Welcome to CaturSaturday, April 11, 2026, shabbos for Jewish cats and, in Canada, it’s National Poutine Day, the tastiest and unhealthiest of all comfort foods.  Here are several orders of poutine waiting to be served at La Banquise, perhaps Montreal’s most famous poutine shack. The photo, taken in March of 2016, shows two orders with guac amd sour cream.  One person has unaccountably ordered a salad:

It’s also Barbershop Quartet Day, International Louie Louie Day (Richard Berry, the writer of this “classic,” was born on this day in 1935; the song itself became famous with the Kingsmen’s version in 1963), National Cheese Fondue Day, and National Pet Day.

Here are the Kingsmen lip-synching to the song. I can still remember the first time I heard it, and it was on a transistor radio.

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

Da Nooz:

*Did you watch the Artemis re-entry and splashdown yesterday? Everything worked fine: it was, as they say, copacetic.

Floating in the Pacific Ocean on Friday, the four astronauts of NASA’s Artemis II mission had achieved more than just a historic return to human spaceflight around the moon.

“From the pages of Jules Verne to a modern-day mission to the moon, a new chapter of the exploration of our celestial neighbor is complete,” Rob Navias, who provided NASA commentary during the re-entry, said after splashdown.

The successful conclusion of Artemis II sets NASA on a path to extend the agency’s achievements in space exploration, and, for now at least, the United States is ahead of China in a 21st century space race.

Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch of NASA and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency were the first people to leave low-Earth orbit since 1972. Their journey captivated space enthusiasts and may have created new ones.

I’ve put an 11-minute video below; the moment of splashdown is at 7:42.

I’m told that this mission is partly to prepare for creating a U.S. base on the Moon.  I’m not sure, however, what that will accomplish? Will we claim the moon, in the same way that countries have made faux claims in Antarctica?

*In a post on It’s Noon in Israel,” author and journalist Amit Segal interviews Israeli Minister Aryeh Deri and also gives some exclusive statements from Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. First I’ll give Segal’s bullet points and take on the war, and you can read the Q&A for yourself:

It’s Friday, April 10, and before we dive into today’s headlines, we have exclusive statements from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. During our conversation last night, he highlighted three key points:

• • On Iran he asserted that without the two recent operations, Iran would have already acquired nuclear weapons by 2026.
  • On U.S. relations he argued that Israel’s standing in the United States is only an issue among those who have a problem with America itself. He stressed that this is not a new development, nor is it related to the current war.
  • On the northern front he claimed that Hezbollah has been begging for a ceasefire for a month, and teased that there will be further ‘interesting developments’ in the negotiations with Lebanon.”

As early as the second week, it became clear that the regime would not fall from airstrikes alone. The U.S. and Israeli strategy pivoted: hit them hard, then allow internal pressure to build while the U.S. military remains in the region as a passive deterrent against mass repression. The recent prospect of negotiations complicates that signal to the Iranian public, but the core strategy may still hold.

While the Iranian threat has been at least temporarily defanged, a new long-term threat is rising: U.S. public opinion.

There is a two-part problem.

First, the United States has not yet achieved its stated objectives. Second, as long as those objectives remain unmet, the finger of blame will inevitably point toward Israel. We can already see the narrative forming: Israel gave the U.S. false intelligence that the regime was on the brink of collapse, deceiving Trump into wasting American resources and lives in pursuit of its own interests. Ignoring the likely fact that Donald Trump hasn’t been led into doing anything he didn’t want to do since he was an infant, this is the story that’s being told.

Israel cannot afford to be seen as the party that overpromised. It cannot be left holding the proverbial bag for an Iranian version of Iraq’s nonexistent WMDs.

Moving forward, Israel must urgently invest in rebuilding its own infrastructure devastated by the war: public support in the U.S.

A bit of the Q&A with Deri:

Q: Will we see a regime change in the near future?

“I believe so. By the way, Trump believes the current regime is far more measured and responsible than what came before. In a certain sense, I agree. The diplomatic figures there effectively forced the ceasefire because of the constraints, not because of any genuine change of heart. They understood that within two weeks Iran would go bankrupt.”

Q: “And aren’t you worried that Israel’s gains come at a cost – a growing sense in America that we dragged them into a war that wasn’t theirs?”

“That has nothing to do with Iran. We have a problem with the Democrats, and somewhat with some Republicans, too. But precisely because of that, this period with Trump in power is a major opportunity for Israel to cement its regional standing. In the end, the Americans – whatever administration – will understand that their real ally is us.”

*As always, I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news-and-snark column in the Free Press, called this week, “TGIF: MMIWG2SLGBTQIA+” (yes, that’s a group; read on).

→ To study the forest, you must have a limp: A new job posting for a tenure-track position—Canada Research Chair in Forestry and Environmental Stewardship at the University of British Columbia—has an interesting requirement. “For this position, applicants must identify as having a disability.” Actually, more ideally, they must identify as disabled women or indigenous people of color:

In accordance with UBC’s CRC Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Action Plan, and pursuant to Section 42 of the BC Human Rights code, this search is restricted to people with disabilities. We welcome applications from disabled scholars who are also members of the following federally designated groups: Indigenous Peoples, racialized people, and women, and gender equity-seeking groups. Applicants to CRC positions are required to complete this equity survey.

To study the forest, you must have a limp. And be gay. Are you gay and are you limping? (Me, yes, frequently.) Now you may apply to be a professor of the forests. Also, this confirms my theory that the longer the job title, the more ridiculous the job. Canada Research Chair in Forestry and Environmental Stewardship?

And elsewhere in Canada, a major political conference devolved into chaos as everyone fought over “equity cards,” differently colored little cards that let certain speakers cut in line according to their level of oppression. “I was standing here with my gender equity card before you called on the previous speaker. That’s my point of privilege,” one person said. Another: “Yesterday, this card was used in an inappropriate matter. And while I understand in Ontario, we note this as equity, even if that, this was also used inappropriately in terms of gender. I want everyone to be mindful that these cards for individuals like myself, who identify as a black woman, have no value outside of this space.” Okay, fine, one more: “I said, ‘Hey, this pertains to multiple intersecting parts of my lived experience, I’d like to speak.’ I was rejected when I talked. It’s frustrating when it’s—these are my rights being directly under attack right now in Alberta. A cisgender woman had spoken over me.” The delegates weren’t the only ones complaining, however. The chair had some words after their pronouns were tread upon: “I’ll again thank delegates not to call me ‘Madame Chair.’ I am a nonbinary person. My pronouns are they/them/their. Chair is sufficient.” I’d also like to thank my coworkers not to call me Nellie Bowels. Which they have multiple times this week, and which is (I swear to G-d) how my name is spelled on my official Paramount ID card. I thank you not to call me that. Chair is sufficient.

On my last Canadian note—it’s a 20! I’ll be here all week!—New Democratic Party MP Leah Gazan expressed her frustration at budget cuts by saying: “They provided $0 to deal with the ongoing genocide of MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+.” Them’s a lot of letters. I thought that surely had to be a joke. So I googled the phrase and sure enough, it’s real. I really try not to make too much fun of the alphabet soup stuff. It’s too easy. It’s played out. I’m better than it. But then a member of parliament drops MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ on us. What are we supposed to do here, guys? When will the letters end? Is there pi of letters? Why two Q’s?

