Welcome to the start of a busy week: it’s Monday, March 10, 2025, National Blueberry Popover Day. I’ve never had one, but I’m sure they’re good.

It’s also Commonwealth Day, International Lime Day, International Day of Awesomeness, Fill Our Staplers Day (don’t forget!), National Ranch Day (celebrating the dressing), and International Bagpipe Day.

Here’s “Amazing Grace” from the Bagpipe Master. This should wake you up.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 10 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

UPDATE from below:  Canada’s new Prime Minister is Mark Carney, who will have to deal with Trump.  He won in landslide:

Amid a generational crisis in Canada’s relationship with the United States, the Liberal Party of Canada on Sunday chose an unelected technocrat with deep experience in financial markets to replace Justin Trudeau as party leader and the country’s prime minister, and to take on President Trump.

Mark Carney, 59, who steered the Bank of Canada through the 2008 global financial crisis and the Bank of England through Brexit, but who has never been elected to office, won a leadership race on Sunday against his friend and former finance minister, Chrystia Freeland.

He won a stunning 85.9 percent of the votes cast by Liberal Party members. More than 150,000 people voted, according to the party’s leaders.

(From yesterday afternoon) *Justin Trudeau has been on the way out for a while, and now his replacement looks imminent.  The election is TODAY:

Two friends from Alberta, both with strong careers overseas and similar backgrounds, are vying to replace Justin Trudeau as leader of the Liberal Party and of Canada just as the country faces a generational crisis because of the Trump administration’s tariffs and sovereignty threats.

Some 400,000 Liberal Party members were eligible to cast ballots in their party’s important leadership race to decide who will succeed Mr. Trudeau and mark a new era in Canadian politics. Whoever wins will have to call a general election, which must be held by October, but could take place sooner.

The results of the election will be announced at a special event in Ottawa, the capital, at around 6:30 p.m. on Sunday.

The race is between Mark Carney, 59, the former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England and a prominent green investor, and former finance minister Chrystia Freeland, 56, whose resignation triggered Mr. Trudeau’s decision to step down. Surveys have shown Mr. Carney is the front-runner.

. . . . Ms. Freeland and Mr. Carney share similar backgrounds and are both considered technically competent centrists with a preference for fiscal discipline.

. . . .Results will be tracked on the Liberal Party’s website and are expected around 6:30 p.m. Supporters will gather at the Rogers Center in Ottawa, a convention hall not far from Parliament Hill, for the announcement of the results.

Mr. Trudeau, who will be capping nearly a decade as prime minister and 13 years as leader of the Liberals, is expected to attend.

The new leader will likely be sworn in as prime minister during the coming week. The proceedings are in accordance with the Westminster parliamentary system, which is followed in Britain and elsewhere.

I don’t follow Canadian politics much but their citizens on this site have beefed about Trudeau, and I do know he’s countenanced too much wokeness. He did, however, stand up tall against Trump’s stupid tariffs, aimed at one of our closest allies, and a country that does NOT send us much fentanyl or many migrants who enter illegally. Canadian readers: what do you think of the winner?

*Elon Musk and his DOGE program has put a $1 (yep, one buck) limit on spending using government credit cards, which effectively means that they can’t be used for anything. This is just another way that Musk wants to cut costs in the government. But the credit-card limit (effectively a ban) is having deleterious effects.

A Trump administration freeze on purchase cards that agencies use to cover everything from dumpster pickups at national parks to liquid nitrogen for lifesaving military research is upending work across the government, according to more than two dozen affected employees and records obtained by The Washington Post.

. . . As a result of the move, government scientists who study food safety say they are running out of cleaning fluid for their labs; federal aviation workers report cuts to travel for urgent work; and contractors who help identify U.S. soldiers killed in combat were told to pause their efforts, said three forensic genealogists who, like other workers interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.. . . U.S. DOGE Service staff working with Musk began focusing publicly on purchase cards in mid-February, when the DOGE X account posted that team members had identified 4.6 million active federal credit cards or accounts — a number that far exceeds the size of the civilian workforce.

Well, yes, that does seem like too many credit cards. Why are there more cards than members of the civilian workforce? Probably because the military uses them, too.

On Feb. 26, the account said 24,000 cards across 14 agencies had been frozen. By Wednesday, that number had risen to 146,000 cards across 16 agencies. “There are still almost twice as many credit/purchasing cards as people in the government,” Musk wrote on X Thursday, adding without evidence: “A lot of shady expenditures happening.”

As access to cards and accounts ground to a halt across agencies over the past two weeks, a frantic scramble ensued. The impacts landed hard in parts of the Army, disrupting operations while leaders already were grappling with administration directives, workers said and correspondence shows.

“I spent today with senior leaders and commanders from across the Army discussing the fiscal environment and implications for the future,” a commanding officer wrote recently in an email to staff obtained by The Post. “The reality is that the Army has some tough decisions ahead — we must prioritize resources towards those functions which are most critical to enhancing warfighter capability and lethality

A Defense Department memo announcing the freeze, which was reviewed by The Post, stunned researcherswho work on developinglifesaving protective equipment, including helmets, medical supplies, flame-resistant uniforms and cold-weather gear, said an employee there.

*Malgorzata always told me that the world doesn’t pay attention to war unless it’s Jews who are doing the killing. I thought she was exaggerating, but do you see a lot of news about the mass slaughter by Muslims of Christians, Druze, and Kurds. As she wrote me,

“The slaughter of Christians (and animists) by Muslims in Africa has been going on for years. Tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) were killed in Congo, Sudan, Mali, Nigeria and many other countries. Wherever there are Muslims. ISIS and Al-Qaeda are steadily growing on the continent. It’s a catastrophe. But the world’s reaction is very, very muted.”

“Here are two examples from the Congo (I won’t mention Syria, and neither did I see in the media because it is Muslims killing Muslims)”:

I had to go to the Times of Israel to learn about Syria, where not only are the supporters of Assad fighting the new government, but everybody’s killing civilians, including women and children:

Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa called for peace on Sunday after hundreds were killed in some of the deadliest violence in 13 years of civil war, pitting loyalists of deposed president Bashar al-Assad against the country’s new Islamist rulers.

The clashes, which a war monitoring group said had already killed 1,000 people, mostly civilians from Assad’s Alawite sect, continued for a fourth day in Assad’s coastal heartland.

A Syrian security source said the pace of fighting had slowed around the cities of Latakia, Jabla and Baniyas, while forces searched surrounding mountainous areas where an estimated 5,000 pro-Assad insurgents were hiding.

. . . The authorities blamed summary executions of dozens of youths and deadly raids on homes in villages and towns inhabited by Syria’s once-ruling minority on unruly armed militias who came to help the security forces and have long blamed Assad’s supporters for past crimes.

*Our student newspaper, the Chicago Maroon, has a special edition on The Chicago Principles (of free expression), principles that, according to FIRE, have been adopted by 112 other colleges.  (They also discuss the Kalven Report of 1967, which ensures our institutional neutrality, which has been adopted by only 30 other colleges.  Of the 11 articles on free speech and neutrality, only two can be deemed favorable to the Principles, and one is neutral. This supports the view that no, students aren’t big-time boosters of free speech and institutional neutrality, even at the University of Chicago.

One of the articles, “At Columbia, Chicago Principles Falter,” implies that our principles may not be applicable to other schools, even elite schools like Columbia University.

The Principles have captured the attention of other institutions of higher education, where similar debates surrounding free speech have emerged over the last 10 years. As of December 2024, 112 universities across the United States have adopted the Principles; Princeton University was the first institution to adopt the Principles in April 2015, while Boise State University adopted them most recently in December 2024. 

Yet, even as more institutions embrace the Chicago Principles, recent reports, including one from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), have noted dwindling support for free speech on college campuses in recent years. 

Recent student protests at Columbia University, an institution with a rich tradition of student activism, highlight the divergent approaches universities take to sanctioning open expression. Scholars from both Columbia and UChicago have questioned whether the Chicago Principles are universally applicable, especially when they were created in the context of UChicago’s long-standing commitment to academic freedom and institutional neutrality. 

This is pretty bad reporting, because schools have differed in how much they enforce their own rules, and Columbia was one of the more lax ones (remember that its President resigned under pressure. And what good reasons do scholars offer for saying that freedom of speech, academic freedom, and institutional neutrality become “less applicable”? “Scholars say” is not an argument. In fact, these kinds of freedoms are essential to ensure the kind of free inquiry that’s the basis for a good university.

Featuring quotes from several past University presidents, the Chicago Principles serve as a guideline for the University’s approach to free expression rather than as a binding legal document; they encourage hosting controversial speakers and emphasize the importance of institutional neutrality in University decision-making.

“[The Principles] were written about and for the University of Chicago, which is why… they talk a lot about the history of the University,” Stone said. “They were not meant to be adopted by other institutions. They were just about ourselves.”

