Colin McGinn on the evolution of “knowledge”

January 23, 2026 • 10:15 am

Colin McGinn is a well-known philosopher of mind who has written a short piece on the “history of knowledge” on his personal website. He takes an evolutionary view of the topic, which is what he means by “history”. But I found the piece, despite McGinn’s reputation and his authorship of nearly 30 books (many of them on consciousness), confusing and probably misleading. You can read it yourself by clicking on the link below

No doubt McGinn will take issue with my criticisms, for I am but a poor evolutionary biologist trying to understand this the best way I can. However, I do know some biology.  I will put what I see as McGinn’s two main misconceptions under my own bold headings, with McGinn’s quotes indented and my own comments flush left.

McGinn conflates “knowledge” with “consciousness”.  In general, knowledge, which most people define as “justified true belief” is acquired, and does not evolve.  Since it involves belief, it does require a mind that is conscious.  (I’ll take consciousness as McGinn does. meaning “having subjective awareness” or “being able to experience qualia: sense perceptions like the feeling of pain and pleasure, the apprehension of color and touch, and so on”.)

The problem is that what evolves is consciousness, not “knowledge”.  We do not know whether consciousness is a direct, adaptive product of natural selection, or is a byproduct of evolution, but it is certainly a result of our neuronal wiring. I’ll leave aside the problem of which animals are conscious. Based on parallel behavior, I think that many vertebrates and all mammals are conscious, but of course I can’t even say if other people are conscious. (Remember Thomas Nagel’s famous article,  “What is it like to be a bat?” We don’t know.) So consciousness has evolved, perhaps via selection, and it’s likely that the consciousness of many vertebrates had a common evolutionary origin based on neuronal wiring, though again it may have evolved independently in different lineages.

But regardless of these unknowns, since “knowledge” is largely acquired rather than inherited (remember its definition), it’s difficult to see how knowledge can evolve genetically, rather than being learned or passed on culturally.  Monkeys and apes peel bananas differently from how we do it: starting from the flower (bottom) end rather than the stem end (try it–it’s easier), but surely that knowledge is not evolved.  Anything acquired through experience is not knowledge bequeathed by evolution, even though the capacity to acquire certain knowledge (like learning language) can be evolved.

Now in some cases “knowledge” seemingly can be inherited, so the conflation is not total. Male birds of paradise, for example, “know” how to do specific displays to lure females of their species, and that is an instinct (does that count as “knowledge”?) which is inborn, not learned. But different birds of paradise have different displays or songs, and those displays surely evolved independently based on evolved differences in female preferences. We cannot say with any assurance that the genes or neuronal wiring for one species evolved from homologous genes and wiring in another species. Is one songbird’s knowledge of how to find edible berries evolutionarily related to another the ability of another species of songbird to find food? Both may be learned or both may be evolved, but there’s no reason to think that “knowledge” of different species forms an evolutionary tree the way that their genes do.

You can see this conflation in McGinn’s opening paragraph, which assumes that there was a primordial “knowledge” that gave rise to descendant knowledge:

 This is a big subject—a long story—but I will keep it short, brevity being the soul of wisdom. We all know those books about the history of this or that area of human knowledge: physics, astronomy, mathematics, psychology (not so much biology). They are quite engaging, partly because they show the progress of knowledge—obstacles overcome, discoveries made. But they only cover the most recent chapters of the whole history of knowledge—human recorded history. Before that, there stretches a vast history of knowledge, human and animal. Knowledge has evolved over eons, from the primitive to the sophisticated. It would be nice to have a story of the origins and phases of knowledge, analogous to the evolutionary history of other animal traits: when it first appeared and to whom, how it evolved over time, what the mechanisms were, what its phenotypes are. It would be good to have an evolutionary epistemic science. This would be like cognitive science—a mixture of psychology, biology, neuroscience, philosophy, and the various branches of knowledge. It need not focus on human knowledge but could take in the knowledge possessed by other species; there could be an epistemic science of the squirrel, for example. One of the tasks of this nascent science would be the ordering of the various types of knowledge in time—what preceded what. In particular, what was the nature of the very first form of knowledge—the most primitive type of knowledge. For that is likely to shape all later elaborations. We will approach these questions in a Darwinian spirit, regarding animal knowledge as a biological adaptation descended from earlier adaptations. As species and traits of species evolve from earlier species and traits, so knowledge evolves from earlier knowledge, forming a more or less smooth progression (no saltation). Yet we must respect differences—the classic problem of all evolutionary science. We can’t suppose that all knowledge was created simultaneously, or that each type of knowledge arose independently. And we must be prepared to accept that the origins of later knowledge lie in humble beginnings quite far removed from their eventual forms (like bacteria and butterflies). The following question therefore assumes fundamental importance: what was the first type of knowledge to exist on planet Earth?

Note that he implicitly envisages an evolutionary tree of knowledge. It would be clearer if he used “consciousness” for “knowledge”, and defined both of them, which he doesn’t.  But even if you think that, well, McGinn may be onto something here, that “something” comes crashing down when he starts talking about what “knowledge” was the ancestral knowledge. This brings us to the second problem:

McGinn is dead certain that the first “knowledge” that evolved, by which he really means the first quale, or subjective sensation, is the experience of pain. There is no evidence , or even a convincing scenario, for this proposition.  Here’s where he proposes this, and not with much doubt, either:

I believe that pain was the first form of consciousness to exist.[1] I won’t repeat my reasons for saying this; I take it that it is prima facie plausible, given the function of pain, namely to warn of damage and danger. Pain is a marvelous aid to survival (the “survival of the painiest”). Then it is a short step to the thesis that the most primitive form of knowledge involves pain, either intrinsically or as a consequence. We can either suppose that pain itself is a type of knowledge (of harm to the body or impending harm) or that the organism will necessarily know it is in pain when it is (how could it not know?). Actually, I think the first claim is quite compelling: pain is a way of knowing relevant facts about the body without looking or otherwise sensing them—to feel pain is to have this kind of primordial knowledge. To experience pain is to apprehend a bodily condition—and in a highly motivating way. In feeling pain your body knows it is in trouble. It is perceiving bodily harm. Somehow the organism then came to have an extra piece of knowledge, namely that it has the first piece, the sensation itself. It knows a mode of knowing. Pain is thus inherently epistemic—though not at this early stage in the way later knowledge came to exist. Call it proto-knowledge if you feel queasy about applying the modern concept. We can leave the niceties aside; the point is that the first knowledge was inextricably bound up with the sensation of pain, which itself no doubt evolved further refinements and types. Assuming this, we have an important clue to the history of knowledge as a biological phenomenon: knowledge in all its forms grew from pain knowledge; it has pain knowledge in its DNA, literally. Pain is the most basic way that organisms know the world—it is known as painful. Later, we may suppose, pleasure came on the scene, perhaps as a modification of pain, so that knowledge now had some pleasure mixed in with it; knowledge came to have a pain-pleasure axis. Both pain and pleasure are associated with knowledge, it having evolved from these primitive sensations. This is long ago, but the evolutionary past has a way of clinging on over time. Bacterial Adam and Eve knew pain and pleasure (in that order), and we still sense the connection. Knowledge can hurt, but it can also produce pleasure.