Here’s the answer. There’s other mishigas from Canada at the article. Note that this isn’t really a “genocide” since most of the perps are indigenous people themselves, and I suspect that domestic violence is a major contributor:

MMIWG stand for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. The media and politicians in Canada treat this as a genocide. One problem: https://t.co/f2Mdy29Tvo pic.twitter.com/o4HmRiQsWr

— Charlie Smirkley (@charliesmirkley) April 9, 2026

→ Updates on Jewish life: What a time it has been! Sixty percent of American adults now largely dislike Israel, according to a new Pew Research Center survey and also my entire Instagram feed, and everyone else in the world minus the people I work and associate with.

. . . A politician from Britain’s Labour Party made and posted a video with the words Jew and kike spelled out over different Tories’ faces. But don’t worry—he was just quoting a song, just a random line that happened to be transcribed randomly. Must be AI’s fault. A total accident, he says, of the word kike spelled out over his oppositions’ faces. Happens all the time, I’m sure. I’ve been there, man, hang in there, says the rest of the country.

In a vestigial twitch of fairness, NPR’s public editor did note that it was odd how the news outlet covered the attack on a Michigan synagogue and preschool. See, NPR sent a reporter to a Lebanese village to help contextualize why the suspect in that Michigan attack might have been so upset (Israel killed his relatives, one of whom was reportedly a Hezbollah commander, so you see, blowing up a Jewish preschool is fair). The public editor notes: “I couldn’t find any stories that quote rabbis, congregation members, or the families of the children who had to flee the building.” Seems bad! Alas, not really that bad. The piece ends: “NPR has given Americans what they need to understand their government’s motivations and to hold their elected officials accountable for this war.” All’s well. Nothing to see here.

Meanwhile, a NYT piece on the youth these days defines the term J-pilled as simply “far-right slang for skepticism of Israeli influence.” J-pilled. Interesting; does Israel start with J? Does it have a J? Maybe it stands for Jabba the Hutt? Oh, right. It means Jew-pilled, and the NYT is trying to soften it. Like how the mainstream media always translates the Arabic word Yahud to Israelis instead of Jews, which is what it means. But the people saying J-pilled speak English! They’re literally calling themselves Jew-pilled, and our greatest newspaper is desperate to make it go down smoothly. Some days I’m ready for the human-alien hybrids to reveal themselves.

*John McWhorter responds to both AI and DEI in a new NYT column, “What A.I. and D.E.I. have in common” (article is archived here). The commonality involves casting suspicion on people and their work.

I never thought A.I. would get me thinking of D.E.I.

I’ve reached a depressing turning point as a college professor. With A.I. now entrenched in academic life, when a student submits a wonderful essay, I will never again be sure that it was purely a work of the student’s initiative, intelligence and talent.

Some essays will be. But there will be no way to really tell. Technology could allow me to determine only what was likely. And would an essay count as original if the student used A.I. to begin the paper but then built upon those prompts?

Let’s face it: From now on we will have to revise our sense of what is original and authentic. There is no way to adjudicate where to draw the line, and few professors will be up for submitting every essay they receive to this kind of evaluation.

. . .And there is something else gloomy about A.I. making it unnecessary to write an essay from the ground up. A.I. will put more people under the sort of suspicion that D.E.I. does.

A.I. will put artistic and intellectual achievement under a cloud of doubt, a sense that the creator did not do it all on their own, and possibly could not have. And this is the burden that D.E.I. policies often saddle its intended beneficiaries with.

Call it diversity, equity and inclusion or affirmative action or racial preferences, it is rooted in a quest to give people an opportunity to compete more easily against straight white people, especially men.

Adjusting standards for admission or hiring in view of a group’s past handicap is a unique moral advance.

But it should be applied for as limited a time as possible because of the side effects. Under a policy that allows certain people to be judged even partly on who they are rather than what they bring to the table, people of color are often suspected of being “D.E.I. hires,” brought on with lesser qualifications than their white equivalent would be permitted to have.

Sometimes, the charge is false. From what I see, and from what people with law degrees whose opinions I trust tell me, the Supreme Court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is clearly qualified for her position.

But the interviews Karine Jean-Pierre gave during her book tour last year gave credence to the idea that when President Joe Biden made her White House press secretary her race, gender and sexual orientation were more important criteria than her ability to convey policy, positions and ideas clearly.

I haven’t seen Jean-Pierre’s interviews, but here’s a video from the Left-wing site The Young Turks arguing (at the start) that her book tour was a “disaster”:

*If you want to hear about the sex binary for its expert, as well as rebuttals of several widespread criticisms of the (real) sex binary, there’s an interview with Colin Wright published on his substack called “One reality, two sexes, and endless debates.” You can read for free; it’s a transcript of a interview he did with the German rationalist/skeptic organization Die Gesellschaft zur wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung von Parawissenschaften (GWUP),(The Society for the Scientific Study of Parasciences). Here are two of many Q&As:

Q: Your paper identifies five main models used to argue against the sex binary. Could you briefly outline them?

A: First, there’s the conflation of mating types with sexes. Some fungi and slime molds reproduce sexually using gametes of the same size—we call these isogamous species. They have chemical compatibility types between gametes, sometimes thousands of them. Articles about ‘the slime mold with 30,000 sexes’ are based on a fundamental misunderstanding. Sexes refer only to males and females, which are defined by different-sized gametes. Species with same-sized gametes don’t have males and females—they have mating types.

Second, there’s the chromosomal or karyotype model. You’ll hear people say, ‘if you’re XX you’re female, if you’re XY you’re male.’ But this conflates how sex is determined in humans with what sex is. Many crocodilians and turtles don’t have sex chromosomes at all—their sex is determined by egg incubation temperature. People with Klinefelter syndrome (XXY) aren’t a third sex; they’re biologically male. These are chromosomal variations within the two sexes.

Third, there’s the sex spectrum model, which holds that sex is a continuous variable based on genital morphology. Some proponents think males and females aren’t real entities but exist only in a statistical sense—you can be varying degrees of male or female, but not definitively male or female. This ignores gametes entirely and has circular problems: how do you know what genital shape is ‘male’ unless you already know what males are, rooted in gametes?

Fourth, there’s the polythetic categories model—like family resemblance, in which members share overlapping characteristics, with no single feature necessary for membership. They try to apply this to sex, saying it’s a combination of chromosomes, hormones, height, and voice pitch, and many other sex-related traits. But how do you define which chromosomes or hormone profiles are ‘male’ without presupposing what males are, rooted in gametes?

Fifth—and most influential—is the multi-level model, which says we can’t talk about bodies having a sex. Instead, you’d say someone is ‘genetically male’ or ‘hormonally female’ or has a ‘male height.’ But again, how are they determining which chromosomes are male without presupposing that males and females exist apart from chromosomes, inevitably rooted in gametes?

and:

Q: What evidence would you need to change your view that there are only two sexes?