That statement is unwise. Yes, they were written for here, but Dr. Stone doesn’t tell us why they are NOT applicable to other schools.  And this makes little sense either:

Columbia University is one institution that has struggled with adopting the Principles. However, according to professor Eli Noam, co-chair of the Columbia Academic Freedom Council, the administration’s approach to freedom of expression over the past few years appears to have diverged from the university’s own values regarding free speech, as well as the Chicago Principles.

Noam highlighted the challenges Columbia currently faces in maintaining open expression. Though Columbia adopted the Chicago Principles in 2016, according to Noam, if the University Senate had to decide whether to adopt the Principles today, “my guess is that it would be contentious, at least,” he said.

“Particularly among the student senators and some of the activist faculty representatives, the commitment to free speech principles has declined, not just at Columbia, but nationally.… While it used to be that free speech was advocated for by progressives and liberals, it is now seen as a conservative preoccupation and therefore has less support,” Noam said.

Again, just because these admirable principles are seen as “conservative” is not a reason to reject them. It is not even an argument,  but guilt by association. As one Columbia professor noted, “the latest FIRE survey on free speech, in which Columbia ranked 250th out of 251 colleges and universities overall on qualities such as openness, tolerance, and administrative support.” There are arguments back and forth about differences in University culture, but I find no hard arguments about why any school shouldn’t adopt Chicago’s principles. And, in fact, they are being adopted, albeit slowly for institutional neutrality.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili asks a dumb question:

Hili: Does owning a blanket on the windowsill belong to natural law or positive law?

Andrzej: I’m afraid you have luxury problems.

Hili: Czy posiadanie własnego koca na parapecie należy do praw naturalnych czy stanowionych?

Ja: Obawiam się, że masz luksusowe problemy.

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

From Fat Cat Art, Chessie and her kittens!

From Things With Faces: look at the tired wires:

From Meow:

Masih meets some of her heroes: the women who have suffered for protesting the oppressive Iranian theocracy:

Emotional moment meeting my personal heroes; women who survived prison, execution, and bullets.

One was sentenced to death.
One lost her arm.
Two lost their eyesight.
Others spent years in prison.

Some of them were tortured and interrogated for hours — their only “crime” was… pic.twitter.com/jA3PIr65vy

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) March 8, 2025

From Barry, “a great way to stay out of the rain.” Does anybody know the species?

I brought you this.

— Salome Jones (@salomekjones.bsky.social) 2025-03-06T18:32:08.353Z

Other people may appreciate this more than I, but the guy apparently spent 9 months practicing to get this. He seems quite elated at the end! It was sent from Bryan, who notes that there are almost 19 million views since this was posted on March 7!

Twitch Streamer @CarnyJared full combo’d Through the Fire and Flames at 200% speed on Guitar Hero, something never done before

He spent 9 months and 50,000 attempts to achieve this… actually insane pic.twitter.com/jRNKYWTBej

— Jake Lucky (@JakeSucky) March 7, 2025

From reader Jez,, who says, “I must be becoming a softie in my old age, because I found the posts in this thread very moving.” The whole thread is condensed here.
.

Best replies and responses 🧵

1. Never have I read anything better than this pic.twitter.com/IONQ3iktgU

— Wolf of X (@tradingMaxiSL) March 6, 2025

Here’s another one from that thread:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

A Roma gassed along with eight members of her family. Anna was only nine.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-03-10T09:41:41.667Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. I’ve been to this tank at Monterey: go to the aquarium if you can:

Monterey Aquarium

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-02-27T06:36:48.612Z

And Matthew says, “Be very afraid.  . . ”

we are so cooked* as a country https://futurism.com/openai-signs-deal-us-government-nuclear-weapon-security*possibly literally, by nuclear bombs

— Stef Schrader (@hoonofthe.day) 2025-02-02T12:34:02.653Z

DID YOU SET YOUR CLOCK FORWARD LAST NIGHT? IF NOT, IT’S DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME, AND AN HOUR LATER THAN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS!

Welcome to the Sabbath for goyische cats: it’s Sunday, March 9, 2025, and National Meatball Day. Here’s the world’s largest meatball, put together in Ohio: 1110.5 pounds—more than half a ton! What I want to know is what they did with it? Did they have spaghetti on hand?

Don’t forget that the stupid DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME BEGAN at 2 a.m, in America, so unless you live in Hawaii or Arizona you’ve lost an hour of sleep.

It’s also National Crabmeat Day and Amerigo Vespucci Day, honoring the birthday in 1454 of the explorer whose voyages haven’t been shown to have really taken place (he claimed to have discovered the New World by landing in Brazil).

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 9 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*This was inevitable as Democrats ponder our big loss last November. Should we resist and double down, especially since Trump seems prone to self-sabotage, or should we move more towards the center and become concerned with the issues that trouble most Americans. I have opted for the latter since I don’t think “progressive” Leftism can take hold of the country, but the WSJ reports how the internecine fight continues among Democrats.

The Democratic Party, overpowered by President Trump’s command of the national political debate, is fighting over how to fight back.

When Rep. Al Green of Texas stood up, shook his cane and yelled at Trump during the president’s address to Congress this week, the progressive group Indivisible called it the leadership the party needs. “It was behavior that raised the alarm about how extreme this administration is,” said the group’s co-founder, Ezra Levin.

To Rep. Tom Suozzi of New York, Green’s outburst was a distraction from the bread-and-butter issues that win elections. “Instead of focusing on protecting Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare…too many Americans are talking about a member of Congress being removed from the chamber,” he wrote online. “This is not helpful.”

Their diverging strategy perspectives reflect a schism inside the party over Democrats’ most promising pathway back to power. Progressives want constant action and are urging core supporters to flood town hall meetings and congressional phone lines to demand an aggressive response to Trump. Moderates say that approach risks turning off centrist voters in highly competitive districts—such as Suozzi’s—who dislike partisan politics and vote their pocketbooks.

The pro-confrontation crowd believes that angry voters turning out at town hall meetings have scared GOP lawmakers, who in turn could become a moderating force on Trump. Many progressives reject the idea that their party has little ability to counter the president’s efforts to fire federal workers, idle entire agencies and unwind longstanding ties with U.S. allies, even though Democrats don’t control the House, the Senate or the White House.

That last sentence is the key issue. Even if Democrats win in the midterms, there’s always Trump’s veto and the conservative Supreme Court.

. . . In a mid-February Blueprint poll, 65% of voters agreed with the statement “No one has any idea what the Democratic Party stands for anymore, other than opposing Donald Trump.” Smith said that Democrats should discard any gesture that distracts from showing how the party would help voters if they regained power.

“Voters expect something very clear from the Democratic Party: ‘You are the center-left party, the party of Social Security and Medicare and the little guy when we are being stepped on,’ ” Smith said. “Be center-left. Don’t be a spectacle.”

Rahm Emanuel, former congressman and White House chief of staff to former President Barack Obama, has said that confrontation won’t help Democrats reach voters. “They’re close to having you on mute, anyway. If it’s only one tone, they’ll shut you down,” Emanuel said at a February panel of the Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas.

I’m with Smith and Emanuel. The Democrats’ raucous performance in Congress, shouting and waving signs, embarrassed me.  But who knows how Trump might self destruct?  A little inflation, a little more osculation of the tuchas of dictators, and, well. . . . I don’t know. . .

*Reader Norman sent a Gallup poll that shows a strong political divide among Americans in their feelings towards different countries.  As he wrote, “For the past several years, I have been more concerned about antisemitism from the left than from the right. On the right it has been largely confined to the far right—which has limited political power and is widely derided in the media. But on the left, antisemitism—and especially antiZionism—have become mainstream. And since the left has a great deal of political power, the left is what I worry about.”

Well, to me it looks like the power balance is exactly the opposite, but the polls show a huge division between Democrats and Republicans. A quote and a figure:

Americans rate Canada, Japan, Great Britain and Denmark the most positively among 22 countries asked about, with each country viewed favorably by over 80% of U.S adults. Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan are the least well-liked countries, all with 15% favorability or lower.

The highest- and lowest-rated countries tend to be rated similarly by Republicans and Democrats. Partisans diverge most in their opinions of Israel — 83% of Republicans versus 33% of Democrats have a favorable opinion of Israel, as do 48% of independents. Fifty-four percent of Americans overall rate Israel positively.

. . . . n addition to Israel, Republicans also have substantially more positive views of Russia and Saudi Arabia than Democrats do. Democrats’ favorable ratings of Panama, France, India and Germany are 10 points higher than those of Republicans.

And the data. I’ve put rectangles around countries with the biggest differences between Democrats and Republicans.

Yep, the Republicans like Israel a whole lot more (and Palestine considerably less) than do the Democrats. I’ll refrain from saying that Democrats are more anti-Semitic, for one could always say that they are referring to Israel’s behavior in the Gaza war, not to Jews. But if that’s the stand you take, what about the behavior of Hamas, hiding among civilians and holding hostages? As for Russia, neither party really likes it a lot, but Republicans like it five times more than to Democrats, a reversal of the old days when the Left was more pro-Communist. I suppose they’re following Trump and his love of dictators.

