Welcome to Monday, April 6, 2026 and National Carbonara Day, celebrating my favorite pasta aside from Fettuccine Alfredo. As Wikipedia notes,

Carbonara (Italian: [karboˈnaːra]) is a pasta dish made with fatty cured pork, hard cheese, eggs, salt, and black pepper. It is typical of the Lazio region of Italy. The dish took its modern form and name in the middle of the 20th century.

A photo of spaghetti carbonara:

It’s also Fresh Tomato Day, International Asexuality Day, National Açaí Bowl Day, National Caramel Popcorn Day (the best in America is Garrett’s right here in Chicago), National Egg Salad Sandwich Day (underrated, one of my favorites, and at its best in Japan), National Twinkie Day, Sweet Potato Day, New Beer’s Eve (celebrating the evening before the end of Prohibition in 1933), World Table Tennis Day (freatured in the new movie “Marty Supreme,” which was good but not great, and, finally, National Siamese Cat Day.

Siamese cats are LOUD. For example, listen to the racket this pair makes when their staff is taking a shower (turn sound up and watch your own cats go nuts—report their reaction in the comments):

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

Da Nooz:

*Yesterday’s war news from It’s Noon in Israel. (Bolding is theirs.)

It’s Sunday, April 5, and the thirty-seventh day of Operation Roaring Lion. The global price of oil has reached $109, up seven percent since Friday. Here are the latest developments while you were asleep:

• Both crew members of the F-15 shot down over Iran on Friday have been rescued. President Donald Trump called the rescue of the second airman on Saturday night one of the “most daring” operations in U.S. military history, involving dozens of aircraft and hundreds of special forces troops. U.S. forces also destroyed at least one transport aircraft on the ground to prevent it from falling into Iranian hands after it became stranded at a remote site during the mission. They struck Iranian convoys heading toward the search area, and a firefight broke out between U.S. rescuers and Iranian search parties.
• The Telegraph reports that five Chinese shipments of sodium perchlorate—a key ingredient in solid missile fuel—have arrived in Iran. China has previously supplied the same chemical to support Iran’s ballistic missile program. The deliveries come even as U.S.-Israeli strikes have specifically targeted Iran’s missile production infrastructure, including fuel and propellant facilities.
• U.S.-Israeli forces struck the border crossing between Iran and Iraq for at least the second time since the war began, prompting Iraq to close the crossing. The crossing served as a transit point for at least 1,000 Iraqi proxy fighters now deployed to Basij bases inside Iran—a mobilization analysts believe is partly aimed at suppressing potential domestic unrest.

From the WSJ on the rescue:

. . . the president also shared new details about the dramatic rescue of two U.S. airmen whose F-15E was shot down over Iran. Trump said the Friday rescue of the first airman was kept quiet so a search could continue for the second pilot, who was wounded but climbed up to a mountain crevice where he was rescued.

“We didn’t play up the first one, because then they would have found out about the second one,” Trump said. “You know, normally this is not done. When airmen go down, you can’t get them in very tough countries.”

The two pilots were in the same plane but landed a long distance apart because of the speed at which the jet was flying when the airmen evacuated, Trump said.

“Even though they’re only separated by five or six seconds, five or six seconds when you’re going 1000 miles an hour, so that’s many miles, right?” he said.

And there are more details in the NYT article on the rescue (archived).

Here’s the device used by the airman to give US forces his location. (Click on screenshot or here to read more.)

Now, on to the details from INiI:.

Tomorrow, Iran’s extension on Donald Trump’s ultimatum will expire. Last night, Trump reiterated his threat initially made in March: within the next 48 hours, make a deal, open the Strait of Hormuz—or “all hell will rain down” on Iran. Trump’s version of hell, in this case, would look a lot like the real thing: flammable, as Iran’s energy infrastructure is likely in his crosshairs.

In Israel, the assessment is that the regime will allow the ultimatum to expire. So far, few positive signals have come out of Islamabad, where negotiations are supposed to take place. None have even reached the level of vague optimism of “good progress” that came out of the Geneva talks preceding the war. A senior official told Pakistan’s Dawn on Friday that “Tehran has so far not conveyed its readiness to take part in the dialogue.” Reports from The Wall Street Journal tell a similar story: Iran is “unwilling to meet U.S. officials in Islamabad in the coming days and considers U.S. demands unacceptable.”

On March 26, Trump extended Iran’s nuclear negotiation deadline to 10 days, partly because Tehran sent 10 Pakistani-flagged oil tankers as a goodwill gesture. Another delaying gesture is possible—but unlikely. . . .

*Trump has threatened to destroy every power plant in Iran if they don’t open the Strait of Hormuz by Tuesday.

President Trump threatened to destroy all of Iran’s power plants if the country’s leaders don’t agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by Tuesday evening, ratcheting up pressure on Tehran.

“If they don’t come through, if they want to keep it closed, they’re going to lose every power plant and every other plant they have in the whole country,” Trump said in an eight-minute interview with The Wall Street Journal on Sunday.

Pressed on when he thinks the war will end, Trump said, “I will let you know pretty soon.”

“But we are in a position that’s very strong, and that country will take 20 years to rebuild, if they’re lucky, if they have a country,” he said. “And if they don’t do something by Tuesday evening, they won’t have any power plants and they won’t have any bridges standing.”

. . . Asked if he is concerned the people of Iran, a country of 93 million people, could suffer if civilian infrastructure is hit, Trump said, “No, they want us to do it,” arguing that Iranian people are “living in hell.”

In a social-media post on Sunday morning, Trump threatened to destroy Iran’s power plants and bridges on Tuesday if the Strait of Hormuz isn’t reopened. But the post offered few details about how expansive the attacks might be.

Under international law, the military is allowed to strike civilian power plants and other key infrastructure only if it contributes to a military operation and civilian harm is minimized.

The Wall Street Journal previously reported that aides to Trump have said these types of narrowly focused strikes are allowable because they are meant to hamper Tehran’s ability to build missiles, drones and nuclear weapons. Widespread strikes on power plants and bridges, regardless of military value, raise legal and humanitarian questions.

Here’s his threat, with the gravitas and dignity we’re accustomed to from our leader:

Iran is not Gaza, not a country in which the military is deeply embedded in civilian structure, nor one in which the people support the theocracy. If we want regime change, we can’t simply take out all the civilian infrastructure for nothing more than revenge. And that is a war crime.

*In an article on his Substack site, “Washington is drowning the Iran war in noise“, Andrew Fox lays out the four viable options for Trump in the war (h/t Orli).

We cannot soft-soap the damage to the global economy. From that perspective, this war is a catastrophe. It is far more serious than simply an oil shock. Hormuz handled about one-fifth of the global LNG trade in 2025, with no alternative route for most Qatari and Emirati volumes. Conflict-related damage has reduced Qatar’s LNG capacity by 17% for up to five years. Qatar also produces nearly one-third of the world’s helium, and supply disruptions have already begun to impact semiconductor supply chains and significantly increase helium prices. Hormuz transports about 30% of globally traded fertilisers. Fertiliser prices are rising rapidly; FAO’s food price index increased by 2.4% in March, and the IMF warns that poorer countries could face higher food insecurity if the shock continues. J.P. Morgan suggests oil could reach $120 to $130 in the short term, and exceed $150 if disruptions persist into mid-May.

That leaves four plausible options for Trump moving forward (and, of course, Israel—but let us not forget who the junior partner is in this Coalition. Strategy for Israel here is easy: keep bombing things until told by Washington to stop.)

Option one: stop now and declare victory

Financially, this is the most affordable direct US option. It halts the expenditure on sorties, tankers, carriers, munitions, and reduces escalation risk. Politically, it is always accessible because the White House has already set the rhetorical groundwork, with official claims of “clear and unchanging objectives” and a televised assertion that the campaign is on track to conclude “very shortly.” Strategically, however, it leaves the core issue unresolved. The regime would still be in control in Tehran, and Hormuz would remain a point that Tehran can block, ration, or permit. The cost-benefit only makes sense if Washington decides that the domestic value of ending the war now outweighs the strategic humiliation of striking Iran hard without actually re-establishing free navigation.

Option two: keep the air war going at roughly the current level

This is the current situation. US forces have already targeted over 10,000 locations and, according to CENTCOM, destroyed 92% of Iran’s largest naval vessels while significantly reducing missile and drone launch rates. Since then, the pattern has not shifted towards de-escalation but towards coercive punishment. Trump has threatened bridges, power plants, and other infrastructure (even threatening desalination plants—essentially a threat to impose drought on 90 million people heading into a Middle East summer). A major bridge near Tehran-Karaj was hit this week. Financially, this involves ongoing direct military expenses, as well as continued macroeconomic damage from oil, insurance, and freight costs. Strategically, it can further weaken Iran and increase bargaining leverage. However, the benefits are diminishing. Bombing can punish and wear down, but it cannot, on its own, ensure a lasting reopening of Hormuz while Iran retains the capacity to control access and keep markets unsettled.

Option three: escalate with ground troops

This is the most expensive and riskiest option by far. It is the only route that might plausibly try to force Hormuz open, seize islands, or control key maritime points. It also has the highest risk of casualties, political backlash, and prolonged escalation. Current signals strongly oppose it. Rubio stated on 27^th March that US aims could be achieved without ground troops and that recent deployments were contingency measures, not plans for invasion. Reuters/Ipsos polling published on Friday shows that over three-quarters of Americans oppose sending American ground troops to Iran. At the UN, even a revised Bahrain-backed resolution on protecting commercial shipping faces Chinese opposition to authorising the use of force, with Russia and France also objecting. Regarding cost and benefits, a ground intervention offers the greatest strategic potential, but the cost would be extraordinary with no guarantee of success.