When you poke an earthworm, it recoils.  Does it do so because it feels pain? I doubt it, as it seems to me unlikely that an earthworm is conscious. Perhaps it just has an evolved neuronal network and morphology that retracts the body when it senses (not consciously) that it’s been touched. It could simply be like our kneejerk reaction: a reflex that evolved, but is not perceived consciously (remember, we take our hand off a hot stove before we are even conscious of feeling pain). But even if you think earthworms are conscious, certainly single-celled animals are not, yet they exhibit adaptive behavior as well.  One-celled animals can move toward or away from light, are attracted to chemical gradients that denote the proximity of food, move away when disturbed by a touch, seek out other individuals for reproduction, and so on. All animals, whether you think they’re conscious or not, have some kind of evolved instinct to find individuals of the opposite sex when it’s time to have offspring. And surely that “knowledge” (if you will) is the most evolutionarily important of all.

Why, then, is awareness of pain supposed to be the very first “knowledge” to evolve?  Why not responses to touch, to chemical gradients, to a drive for reproduction, or all the qualia that involve senses: touch, taste, sight, hearing, hunger and thirst, and so on?  All of those can be seen as adaptive as a sense of pain, whether it be conscious or not.

Seeing various behavioral responses as constituting “knowledge”, then, adds nothing to our understanding of either evolution or consciousness. It muddles one’s thinking.  The problem is instantiated by sentences like this one:

The organism knows how to get about without banging into things and making a mess. We could call this “substance knowledge”.

Well, simple organisms like rotifers also avoid obstacles.  They are almost certainly not conscious, and you can’t have knowledge without consciousness.  Do they “know” how to get about without banging into things, or is it an evolved trait based on cues associated with “being touched”. What “knowledge” is being shown here?

McGinn then proposes, with near certainty, an evolutionary progression of “knowledge”:

So, let’s declare the age of sense perception the second great phase in the development of knowledge on planet Earth. The two types of knowledge will be connected, because sensed objects are sources of pain and pleasure: it’s good to know about external objects because they are the things that occasion pain or pleasure, and hence aid survival.

I will now speed up the narrative, as promised. Next on the scene we will have knowledge of motion (hence space and time), knowledge of other organisms and their behavior (hence their psychology), followed by knowledge of right and wrong, knowledge of beauty, scientific knowledge of various kinds, social and political knowledge, and philosophical knowledge. Eventually we will have the technology of knowledge: books, libraries, education, computers, artificial intelligence. All this grows from a tiny seed long ago swimming in a vast ocean: the sensation of pain.

The “knowledge” of right and wrong is a learned and cultural phenomenon, completely unlike our “knowledge” of pain, whether it be conscious or a simple reflex reaction to harmful stimuli. What bothers me about all this is not just the mere conflation of “knowledge” with “consciousness”, or the idea that pain was the first “knowledge”; it is the sheer certainty McGinn displays in his essay. Perhaps that comes from his being a philosopher rather than a biologist, as biologists are surely more cautious than philosophers. A quote:

 It was pain that got the ball rolling, and maybe nothing else would have (pain really marks a watershed in the evolution of life on Earth).

I could say with just as much evidence that the perception of touch (either conscious or as an evolved reflex) “got the ball rolling”.  And a response to touch in simple organisms cannot be construed as “knowledge” in any respect.

There is more in this article, but I find the whole thing confusing.  We don’t even know whether consciousness evolved as an adaptive phenomenon. We don’t know whether our consciousness is a post facto construct for perceiving qualia that the body has already detected (remember, you pull your hand off a hot stove before you feel pain). Above all, we don’t know the neuronal basis of consciousness, much less which animals are conscious and which are not.  In Matthew Cobb’s biography of Francis Crick, you can see his subject struggling with this issue in the last part of his life, and admitting that we know little about it. Crick laid out a program for sussing out the neuronal basis of consciousness, but, as Matthew noted in these pages, scientists haven’t gotten far with this problem.

I have no idea why McGinn is so certain about evolution and qualia. I don’t know any evolutionist who would agree with his thesis. I even broached it to a neurobiologist who knows evolution, and that person found the whole concept totally misguided.

As I said, McGinn is no slouch; he is a highly respected philosopher whose work I’ve read and respected. But I get the feeling that he’s driven out of his lane here.

Friday: Hili dialogue

January 23, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Friday, January 23, 2026—the end of the coldest work week of the past year.  Here’s today’s weather, with temperatures in Fahrenheit (!) and the prediction for the next week:

And it’s National Pie Day, celebrating another contribution of America to world cuisine (yes, pies are worldwide and antedate America, but it’s here where pies have become the go-to dessert, and many (like pecan pie) were created.  Here’s a cherry pie baked by Malgorzata in 2014. I helped pit the sour cherries from her and Andrzej’s orchard, and I designed the cat crust.  There will be no more pies like this, not from Dobrzyn:

It’s also International Sticky Toffee Pudding Day (a great contribution of the UK to world dessert culture), National Handwriting Day (mine is getting worse as I age and don’t write much by hand), and, as if to destroy National Pie Day, it’s also National Rhubarb Pie Day, an affront to all pies and an inedible dessert (don’t bother commenting that you like it!)

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 23 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*As I mentioned recently, one of the five or more committees that Trump wants to govern Gaza as it rebuilds is called “The Board of Peace”, described by the Times of Israel like this:

The Board of Peace is the umbrella body that was mandated by the UN Security Council to oversee the postwar management of Gaza until the end of 2027.

The Board of Peace is chaired by Trump, and will largely be made up of heads of state from around the world.

Formal invitations to become members of the Board of Peace were sent out on Friday, and by Saturday the leaders of Turkey, Egypt, Canada and Argentina confirmed having received the offer — an indication that they will likely accept

While this is the most prominent of all the panels established, the Board of Peace will play a generally symbolic role and be more relevant during the fundraising stage, a senior Arab diplomat told The Times of Israel.

Now, at Davos, Trump has signed up some countries to the Board, which he apparently intends to use to replace UN oversight of Gaza:

President Donald Trump said Thursday that he wants his new “Board of Peace” to work with the United Nations, but it was unclear if that pledge would ease concerns among some leaders that he is trying to sideline the international body.

Trump discussed the potential for collaboration at the board’s formal launch, which his administration has advertised as a tool to resolve global conflicts with a scope rivaling the U.N. He was joined by 19 world leaders but just two representatives from European Union nations, Hungary and Bulgaria, a contrast that underscored his ambition to reshape the world order and the limits of his approach.