*Speaking of dictators, Andrew Sullivan’s Weekly Dish column, “The Bully in his Pulpit,” takes out after Trump again, calling his speech to Congress as an instance of “liberal democratic collapse.”

. . . . Yes, yes, I know I recently pledged not to respond to every provocation from the troller-in-chief and focus on policies and long-term results. But to understand the moment we are in — and the policies that will follow — we simply cannot look away from what Tuesday night revealed about the state of our republic. I know I’m repeating myself, and have been since early 2016, but part of Trump’s psychological abuse is wearing down opponents so they stop repeating themselves, and give in to the lies. I will not be worn down. Truth matters.

Here it is: We have a sociopathic president in total command of a cult-like party; a Congress that, as long as the GOP controls it, is a rubber-stamp version of the Russian Duma under Putin; a court balanced precariously between a modest defense of the unitary executive and an Alito wing bent on empowering an American Caesar; and a Justice Department openly planning persecution of the president’s political opponents.

The speech itself, mind you, was masterful. He’s at the top of his game and clearly loving every second of it. If you knew nothing of history or reality apart from it, you’d have been inspired, entranced, even ebullient about the greatest comeback of any country in all of human history by far! And the poignant individual stories were pitch-perfect, with the Democrats’ cringey lameness the cherry on the cake.

Trump’s ability to invent and sustain a false narrative, however crazy and however incoherent, is preternatural. So are his profound skills in psychological abuse deployed to make it stick: gaslighting, intimidating, manipulating, and menacing you so that, in the end, you have no idea what the truth is or could be, and submit to the man if only to get out of his way.

He then gives an example of Trump’s lies (the exemplar is his huge distortion of the popular-vote margin of his win), lies that we no longer notice because they’re so common. But Sullivan notices, for he’s a conservative:

This matters because it is central to Trump’s success: no sane person with a grip on reality — unless they had just arrived from outer space — could believe vast tracts of his speech. With huge self-evident lie after huge self-evident lie, insane exaggeration after insane exaggeration, you are instantly forced to choose between walking away from the nutter or acquiescing to his madness. And since he is president, you can’t walk away. So the lies become Truth for millions; narrative replaces reality; aggressors are victims; exploding debt is fiscal prudence; weaponization of the law is anti-weaponization; and on and on.

Sounds like Nineteen Eighty-Four, no?

Notice how post-modern this is. These are not the usual politicians’ lies, which pay some deference to the truth, even when eliding it. Trump, like the critical theorists, has contempt for the truth. “Truth” is entirely a myth he creates at will to justify the use of power. Critical Trump Theory, so to speak, is unfalsifiable, irrational, and seeks to replace objective reality with Trump’s lived experience so that, in the end, only his power remains. Brute power — immune to fact, argument or debate. Trump power. That’s what the Founders started this country to resist. And it’s what a majority of Americans have now given up on.

It continues, recounting Trump’s unconscionable humiliation of Zelensky and our allies, DOGE, the tariff wars—the list goes on and on. And the result?

So yes, I will wait and judge the consequences of Trump’s policies. Some — like ending DEI, mass migration, and the medical abuse of children — I support. But at the expense of reason, decency, and the rule of law?

What I saw Tuesday night was a whole new low in mass deception, delusion, and democratic collapse. What I saw was a new stage in the transition from democracy to a form of tyranny in real time. The institutional trappings remain, as they did in Rome. But the institutions no longer function as the Founders understood them; and reasoned deliberation has become utterly irrelevant. The cooling saucer of the Senate on Tuesday night was chanting “USA! USA! USA!” like a mob. If Ben Franklin witnessed the scene, his worst fears would be confirmed.

I cannot allow myself to believe that tyranny like this can last for more than for years, but remember that Vance is waiting in the wings and learning his lessons well. Whether the tyranny continues depends on whether America becomes so sick of Trump that they can’t bear to elect another Republican. I internalize my frustration, but it’s seeping out as depression.

*The Free Press held a debate (co-sponsored by, of all groups, FIRE, about a topic that’s becoming increasingly popular: the supposed religious “revival” in America, a revival that looks more like a leveling-off of belief in God and not a big increase in religiosity. Further, the salubrious nature of religion is adduced solely by a correlation between bad stuff happening in the world and the slowing of the decline of religion in America. (Note that the slowing is not happening on other Western countries; religion in general is on the wane in Europe) Of course, people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali see religion as a bulwark against the incursion of ideologies like Communism and Islamism into the West, but she, along with her debate partner Ross Douthat (who’s floggins his new book on the need for faith), also actually believe in things like the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, and Douthat also claims to believe in Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell.

You can see the 1½-hour debate here (it starts at 02:45), but only if you’re a Free Press subscriber. But the godless people won, thanks from Michael Shermer and Adam Carolla, who were on the “no side” of the proposition: “Moved: The West needs a religious revival.” Bolding is mine. Check the Pew data to see how unimpressive the “religious revival” really is.

But as churches emptied, people began searching for meaning elsewhere—politics, activism, astrology, and therapy started to fill the void God once occupied. And now, after decades of decline, faith is creeping back. A new Pew study suggests Christian identification in America may be ticking upward again. And a recent piece by The Free Press’s Peter Savodnik showed that this revival is being led by many of our leading intellectuals.

What’s going on? Could it be that humanity needs religion? Last week, 1,300 people packed into the Paramount Theatre in Austin, Texas, for a Free Press debate on this subject.

In the audience were a monk from Marblehead, Massachusetts; a couple from Portland; a father and daughter from Toronto; metalworkers from Detroit; and Entourage star Adrian Grenier. All of them made the trip to Austin to watch Ross Douthat and Ayaan Hirsi Ali (who argued yes) face off against Michael Shermer and Adam Carolla (who argued no) to hash out the question: Does the West need a religious revival?

At the beginning of the debate, a whopping 73 percent of the live audience voted in favor of religious revival.

As Douthat stated in his opening statement: “The convergence of secularization with political derangement and cultural despair is not a coincidence.”

But, later in the discussion, Carolla countered that point: “I think the uptick of despair is more physical. We were meant to go out and work and be on our feet and be in nature. And in the last 10 minutes, we took everyone and put them in a cubicle and blasted air-conditioning at them and told them to do data entry on a computer and we started eating our own brains.”

By the end of the debate, Shermer and Carolla were able to convince 12 percent of the audience to switch to their side—that religion is not the answer—changing more minds than their opponents, and winning the night.

One audience member and past Free Press debater, Michael Shellenberger, disagreed with the outcome: “I think the affirmative side is obviously right that the absence of religion leaves a God-sized hole that has been filled by dangerously juvenile secular religions including fascism, communism, and wokeism.” Although, he added, “I’m skeptical we will see a mass return to Christianity in the West, even though that has been my own journey.”

A screenshot of the audience poll before the debate:

And after the debate. Atheists win! Atheists win! (Though of course 61% of the presumably smart audience still needs its god.)

The godless people won—at least in terms of changing more minds.  It still baffles me that people with brains think that the solution to the world’s problems—and the personal problem of having a “need for meaning” (described as our “God-shaped hole”)—depends on taking as true a set of propositions for which there is no evidence.  The credibility of Christianity is no greater than the credibility of Scientology; the only reason people make fun of Scientology is because we were alive when the religion was made up. The tenets of both faiths are equally risible and unevidenced.

*Trying to follow the news on Israel is like trying to catch a greased pig:  once you think you’ve got the situation in hand, it changes. The U.S. is apparently talking to Hamas, while Hamas claims that it’s negotiating with Israel, and Israel denies it.  The tenuous ceasefire is holding, though an occasional rocket is fired from Gaza. The Guardian, not clearly biased for once (though they do distort the news below), summarizes the uncertainty in an article misleadingly called, “Dread haunts Gaza as airstrikes dent hopes of a renewed ceasefire.”

The distortion here is that Israel only launches airstrikes to take out a missile site when one is launched at Israel.  And the IDF fires only at Gazans who, despite warnings, approach the IDF forces in northern Gaza and along the border with Egypt. If Hamas just stopped being aggressive, this “denting of hopes” would not happen.

That said, I do think the war will resume for one reason. The present situation is untenable, though, as Yigal Carmon think, it could last for years.  Israel, despite wanting its hostages back, knows that I cannot put up with a Gaza permanently controlled by Hamas. And Hamas will not voluntarily give up power. That is all ye need to know.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is pulling rank and telling Andrzej to plan his next post.

A: May I go back to the computer?

Hili: First tell me what are you going to do there.

Ja: Czy mogę wrócić do komputera?

Hili: Opowiedz mi najpierw co tam będziesz robił.

