Category: Szaron

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

April 7, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the cruelest day: Tuesday, April 7, 2026, and National Beer Day, celebrating the day that Prohibition (of beer) was ended in 1933. FDR was elected with the promise to repeal Prohibition, and he did. In December all alcohol was legalized.  But weak beer was okay on April 7, and here ar e the good things that happened:

The Abner-Drury Brewery sent a guarded truck to the White House at a minute past midnight with two cases of beer for Roosevelt, though when it arrived, it became apparent he was asleep. The Marine guarding the beer opened the first bottle and drank it, allowing the press to photograph him. Roosevelt later sent the cases of beer to the National Press Club. People across the country gathered outside breweries on April 7, some of whom camped outside the night prior. An estimated 1.5 million barrels of beer were consumed,  with an estimated $5 million of beer being sold in Chicago alone. Hundreds of breweries, bars, and taverns could reopen and expand again, hiring workers and buying new equipment, while restaurants could sell alcohol again. In the four months that followed, manufacturing grew by 78%, automobile and heavy equipment sales by almost 200%, the stock market by 71%, and approximately four million people found employment, with approximately 500,000 more jobs being created in related industries. Prohibition officially ended on December 5, 1933 with the passage of the 21st Amendment.

Banning alcohol is a dumb thing to do and also cannot be enforced.

It’s also International Beaver Day, Metric System Day, National Coffee Cake Day, and World Health Day.

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

And here’s an old Jesus and Mo cartoon that reader Peter found and sent along. It’s about mythicism, the view that Jesus was one of many people claiming to be a savior:

Da Nooz:

*The astronauts successfully made it around the Moon yesterday, and Artemis II is on its way back to Earth.

On the sixth day, 248,655 miles from Earth, four people ventured farther from home than any human being who has ever lived.

Embraced by the moon’s gravitational pull, four astronauts accelerated Monday afternoon on a path to swing around the lunar far side, five days after launching on the Artemis II mission from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

“Today, for all humanity, you’re pushing beyond that frontier,” said Jenni Gibbons, a Canadian Space Agency astronaut who was the main point of contact for the crew at mission control in Houston.

In response, Jeremy Hansen, a fellow Canadian who is a member of the Artemis II crew, hailed the space pioneers who had preceded them.

“We most importantly choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long-lived,” he said.

A few hours later, Mr. Hansen, along with Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch of NASA, became the first humans in more than half a century to slip behind the moon.

At 6:44 p.m. Eastern time, video transmission from Artemis II blinked out, and the astronauts were cut off from the world’s other eight billion people. As the spaceship they named Integrity passed over the far side of the moon, they reached their greatest distance from Earth — more than a quarter-million miles — and their closest proximity to the moon at a bit over 4,000 miles.

After 40 minutes of silence, the astronauts reconnected with humanity. From their windows, they watched as a thin crescent of sunlit Earth reappeared.

There’s a lot of emotionality (and some God talk) being emitted on the radio from both Houston and Artemis: more than I remember in previous space shots.  The Christian emissions come mainly from pious astronaut Victor Glover, but we also heard this from commander Jeremy Hansen in his Easter address:

“No matter your faith or religion, for me the teachings of Jesus were always a very simple truth of love, universal love. Love yourself, and love others.”

Do we need this stuff broadcast from space on a trip funded by people who don’t think Jesus was a messiah? Can’t they keep their faith to themselves? And why didn’t Glover add that the teachings of Jesus included an admonition to follow him lest you be damned to a fiery eternal torment in hell?

*War news from yesterday’s edition of It’s Noon in Israel:

It’s Monday, April 6, and the thirty-eighth day of Operation Roaring Lion. The global price of oil has reached $108, down less than a percent since yesterday. Here are the latest developments that occurred while you were asleep:

  • A source told Reuters that Pakistan’s army commander spent the night in direct contact with U.S. Vice President Vance, envoy Witkoff, and Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi. The emerging proposal calls for an immediate ceasefire and reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, followed by direct talks in Pakistan within 15–20 days to reach a broader agreement. An Iranian official responded to the report, saying they are reviewing Pakistan’s proposal, but Iran would not agree to open the Strait of Hormuz for a temporary ceasefire.
  • Four bodies were recovered from the rubble of a Haifa residential building struck by an Iranian ballistic missile yesterday, with rescue teams still searching for two additional missing people, including a child and an elderly person. An 82-year-old man who was seriously wounded has undergone surgery and remains sedated and ventilated; his 78-year-old wife is hospitalized in good condition. A 10-month-old baby was among the lightly wounded.
  • Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have confirmed the killing of Major General Majid Khademi, head of the IRGC’s Intelligence Directorate, in a U.S.-Israeli strike. Khademi, who had served in Iran’s intelligence and security apparatus for nearly five decades, was responsible for surveillance of Iranian citizens and for orchestrating attacks against Jews worldwide.

And one news item (there’s more at the site):

Donald Trump has issued a 24-hour extension, giving the regime until tomorrow at 8 p.m. ET to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The extension appears to be tied to the prospect of negotiations. According to sources familiar with the talks in Islamabad, the United States and Iran are discussing terms for a potential 45-day ceasefire (though Reuters puts it at 15–20 days) that could lead to a permanent end to the war.

The mediators are discussing a two-stage framework:

  • Stage One: A 45-day ceasefire during which negotiations would take place to end the war.
  • Stage Two: A final agreement to officially end the conflict.

This proposal strikes a somewhat dissonant tone. For the past two weeks, reports of negotiations have spanned from outright denial to thoroughly unenthusiastic. Apart from Trump’s triumphalist rhetoric claiming Iran is begging for peace, there has been very little indication that a deal is actually forthcoming. The sources familiar with the talks are largely in harmony with previous statements: according to them, the chances of reaching even a partial agreement in the next 48 hours are low.

So far there is no movement towards agreement between the U.S. and Iran (see next item).

*Iran has rejected Trump’s cease-fire plan ahead of the deadline for opening the Strait of Hormuz (8 p.m. tonight):

Iran on Monday rejected a 45-day ceasefire proposal and said it wants a permanent end to the war, even as Israel attacked a major gas field and U.S. President Donald Trump’s ultimatum to open the Strait of Hormuz loomed.

“We only accept an end of the war with guarantees that we won’t be attacked again,” Mojtaba Ferdousi Pour, head of Iran’s diplomatic mission in Cairo, told The Associated Press. He said Iran no longer trusts the Trump administration after the U.S. bombed the Islamic Republic twice during previous rounds of talks.

Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency said Tehran conveyed its response through Pakistan, a key mediator.

And yet a regional official involved in talks said efforts had not collapsed. “We are still talking to both sides,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss closed-door diplomacy.

Ferdousi Pour said Iranian and Omani officials were working on a mechanism for administrating the strait, through which a fifth of the world’s oil is shipped in peacetime. Iran’s grip on it has shaken the world economy. Tehran has refused to let U.S. and Israeli vessels through after they started the war on Feb. 28.

Iran’s rejection came after Israel struck a key petrochemical plant in the South Pars natural gas field and killed two paramilitary Revolutionary Guard commanders.

The gas field attack aimed at eliminating a major source of revenue for Iran, Israel said. The field, the world’s largest, is shared with Qatar. It is critical to electricity production, but the strike appeared to be separate from Trump’s threats.

An earlier Israeli attack on the field in March prompted Iran to target energy infrastructure in other Middle East countries, a major escalation.

Trump has warned Iran that the U.S. could set the country “back to the stone ages.”

Word of Iran’s rejection of the ceasefire proposal came while Trump addressed an Easter event on the White House lawn, and it was not clear whether he was aware. But he also was scheduled to hold a news conference later Monday.

“If they don’t cry uncle, no bridges, no power plants, no anything,” Trump said of Iran. “But they will.”

He also threatened to go further. “If I had my choice, what would I like to do? Take the oil,” he said, suggesting it could be done easily, but “unfortunately the American people would like to see us come home.”

Asked if Tuesday at 8 p.m. Washington time was his final deadline for Iran, Trump replied simply, “Yeah.”

I doubt that a permanent end to the war can be cobbled together before tonight, and so the bombing will go on. I can’t believe that Iran doesn’t want an end to the war, but the U.S. wants the Strait opened and nuclear material destroyed with a promise that Iran will stop making bombs. And how will we guarantee that Iran stops exporting terrorism? I don’t think we can, and I don’t really see any agreement that will make the U.S. successful in its aims, which at one time including regime change to free the Iranian people. But that was then. . .

We should not be destroying the infrastructure that the Iranian people depend on—the very people to whom Trump promised freedom.

*The Jerusalem Post reports that a U.S. court has reinstated  $655 million judgement against the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian Liberation Organization for damages to American citizens during the second intifada.

The federal Court of Appeals in New York has reinstated a 2015 judgment that ordered the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority to pay $655.5 million in damages to victims of terrorism from the period of the Second Intifada.

Last week, a federal Court of Appeals judge ruled to reinstate the original 2015 decision of Sokolow v. the Palestinian Authority.

This reverses the decisions of the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals in New York in August 2016, which ordered the $655.5 million terrorism case to be dismissed, saying that the court system had no jurisdiction over the PA or its sister organization, the PLO, and the US Supreme Court in April 2018.

Since then, Shurat Hadin – Israel Law Center, which led the legal charge and hoped the US Supreme Court would uphold the original district court decision, has been fighting to have the original decision reinstated.

Their central argument is that the PA’s ‘pay for slay’ policy, which rewards Palestinians terrorists and their families for crimes against Jews, incentivizes terrorism and makes the Authority responsible for such acts.

If you don’t know about the “pay for slay” policy, you should read Wikipedia’s euphemistic article, “Palestinian Authority Martyrs Fund, which describes all the goodies Palestinians and their families get if they attack or murder Israelis.

The PA spends nearly $350 million per year on ‘pay for slay’, but just $220 million for its other welfare programs for the rest of its citizens.”

While under Trump the U.S. has cut its aid to the Palestinian Authority so that no money will go to this fund, in reality U.S. aid can readily be redirected to the fund.  This means that we’re still supporting terrorism.

The award to the victims is about three times the annual budget of the Pay for Slay program, but there is no mechanism I can see for the PA to pay off this judgement, and so it remains symbolic.

The Sokolow case started in 2004, when the families of victims of the Second Intifada filed a lawsuit against the PLO and PA, led by Shurat Hadin.

Among the victims were members of the Gritz, Coulter, Blutstein, and Carter families, who lost their children in the bombing of the Hebrew University Cafeteria in 2002; the Goldberg family, which lost the father in the bus No. 19 bombing in Jerusalem; and victims including Shaina Gold, Jonathan and Alan Bauer, Shaul Mendelcorn, and Mark Sokolow, who were injured in various attacks on Jaffa Road in Jerusalem.

The basis for the Sokolow case was the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), which was passed by Congress in 1992. In it, the families argued that the PLO and the PA financed and orchestrated seven separate attacks, and that these specific organizations were responsible for the terrorist attacks between January 2001 and February 2004.

