Category: Hili Dialogue

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

Saturday: Hili dialogue

March 22, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to CaturSaturday, cat shabbos and March 22, 2025. It’s also International Day of the Seal.  Here’s a photo of a seal I took in March, 2022 in Antarctica. Because it has external ears, it’s not a “true” seal, but either a sea lion or fur seal. I’m guessing the latter, but readers can help.

It’s also National Broccoli Day, a vegetable I absolutely refuse to eat, as well as World Water Day and National Bavarian Crêpes Day, whatever they are.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 22 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Given that for several years the NYT pushed the “wet-market” theory for the origin of Covid and poo-pooed the lab-leak theory, this NYT piece by Zeynep Tufekci, “We were badly misled about the event that changed out lives,” should have been an article rather than an op-ed. At least they’re falling in line with the evidence, which increasingly points to the Hunan lab as the source of the virus. An extract:

Yet in 2020, when people started speculating that a laboratory accident might have been the spark that started the Covid-19 pandemic, they were treated like kooks and cranks. Many public health officials and prominent scientists dismissed the idea as a conspiracy theory, insisting that the virus had emerged from animals in a seafood market in Wuhan, China. And when a nonprofit called EcoHealth Alliance lost a grant because it was planning to conduct risky research into bat viruses with the Wuhan Institute of Virology — research that, if conducted with lax safety standards, could have resulted in a dangerous pathogen leaking out into the world — no fewer than 77 Nobel laureates and 31 scientific societies lined up to defend the organization.

So the Wuhan research was totally safe, and the pandemic was definitely caused by natural transmission — it certainly seemed like consensus.

We have since learned, however, that to promote the appearance of consensus, some officials and scientists hid or understated crucial facts, misled at least one reporter, orchestrated campaigns of supposedly independent voices and even compared notes about how to hide their communications in order to keep the public from hearing the whole story. And as for that Wuhan laboratory’s research, the details that have since emerged show that safety precautions might have been terrifyingly lax.

Among those people who tried to quash the lab-leak theory, using their authority rather than evidence, were Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins, whose reputations have been besmirched. But wait! There’s more!

That’s a start. The C.I.A. recently updated its assessment of how the Covid pandemic began, judging a lab leak to be the likely origin, albeit with low confidence. The Department of Energy, which runs sophisticated labs, and the F.B.I. came to that conclusion in 2023. But there are certainly more questions for governments and researchers across the world to answer. Why did it take until now for the German public to learn that way back in 2020, their Federal Intelligence Service endorsed a lab leak origin with 80 to 95 percent probability? What else is still being kept from us about the pandemic that half a decade ago changed all of our lives?

To this day, there is no strong scientific evidence ruling out a lab leak or proving that the virus arose from human-animal contact in that seafood market. The few papers cited for market origin were written by a small, overlapping group of authors, including those who didn’t tell the public how serious their doubts had been.

The article is not conclusive, and we may never know the answer. But the lesson, as Collins himself tried to make in his new book, is that we need open discussion. His very behavior during this controversy, though belies his advice.

*According to the Times of Israel, Egypt has declared itself willing to take up to half a million Gazans as residents (there are about two million Gazans altogether). But it’s not verified, and residence seems to be temporary:

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has informed other Arab leaders that he is willing to temporarily relocate half a million residents from Gaza to northern Sinai in a designated city as part of the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, according to a Friday report.

According to the report in the Lebanese Al-Akhbar newspaper, Sissi made his willingness known during meetings held by Arab leaders in recent weeks in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. There was no confirmation of the report from any other source.

The Egyptian State Information Service denied the report, saying, “Egypt’s position is firm in its absolute and final rejection of any attempt to displace Palestinians, and the Cairo Arab Summit’s emergency plan for reconstruction is based on it.”

In public statements, Sissi and Jordan’s King Abdullah have repeatedly rebuffed US President Donald Trump’s assertion that the two Arab countries could take in Palestinian refugees on a permanent basis under his plan to empty the Gaza Strip of its residents and turn it into a “riviera.” The issue is of crucial significance for Jordan and Egypt, which fear that an influx of Palestinians will destabilize their countries.

Throughout the recent two-month ceasefire between Hamas and Israel — which collapsed this week — Arab leaders held several summits regarding Gaza and their vision for “the day after the war.”

At an Arab League summit in Cairo in early March, Egypt presented its plan for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip and emphasized that it would not include the displacement of residents.

The upside of this is that one-quarter of Gazans are removed from the war zone, so there will be less ancillary killing of civilians, and those people would presumably live better off than in Gaza. The downside is that it’s not at all certain, and if they return and Gaza is still run by Hamas, the enmity and fighting will continue. But at least it gives Gazans a choice of whether they want to stay.  However, the more I ponder this the less I think it will come to fruition.

*As usual, I’ll steal a few stories from Nellie Bowles’s wonderful weekly news-and-snark summary at the Free Press, called this week: “TGIF: Passed Peak Intelligence.”

→ This WaPo Israel reporter literally supports Hamas: Legacy newspapers look so nice, so calm. Their design is so beautiful. The typeface, enchanting. Which is why it’s always so unsettling to read a story and then google the reporter. Honestly, try it. Any story.

For example, what about the Washington Post reporter bringing us our trusted, important news on the Israel-Hamas war? What has she posted on her personal time? Just normal stuff like this: “Call me a Nazi, call me a terrorist, call me backward, but still, fuck your illegal ‘state’ of #Israel.” The reporter, Heba Farouk Mahfouz, once posted that she will “always and forever” support Hamas. She called her critics “Zio-Nazis.”

It’s so hard to parse her politics—she’s playing it so close to the chest. She’s like a modern Walter Cronkite. Woodward, but more private. At this point, the better the design of the website, the less I trust the news I’m reading. I try to explain this to our new head of product, like, listen, Daniel, keep it crappy. I need half the links broken. I need five different fonts. I need it to make Drudge look like The Paris Review. He nods and says “totally” and then ignores me, which is why I know we’re on the edge of fake news. The homepage is a little too elegant. I’m trying to hold on, though: All new hires still have to pass my litmus test, where I casually say “chemtrails cause autism” and see if they blink.

In other notes, Brown University professor and Lebanese national Rasha Alawieh was deported by the Trump administration as part of their effort to eject terrorism supporters. In a panicked article, The New York Times explained that she was a “valid visa” holder and a kidney transplant specialist. It’s so messed up that she was randomly deported! Well. The Times didn’t think it was relevant to mention that Rasha Alawieh was a pretty big Hezbollah fan and had traveled to Beirut to go to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s funeral. (Fine, they later covered it.)

The do-gooder lawyers who took Rasha’s case have since dropped her, stating it comes “as a result of further diligence,” a line I’m telling Suzy to use on men instead of ghosting them.

→ That’s beautiful: Axios this week blessed us with a magical Trump quote, from a story called “Trump Unplugged: What He Says Behind Closed Doors.” And what does he say?

The Diet Coke button. The Village People obsession. The tans. The pageantry. The pettiness. The Liberace aesthetic. It’s been said, but: Just as Bill Clinton was our first black president, Trump is truly our first gay one.

→ Dark new polls for the Dems despite all the opportunities: The Democratic Party’s popularity is hitting new lows. Only 27 percent of voters say they have a positive view of Dems, the lowest rating for Dems in NBC polling history, and only a brave 7 percent say they have a very positive view, according to an NBC News poll. CNN similarly reported a record low favorability rating for the Dems.

I love the 7 percent who think the Democrats are doing great. That’s the 7 percent of Americans who don’t read the news and live happy, good, peaceful lives. That’s the 7 percent of Americans who make lemongrass tea from their garden, and they go to an Episcopal church with rainbow stained glass windows, and they have zero grandchildren and three Subarus, but you know what? It’s a good life. They are the Mel Robbins people, shouting Let them! every time a Democrat dies on the hill of gender-affirming healthcare for illegal immigrants. The Democrats are committing slow-motion suicide and 7 percent of voters are all, That’s their truth, and I love them not despite it, but because of it.

Meanwhile, ol’ Trumpo enjoys a 48 percent approval rating this week. That’s despite making America’s debutantes (all my friends and me) aghast and alarmed by our collective portfolio performance. “It’s not fair!” we shriek. “You said he was the businessman president! Why is line going down? Line supposed to go up!”

*This tweet by Brian Soucek, Professor of Law at the University of California at Davis, notes that the entire University of California System will no longer be asking for diversity statements in hiring, explaining that they weren’t useful. But three years ago they were mandatory in the system. (My friends at some campuses have said that even when they were required, departments simply ignored them completely, so hiring was done purely on merit.)

The NYT verifies this:

The University of California said on Wednesday that it would stop requiring the use of diversity statements in hiring, a practice praised by some who said it made campuses more inclusive but criticized by others who said it did the opposite.

Diversity statements typically ask job applicants to describe in a page or so how they would contribute to campus diversity. The move away from them, by one of the biggest higher education systems in the United States, comes as the Trump administration escalates an attack on higher education over diversity programming.

