Welcome to CaturSaturday, April 11, 2026, shabbos for Jewish cats and, in Canada, it’s National Poutine Day, the tastiest and unhealthiest of all comfort foods. Here are several orders of poutine waiting to be served at La Banquise, perhaps Montreal’s most famous poutine shack. The photo, taken in March of 2016, shows two orders with guac amd sour cream. One person has unaccountably ordered a salad:
It’s also Barbershop Quartet Day, International Louie Louie Day (Richard Berry, the writer of this “classic,” was born on this day in 1935; the song itself became famous with the Kingsmen’s version in 1963), National Cheese Fondue Day, and National Pet Day.
Here are the Kingsmen lip-synching to the song. I can still remember the first time I heard it, and it was on a transistor radio.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 11 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Did you watch the Artemis re-entry and splashdown yesterday? Everything worked fine: it was, as they say, copacetic.
Floating in the Pacific Ocean on Friday, the four astronauts of NASA’s Artemis II mission had achieved more than just a historic return to human spaceflight around the moon.
“From the pages of Jules Verne to a modern-day mission to the moon, a new chapter of the exploration of our celestial neighbor is complete,” Rob Navias, who provided NASA commentary during the re-entry, said after splashdown.
The successful conclusion of Artemis II sets NASA on a path to extend the agency’s achievements in space exploration, and, for now at least, the United States is ahead of China in a 21st century space race.
Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch of NASA and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency were the first people to leave low-Earth orbit since 1972. Their journey captivated space enthusiasts and may have created new ones.
I’ve put an 11-minute video below; the moment of splashdown is at 7:42.
I’m told that this mission is partly to prepare for creating a U.S. base on the Moon. I’m not sure, however, what that will accomplish? Will we claim the moon, in the same way that countries have made faux claims in Antarctica?
*In a post on It’s Noon in Israel,” author and journalist Amit Segal interviews Israeli Minister Aryeh Deri and also gives some exclusive statements from Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. First I’ll give Segal’s bullet points and take on the war, and you can read the Q&A for yourself:
It’s Friday, April 10, and before we dive into today’s headlines, we have exclusive statements from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. During our conversation last night, he highlighted three key points:
-
- On Iran he asserted that without the two recent operations, Iran would have already acquired nuclear weapons by 2026.
- On U.S. relations he argued that Israel’s standing in the United States is only an issue among those who have a problem with America itself. He stressed that this is not a new development, nor is it related to the current war.
- On the northern front he claimed that Hezbollah has been begging for a ceasefire for a month, and teased that there will be further ‘interesting developments’ in the negotiations with Lebanon.”
As early as the second week, it became clear that the regime would not fall from airstrikes alone. The U.S. and Israeli strategy pivoted: hit them hard, then allow internal pressure to build while the U.S. military remains in the region as a passive deterrent against mass repression. The recent prospect of negotiations complicates that signal to the Iranian public, but the core strategy may still hold.
While the Iranian threat has been at least temporarily defanged, a new long-term threat is rising: U.S. public opinion.
There is a two-part problem.
First, the United States has not yet achieved its stated objectives. Second, as long as those objectives remain unmet, the finger of blame will inevitably point toward Israel. We can already see the narrative forming: Israel gave the U.S. false intelligence that the regime was on the brink of collapse, deceiving Trump into wasting American resources and lives in pursuit of its own interests. Ignoring the likely fact that Donald Trump hasn’t been led into doing anything he didn’t want to do since he was an infant, this is the story that’s being told.
Israel cannot afford to be seen as the party that overpromised. It cannot be left holding the proverbial bag for an Iranian version of Iraq’s nonexistent WMDs.
Moving forward, Israel must urgently invest in rebuilding its own infrastructure devastated by the war: public support in the U.S.
A bit of the Q&A with Deri:
Q: Will we see a regime change in the near future?
“I believe so. By the way, Trump believes the current regime is far more measured and responsible than what came before. In a certain sense, I agree. The diplomatic figures there effectively forced the ceasefire because of the constraints, not because of any genuine change of heart. They understood that within two weeks Iran would go bankrupt.”
Q: “And aren’t you worried that Israel’s gains come at a cost – a growing sense in America that we dragged them into a war that wasn’t theirs?”
“That has nothing to do with Iran. We have a problem with the Democrats, and somewhat with some Republicans, too. But precisely because of that, this period with Trump in power is a major opportunity for Israel to cement its regional standing. In the end, the Americans – whatever administration – will understand that their real ally is us.”