A: That’s a crucial question. In the skeptic community, you always need to have something that could convince you you’re wrong. If you don’t, you’re just a zealot, not doing science.

For me, it’s really easy: we define sexes by the type of gamete an individual is biologically capable of producing. You’d need to present a third novel gamete type—in addition to or intermediate between sperm and ova—that an individual’s reproductive system could have the function to produce. That’s the only thing that could make there be more than two sexes.

*Chimp wars! The WSJ describes a lethal war between a previously amiable group of chimpanzees. We’ve long known that chimpanzees can engage in lethal intergroup violence, sometimes tearing apart an outsider chimp limb from limb.  But in an article called “Inside the deadly civil war that tore apart a group of chimpanzees in Uganda“, the paper describe fractionation of a previously harmonious group, and a big group, too. I’ve put the original article from Science below, which you can also click to read. The article’s conclusion is that fractioning a group doesn’t require “cultural markers” like ethnicity, religion, or language, since chimps don’t have those.

A rare and deadly “civil war” has broken out between two factions of chimps in Africa, according to new research.

The dispute erupted in what was once a cohesive group of about 200 chimps whose ties stretched back two decades. It took just three years for them to turn on each other, according to a new study in the journal Science.

The paper below says that “over the next 7 years [after fission], members of one group made 24 attacks, killing at least seven mature males and 17 infants in the other group.”

Here’s the paper’s conclusion, which contains what I think an unwarranted extrapolation to humans. It’s ok to speculate, I guess, but I’m not sure I would have written what’s below:

This study encourages a reevaluation of current models of human collective violence. If chimpanzee groups can polarize, split, and engage in lethal aggression without human-type cultural markers, then relational dynamics may play a larger causal role in human conflict than often assumed. Cultural traits remain essential for large-scale cooperation, but many conflicts may originate in the breakdown of interpersonal relationships rather than in entrenched ethnic or ideological divisions . It is tempting to attribute polarization and war that occur in humans today to ethnic, religious, or political divisions. Focusing entirely on these cultural factors, however, overlooks social processes that shape human behavior—processes also present in one of our closest animal relatives. In some cases, it may be in the small, daily acts of reconciliation and reunion between individuals that we find opportunities for peace.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej gives his opinion about philosophy:

Andrzej: Are you asleep?
Hili: No, I’m practicing philosophy.
Andrzej: Sometimes that amounts to the same thing.\

In Polish:

Ja: Śpisz?
Hili: Nie, uprawiam filozofię.
Ja: To czasem na jedno wychodzi.

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

From Things with Faces:

From Now That’s Wild:

From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:

Masih isn’t tweeting so much, so let’s have Larry the Cat, who’s no friend of Trump:

We’ve reached the point that they’re using the Epstein files to cover up Iran https://t.co/Secj666mDc

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) April 9, 2026

From Bryan: a short but provocative interview with Dan Dennett (text and video) about consciousness:

Daniel Dennett: You don’t know your own mind as well as you think you do.

In a 1993 Dutch documentary series, A Glorious Accident, philosopher Daniel Dennett laid out one of the most unsettling ideas in all of philosophy, the possibility that we are fundamentally mistaken about… pic.twitter.com/UZ0hZuwmG0

— Big Brain Philosophy (@BigBrainPhiloso) April 9, 2026

From Luana on Biden’s immigration policy, which was no policy:

Most Americans still don’t fully understand what happened under Biden…

8% of Nicaragua entered the US in 4 years.
8% of the entire country.

7% of Cuba.
6% of Haiti.
5% of Honduras. pic.twitter.com/Y5eRA8yTGV

— BitcoinSapiens ⚡️ (@BitcoinSapiens) April 9, 2026

From Malcolm. Have people decided that orange cats are really weird?

It’s always the orange cats. Love them all. pic.twitter.com/ZAKjpaklV1

— Why you should have a cat (@ShouldHaveCat) March 9, 2026

One from my feed; more evidence that the Turks love their cats (translation from the Turkish: “In Turkey, an elderly man who makes his living by shining shoes never turns away this little friend when a cat that shows up at the same time every morning asks to have its fur brushed.”

Türkiye’de ayakkabı boyayarak geçimini sağlayan yaşlı bir amcanın yanına her sabah aynı saatte gelen bir kedi, tüylerinin taranmasını isteyince amca bu minik dostunu asla geri çevirmiyor. pic.twitter.com/ktjJE66upn

— Bayrak Medya (@bayrakmedya) April 10, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Hungarian Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was five years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-04-11T11:09:16.571Z

Two from Matthew. First, my two favorite animals together. Matthew says this is NOT AI:

Remy the cat sees a duck for the first time 😂TT: McKenna

— Luca (@lucagalletti.bsky.social) 2026-04-09T22:45:17.899Z

And a woodie!  After a two-day absence, ours returned to Botany Pond yesterday.

It's the time of year for wood ducks in the woods. Here's a wood duck on a tree branch in a greater Vancouver (BC) park.

— Donna Giberson (Elbows UP!) 🇨🇦🇺🇦 (@donnag.bsky.social) 2026-04-09T20:47:08.525Z

Welcome to Sunday, April 5, 2026, and it’s Easter, which gives me a chance to tell my Jewish Easter joke.  My records say “It comes from the site Southern Jewish Humor, which gets the story from Eli N. Evans, who wrote The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South: Evans said he searched for the best example he could find of Southern Jewish humor. ”

He told the story of a Jewish storekeeper in a small town who was approached by the Christian elders to show solidarity for their Easter holiday.

Mr. Goldberg was chagrined but when Easter came, after sunrise services on a nearby hilltop, the mayor, all the churchgoers, and the leading families in the city gathered in the town square in front of his store.  The store had a new sign but it was draped with a parachute.

After an introduction from the mayor, at the appointed hour, the owner pulled the rope and there it was revealed in all its wonder for all to see: “Christ Has Risen, but Goldberg’s prices remain the same.”

And, since it’s still Passover (until April 9).  I hope you get this:

It’s also First Contact Day from Star Trek (humans contacted aliens on April 5, 2063 when the Vulcan ship T’Plana-Hath landed in Bozeman, Montana), National Baked Ham with Pineapple Day, National Caramel Day, and National Deep Dish Pizza Day (the best kind, but best only in Chicago).

Today’s Google Doodle marks the holiday; click to see where it goes:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 1 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*BREAKING NEWS (relevant to first post below). The missing U.S. airman has been rescued in a daring night commando raid in Iran.

An Air Force officer whose fighter jet had been shot down in Iran was rescued by U.S. Special Operations forces in a risky night mission deep inside Iranian territory, President Trump said on social media early Sunday.

The rescue followed a life-or-death race between U.S. and Iranian forces that stretched over two days to reach the injured airman, a weapon systems officer, officials said. The operation took commandos deep inside Iran and involved hundreds of special operations troops.

There were no U.S. casualties among the rescue team, Mr. Trump said. The rescued officer had “sustained injuries, but he will be just fine,” Mr. Trump added.

