Welcome to Thursday, March 19, 2026, and it’s National Poultry Day, and you know what “poultry” includes:
Today we celebrate poultry: domesticated birds that are raised for their meat and eggs, and sometimes also for their feathers. Besides referring to the bird itself, the name may also refer specifically to the meat of the bird. Birds such as chickens, turkeys, ducks, and geese are considered to be poultry, while birds such as parrots and songbirds are not. Other birds considered poultry include quail, pheasants, and guineafowl. Birds that are hunted, known as game birds, are usually not included in the definition. The word “poultry” goes back to the Latin word pullus, which means “small animal.”
And so I’ll declare it National Duck Day, a celebration of wild ducks—ducks not raised for meat or eggs. And here again is the photo of the World’s Finest Mallard, Honey, celebrated in three Chicago Tribune columns by Mary Schmich. Honey had a big brood but also, in 2020, ducknapped the entire brood of another hen, Dorothy—and raised them all (17 ducklings) to fledging! (Dorothy, initially bereft, went on to nest again and raise her own brood of seven.) Here’s Honey and her 17 babies resting on the cement circle that used to be in the middle of Botany Pond:
It’s also Certified Nurses Day, National Chocolate Caramel Day, and Oranges and Lemons Day.
There’s a Google Doodle celebarating men’s college basketball (click to see where it goes):
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 19 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Here’s a WSJ clickbait headline for those following the war in Iran, “Israel is hunting Iranian regime members in their hideouts, one by one.”
Ali Larijani, Iran’s top security official, strolled confidently in dark sunglasses and a black coat Friday through a rally of regime loyalists in central Tehran. It was his first public appearance in a war in which he was a known target. “Brave people. Brave officials. Brave leaders. This combination cannot be defeated,” he wrote later on X.
Four days later, he was dead. Early Tuesday morning, Israel’s intelligence services found Larijani gathered with other officials at a hideout on the outskirts of Tehran and killed him with a missile strike.
That same night, Israel got a tip from ordinary Iranians that the leader of the feared Basij militia, Gholamreza Soleimani, was holing up with his deputies in a tent in a wooded area in Tehran. It was the sort of payoff Israel had been hoping for after blowing up Basij headquarters and command posts for more than two weeks, forcing its members to gather out in the open. Soleimani, too, was struck and killed.
Israeli and American leaders said at the outset that the war with Iran would create the conditions for Iranians to topple their regime. The killings early Tuesday——followed by the Israeli announcement a day later that Iranian Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib had also been killed—were milestones in that campaign made possible by the fast-accumulating damage from airstrikes and a growing harvest of intelligence about possible targets.
With thousands of regime members killed—from top leaders to street-level grunts—Iranians are reporting that a sense of disorder is starting to take hold. Security forces are under stress and on the run as they threaten protesters to stay off the streets and direct strikes at the U.S., Israel and Arab neighbors across the Persian Gulf.
But where there’s good news, there’s also bad news:
So far Israel says it has dropped 10,000 munitions on thousands of different targets, including more than 2,200 related to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Basij and other internal security forces. It believes thousands have been killed or wounded.
The advanced technology deployed by Israel and the penetration of Iranian society by its agents are combining to create the greatest threat yet to a deeply entrenched regime.
But decades of military experience show it is difficult if not impossible to dislodge a government from the air. And if the Iranian regime survives, it could emerge emboldened and more dangerous. “It will be a clear victory for the regime with both predictable and unforeseen circumstances,” said Farzin Nadimi, an Iran-focused senior fellow with the Washington Institute, a U.S.-based think tank.
*For those like me feeling down about the war with Iran, it’s heartening to read Bret Stephen’s op-eds at the NYT. Today’s is called, “For once, with fight with an equal ally.” That ally, of course, is Israel, and I’ve noticed an increasing number of claims that Israel manipulated Trump into this war, something I don’t believe. Stephens:
For most of the postwar era, the United States has gone to war with partners whose military contributions ranged from moderately helpful to mainly symbolic. Britain in Afghanistan and Iraq comes to mind in the first case. Germany in the 1999 Kosovo war comes to mind in the second.
