They were hungry, devoured their super-sized hot dogs immediately.

As an immigrant to the US, I was struck by how so many Americans talk about patriotism and view it as an unalloyed good. Some immigrants become hyper-patriotic, perhaps to show that they really do belong here.

It is not that the concept of patriotismwas foreign to us in Sri Lanka. But it was not as pervasive. I recall that at a time of economic hardship, people were urged in the name of patriotism to grow more food and learn to live with less. As part of this movement to create patriotic feelings, movie theaters started playing the national anthem at the start. I remember feeling the pressure to stand up for it even though such gestures seemed merely performative. I now regret having done so.

I later abandoned the idea of patriotism altogether when I saw how the government used it to promote agendas that served its own interests and not those of the people at large. I now despise the entire concept of patriotism (and have written so many times in the past). I totally agree with Leo Tolstoy who wrote the following:

Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubitable signification is nothing else but a means of obtaining for the rulers their ambitions and covetous desires, and for the ruled the abdication of human dignity, reason, and conscience, and a slavish enthrallment to those in power. And as such it is recommended wherever it is preached. Patriotism is slavery.”

But Americans, even those who realize how problematic it can be, still struggle to find a formulation that they can latch on to because to say that one is not patriotic seems unthinkable.

Mark Twain, H. L. Mencken, George Bernard Shaw, and Ursula K. Le Guin distrusted it. Samuel Johnson called it “the last refuge of a scoundrel,” and Leo Tolstoy likened it to slavery. Jorge Luis Borges initially felt that “there is no end to the illusions of patriotism,” noting that “Plutarch mocked those who declared that the Athenian moon is better than the Corinthian moon.” Years later, perhaps feeling adrift, Borges begged his gods to send someone or something into his life. “They did,” he wrote. “It is my country.”

George Orwell was kinder than most. Patriotism, he wrote, is “devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people.” The problem was nationalism, which he maintained was “inseparable from the desire for power.” The line between these terms, however, is porous. Attachment to a parcel of land can easily harden into isolationism, jingoism, and racism. “It is lamentable,” Voltaire observed, “that to be a good patriot one must often become the enemy of the rest of mankind.” More recently, the philosopher Richard Rorty capably defended patriotism, whereas Martha Nussbaum continues to seek its curtailment.

Much as I like Orwell, I think his description is hardly persuasive. To believe that “a particular place and a particular way of life … to be the best in the world” makes no sense since where one is born into is purely due to chance. It seems like a form of vanity to think that one’s arrival into some country suddenly makes that place the best in the world.

Patriotism also depends upon lying about one’s country’s past, imbuing it with grandeur and nobility, and its founders and former leaders with virtues that they did not possess.

Flag-waving patriots may believe otherwise, but our recoverable past isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It never was. The historian David Lowenthal reminds us that America manipulated its archives from the very beginning. When Charles Thomson, the longtime secretary of the Continental Congress, was asked to publish his notes—some thousand pages’ worth—he initially agreed, but then burned them instead. “I shall not undeceive future generations,” he reputedly explained. “I could not tell the truth without giving great offense. Let the world admire our patriots and heroes. Their supposed talents and virtues . . . will serve the cause of patriotism.”

Fortunately, patriotism is on the outs, especially with younger people. Usually wars are the vehicle by which leaders rouse up patriotic fervor but the war with Iran has failed to do that.

I am deeply humbled and grateful to learn that my H-index has now reached 140. I was also honored to see that I am currently ranked among the two most-cited researchers worldwide in the fields of Urologic Oncology and Urology on Google Scholar.

In addition, my i10-index has reached 1060; that is, one thousand and sixty publications each cited at least ten times. I was told that this may represent a world record – what an extraordinary honor!

Nonetheless, these numbers are far less important than the people, mentorship, friendships, and collaborations behind them. This milestone is truly a triumph of team science. I owe immense gratitude to my mentors, colleagues, collaborators, residents, fellows, medical students, and friends who have inspired and supported me throughout this journey over the past two decades.

Academic medicine is never an individual accomplishment. It is ultimately about advancing science and medicine, educating future generations, and improving patient care. If our work has contributed even in a small way toward those goals, then I feel extraordinarily fortunate and grateful.

Thank you for being part of this journey. The best is yet to come!

I hate to be the one to tear him down, but no one cares about your H-index and i10-index except, maybe and importantly, administrators and fellow H-index chasers. Anyone else remember that scene in American Psycho where Patrick Bateman and several of his cronies are comparing business cards, noting the quality of the stock and the embossing and the inks? Yeah, that’s what it’s like seeing someone brag about their indexes. Don’t care.