“Once this board is completely formed, we can do pretty much whatever we want to do, and we’ll do it in conjunction with the United Nations,” Trump said at the signing ceremony. “You know, I’ve always said the United Nations has got tremendous potential, has not used it, but there’s tremendous potential in the United Nations.”

The White House on Thursday released a list of countries that signed onto the board, which included Belgium. Maxime Prévot, the country’s deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs, swiftly refuted the announcement. Belgium has “reservations” about the proposal, like other European nations, he wrote on X.

“Our effort will bring together a distinguished group of nations ready to shoulder the noble responsibility of building LASTING PEACE,” read the invitation sent to Argentine President Javier Milei. “We will convene our wonderful and committed partners, most of whom are HIGHLY Respected World Leaders, in the near future.”

UPDATE: Trump has rescinded his invitation to Canada; it’s retributive, of course, but it’s not wise for anybody to join:

President Trump rescinded on Thursday his invitation for Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada to join his “Board of Peace,” an organization that he had founded to oversee a peace deal between Israel and Hamas in Gaza but that he has now tried to broaden into an institution to rival the United Nations.

In a high-profile speech at the World Economic Forum on Tuesday, Mr. Carney had urged leaders of smaller nations to band together to resist Mr. Trump’s America First doctrine and his efforts to dismantle the post-World War II international order. On Thursday, hours before Mr. Trump’s announcement, Mr. Carney went further, denouncing “authoritarianism and exclusion” in a speech that appeared to be referencing the president.

Here’s the WaPo’s map of countries invited, and those who have already accepted or declined (the latter include Denmark, France, Slovenia, Norway, and Sweden. As of yet, no Western European countries have accepted, though several in the Middle East have.

I’ve already given my reservations about Trump’s overall reconstruction plan, the two main ones being that there is no mechanism for disarming and disbanding Hamas, and putting the Palestinian Authority (hated by nearly all Gazans) on the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza. As for the Board of Peace, Trump has put himself in charge, with the power to veto every decision made by the committee.  Ironically, he said he’s “honored” to chair, but he appointed himself!

*Over at the Free Press, FIRE President Greg Lukianoff describes “The campaign to crush free speech in Minnesota.” It turns out that everyone is guilty of quashing the First Amendment.

The actions of protesters and politicians, during and in response to protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), have become real-world lessons in the law of speech. The clashes have demonstrated which types of speech aren’t protected, along with passionate, angry, and unsettling speech that is protected. We’ve also gotten a chilling reminder of what goes wrong when the government pretends not to know the difference.

For starters, the Justice Department has issued grand jury subpoenas to Minnesota governor Tim Walz, Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey, and at least three other Democratic officials in the state, as part of an investigation into whether state and local officials obstructed federal immigration enforcement. Grand jury matters are secret, so we may never see the subpoenas themselves. But the public justification keeps circling back to speech. Federal officials have portrayed Walz’s and Frey’s criticisms of ICE as incitement, which is not protected by the First Amendment.

But by any reasonable assessment, the statements that have been publicly attributed to Walz do not meet the legal standard for incitement. The governor urged people to speak out “loudly, urgently, but also peacefully,” and warned them not to “fan the flames of chaos.” That doesn’t cross the constitutional line. Walz also used metaphorical political rhetoric, saying no governor should have to “fight a war against the federal government every single day”—language that has lived comfortably inside First Amendment protection for generations.

. . . The speech that federal officials have criticized in Minnesota seems like protected political dissent, not obstruction or conspiracy. That raises the discouraging possibility that the point of the Justice investigation isn’t to bring charges that will stick. Rather, it may be to use the threat of prosecution to chill speech.

. . .As for the protests themselves, some of what we’ve seen is textbook First Amendment activity: protesters chanting in public streets, filming law enforcement, warning neighbors of enforcement activity, criticizing policy. This is precisely the kind of free speech and free assembly the First Amendment was designed to protect.

Nevertheless, there is plenty of unprotected speech being improperly justified on First Amendment grounds. Since the start of ICE operations in Minnesota in November, we have seen objects thrown at officers, crowds pepper sprayed and tear-gassed, and worse. But the extent to which the First Amendment is implicated in interactions between protesters and ICE agents often depends on how the granular details played out, which isn’t always clear from the videos and testimonies.

. . . .Some types of speech, like crowds telling ICE agents to kill themselves in the heat of a protest, might strike most people as upsetting and offensive, but are still protected. While the White House has claimed that such incidents are the result of a campaign of targeted harassment against federal officers, it has so far not provided evidence to that effect. It seems just as probable that those protesters were motivated by their personal dislike of federal law enforcement and chose a harsh way to express it.

Some law enforcement activity violates the First Amendment even though it’s nonphysical. For example, there are credible reports that ICE agents have led civilian observers back to the observers’ homes. The message couldn’t be any clearer: ICE knows where you live. Assuming there’s no law enforcement reason to go to those homes, it’s a pure intimidation tactic designed to create a chilling effect, and the First Amendment is meant to protect us from that kind of retaliation for speaking out.

. . . . And then there’s the moment where the First Amendment lesson goes completely off the rails.

Across the river in St. Paul, protesters entered a church and disrupted a worship service. Journalist Don Lemon filmed the event, and while interviewing a member of the congregation, was told: “Our church had gathered for worship, which we do every Sunday. We asked them to leave and they obviously have not left.” The next thing we hear is Lemon saying, “So, this is what the First Amendment is about.”

No, it is not.

The First Amendment does not grant a right to commandeer private spaces or force unwilling audiences in a private space into a political confrontation. A church is not a public forum, and the actions of that group that day are not legally protected expression. They have a right to gather outside the church and protest on the sidewalk, but by walking into a private service and refusing to leave, they are, at a minimum, trespassing.

In this case, the protesters displayed a flawed understanding of protected speech. Believing your cause is morally urgent isn’t a valid defense for entering a private space unlawfully to deliver a message.

Put all these events and incidents together and the overall lesson becomes clear. Minnesota isn’t showing that the First Amendment is obsolete. It’s showing that balancing its demands is difficult, and that getting it wrong is dangerous.

I haven’t been on the scene, and without that it’s hard to make judgements from videos. But Lukianoff’s take seems reasonable and balanced. Both sides have violated freedom of speech, with the government the most frequent violator. But we shouldn’t excuse protestors, either, as when they disrupted a church service.

*In a bipartisan vote, a House Oversight panel voted to hold both Bill and Hillary Clinton in contempt of Congress (article archived here).

The House Oversight Committee voted on Wednesday to recommend charging Bill and Hillary Clinton with criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to testify in its Jeffrey Epstein investigation, an extraordinary first step in referring them to the Justice Department for prosecution.

Nine Democrats joined Republicans in support of holding Mr. Clinton in contempt, while three Democrats backed holding Mrs. Clinton in contempt, teeing up votes on the House floor within weeks. Should the full House approve the citations, criminal referrals would go to the Justice Department to prosecute the contempt charges, which can carry penalties including a fine of up to $100,000 and imprisonment for as long as a year.

