Tuesday: Hili dialogue

April 14, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Tuesday, April 14, 2026, and it’s International Laverbread Day. What’s that?, you ask. It turns out that it’s not bread at all but seaweed mush. From:

Laverbread . . . is a food product made from laver, an edible seaweed (littoral alga) consumed mainly in Wales as part of local traditional cuisine. The seaweed is commonly found around the west coast of Great Britain, and the coasts of Ireland, where it is known as sleabhac.[1] It is smooth in texture and forms delicate, sheetlike thalli, often clinging to rocks. The principal variety is Porphyra umbilicalis, a red alga which tends to be a brownish colour, but boils down to a dark green pulp when prepared.

Would you like this for breakfast?

Diádoco assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also Holocaust Remembrance Day (but the International Holocaust Remembrance Day is on January 27, and there are other country-specific ones, too),

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 14 Wikipedia page. National Dolphin Day, National Grits Day (I’ll be eating them in Savannah next week), and National Pecan Day.  Remember this clip from “My Cousin Vinny” of Marisa Tomei and Joe Pesci encountering grits in an Alabama diner? Many people spurn the hominy derivative, but I love grits, though not as much as I love Marisa Tomei. She won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Mona Lisa Vito in the movie.

There’s a Google Doodle today honoring World Quantum Day.

World Quantum Day, celebrated annually on April 14th (4/14), promotes global awareness and understanding of quantum science and technology. Launched in 2021, the date honors Planck’s constant, a fundamental value in quantum mechanics. Events worldwide highlight how quantum mechanics powers, or will power, technologies like lasers, GPS, and quantum computing.

And here’s the constant:, which connects the frequency of light to its energy:

The Planck constant, or Planck’s constant, denoted by h, is a fundamental physical constant of foundational importance in quantum mechanics: a photon’s energy is equal to its frequency multiplied by the Planck constant, and a particle’s momentum is equal to the wavenumber of the associated matter wave (the reciprocal of its wavelength) multiplied by the Planck constant.

The SI units are defined such that it has the exact value h = 6.62607015×10−34 J⋅Hz−1[4] when the Planck constant is expressed in SI units.

Click to see where it goes:

Da Nooz:

*The latest war news by Amit Segal at It’s Noon in Israel  (bolding is theirs):

It’s Monday, April 13, and there is a cardinal rule in diplomacy: everything that happens before a deal is closed—the threats, the slammed doors, the declarations that “it’s over”—is simply negotiation by other means. Donald Trump’s recent move to blockade the Strait of Hormuz falls squarely into this category.

Even when the strait was effectively closed during earlier military operations, Iranian, Russian and Chinese tankers sailed through unimpeded. Although the U.S. navy could have easily stopped them, increasing the pressure on Iran and its key sponsors, Trump deliberately chose not to escalate. The president was walking a tightrope: maintaining heavy pressure on Tehran without triggering a catastrophic spike in global oil prices. At the time, a total blockade would have instantly removed millions of barrels of oil from global circulation. Now, however, with the countervailing force of negotiations calming the energy markets, Trump has the freedom to ratchet up the pressure.

But this raises a more fundamental question: What is he hoping to get out of this tactic?

As Trump himself has noted on numerous occasions, “Iran has never won a war, but it has never lost a negotiation.” Trump must know that the chances of the Iranians folding and voluntarily surrendering their nuclear program are essentially zero. After all, if the regime refused to concede under direct military pressure, it certainly will not concede at the negotiating table.

Just look at the terms currently being floated in Islamabad. The U.S. is reportedly offering to release a portion of frozen funds and end the war in exchange for a 20-year freeze on enrichment, the removal of enriched material, and free navigation in the Strait of Hormuz without tax payments.

Yet even this remains miles from the Iranian position. Anyone familiar with the region understands that the complete surrender of their nuclear program is the ultimate Iranian red line—one they have never and will never cross. To be fair to the Iranian perspective, latent nuclear capability is their ultimate deterrent; had they already weaponized, Rising and Roaring Lion would have remained permanently on paper.

So why is Trump going down the path of negotiations? There are two possibilities.

The first is legal: The War Powers Act requires American forces to be withdrawn within 60 days of initiating hostilities unless the operation receives formal authorization from Congress. According to recent reports, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson warned Trump that any military operation—even a strictly limited one—would not survive a vote in the Republican-controlled House. Launching a military campaign with a 60-day ticking clock is unfeasible, so entering negotiations may simply give Trump the ability to appear before Congress and declare, “We tried diplomacy; we have no other choice.”

The second possibility is pragmatic: Trump understands he lacks the domestic political support required for an extended military entanglement. By initiating talks, he is attempting to maximize his off-ramps and explore any possible avenue for freezing the conflict, no matter how slim the odds might be.

Note the importance that Iran attaches to its nuclear program. And a 20-year delay is not good enough, for it just stalls the inevitable, and Iran would probably cheat unless there is some form of verified and unannounced inspections. Meanwhile, the poor Iranians are huddled inside, waiting, like us, to see what happens.

Now, there’s a new deal on the table:

The United States and Iran have traded proposals for a suspension of Iranian nuclear activities, but remain far apart on the length of any agreement, according to Iranian and U.S. officials.

During weekend negotiations in Pakistan, the United States asked Iran for a 20-year suspension of uranium enrichment. The Iranians, in a formal response sent on Monday, said they would agree to up to five years, according to two senior Iranian officials and one U.S. official. President Trump rejected Iran’s offer, according to a U.S. official.

Still, the discussions suggested a possible path to a deal, even as the U.S. military began its blockade of Iranian ports.

Officials also said they were discussing a second round of face-to-face talks, but provided no details.

Iran, it seems, is getting the better of Trump, who is fumbling about in the dark.