It’s also because those numbers are thoroughly gamed. I looked him up on PubMed, and it’s true, his name is on a lot of papers: papers that have 10 or 20 or more authors, and there he is, somewhere in the middle of a sea of names, rarely first or last. He really does owe a lot to his “mentors, colleagues, collaborators, residents, fellows, medical students, and friends” who have been tacking his name unto their papers! And further, his publication rate, that is, the rate at which his name gets plugged in to a long list, is approximately a paper every two days, which is insane. This is authorship by rubber stamp.

I think it is valid that many research endeavors nowadays require a large team, and he may have been an indispensable member of such a team, but then to use that cooperation to brag that he is #1 or #2 in his field is unseemly. It’s also dangerous, Dr Tall Poppy. He was spamming his ‘accomplishment’ on every social media site he could find, and on Xitter, Michael Eisen noticed.

The author’s Google scholar profile falsely lists multiple papers that he didn’t author, and therefore the citation count and h-index are inaccurate.

Whooops.

I do enjoy seeing a braggart taken down a peg, but Liang Cheng is a symptom of a greater problem: we’re drowning in artificial metrics, amplified by AI slop.

Over the last few decades, science has undergone a “citation revolution.” Scientific life used to be structured by personal reputation and mutual acquaintance; now it is defined by quantitative assessments derived from citations.

And this reward system has warped scientific life in dramatic ways. It has resulted in the obvious and widespread gaming of citation metrics; but, more insidiously, it has pushed scientists toward risk-averse, incremental, and above all unambitious research. The logic of institutional science has become increasingly divorced from actual knowledge and discovery. In a system governed by these perverse incentives, the inevitable endpoint is simply AI-generated slop at scale.

Now, with AI, we’ve built a remarkable new technology that opens up dramatic new horizons for scientific work. But we’re deploying that technology within an institutional structure that incentivizes, above all else, the maximization of metrics that don’t have much to do with real science. The underlying problem is not with AI, but with the institutions and incentives that define modern science.

That is an excellent article, everyone should read it. It actually ends on a promising note, regarding AI as a tool that could break us out of the dead-end, grasping competition for a magic ranking number, as exemplified by the case of Liang Cheng.

The citation index was designed in the 1950s and ‘60s as a solution to the information crisis engulfing scientific life. It ended up becoming much more than that: a regime that reshaped what science was, how it was rewarded, and what kind of science got done. Now that regime is collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. I think it’s a fantastic opportunity to build something better.

It’s historic, don’t you know. Bulbous sweaty men kicking each other in the face is considered a dignified way to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States…and it’s not political, it just happens to be held on the president’s 80th birthday.

The president promises us it won’t cost the American taxpayer a thing (I’ve heard that somewhere before). It’s all paid for by special ticket prices — this is not a public event — and sponsorships from Paramount and a crypto company. I’ve never watched UFC, is it all scripted kayfabe bullshit? If so, that would be perfect.

Canadians, Europeans, everyone living in the civilized world outside our borders: are you laughing at us? Because I feel like hiding in shame for some reason.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

The indeterminate potatoes “Agrie” look promising. They are now tall enough to be hilled up, which I will do this weekend.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

The same goes for “Dali”, although those might need a few more days to reach sufficient height. These two varieties look really promising, they even were not damaged by late frost.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

The very early variety “Bellarosa” was damaged by late frost, despite being covered with white cloth. But the damage was not very severe and it appears that the plants are recovering now.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

The early variety “Camel” is a headscratcher. They still did not all emerge from the ground, and those that did are still tiny. Some were also probably destroyed by voles who had nests under the PVC mats. But that only explains the empty spots, not the stunted plants. Maybe they will take off later.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

The garlic “Dukát” looks promising, albeit the leaves are a bit yellow near the tips, so I added nitrogen today (very dilute KNO3 solution). Mulch from old leaves works very well at suppressing weeds.

Onions and carrots, on the other hand, look downright pitiful. The seedsnails for the onions did not work well – using the landscaping cloth was a mistake, plastic wrap would work better. On top of that, they really suffered in the cold May weather.

For some reason, the trick with egg trays did not work for the carrots either; only about a third emerged from the ground. I think I made a mistake and buried them too deeply. I tried to sow some seeds directly into the soil now, it should still result in reasonably sized carrots, if they manage to survive the heat

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Spinach from seeds sown directly into the ground failed again; spinach from seedlings fared a bit better, though still nothing to write home about. It just seems I do not have the soil or climate, or both, for it. I will harvest it this weekend, and I will plant summer squash in its stead. That was the plan all along, only I was hoping to harvest more Spinach than I realistically will.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