The measures “will pass, and I believe it will pass with Democratic votes,” said Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, the Republican chairman of the Oversight panel.

The votes came after a heated, daylong meeting full of bitter partisan debate over the charges. But they reflected a reluctance by many Democrats, who have been clamoring for months for more transparency from the Trump administration on the Epstein investigation, to be seen as defending anyone associated with the convicted sex offender — and especially party figures who carry as much baggage as the Clintons.

Some Democrats on the committee conceded that the subpoenas were lawful, even though the Clintons have repeatedly stated that they are not. They asserted that Mr. Clinton in particular, who had socialized with Mr. Epstein, needed to answer the committee’s questions, and some called his refusal to testify “shameful.” Mr. Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while in federal custody on sex trafficking charges.

Still, many Democrats also argued that given the Clintons’ efforts to cooperate with the investigation, including an offer by Mr. Clinton to be interviewed under oath by Mr. Comer and their submission of sworn statements laying out what they would say in testimony, the criminal contempt referrals were inappropriate, particularly for a former president.

The President and the ex First Lady are not above the law, and so in this case a contempt citation seems reasonable. There are no reasons to think that either Clinton is guilty, and neither an interview nor a statement is not sufficient since House members should be able to question both of them directly. Representatives are, after all, representatives of Americans, and this is a democracy.  Whatever happens, it’s certain that even if the Clintons are found guilty, neither will spend a day in jail. They’re surely rich enough to pay a fine, and no judge will put people under Secret Service protection in jail.

*Here’s a NYT clickbait article, but it’s true: “At Yosemite, rangers are scarce and visitors have gone wild” (article archived here). I’ve been there several times, and this despoliation upsets me.

 . . . ranger sightings were too rare last year, according to park regulars and advocates. Visitors were far less supervised than they normally were, which had led to the wrong kind of wildness — littering, cliff jumping, drone-flying.

This is Yosemite under President Trump.

Over the past year, Mr. Trump has upended the agency that oversees Yosemite, the National Park Service.

He has presided over a 25 percent drop in permanent staff across the park service, through a combination of Department of Government Efficiency layoffs, as well as buyouts and retirements, according to the National Parks Conservation Association, a nonprofit.

. . . . The U.S. Department of the Interior, which administers the National Park Service, declined to comment on staffing numbers or operations at Yosemite.

. . . But according to interviews with park employees and environmentalists, the cuts at Yosemite, one of the country’s most visited national parks, have meant there aren’t always enough rangers to staff entrance booths or educate visitors on caring for the park. Amid the shortage, scientists working in the parks have cleaned the public toilets.

. . . At the same time, tourists have been coming to Yosemite in droves, with 2025 becoming one of its busiest summers in recent years. October was unusually packed because the park was left open and free during the federal government shutdown.

. . . Elisabeth Barton, a co-owner of a company that offers guided tours of Yosemite’s attractions, said her business had benefited from the crowds. But she has also noticed more visitors driving the wrong way down one-way roads, parking on sensitive meadows and BASE jumping off cliffs, which is not allowed.

. . . Ms. Barton and her co-owner, Bryant Burnette, who have been giving private tours of the park for years, think visitors have become particularly unruly because there haven’t been enough staff members around to teach them the importance of caring for the landscape.

“No wonder people are throwing trash and flying drones,” said Mr. Burnette, 36, who, as he walked, picked up tissues and wrappers that had been discarded on the valley floor. “I can’t be mad at them.”

Well, I can be mad at them.  Anybody with a lick of sense should know not to do anything unseemly, including littering and flying drones, in what is one of America’s greatest glories. How can Burnette think that without instruction tourists don’t know better than to litter the park or climb without a permit? As the article notes:

Currently, employees are keeping the park running day to day, but that isn’t enough — and it can’t last forever, said Don Neubacher, who was superintendent of Yosemite from 2010 to 2016.

“It’s not like you’re talking about some city park,” he said. “You’re talking about nature’s greatest gifts — it’s a dire time.”

It is SO beautiful.  Here’s the view from Glacier Point of the Eastern Yosemite Valley with Half Dome on the right:

Thomas Wolf, http://www.foto-tw.de, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

*The UPI’s “Odd News” section describes a coyote doing what no human ever accomplished, swimming between the mainland and the island where Alcatraz prison sits (it’s no longer used as a prison).

A coyote caught on camera swimming to San Francisco’s Alcatraz Island is believed to be the first of its species to visit the former prison, which is now a tourist attraction.

Aidan Moore, a guest relations employee for Alcatraz City Cruises, said he was helping visitors disembark at the dock when a tourist showed him a video she captured of a coyote swimming to shore and climbing up onto the rocks.

Moore, who posted the video to Facebook, said he contacted rangers on the island, but they were unable to locate the animal.

Moore said he suspects the coyote may have gone back into the water, but it could also be hiding out somewhere on the island.

Janet Kessler, an amateur naturalist who has been studying coyote behavior in San Francisco for two decades, said the canine would be able to survive on the island for at least a short time. She said there are ample sources of food and puddles of fresh water to sustain the coyote.

The coyote may have come from San Francisco or Angel Island, where coyotes were previously observed. Either way, the animal would have had to swim over a mile to Alcatraz.

ulian Espinoza, a spokesperson for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which oversees Alcatraz, confirmed the coyote was the first of its species to be documented visiting the island.

“Coyotes can be commonly seen throughout our San Francisco and Marin parklands but never before on Alcatraz,” Espinoza wrote in an email to SFGate. “This was the first time our park biologists observed anything like this.”

There have been several attempts of inmates to escape Alcatraz by swimming to shore, but no successes have been confirmed. The water is freezing and the currents swift. But I sure hope the coyote, who may have been looking for territory without competition, survived.  He was not in good shape when he made it to the island.  And I hope that eventually, if it survives, animal people would rescue it and put it in a good territory on the mainland (after a big meal of dog food). Here’s a video that shows the poor beast swimming:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has spilkes in her kishkes:

Hili: Various thoughts are troubling me.
Andrzej: Yeah, that’s one of the flaws of being alive.

In Polish:

Hili: Dręczą mnie różne myśli.
Ja: Tak, to jedna z wad istnienia.

*******************

From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:

From Give Me a Sign:

From CinEmma:

Masih gets attacked on Iranian t.v. in a ludicrous way. Look at the woman in the hijab saying that Masih is protected by the FBI because she’s not doing “clean-cut journalism”? What Masih is doing is both advocacy and perfectly legal reporting on the Iranian regime, but she’s protected because Iran has tried to kill her three times, for crying out loud!

From Al, a post about a resident of Catstanbul and the moggies one encounters there daily:

There’s no doubt that Larry the Cat, if he was an American cat, would be a Democat:

I can’t remember who sent me this, but it’s insane and has to stop:

One from my feed; a parent gives her child a roller-coaster experience. Presumably the video was playing at the same time (sound up):

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

Two from Dr. Cobb.  I didn’t realize that German was the most frequently-spoken language in Switzerland, but it is—by a long shot (64% of the people, with the second most common language, French, spoken by only 19%).