*According to Trump’s stipulations, the U.S. blockade of Iran should have begun yesterday morning. And it did.

A U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz was set to take effect on Monday in an effort to raise pressure on Tehran, even as questions surrounded the plan and U.S. allies distanced themselves from it.

The blockade was scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. Eastern time, but the United States had not formally acknowledged that it had begun.

The announcement of the blockade, declared by President Trump on Sunday, rattled the already fragile cease-fire among the United States, Israel and Iran, which began last week. A round of high-level talks over the weekend between negotiators from Iran and the United States, including Vice President JD Vance, ended without a breakthrough.

Now Mr. Trump is seeking to prevent Iran from profiting from oil exports and force its leaders to accept American conditions for ending more than a month of war. Iranian forces have largely barred Western tankers and ships from transiting the strait, the Persian Gulf waterway through which about one fifth of the world’s oil passes. The price of oil has soared by more than 50 percent since the war began in late February.

The U.S. military said that it would block ships “entering or departing Iranian ports and coastal areas” starting at 10 a.m. Eastern on Monday, while allowing other vessels to transit the strait on their way to or from non-Iranian ports. Two tankers linked to Iran — one carrying naphtha, a petroleum product, and the other carrying gas oil — slipped through the Strait of Hormuz on Monday hours before the blockade went into effect.

Earlier on Monday, Iran warned of repercussions. Ebrahim Zolfaghari, an Iranian military spokesman, said Monday that if Iranian ports were threatened, “no port in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman will be safe.” The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, rose about 7 percent on Monday, to nearly $102 a barrel. U.S. markets opened slightly lower after stocks fell in Asia and Europe.

. . . . Experts on Iran questioned whether a U.S. blockade would force Iran’s leadership to accept terms that five weeks of war and the killing of many Iranian leaders had not. The Trump administration has been insisting on stopping Iranian nuclear enrichment, as well as confiscating stockpiles of enriched uranium they say could form the basis for a bomb.

European leaders, already frustrated by Mr. Trump’s military campaign in Iran, quickly distanced themselves from the blockade, despite his promise “that numerous countries are going to be helping us with this.”

See next comment:

*I can’t help it, but I read the above reportage from the NYT as slanted, emphasizing the problems with the blockade, almost like an editorial that it shouldn’t be done. Granted, Trump is flopping about like a fish out of water, but I want straight news, not slanted news. For example, here’s the Wall Street Journal’s reporting of the same event, put up at about the same time:

The U.S. blockade has officially gone into effect, and there are more than 15 U.S. warships in place to support the operation, according to a senior U.S. official.

The U.S. has an aircraft carrier, multiple guided-missile destroyers, an amphibious assault ship and several other warships in the Middle East, according to Navy and Central Command officials. These ships have the ability to launch helicopters that support boarding operations, and some are capable of marshalling commercial vessels to specific areas to hold them in place.

The warships would likely operate outside the Strait of Hormuz to avoid threats fired by Iran, according to retired Navy Vice Adm. Kevin Donegan. “There are lots of ways you can construct this, and there are a lot of boarding forces in the region now,” Donegan said. “Don’t expect it all to be started at once, this will build. Blockades take time to have an impact.”

. . . .President Trump said any fast-attack ships from Iran that come near the U.S.’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz would be destroyed. “If any of these ships come anywhere close to our BLOCKADE, they will be immediately ELIMINATED, using the same system of kill that we use against the drug dealers on boats at Sea,” Trump said on social media Monday. “It is quick and brutal.”

The Trump administration has carried out a number of deadly military strikes on boats alleged to be carrying drugs while traveling in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean.

That seems more like “just the news”.  Indeed, for news along I trust the WSJ more than the NYT or WaPo. And indeed, the WSJ is, as rated by the AllSides Media Bias Chart, pretty much in the center compared to the NYT:

*OMG Department. Just when you think Trump can’t get more narcissistic, he does. The WaPo reports that Trump posted an illustration on Truth Social of himself as Jesus!

President Donald Trump’s posting of a rendering that appeared to depict him as Jesus drew rare criticism from the religious right, prompting calls for him to take down the post and allegations of blasphemy.

Shortly after posting a screed against Pope Leo XIV on Sunday night as he returned to Washington from Florida, Trump shared an image that appeared to be AI-generated in the style of a painting, depicting him in a long white robe. In one hand was an orb glowing with light; Trump’s other hand rested on the forehead of a man in what resembled a hospital bed — light beaming from the man’s head as Trump appeared to pray for his healing. Patriotic symbols including an eagle, fireworks and the Statue of Liberty filled the frame.

Unlike the post criticizing Leo, whom Trump later said he didn’t like and is too “liberal,” the image evoking Jesus drew swift criticism from some evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics who have otherwise expressed near constant support for Trump’s decisions.

“I don’t know if the President thought he was being funny or if he is under the influence of some substance or what possible explanation he could have for this OUTRAGEOUS blasphemy,” wrote Megan Basham, a prominent conservative Protestant Christian writer and commentator. “But he needs to take this down immediately and ask for forgiveness from the American people and then from God.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Trump’s intent in posting the image. The president last year posted an image of him as pope that appeared to be AI-generated.

And of course you want to see it. Here it is:

I tried to make an AI photo one of Trump as Satan, presiding over Hell, but ChatGPT rejected it on grounds of “violence.” Here’s a version of a Satanified Trump from Grok, which is inferior to ChatGPT at creating images:

*The UPI’s odd news site describes a new world record: the most people dressed up in dinosaur costumes at one time and place. The new record: 682!

 An Alberta university broke a Guinness World Record by gathering 682 people in dinosaur costumes at the school’s 60th anniversary celebration.

The University of Calgary, whose sports teams are known as the Dinos, gathered people dressed as various dinosaurs Saturday outside the Taylor Family Digital Library.

