Columbia’s anti-Israel grad student union makes big demands, prepares to strike

March 10, 2026 • 11:30 am

Graduate student unions are relatively new: they weren’t around when I was in graduate school in the Pleistocene.  They are officially part of larger labor unions (the University of Chicago grad student union, for example, is part of  the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (GSU-UE, Local 1103).  Today’s piece is about the Columbia University grad-student union, affiliated with the United Auto Workers.

The rationale for students joining unions is that they consider themselves employees rather than just students, and that comes from requirements that students often have to teach to get their degree (they can be paid by the university if they’re on fellowship, as I was at Harvard, and taught for a year as part of the degree requirements). Teaching and even the requirement to do research is considered “employment” in the same way that making cars is considered employment, though many grad students disagree, considering their activities involved in getting a graduate degree—including learning to teach—to be education, not employment. The resolution of these differences involves grad students voting: if enough of them want a union, they get a union.  Whether or not they must join a union or pay dues to a one depends on the university. Neither Chicago nor Columbia requires membership, for example, but the benefits all students get are those agreed on via bargaining between the university and the union.  Chicago grad students have to pay someone, however. As Grok tells me:

University of Chicago graduate students are not required to join the union (GSU-UE) as members. However, those in covered teaching or research positions must pay union dues or an equivalent agency fee as a condition of employment, per the collective bargaining agreement effective April 2024.
I’m not sure who gets the “equivalent agency fee.”

The two articles below, the first from the Free Press (FP) and the second from the Columbia Spectator (CS; the student paper) describe a potential upcoming strike by Columbia graduate students. Click on either headline to go to the article. I’ll identify where quotes come from, and all quotes are indented.

The CS describes how grad-student unions bargains with the university; this holds, I think, for all universities:

Under the National Labor Relations Act, the union’s legally mandated role involves bargaining with the University over wages, hours, and working conditions, which are ‘mandatory’ subjects of collective bargaining; the employer and the union are legally required to bargain over these subjects if one of the parties raises concerns. Other topics which may be brought for bargaining include any condition outside of wages, hours, and working conditions. Neither party may insist on bargaining for permissive demands, but they may discuss them.

One of the problems with requesting big increases in student salaries, as Columbia’s union is doing, is that it ultimately leads to the admission of fewer grad students, for the funds for grad students are limited. (This shrinking has happened, I’m told, at the University of California.)  Another problem, highlighted in the FP but not the CS article, is that student unions, which have historically taken political stands (including endorsing candidates), can and have made demands for the university itself to take political stands. In the case of Columbia, this often involves anti-Israel stands, and you can see that many students—especially Jewish ones—don’t want to be part of a union that is explicitly and blatantly anti-Israel.

The FP article (not archived):

And the CS:

Columbia students went on strike for 10 weeks in 2021, and that of course degraded classes in which grad students teach, and also research (nobody is supposed to teach or do research during a strike). Now they’re threatening to strike again, and the union’s demands are big. From the CS:

The Student Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers [SWC] opened a strike authorization vote Friday to “ramp up the pressure” for the University to meet its demands amid seven months of stalled contract negotiations.

The vote follows continued disagreement between the union and the University over the scope of issues subject to collective bargaining and is open to all union members through March 8. If affirmed, the vote would authorize union leadership to hold a later vote to decide whether and when to initiate a strike. SWC-UAW last went on strike in 2021 for 10 weeks during its first contract negotiation before signing a contract with the University.

A University spokesperson characterized the strike authorization vote as “disappointing” in a statement to Spectator because it comes “after only six bargaining sessions and without even putting forward all the proposals they have said they want to discuss with the University.”
“During negotiations for SWC’s first contract in 2021, Columbia met with the union 73 times before they decided to strike,” the spokesperson wrote.

Here’s what Columbia students get now and what they’re asking in terms of benefits (from the FP):

Now that the union has gotten around to its economic demands, they are far beyond what graduate students at comparable academic institutions are typically offered. On top of a full tuition remission valued at over $55,000 per academic year, SWC has demanded an annual minimum salary of over $76,000 for PhD students who are teaching or conducting research, even though they are expected to work only about 20 hours per week.

The union also is seeking a childcare subsidy of up to $50,000 per child per year. For so-called casual employees, including undergraduate student workers, the union is demanding minimum pay of $36.50 per hour, up from $22.50 per hour, and more than twice New York City’s minimum wage of $17 per hour.

SWC also plans to bargain for union shop status, which would force student workers to join and pay dues to remain employed, or for agency shop status, in which nonunion members must pay a fee to cover bargaining costs.

Some Googling indicates that grad students now make up to about $50,000 per year, so they’re asking for about a 50% increase in salary.  And depending on whether a member has kids, the demands could total as much as $200,000 per year.  Further, the “union shop status” they’re requesting means that all students must join the union, and since the union is demanding political stands, that can be problematic. From the FP:

The battle isn’t primarily about wages or working conditions. Instead, it is focused on the demands of anti-Israel activists on Columbia’s campus. Some student workers say this activism means that they feel uncomfortable about seeking help with basic functions like workplace conditions or health insurance.

“They’ve singularly focused on pursuing policies that are meant to disenfranchise Jews and Israelis, as opposed to pursuing and negotiating on policies for the betterment of all student workers,” one Columbia grad student told me. An engineering graduate student added, “If you look at what the union is doing now, you can see there’s no sane people left.”

SWC’s president, Grant Miner, isn’t even allowed on campus. He was one of the 22 students arrested following the occupation of Hamilton Hall in 2024, was expelled, and therefore is no longer employed by the university. Yet Miner is paid over $46,000 a year by the union, according to a contract reviewed by The Free Press. Miner did not respond to a request for comment.

Some of the Columbia union’s demands (from the FP):

The union has demanded that Columbia public safety officers not “use force against Columbia affiliates or non-Columbia affiliates under any circumstances,” carry weapons, or require anyone to show their university identification. SWC also wants Columbia to dismantle its security cameras, halt Columbia’s dual degree program with Tel Aviv University, block the opening of a new facility in Tel Aviv, and divest Columbia from Israel.

. . .Olya Skulovich, who is Jewish and Israeli, said SWC deserves credit for improvements in health insurance and other areas. “There was not even coverage for spouses” when she started, said Skulovich, who arrived at Columbia in 2018 and earned a PhD in earth and environmental engineering.

But she was shocked when the union quickly veered away from economic priorities after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. SWC described Israel as “genocidal” and called on Columbia to divest from the “Israeli war machine.” The statement was approved by just 100 of the eligible union members.

“I lived a big part of my life in Belarus, and I know what antisemitism is firsthand,” Skulovich said. Brian Frost, a union steward for the engineering school, resigned from his SWC post over the post–October 7 statement. “The lists of demands are not labor demands,” he wrote in an email to other PhDs in his department. The statement was “uncharacteristically heartless for a labor organization,” said Frost.

Once the union had taken an official side on the war in Gaza, it began to support student protesters. SWC voted to join the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) coalition, the main anti-Israel campus group that includes Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). The three groups are not recognized by Columbia and were therefore ineligible to organize protests, but union leaders believed that SWC could veil their activities as labor actions.

“We were putting up rallies for the student organizations who weren’t allowed to protest on campus,” union steward Ioanna Kourkoulou told other UAW branch organizations. She bragged that SWC was “allowed to picket whenever the fuck we want.”

I have never been involved in any of these negotiations or votes, as I was a faculty member when the union began at my school, and I can’t even tell you what deal was made between the union here and the university, though I doubt it forces the University of Chicago to take political stands, which is prohibited by our Kalven principles.

I thus can’t say how many grad student positions here have been lost here because of bargaining, but if the Columbia uni9on gets its demands of a $76,000 annual salary and childcare subsidies (on top of the $55,000 tuition remission), I expect there will be substantially fewer grad students.  That is for the talks to decide.

What I most object to is the union’s anti-Israel demands, which include university divesting from Israel,  blocking the Tel Aviv facility, and joining three anti-Israel groups (and sponsoring their rallies)—at least two of them (SJP and JVP) that I see as antisemitic. This would force Columbia to take ideological and political stands, which would violate its existing policy of institutional neutrality and chill the speech of Jewish or pro-Israel students.  It is the political positions of grad-student unions that, I think, make them different from “normal” labor unions and inappropriate for universities. Whatever Columbia decides to do about grad-student funding, it must not agree to adopt these ideological positions.