For a decade, the 10-campus system was a national leader in using such statements, as universities increasingly came under pressure from those who wanted more diverse student bodies and faculties.

“Our values and commitment to our mission have not changed,” Janet Reilly, the chair of the system’s Board of Regents, said in a statement late Wednesday. “We will continue to embrace and celebrate Californians from a variety of life experiences, backgrounds and points of view.”

Of course that last paragraph means that if departments did actually use DEI statements in hiring, they’ll find a way to keep diversity on the front burner, and by “diversity” they mean “racial diversity”, no matter what they say.  If their “values and commitments” haven’t changed, then they’ll try to do what they did before.

*The NYT has an official review of the controversial Disney remake of the “Snow White” film. It’s a generally favorable though rather tepid review, and there’s one bit that stopped me in my tracks:

Disney’s new “Snow White” is perfectly adequate, though the scene when our heroine stands alongside Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez chanting “no justice, no peace” did admittedly give me pause.

WHAAAAT?  Why is that in there? Anybody who says this movie isn’t woke is immediately refuted by that line alone.  But otherwise the review is okay:

Yes, this live-action redo of its 1937 feature-length animated film has been called out as woke, but by the end, the overall damage from Snow White’s liberation struggle proves minimal. She still smiles and sings, whistles and works, rejects evil and rescues seven potential incels. Snow White no longer trills about a prince, true, but heteronormativity still has its happy ending. Huzzah!

The Snow White in the new movie isn’t coded as anything other than sweet and spunky. Like her predecessors, she comes with the usual princess prerequisites: a royal patrimony, a dead mother, a killer stepmom and a guy waiting, at times riding in from the wings on a white horse. As in the original film — the studio’s first full-length animated feature — this Snow White is born to a King and Queen who are expediently sidelined. The Evil Queen (as she’s called), who’s played by Gal Gadot with less animation than the typical cartoon royal, talks into a mirror and doesn’t like what she hears. She subsequently makes life miserable for Snow White, who remains spirited enough to sing while mopping.

Zegler has enough charm and lung power to hold the center of this busy, overproduced movie with its mix of memorable old and unmemorable new songs. Directed by Marc Webb and written by Erin Cressida Wilson, Snow White 2.0 dusts off Disney’s take on the Grimm fairy tale, modernizes it with girl empowerment and tosses in a bit of “Les Mis”-style storm-the-barricades uplift. Oddly, while the prince in the first film shows up only near the start and end, Zegler’s Snow White has to deal more forcefully with her insipid love interest, presumably to pad the story. He’s a smiler, Jonathan (Andrew Burnap), who’s been demoted to a commoner and leads a merry band of dancing-and-singing thieves.

But then there are those computer-generated dwarfs, who cost real dwarfs acting jobs:

it’s also true that Disney’s remakes often introduce new problems. That’s teeth-grindingly true here of the dwarf characters, whose bodies were created with a combination of performance capture, puppetry and computer generated imagery, using actors to voice them. The results are, er, grim. The delicate, flowing lines of the original’s animation style softened every edge to beautiful effect and made even potentially scary moments inviting for tots. The eerie photorealistic look in the redo, by contrast, emphasizes every craggy line and tumescently bulbous nose; weirdly, Grumpy (voiced by Martin Klebba) looks like a ragged, very angry Dermot Mulroney.

In an essay pegged to Disney’s unhappy 2019 live-action version of “Aladdin,” the critic Aisha Harris wrote in The New York Times that “shoehorned-in progressive messages only call more attention to the inherent crassness of Disney’s current exercise in money-grabbing nostalgia.” That was true then and it remains the case with “Snow White,” which is neither good enough to admire nor bad enough to joyfully skewer; its mediocrity is among its biggest bummers.

Well, I ain’t paying to go to no mediocre movie with computer-generated “little people” and especially with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is snapped through the window:

Hili: These pictures taken through the window are strange.
A: But they are funny.
In Polish:
Hili: Te zdjęcia przez szybę zawsze dziwnie wychodzą.
Ja: Ale są zabawne.

And a photo of baby Kulka. Notice4 that she has more white on her face than Szaron does:

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

From Facebook; LOOK AT THIS ADORABLE PALLAS’S CAT (Ocotolobus manul)!

From Reese. They’re eating the ducks!

From Jesus of the Day. Heterospecific twins!

From Masih. Two of the assassins that Iran sent to murder her in the U.S. have been convicted! It’s the headline in the New York Post:

From Malgorzata, the eloquent Elica Le Bon (not Jewish) explains her pro-Israeli activism:

From Barry, “The laziest cat fight ever”:

Laziest cat fight ever 😂

— Luca (@lucagalletti.bsky.social) 2025-03-13T01:56:38.396Z

From Malcolm; I wonder if this worked:

From my feed: a d*g saves a cat!

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

A Dutch Jewish girl was gassed upon arrival at Auschwitz. She was ten years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-03-22T09:44:28.033Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, Mars:

Beautiful shot captured yesterday by Curiosity in the canyon between Gould Mesa and Texoli Butte#Mars Mar. 18, 2025 (Sol 4484) 🧪🔭Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/fredk

— Daniel Pomarède (@pomarede.bsky.social) 2025-03-19T23:04:31.773Z

. . . and a slow-moving nudibranch:

Because sometimes you just need to watch a nudibranch floof around the seafloor for a whole minute 🥰Tritonia tetraquetra can grow to 22 centimeters (about eight inches) in length. The two horn-like structures on Tritonia's head are rhinophores that help locate the sea slug's prey—deep-sea corals.

— MBARI (@mbarinews.bsky.social) 2025-03-20T20:44:45.338Z

Friday: Hili dialogue

March 21, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the end o’ the week: it’s Friday, March 21, 2025, and National French Bread Day.  Here’s a well-known photo by one of my photography heroes, Henri Cartier-Bresson (you can buy the print at Amazon). The kid runs home with a necessary dinner item:

It’s also National Crunchy Taco Day, International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, National California Strawberry Day, National Vermouth Day, World Poetry Day, International Day of Forests, National Flower Day, Red Nose Day in the UK, and International Tiramisu Day.

For World Poetry Day, I give you “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” by Yeats (note that it rhymes, almost an essential of good poetry):

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

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

Da Nooz:

*Heathrow Airport is near a gigantic fire that sprang up today causing a power outage, and the airport will be closed all day. Since Heathrow is a worldwide travel hub, flights all over the globe will be affected. 1300 flights have already been canceled today.

Travelers braced for a day of chaos as Heathrow Airport in London was expected to remain shut all of Friday because of a power outage, grinding flights to a halt at one of the world’s busiest airports and disrupting travel across the globe.

Officials at Heathrow said the airport would remain closed until 11:59 p.m. local time because of a fire nearby that caused a power outage overnight. Ed Miliband, Britain’s energy secretary, described the blaze to Sky News as a catastrophic fire that had also affected backup systems, complicating the response.

Speaking to LBC radio on Friday morning, he said that “there’s no suggestion there is any foul play” having led to the fire, but that it would “take time to unwind the disruption for obvious reasons.” So far, he added, “we don’t yet have a real understanding of what caused the fire.”

Around the world, people were starting to see their plans upended, and analysts said it could take several days for airlines to rebook passengers because of the large numbers.While Heathrow is the world’s fourth biggest airport in terms of total scheduled capacity, it is considered the top travel hub as the most connected airport in the world. Many travelers use it as a stepping stone to further destinations.

“We expect significant disruption over the coming days and passengers should not travel to the airport under any circumstances until the airport reopens,” a Heathrow representative said in a statement.

*Yesterday Trump signed an EO aimed at closing the Department of Education  (NYT here and WaPo here). That’s because Republican perceive the Department as an epicenter of wokeness (don’t ask me; I just work here).

From the NYT:

President Trump on Thursday instructed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin shutting down her agency, a task that cannot be completed without congressional approval and sets the stage for a seismic political and legal battle over the federal government’s role in the nation’s schools.

Surrounded by schoolchildren seated at desks in the East Room of the White House, Mr. Trump signed a long-awaited executive order that he said would begin dismantling the department “once and for all.” The Trump administration has cited poor test scores as a key justification for the move.

“We’re going to shut it down, and shut it down as quickly as possible,” Mr. Trump said.

The department, which manages federal loans for college, tracks student achievement and supports programs for students with disabilities, was created by an act of Congress. That means, according to Article I of the Constitution, that only Congress can shut it down. That clear delineation of power, a fundamental component of democracy from the inception of the United States, underscores why no other modern president has tried to unilaterally shutter a federal department.

But Mr. Trump has already taken significant steps that have limited the agency’s operations and authority. Since Mr. Trump’s inauguration, his administration has slashed the department’s work force by more than half and eliminated $600 million in grants. The job cuts hit particularly hard at the department’s Office for Civil Rights, which enforces the country’s guarantee that all students have an equal opportunity to an education.

That movement, which includes key pro-Trump, grass-roots activists, expanded around opposition to progressive agendas that promoted mandating certain education standards and inclusive policies for L.G.B.T.Q. students. Activists contended that these policies undermined parental rights and values.