The gathering of 682 dinos broke the Guinness World Record for the largest gathering of people dressed as dinosaurs, which was previously set by 468 by the Cox Science Center and Aquarium in West Palm Beach, Fla., last year.

“The old record is extinct,” Ed McCauley, UCalgary’s president and vice-chancellor, was quoted as saying by the Calgary Herald. “This is just a great example of the University of Calgary and our Calgary community coming together to set a world record.”

A Guinness World Records adjudicator was on hand to verify the record had officially been broken.

Here’s the Instagram post.  I swear, people will do anything to set a world record.  And I have to say that some of the participants don’t look particularly dinosaurian.

Here’s a 2.5-minute video of the event:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has a question about the Pope:

Hili: What does the Pope think about when he prays for peace?
Andrzej: He’s probably wondering whether everyone can see it.

In Polish:

Hili: Co papież myśli kiedy modli się o pokój?
Ja: Pewnie zastanawia się, czy wszyscy to widzą.

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

Masih describes a second war in Iran: the government against its own people:

Emma answers a frequent question:

From Luana, who says she had a pet rabbit as a girl in Brazil, and it was groomed this way by her cat:

From Malcolm;

x

From Bryan; another version of the trolley car problem:

From Malcolm; if it fits, he sits:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

And two from Dr. Cobb. First, a groaner:

— Rob DenBleyker (@robdenbleyker.com) 2026-04-11T18:31:05.839358Z

I’d sure get up for this! Watch until the end:

Marg Leehane, part owner of Great Bear Lodge in Port Hardy, British Columbia, decided it was worth waking up the guests at 6 a.m. to show them two humpback whales in the bay.TT: bookofcabins

— Luca (@lucagalletti.bsky.social) 2026-04-06T22:10:39.804Z

“Angel”

April 13, 2026 • 12:45 pm

It was 12 years ago when I posted the first video below of Sarah McLachlan singing what is perhaps her most famous song, “Angel.” I came across it again yesterday and decided to pair it with another version.  The first one, recorded in her home studio, shows her well-known ability to go between her “chest voice” (normal range) and “head voice” (high notes, like a falsetto or yodeling). It’s a lovely song, and was written by her and usually performed only with her own piano accompaniment (there are a lot of versions on the Internet). My earlier post describes what the song’s about.

When I looked up the song on Wikipedia, I found this:

On 8 April 2000, McLachlan performed “Angel” with Carlos Santana on guitar at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in Pasadena, California. The show was televised on Fox TV and released on the DVD Supernatural Live – An Evening with Carlos Santana and Friends.

And of course I hoped that song was on video, too, as I’m a Santana fan. Sure enough, it was, though Santana humbly embroiders the voice and piano with soft accompaniment and a short solo (starts at 2:24).  I would have preferred to see him cut loose with an electric solo, but of course it’s not appropriate for this song. Santna’s bit, though, was apparently improvised.

I can’t say that the version with Santana is better than the solo version, but how often do you get to hear two such different musicians play together?

New paper by Ruuska et al: Gender reassignment does not reduce psychiatric morbidity in gender-dysphoric youth

April 13, 2026 • 10:00 am

It’s one of the commonplaces that young people who have gender dysphoria (“GD”) will experience both reduced psychiatric problems and reduced suicides if they proceed on to gender reassignment (GR) via “affirmative care”. The suicide claim was dispelled in 2024 by the Finnish investigators given below, who showed that both GD and GR, when compared to controls, do not show increased suicide beyond that predicted from psychiatric problems alone (they used controls).  That dispels the common claim by gender activists pushing GR: “Do you want a dead son or a live daughter?” (That’s for transitioning to female gender, but it can be reversed.)

A new paper from the same group, published in Acta Paediatrica, looks not at suicide but psychiatric “morbidity” (psychiatric problems).  The study was large, controlled, and takes advantage of the fact that in Finland every doctor visit is recorded for every citizen because of the country’s national health system.

The upshot is simple: children and young people (they used subjects up to 23 years old; henceforth called “subjects”) who sought treatment for GD had significantly more severe psychiatric problems and were referred far more often for “specialist level” treatment than were controls.  Those GD subjects were parsed into two groups: those who were given gender reassigment, and those who were not. The conventional wisdom is that if you have GD, then gender reassignment should significantly alleviate their dysphoria, measured by a reduced need for specialist psychiatric treatment.

The conventional wisdom was wrong: gender reassignment didn’t alleviate psychiatric compared to GD people who didn’t get reassignment. The conclusion is that gender reassignment, with its deleterious side effects, was not a good way to improve quality of life, at least measured by the need for psychiatric intervention.

Here’s how the term “gender reassignment” is used in the paper:

Medical GR interventions included masculinising/feminising hormonal treatments, chest masculinisation, and/or genital surgery (vaginoplasty/phalloplasty/metoidioplasty).

These treatments are all irreversible except that removed breasts can be restored by replacements.

Click below to access or download the pdf, or you can see the original paper online here.

As I mentioned, the sample size was large: there were 2,083 GD subjects who presented themselves for treatment, and for each of these subjects the investigators chose eight controls, four males and four females matched to the GD subjects by age and place of residence. The final controls numbered 16,643.

Here are the percentage of subjects who sought specialist-level psychiatric treatment between 2011-2019 (differences from 1996-2010 were in the same direction, but far more people who sought GD treatment had a history of specialized treatment in the later period. The authors don’t know the reason for the rise in GD-associated psychiatric difficulties, but it matches the rise in gender dysphoria in other places, including the U.S.

