The lesson of apples

I grew up in Washington state, and many of my relatives worked the apple orchards in season — they were good, hardworking fruit pickers. But I hadn’t even thought about where apples came from. I was pretty sure it wouldn’t have been the Yakima valley, and of course I knew of the legend of Johnny Appleseed, but wouldn’t have been able to even guess what their origin was.

It turns out they’re from Kazakhstan.

What I thought was most interesting in the video is that it mentions Nikolai Vavilov, and his famous hypothesis — so famous that we take it for granted in any discussion of human origins.

The origin of any cultivated plant can be found where its wild relatives grow with the greatest diversity.

Awesome! I’m going to have expand my discussion of extreme heterozygosity and centers of origin in my Spring semester genetics class (but not now, I have to focus on cell bio for next week). I read this most excellent review, Human-driven evolution of cultivated plants and the origin of early civilizations: The concept of Neolithic revolution in the works of Nikolai Vavilov and found it enlightening.

The concept of centers of origin of cultivated plants (crop biodiversity hotspots) developed by Nikolai Vavilov (1887–1943) is essential for understanding the origin and evolution of human civilization. Vavilov formulated the principles of the Neolithic agricultural revolution and substantiated the basic patterns for the emergence of agricultural civilizations. He established that the center of speciation of the plants that have a potential for cultivation determines the origin of primary civilization. Humans actively performed the selection of plants with valuable properties, which led to the formation of new cultivated species and varieties, while the starting point for such unconsciously human-directed evolution was the presence of potentially useful traits due to the increased genetic diversity in the center of origin. The spreading of agriculturally important cultivars from the center of their origin led to the propagation of beneficial farming technologies over large areas. The establishment of human civilization resulted from the dynamic quasi-symbiotic relationship between humans and domesticated plants and animals, which human-driven evolution became an essential factor for the transformation and dynamics of human societies.

Here’s all the human history you need. (I exaggerate slightly.)

Fig. 5 summarizes the proposed views on the development of agricultural civilizations and phytospreading during the Holocene. The phytospreading process became to a major extent human-driven in the Holocene, which resulted in intensive biomass formation related to the production of crops. Centers of origin of cultivated plants determined the rise of early civilizations, which in turn facilitated the spreading of wild, cultivated, and weed species to higher latitudes. The process of phytospreading in the Holocene was described by Vavilov for the origin and distribution of cultivated plants. He identified the centers of origin of cultivated plants as the hotspots of genetic diversity for the plants potentially having agricultural importance. In these spots, the series of parallel variability (described as Vavilov’s law of homologous series) were very intense.

Fig. 5. Schematic illustration of the development of agricultural practices, spreading of cultivated plants, and social evolution of human civilization.

The law of homologous series is a very evo-devo concept. It’s the idea that similar variations can be found in members of the same genus, the same family, that is, that there seems to be something in the ancestral form that recurs spontaneously in later descendant forms, that the feature is an intrinsic property that can pop up in multiple branches of a lineage. These are brilliant observations rooted in Vavilov’s extensive study of native populations. Yes, he visited Kazakhstan and studied the apples there.

It’s especially impressive that he was doing this work that merged the disciplines of evolutionary biology and genetics in the 1920s.

You may have heard Vavilov’s name in another context: he was hated by the anti-science ideologue Trofim Lysenko, who eventually had him arrested and condemned to death in 1940. Vavilov died in prison in 1943, all because he recognized the scientific validity of Mendelian genetics, and opposed the nonsensical delusions and wishful thinking of Lysenko (delusions that led to the death of millions by famine). I can’t help but notice the similarities in the conflict between American science and the lies of MAHA and our modern Lysenko, RFK jr.

Vavilov’s mugshot

Thank goodness no scientists are being harassed in show trials and threatened with prison here! How many great scientists are going to wither on the vine thanks to the current radical politicization of science in this country?

Election denial is a psychological disorder

Remember this guy? He ought to be forgotten already.

