Welcome to The Cruelest Day: it is Tuesday, March 4, 2025 and National Pączki  Day, the Polish version of the American jam donut, but much better, as they’re made with yeast and allowed to rise. Here are some pączki I photographed in Katowice last December during the Science Festival, and one below that purchased and eating in Krakow in 2013. Oy, were they good!

It’s also National Poundcake Day, International Pancake Day, Mardi Gras, National Snack Day, World Obesity Day (!), and National Grammar Day (at least they didn’t say “National Grammar Lover’s Day”).

Given the level of engagement yesterday, I think that the end of the science posts has arrived.

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

Da Nooz:  The news is thin today as I had a busy day and little time to write here.

*Fricking Trump has hit Canada, China and Mexico with tariffs. He means business, and this is bad for the consumer (see later post for whom the Democrats should nominate in 2028):

China imposed tariffs on various U.S. food exports early Tuesday, responding swiftly to the Trump administration’s latest tariffs and escalating a global dispute that has rattled governments and international trade. Canada, which was also targeted by the Trump tariffs that took effect after midnight, immediately imposed retaliatory measures and Mexico was expected to respond later today.

China’s finance ministry announced 15 percent tariffs on imports of chicken, wheat, corn and cotton from the United States, as well as 10 percent tariffs on imports of sorghum, soybeans, pork, beef, aquatic products, fruits, vegetables and dairy products.

President Trump’s new tariffs — 25 percent on most imports from Canada and Mexico, and 10 percent on imports from China — will make good on his campaign promise to rework America’s trade relations, and they are likely to encourage some manufacturers to set up factories in the United States, instead of in other countries.

Canada responded by imposing 25 percent tariffs on $30 billion worth of goods at 12:01 a.m. Eastern but did not specify which products would be affected. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada said in a statement that the tariffs would extend to $125 billion of American goods in 21 days.

By altering the terms of trade between the United States and its largest economic partners, the tariffs will also probably rattle supply chains, strain some of the country’s most important diplomatic relationships and add significant costs for American consumers and manufacturers.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Mexico pushes back: As President Trump uses the hammer of tariffs as a negotiating tool against Mexico, a sense of Mexican nationalism has been strengthened and the country’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has seen her approval ratings rise.

• Canadian reaction: It remains unclear what is at the root of Mr. Trump’s love-hate relationship with Canada. But there is widespread consensus in the country that tariffs would inflict major damage on its economy, which is dependent on exports as well as industries that are tightly integrated with the American market.

• Tariff basics: Trade wars were a feature of Mr. Trump’s first term in the White House. But his latest tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China could broaden the scale of disruptions. The three countries account for more than a third of the products brought into the United States, supporting tens of millions of American jobs.

Of course prices will go up for us as well as the Mexicans, Canadians, and Chinese. No good will come of this, that’s for sure. Once again we are alienating some of our allies. All I can do is apologize for our narcissistic leader.

*Trump has sort of scuppered himself, foodwise. According to the WSJ, RFK Jr. is trying to eliminate government benefits, like food stamps, being used to buy sugary drinks like Coke and Pepsi.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. calls it “poison.” President Trump has multiple cans of it every day. Welcome to the 2025 soda wars.

At both state and federal levels, the Kennedy-led Make America Healthy Again movement is backing efforts to prevent people from spending food-aid benefits on sugary, carbonated beverages. Now, they are gaining momentum with an administration led by a man who enjoys soda so much that he had a red button installed on his desk for a valet to bring him a Diet Coke.

Beverage companies are nervous about the push and preparing a counterpush of their own.

Liberal-leaning states including New York and Minnesota have tried in the past to strip soda from state food-aid programs, saying it would boost their nutritional impact. But the U.S. Agriculture Department, which oversees the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, has rejected the requests for more than 20 years, saying it would be too complicated to implement. This year, deep-red Arkansas may be the first to get a different answer.

The state is preparing to ask the USDA if it can restrict some less-healthy items, including potentially soda, candy and desserts, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in an interview Friday.

“Nobody is anti-Diet Coke. Nobody is anti-soft drink. I like a soft drink, too. It’s whether or not the government should be paying for it,” said Sanders, who was Trump’s press secretary in his first term.

Currently SNAP recipients can purchase most food with the benefits, but not items such as pet food or alcohol. Sanders said the state is still fine-tuning the language of its waiver request.

Trump’s new agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, has indicated she is inclined to grant such waivers. She sent governors a letter on her first full day in office, urging them to propose pilot programs testing changes to food aid.

. . . . “When a taxpayer is putting money into SNAP, are they OK with us using their tax dollars to feed really bad food and sugary drinks to children, who perhaps need something more nutritious?” Rollins told reporters recently outside the White House.

Meanwhile in Washington, an alarmed Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and their band of lobbyists are trying to persuade Trump such steps would alienate his core voters. The chief executive of Coca-Cola, James Quincey, spent about an hour with Trump during the transition, presenting him a commemorative inaugural Diet Coke. “Our principal objective is to make sure we offer those consumers options,” Quincey said.

The American Beverage Association, a trade group that represents soda and juice makers, commissioned polling this year showing that nearly 60% of those who voted for Trump last fall support allowing soda purchases with food aid.

Well of course Trump will still be buying sodas; he doesn’t use food stamps!  I have mixed feelings.  Should we be subsidizing this stuff. If no alcohol, why not no sugary Coke? On the other hand, I drink only diet sodas, and in moderation; would they be exempt?  I wonder how readers feel about this one.  And don’t mention Social Security or Medicare. . . .

*Deborah Lipstadt was the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism under President Biden. Now she has rejected an offer of a visiting professorship from Columbia University, explaining at the Free Press “Why I Won’t Teach at Columbia.”

My decision to withdraw my name from consideration for a teaching post at Columbia is based on three calculations.

First, I am not convinced that the university is serious about taking the necessary and difficult measures that would create an atmosphere that allows for true inquiry.

Second, I fear that my presence would be used as a sop to convince the outside world that “Yes, we in the Columbia/Barnard orbit are fighting antisemitism. We even brought in the former Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism.” I will not be used to provide cover for a completely unacceptable situation.

Third, I am not sure that I would be safe or even able to teach without being harassed. I do not flinch in the face of threats. But this is not a healthy or acceptable learning environment.

On too many university campuses, the inmates—and these may include administrators, student disrupters, and off-campus agitators as well as faculty members—are running the asylum. They are turning universities into parodies of true academic inquiry.

We are at a crisis point. Unless this situation is addressed forcefully and unequivocally, one of America’s great institutions, its system of higher education, could well collapse. There are many in this country—including those in significant positions of power—who would delight in seeing that happen. The failure to stand up to disrupters who are preventing other students from learning gives the opponents of higher education the very tools they need.

Meanwhile, absent direct and comprehensive action to protect Jewish students and the campus environment, I will not be teaching on Columbia’s campus.

Although the students who recently occupied a building at Columbia were protesting the expulsion of students who broke the rules at the sister school Barnard,  Columbia wiggled out of any responsibility this way:

But watching Barnard capitulate to mob violence and fail to enforce its own rules and regulations led me to conclude that I could not go to Columbia University, even for a single semester.

