Category: Hili Dialogue

Thursday: Hili dialogue

March 12, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Thursday, March 12, 2026, and National Milky Way Day, celebrating my favorite American candy bar. From the link:

There are actually two versions of the Milky Way. The Milky Way known in the United States is sold as the Mars bar around the world, while the global Milky Way bar is similar to the American 3 Musketeers bar and doesn’t have the caramel topping. There also have been a number of variations besides the original Milky Way, such as Milky Way Midnight (previously Milky Way Dark) and Milky Way Cookie Dough. The original Milky Way and its variations are celebrated and enjoyed today on National Milky Way Day!

I have had a deep-fried Mars bar (battered and fried in fish oil) in Edinburgh, and it was good! Here from the Wikipedia entry is a comparison of the U.S. (left) and global (right) Milky Ways with different fillings:

Milky Ways were advertised as appetite-curbers to eat between meals, resulting in a famous ad:

Once marketed as a snack food that would not intrude on regular meals, modern marketing portrays the Milky Way as a snack reducing mealtime hunger and curbing the appetite between meals.

A widely known advertisement was debuted in 1989, featuring a red 1951 Buick Roadmaster and a vehicle that resembles a blue 1959 Cadillac Series 62 (lacking its dual headlights) racing, with the former eating everything in sight and the latter eating a Milky Way. The advertisement ends with the bridge to Dinnertown being out and the now fat red car being too heavy to jump the gap while the blue car makes the jump. The advertisement returned albeit edited in 2009, removing the claim that the Milky Way is not an appetite spoiler.

The ad:

It’s also National Alfred Hitchcock Day (neither his birthday nor deathday), Girl Scout Day (the organization was founded on this day in 1912 in Savannah, Georgia, where I’ll be travelling shortly), National Baked Scallops Day, and Popcorn Lovers Day (that’s all of us).

Remember this intro to the Hitchcock television show? If you do, you’re a geezer!

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 12 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

First a discussion by NYT writers you may want to read (it isn’t archived yet, but click on it if you have a subscription):

*And here’s the top front page of the NYT from yesterday afternoon, highlighting its biggest stories, and I can see nothing but opprobrium towards the U.S.  Yes, we now are pretty sure that the U.S. screwed up and hit a girls school, killing many children, but I swear that the NYT seems almost gleeful about that, at least about it being the fault of the U.S. and not Iran. (Would it have been the headline story if it were a misfired Iranian missile?). Click page to enlarge. If you want any articles and don’t subscribe, go here , click on an article, which you won’t be able to read, and then look for its URL on one of the archive sites.

Here are the op-eds, all of a similar tenor. Can you spot the heterodox column? See the next item.

I swear that on my grumpier days I see the NYT as a useful idiot for progressives who hate America, and in the case of the war I have a dark fantasy that the NYT newsroom would erupt with glee if Trump’s attack on Iran wound up not accomplishing anything.  Today is one of those days.

*Okay, here’s an excerpt of Bret Stephens’ column, which you can also find archived here: “How does this end? Four scenarios for what comes next with Iran”.  Here are Stephens’s four scenarios (bolding is mine):

Regime change is the most optimistic one. Some imagine it will take the form of the resumption of the mass demonstrations that the regime bloodily stamped out in January — millions of Iranians marching in dozens of cities, joined by police officers and soldiers and commanders from the conventional army, emboldened by American and Israeli air support, rising to tear down their rulers’ enfeebled apparatus of repression.

Nobody should discount this scenario, especially if Iran continues to be battered militarily and politically, perhaps with the loss of additional echelons of leadership. Nobody should count on it, either, at least not in the short term. . .

Regime modification — that is, a regime that stays in place but complies with U.S. and Israeli demands — is another optimistic scenario. It’s doubtful that Mojtaba Khamenei, the new supreme leader, will agree to surrender Iran’s nuclear and missile programs and cease support for regional proxies like Hezbollah. But the new Khamenei’s reign may be very short-lived. And whoever runs the regime next will have to come to grips with its vulnerability and isolation.

That isolation will be especially pronounced if U.S. forces seize Kharg Island, 15 or 16 miles off the Iranian coast in the Persian Gulf, which serves as the terminal for roughly 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports. American control would give the administration the whip hand over most of the regime’s remaining revenues, including its ability to pay salaries for soldiers and civil servants alike.

But perhaps the regime refuses to yield and the war carries on in much the same way for another two or three weeks before some sort of mutual cease-fire declaration, probably before President Trump’s planned visit to Beijing on March 31.

In this third scenario, all sides declare their own sort of victory and none of them quite believe it. . .

Reality, however, will catch up. The sanctions that have already crippled the regime economically will not be lifted. It’s hard to imagine the war ending before the United States and Israel attack Iran’s remaining nuclear sites, including its buried (but accessible) stores of highly enriched uranium. And any efforts by Iran to conduct spectacular terrorist attacks in the vein of Libya’s 1988 Lockerbie bombing, or to mine the Strait of Hormuz, will only result in another war. The era in which Iranian leaders thought themselves invulnerable is over.

This scenario has an ugly cousin: not regime change, but state collapse. The most worrisome form it could take would resemble Syria during its 13-year civil war, in which the regime would survive in some areas of Iran, fall in others, invite foreign intervention and lead to killing on an epic scale. Along with that killing would come waves of refugees throughout the Middle East and into Europe and Australia.

And Stephens gives his recommendation about what we should do:

What, then, should the Trump administration do? My prescription: Seize Kharg Island. Mine or blockade Iran’s remaining ports. Destroy as much Iranian military capability as possible over the next week or two, including a second Midnight Hammer operation to destroy what’s left of Iran’s nuclear capacity and know-how. And threaten the regime with further bombing if it massacres its own citizens, mounts terrorist attacks abroad or returns to nuclear work.

That constitutes the most realistic path to victory at the lowest plausible price in lives, risk and treasure. And for all its admitted dangers, it gives Iran’s people their best chance of winning their freedom. Not bad for a one-month war its critics warned would be another Iraq.

I am a fan of Stephens. He may be labeled as a conservative, but I think both his analysis of wars  (both Iran and Gaza) and his recommendations are sensible. Of course, he’s Jewish, probably, like me, of the secular variety. There is, however, one problem with his recommendations above: how can we tell if Iran returns to nuclear work? Will there be unannounced inspections? Otherwise, his recommendations seem solid.

*Every night on NBC the lead news is, as it should be, about the war with Iran. But very quickly the latest news turns into a report on how the price of gas is going up. Granted, this affects nearly every price in America, because everything is delivered, but there are lives, freedom, and the fate of the Middle East at stake. I know I don’t use much gas, but I do buy stuff, and still I can’t really worry about price increases (farmers, of course, can). Still, it’s in all of our interests, as Stephens recommends above, that the Strait of Hormuz be open for transport of oil (it carries 20% of the world’s oil). Bombing Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf, as Stephens recommends above, will raise oil prices even more, for 90% of Iran’s oil flows through pipelines to that bit of land.

And as I write this on Wednesday afternoon I see that three commercial ships have been attacked in the Strait of Hormuz, and Iran is laying mines there. From the WSJ:

Three commercial ships were struck around the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday as Iran stepped up its efforts to halt traffic through the critical oil conduit.

U.S. forces said they had destroyed 16 Iranian mine-laying vessels. The head of U.S. Central Command said that its focus remains on destroying Iran’s missiles and drones and degrading its ability to interrupt shipping in the strait.

The International Energy Agency said its member countries would release 400 million barrels of oil, the largest reserves distribution in history.

Other news tacked onto the above by the WSJ:

  • French President Emmanuel Macron is hosting a video conference call with leaders of the Group of Seven advanced economies to discuss ways to mitigate the energy crisis.
  • The U.S. told Israel that it was “not happy” with recent attacks on Iranian energy facilities and told Israel not to do it again unless approved by Washington.
  • Citigroup evacuated several buildings in the U.A.E. on Wednesday, after Iranian authorities said banks linked to the U.S. and Israel in the region were now targets.
  • One of the seven members of the Iranian women’s soccer delegation who were granted humanitarian visas by Australia has changed her mind.

*More from The World Hates Jews Department: Reader Bill sent some data from The Polarization Research Lab about Americans’ reactions to a Jew being killed for being a Jew, and the data aren’t pretty (bolding is theirs):

For six weeks our national polarization tracking survey included an item measuring public support for an explicitly antisemitic murder—an act motivated by a victim’s Jewish identity. Our data include 6,000 interviews from YouGov (May-July 2025).

Direct support for antisemitic murder is low but meaningful at 2.8%–a level comparable to what we measure for political violence. However, the key finding is the alarmingly high level of public indifference. Our study shows that 8.3% of Americans are indifferent to an explicitly antisemitic murder. This figure is four times larger than the indifference we observe toward other types of political murder. Together, 11.1% of Americans either support or are indifferent to the murder of a Jew simply because the victim was Jewish.