But the hyper-partisanship around education issues has been present for decades, from progressive-leaning teachers’ unions who organized against President George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” policies to conservative Republican presidential candidates in 2016 who ran against the Common Core standards elevated by President Barack Obama’s “Race to the Top” program.

Divisions within the agency that were particularly affected by the layoffs include the Federal Student Aid office, the Office for Civil Rights, and the office responsible for data collection and research, data obtained by The Post shows. Most of the lawyers at the Office of General Counsel were laid off. And just days after the president signed an order declaring English the nation’s official language, nearly

The WaPo notes that what the Department did will not be completely eliminated:

The Education Department administers federal grant programs, including the $18.4 billion Title I program that provides supplemental funding to high-poverty K-12 schools, as well as the $15.5 billion IDEA program that helps cover the cost of education for students with disabilities. And the department oversees the $1.6 trillion federal student loan program and sets rules for what colleges must do to participate.

A senior administration official said Wednesday that these programs, which make up the bulk of the Education Department’s budget and work, “will NOT be touched.” It’s not clear what that means or how the White House expects significant change without touching those programs. McMahon has said she does not support cutting federal spending on Title I or IDEA.

This looks a bit harsh, though it’s generally acknowledged that teacher’s unions and schools in progressive states are uber-woke. Can’t they keep the Department but pare away the rotten bits? (And why did “progressive-leaning teachers’ unions” organize against Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” policies? Weren’t those policies designed to create more equity?

At any rate, the closure of the Department has to be approved by Congress.

*The Free Press has a “Fight Club” article about whether Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University pro-Palestinian activist with a green card, should be deported.  There’s both a pro and con. The “pro” is by Hussein Aboubakr Mansour, who argues for deportation on the grounds of what Khalil did, not what he said:

Let me be clear: This is not a case about free speech. The heart of the problem lies not in Khalil’s words, but in his actions.

He is not some wide-eyed idealist who uttered unpopular opinions or scribbled inflammatory op-eds. In fact, he served as the “negotiator” for Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a student organization that gleefully cheers for “the total eradication of Western civilization.”

CUAD is the primary agent of the chaos that has roiled Columbia since October 7, including assaults on janitorial workers and Jewish students. This is a determined, persistent anarchist enterprise aided by Khalil who, while enjoying the privileges of American residency, helped to spread support for terrorist organizations that have a documented history of kidnapping and killing U.S. citizens.

. . . . A green card is a grant of privilege—an invitation to participate in the American project under certain mutually understood terms. The power to revoke that privilege rests with the American public through its constitutional processes precisely because we expect immigrants to respect the foundational principles of our society. If an individual devotes himself to undermining or violently dismantling our culture and institutions, that is a fundamental breach of the agreement he entered into when seeking to live here.

And Eli Lake argues against deportation because, he says, this is purely an issue of speech. He thinks Khalil should be punished by Columbia, but not kicked out of the U.S.:

. . . . it might surprise you that I also think the Trump administration’s effort to deport Khalil, who is a permanent legal resident of the United States, sets a horrifying precedent for free speech in America.

This is because the government’s rationale for deporting him is not that he committed property crimes. It’s not that he provided material support to Hamas. Nor is it that he coordinated his or CUAD’s activities directly with Hamas.

The reason Khalil is being deported is because of his speech.

Here is how the deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Troy Edgar, explained it earlier this month: “We’ve invited and allowed the student to come into the country, and he’s put himself in the middle of the process of basically pro-Palestinian activity. And at this point, like I said, the Secretary of State can review his visa process at any point and revoke it.”

“Pro-Palestinian activity”? That amounts to a kind of thought crime.

I agree with Lake; I think this is a free-speech issue, and green-card holders should have that right as well as American citizens. Yes, Khalil’s speech was reprehensible and abhorrent, but I have no evidence that he actually did anything illegal. Apparently, that doesn’t matter to Trump and his people, who think that Khalil endangered American security. Me, I favor free speech within First Amendment boundaries, and I can’t see that Khalil went outside those boundaries. This will be a case for the Supreme Court.

*Speaking of which, the WSJ reports that people are being held up and questioned a lot more as they try to enter the U.S. than they were during the Biden administration. It even holds for those who already have visas, and even here for tourism. That’s really no surprise:

Immigration officers are employing more aggressive questioning tactics with immigrants and tourists trying to enter the country, scrutinizing their visas and more frequently detaining them in a sharp break from past practice, lawyers and former immigration officials said.

In a string of recent cases, border authorities have detained U.S. tourist and work visa holders for lengthy periods after seemingly minor issues with their cases. Among them: a German national with a U.S. green card, who needed to be transported to the hospital after his mother said he was strip-searched during questioning. Another, a tourist who was shackled and chained, was detained after a routine stop driving into the U.S. from Mexico.

Immigrants with visa issues more often had been required to come back with additional paperwork to resolve their cases, or else put into deportation proceedings. Generally, it is rare that border authorities detain people with visa issues long-term, especially those with relatively minor violations, the lawyers and former immigration officials said.

“I can’t remember anything quite that extreme,” said Gil Kerlikowske, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection under former President Barack Obama.

The moves come after an executive order, which President Trump issued on his first day in office, called on immigration officials to apply “extreme vetting” measures to visa and green card applicants, including immigrants re-entering the country. Lawyers say the directive appears to have put pressure on them to find more violators, with the goal of tightening restrictions on who is allowed into the country.

This is clearly part of Trump’s promise to crack down on immigration and enforce national security. But seriously, a German with a green card has to get strip-searched? Did they have grounds for suspicion? And a tourist from Mexico put in chains and shackles? I wonder if the people who voted for Trump think twice when they hear about stuff like this. Actually, I doubt it.

*I already reported that Disney’s live-people remake of “Snow White” was plagued by criticisms before it was even released, criticisms ranging from the pro-Palestinian sentiments of Rachel Zegler to the pro-Israeli sentiments of Gal Gadot, as well as the idea that the Price “stalked” Snow White and kissed her when she was unconscious. Not to mention that instead of using real dwarfs, they used computer-generated dwarfs, whereupon real dwarfs objected that their jobs were being taken away.  Apoparently this attempt to clean up and update the old classic wasn’t successful. It has only a 47% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and the AP review is also critical:

That legacy of “Snow White,” by comparison, doesn’t do any favors to Marc Webb’s inevitably lesser, inert live-action retread. Good intentions, like swirling bluebirds, flutter through this “Snow White”: to give its singing protagonist ( Rachel Zegler ) more agency; to expand that notion of “fair” beyond skin tone; to reframe that problematic prince. But all that updating adds up to a mishmash of a fable, caught in between now and once upon a time.

It wouldn’t be an earthshattering observation to note that a 1930s cartoon, let alone a 19th century German folk tale, might not be entirely in line with contemporary culture. Most of these Disney live-action remakes have carried with them more than a few notes of correction and atonement for the past — a laudable goal that means a generation of kids might not need a brief history lesson to go along with an old classic.

But it’s a tricky thing reworking a fable that’s been around two centuries, and that’s doubly true when leaping from the two-dimensional fantasy realm of animation to the more complicated land of flesh and bone. Webb’s “Snow White” has been a veritable case study for the headaches that can arise when a window into the real world is cracked open. Everything from Israel’s war in Gaza (Zegler and her co-star Gal Gadot, who plays the wicked stepmother, have differing opinions), the humanity of little people (there’s a reason “and the Seven Dwarfs” has been stripped from the title) and the alleged “woke”-ness of the production have been fuel for what we can gently refer to as online debate.

But like scaffolding that’s been left up too long, the strain of renovation shows in Webb’s film, particularly in its awkward handling of Dopey, Sneezy and company. The seven dwarfs, like the fawns and squirrels, are rendered in CGI. You could argue that this acknowledges the artificiality of a dated and offensive trope. But it also gives “Snow White” an uncanny quality, with all human characters but the dwarfs being played by real people. As if to Band-Aid over this, one of the woodsmen is played by an actor of short stature (George Appleby) whose presence seems like yet another atonement, only one for this “Snow White,” not 1937’s.

I ain’t gonna see it. If real dwarfs wanted to play the dwarfs, why should they be prohibited? And I could care less about the political opinions of the actors. The important thing is whether the movie is good, watchable, and engaging, and apparently this one isn’t.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is jealous of Szaron:

Hili He is bothering you.
Andrzej:  Szaron needs attention as well.
Hili: I’m not sure he does.
In Polish:
Hili: On ci przeszkadza.
Ja: Szaron też potrzebuje uwagi.
Hili: Nie jestem tego pewna.

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

From Cats Without Gods:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Things with Faces; scary meat!:

From Masih: An elderly lady gets a long prison sentence, with torture included, merely for protesting her son’s murder for protesting the Iranian regime:

From JKR; any guesses? (I have no idea.)