*As always, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news-and-snark column in the Free Press, called this week, “TGIF: MMIWG2SLGBTQIA+” (yes, that’s a group; read on).
→ To study the forest, you must have a limp: A new job posting for a tenure-track position—Canada Research Chair in Forestry and Environmental Stewardship at the University of British Columbia—has an interesting requirement. “For this position, applicants must identify as having a disability.” Actually, more ideally, they must identify as disabled women or indigenous people of color:
In accordance with UBC’s CRC Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Action Plan, and pursuant to Section 42 of the BC Human Rights code, this search is restricted to people with disabilities. We welcome applications from disabled scholars who are also members of the following federally designated groups: Indigenous Peoples, racialized people, and women, and gender equity-seeking groups. Applicants to CRC positions are required to complete this equity survey.
To study the forest, you must have a limp. And be gay. Are you gay and are you limping? (Me, yes, frequently.) Now you may apply to be a professor of the forests. Also, this confirms my theory that the longer the job title, the more ridiculous the job. Canada Research Chair in Forestry and Environmental Stewardship?
And elsewhere in Canada, a major political conference devolved into chaos as everyone fought over “equity cards,” differently colored little cards that let certain speakers cut in line according to their level of oppression. “I was standing here with my gender equity card before you called on the previous speaker. That’s my point of privilege,” one person said. Another: “Yesterday, this card was used in an inappropriate matter. And while I understand in Ontario, we note this as equity, even if that, this was also used inappropriately in terms of gender. I want everyone to be mindful that these cards for individuals like myself, who identify as a black woman, have no value outside of this space.” Okay, fine, one more: “I said, ‘Hey, this pertains to multiple intersecting parts of my lived experience, I’d like to speak.’ I was rejected when I talked. It’s frustrating when it’s—these are my rights being directly under attack right now in Alberta. A cisgender woman had spoken over me.” The delegates weren’t the only ones complaining, however. The chair had some words after their pronouns were tread upon: “I’ll again thank delegates not to call me ‘Madame Chair.’ I am a nonbinary person. My pronouns are they/them/their. Chair is sufficient.” I’d also like to thank my coworkers not to call me Nellie Bowels. Which they have multiple times this week, and which is (I swear to G-d) how my name is spelled on my official Paramount ID card. I thank you not to call me that. Chair is sufficient.
On my last Canadian note—it’s a 20! I’ll be here all week!—New Democratic Party MP Leah Gazan expressed her frustration at budget cuts by saying: “They provided $0 to deal with the ongoing genocide of MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+.” Them’s a lot of letters. I thought that surely had to be a joke. So I googled the phrase and sure enough, it’s real. I really try not to make too much fun of the alphabet soup stuff. It’s too easy. It’s played out. I’m better than it. But then a member of parliament drops MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ on us. What are we supposed to do here, guys? When will the letters end? Is there pi of letters? Why two Q’s?
Here’s the answer. There’s other mishigas from Canada at the article. Note that this isn’t really a “genocide” since most of the perps are indigenous people themselves, and I suspect that domestic violence is a major contributor:
MMIWG stand for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. The media and politicians in Canada treat this as a genocide. One problem: https://t.co/f2Mdy29Tvo pic.twitter.com/o4HmRiQsWr
— Charlie Smirkley (@charliesmirkley) April 9, 2026
→ Updates on Jewish life: What a time it has been! Sixty percent of American adults now largely dislike Israel, according to a new Pew Research Center survey and also my entire Instagram feed, and everyone else in the world minus the people I work and associate with.
. . . A politician from Britain’s Labour Party made and posted a video with the words Jew and kike spelled out over different Tories’ faces. But don’t worry—he was just quoting a song, just a random line that happened to be transcribed randomly. Must be AI’s fault. A total accident, he says, of the word kike spelled out over his oppositions’ faces. Happens all the time, I’m sure. I’ve been there, man, hang in there, says the rest of the country.
In a vestigial twitch of fairness, NPR’s public editor did note that it was odd how the news outlet covered the attack on a Michigan synagogue and preschool. See, NPR sent a reporter to a Lebanese village to help contextualize why the suspect in that Michigan attack might have been so upset (Israel killed his relatives, one of whom was reportedly a Hezbollah commander, so you see, blowing up a Jewish preschool is fair). The public editor notes: “I couldn’t find any stories that quote rabbis, congregation members, or the families of the children who had to flee the building.” Seems bad! Alas, not really that bad. The piece ends: “NPR has given Americans what they need to understand their government’s motivations and to hold their elected officials accountable for this war.” All’s well. Nothing to see here.