. . .The results presented in this report on support and indifference for antisemitic violence reveal that polling simply on support for political violence may mask deeply concerning patterns of indifference for hate-based violence. Our results are similar to those found in recent work by the Anti-Defamation League, where polling found that 87% of Americans disagree with recent acts of antisemitic violence and 85% disagree that violent acts were necessary. These data highlight the importance of asking unambiguous survey questions about political violence so that we can collect the most accurate data on what is driving hate in America and allocate resources with precision.

Survey design

The survey item was designed according to best practices for measuring political violence, ensuring high-quality data by confirming that:

  1. The crime’s motivation was unambiguous.
  2. The perpetrator had been adjudicated guilty, removing any doubt about the facts of the case.

Data were collected from high-quality samples using attention checks to ensure data integrity.

Survey question: “Alan Whitle was convicted of murder. He was arrested by police after surveillance footage was found showing him stabbing a prominent member of the local Jewish community to death. Whitle targeted the victim because the victim was Jewish, driven by opposition to the war in Gaza. Do you support or oppose Whitle’s actions?”

Reader Bill, who sent me the link to that report. , added in his email, “”I can’t believe this. . . .well perhaps, I can”

I told you that nobody likes the Jews! (Which reminds me of a joke that I’ll spare you right now.)

*And some light news (with a video) from the UPI’s “odd news” section: Four cheetah cubs were just born in the San Diego Zoo.

The San Diego Zoo Safari Park announced the births of four male cheetah cubs, the first of their species to be born at the facility since 2020.

The zoo said first-time mother Kelechi gave birth to the cubs on Jan. 24.

“Just as they do in native habitats, Kelechi and her cubs are bonding in a private, behind-the-scenes den at the Carnivore Conservation Center,” zoo officials wrote in the announcement. “The cubs are now emerging from their den, giving guests an opportunity to see them as part of an Ultimate Safari.”

The zoo said cheetah mothers are very attentive to their babies.

“During these vital early months, Kelechi spends much of her time grooming her cubs and keeping them close. As they continue to grow more curious and active, they play and climb all over her as she keeps a close eye on them, chirping to call them closer when needed,” the announcement said.

The brothers are expected to form a lifelong bond.

“Male cheetahs, like these four brothers, form groups called ‘coalitions’ that will hunt and travel together for life, a unique trait for this primarily solitary species,” officials said.

Here’s an adorable video. Listen to those babies squeak (adult cheetahs don’t roar, but chirp:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Andrzej have an amusing interchange:

Hili: When chaos starts to prevail, we need stable points of orientation.
Andrzej: Some search for the path by looking at the stars, others by inspecting the bowls.\

In Polish

Hili: Kiedy chaos zaczyna dominować potrzebujemy stałych punktów orientacyjnych.
Ja: Jedni szukają drogi patrząc w gwiazdy, inni sprawdzając miseczki.

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

From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Things With Faces:

Jango is in love with Hili, but the Princess spurns him:

From Masih: an Iranian official threatens all potential protestors. Oy!

From Colin: another journal falls by the wayside:

From Emma, going after an anti-HPV-vaxer. Christ on a bike, indeed!

Two from my feed.  First, another great post from Science Girl:

This is not abnormal in Istanbul. If you’re a cat lover, you must go there! English translation:

In Istanbul, cats aren’t “strays”—they’re full-fledged citizens.  There’s an unwritten law of collective care where shops and restaurants welcome them as part of the family. This little kitten isn’t begging for scraps; it’s savoring its rightful place at the table. A shining example of coexistence for the world! 

Or, “I’m Mehmet and I’ll be your server tonight.”

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

And two from Dr. Cobb. Take this first color test (I did 0.015, better than average):

For those who want to test their perception of colour, I made a little game called "What's My JND"www.keithcirkel.co.uk/whats-my-jnd…

— Keith Cirkel (@keithamus.social) 2026-03-10T09:58:08.322Z

. . . and weasel words:

This is hilarious.Also, completely enraging.

— Joshua Reed Eakle 🗽 (@joshuaeakle.com) 2026-03-11T01:56:44.249Z

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

March 11, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to a “hump day” (“Дзень горба” in Belarusian); it’s Wednesday, March 11, 2026 and Debunking Day. Here’s one: You don’t have free will, even if you feel like it. As biochemist Anthony Cashmore said in the PNAS paper that turned me into a hard determinist:

Here I argue that the way we use the concept of free will is nonsensical. The beauty of the mind of man has nothing to do with free will or any unique hold that biology has on select laws of physics or chemistry. This beauty lies in the complexity of the chemistry and cell biology of the brain, which enables a select few of us to compose like Mozart and Verdi, and the rest of us to appreciate listening to these compositions. The reality is, not only do we have no more free will than a fly or a bacterium, in actuality we have no more free will than a bowl of sugar. The laws of nature are uniform throughout, and these laws do not accommodate the concept of free will.

And don’t listen to those compatibilists who make up new definitions of free will so we can have it despite the fact that we can never do other than what we did. Compatibilists are worried that if people accept determinism (which happens to be true), we’ll all become nihilists and never get out of bed—and society will fall apart. (This is the identical argument made by those promoting religious belief.) They’re wrong. People do just fine without religion (Scandinavia) and “free will” (determinists like Sapolsky and I are neither nihilists nor criminals).

It’s also Johnny Appleseed Day (one of two days thought to be John Chapman’s birthday), National “Eat Your Noodles” Day (why the scare quotes?), Oatmeal Nut Waffles Day, and World Plumbing Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 11 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*According to the WSJ, Trump’s advisors are urging him to find an exit strategy from the war soon. This is in the face of big American opposition to our fight with Iran.

President Trump said he was eyeing a quick end to the war in Iran, as some of his advisers privately urged him to look for an exit plan amid spiking oil prices and concerns that a lengthy conflict could spark political backlash.

Speaking to reporters in Florida on Monday, Trump characterized the military mission as mostly having achieved its goals. “We’re way ahead of schedule,” he said, adding he thought it would be over “very soon.”

He didn’t provide a clear timeline for ending the Iran operation. When asked about helping the Iranian people who have risen up against the regime, Trump sounded ready for a quick conclusion rather than to continue to push for leadership change.

“We want a system that can lead to many years of peace, and if we can’t have that, we might as well get it over with right now,” Trump said. He said he was disappointed in the appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the slain Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as Iran’s new supreme leader, a move that signals that Tehran won’t back down.

From the NYT:

In the days after President Trump launched U.S. forces in an attack against Iran, support for the strikes is far lower than what it has been at the beginnings of previous foreign conflicts.

So far, polls have found that most Americans oppose the Iran attacks. Support ranges from 27 percent in a Reuters/Ipsos poll to 50 percent in a Fox News poll. The wide variation suggests that public opinion is still taking shape as more Americans learn details of the attacks and the aftermath.

But even the highest level of public support for this conflict falls far lower than that at the start of most other conflicts, including World War II, the Korean War and the Iraq War.

Here’s a graph from the NYT article showing how little support this war has compared to others (in the initial days):

With Americans that opposed to our striking Iran, this will constitute strong pressure on Trump to get the conflict over with.  It’s a bit disturbing that he’s not talking any more about regime change, and the nuclear issue seems to have disappeared.  Without resolution of those issues, what will a quick “exit” accomplish, then? But see the next item!

*HOWEVER, our “Secretary of War” has declared that the U.S. will keep fighting until Iran is defeated.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Iran is “badly losing” in the war and that Tuesday’s airstrikes would be the most intense yet of the campaign against the regime.

“We will not relent until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated, but we do so on our time line and at our choosing,” Hegseth told a joint press conference with Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

Earlier, Iran’s foreign minister said negotiations with the U.S. were off the table, after President Trump said the war will be over “very soon” but that the U.S. military campaign still has further to go.

And from the previous link:

The defense secretary set out three objectives for the U.S. campaign against Iran.

1. Destroy their missiles and their ability to make them.

2. Destroy their navy.

3. Permanently deny Iran nuclear weapons forever.

I don’t see how #3 can be accomplished without regime change.  It would require a binding agreement by Iran, along with repeated and unannounced inspections of Iran’s uranium-enrichment facilities. But even that is not enough, as we know from previous experience. And how do we permanently destroy their ability to make missiles?  Finally, they can always rebuild their navy. I fail to understand how these objectives can be achieved unless the government falls and is replaces by a democratic and friendlier one.

*CNN reports that the whereabouts of Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the late Ayatollah and Iran’s appointed new leader, are a mystery.

Nearly 48 hours since being appointed as the third supreme leader of the Islamic Republic in Iran’s history, Mojtaba Khamenei is nowhere to be seen.

No video message has been put out from him addressing the crowds of supporters that have gone onto the streets across Iran to pledge their allegiance to him, nor has a written statement been issued by him or his office. State media has relied on archive footage to introduce him to the audience, and state propaganda networks have heavily relied on AI video and stills to create an image of an all-wise leader who rightly inherits the mantle of leadership.

. . . One clue in the new leader’s absence may come from state media reports that he too has been injured in what’s being dubbed the “Ramadan War.” Perhaps his reported injuries have prevented him from appearing on video, though that wouldn’t explain the lack of a written statement. Another factor could be the disappointment expressed by US President Donald Trump in Mojtaba Khamenei’s appointment following his father’s assassination. Asked Monday if the new supreme leader has a target on his back, Trump responded that he didn’t want to say.