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

From Merilee, a very old cat meme, but still a good one:

From Nicole:

From Divy, a very true diagram of cat behavior:

Masih highlights a new documentary about a fighter for women’s rights in Afghanistan, the indomitable Roya Mahboob:

Breaking Firewalls, Breaking Chains: The Courage of Afghan Women in Technology!

On this International Women’s Day, we are honored to celebrate the release of Rule Breakers, a powerful documentary showcasing the extraordinary resilience, vision, and impact of Roya Mahboob, a true… pic.twitter.com/YNc3HBunug

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) March 7, 2025

From Simon, a science-nerd poster (but what do you expect at a science march?). Grahm Coop is a very good geneticist at UC Davis:

The science version of "JD Vance skis in jeans"

— Dr. Emily Dolson (@emilydolson.bsky.social) 2025-03-08T03:13:00.451Z

From Bryan: a clear (5.5-minute) explanation about how a car differential works, from 1937. Very clever! And then, the incomparable Feynman tells us how a train stays on the tracks. It’s not the flanges on the wheels, as I thought until now!

Here’s Richard Feynman explaining it in 2.5 minutes via his unique storytelling approach:

• Starts with how a train stays on its track
• Then describes the purpose of a car differential pic.twitter.com/GYxGUOs4G6

— Hassan O. (@AuthorOnTheSide) March 7, 2025

I presume a “female-only phallus-free environment” can include unphallused trans-identified women.  Things are getting complicated!

A woke spa in San Francisco is having difficulty navigating the natural consequences of their policies. They held a “women’s only night” and so many bepenised ppl showed up that even the SF Wokes revolted and now, they’re having alternating “phallic” and “non phallic” days… pic.twitter.com/b6Yi8yPXlT

— The Heretical Liberal 🇨🇦 (@Rob_ThaBuilder) March 7, 2025

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one I reposted:

French Jewish girl gassed immediately upon arriving at Auschwitz. She was five.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-03-09T10:15:13.802Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, a “medieval kot”:

One of my faves ~ looks like this little medieval critter has just discovered a literary version of a cat-flap. This front & back view of the page is said to be from a 1485 Book of Hours, held in the National Museum in Krakow, Poland

— Journal of Art in Society (@artinsociety.bsky.social) 2025-03-08T06:43:49.306Z

. . . and a gaggle of geese combined with a raft of ducks:

When the traffic lights stop working during rush hour #birds #ducks #geese #waterfowl #trafficjam

— Bob Bell 🇨🇦 (@thebirderbob.bsky.social) 2025-03-03T11:28:08.825Z

Welcome to the tail end of the week:  it’s Friday, March 7, 2025: National “Eat Your Noodles” Day . But why the scare quotes? Are we only supposed to pretend to eat noodles?

At any rate, here’s how they make hand-pulled noodles at Jibek Jolu, Chicago’s only Kyrgyz restaurant, where I plan to eat soon. And of course I’ll have noodles.

It’s also National Flapjack Day, National Cereal Day, Friday Fish Fry Day,  National Crown Roast of Pork Day, and National Tartar Sauce Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 7 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*One thing that’s making the world wonder about Trump (okay, well, it’s making me discombobulated) is his constant back-and-forth stands on issues. For example, the U.S. is negotiating with Hamas (without Israel!) for 10 more living hostages and a two-month’s cease-fire at the same time that Trump is calling for a complete destruction of Hamas.  I have no idea how that will turn out. And the tariff wars go back and forth: first there’s tariff’s, then there’s not. The latest is that Trump has now declared a temporary “cease-fire” on the 25% tariff to be levied on most goods from Mexico and apparently some from Canada:

President Trump said Thursday that he would offer a one-month exemption from tariffs for imports from Mexico that trade under the rules of U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the trade pact Mr. Trump signed in his first term.

The president wrote on Truth Social that he would give Mexican products an exemption until April 2 from the 25 percent tariffs that he levied on all products from Mexico and most goods from Canada earlier this week. The exemption would cover the vast majority of North American trade and follows days of turmoil in the stock markets.

“After speaking with President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico, I have agreed that Mexico will not be required to pay Tariffs on anything that falls under the USMCA Agreement,” he wrote.

“Our relationship has been a very good one, and we are working hard, together, on the Border, both in terms of stopping Illegal Aliens from entering the United States and, likewise, stopping Fentanyl,” he added.

Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, made similar comments on Thursday morning, saying that the president would most likely exempt all products that trade under U.S.M.C.A. Mr. Trump’s announcement did not describe any exemption for Canadian goods.

. . . . Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Lutnick have implied that any relief from tariffs could be short-lived, since the administration is considering another raft of levies next month. The president has said he will announce “reciprocal” tariffs on April 2, which will raise U.S. tariffs to match the levels set by other countries, while also taking into consideration other practices that affect trade, like taxes and currency.

“My expectation is the president will come to the agreement today, and hopefully we will announce this today, that U.S.M.C.A.-compliant goods will not have a tariff for the next month, until April 2,” Mr. Lutnick said. Mr. Trump signed U.S.M.C.A. in 2020 to replace and revise the North American Free Trade Agreement.replace and revise the North American Free Trade Agreement.

I don’t get wny Mexico is treated better than Canada given that far fewer migrants and far less drugs come from Canada than via Mexico.  And why the pause if the rationale hasn’t changed. Of course, I don’t think tariffs are the way to solve any problem, except, perhaps, as a threat to get other countries to do what Trump wants, but it isn’t going to work with these countries. Or so I think.

*This news however, doesn’t seem fair, and Jack Daniels, the bourbon makers have beefed about it. The Canadians are not only raising the prices of American booze in stores, but in some cases taking it off the shelf.

Canadian provinces pulling US alcohol off store shelves in response to Trump trade policy is “worse than tariffs”, the boss of Jack Daniel’s maker Brown-Forman has said.

Several Canadian provinces, including Ontario, which is by far the most populated, took action this week in retaliation for US tariffs on Canadian goods.

The Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO), one of the largest buyers of alcohol in the world, removed US-made alcoholic drinks from its shelves on Tuesday.

Brown-Forman boss Lawson Whiting said the Canadian response was “disproportionate” to the 25% levies on Canadian goods imposed by the Trump administration.

“I mean, that’s worse than a tariff, because it’s literally taking your sales away, completely removing our products from the shelves,” Mr Whiting said.

In response to the tariffs, Canada has retaliated with 25% levies on goods imported from the US, including beer, spirits, and wine.

Some provinces also took action themselves, including Ontario and Nova Scotia.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said the LCBO sells nearly $1bn of US alcohol per year. “As of today, every single one of these products is off the shelves,” Mr Ford said on Tuesday.

The LCBO is the exclusive wholesaler in Ontario, which means other retailers, bars and restaurants in the province will no longer be able to restock US products, Mr Ford said.

Nevertheless, Mr Whiting said Canada makes up only 1% of Brown-Forman’s total sales, so the firm can withstand the hit.

Well, of course Canada can do what it wants in response to Trump’s risible levying of the 25% tariff on Canadian goods, but I think there will be some Canucks hurting for their Jack and Cokes in a short while.

*And, as I predicted, the unconscionable EOs issued by Trump will be overturned not by demonstrations or yelling in Congress, but by legal action. And indeed, that’s what is happening. Now a federal judge has blocked, indefinitely, Trump’s freeze on federal grants and loans (including scientific grants), presumably because only Congress can do something like that.

A second federal judge has indefinitely blocked President Trump’s freeze on federal grants and loans, saying the White House had “put itself above Congress” and undermined democracy.

In a ruling on Thursday, U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr. in Rhode Island prohibited the Trump administration from freezing or otherwise impeding the disbursement of appropriated federal funds to state governments.

The decision is a victory for Trump critics who say he has trampled on Congress’s authority in his effort to cut federal spending and overhaul agencies.

McConnell’s order follows a similar one issued by a different federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 25. The judge had previously issued a temporary restraining order, which on Thursday he converted into an injunction, a more permanent form of relief.

“The Executive’s categorical freeze of appropriated and obligated funds fundamentally undermines the distinct constitutional roles of each branch of our government,” McConnell wrote.

“Here, the Executive put itself above Congress,” the judge continued. “It imposed a categorical mandate on the spending of congressionally appropriated and obligated funds without regard to Congress’s authority to control spending.”

The ruling by McConnell, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, came in a lawsuit filed by 22 states with Democratic attorneys general, as well as the District of Columbia.

The lawsuit focused on a directive from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget instructing federal agencies to pause funding while it assessed whether government programs complied with executive orders issued by President Trump targeting foreign aid, diversity initiatives and green-energy projects.

Now I predict that, based on the recent vote that included Barrett and Roberts, the Supremes will also negate this executive order. The appropriation of money is the charge of the legislative branch of the government, and it’s presumably the abrogation of this requirement that led to the two federal court decisions.

