Category: Hili Dialogue

Saturday: Hili dialogue

March 29, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to CaturSaturday, March 29, 2025:  it’s Cat shabbos and April is nearly on us. It’s National Pita Day, a big favorite except for those who are gluten intolerant. Here’s a “Palestinian breakfast with falafel, hummus, torshi and khubz bread.” Very healthy!

Peteravivangel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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

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

Da Nooz:

*There’s an op-ed by Hillary Clinton in the NYT called “How much dumber will this get?” (archived here), and you know without looking what “this” refers to. Although she does praise herself a bit, her criticisms of Trump are on the mark.

It’s not the hypocrisy that bothers me; it’s the stupidity. We’re all shocked — shocked! — that President Trump and his team don’t actually care about protecting classified information or federal record retention laws. But we knew that already. What’s much worse is that top Trump administration officials put our troops in jeopardy by sharing military plans on a commercial messaging app and unwittingly invited a journalist into the chat. That’s dangerous. And it’s just dumb.

This is the latest in a string of self-inflicted wounds by the new administration that are squandering America’s strength and threatening our national security. Firing hundreds of federal workers charged with protecting our nation’s nuclear weapons is also dumb. So is shutting down efforts to fight pandemics just as a deadly Ebola outbreak is spreading in Africa. It makes no sense to purge talented generals, diplomats and spies at a time when rivals like China and Russia are trying to expand their global reach.

. . . . Let’s start with the military, because that’s what he claims to care about. Don’t let the swagger fool you. Mr. Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (of group chat fame) are apparently more focused on performative fights over wokeness than preparing for real fights with America’s adversaries. Does anyone really think deleting tributes to the Tuskegee Airmen makes us more safe? The Trump Pentagon purged images of the plane that dropped the atomic bomb that ended World War II because its name is the Enola Gay. Dumb.

Instead of working with Congress to modernize the military’s budget to reflect changing threats, the president is firing top generals without credible justification. Five former secretaries of defense, Republicans and Democrats, rightly warned that this would “undermine our all-volunteer force and weaken our national security.” Mass layoffs are also hitting the intelligence agencies. As one former senior spy put it, “We’re shooting ourselves in the head, not the foot.” Not smart.

. . . All of this is both dumb and dangerous. And I haven’t even gotten to the damage Mr. Trump is doing by cozying up to dictators like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, blowing up our alliances — force multipliers that extend our reach and share our burdens — and trashing our moral influence by undermining the rule of law at home. Or how he’s tanking our economy and blowing up our national debt. Propagandists in Beijing and Moscow know we are in a global debate about competing systems of governance. People and leaders around the world are watching to see if democracy can still deliver peace and prosperity or even function. If America is ruled like a banana republic, with flagrant corruption and a leader who puts himself above the law, we lose that argument. We also lose the qualities that have made America exceptional and indispensable.

If there’s a grand strategy at work here, I don’t know what it is. Maybe Mr. Trump wants to return to 19th-century spheres of influence. Maybe he’s just driven by personal grudges and is in way over his head. As a businessman, he bankrupted his Atlantic City casinos. Now he’s gambling with the national security of the United States. If this continues, a group chat foul will be the least of our concerns, and all the fist and flag emojis in the world won’t save us.

I had a chat with Matthew yesterday morning, who reminded me how much the missteps of America and the Trump administration have a negative effect not just on the U.S., but on other countries. And it’s not only those countries harboring carmakers, but those with a moral investment in, say Ukraine, which Trump is throwing under the bus. Europe is no longer so certain about how close an ally America will be, especially because he seems to be schmoozing with Putin.

*The Yale Daily News reports that three professors, all of them critics of Trump (which professor isn’t these days?), have left Yale to take jobs in Canada.

Three prominent critics of President Donald Trump are leaving Yale’s faculty — and the United States — amid attacks on higher education to take up positions at the University of Toronto in fall 2025.

Philosophy professor Jason Stanley announced this week that he will leave Yale, while history professors Timothy Snyder and Marci Shore, who are married, decided to leave around the November elections. The three professors will work at Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.

Stanley wrote to the Daily Nous that his decision to leave was “entirely because of the political climate in the United States.” On Wednesday, he told the Guardian that he chose to move after seeing how Columbia University handled political attacks from Trump.

After the Trump administration threatened to deport two student protesters at Columbia and revoked $400 million in research funding from the school, Columbia agreed on Friday to concede to a series of demands from the Trump administration that included overhauling its protest policies and imposing external oversight on the school’s Middle Eastern studies department.

“When I saw Columbia completely capitulate, and I saw this vocabulary of, well, we’re going to work behind the scenes because we’re not going to get targeted — that whole way of thinking presupposes that some universities will get targeted, and you don’t want to be one of those universities, and that’s just a losing strategy,” Stanley told the Guardian.

“I just became very worried because I didn’t see a strong enough reaction in other universities to side with Columbia,” he added.

Shore wrote that the Munk School had long attempted to recruit her and Snyder and that the couple had seriously considered the offers “for the past two years.” Shore wrote that the couple decided to take the positions after the November 2024 elections. However, a spokesperson for Snyder told Inside Higher Ed that Snyder’s decision was made before the elections, was largely personal and came amid “difficult family matters.” The spokesperson also said that he had “no desire” to leave the United States.

Shore wrote that her and Snyder’s children were factors in the couple’s decision.

Snyder and Shore both specialize in Eastern European history and each has drawn parallels between the fascist regimes they have studied and the current Trump administration. Stanley, a philosopher, has also published books on fascism and propaganda, including the popular book “How Fascism Works.”

In 2021, Stanley and Snyder co-taught a course at Yale titled “Mass Incarceration in the Soviet Union and the United States.” Earlier this week, Stanley and Shore joined nearly 3,000 Jewish faculty across the U.S. to sign a letter denouncing the arrest of a Columbia student protester and urging their respective institutions to resist the Trump administration’s policies targeting colleges.

“I know Jason Stanley very well, he’s been one of my most important interlocutors on political, historical and philosophical questions for the better part of a decade now,” Shore wrote to the News on Wednesday. “I am thrilled that he’ll be joining us in Toronto, but also heartbroken at what’s happened to my own country.”

Paul Franks, the chair of Yale’s philosophy department, described the news of Stanley’s departure as a shock, although he knew that Stanley had been considering leaving Yale “for quite some time.” Franks described Stanley as an irreplaceable “pioneer” in analytic philosophy and as a “rare” American philosophical public intellectual.

Here are the departed three. America’s loss is Canada’s gain, and no, Canada won’t become America’s 51st state.

*Nellie Bowles’s weekly news summary at the Free Press doesn’t have a title in words, but in emojis. Here it is (click to see if it you subscribe):

And, as usual, I’ll steal a few items from it:

→ Conquest of Greenland continues: J.D. and Usha Vance are planning a trip to Greenland for a casual, low-key state visit. Can’t the second couple have a little getaway and sample some narwhal blubber away from the kids? Greenland prime minister Múte B. Egede called the trip “highly aggressive.” NBC reports: “Vances’ planned trip to Greenland is stoking Arctic anti-Americanism.” Trump is amped up. He said his team is going to “let them know that we need Greenland for international safety and security. We need it. We have to have it.”

We need it. We have to have it. It’s done.

Check out the last paragraph of this one. Oy!

→ Scam of the week: Trump-backed World Liberty Financial has a new “stablecoin” called USD1 that is going to be backed by short-term U.S. government Treasurys and U.S. dollar deposits. Yes, that means our tax dollars. God bless The Wall Street Journal, which is trying to cover these scams with a straight face. Here’s the Journal: “Earlier this year, President Trump and first lady Melania Trump also launched a pair of meme coins, a type of cryptocurrency with no intrinsic value.”

And: “USD1’s reserves will be safeguarded by crypto custodian BitGo and audited regularly by an unspecified third-party accounting firm, World Liberty said.” This is below them. They should be covering oil futures and Q4 earnings calls with dignity.

Meanwhile, Congress is seeking ways to venerate Trump. There is a proposal to put his face on the $100 bill, and another proposal to make a new $250 bill with Trump’s face on it. Actually, Politico has the whole list: “Other measures would make Trump’s birthday a federal holiday, rename Dulles Airport in Trump’s honor, carve Trump’s face on Mount Rushmore, and create a new $250 bill with Trump’s likeness.” Me? I think we should eliminate the word good and replace it with Trump. If something is really good, you can just say Bigly Trump! Doesn’t that feel nice?

Below: I read the SJP-activates-Instagram-before-Oct.7 news yesterday, and I find it very hard to fathom. I’ve often thought there’s a connection between militant pro-Palestinian groups on campus and terrorists in the Middle East, but warning the campus groups that a massacre is coming? If true, that’s big news. Is it in the NYT?

→ Irish politicians are now showing up at Houthi rallies: Progressive Irish politician Clare Daly put on a headscarf and attended a pro-Palestine Houthi rally in Yemen this week. Being at a Houthi rally is the final stop in the Defund-the-Police to Free-Palestine to Kill-the-Jews pipeline. She called the rally a “magnificent display of solidarity for Palestine.” The crowd reportedly chanted things like: “Death to America! Death to Israel! A curse upon the Jews! Victory to Islam!” This (Houthi) is what a feminist leprechaun looks like.

I had no idea that Houthi and Hezbollah rallies in Yemen would become such a who’s who of the left. And these rallies look fun. Everyone’s dressed up, chanting for war, looking cool in desert boots, posing next to random jihadists who have that wild-eyed “I’m the captain now” look. (Captain Phillips is my only cultural reference.)

And fun fact: Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine apparently reactivated their dormant Instagram three minutes before the October 7 massacre began, according to a new lawsuit. I didn’t realize that. You have to admit: Qatar and Iran organized everything beautifully. You have to admire the American student groups working in perfect coordination overnight with their on-the-ground Hamas counterparts. So while Hamas killed Israeli teens at a music festival, American teens were gathering all their protest materials on the quad. Their hands were completely clean as they marched for Palestine that morning, kicking off one of the great antisemitic surges, whose end we are far from seeing.

Here’s the head of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, San Francisco Bay Area office, saying what really doesn’t even need to be said anymore:

*In his rush to become an autocrat, Trump is now threatening not only colleges, but also the media and law firms.  Don’t criticize the Orange Man or you’ll be punished (he’s like Henry VIII). Now two law firms are suing him for retaliating against them when the firms did stuff Trump didn’t like. As I’ve said from the beginning of the stream of Executive Orders, we will see this all resolved in the courts, and much of it won’t support what Trump has done. Have a gander:

Two law firms filed lawsuits Friday to block White House executive orders that targeted them for their ties to lawyers involved in an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Jenner & Block and WilmerHale filed separate lawsuits in a Washington, D.C., federal court, both alleging the administration engaged in unconstitutional retaliation that violates the First Amendment.

Their lawsuits follow a raft of executive orders against several prominent law firms that stripped security clearances, limited access to federal buildings, and directed agencies to remove government contracts from firms and their clients.

President Trump has targeted five big firms so far, most recently with an order issued Thursday evening against WilmerHale, the former law firm of Robert Mueller, who led the Russia interference investigation.

Mueller worked at Hale and Dorr from 1993 to 1995, before it merged to create WilmerHale. He later rejoined in 2014 as a partner before his appointment as special counsel in 2017, during Trump’s first term, to investigate any possible ties between Russia and the president and his campaign. That investigation infuriated Trump, who called it a witch hunt.

“Mueller’s investigation epitomizes the weaponization of government,” the executive order said.

A Mueller deputy, Andrew Weissmann, is a former Jenner partner who led the group that investigated Paul Manafort, who served as chairman of Trump’s presidential campaign in the summer of 2016. Weissmann worked at Jenner for five years, between 2006 and 2011. He returned in 2020 for a year. Trump singled out Weissmann for criticism, and referred to him as a “bad guy” when he signed the executive order.

Trump’s order against Jenner cited Weissmann by name, as well as the firm’s pro bono work backing lawsuits challenging the administration’s policies, including on behalf of transgender individuals and asylum seekers.

“Democrats and their law firms weaponized the legal process to try to punish and jail their political opponents,” said White House spokesman Harrison Fields. “The President’s executive orders are lawful directives to ensure that the President’s agenda is implemented and that law firms comply with the law.”

What the last sentence really means is “to ensure that law firms comply with what the President likes.”  Trump is using his second term, and, thankfully, his last, to get back at everyone he dislikes, or who “wronged” him, before he becomes an ex-President. I wonder if Vance wouldn’t be better than Trump, as he doesn’t have the Gilbert-and-Sullivanian “little list” of enemies (I do wonder what would happen if Trump died from too many Big Macs, though I don’t wish anybody to die).