But even as the leader remains hidden from sight, it seems the wider body politic is still functioning with little suggestion of a change in the war posture; more public statements of allegiance have emerged from across the spectrum, with the likes of reformist former President Mohammad Khatami releasing a statement on Tuesday. Perhaps the mere thought that the position no longer remains vacant is enough to keep the war momentum going.

Or he could be scared of being killed. If any man in the world should be fearing for his life right now—save those on death row—it would be Khomenei, Jr.  The last two sentences make little sense to me.

*Over at Quillette, Brian Stewart tells us that, despite its many good programs, “The United Nations is going broke.”  But, adds Stewart, it has only itself to blame.

Yet the United Nations endures, not because its critics are wrong about its shortcomings, but because it’s better than nothing. This is faint praise, I realise. Still, it’s sobering to consider that, for all its flaws, the UN remains the only permanent standing forum where representatives of every nation can speak to their international counterparts—and, occasionally, even find ways to co-operate productively.

To give one example, it was in large part thanks to the World Health Organization, a specialised agency of the United Nations, that smallpox was eradicated in the 1970s. Other agencies and related organisations include the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, International Atomic Energy Agency, International Court of Justice, International Monetary Fund, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and the World Bank. All of these multilateral entities have fairly earned their own critics. However, it’s hard to argue that the world would be a safer, healthier, or more culturally enriched place if they did not exist.

But the United Nations now faces a crisis that threatens to impair its global work. On 30 January, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that the body is on the brink of “imminent financial collapse,” citing record-high unpaid dues totalling nearly $1.6 billion (all figures US) and outdated budget rules. He cautioned that the UN could run out of cash by mid-2026, and urged member states to pay their assessed contributions in full and on time, or agree to fundamental financial reforms.

The U.S. has been responsible for a lot of the UN’s financial woes. Some of our refusal to pay is good (UNRWA), but other victims of withholding, like cuts to WHO contributions, don’t seem to deserve it.

The United States has long been the single biggest contributor to the UN’s regular budget and peacekeeping operations. That role has granted Washington outsized influence within international circles, but has also fuelled persistent domestic resentment among critics who ask why American taxpayers should underwrite an institution that often seems hostile to western interests.

As one might expect, Donald Trump is sympathetic to this constituency, and his administration (both during its first and second terms) has imposed sweeping cuts on payments to UN bodies, including the World Health Organization and the Human Rights Council. It also permanently halted funding to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), which has been accused of serving the interests of Hamas. Last year, the Trump administration announced its withdrawal from the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), on the basis that the agency promotes “woke” and “divisive” cultural postures. This is actually the second time that Trump has ordered this move: He withdrew from UNESCO in 2019, but the United States rejoined in 2023 under Joe Biden’s watch.

Stewart also lauds the UN’s peacekeeping operations, with eleven underway. UNIFIL, the one in Lebanon, is however a huge waste of money, as UNIFIL does nothing to carry out its mission. Here’s a map of the rest of them:

(from article): A map of all UN field missions. Special Political Missions are indicated in purple. Peacekeeping operations are indicated in blue.

In the end, Stewart argues that the UN’s “political theater” has acted to scupper its mission and reduce the dosh the organization rakes in:

It’s a pity that all of this substantive work often gets overshadowed by the performative political theatre that grabs headlines. But to some extent, UN officials only have themselves to blame. The UN chief recently congratulated Iran’s mullahs on the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution—which, in case anyone needs reminding, ushered in the ruthless theocracy that just slaughtered tens of thousands of protesters.

This kind of misjudgment contaminates the whole UN brand, not just the organisation’s top administrator. And it isn’t surprising that politicians in many parts of the world are getting tired of paying his invoices.

It’s a pity that the people who run the UN or its agencies are so often hamhanded. If they’d chosen some good people unlike António Guterres and Francesca Albanese, the positive effect would ramify throughout the organization. The UN needs a complete restructuring and an ethical leadership.

*You’ll remember that the Iranian women’s soccer team, before playing a match in Australia, refused to sing their country’s national anthem. It was reported that on the team bus they were making the “SOS” sign, for they’d surely face punishment when they went home. Now I see this with a link to the story that five of them have defected (click photo for link to Jerusalem Post story).  Also, Trump offered to take all 26 members of the team into the U.S. if they wanted to come.

Five members of the Iranian women’s soccer team, who visited Australia to play in the Women’s Asian Cup, were granted permission to stay in the country on Tuesday after international concern broke out over their safety.

An inside source told CNN that two additional people, a player and a member of staff, had also decided to stay in Australia, though officials have yet to confirm.

Last Monday, the players were recorded standing in silence during their national anthem, an action taken by hardliners in Iran as treason.

The women were reportedly forced to sing the anthem during their following two matches, and perform the military salute, but were filmed signing “Help” as they were driven away after their 2-0 loss to the Philippines last week.

Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, who has agreed to provide the women with visas, told reporters that the other team members were also welcome to stay in Australia, noting that the initial five players wanted to stay.

Australian officials identified the players as Zahra Sarbali Alishah, Mona Hamoudi, Zahra Ghanbari, Fatemeh Pasandideh, and Atefeh Ramezanizadeh. They were staying at an undisclosed location under police protection, officials said.

Simon Leske, the co-founder and director of Kindra Migration Lawyers, told The Jerusalem Post that Burke had used his unique powers to grant the women visas and that the players had likely received the subclass 449 temporary humanitarian visa.

“I believe, based on my experience, that it’s likely to be the subclass 449, humanitarian stay, temporary visa, which is a visa that can be used by the minister in very exceptional circumstances where there’s a need for a very quick grant to allow an individual to stay, and would then allow, subsequently, for the minister to grant a permanent visa, and that might take a little bit longer,” Leske explained.

While not able to comment on the diplomatic implications of the move, Leske shared that many Australians campaigned tirelessly for the women, including members of Australia’s own Iranian diaspora community.

“The fact that the minister actually traveled to Brisbane to meet with the players is quite an exceptional situation. I believe that’s probably due to the pressure within the community to show support,” he explained.

This is very heartening. The players surely knew that they would face retribution from Iran, and I’m wondering whether the other 21 players are actually going back to Iran. They will be regarded as traitors, and I wouldn’t bet on them surviving.  Of course those who stay in Australia or the U.S. face the horrible possibility that their relatives will be punished, so it wasn’t an easy decision. But they decided not to sing the national anthem, and surely they knew what that would lead to. I applaud them.  And see the two tweets from Masih below.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s again wondering, “Where’s the kibble?” But unlike Godot, the kibble always appears.

Hili: Life is a constant waiting.
Andrzej: For what?
Hili: For the next meal.

In Polish:

Hili: Życie jest ciągłym czekaniem.
Ja: Na co?
Hili: Na kolejny posiłek.

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

From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices; this place is looking for constipated employees):

From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:

From the Unitarian Universalist Hysterical Society (you have to be old to get this one):

Two tweets from Masih today, both about the Iranian women footballers who refused to go back to Iran. Sound up:

And some of the defectors:

From UBC political scientist Sally Sharif via Luana. LLMs are “Large language modules,” a form of AI.  AI is going to be the death of universities, or so Luana maintains. (I am agnostic right now.)

A useful idiot:

From reader Bryan, who says, “I used a straightedge on my phone screen, and also looked without glasses – this illusion is amazing.”  Yep, the lines are straight.

One from my feed: those toes are strong!

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial. Imagine hearing this speech as soon as you arrived at Auschwitz (and survived the “selection”:

One from Dr. Cobb. Mother Earwig (sounds like a Beatrix Potter book):

Female Common Earwigs Forficula auricularia are very good mothers. After spending the winter guarding her batch of eggs she cares for the nymphs for several weeks and regurgitates food for them. The nymphs will disperse when they are large enough to fend for themselves. Dartmoor, Devon

— John Walters (@johnwalterswildife.bsky.social) 2026-03-10T10:11:28.619Z

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

March 10, 2026 • 6:45 am

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

Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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

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

Da Nooz:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And from the WSJ:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mamdani is different. Here was his statement:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili insulted Andrzej!

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

In Polish:

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

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

From Stacy (it’s true!):

From Jesus of the Day:

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

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

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

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

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

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

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

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

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

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

Look at this mantis!

 

Monday: Hili dialogue

March 9, 2026 • 6:45 am

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Da Nooz:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

In Polish:

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

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

From Stacy:

From CinEmma:

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

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

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

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

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

Two from my feed. First, lovely salticids:

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

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

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday: Hili dialogue

March 8, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Sunday, March 8, 2026: the Sabbath for goyische cats. It’s also Daylight Savings Time, so make sure you’ve reset your clocks an hour forward (those with iPhones get it automatically, but don’t forget the microwave clock and other antiquated timepieces). Stanford University finds that these time changes, by disrupting our circadian rhythms, can be harmful to our health. Watch this: time changes make us fat and have strokes!  Seriously, we need a system where the time never changes:

It’s also International Women’s Day, Check your Batteries Day, and National Peanut Cluster Day.