Meanwhile, a NYT piece on the youth these days defines the term J-pilled as simply “far-right slang for skepticism of Israeli influence.” J-pilled. Interesting; does Israel start with J? Does it have a J? Maybe it stands for Jabba the Hutt? Oh, right. It means Jew-pilled, and the NYT is trying to soften it. Like how the mainstream media always translates the Arabic word Yahud to Israelis instead of Jews, which is what it means. But the people saying J-pilled speak English! They’re literally calling themselves Jew-pilled, and our greatest newspaper is desperate to make it go down smoothly. Some days I’m ready for the human-alien hybrids to reveal themselves.
*John McWhorter responds to both AI and DEI in a new NYT column, “What A.I. and D.E.I. have in common” (article is archived here). The commonality involves casting suspicion on people and their work.
I never thought A.I. would get me thinking of D.E.I.
I’ve reached a depressing turning point as a college professor. With A.I. now entrenched in academic life, when a student submits a wonderful essay, I will never again be sure that it was purely a work of the student’s initiative, intelligence and talent.
Some essays will be. But there will be no way to really tell. Technology could allow me to determine only what was likely. And would an essay count as original if the student used A.I. to begin the paper but then built upon those prompts?
Let’s face it: From now on we will have to revise our sense of what is original and authentic. There is no way to adjudicate where to draw the line, and few professors will be up for submitting every essay they receive to this kind of evaluation.
. . .And there is something else gloomy about A.I. making it unnecessary to write an essay from the ground up. A.I. will put more people under the sort of suspicion that D.E.I. does.
A.I. will put artistic and intellectual achievement under a cloud of doubt, a sense that the creator did not do it all on their own, and possibly could not have. And this is the burden that D.E.I. policies often saddle its intended beneficiaries with.
Call it diversity, equity and inclusion or affirmative action or racial preferences, it is rooted in a quest to give people an opportunity to compete more easily against straight white people, especially men.
Adjusting standards for admission or hiring in view of a group’s past handicap is a unique moral advance.
But it should be applied for as limited a time as possible because of the side effects. Under a policy that allows certain people to be judged even partly on who they are rather than what they bring to the table, people of color are often suspected of being “D.E.I. hires,” brought on with lesser qualifications than their white equivalent would be permitted to have.
Sometimes, the charge is false. From what I see, and from what people with law degrees whose opinions I trust tell me, the Supreme Court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is clearly qualified for her position.
But the interviews Karine Jean-Pierre gave during her book tour last year gave credence to the idea that when President Joe Biden made her White House press secretary her race, gender and sexual orientation were more important criteria than her ability to convey policy, positions and ideas clearly.
I haven’t seen Jean-Pierre’s interviews, but here’s a video from the Left-wing site The Young Turks arguing (at the start) that her book tour was a “disaster”:
*If you want to hear about the sex binary for its expert, as well as rebuttals of several widespread criticisms of the (real) sex binary, there’s an interview with Colin Wright published on his substack called “One reality, two sexes, and endless debates.” You can read for free; it’s a transcript of a interview he did with the German rationalist/skeptic organization Die Gesellschaft zur wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung von Parawissenschaften (GWUP),(The Society for the Scientific Study of Parasciences). Here are two of many Q&As:
Q: Your paper identifies five main models used to argue against the sex binary. Could you briefly outline them?
A: First, there’s the conflation of mating types with sexes. Some fungi and slime molds reproduce sexually using gametes of the same size—we call these isogamous species. They have chemical compatibility types between gametes, sometimes thousands of them. Articles about ‘the slime mold with 30,000 sexes’ are based on a fundamental misunderstanding. Sexes refer only to males and females, which are defined by different-sized gametes. Species with same-sized gametes don’t have males and females—they have mating types.
Second, there’s the chromosomal or karyotype model. You’ll hear people say, ‘if you’re XX you’re female, if you’re XY you’re male.’ But this conflates how sex is determined in humans with what sex is. Many crocodilians and turtles don’t have sex chromosomes at all—their sex is determined by egg incubation temperature. People with Klinefelter syndrome (XXY) aren’t a third sex; they’re biologically male. These are chromosomal variations within the two sexes.