The war against Iran is different. As of Monday, Central Command reports that the United States had struck over 7,000 targets inside Iran. Israel, for its part, had carried out some 7,600 strikes, according to a representative of the Israeli military. This may be the first time since the Second World War that Washington has had an equal partner with which to share the burdens of war.
That’s a good starting point from which to consider the claim that the U.S. war with Iran is really a war for Israel. Past administrations have, in fact, gone to war for other countries. In the early 1990s, we went to war in the Persian Gulf for the sake of freeing Kuwait and defending Saudi Arabia — two countries that couldn’t defend themselves — from Iraq. Later that decade, we went to war in the Balkans after Europe proved shamefully unable to police its own neighborhood.
In both cases, American presidents believed they were serving the national interest. But the military helplessness of our allies was a major factor in the decision to intervene.
As for Israel, the charge that the United States has gone to war for it isn’t new. . .
. . .Those charges always sat awkwardly with the facts. Israel stayed out of the gulf war under heavy U.S. pressure, despite being hit by Iraqi missiles. As for Iraq, Ariel Sharon, then the Israeli prime minister, told the journalist Nadav Eyal that George W. Bush was fighting “the wrong war.” Sharon thought Iran was the more dangerous enemy in what was then called the war on terror.
In the case of Iran, the idea that crippling its capacity to threaten its neighbors is some sort of purely Israeli interest is belied by every Iranian missile or drone that falls on Dubai, Doha, Manama or Riyadh, not to mention U.S. and NATO military bases in the region. In October 2024, Kamala Harris called Iran our “greatest adversary,” adding that one of her “highest priorities” as president would be to ensure that Iran never became a nuclear power. Was she, also, just another of Benjamin Netanyahu’s little stooges — a manipulated American politician with no mind of her own?
That charge is now being leveled at Donald Trump, never mind that the president first expressed a desire to thwack the Iranian regime in 1980, during the hostage crisis at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, and repeated the point over decades. Whatever one thinks about the wisdom or the timing of Trump’s decision to go to war, it was, plainly, his decision — one for which he needed little convincing from Netanyahu, or, for that matter, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, who, The Times reports, is urging Trump to “keep hitting the Iranians hard.”
. . . What is true is that the United States is going to war with Israel, not for it. That’s something many Americans, MAGA-type conservatives most of all, often claim to want: an ally that pulls its weight, shares the risk and contributes meaningfully to victory.
. . .But the central point is that Israel, population 10 million, is behaving as an equal partner to America, population 342 million, in a war that the elected leadership of both countries believe is in their respective national interests. Whatever else that is, it isn’t the tail wagging the dog.
The killing of Larijani may help dispel the odd gloom that’s descended on a war that is persistently dismantling Iran’s ability to put up a meaningful fight, beyond the desperate play of seeking to shut the Strait of Hormuz. That, too, won’t last long, thanks to the United States achieving what’s known among war planners as “escalation dominance.” Good thing that, in this war, the United States for once had a bold and competent ally to help us achieve it.
The accusation that Israel manipulated Trump into going to war smells of antisemitism—the view of Jews as puppeteers who control Hollywood, the press—indeed, all of America. And the accusation doesn’t jibe with the facts. As far as the “odd gloom” goes, well, it’s because it looks like we’re in a war that is going to last a lot longer than we though, and against a regime that, like Hamas, is unwilling to surrender. Stephens does a good job here of dispelling the myth of Israel as a puppeteer, but, given the situation, I find his column oddly optimistic.