There’s a new Google Doodle today, and, well, I’ll let you figure it out, and then click on it to see where it goes:

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

Da Nooz:

*War update from the NYT: Trump is vowing to hit Iran even harder, as the Islamic Republic apologized to its neighboring states (save Israel, of course) for firing missiles and drones at them.

President Trump vowed in a Saturday morning social media post that Iran would soon be “hit very hard” and that the week-old Israeli-American aerial onslaught would expand to target new “areas and groups of people.”

Earlier, the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said in a televised address that Mr. Trump’s demand for unconditional surrender was “a dream that our enemies will take to the grave.” Shortly after Mr. Pezeshkian’s speech, air-raid sirens rang out in Bahrain and Qatar, a sign Iran’s retaliatory attacks were still continuing.

Mr. Pezeshkian, apparently seeking to blunt anger at Iran in the Arab world, also apologized to Persian Gulf nations for launching strikes into their territories. That comment appeared to prompt Mr. Trump to claim Iran had “surrendered to its Middle East neighbors.”

But the Iranian president said later on social media that Iran would keep trying to damage American bases in the Gulf. “We have not attacked our friendly and neighboring countries,” he said. “Rather, we have targeted U.S. military bases, facilities, and installations in the region.”

The details of American attacks on Iran on Saturday remained unclear. Senior U.S. officials last briefed the public on the fighting two days ago. On Friday, the U.S. military released a statement saying that U.S. forces had struck at least 3,000 targets since the war began last weekend, up sharply from 2,000 strikes earlier this week, but provided few details.

Israeli attacks hit Mehrabad Airport in Tehran overnight, the military said, setting it ablaze. The targets were planes affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the military said. Tehran residents described massive balls of fire and smoke billowing into the air.

In an interview with NBC News two nights ago, Iran’s foreign minister denied a lot of allegations, including that Iran has created an internet blackout, which it clearly has. The Islamic Republic is digging in, and this means, given Trump’s demands for “unconditional surrender” (which he may not mean), the war is going to drag on.  Meanwhile, more and more people on the Left are demonstrating and crying, “Hands off Iran.” If you subscribe to the NYT, look at the front page this morning; it’s all about how bad this war is and so on.  They make no pretense now about not being biased: they are criticizing and not reporting (I’m talking about the news itself; the op-eds are even more slanted).

*Speaking of the war, Andrew Sullivan continues to get my dander up with his continued demonizing of Israel. His latest Weekly Dish column is called, “The war he’s always wanted,” with the subtitle, “A moment of triumph for Benjamin Netanyahu; and of democratic collapse in the US.”  What he means is that the Constitution mandates that only Congress can declare war, but Trump is flouting that. (So did earlier Presidents, including Clinton and Obama).  Some excerpts:

We had a functioning liberal democracy then, a constitutional system that was imperfectly but actually followed, a responsible president, and international law on our side.

Today, we have precisely none of the above.

We’ve had no debate; we’ve had no search for international support or allies; we’ve ignored the UN entirely; the Congress didn’t debate, let alone vote, in advance; and the American people were told about the war after it had already begun. All of this renders this war illegal and unconstitutional and outrageous, and the fact that most people have just accepted it is proof, if we still needed it, that the extinction-level event I predicted in 2016 is now well in the rearview mirror.

In plain English, this is what is in front of our nose: a corrupt, deranged monarch pursuing an illegal and immoral war primarily to benefit a foreign country. This war makes us a textbook case of how democracies stagger into tyranny and endless war.

And how they rot from within. I watched this week as the secretary of defense did his Rumsfeld-On-Meth routine. But Rumsfeld would never express the following indecency:

This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.

That’s how fascists describe war, not Americans. It’s the mark of barbarians, not Christians. . .

. . . .How then did this almost incredible thing, the one thing we swore we’d never do again — another regime-change war in the Middle East — happen before most Americans had even heard of it, let alone debated it? It’s stupefying that so many have already moved on from this foundational question.

One answer is that liberal democracy was deliberately crippled — because if we’d actually followed the Constitution, we wouldn’t be at war right now. The public is opposed by a big margin; the House vote on whether to suspend support just narrowly failed 212-219. (If all the Dems had voted for it, it would have won.) A real debate — with Gaza fresh in the minds of Dems and with MAGA deeply divided — and this war would never have started. If it was to happen, it had to be sprung on us.

The other answer, provided by the administration, is that Israel bounced us into it. They did so by deciding to assassinate the entire Iranian leadership (an act that violates all international law and sets a truly terrifying precedent for leaders of all countries, including our own). That Israeli decision instantly guaranteed America’s entry into the war, regardless of the will of the American people

Sullivan really doesn’t like Israel, and this column is, to me, over the top. If we conduct a secret strike, we don’t debate it before Congress, as leaks are almost certain. And Israel has been in an existential crisis with respect to Iran for years and years. Sullivan doesn’t think that: he thinks that Israel is just fine and Jewish Americans are just doing their thing when they lobby the Administration. Perhaps if Sullivan lived in Israel he’d have a different take. Yes, he may be right about the futility of this war, like the futility of other Middle Eastern conflicts, but even our European allies wish for the death of the Iranian theocracy. I’m getting tired of his rants.

*Even more on the war: the WSJ (and other sources) report that it was likely the U.S. who struck a girls school in Iran, killing over 150 people (the number of children isn’t yet known, but surely many were killed).

U.S. military investigators think American forces likely were responsible for a strike that killed dozens of children at a girls elementary school in Iran, a U.S. official said. The investigation hasn’t reached a final conclusion, the official said.

Shajarah Tayyebeh Girls’ School, in the town of Minab near the Strait of Hormuz, was hit Saturday on the first day of the U.S.-Israeli air campaign in what appears to be the deadliest strike of the war. Iran said more than 160 people were killed, including many children, a figure that couldn’t be independently verified.

The school is located on the edge of a compound linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite branch of Iran’s armed forces, according to an analysis of images by The Wall Street Journal. There are indications the school building had previously been used as an IRGC headquarters, the official said.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said this week that the U.S. is investigating the strike. The U.S. official cautioned that the investigation was in its early stages. A U.S. Central Command spokesperson declined to comment on the incident.

Reuters first reported that U.S. officials believed the U.S. military was likely responsible for the incident at the school.

The U.S. hasn’t publicly acknowledged that its forces struck the compound. Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday that the U.S. carried out strikes along the southern coast of Iran to degrade its naval and missile capabilities before bringing its offensive further inland.

Iran has blamed both the U.S. and Israel for the strike. While the U.S. and Israel are coordinating their actions in Iran, they are largely operating in different geographical areas. An Israeli military official said the military was looking into the school incident but wasn’t aware of an Israeli strike in that area.

It’s not certain yet who did this, and if Israel or the U.S. did, it’s a black mark on the American attacks. Granted, the school abutted a military target, and so this could be considered “collateral damage”, but think of the lives of all those girls, and of the grief of their parents.  So far both Israel and the U.S. seem to have been careful to take out only military targets, and this is a sad error (no Western country would try to destroy a school for girls). But it’s not a reason to end military action in Iran.

*We have freedom of speech in the U.S., so you can say whatever you want so long as it doesn’t fall under the exceptions to the First Amendment. You can, for example, applaud Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.  ‘And that in fact is what the wife of Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of NYC did.  The NYT has the story (frankly, I’m surprised the Israel-hating NYT printed it!).

Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Friday sought to create a wall between his leadership of New York City and the private views of his wife, Rama Duwaji, after being asked about her social media activity surrounding the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Ms. Duwaji liked posts on Instagram that were supportive of the Palestinian cause immediately after the attacks, in which roughly 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage, according to the Israeli authorities. Israeli military forces responded with military action in Gaza that has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

The mayor said his wife’s views should not be subject to broad public scrutiny. They were not married when she liked the posts; the couple wed in early 2025, and he did not enter the Democratic primary for mayor until October 2024.

“My wife is the love of my life and she’s also a private person who has held no formal position on my campaign or in my City Hall,” Mr. Mamdani said during an unrelated news conference Friday morning. “I, however, was elected to represent all eight and a half million people in this city, and I believe that it’s my responsibility, because of that role, to answer any questions about my thoughts and my policies and my decisions.”

Mr. Mamdani was responding to a Jewish Insider article that highlighted a handful of instances in which Ms. Duwaji had liked Instagram posts supportive of the Palestinian cause immediately after the Oct. 7 attacks.

One post, shared by an account called The Slow Factory, a social justice nonprofit, on the day of the Hamas attack, showed a bulldozer that appeared to breach the barrier between Israel and Gaza. The caption read, “Breaking the walls of apartheid and military occupation” with the date of the attack beneath.

Ms. Duwaji, who is Syrian-American, liked the post. She did not comment for the Jewish Insider article. A City Hall spokeswoman on Friday told The New York Times that Ms. Duwaji had no comment.

In another example, she liked an Instagram post that showed people celebrating atop what appeared to be an Israeli military vehicle with the words “Free Palestine” beneath it. The article also included posts she liked that described resistance as an act of “self-defense” and a “human right” for people under occupation.