Readers’ wildlife photos

March 10, 2026 • 8:15 am

We have no more batches in the tank, so if you have photos, send them along. Thanks.

Today’s final tranche comes from reader Ephraim Heller, which will be in two parts. Ephraim’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them:

Q: Why do chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus) in Trinidad & Tobago cross the roads?

A: To eat the tarantulas.

During my recent visit to Trinidad and Tobago, a local birding guide explained that one of the reasons people commonly keep free-range chickens in their yards is to eat the tarantulas. This gave me a new respect for these domestic fowl, as I witnessed venomous tarantulas larger than my XXL-size hands, such as this female Trinidad chevron tarantula (Psalmopoeus cambridgei):

Trinidad harbors a diversity of arachnids that rivals anywhere in the Neotropics. On my night walks with my new macro lens I observed spiders (order Araneae) and harvestmen, also known as daddy long legs (order Opiliones). Both arachnids are eight-legged members of the class Arachnida, but they belong to entirely separate orders and are not closely related within that class.

Returning to the Trinidad Chevron tarantula: it constructs silken tube retreats in tree crevices, behind bark, and among epiphytic plants. It also readily adapts to human structures (e.g., tin roofs, metal pipes, and abandoned buildings) making it something of a synanthrope:

Females are large and fast-growing, reaching 18 cm (7 inches) in leg span, with striking chevron-shaped dark markings on the abdomen and green-brown coloration accented by red or orange flashes on the legs. Males are smaller, with a more uniform grey-brown appearance, and can mature in as little as one year. The species is notable for its broad diet: bats, frogs, lizards, grasshoppers, mice, and other insects have all been documented as prey.

Pharmacologically, the Trinidad chevron tarantula is of medical interest. Its venom is the source of psalmotoxin and vanillotoxin – inhibitor cystine knot (ICK) peptides that may have therapeutic applications in stroke treatment.

The pinktoe tarantula (Avicularia avicularia), is the most commonly encountered tarantula in Trinidad and Tobago. This arboreal species is named for the distinctive pink coloration on the tips of its legs in adults:

Adults reach about six inches in leg span. They are ambush predators that construct silken retreats and trip lines in tree canopies, using webbing as both trap and sensor. Unlike most tarantulas, pinktoes can jump short distances (3-4 cm), and their defensive repertoire includes propelling feces at threats, a behavior that, while unglamorous, is effective. Their venom is mild, even by New World tarantula standards. Here’s a closeup from the previous photo focused on the body:

The Giant Fishing Spider (Ancylometes bogotensis) is a semi-aquatic giant. Females reach roughly 26 mm in body length with an impressive leg span, while males are somewhat smaller at about 21 mm. These spiders walk on water using air-trapping hydrophobic hairs on their leg tips, much like water striders. When disturbed, they can dive below the surface and remain submerged for over 20 minutes by breathing air trapped in the hairs surrounding their book lungs. Their diet ranges from aquatic insects to small fish, frogs, lizards, and geckos:

Ancylometes bogotensis is sometimes confused with the infamous Brazilian wandering spider (genus Phoneutria, photo below): both are large, ground-active, nocturnal hunters with similar body plans. The name Phoneutria translates from Greek as “murderer,” and the genus has appeared in the Guinness World Records as containing the world’s most venomous spider. There are eight described species, found primarily in tropical South America with one extending into Central America.

Phoneutria species are best known for their potent neurotoxic venom, their characteristic threat display (raising the first two pairs of legs high to reveal banded leg patterns) and their wandering, non-web-building habits. They famously hide in banana bunches, boots, clothing, and dark shelters, which brings them into frequent contact with humans. Their venom contains a cocktail of neurotoxins, but fatalities are rare with modern medical treatment.

Though Ancylometes and Phoneutria were both historically placed in the family Ctenidae, Ancylometes was transferred to its own family (Ancylometidae) in 2025, reflecting the growing understanding that these semi-aquatic fishing spiders represent a distinct evolutionary lineage:

We now turn to a species of orb-weaver. The golden silk spider (Trichonephila clavipes) is one of the most conspicuous spiders in the Caribbean and Neotropical forests. Sexual dimorphism in this species is extreme: males are tiny (5-9 mm body length) and weigh roughly one-thousandth what a female does. Here is a female:

The silk itself is remarkable. It has a golden hue visible to the naked eye and is the strongest natural fiber known. Researchers have fully annotated the T. clavipes genome, identifying 28 unique silk protein genes. These spiders produce and utilize seven different types of silk. Their large, asymmetric orb webs can exceed a meter in diameter, and in the South Pacific, relatives of Trichonephila spin webs strong enough to be used as fishing nets by indigenous communities:

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

March 10, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the Cruelest Day: Tuesday, March 10, 2026, and a celebration of everyone’s favorite instrument (not): International Bagpipe Day. Bagpipes aren’t just Irish or Scottish: they have been going for a while in different countries. Here’s a Wikipedia drawing labeled, “A detail from the Cantigas de Santa Maria showing bagpipes with one chanter and a parallel drone (Spain, 13th century).”

Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also International Day of Awesomeness, International Lime Day, National Blueberry Popover Day (?), and National Ranch Day, celebrating the calorific dressing.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 10 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The latest war news from the NYT includes Iran naming the late Åyatollah’s second-oldest son as the Supreme leader, meaning that they’ll fight on, and a predictable rise in oil prices.

U.S. stocks fell at the start of trading on Monday, after markets in Asia and Europe tumbled, as a spike in oil prices reflected global fears of a prolonged U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. Meanwhile, Iran projected defiance by naming a son of its slain supreme leader as his successor.

Oil prices briefly surged early Monday to almost $120 per barrel, their highest level since the Covid pandemic, as President Trump’s plans for the next steps in the war, let alone its endgame, remained unclear and Iran showed no sign of bowing to his demand for unconditional surrender.

Investors appear increasingly worried about the lack of a clear offramp for the fighting, which has spread across the Middle East, disrupted oil supplies and raised costs for consumers and businesses. The price of gasoline in the United States jumped again on Monday to an average of $3.48 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club, a nearly 17 percent increase since the first U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28 and the highest level since 2024.

. . ., Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, was appointed by senior clerics on Monday, days after Mr. Trump declared that he was an “unacceptable choice” and amid Israeli threats to kill Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s successor. Iran’s military and hard-line political forces trumpeted the selection, but in Tehran, opponents of the government were heard chanting “Death to Mojtaba” from their windows — reflecting widespread if muted dissent.

As the conflict raged into its 10th day, more than 1,300 people had already been killed in U.S. and Israeli strikes in Iran, according to the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations. And Iran was continuing with attacks across the Middle East, killing more than 30 people.

A ballistic missile launched from Iran targeted Turkey before being downed by NATO defenses, the Turkish defense ministry said. It was the second such announcement in six days, after officials said a previous Iranian attack had been aimed at the Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey.

Iranian strikes on Turkey are particularly incendiary because Turkey is a member of the NATO alliance, whose nations are bound to defend one another. Iran denied targeting Turkey and has yet to comment on Monday’s announcement.

And from the WSJ:

The appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the slain Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as Iran’s new supreme leader defies President Trump and signals that Tehran won’t back down as it fights a war with the U.S. and Israel.

The elevation of Mojtaba Khamenei, a conservative long close to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, shows that Trump’s efforts so far to cow the regime into surrender have failed. It also appears to have put hard-liners in firm control of the country, with moderate and reformist factions long marginalized. The 56-year old Khamenei is expected to take a confrontational stance toward the West.

His appointment also shows that Iran won’t acquiesce to Trump’s demand that he approve the country’s new top cleric. Trump told Axios last week that “Khamenei’s son is unacceptable to me.”

The slanted reportage of the NYT on this war (just look at the headlines) seems to me one of the clearest instances I’ve seen of the paper’s “progressive” bias. Now we don’t know what’s going to happen in Iran, and Trump (and perhaps Israel) might stop attacking permanently leaving Khamenei Jr. in control. But then the construction of nuclear weapons would beging again, and would the U.S. and Israel, having made that a huge goal of intervention, really accept that? It doesn’t help that Trump keeps waffling on how long the war might take, but that depends after all on the Iranian regime.