*More war news, but pessimistic. Israeli historian Benny Morris, whose takes on the war seem accurate and sensible, if not optimistic, has his latest take in Quillette: “War in straitened circumstances,” with the subtitle, “After nineteen days of war, Israel and America face a grinding conflict with Iran and Hezbollah, and there is no clear end in sight.” The long but well-worth-reading article is also archived here, so I don’t have to give extensive quotes. Some short excerpts (the piece is pessimistic):
After a fortnight of war-making against Iran and its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, the rocketing of Israel by the Islamists has come to seem almost routine. Here in the Jewish state, people have been growing increasingly pessimistic. Some are despondent. The widespread jubilation that characterised the first days of the war—which saw the surprise Israeli–American decapitation of the Iranian military leadership, including the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, on 28 February and the subsequent devastation of the Islamic Republic’s air defences and ballistic missile capabilities—has given way to a realisation that neither Iran nor Hezbollah will be easily brought to heel. We have reached Day 19 of the conflict and both adversaries are still proclaiming that they will continue the fight until Israel and America are defeated. Meanwhile, people in Israel’s populous centre around Tel Aviv and in the frontier villages and towns bordering Lebanon continue to live under periodic, albeit small, barrages of ballistic missiles and short-range rockets and drones, which continue to disrupt the economy and education system, and render normal life impossible.
Yesterday (17 March), Israelis had a moment of uplift when Defence Minister Israel Katz announced the assassination in Tehran of Iran’s strongman, Ali Larijani, head of the Supreme National Security Council, and the almost simultaneous killing of Gholamreza Soleimani, the commander of the Basij militia, which was prominent in January’s brutal repression of the Iranian opposition demonstrations. But such killings are unlikely to have any effect on the emerging strategic big picture.
At the start of the war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the joint Israeli–American assault on Iran would pave the way for an uprising of the Iranian masses and the fall of Tehran’s internally tyrannical and externally aggressive Islamist regime. And should Hezbollah join the fray, he added, Israel would demolish or at least disarm the Lebanese fundamentalists once and for all. But the brutal suppression of the mass anti-government demonstrations by the Islamic Republic’s police, Basij militia, and Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in early January, which claimed many thousands of lives, left would-be protesters afraid to return to the streets, while Hezbollah began rocketing Israel on Day 3, in revenge, they declared, for Khamenei’s assassination. On 9 March, the Islamic Republic named Ali Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, the new Supreme Leader—but Mojtaba has yet to be seen in public and is believed to have been seriously wounded on 28 February. In effect, Larijani managed the war. Meanwhile, despite massive Israeli and American bombardments, neither the Ayatollahs nor Hezbollah have even hinted that they might eventually concede defeat.
. . . For the moment, it is unclear whether and how Trump intends to continue his war-making. Given his mercurial personality, he could well order a halt tomorrow or the day after and claim victory. If the Americans called things off, Israel would almost certainly have to do so, too—though it would probably continue its counter-offensive against Hezbollah. But if, as appears likely, Trump is resolved to continue the war for weeks or even months, he could deploy Marines to occupy the coastal area of Iran bordering the strait to enable its re-opening or to attempt to conquer Kharg. Marine battalions are already on their way to the Middle East. But any such operation would run counter to Trump’s traditional opposition to any war involving boots on the ground.
. . . according to reports, the Israelis are suffering from munitions shortages, especially of long-range Arrow Two and Arrow Three anti-ballistic missile interceptors. Israel’s anti-missile defences are bolstered by one or two American THAAD anti-missile interceptor batteries. But America reputedly also has only a relatively small stockpile of THAADs. This may turn out to be a major factor in determining the length of the war, alongside the international and internal American pressures bearing down on Trump. Over the past few days, both Trump and Netanyahu have spoken of “two or three more weeks” of warfare. But at the moment it is unclear whether Iran will accede to such a timetable.
Morris is clear-headed and experienced, and a good historian of the Middle East. When he’s pessimistic, I’m pessimistic. But it’s in the nature of Jews to be pessimistic. Jewish pessimist: “Oy, things couldn’t get any worse!” Jewish optimist: “Sure they could!”