Mr. Mamdani, New York City’s first Muslim mayor and a democratic socialist, has long criticized Israel and defended Palestinians — an issue that inspired him to get into politics. He has described the war in Gaza as genocide and has said he does not believe Israel should be a Jewish state.

Here’s a tweet about the NYT’s hypocrisy on the issue (h/t Luana):

And the NYT has changed its headline from the original (h/t Orli). Here’s the latest headline:

and here’s (at bottom) is the original headline.  I’m not sure why they made the change, but I don’t agree that his wife’s views are “no one’s business.” Of course she can have and promulgate such views if she wants, but she can also be detested for them. And knowing Mamdani, I would bet that he actually shares her views but keeps quiet about it. After all, if she really “likes” the October 7 attacks, how can he eat dinner with, or get into bed with, someone who approved of this butchery? I see Mamdani as an Islamist and antisemite, but others of course disagree. What puzzles me is why so many Jewish people voted for him.

Screenshot

*From the AP: a marble bust of Christ in a Roman basilica has now been attributed (by one researcher) to Michelangelo. Who knows—she may be right! Excerpts:

An independent researcher claimed on Wednesday that a marble bust of Christ in a Roman church is by Michelangelo, the latest purported attribution to the Renaissance genius who is one of the most imitated artists in the world.

The unverified claims by Valentina Salerno has unsettled Renaissance scholars, especially since a recent sketch of a foot that was attributed to Michelangelo, but disputed by some as a copy, recently fetched $27.2 million at a Christie’s auction.

Given the stakes — and Salerno’s suggestion that several other works can now be attributed to Michelangelo based on her documentary research — many leading experts have declined to comment.

Salerno has published her theory on the commercial website academia.edu, a non-peer reviewed social networking site academics use, and announced the first “rediscovery” at a news conference Wednesday.

Michelangelo Buonarroti, who lived from 1475-1564, created some of the most spectacular works of the Renaissance: the imposing statue of David in Florence and the delicate Pieta in St. Peter’s Basilica, the Sistine Chapel ceiling and “The Last Judgment” fresco behind the chapel’s altar. Salerno now says she has located another — a bust of Christ in the Basilica of Sant’Agnese Fuori le Mura, listed by Italy’s Culture Ministry as anonymous from the Roman school of the 16th century.

She is not the first to claim it. In 1996, Michelangelo expert William Wallace wrote an article in ArtNews about the well-documented history of wrongly attributing works to Michelangelo. It quoted the 19th century French author Stendhal as writing that at the Sant’Agnese church, “we noticed a head of the savior which I should swear is by Michelangelo.”

. . . Salerno suggests that several documents in the first few hundred years after Michelangelo’s death correctly attribute the work to the artist but that in 1984 a scholar debunked it, erroneously in her view, and it has remained wrongly attributed ever since.

Here’s a video that shows you what the bust looks like. It’s certainly beautiful and of Michelangelo’s style and quality, but stay tuned. You don’t need to understand the Italian.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is asking Big Questions again:

Hili: What is eternity?
Andrzej: Difficult to explain, a sort of self-renewing present, with no beginning and no end.

In Polish:

Hili: Co to jest wieczność?
Ja: Trudno wyjaśnić, rodzaj samoodnawialnej teraźniejszości, bez początku i końca.

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

From Puns:

From Now That’s Wild:

From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:

Masih’s pinned tweet in which she talks to Bill Maher about how Amercans ignore the plight of Iranians:

Van Jones echoes Masih; he’s getting more “politically incorrect” all the time, and he works for CNN!

Emma always puts some humor in her posts:

Two from my feed. If you mock accordion music, think twice:

Three-handed spontaneous boogie-woogie duet:

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

And two from Dr. Cobb. The first one’s from The New Republic, and the guy is horrible!:

Conservative MAGA ideologue Matt Schlapp has attempted to justify the killing of more than 100 young girls at an elementary school in southern Iran, by claiming they were saved from religious extremism.

— Bruce Little (@brucedlittle.bsky.social) 2026-03-06T22:14:16.334Z

. . . and Matthew’s own Lived Experience. Oy!

I was at London Zoo years ago and the vicuna made a noise at me. Feeling clever, I repeated it back; it said the same thing, so I said again. Then it spat me right in the eyes.* It was saying “You lookin’ at me?” and I was unwittingly saying that back. * An unnoticed sign said “this animal spits”.

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-03-07T15:04:05.162Z

Saturday: Hili dialogue

March 7, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to CaturSaturday, March 7, 2026, and National Cereal Day. I rarely eat cereal, but when I do it’s usually Raisin Bran, Shredded Wheat, or my friend Betsy’s homemade granola. Below you can see most of how they make shredded wheat, but how the wheat shreds are converted into biscuits remains a trade secret.

DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME BEGINS AT 2 a.m. TOMORROW (i.e., 2 hours after midnight tonight)!  Don’t forget to set your clocks forward before you go to bed tonight, and we’ll either lose an hour of sleep or be really tired on Sunday.

It’s also National Crown Roast of Pork Day and National Flapjack Day (American argot for “pancakes”).

Our ducks are still here and have been well trained, swimming quickly to me for food when I whistle. I haven’t yet named them.  Oh, and Simon, visiting relatives in Old Blighty, sent me a picture of a pint of my favorite British beer. But it does me little good just to look at a pint across the ocean:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 7 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Israel now seems to want to take out Hezbollah for good. They’ve increased their strikes on the terrorists in Lebanon, and even struck targets in Beirut. In the meantime, Israel has bombed (again) a bunker used by the vaporized ex-Supreme leader Ali Khamenei.

President Trump on Friday demanded “unconditional surrender” by Iran, saying there would be no negotiated end to the war, while Israeli officials said their forces had destroyed a Tehran bunker that had been used by Iran’s supreme leader, in a fresh wave of heavy strikes on Tehran.

The Israeli military also pounded the southern outskirts of Beirut and issued more evacuation warnings in Lebanon as it intensified its campaign there against Iran-backed Hezbollah militants. About 300,000 people in Lebanon have fled their homes since the bombing began, the Norwegian Refugee Council estimated.

Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social that there “will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” He made the post after Masoud Pezeshkian, the Iranian president, said that some countries had begun what he called “mediation efforts,” without elaborating on who was involved.

The comments highlighted the shifting U.S. stances in the war that began with U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran six days ago. Mr. Trump told The Atlantic on Sunday, “They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them.” And Iran’s intelligence ministry has reached out to the C.I.A. through intermediaries to discuss terms for ending the war, according to officials briefed on the outreach.

I guess there may be other theocrats hiding in a sub-bunker below the already-bombed bunker. As for Hezbollah, the Lebanese government is still trying to get it to go away:

For much of the past year, Lebanon’s government has walked a tightrope in its dealings with the Iranian-backed armed group Hezbollah as it has moved to disarm the militants and curb their influence in Lebanese politics.

Now, as Lebanon faces a rapidly escalating conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, the country is waiting to see if the government seizes on this moment to take decisive action against Hezbollah — and how the group will respond.

Overnight, the Israeli military pounded Hezbollah in the southern edge of the Lebanese capital with explosions that could be heard across the city. The bombardment displaced thousands of people from the densely packed area who spent the night on the streets of downtown Beirut.

“This is the tipping point,” said Sami Nader, the director of the Institute of Political Science at Saint Joseph University of Beirut. “Either we have the dark scenario where the army clashes with Hezbollah and there is civil strife, or Hezbollah abides by the government decision and they disarm.”

When it comes to Hezbollah, Lebanese officials have had to strike a delicate balance over the past year: appeasing demands from the United States and other allies to act quickly and decisively against the group while proceeding cautiously to avoid clashes between Lebanese soldiers and Hezbollah militants, a scenario that many fear could unleash civil conflict in Lebanon.

Hezbollah will not abide by the Lebanese government’s request, nor by the U.N. Security Council’s demand that they stop attacking Israel.  What will happen? Given that Hezbollah is, like Hamas—a death cult whose member really do think they’re going to Paradise if they die—what impetus do they have to surrender? And the UN really should do its job, but the 10,000 UNIFIL soldiers in the country are cowards, pure and simple. They have a job to do but are too afraid to do it.

*I don’t know if this is an act of war, but it does show Russia supporting Iran by passing onto the Islamic Republic the locations of American military assets.

Russia is providing Iran with targeting information to attack American forces in the Middle East, the first indication that another major U.S. adversary is participating — even indirectly — in the war, according to three officials familiar with the intelligence.

The assistance, which has not been previously reported, signals that the rapidly expanding conflict now features one of America’s chief nuclear-armed competitors with exquisite intelligence capabilities.

Since the war began Saturday, Russia has passed Iran the locations of U.S. military assets, including warships and aircraft, said the three officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.

“It does seem like it’s a pretty comprehensive effort,” one of the people said.

Reached by The Washington Post on Friday, Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, declined to comment on the intelligence findings. Moscow has called for an end to the war, which it labeled an “unprovoked act of armed aggression.”

The extent of Russia’s targeting assistance to Iran was not entirely clear. The Iranian military’s own ability to locate U.S. forces has been degraded less than a week into the fighting, the officials said.