From Malcolm, a delighted cat with an adopted kitten:

Two from my feed. First, after a bit of time, a camel is befriended by horses:

Flora Borsi, a talented artist and photographer, has taken the world by storm with her innovative self-portrait project, Animeyed II. This unique series features Flora sharing her eye with a range of animals,….😍#viral #animals #nature #portrait

— Kanchana Adassuriya (@kanchanaadassuriya.bsky.social) 2025-03-20T17:47:50.070Z

From the Auschwitz Memorial; one that I reposted:

Killed with cyanide gas upon arriving at Auschwitz, this French Jewish girl was six years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-03-21T09:57:39.326Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. He thinks this lovely insect is a leafhopper:

I found another, this time bigger, of these weird looking guys 😍They are amazing-looking creatures. We still don't know the species, which is hard since they are not adults yet, but every time I spot one, I feel very excited because they are so cool, haha.Have a good day, y'all.

— Santiago Jaume, Dr. rer. nat. (@santijaumes.bsky.social) 2025-03-20T15:41:44.698Z

And ancient Egyptian ducks:

Ancient Egyptian wall relief depicting a basket filled with three young birds. Carved by an accomplished artisan some 4,300 years ago!Tomb of Kagemni at Saqqara 📷 by me.#ReliefWedneday#Archaeology

— Alison Fisk (@alisonfisk.bsky.social) 2025-03-19T16:18:51.794Z

Thursday: Hili dialogue

March 20, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Thursday, March 20, 2025, the 79th day of the year and the First Day of Spring, which started at 5:01 a.m.   It’s also The Great American Meatout, honoring carnivorous humans.

It’s also International Earth Day, Ostara, celebrating the Spring Equinox, National Bock Beer Day, National Ravioli Day, French Language Day, International Day of Happiness, World Sparrow Day, and Oranges and Lemons Day.  In honor of Earth Day, here’s a great photo, labeled:

“The Blue Marble” is a famous photograph of the Earth taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft en route to the Moon at a distance of about 29,400 kilometres (18,300 mi). It shows Africa, Antarctica, and the Arabian Peninsula.

File from Wikimedia Commons via NASA. Public domain

Today there’s a Google Doodle marking the NCAA playoffs. Click to go to the site

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 20 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*In a news analysis, the NYT argues that there is no longer a question about whether Trump has plunged the nation into a constitutional crisis, but about how much damage the crisis will do. The Orange Man is, after all, defying judges’ orders, and brags that he isn’t accountable to the judiciary. John Roberts doesn’t like that.

Over the weekend, the Trump administration ignored a federal judge’s order not to deport a group of Venezuelan men, violating an instruction that could not have been plainer or more direct.

Justice Department lawyers later justified the administration’s actions with contentions that many legal experts said bordered on frivolous.

The line between arguments in support of a claimed right to disobey court orders and outright defiance has become gossamer thin, they said, again raising the question of whether the latest clash between President Trump and the judiciary amounts to a constitutional crisis.

Legal scholars say that is no longer the right inquiry. Mr. Trump is already undercutting the separation of powers at the heart of the constitutional system, they say, and the right question now is how it will transform the nation.

“If anyone is being detained or removed based on the administration’s assertion that it can do so without judicial review or due process,” said Jamal Greene, a law professor at Columbia, “the president is asserting dictatorial power and ‘constitutional crisis’ doesn’t capture the gravity of the situation.”

Mr. Trump raised the stakes on Tuesday by calling for the impeachment of the judge who issued the order, James E. Boasberg of the Federal District Court in Washington, describing him on social media as a “Radical Left Lunatic.”

That last bit is what got Trump in trouble with Roberts, and he better stay on the good side of the Chief Justice.  This is, however, the first case in which Trump refused to obey a court order. If he does that with the Supreme Court, he could be impeached–and should be.

*Speaking of the Supreme Court, the AP notes that it doesn’t look to be in any hurry to rule on the “birthright” issue: Trump’s claim that babies born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants are not automatically American citizens. It seems to me that this right is already enshrined in the Constitution, and is palpably legal, but things are moving slowly:

The Supreme Court seems to be in no hurry to address an issue that has irritated Republican and Democratic administrations alike: the ability of a single judge to block a nationwide policy.

Federal judges responding to a flurry of lawsuits have stopped or slowed one Trump administration action after another, from efforts to restrict birthright citizenship to freezes on domestic and international spending.

While several justices have expressed concern about the use of so-called nationwide, or universal, injunctions, the high court has sidestepped multiple requests to do something about them.

The latest plea comes in the form of an emergency appeal the Justice Department filed with the court last week, seeking to narrow orders issued by judges in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington that prohibit the nationwide enforcement of an executive order signed by President Donald Trump to restrict birthright citizenship.

The justices usually order the other side in an emergency appeal to respond in a few days or a week. But in this case, they have set a deadline of April 4, without offering any explanation.

. . .The Trump administration’s acting top Supreme Court lawyer, Sarah Harris, described one major flaw in these court orders with universal effect. “Years of experience have shown that the Executive Branch cannot properly perform its functions if any judge anywhere can enjoin every presidential action everywhere,” Harris wrote in the emergency appeal over birthright citizenship.

Her predecessor in the Biden administration, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, struck a similar theme in high court filings last year, noting that “the government must prevail in every suit to keep its policy in force, but plaintiffs can block a federal statute or regulation nationwide with just a single lower-court victory.”

The process is also slowed because it’s not even certain that district-court judges have the power to issue injunctions that apply to the whole country, but when they do it can hold up the process for a long time. One thing’s for sure: besides learning how Trump’s EOs fare in the next few years, we’ll learn a lot about the ambit of Constitutional law.

*The WSJ explains why Israel resumed the war with Hamas:

Israel took Hamas by surprise, but no one can say it wasn’t warned. On Monday night Israel hit Hamas with air strikes up and down Gaza. The Arab mediators and terrorist echo chamber are crying bloody murder, but what did they expect when Hamas refused to release hostages for 2½ weeks after the cease-fire ended?

It was never tenable to give Hamas a reprieve while it wasn’t giving up hostages. Nor was it effective to let Hamas negotiate in peace and quiet while it regrouped, with every incentive to drag out talks. But it was important for Israel to give a hostage deal every chance. Israel accepted the proposal of Trump envoy Steve Witkoff; Hamas rejected it.

Israel also needed time to integrate a new military chief of staff and his more aggressive operational plan. Military force isn’t replacing negotiations—it’s Israel’s best leverage. That’s the theory of Israel’s new campaign, which is designed to escalate steadily but stop when Hamas comes to terms.

Initial Israeli strikes seem to have been successful at targeting senior figures, midlevel commanders and infrastructure. Among the dead are Hamas Prime Minister Issam Da’alis and jihadist icon Abu Hamza, the masked public face of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The White House says Israel notified it of the attack in advance. “Hamas could have released hostages to extend the cease-fire but instead chose refusal and war,” a spokesman for the National Security Council added.

On Friday Mr. Witkoff had made clear his impatience with Hamas, which still holds as many as 24 living hostages, including Edan Alexander of Tenafly, N.J. “Hamas is making a very bad bet that time is on its side. It is not,” Mr. Witkoff warned. “Hamas is well aware of the deadline” to make a deal, he said.

Hamas was indeed stalling for time while they regrouped, offering only one live American and four dead American hostages: a pathetic and insulting offer, and one they knew Israel would refuse. It’s clear that Hamas will never, ever give up all of its hostages, for without them it has no meal ticket to bargain with. And Israelis will no stop protesting their government’s actions in the war if all the hostages, dead or alive, are returned. In fact, Hamas has not admitted how many hostages it has, and how many are alive. All information about those matters comes from the IDF.

*The NYT reports that there is an “Old Age Home” set up for geriatric Senior Penguins at Boston’s New England Aquarium (archived here; h/t Ursula).

Good etiquette is expected at meal time in the penguin colony, but the diners with the best manners are found on a new, special island for birds of a certain age.

There, geriatric African penguins don’t have to worry about younger birds bombarding the buckets of fish delivered by trainers at the New England Aquarium in Boston.

“They all get a good opportunity to eat and take their time and not feel rushed, not get pushed off the island by another animal that’s anxious to eat,” said Kristen McMahon, the aquarium’s curator of pinnipeds and penguins.

Six seabirds have moved to the island for “retired” penguins since it opened in February. Their relocation is meant to address the large number of penguins at the aquarium who are living well beyond the age they would be expected to reach in the wild. About half of the aquarium’s 40 African penguins are older than the bird’s life expectancy of 10 to 15 years, Ms. McMahon said, and some have doubled it.

The residents of what Ms. McMahon described as a “country club for older animals” are sectioned off from three other islands inhabited by youngsters via a mesh gate in the water.

They can still see their fellow seabirds, but from the remove of a craggy rock island that has less pecking and noise.

“The birds are definitely quieter, there’s less territoriality,” said M

That’s it: I’m going to the Aquarium when I’m next in Boston.  The penguin display is certainly something (the African penguins are from South Africa), but I wish they could swim free.

*And a not-so-nice story from the AP, with the link now disabled. Why did they kill Walter?

Several dozen people gathered Saturday at an apartment complex along the South Carolina coast to remember a longtime resident who died the day before — an alligator named Walter who sunned beside a pond on the property for more than a decade.