GD subjects

Sought specialized psychiatric treatment before the presentation for GD (“index date”):  47.9%
Sought specialized psychiatric treatment ≥2 years after the presentation for GD:               61.3%

Controls

Sought specialized psychiatric treatment before the presentation for GD (“index date”):  15.3%
Sought specialized psychiatric treatment ≥2 years after the presentation for GD:               14.2%

This shows that GD subjects, whether or not they went on to GR, initially had about three or more times the rate of psychiatric difficulties than did the controls. That is not new, as GD is generally related to psychiatric difficulties, and it’s likely that some people look for gender reassignment as a way to alleviate their gender dysphoria, or even as a way to alleviate general mental difficulties.  But GD subjects in general did not in general show a lessening of psychiatric difficulties after their presentation; in fact, the rate was increased by about 13.4%.

The important figures, though, are those showing whether or not GR treatment alleviated psychiatric difficulties. After all, that is the rationale for gender-reassignment treatment, whether it be hormones or surgery.  Here is Table 3 from the paper, with the last two columns being the important ones. They’re divided up by sex, and “GR-” means GD subjects not given gender reassignment, while “GR+” means GD subjects who were given gender reassignment. Click table to enlarge; I’ve put a red rectangle around the area of most importance:

This shows that GD subjects, both those who transitioned to female and those who transitioned towards male, did not have a reduction in psychiatric treatment contact (all contact, whether “specialized” or not) after their transition began or was completed. Au contraire: the psychiatric treatments went up sixfold for those transitioning to female genders and 2.5-fold for those transitioning towards male.

If you look at the third and four data columns, you can see the percentages of GD subjects who got psychiatric treatment for GD but who did not go on to reassignment. Curiously, the psychiatric treatment was more frequent in this group than in the group that went on to reassignment, but only before the data of first consultation for GD.

This difference between the third and fourth and the fifth and sixth data points on the first line is curious.  But what’s important here is that there is no marked alleviation of psychiatric contacts for GD subjects who went on to reassignment. They continue to consult psychiatrists, and at about the rate of GD subjects who didn’t go on to reassignment. Again, we don’t see the mitigation of psychiatric difficulties in GD patients that go on to surgery or hormones.  Since those procedures have deleterious side effects (anorgasmia and pronounced difficulties after surgery on genitals or even breasts), there is not a strong case to be made for gender reassignment of gender-dyphoric patients, at least in terms of alleviating mental illness.

The first two columns show the data for both male and female controls. Since they didn’t have consultations for GD, the “index date” for controls was given as the date that their matched GD subjects first had a consultation.  And, as expected, their psychiatric visits were far less numerous than the GD subjects two years after the index date (though the low levels of consultations for GR+ subjects compared to GR-subjects before the index date is still curious, and I may have missed the authors’ explanation).

This is just a cursory interpretation I’ve made after reading the paper twice, and I may have missed some data that feed into the authors’ conclusion below. What’s clear is that GD is associated with psychiatric disorders, though it may not be causal, and that gender reassignment does not improve mental health compared to dysphoric subjects who didn’t get reassigned.  All this suggests that “affirmative care” that puts GD subjects on the path to GR doesn’t, at least in this study, have the salubrious effects that are touted—as measured by the intensity of psychiatric treatment. Gender-reassigned subjects continue to suffer from mental disorders at a rate threefold to fivefold that of controls without gender dysphoria, so GR doesn’t come close to giving subjects the mental stability of controls.

The last paragraph of the paper gives what the authors see as the “Clinical Implications” of their results:

Regardless of gender, adolescents suffering from GD present with excessive psychiatric morbidity. Subsequent to medical GR, psychiatric treatment needs appear to increase. It should be noted that in some individuals, medical GR appears to be linked to deterioration in mental health. Possible mechanisms and vulnerable subgroups should be explored in future studies. The effects of medical GR and the expectations of the patient must be addressed before commencing the treatment. The considerable severe psychiatric morbidity prior to contacting the GIS, and its increase over time, suggest that for some of these adolescents, GD may be secondary to other mental health challenges. This underscores the need to thoroughly assess and appropriately treat mental disorders among those seeking GR before and after undergoing irreversible medical treatments. Psychiatric needs must be adequately met.

 

h/t: Christopher

Readers’ wildlife photos

April 13, 2026 • 8:15 am

Today I’m stealing (with permission) the photos of Aussie biologist Scott Ritchie, whose Facebook page is here.  And what better subject than kangaroos? Scott’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

My last report from my Melbourne to Sydney trip. From Depot Beach in New South Wales. It was epic. Stayed in a National Park cabin that looked out over the ocean. And at 5 o’clock our front lawn became the bar for Eastern Grey Kangaroos [Macropus giganteus]. And in the morning, you could take pictures of the kangaroos watching the sunrise. What could be better for a boy from Iowa?

We had a ring-side seat for roos. There would have been over a dozen here, not including joeys in the pouch:

The boys like a bit of rough and tumble:

They are smart to avoid those claws:

. . . just barely:

Squaring off:

I missed the kick shot. A sudden loud thump. Then the fight was over. One kick!

I don’t know how this is going to work!:

But somehow it does:

 

White-faced Heron [Egretta novaehollandiae] loves a roo too:

Cute:

Hanging loose:

Don’t trip, mom!:

Just in time for a smoke:

I hate pan pipes!:

It’s a tight fit:

Come on big fella. I’m already familied up:

Sunrise at Depot Beach:

Monday: Hili dialogue

April 13, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Monday, April 13, 2026, and National Thomas Jefferson Day, celebrating the birth of our third President in 1743,  Having produced offspring by an slave, Jefferson is no long extolled, but Bill Maher, in a post later today, has a few words on how we’re supposed to regard someone who did both good and bad things. He was probably a religious nonbeliever, but in those days you didn’t declar ethat publicly. He was also author of a secular bowdlerization of the Bible:

The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, commonly referred to as the Jefferson Bible, is one of two religious works constructed by Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson compiled the manuscripts but never published them. The first, The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth, was completed in 1804, but no copies exist today. The second, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, was completed in 1820 by cutting and pasting, with a razor and glue, numerous sections from the New Testament as extractions of the doctrine of Jesus. Jefferson’s condensed composition excludes all miracles by Jesus and most mentions of the supernatural, including sections of the four gospels that contain the Resurrection and most other miracles, and passages that portray Jesus as divine.