*We will have a vacant Senate Seat in Illinois (Democrat Dick Durbin is retiring), and there was a bitter Democratic primary for it, for whoever wins the primary will likely, given that Illinois is a diehard Democratic state, wind up in the Senate. Yesterday Juliana Stratton, the sitting Lieutenant Governor, won that primary. (I didn’t vote for her as she’s a progressive, but I did vote for a good left-centrist.)
Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton won the Democratic primary race for Senate in Illinois on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, riding the power of political and financial help from her chief patron, Gov. JB Pritzker, to prevail in a bitter three-way contest.
Ms. Stratton defeated two veteran members of Congress, Representatives Raja Krishnamoorthi and Robin Kelly, in a race marked by efforts from Mr. Krishnamoorthi’s allies and Mr. Pritzker’s detractors to split Black voters and hand the nomination to Mr. Krishnamoorthi.
I watched a lot of ads and read the stands of the candidates, but I didn’t see anything that looked remotely like an attempt to split black voters (Stratton is black). What I did see were completely negative campaign ads, with every one of them mentioning the promoted candidates’ opposition to both Trump and ICE I guess it’s more effective to attack someone than to promote the positive things in your platform. (I think psychology has shown that.) And here’s what I saw:
Ms. Stratton, 60, will be heavily favored to win the general election in deep-blue Illinois, where no Republican has won a statewide election since 2014. She would be just the sixth Black woman to serve in the Senate, and her potential arrival could mean that three Black women serve together in the chamber for the first time in U.S. history.
She has spent most of her political career inside Mr. Pritzker’s orbit, having won election to a single term in the Illinois State House before he chose her to be his running mate in the 2018 election.
The primary in Illinois to fill the seat being vacated by Senator Richard J. Durbin, who is retiring after five terms, was defined early by personal animosity among the candidates and Mr. Pritzker.
After President Trump sent federal agents to Chicago last fall, the three contenders jostled to be viewed as the most hostile to his deportation agenda.
And in the closing weeks, groups backing Mr. Krishnamoorthi and Ms. Stratton unleashed large amounts of spending on ads — with some Krishnamoorthi allies trying to elevate Ms. Kelly in an effort to tank Ms. Stratton.
The three candidates had no major policy differences, only degrees of separation. Mr. Krishnamoorthi pledged to “abolish Trump’s ICE,” Ms. Stratton said she would eliminate U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement entirely and Ms. Kelly introduced legislation to impeach Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary who was later fired by Mr. Trump.
It must be nice to be a shoo-in for the Senate, for I’d bet big bucks that Stratton beats whoever runs on the Republican side. Well, she’s not an AOC type of progressive, and for sure I’ll vote for her over whatever hapless Republican is chosen to lose.
*A meteor streaked through the sky over Cleveland, Ohio, yesterday, and then exploded with a large “boom.” It was a big ‘un: about two meters in diameter and an estimated weight of seven tons.
A meteor exploded Tuesday morning north of Cleveland over Lake Erie.
The American Meteor Society received hundreds reports of a visible meteor from the Eastern Shore of Maryland to Kentucky; it was widely visible across Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and western New York state, too.
Though the meteor occurred during the daylight hours, it was bright enough to be seen for about 5½ seconds. Tens of thousands of people across northern Ohio heard a loud boom, and some people even felt the ground shake. That may have been the meteor’s sonic boom orthe sound of it actually exploding. A seismometer, or earthquake-measuring instrument, detected subtle shaking of the ground at 8:56 a.m. in Lorain County, Ohio.
. . .It’s too early to know the approximate size or trajectory of the meteor, or whether any fragments reached the ground.
This does happen from time to time, however. On Jan. 16, 2018, a meteor exploded over Michigan, producing shaking equivalent to that of a 1.8-magnitude earthquake. Fragments were found after the fact, and debris could even be seen on weather radars.
And here’s a news report showing several videos of the meteor:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili looks as if she doesn’t want Andrzej to be too skeptical. But look at that cute cat!
Hili: Careful, you’re losing your sense of proportion.
Andrzej: In what?
Hili: In how suspiciously you examine reality.