*The NYT has accumulated evidence showing that the Iranian elementary school damaged by a missile, a strike that killed 175 people—and many children—was almost surely an American “precision strike” by a cruise missile, whose explosion also to the deaths and injuries (the school was adjacent to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard base). There’s a similar report by the Associated Press. From the NYT:

A newly released video adds to the evidence that an American missile likely hit an Iranian elementary school where 175 people, many of them children, were reported killed.

The video, uploaded on Sunday by Iran’s semiofficial Mehr News Agency and verified by The New York Times, shows a Tomahawk cruise missile striking a naval base beside the school in the town of Minab on Feb. 28. The U.S. military is the only force involved in the conflict that uses Tomahawk missiles.

A body of evidence assembled by The Times — including satellite imagery, social media posts and other verified videos — indicates that the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school building was severely damaged by a precision strike that occurred at the same time as attacks on the naval base. The base is operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Asked by a reporter from The Times on Saturday if the United States had bombed the school, President Trump said: “No. In my opinion and based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran.” He said, “They’re very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was standing beside Mr. Trump, said the Pentagon was investigating, “but the only side that targets civilians is Iran.”

The video of the strike, which was first reported by the research collective Bellingcat, was independently verified by The Times. We compared features visible in the footage to new satellite imagery captured days after the strikes in Minab.

The video was filmed from a construction site opposite the base and shows a worn, dirt path across a grassy area and piles of debris also evident in recent satellite imagery, bolstering its credibility. The video also comports with other verified videos taken in the immediate aftermath of the strikes.

A Times analysis of the video shows the missile striking a building described as a medical clinic in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps base. Plumes of smoke and debris shoot out of the building after it is hit as the distant screams of onlookers are heard.

As the camera pans to the right, large plumes of dust and smoke are already billowing from the area around the elementary school, suggesting that it had been struck shortly before the strike on the naval base. This is supported by a timeline of the strikes assembled by The Times that shows the school was hit around the time as the base.

Here’s a video showing the missile before the strike (the fins and cylindrical shape show it’s a Tomahawk, used only by the US), and the proximity of the school to the strike site (an IRGC Navy base_:

This was a bit confusing, but it seems that the school was hit independently, by a missile that was not one of those that struck the base, i.e., not a Tomahawk missile. If that was the case, then yes, the U.S. screwed up, and that seems likely. If it was the same missile or bomb that hit the base, there would be less culpability for the U.S., as it could be considered a byproduct of missiles striking the base, and the equivalent of Gaza embedding its military facilities near schools or hospitals. But I’m assuming the former: the U.S. simply targeted a wrong building. The death of so many noncombatants, particularly children, is horrible.  I would hope that if Iran also aimed at civilian targets (and it has, but the Iron Dome and other systems have intercepted the missiles in Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other countries), they would receive opprobrium for targeting civilians, but we hear little about that.

*Israeli historian Benny Morris has a very good update of the war in Iran at Quillette: “Iran’s Risky Gamble” (archived here). He seems to produce one of these weekly, and it’s worth reading them, as they summarize basically everything of interest. Here’s the beginning of the long piece, but you can read it yourself at the archived link.

The American–Israeli war with Iran that began on 28 February has significantly expanded in two—possibly three—directions, with likely revolutionary implications for the geopolitics of the Middle East in the coming decades.

The most immediate possibility is the likely demise of Hezbollah, Lebanon’s Islamist terrorist organisation, which is Iran’s main proxy in the region. Though strapped for cash, this past year Iran has sent Hezbollah some one billion US dollars, in funds or in kind. After a two-day hesitation and under pressure from an embattled Iran to join the fighting, on Day Three of the war Hezbollah launched a salvo of short-range rockets toward Israel’s northern border settlements. The organisation said this was in response to the Israeli assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s “Supreme Leader” and the most important religious and political figure in the Shi’ite universe.

The Lebanese Islamists may have been simply trying to make a symbolic statement, but the IDF—eager to complete the job it began in summer 2024 and demolish Hezbollah—responded with an escalating array of operations, including bombardments of targets in southern and eastern Lebanon and in the Dahiya quarter of southern Beirut, the Lebanese capital’s Shi’ite neighbourhood and Hezbollah’s main stronghold.

Most significantly, the IDF ordered the inhabitants of southern Lebanon, most of whom are Shi’ites, to completely evacuate the villages south of the Litani River and the Dahiya district. Since Thursday, Beirut’s boulevards and Lebanon’s roads have been clogged with endless streams of cars heading north and east, loaded with mattresses and other household appurtenances. More than half a million Lebanese are reportedly on the move and seeking makeshift shelter. On Friday, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) began toppling multistorey apartment blocks in the Dahiya district. Meanwhile, the IDF began moving armour and infantry into the border-hugging areas of southern Lebanon to prevent possible Hezbollah raids on Israel’s border settlements and possibly also as the start of a slow crawl northwards towards the Litani River line.

Hezbollah responded with rocket and drone strikes on northern Israel and, on one occasion, on Tel Aviv. A drone also appears to have unsuccessfully targeted Benjamin Netanyahu’s private home in Caesarea, on the Mediterranean coast south of Haifa. On Friday and Saturday, Hezbollah ordered the population of Israel’s northern border settlements, including the town of Kiryat Shmona, to evacuate southward to a depth of five kilometres from the border in an obvious response to the Israeli evacuation orders in Lebanon, but observers considered this an empty gesture and few Israelis are likely to actually leave their homes. So far, Hezbollah rockets and drones have been largely ineffectual and have claimed no Israeli lives.

None of this is new. But what is new is the near-simultaneous announcement by the Lebanese government deeming all Hezbollah military activity illegal and the arrest of 26 armed Hezbollah operatives at Lebanese national army roadblocks. Then, after Israel ordered all Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) officers, who had been training and arming Hezbollah for decades, to leave Lebanon on pain of death, the Lebanese government ordered them out, announcing that henceforward all Iranians will require visas to enter the country. In effect, Iranians and Iranian funds for Hezbollah are now barred from Lebanon. Although the Beirut government has been unhappy with Hezbollah and Iranian interference in internal Lebanese affairs for decades, this is the first time it has directly challenged Hezbollah or Iran. On Saturday, Israeli jets struck a suite in a downtown Beirut hotel reportedly housing operatives of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force.

Morris is Israeli, but I can’t detect any real bias in his takes (blame me if I’m blind), and his assessment of what’s new and the consequences of various acts seem pretty objective to me.  I will call attention to his summaries from time to time.

*Two Islamist terrorists tried (and failed) to explode two bombs in NYC’s upper East Side at a rally protesting Islamist Mayor Mamdani (near his mayoral mansion), with the rally having a name: ““Stop the Islamic Takeover of New York City, Stop New York City Public Muslim Prayer”.  Nobody was hurt as the bomb fizzled, but Mamdani’s response was remarkable—but in character. He first called out the protestors, not the terroists! From the Free Press:

Two men tried to detonate homemade bombs on the Upper East Side of Manhattan on Saturday. They had, according to reports, been inspired by ISIS videos. In a video from the scene, you can hear someone scream, “Allahu akbar.”

But you would never know any of that from the mayor’s statement—or from much of the mainstream media’s coverage. If you were reading that, or listening to the words of the city’s top elected official, you would assume the bombs were placed by white supremacists.

Not only did the failed attack expose Mayor Zohran Mamdani and many of his sympathizers in the press as apologists for apparent Islamists, it showed how hard they will work to hide the truth when it’s inconvenient to their worldview.

Here’s what actually happened. The scene took place Saturday afternoon outside of Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s residence. A protest calling itself “Stop the Islamic Takeover of New York City, Stop New York City Public Muslim Prayer” was organized by right-wing influencer Jake Lang to protest Mamdani, an observant Muslim. Lang’s group of about 20 faced off with a group of some 125 counterprotesters calling themselves “Run the Nazis out of New York City, Stand Against Hate.”

The counterprotestors then threw the bomb, but it didn’t go off. And it wasn’t a “placebo bomb,” either. It could have killed people if the fuse hadn’t fizzled.

Many initial reports presumed it was a dummy, but police set the record straight by Sunday afternoon. “It is, in fact, an improvised explosive device that could have caused serious injury or death,” Commissioner Jessica Tisch announced in a statement on X. Officers arrested two men in connection with the attack: Emir Balat, 18, who they believe threw the bomb, and Ibrahim Kayumi, 19, who is believed to have supplied it. The FBI is probing the attack as an act of terrorism.