Six U.S. troops were killed and several others were injured by an Iranian drone attack Sunday in Kuwait. Iran has fired thousands of one-way attack drones and hundreds of missiles at U.S. military positions, embassies and civilians, even as the joint American-Israeli campaign has hit more than 2,000 Iranian targets — including ballistic missile sites, naval assets and the country’s leadership.

Iran is running out of missiles (I don’t know about drones), and if that’s the case Russian intelligence will be of little use. Russia won’t dare attack the U.S. itself, for we’re a member of NATO and that would trigger massive retaliation—World War III in effect.  I’m not sure how we know that the Russians are giving info to Iran, but monitoring of other countries has grown very sophisticated.  Iran has lost, as has Hamas, but in both cases the elimination of both terrorist groups is necessary if the U.S. wants stable and democratic regimes. That ain’t gonna happen in Gaza, and we have no idea what will happen in Iran. There are reports that the reliable Kurds are massing to help attack the Iranian regime. They won’t ever run Iran, but they have been plumping for their own state forever. Maybe they can carve one out of Iran in a settlement.

*The Wall Street Journal and other sources report an unexpected downturn in the economy, with the U.S. losing 92,000 jobs last month.

The U.S. lost 92,000 jobs in February, a sign that the job market continues to struggle across a broad range of sectors.

The employment numbers, reported Friday by the Labor Department, fell far short of January’s gain of 126,000 jobs. They were also much worse than the gain of 50,000 jobs that economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had expected to see.

The unemployment rate ticked slightly higher to 4.4%. While that is still low, the Friday report exposes troubling weaknesses in a labor market that has shown very little employment growth in recent months.

Healthcare jobs, which have propped up the labor market for months, collapsed. A strike in California was partly to blame, but it also highlighted problems in the rest of the market. Private-sector jobs fell by 86,000.

Employment growth slowed markedly last year, and the U.S. has now lost jobs in three of the past six months. Many employers have been unnerved by back-and-forth tariff policies. Expectations that artificial intelligence could reduce staffing needs have cut into hiring plans. What’s more, the Trump administration has also slashed the federal workforce.

“This is about a labor market that is so soft that it cannot withstand a strike” of 31,000 healthcare workers, wrote inflation Insights economist Omair Sharif in a note to clients. “Because no one else is hiring.”

Although my dad was an economist, I don’t know how serious this is, but a report of job loss will hurt the Republicans come November and also in the 2028 election.  But what’s more worrisome is not who runs the country, but the plight of people who are out of work. Below is the WSJ’s figure on jobs growth and loss; note that the green bars below the line indicate job losses. This is the fourth loss during the Trump administration, but not the largest, and a big difference from the Biden Administration’s record on this statistic.

*As usual, I’ll steal few items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news-and-snark column in The Free Press, called this week “TGIF: Get them before they get me.”

→ Are those bomb instructions? Hasan Piker, a major (perhaps the top) progressive influencer in America, is now telling his followers how one could really easily practice drone warfare. See, suicide bombing is lame now, he explains, unless you’re really just in it for the love of the game (his words). Instead, try this: “Just make fucking drones. . . . You can purchase them in the online marketplace. China literally sells, like, explosive ordnance delivery mechanisms that you can put to a DGI [ed note: DJI] drone that you can purchase, like, at virtually no significant cost.” Wow, that’s so simple. It’s so easy. It’s almost like I, a disaffected bro in Flatbush who just lost his job to AI, should try that. Even terrorism is going remote. No self-respecting millennial would take an in-person terrorism job. It’s 2026; we’re outsourcing to Chinese marketplaces for terror.

→ NPR becomes HOW: NPR changed the iconic letters on their D.C. headquarters. A photo from the NYT’s Ben Mullin:

Apparently they also did WHO. And WHY. The statement they gave: “These three-letter questions are a rallying cry to show that NPR’s mission of providing trustworthy, reliable journalism endures, and that curiosity can’t be silenced.” I do really want to know WHY and WHO and also HOW this got approved, because it seems like something the Wesleyan student newspaper came up with. But I won’t ask more. I don’t want to kick NPR while it’s down, even if it’s called HOW now. HOW NOW? No bad ideas in a brainstorm. Also, I stand by my belief that the head of NPR is a hottie, and we 10s have to stand together, so I’m always rooting for those tote bags. NPR! How! Now! Huh? Who? Us!

→ Not the “diversity is our strength” moment: After a knifeman from Chad went on a stabbing spree in Edinburgh, Scotland, this week, the leader of the Edinburgh City Council used it as a time to remind everyone how great diversity is. “Edinburgh is a proud, welcoming, and diverse city. Our biggest strength lies in those who live here—people from all walks of life, cultures, and backgrounds—and we all have a part to play in making sure it stays that way.” In other words, a classic diversity is our strength quote. I’m all for diversity, personally, but is this the exact right moment? When there’s still blood in the streets? As news comes that the stabber was trying to get into a nursery school, I wouldn’t make this a big political pro-immigration moment, no. Not me. But I guess I’m not the one on the Edinburgh City Council. When a man from Chad goes on a stabbing spree, we can just say it’s very bad and can’t happen. Then we save the diversity is our strength quote for like, a food festival.

*Many of us have been concerned about the erosion of free speech in the UK, largely propelled by dislike of so-called “hate speech”, which, in turn, derives from wokeness. The National Review reports on “A temporary respite for free speech in Britain” (article archived here, there’s another report of this incident at FIRE.) It’s about a Kurdish/Armenian asylum seeker who burned a Quran in London and was relentlessly pursued by the law:

In February of last year, a 50-year-old Kurdish-Armenian man named Hamit Coskun burned a Koran outside the Turkish consulate in London. In June, a court convicted him of a “religiously aggravated public order offense,” but this conviction was subsequently overturned in October. Last week, the High Court dismissed a Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) appeal of this overturning, effectively putting an end to the process, as the case has not been referred to the supreme court.

Coskun’s case represents a rare victory for free speech in Britain. Sadly, it is likely to be short-lived.

Hamit Coskun is not the first person to have suffered legal trials due to burning the Koran. As early as 2010, a British schoolgirl was arrested for burning several pages out of a Koran on a video uploaded to Facebook. In Denmark, a man was convicted back in 2017 after filming himself burning a Koran, though outrage over this conviction led to the repeal of Danish blasphemy laws. In Sweden, Koran burner Salwan Momika was convicted of agitation against an ethnic group. Sadly, Momika was murdered while livestreaming on TikTok from his apartment the day before the conviction was to be announced (the suspect remains at large).

In the Coskun case, CPS [Crown Prosecution Service] bizarrely argued that the fact that Coskun was violently attacked by a man carrying a blade constituted proof that Coskun’s actions were offensive, which the judge agreed with. Had the conviction stood, a dangerous precedent would have been established.

From FIRE; get a load of this (my bold)

Coskun was soon attacked by two men including one carrying a knife, who told Coskun he was “going to kill him” and then beat and kicked him. That man later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 20 weeks in prison and community service, but his prison sentence was suspended. Ultimately, he would serve no time for the assault.

In June, Coskun was found guilty in the Westminster Magistrates’ Court and fined £240 ($321). Incredibly, Judge John McGarva argued “That the conduct was disorderly is no better illustrated than by the fact that it led to serious public disorder involving him being assaulted by 2 different people.” In other words, being the victim of an attack was evidence of his disorderly conduct because the attack was disorderly.

No jail time for the knife man! But Coskun could have gotten jail.  And of course prosecution’s argument is completely bonkers!  As FIRE notes correctly, there are no blasphemy laws in Britain, but punishing Coskun comes perilously close to that. And he wouldn’t have been punished at all if he’d burned a Bible or the Bhagavad Gita.  We should pay attention to what’s going on in the UK because they are our closest “relatives.”  Yet their treatment of free speech, which our founders saw fit to make the First Amendment to the Constitution, is completely wonky, and is out of control. Part of that is due largely to fear of offending Muslims, who could respond, as they did with Coskun, violently. That is not a reason to allow free speech for some but but not for others, even if they both involve criticizing religion. FIRE:

This is a notable win for free expression in a country where arrests for subjectively offensive speech have become alarmingly common. But UK citizens should remain deeply concerned about their ability to express their thoughts on important matters like religion or politics — even, or especially, in unpopular ways.

This chain of events, from the original charge referencing the “religious institution of Islam” to the guilty finding citing the attack against Coskun to prosecutors’ refusal to let this case drop, represent an alarming effort to enforce what certainly look like blasphemy restrictions.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is still asking Big Questions, but they somehow always manage to involve food:​

Hili: Struggle with the adversities of fate, or curl up in a ball and go to sleep?
Andrzej: It is still early – keep fighting until dinner.

In Polish:

Hili: Zmagać się z przeciwnościami losu, czy zwinąć się w kłębek i zasnąć?
Ja: Jest jeszcze wcześnie powalcz do kolacji.

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

From The Language Nerds (you should understand this one):

From Now That’s Wild:

From This Cat is Guilty:

Andrzej posted a photo of him walking the upstairs lodgers’ d*g, with the translated Polish caption, “And in spring – let spring come, not Poland, I’ll see.”  I’m baffled, but it’s a good photo.