I conveyed this to Columbia’s administration on Friday, which prompted Columbia’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, to call me. She pointed out that the two institutions, Barnard and Columbia, while affiliated, have separate administrations, security teams, and policies. I know this is true. But its recent history regarding demonstrations suggests that it has far less than a firm commitment to the free exchange of ideas, or to preventing classroom disruptions or even condemning disrupters and their demonstrations.

During the Barnard protest, Columbia issued an anodyne statement disclaiming responsibility because the “disruption” was on Barnard’s campus, not Columbia’s, and asserting its commitment “to supporting our Columbia student body and our campus community during this challenging time.” No condemnation.

*The Oscar winners, except for “Flow”, which I predicted would win for Best Animated feature film,  surprised me. Here is the list of winners in major categories.

Best picture:

“Anora” – *WINNER

“The Brutalist”

“A Complete Unknown”

“Conclave”

“Dune: Part Two”

“Emilia Pérez”

“I’m Still Here”

“Nickel Boys”

“The Substance”

“Wicked”

I saw only “Anora” and “A Complete Unknown, but I thought neither was a world-beater.

Best actor in a leading role:

Adrien Brody, “The Brutalist” – *WINNER

Timothée Chalamet, “A Complete Unknown”

Colman Domingo, “Sing Sing”

Ralph Fiennes, “Conclave”

Sebastian Stan, “The Apprentice”

I will be seeing “The Brutalist”

Best actress in a leading role:

Cynthia Erivo, “Wicked”

Karla Sofía Gascón, “Emilia Pérez”

Mikey Madison, “Anora” – *WINNER

Demi Moore, “The Substance”

Fernanda Torres, “I’m Still Here”

Best actress in a supporting role:

Zoe Saldaña, “Emilia Pérez” – *WINNER

Best actor in a supporting role:

Kieran Culkin, “A Real Pain” – *WINNER

Best director:

Sean Baker, “Anora” – *WINNER

Brady Corbet, “The Brutalist”

James Mangold, “A Complete Unknown”

Jacques Audiard, “Emilia Pérez”

Coralie Fargeat, “The Substance”

Best original screenplay:

“Anora” – *WINNER

Annnnnnnd, . , Best animated feature film:

“Flow” – *WINNER

“Inside Out 2”

“Memoir of a Snail”

“Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl”

“The Wild Robot”

All I can say is that I’m going to see “The Brutalist” and that you have to see “Flow”. Here’s the trailer:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili wants her chair:

Ja: Czy możesz mi udostępnić kawałek fotela?

Hili: Idź pozmywać naczynia.

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

From Godless Mom:

From My Cat is an Asshole:

From Things With Faces; unhappy feet:

I am still pondering whether “gender” has a substantive meaning despite the assertion of many that it is pure superstition, like the Holy Ghost. Here JKR calls out the notion as authoritarian:

🙄The fringe idea that we all have a ‘gender identity’ that may or may not match our biological sex is the whole point of this discussion. Trans activists act as though the existence of ‘gender identity’ is a settled, self-evident point, when to the vast majority of the world… pic.twitter.com/90R4KUGUWP

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) March 3, 2025

From Malgorzata:

Gee, NYT, last I saw the somber Gazans they were dancing around the coffins of murdered children. So spare me. pic.twitter.com/3gPeCKljtv

— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) March 1, 2025

Two cat posts from my Twitter feed:

bro is a logo pic.twitter.com/7VQqcoKbjE

— Punch Cat (@PunchingCat) March 1, 2025

Sound up:

Bro really said “👋” pic.twitter.com/AegYWv9qiS

— contents that ll heal your depression 🌻 (@catshealdeprsn) March 3, 2025

. . . and one from my BlueHair feed:

Always wondering how nature can produce such crazy landscape… Well, I know how it happens, but still feels unbelievable.Cappadocia, 2024. aerial.#bluesky #photography #nature #art #landscape #geology

— Armand Sarlangue (@armandsarlangue.bsky.social) 2025-03-03T14:55:12.595Z

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

A German woman and her infant were gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz, along with 1020 other Norwegian and German Jews.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-03-04T11:18:26.847Z

Two from Matthew. Here’s a “kot”:

Be nice or go away.

— MissyBBBobtail (@missybbbobtail.bsky.social) 2025-03-01T17:16:38.797Z

. . . and a post from his recent trip to Asilomar:

Beach outside Monterey with Harbour seals

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-02-27T21:47:29.178Z

Welcome to the beginning of the first work week in March: it’s Monday, March 3, 2025, and National Cold Cuts Day. Here’s a huge (3+ pounds) sub from Chicago, and not far from me (I’ve never been there):

It’s also 33 Flavors Day, celebrating Baskin-Robbins, Moscow Mule Day (a great drink), Canadian Bacon Day, National Mulled Wine Day, Shrove Monday, World Wildlife Day,  Cream Bun Day in Iceland, and National Soup it Forward Day, whose meaning I don’t know. But remember this?

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 3 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Israel has halted aid to Gaza after the terrorist group has refused to extend the first phase of the cease-fire (Hamas is demanding that Israel remove its troops from the border with Egypt, which are used for smuggling weapons and material).

Israel said Sunday it would not allow any more goods to enter Gaza over what it called Hamas’s refusal to accept a proposal to extend the expiring initial stage of the ceasefire and hostage release deal, and threatened “additional consequences” and a return to war.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government said the move had rock-solid backing from US President Donald Trump’s White House, even as Jerusalem appeared to back away from its previous agreement with Hamas to negotiate a second phase of the ceasefire during which additional hostages would be released and Israel would fully withdraw from Gaza.

“With the end of phase one of the hostage deal and in light of Hamas’s refusal to accept the [US special envoy Steve] Witkoff outline for continuing talks – to which Israel agreed – Prime Minister Netanyahu has decided that, as of this morning, all entry of goods and supplies into the Gaza Strip will cease,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement Sunday morning.

Israel said Sunday it would not allow any more goods to enter Gaza over what it called Hamas’s refusal to accept a proposal to extend the expiring initial stage of the ceasefire and hostage release deal, and threatened “additional consequences” and a return to war.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government said the move had rock-solid backing from US President Donald Trump’s White House, even as Jerusalem appeared to back away from its previous agreement with Hamas to negotiate a second phase of the ceasefire during which additional hostages would be released and Israel would fully withdraw from Gaza.

“With the end of phase one of the hostage deal and in light of Hamas’s refusal to accept the [US special envoy Steve] Witkoff outline for continuing talks – to which Israel agreed – Prime Minister Netanyahu has decided that, as of this morning, all entry of goods and supplies into the Gaza Strip will cease,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement Sunday morning.

“Israel will not allow a ceasefire without the release of our hostages,” the PMO added, threatening “further consequences” if Hamas continues to say no to the proposal.

It later denied a report in Arabic-language media that Netanyahu had dispatched a delegation to Egypt for talks.

Netanyahu also claimed at his weekly cabinet meeting that Hamas is diverting aid entering the Strip for its own use.

“Hamas is currently taking control of all supplies and goods sent to the Gaza Strip. It is abusing the Gazan population who are trying to receive the aid, it is shooting at them, and is turning humanitarian aid into a terrorist budget directed against us,” he said.

According to the Kan public broadcaster, Israel believes enough aid has entered the enclave in recent weeks to last Gaza for several months. Jerusalem has  questioned the veracity of reports of famine in the enclave over the course of the war, which has been blamed on a lack of sufficient aid flowing into the Strip via Israel-controlled border crossings.