Walter was killed on the property after several complaints over the past week, the management of Daniel Island Village told WCIV-TV in a statement.

Neighbors in the apartment complex near Charleston said Walter had been hanging around the complex for more than a decade, not only earning a name but a little fame.

Vigil organizer Rebekah Cole told the TV station that people with pets and children could walk right past Walter and not be bothered.

“He was a piece of the community. Even though he was a cold-blooded animal, we all loved him and it tore us all up,” Cole said.

In a February 2024 Facebook post, Daniel Island Village marked warmer weather after the winter chill with a photo of the alligator hanging out by a pond.

“Daylight savings time is coming to an end! It is getting warmer out! Daniel Island Village is on the verge of a beautiful blossom! The proof is in the pudding, WALTER is OUT!!” the post read.

Here’s a news report on Walter:

YOU DO NOT KILL ANIMALS THAT ARE NOT HURTING YOU!!!!!  Whoever killed that gator is a horrible, cruel person.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Szaron are looking for entertainment:

Szaron: Maybe we can watch a film?
Hili: I prefer my own dreams.
In Polish:
Szaron: Może obejrzymy jakiś film?
Hili: Wolę własne sny.

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

From Strange, Stupid, or Silly Signs:

From reader Pliny the In Between’s Far Corner Cafe (click to enlarge if you can’t read the caption):

From Things With Faces, an eerie reflection:

From Masih, another of the brave, one-eyed Iranian women shot in the face by the misogynistic regime:

More on this later today; indigenous people in Australia are demanding reburied of some of the world’s oldest hominin fossils, denying scientists the right to study them on the grounds of, well, superstition (some are 40.000 ytears old, for crying out loud!). Here’s a tweet about what’s happening in Oz:

From Malcolm. Are orange cats really weirder than other cats?

Two baby elephant tweets from my feed. They are adorable! (Ignore the superfluous apostrophe in the second one.)

One from the Auschwitz Memorial that I reposted:

A French girl gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz. She was ten.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-03-20T10:11:01.483Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb, showing what his Crick biography will look like in the UK and American editions. Buy it! (It comes out November of this year.) First, the UK edition:

UK cover reveal for CRICK. There may be some tweaks, and a more focused quote, but this is what we have. Only say nice things. Out in November (!), pre-order from your local bookshop or somewhere nice.

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-03-19T16:01:01.463Z

And the American version:

And here’s the US cover. Again, only say nice things pls.

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-03-19T16:07:06.539Z

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

March 19, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to a Hump Day (“Agew na Hump” in Pangasinan): it’s Wednesday, March 19, 2025, and National Chocolate Caramel Day. This is the most famous genus, with the species shown below, the Milky Way “Simply Caramel” bar having gone extinct in 2023:

Evan-Amos, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also National Poultry Day (pity the virus-afflicted chickens) and Certified Nurses Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 19 Wikipedia page.

Posting will be light today as I have to go downtown to the Apple Store to get my iPhone battery replaced. Plus my insomnia is back big time (I woke up at 12:45 after 3.5 hours of sleep), and I am barely sentient. Bear with me; I do my best.

There’s a Google Doodle today; if you click on what’s below, you can play a Moon Game:

Da Nooz:

BREAKING NEWS:  I watched the ducks at Botany Pond yesterday, and observed Esther and Mordecai doing their head-bobbing courtship behavior. Then then swam underwater together and surfaced side by side at the same time. After they did this three times, THEY MATED! (Ducks will copulate multiple times before the female nests.)  But THERE WILL BE DUCKLINGS!

*The war between Hamas and Israel has started again. The cease-fire talks failed and phase 2 of the cease-fire never took off. Israel asked for 11 living hostages and some dead hostages to be released in return for release of Palestinian prisoners.  No go.  The U.S. tried to compromise, asking for 5 living hostages and 10 dead hostages to be returned. No go. Hamas’s “counteroffer” was to release a single living American hostage and 4 dead American hostages. The U.S. and Israel could not come to an agreement with Hamas, and so the fighting resumed:

Israel launched a series of attacks against Hamas targets across the Gaza Strip early Tuesday, killing more than 400 people, according to Palestinian authorities, and threatening a return to full-scale war after talks to release the remaining hostages held in the enclave stalled out.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the attacks after Hamas failed to release the hostages or accept U.S. proposals for extending a fragile cease-fire that had held for two months, his office said.

Gaza health authorities said 404 people were killed in the attacks, without specifying how many were combatants, making it one of the largest single-day death tolls since the war began in October 2023.

The strikes were aimed at what Israel said were dozens of targets among Hamas’s leadership, midrank military commanders and infrastructure. Israel said the effort would continue and would expand beyond airstrikes.

“From now on, Israel will act against Hamas with increasing military force,” the prime minister’s office said.

Hours later, the Israeli military issued evacuation orders covering a number of population centers in the enclave, particularly the northern city of Beit Hanoun and several neighborhoods of Khan Younis in the south.

An Israeli official said that President Trump gave Israel the green light to restart attacks on Hamas after the U.S.-designated terrorist group failed to give up hostages. Israel then gave the U.S. a heads-up before starting the operation, the official said.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed on Fox News that Israel had given advance notice of the attacks. She warned Hamas and other regional enemies of Israel and the U.S. “will see a price to pay.”

“All hell will break loose,” she said, repeating a threat often made by Trump.

Trump has pressed for the release of all remaining hostages and has repeatedly said Hamas would face a return to war if it doesn’t comply. The hostages include one remaining living U.S. citizen, dual national Edan Alexander, who was serving in the Israeli military when he was kidnapped by Hamas. Of the 59 hostages who remain in Gaza, Israel believes as many as 24 are still alive.

I suspect Hamas was stalling for time, offering a tiny number of hostages to keep the cease-fire going until it build up its strength. Neither the U.S. nor Israel is keen on buying into that. This war will not be over until Hamas is no longer in power, but the chance that they will give up power and release all the hostages is exactly zero, for that would be a loss for them. It’s a tough situation, but Israel will not, I think, accept any solution that leaves Hamas in power, and Hamas will not accept any situation that leaves it without any hostages.

*Dare one hope that Trump’s appeals to the Supreme Court, which are inevitable, might not always meet a kind reception? Well, at least John Roberts, who has proven himself less of a; hidebound conservative and more of a defender of the law than I expected, has rejected one of Trump’s claims—albeit not a formal legal appeal:

The chief justice of the United States on Tuesday rejected calls from President Donald Trump and his allies to impeach federal judges who have aggressively pushed back on the administration’s initiatives.

“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said in a rare statement. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”

Roberts spoke hours after Trump said on social media that U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg should be impeached for blocking the administration’s efforts to deport Venezuelan migrants without due process. It was the latest escalation by the new administration, which for weeks has been trying to cast doubt on the authority of courts to constrain the president.

Trump criticized Boasberg, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, as a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge” and wrote: “This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!”

Roberts is a fierce defender of the judiciary he oversees and has often expressed concern about criticism of its impartiality. In late December, Roberts emphasized in an annual report on the courts that personal attacks against judges had gone too far.

“Violence, intimidation, and defiance directed at judges because of their work undermine our Republic, and are wholly unacceptable,” the report said.

Oy! The man is seriously unhinged. But half of America loved him, though maybe they don’t now. A bit more.

Boasberg had blocked the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to speedily deport gang members. At the Monday hearing, the judge ordered the government to submit sworn declarations by noon Tuesday that explained how the incident unfolded.

Trump has a long history of criticizing judges, including in his own criminal trials. He unsuccessfully tried to remove the judge in his New York state trial, where he was convicted on charges of falsifying business records connected to a hush money payment to a porn star.

At the time, some Trump critics suggested that attacking the courts so directly would cost him swing votes. But Trump and his campaign hammered a message that he was being unfairly targeted by the justice system — a strategy the White House argues was, and is, a winning one.

I’m not so sure.  None of the big-time cases against Trump’s EOs have yet made it to the Supreme Court, and if he can’t even push through his agenda executed through EOs, in a time when the entire Congress and Supreme Court are ideologically aligned with Trump, maybe the public won’t love him so much.

*More health foolishness from the Trump administration. KFF News (Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit, independent health-related news organization) has a chilling announcement that may be a harbinger of an end to research on mRNA vaccines, a clever and, in the case of covid, very efficacious type of immunization.

National Institutes of Health officials have urged scientists to remove all references to mRNA vaccine technology from their grant applications, two researchers said, in a move that signaled the agency might abandon a promising field of medical research.

The mRNA technology is under study at the NIH for prevention and treatment of infectious diseases, including flu and AIDS, and also cancer. It was deployed in the development of covid-19 vaccines credited with saving 3 million lives in the U.S. alone — an accomplishment President Donald Trump bragged about in his first term.

A scientist at a biomedical research center in Philadelphia wrote to a colleague, in an email reviewed by KFF Health News, that a project officer at NIH had “flagged our pending grant as having an mRNA vaccine component.”

“It’s still unclear whether mRNA vaccine grants will be canceled,” the scientist added.