Third, there’s the sex spectrum model, which holds that sex is a continuous variable based on genital morphology. Some proponents think males and females aren’t real entities but exist only in a statistical sense—you can be varying degrees of male or female, but not definitively male or female. This ignores gametes entirely and has circular problems: how do you know what genital shape is ‘male’ unless you already know what males are, rooted in gametes?
Fourth, there’s the polythetic categories model—like family resemblance, in which members share overlapping characteristics, with no single feature necessary for membership. They try to apply this to sex, saying it’s a combination of chromosomes, hormones, height, and voice pitch, and many other sex-related traits. But how do you define which chromosomes or hormone profiles are ‘male’ without presupposing what males are, rooted in gametes?
Fifth—and most influential—is the multi-level model, which says we can’t talk about bodies having a sex. Instead, you’d say someone is ‘genetically male’ or ‘hormonally female’ or has a ‘male height.’ But again, how are they determining which chromosomes are male without presupposing that males and females exist apart from chromosomes, inevitably rooted in gametes?
and:
Q: What evidence would you need to change your view that there are only two sexes?
A: That’s a crucial question. In the skeptic community, you always need to have something that could convince you you’re wrong. If you don’t, you’re just a zealot, not doing science.
For me, it’s really easy: we define sexes by the type of gamete an individual is biologically capable of producing. You’d need to present a third novel gamete type—in addition to or intermediate between sperm and ova—that an individual’s reproductive system could have the function to produce. That’s the only thing that could make there be more than two sexes.
*Chimp wars! The WSJ describes a lethal war between a previously amiable group of chimpanzees. We’ve long known that chimpanzees can engage in lethal intergroup violence, sometimes tearing apart an outsider chimp limb from limb. But in an article called “Inside the deadly civil war that tore apart a group of chimpanzees in Uganda“, the paper describe fractionation of a previously harmonious group, and a big group, too. I’ve put the original article from Science below, which you can also click to read. The article’s conclusion is that fractioning a group doesn’t require “cultural markers” like ethnicity, religion, or language, since chimps don’t have those.
A rare and deadly “civil war” has broken out between two factions of chimps in Africa, according to new research.
The dispute erupted in what was once a cohesive group of about 200 chimps whose ties stretched back two decades. It took just three years for them to turn on each other, according to a new study in the journal Science.
“We’ve known for a long time that chimpanzees will attack and kill their neighbors,” said primatologist John Mitani, professor emeritus at the University of Michigan and a study co-author. “It turns out they will do this even when those neighbors are former friends and allies.”
For 20 years, the Ngogo chimps of Uganda’s Kibale National Park “were living the good life by being together,” Mitani said. They helped one another, dominated and killed apes from neighboring groups, expanded their territory and boosted their babies’ chances of survival.
But in 2015, the group started splitting into two clusters. Several male chimps who had bridged cliques within the larger group died from disease, weakening social ties. Around the same time, a new alpha male rose to dominance.
Changes in the dominance hierarchy can fuel more aggression and tension, said Aaron Sandel, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin and study co-author. As aggression escalated, the factions drifted into separate areas of the park.
By 2018, the split was complete. The two groups had no remaining social or reproductive ties between them; the last chimp infant with parents from different groups was born in 2015. What was once the center of the group’s territory became a border, which chimps patrolled, the researchers found.
Then the hostilities began in earnest.
Members of the smaller of the two groups launched coordinated lethal attacks on the other, aiming to kill rival adult males. By 2021, these raids had expanded to target younger apes, averaging several infant deaths a year since.
The paper below says that “over the next 7 years [after fission], members of one group made 24 attacks, killing at least seven mature males and 17 infants in the other group.”
Here’s the paper’s conclusion, which contains what I think an unwarranted extrapolation to humans. It’s ok to speculate, I guess, but I’m not sure I would have written what’s below:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej gives his opinion about philosophy:
Andrzej: Are you asleep?
Hili: No, I’m practicing philosophy.
Andrzej: Sometimes that amounts to the same thing.\
In Polish:
Ja: Śpisz?
Hili: Nie, uprawiam filozofię.
Ja: To czasem na jedno wychodzi.
*******************
From Things with Faces:
From Now That’s Wild:
From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:
Masih isn’t tweeting so much, so let’s have Larry the Cat, who’s no friend of Trump:
We’ve reached the point that they’re using the Epstein files to cover up Iran https://t.co/Secj666mDc
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) April 9, 2026
From Bryan: a short but provocative interview with Dan Dennett (text and video) about consciousness:
Daniel Dennett: You don’t know your own mind as well as you think you do.