Here’s the title page of the Jefferson Bible written in his own hand:

Thomas Jefferson, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also National Peach Cobbler Day and Scrabble Day, celebrating the birthday in 1899 of Alfred Butts, the game’s creator. The game was devised in the early 1930s but not trademarked until 1948:

Butts decided to create a game that utilized both chance and skill by combining elements of anagrams and crossword puzzles, a popular pastime of the 1920s. Players draw seven lettered tiles from a pool and then attempt to form words from their letters. A key to the game was Butts’s analysis of the English language. Butts studied the front page of The New York Times to calculate how frequently each letter of the alphabet was used. He then used each letter’s frequency to determine how many of each letter he would include in the game. He included only four “S” tiles so that the ability to make words plural would not make the game too easy

. . . To memorialize his importance to the invention of the game, a street sign at 35th Avenue and 81st Street in Jackson Heights is stylized using letters with their values in Scrabble as a subscript.

Here’s the sign (near where Scrabble was invented), erected mysteriously (the city denies responsibility) and then mysteriously vanishing in 2008. It’s reported to have been re-installed.

And I had a dream last night, for I slept pretty well and had it right before I woke up, so I remember the details. I was assigned to give three lectures on various topics to school students, but didn’t have time to go over my first lecture, which was on sex determination. When I sent to the classroom, unprepared, I saw that the students were about eight years old and rowdy. When I showed my first slide, which was a complex slid of how sex is determined in humans, with busy pathways and pictures of molecules, the kids weren’t interested and began shouting sentences full of obscenities about copulation.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 13 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*From It’s Noon in Israel‘s daily war report, we have an article called “The Phony Ceasefire.”

Today, we seem to be living through a “Phony Ceasefire.” Following the supposed halt in hostilities with Iran, nations including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain reported attacks on their territory, with one impact in Bahrain reported as recently as yesterday. The Strait of Hormuz, while no longer actively engulfed in flames, remains largely closed. Meanwhile, both sides quietly prepare for another round.

. . . How many mines are actually in the Strait? The number is unknown, but much like the threats issued by the IRGC during the war, the mere possibility of danger is sufficient to deter commercial passage.

Yesterday, the U.S. began its efforts to deprive Tehran of this leverage. Two U.S. destroyers tested the Strait, daring Iran to enforce its closure and laying the groundwork for the resumption of safe passage. U.S. mine removal operations have been announced to begin this week, and Qatar has already announced it will resume operations “for all types of maritime vessels and ships.”

There exists an ironic deterrent to resuming hostilities: Trump’s threat. By declaring he would devastate Iran’s energy infrastructure unless an agreement was reached, Trump armed a nuclear bomb that only negotiations can defuse. Iran fears this bomb will explode in Tehran—perhaps not returning them to the Stone Age, but utterly devastating the country. Trump, meanwhile, fears the fallout in global energy markets.

Trump has the option to disarm his threat by pivoting to a different target. But short of taking dramatic actions—like seizing Iran’s enriched uranium stockpiles, conquering Kharg Island, or forcibly reopening the Strait, all of which demand an unpopular ground campaign—he has few options to resume the war and eventually re-enter negotiations from a position of greater power.

Regardless, unless something fundamentally shifts in Islamabad, this state of affairs—much like the Phony War—is destined for conflict.

More pessismism and more anxiety.

*The latest news as of Sunday afternoon was Trump’s announcement of a naval blockade of Iran. And this morning Iran threatened all Persian Gulf ports if the U.S. won’t let ship into or out of Iranian ports. The WSJ’s take from this morning:

Iran said no port in the Persian Gulf or the Sea of Oman would be safe if its ports are threatened, after President Trump confirmed that a U.S. blockade on ships entering or exiting Iranian ports would take effect at 10 a.m. ET Monday.

After peace talks stalled between the U.S. and Iran at the weekend, Trump said he doesn’t care whether Tehran returns for another round of negotiations.

Less than a week into a cease-fire between the two countries, Trump has warned that the U.S. would “finish up the little that is left of Iran” and said its water and electric plants would be “easy to hit.” Iran’s Revolutionary Guard navy said that any approach by military vessels toward the Strait of Hormuz would be treated as a violation of the cease-fire, according to a statement cited by Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency.

U.S. Central Command said the blockade won’t impede vessels going to and from non-Iranian ports.

The U.S. and Iran have dug into their positions since talks stalled, but both sides signaled they were open to a diplomatic solution.

Tehran’s lead negotiator said Washington had failed to earn its trust.

Oil prices jumped, while U.S. stock futures fell.

From the WaPo:

After marathon overnight talks between the United States and Iran failed to clinch a deal on U.S. terms, President Donald Trump on Sunday announced the imposition of a naval blockade on Iran — a move that could derail a tenuous two-week ceasefire reached just five days ago.

“Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump posted Sunday on Truth Social, his social media site. The president also said he had instructed the Navy to interdict all ships that have paid a toll to Iran for traversing the strait, calling Tehran’s expanded control of the waterway “EXTORTION.”

A U.S. official told The Washington Post that the U.S. and Iran failed to reach agreements on ending all uranium enrichment and retrieving highly enriched uranium; dismantling all major nuclear enrichment facilities; accepting a broader de-escalation framework involving regional allies; ending funding for terrorist proxies including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis; and fully reopening the Strait of Hormuz with no tolls for passage. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private negotiations.