In some of the videos you can hear someone shouting Allahu akbar—Arabic for “God is great.” (According to a reporter at the scene from Agence France-Presse, the person who shouted it was Balat.) But regardless of who shouted it, the reporting that has emerged over the past hours makes their motivations plain: The New York Post reports that the suspects told police they attacked because they felt the protesters had insulted Islam. According to law enforcement sources, they said they had been radicalized by watching ISIS videos.

New Yorkers look to their mayor when terrorists strike, hoping to rally behind a leader who can communicate the facts, direct the response, and express righteous rage on the city’s behalf. Rudy Giuliani strode through the rubble on 9/11. Bill de Blasio, an avowed progressive, experienced at least four attacks while in office, including a truck rampage that killed eight in 2017. He described each event as what it was: “terrorism.”

Mamdani is different. Here was his statement:

The omissions are remarkable. Instead of denouncing a terrorist attack on the police who serve his city, Mamdani referred to the “violence” as if it were the weather. There is no reference to the suspects. No use of the word terrorism. And no mention of Islamism, which the evidence suggests motivated the nearly catastrophic attack.

Like many of the worst figures of our hyper-partisan moment, Mamdani saved his rage for his political opponents. He chose to open his statement not by condemning terrorism, but by lambasting a legal demonstration against him. He said the protesters, not the terrorists, have “no place in New York City.” He named Lang, but didn’t mention the names of the attackers.

Mamdani released his statement after the police commissioner’s, so it’s unlikely that he lacked any of the facts when he spoke.

Here’s a tweet found by Luana showing the bomb being thrown:

Luana also found a relevant and tweet from the Babylon Bee (their sarcastic article is here):

Finally, Mamdani realized he’d made a gaffe and corrected it with another tweet, but he’d damaged his reputation with his first response.

I cannot abide Mamdani, who seems to be both an Islamist of the worst stripe (a cryptic one) and an antisemite.  I hope the New Yorkers who voted for him expect more of this, because that’s exactly what they’re going to get. As for taxes on the rich, free public transport, and free childcare, fuggedaboutit.

*At first I thought this WaPo op-ed, called, “Your salted caramel mocha latte is destroying society,” was a joke, but it’s not (article archived here).  Author Jakub Grygiel, identified as “a professor of politics at the Catholic University of America, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior adviser at the Marathon Initiative,” seems dead serious. I don’t like those fancy drinks either, which are akin to coffee milkshakes, but that’s because they are expensive and icky, but I don’t blame them for the destruction of America.  The argument:

According to the National Coffee Association, last year 46 percent of Americans had some “specialty” coffee (42 percent, sensibly, still had a regular one) in the past day. Simultaneously, 54 percent of U.S. adults feel isolated and half of them feel bereft of companionship “often or some of the time,” according to the American Psychological Association.

As specialty coffee consumption has surged (84 percent since 2011), so has the loneliness epidemic. Just a correlation? Consider what your coffee order reveals.

The salted caramel mocha latte, the iced brown sugar soy milk shaken espresso, the white chocolate macadamia cream cold brew are the triumph of hyper-individualization over communal norms. When you order a dirty spiced chai with oat milk, you are not only wasting the time of other customers in line but also are signaling that your personal appetites demand an elaborate, customized response. You are asserting your primacy, unique in the complexity of your desires, and stand apart from your nation’s simple rituals. No wonder you’re alone.

Edmund Burke would have thought, correctly, that liberty is put at risk by the consumption of that vanilla sweet cream nitro cold brew. People “are qualified for civil liberty,” he wrote in a letter, “in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites … in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption … in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good.”

The moment we let our appetites rule us, devising ever more intricate beverages, we knock one more chunk from society’s foundation. In fact, Burke continued, “society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.”

And you thought that I was a curmudgeon! Here’s a professor who quotes Edmund Burke to drinkshame those who buyt fancy lattes. If customers buying regular coffee objected to the wait, Starbucks wouldn’t sell the fancy stuff. It’s capitalism, Jake!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili insulted Andrzej!

Hili: You amaze me.
Andrzej: With what?
Hili: With your lack of understanding of the essence of things.

In Polish:

Hili: Zdumiewasz mnie.
Ja: Czym?
Hili: Brakiem zrozumienia istoty rzeczy.

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

From Stacy (it’s true!):

From Jesus of the Day:

From Merilee: an old video showing Brian Cox taking Deepak Chopra apart on Conan’s show.

From Masih; I knew this would happen, and no, they weren’t mourning the death of the Ayatollah when they didn’t sing:

From Luana; the purported Islamist throwing a bomb at conservative protestors. The explosive, which didn’t detonate, was identified down the thread as “TATP, the explosive infamously known as the ‘Mother of Satan’.”

A humble Ricky Gervais and Philomena (Diane Morgan) crack each other up. I don’t know where this is from:

From Emma, speaking of misidentified-by-sex athletes:

One from my feed: a cow roll call! (I may have posted this before.)

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

Two from Dr. Cobb. I don’t fully understand the first one but perhaps a knowledgeable reader can explain it:

Maybe it IS a jellyfish. A giant, ancient, cosmic cnidarian…

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-03-09T16:42:36.690Z

Look at this mantis!

 

Botany pond ducks named Armon and Vashti, and the turtles have reappeared!

March 9, 2026 • 9:30 am

It appears that the bonded pair of mallards at Botany Pond are here for the long term. Every morning they are waiting at the same spot for their breakfast, and in the afternoon they snooze on the rocks but swim to me for their late lunch when I whistle. Further, I saw two of our five red-eared slider turtles yesterday, swimming and sunning in the warmer weather. Here are a few photos and a video at bottom.

It seems that the ducks are residents now, and so it’s time to name them. As with last year, they appeared on the Jewish holiday of Purim and thus needed Jewish, Purim-related names. My friend Peggy Mason, co-duck-tender, scoured the Purim literature to give the ducks names (we don’t name them until we’re sure they’re going to hang around). The hen (not Esther, as I ascertained from photos published previously), is now called Vashti, named after a character in the Purim story:

Vashti (Hebrew: וַשְׁתִּי‎, romanized: Vaštī; Koine Greek: Ἀστίν, romanized: Astín; Modern Persian: وشتی, romanized: Vâšti) was a queen of Persia and the first wife of Persian king Ahasuerus in the Book of Esther, a book included within the Tanakh and the Old Testament which is read on the Jewish holiday of Purim. She was either executed or banished for her refusal to appear at the king’s banquet to show her beauty as Ahasuerus wished, and was succeeded as queen by Esther, a Jew. That refusal might be better understood via the Jewish tradition that she was ordered to appear naked. In the Midrash, Vashti is described as beautiful but wicked and vain; she is viewed as an independent-minded heroine in feminist theological interpretations of the Purim story.

That seems fairly appropriate given that there’s no other woman in the story save the heroine Esther, who saved the Jews.

A name for the drake was tougher, as the only other notable male in the Purim story is the wicked Haman, who tried to get the King to exterminate the Jews (Esther foiled that plot). And we can’t have a drake named after a genocidal maniac.  Scouring the story and remembering her Hebrew, Peggy suggested the name Armon,  which means “palace” or “fortress” in Hebrew. That’s where the whole Purim story took place. Fortunately, it’s also a Jewish man’s name, and short.

Ergo the hen and drake are now Vashti and Armon, respectively. I’ll have to do some explaining when visitors ask me the ducks’ names and how they got them. But it is cool that last year’s and this year’s ducks both arrived on Purim, though the holidays are two weeks displaced from 2025 to 2026.

Click the pictures below if you want to enlarge them.

Aaaaaand. . . here’s the pair together. I think they make quite the handsome couple:

The lovely Vashti, hopefully destined to produce this year’s brood of ducklings. Here she’s preening, sunning, and sleeping in the warm sun of Sunday:

And the regal Armon, swimming and napping:

We put five large red-eared slider turtles (Trachemys scripta elegans) into the pond last fall, and hoped they’d hibernate in custom turtle houses put on the pebble-y bottom.  Apparently they did, as we’ve seen no bodies floating on the water.  (These were five turtles saved and put in a southern Illinois pond when Botany Pond was renovated several years ago. I believe five more evacuees will come home again this Spring.)

It’s been too cold for them to show up, but yesterday I found a big one blithely sunning himself on a rock, stretching out his limbs to get the sun. (Turtles’ heads and legs are their solar panels, used to warm up the body.) Later I saw another one’s head above the water surface as it was swimming around. So we know we have at least two. Here’s the sunbather:

This is near the northern limit of the species’ distribution, as the eggs can’t survive very cold winters.