Option four: strike a deal with the regime

On paper, this represents the most advantageous economic deal. If a settlement genuinely restores shipping, stabilises energy flows, and imposes real limits on missiles or the nuclear programme, it would reduce macroeconomic costs more quickly than any military option. Washington has already submitted a 15-point proposal through intermediaries, and Iran has been reviewing it even as it publicly dismisses direct negotiations. Since then, selective ship passages and Iran’s discussions with Oman about a future Hormuz protocol demonstrate that negotiations over access are ongoing, even if formal talks remain stalled. Strategically, the cost is evident: Trump would need to engage with the very regime he continues to describe as defeated or nearly finished. The benefit is equally clear: a deal is the only feasible way to reopen the Strait without a much larger conflict.

And his assessment of the likelihood:

My analysis, based on the currently available signals, is this: the least likely option is a major ground escalation; the most probable immediate action is continued air strikes and infrastructure coercion; the most likely eventual outcome is a mediated deal that the White House will package as a complete victory. The emergency fallback, if markets and politics worsen more quickly than forecast, is a unilateral ceasefire-and-spin. In brief, the short-term path seems to be option two, with option four as the intended destination.

None of these guarantees, much less makes it likely, that the Iranian people will have a democratic government rather than an oppressive theocracy. And I don’t trust any deal that Iran will abandon its quest for nuclear weapons; it simply cannot be trusted without rigorous and unannounced inspections. This seems unlikely to happen, so yes, option two seems the most likely.

*I’ll steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news-and-snark column at the Free Press, called this week, “TGIF: The truth of the conspiracy of the conspiracy.”

→ You’re getting drafted: Describing our approach to Iran, Pete Hegseth stood before the press and put his hand on a pretend throttle and said: “We’re keeping our hand on that throttle,” clenching the invisible throttle, “as long and as hard as is necessary.” Standing behind him was Trump, who never misses a penis joke, and who simply raised his eyebrows. Unusual self-control. Restraint. Quite presidential not to make a dick joke there, if you ask me.

Also this week, the Army raised the maximum enlistment age from 35 to 42. That’s right, 42! When the ground war with China begins, there will be a draft of middle-aged millennial men begging their platoon leader for the Wi-Fi password so that they can watch Breaking Bad on their iPads. I see this lasting about two weeks. See, 52-year-old Gen-X men would be better fighters than the millennials.

→ Just for a little taste of the streets: You should probably know what is being said in those fun progressive pro-peace protests happening all over the place. Here’s a great example from a protest in Philadelphia this week. A man stands in front of a boisterous crowd: “Until we have done everything in our power to bring the United States to its knees, let us not lose sight of the enemy!” Okay, me too, peace and love,man. He continues: “For every U.S. soldier who comes back in a casket, we cheer!” The crowd cheers.

He also says: “Hamas, Hezbollah, Ansar Allah, all of the resistance forces we celebrate. These popular forces on the ground spend every waking moment in direct confrontation with Zionism and they rely on a strong Iranian state to maintain their fighting capacity.”

→ Wrong place, wrong headline: A Venezuelan migrant who was allegedly detained at the border in 2023 but released into the U.S. has been charged with murdering 18-year-old Loyola University Chicago freshman Sheridan Gorman. She was shot in the back along the lakefront. Hmm. That’s a little too perfect for the Republican narrative. Is there any way we can blame the student for being shot? Chicago electeds and local media are trying.

Chicago alderwoman Maria Hadden said it sounded like Gorman was in the “wrong place, wrong time,” and that the victim and her friends “might’ve startled this person,” i.e., the shooter. When I get startled I usually commit first-degree murder too. Wrong place, wrong time. Someone made a lot of mistakes, and it’s Sheridan Gorman, who is dead. No other mistakes here. No one else in the “wrong” anything.

In fact, the only mistake acknowledged was that of Loyola University Chicago’s student newspaper, which apologized for having called the accused killer of freshman Sheridan Gorman an “illegal immigrant” in a subsequently deleted Instagram post. I’m a lefty here, truly. Like, I believe in mass amnesty. But if someone shoots into a crowd and kills a girl, we do not blame the girl simply because she’s the citizen and he’s the immigrant. . .

I was amazed at how the local media tried to blame the victim for her own shooting. And that, of course, is that the alleged killer was an undocumented immigrant, a status considered sacred by progressives.

*And there’s good news today from the UPI’s “Odd News” section:

The San Diego Zoo Safari Park announced its four male cheetah cubs, born in January, now have names: Nyasi, Owadgi, Ohani and Nkala.

First-time mother Kelechi gave birth to the cubs on Jan. 24, becoming the first cheetah to give birth at the zoo since 2020.

Here are the cheetos:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili i referring to the d*g now owned by the upstairs lodgers:

Hili: These steps have lost their entire charm.
Andrzej: Maybe with time they will recover it once more.

In Polish:

Hili: Te schodki straciły cały urok.
Ja: Być może z czasem odzyskają go ponownie.

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

The cover of the University of Chicago magazine shows Botany Pond with ducks in it next to Erman Hall, where students who should be doing science are sitting at their computers. And the ducks are white Pekin ducks, not wild mallards. Well, you can’t have everything.  There’s an article on the renovated pond that mentions the ducks, but leaves out the Duckmeister because Facilities doesn’t like him. Eventually that story will be up here.

From Stacy:

From Now That’s Wild. Don’t butter the moggy!

Masih criticizzes Trump for hurting the people of Iran by threatening to bomb them into the Stone Age and falsely promising help.

We are going to send Iran back to the Stone Age?

President @realDonaldTrump! Stop targeting ordinary Iranians and Iran’s infrastructure, the Islamic regime’s officials you call “less radical leaders” in Iran, the ones you are willing to negotiate with are exactly the ones with a… pic.twitter.com/xVSFwyzhHP

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

From Luana; the article with the data (from Finland) are in the link:

“Among adolescents who underwent medical gender reassignment, psychiatric morbidity increased markedly during follow-up—rising from 9.8% to 60.7% in feminising gender re-assignment and from 21.6% to 54.5% in masculinising gender reassignment.”
Ruuska 2026 https://t.co/iJ6gBLwrgA

— James Cantor (@JamesCantorPhD) April 4, 2026

From Brian, a “math clock” (there are others in the thread:

One of the best tests of an AI is the “Clock Test” prompt I developed. Below are results from Grok (left) and from ChatGPT (right). Can your AI do better?

Prompt: “Draw a math clock. It looks like a traditional clock with hands; however, instead of 12 numbers on the clock… pic.twitter.com/IBkLZ8pTsj

— Cliff Pickover (@pickover) April 3, 2026

From Barry, a buff cat:

One from my feed. Larry just turned 19, and he is still spry, having recently caught his first mouse!

Happy 19th birthday Larry the cat at Downing Street!
🎉 pic.twitter.com/te4dZjbx1B

— Sara Mary ⭐❤️ (@saniyafatma1278) April 5, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Yugoslavian Jewish boy was gassed as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was three years old, and would be 85 today if he had lived. https://t.co/KJRosA52tT

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) April 6, 2026

And two from Dr. Cobb: First, more explanation of that famous Earth photo taken by Artemis II:

You'll have seen this – Earth from #Artemis II en-route to the Moon.But look again – it's Earth's *nightside*, lit by the near-full Moon, not the Sun 🌕️The aurorae, airglow, stars, & city lights in Europe, Africa, & the Americas give the game away. Cool.NASA/Reid Wiseman#Space #Photography

— Mark McCaughrean (@markmccaughrean.bsky.social) 2026-04-03T19:13:10.768Z

Who remember’s Bob Paine’s pathbreaking ecology work? I do!  Here’s a short video post:

A nice video about how Bob Paine's work on starfish influenced modern ecology #pisaster youtu.be/rN5KzBVxNl4?…

— Chris Mah (@echinoblog.bsky.social) 2026-04-02T16:09:11.414Z

Welcome to CaturSaturday,  April 4, 2026, Passover (until April 9) and shabbos for Jewish cats.

It’s also Holy Saturday, International Carrot Day, National Cordon Bleu Day, National Vitamin C Day, World Rat Day, and Ramen Noodle Day.

This isn’t really ramen, but it’s close: a bowl of Hong Kong’s famous beef noodle soup that I ate on my first visit there in 2016:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 4 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

First, two lovely views of Earth from Artemis II posted by NASA: Surprise: it’s round! And it’s round from all angles, which means it’s not flat. I’m not quite sure what continents we’re looking at. Can you help?

From inside the capsule:

A headline from today’s NYT (click to read):

*Friday’s war summary from It’s Noon in Israel (their bolding):

It’s Friday, April 3, and the thirty-fifth day of Operation Roaring Lion. The global price of oil has reached $111, up eleven percent since yesterday. Here are the latest developments while you were asleep:

• Donald Trump’s primetime address Wednesday night marked no significant shift in the war’s trajectory—as I predicted. The president reiterated four familiar positions: the war is necessary, it has effectively already been won, it must continue, and it will end soon. As of today, the original four-to-five week timeline has elapsed. Based on an IDF statement from March 15 indicating that up to three additional weeks of strikes were under consideration, the current estimate now points to a total campaign lasting seven to eight weeks.
• Yesterday, the U.S. struck Iran’s largest bridge, collapsing the center of a newly built B! suspension bridge—a 136-meter-high, $400 million structure connecting Tehran and Karaj. According to a security source speaking to i24NEWS, the destruction was intended to cut off supply routes that bring drone parts and missiles to Iranian firing units that launch them at U.S. and Israeli forces. Trump shared footage of the strike on Truth Social, declaring, “The biggest bridge in Iran comes tumbling down, never to be used again,” and warning of “much more to follow” if a settlement is not reached.
• Iranian media reported this morning that a second F-35 stealth fighter had been shot down over central Iran—echoing a March 23 claim previously denied by United States Central Command. As with the earlier report, there is no independent verification.