Another proud day for America.

— Ron Filipkowski (@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social) 2026-01-21T17:37:33.984Z

Look at this thing!  The linked paper suggests that it’s not related to living or extinct fungi, so it may be a member of an unknown group that went extinct without leaving descendants:

Our paper on the mysterious Devonian organism Prototaxites has now finally been published! See the paper here (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/…) and our explainer thread below! Prototaxites reconstruction by Matt Humpage

— Laura Cooper (@transitionalform.bsky.social) 2026-01-21T19:25:29.885Z

There’s a thread, and these bizarre things were up to 8 meters tall!

1 / 23 Prototaxites is known from some very large fossils, including columns over 8m tall. These fossils date from the end of the Silurian to the Late Devonian (425–365 million years ago). This makes Prototaxites the largest organism on the Earth’s surface before the appearance of tall trees.

— Laura Cooper (@transitionalform.bsky.social) 2026-01-21T19:39:32.138Z

Has Trump done anything good?

January 22, 2026 • 10:40 am

My Facebook page is filled with criticisms of all the craziness in the world due to Trump’s actions, and of course most of the news and websites I read are similar.  Because I usually use Facebook to see what my friends are doing, or to look at pictures of cats, ducks, and other animals, I find the constant harping on Trump and his deeds depressing. That’s not because I disagree with these views; as should be clear by now, I think the man is mentally ill and that his presidency has been a disaster, with him veering between one crazy, drastic decision and another. (The threat to take over Greenland was merely the latest dumbass move.)

I say this because I think I need to make my position clear before I ask a question. And the question is this:

What do you think are the beneficial things Trump has done?

Why am I asking this? Well, first, because I think he has done some good stuff, including helping Israel, taking out Maduro, attacking Iran along with Israel, defining sex for official purposes as biological sex rather than self-identification, reducing illegal immigration at the border (I am not, of course, approving of the heavy-handed and often injurious tactics of ICE), and trying to expand the use of mental institutions to reduce the privations suffered by homeless people who are mentally ill.  Again, I am not saying that the net effect of all of Trump’s policies are good for America, as one can easily make the case otherwise—most notably in his changing a checks-and-balance Presidency into a quasi-dictatorship.

However, I don’t think that people’s opinions of policies should rest on an assessment of the person, but should be based on the policies themselves.  It’s both divisive and irrational to refuse to admit that, if someone does something good, it’s really bad because the person is bad (in Trump’s case, he’s often called a “Nazi”, which is hyperbolic and inaccurate).

So, I’m asking readers to answer the question above. If you wish to add a caveat about disliking Trump as I have done above, you’re welcome to do so, but I’m not asking for harangues about the man, as I can read those everywhere on the Internet. (I can guarantee that this  very post will lead me to be called a “right-winger,” just as my opposition to biological men being put in women’s prisons or participating in women’s sports has led to my being called a “transphobe”. More on that later.)

If you don’t think he’s ever done anything good, feel free to say that, too.

Readers’ wildlife photos

January 22, 2026 • 9:15 am

Well, we’ve run out of photos from readers and I am heartbroken again. BUT we still have the third and final batch of photos from Cairns resident Scott Ritchie, summarizing his best photos of 2025.  Scott’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.  Scott’s Facebook page is here.

Warning cuteness ahead! Here’s a couple of mammals from my Western Australia trip. A Honey Possum [Tarsipes rostratus] feeding on a Scarlet Banksia at Cheynes Beach.

It even more cuteness. A numbat [Myrmecobius fasciatus] searches for his nest hollow. This was taken it Dryandra Forest National Park, Western Australia:

I like my ducks and he’s not the prettiest one, but I love his weirdness. The Musk Duck [Biziura lobata]. This male has this weird leather pouch under his chin and the tail feathers like a crown of the Statue of Liberty. And he likes laying on his back like a sea otter. Very cool beast. This was taken in Albany, Westerrn Australia:

I love my fairywrens. They’re usually extremely beautiful but before they grow up, they’re sort of brownish birds designed to blend in with the bush. This is a young male Splendid Fairywren [Malurus splendens] in eclipse phase, just starting to grow his beautiful blue feathers. You can just see them around his eye. This photo gives us a hint of what’s to come. Pemberton Western Australia:

And here’s the Splendid Fairyrwen in full eclipse mode singing is heart out. I love the blue and gray patchwork. It reminds me of a flannel shirt I have:

“in case you’re wondering what I look like in full costume, here it is!” Male Splendid Fairywren, Nannup, Western Australia.

I was really fortunate to run across a group of Baudin’s Black Cockatoos [Zanda baudinii] near Pemberton. A very endangered and magnificent parrot:

A Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo [Zanda funerea] navigates through the forest. This bird was part of a group that had been warned to flee in response to an incoming sea-eagle. Most cockatoos post sentries to stand guard while the others feed:

A sentry male Crimson Rosella [Platycercus elegans] in a Gumtree forest in the Dandenong Ranges in Victoria:

I really taken to capturing wider views, “birdscapes”. They allow you to appreciate the birds and their natural environment. Here’s a group of Great Knots [Calidris tenuirostris] and a Great Egret [Ardea alba] at sunrise on the Cairns Esplanade:

I really love Red-tailed Black Cockatoos [Calyptorhynchus banksii]. It was great to get this male in flight with his tail spread so that you can appreciate his lovely red panels. It was also cool to get him flying across the rainforest in the rain. An iconic north Queensland moment:

Spring is rebirth. And here a group of Radjah Shelducks [Radjah radjah], mother, father and their nine little ducklings, cruise across Freshwater Lake in Cairns. I call this a duck love train:

And finally, our local Rufus Owls, after several nest failures, managed to produce a chick. This young fledgling Rufous Owl [Ninox rufa] cautiously sticks his head out the late evening light, looking for his parents to come and feed him. These birds had survived harassment by waves of Sulphur-crested Cockatoos that wanted to take over the nesting hollow. However, the owls were staunch in their defense, and eventually the chick fledged and left the nest. A end of year treat for all us local birders!:

Thursday: Hili dialogue

January 22, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Thursday, January 22, 2026, and National Southern Food Day.  This is the finest regional cuisine of America, and extends from the meat-and-three plates of the South to the BBQ of Texas.  Here is the apotheosis of the genre: a plate of BBQ at Black’s in Lockhart, Texas, photographed (and eaten) by me in 2021. There’s a huge barbecued beef rib, a jalapeño corn muffin, beans, potato salad, raw onion, and pickles. On the side, not visible, is a huge beaker of sweetened ice tea. I had banana pudding for dessert.  Kings don’t eat that well!