In a 1993 Dutch documentary series, A Glorious Accident, philosopher Daniel Dennett laid out one of the most unsettling ideas in all of philosophy, the possibility that we are fundamentally mistaken about… pic.twitter.com/UZ0hZuwmG0
— Big Brain Philosophy (@BigBrainPhiloso) April 9, 2026
From Luana on Biden’s immigration policy, which was no policy:
Most Americans still don’t fully understand what happened under Biden…
8% of Nicaragua entered the US in 4 years.
8% of the entire country.7% of Cuba.
6% of Haiti.
5% of Honduras. pic.twitter.com/Y5eRA8yTGV— BitcoinSapiens ⚡️ (@BitcoinSapiens) April 9, 2026
From Malcolm. Have people decided that orange cats are really weird?
It’s always the orange cats. Love them all. pic.twitter.com/ZAKjpaklV1
— Why you should have a cat (@ShouldHaveCat) March 9, 2026
One from my feed; more evidence that the Turks love their cats (translation from the Turkish: “In Turkey, an elderly man who makes his living by shining shoes never turns away this little friend when a cat that shows up at the same time every morning asks to have its fur brushed.”
Türkiye’de ayakkabı boyayarak geçimini sağlayan yaşlı bir amcanın yanına her sabah aynı saatte gelen bir kedi, tüylerinin taranmasını isteyince amca bu minik dostunu asla geri çevirmiyor. pic.twitter.com/ktjJE66upn
— Bayrak Medya (@bayrakmedya) April 10, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Hungarian Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was five years old.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-04-11T11:09:16.571Z
Two from Matthew. First, my two favorite animals together. Matthew says this is NOT AI:
Remy the cat sees a duck for the first time 😂TT: McKenna
And a woodie! After a two-day absence, ours returned to Botany Pond yesterday.
It's the time of year for wood ducks in the woods. Here's a wood duck on a tree branch in a greater Vancouver (BC) park.
— Donna Giberson (Elbows UP!) 🇨🇦🇺🇦 (@donnag.bsky.social) 2026-04-09T20:47:08.525Z
Thank you for the Artemis 2 coverage WEIT! It worked! FWIW, off the top of my head, my three favorite visuals from the mission were: 1. Earth-set as seen from above the far side of the moon; 2. Last night’s service module separation from the crew module LIVE in real-time; 3. Three fully inflated main parachutes for splashdown.
And it was nice to see Nasa boss Jared feet wet out at the recovery site onboard the recovery ship. And congrats to the whole Nasa/contractor team that has somehow kept its focus through the past year of tumultuous federal government chaos.
“Nominal” has never before been so scary or so exciting!
Regarding immigration and the Democratic Party (apropos the tweet contributed by Luana to today’s Hili dialogue):
The Gallup polling organisation has been asking Americans since about 1965 whether they want “immigration be kept at its present level, increased or decreased”?
By the time the Biden administration decided to implement an open border policy that was bound to lead to a massive surge of immigration, only 30% of Americans wanted the present level of immigration increased. Only 30%! That’s the Democratic Party for you: making policy that is rejected by a clear majority of the country.
Gallup: Sharply More Americans Want to Curb Immigration to U.S. July 12, 2024
55% want immigration levels reduced, highest since 2001
https://news.gallup.com/poll/647123/sharply-americans-curb-immigration.aspx
Look at the trans issue – same thing.
Look at education policy – same thing (the dominant thrust of the Dem’s policy being the lowering of educational standards, to hide the fact that not all ethnic groups achieve at the same level; lack of proper oversight of universities, etc.)
Look at criminal policy – same thing (Let’s reduce law enforcement. The victims of crime? We don’t care, even if “racialized” minorities are overrepresented among them.).
And then the party has the nerve to paint Trump as this antidemocrat while the Dems themselves don’t care about the views of the majority of the voters! The party disgusts me about as much as Trump’s insane threat to bomb Iran into the Stone Age (which would require committing massive war crimes).
On that translatory note and Middle East politics. My spoken Arabic isn’t any good anymore but I understand quite a lot and the switcheroo the (ENTIRE!) Western media do with Arabic “yahood” vs “Israeli” is really something.
On a wider issue, there’s a whole lot of tomfoolery in translating what Arabs – in the street and positions of power- tell the west, on top of translatory lies. Yassir Arafat was a master of this in his “Palestinian” straight outta Cairo Arabic.
D.A.
NYC 🗽
A Facebook friend (Australian!) of mine who knows some Arabic, and supports Israel, is always telling people this word: “Mughaffal.”