. . .Attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, founder of Shurat Hadin, said the ruling marks a “historic turning point in the fight against terrorism.”

“Not only does it restore the ability of American victims of terrorism to obtain compensation after years of struggle, but it also changes the rules of the game: from now on, US courts will be able to hear cases that previously could not even be brought before them,” she said. “This is a day of great victory in our determined fight to cut off the financial lifelines of terrorist organizations.”

Again, largely symbolic.  The PA will not lose a shekel because of the judgement.

*More Jew news, this time highlighting a big but somewhat amusing foulup, and I’ll put up the headline below (click on it to see the article; h/t Norm):

An excerpt:

When readers of the Atlanta Jewish Times opened their Passover edition last week, they saw something surprising: a fluffy challah.

The leavened bread, forbidden for Jews to consume during the holiday, appeared in an ad placed by Nathalie Kanani, a candidate for state Senate in a Metro Atlanta district.

“Have a blessed Passover,” the ad said, over an image of a challah draped in an Israeli flag alongside two towering candles. “Wishing you a Passover rich in divine love and blessings.”

The ad quickly drew ridicule online, particularly after Greg Bluestein, a Jewish Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter, tweeted about it on Saturday, writing, “It’s the thought that counts, I guess.”

That night, Kanani issued an apology, calling the inclusion of challah in the ad “an oversight that should not have happened” and saying that her campaign was instituting new processes to prevent similar snafus in the future.

“My intent was to honor our Jewish neighbors and friends. We are all human, and even with the best intentions, honest mistakes can happen,” she wrote. “I believe in meeting those moments with grace and using them to bring people of different cultures together, not tear them apart.”

Kanani added, “While this content was created by a consultant working with my campaign, I take full responsibility for everything shared in my name. We are implementing stronger review processes to ensure this does not happen again. As always, my campaign stands for inclusion, respect, and bringing all people together.”

The incident is also spurring potential reforms at the Atlanta Jewish Times. “The ad should not have passed proofing checks,” Michael Morris, the newspaper’s owner and publisher, wrote in an email to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Sunday.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the two cats are plotting against Andrzej:

Hili: He has already gone to bed.
Szaron: We will start tormenting him in a moment.

In Polish:

Hili: On już położył się do łóżka.
Szaron: Zaraz zaczniemy go dręczyć.

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

From Stacy:

From The Language Nerds:

From CinEmma:

Masih announces the execution of another Iranian protestor by the government—the government that Trump says has undergone “regime change”:

From Luana. It’s unbelievable that murals of the murdered Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska are being defaced, and the vandalism must surely involve “reverse racial differences”, since she was white and her killer was black (but also mentally ill).  I presume that’s what the “Hmmm” means.

I might have posted this before, so sue me if I did. It’s a new genre: Irish cowboy dancing:

Larry the Number Ten Cat really doesn’t like Trump:

One from my feed; another Gem from Science Girl:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

Two from Dr. Cobb. He calls these mantas “Gentle giants unless you are plankton”:

Take a break from doomscrolling with a coupla giant mantas flying in formation. 🦑 🤿

— Joshua Holland (@joshuaholland.bsky.social) 2026-04-06T02:22:51.215Z

A tortoise scam tweeted by Matthew (Jonathan was falsely declared dead. He’s 144 years old, blind from cataracts, and has lost his sense of smell, but he still gets around.)

Amazing that he could come up with such a scam, but I guess he’s had a long time to think about it.

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-04-02T07:00:44.341Z

 

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

March 31, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the Cruelest Day, and the last day of the month: March 31, 2026, and a day that will not be celebrated: César Chávez Day  (he was born on this day in 1927).  He was of course credibly accused of sexual abuse and sexual assault. California has renamed today Farmworkers Day,  The AP reports on the rebranding efforts:

Efforts have been swift and widespread to rebrand events ahead of what typically was a day to celebrate the life and legacy of the Latino rights advocate on his birthday, March 31.

In Tucson, Arizona, last weekend’s celebration was instead billed as a community and labor fair. In Grand Junction, Colorado, it’s now the Sí, Se Puede Celebration. El Paso, Texas, will mark Tuesday as Community and Labor Heritage Day.

Lawmakers in Minnesota voted this week to end the César Chavez holiday in their state, while California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday signed a bill to rename César Chavez Day as Farmworkers Day. In Colorado, lawmakers were considering a bill to rename the voluntary state holiday there to Farm Workers Day.

Renaming efforts also are underway for dozens of schools, streets and other locations across the United States that are named for Chavez, including the national monument in Keene, California.

The resulting conversations have been anything but easy as supporters grapple with conflicted feelings while sorting out how best to honor what was a pivotal labor and civil rights effort in the United States.

The sorting out so far has involved simply taking off Chávez’s name from everything.

It’s also Eiffel Tower Day, International Taco Day, International Transgender Day of Visibility, National Clams on the Half Shell Day, National Tater Day, and National Crayon Day (does Crayola still make Burnt Umber?).

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 31 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Here’s this morning’s NYT headlines, emphasizing All the Bad News That’s Fit to Print.  It’s pretty much all about oil and gas prices.

*And here’s the war news yesterday from It’s Noon in Israel (their bolding):

It’s Monday, March 30, and the thirty-first day of Operation Roaring Lion. The global price of oil has reached $115, up two percent since yesterday. Here are the latest developments while you were asleep:

  • Spain has closed its airspace to US planes involved in attacks on Iran, going a step further than its earlier decision to deny American forces use of jointly operated military bases. The closure forces US aircraft to bypass Spain when flying to Middle East targets, though exceptions apply in emergencies. Economy Minister Carlos Cuerpo said the move reflects Spain’s stance of not participating in “a war initiated unilaterally and against international law.”
  • For the first time in his nearly 20 years as Prime Minister, Netanyahu successfully passed a budget in an election year—a milestone that secures the government through the end of its term. Even if the ultra-Orthodox were to withdraw from the coalition in the next legislative session and elections were called, the earliest they could be held would be September, making this the longest-serving government Israel has had since 1969. This historic budget came at a steep price: millions of shekels allocated to the Haredi sector.
  • IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir has ordered the early removal of a battalion from Judea and Samaria, following an incident in which soldiers allegedly detained and assaulted a CNN crew while preventing them from filming at an illegal outpost. Soldiers were caught on camera stating that they were acting in revenge for the killing of settler Yehuda Sherman days earlier. The chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee has demanded that Zamir reverse his decision.
  • President Isaac Herzog has responded to the Pardons Department’s recommendation regarding the pardon for Netanyahu. The department concluded that granting the pardon was inappropriate, but Herzog inquired politely—and firmly—whether it was legally possible despite its inappropriateness.

Now, on to the details.

Israel has invited the United States to relocate some of its regional bases from countries such as Qatar to Israel. But that raises a question:

Why is the U.S. regional headquarters in a country that actively sponsors terrorism?

It’s a relatively recent development. For decades, Saudi Arabia served as the U.S.’s regional headquarters. It was from there—not Qatar—that the U.S. assembled forces and ultimately launched the Gulf War to liberate Kuwait. After 9/11 and the Iraq War, the U.S. sought a host with fewer political constraints and a location that would recruit fewer jihadists by being farther from Islam’s two holiest sites. Qatar fit the bill: no political complications, billions of dollars in subsidies, and the ready-to-use Al Udeid Air Base.

Now, more than twenty years later, Israel is positioning itself as the U.S.’s new home away from home. The Israeli security establishment sees an opportunity to “reshape the map” of U.S. military positioning in the Middle East.

And more waffling by Trump, who’s claiming that there has been “great progress” in talks with Iran but also threatening Iran with bombardment of their power infrastructure if no agreement is reached. Further, he suggested yesterday that regime change had already been completed because whoever is in charge now is “much more reasonable” than the previous theocrats:

Though Iran’s clerical and military establishment remain in control of the country, and its most hard-line factions may even have emerged strengthened, Mr. Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One: “We’ve had regime change.”

“The one regime was decimated, destroyed, they’re all dead. The next regime is mostly dead,” he said. He suggested that Iran had moved onto its “third regime,” and that American negotiators were speaking to “a whole different group of people,” who have “been very reasonable.”

*On Wednesday the Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case of “birthright citizenship“, the Constitutional provision that ensures American citizenship for all people born on American soil.  Trump has challenged this provision of the 14th Amendment by stating that people born when their parents are in the U.S. illegally, or if they are on temporary visas, are not entitled to citizenship. This was the object of one of Trump’s notorious Executive Orders, and the administration is being sued in New Hampshire by “a group of expectant parents and their children who would be subject to the order.”  To me the case seems cut and dried: if you’re born here, you’re a citizen. But the NYT says that some legal experts dissent.

For generations, most legal experts and the courts have agreed that the Constitution guarantees citizenship to nearly all babies born in the United States.

But ever since Donald Trump issued an executive order to eliminate so-called birthright citizenship for the infants of undocumented immigrants and temporary residents, some conservative legal scholars have begun re-examining the history of the 14th Amendment, long understood as the source of the birthright guarantee.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on the legality of Mr. Trump’s executive order, and some conservative legal experts say that, in light of new scholarship, it might be a closer call than once thought.

“A lot of people, when Trump first started talking about it, thought this is crazy,” said John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, who was a top lawyer in the George W. Bush administration. “But in the intervening years, a lot more serious people are taking it seriously.”

Even as the legal debate has grown more robust, many legal experts, including Professor Yoo, remain confident that a majority of justices across the ideological spectrum will rule against Mr. Trump’s quest to redefine citizenship. Doing so would mean another major defeat for Mr. Trump in front of a court that includes three of his own nominees. Last month, the court invalidated the president’s sweeping tariffs on imports from major U.S. trading partners.

The issue:

The debate over the bounds of birthright citizenship moves from law review articles to the Supreme Court on Wednesday, in a historic case that will test the president’s power and the common understanding of what it means to be an American.

The Trump administration is asking the court to reinterpret the 14th Amendment, which was added to the Constitution in 1868 after the Civil War. The amendment reversed the Supreme Court’s infamous decision in Dred Scott, which in 1857 had denied citizenship to Black Americans. “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside,” the amendment declared.

The key question for the justices is what it means for a person to be “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, a phrase that courts have for more than 125 years interpreted as meaning nearly everyone born on U.S. soil.

But the Justice Department says the passage has been misread for decades to grant citizenship to the children of hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants, incentivizing foreigners to travel to the U.S. to have babies.

I’ll put my money on the court ruling against Trump.

*Iran has 1000 pounds of enriched uranium sitting somewhere, and now Trump has announced that he’s pondering using American ground troops to kidnap it.

President Trump is weighing a military operation to extract nearly 1,000 pounds of uranium from Iran, according to U.S. officials, a complex and risky mission that would likely put American forces inside the country for days or longer.

Trump hasn’t made a decision on whether to give the order, the officials said, adding that he is considering the danger to U.S. troops. But the president remains generally open to the idea, according to the officials, because it could help accomplish his central goal of preventing Iran from ever making a nuclear weapon.