*I realize that I’m writing more about Trump that I ever envisioned, but who would envision that he’d go nuts–much more nuts than in his last term–as soon as he took office? The AP lists half a dozen people who have been apprehended by the government, with some of them deported, for “supporting Hamas.”  This most recent one is also one of the most egregious, since her “incriminating” 2024 op-ed is online and you can see what got Ms. Ozturk snatched up:

Federal officers detained 30-year-old Turkish student Rumeysa Ozturk on Tuesday as she walked along a street in suburban Boston. A senior Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said without providing evidence that an investigation found Ozturk, a doctoral student at Tufts University, “engaged in activities in support of Hamas,” a U.S.-designated terrorist group.

Friends and colleagues of Ozturk said her only known activism was co-authoring an op-ed in a student newspaper that called on Tufts University to engage with student demands to cut ties with Israel. Ozturk has been taken to an ICE detention center in Louisiana. A U.S. District judge has given the government until Friday to explain why Ozturk is being detained.

. . .Video obtained by The Associated Press appeared to show six people, all but one with their faces covered, taking away a shouting Ozturk’s phone before she was handcuffed on Tuesday.

“We’re the police,” members of the group are heard saying in the video.

A bystander is heard asking, “Why are you hiding your faces?”

Ozturk, who is Muslim, was meeting friends for iftar, a meal that breaks a fast at sunset during Ramadan, according to her lawyer, Mahsa Khanbabai.

Khanbabai, who said no charges have been filed against Ozturk, filed a petition seeking her release Tuesday and then an emergency motion Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani initially issued an order giving the government until Friday to answer why Ozturk was being detained. Talwani also ordered that Ozturk not be moved outside the District of Massachusetts without 48 hours advance notice.

The government said in its response Thursday that it “will set forth the timeline” of Ozturk’s arrest and transfer from Massachusetts.

Here’s the video (it’s from Al Jazeera). Ozturk is the one in white. The spectacle of American police covering their faces and then hauling them away without charges is chilling.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is enjoying global warming:

Hili: I think that the world is starting to be more friendly.
A: Yes, it’s getting warmer and warmer.
Hili: Not only that, but the mice have started to go out of their holes more often.
In Polish:
Hili: Myślę, że świat zaczyna być bardziej przyjazny.
Ja: Tak, jest coraz cieplej.
Hili: Nie tylko to, również myszy wychodzą częściej ze swoich norek.

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

From Jesus of the Day:

From Cats Without Gods:

From Things With Faces, a good angle:

From Masih:

From Malgorzata; the hatred is everywhere, including Down Under:

I posted the first one yesterday, but haven’t seen duck vs. cat before (duck wins!)

From Luana; I suppose one could have predicted this:

From Malcolm, who captions it “WHAT?”:

From my Twitter feed; a giraffe listening to its birthday song:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I retweeted:

A fourteen-year old French Jewish girl was gassed upon arrival at Auschwitz.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-03-29T10:29:50.381Z

One from Dr. Cobb, a bat with her pup (I didn’t know baby bats were called that):

We had no plans to sample bats on this final field trip to Uganda. Luckily for us, we still happened across this beautiful female Nycteris thebaica while visiting Ngamba island. Look closely as she twirls and you can spot the wings of her pup! 🦇 #mammals

— Natalie Wickenkamp (@nataliewick.bsky.social) 2025-03-25T14:04:49.562Z

Friday: Hili dialogue

March 28, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the end of the “work” week: it’s Friday, March 28, 2025, and National Black Forest Cake Day. As Wikipedia notes, it’s “a layer cake made out of cocoa powder, cherries, Kirsch, and whipped cream, with dark chocolate as a decoration.” It’s history is a matter of dispute, but not its appeal. Here’s one:

posted to Flickr by Mikelo , Creative Commons

It’s also National Something on a Stick Day, Weed Appreciation Day (no, bnot that kind of weed), National Hot Tub Day, and, most important, Respect Your Cat Day.  The first reader to send me a photo of their cat will have it added below (please give an identifying caption with the cat’s name).

And here’s the first in: Joan Langerfeld with a kitty photo (note that it’s polydactylous) and a note:

Here is my daughter’s cat, Bigfoot. He was part of a small litter found under the loading dock where she works, at about 3-4 days old (the kittens had not yet opened their eyes). After their mom did not return for over 8 hours, workers split up the litter and now they’re all healthy and a bit more than 1 year old.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 28 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*As the kids used to say, “I can’t even. . . ” A terrible hire at the HHS  (archived here):

A vaccine skeptic who has long promoted false claims about the connection between immunizations and autism has been tapped by the federal government to conduct a critical study of possible links between the two, according to current and former federal health officials.

The Department of Health and Human Services has hired David Geier to conduct the analysis, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. Geier and his father, Mark Geier, have published papers claiming vaccines increase the risk of autism, a theory that has been studied for decades and scientifically debunked.

David Geier was disciplined by Maryland regulators more than a decade ago for practicing medicine without a license. He is listed as a data analyst in the HHS employee directory.

Public health and autism experts fear that choosing a researcher who has promoted false claims will produce a flawed study with far-reaching consequences.

I think that fear is pretty justified!

*The University of Sussex was given a big fine because its Trans and Non-Binary Equality Policy Statement quashed free speech on the issue. The Office of Students supported the ruling, but the University is badmouthing the fine.  Sussex, you may recall, is where Professor Kathleen Stock (OBE) was more or less forced out because she opposed self-identification for non-binary or trans people, including her claim that (gasp!) there are only two sexes.

British authorities issued a record fine against one of the country’s universities on Wednesday for issues including failing to “uphold the freedom of speech and academic freedom” in a policy statement on transgender equality, an escalation in the debate over student and staff rights on campus.

The Office for Students, the regulator for higher education in England, imposed a penalty of 585,000 pounds, more than $755,000, on the University of Sussex. The fine followed an investigation into the university that began more than three years ago after Kathleen Stock, a philosophy professor, resigned saying that she had faced a campaign of harassment from students and activists over her views on gender identity.

The fine from the regulator, the Office for Students, comes amid fraught conversations about both trans rights and free speech on campuses in the United States and Britain, with many universities trying to balance the right of free expression with preventing hate speech.

Dr. Stock quit in 2021 after she was accused of being transphobic by students and activists for arguing that transgender women were not women. She said she faced a campaign of harassment, bullying and character assassination before quitting.

The university publicly defended Dr. Stock at the time. But on Wednesday, the Office for Students said the university’s policy statement on trans and nonbinary equality had created a “chilling effect” that could cause students and staff members to “self-censor.”

The regulator said this included requiring course materials to “positively represent trans people and trans lives.” It also penalized the school for failures in government and management processes.

A university’s governing documents “should uphold principles of free speech and academic freedom,” Arif Ahmed, the regulator’s director of free speech and academic freedom, said. He added that the university’s policy “restricted” speech, teaching and learning, and that Dr. Stock withheld materials from her students that she otherwise would have included as a result.

“Nothing in our approach has anything to do with taking sides on this issue,” he said, arguing that the regulator was concerned only with speech issues and neutral on issues of gender.

The university condemned the ruling, saying in a statement that it would make it impossible to create “policies to prevent abusive, bullying and harassing speech.” Sasha Roseneil, the university’s vice chancellor, promised to mount a legal challenge and said the regulator was mandating “libertarian free-speech absolutism as the fundamental principle for U.K. universities” and was “perpetuating the culture wars.”

This tweet leads to a thread which shows some of the University’s reaction:

*Ars Technica and the NYT reports two deleterious effects of dumb medical advice (h/t Reese). First, an outbreak of measles reported by AT:

An eruption of measles is spreading quickly in Kansas, with cases doubling in a week and spreading to three new counties, some with vaccination coverage among kindergartners at pitiful levels as low as 41 percent. Coverage of 95 percent or greater is thought to protect communities from onward spread of the extremely contagious virus.

In an update Wednesday, March 26, Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) reported 23 measles cases across six counties—up from 10 cases across three counties on March 21. The 23 people ill with the dangerous virus are mostly children, including six who are 0 to 4 years old, nine who are 5 to 10, three who are 11 to 13, three who are 14 to 17, and two adults between the ages of 25 and 44. Fortunately, none of the cases have been hospitalized so far, and there have been no deaths.

Twenty of the 23 cases were unvaccinated. One case was “not age appropriately vaccinated,” one was “age appropriately vaccinated,” and the remaining case’s vaccination status is pending.

From the NYT, a RFK Jr. “remedy” for measles that’s hurting people:

Doctors in West Texas are seeing measles patients whose illnesses have been complicated by an alternative therapy endorsed by vaccine skeptics including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary.

Parents in Gaines County, Texas, the center of a raging measles outbreak, have increasingly turned to supplements and unproven treatments to protect their children, many of whom are unvaccinated, against the virus.

One of those supplements is cod liver oil containing vitamin A, which Mr. Kennedy has promoted as a near miraculous cure for measles. Physicians at Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, Texas, say they’ve now treated a handful of unvaccinated children who were given so much vitamin A that they had signs of liver damage.

Some of them had received unsafe doses of cod liver oil and other vitamin A supplements for several weeks in an attempt to prevent a measles infection, said Dr. Summer Davies, who cares for acutely ill children at the hospital.

“I had a patient that was only sick a couple of days, four or five days, but had been taking it for like three weeks,” Dr. Davies said.

While doctors sometimes administer high doses of vitamin A in a hospital to manage severe measles, experts do not recommend taking it without physician supervision. Vitamin A is not an effective way to prevent measles; however, two doses of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine are about 97 percent effective.

USELESS remedies. Vitamin A is about as useful for measles as is ivermectin for Covid (n.b. Bret Weinstein). I suspected that RFK Jr. was the appointment that may cause the most damage to Americans, though Pete Hegseth is running neck and neck with him.

*Regardless of what you think of Christopher Rufo, the guy has a sense of humor. On his Twitter thread he’s destroyed the credibility of NPR head Katherine Maher by simply reposting her tweets from several years ago (she testified before Congress yesterday at a House subcommittee on government efficiency hearing along with PBS head Paula Kerger; both organizations get about 15% of their budget from the federal government). The hearings, dominated by Republicans, were intended to hector the organizations because–and this is true–they use federal money but have a pronounced left-wing slant to their news. (h/t Luana for the links):

There are many tweets in Rufo’s thread; here are a few (some with screenshots). Of course the Republicans were hostile and out to get her. Their goal: to replace her. But the first allegation, which she didn’t deny, is pretty distressing:

There are many more like these, and I can’t resist putting them up. Lots are hilarious. But Maher has to go. We’ll see:

 

*More RFK Jr. malfeasance: he plans to lay off ten thousand people from the Department of Health and Human Services:

The Trump administration on Thursday announced a layoff of 10,000 employees at the Health and Human Services Department, as part of a broad reorganization designed to bring communications and other functions directly under the purview of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The layoffs are a drastic reduction in personnel for the sprawling health department, which now employs about 82,000 people and touches the lives of every American through its oversight of medical care, food and drugs. Together with previous layoffs and departures, the move will bring the department down to about 62,000 employees, the agency said.

The restructuring will include creating a new division called the Administration for a Healthy America. “We’re going to do more with less,” Mr. Kennedy said, even as he acknowledged it would be “a painful period for H.H.S.”

The 28 divisions of the health agency will be consolidated into 15 new divisions, according to a statement issued by the department. Mr. Kennedy announced the changes in a YouTube video. The staff cuts, reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, are being made in line with President Trump’s order to implement the Department of Government Efficiency’s shrinking of the federal work force.

Mr. Kennedy said rates of chronic disease rose under the Biden administration even as the government grew. He pitched the changes as a way to refocus the agency on Americans’ health, but did not outline any specifics on how he would mediate rates of diabetes, heart disease or any other condition.

The reorganization will cut 3,500 jobs from the Food and Drug Administration, which approves and oversees the safety of a vast swath of the medications and consumer products people eat and rely on for well-being, according to an H.H.S. fact sheet. The cuts are said to be administrative, but some of the roles support research and monitoring of the safety and purity of food and drugs, as well as travel planning for inspectors who investigate overseas food and drug facilities.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will also have its work force cut by about 2,400 employees, and will narrow its focus to “preparing for and responding to epidemics and outbreaks,” the fact sheet said. The C.D.C. also does work on H.I.V./AIDS, tobacco control, maternal health and the distribution of vaccines for children. The National Institutes of Health will lose 1,200 staff members, and the agency that administers Medicare and Medicaid is expected to lose 300.