It means fool. He says it’s what the Islamists think of their Western supporters.
“I’m told that this mission is partly to prepare for creating a U.S. base on the Moon. I’m not sure, however, what that will accomplish? Will we claim the moon, in the same way that countries have made faux claims in Antarctica?”
The U.S. has never made any territorial claims in Antarctica, but we do have bases there, including Amundsen-Scott right at the South Pole; we’ve had them since the 1950s. A Moon base will presumably be for the same reasons: Scientific research (and maybe a bit of “national prestige” although–as with Antarctica–that may well fade in importance over time, leaving mostly just the science). The Moon has a surface area larger than the entire continent of Africa, and while it’s been pretty well mapped from orbit, very, very little of it has been explored up close, by either humans or by robots.
The motivation for a moon base is not science, since any science could be done for a tenth the cost by robotic missions.
(Humans are big and heavy, and their life-support systems are also big and heavy; and one also needs to bring the humans back home, which is hard and expensive, whereas robots are one-way and expendable; and also the levels of safety required when humans are involved is very high, whereas one can take risks with robots; and anyhow, humans can’t actually do very much in space or on the moon, since their spacesuits make them clumsy and cumbersome.)
“No Buck Rogers, no bucks.”
Oh. Also, sorry: There’s talk of an actual peace treaty between Lebanon and Israel. This would be HUGE if true. Assuming the Leb Armed Forces can even control Hizballah (they probably can’t)… but a possible step in the right direction.
Contrary to what the leftist media will tell you: MANY Lebanese are rooting for Israel in this war against the (Pal and Shia) terrorists/militias who have ruined their country.
D.A.
NYC 🗽
Yea, Israel and Lebanon have a major shared interest—the elimination of Hezbollah (Hizballah).
“We can already see the narrative forming that Israel gave the US false intelligence that the Iranian regime was on the brink of collapse…”
Giving “false intelligence” implies deliberate deceit. But giving “mistaken intelligence” may be what happened. Israeli intelligence is very good, but intelligence is hard and some things are difficult to judge. It may be that Mossad underestimated the Iranian regime’s ability to maintain their grip on power and thereby misled Trump as well as themselves. I certainly feel disappointed that Iran’s brutal crackdown on the protesters appears to be so successful.
On how Trump decided to go to war with Iran:
summary of the second, longer article:
6 Takeaways From the Story of Trump’s Decision to Go to War With Iran. New York Times, April 7, 2026
New details from the weeks leading up to the campaign show how President Trump’s alignment with Benjamin Netanyahu and a lack of sustained opposition from his inner circle put the United States on a course to war.
https://archive.ph/ni530
longer story:
Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman: How Trump Took the U.S. to War With Iran. New York Times, April 7, 2026
In a series of Situation Room meetings, President Trump weighed his instincts against the deep concerns of his vice president and a pessimistic intelligence assessment. Here’s the inside story of how he made the fateful decision.
https://archive.ph/eGBMD
That’s an excellent article and well worth reading!
I am waiting for the job posting that calls specifically for a Murdered or Missing Indigenous Woman (MMIW). You know it’s going to happen.
McWhorter makes an interesting point on DEI/AI.
Why are missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls lumped in with LGBTetc.? Because they are represented by initials? Do people think that MMIWG are a sexual minority?
Doug it’s the alphabetical instantiation of the omnicause. All oppression is the same oppression. Leah Gazan argues that omnioppression can only be destroyed by the most powerful universal liquid solvent known to science: federal tax dollars.
[Edit to add: the first Q is for kweer, the second is for cuestioning (see what I did there?)]
It just seems to be a long list of people who are claiming victimhood. Some are genuine victims, some just self identify as victims. I don’t personally know any LGB people who literally identify as victims nowadays since they won equal rights.
There are loads more initials we can add if we include every community where some have been oppressed or victimised.
Poor, Deaf, Blind, Mentally ill, Albino, Epileptic, Amputees etc etc. Where will it end? Andrew Doyle said he used to have a comedy routine years ago where he used every letter of the alphabet, but he stopped doing it, because reality was becoming worse than his joke. 🤦♀️
It makes the whole concept a farce. The letters don’t represent a community, Many TQs are homophobic and misogynist, the letters should each have their own specialised campaign groups. In theory, Jewish people could be included as they are being persecuted at the moment, but can you imagine how the woke would react to adding a ‘J’ 🤦♀️
I guess Jews are excluded because they are not “minoritized” enough. Gaggg!