. . . Under the ceasefire outline agreed to by Israel and Hamas on January 19, the remaining living hostages were to be released during the second stage of the deal, during which the IDF would complete a full withdrawal from Gaza. A third stage is also planned, during which the bodies of hostages held by Gazan terror groups would be released, the war would end, and the reconstruction of Gaza would begin.

The U.S. is endorsing Israel’s actions, even though the world will soon begin baying that Gazans are starving (that’s always been untrue) and even though Hamas takes most of the aid.  Unless you lack neurons, you’ll realize that Hamas will never agree to let all the living hostages go, as they are the ticket to their continuing in power. With no living hostages, there’s little impetus for Israel to allow Hamas to continue to rule, which they’ve said is intolerable—and it is. My prediction is that this will be drawn out considerably, but eventually the war will resume.

*As reader Jez comments, and as reported in the Guardian, “Rather bizarre, but it looks like the British prime minister and the monarchy are trying to undermine the official invitation for a state visit that Keir Starmer extended to Trump on Thursday by pre-emptively hosting Zelenskyy”:

King Charles will hold an ­official audience at Sandringham with the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday as the UK and EU demonstrate their “unwavering” ­support after his humiliation at the hands of Donald Trump and JD Vance in the White House.

Keir Starmer will also host European heads of government and the leaders of Canada and Turkey at a special defence summit aimed at presenting a united front on the Ukraine crisis.

On arrival in Downing Street for a meeting with Starmer on Saturday night, just 24 hours after Trump and his vice-president Vance subjected him to a 10-minute tirade in the Oval Office, Zelenskyy said he was “very happy” that the king had agreed to the meeting.

The offer of a royal audience was seen at Westminster as a deliberate move to give the Ukrainian president equal treatment to Trump, who was presented during his meeting at the White House on Wednesday by Starmer with an invitation to a ­second state visit to the UK, including a meeting with King Charles.

Last night there were reports that the UK would show further solidarity by unlocking billions of pounds of frozen Russian assets to Ukraine. The Sunday Times claimed Rachel Reeves would divert money earmarked for green investment in the UK to the defence industry. It would be the first time that money from frozen Russian assets would contribute towards military spending.

The irate exchanges between Trump and Vance, on the US side, and Zelenskyy, which led to the Ukrainian president being told to leave the White House before any formal talks took place, led to fears among European and other world leaders of irreparable damage to the western alliance, and to the hopes of peace in Ukraine’s war with Russia. At today’s defence summit, which demonstrates the increasingly central role being played by the UK in Europe’s defence and security, Starmer will be clear that Europe must stand united against President Putin.

I’m especially heartened that King Charles, though he has little power, encouraged this move. The Brits are acting like menschen, while Trump and Vance, osculating Putin’s rump, look like dopes. I’m not sure what Trump intended to accomplish by humiliating Zelensky in public, but he gained nothing from it. This shows more clearly than ever how much he’s sundered America from its allies, but the one problem is that the U.S. alone can’t support Ukraine if it continues to fight rather than take Trump’s rotten offer.

*The NYT is flogging Christianity again, this time giving Nicholas Wolterstorff a theologian and philosopher of religion, a Q&A in which he discusses his faith with religionist Peter Wehner.  (Wolterstorff’s son was killed in a mountain-climbing accident at age 25, which surely motivated his answer to the first question (in bold; Wolterstorff answers are in plain text).

These are of course god-of-the-gaps arguments, and scientists have dealt with them using “materialistic accounts”. These apologists just don’t realize that once you’ve evolved a big brain and can live in small groups with other humans, you can do a lot of other stuff as epiphenomena.  After all, humans painted on caves early in our evolution; did God give us artistic abilities, too?

*Yesterday I wrote about how the Maine legislature had both censured and censored one of its members, Rep. Laurel Libby, for posting photos of a trans-identified male teenager on the podium after having won a girls’ athletic event, The editorial board of the WSJ notes, correctly, that this kind of behavior is going to cost Democrats elections. It’s clear that Libby was silenced for her sentiments, not posting the picture. (The excuse was that she photographed a teen, but it seems the teen was willing to be photographed, and this is not illegal.

If Democrats want to know why so many voters abandoned them in November, they could take a gander at the progressive meltdown in Maine. On Tuesday the Maine House of Representatives voted to censure Republican Rep. Laurel Libby for posting photos of a transgender high school athlete on Facebook.

The teenager, who previously competed in boys’ track and field, switched to compete in the girls’ pole vault this year, winning the class B state championship. “This is outrageous and unfair to the many female athletes who work every day to succeed in their respective sports,” Ms. Libby wrote on Facebook.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has a philosophical question:

Hili: What is happiness?

Andrzej: An exceptionally high level of satisfaction with the present moment.

In Polish:

Hili: Co to jest szczęście?

Ja: Nadzwyczajnie wysoki poziom zadowolenia z chwili obecnej.

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

From Cat Memes:

From Things with Faces, a “stretching fondue squirrel”:

From the 2025 Darwin Awards!!!/Epic Fails!!!:

This post by Masih can’t be embedded (obscenity??), so I’m posting a screenshot:

From Malgozata: the benighted thugs shut down an event that attempted to produce DIALOGUE between Israeli and Iranian students. Jebus!

Does King’s College London want to be known for thugs shrieking for terror and wrecking events they dislike? For that is just what happened to an Israeli-Iranian dialogue meeting last night. If they’re students, expel them, quickly. If not, bar them from campus, permanently. Act! pic.twitter.com/HykyyJnk4Z

— habibi (@habibi_uk) February 28, 2025

From Barry: Weird behavior from a whitish wolf. Look at them choppers!

I've never seen a wolf be silly 😅😅

— amazingnature ☘️ (@amazingnature.bsky.social) 2025-03-02T03:47:22.949Z

From Malcolm; a Facebook video of cats imitating people. I am truly stunned!

From my feed, a helpful goose trying to rescue a stuck goat:

The goose trying to help??? Oh my heart 🥹🥰 pic.twitter.com/De9H5F4s3T

— why you should have an animal (@ShouldHaveAnima) March 1, 2025

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

Murdered in the gas chamber upon arriving at Auschwitz. This French Jewish girl was only eight years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-03-03T10:31:56.423Z

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, some ancient but lovely and largely intact teacups:

Something lovely for the weekend! Marvellous Minoan cups known as Kamares Ware. They look so modern, yet they were made by Bronze Age potters about 3,800 years ago!Heraklion Archaeological Museum, Crete. 📷 by me#Archaeology

— Alison Fisk (@alisonfisk.bsky.social) 2025-03-01T11:07:19.265Z

Narwhals! (But I can’t find any video from the drone.)

Drone captures narwhals using their tusks to explore, forage and playwww.eurekalert.org/news-release…

— Roger Highfield (@rogerhighfield.bsky.social) 2025-03-02T07:28:58.979Z

Welcome to shabbos for Jewish cats: it’s CaturSaturday,  2025, and March 1.  Here’s March from the illuminated manuscript the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, produced in the second decade of the fifteenth century. Time for plowing and planting!