In an interview Sunday morning with Fox News, Trump said he expected “numerous” countries to help with the blockade, which he compared to the U.S. operation to block the flow of oil ships out of Venezuela earlier this year, saying it would be “very similar to that but at a higher level.”

Well that ain’t gonna happen. If those countries wouldn’t help open the Strait of Hormuz, why would they want to get involved even deeper in the war by blockading Iran?

The blockade in the short term, at least, might risk worsening a war-driven global energy crisis by halting all cargo traffic through the strait, and Trump acknowledged that price of oil and gas may continue to increase in the U.S. for some time. While Iran would potentially suffer the most economically, the move may come as a blow to the rest of the world as well, especially nations in Asia, which rely heavily on oil and gas, petrochemicals, and other essentials shipped from the Persian Gulf.

The tight geography could also make naval operations in the Gulf perilous. U.S. ships could be vulnerable to attacks by small craft, as well as drones and missiles. Trump in his post said other countries would be involved in imposing the blockade but offered no specifics.

Despite failing to reach a deal, Trump expressed optimism that one would still be struck with Iran and reiterated Vice President JD Vance’s earlier remarks that the main sticking point was disagreement over Iran’s nuclear program.

“It was a good meeting yesterday, really, a good meeting, except for one problem — and it’s 95 percent,” Trump told Fox. “They want to have nuclear weapons. It’s not going to happen.”

. . . Except for one problem. But that is a huge problem, and I can’t imagine Iran giving way on its nuclear ambitions. Or they could do what they usually do—lie about them and then hide their efforts to get a bomb.  And of course the Strait of Hormuz is also a big problem, and Iran’s ace in the hole that it’s not keen to discard.

Oh, and I still think that the NYT and WaPo want the U.S. to come out badly in the Iran war, or even lose it. Their news is palpably positive for Iran and negative for the U.S., as this morning’s war headlines show (click to enlarge):

*Harvard has proposed curbing grade inflation by capping the “A”s in a course, which now, including A-s, stand at around 80% of all grades.  Grades there, like at many schools, have become a joke. The Harvard faculty voted the A curb, but delayed its approval until next month. And perhaps in the end it won’t get approved. The efficacy of the plan is that it will be implemented by all courses, so no professor need fear being singled out as a hard grader.  In an editorial-board op-ed called “Harvard’s grade inflation experiment,” the Washington Post recommends that the plan be implemented ASAP:

About two-thirds of grades at Harvard College last school year were A’s. That doesn’t count A-minuses, which were another 18 percent, meaning fewer than one in six grades were a B-plus or lower.

The Harvard Crimson says this:

Where the Class of 2015 had a median grade point average of 3.64 at graduation, the Class of 2025 clocked in at 3.83. And since the 2016-2017 academic year, the median Harvard College GPA has been an A.

Back to the WaPo:

You might have guessed grading at Ivy League schools was lenient, though not this lenient.

There’s a thoughtful solution on the table. Unfortunately, amid a student revolt last week, Harvard’s faculty postponed a vote to impose a cap on A’s. Forging ahead with the plan anyway would send a promising signal about merit and competition in American higher education.

Grade inflation — like the inflation of a currency — is a collective action problem. Professors increase the share of A’s they hand out because they know other professors are doing so and breaking from the herd would have costs. Just 35 percent of grades at Harvard were A’s in the 2012-2013 academic year, but the number climbed at a rapid clip and then surged during the covid pandemic.

. . .The result is a collapse in the informational value of grades, especially at the high end. “As GPAs accumulate against the wall of 4.0,” a Harvard faculty committee report noted earlier this year, “the small numerical differences that remain are less reflective of genuine variation in academic performance than random noise in the grading process.”

The proposal under consideration would cap the share of A’s an instructor can give to 20 percent of the class plus four students. That means that in a large introductory course, the share of students who could get A’s — 24 out of 100, for example — would be lower than in smaller courses, which tend to be more advanced. Up to eight A’s would be available in a class of 20.

The overall effect would be to cut the share of A’s in half from the last academic year, to around a third, according to the Harvard Gazette. There would be no limit on A-minuses.

. . . This effort matters because Harvard has the stature to prompt similar changes across the rest of higher education, where grade inflation has also been rampant. Princeton and Wellesley both tried to respond to grade inflation with caps but abandoned their efforts in 2014 and 2019, respectively.

A major objection from students at Harvard is that going back to grading on a curve will discourage them from participating in extracurricular activities. But the core purpose of campus life is learning, not socializing or networking, and academics have been excessively devalued at Harvard in recent decades. This would help restore the balance.

An admirable plan, for the students at Harvard have not gotten uber-smarter in the last decade—the higher grades reflect professorial inflation of marks. Another suggestion, which I think should be implemented in all schools that have transcripts, is to put the overall median grade for each course on a student’s transcript.. Even if other schools are too timorous to curb grade inflation, at least the median will give people scrutinizing transcripts an idea of how inflated the grades really are.

Grok tells me this about my school (the U of C doesn’t release the data): “Unofficial estimates from students, alumni, and forums (Reddit, College Confidential, Quora, Wall Street Oasis, etc.) consistently place the current average/median undergraduate GPA in the 3.3–3.5 range, often around 3.3.”  That is a B+, and at least we grade harder here than they do at Harvard. 

*Reader Reese called my attention to an Atlantic article called “The most beautiful moment of the Artemis II mission” about naming new craters on the far side of the Moon, including on in memoriam of an astronaut’s late wife. A short excerpt from the article:

On Monday, while flying around the moon, the crew tried to live up to this elevated standard of naming. During the livestream, Hansen said that the crew hoped that a crater on the moon’s far side might share the name of their spacecraft, Integrity. You can understand why they might have been feeling gratitude for the little vessel at that moment. In carrying them farther from Earth than any humans had ever traveled, it had bested the Santa María, the H.M.S. Endeavour, and every single one of the Apollo crew modules. For days, its thin walls had been the only thing separating their soft animal bodies from the lethal vacuum of space.