They are a minority but a successful one despite their history of being the most persecuted people on the planet. And that undermines the “progressive” credo that a history of persecution and discrimination means success is impossible without programs of “positive” discrimination to offset it.
There’s no logic to the nonsense. Men are not a victimised minority, but they suddenly self identify as victims when they put a dress on 🙄 If only it was as easy for women to escape victimhood by wearing trousers, but even trans identified women get raped.
Trans people also self identify into being victims of the holocaust, even though only a handful were murdered during the holocaust and research shows that the individuals were actually murdered bcause they were Jewish or gay. Nazis had no issue with cross dressing, there’s even a book of photographs of Nazi officers dressed as women.
The issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls is not a genocide, but it is certainly an area where police and local governments are failing women and girls. One of the true crime podcasts I listen to, Crime Junkie, had a series on MMIWG. They also spent several years working with local and federal law enforcement to try and improve things.
Many of the women who were murdered lived in areas that were poorly serviced by public transport, so they took the risk of hitchhiking to work, or walking along long lonely roads. Also, police don’t take these missing women as seriously as white women in urban areas and there have been many campaigns where families had to fight for the police to take action.
As I said, it isn’t a genocide, it is just the all too familiar male violence against women, and lack of transportation and policing in many areas leaves women more vulnerable to that violence.
https://crimejunkiepodcast.com
Yes and No.
Indigenous people are always complaining that the police ignore and mistreat them. It’s part of the expected indigenous narrative in Canada, as Leah Gazan’s tirade gives voice to. We tune her out. Many of the “missing” hitchhiked to Vancouver to disappear into the urban drug and sex trade and don’t particularly want to be “found”. The police know this and the people know this but neither wants to say it out loud. British Columbia Highway 16 is a long lonely road with population density (and policing) so low in a land so vast that people from the UK can’t comprehend how thin it is, and it’s not even particularly far north, as Canada goes. Greyhound Canada cancelled permanently all its bus routes west of Sudbury, Ontario, several years ago for lack of patronage. Anyone abducted on that road and murdered will probably never be found.
There are occasional notorious episodes of white predators who murder aboriginal prostitutes they pick up in urban downtowns, but if someone just disappears it’s anyone’s guess what happened to her. (One tragic case involved a woman who staggered out of a skid row hotel in the wee hours and climbed into a dumpster in the alley, seen on later review of security camera tape. Her body ended up in the Winnipeg city dump.) White women don’t just go missing all that often because they don’t live in remote dysfunctional communities that people want to disappear from.
The RCMP report that for women found dead, the clearance rate, the rate at which an arrest is made, is the same for aboriginal women as for settler women. For both groups, the arrested perpetrator is nearly always a man of the same race as the deceased and known to her. Aboriginal women, then, die at the hands of recidivist aboriginal men, with chronic fetal alcohol syndrome and acute alcohol and drug intoxication in both perps and victims frequently a factor. It is the sad open secret of indigenous society.
It suits aboriginal political activism to refer to this wretched state of affairs as a genocide conducted by the Canadian state. Sure we could “do more” to try to fix things for them but this pejorative casting gets us all off on the wrong mistrustful foot.
Read/listen to the stories of people on the podcast I mentioned.
I didn’t say that ALL cases are ignored, but there are many, many cases where police have ignored them. They are well documented in the podcast.
“The police know this and the people know this” is a false assumption. Every case should be investigated on its own merits. Many of them are people who would never have run away from home, but the police ignore the families.
Don’t assume I don’t know about the long lonely roads in Canada. I have driven on several, and I have read a lot about the murders perpetrated by men on these lonely roads the hopelessness of trying to find bodies of the deceased along the roads.
Just because companies can’t make profits out of people in remote areas, it doesn’t mean that they can’t be given some sort of transport system funded by society. If people had the opportunity to travel to jobs, or, jobs were set up in their communities, there would be less people on benefits and making contribution to society. People whine that so many are unemployed, but baulk at investing in ways to get them working. Everyone benefits financially if more people are working.
I doubt the RCMP statistics that you give, I will have to look them up. Some of the women reported on in the podcast weren’t even recorded as missing because the police just assumed that they had run away, which was not always the case.
The perpetrators aren’t always men of the same race, and you cannot know in a specific case until the perpetrator is caught. I’m sure you aren’t saying that murders should be ignored just because a murderer may come from the same community.