The president has also encouraged his advisers to press Iran to agree to surrender the material as a condition for ending the war, according to a person familiar with Trump’s thinking. Trump has been clear in conversations with political allies that the Iranians can’t keep the material, and he has discussed seizing it by force if Iran won’t give it up at the negotiating table.

. . . Before Israel and the U.S. conducted a series of airstrikes on Iran in June last year, the country was believed to have more than 400 kilograms of 60% highly enriched uranium, and nearly 200 kilograms of 20% fissile material, which is easily converted into 90%-weapons-grade uranium.

. . . The president and at least some of his allies have said privately it would be possible to seize the material in a targeted operation that wouldn’t significantly extend the timeline of the war and still enable the U.S. to be done with the conflict by mid-April, according to the person familiar with the discussions.

I wouldn’t want to be part of that operation. There’s not only the danger of radioactivity, but the U.S. has already signalled to Iran that it may go after the uranium. So of course they’re going to guard it extra closely.

*According to the FIRE Substrack site Expression (article by Sean Stevens), cancellations on U.S. campuses reached a record high in 2026. We’re talking about successful cancellations;  because 2026 over yet, we don’t know about the final number of cancellations. But the success rate is over 90%, and that’s disturbing (h/t Luana).

Only three months into the year, campus deplatforming is already on pace to set a disturbing new record, and if current trends hold, 2026 won’t just be a bad year for campus free speech. It’ll be the worst year on record for campus deplatformings.

FIRE’s Campus Deplatforming Database tracks efforts to stop public expression on college campuses — disinviting speakers, canceling performances or film screenings, removing art, or disrupting events while they are happening. In just the first three months of this year, there have been 70 such attempts. Even worse, 65 of those attempts succeeded — the highest success rate we’ve ever recorded in any year with 10 or more attempts.

Here is the success rate of deplatforming (speakers prevented from speaking or appearing) since 2000, followed by the graph of number of deplatforming attempts over the same period.  (Note that we’re only three months into 2026.)  Everything is creeping up.

A couple of examples from this year:

This week, the University of Southern California scrapped a gubernatorial debate after excluded candidates complained about the race of those invited — they were all white. [See tweet below.] This shut down what should’ve been one of the clearest examples of a university serving as a forum for democratic exchange. Universities often claim to prepare students for civic participation. Canceling a debate involving major political figures because the controversy “created a significant distraction from the issues that matter to voters,” sends the opposite message. Namely, that even core political discourse can be treated as too difficult or too risky to host.

At New York University, the administration reportedly told student organizers that they could not invite certain music performers to a concert because the performers were affiliated with the No Music for Genocide boycott of Israel. That decision illustrates an especially troubling dynamic: universities are not only reacting to speech after the fact, but increasingly preempting it.

The University of North Texas removed an art exhibit after an anonymous tip alleged the show included artwork denouncing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. UNT also just revoked approval for a drag show after the university system lifted its systemwide pause on drag performances last August.

The Catholic University of America rejected requests from the campus chapter of Students Supporting Israel to host Randy Fine and Dany Turza at two separate events because the discussions would not feature a “balanced presentation” of views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

So much for freedom of speech. If you want to see everthing FIRE has recorded over the years, and who did the deplatforming, go to FIRE’s Campus Deplatforming Database. So far this year most of the deplatformings have come from the political right—a change from a few years ago when the Left did most of the censoring.

*The NYT has a semi-animated article on all the problems with Trump’s rush to remodel the East Wing of the White House into a giant ballroom. The normal scrutiny and approvals applied to such renovations have been almost completely neglected. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, directed by Carol Quillen, has sued the Administration about this matter:

The National Capital Planning Commission is scheduled on Thursday to take a final vote approving President Trump’s ballroom, clearing the last review for a major addition to the White House that was publicly unveiled in detail only in January. Last month, another panel led by the president’s allies, the Commission of Fine Arts, discussed the ballroom for 12 minutes before unanimously approving it.

The hurried reviews, with construction cranes already swiveling above the White House grounds, are an abrupt departure from how new monuments, museums and even modest renovations have been designed and refined in the capital for decades. And the ballroom will be worse off for it, architects warn.

“Even if we are slow and we make mistakes and we fight, that process has meaning to us,” Ms. Quillen said. No project belonging to the public should be the vision of just one man, she said.

That is, however, how the ballroom has often been described.

“President Trump is the best builder and developer in the entire world, and the American people can rest well knowing that this project is in his hands,” Davis Ingle, a White House spokesman, said in a statement. Past administrations and presidents have wanted a ballroom for more than 150 years, he said, and Mr. Trump will accomplish it.

But in the sprint to complete it before the end of his term, the addition appears to have compressed the normal design evolution for any project.

As recently as October, the president was still increasing the ballroom’s capacity, the kind of decision needed at the concept stage. And the White House has said it plans to begin building in the spring, a timeline that would mean construction documents would have to be prepared even as the design was still under review. (Before a judge demanded in December that the project seek review by these two commissions, the administration appeared poised to skip them entirely.)

No, I don’t rest well knowing that Trump is the best “builder and developer in the entire world,” but, like so much of what Trump does, the deed is done before the process is vetted and adjudicated. So it goes.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, there’s a three-way conversation in the kitchen—about food, of course.

Andrzej: What are you doing here?
Hili: We’re waiting for appetite to rise again.
Szaron: She’s always talking like that.

In Polish:

Ja: Co tu robicie?
Hili: Czekamy na zmartwychwstanie apetytu.
Szaron: Ona tak zawsze.

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

From Barry. I think this is a real sign but don’t want to think what’s behind it:

From The Dodo Pet:

From Give Me a Sign:

From Masih, who is in Germany calling for European nations to help Israel and the U.S. eliminate the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran:

Larry the Cat is posting again:

Re the FIRE report above, apparently Bill Maher tweeted a new rule just for that:

Two from my feed.  First, a real hero:

This is TRUE!:

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

The debate over the bounds of birthright citizenship moves from law review articles to the Supreme Court on Wednesday, in a historic case that will test the president’s power and the common understanding of what it means to be an American.

The Trump administration is asking the court to reinterpret the 14th Amendment, which was added to the Constitution in 1868 after the Civil War. The amendment reversed the Supreme Court’s infamous decision in Dred Scott, which in 1857 had denied citizenship to Black Americans. “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside,” the amendment declared.

The key question for the justices is what it means for a person to be “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, a phrase that courts have for more than 125 years interpreted as meaning nearly everyone born on U.S. soil.

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But the Justice Department says the passage has been misread for decades to grant citizenship to the children of hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants, incentivizing foreigners to travel to the U.S. to have babies.

And two from Dr. Cobb, who will be in Lyme Regis for a few more days. He hasn’t had a vacation this long in 15 years.  I migfht have posted this first one but it’s worth seeing again. Elephants do indeed get drunk from this fruit (they also make a human cordial out of marula in South Africa).

Drunk elephants are real 🐘😂They just love Marula fruit and eat them when they’re fermented (with alcohol levels similar to beer) so end up hilariously tipsy! Reminds me of the Mead Hall on a Saturday night

— LadyFluffyOrca 🫍📎 🇵🇸🇬🇧🇺🇦 (@ladyfluffyorca.bsky.social) 2026-03-28T10:42:25.803Z

Of this one Matthew says, “Old but droll and true (I checked Snopes)”:

A new contender for best headline

— Will Kerslake (@wkerslake.bsky.social) 2026-03-29T19:22:41.739Z

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

March 24, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the Cruelest Day: Tuesday, March 24, 2026, and National Cheesesteak Day, celebrating a fine sandwich and exemplar of American cuisine.  It’s best sampled in its home, Philadelphia. Here’s a one-day attempt to find the best cheesesteak in Philly (Pat’s is touted as the city’s best version, but how does it rate here?). John’s and Dallesandro’s are tied for the top spot.

It’s also National Chocolate Covered Raisins Day and National Cocktail Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 24 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*NOTE: See below. Trump put a five-day hold on the bombing of infrastructure. It looks like Israel and the U.S. are about to striking Iranian infrastructure, including power plants, as per their promise if the Straits of Hormuz remained closed by Monday evening (US time). . And the new Ayatollah is out of action. From It’s Noon in Israel: (bolding is theirs)

  • The Washington Post reported that Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is injured, isolated, and unresponsive, according to intelligence officials from both Israel and the United States. Despite his apparent incapacitation, Israeli officials say the remaining clerical leadership and the Revolutionary Guards have managed to consolidate their grip on the country. Both the U.S. and Israel assess that Mojtaba is still alive; intelligence indicates that senior Iranian officials have attempted to arrange face-to-face meetings with him—efforts that have so far failed, reportedly for security reasons.
  • Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz have ordered the destruction of all bridges over the Litani River in an effort to cut off Hezbollah’s supply and movement routes. The IDF has more than doubled its troop deployment along the northern border, expanded ground operations—eliminating dozens of fighters and seizing weapons—and is conducting targeted raids on evacuated villages to dismantle Hezbollah’s military infrastructure.
  • Trump’s ultimatum expires at 7:44 PM EDT (1:44 AM Israel time). Iran must fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz or the United States will begin striking its power stations.

It seems that after securing concessions over the Panama Canal, Trump has developed a fondness for critical waterways. Israel and the United States have now settled on a new war goal: ending the conflict with the Strait of Hormuz under American control—not just temporarily.

The operation appears to have two parts. The first is seizing Iran’s most valuable card—the small island in the Persian Gulf that processes over 90 percent of its oil exports: Kharg Island. The second is securing the strait itself.

The question is how. The plan seems to combine Marine forces expected to arrive on Friday, ongoing airstrikes targeting Iran’s naval and drone capabilities, and advanced monitoring technologies to prevent any disruption to shipping.

The operation is expected to take roughly two to three weeks. That gives Israel enough time to complete the destruction of the remaining military industry and regime targets.

According to the NYT, there are already blackouts in Tehran:

Residents reported blackouts across large parts of Tehran, the Iranian capital, after heavy airstrikes struck multiple areas of the city early Monday. The outages came shortly after Israel announced it would target infrastructure in Iran.

But wait!  On the other hand, the NYT now reports “productive” peace talks between the U.S. and Iran:

President Trump said Monday that the United States and Iran were negotiating a “total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East,” and that he would postpone American attacks on Iranian power plants by five days after the two countries traded threats over the weekend.

Iran did not immediately comment. It was unclear what kind of communication might be taking place and who might be mediating; Iran has previously denied seeking a cease-fire. Mr. Trump had threatened on Saturday to bomb Iran’s energy infrastructure within 48 hours unless Iran agreed to open the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, a critical shipping route for the global oil trade.

Mr. Trump did not elaborate on the details of the talks, but analysts have said it is difficult to see a straightforward offramp for the American-Israeli air war with Iran, which began on Feb 28. and has morphed into a wider conflict in the Middle East. Despite Mr. Trump’s calls for the ouster of the Islamic Republic and his vow to help Iranian protesters overthrow their leaders earlier this year, the Iranian government is still very much in place, as is much of its nuclear program.