Masih goes after Spain in Spain, which is taking Iran’s side (video is about 7 minutes long). Translation from the Persian (Masih speaks in English; do listen):

What Masih Alinejad did yesterday at the Spanish Congress was unparalleled. I can’t recall anyone supporting the people of Iran in Spain in this way, or so openly lashing out at the duplicity and hypocrisy of the Spanish government like this. El Mundo and El País have run multiple in-depth reports on her. She’s made headlines. It’s beautiful.

From Luana, who says, “Another lunatic let loose in New York City”:

From Jez, another tweet explaining how Israel managed to track down the Ayatollah and bomb him and his associates:

Two from my feed. First, a cat who really loves music:

Turkeys out for blood (or packages):

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

And two from Dr. Cobb, who is now somewhat richer. First, a video of a lovely fox who lives in Kew Gardens in London:

Timeline cleanse. This is Checko, a 4-year-old fox who lives in Kew Gardens

— Rowan Hooper (@rowhoop.bsky.social) 2026-03-01T14:47:33.353Z

Matthew disses herbivores!

It must be really boring being a herbivore – chompchompchomp all day long. If you’re a ruminant, you then have to lie down and chew your own spew (or if you’re a rabbit, stick your nose by your bum and eat your own poo so it goes through a second time). It all strikes me as rather dull.

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-02-27T12:45:32.060Z

Friday: Hili dialogue

March 6, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the first Friday in March: March the sixth to be precise. It’s The Day of the Dude, celebrating the hero of the movie “The Big Lebowski“, released on this day in 1998. Here’s the trailer. And the dude abides.

It’s also Alamo Day (the battle for the structure ended badly for the Texans on this day in 1836),  National Frozen Food Day, National Oreo Cookie Day (they were first sold on this day in 1912), and National White Chocoalte Cheesecake Day.

There’s a special Google Doodle today for the Paralympic Winter Games, which will run between today and March 15. Click below to see the animated page giving details:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 6 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Late breaking news:, Trump has fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. The troubles with ICE was partly responsible, and her poor performance at Congressional hearings,  She also refused to answer questions about whether she had an affair with her chief advisor Corey Lewandowski, who was given powers like the ability to sign government contracts. And she bought an expensive jet with a bedroom and 18 seats that, she claimed, was to be used for deportation of immigrants.

President Trump fired Kristi Noem as homeland security secretary on Thursday and announced plans to replace her with Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, concluding a long-building frustration with Ms. Noem that had come to a head this week with her grilling by Republicans at congressional hearings.

Mr. Trump announced the change on social media, along with a new, and previously nonexistent, role for Ms. Noem inside the administration: special envoy for the Shield of the Americas, which he said would be a new security initiative for the Western Hemisphere.

The immediate catalyst for Ms. Noem’s firing appeared to be her answers during two congressional hearings this week, particularly her under-threat-of-perjury statements that Mr. Trump had approved of tens of millions of dollars of government ads in which she was prominently featured. Mr. Trump denied that to Reuters on Thursday, saying, “I never knew anything about it.”

Mr. Trump was shown clips of her answers before a Senate panel and was angry that she blamed him for the contentious spots, according to a person with knowledge of what happened who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The ads were part of a $200 million-plus government-funded campaign that included a subcontractor run by the husband of Ms. Noem’s now-former spokeswoman, Tricia McLaughlin.

She’s now been accused of perjury at that hearing:

Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said on Thursday evening that he would press for a perjury investigation into Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary whom President Trump fired hours earlier.

Mr. Blumenthal said that he would call for the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to investigate whether Ms. Noem had lied under oath during a Senate hearing on Tuesday, when she said that Corey Lewandowski, one of her top advisers, did not approve contracts for the Department of Homeland Security.

Mr. Blumenthal said that Democrats had evidence to suggest that Mr. Lewandowski had done so, and that Ms. Noem’s removal did not protect her from an investigation.

“Her firing doesn’t absolve her or relieve her of potential liability for perjury, and we are going to pursue an investigation of the evidence that she lied, because it relates to corruption in the administration,” said Mr. Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the panel.

But the Republican-controlled Senate is unlikely to hold hearings on Noem, although she can be investigated (though perhaps not indicted) by other means.

*The U.S. Senate rejected a resolution that would have forced Trump to end the strikes on Iran. Voting was pretty much along party lines, with one Democrat objecting (Fetterman, of course, who will not be re-elected), and one Republican (Rand Paul) signing on.

The Senate rejected a resolution Wednesday to block President Donald Trump from ordering further strikes on Iran, declining to halt a war that Trump started without the consent of Congress.

Democrats — along with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) — forced a vote on the war powers resolution over the opposition of most Republicans, who control the Senate. Democrats implored a handful of Republicans to break with their party to end the conflict and reassert Congress’s control over declaring war.

“This essentially is the vote whether to go to war or not,” Paul told reporters.

But Paul was the only Republican who voted to advance the resolution, which failed 47-53 on a procedural vote. One Democrat, Sen. John Fetterman (Pennsylvania) voted against it.

The vote was the latest setback in Democrats’ long-shot strategy to block Trump from ordering military strikes without authorization from Congress. They have forced votes on eight war power resolutions in the House and Senate — a record for a single Congress — since Trump returned to office in an attempt to block him from striking Venezuela, Iran and boats near Latin America suspected of smuggling drugs. All of them have failed.

Republicans in Congress broadly support Trump’s decision to strike Iran, though a few have raised concerns about Congress’s lack of involvement.

“Yes, I wish I would have been consulted,” Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) said in a statement. “I wish my vote would have been asked for before this. But the President did act within his legal bounds to do what he has done.”

Curtis and other Republicans argued that ordering the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the war days after it started would send the wrong message. Sen. Todd Young (R-Indiana) said he wished in retrospect that Congress had done more to assert its authority before the strikes.

“We should’ve been holding hearings and asking probing questions and making the case to get a greater measure of unity around this operation on the front end,” Young told reporters ahead of the vote. “But here we are. We’re at war.”

Democrats countered that it was not too late to halt a war it did not authorize.

Even Democratic Presidents, including Biden, Obama, and Clinton, have struck the Middle East without asking for Congressional approval.  And, in this case when the element of surprise was so important, I think it was risky to put this before Congress in advance, for fear of leaking.  Do we trust, say, members of The Squad not to leak a strike to Iran (you know who I’m talking about)? Given the precedents by Democratic Presidents, it’s not evenhanded for Democrats to make a big deal of this now. The horse is out of the barn.

*An archived article in the Financial Times shows how Israel managed to track down and kill Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It’s devilishly clever (h/t Jez):

When the highly trained, loyal bodyguards and drivers of senior Iranian officials came to work near Pasteur Street in Tehran — where Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in an Israeli air strike on Saturday — the Israelis were watching.

Nearly all the traffic cameras in Tehran had been hacked for years, their images encrypted and transmitted to servers in Tel Aviv and southern Israel, according to two people familiar with the matter.

One camera had an angle that proved particularly useful, said one of the people, allowing them to determine where the men liked to park their personal cars and providing a window into the workings of a mundane part of the closely guarded compound.

Complex algorithms added details to dossiers on members of these security guards that included their addresses, hours of duty, routes they took to work and, most importantly, who they were usually assigned to protect and transport — building what intelligence officers call a “pattern of life”.

The capabilities were part of a years-long intelligence campaign that helped pave the way for the ayatollah’s assassination. This source of real-time data — one of hundreds of different streams of intelligence — was not the only way Israel and the CIA were able to determine exactly what time 86-year-old Khamenei would be in his offices this fateful Saturday morning and who would be joining him.

The capabilities were part of a years-long intelligence campaign that helped pave the way for the ayatollah’s assassination. This source of real-time data — one of hundreds of different streams of intelligence — was not the only way Israel and the CIA were able to determine exactly what time 86-year-old Khamenei would be in his offices this fateful Saturday morning and who would be joining him.

Long before the bombs fell, “we knew Tehran like we know Jerusalem”, said one current Israeli intelligence official. “And when you know [a place] as well as you know the street you grew up on, you notice a single thing that’s out of place.”

This is again the doing of Mossad, and ranks up there with Beepergate (and the Entebbe rescue) as one of the great feats of Israeli intelligence. It was dumb of the Iranian government to put so many higher-ups in one place at one time. Don’t they have Zoom calls there?

*At the NYT, Bret Stephens and Frank Bruni clash in a conversation about Iran.(article archived here). You already know what sides they’re on.  A few snippets of the conversation:

Bret Stephens: They were among the motivations. A democratic Iran that represented the will of its people would not have spent the past 47 years waging war against the Big and Little Satans — that is, the United States and Israel. It would not have squandered its national treasure financing and arming groups like Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis, too. It would not have courted global sanctions through its secretive nuclear program.

That said, if what this war accomplishes isn’t quite regime change — which, I think, has perhaps a 30 percent chance of succeeding — but what might be called “regime modification,” then that also will count as success. By that, I mean an outcome that gets the Iranians to verifiably and irreversibly divest themselves of their nuclear and long-range missile programs and to stop supporting terrorist proxies.