*According to a YouGov poll, sentiment in the UK shows “an increased scepticism towards transgender rights across the board – and particularly in the two and a half years since our previous wave of this study.”  (h/t Jez). The article begins with a paragraph asserting the erosion of transgender “rights” without mentioning, as in sports, that these can clash with the “rights” of other groups:

Recent years have seen an increasing backlash against transgender rights. In the US, some of Donald Trump’s first acts upon resuming the presidency have been to sign executive orders declaring there to be only two sexes, restricting gender care services for young transgender people, barring transgender people from military service, and banning transgender women from women’s sports.

I wish they’d stop using the word “rights” since it is, on this issue, contentious what the “rights” are. It also conflates “gender” with “sex”:

Notable in this most recent study – conducted in mid-December – is the growing resistance on transgender rights among those groups that are typically more permissive on the issue, like women and young people.

In fact, the only question on which women now take the permissive view on transgender rights is saying that people should be able to change their gender socially, although at 55% this still represents an eight point drop since the 2022 survey.

When it comes to whether or not people should be able to change their gender legally, there has been a crossover among women. While in 2022 women supported allowing people to change their gender legally by 44% to 32%, these figures have since shifted to 37% who continue to be in favour but 42% now opposed.

Here are some data of particular interest to some feminists, as well as to me. The data go from 2018-2024.  The change in sentiments over this period, and among all age groups and sexes, is clear.

One more:

When it comes to the key questions of whether people should be able to socially identify as a different gender, the number of 18-24 year olds who say they should – 61% – remains almost exactly the same as in 2022. However, the number who say they should not has risen eight points to 25% over the same time period.

And when it comes to whether you should be allowed to legally change your gender, support among the young has actively diminished: while 50% still say so, this has fallen seven points since the prior study. At the same time, belief that you should not be allowed to change your gender legally has increased by a full 16 points, to 36%.

I couldn’t care less about whether people should be able to socially identify as a different “gender” (do they mean sex?). But at any rate, why should there be any rules about how one is socially identified. As for legally changing gender–and again they clearly mean sex–I do think that this is more problematic, especially since the NCAA uses what is on birth certificates as an indication of who can compete in men’s versus women’s sports, and in 44 states in America you can go back and change the sex on your birth certificate.  The whole piece shows how the concept of “gender” is very confusing, and should usually be replaced in this piece with “sex”.

*During the President’s speech to Congress the other day, the Republicans rose and cheered everything that Trump said, while the Democrats (well, most of them) remained silent. That’s perfectly fine. But what’s not fine for anyone is to make a ruckus the way some Democrats did, and I’m also not keen on holding up signs, which is a form of disturbance. Whoever is President, decorum should prevail in the legislature. Sadly, Texas Representative Al Green made a pretty good ruckus, and was ultimately removed from the chamber by the Sergeant at Arms.  Today he was censured by the House, strictly along party lines:

The House on Thursday voted to censure an unrepentant Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, for disrupting President Donald Trump’s address to Congress.

Green was joined in the well of the House by more than 20 fellow Democrats as Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., read the censure resolution. Green and some of his colleagues began singing “We Shall Overcome,” an anthem of the Civil Rights Movement, as Johnson spoke. Republicans in the chamber yelled “order” as the singing continued. Eventually, Johnson declared the House in recess.

The resolution against Green was approved in a mostly party-line vote of 224-198. Ten Democrats voted for it; no Republicans voted against it.

Johnson had Green removed from the chamber during the early moments of Trump’s speech Tuesday night. Green stood and shouted at Trump after the Republican president said the Nov. 5 election had delivered a governing mandate not seen for many decades.

“You have no mandate,” the Houston lawmaker said, shaking a cane and refusing an order from Johnson to “take your seat, sir!”

Republicans acted quickly to rebuke Green with a censure resolution that officially registers the House’s deep disapproval of a member’s conduct.

“They just felt that the rules get forced on them more strictly than perhaps Republicans or others,” Meuser said.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., confirmed the tenor of the exchange.

“Well, what we were just speaking about is that there is not, in terms of rules of decorum, they’re often violated by our Republican colleagues and the response is not punitive,” Pressley said.

Now I’m not sure that Rep. Pressley is correct, but if she is, then the rules need to be enforced the same way for all. But Democrats should realize that acting out like a bunch of kids is not going to help their public image. Sitting there in silence without applause would be much better.

Here’s Green waving his cane and getting escorted out:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is preening. When I asked Malgorzata what Hili meant, she said that Andrzej replied this way: “Every cat is beautiful. It’s a given. What is there to talk about? (Andrzej’s answer)/

A: What are you thinking about?

Hili: About the banality of feline beauty.

In Polish:

Ja: O czym myślisz?

Hili: O banalności piękna kotów.

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

From Strange, Stupid, or Silly Signs, laxatives on sale;

From My Cat is an Asshole:

From America’s Decline into Idiocy:

From Masih. In fact, two Iranians won an Oscar, with the woman, Shirin Soani, winning along for Hossein Molayemi for the short animated film, “In the Shadow of the Cypress”.

I admire the first Iranian woman to win an Oscar, not just for her talent, but for her courage. Unlike other Iran’s actresses who surrendered to the regime’s forced hijab, she refused to cover her beautiful hair. This is the true face of Iranian women. Choke on it @khamenei_ir ! pic.twitter.com/8Wz64pQC4A

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) March 5, 2025

China is making threatening noises after the imposition of U.S. tariffs. From the Chinese embassy in the U.S.:

If war is what the U.S. wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we’re ready to fight till the end. https://t.co/crPhO02fFE

— Chinese Embassy in US (@ChineseEmbinUS) March 5, 2025

From Luana; this doesn’t look like ‘brutality’ to me:

Protestors at Barnard who refused to leave and pushed back against police during a bomb threat are trying to complain that police “brutalized” them.

This is the best evidence they could come up with: pic.twitter.com/rzosG7IDtH

— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) March 6, 2025

Tw9 from my Twitter feed. First, a helpful mom:

Mom wins the internet … pic.twitter.com/7SSn5Qfrwr

— The Figen (@TheFigen_) March 5, 2025

Even though this is a d*g it’s still cute:

This might be the cutest thing I’ve ever seen pic.twitter.com/hRON2pmd56

— NO CONTEXT HUMANS (@HumansNoContext) March 6, 2025

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I retweeted.

This five-year-old boy was stripped upon arriving at Auschwitz and gassed to death, probably with his mother. We'll never know what his life would have been like.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-03-07T11:18:15.439Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, a small call duck bathing (sound up). They are named because they are LOUD:

Bath time for PeeWee our rescue call duck

— Chris, Caroline, Kara (@caenhillcc.bsky.social) 2025-03-04T19:41:39.517Z

A beautiful marine worm, which Matthew says is “Moar interesting than an hairy mouse”:

Who ever said worms weren’t beautiful?!? This is a marine scaleworm, drifting through the open ocean with the plankton….#scaleworm #worm #marineworm #blackwater #blackwaterdiving #underwater #scubadiving #blackwaterphotography #gug #chrisgug #gugunderwater

— Chris Gug (@gugunderwater.bsky.social) 2025-02-22T16:41:22.917Z

Welcome to Thursday, March 6, 2025, and National Frozen Food Day. May I recommend Trader Joe’s kimbap, which gets rave reviews. It’s “a vegan kimbap that features seasoned rice, fried tofu, and select stir-fried vegetables (burdok root — an impressive choice of ingredient — carrot, yellowed pickled radish, and spinach). It also contains other notable ingredients like seaweed (obviously— that’s what we wrap the roll in), sesame seeds, and soy sauce according to the ingredient list.” I had one the other night, dipping the slices in soy sauce with a tad of sesame oil. It was terrific, and you need only snip the corner of this puppy’s package and then microwave it:

It’s also Alamo Day (the day in 1836 when the Mexicans defeated the Texans in that structure), National Oreo Cookie Day (first sold on this day in 1912), and National White Chocolate Cheesecake Day.  What every happened to Hydrox cookies? Did anybody ever do a blind taste test of Hydrox vs. Oreo?

A bunch of “Stand Up for Science” rallies and walkouts are taking place TOMORROW to protest the new administrations cuts in science funding. There are 32 in various state capitals (list here), so if you think your participation will make a difference, go make your voice heard or your placard seen.

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

Da Nooz:

*The courts are starting to take the mickey out of Trump’s ambitious executive orders. This time it’s the order to freeze foreign aid, and the vote to sink it was from the Supreme Court, with both Roberts and Barrett voting against Trump!

The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected President Trump’s emergency request to freeze nearly $2 billion in foreign aid as part of his efforts to slash government spending.

The court’s brief order was unsigned, which is typical when the justices act on emergency applications. It said only that the trial judge, who had ordered the government to resume payments, “should clarify what obligations the government must fulfill.”

But the ruling represented one of the court’s first moves in response to the flurry of litigation filed in response to Mr. Trump’s efforts to dramatically reshape government. The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joining the three liberal members to form a majority.

Although the language of the order was mild, tentative and not a little confusing, its bottom line was that a bare majority of the court ruled against Mr. Trump on one of his signature projects. The president’s many programs and plans, the order suggested, will face close scrutiny from a deeply divided court.