So we have our turtles and ducks: all is in place for a lovely Spring and Summer.

And a lousy movie of Armon and Vashti preening themselves after having lunch:

More good news: I’m told the duck camera, which has been re-installed, will be activated this week. Stay tuned for the link!

Readers’ wildlife photos

March 9, 2026 • 8:15 am

I have a few batches now, so I’m complacent (never happy!). Today’s photos of Costa Rica come from reader Rachel Sperling.  Her captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

In January I took my first (of many, I hope) trip to Costa Rica. We spent about a week in Manuel Antonio, on the Pacific Ocean side. We took a couple of nature walks in and around Manuel Antonio National Park, and we saw plenty of wildlife. One of these days I’m going to treat myself to a really good camera, but these were all taken with either my mirrorless Olympus or my iPhone camera, which are light and easy to stash in a backpack. I did see a couple of sloths – both three-toed (Bradypus variegatus) and Hoffman’s two-toed (Choloepus hoffmanni), but they were high up in the trees, so I wasn’t able to get a good photo of them.  These are the photos I was able to capture:

On the drive from San Jose to Manuel Antonio, we stopped at a creek to view some American crocodiles (Crocodylus acutus):

We saw a number of Central American Squirrel monkeys (Saimiri oerstedii), which were incredibly cute:

Then there were these little beasts: the Costa Rican mafia, aka the Panamanian/Central American White-faced capuchin (Cebus imitator). According to our guide, these monkeys can be pretty vicious with animals their own size, and they’ll just riffle through your backpack if you’re not watchful. Someone had to be on guard whenever we went to the beach.

We went on a nature walk in the rainforest at night (with a guide), which gave us the opportunity to see a lot of nocturnal animals. Among them was the Red-eyed tree frog (Agalychnis callidryas):

Masked tree frog/New Granada cross-banded tree frog (Smilisca phaeota) in Manuel Antonio National Park. I’m sorry I’m not better at identifying plants, to the disappointment of my botany-teacher father:

Black iguana (Ctenosaura similis), at the beach at Manuel Antonio:

We also saw a coati (Nasua narica), which Wikipedia tells me are diurnal, but it was definitely after sunset and that is definitely a coati. They’re relatives of the raccoon, and our guide told us that a mature one can hold its own against a jaguar. This one wasn’t afraid of us, anyhow:

Back at our b&b, this Black-hooded antshrike (Thamnophilus bridgesi) came to visit me as I read on the veranda a few times. I think it’s a female, though the sexual dimorphism of this species doesn’t seem terribly dramatic. I did see her building a nest:

On my last day in Costa Rica, I heard a tremendous ruckus in the trees outside my hotel in San Jose. I looked and discovered that the trees (American oil palms —Elaeis oleifera —I think) were full of Crimson-fronted parakeets (Psittacara finschi). They were LOUD and they were going to town on those trees. There were too many to count. Fortunately, they quieted down after sunset:

Manuel Antonio National Park from the water. These little islands are bird sanctuaries that tourists are not allowed to visit:

Sunset over the Pacific, near Manuel Antonio National Park:

Nauyaca Waterfalls, near Dominicalito, where we swam:

Finally, I thought you’d like these because they’re jaguar-inspired. We spent an afternoon at a village belonging to the Boruca, an indigenous tribe. They cooked us a delicious lunch, and showed us how they made dyes from local plants, and carved and painted balsa wood masks. The masks were first used to frighten the Conquistadores. Now you can buy them just about everywhere:

Monday: Hili dialogue

March 9, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to another damn week: it’s Monday, March 8, 2026, and the ducks are still here. In honor of their Purim arrival, we have named them Vashti (the hen) and Armon (the drake). They are happy and well fed.  It’s also National Meatball Day, so perhaps I’ll make a batch of bucatini with red sauce and turkey meatballs. I bet you’re wondering what the world’s largest meatball was. Here’s the answer, and it was big:

It was the biggest meatball anyone, anywhere, had ever seen—a massive sphere that tipped the scales at more than 1,700 pounds. Volunteers from the Italian-American Club on Hilton Head Island [South Carolina] had babysat the big boy around the clock for five days as it cooked away in its custom-made oven.

The aroma wafted through the air at Shelter Cove Community Park and prompted more than one passerby to seek out its source. A group of women trying to concentrate on a morning yoga routine jokingly suggested that it was challenging their resolve to live a healthy lifestyle.

But, no one was pretending that this huge meatball was in any way a testament to low cholesterol and a trim waistline. The whole purpose of its creation was to secure a coveted place in Guinness World Records. To do so, they would have to best the admirable efforts of an Italian-American Club in Ohio that had waddled into history in 2011 when it cooked a meatball that weighed in at 1,100 pounds.

And, now, a representative—an adjudicator—from Guinness World Records was on hand to determine if the Ohio record would fall.

Chef Joe Sullivan of Mulberry Street Trattoria in Bluffton provided his recipe, multiplied it 520 times and helped secure the staggering amount of ingredients needed: more than 1,800 pounds of beef and pork, 700 eggs, 250 pounds of breadcrumbs, 25 pounds of oregano, 56 pounds of salt and an equal amount of pepper. There was some Parmesan cheese in there, too, and some milk to keep everything nice and moist.

Here it is! (Watch from 2:16 to 8:53 and then from 11:00 to 11:52.) It weighed almost a ton!

It’s also Amerigo Vespucci Day, marking the birth of the Italian explorer in 1454, Barbie Day (celebrating her debut at the International Toy Fair in 1959), Commonwealth Day in the UK, and National Crabmeat Day (you’ll see some later today; we had one dish at the Next restaurant).

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 2 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Obituaries first. The rock stars of my generation are dying off. The Reaper’s latest victim is Country Joe McDonald, who died on Saturday at 84 from Parkinson’s disease.  McDonald wasn’t really a star but a one-hit wonder, but that hit became an anthem of the anti-Vietnam-war generation, “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag“, released in 1965 by Country Joe and his band, The Fish.  It was a bouncy but biting song, and all of us knew the words, including the chorus:

And it’s one, two, three, what are we fighting for?
Don’t ask me I don’t give a damn
Next stop is Vietnam.
And it’s five, six, seven, open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain’t no time to wonder why,
Whoopie! We’re all gonna die

Here’s the song from Woodstock in 1969, starting with the “Fish Cheer,” replaced by another F-word:

*War news: the U.S. and Israel ramp up attacks, and Iran says it’s close to naming a new Supreme Leader.  As I predicted (anybody could), it’s Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the late theocrtic dictator.  He now has a target on his back, and the oppression, terrorism, and theocracy will continue.

Fuel depots near Iran’s capital, Tehran, were engulfed in flames early Sunday after U.S. and Israeli forces expanded their attacks, while Iran tried to project stability by announcing that top clerics were finalizing their selection of a new supreme leader.

More than a week into the war, there was no sign of an offramp for the fighting. Both sides appeared to be intensifying attacks on critical infrastructure, potentially affecting millions of people across the Middle East.

The United States Central Command on Sunday urged Iranian civilians to stay at home, suggesting that the U.S. could strike densely populated areas as the Iranian forces often use urban areas to launch drone strikes and ballistic missiles. Iran earlier rejected President Trump’s demand for unconditional surrender, with a top leader vowing to avenge Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death.

Iranian state television announced on Sunday that the country’s top clerics were close to naming a successor to Ayatollah Khamenei, the ruler killed in the opening blow of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran last weekend. The channel did not say who the new leader might be, but officials who spoke to The New York Times previously said Mojtaba Khamenei, the ayatollah’s son, was the front-runner.

Mr. Trump warned in an interview with ABC News on Sunday that whoever is selected “is not going to last long” without the approval of the United States.

I am betting the next Supreme Leader will be Ali Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, but I would be scared to death if I became Iran’s next leader. Look what the Mossad did to his father! Anyway, yes, this is going to last a while as I can’t see the regime giving up power unless Qatar gives the leaders sanctuary and the Revolutionary Guard surrenders (and gets amnesty). That doesn’t look to be in the cards.

*US officials have warned that Iran may be able to retrieve the enriched uranium that was buried last year by U.S. bombs near Isfahan.