Frank: Accomplishes “regime modification” at what price? And how modified a regime? And why, with all due respect, do I feel that those promoting and defending this war are spreading out a buffet of reasons and goals and asking us skeptics to pick the dish that most appeals to us? You want roast chicken? There’s a wing and a drumstick over here! Oh, no, you craved penne alla vodka? Behold these noodles! I have intellectual and moral indigestion. And a diminishing, not growing, appetite.

Bret: No question President Trump did a terrible job explaining himself. Americans have a right to know why he’s putting service members in harm’s way. But I don’t think the justifications are quite the smorgasbord you suggest.

I’d boil it down to one paragraph:

Iran has been waging a “forever war” against us ever since this regime came to power in 1979. These strikes are an attempt finally to put an end to that war, not to start a new one. We need to do it because the regime has flatly refused to curb its most threatening behavior, even after last June’s war. And we need to do it now for the same reason you try to deal with cancer at Stage 1 rather than Stage 4: Because waiting till they reconstitute their nuclear programs and manufacture thousands of missiles a year would make stopping them in the future much costlier. That they are close allies of Russia and China raises the geopolitical stakes. That they just slaughtered thousands of their own people raises the moral stakes.

To me, that’s a coherent case.

Frank: It’s a case, but is it or was it Trump’s? No insult intended, but your rationale matters considerably less than Trump’s — and as you say, he’s done a terrible job explaining himself. That’s because he has never carefully worked this out in his own mind, and frankly, that’s terrifying. His incoherence on this issue isn’t an asterisk; it’s a devastating tell.

Bret: The best case I’ve heard against the war boils down to one sentence: Do you really trust Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth to fight, and finish, this war? My answer is: The jury is out. But at least the military side of it seems, so far, to have been accomplished with impressive competence.

Both men agree that James Talarico’s victory in the Texas Democratic primary for a Senate seat is a good harbinger for the party, as he seems to be more charismatic and more willing to be bipartisan than other candidates, including his Democratic opponent.

*And Retraction Watch highlights a case of massive medical-reporting fraud lasting 25 years.

A Canadian journal has issued corrections on 138 case reports it published over the last 25 years to add a disclaimer: The cases described are fictional.

Paediatrics & Child Health, the journal of the Canadian Paediatric Society, has published the cases since 2000 in articles for a series for its Canadian Paediatric Surveillance Program. The articles usually start with a case description followed by “learning points” that include statistics, clinical observations and data from CPSP. The peer-reviewed articles don’t state anywhere the cases described are fictional.

The corrections come following a January article in New Yorker magazine that mentioned one of the reports — “Baby boy blue,” a case published in 2010 describing an infant who showed signs of opioid exposure via breast milk while his mother was taking acetaminophen with codeine. The New Yorker article made public an admission by one of the coauthors that the case was made up.

“Based on the New Yorker article, we made the decision to add a correction notice to all 138 publications drawing attention to CPSP studies and surveys to clarify that the cases are fictional,” Joan Robinson, editor-in-chief of Paediatrics & Child Health, told Retraction Watch. “From now on, the body of the case report will specifically state that the case is fictional.”

The move came as a surprise to David Juurlink, professor of medicine and pediatrics at the University of Toronto, who has spent over a decade looking into the claim that infants can receive a meaningful or even lethal dose of opioids via breast milk when their mothers take acetaminophen with codeine. The first such case, published in the Lancetin 2006 by pharmacologist Gideon Koren, was the centerpiece of the New Yorker article. (The Lancet case report now bears an expression of concern.) Koren used that case to claim for years that codeine, which gets metabolized to morphine in the body, can pose a lethal risk to breastfeeding infants.

Follow-up work by Juurlink and others has found the doses claimed in the Lancet report — as well as in two other articles, both now retracted, Koren and colleagues wrote about the case — to be pharmacologically unlikely. As the New Yorker reported, a review of the autopsy data and other evidence points to the baby having been given the pain medication directly rather than having been exposed to the drug through breast milk.

While the instructions for authors for Paediatrics & Child Health has at times indicated the case reports are fictional, that disclosure has never appeared on the journal articles themselves.

“Readers of primary source peer reviewed medical scientific journals have an absolute right to believe that the article being read is as accurate as possible, original, and factual, unless clearly specified otherwise,” said former JAMA editor George Lundberg. “‘Alternative facts,’ as popularized by Kellyanne Conway, have no place in a medical or scientific journal.”

. . . The journal decided when it first started publishing the article type “that the cases should be fictional to protect patient confidentiality,” Robinson told us. “Apart from the case that led to the recent New Yorker article, all or almost all were cases of very well recognized conditions (such as congenital syphilis, fetal alcohol syndrome, serious trauma from ATVs, hepatitis C infection) where a single case report would not generate any interest or ever be cited.”

They try to cover their butts, and it is the case that some of the vignettes were true, with only names changed. But not informing people that published details may be made up is unforgivable. Retraction Watch does science a great service.

*I’m a sucker for Democrats dispensing wisdom about how we should win elections, and this one, “Rahm Emanuel floods Democrats with criticisms and ideas. Will his party listen?” is in the WSJ.  Emanuel has had a lot of experience, serving as a U.S. Representative, White House Chief of Staff, and Mayor of Chicago (people didn’t like him much here). But if he were elected, he’d be America’s first Jewish President. What advice does he have for us?

Asked at a recent fundraiser in this affluent Detroit suburb how Democrats might be able to win back the working-class voters who have defected to President Trump, Emanuel faulted his party in 2024 for being too focused on things such as transgender rights and not enough on pocketbook issues.

“We weren’t very good in this last election at the kitchen table. We weren’t very good in the family room,” said the former congressman, mayor and U.S. ambassador to Japan. “The only room we occupied in the house was the bathroom—and it’s the smallest room in the house.”

Emanuel’s diagnosis is the loudest version of a soul-searching exercise playing out among a few members of the prospective 2028 Democratic presidential field, providing a window into their party’s continuing debate about how to win more broadly again.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear implores Democrats to talk more like “normal human beings” and avoid “advocacy speak” he hears when people use phrases such as “substance-use disorder” instead of addiction and “food insecurity” instead of hunger.

Even California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has governed one of the country’s most Democratic states, has begun to distance himself from certain progressive stances, including party orthodoxy on transgender rights. He recently said Democrats need to be “culturally normal.”

In an interview, Emanuel said his party grew too complacent during Barack Obama’s presidency, assuming the demographics of a diversifying nation would favor them going forward. He also said Democrats are now too fixated on Trump and it is hurting their chances in future elections.

“We became intellectually flabby and we became intellectually lazy,” said Emanuel, Obama’s first White House chief of staff. “To gain the confidence of the American people, you cannot just be a resistance, you also have to be a renewal. One of the things I’m trying to do is lay out that agenda.”

During an appearance at the Detroit Economic Club, Emanuel said he plans to offer a lot of bluntness between now and 2028. “I don’t give a crap,” he said. “I’m going to tell you what I think we’ve got to get done. You like it, great. You don’t like it, you can join my family and not like me.”

Kelly Breen, a suburban Detroit state representative who attended the fundraiser here, said Emanuel is on her list of potential 2028 candidates, along with Newsom and Beshear, whom she is most interested in so far. “I would prefer to have a steady and knowledgeable hand,” she said.

Well, yes, many Democrats have called the party out for wokeness and for not listening to the average Joe and Jane, but it’s one thing to pinpoint a problem and another to solve it, especially when the Democratic edifice is weakened by “progressive” termites.  Emanuel is starting to sound like James Carville. That’s not a bad thing, but Rahm’s Jewish, and, more than that, he’s known for being abrasive.  I can’t imagine Democrats, who are growing less fond of Jews, would nominate one as their Presidential candidates. But maybe the Party will at least listen to him.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Szaron don’t seem to like attention:

Hili: And once again we find ourselves in the spotlight.
Szaron: Sometimes the secondary characters look better.

In Polish:

Hili: I znów jesteśmy w świetle reflektorów.
Szaron: Czasem postaci drugoplanowe wyglądają lepiej.

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

From Stacy:

From CinEmma. more cat paws:

From Give Me a Sign, and no, I can’t guarantee this is genuine:

Lagniappe: Yesterday’s cover of Charlie Hebdo (h/t Bat).  They never give up:

From Masih, now taking Elizabeth Warren to task:

Some sardonic humor (with truth in it) from The Babylon Bee via Luana:

From actor and comedian Rowan Atkinson via J. K. Rowling:

From Colin. No comment needed:

One from my feed, another great post from Science girl. It’s hard to imagine the evolutionary steps that resulted in this behavior:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

Two from Dr. Cobb. The first one is salacious, and I had no idea!  The lyrics and even a recording is further down the thread:

Praise be! It’s the 91st anniversary of Lucile Bogan recording surely the filthiest song in history: Shave ’Em Dry. She worked in the ‘dirty blues’ genre, known for innuendo-heavy lyrics, but Lucile was the sort of person who knew writers who used innuendo, and thought they were all cowards 🧵

— Odd This Day (@oddthisday.bsky.social) 2026-03-05T09:46:20.473Z

A dad joke (click to go to original):