That, in turn, is likely to give rise to major rulings testing and perhaps recalibrating the separation of powers required by the Constitution.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the four dissenting justices, said the majority had gone profoundly astray.

It looks like some of the conservative justices are going to stick to the law rather than to the GOP, which is good. I can see several other EOs that the Supremes will overturn as well, beginning with the birthright ban.

*Several Arab countries have proposed a plan to oversee the rebuilding of Gaza until the Palestinian Authority can take over.  The PA part is completely insane. And Trump is not on board.

The White House has rejected an Arab plan for rebuilding the Gaza Strip, an early indication of the strength of President Trump’s commitment to positions he has staked out on contentious foreign-policy issues.

Arab governments have scrambled to come up with a plan after Trump laid out a proposal for the U.S. to take over the territory and redevelop it as an international destination after clearing out its Palestinian residents. The Arab proposal nodded to the president’s vision of a “Riviera of the Middle East,” calling for the eventual development of beachfront resorts.

But the White House shot down the proposal, saying the extent of the destruction in Gaza made keeping Palestinians in the enclave unworkable. Critics of the plan also said it failed to spell out how it would disarm Hamas, the U.S.-designated terrorist group that led the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel that left 1,200 dead and triggered the war.

The rejection makes clear that Trump won’t easily give up on an idea that has been criticized by governments around the world and surprised some of his aides and own party. It is also a sign of the challenges facing countries from Canada to Ukraine in trying to steer Trump to more palatable outcomes in disputes of their own.

“The current proposal does not address the reality that Gaza is currently uninhabitable and residents cannot humanely live in a territory covered in debris and unexploded ordnance,” National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said. “President Trump stands by his vision to rebuild Gaza free from Hamas. We look forward to further talks to bring peace and prosperity to the region.”

Two weeks after the war began, on October 23, 2023, I published an article titled About the Future. In it, I wrote that the war would continue for about another decade. When asked why I was so pessimistic, I said, “Pessimistic? I am realistic. It could take a lot longer.”

*If I had a choice of how I was to be executed, I may well choose the firing squad, since lethal injections seem to go wrong quite often. And the firing squad is very quick, though you might have a moment of severe pain.  At any rate, five states (Idaho, Utah, South Carolina, Oklahoma and Mississippi) permit this method of execution, though only 144 people have been put to death this way in the history of the U.S. Now it’s going to be 145.

South Carolina on Friday is scheduled to put the first person to death by firing squad in the U.S. in 15 years. Brad Sigmon, who was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend’s parents in 2001, chose it over the two other methods in South Carolina — the electric chair and lethal injection.

Since 1608, at least 144 civilian prisoners have been executed by shooting in America, nearly all in Utah. Only three have occurred since 1977, when the use of capital punishment resumed after a 10-year pause. The first of those, Gary Gilmore, caused a media sensation in part because he waived his appeals and volunteered to be executed. When asked for his last words, Gilmore replied, “Let’s do it.”

Five states — Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah — authorize the use of firing squads in certain circumstances.

One of the reasons firing squads did not gain much use beyond Utah was that people viewed them as barbaric, according to Deborah Denno, a criminologist at Fordham School of Law.

The bloody reality of those killings, as well as botched hangings and electrocutions, which sometimes led people to struggle and suffer, prompted states in the early 1980s to begin turning to lethal injection, a procedure viewed — at least initially — as more humane.

But since then, lethal injection has become the most commonly botched execution method, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. States have struggled to obtain the required drugs, and some have taken another look at firing squads — an old but largely reliable method. Lawmakers in Idaho are considering a bill that would make firing squads the primary method of execution there.

Two people now on Utah’s death row have requested firing squads.

According to the AP’s diagram at the site, three volunteers from the state’s Corrections Department will fire rifles through a slot in a wall from 15 feet away from the seated prisoner, aiming at his heart. The ammunition will be .308 Caliber Winchester 110-grain TAP Urban, said to “break apart on impact. Fragments will spread out and the intent is to destroy as much of the heart as possible.”  I reiterate that I am adamantly opposed to all forms of capital punishment, including this one. If they’re to be used as deterrents, though, they should be carried out in public.

*Regardless of its intent, this artwork, involving allowing three caged piglets starve to death in public, is ineffably cruel. (Piglets aren’t deliberately starved to death anyway, though some die because sows produce more piglets than they have teats.) Fortunately, somebody rescued the hapless porkers. There’s a photo of the “installation” at the NYT website (archived here).

Three piglets were stolen from an art exhibition in Copenhagen over the weekend after a provocative artist said they would be allowed to starve to death in a commentary about animal welfare in Denmark, one of the world’s largest pork exporters.

The artist, Marco Evaristti, said in an interview on Monday that his exhibition, “And Now You Care?,” was meant to “wake up the Danish society” to the mistreatment of pigs, pointing to statistics that tens of thousands of pigs die each day because of poor conditions.

“I have some kind of voice as an artist to talk about the issue,” Evaristti, 62, said. “So I will share my thoughts about what I think about the treatment of the animals in Denmark.”

The exhibition, which opened on Friday inside a former butcher’s warehouse in the Meatpacking District of Copenhagen, included three live piglets that were caged by two shopping carts on a pile of straw. Large-scale paintings of the Danish flag and slaughtered pigs hung on the walls.

The pigs, which were given water but no food, were expected to live up to five days. Evaristti said he also would not eat or drink until the exhibition came to an end.

But the pigs did not die. They disappeared.

Evaristti, who was born in Chile, said that while the exhibition space was being cleaned on Saturday morning, members of an animal rights organization came to check on the piglets. Shortly after they left, the theft occurred.

“They closed the door while the cleaning people were cleaning the toilet,” he said, adding that the door was unlocked. “After four minutes, they come out and it was no pigs.

Animal rights groups were divided over Evaristti’s latest exhibition, with some agreeing with his message but not his method and presentation. A review from a Danish newspaper slammed the exhibition as “old-fashioned avant-garde.”

Mathias Madsen, a campaign manager for Anima International Denmark, said in a statement that the organization had reported Evaristti to the police when he announced his plans to starve the piglets to death.

“This would violate multiple sections of the Danish Animal Welfare Act, and we wanted authorities prepared to intervene,” Madsen said, adding that the strong public reaction to the exhibition was a reminder that people find animal suffering unacceptable.

This is disgusting.  There are better ways to call attention to cruelty to animals than to deliberately inflict cruelty on animals. I’m glad the artist was reported and the piglets freed.

*The BBC reports that the U.S. has decided to stop sharing intelligence with Ukraine.

Intelligence sharing paused: The US has suspended intelligence sharing with Ukraine on top of a pause to military support. The move was confirmed by Trump’s national security adviser and the head of the CIA, and could have serious consequences on the battlefield.

But freeze might come to an end: Mike Waltz, the US national security adviser, says President Trump would consider restoring military aid to Ukraine if peace talks are arranged. Speaking to Fox News, Waltz said “the president will take a hard look at lifting this pause” if they can “nail down these negotiations” and put confidence-building measures on the table.

. . . . .US intelligence sharing is “more important” for Ukraine than the military aid cut-off, the Economist’s defence editor Shashank Joshi tells the BBC’s PM programme.

That’s because “they could fight for months without munition, however they will feel this immediately”, he says.

“It’s at times been absolutely fundamental for Ukraine”, Joshi says, explaining that “on day one of this conflict” Western intelligence supplied to Ukraine allowed them to anticipate and defend against a Russian assault on an airport outside of Kyiv.

Since then, US intelligence has been used for alerts on incoming ballistic missiles, as well as for information to effectively use long-range strike systems.

But Joshi says Ukraine also has some indigenous intelligence sources as well as commercial sources, adding: “I also don’t want to suggest that it’s cataclysmal and they can no longer see anything at all.”

He says for now, Ukraine still has access to Starlink – Elon Musk’s satellite internet company – but they anticipate it could be cut off soon and are actively working on replacements.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is dreaming of the Japanese cat treats that Hiroko (who made my embroidered Hili shirt) sent her.

Hili: I have a dream.

A: What dream?

Hili: That I’m eating such a treat that I once got from Japan.

Hili: Mam marzenie.

Ja: Jakie?

Hili: Że znowu jem taki przysmak jaki kiedyś dostałam z Japonii.

From Godless Mom, a welcome mat:

From Things With Faces, a grumpy chair:

From The Grammar Police:

From Masih; another Iranian man bravely defies the theocracy.

Mehdi Yarrahi, the Iranian singer, was flogged by the Islamic Republic, for singing a song called Take Off Your Scarf. But let me tell you what this regime never understands:

For every lash they strike, more women will take off their scarves. More voices will rise. And nothing… pic.twitter.com/93xa0xTLhp

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) March 5, 2025

Luana says this is the funniest thing she’s seen in a long time, and made her tear up:

JAJAJAAJAJAJAJAJA la voz de Mickey pic.twitter.com/Oe7Wjds4ap

— 𝒶 (@horridibujos) March 4, 2025

From cesar.  When are people going to learn that hate speech is not illegal unless it’s designed to create immediate violence or is so pervasive that it creates a climate of discrimination?