Despite a glowing endorsement from Trump, Lindell was defeated by Demuth by roughly 11 percentage points in the Republican primary for governor on 11 August, a margin far beyond the 0.25% threshold that would trigger an automatic state-funded recount.

He lost by 11 percent. This was not a photo finish, he was clearly repudiated by the Republican electorate. Without question, Mike Lindell is OUT. However, he still refuses to concede, and is demanding a recount.

Because the gap is wider than the threshold, Lindell would need to formally request the recount and cover its cost himself.

The announcement comes after Lindell refused last week to concede the Republican gubernatorial primary, despite trailing by a double-digit margin. The Associated Press called the race for Demuth, the Minnesota House speaker, late on election night.

Lindell’s campaign alleged “irregularities identified in election-night electronic reporting data” in the news release.

Minnesota law allows a manual recount if the loser pays for it themself, in this case at the cost of over $800,000. He’s planning to pay it, despite his pillow business being in a shambles and his bankruptcies.

Just wait until the general election! MAGA is going to go nuts.

James O’Keefe still likes to play dress-up

If you thought James O’Keefe was washed up and would vanish in the sewage outlet of history after his exposure and disgrace, guess again. He attempted to meddle in the Minnesota primary by dressing up as a “muslim”, putting on a poor “muslim” accent, and attempting to vote illegally, to show that Minnesota election laws were leaky and would allow for significant election fraud.

Veritas founder James O’Keefe, along with reporter Cam Higby, impersonated Muslims and went to multiple Twin Cities polling places during the Aug. 11 primary.

“During Minnesota’s Primary on August 11, 2026, members of a widely discredited Florida-based political group visited several polling places in Minneapolis impersonating Minnesota voters,” Simon said in a news release.

“Dressed in what they called ‘Muslim’ costumes, and imitating foreign accents, they falsely claimed to be registered Minnesota voters. The group used concealed cameras to record their interactions with poll workers, releasing a heavily edited video of their encounters. Their apparent goal was to cast doubt on one or more Minnesota election laws that have been in force for over fifty years. Instead, they revealed their ignorance of how those laws actually work – while putting themselves in legal jeopardy.”

According to Higby, their goal was to see if they’d be allowed to vote without showing identification, and whether they’d be allowed to vouch for people who aren’t registered to vote.

He failed, but he still went ahead and spliced together a very bad video that purported to show Muslim election fraud. O’Keefe has a kink for putting on cheap costumes and posing in racist one-act plays. Isn’t it past time to throw out this piece of trash?

We’ve got epic losers in this state

I told you who won the Minnesota primaries, but I should probably mention the wacky and unloveable losers of that race.

First and foremost is Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy. Despite the fact that Donald Trump endorsed him, he lost by 11 points to Lisa Demuth. Before the election night, he was saying that win or lose, he’d back the Republican nominee. During election night, he was getting visibly flustered as he tried to suggest that the election returns were flawed, and he’d need to examine the data closely, and he refused to concede. Now he’s singing a familiar song.

Mike Lindell, well-versed in denying election results, has cast doubt on his distant second-place primary finish Tuesday night in his effort to secure the Republican nomination for governor of Minnesota.
The MyPillow founder, speaking to reporters at his watch party in a downtown Minneapolis hotel after The Associated Press called the race for Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth, raised the specter of fraud in the vote count and was not ready to concede the race.
Lindell said there were “deviations (that) came right at the end,” when the final unofficial results came in showing him losing by more than 45,000 votes, or 11%, to Demuth.

You know this is going to be the game plan for every Republican loser come November. How do we know there’s election fraud? Because I lost!

I’m just surprised he got as many votes as he did. He’s a crackpot.

We had another big loser that night: Royce White, a former basketball player (and by all accounts, not a very good one) was running for the Senate. He lost bigly, coming in third place. His dalliance in crazyville was distinguished by his announcement that he was also declaring his eligibility for the WNBA, because he was a transgender woman. He proved it by putting on a wig.