It’s also National Pig Day, World Compliment Day, Beer Day in Iceland, The beginning of Ramadan, and National Peanut Butter Lover’s Day (note once again the misplaced apostrophe, implying that only a single lover of peanut butter is being honored.

Here’s a joke for World Compliment Day; pardon the misspelling:

A man goes into one of those Seattle fern bars and orders a drink. As he nurses his white wine, a peanut jumps out of the bowl on the table, runs up to him and says, “Nice turtleneck, buddy” and proceeds out the door.

“Whoa”, thinks the man with the wine.

A minute later, another goober runs by and yells, “Great haircut, pal!”, and strides out the door.

Enough!!

“Hey bartender”, calls out the patron, “What’s with these peanuts?”

“Oh, they’re complimentary snacks, sir”.

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

Da Nooz:

*Trump had a meeting with Ukrainian President Zelensky in the White House yesterday, and it wasn’t pretty (article archived here). Trump wants Zelensky to lick his boots and abase his country because it got aid from America.

Tensions between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Trump burst into the open Friday in the Oval Office as the Ukrainian leader urged the U.S. not to trust Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump responded that Kyiv needed to accept that it had a weak negotiating hand.

Ukraine had sought the meeting to line up U.S. support against Russian aggression, which it hoped to solidify with the signing of a mineral-rights deal later in the day.

*As usual, I’ll post a few items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news summary at the Free Press: “TGIF: Gold Bars, Gold Stars, Gold Cards.”

You’ve surely seen this (for one thing, I posted it):

→ TrumpGaza: Our President this week posted an AI-generated video of what Gaza might look like in the future as an American colony, and I cannot describe how unhinged it is. Lyrics include: “No more tunnels, no more fear. TrumpGaza is finally here. TrumpGaza shining bright, golden future, a brand-new light.” There are dancing bearded women on the beach. There are golden Trump balloons, and shots of a suspiciously chiseled Elon eating vats of hummus. You just have to watch it to understand the level of freak emanating from America’s capital. Here’s a good link.

Here: I’ll save you the trouble of clicking:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by President Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump)

→ Lost in translation: A BBC documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone had a lot of problems, but one is that they didn’t actually tell viewers what Palestinians were saying. The British broadcaster mistranslated or just left out any Palestinians’ references to the Jews or praise of jihad. The word Yahud, Arabic for Jew—and it also kinda sounds like it already—was changed to Israel or Israeli forces. A Palestinian’s praise of Yahya Sinwar’s “jihad against the Jews” was translated as Sinwar’s fighting “Israeli forces.” Watch this side-by-side. It’s a pretty perfect example of how Hamas’s war to eliminate Israel and expel all Jews from the Middle East is whitewashed into a gentle call for better military ethics. A call for an end to the military-industrial complex.

About that one, reader Jez found the “apology”: “The BBC has finally put out a statement on the dire documentary about Gaza narrated by the son on a Hamas official.” Have a look. Jez added, “When I tried to search the BBC website to find the statement using its full title, it didn’t come up, but ironically a link to a BBC Verify video called ‘Israel-Gaza war: How to spot fake news on social media”‘did. You couldn’t make it up – although apparently they did their best to…!”

And this one is absolutely true:

→ Mayor Johnson’s astonishingly low favorability: Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson is “overwhelmingly unpopular,” per a new poll. Fully 80 percent of voters disapprove of Johnson. And—this is incredible—only 6.6 percent hold a favorable view of the mayor. The same poll found that 67 percent of Chicago voters feel crime is the most important issue the city is facing. Brandon Johnson is a 2020-style mayor meeting the year 2025.

Johnson’s a goner, and Nellie’s last line is absolutely  correct.

*As I predicted, the protestors who had a sit-in at Barnard, injuring an employee, were not punished at all. They were protesting the expulsion of two students for disrupting a class on the history of Israel (bolding is mine):

About 8:30 p.m., Robin Levine, a Barnard spokeswoman, issued a statement saying that if the students did not agree to leave the building by 9:30 p.m., “Barnard will be forced to consider additional, necessary measures to protect our campus.”

She said that the college did not know if all of the protesters were Barnard students, and that there had been violence entering the hall.

“We have made multiple good-faith efforts to de-escalate. Barnard leadership offered to meet with the protesters — just as we meet with all members of our community — on one simple condition: remove their masks. They refused. We have also offered mediation,” Ms. Levine said in the statement.

The students were part of Students for Justice in Palestine. The fact that these students suffered no punishment, even attacking someone and sending him to the hospital, is shameful.  Very few campuses seem to levy any punishment on students who break the rules about protesting.

*I recently reported that the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) banned the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports, following an EO from Trump threatening loss of federal funding to institutions that didn’t enact such a ban (see also this report from the NYT). Regardless of what you think of Trump, I see the NCAA as having promoted more fairness in women’s sports.  Unfortunately, Colin Wright, in a new Substack post, tells us that we shouldn’t be so optimistic: the NCAA policy, says Wright, is a “Trojan horse” that can be circumvented by using several loopholes.

While the new policy might seem reasonable at a glance, a closer look reveals a giant loophole that could be used to defy the clear intent of Trump’s executive order. In fact, the updated protocols could make it easier for males to compete in women’s sports.

The NCAA’s policy has several troubling features. First, it deliberately avoids referencing objective biology, and defines “woman” as a “gender identity” rather than as an “adult human female”—the language of the executive order. Further, it defines “gender identity” circularly as “an individual’s own internal sense of their gender.”

Second, though the policy states that “a student-athlete assigned male at birth may not compete on a women’s team,” and that eligibility will be determined based on the sex “marked on [the athlete’s] birth records,” this standard is easily manipulated. In rare cases, though more commonly in developing countries, doctors may misidentify a male newborn’s sex due to female-like or ambiguous genitalia caused by a developmental condition. The NCAA’s policy does nothing to keep such misclassified males out of women’s sports. Just this summer, a loophole of this kind allowed two male athletes, Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting, to compete as women and win gold medals in boxing at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

The larger issue, however, is that 44 U.S. states and many countries allow individuals to amend their birth certificates to reflect their self-declared “gender identity.” Progressive lawmakers are keenly aware of this loophole, which is why officials like Washington governor Bob Ferguson are expediting approval of their constituents’ birth-certificate-modification requests. In a recent X post, Ferguson stated, “[T]he Department of Health will now process all requests to change gender designation on birth certificates within three business days. Previously, there was as much as a 10 month wait.”

Since sex is a matter of objective biology, any policy aiming to maintain the integrity of women’s sports must incorporate an active screening process rooted in empirical reality. This could include a cheek swab (Barr body) test to verify an athlete’s sex chromosomes, or a direct test for the SRY gene, which determines male development. Simply relying on changeable birth certificates is not a viable solution.

And believe me, those loopholes will be used!  Changing birth certificates retroactively is not something I approve of, since biological sex is immutable. If one finds out that at birth one was declared a member of the wrong biological sex, well, then, changes can be made. But using self-identification on those certificates? Not something I favor.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the Queen is feeling neglected:

Hili: I don’t know what to do.

Andrzej: What about?

Hili: To get you to take more interest in me.

Hili: Nie wiem co mam zrobić.

Ja: Z czym?

Hili: Żebyś się mną więcej zajmował.

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

From Things with Faces, a snarky ice-cream bar:

From The Dodo; the Branch Manager and the Assistant Branch Manager:

From I Love Cats; isn’t it gorgeous?