This is a huge layoff (technically, more than a “decimation,” which really means getting rid of 1 person out of 10), and I don’t like the sound of it HHS is an important department, and I’m dubious that they can cut this many people without doing harm to Americans.  I keep telling myself, “Well, in four more years we’ll have a Democratic President,” but I can’t quite convince myself of that. Who will our candidate be? And will they lean from the Democrats’ big loss last November?

*Finally, another “miracle” found to have a naturalistic explanation.

A laboratory analysis turned up nothing miraculous about red marks found on a Communion wafer at a Catholic church in Indiana.

The discovery at St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church in Morris was unusual enough for a formal inspection, the Archdiocese of Indianapolis said.

But a biochemical analysis revealed only “fungus and three different species of bacteria, all of which are commonly found on human hands,” the archdiocese said Monday, adding that no blood was found.

. . . Before the analysis, some members of St. Anthony Church were excited about what might be found.

What did they expect? Hemoglobin?

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili (looking a bit chonky) is touting herself again:

Hili: Do you really think that other things are more important?
A: More important than what?
Hili: More important than my needs.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy naprawdę sądzisz, że są ważniejsze sprawy?
Ja: Ważniejsze niż co?
And a picture of Baby Kulka in the outside windowsill. Notice that she has a lot more white on her face than does Hili:

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

From Meanwhile in Canada:

From Things With Faces, a scary spud:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Masih, who draws an analogy between anti-Hamas Gazans and anti-regime Iranians:

From Malcolm: closing the deal:

From Barry, who says I may have posted this before. It looks familiar, but what’s the harm of posting it again?

A year on Earth from the erstwhile commander of the ISS vis reader Bryan. The year was 2024-2025:

From my feed; a jealous kitten gets its own bottle:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I retweeted:

A Dutch girl was gassed to death upon arrival at Auschwitz. She was ten.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-03-28T10:24:08.333Z

Two marine tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, a lemon shark with a fish entourage. Are they waiting for bits of the shark’s prey?

Lemon shark rolling deep with an entourage of jacks on a blue water day #lemonshark #jackcrevalle #entourage #sharksofcoralcity #rollingdeep #crew #coral #coralhead #coralcitycamera #miami #portmiami #miamibeach #biscaynebay #coralcity #civicpridethroughbiodiversity

— Coral City Camera (@coralcitycamera.bsky.social) 2025-03-26T15:52:35.960Z

. . . and a beautiful stingray:

Magic carpet flap flapping through! #southernstingray #stingraysofcoralcity #stingray #flapflap #ufo #magiccarpet #coral #coralhead #coralcitycamera #miami #portmiami #miamibeach #biscaynebay #bfi #noaa #aoml #coralcity #civicpridethroughbiodiversity #glennnevis

— Coral City Camera (@coralcitycamera.bsky.social) 2025-03-25T15:20:14.945Z

Thursday: Hili dialogue

March 27, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Thursday, March 27, 2025, and National Spanish Paella Day (is there any other kind?) When I gave a talk in Valencia in 2011, they took me to what was supposed to be the best paella place in the city—the Spanish city most famed for its paella. The small restaurant was way out in the country, and in the back were two old men cooking paella over a wood fire. It was fantastic. Here’s a photo of the cooking and one of the final product.

Posting will be light for the next two days as today I have to take my car in for maintenance (oil change, tire rotation, etc.) and tomorrow I have a number of tasks. Bear with me; I do my best.

It’s also International Whisky Day and World Theatre Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 27 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, whom no rational person wanted to take that position, is starting to look like the biggest bumbler in the Signal fiasco in which US plans to attack Yemen were leaked by accident to the editor of the Atlantic–and before the attacks took place. I wish Trump would replace that guy. From the WSJ:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted plans for the timing and weapons to be used in a military strike against Houthi militants on a nongovernmental group chat at least two hours before the first bombs were scheduled to drop, according to texts published Wednesday by the Atlantic magazine.

The release of the texts comes after days of contentious dispute between the magazine and the White House over whether classified information about the military operation had been shared in the unclassified chat group in violation of longstanding security procedures and possibly legal requirements.

The new messages that were made public by the magazine showed the texts included details about the specific times that F-18s, MQ-9 drones and Tomahawk cruise missiles would be used in the attack and mentions intelligence that an unnamed target of the attacks was at a “known location.”

Such information is normally guarded carefully by the Pentagon before imminent strikes to avoid disclosures that could help adversaries.

In a statement Wednesday, Hegseth said, “The Atlantic released the so-called ‘war plans’ and those ‘plans’ include: No names. No targets. No locations. No units. No routes. No sources. No methods. And no classified information.”

His texts before the strikes in Yemen, though, included multiple specific details of the looming attack.

In a text entitled “Team Update” on the Signal service, Hegseth wrote that the weather was favorable for the military operation and that “we are a GO for mission launch.”

The text was posted at 11:44 a.m. E.T. on March 15, about 30 minutes before the first U.S. F-18s warplanes that carried out the strikes took off from a U.S. aircraft carrier.

All the participants, especially Tulsi Gabbard, said that no classified information was shared, nor any methods, locations, or war plans. This, given what has been reported elsewhere, sounds like flat-out lying. See Tulsi Gabbard’s video testimony at the WSJ piece, and she simply says she simply does not recall the details of the conversation when denying that it contained any sensititive information.

*And The Atlantic has finally released the transcript of the Signal chat, and yes, it gives sensitive information including methods and locations. As they say:

As we wrote on Monday, much of the conversation in the “Houthi PC small group” concerned the timing and rationale of attacks on the Houthis, and contained remarks by Trump-administration officials about the alleged shortcomings of America’s European allies. But on the day of the attack—Saturday, March 15—the discussion veered toward the operational.

Hegseth’s text:

  • “1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package)”
  • “1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME – also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s)”

Let us pause here for a moment to underscore a point. This Signal message shows that the U.S. secretary of defense texted a group that included a phone number unknown to him—Goldberg’s cellphone—at 11:44 a.m. This was 31 minutes before the first U.S. warplanes launched, and two hours and one minute before the beginning of a period in which a primary target, the Houthi “Target Terrorist,” was expected to be killed by these American aircraft. If this text had been received by someone hostile to American interests—or someone merely indiscreet, and with access to social media—the Houthis would have had time to prepare for what was meant to be a surprise attack on their strongholds. The consequences for American pilots could have been catastrophic.

The Hegseth text then continued:

  • “1410: More F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package)”
  • “1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based’ targets)”
  • “1536 F-18 2nd Strike Starts – also, first sea-based Tomahawks launched.”
  • “MORE TO FOLLOW (per timeline)”
  • “We are currently clean on OPSEC”—that is, operational security.
  • “Godspeed to our Warriors.”

Shortly after, Vice President J. D. Vance texted the group, “I will say a prayer for victory.”

And they discuss matters of foreign policy about Europe. And they even use EMOTICONS. Oy!

*This is a surprise; there was an anti-Hamas protest in Gaza, and it was even reported by the BBC (h/t Neil). You can see two minutes of video and read an article about this at MEMRI, too.

Hundreds of people have taken part in the largest anti-Hamas protest in Gaza since the war with Israel began, taking to the streets to demand the group step down from power.

Masked Hamas militants, some armed with guns and others carrying batons, intervened and forcibly dispersed the protesters, assaulting several of them.

Videos shared widely on social media by activists typically critical of Hamas showed young men marching in the streets of Beit Lahia, northern Gaza on Tuesday, chanting “out, out, out, Hamas out”.

Hamas has not commented directly on the protest, but in a statement on Wednesday it blamed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for resuming the war.

Pro-Hamas supporters downplayed the significance of the protests and accused the participants of being traitors.

The protests in northern Gaza came a day after Islamic Jihad gunmen launched rockets at Israel, prompting an Israeli decision to evacuate large parts of Beit Lahia, which sparked public anger in the area.

Israel has resumed its military campaign in Gaza following nearly two months of ceasefire, blaming Hamas for rejecting a new US proposal to extend the truce. Hamas, in turn, has accused Israel of abandoning the original deal agreed in January.

. . . . Open criticism of Hamas has grown in Gaza since war began, both on the streets and online, though there are still those that are fiercely loyal and it is hard to accurately gauge how far support for the group has shifted.

There was opposition to Hamas long before the war, though much of it remained hidden for fear of reprisals.

Mohammed Al-Najjar, from Gaza, posted on his Facebook: “Excuse me, but what exactly is Hamas betting on? They’re betting on our blood, blood that the whole world sees as just numbers.

“Even Hamas counts us as numbers. Step down and let us tend to our wounds.”

Here’s an ABC News video of the protests:

All I can say is that I’m mystified why Hamas didn’t shoot these protestors, for they used to do that. And bravo for the Gazans brave enough to know that they won’t begin to prosper until the get rid of Hamas and its culture of death. It’s possible that they are trying to court world opinion by showing that they tolerate dissent, or maybe they’re saving their ammo for Israelis.

*Neil Gross, a sociology professor at Colby College, asks in a NYT op-ed, “Have young people really turned MAGA?” Betteridge’s Law of Headlines suggests that the answer is “no,” and sure enough, that’s the case.

Democrats were alarmed last spring and summer when polling suggested that voters ages 18 to 29 were softening in their longtime commitment to the Democratic Party. After the November election, when exit polls indicated that Kamala Harris had won the young adult vote by only a slim margin (if that), it seemed that the ground had shifted. A post-inauguration cover story in New York magazine on young Trump supporters partying it up in Washington captured a widespread impression that this was a generational realignment: the rise of a cadre of MAGA youth.

After examining new survey data and interviewing more than 100 young adults for a book I’m writing on how politics is reshaping the college experience, I’m doubtful. Young MAGA types may feel newly energized and empowered, but empowerment is different from numerical growth. The data suggest that the swing in young adults voting for Donald Trump did not reflect a major shift in ideology. Rather, the swing seems to have resulted from moderate-to-somewhat-liberal young voters deciding to bet on Mr. Trump out of concern about the state of the economy — and from young moderates and progressives who chose to stay home because they thought Ms. Harris was either too progressive or not progressive enough. This is a point with implications for Democrats and Republicans alike.

The most striking feature of the young adult Trump swing is that it occurred even though there has been no significant recent increase in the proportion of young adults who identify as conservative. Data from the Cooperative Election Study, a national survey with more than 50,000 respondents during election years, show that between 2006 and 2023, about 23 percent of Americans ages 18 to 29 identified as either “conservative” or “very conservative” on average, a number that fluctuated only modestly year to year. The 2024 numbers, which the study’s researchers have shared with me, show no meaningful departure from this pattern. (Despite fears of the influence of a misogynistic online “manosphere,” the ratio of young men to young women who identify as conservative did not change appreciably, either.)

Likewise, the survey registered only modest changes in the political party affiliations of young adults over the past two decades. Young people have been softening in their commitment to the Democrats, but they’ve been softening in their commitment to the Republicans as well. In place of these loyalties a growing number say they are independents.

. . . .Republicans, for their part, should heed the limits of their mandate from young Americans, such as it is. The G.O.P.’s core base remains older white people who say they no longer recognize the country that young people are ushering into being. The more the Trump administration caters to these voters by doubling down on prayer in public schools, for example, or pursuing a national abortion ban or imposing restrictions on L.G.B.T.Q.+ rights, the more it risks alienating younger, more socially accepting voters who swung toward Mr. Trump for bigger paychecks and less expensive housing — especially if the economy falters.

Perhaps today’s young voters will more fully embrace partisan identities as they grow older. But it is also possible that dissatisfaction with both parties is so great that we are witnessing the emergence of a cohort of swing voters who are open to persuasion each political cycle. If this has the effect of tempering our polarized and dysfunctional politics, we will owe today’s young people our gratitude.

Well, I’m not sure if this is good news for Democrats. If the economy tanks it is, but the young folks aren’t that keen on wokeness, either. I get the feeling that Gross is trying to squeeze as much good news out of his data as he can, but I couldn’t find much to hearten me.

*Republicans have called for the defunding of NPR and PBS because they’re biased, and of course they are. Have you listened lately? I can hardly turn it on without hearing something woke, but at least Krista Tippett is no more. Yesterday House Republicans lit into the chief executives of both organizations for this bias.

Congressional Republicans laced into PBS and NPR on Wednesday, accusing the country’s biggest public media networks of institutional bias in a fiery hearing that functioned as the latest salvo against the American press by close allies of the Trump administration.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican who organized the hearing — which she called “Anti-American Airwaves” — derided PBS and NPR as “radical left-wing echo chambers” that published skewed news reports and indoctrinated children with L.G.B.T.Q. programming.