NIH officials also told a senior NIH-funded vaccine scientist in New York state, who does not conduct mRNA vaccine research but described its efficacy in previous grant applications, that all references to mRNA vaccines should be scrubbed from future applications.

Scientists relayed their experiences on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional retaliation by the Trump administration.

A senior official at the National Cancer Institute confirmed that NIH acting Director Matthew Memoli sent an email across the NIH instructing that any grants, contracts, or collaborations involving mRNA vaccines be reported up the chain to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s office and the White House.

Memoli sent a similar message ahead of the agency canceling other research, such as studies of vaccine hesitancy.

Memoli’s email on that topic bluntly stated that NIH was not interested in learning why people shun vaccines or in exploring ways to “improve vaccine interest and commitment.”

I’ve already written about the scrubbing of studies on vaccine hesitancy and interest, but this is much worse.  mRNA vaccines hold huge promise, and if RFK Jr. and his gang of antivax goons are going to come down on that kind of research, it’s an arrant and misguided effort that will stall progress in healthcare.

*The NYT reports new evidence, from a paper in PNAS, that iguanas made it on their own (surely on mats of vegetation) from the Americas to Fiji!

For decades, the native iguanas of Fiji and Tonga have presented an evolutionary mystery. Every other living iguana species dwells in the Americas, from the Southwestern United States to the Caribbean and parts of South America. So how could a handful of reptilian transplants have ended up on two islands in the South Pacific, over 4,970 miles away?

“The question has definitely captured the imagination of scientists and the public alike,” said Simon G. Scarpetta, an evolutionary biologist at the University of San Francisco.

In research published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Scarpetta and his colleagues make the case that the ancestors of Fiji’s iguanas crossed on mats of floating vegetation. Such a voyage across nearly 5,000 miles of open ocean would be the longest known by a nonhuman vertebrate.

Rafting — the term scientists use for hitching a ride across oceans on uprooted trees or tangles of plants — has long been recognized as a way for small creatures on land to reach islands, said Hamish G. Spencer, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Otago in New Zealand who was not involved in the study. Usually those are invertebrates, whose small size means they can survive a long way in an uprooted tree trunk. While examples from nonflying vertebrates are relatively rare, he added, lizards and snakes seem to be able to raft farther than mammals, perhaps because their slower metabolism allows them to fast for a long time.

Iguana species have proved adept at making shorter crossings. In 1995, Dr. Scarpetta said, scientists observed at least 15 green iguanas rafting nearly 200 miles on hurricane debris from one Caribbean island to another. And researchers have long agreed that the ancestors of the iguanas of the Galápagos Islands made the nearly 600-mile trip from South America on bobbing vegetation.

A crossing to Fiji, however, represents an almost unimaginable challenge. While some researchers suggested that the Fiji iguana’s ancestors had rafted there as well, Dr. Spencer said, others pointed to the vast distances as a reason for skepticism. They countered that the iguanas were the remnant of an extinct group, one that had possibly crossed over land from the Americas to Asia or Australia, and then made the relatively easier crossing to Fiji and Tonga.

This is the longest known dispersal event in terrestrial vertebrates. The paper says this:

We estimated the phylogenetic relationships and evolutionary timescale of the iguanid lizard radiation using genome-wide exons and ultraconserved elements (UCEs). Those data indicate that the closest living relative of extant Fijian iguanas is the North American desert iguana and that the two taxa likely diverged during the late Paleogene near or after the onset of volcanism that produced the Fijian archipelago.

This apparently happened 30-34 million years ago, and desert iguanas are probably the best lizards to make such a strenuous crossing, since they hibernate for a long time and thus would be more resistant to famine or desiccation.  This shows the importance of phylogeny (evolutionary relatedness) in understanding weird patterns of distribution.

*The days of DEI aren’t even close to being over yet.  Look what happened at Amherst College. First. Jeb Allen, a student from the Class of 2027, wrote a measured and respectful piece in the student newspaper called “Academia needs unco0mfortable, unpopular, but necessary debates on DEI.” Then the hammer came down on him, at least reported by the conservative sites The College Fix and Turning Point USA.

First, a big of Allen’s piece:

Lastly, while DEI initiatives may seem fair, to what extent do we make sure racial and gender imbalances are equalized to account for historical biases? Should we also be mandating 50% female diversity quotas in physically demanding fields such as construction and oil rig workers, loggers, coal miners, truck drivers, garbage collectors, and welders, where men make up the overwhelming majority of the workforce — a factor contributing to men accounting for 92% of workplace fatalities in 2023 and having a life expectancy nearly 5.8 years shorter than women in the U.S.? On the other hand, should we push for more men in female-dominated professions such as healthcare, psychology, education, and childcare, or is it only a one-way street? If your honest answer is that DEI policies should be a one-way street, is their true purpose to balance out the historical biases that have discriminated against employment? Or is it something else?

In a time characterized by heightened polarization and gridlock, academia should serve its intended purpose and pave the way for sincere dialogue on what is the most fair and effective way to right the historical wrongs committed against minorities in America, not shun those raising the unpopular, legitimate critiques that current DEI efforts may be inadvertently exacerbating our social divide. I don’t doubt for a second that such policies pushed by the Democratic Party have good intentions and are aimed to right our country’s wrongs, nor am I advocating to abolish any and all efforts to diversify our workforce where minority representation is sparse. But I maintain that uncomfortable dialogue recognizing biological realities between sexes, maintaining meritocracy, and rejecting performative gestures is necessary on college campuses across America to determine how we move forward with this essential task, and Amherst College should be the first.

It’s much longer than this, but this gives you a flavor of the call for free-discussion that imbues Allen’s piece. But the progressive left doesn’t want free discussion; they already know what they want and won’t be diverted. At any rate, you can’t get away with saying stuff at Amherst, like “academia should serve its intended purpose and pave the way for sincere dialogue.” Heresy!  And the response, as the Fix notes, was harsh:

An Amherst College student who last month wrote an op-ed for his student paper criticizing DEI — diversity, equity, and inclusion — initiatives dealt with harassment, a death threat, and incurred the wrath of the school’s Title IX office.

. . . . In The New Guard, Allen relates how he “received hundreds of anonymous ad-hominem attacks” on the app Fizz following publication of his piece, which included the death threat: “dragging jeb allen on fizz isn’t enough I need a– [gunshot].”

Other comments included “Any white male who is not gay or trans is poison,” and “meritocracy is white supremacy.”

Even Amherst itself came down on Allen:

Allen also was slapped with a “No-Communications & Restricted Proximity Order” by the Amherst Title IX office due to a complaint by an aggrieved female student with whom Allen had never spoken.

According to Allen, this same student previously had argued the Amherst football team merely looking at her public Instagram post constituted “harassment” and was “indicative of ‘white fragility.’”

The Title IX office at one point told Allen he “potentially violated” the order by “non-verbally making [him]self present” at the same dining hall as the student who filed the complaint.

Oy! He has to scan the dining hall for a particular person, and if she’s in there he can’t eat.  I’m glad I’m no longer immersed in such mishigas.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s stolen Andrzej’s bookmark:

Andrzej: Give me back my bookmark.
Hili: Get another one, this one will be mine.
In Polish:
Ja: Oddaj moją zakładkę.
Hili: Weź sobie inną, ta będzie moja.

And a photo of the loving Szaron:

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From Divy; with soap!

From My Cat is an Asshole. OY!!! But they stood there and just took a photo. . .

From Things With Faces: a d*g wall:

 

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Masih has a constant police escort (there have been three plans to assassinate her), but she still shows her house! I worry that the same fate that befell Salman Rushdie (thankfully not a fatal attack) will also befall her.

From Bryan; a math lesson using cats:

From Luana, a study still cited as evidence for white racism.  But it is not evidence for that; it is an artifact of which babies go to which doctors:

From Malcolm; a bad-tempered kitten. Sound up.

From my feed. The kid can dance, but the cat don’t care:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

This dapper little French boy was gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz. Then his body was burned. He was five.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-03-19T10:12:02.683Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb.  You have to love barnacles; Darwin did!

Watching barnacles sweep the ocean for food is so mesmerizing. They look like eyelashes opening and closing. I could watch this for hours. #barnacles #intertidal #marinelife 🦑

— Karyn Murphy 𓇼𓇼 🐙 (@staycurious.bsky.social) 2025-03-17T17:47:26.458Z

A ten-post thread on the inventor of the saxophone:

By 18, this man had survived falling down a 3 floor staircase, swallowing needles and acid he'd mistaken for milk, suffocating varnish fumes, serious burns, and a large brick being dropped on his head. Neighbours called him 'the ghost child'.This is the story of Adolphe Sax and his Saxophone /1 🧵

— John Bull (@garius.bsky.social) 2025-03-17T11:08:34.116Z

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

March 18, 2025 • 6:55 am

Welcome to The Cruelest Day: March 18, 2025, and it’s National Sloppy Joe Day.  I love them, but the sandwich seems to have gone extinct. (It’s loose ground beef, onions, and ketchup on a bun, and my mom used to make them.) Here’s one:

Buck Blues, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also World Social Work Day, National Lacy Oatmeal Cookie Day (?), and National Agriculture Day.