Via Masih, an Iranian woman arrested for singing in public (she’s not wearing a hijab, either).

The voice you hear belongs to Hiva Seyfizadeh, an Iranian singer arrested last night simply for singing in public.

Why? Because in today’s Iran, a woman’s voice is a crime, but public executions are not.

Hiva defied this injustice with an act of civil disobedience, breaking a… pic.twitter.com/8pLmTvPjZ7

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) February 28, 2025

Yup, another institution of pro-Palestinian demonstrators, who violated campus rules at Bowdoin College, getting off scot-free:

It’s definitely not getting the attention it deserves, but the students at @BowdoinCollege who were suspended for occupying Smith Union have had their suspensions lifted.

Bowdoin says there are ongoing “disciplinary proceedings” but it sounds like no one is getting punished. pic.twitter.com/op6MwiZggW

— Stu (@thestustustudio) February 28, 2025

It’s curious, but I never thought about this question before!

Explain what makes them trans. https://t.co/epiraJFIWP

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) February 27, 2025

From my Twitter feed: Sister Rosetta Tharpe (195-1973), showing the gospel origins of rock and roll:

Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

She was there before Little Richard, Johnny Cash & Elvis Presley swiveled their hips and strummed their guitars. pic.twitter.com/vnQf9niAYi

— 🎸 Rock History 🎸 (@historyrock_) February 28, 2025

From Malcom: “Friends”:

Cat and a horse.. 😊 pic.twitter.com/FL9TwOrPry

— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) January 16, 2025

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

A fifteen-year-old French Jewish boy died in the camp. He was one of a million Jews who died at Auschwitz (and of a total of 1.1 million people)

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-03-01T11:09:40.525Z

One tweet from Matthew. He says it’s a bee, and the black bits are “pseudopupils”: part of the compound eye.

Plus the upper part of the labrum makes it look glum. Mind you, it probably is if it’s been paying any attention.

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-02-05T21:23:13.150Z

Welcome to Friday, February 28, 2025: the last day of the month and National Chocolate Soufflé Day.  Here’s an easy one for two, using only four ingredients:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Matthew Merril (@mmerril)

It’s also National Science Day, Global Scouse Day, celebrating Liverpudlinas (including the Beatles), and National Tooth Fairy Day.  Here’s a lesson in speaking Scouse:

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

Da Nooz:

*Obituaries first: Actor Gene Hackman, his wife, and his dog were all found dead in their home in New Mexico.

Oscar-winning actor Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, were found dead in their home in New Mexico along with their dog, the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office told CNN. He was 95.

Their causes of death have not been confirmed, but foul play is not suspected, Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Denise Womack-Avila told CNN on Thursday morning.

Deputies responded to a welfare check request at the home around 1:45 p.m. Wednesday and found Hackman, Arakawa and a dog deceased, Womack-Avila said. An investigation is ongoing, the sheriff’s office said. The gas company is assisting in the investigation, The Associated Press reported.

The welfare check was conducted after a neighbor called authorities, concerned about the couple’s well-being, CNN affiliate KOAT reported.

Related articleGene Hackman, the Oscar-winning Everyman actor with an edge, dies at 95

A search warrant shows that Hackman, his wife and their dog had been dead for some time, and the couple’s bodies were in different rooms when deputies found them during the wellness check, the AP reported.

Hackman was found dead Wednesday in a mudroom, and Arakawa was found dead in a bathroom next to a space heater. There was an open prescription bottle and pills scattered on the countertop near Arakawa, the AP reported.

Medical examiner’s reports with the final cause of death “generally take anywhere from 4-6 weeks to generate,” said Chris Ramirez, spokesperson for the New Mexico medical investigator’s office.

Okay, no foul play, but the coincidence implies that it was a mass suicide. But why take the dog with you? There are ways to leave it alive—unless the dog was terminally ill or very old.  At any rate, I remember him well in The French Connectin, Scarecrow, and The Conversation. 

*Well, Trump decided to go ahead and raise tariffs on products from China, Mexico and Canada (the latter two were under a reprieve until now).

*The NYT is so happy that Christianity’s disappearance in America is slowing: “One Nation Under God.” (The subtitle is “Americans have stopped leaving Christianity.  And the country is overwhelmingly spiritual, a new report found,”

As religion in America declined, experts administered last rites.

Churches were approaching “their twilight hour” as attendance fell, The Brookings Institution wrote in 2011. In his 2023 book, “Losing Our Religion,” the evangelical preacher Russell Moore asked: “Can American Christianity survive?”

The answer appears to be yes. People have stopped leaving churches en masse, according to a new study released this morning by Pew Research. America’s secularization is on pause for now, likely because of the pandemic and the country’s sustained spirituality. Most Americans — 92 percent of adults — say they hold one or more spiritual beliefs that Pew asked about:

The United States is an outlier compared with most other Western countries, which are far less religious. America’s persistent religious and spiritual curiosity is visible in its centers of power. In Washington, President Trump and JD Vance talk a lot about God in their quest to remake America. In Silicon Valley, tech billionaires — long obsessed with religion-adjacent projects like artificial intelligence, transhumanism and immortality — are warming to Christianity. In Hollywood, films and shows about faith, such as “Conclave,” the latest season of “The White Lotus” and “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” have dominated streaming charts.

Below, I’ll explain why religion still has such a strong hold in America.

And a few years’ worth of statistics show that the rise of the “nones” (those who don’t identify with a particular denomination) has slowed:

Over the last 25 years, tens of millions of people left American religion. It was a major shift that affected how people voted, when they married and where they lived. Christianity took the hardest hit: Around 15 percent of American adults who once went to church stopped going. While some people switched to new faiths, many left religion altogether.

Experts called this phenomenon the “rise of the nones,” a group that includes atheists, agnostics and people who said in surveys that they identified with “nothing in particular.” The nones grew to include about 30 percent of the country.

But the rise of the nones has stopped, Pew found. People are no longer leaving churches en masse, and other major religions are growing, largely because of immigration.

And the proposed explanations:

Experts point to a few possible explanations.

First is the pandemic. Pew found that people turned to faith for support during those years, as the number of people going to religious services — either in person or virtually — remained consistent at about 40 percent. About a quarter of Americans even told Pew that the pandemic had strengthened their faith. “Religion was in their psychological tool kit for dealing with the hard times,” said Alan Cooperman, an author of the report.

The second explanation is that secularization has a limit in the United States.

Americans pray more often, are more likely to attend weekly religious services and value faith in their lives more than adults in other wealthy democracies like Canada, Australia and most European countries, Pew found in a separate study. Americans — both religious and not — also report high levels of spirituality: Eighty-three percent say they believe in God or a universal spirit, Pew found.

Ryan Burge, a political scientist, argues that most people who disagree with their religion on political or social issues — on Trumpism, abortion or gay marriage, for instance — have already left or switched faiths. “What’s left is like the bedrock of American religion, which is exceptionally large,” he said. The report reveals how many people remain committed to their religious traditions even after those defections.