During a hearing on censorship, Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett falsely states that hate speech is not protected by the First Amendment.

This level of ignorance about the Constitution should disqualify you from holding office.

“The thing about the Constitution is that it has… pic.twitter.com/77IMSaJJp9

— Laura Powell (@LauraPowellEsq) February 14, 2025

Simon sent this, which made me really laugh out loud–a genuine LOL:

GIVE THEM TRUNKS YOU COWARDSwww.theguardian.com/science/2025…

— Marc Dionne (@marcsdionne.bsky.social) 2025-03-04T18:05:25.420Z

From my feed; who says that Twitter is a cesspool?

This horse waited his whole life for this moment

pic.twitter.com/vWvkFsYquC

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) March 5, 2025

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

A Dutch boy was sent to the gas chambers after arriving at Auschwitz. He was only seven.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-03-06T10:52:10.130Z

Two from Dr. Cobb. The first one he calls, “Australia wants to kill you,” and it’s true!

Beregama aurea, also known as The golden huntsman Spider IS one of the largest huntsman Spiders in Australia.#nature #insects #animals

— Álvaro F. (@maxwellafh.bsky.social) 2025-01-31T03:21:13.403Z

We still have the muscles to do this, though some people can’t move their ears (I’m good at it). It’s clearly a vestigial trait, for our relatives have functional ear-moving muscles (viz., cats):

‘A neural fossil’: human ears try to move when listening, scientists say

— The Guardian (@theguardian.com) 2025-01-31T05:13:33Z

Welcome to a Hump Day (“Kilumbu ya Hump” in Kikongo): Wednesday, March 5, 2025, and National Cheese Doodle Day, celebrating what I call (inaccurately) “styrofoam flavored with petroleum byproducts.”: But many people love this stuff. The iconic brand, “Cheez Doodles” was developed only in 1964, so I remember a glorious time when people didn’t stuff them down their maws, getting orange or (if they ate the “hot” flavor) red color all over their mugs.  Here’s how the crunchy version is made (there’s a glitch at the beginning):

It’s also Ash Wednesday, National Absinthe Day, and National Poutine Day, celebrating an iconic Canadian food that I love: French fries covered with gravy, cheese curds, and other stuff. Here’s a loaded plate I got in 2013 at Montreal’s most famous purveyor of this heart-clogging substance, La Banquise. This is the version with sausages and potatoes. Be still my beating heart!

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 5 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Trump’s speech to Congress last night was 1 hour and 40 minutes long, and I’m glad I missed it.

President Trump took a defiant victory lap in the House chamber on Tuesday night, using his address to a joint session of Congress to promote the flurry of drastic changes to domestic and foreign policy that his administration has made in just the first six weeks.

Delivering the longest address to Congress in modern presidential history, Mr. Trump reprised many of the themes that animated his campaign for president and spent little time unveiling new policies, as presidents traditionally have done on these occasions. He spoke for roughly one hour 40 minutes.

“We have accomplished more in 43 days than most administrations accomplish in four years or eight years — and we are just getting started,” he said.

Democrats lodged protests throughout the evening, with one representative getting kicked out and others holding signs in silent opposition. But Mr. Trump argued that it was the Democrats who left him a country besieged by crises and that his administration was working to clean them up.

From the Free Press’s morning email:

Wow, what a show. Or at least, what a long show. And no intermission. Donald Trump’s speech last night was the longest ever presidential address to Congress, clocking in at an hour and forty minutes.

That meant there was time for Trump to do a lot. But first, before Trump really got going, the Democrats made their presence felt in the form of an old man shaking a stick. Texas Representative Al Green, 77, heckled Trump repeatedly, cane in hand, until he was eventually kicked out by Speaker Mike Johnson. It was the first in a series of visuals that didn’t exactly scream “The Democrats are back.” Trump reveled in the confrontation with Democrats, who, with many wearing pink jackets and holding little round signs that said things like “False” and “Musk Steals,” looked utterly lost.

“I realize there is absolutely nothing I can say to make them happy or to make them stand or smile or applaud,” said Trump early on. “Nothing I can do.”

State of the Union addresses—something this technically wasn’t, for arcane reasons—are supposed to involve presidents suggesting to Congress laws it might pass. There was a bit of that. Trump asked the House of Representatives to sign the “Take It Down Act,” which aims to combat revenge porn, including fake images created by AI. He also asked for money to fund his deportation efforts, and called on Congress to repeal Biden’s CHIPS Act.

But Trump was more focused on the actions he has taken via executive order without Congress’s help. Or as he put it: “swift and unrelenting action to usher in the greatest and most successful era in the history of our country.”

Trump touted the work of DOGE, citing wasteful programs it has rooted out that funded things like transgender operations for mice, “eight million dollars to promote LGBTQI+ in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of,” “lavish fish monitoring,” and a program to improve “learning outcomes in Asia.”

Here is a 5.5-minute summary of the highlights, including the removal:

*Trump has now put the tariffs on China, Mexico, and Canada in place, and they are retaliating. I don’t know if he realizes the effect this will have on consumers, who are already sick of high prices, but the effect is worsened because the stock market is tanking hurting their pensions and investments.

resident Trump’s 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada took effect first thing Tuesday. Canada responded with plans to impose 25% tariffs on about $100 billion of U.S. imports, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau saying Trump is acting in “bad faith” and the U.S. president threatening more tariffs.

Mexico’s president said it would also retaliate, with a range of moves to be announced Sunday.

The U.S. also introduced an extra 10% tariff on Chinese imports overnight, adding to a levy imposed a month ago, and other existing duties. China swiftly announced retaliatory tariffs on U.S. agricultural goods, and other measures against American companies. Beijing also filed a lawsuit with the World Trade Organization.

Investors were rattled: the Dow industrials and other indexes fell Tuesday, while gold rose, Wall Street’s “fear gauge” picked up, and global equities largely retreated. Stocks had slid Monday, after Trump confirmed tariffs would go ahead.

Tuesday’s moves in the Canadian dollar and Mexican peso were relatively modest, however, with some traders betting hefty tariffs will be short-lived.

Economists say American importers and businesses will likely pass along the cost of tariffs to consumers, meaning individuals are likely to see higher prices at grocery stores and car dealerships.

Here from the WSJ is a figure showing how the markets have done in the last several weeks. Feb 19 is the starting point, and the y-axis is percentage change. :

*The Trump Administration has now said it’s going to “pause” future deliveries of military aid to Ukraine. Zelensky gets another unwarranted slap on the butt:

President Donald Trump has decided to pause all future deliveries of U.S. military assistance to Ukraine in an extraordinary move aimed at pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into peace talks with Russia, said two U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

U.S. military support for Ukraine has been essential to fending off Russia’s invading forces, but initial bipartisan backing for Ukraine’s resistance has fractured along partisan lines amid doubts about the war’s costs and a diplomatic off-ramp.

“The president has been clear that he is focused on peace. We need our partners to be committed to that goal as well,” said a White House official who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive policy deliberations. “We are pausing and reviewing our aid to ensure that it is contributing to a solution.”

Trump has long been skeptical of aid to Ukraine, but his top aides began preparing serious policy options about ending military assistance following last week’s rancorous Oval Office meeting as Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated Zelensky, a second U.S. official said.

The official said the decision could be reversed if Zelensky demonstrates a good-faith effort to participate in peace talks. Ukrainian officials have bristled that the Trump administration did not seek early buy-in on negotiations and were surprised by the decision to exclude them from last month’s meeting between U.S. and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia.

The decision to pause the aid was made at a White House meeting Monday that included Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.

The move follows an order last week by Hegseth for U.S. Cyber Command to halt offensive cyber and information operations against Russia as long as negotiations to end the war are ongoing, according to current and former U.S. officials.

It’s not enough for Trump to get Zelensky to participate in talks with Putin; no, he wants an apology and a fulsome “thank you” from Ukraine for U.S. aid, not to mention those mineral rights.  This is childish and unprofessional, and Zelensky is right to question Trump’s assertion that the U.S. getting minerals constitutes a “security guarantee.” Seriously? Are U.S. citizens going to be prying the minerals out of the soil, so they will be there to defend against Russian aggression? The answer is “no.”

*In response to American diplomatic stupidity over Ukraine, our allies in the EU have acted admirably, proposing a huge sum of money to strengthen U.S. defenses and fund Ukraine:

The chief of the European Union’s executive on Tuesday proposed an 800 billion-euro ($841 billion) plan to beef up the defenses of EU nations, aiming to lessen the impact of potential U.S. disengagement and provide Ukraine with military muscle to negotiate with Russia following the freeze of U.S. aid to the embattled nation.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the massive “REARM Europe” package will be put to the 27 EU leaders. They are holding an emergency meeting in Brussels on Thursday following a week of increasing political uncertainty from Washington, where President Donald Trump questioned both his alliance to the continent and the defense of Ukraine.