Hansen said that the second crater was especially meaningful to the crew. It was located close to the boundary line between the moon’s near and far sides, and can be seen from Earth for part of the year. Hansen proposed that it be named for a departed loved one from their “astronaut family.” To his right was Reid Wiseman, the mission’s commander, who in 2020 lost his wife, Carroll, to a five-year battle with cancer. The couple’s two daughters were teenagers at the time, and since then, he has raised them on his own. “We would like to call it Carroll,” Hansen said of the crater. His voice cracked as he spelled it out. C-A-R-R-O-L-L. The astronauts wiped away tears, and all four of them floated up to the top of the capsule, in a group hug—an image of human tenderness, beamed down to a planet that badly needed one.

The naming of Carroll starts about 1:15 in. The sound cuts out towards the end before resuming, but that’s because there are tears and hugs. It is indeed moving.

*If you’re a baseball fan, you might have heard that a game played between Los Angeles and the Seattle Mariners on April 4 has been labeled “the greatest single defensive game in major league history.” What happened was this:

On April 4, 2026, [Los Angeles outfielder Jo] Adell became the first player in MLB history to rob three home runs in one game, when he did so in a 1–0 win over the Seattle Mariners. He first robbed Cal Raleigh‘s first potential homer of the year in the first inning, before robbing Josh Naylor of a home run in the eighth. In the ninth inning, the third took place when he robbed J. P. Crawford of a home run, leaping into the right field stands in the process.The previous record, as tracked by Sports Info Solutions was two, by Nook Logan in 2005 and Jesús Sánchez in 2025.

And here’s the video:

Whether this is the greatest defensive performance in MLB history is arguable (you might say that pitching a 9-inning perfect game is a great act of defense), but that last catch, judged by the bot as caught before Adell left the field as well as a fair ball, was a doozy.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is giving advice so generalized that it’s useless:

Hili: We must be principled.
Andrzej: In what matter?
Hili: I don’t know yet.

In Polish:

Hili: Musimy być pryncypialni.
Ja: W jakiej sprawie?
Hili: Jeszcze nie wiem.

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

From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:

From CinEmma:

From Now That’s Wild:

Masih doesn’t like Iranians associated with terrorism to have luxury lives in the U.S. when they’re not even citizens. The son of “Screaming Mary” has been arrested and is scheduled for deportation.

From Simon: Larry the Cat, like Hili, doesn’t much care for humans:

From Luana; the decline of Caltech and the decline of MIT. Caltech is attracting the smartest math students.

From Malcolm, making a point I’ve always emphasized:

One from my feed: I’m not sure what this bird is (a starling?), but note the “Community note”: “Not shown on X: This video was taken from Instagram user inkydragon without proper attribution. https://www.instagram.com/inkydragon”. There: it’s properly attributed. Now sound up. 

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch girl was gassed, together with her mother and five bothers and sisters, as soon as they arrived in Auschwitz.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-04-13T12:48:55.600Z

Two from Dr. Cobb. You can buy this fly all painted up, but it costs £800.  They also give you the printing directions if you have access to a 3D printer. Awesome!

Who does not want an AMAZING 3D printed fly???? This Drosophila was printed for me today as a prop for a talk at the @rigb.org It caused a minor commotion on the tube on my way home. And I LOVE IT – @bittelmethis.bsky.social 🤓🪰🤘

— Erica McAlister (@flygirlnhm.bsky.social) 2026-04-09T20:26:00.934Z

From Artemis II posted by astronaut Katie Mack:

Whoa 🤯The Moon, in full eclipse, with the #Artemis II Orion spacecraft. Part of the Moon and spacecraft are lit by Earthshine, and both Saturn and Mars are visible to the lower right. Incredible. Details: images.nasa.gov/details/art0…

— Katie Mack (@astrokatie.com) 2026-04-07T19:00:14.800Z

Bill Maher’s New Rule: When bad people do good things

April 12, 2026 • 11:30 am

There’s no real “rule” here, but simply Maher’s assertion—one that many people won’t sccept in the Time of Demonization—that people can do both good and bad things (it’s better to say that then brand someone as good or evil, though of course people can lean toward one side or another).

This monologue was prompted, of course, by recent revelations that Cesar Chavez was a sexual predator and rapist. Maher mentions others with such ambitendencies, including Thomas Jefferson, Michael Jackson, and Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia who’s particularly vexing.

Maher tries to accept the fact that sometimes the bad comes with the good, and that’s really the only life lesson you can derive from this monologue. But it’s worth pondering. For if you see what happens to people like Chavez, who are written off as too evil to extol in any way, you see the inability of many people to accept nuance (and no, I’m not saying that there should be Cesar Chavez high schools.)

The other guests include Lloyd Blankfein (former CEO of Goldman Sachs), Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, and Anthony Scaramucci, who lasted a mere ten days as Trump’s communications director.

Doctors Without Borders again accused of antisemitism

April 12, 2026 • 10:15 am

For a long time the otherwise admirable organization Doctors Without Borders (also known as “MSF” for its French name Médecins Sans Frontières) has been accused of antisemitism.  The accusations have been credible enough to make me curb my donations to the group.  I still regret having donated over $10,000 to the organization after Kelly Houle and I auctioned off a copy of Why Evolution is True that I got autographed by multiple scientists and celebrities, including two Nobel Laureates. Kelly had also beautifully illuminated and gilded the book, so it was quite the showpiece.  I don’t know where that money went after we sent it to MSF, but the organization won’t be getting any more dosh from me. That’s a pity, as otherwise they’d be in my will and lined up to get a lot more money: in the six figures.  Well, such is the result of Jew hating.