Paula Kerger, the chief executive of PBS, and Katherine Maher, the chief executive of NPR, rejected those claims, arguing that their stations served as a crucial source of accurate information and educational programming for millions of Americans.

And Democratic committee members mocked the proceedings as a cynical exercise by Republicans to air a predictable list of grievances against the news media. Representative Stephen Lynch, Democrat of Massachusetts, tried to shift focus onto the Trump administration, including the revelation that top security officials inadvertently included the editor of The Atlantic on a group chat planning a military operation.

Mr. Lynch said that Republicans would rather go after Big Bird than President Trump. “If shame was still a thing, this hearing would be shameful,” he said.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a government-funded company, received $535 million from the government for this year. Most of that money is spent on public radio and TV stations across the United States, with some of it going directly to NPR and PBS.

According to the NYT, fans of the stations are relieved that neither executive made major flubs.  Christopher Rufo published ten questions for Katherine Maher on his Substack site, but I seriously doubt that any of them were asked. More tomorrow.

Over at The Free Press, Uri Berliner, notorious for having quit as an NPR editor and writing about how woke the station is, continues to say that it’s woke, losing listeners, and that its promise to become more objective has failed. Berliner argues that NPR should just stop taking public money, quit pretending, and come out as a “progressive” radio station.  That sounds okay to me, because the station sure is not evenhanded in how it covers news. I would like to be challenged sometimes when I listen to it, and it’s the only station I listen to on my car radio.

*Finally, the AP reports two river otters escaped from a zoo (North American river otters: Lontra canadensis). I expect they’ll be caught and returned.

Two river otters, Louie and Ophelia, weaseled their way out of their Wisconsin zoo enclosure last week during a winter storm, appearing on security camera footage cavorting across the snow, as the search continued Tuesday.

The NEW Zoo & Adventure Park said the two North American river otters escaped through a small hole that they enlarged in a buried fence, and their flight was quickly noticed by zookeepers on their morning rounds.

But Louie and Ophelia don’t appear to have gone far, their tracks showed them exploring nearby bodies of water and returning to the zoo’s perimeter now and again, the zoo said in a news release.

Footage released by the zoo shows an otter leaving the stoop of a building and launching itself into a belly slide on the snow, its forepaws snapping to its side, nose leading the way and back legs thrusting for an extra boost.

It’s the undeniable “bounce, bounce, sliiiiide” of the otter, the zoo said in a Facebook post, and creates one of the more recognizable mammal tracks.

Louie and Ophelia are expected to stay close because otters are territorial creatures, the zoo said, adding their species are native to the area and capable of surviving, with the local ponds and streams offering food and shelter.

Here’s a news report (click “Watch on YouTube”)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is tired and says that it’s time to put Listy to bed:

Hili: Switch off the computer and let’s go to sleep.
A: Just let me check the articles for tomorrow.
In Polish:
Hili: Zgaś ten komputer i idziemy spać.
Ja: Jeszcze tylko sprawdzę artykuły na jutro.

. . . and a photo of the loving Szaron:

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

From John Schuermann:

 

From Jesus of the Day (this is me):

From Things With Faces, a sad cookie:

From Masih’s site: a tweet with a video of Gazans protesting against Hamas:

From Luana; education or indoctrination?

From Malcolm, who adds, “Big ears, too.”

Two from my feed. First, a biker d*g:

Caracal mom is very watchful!

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted.

A 43-year-old German engineer was gassed to death upon arrival at Auschwitz (I believe he's holding a slide rule).

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-03-27T10:06:52.750Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, an amphipod hitching a ride on a jellyfish:

This was a jelly sort of day. Featuring a handsome jelly-riding amphipod with a tail like antlers

— Keishu Asada (@cephwarden.bsky.social) 2025-03-25T23:11:36.349Z

An old tweet that chuffed Matthew’s daughter:

An old tweet.

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-03-26T09:44:58.872Z

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

March 26, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to a “Hump Day” (“Kilumbu ya Hump” in Kituba), Wednesday, March 26, 2025, and National Spinach Day. This is one of the very few green vegetables I like, and it makes you STRONG. Remember?

Most important, it is National Science Appreciation Day. Why today?:

On March 26, 1953, American medical scientist Dr. Jonas Salk revealed the successful development of his polio vaccine. It was a landmark achievement of science and continues to make life healthier and safer even today.

The CDC estimates the polio vaccine has prevented 18 million cases of paralysis and saved 1.5 million lives worldwide since 1988.

It somehow pleases me to know that, like Salk, Albert Sabin, who invented the attenuated live vaccine (the Salk vaccine used dead virus), was Jewish. And between them they saved 1.5 million lives. Now THAT is a legacy!

Here’s a very famous exchange between Salk and Edward R. Murrow about who owned the patent for the Salk vaccine. Salk did not get a dime!

It’s also Purple Day (my favorite color), National Nougat Day, World Math Day, and Manatee Appreciation Day. Remember that mammals have independently invaded the sea seven times, with two lineages extinct and five still with us. Here are the five: cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises), sirenians (manatees and dugongs), pinnipeds (seals, sea lions, and walruses), mustelids (otters), and ursids (polar bears).  I’m not sure the polar bear counts as a marine mammal, though. 

Here’s a NASA photo of Paris from Space.com, taken from the ISS, 261 miles above (h/t NASA and Bat). It’s pretty amazing, and makes me want to return.  They don’t call it the “City of Light” for nothing! Notes from the site:

This photo of Paris was taken at 9:54 p.m. local time on March 14, 2025 from 261 miles (420 kilometers) above the city through a window aboard the International Space Station.

The astronaut who captured this shot — possibly Expedition 72 flight engineer Don Pettit, who has been working on photo documenting cities at night — used by Nikon Z9 full-frame mirrorless camera with a 200mm lens.

From this orientation, the Eiffel Tower can be seen glowing brightly in yellow light left of center. Just north of it, lit in white is the Arc de Triomphe.

The Palais Garnier and the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre can be seen above the center of the photo,

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

Da Nooz:

*You all know about how several members of Trump’s security team fluffed a supposedly confidential group text chat on military action in Yemen, including by mistake the head editor of the Atlantic, Jeff Goldberg. And Goldberg did disclose some of what he learned–after the action in Yemen came about (there was some disagreement among the members of the chat, which included Vice President JD Vance, National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.  But they all denied that classified material was revealed. even though that seems misleading:

Two of the Trump administration’s top intelligence officials denied in a frequently contentious Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Tuesday that classified information was shared in an encrypted group chat in which details of an attack on Yemen were discussed in the presence of a journalist who had been mistakenly added to the conversation.

Pressed repeatedly about the security breach in the previously scheduled intelligence committee hearing, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, and John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, both denied that classified material had been shared in the chat in which they were included.

The White House also sought to downplay the serious nature of the extraordinary security breach, as bipartisan criticism of the incident grew and leading Democrats called for the resignation of the national security adviser, Michael Waltz, who set up the group chat, and the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, who reportedly shared classified war plans in it.

  • Bipartisan criticism: The vice chairman of the intelligence committee, Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, denounced what he called “sloppy, careless, incompetent behavior” by the country’s top intelligence officials. Representative Don Bacon, Republican of Nebraska and a senior member of the Armed Services Committee, told reporters that the White House should “be honest and own up” to what happened.

  • Defending Waltz: President Trump defended Mr. Waltz, saying in an interview with NBC News that the national security adviser had “learned a lesson” and suggested a staff member was to blame for including a journalist in the secret group chat.

  • Damage control: The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said no classified material was sent to the group chat, despite the inclusion of specific details of the Yemen strike before it took place, and she attacked the journalist who revealed it, Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, as “sensationalist.” Her statement came a day after Mr. Hegseth suggested the leak was a “hoax.”

Some of the Republicans who were part of that call had criticized Hillary Clinton for using her own email to do government business, which wasn’t too cool, but the beefing about those Republicans for hypocrisy doesn’t move me much.  What bothers me more is how something like this could happen in the first place, especially with the ability of some countries, like China, to do pretty good jobs of hacking.

*Columbia University caved to the Trump administration, making a number of demanded changes in return for restoration of $400 million in federal funds withheld from the University.  I think some of those changes needed to be made, but I don’t at all like the government using science funding as a lever to alter universities in ways it wants. After all, a liberal administration could do the same thing to make universities less conservative! The principle is that the government should not use science funding to impose its ideology on universities, a precious resource in America. And now the interim President of Columbia is in trouble with the faculty for caving:

Columbia University interim president Katrina Armstrong met with anxious faculty over the weekend in an effort to generate support, warn of the jeopardy the school faces and play down concerns that the deal the school cut with the government on Friday undermined its academic independence.

In meetings with about 75 faculty leaders, Armstrong and her team said six federal agencies are investigating the school and could pull all federal support from it. The Trump administration has already canceled $400 million in grants and contracts over concerns Columbia failed to protect Jewish students from harassment.

“The ability of the federal administration to leverage other forms of federal funding in an immediate fashion is really potentially devastating to our students in particular,” Armstrong said, according to a transcript of the meetings reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. “I think it is a really critical risk for us to understand.”

Lawyers for the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights are scheduled to visit campus and question faculty this week about potential violations of federal civil rights laws, people familiar with the matter said.

Columbia receives more than $1 billion a year in federal funds, Armstrong said. Much of the school’s approximately $15 billion endowment is earmarked by donors for specific programs. The school has begun to consider what it would give priority to if all federal funds were cut, according to a transcript.

. . . . The weekend meetings with faculty highlight the tangle of pressure points Armstrong is navigating. The Trump administration could end funding, a potentially existential threat. At the same time, internal conflicts are dividing faculty. Without enough support, Armstrong could face a faculty vote of no confidence, undermining her ability to lead.

Medical and research faculty, who are most affected by federal cuts, are angry they are bearing most of the financial brunt for the political activism of more liberal co-workers in arts and humanities. Many also believe Columbia hasn’t adequately protected Jewish students.

Arts and social sciences professors worry more about ceding independence to Trump, suffering reputational damage and not yielding to what they perceive as an authoritarian erosion of civil liberties. Some criticized Armstrong for not taking a harder line with President Trump.

Others expressed frustration that the school has received little support from other university presidents.

This is a tough one because the money withheld hurts mostly scientists and, as the report notes, it is people in the humanities who created most of the troubles. And, of course, President Trump shouldn’t be doing this, though there’s a small part of me that has some approbation for him doing this. However, I have no idea what I’d do were I president of that beleaguered school. I suppose this is one reason why college Presidents make so much money. (The penultimate President of Columbia made nearly $4 million per year.)

*The law in New York mandates that products to help with menstruation be freely available, but enforcement (and availability) is spotty. Now a nonprofit group and a student are suing the state for noncompliance:

Alisa Nudar was in the middle of her math exam when she realized she had unexpectedly started her period.

Nudar raised her hand and asked for permission to go to the bathroom. When she got there, she found that she had bled through her underwear. She didn’t have any period products with her, and there were none in the bathroom. “I kept asking people who were coming in and they were, like, Oh, I’m so sorry, I don’t have any,” Nudar said. “And already 10 minutes had passed.”

She walked out of the bathroom looking for a better solution and bumped into a friend who ran back to her classroom to get one of her own pads.

All of that searching took about 15 minutes, Nudar said — wasted time that she could have put into her exam. Back then, in 2021, Nudar was a freshman at Bard High School Early College in New York City. And legally there should have been tampons and pads in the school bathroom, provided for free by the New York City Department of Education.

Now a nonprofit organization called Period Law and an anonymous student are suing the Education Department for not providing those products in schools, a failure that, according to the legal complaint, effectively amounts to discrimination against menstruating people.

In 2016, New York City became the first jurisdiction in the country to pass a law mandating every school to be stocked with free period products. The law paved the way for other legislators to pass their own versions of a similar law. Today, 28 states and the District of Columbia have laws on free period products in schools.

In the years since, however, implementation in New York has been weak and inconsistent, said Laura Strausfeld, founder and executive director of Period Law, which was instrumental in crafting the law.

The failure makes it seem as though period products are an optional benefit rather than a necessity akin to toilet paper or soap, Strausfeld said. “No kid is sitting in class worried whether there will be toilet paper in the bathroom — that is where a lack of access to menstrual products is discriminating against menstruators.” Filing this lawsuit at a time when equity initiatives are being scaled back across the country is an attempt to keep the issue front and center, Strausfeld said, rather than let it get “back burnered.”

Studies have shown that the lack of availability of these products has an inimical effect on students’ performance, as periods cause girls to miss school or class.  I agree with this free dispensation, for period products are a necessity to women.  All you need to realize in adjudicating this is that if men had periods, this would be a non-issue: free tampons or pads would be everywhere.