The Truth Social announcement:

Back and forth, back and forth.  The erratic and contradictory pronouncements of Trump make this military action confusing and distressing. Whatever he does, he has to create regime change, which was originally one of his goals. And he has to stop the enrichment of uranium and the ongoing program of Iran to create nuclear weapons. Apparently Iran denies that these talks are even going on.

*The Times of Israel reports that a March 13 anti-Zionist rally in NYC, taking place near a pro-Israel rally, accused the Jews of—wait for it—eating babies! It’s one of the oldest blood libels: the accusation that Jews used the blood of non-Jewish children to make Passover matzos.

On Friday, at an Al Quds Day protest in Times Square, a protest leader directed the crowd to chant “Stop eating babies” toward a handful of mostly Jewish counter-protesters.

As surprising as it was to hear the charge that Zionists “eat babies” in New York City in 2026, equally surprising was the willingness with which the crowd took up the chant. There was no confusion or hesitancy about the outlandish allegation — the hundreds in attendance repeated the chant with enthusiasm, without skipping a beat.

“Stop eating babies! Stop raping kids!” they chanted toward counter-protesters holding Israeli flags across the street behind a line of police officers and metal barricades, recalling the age-old blood libel that says Jews murder and consume children for ritual purposes.

The rally illustrated how anti-Israel activists incorporate historical manifestations of anti-Jewish discrimination under the guise of anti-Zionist political activism, from the blood libel to Nazi-era tropes, mixed with contemporary academic theories. Anti-Zionism acts as a container for these historical tropes, blending them together with progressive talking points.

A cadre of scholar-activists has argued that anti-Zionism is the third major iteration of discrimination against Jews. The first was anti-Judaism, based on religion, the second was antisemitism, focused on race, and the third, anti-Zionism, is a hatred of Jewish peoplehood, the activists say.

The worst part of all this is indeed the crowd joining in.  What the hell are these people thinking?  And is there any doubt that this is antisemitic?  Eating babies? Is it only Israelis who eat babies, and not Jews in America? Or is it only Zionist Jews who eat babies?  And what is this about “raping kids”? That’s something I haven’t heard in these protests.

I couldn’t find that chant online, but here

*At Chicago’s Cook County Jail, a place I visited when I was helping public defenders with DNA evidence, inmates are falling ill—and even dying—after ingesting drugs smuggled into the jail soaked onto paper.

The body lay slumped on the jail floor, curled around a metal toilet.

Investigators found no evidence of homicide, just a few scraps of rolled-up paper, singed and scattered on the floor like scorched confetti.

For months, inmates had been falling ill at the Cook County jail in Chicago. Officials said they had heard rumors that extremely toxic drugs were infiltrating the facility, delivered on something so ordinary that it seemed impossible to stop.

Then the body appeared, and “something clicked,” said Justin Wilks, the head investigator at the jail.

The paper itself must be the culprit — and it was deadly.

More overdoses soon followed. The next month, in February 2023, another inmate died from smoking paper laced with mysterious new drugs. In April, one more.

“People were dying so fast,” Mr. Wilks said. But when officials at the jail told their law enforcement colleagues about it, they said, some found it hard to believe.

By year’s end, at least six people had died of overdoses, putting the jail at the vanguard of a new kind of drug war, one in which extraordinarily powerful drugs can be invented faster than the authorities can identify them.

And where something as ubiquitous as paper can become lethal.

The drugs are new synthetic drugs, dissolved in a solvent that is then used to soak sheets of paper that were smuggled in.

. . . . . Today, fringe chemists are ushering in a total transformation of the illicit drug market. Operating from clandestine labs, they are churning out a dizzying array of synthetic drugs — not only fentanyl, but also hazardous new tranquilizers, stimulants and complex cannabinoids. Sometimes, several unknown drugs appear on the streets in a single month. Many are so new they are not even illegal yet.

Nearly all of them are harder to trace than conventional drugs, less expensive to produce, much more potent and far deadlier, according to scientists and law enforcement officials across the globe.

After that first death in the Cook County jail in January 2023, it took months for Mr. Wilks’s team to realize that these mysterious new drugs were being sprayed onto the pages of the most innocuous-seeming items: books, letters, documents, even photographs.

The sheets of drugs, worth thousands of dollars a page, were being torn into strips and smoked by inmates who went into crazed, exorcistic fits, as if possessed by a phantom narcotic the authorities could not see, much less stop.

Just figuring out what the paper had on it was maddening. The specialized labs needed to run the tests often took months to send back mind-boggling chemical formulas that left some officers scratching their heads.

There are chemists out there synthesizing new compounds similar in structure to existing compounds. But some may be toxic, and were. And the prisoners are the guinea pigs.

*We’re several weeks into the partial government shutdown in which Democrats won’t give additional money ICE unless stringent conditions are imposed on officers’ behavior, Republicans won’t put up with it, and the Coast Guard and TSA agents are still not getting paid. (ICE, however, has a comfortable backlog and is still operating.  Now Trump is demanding that any compromise be tied to voter-identification legislation.

President Trump has rejected one of the possible offramps for the standoff over funding the Department of Homeland Security, leaving an impasse unresolved that has led to hourslong lines at some airports as security staff don’t show up for work.

White House staff briefed the president on an idea to fund all parts of DHS except for the agency responsible for enforcing immigration law, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Republicans could separately fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement through a procedural move—known as reconciliation—that would allow the money to clear the Senate on a simple-majority vote instead of requiring the 60 votes needed to pass most legislation. But not all Republicans think this is necessary because ICE received billions of additional funding in Trump’s sweeping tax cuts and spending bill passed along party lines last year.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) walked Trump through the strategy in a weekend conversation, the person said, but Trump rejected the idea. Some top Senate Republicans had met on Sunday with White House liaison James Braid to discuss ideas for ending the shutdown. The conversation between Thune and Trump was reported earlier by Punchbowl News.

Over the weekend, the president said he would send ICE agents to select airports around the country to assist with security lines. Trump on Monday said that move brought Democrats to the table to negotiate, but he told his negotiators to hold firm until a spending bill is paired with legislation requiring proof of citizenship to vote, along with other requirements.

Trump also indicated that he wanted to use the funding fight as leverage to pass what he considers his top legislative priority, the SAVE America Act. That legislation would ratchet up ID requirements to vote in federal elections and mandate proof of citizenship when registering to vote. Trump also wants to add a ban on most mail-in voting and restrictions on gender-transition procedures for minors.

ICE in airports is going to anger a lot of people, who will suspect that they’re really in airports to spot and arrest people accused of entering the U.S. illegally (a Guatemalan woman was apprehended yesterday). But if they’re just there help move security lines, which have extended to four hours in busy airports like Newark and Atlanta, that would be okay. As for showing proof of citizenship to register to vote, I have no problem with that, but I’d have to see the rest of the demands , especially about gender transition, as I think that surgery and drugs should be allowed only for people “of age” (I’m settling on 18).  Mail-in ballots are okay by me; I’ve used them for years, and that’s made me lazy.

*The video of a cat beauty competition in Romania is the most-watched video on the Associated Press site, but fortunately it’s also on YouTube. The AP also has a great page of photos from that competition, though I can’t find any news beyond what is in the videos. (I can’t reproduce the photos because of possible copyright issues, but you can see them at the link, and don’t miss them if you like cats (the huge Maine Coon is spectacular).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili thinks she’s fixing the world:

Szaron: It’s a bit boring here.
Hili: Start fixing the world, you’ll see what great entertainment it is.

In Polish:

Szaron: Trochę tu  nudno.
Hili: Zacznij naprawiać świat, zobaczysz jaka to fajna rozrywka.

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

Reader Pratyadipta Rudra vindicates me on Facebook. His caption:

A couple weeks ago, Jerry Coyne wrote about his “new law”: ” At least half of new medicines advertised on t.v. have the letters “x”, “y”, or “z” in them.”
Obviously, as he argued, this is much higher than their frequency in the English dictionary, or what would happen if letters of a medication name were picked randomly with each letter in the English alphabet having equal probability.Now, what are the chances that I see this at Costco the very next day?
I was a little sad that they did not call it XYZAB.
I was right!

From Funny and Strange Signs:

From Stacy: It’s Larry!!!!

From Masih, speaking on behalf of Iranians who want the present regime out:

From Luana; you can find the details here.

From Sciencegirl via Keith.  Would you drink this coffee? (I’m sure it would be expensive.) I’ve tried kopi luwak coffee made from beans that have transited the digestive tracts of palm civets (it was just ok), but not elephants.  It’s all hype, I suppose:

Two from my feed. First, gimme the cat massage option!

Yes it’s d*gs but it’s heartwarming. Kudo to Chairman Corgi, but I hope the photographer lent a hand as well:

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

. . and two from Dr. Cobb. First, a holy moggy:

Here's your moment of zen: A "holy" cat named Coco stands at the entrance of a church in Mexico, seemingly blessing everyone who walks in 🐱

— Laura Martínez 🥑 (@miblogestublog.bsky.social) 2026-03-23T14:26:55.587Z

An itchy duck, but not a dead one:

I promise, I am NOT photographing a dead duck here. 😜This Northern Shoveler just decided to flop over in the water and scratch that itchy chin in the midst of the red duckweed.#BirdOfTheDay #Preeners&Scratchers#MallardMonday📷🪶🦆

— Mstreefrog (@mstreefrog.bsky.social) 2026-03-23T11:55:40.534Z

 

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):

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

March 3, 2026 • 6:45 am

Today is the cruelest day: Tuesday, March 3, 2026, and National Pancake Day (free pancakes at IHOP). Here are two versions I’ve had: a blue-corn blueberry pancake with piñon nuts served in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and a cherry pancake with sour cream I ate in Gdańsk, Poland. The world has a great variety of pancakes!

It’s also 33 Flavor Days, celebrating the anniversary of Baskin-Robbins, Canadian Bacon Day, National Cold Cuts Day, National Moscow Mule Day (an excellent drink when made properly), National Mulled Wine Day (ditto), World Wildlife Day, National Anthem Day (“The Star-Spangled Banner became America’s official anthem on this day in 1931), and Purim, the Jewish holiday commemorating the saving of the Jews from annihiliation by Queen Esther (you may remember our last pair of ducks named Esther and Mordecai, who produced a brood of six that fledged last year). Here is the pair. As I posted yesterday, we have a new pair of mallards that are not Esther and Mordecai.

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

Da Nooz:

*Trump is sending more U.S. troops to the Middle East and now predicts a more extended war: a month or more.  (Article archived here.)

The Pentagon said on Monday that more U.S. forces were headed to the Middle East, amid reports that President Trump declined to rule out sending ground troops into Iran and promised that still bigger waves of airstrikes against that country were coming, in further signs of an expanding, lasting war.

In his first public event since the strikes in Iran began on Saturday, Mr. Trump predicted the attacks against “this sick and sinister regime” would go on for at least a month. “Right from the beginning we projected four to five weeks, but we have the capability to go far longer than that,” Mr. Trump said at the White House. “We’ll do it.”