We are under an extreme cold alert in Chicago. Here’s the forecast for today’s temperatures (right now it’s -8°C or 18°F), as well as for the next week’s highs and lows. I’ve shown Celsius temperatures, but it’s equally cold in Fahrenheit. Brrrrr! Snow on Saturday! But at least we’re not getting the huge accumulations in the NE United Sates.

Comments on this site are dropping, which makes Professor Ceiling Cat (Emeritus) sad.  There’s no point writing if nobody reads.

It’s also Answer Your Cat’s Questions Day (the most common is “when are you gonna feed me?”), National Blond Brownie Day, and Roe vs. Wade Day (the decision, now overturned, came down on this day in 1973). Below is plaintiff “Jane Roe,” whose real name was Norma McCorvey. She died in 2017 at age 68.

Lorie Shaull from St Paul, United States, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 22 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*In what is likely to be a Supreme Court loss for Trump, questioning in arguments today suggest that the Justices are not going to let Trump fire Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook, whom Trump accused of mortgage fraud:

The Supreme Court on Wednesday seemed poised to reject President Trump’s bid to immediately remove Lisa D. Cook from the Federal Reserve board, with key justices expressing concern about undermining the longstanding independence of the central bank.

Justices from across the ideological spectrum questioned whether the allegations President Trump lodged against Ms. Cook — an unproven assertion that she engaged in mortgage fraud before taking office — were serious enough to allow the president to fire her.

They suggested it was premature for the court to resolve the case when there were still factual disputes over those allegations, and they sounded skeptical that Ms. Cook had received sufficient notice of Mr. Trump’s accusations and an opportunity to respond.

After about two hours of argument, a majority of the justices seemed likely to order additional proceedings, perhaps in the lower courts, meaning the Supreme Court’s ruling may not be the final word in the case. But if the justices agree to allow Ms. Cook to keep her job in the meantime, the result would be that the president’s effort to reshape the Fed would be frozen for now.

The court’s conservative majority has repeatedly allowed Mr. Trump to oust leaders of other independent agencies as he moves to expand presidential power and seize control of the federal bureaucracy. But the justices have signaled that the Fed may be different and uniquely insulated from executive influence because of its structure and history.

Key justices sharply questioned the Trump administration’s lawyer about the implications of the president’s position for the independence of the Fed and the economy.

Justices Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, who are often in the majority, noted that former Fed chairs and Treasury secretaries had warned against allowing the president to immediately remove Ms. Cook.

Accepting the president’s view, Justice Kavanaugh said, would “weaken, if not shatter, the independence of the Federal Reserve,” he said, opening the door to future presidents trying to dismiss officials at the Fed “at will.”

The justices agreed to hear Ms. Cook’s case on an expedited basis and are expected to rule in the coming weeks or months. The final outcome of the case could determine how much latitude presidents have to influence the direction of the powerful central bank, which Congress intentionally tried to insulate from political pressures.

This represents a curbing of Trump’s attempt to expand a President’s powers, as no previous President has tried to monkey with the Fed board; the organization is supposed to be independent. At any rate, even a ruling in favor of Cook won’t end the case, as the justices will just allow her to stay on while the case is adjudicated in lower courts, and that could take a very long time.

*Andrew Sullivan latest weekly dish article, “Greenland is a red line,” dilates on the insanity of Trump’s Greenland ambitions, ambitions that are simply not justifiable under any argument:

The essence of tyranny is the imposition of one man’s will on an entire polity — with no checks, balances, or even reasons cited to back him up. It is, to coin a phrase, a triumph of will. In fact, you could argue that a tyrant aims for exactly such a demonstrable act of pure solipsism as soon as he can pull it off — against all elite and popular opinion and common sense — because it proves by its very arbitrary irrationality that only he matters.

That’s why President Trump’s threat to the sovereignty of a NATO ally, Denmark, is a red line. No one — neither Greenlanders nor Americans — wants what is an insane idea. No one needs it. No reason can be given for it. And yet Trump keeps insisting, like a mafia boss, that he will take it. He must be stopped.

The reasons given have changed, as they do when they are being invented on the fly to justify something already decided and totally bonkers. We were first told that this was about national security, because the Arctic — thanks to the climate’s rapid heating of the North Pole — is becoming a far more disputed part of the globe, with more valuable shipping lanes and military activity. Russia and China have their eyes on it. And so should we.

Fair enough. In fact, let’s get to it. Greenland is already in NATO, and the Danes and Greenlanders would be more than happy to have all the US bases that were once there to come back, and more if necessary. The Danes, after all, are among the finest members of the alliance, committing to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, for example, for many long years, with many fatalities. When Germany and France refused to send troops to accompany the US and UK in Iraq, the Danish parliament voted to support the US. Danes have literally died for us — and now we repay it by threatening to invade and conquer them. It’s a disgusting and shameful idea.

This week, Trump tried to suggest that unless the US occupies Greenland against the wishes of its people, Russia and China will. There is no substance to this absurd lie. If Russia or China were to threaten Greenland’s sovereignty, NATO would invoke Article 5. Which is why Russia and China haven’t. The only reason they might is if Trump effectively ends NATO, as he is now apparently planning. And let’s be honest: if we’re not buying Greenland, and not allying with it, we are illegally invading and occupying a sovereign country — an action opposed by a super-majority of Americans (75 percent per CNN, 86 percent per Quinnipiac).

So what’s left to defend the madness? According to Trump, the “psychological” benefit of “owning” the place. The best way to understand that, I think, is simply that Trump wants, like all tyrants, to expand the footprint of his domain. We missed this in the first term. But it’s just what tyrants do, what tyranny is — as Plato first explained. It’s what Putin is trying in Ukraine; and Xi in Taiwan and Tibet; and Netanyahu in Gaza and the West Bank. Trump wants to see the stars and stripes extend on a Mercator map to make America look BIGGER. So he can gain GLORY. That’s it. Yep. That’s really all this is.

. . .More troops please. NATO needs to make it very clear that a war on Greenland is a war on NATO, and Article 5 will be triggered. And the Congress needs to act now with a vote upholding the integrity of NATO and the inviolable sovereignty of our great ally, Denmark. Every second a NATO ally is threatened in this way damages the alliance deeply and endangers the order of the entire world.

This is not a drill. The madman must be stopped now. Or he will become unstoppable.

And the latest from Davos; Trump backs off on Greenland!

President Trump said Wednesday that he had reached the framework of a deal with NATO over Greenland’s future, hours after alliance officials separately discussed the possibility of the United States obtaining sovereignty over land for military bases, according to three senior officials familiar with the talks.

Mr. Trump’s announcement was among a series of moves on Wednesday that appeared to draw the United States back from the possibility of military and economic conflict with his allies over Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark.

Mr. Trump also withdrew the threat of additional tariffs for European allies that had resisted his insistence on owning Greenland, and said he would not use force to assert American ownership.