Finding the downed airman had been the U.S. military’s top priority since Friday, when Iran’s military shot down the F-15E Strike Eagle. It was the first known instance of a U.S. combat aircraft being shot down by Iran since the war began more than a month ago. The two members ejected from the cockpit and the pilot was quickly rescued.

Of course the NYT, which wants America to lose the war, had to qualify the above by adding this right after:

The incident underscored Iran’s ability to fight back despite weeks of attacks on its military arsenal. On Sunday, Israel and Gulf nations reported attempted drone and missile strikes they attributed to Iran. Kuwaiti officials said Iranian drones significantly damaged two power and water desalination plants, and sparked a fire at the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation’s oil complex.

This is excellent news for several reasons: the man is alive and apparently well, and Iran, who was using hundreds of forces to find him (plus offering a $60,000 bounty), would have used him as a bargaining chip to settle the war, much as the Palestinians do when they capture an IDF soldier or take civilian hostages.

*An airman shot down over Iran in an F15 fighter bailed out on Friday along with a fellow crewman. One has been rescued, but the other airman is somewhere in Iran, with the military doing a lot of sorties to find him.

The U.S. military was racing on Saturday to find an American airman who ejected from a fighter jet that was shot down over Iran, even as President Trump said time was “running out” on his ultimatum to escalate U.S. attacks unless a deal was reached in two days.

The White House has mostly been silent about the downing of the U.S. F-15E fighter jet by Iranian forces since it was first reported more than a day ago, as well as about the attempts to recover its two crew members. U.S. officials said one had been rescued, but the status of the second was unknown as of Saturday.

In a social media post on Saturday morning, Mr. Trump did not address the airman’s status. Instead, he reiterated that the deadline for his threat to massively bombard Iranian power plants would expire in 48 hours unless Iran agreed to stop blockading the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway for Persian Gulf oil and gas.

Mr. Trump has already delayed the ultimatum twice, saying that there were ongoing talks between the United States and Iran. Iranian officials have publicly dismissed U.S. demands, however, and continued to voice defiance after the two airmen were shot down on Friday.

. . . The downing of the fighter jet on Friday was the first time U.S. personnel and combat aircraft have been shot down in Iran since the U.S.-Israeli war began in late February. Iranian forces were also seeking to capture the missing American, Iranian officials said, speaking anonymously to discuss ongoing operations.

I can’t help but imagine what that pilot, who is likely still alive, is doing. The television news last night said he had been trained in how to survive in enemy territory, and I presume he has at least some food and water with him (I’m presuming that it’s a male). But Iran has offered a $60,000 bounty for anyone who turns the pilot over to the police, and I can only imagine what they’d do to him if they caught him. (Do no presume that Iran adheres to the Geneva Convention for POWs!).  Sometimes I fantasize that he’ll be taken in by anti-regime civilians, who will forego the bounty, and endanger their own lives, by harboring an enemy airman.

*The Wall Street Journal discusses Trump’s attempts to open the Strait of Hormuz, a task that the WSJ calls “mission impossible”:

President Trump has called on allied nations to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, to allow a fifth of the world’s oil to flow again through the passageway that Iran has effectively shut since the war started.

The problem: Naval escorts for tankers through such a narrow waterway in a war zone would be nearly impossible, say allied officials and military experts. Reopening the strait would more likely come after a cease-fire and through international pressure on Iran, they say.

Forcing open the strait militarily is unrealistic, French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday. “It would take forever and would expose all those crossing the strait to risks” of Iranian attack, he said.

“Iran is trying to hold the global economy hostage in the Strait of Hormuz,” U.K. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said Thursday after convening a meeting of more than 40 countries seeking to reopen the strait. They discussed political and diplomatic steps, including potential sanctions, she said. Military intervention wasn’t on the list of options discussed.

Trump said Wednesday that strikes on Iran would continue for more than two weeks. During that time, shippers are unlikely to risk sending commercial vessels through the combat zone, analysts say. The question is what level of assurance they need to start sailing again in large numbers.

U.S. and Israeli strikes have badly damaged Iran’s regular naval assets. Yet the main threat to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz comes not from Iran’s conventional navy but from its arsenal of land-based antiship missiles, drones, swarms of small attack craft, midget submarines and various types of mines.

Geography complicates defending ships. The strait is roughly 20 miles wide at its narrowest point and divided into lanes to separate marine traffic, forcing merchant ships to travel along predictable routes. The warning time of a potential attack, and the chance to respond, would be exceedingly brief.

Iran has nearly 1,000 miles of coastline along the Persian Gulf, which it can use to launch attacks against ships, such as the drone strike that earlier this week hit a fully laden Kuwaiti oil tanker off the coast of Dubai. The coastline is dominated by mountains and coves, allowing Iranian forces to launch surprise attacks with swarms of speed boats. Tunnels under the rock, or ones hidden by mangroves and in salt caves, shelter boats that can either be launched directly into the water, or from trailers.

If we need a cease-fire and negotiated settlement with Iran to open the Strait, then everything becomes a mess, as a negotiated settlement that leaves the theocracy in power doesn’t solve any problem except the transit of oil. It doesn’t solve the oppression and murder of Iranian civilians, the dictatorial nature of the government, and the government’s drive to produce nuclear weapons. The war is a mess, and I worry that Trump will just tire of it, let Iran go the way of Venezuela (no real change in leadership), and move on to his next “project.”

*Luana sent this NYT headline (article archived here):

An excerpt:

Syracuse University is closing or halting enrollment in about 20 percent of its academic programs, in a move that the school’s provost said was designed to create a university that would be “more focused, more distinctive and more aligned with student demand.”

The overhaul was revealed in a letter from the provost, Lois Agnew, that was sent on Wednesday to students and faculty members. And while the letter did not list the cuts, a spreadsheet provided by the university showed that the humanities and the fine arts represented the largest share.

Classics and ceramics are out as majors, along with a host of others that had attracted few students.

In all, 93 of the 460 academic programs at the school will be closed or paused, meaning that no new students will be able to enroll in those majors. Coursework in the areas will still be offered, and minors in many of the subjects will continue to be available.

Similar changes are happening at universities around the country, as students seek out fields that they believe will more directly translate into higher-paying jobs, a recent analysis by the American Enterprise Institute showed. College administrators, following the market, have been reducing humanities offerings.

Among the 17 majors ending in the College of Arts and Sciences are the undergraduate degrees in classical civilization, classics, German, Italian, Middle Eastern studies and Modern Jewish studies, the spreadsheet showed.

Students will still be able to study German and Italian — as well as Arabic, Chinese, French and Spanish — as tracks in a new world languages and cultures bachelor’s degree program or as minors, a website detailing the changes showed.

In the College of Visual and Performing Arts, it will no longer be possible to major in ceramics, jewelry and metalsmithing, sculpture, painting or art video, though coursework in those areas will remain. Instead, students will be channeled into a broader bachelor of fine arts degree that will offer those fields as concentrations.