In Polish:
Hili: Uważaj tracisz miarę.
Ja: W czym?
Hili: W podejrzliwym przyglądaniu się rzeczywistości.
*******************
From The Language Nerds:
From Give Me a Sign:
From Stash Krod:
From Masih, who explains what Iran’s now-blown-up intelligence minister did, while showing pictures of two of his victims:
Before some analysts in the West rush to rebrand him as a “moderate” or a “pragmatist,” it is important to establish who Esmail Khatib actually was.
I speak not as an observer, but as someone who has been arrested and interrogated by Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and who has… pic.twitter.com/ZvKoEXt1jd
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) March 18, 2026
Amazing! Harvard has lost a lot of Jewish students in recent years:
Sometimes the miracles precede Pesach! https://t.co/OaXzFyRsOt pic.twitter.com/0IFueQeTwg
— David Wolpe (@RabbiWolpe) March 17, 2026
Luana found this from the world’s wokest physicist. What does “non-trinary” mean for neutrinas. And who ever said the binary is “inherently natural” in the laws of the universe? The biological sex binary is an observation, not a law, but it happens to be true.
Taking a stand against nonbinary erasure, astrophysicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein asserts: “Also, particles have non-binary features! Neutrinos are non-trinary! The binary is not somehow inherently natural to the laws of the universe!”
And yet there is no third human sex. pic.twitter.com/PUV2u3l6aO
— Benjamin Ryan (@benryanwriter) March 17, 2026
Two from my feed. First, the care taken with Israeli strikes:
Israel’s intelligence is next-level:
4 IRGC commanders in Lebanon tried to hide. They booked 15 hotel rooms under false names, and used only 1 room. They disabled all hotel security cameras.
All 4 were killed today with a single missile to their room. No hotel guest was harmed. pic.twitter.com/eD30rfEzng
— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) March 17, 2026
Oy! A pile of small d*gs!
That cat intentionally dives into a pile of puppies because it enjoys the attention; every living being wants to feel loved. 🐾pic.twitter.com/bkMaL3SLut
— Enezator (@Enezator) March 18, 2026
. . and I have to add this one. The sign reads “A cat may appear”
Street Cat Sign in Istanbul pic.twitter.com/ecxZeMny17
— DaVinci (@BiancoDavinci) March 18, 2026
One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:
This French Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz (89% of her transport met the same fate). Arlette was three years old, and would be 87 today had she lived. https://t.co/I0ygwZfRNi
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) March 19, 2026
. . and two from Dr. Cobb. This one had its anniversary yesterday, and it’s a good one:
128th anniversary today of this rather important story appearing in the Lawrence Daily Journal, Kansas
— Odd This Day (@oddthisday.bsky.social) 2026-03-18T13:10:17.608Z
An an adorable wasp larvae. It even has a cute little face!
Meet the king of the Weird Little Guys, the Butternut Woollyworm (Eriocampa juglandis), native to North America.They're the larval form for a wasp-like sawfly & they secrete tufts of wooly substance from epidermal glands to aid in camouflage.All hail the king!(📷: Robert Gromotka)
— c0nc0rdance (@c0nc0rdance.bsky.social) 2026-03-18T13:31:17.209Z
Good morning. Forgive me, but I am confused about the Auschwitz Memorial. Was there an error in your posting? The link goes to the Boudry Substack.
“Morris is clear-headed and experienced, and a good historian of the Middle East.”
That would depend on which version of Benny Morris we are talking about:
https://www.meforum.org/middle-east-quarterly/benny-morris-and-the-reign-of-error
https://www.meforum.org/middle-east-quarterly/benny-morriss-reign-of-error-revisited
I have read a number of recent Benny Morris pieces as well as his 2008 book “1948 – The First Arab/Israeli War” where the first chapters give a full context to the declaration of and war for independence. Maybe I am naive, but I do not find the “new historian/anti-israel” criticisms leveled at him to hold any water.
Maybe the criticisms are proto-woke philosophy of disagree with me on anything then we disagree on everything.