American intelligence agencies have determined that Iran or potentially another group could retrieve Iran’s primary store of highly enriched uranium even though it was entombed under the country’s nuclear site at Isfahan by U.S. strikes last year, according to multiple officials familiar with the classified reports.

Officials familiar with the intelligence said that Iran can now get to the uranium through a very narrow access point. It is unclear how quickly Iran could move the uranium, which is in gas form and stored in canisters.

U.S. officials have said that American spy agencies have constant surveillance of the Isfahan site and have a high degree of confidence they could detect — and react — to any attempt by the Iranian government or other groups to move it.

That stockpile of uranium would be a key building block if Iran decided to move toward making a nuclear weapon.

With Iran in chaos from the ongoing strikes by the United States and Israel, the fate of the uranium and the options for securing it have become critical issues for the Trump administration.

On Saturday, President Trump was asked by reporters on Air Force One if he would consider sending in ground forces to secure the highly enriched uranium.

“Right now we’re just decimating them, but we haven’t gone after it,” he said. “But something we could do later on. We wouldn’t do it now.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said on Saturday that the decision to go to war with Iran was motivated, in part, by the Iranian government’s decision to move its nuclear and missile projects so far underground that they would be “immune to any assault.”

The United States chose not to try to retrieve the uranium last year after the 12-day war in which Iran’s nuclear sites came under intense bombardment. Mr. Trump determined that doing so at that time would be too dangerous.

Any insertion of ground forces — presumably Special Operations commandos — would be highly risky. U.S. officials said that the air campaign against Iran would need to continue for days to further weaken Iranian defenses before any final decision on the viability of that type of raid.
You just know that this is from the NYT, which loves to point out problems for the U.S. while ignoring its successes in Iran. Yes, this is interesting news, but given the monitoring of the site by the U.S. and Israel, I find it inconceivable that Iran could get its hands back on that uranium.  In fact, I doubt it still has the facilities to enrich it to bomb-grade uranium (over 90% pure), and I cannot imagine Trump striking any kind of deal that lets the enrichment continue—especially since preventing Iran from so doing was a major goal of Israel the U.S. in beginning the hostilities.

*If you want regime change in Iran, you can have your views bolstered by this WSJ column by a historian who heads an Institute of Iranian studies. He’s optimistic.

Everywhere you look, there’s another expert to tell you what won’t happen—what can’t happen—in Iran. Regime change is impossible. Never mind the mass protests of January; the regime has the guns and is willing to use them. Never mind the airstrikes on leaders and thugs; you can’t topple a regime from the air. Trust the political science.

Ali M. Ansari has a different view. “I’m a firm believer in what Hannah Arendt says: Revolutions are impossible before they happen and inevitable after they happen.” Prof. Ansari, 58, is a historian at Scotland’s University of St. Andrews, where he directs the Institute for Iranian Studies. His 2024 book, “Iran,” is the best primer available on the nation’s modern history. He worries that social scientists and international-relations types “have become so wedded to their templates that they can’t see” what has happened inside Iran.

“The vast majority of people are struggling. The political system is hated. The economic system isn’t delivering,” he says in a video interview. Salaries “no longer meet the basic needs of life. There’s an environmental crisis—they’ve drained the water table. And now, they have an international crisis.” That’s putting it mildly.

“Every crisis you can think of, the Islamic Republic is facing,” Mr. Ansari says. “People tell me, ‘Oh, but it’s strong and stable.’ Well, it can’t be that strong and stable because people are rebelling every few years, and on a scale the regime deems existential.” Regime supporters, whom Mr. Ansari pegs at 10% to 20% of the population, “are convinced they are going to defeat the U.S. in this war.” He pauses: “They are not going to do it.”

. . . This gets at the main problem Mr. Ansari sees with Western analysis: “We fail to give the Iranians agency in what they do.” When Iran’s economy is in shambles, the reflex is to blame U.S. sanctions. “That doesn’t explain why the Iranians have mismanaged their water. It doesn’t tell you why, well before the real sanctions arrived in 2011-12, they were never able to get any foreign direct investment into the country. Now, why is that?” he asks. “It’s internal. It’s the corruption, the kleptocracy, the short-termism, the opaqueness, the lack of accountability, the uncertainty.” Sanctions didn’t make life easier, he says, but they didn’t befall Iran. They were a consequence of the regime’s behavior.

. . .The regime insisted throughout on a “right to enrich uranium”—which “would have more credibility if they respected any other rights as well,” Mr. Ansari cracks. “We often think of the Iranians as very strategic thinkers, playing the long game. No, no. It’s different. They’re ditherers,” he says. “We ascribe to them too much competence. I do not consider what’s happening now to be the result of great strategic thinking.” He points to a “dogmatic ideology and a grievance culture, whereby they’ve taken a hit for their nuclear program and can’t back down.” In his assessment, by sheer stubbornness, the regime “basically decided to declare war on the U.S.”

The failure to see that, and so much else, can be attributed to the prevailing “Washington-centered analysis,” Mr. Ansari says. “We always see Iran as almost marginal to the problem, which is Washington.” If only Mr. Trump hadn’t done this or that, the commentators rage. But if there is now an opening for regime change, it is because U.S. policymakers for once were able to turn from the mirror and see what the Iranian people know well: The problem is in Iran.

Many of us will be very disappointed if the New Boss is the same as the Old Boss, if Iran continues its nuclear program, and if they don’t give the people freedom of speech, of dress, of education, and so on.  What happened to Venezuela should not happen to Iran.

*Oy, a fourth bit of war news: Iran has attacked a desalination plant in Bahrain, a place where fresh water is essential. Iran continues to make more enemies in the Middle East! But Iran claimed they did this because the U.S. did it to them, but the U.S. denies it.

An Iranian drone attack damaged a desalination plant in Bahrain, bringing the war to the oil-rich Persian Gulf’s most strategic resource: drinking water.

The attack did material damage, the Gulf state’s Interior Ministry said Sunday. Iran hadn’t addressed the attack, but a day earlier Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the U.S. had attacked an Iranian desalination plant on the Gulf island of Qeshm. “The U.S. set this precedent, not Iran,” Araghchi said on social media.

A spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for the Middle East, denied that the military hit a desalination plant in Iran.

With desalination plants, the set of infrastructure targets being struck in the war has expanded, marking a new and dangerous escalation in a region where many countries have limited onshore sources of fresh water.

The Middle East’s abundant desalination plants, which remove salt from the Persian Gulf’s seawater, are the key source of drinking water for millions of residents in the arid region.

“It’s really going for the jugular, and in a major way,” said Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, a Washington think tank. “These desalination plants, even more than the energy infrastructure of the Gulf monarchies, are their Achilles’ heel.”

The Middle East accounts for more than 40% of the world’s desalination capacity, with around 5,000 plants feeding its water systems.

Bahrain, where the drone strike occurred, is almost completely dependent on its plants for drinking water for its population of 1.6 million. Israel depends on the plants for about 80% of its drinkable water. About 90% of Kuwait’s water needs are met by desalination.

The only country that can persist with desalination in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia. Bahrain does have an Army, Navy, and Air Force, but it’s not going to use up its military assets when the U.S. and Israel is doing the job.  Attacking its water supply is probably a war crime given that Bahrain has not attacked Iran and cutting of water to the population is an attack on the civilian population. And why is Iran going after Bahrain, anyway?

*A red-flanked bluetail (Tarsiger cyanurus; a bird native to Asia and Scandinavia) has appeared in Virginia, and of course the birders are out in force with binoculars and guidebooks.

Barbara Saffir clipped a camouflage vest around her chest, hung her heavy, long-lens camera and binoculars around her neck, and stepped in her knee-high, red galoshes through wet leaves and mud under a dense early morning fog on the edge of the Potomac River.

Her quest: to catch a sighting of a red-flanked bluetail, a bird that’s rarely seen in the United States.

Native to Asia, the tiny brown-colored bird with orange sides and a short, high-pitched whistle has been spotted east of the Rockies only once before. Its surprise landing in Northern Virginia recently has rocked the world of birding and made it an internet sensation.

Since a birder named Phil Kenny first discovered a female red-flanked bluetail in a tree just off the Capital Beltway on New Year’s Day, crowds of visitors have flocked to Great Falls Park — where the bird has been living for the past three months — to try to catch a glimpse. Locals young and old, plus bird nerds from as far away as Minnesota, Nevada, Texas, Michigan and Florida have all showed up with binoculars in tow.

