Welcome to a Hump Day (“Letšatši la Hump” in Sepedi): it’s Wednesday, March 12, 2025, and National Milky Way Day, one of my favorite American Candy Bars. Here’s how the miniature versions are made:
It’s also National Baked Scallops Day and World Day against Cyber Censorship.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 12 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Trump imposted a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum from everywhere (it was going to be 50% for Canada, but he had a brief moment of semi-sanity and brought it back down). The EU has retaliated:
The European Union announced up to about $28 billion in planned retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports early Wednesday, shortly after President Trump’s worldwide tariffs on steel and aluminum took effect. It was the latest escalation in the global trade turmoil triggered by Mr. Trump’s campaign to use tariffs as an economic cudgel against friends and foes alike.
Mr. Trump has appeared undeterred by the uncertainty and fear his tariffs have injected into the global economy, and he has not ruled out the possibility that his policies could cause a recession in the United States.
The E.U., which is already struggling with a lackluster economy, said its retaliatory tariffs were proportionate to about $26 billion in tariffs applied by the United States. But European officials emphasized that they were ready to strike a deal with the Trump administration, with Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, saying: “Jobs are at stake, prices up, nobody needs that.”.
No other countries immediately announced further retaliation. China did not directly address the U.S. tariffs, although its Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said the government would take “firm measures” to safeguard its interests.
The 25 percent tariffs on the import of steel and aluminum have the support of U.S. domestic producers. But they could hit a range of industries, including car manufacturing, and potentially slow down the American economy.
Anybody who favors tariffs is making a mistake, and that includes domestic metal producers. It will hurt all Americans: we pay more for foreign goods and other countries are less willing to import American goods. I see no good justification for this, and, in fact, it seems to be one more sign of an unstable President. What embarrasses me is that, as an American, I am held to blame by other countries, and I did not vote for this loon. Why are we going after Canada, one of our closest allies? The fentanyl/immigrant scenario painted by Trump is ludicrous. Okay, I’ll have my coffee now.
*The NYT reports that more and more American universities are choosing to stay institutionally neutral (we were the first!). The article is archived here.
According to a new report released on Tuesday from the Heterodox Academy, a group that has been critical of progressive orthodoxy on college campuses, 148 colleges had adopted “institutional neutrality” policies by the end of 2024, a trend that underscores the scorching political scrutiny they are under. All but eight of those policies were adopted after the Hamas attack.
“We must open the way for our individual faculty’s expertise, intelligence, scholarship and wisdom to inform our state and society in their own voice, free from institutional interference,” said Mark Bernstein, a regent at Michigan, after adopting the policy in October.
He said the university had historically refrained from issuing statements on momentous events, like the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy or during the two world wars.
“So institutional statements are a modern phenomenon and a misguided venture that betrays our public mission,” he said.
The universities are adopting such policies at a time when the Trump administration has moved aggressively to punish them for not doing enough to crack down on antisemitism and for embracing diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
It’s a shame that it took the threats of Trump to make universities realize that they had better either apply speech policies uniformly (which Harvard wasn’t doing) or stop making ideological, political, or moral statements entirely (save for those statements bearing on matters vital to the operation of the university. We have always had institutional neutrality (using our Kalven report) as a way to butttess free speech, for nobody need fear bucking any “official views.” Here’s the way it works with us, which I think is optimal:
Most of the new policies apply to senior administrators, like college presidents and provosts. Others also encompass units like academic departments. And many apply to faculty members when they are speaking in an official capacity, but often make clear that faculty are free to express personal views, according to the Heterodox Academy.
I can, for instance, write a letter to the editor giving my position, but that’s just for credentials purposes and doesn’t show me speaking for anyone by myself. Finally, there are some miscreants that demand to have their say, or say that “now is a time when we MUST speak out”. Here we have one of the good ones (ours) and one of those who say, “well, now is the time for every college to speak up”:
No university is more associated with neutrality than the University of Chicago, where incoming students are furnished with the Kalven Report, the 1967 document that made the case for neutrality. The report, penned as violence upended college campuses during the Vietnam War, said the university “is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic.”
Tom Ginsburg, director of the Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression at Chicago, says adopting neutrality signals to lawmakers that colleges are committed to welcoming diverse viewpoints.