And a bit of analysis:

More than almost any of the generals and military figures, there is one man whose elimination might truly cause the regime to topple. The man could have been a Silicon Valley billionaire; instead, he joined the Revolutionary Guards: Babak Zanjani, the architect of Iran’s crypto-based sanctions-evasion system.

Zanjani’s is a fascinating story: the son of a railway worker with no higher education who became a businessman and built a global empire of dozens of companies across Turkey, the UAE, Malaysia and Tajikistan—designed specifically to bypass sanctions. In 2013, he was arrested for allegedly embezzling $2.7 billion from state oil revenues and sentenced to death—but the sentence was never carried out. It turned out the architect of its shadow economy was more valuable to the regime alive than dead. Before and during his arrest he was a media fascination, and was the most famous prisoner in the history of the Islamic Republic. After his gamble on the explosion of crypto netted major returns for the regime, Zanjani was released under supervision in 2025.

According to Makor Rishon’s Pazit Rabina, Israel has declared the first crypto war, and Zanjani is the enemy. He has been identified as the “beating heart” of Iran’s shadow economy—the man who converted oil revenues and financial assets into digital assets, enabling the Revolutionary Guards to continue funding terror even under the heaviest sanctions.

Earlier this week, Defense Minister Israel Katz, in cooperation with the U.S. treasure department, signed an administrative order designating Zanjani’s crypto wallets and oil tankers as terror assets. The order grants Israel and the U.S. legal authority to freeze and seize billions of dollars across global trading arenas. Yet well-informed sources warned that the effort is “too little, too late.”

*Definite clickbait from the WSJ: “Iran beefs up defenses, recruits children as it prepares for ground war.”

Iran is responding to the threat of a ground operation on its soil by stepping up defenses around its biggest oil port, while threatening to attack a wider array of targets around the Gulf and launching a mass recruitment drive reminiscent of its 1980s war with Iraq.

The steps come as President Trump has ordered thousands of Marines and Airborne troops to the Middle East. While the president hasn’t said he plans to put boots on the ground, the deployments would give the U.S. more options for ground assaults or raids, and they have set off preparations and a wave of new threats from Iran.

Analysts and people familiar with Iranian military tactics say the country is gearing up for a fierce fight that could give it the chance to inflict more casualties than it can against the U.S. and Israel’s dominant air forces.

Tehran is also mobilizing its population in ways that seek to harness the spirit of the 1980s war with Iraq. They include drives to recruit millions of Iranians, including children—a fixture of the tributes to martyrs via street signs and posters that are still a part of Iran’s daily life.

Iran is hardening defenses on Kharg Island, Ebrahim Azizi, the head of the parliament’s National Security Commission, told the legislature’s news agency this week following a visit to the oil export hub and possible focus of any ground operation. Steps include boosting guided-missile systems, laying mines along the coastline and booby-trapping facilities, an Iranian official said.

Military analysts say tunnels have likely been carved into many of the islands, which Iran is preparing to defend with missiles and other munitions. Iranian-backed militias in Iraq have demonstrated the use of wire-guided first-person-view drones, which are possessed in greater numbers by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, posing a potent threat to any U.S. troops.

The Times of Israel reports that Amnesty International has condemned Iran’s use of child soldiers as a war crime:

Amnesty International on Thursday issued a statement warning that Iran’s recruitment of children as young as 12 for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ all-volunteer Basij force amounts to a war crime.

According to Amnesty, the IRGC put out a recruitment call on March 26, dubbed the “Homeland-Defending Combatants for Iran,” which it said was “open to volunteers” aged 12 and up. The call came as the Basij found its checkpoints under attack during the war with the United States and Israel.

Citing eyewitness accounts and its own analysis of video footage, Amnesty said that evidence shows “child soldiers having been deployed” to checkpoints and patrols, some armed with weapons including AK47-style assault rifles.

Iran is not dumb: they know that even a small number of American casualties on the ground will turn America against the war far more than any rise in the price of oil. Iran is surely willing to sacrifice any number of “martyrs” to stop the war.

*Despite Trump’s claim that there is “regime change” in Iran since there’s a new leadership, these new leaders are still hard-liners, and are, according to the WaPo, are pushing a hard bargain on Trump.

The assassinations of Iran’s senior leaders by Israel and the United States have triggered unprecedented churn within Tehran’s political and military establishment, eliminating the supreme leader and some of the most powerful men in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, but have left in place a hard-line government and little hope of a diplomatic breakthrough, according to regional and Western officials.

Rather than usher in what President Donald Trump has called “more reasonable” leadership, the surviving Iranian regime is newly emboldened to inflict economic pain, pushing Tehran and Washington further apart in negotiations, according to the officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive details.

 . . . officials in the region say they see little hope of a negotiated breakthrough in the next few weeks, even as Israel continues to pursue its assassination campaign against senior Iranian leadership. In public comments, Iran’s leaders have played down talks with the United States and laid out steep demands to end the war, including reparations and formalized control over the Strait of Hormuz, with a right to collect tolls.

. . . The regime has signaled its defense will also involve spreading more pain around the region to substantially raise the price of any attack. Tehran, which has successfully shut off most Gulf oil exports and hit facilities and airports, has told its neighbors it would expand its targets to offshore oil platforms if its islands are invaded, Iranian and Arab officials said. It has also threatened to hit vital infrastructure like power plants and desalination facilities.

“Iran intends to make any U.S. landing as costly and politically unsustainable as possible,” said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, a London-based think tank. “I expect Iran will try to swarm and inflict pain through drones first and then widening its retaliation to its neighbors.”

Does that make you nervous? Yes, me too.

*In January an unidentified astronaut took ill aboard the International Space Station, forcing a medical evacuation of the ailing one and two companions back to Earth. Now the astronaut has been identified as Mike Fincke, and his condition described, though he seems to be okay now and doctors still don’t know what happened.

The astronaut who prompted NASA’s first medical evacuation earlier this year said Friday that doctors still don’t know why he suddenly fell sick at the International Space Station.

Four-time space flier Mike Fincke said he was eating dinner on Jan. 7 after prepping for a spacewalk the next day when it happened. He couldn’t talk and remembers no pain, but his anxious crewmates jumped into action after seeing him in distress and requested help from flight surgeons on the ground.

“It was completely out of the blue. It was just amazingly quick,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press from Houston’s Johnson Space Center.

Fincke, 59, a retired Air Force colonel, said the episode lasted roughly 20 minutes and he felt fine afterward. He said he still does. He never experienced anything like that before or since.

Doctors have ruled out a heart attack and Fincke said he wasn’t choking, but everything else is still on the table and could be related to his 549 days of weightlessness. He was 5 ½ months into his latest space station stay when the problem struck like “a very, very fast lightning bolt.”

. . . Fincke said he can’t provide any more details about his medical episode. The space agency wants to make sure that other astronauts do not feel that their medical privacy will be compromised if something happens to them, he said.

One wonders why he was brought back home if the episode lasted only 20 minutes. But doctors couldn’t be sure that something serious didn’t happen (even a mild heart attack), and it was the right thing to do to bring him back to Earth to have him checked out. Remember, the safety of astronauts takes priority over the goals of a mission.

*Yup, the Free Press is still touting religion, and never touting the advantages of nonbelief. Here’s there new article, whose title speaks for itself, “Guys, try church“, by FP senior editor Will Rahn, He first dispels the idea of going to church to embrace “hypermasculine” Christianity, which I didn’t know was a thing. It’s the crazy idea that Christianity goes along with getting fit and buff. Instead, Rahn says that we males should go to church for the right reasons. Curiously, that means making Pascal’s wager!

I’m not saying men should stay away from faith generally. In fact, I’m writing this to encourage you to go to church—not necessarily because it will get you fit, or be fun. Pretending to be a crusader is probably more exciting than just sitting in a pew. But going to church will probably make you a bit happier, and perhaps a slightly better human. Normie Catholicism is, to my mind, a lot more attractive than the “Deus Vult” version.

Don’t get me wrong—as a kid I found it all exceptionally dull. Sit, stand, kneel, stand. The organ music. The well-coiffed priest in his robes going on about who knows what. It all struck me as a silly waste of time that would be better spent watching cartoons.

. . .I’m not making the case that you should adopt my strain of mainstream Catholicism, or even Catholicism at all. I’m not even here to sell you on Christianity. If you’re looking for that, check out C.S. Lewis or Søren Kierkegaard or Thomas Aquinas. A lot of that stuff, particularly Kierkegaard, has a way of sailing right over my skull. But I will say that the most practical argument for fostering a faith in the deity comes from the 17th-century French polymath Blaise Pascal.

In vulgar terms, it’s essentially a risk-reward hypothesis: You lose very little by deciding to live a faithful life, and if all that dogma is essentially correct, you might get to spend eternity in paradise. If there is no God, you just die like everyone else, having lived at least a little more lovingly, peacefully, and forgivingly than you might have otherwise.

The only people with something to lose here are those who stick with atheism: The hard bet that there is no God has atheists dying like everyone else at best, and at worst costs them never-ending joy. Life, in my humble opinion, is a hard enough slog without the weight of atheistic certainty.

. . . Pascal’s wager has been decried as cynical, but it worked for him. He talked himself into sincere religious faith. Go through the motions, act as if it’s true, and you might just wind up a true believer. What’s funny about the wager is that believing in God, in the promise of heaven, is really its own reward. Bet on a God who loves you, and you’ll find there are rewards for you in this world regardless of what’s next.

And another reason men should go to church: to find women!

I heard recently of a now-married couple who locked eyes for the first time at the moment in Mass when everyone wishes peace on those around them. And this was not in one of those fancy downtown Manhattan churches for hot Zoomers on the make, but rather in the sleepy, family-oriented Upper East Side neighborhood of Yorkville. Going to church indicates to women that you’re a halfway functional human being.

This is absolutely insane; I was stunned to see such stupidity. What kind of God wouldn’t know whether you were believing solely to get to heaven—or faking your belief.  Maybe Pascal talked himself into sincere belief, but how many of us unbelievers could do the same thing?  And aren’t there good reasons for being a good human being: living a decent life rather than a “faithful” life? Does it matter which “faith” you live? Finally, “atheistic certainty” is an oxymoron.  Most atheists simply see no reason to believe in God, and are not certain about Gods. No atheist I know feels that their atheism is any kind of “weight”. Atheism is no more a “weight” than is disbelieve in leprechauns, Santa Claus, and the Tooth Fairy.

I have to say that this is the dumbest article I’ve seen lately touting religion, which seems to be a goal of the Free Press. It’s incoherent, misguided, and out of place on a serious news website.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej compares people unfavorably to cats:

Hili: People like to talk behind each other’s backs.
Andrzej: Yes, cats are better—they kill, but they don’t hold grudges.

In Polish:

Hili: Ludzie lubią się wzajemnie obmawiać.
Ja: Tak, koty są lepsze, zagryzają, ale nie żywią urazy.

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

From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:

From somewhere on Facebook (I forgot); the caption is “This is how we’ll get to Mars.”

From My Cat is an Asshole:

Masih reposted this video of an Iranian civil-rights activist describing her horrifying interrogation in prison. She must be out of Iran now, but think of all the jailed protestors that don’t have a voice—or never leave prison alive. The Farsi is translated into English subtitles.

BREAKING:
A firsthand witness from Iran’s prisons is speaking out about torture, forced confessions, mock executions, and the crimes committed against prisoners by the IRGC.
Mojgan Keshavarz, a brave civil rights activist who fought for years in Iran, was imprisoned, and endured… pic.twitter.com/rd3dzKbm1o

— United Against Gender Apartheid (@UAGApartheid) April 3, 2026

And I had to add this one I found on my feed:

Mohammadreza Ghorbani, 18, was executed by mullah Basij forces.
His mother clutches his clothes, searching for the scent of her child. @araghchi @drpezeshkian @mb_ghalibaf will face justice. #IranRevolution2026‌
pic.twitter.com/oNJBjCQMLC

— Avi Kaner ابراهيم אבי (@AviKaner) April 3, 2026

From Simon: Cats on a plane!

“Unhand me; I’m the co-pilot!” https://t.co/n4gsGNr3mg

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

From Luana:

In equating the colonization of space with the colonization of the New World, the author here seems not to have considered how rocks are not the same as people. https://t.co/F2TIeAku9n

— Leigh Phillips (@Leigh_Phillips) April 2, 2026

From Emma. Read the description of that poor guy’s life by clicking on Sama Hoole’s tweet:

It is definitely better to keep chickens for eggs than it is to eat the chickens. https://t.co/1VGHGps1ck

— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) April 3, 2026

Two from my feed:

The Gardiner Brothers and Keeva Corry brought the thunder to Dolly Parton’s Jolene! They’re powerful, precise, and that footwork is INSANE! One of the coolest crossovers I’ve seen. Watch till the end! 😻😅 pic.twitter.com/2YvTxEBN0L

— Catarina Senora Gatita (@WyattCatarina) April 1, 2026

Clever cat!

My cat thought if he just pretended to be asleep, I wouldn’t notice pic.twitter.com/h8xbJ0QmoP

— We don’t deserve cats 😺 (@catsareblessing) April 2, 2026

One I reposted at The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived at Auschwitz. She was four years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-04-04T10:13:08.628Z

Three from Dr. Cobb, whose hols ended yesterday. First, a treehopper disguised as a duck! Not really, but there coiuld be multiple functions for these shapes, including the new one given in the article below the photo.

Inspiration for scifi. #Bugs #Bugsky http://www.science.org/content/arti…

— 🟪 Core Traditions | 1.5°C > Normal?! 🌎 (@porcelainteacup04.bsky.social) 2026-04-03T06:33:22.701Z

A pair of osprey vids. This one was from three days ago:

Resident female Telyn (3J) arrived at Dyfi today (30th) at 14:19. Just need resident male Idris to arrive(c)DOP#UKOspreys

— Welsh_Nature_Lady 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 (@welshnaturelady.bsky.social) 2026-03-30T14:04:51.551Z

And this one was yesterday:

Dyfi Ospreys resident male Idris returns at 18:23 2nd April, great to see him back with Telyn (3J)#UKOspreys(c)DOP (c)MWT

— Welsh_Nature_Lady 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 (@welshnaturelady.bsky.social) 2026-04-02T19:23:01.006Z

Welcome to Thursday, April 2, 2026, and National Ferret Day.   Here’s a video about ferrets, but I wouldn’t recommend you getting one as a pet: they’re cute but also stinky, and they bite.

It’s also Maundy Thursday (“maundy” refers to the Christian ceremony of washing people’s feet, as Jesus supposedly did on the day of the Last Supper. Some churches still ask people to wash each other’s feet), National Burrito Day, National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day, and the first full day of Passover, which began yesterday at sundown and will last until sundown on April 9.

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

Da Nooz:

*Yesterday Artemis II around-the-Moon mission, which will last ten days, took off successfully (or “nominally”, as they say) and, save for a glitch in the crew toilet, which was fixed, all is well. Here’s ten-minute video of the liftoff if you missed it:

*Here’s a summary of the war news (and Middle East news) from the NYT morning newsletter (with links):

. . . and from It’s Noon in Israel:

 The global price of oil has reached $100, down four percent since yesterday. Here are the latest developments while you were asleep:

• Ten people have been hospitalized following a missile impact in the city of Bnei Brak this morning. Two young children were badly injured—one critically, the other seriously. The mother of one and the father of the other are both being treated in moderate condition. Six additional children are undergoing medical evaluation.
• The United States has reportedly attacked the former U.S. Embassy in Tehran, which had become a gathering point for Revolutionary Guards and Basij fighters. This is the same building in which 52 Americans were held by the regime for 444 days during the 1979 hostage crisis.
• Yesterday, Pakistan and China jointly published a five-point initiative to end the conflict in Iran, calling for an immediate ceasefire, the start of negotiations, a halt to attacks on civilian targets, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, and a final peace agreement grounded in the UN Charter.

Let’s look at just the first one:

*According to the WSJ, the United Arab Emirates, eager to open the Strait of Hormuz, has agreed to become a combatant in the war against Iran.

The United Arab Emirates is preparing to help the U.S. and other allies open the Strait of Hormuz by force, Arab officials said, a move that would make it the first Persian Gulf country to become a combatant, after being hit by Iranian attacks.

The U.A.E. is lobbying for a United Nations Security Council resolution that would authorize such action, the officials said. Emirati diplomats have urged the U.S. and military powers in Europe and Asia to form a coalition to open the strait by force, the officials said. A U.A.E. official said the Iranian regime thinks it is fighting for its existence and is willing to bring the global economy down with it in a chokehold on the strait.

The U.A.E. official said the country had reviewed its capabilities to assist in securing the strait, including efforts to help clear it of mines and other support services.

The Gulf state has also said the U.S. should occupy islands in the strategic waterway including Abu Musa, which has been held by Iran for a half-century and is claimed by the U.A.E., other Arab officials said.Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states are now turning against Iran’s regime and want the war to continue until it is disabled or toppled, Arab officials said, though they have stopped short of committing their military. Bahrain, a close U.S. ally that hosts the Navy’s Fifth Fleet, is sponsoring the U.N. resolution, with a vote expected Thursday.

Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states are now turning against Iran’s regime and want the war to continue until it is disabled or toppled, Arab officials said, though they have stopped short of committing their military. Bahrain, a close U.S. ally that hosts the Navy’s Fifth Fleet, is sponsoring the U.N. resolution, with a vote expected Thursday.

I didn’t think the UAE had much of a military, but it turns out it does, and even has mandatory conscription. The military has 65,000 people on active duty, and there are 130,000 reservists, along with 139 fighter planes and a small navy with two minesweepers. It also has a decent air defense system.  It’s not comparable to what Israel or the U.S. has brought to bear, but it’s heartening that other Middle Eastern countries are willing to help open the Strait, especially in view of Iran being willing to take on anybody who takes on this task.

*In their questioning about “birthright citizenship” today, “key justices” of the Supreme Court appeared skeptical of Trump’s arguments that you are not always entitled to American citizenship if you were born here. Further, in an American first, Trump showed up at the oral arguments, no doubt trying to intimidate the Justices in a case he’ll almost surely lose.

A majority of the Supreme Court appeared skeptical of President Trump’s efforts to limit birthright citizenship during arguments on Wednesday.

Key conservative justices raised doubts about the constitutionality of the president’s executive order that would end automatic citizenship for children born on U.S. soil to undocumented immigrants and some temporary foreign visitors.

But in an argument that lasted more than two hours, several of the court’s conservative justices also asked tough questions of a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the legal challenge, making the outcome of the legally complicated and hugely consequential case not fully clear.

In an unprecedented move and a signal of the stakes of the landmark case, President Trump attended the first part of the argument, watching from a public gallery as his solicitor general defended the policy. Mr. Trump had been railing against the court on social media in the days leading up to the argument.

The case focuses on the constitutionality of an executive order signed by Mr. Trump last year that would end citizenship for babies born on U.S. soil to undocumented immigrants and temporary foreign visitors.

A ruling in favor of the Trump administration could redefine what it means to be an American. It could also have sweeping practical consequences, stripping citizenship from more than an estimated 200,000 babies born in the United States each year to undocumented immigrants.

The executive order, which was blocked by lower courts and has never gone into effect, would affect only babies born in the future. Opponents say a decision to uphold it would create chaos and uncertainty for newborns and their parents, and cast doubt over the status of millions of people who have already benefited from birthright citizenship.

I think Trump’s birthright ban was clearly unconstitutional, a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.  Given that provision, he’s bucking the law.  I was surprised to learn that birthright citizenship is far from universal. Here’s a map that Luana sent me of how countries relate birthplace to citizienship. She thought that Australia’s and the UK’s policy of requiring the parents being legal residents was more sensible than “automatic” citizenship.  I was surprised that no European country adheres to the U.S. policy, and, indeed, the “parents must be legal residents” policy has things to say for it.

*For despairing folk of the Jewish persuasion, you might be heartened by Eli Lakes’s article in The Free Press: “Israel is unpopular. And it’s never had more friends.”

Israel’s public image is in the toilet. On the socialist left, the Jewish state is portrayed as a genocidal colony. On the populist right, Israel and its supporters in America are conniving courtiers who bullied President Donald Trump to launch a war against Iran on its behalf. The numbers back it up too. A Gallup poll released late last month found that more Americans sympathize with the Palestinians than the Israelis for the first time in the quarter century that Gallup has been asking the question.

All of this might lead Zionists to despair for Israel’s future. In terms of soft power, Jerusalem is being pummeled by podcasts, protests, and social media. But that is only part of the picture. When it comes to hard power, the stuff of arms sales, diplomacy, and air space, Israel is on a generational run.

. . .In the recent past, American presidents have asked Israel to hold fire, fearing its participation in the previous Gulf wars against Iraq would poison cooperation with Arab allies. Under the old rules, Israel was the underdog, surrounded by enemies, protected and subsidized by America. Now Israel’s air force is helping shoot down Iranian missiles aimed at the Gulf States that once refused even to recognize its existence.

Nothing succeeds like success. Since the fall of 2024, Israel has demonstrated the ability to decapitate the leadership of its enemies from the air. The intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance technology that made these air strikes possible is now the envy of its neighbors. The dreams of pro-Palestinian activists to persuade the world to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel look quaint when nearly every military would love to learn how Israel is able to assassinate terrorist leaders without committing ground forces.

Pollack said that Gulf Arab monarchies “are not going to tank their partnership because of what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians. They need them for all these other reasons. It’s the ultimate triumph of Israel’s economic and military power.”

Beyond Israel’s military advances, the Jewish state has also been accumulating allies. Take Israel’s recent pact with Somaliland in January. Shoshana Bryen, senior director of the Jewish Policy Center, contrasted the Somaliland agreement with past Israeli development projects in Africa. “This is not just a new water project,” she said. “This is a strategic asset on the Red Sea.” Israel may soon be able to project naval power in one of the most important waterways in the world.

Bryen said, “There is a tectonic shift going on generally. Countries are moving to align with what they consider to be a strategic power, Israel, in the Middle East, in Africa, and Europe.”

. . . Israel still has a steep hill to climb when it comes to its public image in America and Europe. But very few people have noticed that as Israel has lost the public relations war in the West, it has been winning a real war in the Middle East. And the countries that used to yell loudest about Israel’s perfidy are quietly cheering on its air force as it helps to dominate the skies and pulverize the regime in Iran.

One can hope.  But that steep hill is still there, and my personal impression is that antisemitism is growing, at least in the West. A new Middle East is shaking out, and I hope I’m alive to see what happens in the next ten or fifteen years.

*When I visited Iceland for most of a week last August, I found it expensive, as does everyone else. Most stuff is imported, raising prices, and now they’re even higher because of the rising price of oil. Even the famous Icelandic hot dog, of which I had several, has shot up in price. You probably didn’t know that hot dogs are almost Iceland’s national dish, though they haven’t quite learned the right way to serve them yet.

Iceland is an expensive place to eat. This country in the North Atlantic depends on imported food, and inflation has been raging for years despite the government’s efforts to tame it.

But even though food prices are high, most Icelanders can still afford a hot dog.

“Everyone eats it, rich or poor,” said Gabriel Máni De Sousa, 16, fixing his hairnet behind the counter of Pylsubarinn, a decades-old hot-dog stand south of Reykjavik, where he works weekends.

Then he started making “one with everything,” the local way — with both raw and fried onions between the meat and the bun, and a healthy squirt of ketchup, sweet brown mustard and a rémoulade on top. Usually made with a blend of three meats — Icelandic lamb and beef as well as some imported pork — the dogs have a real snap, followed by a burst of juice that could shame their American peers.

If Iceland had a national dish, it would be the hot dog. It’s akin to the dollar slice, that emblem of affordable New York City eating: hot, reliable and better than it needs to be.

The dollar slice in NYC has gone the way of the Edsel, I’m afraid; a slice is three or four bucks now. Note that Icelanders PUT KETCHUP on the dog along with mustard, something that’s a capital offense in Chicago. A bit more:

But even Iceland’s hot dogs are not immune to inflation.

Prices vary depending on the stand and the toppings. But for the most part, a standard dog costs about 750 Icelandic krona, around $6. That is low for the Reykjavik area, where a kebab can cost $17 and dinner-plate-sized pizza can be $20. Consumer prices were 5.2 percent higher last month than in February 2025 — that’s more than twice that of the European Union. Hot dog prices have followed, steadily increasing at stands across the country.

Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur — the most famous hot dog shop in Iceland, whose name translates to “The Town’s Best Hot Dogs” — has been selling in downtown Reykjavik since at least the 1930s, and expanded rapidly in recent years from four to 14 locations.

Baldur Ingi Halldorsson, the chief executive, said he has raised prices more in the past few years than in the previous 20. In 2022, the price was 600 krona (about $4.80); now, it’s 880 krona, or just over $7. Inflation has increased ingredient costs and wages have gone up, so the cost of running a business is higher.

I actually got a dog and a Coke at the very location pictured in the NYT article, but really, you need at least two dogs to make a meal, and that’s getting up there in price.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili becomes a self-help cat:

Hili: Put your worries off until tomorrow.
Andrzej: They might grow old.
Hili: That’s the point.

In Polish:

Hili: Odłóż zmartwienia na jutro.
Ja: Mogą się zestarzeć.
Hili: I o to chodzi.

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

From Jesus of the Day, a big LOL:

From Give me a Sign:

From Luana:

*Masih has slowed down tweeting as she’s in Germany, but still asks us to remember those protestors who have been or will be executed:

⚠️ Say their names.
Their lives are in serious danger.
Mohammad Amin Biglari, Shahin Vahedparast Kalur, Abolfazl Salehi Siavashani, Amirhossein Hatami, and Ali Fahim. #DigitalBlackOutIran‌ #Iran https://t.co/CPClX9TWtz pic.twitter.com/h9TG57hZhi

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) March 31, 2026

From Bryan; Steve Stewart-Williams has done the hard work of untangling what people mean when they make probabilitistic statements:

Ever wondered how people interpret phrases like “almost certainly,” “probably,” and “probably not”? Well, wonder no more. The graph below shows the probability estimates people give for these and various other terms and phrases.

[Link below.] pic.twitter.com/wUAoCzinDB

— Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill) April 1, 2026

From Luana. This is distressing, but you remember Iryna Zarutska, the 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee who was murdered on a train in North Carolina. A mural of her has been defaces in some places and, in Providence, Rhode Island, has been removed. You can read the story here.  It’s complicated by the fact that some rumors say the murals were funded by Elon Musk. To me, they’re justified as a remembrance of a woman who fled to America to find safety, but instead was murdered. The “division” appears to be about race, as the killer was black (and also mentally ill).

Rep. David Morales justified the removal of the mural of Iryna Zarutska “to make sure that every community member who calls Providence home feels safe.” It appears that memorializing the murder of an innocent woman makes some feel unsafe… https://t.co/OULyFBKuWg

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) March 31, 2026

Three from my feed. This famous dog rescue is now memorialized with a statue on the site:

Ten years after a video shared millions of times, that moment of compassion has been cast in bronze. pic.twitter.com/18zCCkqKqs

— Sophia (@Sophiaapmo) March 31, 2026

Did this cat try to steal fruit?

What are they arguing about? 😅 pic.twitter.com/YwPiuRgL1q

— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) April 1, 2026

These sentences sound like a cat doing the “ek ek ek ek” sound. Watch until the end:

Japanese seems fairly easy to learn. pic.twitter.com/y68NNyZLJM

— Planet Of Memes (@PlanetOfMemes) March 31, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish girl, along with her mother and two brothers, was gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz. She was about seven years old. https://t.co/9Lk5AaB26H

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) April 2, 2026

One from Dr. Cobb, on hols till tomorrow. This book might be worth looking into: it’s got 4.8 stars on Amazon out of 627 reviews.

I am excited that I have a new edition and new publisher for my book KAIBYO: THE SUPERNATURAL CATS OF JAPAN. I increased the text, added some new images, and basically fixed all the stuff that has been bugging me since it's first release 8 years ago.It's a banger.www.amazon.com/Kaibyo-Super…

— Zack Davisson (@zackdavisson.com) 2026-03-24T16:15:50.565Z

Welcome to the penultimate day of the month: March 30, 2026, and National Hot Chicken Day. celebrating a fad that begin with Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack in Nashville, Tennessee. Wikipedia even has an entry on “hot chicken” that includes this salacious lore:

Anecdotal evidence suggests that spicy fried chicken has been served in Nashville’s African-American communities for generations.  The dish may have been introduced as early as the 1930s; however, the current style of spice paste may only date back to the mid-1970s. It is generally accepted that the originator of hot chicken is the family of André Prince Jeffries, owner of Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack. She has operated the restaurant since 1980; before that time, it was owned by her great-uncle, Thornton Prince III.  Jeffries says the development of hot chicken was an accident. Her great-uncle Thornton was purportedly a womanizer, and after a particularly late Saturday night out, his girlfriend at the time cooked him a fried chicken breakfast with extra pepper as revenge.  Instead, Thornton decided he liked it so much that, by the mid-1930s, he and his brothers had created their own recipe and opened the BBQ Chicken Shack café.

Hot chicken, indeed. Here’s a video (the higher degrees of hotness are apparently incendiary; I think this is a form of masochism):

It’s also Holy Monday and Turkey Neck Soup Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 30 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Part of yesterday’s war news from It’s Noon in Israel:, titled “Hezbollah begs for peace“:

It’s Sunday, March 29, and the thirtieth day of Operation Roaring Lion. The global price of oil has reached $112, up four percent since yesterday. Here are the latest developments while you were asleep:

• The USS Tripoli and its Marine Expeditionary Unit have arrived from Japan, including the forces on the USS Boxer and reinforcements from the 82nd Airborne—this marks the largest U.S. military deployment to the region in over 20 years. Trump has extended his ultimatum on the Strait of Hormuz to April 6, while the Pentagon weighs sending up to 10,000 additional troops and prepares plans for limited, weeks-long ground operations focused on targets like Kharg Island rather than a full-scale invasion.
• Iranian missiles and drones struck Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, damaging refueling aircraft and wounding 10–12 U.S. personnel, some critically, according to reporting by The Wall Street Journal and Reuters. The aircraft seem to have been stationed on the tarmac when they were struck, in violation of U.S. Air Force protocol. Open-source imagery verified the attack, while the Pentagon has yet to comment.
• According to Iran International, the president of Iran and the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are in “deep disagreement.” The president warned that without a ceasefire, Iran’s economy could face total collapse within three weeks to a month.
• Over the weekend, the Houthis fired a ballistic missile at Israel for the first time since the October 2025 ceasefire with Hamas. This marks their partial entry into the war. So far, they have refrained from attacking U.S. forces, limiting their attacks to Israel. The Yemen-based group has also yet to declare the closure of the region’s other oil chokepoint, the Bab al-Mandab, which would be a significant boon to Iran and mark their full entry into the conflict.
• The IDF’s Alpinist force recently climbed from the Syrian slopes of Mount Hermon to Mount Dov in southern Lebanon in an operation against entrenched terrorist organizations along the Lebanese border. This marks the unit’s first cross-border operation in its more than fifty-year history—unsurprising given that Israel and the region are not known for an abundance of snow and cold weather.

At this point in the war, the question is less whether there will be a ceasefire and more what kind it will be—negotiated or unilateral. The reality Israel has understood from the outset is that the war in Iran is Trump’s to decide. When he is done, so is Israel—but the question is whether that principle applies to Lebanon as well.

Hezbollah is aware of this question. Behind the scenes, the group is pleading with Iran to be included in any negotiated agreement. Even a unilateral ceasefire—which would likely involve some degree of coordination behind the scenes—Hezbollah wants to be part of it.

*According to the NYT, “Iran is flooding the internet with disinformation and propaganda in an attempt to undermine support for the U.S. and Israeli attacks.” An excerpt:

The videos and posts relentlessly mock President Trump or vilify him as a bloodthirsty leader who strikes civilian targets indiscriminately. They make up content about attacks on American and Israeli targets, including one on Wednesday that featured a fabricated video of a missile striking Liberty Island in New York Harbor. They regularly mention Jeffrey Epstein.

Iran is waging what researchers have described as a sophisticated information war, aided by Russia and China, that is spreading content designed to exploit worldwide opposition to the U.S.-Israeli military campaign and deflect from the country’s considerable losses on the battlefield.

Nearly a month into the war, Iran’s state media outlets and covert operatives are producing a steady torrent of propaganda, overstated narratives and outright disinformation. They are often wielding generative A.I. tools to create increasingly realistic-looking images and videos, according to human rights organizations and research groups studying foreign influence.

Much of the false content has been debunked, but not before reaching millions of people on X, Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and other social media platforms.

The information war, the researchers say, has given Iran’s beleaguered leadership a weapon almost as potent as its ability to disrupt the world’s energy economy by throttling shipments of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. While the impact of the information war can be difficult to measure, experts said it appeared to have stoked popular anger and unease about the conflict in the United States and beyond.

“They’re winning the propaganda war,” Darren L. Linvill, a director of Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, said of the Iranians. “They were prepared for it more than the administration, because they’d been preparing for this entire conflict for 50 years.”

. . . Many of the posts appear to come from accounts controlled by humans, rather than automated bots. Researchers at Clemson identified a furtive network of at least 62 accounts on X, Instagram and Bluesky that spread pro-Iranian content.

The Clemson site shows photos of a number of these fake accounts; I was amused to see that several of the bogus accounts were on Bluesky, the site that is supposed to be beyond hatred, showing hateful content:

*The Times of Israel reports that Tehran harbors a priceless collection of contemporary art, largely collected by Iran’s last queen, Farah Pahlavi, with much of the art unable to be shown because it violates Islamic standards.

This time last year, art enthusiasts in Tehran were celebrating an extraordinary event. A masterpiece by Pablo Picasso, “The Painter and His Model,” went on display in the city for only the second time in decades. It was shown at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, in an exhibition entitled “Picasso in Tehran” — a rare highlighting of a different face of Iran, with similarly rare approval from the Islamic regime.

The 1927 painting was described by Bloomberg last week as “arguably the most important canvas in the world that cannot be visited or seen.” The work that helped inspire Picasso’s “Guernica,” which showcases the destruction caused by the Spanish Civil War, it sits in what Bloomberg called “one of the world’s most dangerous cities.”

But the current war is only the latest factor preventing the piece from being made available to the public, with little known about the museum’s current fate. (Its website, like many others in Iran, has been down, possibly due to internet disruptions in the country. Some users on social media have shared posts showing artifacts in some museums put away or wrapped in protective materials.)

Like dozens of other masterpieces in the museum, “The Painter and His Model” has spent virtually all of the 47 years since the Islamic Revolution shut away in TMOCA’s vaults, considered too inappropriate by the ayatollahs for display.

. . . Like dozens of other masterpieces in the museum, “The Painter and His Model” has spent virtually all of the 47 years since the Islamic Revolution shut away in TMOCA’s vaults, considered too inappropriate by the ayatollahs for display.

Deeply passionate about art, the queen took advantage of the soaring prices of oil to bring to Tehran some of the best modern and contemporary art, acquiring works by Picasso, Andy Warhol, Claude Monet, Jackson Pollock, Vincent Van Gogh and dozens more, including Jewish and Israeli artists such as Marc Chagall and Yaacov Agam, and gay ones like Francis Bacon. In 2018, the value of the collection was estimated at $3 billion.

It’ll be all up and open if the theocracy falls. In the meantime, here’s a YouTube video of the Picasso in Tehran exhibit. That is one hell of a diverse group of Picassos!

And here’s the 1927 “The Painter and His Model” from Wikiart:

*Is the “Revival of Christianity,” much touted by religionists, a non-event—fake news? That, at least, is what the Guardian reports for a survey of Christanity in England and Wales (h/t Alan).

A YouGov survey showing a significant rise in church attendance in parts of the UK has been withdrawn after some respondents were found to be fraudulent.

The poll was central to a Quiet Revival report, published by the Bible Society last year, which prompted news stories about an apparent resurgence in Christianity, particularly among young people.

But YouGov, which carried out the research in 2024, said on Thursday that the data sample was flawed, with “a number of respondents who we can now identify as fraudulent”.

The pollster’s chief executive, Stephan Shakespeare, said: “YouGov takes full responsibility for the outputs of the original 2024 research, and we apologise for what has happened.

“We would like to stress that Bible Society have at all times accurately and responsibly reported the data we supplied to them. We are running the survey again with Bible Society to get robust data on this topic.”

The report had claimed 12% of adults in England and Wales were attending church once a month or more in 2024, which YouGov described as “a significant increase from 8% in a previous 2018 study”.

The data also purported to show a rise in young people’s attendance, from 4% of 18- to 24-year-olds attending monthly in 2018 to 16% in 2024.

So YouGov screwed up, but believers were eager to spread the news. The point is that, given the continual decrease in Christian belief in the last several decades, a rise would need explanation, and there’s not a good one. Nevertheless, even when the Christians were told they had been misinformed, they tried to turn it into a good thing (bolding is mine):

The Bible Society insisted there remained “a very positive story to tell”. It said in the past year, “we have seen an unprecedented public conversation about Christianity, with countless stories of a spiritual awakening among Gen Z”.

The chief executive of Humanists UK, Andrew Copson, said the withdrawal of the data was “both validation and vindication”.

“We need to be absolutely clear: there is no revival of Christianity in Britain,” he said. “For almost a year, Humanists UK has taken a rational, evidence-based approach, repeatedly and rigorously explaining why the Bible Society’s claims do not stand up.”

The “public conversation” is due almost entirely to Christians touting the revival of Christianity!  It’s an example of the kind of self-deception that Bob Trivers wrote about..

*And from the UPI’s odd news site, we have the world’s largest carrot cake:

A British Columbia cafe owner celebrated his 80th birthday by baking and assembling a massive carrot cake measuring 17 feet by 17 feet.

Ted Martindale, owner of Granville’s Coffee in Quesnel, teamed up with multiple local bakeries to assemble his birthday cake, which contained over 1,760 pounds of carrots, 700 pounds of butter, thousands of eggs and nearly 2,000 pounds of icing.

Martindale said it took over a month to bake the 430 individual cakes that made up the final product.

The cake was served Wednesday at Martindale’s birthday party at the local senior’s center.

The current Guinness World Record for the largest carrot cake is held by a Surrey, British Columbia, bakery that assembled a 4,574-pound cake in 2016. Martindale said his cake weighed in at about 6,044 pounds, but evidence must still be reviewed by Guinness World Records for him to officially take the record.

There are two things I want to know. First, is it kosher to put together 430 individual cakes and call it one whole cake? Second, is the frosting made with cream cheese? If not, it shouldn’t count.  Here’s a video:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Andrzej note the signs of Spring:

Hili: You can feel spring everywhere.
Andrzej: Yes, the forsythia has begun to bloom, and in the newspapers scoundrels are in full bloom.

In Polish

Hili: Wszędzie czuć wiosnę.
Ja: Tak, zakwitała forsycja, w gazetach kwitną łajdacy.

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

From Mark, a goth walker:

From My Cat is an Asshole:

From Give Me a Sign:

From Mash, apparently with Kristen Welker on NBC, speaking eloquently about why American should finish the job in Iran.  Masih is quite passionate and yet eloquent when speaking off the cuff:

You don’t hear about this in the international media. Why?
Because people who’ve never lived a single day under war, never spent one hour under a theocratic regime, are sitting comfortably, debating the Middle East like it’s a Netflix series. but this is the reality that people… pic.twitter.com/PYtG9IMGAO

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) March 27, 2026

From Pamela Paresky, but it sounds like the kind of witticism that Andrzej would make (h/t Jay):

Reminds me of the unfortunate joke:
Q: What is the definition of antisemitism?
A: Hating Jews more than absolutely necessary. https://t.co/mDJkxU7RFU

— Pamela Paresky 🟦 (Habits of a Free Mind) (@PamelaParesky) March 28, 2026

Larry the Cat is back tweeting! Yay!  He asks an important question here, but I’m sufficiently anal that I change my stove and microwave clocks the day after the time changes:

The clocks went forward an hour in the UK last night, which means it’s time for an important question:
Is the clock on your oven…

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) March 29, 2026

From Luana, who says to excuse the politically incorrect word “retarded”:

The British left might be the most retarded in the world. They actually believe a man who screams Allahu Akbar whose wife wears a full niqab is a progressive champion who cares about women’s rights, LGBT and the environment. pic.twitter.com/y8NhZf4fjr

— Dr. Maalouf ‏ (@realMaalouf) March 27, 2026

Two from my feed.  This cat is either mesmerized or hypnotized:

Big fan of whatever is going here pic.twitter.com/nSmUYF2iYi

— Wholesome Side of 𝕏 (@itsme_urstruly) March 29, 2026

And this kid (yes, it’s a child) is amazing!

She looks like she’s having a blast—you’d never guess this is a world-class performance. What amazes me isn’t the speed, it’s her flawless timing and dynamics—she truly feels the music. This level isn’t from practice alone; it comes from the heart. ❤️

Mendelssohn: G Major Piano… pic.twitter.com/oyiaoEicYr

— 🎶𝗖𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗠𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗱𝗶𝗲𝘀 ✨ (@Old_But_Gold50s) March 28, 2026

Here’s the whole piece that someone posted in the thread; her name is Alexandra Dovgan, and she’s now 18.  I believe she was eleven when she did this piece:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This French Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived at Auschwitz, along with 90% of the people on her transport. Fanny was eight years old. https://t.co/1yYqJmpXhr

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) March 30, 2026

One from Dr. Cobb, whose hols in Lyme Regis are coming to an end, and he posted some of his holiday snaps:

Scenes in and around Lyme Regis

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-03-28T11:45:50.205Z

Welcome to Sunday, March 29, 2026: Sabbath for goyische cats. We are hurrying towards April, and today is National Vietnam War Veterans Day  Here is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, designed by novice architect Maya Lin and erected in Washington, D.C. in 1982. It is a moving memorial, with over 58,000 names of the dead inscribed on it.  When I visited it, I can’t help thinking of those young American lives lost in a war that should not have taken place (no comments about Iran, please). This shot shows Christmas decorations.

It’s also National Lemon Chiffon Cake Day, Palm Sunday, and Piano Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 29 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*War News from the WSJ and Times of Israel: U.S. Marines have arrived in the Middle East, and the Houthis fired a missile at Israel (it was intercepted). A ground war may be in the offing:

WSJ:

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militants claimed responsibility for a second attack on Israel after entering the war this weekend. Their involvement is an unnerving prospect for the oil market, raising fears of disruption to Red Sea shipping in addition to the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz.

ToI:

The US Department of Defense is preparing options for ground operations in Iran, which would fall short of a full-scale invasion but could involve thousands of troops and take weeks or months, The Washington Post reported late Saturday.

According to the report, which cited unnamed American officials, US President Donald Trump has not greenlit any of the plans yet.

The White House, asked for comment for the report, said the Pentagon works to give the president “maximum optionality,” but that this “does not mean the President has made a decision.”

According to the Post, the potential operations could see a mixture of special forces and conventional infantry sent to conduct extended raids into coastal areas near the Strait of Hormuz, including seizing islands controlled by the Islamic Republic and holding them for an extended period of time.

Experts have warned that holding territory would put American soldiers in significantly more danger than they’ve faced so far in the war, which has already seen 13 US servicemembers killed in action, and more than 300 wounded.

The timeline of the potential operations was not entirely clear, with one source telling the Post that the objectives under consideration would take “weeks, not months” to achieve, while another estimated the operations could last “a couple of months.”

In for a penny, in for a pound. I don’t think there’s any way to bring down the Iranian administration—and is victory possible without that?—save sending in ground troops.  Trump keeps vacillating between saying the war is winding down and saying the war will last for a while

*From the NYT; the partial government shutdown continues as there is no funding for Homeland security, though TSA workers will get paid by an executive order.

• House Republicans rejected the Senate-approved bill to pay T.S.A. workers, which would have eased some of the stresses of the partial shutdown while still withholding funding from ICE.
• The House passed its own bill to fully fund the Department of Homeland Security into May. But the bill is a nonstarter in the Senate, which just began a two-week recess.
• The White House ordered the D.H.S. to pay T.S.A. workers using existing funds. They could get checks as soon as Monday.

House Republicans angrily rejected a bipartisan deal to reopen the Department of Homeland Security and pushed through their own plan late Friday, putting themselves on a collision course with the Senate and extending the agency shutdown that has crippled U.S. airports.

Revolting over an agreement their own party struck with Senate Democrats to end the crisis, which had passed the Senate before dawn on Friday, House Republican leaders — with President Trump’s backing — refused to take it up. They derided the Senate plan for hewing too closely to Democrats’ position by omitting money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, the two agencies responsible for carrying out Mr. Trump’s deportation crackdown, which are operating under previously approved funds.

“House Republicans are not going to be any part of any effort to reopen our borders or to stop immigration enforcement,” Speaker Mike Johnson said at a news conference on Friday afternoon. “This gambit that was done last night is a joke.”

Mr. Johnson called the Senate-passed deal engineered by Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, “ridiculousness,” and instead teed up a stopgap measure to fund the entire department until May 22.

I don’t remember in this administration the House Republicans allied against the Senate Republicans. And, as far as I know, the Democratic bill doesn’t “stop immigration enforcement,” but merely makes ICE workers adhere to reasonable behavior, wear bodycams, and stop wearing masks.

As for when the long lines at TSA will stop, it may take a while, especially since some of them have simply quit their jobs to take more reliable positions.

*A Title VI settlement against Berkeley ruled that “anti-Zionism” is equivalent to antisemitism, and cannot be used to discriminate against students.

After years in which Jewish and Israeli students at University of California, Berkeley were told that their exclusion was merely the product of political disagreement, a Title VI case brought by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law has reached a settlement. It requires the university to end student group practices that excluded “Zionists,” and finally affirms that what Jewish students experienced was, in fact, discrimination.

The settlement forces the university to confront what it had long denied: that Jewish students’ experiences of discrimination and harassment were real. Though the problem accelerated after Hamas’s genocidal massacre on October 7, Kenneth L. Marcus—founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center, which brought the suit—accused Berkeley law students in 2022 of having“institutionalized an ancient ideology of hate, incorporating it into the legal DNA of their major identity groups.” He listed clubs as diverse as women’s groups, Asian and Pacific Islander, African American, LGBTQ, and Middle Eastern student organizations, all of which had altered their bylaws to exclude “Zionist” members and speakers.

In Marcus’s words: “Daniel Pearl, a Zionist victim of beheading, would have been constitutionally banned during his lifetime from speaking to any of these groups. His anti-Zionist murderers would not have been.”

The case comes in the wake of StandWithUs v. MIT, which was dismissed by a Massachusetts district judge who held not only that anti-Zionism constitutes protected speech, but that there is no basis for presuming it to be antisemitic—unless it explicitly employs recognizable antisemitic tropes.

The UC Berkeley case is an important victory. But it seems clear that much more work remains to produce lasting institutional change capable of protecting Jewish and Israeli students from anti-Zionist discrimination in the future. Law, as always, follows culture—and nothing less is required than a sea change in how we understand anti-Zionism.

Anti-Zionism transforms the very meaning of Zionism, reconstructing “Zionism” as a form of racial supremacy rooted in Jewish chosenness. This draws on a longer anti-Judaic tradition, running from Hasan Sa’b’s propaganda text Zionism and Racism—a key entry in the Palestine Essays series edited by Fayez Sayegh, the PLO propagandist who coined the term settler colonialism, and which recast Jewish peoplehood as inherently oppressive—to the Soviet-backed “Zionism is Racism” resolution of 1975 that continues to infuse the toxic discoursearound “Zionism,” despite its formal repeal in 1991.

The Berkeley stand was shameful: they totally bought into the view that anti-Zionism was a “political stand,” when in fact Zionism is simply the recognition that Jews should have their own state, WHICH THEY ALREADY HAVE.  If you’re Jew who lives in Israel, or reccognizes Israel’s already-designated right to exist, you can be damned as a Zionist. Is there anybody fool enough to think that “Zionist” is something other than a euphemism for “Jew”?

*The Free Press documents what happened in Chicago when they paid gang members and other locals to defuse conflicts on the street. It was a total disaster, and an expensive one. Who had that dumb idea?

The idea of fighting crime by paying ex–gang members might be new to you, but this sort of program, which often goes under the name of “community violence intervention,” has become the norm in blue cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City over the past decade.

Proponents of this approach argue that, rather than relying on policing to prevent gang violence and reduce shootings, some amount of police work can be replaced with state-backed, man-on-the-street initiatives. In Chicago, that includes hiring former gang members to counsel current ones and resolve disputes. The programs go by different names: violence prevention, violence interrupters, Peacekeepers.

In recent weeks, I’ve investigated whether this strategy is working—or whether taxpayers and philanthropists are inadvertently funding gang violence in Chicago. Randle is one of many outreach workers, South Side residents, and donors we spoke to who say they’re losing confidence in community violence intervention.

Over the past decade, taxpayers and private donors have spent around $1 billion on community violence intervention (CVI) programs in Chicago, according to an analysis by The Free Press.

CVI is backed by some of the biggest names in Chicago—and the country—including mega-philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, the billionaire wife of the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker, and Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, a progressive who has helped secure funding for these programs. But not all city leaders have bought in.

. . . In 2018, CRED helped launch what would become the most controversial arm of the city’s CVI apparatus: a program called FLIP (Flatlining Violence Inspires Peace). Young locals—many of whom have criminal records or are “justice-involved,” as CRED puts it—are paid to de-escalate conflict, monitor social media for gang tensions, and participate in daily check-ins regarding hot-spot activity. They eventually got rebranded as Peacekeepers. They wear neon vests and are meant to hang out in contested areas. When gang violence explodes, more than 1,000 Peacekeepers are sent to hot spots throughout the city to intervene. What began as a privately funded program under CRED is now a state-funded program, which received $33 million for this fiscal year.

. . . .Since January 2023—when the Peacekeepers program expanded from a summer initiative to a year-round operation—The Free Press found 28 additional arrests involving people who identified themselves as Peacekeepers or “violence interrupters” or wore Peacekeeper vests. The charges range from drug possession to violent assault.

In one case, police arrested a man for alleged heroin possession and unlawful possession of a firearm after finding him naked under his bed with $50,000 in cash nearby (he was later acquitted). In another, officers allegedly discovered 24 suspected ecstasy pills on a man who identified himself as a Peacekeeper who had been arrested for battery and resisting the police. Another police report describes a man who said he worked as a Peacekeeper who allegedly beat a woman unconscious, leaving her hospitalized with a brain hemorrhage. Another Peacekeeper, who told police he was a member of the Satan Disciples gang, was arrested twice within the span of 10 days.

Here’s a figure from the Free Press article showing the increase in public funding of the program over time. It ain’t working:

Pritzker is an okay governor, and may even be a candidate for President in two years, but he’s too woke for his own good, and too enamored of harebrained schemes like this.

*Speaking of woke, Mara Gay is a woke NYT op-ed columnist (among many others) who loves Zohran Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists (have a look at her list of columns; nearly all of them praise Mamdani). This week she continues her osculation of Hizzoner (ignoring his downsides) with a column called, “Mamdani shows what it looks like when generational change actually takes place.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani was on his way to Gracie Mansion this winter when he asked his driver to pull over to help fellow New Yorkers dig their cars out of the snow. He picked up a shovel. So did his press secretary. Members of his security detail did, too.

It was just the kind of scene that had endeared Mr. Mamdani, 34, to voters. It also hinted at a governing style that resembles the scrappy, high-octane feel of a political campaign — and relies on the hustle of a group of young staff members to keep up.

Mr. Mamdani, New York City’s youngest mayor in about a century, has filled City Hall with people who are also in their 30s, or even younger. The mayor’s chief of staff, Elle Bisgaard-Church, is 34. His communications director, Anna Bahr, is 33. Joe Calvello, his press secretary, is 33. His closest outside adviser, Morris Katz, 26, is so young that for several months last year, he told reporters he was a couple of years older than he was.

The arrival of these young Democrats at the helm of one of the most prominent offices in the country has meant all kinds of changes for New York politics, from the congressional primaries in which Mr. Mamdani has involved himself to who holds the political capital in New York.

Then there’s the way they run the government, with a management style that youth allows: working all the time. Mr. Mamdani is younger than most prominent Democrats, needs little sleep, enjoys working weekends and likes to be highly visible in the city he leads, every day. Some of his closest aides haven’t had a day off since Jan. 1, when the mayor was sworn into office. Work calls can begin as late as 10 p.m. Some veterans say the approach is notably intense, like Karen Hinton, who was Mayor Bill de Blasio’s press secretary and said she struggled to imagine her former boss shoveling snow. “He wouldn’t have gotten out of his car,” she said. “He would have called someone.”

Mr. Mamdani is trying to enact a sweeping leftist agenda in a moment when trust in government is exceedingly low. He is the city’s first Muslim mayor. And he came to office promising to champion working people in a moment when those Americans are struggling.

That may be why this mayor seems to approach everything he does with a sense of urgency. If it seems like Mr. Mamdani is everywhere, it’s because he is. So are his exhausted staffers. It’s a group of young and hungry progressives out to prove to voters that the left can govern.

What about his accomplishments? Well, his promise for free daycare has met with some approval with the governor, as it must, so there may be free daycare for two-year-olds within a year. But as for free public transportation and those city grocery stores—criekets.  And then there’s Mandami’s antisemitism, which goes with progressivism and the Democratic Socialists. Nobody seems to care much about that.  As one of my readers wrote me, ” I think Mamdani would expel all Jews from the city if he could. I think he would bankrupt the city and drive anyone with money from its borders.”  But the column, of course is only about the energy he and his young, deluded supporters bring to the city.

Also, my friend Orli Peter, a therapist who works with trauma, has been in the Middle East treating both Israeli and Palestinian trauma survivors. She wrote an article for a Swedish newspaper addressed to Mamdami’s wife, “An open letter to New York City’s first lady,” which is in Swedish but can be automatically tranlated into English by Google. Orli takes Rama Duwaji to task for her approbation for Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Here’s the ending:

As the First Lady of New York City, you are in a public position to inspire a movement for Palestinian rights and security. The survivors I treat are still trying to rebuild their lives from what they witnessed. Palestinians also deserve to be freed from the same sadistic movement that terrorizes them.

Public gestures matter. When someone in a position of influence treats atrocities as liberation, the signal is sent far beyond a social media post.

The evidence is clear. Admit you were wrong and withdraw your support for the lie.

Some of us spend our days helping survivors rebuild the lives that Hamas shattered. The least the rest of the world can do is stop condoning mass sadism and tell the truth about what was done to the victims of Hamas’s cruelty.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has anomie:

Hili: I watch as the present turns into the past.
Me: And?
Hili: I will probably get bored of it soon.

In Polish:

Hili: Patrzę jak teraźniejszość zmienia się w przeszłość.
Ja: I co?
Hili: Pewnie zaraz mi się to znudzi.

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

From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:

From Jesus of the Day:

From CinEmma:

From Masih, another peaceful protestor arrested (along with his mom) and tortured.  Iran now has a shoot-to-kill order in dealing with protests:

“Mom, they are killing me alive.”

That’s not a line from a movie.
That’s a real message from an Iranian dentist whose biggest crime was… treating wounded protesters.

His name is Sobhan Esmaeildoost. 36 years old. Father. Dentist and now a political prisoner and they changed… https://t.co/gSOEER219B pic.twitter.com/dPtAc2hf1o

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) March 25, 2026

Good news: diabetics who inject themselves with insulin daily may be able to go to a once-per-week regimen:

Today the FDA approved the first once-weekly insulin.

Insulin icodec, now brand name Awiqli, demonstrated superior a1c reduction to daily insulin glargine with a1c reduction of 1.55% compared to 1.35%, in addition to 6 less injections per week in the ONWARDS phase 3 trial.

Now… pic.twitter.com/XIJF1ZzREH

— Michael Weintraub, MD (@MWeintraubMD) March 27, 2026

From J. K. Rowling, celebrating the IOC’s decision to allow only biological women to compete in women’s sports:

Today’s ruling by the IOC means a welcome return to fair sport for women and girls, but I’ll never forget the scandal of Paris 2024, when people who consider themselves supremely virtuous and progressive publicly cheered on men punching women. pic.twitter.com/qmQCI2Mks5

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) March 26, 2026

Pinker prefers written rather than video instructions, as do I, and for the same reasons:

Like an appreciation of progress, reading and literacy are among the things that are good but cognitively unnatural. That is, they go against our evolved nature. We didn’t evolve with print; it was a recent invention. Reading, for many of us, has become so second nature that we… pic.twitter.com/jEgCL0d1kj

— Steven Pinker (@sapinker) March 28, 2026

One from my feed:

Mama swan carrying her little babies..🦢😍 pic.twitter.com/71sqaMseJK

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) March 28, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was five years old. Had she lived, she would have been 87 yesterday.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-03-29T14:30:35.433Z

And two from Dr. Cobb, relaxing in Lyme Regis. Look at this lovely siphonophore (a cnidarian):

whoa. stunning siphonophore by @schmidtocean.bsky.social ! youtube.com/shorts/G218j…

— Chris Mah (@echinoblog.bsky.social) 2026-03-26T18:47:13.329Z

I remember this rescue, and now there’s a statue!

A viral dog rescue from 2016 is now immortalized with a statue in Kazakhstan. When a dog fell into the Sayran reservoir, bystanders formed a human chain to pull him to safety. The statue is a reminder of the value of unity, solidarity and collective action. 14/10 for all

— WeRateDogs (@weratedogs.com) 2026-03-25T20:29:25.732Z