Yeah, I’m convinced.

He also made an insincere public announcement.

He’s not getting drafted into the WNBA, and he lost the senate primary, so what’s a certifiable kook to do? Announce that he’s running for the presidency.

Now the real fun begins —I will be starting my campaign for President next week. I don’t care how much money they say I need or how much ass I’m supposed to kiss. It ain’t going to happen! We win MVP of the WNBA and then head to the oval office. What I witnessed today in Minnesota is disgusting. We have not had enough yet. Minnesota nice has killed our state. We still believe in moderates, it’s embarrassing.

Now that’s a delusional lunatic!

What a strange feeling…

I’m not used to this. I’m accustomed to deep disappointment the day after an election, but this year, the results all rolled my way.

Amy Klobuchar won the DFL nomination for governor. I told you, she’s a machine, she got about 90% of the votes. She’ll be competing with Republican Lisa Demuth, not Mike Lindell. Lindell was a joke, Klobuchar will have to work a little harder to beat Demuth.

Peggy Flanagan is the DFL choice for the senate, and will be running against Michele Tafoya, who I know nothing about. Either way, Minnesota will have a woman governor and senator in November.

In my local house election, it will be Erik Osberg vs. the odious Michelle Fischbach.

There we go, my record this year is 100% successful predictions. Of course, that was just the primaries, there’s still time for crushing failure and disappointment in a few months.

This is what happens when you let a senile fool run the country

The next distraction:

We’re at war with Iran, but that’s not enough to hide Trump’s crimes. How about going to war with a NATO ally? The invasion of Greenland has begun.

An American oil company connected to Donald Trump is preparing to sink wells in remote Greenland despite not having received permission from the local authorities.

As the US president renews his threats to claim the vast Arctic territory, materials to prepare for drilling were brought ashore in recent days on Greenland’s eastern coast.

Greenland has protested and told them to get out of there, but the drilling companies are ignoring the demands. US companies have hired their very best to promote the plan to invade.

Greenland Energy has retained Phil McGraw, better known as Dr Phil, a prominent rightwing former chatshow host who served on Trump’s religious freedom commission, to make a documentary series that will “capture the mission of these modern-day wildcatters”.

It has also appointed as a director a US navy veteran who is working on Golden Dome, the missile defence plan for which Trump says controlling Greenland is “vital”.

Larry Swets, Greenland Energy’s chair and a big shareholder, appears to enjoy access to Trump’s circle. He has said the oil project is “not related to American annexation”.

As usual, the Trump administration picks the most incompetent charlatans to do their dirty work. That’s a key step in building a pretext: send some bumbling boob in who will antagonize the people and provoke a response that can be used to justify sending in the Marines.

And fucking Dr Phil? A washed-up, lying hack? Why is he being hired to do anything? Oprah has a lot to answer for.

It’s Minnesota Primary Day!

I’m getting out to vote this afternoon, and generally my choices are straightforward. I’m voting for Peggy Flanagan for the US Senate; she’s vying with Angie Craig, who has made some bad decisions, for instance, pandering to the crypto boys. Flanagan will be a good progressive.

For my local state representative, I will vote for practically anyone against the horrid Republican, Michelle Fischbach. She’s probably going to win, because we live in a deep red district, but we’ve got to choose between two DFL candidates, Erik Osberg and Steve Carlson. I’m voting for Osberg, a 54 year old kid, rather than Carlson, who is too old for the job at 75. Carlson is also a fanatical anti-choice advocate which is sufficient to make me detest him.

Probably the highest profile race is for Governor. We have a swarm of 7 people trying to serve as our DFL leader. I worry that one pair will get a significant number of votes purely on the basis of their names: Ole “Viking” Savior and Ashley “Skol” Johnson. Every election we get some weird fringe candidates, and having the name “Johnson” and a Scandinavian connection always gives an unearned boost. I think Amy Klobuchar is going to steamroll everyone else — she has the election machine. I know that ridiculous clown, Mike Rindell, is on the Republican side, and he might get that nomination, but I don’t think he has chance in the main election in November.