Since the book auction, which occurred well before the Israel/Hamas war, more evidence has come out about MSF’s antisemitism. First, Israel expelled the organization from Gaza this year because it wouldn’t provide the names of its staff and operations in Gaza so they could be checked for membership in Hamas or terrorist activities. Second, as documented in the Jewish Chronicle article below, the organization has repeatedly accused Israel of “genocide” while condemning Hamas only once (for the October 7 attack). The genocide canard, as Maarten Boudry shows in his article “They don’t believe it either,” is without merit; there’s no evidence that Israel has been on a campaign to wipe out Palestinians.  And since MSF’s accusations of genocide are public, you can’t say that Israel or Jews are making them up. (You can see one on MSF’s own site.)

Since any support for terrorism or ideological tilting towards Gaza and against Israel violates MSF’s own policy of political neutrality, there’s even less justification for its accusations. I’ve called out the organization before (see my posts here and here), and this will be the third and probably last time. Click below to read the Jewish Chronicle piece.

A few excerpts (indented):

. . . interviews and internal material reviewed by the JC suggest that the organisation’s principle of témoignage, or “bearing witness”, has taken on a political character in relation to Israel.

MSF public statements started using the term “genocide” to describe the Gaza war in November 2024.

One former employee described “pushback” when it was first adopted, citing concerns about the lack of “legal rigour” behind the claim.

MSF leaders have for years made such similar statements about the Jewish state. In January 2025, shortly before becoming international president of MSF, Javid Abdelmoneim reposted a message on X claiming that Israel had “transformed Jewish symbols into symbols of genocide” and was “the greatest threat to Judaism & the Jewish people on planet earth”.

In another repost, Abdelmoneim – who has endorsed a full boycott of the Jewish state – shared a message describing Israel as “a colony of settlers that continue to ethnically cleanse the native Palestinian population”.

Michael Goldfarb spent more than 15 years at MSF US. He claimed anti-Israel sentiment was at times “tolerated” by those at the top.

He said: “European colleagues freely told me, knowing I am Jewish, that Israel doesn’t have a right to exist.”

He recalled one colleague expressing outrage at being mistaken for Israeli while abroad.

At a restaurant with MSF colleagues in northern Italy, in a town’s former Jewish quarter, one colleague told Goldfarb: “There better not be Israeli flags here.”

He said: “Nothing meaningful has been done to address antisemitism, to show solidarity with Jewish staff, or call out this hate. That creates a permissive environment in which it flourishes.”

And there’s this:

On October 17, 2023, after an explosion at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, MSF’s international account posted that it was “horrified by the recent Israeli bombing… This is a massacre”. The blast was later attributed to a misfired Palestinian rocket. The MSF post remains online.

In November 2023, as Israeli forces said they would target Hamas operatives allegedly using Al-Shifa Hospital, MSF staff were present at the facility. The organisation said it had “seen no evidence” that Hamas was using the hospital as a military base. Months later, US intelligence confirmed Hamas had used parts of the complex for storing weapons and holding hostages.

This one is particularly telling, as everybody now knows that the rocket that exploded in the Al-Ahli parking lot was fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, not Israel. But MSF won’t take down its false accusation. I’ve put its tweet below

Of course MSF says that the “genocide” canard is justified, but read Boudry’s article to see the “genocidal statements” that supposedly support the canard. They were few, were directed at Hamas. and have not been translated into action. Futher, Hamas, despite its agreement for the cease-fire, has not disarmed and is still in charge in southern Gaza, and it’s still stealing and diverting humanitarian aid to Gaza. Hamas must be not only disarmed but dissolved.

The [MSF] spokesperson went on: “Like many others, we were horrified by Hamas’ massacre in Israel on October 7, and we are horrified by Israel’s response. While providing extensive humanitarian assistance in Gaza we have witnessed mass killings, indiscriminate attacks, repeated failures to protect civilians, immense destruction by Israeli forces, the near-total dismantling of the healthcare system, and the weaponisation and restriction of lifesaving aid. Israeli officials have made multiple, well-documented dehumanising statements calling for the annihilation or forced transfer of the population.

“The only reasonable conclusion is that the intention is to erase the Palestinian people from Gaza. For this reason, we believe a genocide is taking place.

So MSF won’t get dime one from me.  However, if you do want to donate to the civilians of Gaza through NGOs that have not been banned by Israel, and have a decent reputation, here’s what Grok suggests. I’ve added links:

ANERA (American Near East Refugee Aid): A U.S.-based, non-political, non-religious organization providing food parcels, hygiene kits, medical care, and livelihoods support directly in Gaza (with recent distributions in 2026, often partnering with WFP). It holds 4-star Charity Navigator ratings and GuideStar Platinum Seal for transparency and impact.

 

PCRF (Palestine Children’s Relief Fund): U.S.-based nonprofit specializing in pediatric medical care, surgeries, mental health, and emergency aid (food, supplies) for children in Gaza. It has earned consistent 4-star Charity Navigator ratings (one of the highest for accountability) and focuses on long-term recovery without political affiliations.

DIRECT RELIEF. Delivers medical supplies, kits, and grants to health facilities in Gaza via partners. It is internationally respected with 4-star ratings and focuses purely on health aid in crises.
I haven’t checked all those organizations myself, so follow the instructions below before you give.

Tips for donating effectively:

  • Visit the organizations’ official websites and designate funds for “Gaza” or “Palestine emergency” where possible.
  • Check current Charity Navigator, CharityWatch, or GuideStar ratings for the latest financial transparency data (most listed above score highly).
  • Aid delivery remains extremely challenging due to access issues, but these groups have documented recent distributions and work within approved coordination mechanisms.