*Trump didn’t like the 2019 portrait of him posted in the Colorado State Capitol, and so it’s being removed. Even the Democrats agreed to take it down!

President Donald Trump likes having his name and image on things, but there’s one representation of his likeness that he wanted gone — a portrait that hangs in the Colorado Capitol. Trump took to Truth Social to complain about the painting Sunday night, blaming the state’s Democratic governor for it and demanding that it be removed.

On Monday, Republican state lawmakers in Colorado followed Trump’s directive. They asked for the portrait to be taken down, and the Democratic lawmakers who hold the majorities in the legislature signed off on removing it, Colorado House Democrats spokesman Jarrett Freedman said.

“If the GOP wants to spend time and money on which portrait of Trump hangs in the Capitol, then that’s up to them,” Freedman said in a statement.

In his complaints Sunday evening on social media, Trump falsely claimed that the portrait had been arranged for by Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) and alleged that his likeness had been “purposefully distorted” — but in reality, the portrait was commissioned during Trump’s first term and backed by Republicans. It has hung in Colorado’s Capitol since 2019, and its funding was led by a Republican former state Senate president, Kevin Grantham.

“Nobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves, but the one in Colorado, in the State Capitol, put up by the Governor, along with all other Presidents, was purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before,” Trump wrote Sunday night on Truth Social.

Trump didn’t say why he didn’t like the portrait or what had prompted him to post about it, but he used its existence as a chance to take jabs at Polis, writing, “Jared should be ashamed of himself!”

Here; you can see the portrait in question. I don’t think it’s so bad, but remember how vain Trump is.  Does he wanted to be bare-chested with a six-pack sitting on a horse?

*And, on the light side, two engineers from the Royal Air force were chewed out by a British judge for breaking and then stealing a statue of–Paddington Bear!

They didn’t look after this bear.

In fact, two men who had been drinking kicked and yanked on a statue of Paddington, the fictional orphaned bear who came to England from Peru, until it broke in half. Then they took it.

A judge on Tuesday chastised the duo — both military personnel — for being the “antithesis” of everything Paddington’s character stands for.

Daniel Heath and William Lawrence, both 22 and engineers in the Royal Air Force, admitted in Reading Magistrates’ Court that they were responsible for the March 2 vandalism in Newbury, the hometown of Paddington creator Michael Bond.

“Paddington Bear is a beloved cultural icon with children and adults alike,” Judge Sam Goozee said. “He represents kindness, tolerance and promotes integration and acceptance in our society. … Your actions were the antithesis of everything Paddington stands for.”

The statue of the bear in his signature blue coat and red hat was one of 23 installed last fall as part of a Paddington trail across England to mark the release of “Paddington in Peru.” The introspective bear is gazing skyward while clutching a sandwich — with marmalade about to drip on his lap.

The judge noted that the label on Paddington’s coat says, “Please look after this bear.”

Prosecutor said Jamie Renuka said the men were drunk during the escapade that was captured by a surveillance camera on the empty street just before 2 a.m. The two spirited away half of the statue in a taxi and returned to RAF Odiham base where the purloined Paddington was later found in Lawrence’s car.

Goozee said the crime could “only be described as an act of wanton vandalism” and that the two had failed to uphold the respect and integrity expected in the military.

The pair, who admitted criminal damage, were ordered to perform community work and each to pay 2,725 pounds ($3,527) for repairs to the damaged statue.

Military discipline might be imposted on top of this, but that would be a private matter. Here’s a video of the very moment of the vandalism and theft:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, a leak in the ceiling was fixed, but Hili ponders everyone’s increasing age:

Hili: Has the water stopped dripping from the ceiling in the kitchen?
A: Yes, the plumber exchanged the old gasket.
Hili: Gaskets are also getting old.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy w kuchni woda z sufitu przestała kapać?
Ja: Tak, hydraulik wymienił w łazience na górze starą uszczelkę i wszystko jest już w porządku.
Hili: Uszczelki też się starzeją.

And a photo of Szaron and Kulka, also getting old. . . .

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

From Seth Andrews (I am that guy holding the sign):

From Jesus of the Day:

From Godless Mom:

From Masih: another brave and blinded Iranian woman, shot in the face for dissenting. Sound up (there are subtitles).

From Bryan. There’s never any end to Schrödinger’s Cat memes, but here’s a new one:

And from Malcolm; one minute of smart cats:

It may be illegal to wear political symbols on your clothes in this school, but everybody is overheated.  Then the student makes himself really stupid by pointing to the “Gulf of America”. This is America in 2025:

From my feed: ants solve a problem:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

This French Jewish boy was gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz. He was nine.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-03-26T10:08:32.282Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, a thread of cat art (there are some lovely pieces in the thread):

Inagaki Tomoo – Black Cat, c. 1940-1950

— Rabih Alameddine (@rabihalameddine.bsky.social) 2024-12-19T00:11:31.820Z

It’s hard for me to believe that this is real!

youtu.be/GQcN7lHSD5Y

— Ehud (@duhe.bsky.social) 2025-03-19T20:35:15.872Z

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

March 25, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the Cruelest Day: Tuesday,  March. 25, 2025, and International Waffle Day. The home of the waffle in America is, of course, Waffle House, with more than 2,000 locations.  Here’s Anthony Bourdain with Sean Brock eating at the Waffle House for the first time. Bourdain was dubious, but, as you’ll see, liked it! It’s the quintessence of America.

It’s also Pecan Day (see pecan waffle above), National Lobster Newburg Day, and National Medal of Honor Day, honoring the recipients of the nation’s highest military honor.  My father was friends with one medalist: Lew Millett, who led the last American bayonet charge during the Korean War.

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

Da Nooz:

*At the NYT’s “The Conversation” between Bret Stephens and Gail Collins, they talk about many things, including Chuck Schumer:

Gail: About Schumer, by the way: I think we agree that he did the right thing in voting with the Trumpians to keep the government operating. I’ve always liked Schumer and the things he stood for. But should he continue to be Senate minority leader? If so, he has to rally the Democrats around a serious message of reform. And by that I don’t mean tax cuts.

Bret: Schumer did something genuinely brave: He took a bullet for his party. A government shutdown would have been blamed on the Democrats, giving Trump the talking point that the absence of government was wholly the result of the Democrats caring more for ideology than they do for the country. And it would have given the president carte blanche to decide for himself what parts of the government he deems critical — and which parts are even more disposable.

Gail: Absolute agreement.

Bret: The larger question you raise is whether Schumer is the right messenger for reform. And I guess my answer is whether the next Democratic leader will be someone in the Elizabeth Warren progressive mold or a centrist like Colorado’s Michael Bennet. If the former, I’d say to Chuck: Hold on with your fingernails.

So who would you prefer as the reformer? And what would be your message of reform?

Gail: Tough question, which the Democrats in Congress are far from together answering. I’d love to see the caucus acknowledge that it’s not a bad thing to cut some funding for programs that haven’t been trimmed down in a while. After coming up with new plans to accomplish the original goals.

I’m pretty much with Stephens on this one. Schumer did a brave thing that also helped the Democrats, although the “progressives” are now screaming for him to resign. That’s misguided. And I also agree with Stephens about Bennet over Warren. I’ve never trusted Warren since she lied about her “indigenous” background.

*This morning, based on some news that the gene-sequencing/ancestry company 23andMe is going belly-up, I went over to the site, signed in, and told them to eliminate all my data before they sell it to some other company (there’s already been a data breach at that company).  Now the WSJ tells us that the company is filing for bankruptcy:

23andMe, the buzzy consumer technology startup that convinced millions of people to spit into test tubes to determine their ancestry, filed for bankruptcy late Sunday night and announced the resignation of its chief executive.

Shares dropped about 50% Monday after the late Sunday bankruptcy filing. It marks a stunning fall for a health technology company that more than 15 million consumers have used to gain new insight into their lineage and health risks.

CEO Anne Wojcicki, who is stepping down from her position but remaining on the board, has so far tried unsuccessfully to rescue the business by buying it back.

Wojcicki said in a late Sunday post on X that she still aims to buy the company’s assets. “I remain committed to our long-term vision of being a global leader in genetics and establishing genetics as a fundamental part of healthcare ecosystems worldwide,” she wrote.

23andMe traded at $0.91 per share early Monday afternoon, the second time its stock has fallen below $1. The company did a reverse 20:1 share split in October to boost its price above the threshold needed to comply with listing requirements for Nasdaq.

The company said its chapter 11 filing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Missouri is “the best path forward to maximize the value of the business.”

23andMe’s global database has grown into a virtually unprecedented repository of human genetic information that could be sold in bankruptcy proceedings.

Why did it go bankrupt? Because of a bad business model:

Six years ago, 23andMe was one of the hottest startups in the world. Its tests had won the support of the Food and Drug Administration, and, with an affordable price tag, became popular Christmas stocking stuffers.

Accounts of test-takers discovering life-altering details about their lineage—siblings they never knew or finding unknown parents—led to news stories and namechecks on Saturday Night Live and in a chart-topping song. Its tagline “welcome to you” sold users on the promise of learning more about themselves.

But 23andMe never solved its central business problem: Customers only need to take its DNA test once.

It tried alternative business strategies, including selling subscriptions, but those never caught on. It also sought to license its data to outside pharmaceutical companies to help with their drug-development efforts. But there, too, it struggled to find significant recurring revenue.

I’m glad I got rid of my data, as it includes personal details as well as DNA sequences. I know what I need to know already (I’m 98% Ashkenazi Jew and the other 2% Eastern European, probably Jew as well), and that is all ye need to know.

*An article in the Friends of Animals tells us that it’s time to stop hunting ducks.

I get a kick out of seeing mallards upend themselves, tail feathers to the sky, while they search for tasty plants and insects. I don’t take it for granted that I can see these ducks, as well as osprey, blue heron, kingfishers, cardinals, robins, tufted titmouse, and other birds whenever I want at this marvelous land trust property.

That’s why it was troubling to learn this week that ducks, who were once a conservation bright spot, are now declining in the U.S., according to the 2025 State of the Birds Report released by the North American Bird Conservation Initiative (NABCI). The report reveals the total number of dabbling and diving ducks is down about 30% from 2017. Loss of grasslands habitat and a prolonged drought affecting the wetlands of the Great Plains’ prairie pothole region have taken a toll, the report says.

Among all the waterfowl, numbers are down 20% since 2014, the report found. Overall, at least 112 North American bird species have lost more than half their populations in the past 50 years.

Commenting on the report, co-author Mike Brasher of the duck-hunting group, Ducks Unlimited, said, “These are the very real consequences if we are unable to conserve and protect the crucial habitats that birds need.”

Of course, Friends of Animals agrees that we need to protect wetlands and grasslands, but how about not shooting ducks? How about banning duck hunting in the U.S. and then studying their populations?

Brasher conveniently neglects to mention hunting as a stressor on ducks, since Ducks Unlimited was founded by hunters in 1937. The majority of DU’s financial contributors and 90 percent of its members are hunters.

If that weren’t the case, perhaps we’d see “Stop Shooting Ducks” at the top of the list of the of actions people can take to help protect birds in decline. It’s sickening to know that people can shoot mergansers, mallards, pintails and gadwalls for fun, the creatures that make the preserve near me so magical.

I sent the article to my friend Jim, who commented, with a point: ”

But the duck article failed to mention how hunting fees pay for habitat, or how daily limits are set based on population sizes, which to me says that the author knew the conclusion before ever starting.  Back in the 1980s, you could shoot 10 pintails in a day (if those were your only ducks).  The population plummeted, and the limit has been 1 pintail per day for a couple of decades.  Next year, it looks like it will go to 3 here.  I can assure you that any attempt to ban duck hunting will result in an ever stronger support of the Republican party.  Of course, an attempt to ban hunting of any kind will never get off the ground – hunting is a sport for the elite and wealthy, who can influence politics.

All I know is that I personally could not shoot a duck.

*Arizona state legislatures appear to be largely immune from criminal and civil charges if they’re committed when the legislature is in session. Now there will be a bill about this insupportable regulation. It’s not just traffic tickets, either.

Soon after his black sedan was clocked speeding 18 miles an hour over the limit through a western-themed town north of here, Arizona state Sen. Mark Finchem (R) wanted to make sure he would not be treated like an ordinary person.

Writing on his office letterhead, Finchem sought assurances from a police chief that he would be spared from a traffic ticket. He cited a provision in the state constitution that shields lawmakers from certain penalties while the legislature is in session.

“Perhaps the officer is unaware of the law in this regard,” he wrote about his Jan. 25 citation. “For my part, I was unaware that the stretch of the road I was driving on was 30 MPH … Regardless, under Article 4, Part 2, Section 6 of the Arizona Constitution, I ask that the citation be voided and stricken from the record.”