“It’s a true rarity of it even being on this continent,” Andrew Farnsworth, an ornithologist, said in a phone interview from his office at Cornell University. “It lives in Asia, and seeing it in North America is really rare. This is only the second time the species has been seen in the Eastern U.S.”

. . .“It’s bobbing its little tail like it’s waving to people and saying, ‘Here I am. Here I am,’” Saffir said. “It’s come thousands of miles just to visit us in Virginia. For birders, seeing it is like a mini lottery win.”

How this bluetail traveled thousands of miles and ended up on Virginia’s shoreline is a bit of a mystery.

Known by their scientific name, Tarsiger cyanurus, bluetails are classified as “Old World flycatchers,” meaning they mainly eat insects and are commonly found in Europe, Asia and Africa. Typically, their breeding range stretches from the Russian province of Siberia to northeastern China and west to Russia, and even into parts of Scandinavia. In colder months they usually winter in warmer, forested areas of southern China, Taiwan and Thailand, where food is more plentiful during that period.

In the past few years, however, the bluetails have expanded their breeding range farther east and west.

There have been sightings of the species in Alaska, British Columbia, Mexico and California. Three years ago, a bluetail was spotted in New Jersey — the first time the bird species had been seen east of the Rockies.

Some D.C.-area birders theorize it is the same bird as the one seen in New Jersey. It is possible, given that birds show “strong fidelity to places they breed and spend the winters,” Farnsworth of Cornell said, but there’s another theory.

If there is a population, I hope it’s a breeding one and that this cute little female is not the only one. She “wants” to breed and should be able to; otherwise she’ll die out without issue. It’s amazing that Phil Kenny the birder recognized it as an Asian species, but I guess he knows a lot about birds!

Here’s a female and the species’ native range:

Materialscientist at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

 

IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, species assessors and the authors of the spatial data., CC BY-SA 3.0  via Wikimedia Commons

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has an encounter of the AI kind:

Hili: Today I spoke with artificial intelligence.
Andrzej: And?
Hili: It agreed with me about everything, not realizing that my opinion was different.

In Polish:

Hili: Rozmawiałam dziś z sztuczną inteligencją.
Ja: I co?
Hili: Zgadzała się ze mną we wszystkim, nie zauważając, że mam inne zdanie.

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

From Stacy:

From CinEmma:

From Things With Faces, my only contribution ever to one of these groups:

Jango, preschool dropout (photo and caption by Divy):

Masih reposted this; I wasn’t aware of this assassination plot but the BBC verifies it:

At trial, Merchant admitted that the IRGC sent him to the US to arrange for political assassinations and that his IRGC handler directed him to kill Trump, former US president Joe Biden and Trump cabinet official Nikki Haley, according to the BBC’s US partner, CBS News.

From Luana, a macabre but true post from The Babylon Bee:

Two from my feed. First, lovely salticids:

. . . and two storks celebrating the production of an egg. Sound up to hear their joy!:

I had to add this one because Baryshnikov was so amazing:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This French Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was 13.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-03-09T10:21:33.541Z

And two from Dr. Cobb. First, the erstwhile rings of Earth (see the article on Space.com):

A long time ago, in a galaxy… well…very very close to you.Earth had a ring (probably).For about 40 million years in the Ordovician (466 MYA), any trilobites that looked skyward would have seen the faint shimmer of the Earth's ring.Let's look at the evidence for this conclusion.

— c0nc0rdance (@c0nc0rdance.bsky.social) 2026-03-07T20:07:00.005Z

This is absolutely true, and I verify it with a reply:

Reminded by a mail from @nccomfort.bsky.social that in UK English “quite” is a negative modifier unless applied to a superlative. So quite good, quite smart, quite tasty etc imply something less than good, smart, tasty. Quite excellent, quite brilliant, quite scrumptious are all better. But why?

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-03-07T13:02:45.324Z

I learned this a long time ago. I think it's a bizarre way of being polite: being negative while not sounding negative!

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-03-07T13:20:17.858Z

The Big Feed: My dinner at Next with Robert Lang

March 8, 2026 • 10:45 am

I am not usually fond of restaurants that serve many small “nouvelle” courses that are lovely and exquisitely curated, as they don’t usually get me full—my prime requirement for a good restaurant. But last night we went to one of these multicourse places and had one of the best meals of my life—and it left me sated. This is the story of that meal.

AT 5:30 I met up with my friend, the engineer and origami master Robert Lang, visiting Chicago to teach a two-day class in origami at a meeting.  And, as I mentioned yesterday, he invited me to a well-known Chicago restaurant for a slap-up dinner, which lasted a full three hours.  It turns out that his niece manages the place, and so we were able to obtain hard-to-get reservations. From Robert:

As I may have mentioned before, my niece Kate is the general manager at Next Restaurant, and she’ll get us in. (You may recall I tried this with you several years ago during a Chicago trip, but the airlines conspired to ruin my arrival. This time, I’m flying in the day before, so there’s more buffer.)
Next is in the family of restaurants owned by the famous chef Grant Achatz, the most famous of which is Alinea. Here’s a Wikipedia photo of Achatz at Alinea, preparing a dish tableside:
star5112, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

There’s a University of Chicago connection with Achatz, and I well remember his diagnosis of, ironically, mouth cancer. I did not expect him to survive, but he did:

On July 23, 2007, Achatz announced that he had been diagnosed with stage 4 squamous cell carcinoma of the mouth, which spread to his lymph nodes. Initially, Achatz was told that radical surgery was necessary, which would remove part of his mandibular anatomy, including part of his tongue and large swaths of neck tissue. Later, University of Chicago physicians prescribed an alternative course of chemotherapy and radiation treatments. This led to full remission, albeit with some side effects including a transitory loss of his sense of taste, which eventually returned. On December 18, 2007, Achatz announced that he was cancer-free. He credited the aggressive protocol of chemotherapy and radiation administered at the University of Chicago Medical Center for driving his cancer into full remission. The treatment regimen, administered under the direction of Drs. Everett E. Vokes, Blair and Haraf at University of Chicago, did not require radical invasive surgery on Achatz’s tongue.

Yay! It’s been nearly twenty years now and he remains cancer-free. Achatz cooks at Alinea, but owns some of Next and, I presume, visits and gives feedback.

Every four months or so, the appropriately named Next changes its themes—themes that are quite eclectic. You can see the history of the changing themes since 2011 at its Wikipedia page, as well as reading about the difficulty of getting reservations. We were lucky to get in, but Robert began the request several months ago, and of course has a genetic connection to the restaurant.

The theme until the end of April is Japan.

From Next’s website:

Robert sent me this photo the menu, so I knew we were in for a treat:  There’s a more complete menu below. as we got a few extra dishes:

Below is Achatz from a FB video. To prepare for the meal, as he says, much of the Next team went to Japan and spent their time eating at a variety of humble and fancy restaurants. They then, said his niece, came back and spent a few months developing a menu that was inspired by what they tasted.  I think the slurring of Achatz’s speech is due to his treatments for mouth cancer.

There is only one menu, and you can get it with or without a wine pairing (this one includes sake) or with non-alcoholic beverages. We got it with booze, of course, and the wines and sakes chosen matched the dishes remarkably well. They were fancy, tasty, and pricey wines. This place is a class act with some good palates working behind the scenes.

This is our menu; we were comped a few dishes because of Robert’s relationship to his niece, and so we wound up with eleven dishes, six wines, and two sakes (I love sake, and these were good ones, not obtainable, I was told, in local stores):

The food menu (this is what we were actually served including the gratis dishes; they apparently made up a custom menu post facto for us as a souvenir):

The wine-and-sake menu (while waiting for me, Robert was given a glass of champagne):

And now for the dishes (all photos by me except Robert’s, which are labeled “RJL”).

First, a glass of bottle-fermented sparkling sake, a real treat. It was served poured to overflowing in a glass inside a cedar box.  After you take a few sips from the glass, you pour the rest of the glass into the cedar box and drink it from there, a traditional practice that gives the liquid a slight woody flavor:

The sake, one of several made by Masumi. It looks to cost about $60 a bottle retail: they did not stint on the wines but that was not near the most expensive libation we were served:

Me, excited before dinner; photo by RJL:

First course: chawanmushi (a savory egg custard), made with sweet corn, umeshu (a Japanese plum liqueur), and black truffle.  Like nearly all the dishes, I had never tasted anything like it before. It was fantastic. Note the dried cornhusk garnishing the plate.  It’s eaten with the wooden spoon:

The next dish arrived at the table as a gift: osetra caviar (the second best in the world after beluga) served with bluefin tuna, wasabi, and crème fraîche. It came with four sheets of seaweed (to the right next to the wasabi), and two already-formed seaweed rolls (left) with unidentifiable goodies inside. You are supposed to roll the caviar, crème, wasabi, and salmon into a sheet of seaweed and eat it as if it were a luxurious Japanese burrito.