“Because the statements tended to reflect the majority views on campuses, which are overwhelmingly left-leaning,” he said, “you can see how adopting it would be a way of saying to lawmakers: ‘This isn’t who we really are. We’re not indoctrinating people with contested positions.’”
But even the Kalven Report included a caveat that doesn’t settle precisely when universities should issue statements. Neutrality, the report says, still allows colleges to speak out when “the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry” are threatened.
That moment is now, said Ms. McGuire of Trinity Washington University. “The erosion of knowledge and expertise that this administration has embraced is very, very scary,” she said, “and higher ed should be calling it out at every turn.”
Nope, nope, and nope.
*Early yesterday morning, Moscow was subject to a huge drone attack from Ukraine (article archived here).
Russian officials said Ukraine attacked Moscow before dawn on Tuesday with its largest long-range drone bombardment of the war, as both sides stepped up attacks ahead of talks intended to find a way to end three years of fighting.
The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed to have shot down at least 91 drones in the region around Moscow and more than 240 drones directed at other targets across the country.
The Ukrainian military said it had targeted Moscow’s oil refinery, which provides more than a third of the fuel consumed in the capital region, along with an oil production station in the Orel region. Neither claim could be independently verified.
Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, called the attack was the largest against the city since the start of the war. At least three people were killed and 18 others were injured in the broader Moscow region, the Russian authorities said, and four international airports temporarily suspended operations. Railway tracks near the Domodedovo airport south of Moscow were also damaged.
President Vladimir V. Putin was briefed on the attack, according to Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman. Mr. Peskov said Russian air defenses were doing “a great job” but told reporters that the authorities “must remain on guard” because attacks would likely continue.
The predawn strikes — just hours before high-level delegations from Kyiv and the United States were scheduled to meet in Saudi Arabia to discuss a possible path toward ending the war — appeared intended to serve as a reminder that despite suffering attacks and enduring huge losses, Ukraine can still hit back at Russia.
I don’t WANT a compromise peace; I want Russia to get its tuchas out of Ukraine and give back the Crimea as well. There’s no chance of that happening, though, and even less now that the Great Orange Peacemaker thinks that he’s forging his legacy by cozying up to dictators.
*Now we have cutting of useful research: according to the WaPo, the NIH has canceled over 40 grants studying why people hesitate to get vaccinated and how to increase the vaccination rate. Is this a surprise? Now that RFK, Jr. is in charge of Health and Human Services?
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the new secretary of NIH’s parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, has disparaged vaccines for years. He gained national notoriety over the past two decades by promoting misinformation about vaccines and a conjectured link to autism, drawing widespread condemnation from the scientific community.
It is unclear if Kennedy had a role, directly or indirectly, in the move to cancel these grants. But his ascendancy to HHS leadership has caused a stir in the research community. Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, another part of HHS, was asked by the Trump administration to launch a study into a possible connection between vaccines and autism, despite repeated research that shows no link between the two.
Spokespeople at NIH and HHS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Monday’s email was sent by Michelle Bulls, director of the Office of Policy for Extramural Research Administration. It instructed NIH officials who dispense money to researchers around the country to send termination letters by the close of business Monday. It did not specify where the order originated.
Good time to do this, what with a measles epidemic afoot and more pandemics surely to come. Yes, some scientific projects are less important than others, but I wouldn’t think that studying and dealing with vaccine hesitancy would be in the “unimportant” group.
*I haven’t been a fan of Prince Harry (is that still his monicker) and Meghan Markle since they came to the U.S. to have a peaceful life and then began on a life of endless self-promotion. Now Markle has a t.v. series (“With Love, Meghan”; and no, she doesn’t love us), and the indomitable Tina Brown gives it an ascerbic review at the Free Press, “Meghan Markle’s Buzzkill” (originally published on Brown’s substack, “Fresh Hell,” here). It’s a hoot if you like sharp but funny criticism. A few examples:
With her unerring instinct for getting it wrong, Meghan has come out with a show about fake perfection just when the zeitgeist has turned raucously against it. Trump’s America is a foulmouthed and disheveled cultural place where podcasters in sweaty T-shirts, crotch-rot jeans, and headphones achieve world domination on YouTube. The real person of the moment is Pamela Anderson with her proudly wan, bare face. As early as 2015, the lifestyle OG Martha Stewart understood the tide was turning against overproduced flawlessness when, as she put it, she dug herself out of “a fucking hole” of Martha hate by trash-talking her own mistakes at a Comedy Central roast of Justin Bieber. Meghan, on the other hand, has never figured out a convincing persona. Masquerading as an influencer, she’s the ultimate follower, which inevitably means she is behind the curve.