The senator was one of three MAGA Republicans in the state pulled over for speeding over the past year who benefited from legislative immunity that either shielded them from punishment or delayed it.

By using the law in their favor, they have sparked debate about the fairness of a constitutionally enshrined justice system that protects those in power from the same type of immediate consequences their constituents face every day. Their moves have been received by some members of their own party and Democrats as evidence they were acting with impunity. Supporters of the immunity provision say it ensures that those in power cannot use the law — even in the form of traffic violations — to target critics.

But a Republican Arizona House member wants to end the two-tiered justice system for traffic scofflaws. Rep. Quang Nguyen has introduced a resolution that would let voters decide during the 2026 midterm election whether lawmakers should continue to be immune from traffic violations while they are in session. The resolution passed the House this month with bipartisan support, but its fate in the Senate is unclear.

And it’s not just traffic violations, either:

In Arizona, legislators are free from arrest and questioning in all cases except for treason, felony and breach of the peace, starting 15 days before the legislature convenes and lasting throughout the session. In 2011, police said a Republican senator claimed immunity after a fight with his girlfriend; he disputed the allegation, according to press reports. He later pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge.

The upcoming bill should prevent immunity for all violations, not just traffic tickets. Oh, and it’s not just in Arizona:

In 1996, a Virginia Republican state lawmaker invoked the privilege during the legislative session after exposing himself in a Richmond park. He got a charge of indecent exposure against him thrown out, but it was reinstated after the General Assembly adjourned, according to press reports. In 2019, a Democratic lawmaker from West Virginia claimed the privilege and then avoided a misdemeanor charge after he was accused of forcefully opening a door into a capitol employee and elbowing a colleague.

Nobody, but nobody, should be immune from the law, and that includes the President. If America means anything, it is supposed to mean that we are all equal under the law.

*A while back, an 18-carat solid gold toilet was stolen from Blenheim Palace, birthplace of Winston Churchill. But at least two potty thieves have been arrested and now convicted. You can see the toilet in the video below:

A thief who swiped a golden toilet from an English palace was convicted Tuesday along with an accomplice who helped cash in on the spoils of the 18-carat work of art insured for nearly 5 million pounds (more than $6 million).

Michael Jones had used the fully functioning one-of-a-kind latrine as he did reconnaissance at Blenheim Palace — the country mansion where British wartime leader Winston Churchill was born — the day before the theft, prosecutors said. He described the experience as “splendid.”

He returned before dawn on Sept. 14, 2019, with at least two other men armed with sledgehammers and crowbars. They smashed a window and pried the toilet from its plumbing within five minutes, leaving a damaging flood in their wake as they escaped in stolen vehicles.

“This was an audacious raid which had been carefully planned and executed,” prosecutor Shan Saunders said. “But those responsible were not careful enough, leaving a trail of evidence in the form of forensics, CCTV footage and phone data.”

The purloined potty has never been recovered but is believed to have been cut up and sold.

As Wikipedia notes (it of course has an article on the precious potty), it was put in Blenheim Palace after being shown (and used) at the Guggenheim Museum:

Maurizio Cattelan created the toilet in 2016 for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City. It was made in a foundry in Florence, cast in several parts that were welded together. Made to look like the museum’s other Kohler toilets, it was installed in one of the museum’s bathrooms for visitors to use.  A special cleaning routine was put in place.  The museum stated that the work was paid for with private funds.

According to the museum, over 100,000 people waited in line to use America, and a security guard was posted outside the bathroom. According to Cattelan, the work was made of 103 kilograms (227 lb) of gold, which in September 2019 was valued at more than four million dollars as bullion.  As an artwork, it has been estimated as high as six million.

In September 2017, when the museum declined a White House request to loan its 1888 Van Gogh painting Landscape with Snow for then President Donald Trump’s private rooms, curator Nancy Spector offered to loan America instead. Any reply by the White House was not reported.

In September 2019, America was installed at Blenheim Palace in the United Kingdom, where it was available for use as part of an exhibition of Cattelan’s works. It was placed in a water closet formerly used by Winston Churchill.

From Wikipedia, the precious john:

stu_spivack, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A video showing the theft is below. The toilet was apparently broken up and sold; it is an ex-commode, flushing in the Bathroom Invisible:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is hunting for Kulka, but if she finds Baby Kulka, a hissing spat will ensue:

Andrzej: What are you doing?
Hili: I’m hunting for Kulka
In Polish:
Ja: Co ty robisz?
Hili: Poluję na Kulkę.

And here’s Baby Kulka; I hope Hili doesn’t find her!

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

From Jesus of the Day:

From Meow:

From The Absurd Sign Project:

Nine minutes of Masih telling Maria Bartiromo about the assassination attempts on her, as well as her views on the politics of the Middle East, particularly Iran.

From Luana, “Jerry, be nice.”

From Colin Wright, an absurdity:

And from Luana, a heartwarmer, at least to me.  Thank you, Simon.

Two from my feed. They’ll be afraid of this little guy soon enough:

Baby tigers!

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

If this French Jewish boy, aged six, hadn't been murdered upon arrival at Auschwitz, today would be his 89th birthday.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-03-25T10:30:02.674Z

One from Matthew today; snow leopards!

Footage of four, rarely-seen snow leopards clambering up snowy cliffs in northern Pakistan has created a frenzy of excitement among conservationists.www.cnn.com/2025/03/18/a…

— Tom Fitton (@tomfitton.bsky.social) 2025-03-20T17:12:03.501Z

Monday: Hili dialogue

March 24, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the beginning of the “work” week, when many are “working from home,” doing chores and raiding the fridge. It’s March 24, 2025 and National Cheesesteak Day. This sandwich is at its best in Philadelphia, and its most famous purveyor is Pat’s, “The King of Steaks, ” celebrating its 95th anniversary.  Here, have one (I’ve never eaten one as I’ve been to Philly only once):

It’s also World Tuberculosis Day, National Chocolate Covered Raisins Day (I used to eat them in the movies when I was a kid, calling them “rabbit turds”), and National Cocktail Day.

Today’s Google Doodle celebrates. . . well, click on it and you’ll see (stay on the page for a few seconds after you click below):

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

Da Nooz:

*Given the failure of the cease-fire in Gaza, Israel is making a push to eradicate Hamas, mostly via killing off its high officials. The problem with the WSJ report below is that they are using statistics taken from Hamas without saying so, and also not noting that the dead (whose numbers we don’t know) surely include a large number of terrorists as well as family members of terrorists who were killed during a targeted strike. This is not to say, of course, that civilian deaths are okay, but that the figures misrepresent both the numbers and the aims of the IDF:

Israel’s military is expanding its ground operations across the Gaza Strip as talks to stop the fighting and release more hostages have stalled and the death toll in the enclave surpasses 50,000.

Israeli troops pressed into the northern Gaza border town of Beit Hanoun on Saturday to lay the groundwork for expanding Israel’s security buffer, a several-hundred-meter-wide zone the military has carved out within Gaza that spans its border with Israel.

The military said it is now operating in patches to expand its footprint and uproot Hamas infrastructure across Gaza, from Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya in the north to the Netzarim corridor bisecting the enclave’s middle and Rafah on the Egyptian border in the south. Fresh evacuation orders were issued Sunday for Palestinians to flee expanding operations in Rafah, as Israel said its forces had completed encircling the city’s Tel al-Sultan neighborhood.

Israel is also targeting prominent members of Hamas. Airstrikes across Gaza overnight killed Salah al-Bardawil, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, the U.S.-designated terrorist organization said.

Israeli strikes have killed more than 600 Palestinians since fighting resumed with an intense air campaign on March 18, according to Palestinian health authorities, whose figures don’t distinguish between civilians and combatants. The war has now killed more than 50,000 Palestinians since it began more than 17 months ago. [JAC: where did they get that data?] It was sparked by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people and saw 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli authorities. A two-month reprieve in the fighting ended this month after Israel and Hamas were unable to come to terms to extend their January cease-fire.

. . . Israel’s current moves are part of the government’s strategy to press Hamas to accept a deal to free the nearly 60 remaining hostages in the Gaza Strip, 24 of whom are believed to be alive. Israel’s government is under intense public pressure to secure their release, and tens of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets in the days since fighting resumed to urge their leaders to seek a deal.

I think we’ve learned, and it’s no surprise, that Hamas will NEVER release all the hostages, for if they do they would lose the only bargaining chip they have. Perhaps they would do so in return for Israel’s assurance that Hamas could continue to rule Gaza without Israel’s military in the territory, but Israel won’t want that. They want Hamas gone and out of power. This is a very tough situation. Egypt’s President offered to take half a million Gazan civilians, but that seems to have come to nothing. Oh, and the WSJ article doesn’t mention that Gaza has, in the last week or so, fired several rockets (around half a dozen) at Israel, but all of them were taken down by the Iron Dome.

*Remember when Trump said he wanted to buy Greenland from Denmark? I thought that came to nothing, and hope and believe that it won’t, but still. . . Trump is sending the Second Lady, Usha Vance, to Greenland this coming week along with other government officials. Greenland’s government is steamed:

Relations between Greenland and the United States sank further on Sunday as the Greenlandic prime minister erupted over what he called a “highly aggressive” delegation of senior officials the Trump administration said it would send to the island this week.

Usha Vance, the second lady, and Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, are among the officials headed to the island, which is a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, though President Trump has vowed to make it part of the United States “one way or the other.”

Ms. Vance is scheduled to make a series of cultural stops after her arrival on Thursday, separate from Mr. Waltz. The national security adviser is supposed to be traveling earlier in the week with the U.S. energy secretary, Chris Wright.

The prime minister, Mute B. Egede, said on Sunday that Greenlanders’ effort to be diplomatic just “bounces off Donald Trump and his administration in their mission to own and control Greenland.”

He made the remarks, his angriest yet, to a Greenlandic newspaper on Sunday, and a high-ranking member of his party confirmed them. The prime minister seemed especially upset with Mr. Waltz’s involvement.

“What is the national security adviser doing in Greenland?” he asked. “The only purpose is to demonstrate power over us.”

“His mere presence in Greenland will no doubt fuel American belief in Trump’s mission — and the pressure will increase,” he added.

Other Greenlandic officials complained about the inopportune timing of the visit, pointing out that Greenland had just held parliamentary elections and that a new government has not even been formed.

“The fact that the Americans are well aware we are in the middle of negotiations,” said Jens-Frederik Nielsen, the leader of the most popular political party, “once again shows a lack of respect for the Greenlandic people.”

Ain’t gonna happen, Greenland becoming a U.S. possession; it’s no more likely than Canada becoming our 51st state. Still, why are we taxpayers funding an expensive trip to Greenland? It’s not just to watch a dogsled race!? Remember, just when you think Trump has forgotten about one of his campaign promises, it resurfaces.

*Spiders are smarter than you think, as the NYT reports (h/t Peggy). They soundproof their webs in cities!

There’s nothing worse than a noisy neighbor when you are trying to have a nice meal — even if that meal consists of liquefying the insides of your prey before sucking them back up.

New research shows that some spiders living in cities somehow weave soundproofing designs into the fabric of their webs to manage unwanted noise, which can make it difficult for them to find prey and detect mates.

. . . Funnel-web spiders are widespread in North America. Quarter-size with legs outstretched, these spiders attach their webs to everything, whether rocks and grass or human objects. They weave a kind of funnel into their webs where they typically hide from predators. Their silk isn’t sticky, so they rely on speed and ambush. After sensing prey on their webs, they burst out and attack, injecting their victims with venom and then liquefying their insides for easy digestion.

. . . . In a study published last week in the journal Current Biology, Dr. Pessman and Dr. Hebets rounded up arachnid city slickers and country bumpkins and took them to a laboratory. They placed each spider in a container with a speaker at the bottom that played either loud or quiet white noise for four days to the spider.

The researchers then analyzed the webs that each spider built by sending measured vibrations at different points.

Dr. Hebets and Dr. Pessman didn’t find much difference in the way the webs of city spiders and farm spiders transmitted vibrations when they played the quiet noise.

When they played loud noise to the city spiders, they found that their webs were less sensitive, transmitting fewer vibrations to the funnel. “Their webs were essentially quieter,” Dr. Pessman said. The researchers weren’t sure how the webs differed structurally, but it Dr. Pessman said it seemed clear that “they are cutting down on the constant noise they are getting close to where they are sitting.”

. . . . Conversely, when the country spiders heard loud noise, they built webs that were more sensitive. The researchers speculated that they weren’t used to that kind of racket and were desperately trying to sense incoming prey. It’s like turning up your television as a lawn mower passes close to your window.