It is not a genocide. It is a group of people who have been mistreated over the years and we should be helping them to improve their communities end up opportunities for employment so that they can be fully contributing members of society so everyone will benefit.
I agree that you should be ignoring the daft woman in the video making up the alphabet.
“It is not a genocide.” Glad you agree that Leah Gazan MP, is lying, which is the main lesson to be taken from her tirade that it was…..even is, on-going, they say. I agree that men murdering women is a terrible thing…. fundamentally not fixable in this population.
BTW, Ms Gazan is only one-quarter aboriginal: maternal grandfather. She is more (Dutch) Jewish (Holocaust survivors) than aboriginal. Not sure where that puts her, privilege-card-wise.
We should leave this here. Lived experience is irreconcilably divergent.
I’m so happy the wood ducks are back at Botany Pond!! And I hope their return calms your anxiety/insomnia. The Battle of the Drakes was stressful.
The links to On Botany Pond Live, and duckcam, no longer work for me. ?
just a quicky Google
AI Overview
As of 2026, the population of Nicaragua is estimated to be approximately 6.9 to 7 million people.
8% of 6.9 million is 552,000
[yes, 2023 but see this https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-did-20-million-illegal-immigrants-enter-us-under-joe-biden-11121014%5D
Nicaraguans are the 13th-largest population of Hispanic origin living in the United States, accounting for about 1% of the U.S. Hispanic population in 2021. From 2000 to 2021, the Nicaraguan-origin population increased 123%, growing from 200,000 to 450,000.Aug 16, 2023
Nicaraguans in the U.S.Data on Latinos – Pew Research Center
Pew Research Center
in short, i’d like to see some recent, real data
Yesterday’s Times of Israel ran an excellent interview about the war with John Spencer, noted war scholar and strategist: https://youtu.be/1k2LE3cbr-Q?si=jpfkpByiDMa-BoUG. The U.S. and Israel have seriously degraded Iran’s capabilities along all of the axes that were defined at the outset.
Thanks for that Norman, I’m a big time John Spencer fan – the academic wing of our military are some of the smartest, most impressive people out there.
Mr. Spencer has gotten a LOT of flak from his telling the truth about Gaza and other situations so much so that he’s had to “close” his twitter to comments and replies.
Being a Zionist – or even supportive of Israel/civilization online in today’s era involves a –lot– of blowback from a mass of very uninformed at best, emotionally unstable at worst mobs. (I’ve found).
D.A.
NYC 🗽
Much as I respect John McWhorter, I think he’s wrong when he says:
It makes no sense that, because black people born in the 1950s were unfairly disadvantaged, that one should lower standards for black people born in 2000s.
Well, it makes perfect sense to those who will benefit from the policy — see Nellie Bowles’s remarks on To study the forest, you must have a limp — but other than that I agree with your argument.
“Unique moral advance” sounds particularly perverse and even grating in an Orwellian way. Prof. McWhorter could have described it a an expedient to make people feel better about themselves, or to reduce the risk of social violence, or to try to attract more money and less criticism from sympathetic donors and antagonistic agitators, but a moral advance, no way.
McWhorter’s point about AI/DEI is just another branch of education’s (primary, secondary as well as postgraduate) fundamental problem…lack of integrity.
Claudine Gay is a prime example. Despite her intellectually light and “inadequate citations” of her research, which she cited as the reason she stepped down as Harvard President, she is still on the African American studies faculty. This is just the latest example of lower standards and the decreasing integrity in America’s education establishments.
Dr. Coyne has documented the growing infiltration of ideology in academic professional institutions as well as academic research. The lack of “data integrity” in Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s critical medical research led him to resign as president of Stanford.
Dr. McWhorter, AI is a tool. Academia’s bigger problem is the lack of PI…personal integrity.
The problem of lack of honesty in academia is actually several problems, and your two examples illustrate that nicely. Gay is (at best) a lightweight, never having contributed anything to intellectual life. She clearly has been advanced to the top of her field because of her identities, not her actual work.
Tessier-Lavigne’s issues are different. He has made significant contributions to his field. However, to stay at the top in that field, the burdens are overwhelming. Dozens of postdocs and students, and some people still pretend that they can give adequate attention to all of them, in addition to writing grants and papers, teaching, whatever. It begins with cutting corners, and who knows where it ends?
Yenomi Park (my hero) thought that Covid would bring down the regime in N. Korea. She was wrong. Regime change happens (is Saddam still running Iraq?) but is far from easy. Will we see regime change in Iran? I hope so. But the real answer is perhaps.