You can see the full list of programs cut by Syracuse here. This has also happened, though on a smaller scale, at the University of Chicago:

The University of Chicago’s Division of the Arts & Humanities is preparing for a significant reorganization to cut administrative costs, with proposed changes expected to be presented to Provost Katherine Baicker by late August.

Citing new federal policies and shifts in the “underlying financial models” for higher education, the division is considering consolidating its 15 departments into eight, reducing language instruction, and establishing minimum class and program sizes.

This is also solely in the humanities, and undoubtedly for the same reason: students aren’t majoring in those areas because you can’t get a job with a major in, say, languages or fine arts.  I find this all very sad, because consolidating departments inevitably means cutting courses that were essential for a major but not sufficiently attractive to be part of a liberal education.  And that inevitably means cutting faculty lines. What’s essential is to maintain courses that would be pivotal for a liberal education, and I’m sure that at least Chicago will do that. I am surprised that gender studies has not been on the chopping block, but that may be for ideological rather than for enrollment reasons.

*Elliott Abrams, who served in foreign-policy positions under three Republican Presidents, has a critique in the National Review of Trump’s latest update on Iran: “The President’s not-so-reassuring Iran address.” with the subtitle, “President Trump could have done a better job assuaging the concerns of the American public.”

 . . . as a performance, it was unimpressive. The president read his lines too fast, and instead of emphasizing the key words or passages, he added comments that were sometimes irrelevant, other times disturbing, and often inaccurate. Do Americans really want to bomb Iran or anyone else “back the Stone Ages where they belong”? Does anyone believe the second-level Revolutionary Guard officers who’ve replaced those killed are actually “less radical and much more reasonable”? In what possible sense was Iran trying to build “a nuclear weapon like nobody’s ever seen before”?

It would have been far better for the president to speak more plainly about the great achievements of these four weeks of combat. And the best parts of the speech were his explanations of our purpose: to prevent the world’s greatest state sponsor of terrorism from developing a nuclear weapon and from threatening its neighbors — and us — with intercontinental ballistic missiles and other growing military assets.

What did the president say about the future? Many predictions had suggested he would announce ending the war quickly, due to fear of the political effects of high oil prices and the falling stock market. But Donald Trump is always unpredictable and always thinking about bargaining to come. In the speech, he seemed to promise two to three more weeks of even heavier bombing, and by mid-April, it appears that both we and Israel will be getting to the bottom of our target lists. In early March, the White House and the Pentagon predicted the war would take four to six weeks, so they are pretty much on schedule.

And the war may end sooner. Pakistan is sending messages back and forth about a cease-fire. In my view, there will be no peace treaty to end the war, for two reasons. The two sides are too far apart in our demands, and there’s no individual or structure now in Tehran able to make the compromises any such multi-page agreement would require. So the likely end will come in a simple deal to stop shooting.

That leaves the Strait of Hormuz, and here the president is saying “don’t look at me, it’s an international responsibility.” He’s at least partially right: Why can’t there be an international maritime force protecting the strait from Iran? The European Union navies combine in EUNAVFOR Atalanta and the Maritime Security Centre Indian Ocean, joint efforts against piracy and to enhance maritime security off the Horn of Africa, in the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, and Persian Gulf. The Combined Maritime Force is a 46-nation effort led by the United States with similar goals.

It is regrettable that instead of urging (or leading) pragmatic, positive action, the president most often turns to insults of allies and threats to leave NATO. On Wednesday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer invited more than 35 countries to a meeting on strait security, in London. That’s a start. There is no reason why a large multinational naval coalition cannot patrol the strait once this war ends, presumably in April.

As I’ve written elsewhere, the president’s kind words about those who are actually fighting on our side (he mentioned Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, and Bahrain, though except for Israel they are actually doing nothing but self-defense) makes his coldness to Ukraine even more indefensible. Ukraine is on our side too, helping our allies defend against the Iranian drones they know so well because Iran sells them to Russia. And like Israel, they fight patriotically and effectively. It is long past time for the president to square up who’s on our side and who’s against us, and to see Ukraine as a key ally and Russia as one of our worst enemies.

The speech seemed more like an effort to silence the critics who kept asking “why doesn’t the president speak to the nation?” than an important message he felt compelled to deliver on all the networks. Given that he speaks to the press almost every day, this kind of set speech may be superfluous in getting through to the public. And reading speeches isn’t his forte anyway.

I have to say that I didn’t listen to Trump’s bombast, as I simply forgot, but I know what he said from the news.  As far as defending the Strait of Hormuz as an international responsibility, I can see why European countries don’t want to put their military in service defending commercial ships, because if Israel and the U.S. had not started the war, there would be no need to defend the Strait.  Trump’s performance was lame, as Abrams says,  and I always worry that regime change in Iran is not a priority. For several years I’ve been posting Masih Alinejad’s tweets about public opposition to Iran’s theocracy, and Iran seems second to only North Korea in oppressing its people. If the theocracy stays in power, my verdict will have been that we lost the war—especially if Iran doesn’t promise to end it’s nuclear problem, which it won’t. But, as I always say, I’m just a simple country geneticist, not a political pundit.

*Hooray! (Not!) Yet another book on why sex isn’t binary is coming out, and the good news is that you don’t have to waste your money on it (h/t Krzysztof ).  Click on the cover photo below if you want to see the Amazon blurb, which includes this bushwa:

Biological sex is as nuanced as gender. Many of us are biologically more typically masculine in some ways and more typically feminine in others. The constellation of traits that make up our sex identity are wide-ranging and often overlap. Height, strength, body hair, genitalia, hormonal balances—these are all part of the picture. How should we think about this kind of variation?

The Binary Delusion explores the actual diversity of our biological sex characteristics, from genitals to brains. Some people may have typically female genitals and a Y chromosome and testes, rather than ovaries. This anatomy is intermediate, not completely male and not completely female, and it occurs in nature all the time. Depending on how you choose to count, up to 6% of the population—about 20 million people in the US or 500 million worldwide—likely have sex traits that aren’t exactly male or exactly female.

As a biologist, Dr. Berkowitz worries that more people aren’t aware of this fundamental fact of human life. Nearly all of us manipulate our bodies in one way or another to make them appear more typically masculine or feminine. The only way to make sense of these apparent contradictions is that our society insists—regardless of our biology—that each body look a specific way from infancy until death. It’s a disturbingly limited view of self-expression, and Dr. Berkowitz argues that it’s worse than that: it’s unscientific.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, it’s a typical holiday:

Hili: That Easter breakfast was wonderful.
Andrzej: I share your opinion, but we still have a lot of work today.

In Polish:

Hili: To wielkanocne śniadanie było wspaniałe.
Ja: Podzielam twoje zdanie, ale i tak mamy dziś dużo pracy.

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

From The Language Nerds:

From Stacy:

From Jesus of the Day, another medieval painting:

From Masih, who presents another human-rights activist imprisoned in Iran:

First, Narges Mohammadi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, nearly suffers a heart attack in prison, denied proper medical care.
Now, Nasrin Sotoudeh, a lawyer and another human rights defender is arrested in Iran.