The city spiders, on the other hand, essentially padded their walls because they were sick of it all — an adaptation that could put them at a disadvantage for hearing prey or potential mates, which also use vibrations to communicate their availability. But that may help the animals save their energy and not react to every urban sound they detect.

Note that this difference is seen as an “adaptation,” but is it evolved (with the genes differing among populations of the same spider) or learned, with the city spiders having learned what gets them the most prey and mates? Given the design of the experiment, it’s clear that the behavior can be learned, but I’m not sure if they can tell whether it has also evolved in city spiders. I suspect that there’s both a cultural learning component and an evolutionary component that makes spiders tune their webs to different amounts of noise.

*The AP reports that AOC is trying to find a segment of the Democratic Party to lead that is more centrist but still combative.

“She has become an inspiration to millions of young people,” Sanders said of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, recounting her biograp

hy from a girl who helped her mother clean houses and later became a bartender before emerging as political insurgent who ousted a powerful New York Democrat in a U.S. House primary.

The crowd began a chant of her well-known moniker: “AOC! AOC!”

In a leaderless Democratic Party out of power in Washington, Ocasio-Cortez has a message and a connection with a segment of liberals feeling disenchanted with both parties. Now, in her fourth term, the 35-year-old congresswoman is working to broaden her appeal beyond her progressive, anti-establishment roots.

Hitting the road last week with Sanders for his “Fighting Oligarchy” rallies, she is addressing people who disagree with her and reframing the divide in the Democratic Party not as progressive versus moderate, but as those going after Republican President Donald Trump and those being more cautious.

Excuse me, but aren’t those two moieties pretty much overlapping? AOC has always aligned herself as progressive, so what is she now? Yes, she has outlined policies, but has avoided two of the ones that most motivated Republicans to vote for Trump: inflation and immigration. And I find her stand on Israel objectionable; she’s of a piece with Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, but pretends otherwise.

“No matter who you voted for in the past, no matter if you know all the right words to say, no matter your race, religion, gender identity or status,” Ocasio-Cortez said to thousands in a rally at Arizona State University. “No matter even if you disagree with me on a few things. If you are willing to fight for someone you don’t know, you are welcome here.”

Her instinct to brawl is well-matched to the restlessness of the Democratic base, much of which sees top party officials like New York Sen. Chuck Schumer as not confrontational enough.

We’re lacking leadership right now, and we really just need someone to take the reins and tell us what to do,” said Kristen Hanson, a 41-year-old small business owner from Phoenix, whose search for a call to action brought her to see Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez. “I’m not in politics, but I would be very happy to follow a leader who I believe in.”

But that instinct also irritates some elected Democrats.

Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, whose profile is also rising after her November victory in a state Trump won, was challenged recently by a constituent to more aggressively confront Trump like Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders and Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a Dallas Democrat who is becoming one of her party’s key messengers.

Slotkin said she had to be “more than just an activist” and noted that those lawmakers represent heavily Democratic areas.

“All of those things require me to be more than just an AOC,” she said. “I can’t do what she does because we live in a purple state and I’m a pragmatist.”

While I agree with a lot of AOC’s policies, somehow she rubs me the wrong way. As Big Daddy says, I sense an “odor of mendacity” about her and see an ambition that outweighs her desire to improve America (otherwise, why didn’t she have her finger on the pulse of middle Amerca?). And yes, Crockett is right: although the time may come when Trump has screwed up so much that it’s fine to go after him tooth and nail, that time is not right now.  Update: The Free Press now reports, however, that Democratic Illinois Congresswoman Delia Ramirez, wants to lead “The Resistance,”

To Ramirez, there was nothing mysterious about the great Democratic clobbering. Losing the White House, including every battleground state. Losing the Senate. Losing support among men, women, blacks, Latinos, Asians, Jews, tech bros—pretty much everyone.

The issue was that her party hadn’t gone far left enough.

“When the Democratic Party is the party of the establishment, when it’s the party that’s okay with the status quo, when the Democratic Party just pats itself on the back for minimal, dismal policy progress, then how different are we—how relatable are we?” she said.

AOC is currently on a political tour with Bernie Sanders.

*This is a new one: a California appeals court rules last week against allowing gun magazines containing more than ten rounds of ammunition. One of the dissenting judges made a video to demonstrate his contentions; the video was a formal part of his dissent.

An appeals court ruled Thursday that California’s law banning gun magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition can remain in place, a decision that prompted one judge to record an unusual video dissent that shows him loading guns in his chambers.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 7-4 that the law was permissible under the Second Amendment because large-capacity magazines are not considered “arms” or “protected accessories.”

Even if they were, California’s ban ”falls within the Nation’s tradition of protecting innocent persons by prohibiting especially dangerous uses of weapons and by regulating components necessary to the firing of a firearm,” the opinion stated.

Judge Lawrence VanDyke disagreed, and included a link to a video of himself posted on YouTube in his dissent.

“This is the first video like this that I’ve ever made,” VanDyke said. “I share this because a rudimentary understanding of how guns are made, sold, used, and commonly modified makes obvious why California’s proposed test and the one my colleagues are adopting today simply does not work.”

In the video, VanDyke handles several guns in his chambers and demonstrates how they are loaded and fired. He also shows high-capacity magazines and argues that they are no different from other gun accessories that could be added to a firearm to make it more dangerous. Under the majority’s logic, he said, that would allow the government to pick and choose any of them to be banned.

Here’s the video, a bit less than 11 minutes long. He has a gun in his office!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szaron gets ghosted by Hili:

Hili: Will you go with me to the garden?
A: Go with Szaron.
Hili: It’s not the same.
In Polish:
Hili: Pójdziesz ze mną do ogrodu?
Ja: Idź z Szaronem.
Hili: To nie to samo.

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

From Cat Memes:

From Strange, Stupid, or Silly Signs:

From Things with Faces, a leaf on the cement:

From Masih. This shouldn’t be happening, but should the mother kill herself if her son is kept in solitary for a bit over a month?

From Malgorzata. I’m amazed that UNRWA still exists, and although the U.S. no longer funds it, many other countries have increased their giving. The organization not only harbors terrorism, but teaches terrorism to kids, making them want to be “martyrs”. No rational person denies that (save members of the UN and Palestinians).

Let nobody say that Nellie Bowles is humble:

From my Twitter feed, with which I’m ethically aligned:

This is beautiful:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

A Dutch Jewish girl was gassed immediately upon arriving at Auschwitz. She was twelve.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-03-24T10:21:39.607Z

Two posts from Professor Cobb (Emeritus). I haven’t read the first one yet but share Matthew’s reaction: “Oooh.”

Exciting #FossilFriday as our preprint on @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social was picked up by @newscientist.com!You can read the prepint here: http://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1…

— Sandy Hetherington (@sandyheth.bsky.social) 2025-03-21T18:18:07.593Z

These two count as one, both connected to Matthew’s research for his biography of Crick (due in November).

In 1970, several scientists suggested that the double helix model of DNA was wrong. Among them, Jerry Donohue (who had put Watson and Crick right about the structure of the bases in 1953). Donohue sent Crick this result from a horse race, in which DOUBLE HELIX tired badly and came second…

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-03-21T10:14:39.581Z

Things soon turned less amicable as Nature published a snotty article calling the debate a brawl involving the hurling of custard pies, disdainfully referring to the ‘crystallographic dialectic’ on display and calling Donohue a fundamentalist and his idea heresy (‘odium theologicum’)…

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-03-21T10:14:39.582Z

Sunday: Hili dialogue

March 23, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to shabbos for goyische cats; it’s Sunday, March 23, 2025, and National Tamale Day. The comestible has a long history:tamales have been eaten since at least the days of the Maya. Below you can see a vase showing tamales, described in Wikipedia this way:

In the pre-Columbian era, the Mayas ate tamales and often served them at feasts and festivals. The Classic Maya hieroglyph for tamales has been identified on pots and other objects dating back to the Classic Era (200–1000 CE), although they likely were eaten much earlier. Tamales appear often in ceramic ware from the Mayan Classic era (200–1000 CE). The Fenton vase shows a plate of unwrapped tamales being offered as a penance to a powerful Mayan nobleman.

Look at the plate of tamales (the Fenton Vase, a famous piece of Mayan art, dates to about 600-800 A.D.)

It’s a vase from the late classical period of the Mayan Empire the author is unknown, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also Cuddly Kitten Day (and National Puppy Day), National Chia Day, World Meteorological Day, National Chip and Dip Day, and National Melba Toast Day, a rusk named, like Peach Melba, after the Australian singer Dame Nellie Melba.

Here, because I don’t know where else to put them, are two photos taken on Friday of Mordecai and Esther, our resident mallards at Botany Pond. They are doing well but we’re hoping that facilities will make the pond duck-friendly soon (and turn on the camera). It’s a bit chilly, so they like to soak up the sun while sitting on the eastern edge of the pond. Mordecai is never far away from his mate, and she has the habit of quacking loudly when he’s not near her. (Remember, only female mallards emit the characteristic loud “quack,” while drakes make a very low grunting sound.) And note how camouflaged Esther is:

Shhhh. . . Esther is snoozing:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 23 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*George Forman, boxer and then entrepreneur (he sold grills) died. at 76.

George Foreman, a heavyweight boxing champion who returned to the sport to regain his title at the improbable age of 45, and who parlayed his fame and his amiable personality into a multimillion-dollar grill business, died on Friday night in Houston. He was 76.

His family announced the death, in a hospital, on his Instagram account. Roy Foreman, George’s brother, said the cause was not known.

When Foreman returned to the ring after 10 years away, there was skepticism that a fighter of his years could beat anyone younger, much less come back to the top of the game. But in 1994, he shocked the world by beating the undefeated Michael Moorer to reclaim the world title.

Foreman’s career spanned generations: He fought Chuck Wepner in the 1960s, Dwight Muhammad Qawi in the ’80s and Evander Holyfield in the ’90s.

With his fellow heavyweights Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali, Foreman embodied a golden era in the 1970s, when boxing was still a cultural force in America. The three great champions thrilled fans with one classic bout after another. Foreman was the last living member of the trio.

Here’s a three-minute summary of his life.  Heavyweight champ at 45!

*Andrew Sullivan takes out after Anthony Fauci (and Francis Collins) in a good piece on the Weekly Dish called, “Why did this man mislead us?” It’s not archived, but I have a subscription, and will give a few excerpts:

I was never a Covid nutter, on either side. I had my paranoid moments early on, but I never expected the government to get everything right. Anyone passingly aware of the history of plagues knows that failure is just par for the course. Misinformation? Always and everywhere, the record shows. But I did have faith in cutting-edge modern science and the expertise at the NIH. I knew NIAID’s Tony Fauci from the AIDS days and remembered him very fondly. Most of the time he was being yelled at by Larry Kramer, I was on Fauci’s side. I trusted him.

I don’t anymore. Over the last five years, we have slowly found out that, on Covid-19, we were all misled and misdirected a lot. And nowhere is this more evident than in the debate over where the virus came from. From the very start, it seemed, every authoritative figure assured us that it came from a “wet market” in Wuhan, China, where many bats, raccoons, and pangolins (mmm) tended to hang out in close proximity.

It was simply a hugely massive coincidence that there was also a laboratory in Wuhan … researching coronaviruses in bats by engineering more dangerous viruses in order to make vaccines for them. In the immortal words of Jon Stewart, appearing on Stephen Colbert’s show: “Oh my God, there’s been an outbreak of chocolaty goodness near Hershey, Pennsylvania. What do you think happened?”

Sullivan discusses how the “lab leak” theory for the origin of the SARS virus is gaining acceptance as the “most likely” theory, but of course we don’t know that with very high confidence. Yes, the Bayesian odds are in its favor as opposed to the “wet market” theory, but Sullivan seems a lot more sure than I am. (I’m agnostic, leaning towards the lab-leak.)

Nonetheless, the paper Andersen and others produced, as he acknowledged privately, focused “on trying to disprove any type of lab theory.” And so it did: “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.” Notice the definitive nature of that sentence. (Deeper in the text, where it was unlikely to be found by rushed journalists, there is a less categorical statement.)

Fauci hailed the paper without noting that he had helped generate it and seen drafts of it. For good measure, 27 public health experts then wrote an open letter to The Lancet, backing the paper and asserting, “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.” One of them was — tada! — Peter Daszak, who was part of this collective statement: “We declare no competing interests.” The Lancet subsequently disclosed his competing interest, which it didn’t condemn.