Listing his objectives, Mr. Trump said, “We’re destroying Iran’s missile capability, and we’re doing that hourly.” He added that the strikes were “annihilating their navy” and ensuring that Iran “can never obtain a nuclear weapon,” and that the country cannot continue to sponsor militant groups across the Middle East.

Internationally, he claimed, “everybody was behind us, they just didn’t have the courage to say so.”

Qatar’s ministry of defense said its air force had shot down two Su-24 bombers coming from Iran, the first report that Iran, which has fired missiles and drones at its Gulf neighbors and Israel in retaliation for the Israeli-U.S. assault, had also sent warplanes into their airspace. President Trump spoke about the war at the White House in his first public event since the strikes began.

Jake Tapper of CNN reported that Mr. Trump had told him in a phone call on Monday that the huge U.S. and Israeli airstrikes against Iran that began early Saturday could soon intensify. “We haven’t even started hitting them hard, the big wave hasn’t even happened,” Mr. Trump said, according to CNN. “The big one is coming soon.”

And the New York Post reported that the president had said in an interview: “I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground — like every president says, ‘There will be no boots on the ground.’ I don’t say it.”

Now in his objectives he doesn’t even mention the Iranian people or regime change, while his announcement of the attack added that the Iranian government was now there for the people to take. He may now have realized that the other objectives are easier to attain.  He also apparently remarked that he’s not ruling out U.S. “boots on the ground.” That would thrown American opinion wholly against the war—once body bags start coming back to the U.S.  At least he has listed a few attainable objectives, but preventing a nuclear weapon for all time? That would require regime change.

*Over at the Free Press, Elliot Ackerman makes “The case against the war.”

. . . President Trump’s strategy of regime change relies on Iranian citizens returning to the streets. Once our air strikes cease, Trump has urged those everyday Iranians to “take over your government,” telling them in a video on Saturday that “this will be probably your only chance for generations.”

We’ve seen regime change before, but not like this. In the lead-up to the Iraq War, then–Secretary of State Colin Powell evoked what’s sometimes called the Pottery Barn Rule: You break it, you own it. Trump’s strategy rejects that logic. Trump’s rule is: We break it, you own it. His message to the Iranian people is clear: Our obligation does not extend past the opportunity we’ve provided for you to topple your regime and replace it with something better.

Trump has already employed a version of this strategy in Venezuela—except in Iran, he’s pushing this strategy to the limit, using it in a high-stakes region, one with a longer and deeper history of resentment toward the United States. In an interview on Sunday, the president said that he would be open to talks with Iran’s post-Khamenei leadership. Perhaps he’ll cut a deal with the ayatollahs, much as he’s done in Venezuela with the government of Delcy Rodríguez. If Trump and the new Iranian regime fail to strike a deal, that leaves only one pathway for success. The regime must topple.

But will the ayatollahs go quietly? Will it be possible for popular street protests to displace violent regime hard-liners? The specter of further American air strikes makes it unlikely that the regime can again repress its people through slaughter on a scale like in January. But what if a significant number of Iranian citizens reject the demands made by protesters? What if the regime still maintains real, durable support? The Arab Spring offers several dire examples of popular protests for democracy mutating into deadly civil wars, chief among them the decade-long civil war in Syria. A civil war in Iran on the scale of Syria would be catastrophic.

. . .If the operation in Iran remains limited, swift, and successful, like the operation in Venezuela, these objections may amount to little. But the enemy always gets a say in war. Already, three U.S. service members have been killed as a result of our strikes. Should the Iranian regime continue its fight against the United States, a key part of their strategy will be to inflict maximum U.S. casualties. This could quickly erode an already fragile base of support for the war.

Trump has made himself particularly susceptible to such a strategy. He has yet to really sell this war to the American people. He didn’t seek congressional approval for the war or make his case in a national address as presidents have often done. Likely, Trump would say this was because he wanted to maintain the element of surprise, but interacting with Congress and the American people aren’t niceties. They are necessities. War is fundamentally a political act. A president who doesn’t wage politics while also waging war may find himself quickly losing a war on the home front, particularly in a republic.

Yes, these are good questions and valid concerns. Civil war, or war of the people versus the military, would be horrific. All this is in the air. Do these considerations mean that the U.S. and Israel should not have attacked Iran? How can we know without a crystal ball?

*Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has started up again (Hezbollah broke the cease fire, agreement which it’s been doing sporadically), and Lebanon has pledged to stop Hezbollah’s fighting after Israel killed a big Hezbollah official. From the Times of Israel:

Israel said Monday that the head of Hezbollah’s intelligence arm was killed in an overnight strike and Beirut said it would ban the terror group’s military activities, hours after the Iran-backed organization fired rockets and drones at Israel, leading to major retaliatory strikes.

The IDF confirmed that the overnight strike in the Lebanese capital killed Hussein Makled, whom it called “the head of Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters.”

The military said Makled was responsible for “forming the intelligence picture using various intelligence collection tools to provide the Hezbollah terror organization with intelligence assessments regarding IDF troops and the State of Israel.”

“He also closely cooperated with senior commanders in Hezbollah who planned and advanced terror attacks against Israel and its citizens,” the military added.

The terror group’s overnight attacks — which it said were in retaliation for the killing of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei in the opening minutes of the joint Israeli-US assault on Iran on Saturday — led to waves of Israeli airstrikes across Lebanon, including in the capital.

. . . In a statement after a cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said Lebanon rejected any military actions launched from its territory “outside the framework of its legitimate institutions and affirmed that the decision of war and peace is exclusively in its hands.”

This “necessitates the immediate prohibition of all Hezbollah’s security and military activities as being outside the law, and obliging it to hand over its weapons to the Lebanese state,” he said.

Salam ordered the military and security agencies to take “immediate measures” to implement the cabinet decision and prevent “any military operation or the launching of missiles or drones from Lebanese territory.”

Can the government of Lebanon stop Hezbollah? Not bloody likely. Hezbollah is now violating a UN Security Council resolution, too, and there are also UN soldiers (UNIFIL) on the ground in Lebanon—around 10,000 of them—but they have not done a single thing to stop Hezbollah, which they are ordered to do. As usual, the UN has been spineless here, and Israel will once again have to take care of itself.

 

*There are now twelve countries involved in the Middle East conflict, and Iran seems to have made a big misstep in attacking its Arab neighbors.

The Iranian regime, decapitated in the first hours of the U.S.-Israeli campaign that started on Saturday, has responded by striking at least nine countries across the Middle East, unleashing a truly regional war.

The apparent calculation was that, by targeting rich Persian Gulf monarchies that hold sway with the Trump administration, Tehran could force Washington and Israel into a rapid de-escalation.

Iran’s expectation was that, by squeezing oil shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and disrupting air traffic, it would cause unbearable pain to the Gulf nations that depend so much on expatriate workers, tourism and overseas trade.

So far, this calculus seems to have backfired. Gulf states, rattled by volleys of Iranian drones and missiles targeting their hotels, ports and airports, are concluding the Iranian peril must be confronted. Rather than seeking an offramp, the prevailing mood in the Gulf—at least for now—is that the Iranian regime can’t be allowed to get away with this unprecedented onslaught on its neighbors.

“Iran is coming to the countries and people of the Gulf and saying: ‘You know, I am actually your number-one threat.’ This has long-term implications, regardless of whoever is actually in power in Iran,” Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the United Arab Emirates president, said in an interview. “Targeting Gulf states is completely irrational, and very shortsighted.”

Iran has struck all six of the oil-rich Gulf Arab states, including Oman, which had mediated nuclear talks between Tehran and the Trump administration. It also hit Jordan, Iraq and Israel. At first, all the Gulf states publicly opposed the U.S.-Israeli assault on the Iranian regime, which has already resulted in the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the killing of many Iranian military and intelligence commanders.

The mood changed quickly once the brunt of the Iranian response targeted cities such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the U.A.E., Doha in Qatar, and Manama in Bahrain, inflicting widespread damage to infrastructure and civilian casualties. In the U.A.E. alone, Iran killed three people and injured 58 after firing 165 ballistic missiles and 541 drones, most of which have been intercepted, according to the Defense Ministry.

“Many people in the Gulf woke up Saturday pissed off at the United States and Israel, and went to sleep pissed off at Iran,” said William Wechsler, director of Middle East programs at the Atlantic Council in Washington and a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense.

Reading the news about the Middle East is an emotionally exhausting experience, as news like this seems good: Iran has alienated neighboring Islamic countries, and hasn’t advanced its aims by attacking them. I wondered what the deuce was going on when Iran started bombing civilian targets in those states, a blatantly stupid move.  But of course the people of Iran remain under the thumb of the theocracy, and there’s no sign that they’ll “take control” of their government (how could they?), nor that the regime will stop its drive to get a bomb.  This is an emotional roller-coaster for many of us Jews, but imagine how distressed and confused the Iranian people are!

*Finally, a small WaPo poll (1,003 people texted) show that Americans generally oppose the strikes on Iran.

More Americans oppose the strikes than support them, the flash poll found. Perceptions of Trump’s goals vary widely, though a clear majority say his administration has not clearly explained them. Still, about half think the U.S. military’s actions will contribute to long-term U.S. security.

The survey was conducted Sunday between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Eastern, coinciding with reports that three American soldiers were killed and five others were seriously wounded.

The results (note the potential bias: only people with cellphones that can accept texts could answer:

There are several questions; here’s one more:

Three-quarters of Americans are concerned about the possibility of a full-scale war with Iran, including 40 percent who are “very concerned.” Those worries are similar to a Post poll after the U.S. and Israel struck Iran’s nuclear facilities in June. Today, about half of Republicans (51 percent) say they are at least somewhat concerned about a full-scale war, rising to 80 percent of independents and 93 percent of Democrats.

I’m in the “somewhat” column here:

Trump needs to keep in touch with the American people more often and more explicitly.  I think he should hold a press conference in which he actually responds to questions. If he keeps his own counsel or keeps changing the timeline, he’ll lose much more support from America.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili needs her body fed before her soul. And Szaron shows that he is clearly an educated cat.

Szaron: Have you read Plato’s “The Symposium”?
Hili: No, but I could eat something too.

In Polish:

Szaron: Czytałaś „Ucztę” Platona?
Hili: Nie, ale też bym coś zjadła.

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

Fromn Cats Doing Cat Stuff:

From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices; short people closure!

From Stacy, whose caption is: “Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. It’s been going on all day. The boulevard was shut down. Notice the flags. ❤️“

From Masih: Two Iranian women blinded by the regime, and still defiant! Kudos for the brave women of Iran.

Also from Stacy, a sarcastic post put up by Peter Boghassian:

But Cenk gave some plaudits to the late Ayatollah. Oy!

Yep, the Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Chicago is back—not just supporting Iran, but celebrating its striking a U.S. base.  As usual, they are without a moral compass.  They are merely against America and the West.