I don’t expect any drama from a Minnesota election, but we’ll do our duty.

He just lies non-stop

You may ask which member of the Trump administration I’m talking about, because they are all compulsive liars. I’m referring to the guy with the brainworm, the barely literate incompetent who has fundamentally shut down science research in this country, the fraud who has been vomiting up medical misinformation, the one, the only, RFK jr, the man who has poisoned the Kennedy name for all time.

In attempting to rewrite the history of the US Covid-19 response, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Sunday pinned the blame for pandemic lockdowns on Dr. Anthony Fauci, while simultaneously reviving a string of debunked assertions about vaccines, RSV and measles.

Kennedy’s appearance came in the wake of a congressional hearing with Fauci last week, when the infections disease expert invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination more than 100 times, as Republicans lambasted him for his role in handling the pandemic.

In his frantic attempt to claim that Fauci was a murderous monster directly at fault for COVID, he made an exaggerated claim of special American victimhood, asserting that we were number one in deaths.

“We had the highest death rate from COVID of any nation on earth,” Kennedy said. When host Dana Bash challenged him, Kennedy doubled down: “What I said was accurate. We had the highest death rate from COVID.”

It was not accurate.

But during the pandemic’s height, 2020 to 2023, the U.S. did not lead the world in its overall rate of death from the illness. Peru did.

In its tracking of global COVID-19 cases and deaths through March 2023, Johns Hopkins University found that Peru’s population was hit hardest with a rate of 665.84 deaths per 100,000 people.

The U.S.’s per capita death rate was nearly half that with 341.11 deaths per 100,000 people. That is the 14th highest rate. Bulgaria, Hungary, Croatia, and Romania were a few of the countries with higher per capita death rates than the U.S.

He does not care about the numbers. Details schmetails. He’s just stirring up hatred in the mob. He did go on to lie about the origins of COVID, the growing measles epidemic, and vaccines and autism, and food policy, all debunked here. This is nothing new. Do you remember that he volleyed a similar barrage of lies a year ago? This is what he does, all the time, every time.

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made myriad false and misleading claims on Thursday as he fielded questions examining his seven-month tenure leading the nation’s health agencies at a contentious three-hour hearing.

Kennedy ignored government data, twisted legislation and pointed to unsubstantiated treatments while addressing topics such as COVID-19 vaccines, rural hospitals and school shootings.

He was still allowed to hold office last year. I predict that he’ll cling to power like a tick after this year. There will be no consequences for him…just for the scientists he torments, and for the children who will die.

More prisons to hold the innocent

Crime is down. It’s so down, that the local prison in Appleton was shut down several years ago.

Now it’s being re-opened to serve the needs of ICE.

The city of Appleton built the prison, but CoreCivic purchased it in 1997 to hold state prisoners, then shut it down in 2010 because of decreased demand. It was once the largest employer in the Swift County city.

Now it will hold up to 1,600 immigrant detainees.

No one should be pleased to see the prison-industrial complex expanding…but my Republican state representative and evil servant of Satan is thrilled.

Rep. Michelle Fischbach, who represents the 7th Congressional District where Appleton is located, told MinnPost at Farmfest on Tuesday that she was happy to hear the prison was reopening.

“I know that the community has been very supportive of making sure that we can open that up, and it makes sense,” she said. “There’s an existing facility there, and so there doesn’t have to be anything new built.”

We gotta get her out of office, I can’t stand her and her wicked policies. Her opponent is more in line with my opinions.

Her opponent, Democrat Erik Osberg, tied the prison announcement to last year’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” saying he’s against the reopening and wants to repeal the legislation that enabled it.

“There’s a $180 billion detention center and deportation-industrial complex in that legislation,” he said. “That’s what this is about, and guess who gets to build and run them? Private companies.”

You’ve got my vote, Erik. You didn’t have to say a word, but you’ve got it.