Why on earth would panicked scientists believe that Covid was probably a lab leak and then write a landmark paper “trying to disprove” it? It’s the essential question. One obvious answer is that Fauci realized that if his beloved gain-of-function research had led to the death of millions in a plague, he might not go down in history as a medical saint. Instead of helping to save millions of people, he may have inadvertently helped kill them, even though he knew the risks very well. So he let it appear that he was impartial — his schmoozing of media flunkies is legendary — while tilting everything to protect GOF.

Also, the NIH, of which Collins was head, had funded research in Wuhan, and probably wanted to separate itself from any theory involving that lab.

What is certain, from the emails that have been released, is that both Fauci and Collins indeed pressured fellow scientists to impugn the lab-leak theory and then further denigrated scientists on the other side as not having any credibility (that was not true). That alone is enough to severely diminish Fauci’s reputation.  And the press went along with Fauci’s views, making the man a hero. Why was the lab-leak considered the wrong theory?:

More persuasive to me is the idea that no Western politician wanted to start a massive fight with China when their cooperation was so essential. The lab leak theory terrified them — because it could mean serious conflict. And so they downplayed it. Appeasement of China is the subtext of all of it. You see this in the scientists’ emails at the very start of the epidemic. They’re worried about “the shit show” if China were accused of deadly incompetence. Andersen’s money quote on the “Proximal Origin” paper in a contemporaneous email is pretty definitive about what happened: “I hate when politics is injected into science — but it’s impossible not to, especially given the circumstances.”

That is indeed what happened, and we have to come to terms with it far more thoroughly than we have. The MSM have never fully copped to their failure. The NYT, as late as October 2023, was publishing sentences like this: “No public evidence indicates that the institute was storing any pathogen that could have become the coronavirus. Still, President Donald J Trump and the Republicans on Capitol Hill amplified the concerns.” Notice that even then, the NYT was casting one view as inherently right-wing and thereby problematic. It reminds me of the way in which the MSM have ducked basic reporting on sex reassignment for children — because Republicans are against it, so of course it must be legit.

. . . . it is always possible for science to spurn political contamination — if scientists have actual integrity.

And without that integrity, science will lose public trust and simply become politics — which is why it now finds itself in such a crisis. When gender scientists refuse to release publicly-funded studies on child sex reassignment because they don’t like the results, and when virologists consciously obscure the scientific truth to protect their own asses and play global politics, we are right not to trust them.

But I want to trust them again. Science matters. We are in an epistemological crisis right now, where left and right have launched a postmodern assault on the search for objective truth to shore up Trump or to enact “social justice.” We actually need scientists right now more than ever to join those of us trying to rescue liberal democracy from its decadent collapse. We need clear, reasoned, rigorous, replicated, open, and transparent science. We need reason, not politics.

When we needed that in a plague, it just wasn’t there. People remember. And scientists have to grasp how hard it will be for some of us to forget.

I might add that we also need scientists to stop telling people that there are more than two sexes in humans and that there’s a “spectrum of sex” in all animal and vascular plant species. They hold the spectrum argument for one reasons, and one reason only: it’s virtue signaling, catering to those people who consider themselves either trans or nonbinary and want nature to conform to what brings them psychological comfort. But it’s simply dumb to think that a biological observation that holds widely somehow demeans trans or nonbinary folks.

*The WSJ describes how Trump is using his power to settle scores–on nearly every front, from colleges to the Secret Service. (And, of course, he’s also rewarding loyalists):

During a visit to the Kennedy Center earlier this week, a reporter asked President Trump whether he was aware that Hunter Biden had taken 18 Secret Service agents with him on a recent trip to South Africa.

“That will be something I’ll look at this afternoon,” Trump said. “I just heard about it for the first time.” Within hours, the president ordered Secret Service protection yanked from Hunter and his sister, Ashley Biden.

The scene played out as Trump was meeting with a new Kennedy Center board he installed to replace officials he terminated because he felt the arts programming didn’t sufficiently reflect his tastes. Also this week, the Trump administration paused $175 million in federal funding to the University of Pennsylvania, criticizing the college for allowing a trans swimmer to participate in women’s competitions, and issued letters to 20 law firms expressing concerns about their diversity programs and employment practices.

Late Friday, Trump revoked the security clearances of a host of political opponents and prominent Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State Antony Blinken and former national security advisor Jake Sullivan.

The moves this week accelerated the pace of Trump’s efforts to settle scores, which began when he took office. The president is continuing to target his perceived enemies and punish institutions that he believes haven’t adequately aligned themselves with his administration’s values.

In his first two months in office, he used the vast powers of the presidency to sanction three well-known law firms whose attorneys opposed him or worked with others who did in various legal matters, a news outlet whose coverage he objects to and academic institutions he says foster views that conflict with his policies. He dismissed Democratic commissioners at a slew of federal boards that were designed to have bipartisan representation—including this week’s firing two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission, saying their service was “inconsistent” with his administration’s priorities.

On Thursday evening, Trump rolled back restrictions placed on Paul Weiss, one of the law firms targeted by executive order. The firm’s chairman, Brad Karp, agreed to spend $40 million in pro bono legal services to support the administration’s initiatives.

. . . . The score settling is occurring at a faster clip now than Trump’s first term because his White House is stocked with advisers who are loyal to him and his mission, rather than a mishmash of Republican aides that were brought into the administration in 2017, Trump allies say. Trump’s team also used its four-year hiatus out of power to come up with more detailed plans to quickly enact the president’s agenda.

Sadly, a lot of this is legal, and it’s going to create a bunch of Trump rump-osculators that will completely distort both society and the government.  My way of dealing with this is to wait for the courts to handle it and, since I can do nothing save write my Senators and Representatives (which I do), avoid having it eat me up inside.

*Jennifer Finney Boylan, a trans woman now writing for the Washington Post, has a column in which she seems to assert that she is equivalent to a biological woman.  With that I take issue, but I have no beef with her call for empathy for trans people, many of whom have had a hard life rife with psychological turmoil.

Is a butterfly “really” a caterpillar?

These questions matter to me, as a transgender woman, because the Trump administration’s attacks on us are, in some ways, founded on the supposition that women like me are “really” men. Whenever I hear, for instance, the simplistic edict that there should be “no men in women’s sports,” my first instinct is to agree. Because transgender women are not “really” men. We are women. We may have different histories than other women, but then, every woman has her own history.

Donald Trump’s election has released a tide of vitriol against transgender people (and women in particular; most of our nemeses seem oblivious to the existence of trans men). The silence of our alleged allies this last month has been stunning to me, and some of our allies have even volunteered to throw us under the bus in hopes of rebranding themselves as mainstream. Does Gavin Newsom — who came out against trans women in sports last week — really think that the MAGA base will embrace him now? Or is it possible that conservatives will see him as “really” a liberal? Hmm, let’s think.

What I think is that it’s unfair to assert that banning transgender women (I prefer to call them “trans identified men”) from participating in women’s sports is equivalent to “throwing transgender women under the bus.” No, it’s not: [banning transgender women] is refraining from throwing biological women–far more numerous–under the bus…

 Boylan goes on:

The current blowback against trans women holds the opposite view — that people like me are “really” men, and no matter what sorts of surgical interventions take place, nothing can alter the fundamental assignment of sex at birth. That’s what’s behind the oddly phrased executive order declaring sex immutable and fixed at conception. “God doesn’t make mistakes,” is a phrase often aimed at people like me, as if to accuse me of being the gender equivalent of old man Withers.

. . . . The challenge for trans people, and our allies, is that many of our antagonists cannot imagine what it might be like to be wired the way we are. I still remember when I came out, 25 years ago, telling a friend that I’d had a lifelong sense of myself as female — that this impulse had dominated my waking life for 40 years — and her response was to dismissively shrug and say, “Well, I can’t imagine that,” as if her inability to imagine the life of someone like me was my problem rather than hers.

In terms of biology, yes, transgender women are biological men, and in that sense are “really men.” But there’s nothing wrong with noting that they are enacting the social role of women. As I once said on the site of the FFRF in a now-removed post, “Biology is not bigotry” (link is archived).

And of course nobody of good will would denigrate trans people or deny them any rights save when those claimed rights class with the rights of other groups, as in sports participation. So yes, I largely agree with Boylan’s last paragraph here:

Our problem is that “No men in women’s sports” or “There are only two sexes” make great bumper stickers. In such simple phrases they seem to capture an inarguable truth. “Common sense” is what the president calls it. But just because arguments against trans people’s right to exist are easy to make, that does not make them any less wrong. What is difficult is that understanding how folks like me experience the world takes time and thoughtfulness. Not to mention decency.

. . . . No, none of these are the greatest obstacles for acceptance. The greatest obstacle for us is a lack of imagination.

By which I mean, only a person without imagination could think that Superman is “really” Clark Kent. Only a person without imagination could think that a butterfly is “really” a caterpillar. Or that a trans woman is “really” a man.

Without imagination, it is easy to believe in things that are simple, and superficial, and wrong.

With it, we can begin to understand the lives of those who are different from ourselves — and respond to their struggles with compassion, and kindness and grace.

Is it “wrong” to say that transgender women are biological men? Or that transgender women should not compete in sports against natal women? I don’t think so, nor do I see those as attempts to “erase” trans people. I’m glad to have them in the world. But yes, Boylan’s last sentence is absolutely right.  Stick up for what you believe about debatable issues, but do so with “compassion, kindness, and grace.”

*The AP reports some horrible behavior on the part of a United pilot:

 An Orthodox Jewish passenger says a United Airlines pilot forcibly removed him from an airplane bathroom while he was experiencing constipation, exposing his genitalia to other flyers during a flight from Tulum, Mexico, to Houston.

Yisroel Liebb, of New Jersey, described his trip through allegedly unfriendly skies in a federal lawsuit this week against the airline and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, whose officers he said boarded the plane upon landing and took him away in handcuffs.

Liebb and a fellow Orthodox Jewish traveler said they were forced to miss a connecting flight to New York City while U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers paraded them through an airport terminal, placed them in holding cells and searched their luggage.

United Airlines declined to comment. Messages seeking comment were left for the Department of Homeland Security and lawyers for Liebb and the other traveler, Jacob Sebbag.

In the lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Manhattan federal court, Liebb said he was in the bathroom in the back of the plane for about 20 minutes on Jan. 28 when a flight attendant woke Sebbag from a nap and asked Sebbag to check on him.

Liebb said he explained his gastrointestinal predicament and assured Sebbag that he’d be out soon. Sebbag then relayed that to the flight attendant, the lawsuit says.

About 10 minutes later, with Liebb still indisposed, the pilot approached Sebbag and asked him to check on Liebb, the lawsuit says. The pilot then yelled at Liebb to leave the bathroom immediately, the lawsuit says.

Liebb said he told the pilot that he was finishing up and would be out momentarily.

The pilot responded by breaking the lock, forcing the bathroom door open and pulling Liebb out with his pants still around his ankles, exposing his genitalia to Sebbag, flight attendants, and nearby passengers, according to the lawsuit.

Poor guy! United later gave the two hasidim complementary tickets to Houston, but the pair had to spend more than that on a hotel in New York. As for whether it’s realistic to be in the bathroom for half an hour, you tell me. I think I’m the only person I’ve ever met who has never been constipated. Seriously! All I know is that from watching remedies for the condition advertised on television, it looks pretty painful.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili sits among the flowers and uses a literary allusion, but I think she’s really waiting for dinner.

Hili: I’m waiting for Godot.
A: And what do you want from him?
Hili: I have a long list.
In Polish:
Hili: Czekam na Godota.
Ja: A czego od niego chcesz?
Hili: Mam długą listę.

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

From The Dodo Pet:

From Strange, Stupid, or Silly Signs:

From Animal Antics, a very realistic spot:


From Masih; how could anybody call Masih an “Islamophobe”?  She was brought up a Muslim and is simply trying to stop Islam from controlling the lives of women and oppressing them!

From Barry; “a cat with a good uppercut”. Click on the screenshot to go to the video, which I can’t embed:

From Malcolm; marine biologists:

From Malgorzata, antisemitism from 1947.

From my Twitter feed; no the site is not a complete cesspool:

From the Auschwitz Memorial: one that I reposted:

This Dutch family of four, including a 3-year-old girl born on March 23, were all gassed to death upon arrival at Auschwitz.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-03-23T10:13:12.114Z

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. I didn’t get the first till I saw the second photo, and even then had to ask:

Modern technology is awful.

— Michael Legge (@michaellegge.bsky.social) 2025-03-22T10:59:35.044Z

And a lovely DUCK:

Exquisite animal. An icon of weird duck season. 10/10.

— Patrick Vallely (@pjvphotography.bsky.social) 2025-03-22T04:56:20.825Z