The pandemic is a possible explanation, for religion tends to rise during bad times. But it’s bad times all over for the U.S.: consumer prices and house prices high, wages, low, etc. Americans are unhappy, and unhappiness is positively correlated with religious belief. I’m not sure that secularization has a limit in the U.S., and, in fact, I don’t believe it.  Why would there be a high lower threshhold of religious belief in the U.S. but not in Europe or other Western countries. Must 80% of Americans always have a “god-shaped hole” in their being.  Well, we’ll see over the next decade. Even if disbelief stops, that doesn’t mean that I won’t keep promoting it.

*I mentioned a few days ago that Hunter College, part of the City University of New York (CUNY), had advertised for a “Palestinian scholar,” using antisemitic terms for the job requirement. Now the position has been removed per order of governor Kathy Hochul. (The job ad was here, but is gone.)

New York governor Kathy Hochul took an unusual interest in the hiring practices of the City University of New York on Tuesday when she ordered the public system to take down a job posting for a professorship in Palestinian studies at Hunter College.

CUNY quickly complied, and faculty at Hunter are up in arms over what they call a brazen intrusion into academic affairs from a powerful state lawmaker.

The job posting was for “a historically grounded scholar who takes a critical lens to issues pertaining to Palestine including but not limited to: settler colonialism, genocide, human rights, apartheid, migration, climate and infrastructure devastation, health, race, gender, and sexuality.”

“We are open to diverse theoretical and methodological approaches,” the posting continued.

In a statement Tuesday night, Hochul said the posting’s use of the words “settler colonialism,” “genocide” and “apartheid” amounted to antisemitic attacks and ordered CUNY to “immediately remove” the posting.

A few hours later, CUNY complied, and system chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez echoed Hochul’s criticisms of the posting.

“We find this language divisive, polarizing and inappropriate and strongly agree with Governor Hochul’s direction to remove this posting, which we have ensured Hunter College has since done,” he wrote in a statement.

Hochul also directed the university system to launch an investigation at Hunter “to ensure that antisemitic theories are not promoted in the classroom.” Matos Rodríguez appeared to imply the system would follow that order as well, saying, “CUNY will continue working with the Governor and other stakeholders to tackle antisemitism on our campuses.”

A CUNY spokesperson declined to say whether the system would launch a probe into the posting at Hunter but wrote in an email that “each college is responsible for its own faculty job posting.”

And of course faculty are pissed off:

Faculty at Hunter are livid about the decision, according to multiple professors who spoke with Inside Higher Ed both on the record and on background. They say it’s a concerning capitulation to political pressure from an institution they long believed to be staunchly independent.

*Finally, over on his Substack site, The Philosophy Garden, Massimo Pigliucci has part II of his defense of the sex binary and an attack on philosophical eliminativism (the idea that we should deep-six definitions of sex), “Let’s talk about (biological) sex—Part II.”

Watkins & DiMarco then go on to discuss more sophisticated philosophical accounts of sex, such as the “homeostatic property cluster” one. These are interesting, but get rather technical, and they don’t change the basic goal of their paper: the standard (i.e., gametic) definition of sex in evolutionary biology ought to be eliminated from scientific parlance because it is, in the authors’ view, “problematic” on multiple fronts.

Notwithstanding Watkins & DiMarco’s frequent “worries” (a standard locution in technical philosophy papers), biologists find the gametic definition of sex useful because it is causally and historically connected to other relevant biological properties, such as different morphologies, mating strategies, parenting behavior, and so on. As another philosopher, Paul Griffiths (quoted by the authors), puts it:

“The payoff for this way of thinking about sexes is that it helps to explain the evolution of reproductive systems and how they differ across the diversity of life.” (p. 8)

Addressing the issue of exceptions, Griffiths continues: “There are some species at the boundary between unicellular and multicellular life, such as some volvocine algae, which can be seen as representing transitional states in the evolution of distinct biological sexes and might be described as having more than two sexes. They produce slightly anisogamous gametes and in a range of sizes rather than two discrete types. But in complex multi-cellular organisms like plants and animals we find two very different kinds of gamete, each associated with a fundamentally different reproductive strategy, and so two biological sexes.” (p. 9)

This is an observation in search of an explanation, which is how biology (and science more broadly) works. Accordingly, evolutionary biologists have produced a large literature on the evolution of mating systems, a literature that includes theoretical models that are informed by, and attempt to explain, the available empirical evidence.

. . . . But this pluralism of concepts [about biological sex] and corresponding usages is not really a problem: the fundamental notion is the one used in evolutionary biology, because, as the famous evolutionist Theodosius Dobzhansky put it, nothing makes sense in biology except in the light of evolution. The other concepts of sex are pragmatically useful, but are, in an important sense, derivative with respect to the gametic one. The reason certain organisms have one type of chromosome rather than another, one hormonal profiles rather than another, or one external anatomy rather than another is that the evolutionary lineages to which those organisms belong have developed anisogamy, that is, gametes of different sizes and function.

Watkins & DiMarco recognize this when they write: “While promising and worthy of further inquiry, [the gametic] account prioritizes a subset of biologists’ interests in anisogamy; namely, evolutionary biologists.” (p. 13). As it should, because evolutionary biology is the biological discipline that unifies all the rest, just like Dobzhansky said. Once again, Griffiths is on the mark:

“The operational definitions of sexes used in biomedical fields all rely on the more fundamental definition that comes from evolutionary biology. … As with so much of biology, sex makes better sense when viewed in the light of evolution.” (p. 14)

political projects should have absolutely nothing to do with scientific ones, because to do so is to pervert science and bend it to political and ideological aims. If scientists claim that concept X does important work within the context of their theories, then this is prima facie evidence that X does do such work. Philosophers are most certainly entitled to level criticisms to whatever scientists say or do, but the burden of proof is high and on the side of the philosophers. So there is no contradiction between preserving a critical role for philosophy of science and being very careful before taking a strong prescriptive role toward the activities of scientists. As for the people affected—in this case transgender and non-binary persons—they most certainly ought to have a saying, but in the court of public opinion, during legislative debates, and in courts of law. Most definitely not in scientific laboratories.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is worried about the grocery shopping:

Hili: Are you going to the shop?

A: Yes.

Hili: Have you checked what I’m lacking?

Hili: Idziesz do sklepu?

Ja: Tak.

Hili: Sprawdziłeś czego mi brakuje?

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

From Emma Hilton, a lesson for those who willfully tout the claim that sex is a spectrum. This, for example, could be a post-menopausal woman:

From My Cat is an Asshole:

From America’s Cultural Decline Into Idiocy:

No Masih today, but here’s an Iranian-German entrepreneur celebrating (or rather dissing) No Hijab Day on Feb. 1:

I’m celebrating International No Hijab Day in defiance of the Islamic oppression of women and gender apartheid.
The hijab is not a choice—it is imposed through systemic indoctrination, teaching girls from an early age that their worth is tied to submission and concealment. The… pic.twitter.com/GXBdUOtRBL

— Maral Salmassi (@MaralSalmassi) February 1, 2025

From Bryan; the incomparable Fred Astaire dancing and playing the drums at the same time:

Fred Astaire playing drums and dancing at the same time (1937) pic.twitter.com/fErZJXCrK5

— 🎸 Rock History 🎸 (@historyrock_) February 26, 2025

And a tweet from Emma demonstrating that sports bans on transgender athletes goes both ways:

The Knoxville Minx women’s rugby team has condemned the President’s Women’s Sports Executive Order, calling it “hateful” to prioritize female athletes’ safety and fair competition in the collision sport.