. . . .The commercial blockbusters of the Harry & Meghan documentary and Harry’s explosive memoir, Spare, were Pyrrhic victories that alienated the House of Windsor for good and burned the Sussexes’ London Bridge to the ground.
What Harry and Meghan forgot was that the great thing about being royal is you can be as boring as fuck for as long as you live and still be treated as the most important person in the room. The only reason any of these deals were signed was for low-down dish on the royals, and Meghan, in another fit of vainglorious yearning—this time for a sit-down with TV’s ultimate deity—gave that away to Oprah for free, infuriating Netflix, whose multimillion-dollar deal got them sloppy seconds.
Four years later, the Sussexes’ life is now all about pretending: showing up at B-list charity galas that would have been tossed into a palace private secretary’s reject pile, making uninvited disaster tourism appearances, or going on mock royal tours that only serve to remind us they could have done the real ones with more sizzle than anyone else in the depleted House of Windsor.
It’s almost like H. L. Mencken is back again!
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is interpreting Andrzej’s gesture as aggressive, for she’s a cat.
Hili: Such wielding of a hand with a pen is a provocation.A: No, it’s just a gesticulation.
Hili: Takie machanie ręką z ołówkiem jest prowokacją.Ja: Nie, to tylko gestykulacja.
And a picture of loving Szaron:
*******************
From Animals in Random Places, a cat with aspirations to be a ballerina:
From Richard on FB, original source unknown:
From My Cat is an Asshole (I can’t find the artist, but you can buy this as a card here):
Twitter still isn’t letting us embed posts, so I’m putting up screenshots. If a post has a video in it, click on the post to go to the video on twitter. (Wed a.m.; It appears to be fixed now, so I’ll embed tweets tomorrow.)
Masih finds out that some Iranians have been charged by the U.S. for attempting to assassinate her. Unfortunately, they’re in Iran and would be impossible to put on trial. Meanwhile, Masih is attending the trial of people who tried to kill her in another assassination plot. Iran is after her big time!
From Bryan, an amazing invention: sign-language glvoes that translate American Sign Language into audible speech (video tweet; click on screenshot):
From Emma Hilton, who rebuts a parody account, though the parody espouses something many people believe. Seahorses and
From Malgorzata, who has watched this several times and thinks it might help young people appreciate classical music (it’s not all classical). She’s right.
From my feed, panda-monium (click on screenshot to see video):
From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:
32-year old woman in Auschwitz who tried to provision a resistance of the Sonderkommando (inmates who disposed of bodies). She was hanged.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-03-12T09:59:17.475Z
Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, the amazing platypus;
A multi-tasking #platypus: chewing & scratching at the same time.When #platypuses dive, they cram their cheek pouches full of food, to chew when they surface. Platypuses don't have teeth (they wear down too easily): they've replaced them with ever-growing horny ridges.#Tasmania #fieldwork #WildOz
— Jack Ashby (@jackdashby.bsky.social) 2025-03-11T09:01:22.130Z
Dead man’s fingers vs. live man’s fingers. That plant is a single multinucleated cell!
Dead man’s fingers & live man’s fingers. This seaweed is rad because it is “coenocytic;” the entire individual is one, single, multinucleate cell. #Codium #Seaweed #MarineLife 🦑🌊
— Matt Bracken (@brackenlab.bsky.social) 2025-03-11T04:57:11.569Z
Lively mix of items today!
The Competitive Foursome is clever! I love how they finish with Mack the Knife…. [checks YouTube]… that video has 41 million views! They’re called Salut Salon – there’s a channel (I will not put the link here).
If anyone knows more about sign-language tech I’d be glad to learn about it – seems a well-travelled area – but very clever – perhaps mostly a research level project.