From my feed: Cuteness quadrupled. I visited this breeding center when I visited Chengdu.

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

And two from Dr. Cobb. First, an amazing proto-whale skeleton (a transitional form) found in Egypt. See the video in the original post.

37 million years old whale spine found in the hot dunes of Egypt. This is a complete skeleton, the first-ever find for Basilosaurus, a large, predatory, prehistoric archaeocete whale uncovered in Wadi El Hitan, preserved with the remains of its prey.Original post

— Massimo (mirror) (@rainmaker1973-m.bsky.social) 2026-03-01T15:47:35.478Z

Juvenilia from the bollard site:

Grow up.#WorldBollardAssociation

— World Bollard Association™️ (@worldbollardassoc.bsky.social) 2026-02-28T22:27:16.478Z

Thursday: Hili dialogue

February 26, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Thursday February 26, 2026, and only two days until Duck Month begins! It’s also National Pistachio Day, one of the trio of World’s Best Nuts (the others are macadamia nuts and cashews).

The seeds of Pistacia vera are not nuts but seeds, at least in the botanical sense. From Wikipedia:

The fruit is a drupe, containing an elongated seed, which is the edible portion. The seed, commonly thought of as a nut, is a culinary nut, not a botanical nut.

Here’s a video about their harvesting and production in Iran, the world’s largest source of the seeds:

It’s also Levi Strauss Day (the Jewish man who dressed the world was born on this day in 1829), National Chili Day, and, in the UK, National Toast Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the February 26 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*More on Trump’s two-hour State of the Union address on Tuesday, which, at 10,599 words, is the longest in American history (George Washington’s address lasted only ten minutes).

Going into the speech, Mr. Trump knew that he needed to use it to maneuver out of a politically treacherous moment for himself and his party. A majority of Americans oppose how Mr. Trump is pursuing his anti-immigration agenda, and more than 70 percent of them think his priorities are in the wrong place. His approval rating has plummeted to 41 percent.

His solution was to wrap himself in the imagery of American heroism with staged asides throughout the speech while throwing the blame for every problem, from the security of elections to the state of the economy, back on his opponents.

In a number of cases, Democrats gave Mr. Trump the confrontations he sought.

Representative Al Green of Texas, who was ejected from the chamber last year for waving his cane at Mr. Trump, was once again removed after he held up a sign proclaiming “BLACK PEOPLE AREN’T APES” — a reference to a racist video Mr. Trump recently shared on social media.

Representative Lauren Underwood of Illinois got up and walked out rather than “take another minute” of the speech. And Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, a frequent target of Mr. Trump’s, was one of a handful who yelled at him.

“You’ve killed Americans!” she shouted as Mr. Trump talked about immigration enforcement.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” the president shot back.

When did these speeches become barroom brawls? Both sides are guilty of disrupting the President when he’s from the other party, and I’d be happier if the audience would be respectful; this would set an example, for instance, for speakers on college campuses. And I’m not sure about whether the Democrats should have remained seated when Trump asked Congress members to stand if they prioritized Americans over immigrants. This was a trap of the “are-you-still-beating-your-wife” variety, but I don’t think it will help the Democrats. Readers?

The NYT has fact-checked some of his assertions, and it’s not pretty. Here two of its verdicts as screenshots:

*In an article called “Why Iran will escalate” (article is archived),  Foreign Policy assesses Trump’s motivations for attacking Iran and warns of potentially dangerous fallout from such an attack.

Trump’s own behavior also increases the risk of escalation. The president’s ever-intensifying wish to be seen as a historic peacemaker has led him to an unnecessarily binary choice—strong-arm Tehran into a major new deal or use substantial force. And the nebulousness of his motives makes this flash point much more dangerous. Trump seems interested, in no particular order, in demonstrating the prowess of the U.S. military, strengthening his negotiating position, showing he was serious when he vowed in a January Truth Social post to protect Iranian protesters, and differentiating his approach from President Barack Obama’s. This mishmash of objectives contrasts with the focus he brought to his previous successful operations and will make him less prepared if a strike does not yield the expected, swift capitulation. All told, today’s conditions mean that an attack by the United States on Iran could result in unexpectedly deadly retaliation—and a much longer and potentially damaging conflict for Washington.

. . . Iran knows that it cannot win an outright war with the United States or Israel. In theory, if Trump strikes, Tehran would be best off seeking a quick de-escalation—as it did with Israel in April and October of 2024 and with both countries in June 2025. But Iran is facing a very different situation now than it did then. Today, Israel and the United States both perceive Iran as a paper tiger. The proxy militias that it used to deter Israel and terrorize the Middle East for years have largely been neutralized. Its nuclear program is in ruins. Its air defenses are in tatters: the June strikes destroyed most of its surface-to-air missile sites and punched massive holes in its early-warning radar network. And in December, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went to Mar-a-Lago and got Trump’s permission to strike Iran’s ballistic missile program, the keystone of the country’s defense, at a time and place of Netanyahu’s choosing. This development threatens the very existence of the Islamic Republic. The program is Iran’s only remaining means of threatening Israel. (Iran also mostly makes these missiles domestically, so Israel would have to strike Iran every six months or so to keep the arsenal sufficiently degraded.)

. . . The ambiguity of Trump’s current intentions also changes the Iranian calculus. The U.S. president is not threatening to attack Iran because of any imminent threat or in response to any act of Iranian aggression. His motives are various and unclear: he is disappointed by the negotiations’ progress, he feels compelled to defend the redline he established with his Truth Social post, he is desperate to avoid unflattering comparisons to Obama, and he believes he can undertake major operations with minimal consequences. From Iran’s perspective, both Israel and the United States appear to have concluded that they can strike without any direct provocation and when doing so serves domestic political needs; Iran even thinks the two countries will be tempted to strike frequently. As a result, Iranian officials feel they need to give Trump a bloody nose or they will perpetually be at risk.

. . . . Finally, Tehran could target global oil flows and international shipping, sending energy prices up and creating a serious political liability for Trump. Iran may well encourage the Houthis to resume attacking ships transiting the Red Sea. The country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has also been preparing to selectively seize adversary ships in the Strait of Hormuz. If conflict with the United States deepens, Iran may seriously consider targeting the Gulf Arab states’ energy infrastructure directly. In 2019, during Trump’s last “maximum pressure” campaign, Iran directly attacked Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq oil processing facility, the world’s largest. That assault appeared to be designed to damage easily replaceable components, thus limiting the consequences to the global energy supply. But if Tehran instead assaulted infrastructure that it knows would take longer to repair, the results would be much more damaging. The relationships between Iran and the Gulf Arab states are stronger now than they were then, but Tehran knows that Gulf leaders carry real influence with Trump and could appeal to him to back down if they came under pressure.

Iran may be weak. But it still has ways to inflict real pain on the United States—and much more incentive to try than it did before. If Trump wants to maintain the playbook that has worked for him, he will need a decisive and low-cost end to this saga. But powerful forces, both within him and external to him, have led him to dismiss the many off-ramps he already had. Iran hawks such as Senator Lindsey Graham are urging Trump not to “talk like Reagan and act like Obama,” a comparison Trump hates and fears. It may seem implausible that Trump, who promised his supporters an end to forever wars, would take out Iran’s leaders or commit ground troops to regime change and nation building. Yet he has come this far. He may well be pushed onward, regardless of the cost

The author, Nate Swanson, clearly doesn’t think the U.S. should attack Iran, noting that he’s not alone: “70 percent of Americans—and a majority of Republicans—oppose military intervention in Iran. Trump will struggle to justify any American deaths in a conflict of his own making.”  I have predicted that Trump will attack, but also that if he really wants regime change, he’ll have to put American boots on the ground, and, as Swanson notes, any American deaths will be hard to justify to the public. But if he just wants to stop the nuclear program, the U.S. and Israel will have to bomb the country over and over again.

*The WaPo surveyed 2,300 Americans for what they think the best and the worst things that Trump has done during his Presidency.

To figure out which Trump measures stand out to the public, a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll asked more than 2,300 Americans to name the best and worst things he has done since January 2025. People who support Trump — 39 percent of U.S. adults in the poll approved of his job performance — were asked to describe his best actions, while the 60 percent of Americans who disapproved were asked to name his worst actions.

Here’s what Trump’s supporters and opponents said. (I added screenshots; the article is archived here):

Immigration is by far the area for which Trump gets the most approval. And while he’s reduced it to nearly a trickle, he’s done it in a scattershot and often hamhanded way, with most of the people apprehended not having committed criminal acts besides illegal entry into the U.S.:

Note that the first two areas, immigration and the economy, are the very areas cited by his supporters as his big accomplishments:

I agree that the Trump presidency has been a disaster for the U.S., but one has to admit that some of his actions (Title IX changes, cutting back on DEI initiatives) have been salubrious.  Yet when I asked readers to name one or two things that Trump did that was good, I was excoriated, and got heated emails that some people had unsubscribed from the site. People can’t admit that any Presidential actions have been a net good, even if the intention wasn’t benevolent. So be it. It’s still good to “steelman” (I hate that verb) the other side, as it increases your own credibility when criticizing it.

*A math professor at Vanderbilt University was the focus of social-media opprobrium when he published a math problem that was really propaganda for Palestine and against Israel. (I believe I reported this before but can’t find the post). The problem is given in the tweet below:

I actually emailed Vanderbilt’s Chancellor, Daniel Diermeier (the University of Chicago’s Provost not long ago), calling his attention to this guy, though not asking that he be penalized or fired. Now we find that even before I wrote Dr. Karadağ was under investigation.

Vanderbilt University has launched an inquiry into a mathematics lecturer whose classroom exercise about Palestinian territory drew criticism from the activist group StopAntisemitism.

Tekin Karadağ, a senior lecturer at the university’s department of mathematics, drew the ire of the antisemitism watchdog after it obtained a slide from one of his lectures that used a pro-Palestinian protest slogan and suggested that Israel was shrinking the Palestinian territory.

. . . Karadǎg, a Turkish national who received his PhD from Texas A&M University in 2021, included the question under “examples related to the popular issues” in a survey of calculus class, according to StopAntisemitism, which wrote in a post on X that Karadǎg was “bringing his anti-Israel, antisemitic bias into his classroom.”

In a statement shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Vanderbilt said that the content had been removed and that an inquiry had been launched into Karadağ.

“The university has received reports alleging a member of the faculty engaged in unprofessional conduct related to content shared during course instruction,” the school said. “The content in question has been removed, and a formal inquiry has been initiated consistent with relevant university policy.”

. . . .The inquiry was not the first time that Vanderbilt took swift action against the expression of pro-Palestinian sentiments on its campus.

In March 2024, the university, which has roughly 1,100 Jewish undergraduate students, was among the first universities to expel students who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Last year, the school’s antisemitism “grade” from the Anti-Defamation League was bumped up from a “C” to an “A.”