Meanwhile, they’ve relied on male player Kenzie Budry to dominate women’s… pic.twitter.com/bfSvVebz36

— ICONS (@icons_women) February 19, 2025

From Simon, but I think the last panel is misleading:

RNA xkcd.com/3056

— Randall Munroe (@xkcd.com) 2025-02-26T14:58:54.736Z

From my feed on Twitter:

A baby elephant crosses the river with Mom. pic.twitter.com/CRh7Gihqw9

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) February 26, 2025

Kitty train!

Why are kids of all species just funny without even trying 🤣 pic.twitter.com/NWeBHzcPw9

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) February 26, 2025

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I retweeted:

This Polish tailor lived but five days after arriving at Auschwitz. He died at 49.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-02-28T10:31:06.654Z

And from Malcolm, a clever cat elevator:

Cat elevator.. pic.twitter.com/aHZgfdojnW

— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) January 27, 2025

Matthew will return in a few days.

Welcome to Thursday, February 27, 2025. and National Toast Day,  Wikipedia has a whole article on toast, which includes this helpful photo of the effect of toasting on bread, captioned, “The same slice of bread, pre-toasting, and post-toasting.” Amazing! It shrank!

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

Da Nooz:

*Trump had his first meeting with his full cabinet, and of course Elon Musk was there and domineering. Apparently Musk shared the stage with Trump, with Trump strongly defending the gazillionaire:

President Trump defended billionaire adviser Elon Musk on Wednesday and raised the possibility that some of the more than one million federal workers who didn’t respond to an email asking what they accomplished last week could be fired.

“Those people are on the bubble, as they say, maybe they’re going to be gone,” Trump said at the White House in the first cabinet meeting of his new term. The president also said that some of the people who didn’t respond may be dead or don’t exist. The White House said that one million workers responded to the email, or more than 40% of the federal workforce of roughly 2.3 million.

Musk, who is running the administration’s Department of Government Efficiency cost-cutting initiative, said he is confident he can find $1 trillion in savings across the government’s roughly $7 trillion in annual spending, or a cut of 15%.

Trump praised Musk’s efforts and asked his cabinet if anyone was dissatisfied with Musk’s efforts. No one responded.

“Some disagree a little bit, but I will tell you, for the most part, I think everyone’s not only happy, they’re thrilled,” Trump said. He added later, addressing his cabinet, “Is anyone unhappy with Elon? If you are, we’ll throw them out of here.”

Lots of Republicans are unhappy with Elon, though I don’t know if any are in the cabinet.  Here’s a chart of Trump (and Biden’s) approval ratings over time from Reuters; Trump’s is falling but has never been higher than about 48%

*Trouble coming down the pike: the WSJ reports that Iran has enriched enough uranium to fuel six nuclear weapons.

Iran has sharply increased its stockpile of highly enriched uranium in recent weeks, according to a confidential United Nations report, as Tehran amasses a critical raw material for atomic weapons.

The increase in Iran’s holdings of uranium enriched to 60%, or nearly weapons grade, would be enough to produce six nuclear weapons.

Iran is now producing enough fissile material in a month for one nuclear weapon, according to the report, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Tehran’s strides come as the country has indicated an openness to negotiating with the U.S. on limits to its nuclear ambitions. The Trump administration has said it would return to a policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran but that President Trump also wants to negotiate a nuclear deal.

The U.N. report said Tehran had amassed around 275 kilograms of 60% highly enriched uranium as of Feb. 8, up from 182 kilograms in late October. That is a 50% jump in 15 weeks. The fuel could be converted to 90% weapons-grade material in days.

Now this doesn’t mean that Iran has the bomb, as it doesn’t (yet), nor a delivery system, but I don’t believe the country is “open to negotiating with the U.S.”.  They want their bombs badly. However, there are other reports that Iran is on alert because it expects a joint U.S./Israel air strike. From the Torygraph:

Iran has put its defence systems around its nuclear sites on high alert amid fears of an attack by Israel and the US, The Telegraph has learnt.

According to two high-level government sources, the Islamic Republic has also been bolstering defences around key nuclear and missile sites, which include the deployment of additional air defence system launchers.

Officials say the measures are in response to growing concerns of potential joint military action by Israel and the United States.

It follows warnings from US intelligence to both the Biden and Trump administrations that Israel would likely target key Iranian nuclear sites this year.

“They [Iranian authorities] are just waiting for the attack and are anticipating it every night and everything has been on high alert – even in sites that no one knows about,” one source told The Telegraph.

My understanding was that Iran’s nuclear facilities were buried so far underground that they were inaccessible to any foreign strike. However, the Israelis did kill the chief of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, who was sequestered deep underground.

*One of the two Muslim nurses in Australia who threatened to kill Israeli patients (and indeed, said they had done so before) has been arrested (h/t Jay).  Both had already been fired, for threatening patients is a violation of the code of ethics for nurses. Apparently it’s also a violation of the law. (I presume “stood down” means “fired” in AussieSpeak). The report. from ABC.net, is a bit repetitive:

A Sydney nurse stood down over a video posted to social media where she claimed she would refuse to treat Israeli patients has been charged by police.

Sarah Abu Lebdeh, 26, was charged with threaten violence to group, use carriage service to threaten to kill and use carriage service to menace/harass/offend.

Ms Abu Lebdeh was granted conditional bail and will appear in the Downing Centre Local Court on March 19.

A Sydney nurse is not allowed to leave the country or use social media after being charged over a video which showed her threatening harm to Israeli patients.

Sarah Abu Lebdeh, 26, was arrested on Tuesday night at Sutherland Police Station.

She was charged with three commonwealth offences of threaten violence to group, use carriage service to threaten to kill and use carriage service to menace/harass/offend.

The video showed Ms Abu Lebdeh and fellow Bankstown Hospital worker Ahmad Rashad Nadir bragging about refusing to treat Israeli patients, killing them, and saying they would go to hell.

The filmed conversation took place on cam chat app Chatruletka.

The two had been stood down pending an investigation.

NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb on Wednesday afternoon said Ms Abu Lebdeh had been charged with three “very, very serious” charges.

“She is on very, very strict bail conditions, namely prohibiting her from going to a point of departure from Australia, but more importantly, banned from using social media,” Commissioner Webb said.

. . .Commissioner Webb said detectives had worked tirelessly to gather evidence from overseas within 13 days.

“I don’t think I would have ever imagined that an investigation of that complexity, across the other side of the world, would be done in such a short time,” she said.

Commissioner Webb confirmed on ABC Radio Sydney police had found no evidence that anyone at the hospital had been harmed but said NSW Health was continuing its own investigation.

Here’s the video, embedded in a news report. At least these nurses didn’t actually hurt any patients:

*Three-quarters of the Bibas family were buried today kfir near the kibbutz where Hamas abducted Shiri, her two sons, and the father, who was released by Hamas. Shiri’s parents were both killed as well on October 7.

Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, Ariel and baby Kfir, who were abducted by terrorists to the Gaza Strip and then murdered there, were buried together Wednesday in a single casket, mother and children wrapped in an eternal embrace, at their joint funeral.

They were buried at Tsoher Cemetery, near the home in Kibbutz Nir Oz, from which they were seized on October 7, 2023.