I generally agree with jerry on his statement about Benny Morris.
Benny Morris happily answered as one of the “New Historians” himself for decades – this is not a case of woke caviling or misplaced identity. He proudly was a New Historian, and made some egregious errors, and outright false claims and attributions in his early work.
The two links I provided call attention to some of these – did you read them?
Then Morris had an epiphany (evidently involving Arafat), and today there is Morris.2
“The accusation that Israel manipulated Trump into going to war smells of antisemitism—the view of Jews as puppeteers who control Hollywood, the press—indeed, all of America.”
Last night on CNN, Erin Burnett approvingly aired a clip of Tucker Carlson interviewing Joe Kent about why he resigned (the sentiently-challenged Kaitlan Collins has also approvingly aired Tucker Carlson clips). I knew when John Bolton then came on to be interviewed, she wouldn’t like what he had to say about the clip. I was right. He simply said it was antisemitism, plain and simple. Burnett immediately moved on to other things.
Anyone thinking only Israel is bothered by Iran, there is a good article in the Atlantic summarizing the damage they’ve done in the Middle East by attempting to export their (Shia) Islamic Revolution: Syria, Lebanon and Iraq were badly destabilized by Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy.
Hezbollah also made attempts on Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, with less success.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/03/iran-history-terror-proxies/686405/
Thanks for that FK, archived here:
https://archive.ph/mWIJg
That poor woman was kept like an animal for years. I often mention the fact that the I.R. Iran basically wrecked 4-5 countries, particularly Lebanon (Yemen was already wrecked).
Since the 80s the Iranians’ huge interference there has destroyed the Lebanese state and people. Oh, helped as always by the world’s worst houseguests, the Palestinians*
*reposted here in case you forgot, my:
https://democracychronicles.org/worst-houseguests-ever-the-palestinians/
It is error to just assume mendacious destruction from Tehran effects only us.
D.A.
NYC
The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary State has been exporting terror since its founding. And while Israel and Jewish targets (they have attacked Jews all over the world—it is not only Israel), the reason that they have concentrated on the “Little Satan” as opposed to the “Great Satan” is simply because of lack of opportunity to attack the US on its own soil.
Do not forget Beirut, and do not forget Iraq.
Dr. Coyne,
The revelations (reported by the NY Times) that Cesar Chavez has been accused of sexual assault of young women and children…including by Deolores Huerta…is a big deal. Note how many western cities have already cancelled traditional celebrations of his birthday.
Huerta…who said she bore children as a result of unwanted sexual encounters from Chavez…is the Hispanic civil rights equivalent of Rosa Parks.
Please take this with a massive block of salt, but last night on NewsNation I watched an interview with a former Israeli official who said that Israel and the CIA both have numerous agents on the ground in Iran trying to convince specific IRGC and Iranian military leaders to form an opposition force. He said that the Israelis have specific generals in mind as potential leaders. While regime collapse is an extra credit goal for the U.S., it’s fundamental to the Israeli strategy. So—according to this take-it-with-a-massive-block-of-salt interview—Israeli intelligence is actively trying to pave the ground for overthrow of the regime.
Jerry wrote, “What does “non-trinary” mean for neutrinas.” Chanda Prescod-Weinstein wrote, “Neutrinos are non-trinary!”
Jerry’s typo is inspiring: I think physics needs a new inclusive language for leptons that does not assume each particle’s identity. Thus “neutrinx”. This seems especially important for the electrox, muox, and taux particles in order to avoid making leptist assumptions about their charge. If an electrox identifies as a muox, who are we to erase that lepton’s existence or deny the legitimacy of its inner charge?
This conceptualization opens up exciting new questions in theoretical physics, engineering, and the law. Does a translepton experience particle euphoria? Can our particle detectors correctly distinguish cisleptons and transleptons? Do our human rights laws require updating so that mischarged leptons have recourse to our human rights tribunals? So exciting.