I’ve seen Dead Man’s Fingers but did not know the name!
The Competitive Foursome reminded me of the pianist/comedian Victor Borge (“give me an F on the piano”), who played on TV variety shows such as Ed Sullivan in the U.S. in the 1950’s and 60’s….but Borge on steroids updated to the 21st century. My depression/WW2-era father loved this shtick.
And yes, Tina Brown’s full article is one of the most entertaining pieces that I have read in quite a while. It kept me smiling throughout.
Why should I be boring you with classical music when there’s P. D. Q. Bach!
https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?&q=pdq+Bach&&mid=81FA63C40CEEB221604981FA63C40CEEB2216049&&FORM=VRDGAR
You ever wish that fireworks were incredibly quiet and also didn’t disappear so quickly and also you could keep them in your home and also you could hold them in your hands? Because if so, I’d love to introduce you to, flowers. -Jonny Sun, author and illustrator (b. 12 Mar 1990)
“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.”
-William Blake
Auguries of Innocence
Lines 1-4
1803, 1863
William Blake is an example of a gnostic writer – perhaps not that excerpt, though.
Of that poem I especially adore the 3 lines beginning with “Every night and every morn…”
That’s awfully cute. I wish the message would be absorbed by people in my old home state of Hawaii, where there is an inexplicable mania for setting off huge, illegal fireworks. Just this last New Years, six people, including a couple of children, were killed and many others were horribly burned. But somehow, lessons are never learned.
On tariffs, I have found a short Milton Friedman excerpt on hidden effects of tariffs ; and Thomas Sowell discussing tariffs as part of a larger trade war – he says its easy to start those wars, but it gets out of control. Also made some remarks on the Great Depression. That was on Fox News 6 years ago, FWIW, but might be worth a listen.
Just go on YouTube to see that.
I am still trying to make sense of what the hell Tr*mp is trying to accomplish. Are these things to force concessions on other issues (fentanyl, illegal aliens, etc.), or are they intended to force manufacturers to set up factories in the US?
Interesting about the manufacturing.
Friedman noted something like workers see a benefit to themselves because they have jobs they otherwise would not have ; but they don’t see that foreign countries are not importing anymore, and so do not earn, have or want to spend money on those American products – on American exports which shrinks:
Friedman puts it as visible vs. invisible effects, imports v. exports :
youtu.be/zv5SiQpG6sg?si=ACfOVgVTLB0kceD8
IIRC, the saintly Milton Friedman desired the dissolution of the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, holding that (instead of injury prevention) tort law remedies (assuming workers had sufficient discretionary income for attorney fees) were satisfactory for injured/amputated human resources, I mean, human beings.
(Tina Brown is the soul of civility and congeniality. I nominate her as an honorary Exceptional American. Her utterance of the F word and “crotch-rot” is rousing. I wonder if her son reads her stuff. A year or so ago on an NPR segment she praised her son (who has autism) for his directness/bluntness in evaluating people to their faces. Well, at least he has an excuse. Would that Henry Louis Mencken were present to contemplate hurling darts at Ms. Brown.)
Preliminary steps leading to the ground invasion of Canada:
https://malcolmnance.substack.com/p/urgent-warning-trump-is-planning?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2zfxar&triedRedirect=true
Depends on how crazy you think Mr Gulf of America/Greenland-is-ours and company are.
Yes, this sounds crazy but I think it is at least partly true. I think it may be intended to ruin Canada’s economy, under the belief that they will then want to join the US.
I hope that’s not right. Trump is sounding pretty crazy though.
Here’s a guy who thinks Trump has early senile dementia based on a shrinking vocabulary.
https://fallows.substack.com/p/three-alarming-tells-from-trumps
Perhaps Canada should contact Grenada for advice on how best to welcome the Exceptional Americans when the invasion comes.
“Anybody who favors tariffs is making a mistake, …”
Tariffs may act as a hidden tax, but they can accomplish two things:
1) Support local industries to ensure that complete supply chains exist within a country and that relevant knowledge at each link of the chain is retained. If an adversary or potential adversary has full control of one or more links (as they can with free trade specialization) then national security is compromised.
2) Provide jobs to lower-skilled workers. In doing so, these lower skilled workers will be earning more than if they did not have these jobs. The tariff tax burden here falls on anyone who does not have one of these jobs.