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

Da Nooz:

*David French has an intriguing (and probably accurate) op-ed in the NYT called, “Don’t fool yourself into thinking it will stop with Columbia” (archived here). Greg Mayer, who sent the link, says, “One part of his legal analysis seems to have a lacuna in it, but it’s quite good. A few excerpts:

Columbia University is now the epicenter of the American culture war. The Trump administration is targeting a former Columbia student — and the university itself — as a test case for its new authoritarian regime.

. . . .While that statement sounds damning, the reality is that [Mahmoud] Khalil was detained because of his protest activity and not because he’d provided illegal support for terrorists. As an administration official told The Free Press, “The allegation here is not that he was breaking the law.”

In an interview with NPR, Troy Edgar, the deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, made it clear that the administration was targeting Khalil’s expression. “We’ve invited and allowed the student to come into the country,” Edgar said, “and he’s put himself in the middle of the process of basically pro-Palestinian activity. And at this point, like I said, the secretary of state can review his visa process at any point and revoke it.”

But there is no visa to review. Khalil is a permanent resident now. Make no mistake, the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil are a direct attack on free speech.

While I’m appalled by the administration’s actions, I’m not surprised that the case arose out of what someone was doing at Columbia. The university has been in various degrees of political turmoil for decades.

. . . .In other words, universities possess a double obligation — to protect students and faculty and staff members from discrimination and harassment, while also protecting free expression on campus. It’s not an easy task. It requires a combination of wisdom and courage.

But the Trump administration possesses neither wisdom nor courage, and it is now in the process of using claims of antisemitism on campus as a justification for grave violations of due process and free speech. The Red Scares of 20th-century anti-communism are being replaced by a new frenzy, whipped up against left-wing supporters of the Palestinian cause.

French also chastises Columbia for its antisemitic atomosphere, but his main point is that freedom of speech is going to be destroyed in all universities if Trump keeps up like this.

When I told Greg that I pretty much agreed with French, he told me about the lacuna in logic:

It’s not that his argument differs from yours (indeed, I think you two agree in all or most details), but that concurrence from an evangelical Christian lawyer in the NYT is notable.
The lacuna is here. French writes:
A different statute, 8 U.S.C. Section 1182, says that any alien who “endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization” can be blocked from entering the country. Violation of that same statute can be grounds for deportation as well.
The cited USC means the First Amendment doesn’t fully apply to visa-seekers (because endorsing terrorist activity is protected for citizens). He also states that violation can be grounds for deportation of an alien (i.e. one who is already here), but doesn’t make clear if that includes green card holders or not
So when he then says that:
. . . even if Khalil did endorse terrorist attacks on Israel, that is still constitutionally protected speech. The First Amendment permits advocacy of violence, including illegal violence. The First Amendment permits advocacy of violence, including illegal violence . . .
it’s not clear if green card holders enjoy that constitutional protection.
His noting that there has been an absolute failure of due process, and that it is astounding that the “remedies” include taking over and reorganizing the academic structure of a private university, are noteworthy.

Finally, I found this thread about the piece on Twitter (click to go to site), noting a “remarkable admission” by the NYT, to wit:

Khalil is still being detained in Louisiana, with the Trump administration hoping that a conservative Southern judge will rule on his case. But it will go to the Supreme Court.

*And another NYT op-ed, showing why the Democrats were wrong to criticize Chuck Schumer when he pushed his fellow Senate Democrats to vote for a Republican bill against a government shutdown: “There’s a price for promising what isn’t possible in Congress” (archived here). It’s by Brendan Buck, a Republican, but I agree with him here:

On Friday the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, committed the grave sin of accepting reality, and his party is now furious.

Democrats were outmaneuvered by House Republicans on a measure to fund the government, and the only options for Democrats by late last week were to fold and vote for it or plunge into a government shutdown for which they were likely to pay a heavy political price.

Mr. Schumer understood this and spared the country and his party from the damage. It is dangerous territory for members of Congress to try to convince their base — or themselves — that they have more power than they do. At some point the bill comes due.

The truth is that this funding fight was over the moment House Speaker Mike Johnson was able to pass the G.O.P. bill without the help of the minority in the House. Still, some Democrats have deluded themselves into thinking the threat of shutdown provided some kind of leverage to rein in President Trump’s assault on the federal work force. Others believed that if they showed Mr. Trump the party was willing to fight, they would be in a stronger position next time. This is nonsense.

Shutdowns are not resolved through a negotiated peace or compromise. They almost always end when one side has taken a brutal political beating long enough that it finally throws in the towel. The party that forced the shutdown usually gets nothing but demoralization.

. . . . .As a result, I have sat through more than a couple of government shutdowns. Mr. Schumer is right that a shutdown was not a winning play for Democrats. It never is for the party that puts one into motion. In this case, it would have been an incredible political gift to Mr. Trump, who would love to change the subject from the market free fall and his sagging approval rating.

Yep, shutting down the government would have been a win for the Republicans had the shutdown been effected by the Democrats. Nevertheless, the younger and “progressive” Democrats were all for it, calling Schumer an out-of-touch fogey.  But Schumer has been around long enough to know whose bread gets buttered, and he’s right. It’s not only bad for the government to shut it down now, but especially bad for Democrats, who don’t seem able to avoid doubling down on what made them lose.

*A headline at the Free Press caught my eye: “Things worth remembering: Death is a friend.” It’s by Sean Fischer, Bari Weiss’s editorial assistant at the site.” WHAT? And again we have the site osculating religion:

Earlier this year, I wrote about my mom’s devastating misdiagnosis. After battling mysterious symptoms for years, she was told by her doctors, at the age of 61, that she had early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. There was no hope of a cure, only a prolonged goodbye. I was 21 then. And though my mom made an unexpected, miraculous recovery, 18 months later, I will forever be grateful for my aunt’s gift, Anam Ċara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom, which I leaned on in those anxious days.

The author, John O’Donohue, was an Irish poet, philosopher, and former Catholic priest, who died in 2008 at the age of 52. This book, published in 1997, blends ancient Irish philosophy, Christian theology, and lyrical poetry—offering an immersive introduction to the spirituality of my ancestors, the Celts.

The root of this spirituality is friendship. Anam Ċara is Gaelic for “soul friend,” the Celtic term for a companion who acts as a guide and teacher through life. In such a friendship, O’Donohue explains, your spirits join. “You feel free to release yourself into the trust and shelter of the other person’s soul.”

But to the Celts, friendship doesn’t exist simply between humans. It is also a way of relating to God, to nature, and all its inhabitants. “To be holy,” O’Donohue writes, is “to be natural, to befriend the worlds that come to balance in you.” The Celts rejected divisions between heaven and earth, time and eternity. To me, in that time of uncertainty, this was profoundly comforting.

Though I grew as a deeply faithful Christian, when I was confronted with my mom’s mortality, I felt divided from the God I thought would protect her. The church’s teaching, that eternal peace waits for us in another life, didn’t lessen my family’s suffering. But here was O’Donohue, with a message for those who are left behind on Earth in the wake of death. “That which seems to pass away on the surface of time,” he writes, “is in fact transfigured and housed in the tabernacle of memory.”

In other words, the division between the living and the dead is false.

. . . .We are bound to the rhythms of the Earth, which include death.

So you have to befriend it.

No I don’t have to fricking befriend it. I don’t want to die! I may reach the point where I’m so feeble or in so much pain that I don’t mind dying, but I will never befriend it. Nor did Christopher Hitchens, even when he knew he was terminally ill.  As he said, dying is like being at a party, and Death taps you on the shoulder and says, “You have to leave now, but the party will go on.”  And I want to go on, too.

*Also from the FP we have an article on our “progressive” Democratic governor, J. B. Pritzker (I did vote for him and he’s pretty okay, but sometimes off the rails). He’s off the rails this time with hypocrisy: “Is JB Pritzker wants to lead the Trump resistance. But is he turning his back on DEI?”

Since the election of Donald Trump, Democratic Illinois governor JB Pritzker has emerged as a key figure in the Resistance 2.0. A longtime proponent of diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, Pritzker has described Trump’s attack on DEI as an attempt to “tear down” civil rights. He also called Trump “unfit to lead” after the president suggested DEI played a role in a tragic aircraft collision in January in Washington, D.C.

But, according to a Free Press review of internet archive records, Pritzker’s own family nonprofit appears to have scrubbed a slew of DEI language from its website on March 11. The Pritzker Family Foundation eliminated the phrase justice and equity from its mission statement and jettisoned the word inequities to describe its focus on social justice. The group also removed the word equitable from the statement that said the group had a “deep desire to create more just and equitable outcomes.”And the foundation removed an entire sentence from its website that read: “Learn more about our ongoing efforts to apply a lens of Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) to our grantmaking here,” which linked to a downloadable foundation document detailing its “ongoing journey” to embrace DEI. This document can no longer be found on the foundation’s site, but was located by The Free Press on the internet archive.