Sadly, the University of Chicago never penalized anyone who violated University rules in a meaningful way  and the ADL gave us a D+ (see below and here; for other schools go here):

The administration has been loath to penalize anyone who, during protests, violates rules like deplatforming speakers, participating in prohibited sit-ins, or encamping.  Diermeier would have done a better job.

*New Zealand’s kakapo (Strigops habroptilus), the world’s only flightless parrot, is one of my favorite birds as it’s ineffably cute—and highly endangered. Moved to islands and isolated areas to stave off invasive predators, the kakapo is now making a comeback. And, as the AP reports in its “odd news,” this is promoted by a bumper crop of berries this year.

. . . the nocturnal and reclusive New Zealand native bird ’s fate is teetering toward survival after an unlikely conservation effort that has coaxed the population from 50 to more than 200 over three decades. This year, with a bumper crop of the strange parrot’s favorite berries prompting a rare enthusiasm for mating, those working to save the birds hope for a record number of chicks in February, which would move the kakapo closer to defying what was not long ago believed to be certain extinction.

Kakapo live on three tiny, remote islands off New Zealand’s southern coast and chances to see them in the wild are scarce. This breeding season has launched one of the birds to internet fame through a livestreamed video of her underground nest, where her chick hatched on Tuesday.

The kakapo is a majestic creature that can live for 60 to 80 years. But they’re undoubtedly weird to look at.

Birds can weigh over 3 kilograms (6.6 pounds). They have owllike faces, whiskers, and mottled green, yellow and black plumage that mimics dappled light on the forest floor.

That’s where the flightless parrot lives, which has made its survival complicated.

“Kakapo also have a really strong scent,” said Deidre Vercoe, the operations manager for the Department of Conservation’s kakapo program. “They smell really musky and fruity — gorgeous smell.”

The pungent aroma was bad news for the parrots when humans arrived in New Zealand hundreds of years ago. The introduction of rats, dogs, cats and stoats, as well as hunting by people and destruction of native forest habitats, drove species of the country’s flourishing flightless birds — the kakapo among them — to near or complete extinction.

By 1974, no kakapo were known to exist. Conservationists kept looking, however, and in the late 1970s, a new population of the birds was discovered.

Reversing their fortunes hasn’t been simple.

It’s hard, with every bird sporting a small backpack that allows researchers to track it. And they remove eggs from females (replacing them with dummy eggs), putting them in incubators to ensure hatching before replacing them beneath the females.

Since January, admirers of the birds have had a rare glimpse into the process through a livestream showing the underground nest of 23-year-old kakapo Rakiura on the island of Whenua Hou, where she has laid three eggs, two of them fertile. So precarious is the species’ survival that the eggs were exchanged for fake replacements while the real ones were incubated indoors.

Go read about their weird behaviors (e.g., male “booming’) and do look at the livestream above. New Zealand is devoting considerable effort to saving this bird, and I think it’s worth it. There’s nothing even close to it in the parrot world. And thank Ceiling Cat for the bumper crop of berries!

“We don’t have the Eiffel Tower or the pyramids, but we do have kakapo and kiwi,” [Operations Manager Deidre] Vercoe said. “It’s a real New Zealand duty to save these birds.”

For sure.  And I can’t write about the kakapo without again showing this classic video clip of Stephen Fry and Mark Carwardine studying the bird, with Carwardine becoming the subject of Sirocco’s romantic longings:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej has an armful o’ cats:

Hili: A penny for your thoughts.
Szaron: He’s probably thinking that at least during the night we’ll leave him in peace.

In Polish:

Hili: Grosz za twoje myśli.
Szaron: On pewnie myśli, że przynajmniej w nocy damy mu święty spokój.

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

From Give Me a Sign:

From Stacy:

From Joolz, a house known as the “Hitler House” because it looks like him, Joolz took the photo from Google Earth, but you can also see it, along with a bunch of human-faced houses, at this site. Some info:

Probably one of the most recognisable face houses in the world, this end-of-terrace property went viral in 2016, when someone spotted that its exterior looks like German dictator, Adolf Hitler. Its slanted roofline and prominent door lintel definitely bear a resemblance to Hitler’s side-parting and moustache, don’t you think?

Located in Swansea, Wales, the property hit the headlines again when it went on the rental market for just £85 ($108) per week. Rather unsurprisingly, the Hitler House has been dubbed one of the ugliest in the world.

From Masih, a tweet that I can’t embed (why??). Another woman protestor killed by Iranian cops (click to go to original):

From a reader, a blockheaded and misguided doctor who signed a petition he hadn’t read:

From Simon, a lovely video of snow in NYC:

AOC trying to rebut the word salad she emitted when talking about foreign affairs last week. What’s hilarious about this is that her partner is snoring in the bed right next to her, and snoring LOUDLY. Sound up!

From Susan, a man guides a swan back to the water. This is really why I love “X”:

One from my feed; it’s totally bogus but I love it anyway:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

. . . and two from Dr. Cobb.  Is the Hubble Space Telescope going to drop from the sky?

The inexorable power of entropy. It will get us all, in the end.

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-02-25T06:37:05.444Z

Cat train!

Monday: Hili dialogue

February 9, 2026 • 6:15 am

Welcome to Monday, February 9, 2026, and National Bagel and Lox Day, one of the few ways I’ll eat fish. I don’t know who got the idea to put salmon on a bagel with cream cheese, but the idea was, as the kids say, “genius”.  Below is a a photo from the Wikipedia “Bagel and cream cheese” page. First, some history:

In American Jewish cuisine, cream cheese toppings (colloquially called “schmear“) of bagels have particular names. For example, a bagel covered with spread cream cheese is sometimes called a “whole schmear” bagel. A “slab” is a bagel topped with an unspread slab of cream cheese. A “lox and a schmear” is a bagel with cream cheese and lox or smoked salmon.  Tomato, red onion, capers and chopped hard-boiled egg are often added.  These terms are used at some delicatessens in New York City, particularly at Jewish delicatessens and older, more traditional delicatessens.

The lox and schmear likely originated in New York City around the time of the turn of the 20th century, when street vendors in the city sold salt-cured belly lox from pushcarts. A high amount of salt in the fish necessitated the addition of bread and cheese to offset the lox’s saltiness.It was reported by U.S. newspapers in the early 1940s that bagels and lox were sold by delicatessens in New York City as a “Sunday morning treat”, and in the early 1950s, bagels and cream cheese combination were very popular in the United States, having permeated American culture.

Jewish cuisine is pretty dire as ethnic cuisines go, but a bagel with lox and a schmear is surely its glory and apotheosis:

Helen Cook, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

And the ducks will arrive in March—if we get any ducks this year.

It’s also Chocolate Day, National Poop Day (the day when the digested food from watching the Super Bowl is excreted), Oatmeal Monday, and Pizza Pie Day.

There’s a Google Doodle honoring ice skating in the Olympics (they change the sport every day or so). Click below to go to the AI site explaining figure skating:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the February 9 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Sports: The Seattle Seahawks crushed the New England Patriots in Super Bowl 60 (or LX, as they say), with the final score 29-13.  I watched about five minutes and read the Italian novel The Leopard instead, as I wanted to finish it last night. It was superb and I recommend it very highly. All the news about the Super Bowl appears to be Bad Bunny’s halftime show, and I still don’t know who Bad Bunny is, clearly showing that I am ignorant of modern music.

*The NYT reveals that the Epstein files show a closer connection between Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein than we thought: Epstein’s companion and fellow predator Ghislaine Maxwell was closely connected with Clinton as he founded his Global Initiative, and Epstein may even have funded it (article archived here).

Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime companion, Ghislaine Maxwell, played a substantial role in supporting the creation of the Clinton Global Initiative, one of President Bill Clinton’s signature post-White House endeavors, new documents released by the Justice Department show.

Ms. Maxwell took part in budget discussions related to the first Clinton Global Initiative conference; talked through challenges about it with both Clinton aides and Publicis Groupe, the company that produced the inaugural event; and arranged to wire $1 million to pay Publicis for its work on “the Clinton project,” according to emails in the massive cache of documents collected as part of the government’s investigations of Mr. Epstein.

The source of the money is unclear, including whether Mr. Epstein provided the funds. However, the emails show that he was aware of the payment.

“Ask him to tell you why i million now and where will it be going,” Mr. Epstein wrote to Ms. Maxwell a few days after she received the wiring instructions from Publicis.

Ms. Maxwell’s involvement in the launch of the Clinton Global Initiative took place in 2004, before Mr. Epstein’s 2006 indictment and 2008 guilty plea for solicitation of prostitution with a minor, and long before Ms. Maxwell, a daughter of the media baron Robert Maxwell, was sentenced in 2022 to two decades in prison for conspiring with Mr. Epstein to sexually exploit underage girls.

The emails support an assertion Ms. Maxwell made last year in an interview with the Justice Department that she played a key role in helping set up the global conference.

Mr. Clinton has said he stopped speaking with Mr. Epstein sometime before his 2006 indictment. In a statement, Angel Ureña, a spokesman for the Clintons, said the former president had “called for the full release of the Epstein files” and “has nothing to hide.”

Again, there’s no evidence so far that Clinton participated in any of Epstein’s illicit activities, and this was all before Epstein had been convicted for the first time. Nevertheless, there are allegations that Clinton visited Epstein’s private island, and the ex-President (and Hillary) also refused to testify before Congress, though I think they’ve since agreed to do so. What can I say?—news is scant and papers are touting associations like this that may well turn out to be nothing.

*Iran has sentenced its imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize Laureate to an additional long stretch in prison—because she went on a hunger strike. It is, of course, Narges Mohammadi, imprisoned several times for criticizing the theocratic government, and awarded the Prize in  2023.

Iran has sentenced the Nobel peace prize laureate Narges Mohammadi to more than seven more years in prison after she began a hunger strike, her supporters said Sunday, as Tehran cracks down on all dissent following nationwide protests and the deaths of thousands at the hands of security forces.

The new convictions against Mohammadi come as Iran tries to negotiate with the US over its nuclear programme to avert a military strike threatened by Donald Trump. Iran’s top diplomat said on Sunday that Tehran’s strength came from its ability to “say no to the great powers”, striking a maximalist position just after negotiations in Oman with the US.

Mohammadi’s supporters cited her lawyer, Mostafa Nili, who had spoken to her. Nili confirmed the sentence on X, saying it had been handed down on Saturday by a court in the city of Mashhad.

“She has been sentenced to six years in prison for ‘gathering and collusion’ and one and a half years for propaganda and two-year travel ban,” he wrote. Mohammadi had received another two years of internal exile to the city of Khosf, about 740km (460 miles) south-east of the capital, Tehran, the lawyer added.

Iran did not immediately acknowledge the sentence.

Supporters say Mohammadi has been on a hunger strike since 2 Februrary. She had been arrested in December at a memorial ceremony honouring Khosrow Alikordi, a 46-year-old Iranian lawyer and human rights advocate who had been based in Mashhad. Footage from the demonstration showed her shouting, demanding justice for Alikordi and others.