When a regime shows no mercy to those who speak the language of peace,… pic.twitter.com/ELcXW7984y

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) April 4, 2026

From Emma, describing A Very Bad Idea:

I attended a scientific conference a few years ago where we were invited to cycle at the side of the platform, to power – at least – the energy costs of the visuals.

Nobody needs to see a panting developmental biologist alongside someone who is changing the face of cancer… https://t.co/bbRfA1DjQi

— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) April 3, 2026

From Simon: the NYT screws up big time (they say they’ll publish a correction):

Can you imagine how many people approved it before publishing? Shameful.

— Olga Nesterova (@onestpress.onestnetwork.com) 2026-04-03T19:20:19.097Z

Two from my feed. First, boat cats (they all need lifejackets):

I didn’t know this life was an option pic.twitter.com/irtyM7zUIk

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) April 3, 2026

For some reason I love these repetitive foreign sentences:

Spanish is confusing: 😵‍💫pic.twitter.com/yrvyb687DJ

— AlphaFox (@alphafox) April 4, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was two years old, and would be 84 today had she lived. https://t.co/qIfD6CF4Tz

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) April 5, 2026

Two from Dr. Cobb.  The first one is amazing.

While you slept last night: ~100 million birds took to the skies 🐦 The Mid-Atlantic saw heavy traffic moving north/northeast, with migration hotspots from the Southeast to Ohio Valley and Southern Plains. The overnight rush continues this weekend.Details at cwg.live

— Capital Weather Gang (@capitalweather.bsky.social) 2026-04-03T18:25:53.051Z

And Matthew sent me this NYT headline, saying, “If this were a UK newspaper you’d know they were taking the piss. In the case of the NYT, not.”  (They’ve changed the headline to reflect that nobody at the Waffle House remembers this guy.)

Welcome to the first TGIF of April: Friday,  April 3, 2026, and it’s Good Friday, the day on which, as the story goes, Jesus was crucified.  I don’t believe a word of that story (your mileage may differ), but it was the subject of nearly all of the art of medieval Europe. Here’s a later painting of the crucifixion (1632), but a good one, and one by one of my favorite artists: Diego Velázquez. They sure took the trouble to make a fancy sign for the cross—in three languages!  Later today I’ll post a discussion between Ross Douthat and Bart Ehrman where they differ on whether Jesus was the son of God, divine, and worked miracles.

It’s also the second full day of Passover, and I need to get some matzos, stat! (I eat them thickly slathered with butter, the only way they’re edible.) Further, it’s Fish Fingers and Custard Day (explained below, n.b. for Doctor Who fans), National Chocolate Mousse Day, and Tweed Day.

Fish Fingers and Custard Day commemorates the introduction of the Eleventh Doctor on the television series Doctor Who, as well as the memorable fish fingers and custard scene from the episode in which he arrives. The episode, which was released on April 3, 2010, is the first from Series 5 of the show, and is titled “The Eleventh Hour.” BBC declared the first Fish Fingers and Custard Day to take place on the second anniversary of the release of the episode. The following year, Birdseye even put the Doctor, who was played by Matt Smith, on their boxes. The day is marked by people eating fish fingers and custard and sharing photos and videos of them doing so.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 3 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Breaking news (well, sort of): Attorney General Pam Bondi has been deep-sixed by Trump—another cabinet member gone.

Attorney General Pam Bondi had a pretty good idea her days were numbered.

President Trump had complained too freely, too frequently, to too many people about her inability to prosecute the people he hates. She was falling short of Mr. Trump’s unyielding, unrealistic demands for retribution against his enemies. She had made mistake upon mistake in her handling of the Epstein files. Her critics were in the president’s ear.

Last month, Ms. Bondi told a friend that Mr. Trump’s willingness to fire Kristi Noem from her post as homeland security secretary meant she might be in jeopardy too.

But Ms. Bondi had not expected Mr. Trump, the man responsible for elevating her to one of the most powerful positions in the country, to drop the curtain quite so soon, according to four people familiar with the situation.

On Wednesday, the 60-year-old Ms. Bondi, downcast but determined, joined Mr. Trump for a glum crosstown drive to the Supreme Court, where they watched arguments in the birthright citizenship case. In the car, Mr. Trump told her it was time for a change at the top of the Justice Department.

Ms. Bondi hoped to save her job or, at the very least, buy a little more time — until the summer — to give herself a graceful exit.

She ended up with neither, and grew emotional Wednesday in conversations with friends and colleagues after she realized she was out. The next morning, Mr. Trump made it official, and fired her via social media post.

She is being replaced temporarily by Todd Blanche, Trump’s personal attorney who has defended him in several criminal cases.  Neither Bondi nor Blanche has the qualifications to be an Attorney General, but so it goes.

*Yesterday morning’s NYT newsletter summarizes what Trump said in his speech about Iran, and I quote:

Here’s what he talked about:

The end of the war. Trump did not offer a clear timeline for that. He said that “discussions are ongoing” but that in the meantime, the U.S. would continue to bomb Iran. “We are going to hit them extremely hard,” he said. “Over the next two to three weeks, we’re going to bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong.” He also threatened to strike “each and every one” of Iran’s power plants, an act widely considered a war crime, if Iran refuses a deal to end the fighting. (Iran has said there are no direct talks with the U.S.)

The economy. “Remarkably, Trump barely acknowledged the economic consequences of his war, as Americans around the country continue to feel the sting of high gas prices,” wrote Tony Romm, an economics reporter. Trump’s sanguine about that: “This is a true investment in your children and your grandchildren’s future,” he said of the war.

Iran’s remaining nuclear material. Trump indicated that he was in no hurry to retrieve it after bombing Iran’s nuclear sites into dust. As my colleague David Sanger put it: “Perhaps this is deception, and he will attempt to seize that cache. If not, he will have left the nuclear material exactly where it was before the war started — underground, and within Iran’s reach.”

Venezuela. Trump recalled how well the operation to unseat President Nicolás Maduro had gone. It’s his model for success in Iran. “That hit was quick, lethal, violent and respected by everyone all over the world,” he said in the speech, adding that the United States and Venezuela were now “joint venture partners” and “getting along incredibly well.”

The Strait of Hormuz. That waterway is not America’s problem, Trump said, because our oil and gas does not move through it. He urged those nations that depend on oil moving through the strait to just go take it. “We will be helpful, but they should take the lead in protecting the oil that they so desperately depend on,” he said.

For context, it’s worth comparing those talking points with the five objectives for the war that Trump laid out on its first day. My colleague Ed Wong has an assessment of where the war stands based on those goals.

Here’s Wong’s summary of the regime-change goal:

This came near the end of Mr. Trump’s video address. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel had promised Mr. Trump in the run-up to the war that his country could help galvanize a popular uprising that would lead to the overthrow of the Iranian government. That revolt has not materialized.

Mr. Trump said he had carried out “regime change,” and pointed to airstrikes that have killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, and other senior officials.

However, the newly appointed supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the deceased cleric, is a hard-liner aligned with a powerful arm of the Iranian military. The current government remains theocratic, authoritarian and anti-American, and continues to wage a war of resistance.