I completely reworked the supports for runner beans near the south wall of my house. Instead of running the clothesline in a zig-zag fashion between the rain gutter and the poles at the bottom, I run it in such a way that each pole has only one clothesline running to it from a wire support on the gutter. The wire supports also serve a secondary role of strengthening the gutter laterally (it got bent out of shape by heavy ice and snow). I also increased the number of plants that can be planted there, so hopefully, I will get bigger harvests and a better coverage of the wall against the hot summer sun.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

I repaired more of the old aluminium fencing that my father used to keep poultry in check. I used it last year as a trellis for butternut squash, and I am trying to do the same this year. Growing butternut squash vertically allows for denser planting of the plants and thus better use of space.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Unfortunately, all my butternut and hokkaido plants are rather pathetic. I was away from home for three days, and I did not want to burden my nephew with having to drag them indoors every evening, so I left them in the greenhouse. And as bad luck would have it, it was exactly those three days when the weather was so cold that even in the greenhouse the temperatures fell below 10°C. As a result, all my winter squash plants are yellowish and sickly looking. But I got them outdoors a month earlier than last year, and most of them are starting to grow healthy green leaves again, so they might not be lost yet.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

I also had several aluminium frames approximately 180×90 cm in size. I repaired them, and to convert them into portable trellises for beans, tomatoes, and pumpkins, I covered them with PVC-coated welded wire fencing mesh.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

I made 12 of these portable trellises, and I hope they last me for years. This year, I intend to use them mainly for an improvised shelter and support for tomatoes, because I have more tomato plants than fit into my greenhouse, and I do not want to throw them all simply away.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

To finish the post, have a look at some very nice Aquilegia blossoms.

Richard Eskow gives a scathing review of the report.

After an extended pressure campaign, Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin finally agreed to release the DNC’s “autopsy report” on the 2024 election. It’s the first document I’ve ever read that would have been better if it had been written by AI. Martin himself said the report “does not meet my standards, and it won’t meet your standards.” That’s for damn sure. As we’ll see, however, that doesn’t let Martin off the hook.

I downloaded the document before reviewing my news feed, where I quickly learned that many like-minded people began exactly as I did: by searching for the word “Gaza.” Result? “Not found.” I then tried “Palestine.” Result? “Not found.” How about “Israel”? “Not found.”

These omissions are particularly striking since one activist group was told by report author Paul Rivera that DNC data showed that the administration’s support for the Gaza genocide was, “in their words, a ‘net-negative’ in the 2024 election.” 
…

Other words that can’t be found in the autopsy include “war,” “military,” “defense” (in the military sense), “peace,” “Medicare,” and “Social Security.” The report fails to address either the US’ runaway military spending or the ongoing attempts to undermine the country’s social contract.

…

The report’s only conceivable value will be for future anthropologists, who will find it provides considerable insight into the culture and folkways of the professional Democratic class. Its introduction reads like the kind of word salad a teenager might come up with when asked to write a 1200-word essay on a topic they forgot to study. There’s a lot of meandering, some restatements of the assignment, and a hastily looked-up quotation.

Eskow recommends that instead of wasting one’s time on the DNC report, one read instead the report put out by the group RootsAction. Its Executive Summary states the five main reasons for the party’s failure.

• Voter Disenchantment: Losing a whopping 6.8 million voters who supported Biden in 2020 proved pivotal in this extremely close election. Harris’s inability to mobilize these pro-Biden voters may have been the campaign’s biggest failure.
• Biden’s Betrayal: Former President Joe Biden’s disastrous decision to run for reelection, and his stubborn refusal to step aside until very late in the process, robbed voters of a Democratic primary process, created confusion and chaos, and severely hindered Democrats’ chances.
• Abandoning the Working-Class Base: With millions of Americans already disenchanted and desperate due to inflation, the Harris campaign lost this essential Democratic base by focusing on courting Republicans, kowtowing to corporate donors’ interests, and failing to confront the role of corporate greed in escalating inflation.
• The Gaza Effect: There is ample evidence that Harris lost many voters, especially young voters, Arab-Americans, and critical support in Michigan and elsewhere, due to the campaign’s failure to shift or even signal a potential shift in policy on Israel and Palestine.
• Losing Young Voters: Extensive evidence shows a huge drop-off in both turnout and Democratic support among young voters aged 18-29.

This report examines the voluminous evidence bolstering these conclusions. We document the many ways in which the Harris campaign and Democratic Party leadership failed to meet the moment and gravely miscalculated both what and who the election hinged on.

It then outlines a path forward.