Supporters had warned for months before her December arrest that Mohammadi, 53, was at risk of being put back into prison after she received a furlough in December 2024 over medical concerns. While that was to be only three weeks, her time out of prison lengthened, possibly as activists and western powers pushed Iran to keep her free. She remained out even during the 12-day war in June between Iran and Israel.

Mohammadi has had multiple heart attacks, convulsions, and surgery for what might have been bone cancer. But she has a Nobel Prize, and is serving time as a political prisoner.  Iran should let her go, preferably overseas where she can get decent medical care. I don’t know if, were she released, she would want to stay in Iran, but she will likely die in prison if they don’t let her go soon.

*There’s a news hiatus because of the Superbowl, which gives me a chance to catch up on non-“news” article, like this one in The Dispatch, “Why I don’t regret majoring in the humanities.” by Sharla Moody  (archived here). I read it because I’ve recently been pondering the differences between sciences and humanities, and have defended the latter even though I am (or was) a scientist.

I majored in English, which baffled many of my friends and, I think, worried my parents. Sometimes, when I’m confronted by the salaries of first-year software engineers and the technical training that such salaries require, I worry I made a mistake.

But I remember, too, the first time I read Paradise Lost and felt that there might be more to the world than I knew. I had always considered myself a bookworm, but it wasn’t until I enrolled in my major that I learned that reading the right books, and reading them with other people, was a different experience altogether. It wasn’t that I hadn’t thought about the problem of evil, or wondered about the existence of fate, before reading Paradise Lost. But reading John Milton gave these questions force and meaning to a degree that nothing prior had. If angels made by God to live in heaven couldn’t resist temptation, what hope was there for me to try to live according to my own values? In other classes, I learned statistical modeling and facts about recent American foreign policy. But nothing gave my life more urgency than the questions that I found in literature. Studying the humanities, for me, was like replacing a too-dim lightbulb. Suddenly I became aware of what was, and always had been, around me. There is so much to the world that I didn’t (and still don’t) know, and before I began studying the humanities, I had no idea that there was so much I was ignorant of.

Much has been made recently about the decline in reading among young people, especially those enrolled at elite universities known for rigorous humanities programs. Professors fret over declining enrollments. While smaller liberal arts colleges shutter, state flagships cut programs, and elite schools reduce Ph.D. admissions and consolidate departments.

While some of this is the result of decades of academic overproduction, practical degree programs absorbing the time of students, and yes, the Internet-phones-AI tripartite, the crisis of the humanities also comes from a lack of clear understanding of what the humanities are for. So argues Humanistic Judgment: Ten Experiments in Reading, a new book published by Yale University Press. Edited by Benjamin Barasch, David Bromwich, and Bryan Garsten—the latter two are Yale professors—the essay collection examines the current state of the humanities.

In recent decades, Bromwich argues in his introduction to the book, the academy has become less focused on understanding the goal of humanistic study as the cultivation of judgment or the development of self-knowledge or even inquiry into the nature of reality and humanity and the world, but rather focused on understanding texts through the lenses of cultural and political debates.. . .

. . .Humanistic study in the Western tradition has long been taught in seminar-style dialogues, taking after Socrates. Scholars commonly refer to works as “in conversation with one another.” At the center of the liberal arts lies this precept that education cannot be a solitary project. In reading and conversing and debating, the student of the humanities is, ideally, always exposed to one who experiences a text, or a painting, or the world differently. Just as reading might expose one’s ignorance, so too might the classroom. But this humility, in turn, should always lead to a desire to understand reality more deeply. In this vein, Barasch, in his contribution to the essay collection, discusses the work of journalist James Agee, writing, “Agee’s radical humanism is a craving for reality, a desire to live in the world as it is, and as he is. In becoming real to himself he discovers again and again the separateness, and thus the reality, of others.”

The sciences, social sciences, and technical fields are noble, good pursuits. But we do a disservice to young people when we discourage them from pursuing the liberal arts and treat education as the mere acquisition of skills and knowledge. To withstand the challenges posed by scientism and politics and AI and declines in reading, the humanities need positive accounts of their value. They have an excellent one in Humanistic Judgment. 

I don’t like the “scientism” bit nor the implication that the humanities helps us “understand reality more deeply” unless that means “subjective reality” or “the fact that different people have different viewpoints.” But, as I said in my Quillette piece, the arts (I’m excluding quasi-scientific humanities fields like economics and sociology), the value of the humanities is to apprehend the diversity of viewpoints of others, and to expand our understanding of how other people view the world.

*I was pulling for Lindsay Vonn to get an Olympic medal in downhill skiing. It was less than two weeks ago that she tore the anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee, a ligament that stabilizes the knee. You’d think that that would end her plans to ski, but this is one tough woman, and although she’s 41, she was bent not just on competing, but on winning. All that came to a grim end when she crashed painfully in yesterday’s competition. The latest report is that she broke her left leg and underwent surgery to stabilize it.

Lindsey Vonn’s pursuit of a downhill medal in her fifth Olympic Games ended violently Sunday morning here with a gruesome crash that left her screaming in pain and being airlifted from the mountain.

Vonn was the 13th of a scheduled 36 athletes to take to the course under baby blue skies at this stunning resort town in the Dolomites. She was just 10 days removed from a crash that tore the ACL in her left knee, and her comeback for these Olympics had already been made possible by a replacement of her right knee.

But with teammate Breezy Johnson, who won gold in the event, waiting at the bottom, Vonn — who was third fastest in Saturday’s final training run — barely got to evaluate herself against the competition before disaster struck. Thirteen seconds into a run that would have taken more than a minute and a half, she clipped the fourth gate with her right arm.

The contact sent Vonn spinning, with snow flying around her. Her head and shoulder violently drove into the surface of the course before she flipped again, her legs splayed.

Various broadcasts captured audio of Vonn crying, “Oh my God!” The crash occurred at noon local time, and it took just nine minutes for a helicopter to arrive to begin the process of flying her from the mountain.

“Certainly hoping she is okay after that terrible crash,” the public address announcer belted to a once buoyant crowd that had grown essentially silent.

. . . In a World Cup career that extends back more than two decades — and includes 84 victories and three Olympic medals, including gold in the downhill in 2010 — Vonn has been injured countless times. Never, though, in this kind of spotlight.

Her comeback bid that began last season — after the knee replacement allowed her to ski without pain for the first time she could remember — had been enormously successful. She won two World Cup downhill races this season, was the leader in the standings and had not finished out of the top three in five downhill starts. This comeback wasn’t a lark. This comeback was legit.

It’s sad, but you have to give her credit; she knew the danger and skied anyway.  And after a knee replacement some time ago!  She’ll be ok financially, and she had her medals.  I doubt she’ll be back at 45 for the next Olympics, but you have to give her kudos for courage and diligence.  Here’s a video of her accident (click on “Watch on YouTube” or here.

*The next movie I’d like to see is “The Testament of Ann Lee“, starring Amanda Seyfried in the title role. It’s about the woman who founded the Shakers in England and their migration to America; it’s also a musical. It’s been highly rated, and there’s buzz about Oscars for both the movie and Seyfried. David French gives his approving take in the NYT, characterizing it as “A movie about American that broke my heart” (the article is archived here).

I couldn’t stop blinking back tears, and I couldn’t understand why.

I’d just walked out of a movie called “The Testament of Ann Lee.” Lee was the founder of the American Shakers, a tiny utopian Christian sect that started in England in the mid-18th century. Lee brought a small band of followers to the United States shortly before the Revolution.

The Shakers were known for their ecstatic worship (hence the name), their egalitarianism and pacifism, their absolute commitment to celibacy and their furniture. Shakers committed themselves to excellence in all things, and their craftsmanship was impeccable.

I’m not exactly the target audience for a film about chair-making religious extremists. I’m more the kind of moviegoer who’s drawn to Will Ferrell or light sabers or dragons. Also orcs. I find great meaning in superhero movies. But my wife and son were going, and I wanted to hang out with them.

So I went, a bit skeptically, hoping that perhaps I might get to see a new trailer for Christopher Nolan’s upcoming adaptation of “The Odyssey.” But then the movie started, and it broke my heart.

. . .In Ann Lee’s case, her radical faith, which mirrored Christ’s and the Apostle Paul’s commitment to singleness and celibacy, also manifested itself in radical love, both for people inside her community and outside it.

In essence, Lee and her followers turned to God and said — as so many believers have — I will do anything for you. And they heard God’s ancient answer to that declaration: Love thy neighbor. And your neighbor includes the enslaved Black man, and the white indentured servant who possessed so few rights, and the Native American who was slowly but surely being driven from his land.

Hours after the movie, I finally realized why I had tears in my eyes. In the final scene, you see Lee’s plain wooden casket sitting alone under a painting of a beautiful tree.

In that moment, you could clearly see the gap between American hope and American reality. And I was reminded once again of one of George Washington’s favorite Bible verses, Micah 4:4 — “Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid.” In his writings, Washington referred to it almost 50 times.

. . .And so it is with this nation we love. In 250 years, the already of American liberty has expanded. We are a better and more decent nation than the one Ann Lee encountered. But as we see state brutality and state violence spill out across our streets, we know that we are not yet fulfilling the promise of the declaration.

Ann Lee died in 1784. When she was reportedly reinterred in the 1820s, she was found to have a fractured skull. It’s 2026 now, and we still see beatings in the streets. There are still too many caskets under the tree of liberty. But the tree is still alive, and it continues to grow. May we all sit securely in its shade one day.

It looks like the movie broke his heart because it reminded him of Trump’s America. That is a stretch at best. I will see the movie, but won’t go to it looking for analogies between 18th century America and today’s America. I will go to learn a bit about history (the Shakers were celibate, so could grow only through converts) and to admire the artistry.

Here’s the official trailer:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the two downstairs cats affirm their pledge:

Szaron: Between us, veganism is not my option.
Hili: Not mine either.

In Polish:

Szaron: Między nami mówiąc, weganizm nie jest moją opcją.
Hili: Moją też nie.

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

From Jesus of the Day:

From The Language Nerds:

From Cats That Have Had Enough of Your Shit:

From Masih; the mothers of murdered protestors console each other:

From Bryan, a long (8-min) clip of Peter Boghossian practicing “street epistemology”.  Peter is damned by progressives, but as you see he’s really good at practicing the Socratic method on ignorant youth (and oy! is this youth ignorant!):

From Luana: apparently antivaxers are not limited to the U.S., and these data are genuine.

From Simon; Jock the Chartwell cat:

From Gerald Steinberg, President of NGO Monitor. I stopped donations to MSF years ago.

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

Two from Dr. Cobb. First: Earth and Moon:

This is Earth and the Moon, photographed by a spacecraft in Mars orbit.

— Paul Byrne (@theplanetaryguy.bsky.social) 2026-02-08T02:21:22.677Z

From Matthew, a hilarious Instagram video (sound up) featuring a British t.v. presenter pretending to ask for kitschy items in a British store. Click on screenshot to watch, or go here to see the original. Ms. Welby cracks herself up.

I LOVE the Edwardian fox with a ruff and human hands who plays the cello: