Welcome to Monday, April 21, 2025:  the beginning of the “work” week, when many people are “working at home” but really playing with their cat and eating snacks. Pope Francis died this morning; see below. Both Easter and Passover ended yesterday, but today is National Big Word Day, and I will proffer one that I learned from Hitchens: “RATIOCINATION”.  Here are the meanings from the Oxford English Dictionary:

It’s also National Chocolate-Covered Cashews Day (they’re better sans chocolate), National Egg Salad Sandwich Day (I have about two a week), Tuna Rights Day, National Tea Day (in the UK) and National Chickpea Day.  Here’s a nice video about how they grow chickpeas commercially, with a nice, easy recipe shown at the end:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 21 Wikipedia page.

Because I have some BIG WRITING to do today, and I prepare most of the morning posts the evening before, Hili will be VERY short tomorrow morning. Bear with me; I do my best.

Da Nooz:

*Obituaries first, and today we have a big one: Pope Francis has died (aka “returned to his Father’s house”). From the NYT (click to read):

An excerpt:

Pope Francis has died, the Vatican announced on Monday, ending a groundbreaking pontificate that sought, however haltingly, to reshape the Roman Catholic Church into a more inclusive institution.

Standing somberly behind a microphone at the Vatican, Cardinal Kevin Farrell announced the pope’s death. “At 7:35 this morning, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the house of the Father,” he said. An American of Irish origin, Cardinal Farrell becomes the Vatican’s de facto administrator after the death of a pope.

*About a month ago I wrote about an incident in which IDF soldiers appeared to have fired on Gazan ambulances and killed Red Crescent medics. And I believe I said that the IDF would surely investigate the incident and punish soldiers if they had screwed up and shot civilians. That in fact, appears to be what happened.

The IDF on Sunday announced that it is firing a deputy commander of Sayeret Golani, a major, and censuring Brigade 14 Commander Col. “T” for their conduct in a March 23 incident in which the military killed 14 International Red Crescent medics and seriously wounded another.

In addition, the IDF spokesperson acknowledged that some of the initial reports that the army put out about the incident, in terms of whether the medic vehicles had their headlights on or not and other issues, were incorrect since some of the information initially provided by the soldiers in the field had been false.

Once the IDF Fact Finding Mechanism Unit led by Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yoav Har-Even probed the issue, it found that some of the initial information provided had been erroneous. Har-Even strove to correct it in an April 5 interim report.

The final operational probe by Har-Even separated the episode involving Division 143, led by controversial commander Brig.-Gen. Barak Hiram, into four incidents: 1) an incident where one ambulance was wrongly identified as a threat and fired upon; 2) a second incident in which multiple ambulances were wrongly identified as a threat and fired upon; 3) an incident in which the IDF forces knew that a vehicle was a United Nations vehicle and knowingly fired upon it anyway – allegedly to try to encourage it to leave a dangerous area, which was against the rules of engagement; and 4) errors made in the handling of the bodies and the ambulances.

Globally, the incident has been viewed as one of the worst of the war because of the number of Red Crescent medics killed, the apparent inconsistencies in the IDF’s initial narrative, and the mishandling of the bodies after the killing.

The third incident, involving the UN vehicle, was viewed by Har-Even and his probe as the most serious since the IDF troops blatantly violated the rules of engagement, even if their intent had been to cause the UN car to flee the area and not to strike and harm those inside the vehicle.

. . . . The brigade commander is being censured for overall collective responsibility for not properly installing within forces under his command the proper values and skills to handle the situation – even though he was not in the field during the incident. He is also being censured for incorrect handling of the bodies and ambulances after the incident.

ADDITIONALLY, ACCORDING to the IDF, criminal charges could still be levied against some of those involved, an issue to be decided by IDF Military Advocate General Yifat Tomer Yerushalmi, but Har-Even was opposed to criminal charges in light of the broader context.

Moreover, the probe noted that in the broader context, Hamas frequently uses ambulances and hospitals to shield its forces, such that the IDF cannot entirely refrain from firing on such vehicles if it suspects that there are terrorists involved.

The probe did not suggest that the soldiers had a reasonable answer for firing on the UN vehicle, even if their intent was not to kill, as the rules of

So yes, the IDF screwed up and killed civilians. A commander was fired and there may be criminal charges to come.  The death of civilians is always reprehensible, and all I can say is that at least the IDF investigates and punishes its soldiers who screwed up.  And yes, this is war, and remember that IDF killed three hostages by mistake. I won’t excuse this, though, by saying that Hamas behaves worse and does not discipline its militants for killing Jewish civilians. The civilians had families, and a mistake means tragedy and tears.  War is messy and there will be mistakes, but if soldiers make mistakes that are egregious and result in the death of civilians, the IDF at least will discipline and even try its soldiers. There’s a shorter article in the NYT here.

*From the news section of the WSJ: “Border crossings grind to a halt as Trump’s policies take hold.”

. . . . During the presidential campaign, Trump promised to shut the U.S. border to illegal immigration after surreptitious crossings reached record levels under the Biden administration.

As the issue featured prominently in the campaign, migrant encounters tallied by U.S. authorities fell precipitously in the months leading to the election. Since taking office, Trump has delivered on his pledge as encounters have since fallen further to their lowest levels since the 1960s.

. . .For the moment, tighter controls by the U.S. and Mexico, along with Trump’s moves to shut down legal immigration pathways has brought migrant crossings to all but a standstill. The administration’s targeted and dramatic expulsion of migrants to the prison in El Salvador has also created a powerful deterrent.

Though Trump is struggling to deliver on another campaign promise—mass deportations—the border is an early political victory. According to a Wall Street Journal poll in March, 53% of voters approve of Trump’s handling of border security, while 43% disapprove.

. . .Illegal border crossings declined significantly in the final year of the Biden administration, from a period of record highs that at one point saw 250,000 Border Patrol arrests in a single month. That number dropped to around 48,000 in December, the last full month of former President Joe Biden’s term, and to just over 7,000 in March.

Border-security experts say that crossings often fall with changes of policy or administration, but also frequently rise as migrants and human smugglers adjust. Still, experts say the current reversal at the border is startling.

The administration has credited the drop in crossings to its decision to send thousands of active duty troops to the border as a deterrent and its move to shut down a program known as CBP One, which migrants used to make appointments to ask for asylum. As a result, tens of thousands of migrants who were awaiting a turn are now stranded in Mexico. Many are now heading back to their communities.

Here’s a graph from the WSJ of border crossing encounters; I have no idea how many of these were legal entries, but probably few of them given the precipitous drop.

U.S. immigration officials and analysts now expect illegal migration dynamics to be similar to those seen in the 1980s and 1990s, when most Mexican and Guatemalan job seekers would sneak into the U.S. and try to evade detection, instead of surrendering to U.S. authorities and requesting asylum as Venezuelans and migrants from other countries have done in recent years.

Mass arrivals of asylum seekers required a heavy logistical effort of U.S. authorities because of shelter and legal-processing standards, while undocumented job seekers caught crossing the border are usually subject to immediate deportation.

But we all know about the dubious things the Trump administration is doing to remove immigrants, something that even the Supreme Court has (temporarily) opposed. At any rate, anybody who is apprehended as an undocumented immigrant should have a rigorous legal hearing to decide on deportation.

*The Free Press, besides moving rightward and replacing Nellie Bowles (at least last week) is getting increasingly religious, pushing articles that emphasize the revival of religion.  They even, as Bari Weiss notes below, float the “Little People’s Argument”: religion is a form of social glue, and who cares whether its claims are true. I’m getting very close to canceling my subscription. Here are two articles just from today:

Founder Bari Weiss introduces a Ross Douthat interview, “Why it’s logical to believe in God” with her claim that she emphasizes religion partly because “I am of the view that something profound has gotten lost in our society as we have lost traditional religion. Remember that Douthat thinks that Christianity is the “right” religion, something he doesn’t argue out with Weiss, but he also believes in souls, miracles, and Satan. I can’t imagine an atheist being given the chance to have such a discussion at the FP.  Why won’t Bari invite on, say, Richard Dawkins? A bit of the interview (there’s really nothing new here that I haven’t discussed vis-à-vis Douthat before. He may be, as Weiss says, “brilliant”, but he’s also prey to the delusions of Christianity.

BW: You’ve published a book; you’ve made an argument on every podcast saying, “We need to believe.” What’s at stake if we don’t believe in a higher power? If we don’t follow the advice of the wise Ross Douthat, what happens?

RD: I’ll just go big on that one. One answer is, there are stakes for every human soul. Whether you believe in an eternal hell or not, the collective religious wisdom of mankind is that souls can get lost. And they’re more likely to get lost if they aren’t in some relationship with God. The more I lose the argument, the more souls potentially get lost—that’s step one.

Step two is civilizational. The book of Genesis begins with an admonition: Fill the Earth, and subdue it. We’ve done that. We have reached an interesting point in history from a religious point of view. And there’s a really open question—where do we go next? Do we collapse? Do we go to the stars? Do we become transhuman? Do we merge with the machines and so on? So, it’s a high-stakes moment. And if God exists and he has intentions for us, it’s really important at a high-stakes moment to take those intentions into account.

I think of people like Musk and Altman. The contest for their literal souls is really important to the whole future of the human race. If God exists, it’s a big moment. You want belief to win out over the alternatives.

*Faith is elsewhere at the Free Press, too, with Rod Dreher banging on about God in the “Things Worth Remembering” piece called “One Easter Night in Europe“, which tells us that “God is everywhere, no farther from us in a Walmart than He is in Vienna’s Stephansdom.”  All I know is that I occasionally go to Walmart and I haven’t yet seen God there. Dreher wandered into the cathedral at Chartres when young, a fantastic place, which gets him going about a description of the same place by the great travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor

Leigh Fermor didn’t have a pious bone in his body. But he followed the assembly into the cathedral—and there, on that night of nights, glimpsed an enchanted cosmos. Recalling the scene, he writes with such precision and intensity that you feel immersed in a waking dream. You don’t have to be a believer to be enchanted by the spell he casts.

“Light filled the great building, new constellations of wicks floated in all the chapels, the Paschal Candle was alight in the choir and unwinking stars tipped the candles that stood as tall as lances along the high altar,” he goes on, like an incantation, building an entire world of splendor and transcendence through the accumulation of details. “The Archbishop, white and gold now, and utterly transformed from his scarlet manifestation as Cardinal, was enthroned under an emblazoned canopy.”

You might be thinking: What does this rococo elegance have to do with a poor Nazarene prophet who lived simply, exalted the poor, and died a criminal’s death on a cross? The answer can be found in the words Jesus spoke to Judas after the treasonous disciple chastised Mary for using precious oil to anoint the Lord’s feet. Why not sell that oil and give the money to the poor? Judas asked. Jesus replied: “Leave her alone. She has kept this perfume in preparation for the day of my burial. The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.”

The point is not that one should neglect the poor. It is sacred ceremony that gives suffering people hope. For the late medieval peasants of Chartres, their cathedral was perhaps the only place they could experience the delights of color and spiritual grandeur, and be reminded that no matter how poor, the Kingdom of God was theirs too.

Note that he goes from a description of an enchanting religious ceremony directly to the truth of Jesus’s divinity and of the Bible, and glosses over Jesus’s self-aggrandizing use of ointment. It was the stained-glass windows of Chartres that turned Dreher into a believer. Is that rational? (My bolding in second paragraph below.)

Yet even here in unbelieving Europe, whose great cathedrals are more like museums and tourist attractions, green shoots arise. All of Catholic France buzzed this past Ash Wednesday with news that for the first time in decades, churches all over the country were full. This week, organizers of the traditionalist Catholic three-day walking pilgrimage from Paris to Chartres had to temporarily suspend registrations, because the online system was overwhelmed. And the sanctifying beauty of old churches and old liturgies endures into the present, despite the best efforts of modern churchmen to bin them.

I know: I saw it myself, and am a Christian today because of what I experienced as a teenager in France. Yes, the Christian faith entails both virtue and rational thinking, but back then, you could not have converted me by appealing to either. My cynical young soul sought wonder, and found it first at Chartres—a place that calls to all wanderers who know in their bones that true religion is not prose, but poetry.

And there’s a touting of religion (in the Free Press’s bold) at the bottom of the article:

Here at The Free Press, we’re fascinated by America’s religious revival. If you are too, don’t miss Peter Savodnik’s essay on how intellectuals are finding God, and Madeleine Kearns’ report on Hallow, the Silicon Valley–born app that’s bringing lapsed Catholics back to the faith. You also might like to catch up with our live debate on whether the West needs religion.

And if you enjoyed this essay, read Rod’s last piece for The Free Press, “On Mary and the Mob,” and check out his most recent book, Living in Wonder.

*Andrew Doyle, of all people (the alter ego of Titania McGrath) has a piece in the Washington Post called, “Criticize your children’s school? IOn Britain, that could land you in jail.” (Subtitle: “Britain’s clampdown on free speech is astonishing. And disturbing.”). The archived link is here.

. . . . consider the following. A recent report by the Times newspaper in Britain found that police are making at least 12,000 arrests per year — more than 30 every day — under “hate speech” laws that are codified in Section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act of 1988 and Section 127 of the Communications Act of 2003. The latter specifically relates to online speech, and it prohibits not only messages of “an indecent, obscene or menacing character” but also words intended to cause “annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety.”

Depending on one’s sensibilities, the description could apply to virtually any post on social media. In January, six police officers were dispatched to arrest two parents in Hertfordshire, north of London, for criticizing, in emails and a WhatsApp group, the administration of their daughter’s school.

At the moment, there is no data available specifying how many of these arrests are due specifically to offensive social media posts, but examples are plentiful and profoundly troubling. The problem seems to lie in the wording of the legislation. In both acts, the threshold is set at language that is deemed to be “grossly offensive,” a hopelessly subjective term.

No evidence of hate is required for noncrime hate incidents to be recorded against a person’s name; the offense is determined solely by the perception of the “victim” (a term used as standard police parlance in place of the more accurate word “complainant,” and one that implies the bypassing of due process). As one Home Office report makes clear: “The victim does not have to justify or provide evidence of their belief, and police officers or staff should not directly challenge this perception.” In short, this means that anyone with a grudge can contact the police and allege that a noncrime involving hatred of a protected characteristic has been committed, and involvement in a noncrime hate incident will be automatically logged against the name of the accused.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Malgorzata adds, “If you wonder, Hili just re-read Demons by Dostoyevsky.”

Hili: Dostoyevsky was right.

A: About what?

Hili: Progressives are suspicious characters.

Hili: Dostojewski miał rację.

Ja: W jakiej sprawie?

Hili: Postępowcy to podejrzane towarzystwo.

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

An optical illusion from Jesus of the Day.  Try it!

From Things with Faces, a happy patio:

From Wholesome Memes:

Masih is still quiet, so here’s a funny tweet by J. K. Rowling:

So vulnerable. So oppressed. So determined to break the law by continuing to invade women’s spaces. And being cheered on by Maggie Chapman MSP of the Scottish Greens, who is one of our most enthusiastic anti-women legislators.

Mind you, the worst crime here is that skirt. https://t.co/5uVjZvyBhf

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 20, 2025

From Malcolm; is it kosher for cats to help d*gs?

Cat retrieves a stuck frisbee for dog friends..🐈🐾🐶🥏💪😍 pic.twitter.com/OWpX4CgG6X

— 𝕐o̴g̴ (@Yoda4ever) April 13, 2025

Three from my feed. Look at that dexterity!

Cat retrieves a stuck frisbee for dog friends..🐈🐾🐶🥏💪😍 pic.twitter.com/OWpX4CgG6X

— 𝕐o̴g̴ (@Yoda4ever) April 13, 2025

I want this job!

Who wants this job? pic.twitter.com/mNn7FgjhL8

— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) April 19, 2025

I knew who was gonna win this one!

Everyone recognizes a psycho when they see one pic.twitter.com/DpkR9zBCMr

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) April 20, 2025

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

A French Jewish boy, age eight, was likely gassed to death with his parents (separated, of course) upon arriving at Auschwitz.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-04-21T10:15:19.167Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, his own post with DUCKLINGS!

First swallow of the year (unpictured) and first ducklings of the year, at RHS Bridgewater.

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-04-20T12:51:58.045Z

Train cats! This is what the Internet is for:

My name is Angus and I photoshop my cat in to photos of trains.

— Angus Duncan (@angusduncan.me) 2025-04-19T18:21:36.885Z

Welcome to CaturSaturday, April 19, 2025 and National Garlic Day. What would we do without that particular bulb?  There’s a yearly festival in Gilroy, California (in a big garlic-growing area), though the festival has been on hold since 2019 because of covid. It’s resuming this year. Here are scenes from the festival of a previous year. They even sell garlic ice cream!

It’s also Bicycle Day, Holy Saturday (tomorrow’s Easter), National Chicken Parmesan Day, and Rice Ball Day. Since it’s Caturday, you can make rice balls that are cat-shaped, like these from Grape Japan:

Da Nooz:

*Everybody’s excited about scientists finding “signs of life” on a planet 120 light-years away from Earth. Carl Zimmer writes about it in the NYT:

Now a team of researchers is offering what it contends is the strongest indication yet of extraterrestrial life, not in our solar system but on a massive planet, known as K2-18b, that orbits a star 120 light-years from Earth. A repeated analysis of the exoplanet’s atmosphere suggests an abundance of a molecule that on Earth has only one known source: living organisms such as marine algae.

“It is in no one’s interest to claim prematurely that we have detected life,” said Nikku Madhusudhan, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge and an author of the new study, at a news conference on Tuesday. Still, he said, the best explanation for his group’s observations is that K2-18b is covered with a warm ocean, brimming with life.

“This is a revolutionary moment,” Dr. Madhusudhan said. “It’s the first time humanity has seen potential biosignatures on a habitable planet.”

The study was published Wednesday in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. Other researchers called it an exciting, thought-provoking first step to making sense of what’s on K2-18b. But they were reluctant to draw grand conclusions.

“It’s not nothing,” said Stephen Schmidt, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University. “It’s a hint. But we cannot conclude it’s habitable yet.”

I find it amazing how scientists can detect what’s in the atmosphere of a planet so far away. But they can!

This is a very good article, with all the proper caveats and interviews with critics. Zimmer remains one of our very best science journalists.

*Bigwigs in Hezbollah terrorists are fleeing Lebanon and heading to South America like rats on a sinking ship.

The Saudi Al-Hadath channel reports that 400 field commanders from Hezbollah recently left Lebanon along with their families and relocated to South American countries such as Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, and Brazil, citing a source at the Argentine embassy in Lebanon.

This move is due to concerns about being monitored as part of the dismantling of Hezbollah’s military infrastructure following the ceasefire agreement with Israel in November.

There is no official confirmation of the report from any official Lebanese source or Hezbollah.

Hezbollah has ties in South America with criminal organizations, particularly around drug trafficking, which constitutes part of the organization’s income.

This may well be end for Hezbollah. First of all, somebody had to order these commanders out of Lebanon. Second, although there are many more foot soldiers in Hezbollah than 400, these are commanders. Third, they could be scared, as every day Israel takes out one or a few Hezbollah commanders, so they may have fled seeing that the end was coming. Finally, the other day the Lebanese government took down every sign or flag of Hezbollah in Beirut.  This is all unprecedented, and very good news. Perhaps Lebanon can return to the lovely country it once was.

*The U.S. has (sort of) been trying to broken a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia, but those efforts may well stop very soon. Remember that Trump said he’d end that war on DAY ONE of his new administration. Well, it’s DAY 89 and we have bupkes. If the war goes on, I fear Ukraine will be swallowed by Putin:

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. would pause its efforts to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine if progress isn’t made in the coming days, in an attempt to put pressure on Kyiv and Moscow to compromise.

“So we need to determine very quickly now, and I’m talking about a matter of days, whether or not this is doable in the next few weeks,” Rubio said after talks Thursday with European and Ukrainian officials. “If it is, we’re in. If it’s not, then we have other priorities to focus on.”

Rubio said the U.S. has presented a framework for a deal to the two sides and to Europeans on how the war might be ended, including a cease-fire, but hasn’t said publicly what it entails. Separately late Thursday, Ukraine and the U.S. took a step toward a broader economic agreement that has proved a major source of contention in relations by signing a memorandum.

Rubio’s warning comes as France has announced a meeting to be held in London next week with U.S., Ukrainian and European officials to try to advance the talks. Rubio said he was open to attending that session if it was clear that headway could be made.

Asked about Rubio’s comments, President Trump said Friday that his patience with the stalled diplomatic process could end “very shortly.”

“If for some reason, one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we’re just going to say ‘You’re foolish, you’re fools, you’re horrible people,’ and we’re going to just take a pass, but hopefully we won’t have to do that,” he said in the Oval Office.

. . . . Ukraine said that it is prepared to impose a comprehensive cease-fire if Russia also agrees. The Kremlin has balked at accepting a cease-fire and has insisted that the “root causes” of the conflict be addressed.

The “root causes” of the conflict are that Russia wants Lebensraum.  And Trump’s claim that Ukraine started the war is one of the stupidest things he’s ever said (and that’s among a whole lot of stupid things). I feel sorry for Ukraine, its inhabitats, and Zelensky, who don’t want no stinking Russian takeover.

*As always, I’ll steal three items from the Free Press’s weekly news summar. The bad news is that it’s coauthored today by Sean Fischer AND Nellie Bowles, and isn’t nearly as good as if Nellie did it herself. Go read “TGIF: Homegrown Criminals” and see for yourself. “TGIF” has become the main reason I subscribe to the Free Press, and if Nellie starts coauthoring the column with others, or even leaving it, I’ll unsubscribe. Here are three, and these are among the best ones I found. They pretty much suck.

→ A nonviolent child sacrifice altar: Archeologists found an alarming new child sacrifice altar in Guatemala—and the remains of young children from at least 1,500 years ago were ceremonially placed around it. Many cultures practiced child sacrifice, so I’m certainly not going to single out Guatemala here, but people cannot grok that non-white cultures might be legitimately violent. Like, of course Vikings did bad things, but we’re supposed to accept that ancient Guatemalans all lived in peace, in a gentle land of songs and tradition. It is so important for the narrative that all violence in the Americas came from Christopher Columbus. And so we must explain away the baby killing. Here is the expert CBS News called last week to explain this gnarly discovery: “It was a practice; it’s not that they were violent, it was their way of connecting with the celestial bodies.”

Not violent. Just their way of connecting with the celestial bodies.

→ Trump’s not-at-all-strange annual physical: Trump’s physician declared the president is “fully fit” for office, citing his “frequent victories” on the golf course as evidence of his vitality. The doctor’s memorandum, however, misspelled a conspicuous word: scarring. Trump’s doctor made sure to note the bullet wound and scarring around Trump’s ear: “Examination of the head, ears, nose, and throat revealed no significant abnormalities with the exception of scaring [sic] on the right ear from a gunshot wound.”

After the physical, Trump told reporters on Air Force One how well it went. “I felt I was in very good health, I was in very good shape. Good heart, a good soul,” he said. I assume he misheard “scoliosis?”

→ We are all Elon’s children: The Wall Street Journal ran a piece this week detailing Musk’s paternity strategy and, well, it’s as creepy as you probably imagined. Tactics reportedly involve recruiting potential mothers on social media and offering millions in exchange for silence, with Musk saying the quiet part out loud: He wants to build a “legion” of offspring. WSJ reported texts Musk sent to conservative influencer and baby mama Ashley St. Clair, in which he wrote: “To reach legion-level before the apocalypse, we will need to use surrogates.” One day in the future, some centuries from now, we’ll find out that 1 in 10 adults are descended from Elon Musk. He’s our modern-day Genghis Khan, generously spilling his seed all across the West. Part of me is sad that our descendants will have his original hairline. But these are the sacrifices we must make for civilization.

Well, yes, there’s news there, but the treatment is not funny–not Nellie-like at all. If she’s not back soon, I’m canceling my subscription (seriously).

And are lots of critical comments demanding that Nellie return to the whole thing (I even left a comment). Here are three:

*The American interloper who visited a remote but inhabited Indian island, trying to make contact with its reclusive and hostile inhabitants, remains in custody after he was arrested more than two weeks ago:

A 24-year-old American YouTuber who was arrested after visiting an off-limits island in the Indian Ocean with hopes of establishing contact with a reclusive tribe was further detained in custody on Thursday.

Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov will next appear before a local court in Port Blair — the capital of India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands — on April 29, police said.

Polyakov, from Scottsdale, Arizona, was arrested on March 31, two days after he set foot on the restricted territory of North Sentinel Island in a bid to meet people from the reclusive Sentinelese tribe.

He left a can of Diet Coke and a coconut as offering for the tribe this time after he failed to contact the Sentinelese. He shot a video of the island on his camera and collected some sand samples before returning to his boat.

“It may be claimed to be an adventure trip, but the fact is that there has been a violation of Indian laws. Outsiders meeting Sentinelese could endanger the tribe’s survival,” said a senior police officer, requesting anonymity as he isn’t authorized to speak about the case under investigation.

Polyakov is suspected of violating Indian laws that carry a possible sentence of up to five years in prison and a fine.

The Island is North Sentinel Island, and is quite dangerous to visit. This is from 2018:

For thousands of years, the people of North Sentinel Island have been isolated from the rest of the world.

They use spears and bows and arrows to hunt the animals that roam the small, heavily forested island, and gather plants to eat and to fashion into homes. Their closest neighbors live more than 50 kilometers (30 miles) away. Deeply suspicious of outsiders, they attack anyone who comes through the surf and onto their beaches.

Police say that is what happened last week when a young American, John Allen Chau, was killed by islanders after paying fishermen to take him to the island.

“The Sentinelese want to be left alone,” said the anthropologist Anup Kapur.

Here’s North Sentinel Island below a Wikipedia description of it:

North Sentinel Island is one of the Andaman Islands, an Indian archipelago in the Bay of Bengal which also includes South Sentinel Island.^[8] The island is a protected area of India. It is home to the Sentinelese, an indigenous tribe in voluntary isolation who have defended, often by force, their protected isolation from the outside world. The island is about eight kilometres (five miles) long and seven kilometres (4+1⁄2 miles) wide, and its area is approximately 60 square kilometres (23 sq mi).

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands Protection of Aboriginal Tribes Regulation 1956  prohibits travel to the island and any approach closer than five nautical miles (nine kilometres), in order to protect the remaining tribal community from “mainland” infectious diseases against which they likely have no acquired immunity. The area is patrolled by the Indian Navy.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is becoming a feline Proust. Look how pensive she is!

Hili: Where does past time disappear?

A: In the abyss of ephemeral memory.

Hili: Gdzie znika czas przeszły?

Ja: W otchłani ulotnej pamięci.

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

From Now That’s Wild:

From America’s Cultural Decline Into Idiocy:

From Animal Antics: another painter who can’t do cats:

Masih has gone quiet, but here’s a tweet posted by J. K. Rowling:

“Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual is not hate speech.”

“Yes, it is.”

And there you have it. Just park your car with a rainbow LGB sticker in Bernal Heights, a San Francisco neighborhood of “Be Kind,” and watch the homophobia come roaring out.

🧵 The Sticker Wars of Bernal Heights pic.twitter.com/nULdVByG9W

— WomenAreReal (@WomenAreReals) April 18, 2025

From Malcolm: a cat doing a graceful back flip while trying to catch a toy (there’s music):

Cat doing backflip 😱 pic.twitter.com/LqmeZoLG1Q

— No Context Cats (@nocontextscats) April 8, 2025

From Luana: a policy change after the recent UK Supreme Court ruling on sex:

🚨BREAKING: British Transport Police announce that trans officers will no longer be allowed to strip search members of the opposite sex following Supreme Court ruling.

THE WORLD IS HEALING.

THIS SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN ALLOWED. pic.twitter.com/r3ozyvEycU

— Hazel Appleyard (@HazelAppleyard_) April 17, 2025

Two from my feed, First, LOOK AT THESE BABY CHEETAHS! And turn the sound on to hear their noises (and Mom’s):

Cheetah introduces a photographer to her little Cheetos pic.twitter.com/q5R7ok6hUH

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) April 17, 2025

This makes me tear up. I hope that that lion is able to run free somewhere. Sound up:

Rescued Lioness steps on grass for the first time. pic.twitter.com/mJzLb6zgwd

— The Figen (@TheFigen_) April 17, 2025

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted.

A 27-year-old Czech Jew. He probably died on an evacuation "death march" not long before liberation.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-04-19T09:50:31.885Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. Yesterday was the 250th anniversary of Paul Revere’s Ride, and they’ve projected slogans on the Old North Church, where, in 1775, lanterns were used to warn of the approach of British troops.

— NorthEnd.page (@northendpage.bsky.social) 2025-04-18T02:16:43.794Z

Amazing bionic hands! Watch the ten-minute video below to see how the movements of her prosthetic hands are controlled by her woman’s brain—by thinking—which send signals to some of the muscles in her arms.

HOLY SHIT! This might be the coolest thing ever.

— Alex Kanaris-Sotiriou (@kanaratron.bsky.social) 2025-04-17T08:10:39.510Z

Here’s the full video:

Welcome to the end o’ the work week: Friday, April 18, 2025 and National Animal Crackers Day, a childhood favorite. Below: the shapes of “Barnum’s Animals” (the best) and a factory in Pennsylvania that makes 15 million crackers per day:

It’s also Good Friday, Piñata Day, and National Velociraptor Awareness Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 18 Wikipedia page.

Posting will be light until Monday as I have a writing assignment, and my insomnia has returned big time. I’m considering someone hitting me over the head with a rubber mallet at bedtime.

Da Nooz:

*The NYT reports that the U.S. has turned down a request to join Israel in an attack on Iran (article archived here). The Times of Israel gives a similar report:

Israel had planned to strike Iranian nuclear sites as soon as next month but was waved off by President Trump in recent weeks in favor of negotiating a deal with Tehran to limit its nuclear program, according to administration officials and others briefed on the discussions.

Mr. Trump made his decision after months of internal debate over whether to pursue diplomacy or support Israel in seeking to set back Iran’s ability to build a bomb, at a time when Iran has been weakened militarily and economically.

The debate highlighted fault lines between historically hawkish American cabinet officials and other aides more skeptical that a military assault on Iran could destroy the country’s nuclear ambitions and avoid a larger war. It resulted in a rough consensus, for now, against military action, with Iran signaling a willingness to negotiate.

Israeli officials had recently developed plans to attack Iranian nuclear sites in May. They were prepared to carry them out, and at times were optimistic that the United States would sign off. The goal of the proposals, according to officials briefed on them, was to set back Tehran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon by a year or more.

Almost all of the plans would have required U.S. help not just to defend Israel from Iranian retaliation, but also to ensure that an Israeli attack was successful, making the United States a central part of the attack itself.

For now, Mr. Trump has chosen diplomacy over military action. In his first term, he tore up the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration. But in his second term, eager to avoid being sucked into another war in the Middle East, he has opened negotiations with Tehran, giving it a deadline of just a few months to negotiate a deal over its nuclear program.

And the JP adds how the plans were made, which can only be helpful to Iran:

Initial plans for the strike would have combined a joint Israeli-American bombing campaign with Israeli commando raids on underground nuclear sites, and included US airstrikes to protect the teams on the ground.

But such an operation would have required months of planning. Israeli and American officials, particularly Netanyahu, wanted to expedite the process. So the commando idea was shelved, and “Israeli and American officials began discussing a plan for an extensive bombing campaign.”

I’m not a fan of Trump, but he’s being extraordinarily obtuse here. The man who wrote The Art of the Deal doesn’t seem to realize that Iran won’t stop forging ahead with its weapons program, no matter what kind of deal Trump helps make. Let’s hope that if there is one, there would be strict and unannounced inspections.

*The Harvard v. Trump saga continues after Harvard refused to accede to the Administration’s demands. Now, according to the BBC, Trump & Co. is threatening to prevent foreign students from enrolling at Harvard.

The US government has threatened to ban Harvard University from enrolling foreign students – after the institution said it would not bow to demands from President Donald Trump’s administration and was hit with a funding freeze.

The White House has demanded the oldest university in the US make changes to hiring, admissions and teaching practices – to help fight antisemitism on campus.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has asked for records on what she called the “illegal and violent” activities of its foreign student visa-holders.

Harvard earlier said it had taken many steps to address antisemitism, and that demands were an effort to regulate the university’s “intellectual conditions”.

“The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” Harvard President Alan Garber wrote in a message on Monday to the Harvard community.

The new request from Noem said the institution would lose the “privilege of enrolling foreign students” if it did not comply with the demand for records.

Harvard said it was aware of the new request from Noem, which was made in a letter, the Reuters news agency reported.

International students make up more than 27% of Harvard’s enrolment this year. Even before Noem’s statement, billions of dollars hung in the balance for the university, after the freeze of some $2.2 bn (£1.7bn) in federal funding.

Trump has also threatened to also remove Harvard’s valuable tax exemption, the loss of which could cost Harvard millions of dollars each year. US media reports suggest the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has started drawing up plans to enact this.

Harvard has said there is “no legal basis” to remove its tax exemption, and that “such an unprecedented action would endanger our ability to carry out our educational mission”.

Man, Trump really wants to go after Harvard hard. And though I know some readers thinks the school deserves it, I’m not sure that, for example, the University of Chicago hasn’t behaved even worse, at least with respect to the climate of anti-Semitism. Perhaps this is some kind of Trumpian crusade against elitism.

*Re the Supreme Court victory for the biological sex people: an op-ed by Alex Massie in the Times of London, “The hateful and bigoted bag ladies have been proved right on sex.”

Single-sex spaces, many of which exist for very good and very obvious reasons, were threatened by this gender woo-woo and public bodies, such as the NHS and the prison service, were captured by magical thinking of the most absurd kind. Far from “being kind” this was simply “being stupid”.

Now the women — for it was almost always women — who insisted that facts are indeed stubborn chiels that winna ding have prevailed. There are plenty of politicians at Holyrood, and Westminster, who owe them an apology. Of course I don’t actually expect Nicola Sturgeon or Humza Yousaf or John Swinney or Patrick Harvie or Alex Cole-Hamilton or Anas Sarwar to apologise for their part in this ludicrous saga but if they were bigger people they actually might.

All of these politicians insisted that words should be stripped of their customary meaning. All of them lied to the public when asserting that the Scottish government’s gender recognition reform bill was a merely administrative matter. All of them were mistaken when they argued that people can literally change sex. All of them are guilty.

Still, we should also acknowledge that the list of the culpable is by no means confined to Scotland. Ostensibly sensible and serious people all across the realm made fools of themselves on this issue. Figures such as Sir Keir Starmer and Harriet Harman and Penny Mordaunt and Maria Miller might now do well to spend some time with their consciences, examining their own past statements and their previous adherence to the metaphysical notion of “gender identity”.

Although a number of parliamentarians, most of them women of course, can look back on this episode and claim vindication, the chief mobilisation of opposition came from outside parliament. So a word, too, for the women of For Women Scotland, Sex Matters, Scottish Lesbians, the LGB Alliance and the policy collective Murray Blackburn Mackenzie, who have done the vast majority of the heavy lifting on this matter.

And a related piece by Richard Dawkins in The Spectator, “Will the Supreme Court gender case victors get the apologies they deserve?” (archived here)

So let us not name and shame. I shall call out no specific names in accusation. But I think apologies are called for, and there may be some out there who are big enough, gracious enough, to come forward.

Were you one of those students who mercilessly hounded Kathleen Stock out of the University of Sussex? Now would be a good time to say sorry. Were you one of those who threatened the life of JK Rowling? Or who threatened someone less able to look after herself than that redoubtable hero of our times? Were you one of those actors who owe your moment of fame entirely to her writing, who turned on her in your sheep-like devotion to a passing fad? Or were you one of those Hollywood airheads who bent to the prevailing political wind? Well, it isn’t prevailing any more, but mightn’t it have been a good idea to think the matter through in the first place, before joining the Gadarene stampede? In any case, a gracious apology wouldn’t come amiss.

Newspaper editors who printed reports of a “woman” committing rape “with her penis” should now apologise for their cowardly debauching of language. So should senior publishers who bowed to pressure to suppress books deemed “transphobic” by callow junior colleagues. By the way, if ever you are puzzled when an otherwise sensible friend starts spouting uncharacteristic nonsense on the subject of “gender”, your first recourse should be, “Cherchez les enfants”.

Those men of mediocre athletic ability who have waltzed into women’s events and effortlessly carried off their medals and plaudits, can be absolved of cheating only if they plead inability to understand the unfairness of their advantage. Those sports-body officials who enabled them should apologise to the women deprived of rightful medals, medals which should now be stripped from the men who unfairly gained them. Rather than respecting the subjective “gender” of the usurper, we should instead sympathise with the women overpowered by “her” objective sex, “her” upper body strength, long boxing reach, or sheer domineering height.

Are you one of those doctors who abetted angst-beset children, prescribing hormones whose unnatural and irreversible effects warrant the label “poison”? Or worse, are you a surgeon who violated the first Hippocratic principle by cutting off the breasts of a girl (or the testes of a boy) too young to be entrusted with drastic, irrevocably life-changing decisions? Admittedly, a public apology from you could lay you open to a well-deserved malpractice suit, but may you in any case be long pursued by remorse.

An especially magnanimous feat of forgiveness is required for those on the political left who betrayed their enlightenment heritage. . . .

Well, I expect no apologies. The gender ideologues (now including the Freedom from Religion Foundation) will never apologize for saying things like “a transwoman is a woman”, for they will not surrender their faux-biological views simply because a court opposed them.  Richard and Alex Massie have their sympathies in the right place, but they are calling for something that will simply never happen.

*Yet another pro-Palestinian college student at Columbia has been snatched up by the administration, but a judge intervened to block the student from being transferred to Louisiana.

Mohsen Mahdawi, an organizer of pro-Palestinian demonstrations last year at Columbia University, was detained by immigration officials on Monday after arriving for an appointment in Vermont that he thought was a step toward becoming a U.S. citizen, his lawyers said.

Hours later, Mr. Mahdawi’s mother, older sister and lawyers were scrambling to find him after his abrupt detention at an immigration center in Colchester, Vt. His lawyers requested a temporary restraining order to prevent federal officials from transferring him to a more conservative jurisdiction — a tactic used in the detention and attempted deportation of at least four other college demonstrators.

A Vermont federal judge, William K. Sessions III, swiftly granted that request, ordering that Mr. Mahdawi, an outspoken critic of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, not be removed from the United States or transferred out of Vermont until he orders otherwise. His lawyers said that as of Monday afternoon, they had confirmed that he was still in Vermont.

“This is their M.O.,” Mr. Mahdawi’s lawyer, Luna Droubi, said. “They just continue to hide the individual to the point where their attorneys can’t quite understand or identify where to file. And so, you know, we’re operating blind, and they have all the information, and yet we’re tasked with attempting to file in the right jurisdiction.”

A green card holder for the past 10 years, Mr. Mahdawi is the latest Palestinian student to be caught in the Trump administration dragnet that has been targeting foreign students involved in pro-Palestinian organizing on U.S. college campuses.

Mr. Mahdawi was born and raised in a refugee camp in the West Bank, where he lived until he moved to the United States in 2014, according to a petition filed by his lawyers on Monday demanding his immediate release. His arrest was first reported by The Intercept.

I think it’s probably too late for the government to send him south, but since when has Trump obeyed judge’s orders that he didn’t like. At some point this will reach the Supreme Court, and then we’ll see. As always, I think there has to be a judicial hearing–or a decision of the Supreme Court–before the government can do things like this. Perhaps I don’t know the law, but my feelings are based on what I see as American values as well as ethics.

*And there’s good news tonight! Hamas is running out of money to pay its terrorists.

Hamas is facing a new problem in Gaza: coming up with the cash it needs to pay its rank and file.

Israel last month cut off supplies of humanitarian goods to the enclave, some of which Hamas had been seizing and selling to raise funds, according to Arab, Israeli and Western officials. Its renewed offensive has targeted and killed Hamas officials who played important roles in distributing cash to cadres and sent others into hiding, Arab intelligence officials said.

*Oh, and Real Clear Science has featured my post on this site about three scientists who were afraid to submit a paper on evolution to a journal out of fear of deportation, and an unreasonable fear that evolution was denigrated by the present administration. So there! (CAUTION: do not say a word in denigration; I’ve heard enough about that post.)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili proclaims a self-aggrandizing law (i’ve made the photo my new Twitter/X picture):

Hili: I discovered a new law.

A: What law?

Hili: When I stare at you for a long time you start to understand that I want something from you.

Hili: Odkryłam nowe prawo.

Ja: Jakie?

Hili: Kiedy długo na ciebie patrzę zaczynasz się domyślać, że czegoś od ciebie chcę.

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

From the Grammar Police:

From Stacy:

From Jesus of the Day:

Masih is stil quiet, so here’s some celebration of yesterday’s decision in the Scottish Supreme Court:

UK Supreme Court live: Trans women not women in definition ruling- we women knew who we were all along-
Thank you to all who fought for this for years!!! https://t.co/5v2vGox0eY

— Martina Navratilova (@Martina) April 16, 2025

JKR is wickedly funny:

UK authorities warn that due to unprecedented demand, national supplies of cope are running dangerously low. pic.twitter.com/TpRfbjXGXr

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 16, 2025

From Cate; a ducks-in-the-snow video:

So smart and wonderful to watch. pic.twitter.com/1guXYYERoq

— why you should have an animal (@ShouldHaveAnima) April 17, 2025

From Luana. All it takes is some Googling:

Evidence of the existence of rape prior to European colonialism: Code of Hammurabi in Mesopotamia, the Old Testament, ancient Chinese records (e.g., Shiji by Sima Qian), ancient Egyptian texts, Assyrian records, Mesoamerican codices (e.g., Mayan), Roman law and Justinian Code,… pic.twitter.com/FPPjJuCdOZ

— i/o (@rational_wiki) April 17, 2025

From Malcolm; a “flying kitten.” Note how it twists its body around just like a big cat so it can land on its feet:

Flying kitten🪽 pic.twitter.com/xAh11WdH3U

— Posts Of Cats (@PostsOfCats) April 14, 2025

From the Auschwitz Memorial; one that I reposted:

A Romanian Jewish boy was gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz. He was five.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-04-18T10:24:28.124Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. Find the spider! I won’t give you the obvious hint, but isn’t the mimicry great? I reposted a link I got from Matthew:

Isn't this mimicry great? It's likely that the ants evolved this pattern to avoid being eaten by predators that find ants distasteful: since ants have terrible vision and do recognition based largely on "smell."

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-04-17T18:10:47.479Z

Ducklings at Cambridge University!  Matthew is sending a daughter to go see them:

Special delivery in the North Courtyard! 🦆#Cambridge #CambridgeUniversity #Ducklings #CambridgeUniversityLibrary

— Cambridge University Library (@theul.bsky.social) 2025-04-17T12:29:34.495Z

Welcome to Thursday: April 17, 2025, and National Cheeseball Day (an old appetizer from the Fifties). This strikes home because one year, in my undergraduate course reviews, I got a note like this:  “Dr. Coyne is always wearing Hawaiian shirts. What a cheeseball!”

Here’s a “Famous Midwestern Cheeseball”. Yum! (Not!)

It’s also Bat Appreciation Day, Malbec World Day, National Crawfish Day, International Ford Mustang Day, Maundy Thursday, National Ask an Atheist Day, International Pizza Day, and International Haiku Poetry Day.  Here’s a Jewish haiku:

Left the door open.
For the Prophet Elijah.
Now our cat is gone.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 17 Wikipedia page.

Posting may be very, very light–almost nonexistent–until Tuesday, for I have some heavy writing to do.

Da Nooz:

*A federal judge ordered that the Trump Administration must describe what it’s doing to return Abrego García to the US  (article archived here). Garcia was apprehended and deported illegally to that horrible prison in El Salvador.

A federal judge on Tuesday said she will require the Trump administration to produce records and sworn answers about the U.S. government’s attempts, or lack thereof, to return a Maryland resident who was apprehended by immigration authorities and illegally sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

The decision from U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, where she left open the possibility of a contempt ruling against the Trump administration, marks another escalation in the legal showdown with the White House. The case has widespread implications, with Justice Department lawyers arguing that the judge lacks the authority to force them to coordinate with the Salvadoran government to bring Kilmar Abrego García back to the United States.

“It’s going to be two weeks of intense discovery,” Xinis told Justice Department attorneys at the hearing.

The Trump administration has repeatedly bucked Xinis’s orders to provide information about what it is doing to facilitate the return of Abrego García, 29. That tone of defiance was underscored this week by President Donald Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele during his visit to the White House, where he and Trump administration officials repeated unsubstantiated claims that the sheet-metal apprentice who fled El Salvador as a teenager has ties to a transnational gang.

“There is never going to be a world in which this is an individual who’s going to live a peaceful life in Maryland, because he is a foreign terrorist and a MS-13 gang member,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday, echoing thoseclaims hours before the hearing. Abrego García’s lawyers have disputed the claims, and he appears to have no criminal record in the United States or El Salvador.

During the hearing, Xinis showed little patience for arguments from Justice Department lawyer Drew Ensign that an order from the Supreme Court last week left space for White House interpretations, such as that the order does not require the administration to attempt to bring about Abrego García’s release from custody in El Salvador.

The Trump administration, Xinis said in a written order after the hearing, is obligated “at a minimum, to take the steps available to them toward aiding, assisting, or making easier Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador.”

“But the record reflects that Defendants have done nothing at all,” she added.

. . . which is exactly what I expected. Trump will not obey any legal orders, perhaps even those of the Supreme Court, though that risks starting a severe Constitutional crisis.  But this is also an ethical matter as well as a legal one. You can’t just pluck a man off the street with no criminal record you can document, and throw him in a godawful prison pretending you do have evidence against him.

*A different judge has threatened to open contempt proceedings against Trump for deporting people under the Alien Enemies Act.

A federal judge in Washington threatened on Wednesday to open a high-stakes contempt investigation into whether the Trump administration violated an order he issued last month directing officials to stop planes of Venezuelan migrants from being sent to El Salvador.

In a 46-page ruling, the judge, James E. Boasberg, said that he would begin contempt proceedings against the administration unless the White House did what it has failed to do for more than a month: give scores of Venezuelan men deported to El Salvador under the expansive authority of a wartime law called the Alien Enemies Act a chance to challenge their removal.

*The Harvard Crimson has an oped by Tarek Masoud and Steve Pinker, writing on behalf of a Harvard faculty organization: “Steven A. Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology. Tarek Masoud is the Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Governance at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. They write on behalf of the executive committee of the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard.” The article is called “Harvard must not submit to a hostile takeover.”

On April 11, 2025, officials of three federal departments presented Harvard University with a list of demands for how the University must run its internal affairs if it is to remain eligible for federal research support.

The demands include changes in how the University is governed; who leads it; whom it admits, hires, and promotes; and how it handles student life. Most disturbingly, the letter requires the University to cede oversight of these reforms to government-appointed bureaucrats and approved external “auditors” in what would constitute unprecedented governmental interference in the University’s internal affairs. We therefore support University President Alan M. Garber ’76 and the Harvard Corporation in their decision to reject the government’s terms.

If the University were to accede to the Trump administration’s demands, it would be empowering bureaucrats in Washington to impose their own viewpoints on universities for generations to come.

Take, for instance, the administration’s Orwellian demand that the University “commission an external party, which shall satisfy the federal government as to its competence and good faith, to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity, such that each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse.”

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the government seeks to impose by fiat beliefs that cannot compete on their own merits in the marketplace of ideas.

The impulse that animates the Department of Education’s letter is profoundly authoritarian. This is illustrated most clearly in the demand that the University not admit students “hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence.” Though this University has long sought to admit only those of the highest character and intellectual caliber, to demand that all admitted students share the same reverence for America’s founding documents in fact violates the spirit of those documents. After all, our Constitution was itself birthed out of vigorous debate and has been criticized by generations of patriots. The current administration appears to believe that this process that has served us so well for 250 years should now cease forever.

Similarly authoritarian, we fear, is the intent behind the administration’s demand that the University ban “any student group or club that endorses or promotes criminal activity.” Though we all agree that students should abide by the law, the administration’s letter gives us little reason to believe that its conception of lawbreaking will not be construed so broadly as to include legitimate, peaceful dissent. With the narrowest of exceptions (like incitement of imminent lawless activity), no opinion should be outlawed in a university.

Imposing “viewpoints” on universities means forcing them to acknowledge the relevance and legitimacy of ideas which may have been intellectually discredited or judged not worthy of finite time and resources.

Government bureaucrats should not be making these decisions.

Yes, of course the government has asked Universities to adhere to standards before (Title IX and so on), but I don’t recall any threats to withhold money, nor any demands even close to being as onerous as these. They are qualitatively different from what has gone before, and they are Orwellian. But see the next piece:

*Speaking of Harvard v. Trump, there’s an article the Free Press by Charles Lane, author and former WaPo columnist: “Harvard had it coming. That doesn’t mean that Trump was right.” While admitting that Harvard had a right–nay, a duty–to push back, Lane tells us why the school had it coming:

If the administration were sincerely interested in the very real problems of antisemitism and intellectual diversity on campus, the university plausibly argues, it might have given Harvard credit for positive steps it has taken since coming under pressure, both internal and external, 15 months ago over its feckless response to anti-Israel campus protests and antisemitic incidents on campus.

And yet any sympathy for Harvard has to be tempered by the knowledge that the school—and others like it—brought much of their current predicament on themselves.

The expression “they’re framing a guilty man” comes to mind. This is the university that once penalized a law professor, Ronald Sullivan, for serving as legal counsel for Harvey Weinstein, widely reviled as an accused rapist, but constitutionally entitled to a defense. Harvard subsequently promoted another dean to president, Claudine Gay, who gave key verbal support to student protests against Sullivan.

This is a school that once tried to strong-arm a quarter of its students into abolishing their single-sex clubs, fraternities, and sororities, because “their fundamental principles are antithetical to our institutional values.”

And of course, this is a university whose response to antisemitism on its campus includes a high-level task force that has still not published final recommendations more than a year since Garber established it.

That prompted one of his predecessors, Lawrence H. Summers, to complain on X March 3 that “Harvard continues its failure to effectively address antisemitism.”

. . .Still, there’s a huge difference, legally and constitutionally, between a federal threat to withhold funding and a private one.

To be legitimate the former has to follow the law, and under the relevant civil rights statute—Title VI—the government is required to formally document allegations such as those the administration is making against Harvard, and to cut funding only to the specific programs that have been found to discriminate. The Trump administration has yet to do that.

For all of the above reasons, Harvard stands a good chance of winning this struggle in the courts of law, but a not as good one in the court of public opinion.

And indeed, Harvard had better clean up its act, something that Masoud and Pinker don’t mention.  But the WSJ freports that students accepted at Harvard are proud of its pushback, and are favoring that school over a woosie school like Columbia (article archived here).

*This human interest story, much needed in these dire days, was all over the news last night. A book-passing chain!

Residents of all ages in a small Michigan community formed a human chain and helped a local bookshop move each of its 9,100 books — one by one — to a new storefront about a block away.

The “book brigade” of around 300 people stood in two lines running along a sidewalk in downtown Chelsea on Sunday, passing each title from Serendipity Books’ former location directly to the correct shelves in the new building, down the block and around the corner on Main Street.

“It was a practical way to move the books, but it also was a way for everybody to have a part,” Michelle Tuplin, the store’s owner, said. “As people passed the books along, they said ‘I have not read this’ and ‘that’s a good one.’”

Momentum had been building since Tuplin announced the move in January.

“It became so buzzy in town. So many people wanted to help,” she said Tuesday.

Tuplin said the endeavor took just under two hours — much shorter than hiring a moving company to box and unbox the thousands of titles. The brigade even put the books back on the shelves in alphabetical order.

Now Tuplin hopes to have the new location open within two weeks.

Here’s a local news video:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is again plumping for beef, though she’s already plump!

Hili: In an ideal world you would bring me a piece of raw meat.

A: The world is seldom ideal.

Hili: W idealnym świecie przyniósłbyś mi tutaj kawałek surowego mięsa.

Ja: Świat rzadko bywa idealny.

Here’s reader Terry McLean’s cat from Edmonton, Alberta, preventing completion of a jigsaw puzzle. Terry’s words:

Ruby was a stray that found us 4 years ago and has been a boon companion ever since.  My fault for doing the border first which created the ubiquitous box!

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

From Stacy:

If you don’t believe the map, here’s the Florida state flag showing toes (my arrow):

From Irena:

J.K. Rowling enjoying a drink and a stogie after yesterday’s UK Supreme Court victory:

From Divy:

Here’s J.K. Rowling’ss victory tweet. There is of course a lot on her site yesterday and today, even though she’s out of the UK.

It took three extraordinary, tenacious Scottish women with an army behind them to get this case heard by the Supreme Court and, in winning, they’ve protected the rights of women and girls across the UK. @ForWomenScot, I’m so proud to know you 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿💜🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿💚🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🤍🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 https://t.co/JEvcScVVGS

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 16, 2025

Congratulations to @ForWomenScot for this unequivocal win at appeal!

Women’s & lesbians’ rights are human rights. They do not impinge on others’ rights.@UKLabour Gov & public bodies must now review all existing policies to bring them in line with this ruling & common sense. pic.twitter.com/LwUIokuLSC

— LabourWomen’sDeclaration 🦖 (@LabWomenDec) April 16, 2025

.@SouthwestAir I used to ALWAYS fly SWA if it went to my destination. No more. Although you say your principles have not changed, they have: you no longer try to convey perks and savings. From now on I will just take the cheapest flight. I am so disappointed in your arrant greed

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) April 15, 2025

A curmudgeonly post I made when I heard that Southwest Airlines, my very favorite carrier, was continuing to do away with all the perks that made me fly them; this time they eliminated any free check-ins for baggage. In one of their explanations, they said “their principles had not changed.”  I beefed and they groveled in response.

From Malcolm, a feline drama queen:

She’s so dramatic 😺 pic.twitter.com/16foxd15Pr

— We don’t deserve cats 😺 (@catsareblessing) April 8, 2025

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposed:

On November 26, 1942, a 31-year old Jewish woman from Norway arrived at Auschwitz and was immediately gassed to death together with her young daughter

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-04-17T10:30:24.684Z

And two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, Bette Davis, divorced for reading too much!

🎶🎵 “She puts her book in her back pocket, Bette Davis style” 🎵🎶

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-04-16T07:03:53.867Z

. . . and the bats come out:

🦇🦇🦇As day turns into night, beautiful #GunaiKurnaiCountry

— Friends of Bats and Habitat Gippsland (@friendsofbats.bsky.social) 2025-04-16T08:42:05.700Z

Welcome to Tuesday, April 15, 2027: TAX DAY in America!  Have you sent in your return? And it’s also National Glazed Spiral Ham Day, a method invented in 1952 to slice an entire bone-in glazed ham into spirals. Here’s an example. I have tried this rarely as nobody serves them, and it’s too much for one person to eat. Maybe this Easter. . .

It’s also Anime Day, McDonald’s Day (the first McD’s was opened by Ray Kroc on this day in 1955), National Griper’s Day,  Holy Tuesday, Titanic Remembrance Day (the ship went down on this day in 1912), and National Rubber Eraser Day. (on this day in 1770, “Joseph Priestly founded a vegetable gum to remove pencil marks.  He dubbed the substance ‘rubber'”.

From Wikipedia, here’s “the oldest operating McDonald’s restaurant is the third one built, opened in 1953. It is located at 10207 Lakewood Blvd. at Florence Ave. in Downey, California”. Perhaps you can guess the heartthrob of mine who was born in Downey:

Da Nooz:

*This is insane: a piece reporting that “U.S. and El Salvador say they won’t return man who was mistakenly deported.”

The Trump administration has been fighting for days against a judge’s order to return a wrongfully deported Maryland man to the United States. But this meeting in the Oval Office with the president of El Salvador was the most clear example yet that Trump had no intention of returning Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to the United States, despite the Supreme Court instructing the U.S. government to take steps to return the Salvadoran migrant.

Trump and his top aide Stephen Miller essentially scoffed at the Supreme Court’s ability to direct the administration to take any action on foreign policy and made clear that if anyone was going to return Garcia to the United States, it would have to be Nayib Bukele, the Salvadoran president. Bukele, seated next to President Trump, rejected any notion he would return Abrego Garcia, a father of three who has no criminal record.

And American citizens, too!

President Trump just said he was open to sending American citizens convicted of violent crimes to President Bukele’s prison in El Salvador. Trump had a similar response when Bukele first offered to jail convicted American criminals in February. “I’m all for it,” Trump said, adding that his attorney general was studying whether the idea was legally feasible. “If it’s a homegrown criminal, I have no problem, no,” he said, adding: “I’m talking about violent people. I’m talking about really bad people.”

Returning a man who was mistakenly sent to prison (and a horrible prison) in another country is not a foreign policy issue. It is an issue of justice, and the Supreme Court was right. This could come down to a nasty fight, but if the guy has no criminal record, and the U.S. won’t give a reason for what they did, but admit it was a “mistake,” then it has to be made right. And the idea that American citizens could be sent to El Salvador is simply ludicrous. But Trump doesn’t know the meaning of “ludicrous.”

*It looks as if Putin isn’t much concerned with having a cease-fire with Ukraine, at least according to the WSJ. Russia is amping up its attacks and killing more Ukrainian civilians.

The deadliest missile strike on Ukraine this year pushed up the civilian death toll from Russia’s invasion and widened divisions between the U.S. and Kyiv’s European allies over President Trump’s strategy for ending the war.

Ukraine and European countries said the latest Russian missile strike, which killed 34 and left more than 100 injured in the city of Sumy on Sunday, showed Russian President Vladimir Putin wasn’t interested in a cease-fire.

Russia fired two ballistic missiles that Ukraine said hit university and residential buildings, cars and streets. Russian officials said it struck a meeting of Ukrainian military commanders. The strike killed Ukrainian Col. Yuriy Yula, commander of a Ukrainian artillery brigade that is equipped with advanced U.S. Himars rocket launchers, according to a person familiar with the matter. Kyiv said the attack also killed two children among a crowd of civilians.

Western leaders criticized the strike over the loss of civilian life, with France’s foreign minister calling for increased sanctions on Moscow following the attack. Friedrich Merz, Germany’s incoming chancellor, described it as “a serious war crime” and said he was open to equipping Ukraine with long-range Taurus missiles.

Putin “evidently interprets our willingness to talk with him not as a serious offer to make peace, but as weakness,” Merz told German public broadcaster ARD on Sunday.

Trump, meanwhile, described the strike late Sunday as “a horrible thing,” adding: “I was told [Russia] made a mistake.” In a post on his Truth Social platform Monday, Trump called the conflict “Biden’s war” and said that the former president and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine “did an absolutely horrible job in allowing this travesty to begin.”

Remember Trump’s boast that he would end the Ukraine/Russia war on DAY 1 of his administration. Now there are no serious talks and Tru,p is blaming the war on Biden and on Zelensky!  What the deuce did Zelensky do to make the war begin. It is Russian aggression and desire for Lebensraum, pure and simple.

*Over at the NYT, one of my favorite pundits, James Carville, has written a piece called “How to turn Trump’s economic chaos against him” (archived here):

Now we know why. Mr. Trump didn’t have a plan to bring down inflation and make life better (except for the rich, who disproportionately benefit from his tax cuts), and he was hellbent on tariffs at all costs.

The problem is that smoke and mirrors only work until you screw up so hard that no act of lunacy can pull the American people’s attention elsewhere. And boy, did the president just screw up royally.

In what will certainly be recorded as one of the most ignorant acts of political leadership in American history, the president of the United States has now willfully damaged the global economy with his tariff chaos. Not only was this an act of economic warfare, it has broken the cardinal rule in American politics: Never destabilize the economy.

. . .In the coming weeks and months, many Americans are going to experience pressure and pain with the tariffs on China and the remaining tariffs on an array of goods and countries. Prices could rise sharply, consumer spending may well dry up and we are already seeing evidence of surging mortgage rates and a weakened bond market. The Trump administration will not be competent enough to dig us out. The path to stabilizing and strengthening the country starts when Democrats can take back the economic narrative from the Republican Party and persuade the majority of Americans to close the book on the Trump chaos.

This can only be done if we avoid the distractions — whether it’s Mr. Trump’s third-term talk or Democratic infighting on social issues — and instead focus on the economic foundations that matter to Americans most. My fellow Democrats, it’s time we transform our party into a projector for the economic pain of the American people.

His advice for Dems includes focusing in prices and on 402(k)s (which are the average Joe and Jill’s saving funds), and focusing on local stories:

The Democratic Party must now take local stories and project them where they matter most. Record the story of Nicholas Gilbert, a dairy farmer upended by the tariffs — and localize it to Wisconsin. Focus on the Latino and Black men who supported his previous election, and take it to Georgia or Arizona. Go on influencer networks and podcasts talking about the looming increase in car prices and the fact that the president exploded Nintendo’s plans for the Switch 2.

If we do this, says Carville, we can “take back the power” and “begin again.” Perhaps.  But these are not charismatic issues for the Dems, who don’t seem to focus on these “narrow” issues. If Carville is right, they had better start now.

*Unlike Columbia University, Harvard stood up today to the Administration’s threats to cut off federal money unless the University makes changes to Trump’s liking.

With billions of dollars in federal funding at risk, Harvard University officials on Monday rejected Trump administration demands to make sweeping changes to its governance, admissions and hiring practices.

Harvard will continue to work to combat antisemitism, and “Harvard remains open to dialogue about what the university has done, and is planning to do, to improve the experience of every member of its community,” two attorneys representing the school wrote in a letter Monday, but the school “is not prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration.”

The school is the first to push back against the government’s efforts to force change at elite universities.

And it has the most funding potentially at stake: The administration recently announced that it was reviewing $9 billion in contracts and grants to Harvard and its affiliates.

That’s a lot of dosh, but Harvard’s endowment is 53.2 billion. And the President, Alan Garber, has moxie. Harvard people got an email from Garber this morning that includes this:

 I encourage you to read the [Administration’s] letter to gain a fuller understanding of the unprecedented demands being made by the federal government to control the Harvard community. They include requirements to “audit” the viewpoints of our student body, faculty, staff, and to “reduc[e] the power” of certain students, faculty, and administrators targeted because of their ideological views. We have informed the administration through our legal counsel that we will not accept their proposed agreement. The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.

The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government. It violates Harvard’s First Amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI. And it threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge. No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.

. . . The work of addressing our shortcomings, fulfilling our commitments, and embodying our values is ours to define and undertake as a community. Freedom of thought and inquiry, along with the government’s longstanding commitment to respect and protect it, has enabled universities to contribute in vital ways to a free society and to healthier, more prosperous lives for people everywhere.

For once I’m proud of Schmarvard, just as Columbia people should be deeply ashamed of their school.  The Administration is blackmailing colleges with funding threats, and of course any administration could do that, though perhaps only Trump’s would have the hubris to do it. I’m sure Harvard will survive a funding cut, but what about all those other schools?

More about Harvard later today.

*They’ve caught a suspect in the arson attack on Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s home (the Governor’s Mansion), and the suspect is in the hospital. Instead of being a rabid anti-semite or a Republican, the suspect may simply have been mentally ill. He has a history.

A man who authorities said scaled an iron security fence in the middle of the night, eluded police and broke into the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion where he set a fire is in police custody at a hospital after an unrelated medical event, state police said Monday.

Cody Balmer, 38, told police he had planned to beat Gov. Josh Shapiro with a small sledgehammer if he found him, according to court documents. He was being treated at the hospital, which police said was “not connected to this incident or his arrest.”

That part about being him with a “small sledgehammer” gets me. Was that supposed to cause only small injuries?  There’s more:

Balmer’s mother told The Associated Press on Monday that she had tried in recent days to get him assistance for mental health issues, but “nobody would help.” She said her son had bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. The AP was not able to verify that information.

“He wasn’t taking his medicine, and that’s all I want to say,” Christie Balmer said, speaking at the family home in Harrisburg.

The fire left significant damage and forced Shapiro, his family and guests to evacuate the building early Sunday. Balmer, who was arrested later in the day, faces charges including attempted homicide, terrorism, aggravated arson and aggravated assault, authorities said.

Balmer had walked an hour from his home to the governor’s residence, and during a police interview, “Balmer admitted to harboring hatred towards Governor Shapiro,” according to a police affidavit, but it didn’t explain why.

. . . .Balmer turned himself in after confessing to his “ex-paramour,” the affidavit said. Authorities had initially said he was being transported to Dauphin County Prison, but did not say whether he has a lawyer. Calls to people believed to be relatives went unanswered or unreturned Sunday. One recent listed residence in Harrisburg was condemned in 2022.

. . . Balmer has faced criminal charges over the past decade including simple assault, theft and forgery, according to online criminal court records.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili demands selfies.  And she got one!

Hili: Take a selfie of us.

Andrzej: It’s not my specialty.

Hili: Zrób nam selfie.

Ja: To nie jest moja dyscyplina sportu.

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

From Things with Faces, an Italian tree:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Stacy:

I may have posted this recently (I forgot) but Masih is absolutely right:

The Islamic Republic will never dismantle its nuclear program.
Khamenei isn’t negotiating, he’s clinging to anti-American hate at any cost.
He’d rather see its nuclear sites bombed than sign a deal.

They understand only one language: pressure.

pic.twitter.com/173u446rPp

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) April 12, 2025

A scene from Ricky Gervais’s fantastic “After Life” series. Actually, in the show his wife had died of cancer some time before.

This is one of the most empathetic and compassionate pieces of television I’ve ever seen. #AfterLife ❤️‍🩹pic.twitter.com/5OC23UF9yw

— After Life 🐕‍🦺 (@truebritgbr) April 13, 2025

From Reese, who got it from Facebook:

From Malcolm: a d*g that rides a horse!

Dally and Spanky: friendship of a Jack Russell Terrier and a rescued miniature horse pic.twitter.com/2ZIhcgbgSo

— why you should have an animal (@ShouldHaveAnima) April 6, 2025

From Luana, who called this a “fun analysis”:

“I told you” says @powerfultakes.

Was it a mistake to vote for Trump?

If I’d known that MAGA would become a poverty cult obsessed with bringing Chinese sweatshops to the US, I would have supported DEI Kamala. However, as far as I am aware, no one (including Karlin) anticipated…

— Nathan Cofnas (@nathancofnas) April 9, 2025

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

1.1 million people died at Auschwitz, the vast majority being Jews, but also Romani, gays, POWs, and so on. Many were gassed in this chamber, which at the height of its use killed 6,000 people per day.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-04-15T10:41:45.841Z

Two posts from Professor Cobb. First, a lovely snow leopard:

Up close with Sabu!Snow leopards – nicknamed the "ghost cat" – are known for being difficult to see and study in the wild due to their elusiveness and beautiful, camouflaged coat that blends seamlessly with their rocky terrain.📷: Lead zookeeper Taylor S

— Zoo Boise (@zooboise.bsky.social) 2025-04-13T15:30:56.615Z

A tweet by Sheffield mammoth expert Tori Herridge and a buttressing response. It is, of course, about Colossal Bioscience’s proposed “de-extinction” of the woolly mammoth.

Still, never thought I’d see the day that some ancient DNA peeps would so whole-heartedly embrace (a somewhat iffy version of) the morphological species concept.

— Tori Herridge (@toriherridge.bsky.social) 2025-04-13T19:08:10.443Z

This is the sort of thing any informed journalist should have queried them on. So you are sequencing the DNA, manipulating the DNA, but to determine whether or not you succeeded, you're looking to soft tissue anatomy and behaviour on a [checks notes] animal known from skeletons.

— Dr Dave Hone (@davehone.bsky.social) 2025-04-13T19:41:57.646Z