Being slightly more serious than your amusing comment 😀, I think there indeed is a clear binary in the fundamental laws of physics, namely the binary between fermions and bosons. I wonder if Chanda Prescod-Weinstein can point to a real fundamental particle that is not either clearly a fermion or clearly a boson.
I don’t think the point is whether fundamental particles are clearly fermions or clearly bosons. I think the point is that a marginalized proton should be allowed to transition to a photon by surgically modifying its “r”. Transphotons should be allowed to live as their authentic selves, and should be welcomed into photon-based systems (such as photosynthesis and global warming). Bigots such as plants and algae must learn to get over their fermiophobia, and welcome transphotons into their chloroplasts. Transphotons are such a small percentage of the boson population that this inclusive approach will harm no one. /s
[I’m sorry to say that I’ve read so much transgenderist propaganda that I feel I could go on all day in this rich vein of ridiculous sarcasm 🙁 I am however quite chuffed to have thought of both “leptism” and “particle euphoria” in the same afternoon. Also forgot to say I agree with you about the binary between things that do or don’t experience Pauli exclusion.]
Your entire post was priceless, from neutrinx to mischarged leptons. Cheers!
Anyons are neither fermions nor bosons, but as they are quasiparticles they may not qualify as “real fundamental particles.”
Of course Western Science, wedded as it is to oppressive reductionist methodologies, can not even see, much less acknowledge, the holistic inter-penetrability of its allegedly discrete “particles”. It’s a spectrum, dammit.
[Sometimes I scare myself.]
Meteor: I gather that at least one piece has been found. Convenient that the Rock & Roll Hall is in Cleveland.
And the VW logo takes on a new connotation, too!
Re. The VW logo. I was involved in creating a website for a retail company in the late 90’s. Someone on our team who was doing the FAQ page created a URL for people who had returns or exchanges as: returnsexchanges. It’s crazy that after hours of working on the site with a dozen different eyes reviewing it over a span of six weeks or so, no one saw what the compound word said. We went live and a couple days later a customer (who said it made him/her LOL) pointed it out to us. Embarrassing! I’m glad I wasn’t the one who created the URL, but I’m sure I saw it a bunch of times without noticing. Incidentally, we quickly changed it to: returnsandexchanges.
… and then returnsexchanges was sold to a site for detransitioners.
That rings so true. Sometimes you need thousands of eyes to see what’s right in front of your nose. At least all of you missing it proved that none of your minds was in the gutter.
Ha! Thanks Leslie.
And the VW logo takes on a new connotation, too!
Almost as good as the Italian branch of PowerGen.
An example of journalistic ignorance. Meteors don’t explode. They are rocks. What people hear on the ground is the arrival of the shockwave. A shockwave forms around and follows any object that is moving through the air at a supersonic speed, When the object is a big rock, the shockwave is extremely strong and sounds as if something blew up nearby.
Some types of meteors do in fact sometimes explode. Or detonate, if you prefer. The energy release from such events can be significant. The Chelyabinsk meteor in 2013 exploded with an estimated energy of 500,000 tons of TNT. The most famous is, of course, the Tunguska event.
Sorry, but these rocks can and do explode, causing an explosion shockwave that is not a sonic boom shockwave. GPT’s spoken —
According to the new V-DEM Democracy Report 2026, the USA is no longer a liberal democracy (but only an electoral democracy): https://www.v-dem.net/publications/democracy-reports/
“The USA loses its long-term status as a liberal democracy – for the first time in over 50 years.” (p. 4)
“In Focus: Autocratization in the USA
* Under Trump’s presidency democracy in the USA has fallen back to the same level as in 1965. Yet the situation is fundamentally different than during the Civil Rights era.
* President Trump’s second term can be summarized as a rapid and aggressive concentration of powers in the presidency.
* The speed with which American democracy is currently dismantled is unprecedented in modern history.
* Legislative Constraints – the worst affected aspect of democracy – is losing one-third of its value in 2025 and reaching its lowest point in over 100 years.