. . .The document, which according to its file name was created in 2021, said that “diversity and inclusion” are “central to the foundation’s work.” It described how the organization is analyzing “inequitable systems” that discriminate against minorities as it shapes its philanthropic giving.

Progressive activist Misty Gaither says the alterations cast doubt on whether the Pritzker Family Foundation was serious about promoting DEI in the first place. “If anyone can so quickly scrub their website, their efforts have been performative at best over the last several years,” Gaither, who advises companies on DEI and is the former vice president of DEI and Belonging at Indeed, told The Free Press.

The Pritzker Family Foundation did not respond to a request for comment on the changes to its website. A spokesperson for the governor’s office said Pritzker has “been clear” that he will not roll back government DEI programs in Illinois and is continuing to push back against the Trump administration.

Here’s the before and after when “equity” was scrubbed (click to enlarge).

In fact, I see that of the “DEI” acronym, it’s the “E”, for “equity” that is disappearing in various universities.  No surprise about that: who can object to “diversity” or “inclusion” in principle? But “equity” implies affirmative action of sorts, and not everybody is down with that.

*As the weather warms up, the pro-Palestinian crowd is becoming busy on campus again.  According to the Chicago Maroon, a legal memorial for Kir Bibas, the youngest of the three members of the Bibas family (mom and two young sons) who were kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, 2023, was vandalized. The two children were reportedly strangled to death with bare hands, and the Maroons for Israel, a pro-Israeli organization, put up a crib on campus to remind people of the savagery of Hamas. The University decried the vandalism.

The University released a statement denouncing the vandalism of a Maroons for Israel (MFI) installation on the quad as a violation of “the University’s longstanding commitment to free expression.”

A University Student Centers–approved MFI installation on the main quad outside Swift Hall was vandalized on March 7, per a MFI statement.

The installation consisted of a crib containing an Israeli flag and a poster with photos of Kfir Bibas, a nine-month-old Israeli taken hostage during the October 7, 2023 attacks and later killed. The poster was partially ripped and left on the ground.

In its statement, the University restated its position regarding damage to approved installations and noted that the University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD) is currently investigating the incident. The University also shared information about how students can receive support for freedom of expression–related concerns.

“Maintaining UChicago’s environment of free expression for a wide diversity of perspectives takes unremitting effort on everyone’s behalf,” the statement read.

In its March 7 statement posted on Instagram, MFI condemned the vandalism.

“Earlier today, our crib installation highlighting the barbaric murder of Kfir Bibas was vandalized on the University of Chicago quadrangles,” MFI wrote. “We are appalled at this inhumane behavior, which shows insensitivity at best, and support at worst, for the slaughter of an innocent nine month old infant whose only crime was being Jewish.”

“This act of hatred does not discourage us, but only motivates our advocacy on campus,” MFI continued. “We are committed to working with the administration and appropriate personnel to penalize the perpetrators of this heinous act. Jewish students can’t look away from antisemitism, and neither should you.”

Over the last year, MFI’s installations have been vandalized or stolen several times. During the pro-Palestine encampment last spring, Israeli flags and pro-Israel signs on the main quad were repeatedly stolen or removed from their approved locations by unknown individuals. At the time, an MFI representative told the Maroon the “desecration of a University-approved installment” was “despicable and shouldn’t be tolerated at the University of Chicago.”

Below is a tweet showing the desecration. This happened, as the article says, repeatedly in the last couple of years, as the pro-Pals continually ripped down expensive Israeli flags and pro-Israel and “bring them home” banners, an illegal act. As far as I know, not a single pro-Palestinian installation was vandalized. So it toes.

But when I looked at the University’s statement condemning the vandalism, which was a good affirmation of free expression on campus, I was amused to see this (my bolding).

The ability of RSOs to display messages of their choice is an important form of free expression on our campus, and vandalizing such installations is never acceptable. The University also does not tolerate harassment directed at individuals or groups.

Maintaining UChicago’s environment of free expression for a wide diversity of perspectives takes unremitting effort on everyone’s behalf. Students in need of support can contact the Dean-on-Call.

The Deans-on-Call here are worse than useless, as they cannot do anything without the permission of the administration. Nothing! And at least some of them don’t even bother to hide their political sympathies towards Palestine. Here’s a photo that a Jewish student took of a Dean-on-Call during the encampment last year (I added the arrow). Look at her “watermelon” fingernails and Palestinian colors. There are pictures of other Deans-on-Call dressed in red, green, white and black during the protests. Seriously, the University shouldn’t allow Deans-on-Call to take sides in such a way.

*Although this BBC headline is ungrammatical, the content is good: “Vending machine for ducks to tackle bread feeding.” (h/t: Matthew)

A special vending machine for feeding ducks appropriate food has been installed in a park after complaints the birds are becoming ill due to people feeding them bread.

It follows a request from volunteers at Burrs Country Park in Bury, Greater Manchester, who have reminded people that bread is bad for ducks’ health and the quality of their water.

The new solar-powered machine, supplied by the Feed The Ducks Initiative, offers £1 portions of healthier alternatives such as barley, oats, peas and chopped lettuce.

Bury councillor Alan Quinn said the council was “delighted” to support the scheme, adding: “Don’t let it be said that we duck the big decisions.”

“Everyone likes to feed the ducks and this initiative will help ensure that the birds are getting a healthy diet,” he said.

The national Feed The Ducks Initiative has been working with local authorities across the country to install the vending machines in a push to reduce bread feeding.

It has pledged to maintain and replenish them with necessary foods.

Users can pay £1 to dispense a handful of duck food, with 90% of costs going towards the initiative’s running costs and the remainder going to the Friends of Burrs Country Park group to help fund events and park maintenance.

A sign on the machine states: “Bread makes ducks ill and does not contain the right nutrition or calories that they need to grow or keep warm.

“Rotting bread pollutes the water and cause nasty surface algae, which kills wildlife and gives ducks diseases.”

Believe me, I’ve had this idea for years. But why pay for a machine and restock it when they’ve got ME to give them a complete diet?

*An update from Jim Batterson on the return to Earth of the two “stranged” astronauts (he doesn’t like “stranded”)

Butch and Suni undocked and pushed away from the ISS just after 1:00 AM EDT this morning as Crew-9 ended its duty on the ISS, turning it over to the recently arrived Crew-10.  The pair left a few days earlier than planned because the weather forecast for the intended splashdown area is unsettled for the end of this week—or at least NASA says.  They have been flying out a protected ellipsoid around station and now, as I write this morning just after 7am EDT, they should be below station and beginning a series of approximately 90-minute orbits that will culminate with the firing of their main deorbit thrusters at 5:11 pm EDT this afternoon, splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico off Florida at 5:57 pm EDT.  Live coverage should start on Space.com and maybe even C-Span (as this very dangerous business has seemed to take on a political tone) at 4:45pm EDT.

There is a good full timeline summary of Butch and Suni’s excellent adventure on Space.com this morning here.
I conclude by saying that NASA, my home for 32 years and my father’s home for 31 years before me (1939-his death in 1970) is dead to me now.  I watched on C-Span last night as the NASA spokesman referred to Butch and Suni as “stranded” and returning to the “Gulf of America”.  This was the official NASA voice using Trump’s words!  So it is over for me, a second generation NASA engineer.  On TWiV, Vince Racaneilo and either Paul Offit or Dan Griffin have said, in talking about public health, that when you mix science and politics, you get politics.  Most recently, one of them observed that when you mix science and politics you get death.  They are very smart people.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is still studying entomology:

Hili: This insect is annoying.
A: Why does it bother you?
Hili: It’s running back and forth.
In Polish:
Hili: Ten owad jest natrętny.
Ja: Co ci przeszkadza?
Hili: Biega tam i z powrotem.

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Two cat-related photos from reader.  First, one from Peter Hearty in the UK, who says:

Not sure if this counts as a wildlife photo or not, but did you know there’s a giant cat looking down on us from the surface of the moon? Taken in my back garden in Southend-on-Sea, England, 16 Mar 2025.

Here’s reader Simon with his two moggies, all watching the terrific animated movie “Flow”:

From Cat Memes:

From Masih, who apparently was blocked on social media for advocating for a Woman’s March against Muslim theocracies:

From Divy: cats and ducks being cozy:

From Malcolm; a clever way to feed homeless cats:

From my Twitter feed:

And from my BlueHair feed; Larry the Cat, whom I follow:

Wishing a very happy St Patrick’s Day to all of my friends celebrating in Ireland and around the world, especially O’Larry who’s the guard cat at Jameson:

— Larry the Cat (@number10cat.bsky.social) 2025-03-17T15:12:16.357Z

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one I reposted:

This Croatian Jewish girl didn't even survive the train journey to Auschwitz. She was 16. Her mother and brother were gassed upon arrival.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-03-18T10:31:47.750Z

Two posts from Matthew. Look at this unit! (There are more in the thread):

And another:

And a leucistic coot:

Well, I did not have "Leucistic American Coot" on my Bingo list today. Did anyone? Seen just a bit ago in #WoodlandCA #Birds

— Jonathan Eisen (@phylogenomics.bsky.social) 2025-03-17T00:01:14.437Z