Rising majorities of Democrats and independent voters are clamoring for progressive, economic populist candidates and policies. In addition to recent progressive wins, massive crowds are clamoring for “Fighting Oligarchy” rallies led by Senator Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Economic populist candidates and ballot measures are succeeding (or, at minimum, significantly beating the partisan spread) in rural and swing districts across America. The Democratic Party needs to listen to what voters have repeatedly told them, and change course. It’s time for the Democratic Party to recover and revive its most populist roots, and put the needs (and votes) of working-class and middle-class people first.
…

• Commit to economic populist policies that inspire and benefit working-class people, including: Enhanced Medicare for All single-payer healthcare; raising the federal minimum wage; robust union protections; expanded job creation and funding to help manual and manufacturing workers when industries and companies go under; aggressive anti-trust enforcement to break corporate monopolies; and significantly increasing taxes on the wealthy and corporations.
• Commit to significantly limiting and curtailing corporate campaign contributions and PACs, and mounting an aggressive challenge to Citizens United and corporate money in politics.
• Democrats should officially reject AIPAC and its stranglehold over the party and its foreign policy. Supporting Israel even amid its war crimes and horrific assault on Gazans was both morally indefensible and politically suicidal. Younger generations of voters and activists, the future of the Democratic Party, have made that abundantly clear.

The Democratic party establishment is captive to the big money interests and the Israel lobby, even if those entities actually support Republicans. They contribute to the party establishment purely to keep them captive and prevent them from taking on more populist measures. They need to go.

The end result: I’m told I’m healing up very well, the recommendation is that I just do one more PT session and continue exercises at home, but so far I’m ahead of the game. I also managed to walk the 3½ blocks between my house and the hospital without much difficulty.

I look forward to returning to my hobby of Cossack-style dancing next week.

In 2022, at the beginning of Russia’s all-out invasion, Ukraine was fighting for its survival. Western weapons allowed it to stymie the Russian advance, at which point the war bogged down into WW1-style trench warfare. Russia willingly sacrificed enormous numbers of soldiers for minimal territorial gains, but Ukraine was unable to recapture most of the territory they’d lost.

This was the status quo for years. But in the last few months, even without American aid, Ukraine has been slowly gaining the initiative. Rapid innovation in drone technology has allowed them to overcome Russia’s air defenses, leading to a steady tempo of strikes on oil refineries and other strategic targets, as well as the embarrassing spectacle of Ukrainian drones attacking Moscow. How long can Russia sustain this punishment before their economy collapses?

Read the excerpt below, then click through to see the full piece. This column is free to read, but members of OnlySky also get special benefits, like a subscriber newsletter:

At the beginning of the invasion, Vladimir Putin believed he’d conquer Ukraine in just three days. Russian soldiers were so confident of meeting no resistance, they packed their dress uniforms for a triumphal march through the streets of Kyiv.

It wasn’t just Russians who held this opinion. Many American conservatives counseled Ukraine to surrender because they argued that Russia was invincible, Ukraine had no hope of victory, and the sooner they capitulated, the easier it would go for them.

In May 2026, four years later, Russian refineries are going up in flames and Ukrainian attack drones are buzzing over Moscow.

How the tables have turned.

Continue reading on OnlySky…

It’s been afloat for about 10 years. When the notion was first proposed in a gambit to get state tax subsidies, Ken Ham & Co. said it would bring in 1.6 million tourists in the first year, and that that number would go up by about 4% each following years, with occasional surges by 10% as new planned exhibits were opened. By those 2015 estimates, they should be bringing in 2.5 million visitors this year. Are they?

• Year 1(JY 2016-JE 2017): est. 800,000 (50% of projected attendance)
• Year 2 (JY 2017-JE 2018): 865,761 (52% of projected attendance)
• Year 3 (JY 2018-JE 2019): 875,882 (51% of projected attendance)
• Year 4 (JY 2019-JE 2021): 841,772 (44% of projected attendance)
  Given the impact of COVID on Ark attendance, I left out March 2020-February 2021
• Year 5 (JY 2021-JE 2022): 775,731 (39% of projected attendance)
• Year 6 (JY 2022-JE 2023): 782,660 (36% of projected attendance)
• Year 7 (JY 2023-JE 2024): 764,258 (34% of projected attendance)
• Year 8 (JY 2024-JE 2025): 682,101 (27% of projected attendance)
• Year 9 (JY 2025-JE 2026): 664, 813 (26% of projected attendance)

For May-June 2026 I used the attendance numbers from May-June 2025. If history is any guide, this may serve to overestimate Year 9 attendance.

They made the invalid assumption that, after the novelty had worn off in the first year, they would get sustained growth for some reason. I’ve been there. I feel no desire to repeat my visit, especially after the ridiculous parking and admission fees. There is nothing there in the big wooden box! Once you’ve read the numerous silly and static infographics pasted on the walls, what would be the point?

I am amused that they only got about half their projected numbers in the first year, and it’s been declining ever since. They’re probably not suffering much, though, since the costs to maintain a big empty wooden box are probably relatively low.