These two objectives can be accomplished by other forms of government intervention, but any such intervention would have to also be financed through taxes. (3) Why is it better to accomplish these things without tariffs than with?
When NAFTA was put in place one of the arguments made for it at the time was that job displacements here would be offset by the additional high-skill tech jobs that would be created as car assemblers became software engineers. That did not really happen, at least where the car assembly occurs (immobile populations). The US was left with resentful populations in swing states having falling standards of living. The US also did not not become the specialist in high technology that was promised at the time – eventually those jobs also largely went elsewhere.
I’m not necessarily arguing for tariffs, but am wondering if there is an alternative as far as accomplishing (1) and (2) go, and why is it better (3).
The operative word, I think, that I’ve seen some people use is that tariffs are “cudgels”; effective for purpose, perhaps, but likely to impart significant off-target damage. I think in my complete ignorance about economics, that it doesn’t make much difference; the consumer pays the tariffs, not the companies. It seems to me that these battles over tariffs can provide limited relief to some and broad pain to everyone else.
Most Canadian exports are raw material or hydropower. The auto industry is different.
GM, Ford and Chrysler moved a part of auto manufacturing to Canada in the 1960s not because wages were lower (they aren’t) but to encourage Canadians to buy American cars. Called the Auto Pact.
Trump has apparently not heard of this or doesn’t care. If he tore up the Auto Pact no American cars would sell in Canada so he would gain nothing.
Of perhaps he does know about it but it’s part of the 51st state plan.
I can’t speak to #3, but I would love for #1 and #2 to occur.
Why Trump’s Tariffs Won’t Work. New York Times, March 12, 2025
https://archive.ph/SjWe6
Ezra Klein interviews Kimberly Clausing, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics
On canceling NIH grants: as a judge said, that ain’t kosher at least for current year grants I assume as the Congress has appropriated the money for this FY and it is the president’s simple task to see that it is dispersed properly….but certainly even delay during court appeals and arguements mucks up a university’s fiscal health…though my experience was that many universities have pretty crappy accounting systems and are late to charge the government leaving a government agency with unspent (though obligated) funds at the end of the FY. This presents a problem between the agency accounting people and the research org PI. But the prez can impact next year’s spending as his little Republican cult will pass the budget he wants apparently. Though I do not know how the big impacts on universities in states and republican districts will not complain to their senators or congressmen about draconian cuts.
And of course it is not only the direct research funds lost, but also the average 50% indirect dollars that support some things or some ones that is zeroed out. Maybe some of the big espn tv payouts or some alum nil dollars we hear about can fund the biology dept. or maybe the endowment can be “invested” in fan book or some similar gambling venture. Such seems the national leadership.
I wonder about the legality of cancelling grants. Aren’t they contractual obligations? I can understand not renewing grants or not making new grants, but cutting off already approved grants would seem to be a breach of contract. Most likely the fine print allows the government to break a contract for any reason or no reason. Maybe that’s the loophole. I’m curious.
Meant to mention in my comment 7 above. Yes, Norman, I seem to recall some boilerplate closeout costs in event of early cancellation, but do not recall details or how things might differ between grants, cooperative agreements, and contracts. I do recall that we were told that a grant is a gift of money and no goods or services can be required for that money other than a year-end report. This recognizes that the grant is supporting “fundamental” or “basic” research whose results are not yet knowable or predictable which is why we (NASA) used them for university support. Is we are expecting a specific and quantifiable goods or service, then the appropriate instrument would be a contract…usually the proper instrument with companies. For at least one contract that the agency wanted to cancel with a company, I think that the close out costs were of the same order of magnitude as simply completing the contract at that point…but that was years ago and I may not remember correctly.
I don’t remember either, nor did I even know the fine print then, as I never expected a grant to be rescinded in this way.
It is quite fascinating to see two economic narratives in play at the same time.
Narrative 1. Unfettered free trade has hurt American workers, driving wages down, and has caused economic distress and “deaths of despair” throughout the American heartland.
Narrative 2. Working class wages have never been higher, America has never been wealthier, and this is mostly due to globalization, cheap foreign-made goods, and comparative economic advantage.