“They will remain together and close, just as Shiri enveloped the children, always, including on that accursed day,” said Carmit Palty Katzir, who acted as MC at the funeral.

The moving live funeral of Sheri, Ariel, and Kfir is below, and Tom Gross describes a few of the eulogies:

Yarden Bibas, who was released alive earlier this month following months of torture by Hamas, eulogizes his wife and children at their funeral today, supported by his sister Ofri at his side:

“Ariel, I hope you’re not angry with me for failing to protect you. I hope you know I thought about you every day, every minute.

“Kfir, I love you the most in the world. I have so many more things to tell you all, but I’ll save them for when we’re alone.”

From the AP:

People lined up on the side of the roads as far as the eye could see, sobbing and embracing each other as the casket made their way along the 100-kilometer (60 miles) route from central Israel to the cemetery.

Hundreds of motorcycles, each with an Israeli flag and orange ribbons, rode solemnly behind the convoy. In the city of Tel Aviv, thousands gathered to watch a broadcast of the eulogies, many dressed in orange.

Kfir was the youngest of about 30 children taken hostage. The infant, with red hair and a toothless smile, quickly became well-known across Israel. His ordeal was raised by Israeli leaders on podiums around the world.

The extended Bibas family has been active at protests, branding the color orange as the symbol of their fight for the “ginger babies.” They marked Kfir Bibas’ first birthday with a release of orange balloons and lobbied world leaders for support.

Below is the livestream, which you can sample if you’d like. I just opened to a random spot, which apparently was Sheri’s sister Dana Silberman weeping as she talked about her sister. (If you want to read Yarden Bibas’s moving eulogy for his wife, go here.) It’s all heartbreaking. All over the world, including Argentina (Shiri and her family had joint Argentinian/Israeli citizenship), there was mourningm often involving the color orange since both boys were redheads (orange balloons were released in Israel. Here’s a photo of Christ the Redeemer in Rio, lit up in orange (via Tom Gross):

And the live feed of the funeral. Clearly, the entire Jewish state had adopted the two babies as their own.

*Massimo Pigliucci and I have had our differences, but I have to say that I very much like his latest post on his Substack, The Philosophy Garden, called “Let’s talk about (biological) sex—part I”.

The story begins back in October of last year, when I was invited to give the opening keynote at the annual CSICon, the major conference of scientific skeptics, held in Las Vegas and organized by CSI, the Center for Skeptical Inquiry. (They publish Skeptical Inquirer magazine, for which I write. The former editor was a friend and esteemed colleague.) The title of my talk was “Why bother? The nature of pseudoscience, how to fight it, and why it matters.” I’ll publish an article based on it soon.

Shortly after me, my friend Steven Novella, of Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe fame and a neurologist by profession, got on the stage and delivered his talk, entitled “When skeptics disagree.” I found myself nodding along, except when Steven got to the “controversy” about biological sex. He said that biologists themselves disagree on the best definition of sex: does it have to do with chromosomes? Is it about anatomy? Behavior?

I immediately thought, uh-oh, here comes trouble! You see, I knew that one of the speakers slated for later on in the conference was my colleague Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist and author of Why Evolution Is True. I expected Jerry to seriously disagree with Steven’s characterization of the “controversy.” And sure enough, he did.

Now, Jerry and I have at times not seen eye-to-eye about some matters, from technical issues concerning the nature of evolutionary theory to the roles of science and philosophy with respect to each other. But I thought in this case Jerry was right on target. Still, I let the matter go because of the policy explained above, and because CSICon is a friendly gathering where I’d rather have a nice conversation with fellow skeptics over martinis than fight yet another useless round of the culture wars.

Skip a few months ahead and a colleague of mine, a philosopher, sends me a paper just published in the prestigious journal Biology & Philosophy. The authors are Aja Watkins, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Marina DiMarco, of Washington University in St. Louis. The title of their paper is “Sex eliminativism.” It is a highly technical, clearly written and very well argued paper. But it also is, I think, fundamentally flawed, and a good example of why some scientists really dislike philosophers.

Watkins and DiMarco maintain that biological sex does no useful work as a concept in science, which is wrong, but Massimo is going to argue more about that in Part II, which he says will be on the site tomorrow.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili expresses General Disdain:

Andrzej: What are you doing?

Hili: I’m expressing a general aversion to everything.

Ja: Co ty robisz?

Hili: Wyrażam ogólną niechęć do wszystkiego.

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

From Things With Faces, a scary drink:

Another from Things with Faces; a happy cheese spread:

From The Dodo. I hope this cat got adopted!

Posted on Masih’s site. Translation of the first post. of the Australian senator Fatima Payman claiming that women are treated well in Iran:  “Masih Alinejad responds to Australian Senator Fatima Payman:’ The only thing that is ‘guaranteed’ to women under the Islamic Republic is systematic oppression. Your words erase the suffering of millions of Iranian women'” @AlinejadMasih

I hadn’t before seen this picture of Mahsa Amini dying in hospital.

Shame on Fatima Payman. How can you ignore and hide Mahsa Amini’s fate? Do you think she deserved to die just because her scarf didn’t fully cover her beautiful hair?

I have lived in Tehran, and every day, I witnessed how the Islamic police arrested girls and women because of… pic.twitter.com/qnjEFx3Jx4

— Persian Blue (@ihatehijab) February 26, 2025

Is this for real? It was apparently posted on Trump’s Truth Social site, but I haven’t looked for it, nor do I think I have access. Trump Gaza Hotel???

This, uhm, thing, was posted from Trump’s Truth Social account.pic.twitter.com/KZP3zjMOZW

— i/o (@eyeslasho) February 26, 2025

Crowds lining the roads in Israel on the way to the funeral of Shiri Bibas and her sons. This makes me tear up, especially with the sound on:

For the baby who never had a birthday.

For the little Batman.

For their Mom. pic.twitter.com/q0NztJMz5S

— miha schwartzenberg (@mihaschw) February 26, 2025

From Simon, who says, “What a moron (if true)”. I’m betting it is true!

This has to be one of the biggest opsec fails I've ever seen in my life. The actual director of the FBI driving around in the most conspicuous vehicle imaginable made even more so by it being neon red.

— Alejandra Caraballo (@esqueer.net) 2025-02-25T21:36:24.853Z

From Malcom; a cat helping a duck! Be still my beating heart!

Cat helping duck with her babies..🐈🐾🐣😍 pic.twitter.com/XYPQDv8Qr7

— 𝕐o̴g̴ (@Yoda4ever) February 12, 2025

From my Twitter feed (no, it’s not all Nazis there); a fantastic proposal. Sound up!

The fact that he knew his girlfriend enough to know that she would 100% volunteer… I’m crying 🥺 pic.twitter.com/KfRY3okeFr

— NO CONTEXT HUMANS (@HumansNoContext) February 26, 2025

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

A Czech couple gassed to death upon arriving in Auschwitz.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-02-27T10:35:18.466Z

A beautiful nudibranch from Matthew:

Got to visit one of my dad’s favorite spots from when he was in college – the tidepools at Dana Point – and found my first Spanish Shawl nudibranch 🥹🦑🐙🌿 #nudibranch

— JA Fields | NonCompliantCyborg (@noncompliantcyborg.bsky.social) 2025-02-02T20:04:29.125Z