. . . The officials said that Mr. Rutte [the NATO Secretary General] had been pursuing a compromise this week, but they did not know if the concept of the United States having some sovereignty over small pockets of Greenland for military bases was part of the framework announced by Mr. Trump.

One of the officials, who attended the meetings, compared the concept to the United Kingdom’s bases in Cyprus, which are regarded as British territory. A second official who was briefed on the discussions also confirmed that the idea for Greenland was modeled after the sovereign British bases in Cyprus.

Asked for details of the framework that Mr. Trump announced, NATO said in a statement that “negotiations between Denmark, Greenland and the United States will go forward aimed at ensuring that Russia and China never gain

It looks as if the crisis is over for now, though getting sovereignty over bases in Greenland means that those bases are on United States territory. In other words, if this happens under the unspecified agreement, the U.S. will own a small part of the island. But at least we won’t be going to war with NATO.

*When I was younger, people would regularly commit suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, which almost guarantees that you’ll die when you hit the water (a few have survived). Now, thanks to nets installed along the bridge, and a video monitoring system, the suicide rate has dropped nearly to zero:

The Golden Gate Bridge, the iconic span that hangs between San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean, has been the site of more than 2,000 confirmed suicide leaps since its completion in 1937. The true death toll is certainly higher, since not all jumps are witnessed and not all bodies are recovered.

In 2006, at least 34 people jumped to their deaths by crossing the four-foot rail and plunging more than 200 feet into the strait below. It was also the year that Paul Muller and two others with family members who had jumped from the bridge decided to do something.

That something slowly evolved into a complicated, miles-long series of stainless-steel nets — a “suicide deterrent system” — now strung on both sides of the bridge. It is out of sight to the millions of people who cross the bridge every year, but plainly visible to anyone standing at the rail, looking down.

For decades, there had been an average of 30 suicides at the bridge each year. In 2024, as the final pieces of the net were installed and tweaks were made, there were eight.

In 2025, the first full year with the nets in place, there were four, and none between June and December.

That annual total is surely among the fewest ever recorded at the bridge, and seven months might be the longest stretch without a suicide at the bridge, though early records are sparse.

“The last seven months there were zero, so the results couldn’t be better,” Mr. Muller said.

Mr. Muller was disheartened to learn that there has been one suicide early in 2026. But the goal all along was to save lives, and to eventually undo the dark magnetism of the bridge as a place to die.

. . .“The assessment is that the net is working as intended,” Mr. Mulligan said. “We’re trying to reduce the number of deaths. That’s what government should do, is protect the public. We were candid up front that nothing’s 100 percent, but that we think this is a worthwhile endeavor and good for the community. And we think a lot of people are alive today because of the project.”

Mr. Mulligan also oversees a vast electronic surveillance system and a team of on-bridge officers whose responsibilities include identifying and stopping those who are considering a leap. Last year, there were 94 successful interventions, about half as many as the average before the nets.

The rate of survival from jumping used to be 1%, but now people look at the nets and just don’t jump. Looking at the nets, though, it seems that a determined self-harmer could simply crawl to the edge of the nets and jump off there.  Perhaps people are just so conflicted about jumping that the mere sight of a net is enough to dissuade them.  I do think that someone with extreme suicidality that has tried everything to get cured, but failed, should be allowed to have medical euthanasia, but many people disagree. (This kind of assisted suicide is legal in places like the Netherlands.)

*The AP reports what is purported the oldest rock art (and oldest depiction of animals) known. I’ve put a video below.

Handprints on cave walls in a largely unexplored area of Indonesia may be the oldest rock art studied so far, dating back to at least 67,800 years ago.

The tan-colored prints analyzed by Indonesian and Australian researchers on the island of Sulawesi were made by blowing pigment over hands placed against the cave walls, leaving an outline. Some of the fingertips were also tweaked to look more pointed.

This prehistoric art form suggests the Indonesian island was home to a flourishing artistic culture. To figure out how old the paintings were, researchers dated mineral crusts that had formed on top of the art.

Upon seeing the new study, independent paleoanthropologist Genevieve von Petzinger said she “let out a little squeal of joy.”

“It fits everything I’d been thinking,” she said.

Indonesia is known to host some of the world’s earliest cave drawings, and scientists have analyzed countless examples of ancient art across the globe — including simple marks on bones and stones that go back hundreds of thousands of years. Cross-hatched markings on a piece of rock in South Africa have been dated to about 73,000 years ago.

The new art from southeastern Sulawesi is the oldest to be found on cave walls. The stencils also represent a more complex tradition of rock art that could have been a shared cultural practice, said study author Maxime Aubert with Griffith University, who published the study Wednesday in the journal Nature.

It’s not yet clear whose hands made the prints. They could be from an ancient human group called Denisovans who lived in the area and may have interacted with our Homo sapiens ancestors before eventually going extinct. Or they may belong to modern humans venturing away from Africa, who could have wandered through the Middle East and Australia around this time. Fine details on the cave art, including the intentionally modified fingertips, point to a human hand.

Other drawings discovered in the same area of the island, including a human figure, a bird and horse-like animals were found to be created much more recently, some of them about 4,000 years ago.

There’s likely more art to be found on nearby islands that could be even older than the handprints. Future studies may help scientists understand how these artistic traditions spread across the globe and how they’re woven into the fabric of humanity’s early days.

“For us, this discovery is not the end of the story,” Aubert said in an email. “It is an invitation to keep looking.”

But wait! Wikipedia says this under “prehistoric art“:

In September 2018, scientists reported the discovery of the earliest known drawing by Homo sapiens, which is estimated to be 73,000 years old, much earlier than the 43,000 years old artifacts understood to be the earliest known modern human drawings found previously.

That’s about 5,000 years older than the present discovery, but maybe handprints don’t count as “drawings” (but the handprings were modified). You be the judge. At any rate, here’s a 2½ minute video showing some of the art found on Sulawesi.

*I had no idea that some young folks have pledged a “no-buy January, a vow not to buy anything non-essential for an entire month. Well, I’ve pretty much been doing that for entire years. From the WSJ:

This January, Americans aren’t just giving up alcohol. They are giving up buying anything at all.

Fueled by social media, some consumers are starting the new year with “No Buy January.” It is a challenge to eliminate purchases of anything nonessential—like clothes, skin-care products and electronics—for the entire 31 days of January.

Brent Parsons has taken up the idea. His family of five is typically mindful of expenses, buying meat on sale at the grocery store and clothing at a discount.

This year, Parsons, 44 years old, locked the family credit card. Anyone who wants to make a purchase needs to make a case for why gas, fast food and other potential items are needed.

“Basically it was like, if we don’t take some drastic measures to change our behaviors now, we’re going to be in a lot of trouble,” he said.

Brent Parsons and his family are trying to save money by locking the family credit card. Erica Rodriguez

Low- or no-buy years or months have gained in popularity. Google searches for “No Buy January” hit a five-year high in December, driven largely by Gen-Zers and millennials, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. Meanwhile, social-media posts setting the rules typically peak in December and again in January, as purchase avoiders track their progress, the firm said.