The only caviar I’d ever had before was pressed caviar made from irregular eggs, and sevruga caviar (the third rarest).  It was hard for me to resist leaving the caviar out of the burrito and just eating it plain with the mother of pearl spoon (the traditional utensil), so I did eat some plain (fantastic) and also put some into two “burritos” (also fantastic).  The two rolls to the left were eaten separately. Note the two “fruits”, actually pickled vegetables) at the top and bottom of the plate. I believe they are a pickled radish and a pickled cucumber, both decorated with nasturtium blossoms.  Those, too, were amazing, full of complex flavors. The “pickle” was like the most delicious pickle you could imagine, and of course you can’t buy them as they’re made in house.

Photo by RJL. Note the lovely setting with chopsticks (and fancy chopstick rests) and spoons:

The wine: Vermintino, an Italian white wine made by Laura Ascero, light, crisp, slightly saline, and dry, a perfect accompaniment to the creamy burritos with caviar. These people know their wines:

Two cute little “ramen eggs” in a spoon with ginger and togarashi (the red spice on top), made to resemble the flavor of Japanese ramen (there’s no ramen in there, and I can’t remember what is). Two cute and savory bites.

A fancy dish: gyoza (a dumpling filled with shrimp and sweet potato), accompanied by a froth made from carrot ponzu. You can see the dumpling at 10 o’clock next to a savory crunchy thing. AI describes “ponzu” as “a tangy, citrus-based Japanese sauce made from soy sauce, vinegar, and citrus juice (like yuzu or sudachi), often with added mirin, dashi, and bonito flakes for a complex salty, sour, and umami flavor.”  Again, it was like nothing I’d ever tasted.

The wine: a Grüner Veltliner (Austrian white), the “Ried Rosenberg” blend made from the Weingut Ott.  A dry version of the wine, it again was great with the dish:

We continued with a fancy dish comprising three items: king crab to the left, a fancy rice in the middle, and a broth (I can’t remember what kind) to the right, with the broth poured from the traditional Japanese metal teapot. Above on the tray is also a pot with sprigs of fresh rosemary, with coals below them to create a herb-scented smoke while you had this dish. You could eat a bit of the incredibly sweet king crab with some rice, and then wash it down with the broth.

With that dish we move to Burgundy for the white wine, A Premier Cru Chablis, the “Fourchaume” blend by De Oliveira Lecestre, a crisp and fruity but dry wine. Another good pairing.

The seventh dish was kare pan (Japanese curry bread), filled with grilled cabbage and heritage pork belly.  This was very complex, and look at the decorations! I didn’t photograph the inside but yes, it was excellent.  There was no dish in the whole meal that I found less than inventive and tasty.

And with the kare pan we moved to the red wines, this one a 2021 Grenache from Cemetery Vineyard from Newfoundland Winery in Mendocino, California.  It was a light red wine to go with the pork, and very tasty (photo by RJL).

I couldn’t remember why they called it “Cemetery Vineyard” (they told us), but AI had the answer:

The “Cemetery Vineyard” (specifically the noted Rockpile Ridge site) is named for a distinct outcropping of rocks at the base of the vineyard that looks like giant, old-fashioned headstones. This specific block has been referred to by this name for over 140 years, long before the wine was commercialized

And then some fish: a luscious piece of grilled cod with a brown butter and miso sauce, accompanied by seaweed and golden mustard seed.  I’m not much of a fish-eater but I loved this:

And for that dish of course we needed sake, and were poured a whiskey tumbler (with ice) of 2024 Tamagawa “Ice Breaker” sake. We were told it was unfiltered, and it was a stronger, slightly sweet, and luscious rice wine. And there was a penguin on the label! The website says this:

Tamagawa’s Ice Breaker is a cask-strength, fresh-pressed junmai ginjo that is undiluted, unpasteurized and unfiltered. This is a seasonal release always listed with the brewery year (BY).

Pairing Notes: The Ice Breaker sake is designed to be drunk over ice as a refresher in the humid Japanese rainy season. Try it with edamame, mackerel, skipjack tuna and eggplant with zesty grated daikon.

I believe the white stuff with the cod above is grated daikon (white radish), but I’m not sure.

When the cod was served, they also put a mysterious bowl of seaweed containing very hot rocks atop a seaweed packet. We asked what it was, and were told was part of the next course being steamed by the rocks while we ate the fish. See below. (Photo by RJL).

Where’s the beef? It was next in a “wagyu au poivre”, and yes, it was real wagyu beef from Japan, the first I’ve had. It was of course rare, and then the seaweed packet was opened to reveal the cooked accompaniments: pear and trumpet mushrooms, along with kombu (edible kelp). Photo by RJL:

Yummers! The beef was so tender and tasty that although the slice was not large, I ate it in very small bites so I could prolong the flavor. It was great with the meaty trumpet mushroom and the fruitiness of the pear:

Of course with that you need a gutsier red wine, which came as a Cabernet Franc (often found in Bordeaux) from Podere Forte, an Italian winemaker. The designation was “Guardiavigna Orienello” with some age: 8 years. It’s a biodynamic wine, tasting much like a Bordeaux; the website describes it this way:

Guardiavigna is a version of perfectly and slowly ripened Cabernet Franc. An intense, deep and vast bouquet. Full bodied, with a very refined tannic structure. A very elegant and endless wine.

It goes for $150-$180 per bottle.

Photo by RJL:

With two courses left, we had dined for about 2½ hours, eating leisurely and catching up.  Robert’s house is nearly rebuilt after the Altadena fire and should be done by June. His studio will take a bit longer.

We were then treated to “Tokyo toast”, with sake lees (I guess the rice at the bottom of the fermenting tank), sakura (cherry blossom), and kumquat. You see that the dishes are inspired by the flavors the team encountered in Japan, but the dish itself is sui generis. It was a very elegant version of a Rice Krispy treat:

And the eleventh and last course: musk melon with saffron, pine nuts, and spaghetti squash. An inspired combination; you have to have a good palate to even think of putting these things together. They melded well. Again, the presentation was carefully thought out, with matching fancy plates, trays, and appropriate cutlery:

Sauternes, my favorite sweet wine, goes with very few things. I eat it either on its own or with a ripe peach or mango. It does not go with chocolate (Thomas Keller hasn’t learned that lesson.) But it did go with the musk melon, which is not too sweet, and the spaghetti squash, barely sweet. And so we were served a 2019 Château Fontebride 2019.  That wine also counted as dessert.  If you haven’t tried a Sauternes, which gets better and more golden as it ages, you might spring for one. (I brought Robert a half bottle of another Sauternes as a gift; it wasn’t clear whether it would make it back to California since Robert is staying with his brother in Chicago.)

And so we wound up at 8:30, having started at 5:30. I was replete, filled with great food and fancy wine, amazed at what we had eaten, impressed by the thought and care that went into the food and service, and, of course, slightly buzzed.  Next is an amazing restaurant and I’d gladly go again—if I was willing to spring for the meal (I have no idea what it cost) and could get a reservation (the website says there are 10,000 people on the Next waiting list!).

When you have a long, sumptuous, and fancy meal like this, you leave the restaurant with a bracing sense of well being. (A Parisian chef once told me that you know a meal is good if the birds sing more sweetly when you leave.) I had that feeling, and of course it was helped along by the slight buzz from wine and sake.

Many thanks to Robert for inviting me, to his niece Kate, the manager, for greeting us and stopping by to chat during the meal (and of course running things), and the staff who organized, cooked and served.

Oh, two dark pictures of the place, the first of the kitchen by Robert and the second of the main room by me. It’s not a large restaurant. Note the Japanese lanterns.

I know that I’m going to get criticized for putting this up, excoriated for eating fancy food and “privilege.” To those who would say that, take a hike. This was a rare treat, and all I can say is that there have been Japanese emperors who haven’t eaten this well.