“I do not need to describe the grave nature of the threats that we face,” von der Leyen said. Her plan had already been in the works before Trump’s decision early Tuesday to pause military aid to Ukraine.

Key to the quandary of EU nations has been an unwillingness to spend much on defense over the past decades as they hid under the U.S. nuclear umbrella and were hurt by a sluggish economy, which creates challenges for a quick ramp-up of such spending. It increasingly has left them on the world’s diplomatic sidelines.

That is a lot of dosh for the EU to come up with. But they have a plan. . .

Most of the money Von der Leyen is talking about, would come from loosening the fiscal constraints the EU puts on budgetary spending to “allow member states to significantly increase their defense expenditures without triggering” punishing rules aimed at keeping deficits from going too far into the red. It would help member states to spend on defense without being forced to cut into social spending purely to keep within EU rules.

“So if member states would increase their defense spending by 1.5% of GDP on average, this could create fiscal space of close to 650 billion euros ($683 billion) over a period of four years,” von der Leyen said. This would be topped up by a loans program, controversially backed by the common EU budget, of 150 billion euros ($157 billion) to allow member states to invest in defense.

She said military equipment that needs to be improved includes air and missile defense, artillery systems, missiles and ammunition, drones and anti-drone systems and cyber preparedness.

Such a plan will force many EU member states to greatly increase their military spending, which is still below 2% of gross domestic product. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has told the member states they need to move to more than 3% as quickly as possible.

The EU is having a summit meeting about this on Thursday.

*And the Democratic party continues to engage in political suicide, voting against the wishes of the American people. Have a look at this NYT article (Click to read; archived here):

Democrats on Monday blocked a Republican-written bill aimed at barring transgender women and girls from school sports teams designated for female students, thwarting consideration in the Senate of the G.O.P.’s latest move to use transgender people as leverage at the dawn of President Trump’s second term.

With Democrats opposed, the measure stalled on a party-line vote of 51 to 45, falling short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster and be brought up for consideration. The bill, which passed the House in January on a largely party-line vote, would prohibit federal funding from going to K-12 schools that include transgender students in women’s and girls’ athletic programs.

It mirrors one of the goals of an executive order Mr. Trump signed last month titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” which charged the Education Department with changing its interpretation of civil rights laws so that schools that failed to bar transgender athletes could lose federal funding.

Senate Republicans argued it was essential to protecting girls from predatory men encroaching on their private spaces and seeking to gain an unfair athletic advantage on the basis of sex, even as they hinted that the measure was intended to lay a political trap for Democrats.

“Democrats can stand for women or stand with a radical transgender ideology,” Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, said on Monday. If they opposed the legislation, he said, “they’ll have to answer to the women and girls they vote to disenfranchise.”

Believing that men should be allowed to compete in women’s sports is not an electable stance.

The majority of people (with the exception of “very liberal” Americans) do not agree that biological men should be allowed to compete in women’s sports.

(see graph below)

These data… https://t.co/gefQGOIbdb pic.twitter.com/OQyGhnPRSd

— Skeptic Research Center Team (@SkepResCenter) March 3, 2025

Do the Democrats really want trans-identified men competing in women’s sports? If so, they should say it straight out. Because if they choose to die on this hill, they’re only hurting their prospects to regain power.

*Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic, internal security agency, has blamed not only Netanyahu, but also itself for promoting Hamas’s attack on Israel in October of 2023.

While taking plenty of responsibility for the October 7 disaster, in its report published suddenly and unexpectedly on Tuesday, the Shin Bet included accusations that policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the Temple Mount, Palestinian prisoners’ treatment, and the judicial overhaul, were significant additional motivators for Hamas to finally actually initiate its long-planned invasion.

In fact, the Shin Bet never mentions Netanyahu by name, and technically, some of these policies were those of then national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, but Netanyahu, as prime minister, allowed many of the policies to continue, despite having the power to stop them.

More specifically, Ben-Gvir vastly expanded the volume of Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount compared to prior years, violated some of the rules of what activities could be done on the Mount, publicly called for completely changing the “status quo,” and enforced policies to worsen the treatment of Palestinian prisoners.

. . . . Other government policies during Netanyahu’s reign that the Shin Bet flagged as problematic and helping contribute to Hamas’s decision to invade were his facilitation of Qatari funding to Hamas and his opposition to proposed assassination operations of top Hamas leaders.

.  . . .But most of the report is about the Shin Bet’s own failures: not warning the country about an invasion, misunderstanding Hamas’s intentions both before October 7 and the eve of the invasion, failing to adjust to Hamas as a military entity as opposed to a terror group, allowing Hamas to massively army itself, and not seeing the depth of the harm to Israeli deterrence.

Another blind-spot for the Shin Bet was its belief on the eve of October 7 that Hamas might be focused on an attack in the West Bank, partially because Gaza’s rulers had carried out an unusual terror attack in the West Bank on October 5.

Conceptually, the Shin Bet said that it had far too much confidence in the IDF’s hi-tech Gaza border fence, was too invested in quiet and stability, and was too worried about miscalculations in pressuring Hamas leading to instability or an “unnecessary” war, as the 2014 Gaza conflict was viewed.

There are multiple bodies and people guilty here: Netanyahu, for agreeing to give money to Hamas in the hopes that it would quash terrorism and allow Gaza to rebuilt, Shin Bet for what’s noted above, but also Shin Bet and the IDF for both ignoring both advance and immediate signs that Hamas would invade Israel in the fall of 2023. Yep, everybody screwed up, and Israel can’t slough off any blame.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, a weird occurrence. I asked Malgorzata if this story were true, and she replied: “I haven’t seen it so I asked Andrzej. No, it’s not true. A few years ago Andrzej saw another cat and a magpie pecking on its tail. Hili’s surprised face reminded him about this and he used it in the dialogue.”

Hili: Astonishing!

Andrzej: What is it?

Hili: Kulka is sitting high on the tree and a magpie is pecking her tail.

Hili: Zdumiewające!

Ja: Co takiego?

Hili: Kulka siedzi wysoko na drzewie, a sroka łapie ją za ogon.

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

From Divy; all road lead to “YES!”. I love this one.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Mika and Mocha (@mika.and.mocha)

From Things with Faces:

From I Love Cats. Can you find the cat pea. It’s there, but not so easy to find (enlarge the photo):

From Masih and others. I’ve shown the first tweet before, but can’t insert the second one, with two anti-Khamenei cartoons, without adding the first:

pic.twitter.com/bvUtTQ6qEr

— Kenth Lampa (@KenthLampa) February 25, 2025

I’m still pondering how serious the notion of “gender” is, and what it might mean. I found this cartoon by someone who has strong feelings about it:

There is no grown-up version of gender ideology. What you see in the pages of propagandistic children’s books is the whole of the claim.

It’s all desperate sophistry and cluster B manipulation in whatever guise it takes — whether it’s spouted by philosophers credentialed by… https://t.co/JgzDCJrOLv pic.twitter.com/UvzH7l7xih

— Wesley Yang (@wesyang) March 3, 2025

Did I put this up before? If so, well, here it is again. It’s academia, Jake!

Here you can see why my leaving academia was the only sensible option.

The synopsis of a 608-page academic book published in May 2024 is below. I can’t understand even one paragraph. 608 pages is unimaginable.

I think it says mountains are racist.

‘In Geologic Life, Kathryn…

— Dr Diane Rasmussen McAdie – UK Column (@dianeukc) January 18, 2025

From Malgozata, the large rock that was once the subject of controversy at the University of Michigan was painted orange in honor of the three dead hostages of the Bibas family, but then of course it was vandalized:

I was just informed that the rock at @UMich which memorialized the Bibas family was vandalized with “Free Palestine” written on it.

The depravity of this hate movement runs so deep that they will literally erase any reminder of the line that was crossed by Hamas on Oct 7th. https://t.co/qUd8PeZKhF pic.twitter.com/ZL58nhyKRI

— Adar Rubin (@rubin_a1) March 2, 2025

What are they putting on these hippos’ snoots? Makeup???

My toxic trait is thinking all hippos are this sweet and want snoot rubs😅 pic.twitter.com/vP0hWrszx2

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) March 3, 2025

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

A 20-year-old Dutch Jewish woman was one of the 1 million Jews who died in Auschwitz.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-03-05T11:01:49.232Z

A post from Dr. Cobb. I especially love this one as I’m a huge fan of the now-defunct UK television show “One Man and His Dog”:

❤️ A farmer and his collie in North Yorkshire expertly steering his sheep through town.

🎥 Wayne Hutchinson pic.twitter.com/D1yUQhDcvo

— Farmers Weekly (@FarmersWeekly) January 23, 2025