* Civil Rights & Equality before the Law, and Freedom of Expression & Media are now at their lowest levels in 60 years.
* Electoral components of democracy, however, remain stable – for now” (p. 5)
“Liberal democracies are home to a mere 7% of people in the world (600 million). It is the lowest in over 50 years. The substantial drop in 2025 is largely due to the USA losing its status of liberal democracy” (p. 11)
I just found this – never noticed before, thought I’d put it in here:
“The American’s Creed is a summing up, in one hundred words, of the basic principles of American political faith. It is not an expression of individual opinion [..] It is a summary of the fundamental principles of American political faith as set forth in its greatest documents, its worthiest traditions and by its greatest leaders.”
“American’s Creed
I believe in the United States of America, as a government of the people, by the people, for the people; whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed; a democracy in a republic; a sovereign Nation of many sovereign States; a perfect union, one and inseparable; established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice, and humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes. I therefore believe it is my duty to my country to love it, to support its Constitution, to obey its laws, to respect its flag, and to defend it against all enemies.”
-all quoting:
William Tyler Page
1917
If all member States are sovereign, then the perfect union of them all cannot be itself sovereign over them. If the union state is sovereign, then the member States cannot be. The contradiction in Page’s otherwise admirable Creed has to be managed by all federal states and it is not straightforward, as the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement demonstrated.
Good point – I found the sovereignty idea out-of-whack as well, not sure where it came from – he claims it’s supposed to be collected from some literature, but I haven’t looked into it yet.
There’s sovereignty, but its nature in this context isn’t clear.
While it is true that an air war alone has never successfully toppled a regime, that criticism fails to consider that this is not your standard air war. (It also fails to acknowledge that there are achievable and desirable military objectives here short of regime change.) Never in the airpower era has a decapitation strategy been waged with this scale and scope while largely sparing the population who might eventually assist in toppling the regime. Yes, we have tried the approach of “cutting the head off of the snake” despite snakes in waiting, but what Israel and the US are now waging, aside from standard interdiction of military forces, is a large-scale assassination campaign across major instruments of Iranian national power. This not only eliminates experience and disrupts command, but it constantly stirs the mix of internecine rivalries. Moreover, its success to date strongly suggests insiders working for the Israelis, which could severely disrupt trust among people who need to work together. Each high-ranking man who does not die will be held in suspicion. Iranian leaders will fall back on kinship and other long-term relations to an even greater degree, and their ability to cooperate and project power will falter. That’s the theory.
To have a chance at success, it will require deeper penetration of the Iranian power structure than I have previously contemplated so that the target base can expand sufficiently to prevent the leadership from regrouping. It might also require leaving operations-level military commanders untargeted so that some faction has sufficient strength to turn against the IRGC. (I don’t know enough about the internal dynamics to assess the likelihood of this.) Arguing against its feasibility is the religious fervor of fundamentalists; the expectation of their fate should the people they have oppressed visit judgment on them; and the lack of arms, coordination, and relevant experience among the population. I won’t venture a guess as to the odds of success, but it is fascinating to watch it unfold.
Since learning Portuguese, I’ve been bemused by the word for “chicken”. The other Romance languages all have reflexes of Latin pullus – poulet (French), pollo (Italian and Spanish), pollastre (Catalan) – but in Portuguese it’s frango (the etymology is unclear).
Update: in the last couple of days, there have been several missile attacks from Iran, including some in the Jerusalem area. One of these days, there may be an impact on the Temple Mount, giving the lie to the so-called “defenders of Islam”. Recently, 4 Palestinian women were killed by a missile: one wonders how their families feel about the war.
The Iranians have been using cluster warheads on their missiles with greater frequency, meaning that police sappers are investigating the sites of cluster bomb attacks for unexploded ordnance.
Today is Eid-al-Fitr, marking the end of Ramadan. Traditionally, Iranians take to the streets to celebrate with fireworks. One can hope that they will celebrate with something more and rid the world of this evil regime, from which they suffer more than anyone else.