Of course the NYT would promote a negative view about how the war is going, and I didn’t hear Trump’s speech, but if he sees the present hard-line theocratic regime in Iran as “regime change” simply because the ‘Ayatollahs aren’t in control, well, he’s distorting things completely, and the Iranian people still aren’t free.

*The WaPo reports on a Republican plan to end the Department of Homeland Security shutdown without having to get Democratic approval.

President Donald Trump endorsed a plan Wednesday to end the nearly seven-week-old shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security by going around Democrats to fund parts of the agency.

Trump urged Republicans to send him a party-line bill by June 1 to fund two agencies within the department — Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol — using the reconciliation process.

The approach would allow him to bypass Democrats, who have spent weeks demanding new guardrails on those agencies in exchange for voting to fund them. Instead, Republicans could pass a funding bill with a simple majority and avoid a Democratic filibuster.

“We are going to work as fast, and as focused, as possible to replenish funding for our Border and ICE Agents, and the Radical Left Democrats won’t be able to stop us,” Trump wrote in a social media post.

Lawmakers have been at an impasse over DHS funding for 47 days in the longest partial shutdown on record, which the public has mostly encountered through long security lines at airports. Pressure has been building to resolve the shutdown, with polling indicating that Republicans are shouldering more of the blame.

Democrats had been demanding new restrictions on federal immigration agents operating in major cities, after they killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January.

The approach that Trump endorsed Wednesday would also fund the rest of DHS — which includes the Transportation Security Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Coast Guard — through September. Then Republicans would start work on the reconciliation process to fund ICE and Border Patrol, which would take weeks.

This circumvention going to get the Democrats hopping mad if it works (Republicans will still need a majority in both houses of Congress), but some of the Democrats’ proposed restrictions on ICE, like bodycams and not wearing masks, were fine with me. Remember, the government was not shut down as a whole—just the DHS part.  But my friends who are flying say that those 5-hour security lines are gone now, for TSA workers are already back on the job.

*If you’ve been conditioned by the MSM to think that we’re mired in another Vietnam in Iran, the Free Press has a counterargument, “Victor Davis Hanson: The war—and the war on the war,” with the subtitle, “Militarily, the war is going as well as could be envisioned, yet Democrats seek to turn it into another Vietnam or Afghanistan—hoping to win control of Congress at the expense of national security.” (Hanson is identified as “an American classicist, military historian, and conservative political commentator.”) Trigger warning: overt conservatism. A few excerpts:

Are we “losing”?

This is the claim made by Trump’s political opponents. It is absurd, Orwellian.

Most of the military objectives are already met or soon will be. The campaign has been brilliantly conducted without substantial casualties. So popular outcry from Democrats and the global left arise not from military realities of the war, but mostly from both politics and existential hatred of Donald Trump.

The midterms are just seven months away. Historically, they should see the incumbent administration lose seats in the House and Senate, if not control of Congress. The left seeks to create such abject chaos that it can only be alleviated by the political destruction of Donald Trump. So the anti-war hysteria follows the pattern of the left’s embrace of Tesla vandalism, violent demonstrations against ICE, the incoherent “No Kings” protests, and three government shutdowns. Such nihilism shares a common trait of offering no positive counter-agenda.

What about regime change?

Critics are claiming that for all that ostensible American success, the regime remains defiant and in control. Indeed, the war’s opponents further state that the bombing only made popular protests more difficult.

Some supporters of the war argue that any cessation without the elimination of the mullahs would prove the war effort was all in vain, or at best is but a brief interlude in the Iranian theocracy’s otherwise long march to control the entire Middle East and blackmail the West with nuclear weapons.

But regime change was never listed as a Trump administration war aim. The reason was ostensibly our poor record at nation-building in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, as well as our more recent success at removing Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela and leveraging the remnants of his dictatorship, without prompting an invasion or civil war.

That said, the continual Israeli elimination of dozens of theocratic and military officials has in itself been a regime change, at least in the sense that anyone associated with the regime who identifies himself is likely to be dead within days.

BOGUS!  Regime change means a democracy with the Iranian people free. And Trump explicitly told the Iranian people in his initial statement that the government was theirs to take—and that they should go ahead and take it. I think he said that again the other night. At the end Hanson says that we don’t have regime change, but it’s more likely than before. True, but how much more likely?

What about the closing of the Strait of Hormuz?

War critics argue that without the American-Israeli bombing, the Strait would still be open for business. That simplistic rationale ignores the reality that Iran’s prewar non-harassment of Western shipping was implicitly predicated on appeasing the theocracy—mostly by Westerners staying quiet when Iran staged or funded terrorist attacks, or flagrantly multiplied its ballistic missile fleet and upped its uranium enrichment with impunity.

If the U.S. decided that Iranian control of the Strait is too egregious a danger to global commerce, then as it leaves the theater, it can threaten Parthian shots at Iran’s easily combustible oil industry to ensure they back off the Strait.

Or alternatively, America can tell our Western allies (who made it evident they want no part in demilitarizing Iran) that the hard work of neutering the Iranian military is now over. And as importers of Iranian oil, Europe and the Asian democracies must handle the easier task of internationalizing the Strait.

The other two questions asked and answered are, “Is Israel using Trump?” and “What about NATO?” You’ll have to see the answers for yourself. Here’s the pro-Trump ending:

In the end, we are left with an indisputable truth. Prior presidents all warned about the dangers of a theocratic Iran’s mounting efforts to become nuclear, witnessed its incessant terrorism, and feared its apocalyptic aims. And yet they did little or nothing.

Donald Trump did, and did so successfully, convinced alone among Western leaders that it was a now or never moment, and the U.S. military was more than up to the risky endeavor.

And history will likely prove him right.

*My friend the Belgian philosopher Maarten Boudry reports on Facebook that three Belgian universities, including the one he studied and worked at (U Ghent), have given honorary degrees to an odious woman, Francesca Albanese, the blatantly antisemitic and pro-Hamas UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories. His post (I’ve added the tweets he interpolated):

Three Flemish universities are disgracing themselves today by awarding an honorary doctorate to a mendacious antisemite. That’s what happens when academia gets hijacked by far-left ideologues. As Holocaust historian Norman Goda writes:

“The Flemish universities, whether they admit it or not, will convey the sanction of university-recognised expertise to a deeply dishonest and fraudulent individual who has vilified an entire society as well as those persons, including many in Belgium who view themselves as connected to it.”

And yes, I don’t shy away from the word “antisemite” this time. Before she was appointed UN rapporteur, Albanese liked to fantasize about how the world was “subjugated by the Jewish lobby”. She just learned not to say the quiet part out loud since her UN mandate. And of course, the blatant double standards she applies to the only Jewish state in the world is damning in its own right.

As I predicted yesterday on the Belgian TV shows De Afspraak, the ceremony is descending into farce. Albanese openly contradicts the rector’s assurance that the award is “not against Israel,” to loud hoots and cheers. Meanwhile, the usual anti-Israel activists—more emboldened than ever—are shouting over any speaker whenever anything falls short of their maximalist demands: “Stop funding genocide! Stop funding genocide!”