Americans’ monthlong exercises in restraint have been known to affect sales of everything from razors in November to alcohol at the beginning of the year and snacks as some take on a one-month sugar detox.

A survey conducted for NerdWallet of more than 2,000 U.S. adults found that more than a quarter have tried a no-spend January, with 12% joining in the trend this year. Nearly 45% said life feels expensive right now, which might be a reason people are trying the challenge.

Gillian Shieh is one of them. “Looking at my finances, they look OK,” she said. “But just emotionally, it feels stressful.”

Well, I’m not giving up alcohol, but I think I have all the wine I need for several years, and have stopped buying more. (For example, it would be useless for someone at my age to buy young vintage port.) But I’m wondering if nonessential items means restaurant meals, which I’m still indulging in from time to time. Books I get free from our library, and I have enough cowboy boots and cigars (which I no longer smoke) to last a lifetime. I see no issue with no-buy-periods since everyone has too much stuff anyway. I once thought, based on seeing Gandhi’s possessions in Delhi (false teeth, a bowl, a stick, a dhoti, and a few other things that he carried) that people shouldn’t own more stuff than they can carry. But then I thought about my car. . . .

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej and Hili have an intellectual chinwag, one in which evolution appears:

Hili: Does history repeat itself?
Andrzej: I think it’s similar to evolution – ideas undergo mutations, results are never quite the same, yet the aggressiveness of some ideas seems to reappear, though in altered shapes.

In Polish:

Hili: Czy historia się powtarza?
Ja: Mam wrażenie, że z historią jest podobnie jak z ewolucją, idee mutują, efekty są różne, zjadliwość niektórych idei wydaje się powtarzać, chociaż wyglądają inaczej.

*******************

From Merilee: Greenland defends itself!:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Stacy:

From Masih: TWO linked tweets about a lively and lovely young woman shot in the lung and killed by the Iranian authorities. Be sure to watch both the videos:

From Luana; the head of the UK’s Liberal Democratic Party takes a “free speech, but. . . ” stand which is odious. He wants to suspend X (Twitter):

The first one is from Jay: this is indeed cool. The second one is a bonus linked to the first

One from my feed; cat singing opera:

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

Two from Matthew. First, an astronomical cat photobomb (I can’t guarantee it’s authentic). Matthew calls this “cat god.”

Cat wandered in front of the camera during the #aurora long exposure

— danniemcq (@danniemcq.bsky.social) 2026-01-20T00:48:26.798Z

“Knob” is a largely British usage for male genitalia, but “love handles” are on both sides of the pond. This poor girl pines for her ex when she sees a can opener:

Everything reminds me of him…

— Faye Hill (@squangles.bsky.social) 2026-01-17T17:34:24.164Z

 

Short takes: An excellent movie and a mediocre book

January 21, 2026 • 11:30 am

In the last week I’ve finished watching an excellent movie and reading a mediocre book, both of which were recommended by readers or friends. I rely a lot on such recommendations because, after all, life is short and critics can help guide us through the arts.

The good news is that the movie, “Hamnet,” turned out to be great. I had read the eponymous book by Maggie O’Farrell in 2022 (see my short take here), and was enthralled, saying this:

I loved the book and recommend it highly, just a notch in quality behind All the Light We Cannot See, but I still give it an A. I’m surprised that it hasn’t been made into a movie, for it would lend itself well to drama. I see now that in fact a feature-length movie is in the works, and I hope they get good actors and a great screenwriter.

They did. Now the movie is out, and it’s nearly as good as the book. Since the book is superb, the movie is close to superb. That is, it’s excellent but perhaps not an all-time classic, though it will always be worth watching. Author O’Farrell co-wrote the screenplay with director  Chloé Zhao, guaranteeing that the movie wouldn’t stray too far from the book. As you may remember, the book centers on Agnes, another name for Shakespeare’s wife Anne Hathaway, a woman who is somewhat of a seer (the book has a bit of magical realism). And the story covers the period from the meeting of Shakespeare and Agnes until Shakespeare writes and performs “Hamlet,” a play that O’Farrell sees as based on the death from plague of their only son Hamnet (another name for Hamlet; apparently names were variable in England).  I won’t give away the plot of the book or movie, which are the same, save to say that the movie differs in having a bit less magic and a little more of Shakespeare’s presence. (He hardly shows up in the book.)

The movie suffers a bit from overemotionality; in fact, there’s basically no time in the movie when someone is not suffering or in a state of high anxiety.  But that is a quibble. The performances, with Jessie Buckley as Agnes and Paul Mescal as Shakespeare, are terrific. Buckley’s is, in fact, Oscar-worthy, and I’ll be surprised if she doesn’t win a Best Actress Oscar this year.  The last ten minutes of the movie focuses on her face as she watches the first performance of “Hamlet” in London’s Globe theater, and the gamut of emotions she expresses just from a close shot of her face is a story in itself.  Go see this movie (bring some Kleenex for the end), but also read the book.  Here’s the trailer:

On to the book. Well, it was tedious and boring, though as I recall Mother Mary Comes to Me, by Indian author Arundhati Roy, was highly praised. Roy’s first novel, The God of Small Things, won the Booker Prize and I loved it; her second, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, was not as good.  I read Mother Mary simply because I liked her first book and try to read all highly-touted fiction from India, as I’ve been there many times, I love to read about the country, and Indian novelists are often very good.

Sadly, Mother Mary was disappointing. There’s no doubt that Roy had a tumultuous and diverse live, and the autobiography centers around her  relationship with her mother (Mary, of course), a teacher in the Indian state of Kerala. The two have a tumultuous connection that, no matter how many times Roy flees from Kerala, is always on her mind.  It persists during Roy’s tenure in architectural school, her marriage to a rich man (they had no children), and her later discovery of writing as well as her entry into Indian politics, including a time spent with Marxist guerrillas and campaigning for peaceful treatment of Kashmiris.

The book failed to engage me for two reasons. First, Mother Mary was a horrible person, capable of being lovable to her schoolchildren at one second and a horrible, nasty witch at the next.  She was never nice to her daughter, and the book failed to explain (to me, at least) why the daughter loved such a hateful mother. There’s plenty of introspection, but nothing convincing. Since the central message of the novel seems to be this abiding mother/daughter relationship, I was left cold.

Further, there’s a lot of moralizing and proselytizing, which is simply tedious. Although Roy avows herself as self-effacting, she comes off as a hidebound and rather pompous moralist, something that takes the sheen off a fascinating life.  Granted, there are good bits, but overall the writing is bland.  I would not recommend this book.

Two thumbs down for this one:

Of course I write these small reviews to encourage readers to tell us what books and/or movies they’ve encountered lately, and whether or not they liked them. I get a lot of good recommendations from these posts; in fact, it was from a reader that I found out about Hamnet.