The rector was openly humiliated on the stage by Albanese and the audience. Well, what did they expect? Didn’t I warn them this was exactly what was going to happen?

Let’s hope the Flemish rectors will not be so inconsiderate as to say anything critical about Hamas in the presence of their Honorary Dr. @FranceskAlbs. An Italian mayor tried it once—and got eye rolls, facepalms, and a stern reprimand: “Don’t do it again.” https://t.co/TAYvZrEHFy

— Maarten Boudry (@mboudry) February 27, 2026

I didn’t watch the whole speech, but of course Albanese repeats the same litany of distorted quotes from Israeli leaders allegedly proving genocidal intent: the “human animals” quote (which was about Hamas, not Palestinians), the Herzog line about “an entire nation that is responsible” (which is exactly what Holocaust historians say about Germany regarding the Holocaust, and in eveny event Herzog insisted that there are many innocent civilians who will NOT be targeted). See my piece here..

More outrageously still, Albanese claims that casualties in Gaza are “75%-80 women and children”, a complete lie. Not even Hamas has ever claimed such a high figure, and its own fabricated “70% women and children” has been widely debunked and officially retracted by Hamas itself. Deaths are overwhelmingly male and combat age. None of the distinguished rectors and academics batted an eye. Pure desinformation again, certified by three universities.]

Did you notice that the myth of “70% women and children” has been quietly retreated, just like every other Hamas claim parroted by Western media, without any correction or accountability? Even according to Hamas’ (updated) lists, fatalities are overwhelmingly male and combat age. https://t.co/jARig0PkYc pic.twitter.com/M1qAtJ2aV9

— Maarten Boudry (@mboudry) September 27, 2025

And of course we only got obsequious softball questions from the interviewer. “How were you so right and prescient from the beginning?” “How is it so difficult for people to agree with you?” (I’m paraphrasing) Well, I sympathize with the interviewer. Any genuinely critical question would’ve been met with deafening jeers and shouts from the audience.

Honestly, I’ve never been more ashamed to be a UGent alumnus. This honorary PhD is a craven and foolish decision that will be ruinous to our international reputation.

Maarten also tweeted that “I just got a heartbreaking message from a Jewish professor who says that she will leave Antwerp and possibly the country. The hatred is too overwhelming, and even targeting young children.” (Have a look at the rest of the tweet.)

I hope you’re aware what’s happening in the Low Countries.

*Finally, there’s good news today—well, not really good but not dreadful.  The AP’s Odd News tells us that a famous surfing dog—the first canid inducted into the Surfer’s Hall of fame—has died. But she had a good long life (16 years), and a good run in the waves:

Sugar The Surfing Dog, the first canine inducted into the Surfer’s Hall of Fame, who spent her days outside the water comforting veterans as a dedicated therapy dog, died Monday after battling cancer.

The 16-year-old rescue dog from Huntington Beach, California, who was a five-time dog surfing world champion, died “in her daddy’s arms,” a post on her Instagram said.

“She lived to put smiles on faces, volunteer, to send it !! to change dog surfing forever !!! thank you for loving Sugar,” the post said. “Good bye my Sugar., i can’t believe in writing this .. i’m going to miss you so much.”

Sugar was found as a stray and over the years her love of the waves and natural talent took dog surfing to new heights.

Dressed in a life jacket, spectators would watch the furry white canine in amazement as she balanced on her surfboard, riding wave after wave back to the shore, sometimes with her owner, Ryan Rustan, by her side and other times all on her own.

In 2024, her paw prints joined the hand and footprints of many other renowned surfers immortalized in concrete in Huntington Beach when she was inducted into the hall of fame.

“This is just incredible. Dreams do come true even for a surfing dog and guys like me,” Rustan said at the ceremony.

Here’s a video from better days:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej doesn’t like Hili trying to catch birds (note the extruded tongue; I’ve made this image into my Twitter avatar):

Hili: A sparrow has made a nest in the hedge.
Me: Fortunately, you can’t reach it.
Hili: And that’s a bit of a problem.

In Polish:

Hili: Wróbelek założył w żywopłocie gniazdko.
Ja: Na szczęście tam się nie dostaniesz.
Hili: I to jest pewien kłopot.

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

From Terrible Maps: the countries in red are anagrams. For example, “Spain” can be rearranged to “pains”. Figure out the rest of them!

From This Cat is Guilty:

From The Language Nerds:

From Masih: Iran hanged an 18-year-old protestor:

Heartbreaking 💔
This morning, right after President Trump’s speech, the Iranian regime moved fast and hanged 18-year-old protester.

Yes, Mr. President @realDonaldTrump, there are no “less radical” leaders in Iran.

From the courtroom to the prison cell, from the interrogator to… pic.twitter.com/fk0gF6p1NQ

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) April 2, 2026

From Luana, and verified by CNN, who published this:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Tuesday she would vote against sending any military aid to Israel, including defensive supplies, a marked shift from a Democrat deemed a potential 2028 presidential candidate.

Ocasio-Cortez told members of the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America Tuesday that she would commit to voting no on any military aid spending for Israel, a spokesperson for the lawmaker told CNN.

I will never vote for her; I would write in some other Democrat instead (remember, I live in a reliably Democratic state).

Her remarks, first reported by City & State, were made at a private forum as members considered whether to endorse her re-election bid.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just committed to voting to strip civilians in Israel of protection from rocket attacks.

This is not a vote against the government of Israel, or Netanyahu. This is collective punishment against ten million civilians, Jews, Muslims, and Christians.… https://t.co/wjvjnAoUz9 pic.twitter.com/lVO8mTv7Ez

— Eric Adams (@ericadamsfornyc) April 1, 2026

A funny tweet from Larry the Cat:

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I present exhibit A pic.twitter.com/QA7Vw8sGaO

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) April 2, 2026

Two from my feed. First, a singing raven:

Ravens can talk but sometimes they even know how to sing, like this one trained by Giuseppe Cassini.pic.twitter.com/fRyhwSp8ym

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) April 2, 2026

. . . and a wonderful plane’s-eye-view of the Artemis II launch:

Passengers on a commercial flight captured the launch of Artemis II on camera

The plane happened to pass near the launch trajectory at the exact moment of liftoff, giving passengers a rare view of the rocket launch right from their windows.pic.twitter.com/8Bewtm8aFg

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) April 2, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Czech Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she got to Auschwitz She was 14 years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-04-03T10:19:18.342Z

Two from Dr. Cobb. This is from a site that gives people’s favorite tweets from Twitter, though it’s on Bluehair:

MASSIVE fan of this one:

— Altrincham Dry Cleaners (@altydrycleaners.bsky.social) 2026-04-02T13:27:33.632Z

Be sure to check out the Science paper to see some lovely and bizarre animals, including the first bilaterians. For a quick link, go see the blurb and photos at the Oxford University site. The “Cambrian Explosion” of animals has been shifted back 4 million years, to the tail end of the Ediacaran.

At last! Ediacarans and Cambrian animals in the same site! Amazing! http://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/…

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-04-02T18:11:56.569Z