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Astronomers have long known the universe is expanding—but exactly how fast remains one of the biggest mysteries in cosmology. Different techniques for measuring the Hubble constant stubbornly disagree, creating the so-called “Hubble tension.” Now researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Chicago have unveiled a bold new way to weigh in on the debate using gravitational waves—the faint ripples in spacetime produced by colliding black holes.

The Hili dialogue will be shortened today as I was preoccupied with the war between Iran and every other country.

Welcome to the first day of March: Sunday, March 1, 2026, and International Rescue Cat Day. Here’s the rescue of a kitten in Malaysia, and of course it ends well (the woman who rescued him had nine cat!). Click “play on YouTube” or go here:

It’s also Casimir Pulaski Day, honoring the Polish man who helped the colonies during the Revolutionary War, but was neither born nor died on this day), and National Banana Cream Pie Day.

Here’s the March entry from the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (1412-1416), showing plowing and other spring planting activities at the Château de Lusignan. Almost nothing remains of the castle, château, and town.

Limbourg brothers, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 1 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

I’ll feature the latest on the war today, but concentrating on opinion beside the news. First, though, an update from the NYT and the Times of Israel.

First, the NYT headline, which affirms that the Supreme Leader was taken out. Click on headline to read, or find it archived here:

An excerpt:

The Iranian government vowed on Sunday that it would retaliate for the attacks that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s longtime supreme leader and an implacable enemy of Israel and the United States, as attacks on the country entered a second day.

The Iranian state news agency confirmed the ayatollah’s death on Sunday morning, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — a powerful institution answering to the supreme leader — said that Iran would avenge him. Ali Larijani, a senior leader and Khamenei confidant, vowed that Iranian forces would fight even harder.

The ayatollah’s death prompted a range of reactions within Iran on Saturday. Large crowds poured into the streets of Tehran and other cities to celebrate the toppling of a leader who had ruled with an iron fist for nearly 37 years. Others mourned him.

The killing is a seismic political shift that raises the prospect of chaos and a power vacuum in an already turbulent region.

The United States and Israel said overnight that they were still attacking Iran. President Trump said on social media that U.S. strikes would continue “throughout the week or, as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!”

In Israel, where the authorities reported one death on Sunday, air-raid sirens warned of further Iranian missile launches. Iran fired waves of ballistic missiles at Israel in retaliation for the initial strikes. The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait — all of which host U.S. military bases — said they had come under attack, as did Jordan.

Of course Iran is already retaliating as hard as it can, and I’m not sure how they’ll retaliate even harder.  I am shedding no tears for the death of Khamenei; as he really was a guiding force of Iran and its use of proxies. The council of theocrats he appointed will of course choose a replacement. Iran should have given up its nuclear program, but of course that was never in the cards.

From the Times of Israel:

An excerpt:

US President Donald Trump threatened early Sunday morning to hit Iran with unprecedented force after Tehran warned it would step up attacks in retaliation for the killing of its supreme leader and fired successive volleys of rockets at Israel for a second consecutive day Sunday.

In Iran, the Israel Defense Forces continued to carry out strikes on military sites, including a massive blast in Tehran. The army announced that it had dropped over 1,000 pieces of munition in just over 24 hours of attacks that kicked off Saturday morning with a strike that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top officials.

“Iran just stated that they are going to hit very hard today, harder than they have ever hit before,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social social network. “THEY BETTER NOT DO THAT, HOWEVER, BECAUSE IF THEY DO, WE WILL HIT THEM WITH A FORCE THAT HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE!”

His comments came just a few hours after the Iranian regime confirmed that its longtime leader Khamenei had been killed in a strike on his office early Saturday morning.

Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said Sunday morning in a video carried on state TV that Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have “crossed our red lines” and “will suffer the consequences.”

The elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps vowed in a statement Sunday that Iran’s armed forces would soon retaliate again with the “most ferocious offensive operation in history” against US bases and Israel.

“The hand of revenge of the Iranian nation for a severe, decisive and regrettable punishment for the murderers of the Imam of the Ummah will not let go of them,” the IRGC said in a statement.

Waves of sirens rang out repeatedly across much of central, southern and northern Israel on Saturday night and Sunday morning as Iran fired ballistic missiles at the country, sending millions of Israelis to shelter. Iran’s state broadcaster said 27 US bases in the region, as well as Israel’s military headquarters and a defense industries complex in Tel Aviv, were among the targets in the new wave of strikes.

There were no reports of impacts in residential areas or direct injuries following the salvos, medics said. Magen David Adom said it treated people lightly hurt by falling while running to bomb shelters.

Police said they received reports of missile and interceptor fragments that landed in the Jerusalem area, and the Fire and Rescue Service said it was responding to a gas leak caused by falling shrapnel in the West Bank.

In contrast to the large barrages fired at Israel during the 12-day war with Iran in June, most salvos Saturday and Sunday have consisted of small number of missiles, usually three at a time, with breaks of a few minutes between each launch, according to the IDF.

There has been one Israeli killed, a remarkably small toll for a supposedly big reprisal:

The attacks have caused only a small number of injuries, aside from a particularly large barrage of some 20 missiles toward the Tel Aviv area Saturday night in which one projectile managed to evade air defenses, hitting near a residential building and killing a woman.

The slain woman, a foreign caregiver for an elderly woman, did not manage to reach a shelter in time, the military said Sunday after an initial investigation. The woman she was caring for was extracted by rescue workers from the rubble alive.

According to the NYT, the CIA helped locate the Ayatollah, which led to the attack taking place when it did:

Shortly before the United States and Israel were poised to launch an attack on Iran, the C.I.A. zeroed in on the location of perhaps the most important target: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader.

The C.I.A. had been tracking Ayatollah Khamenei for months, gaining more confidence about his locations and his patterns, according to people familiar with the operation. Then the agency learned that a meeting of top Iranian officials would take place on Saturday morning at a leadership compound in the heart of Tehran. Most critically, the C.I.A. learned that the supreme leader would be at the site.

The United States and Israel decided to adjust the timing of their attack, in part to take advantage of the new intelligence, according to officials with knowledge of the decisions.

Another NYT piece (archived here), summarizing world reaction, says that most governments in the West, save Australia, have urged restraint in the attacks, and few (save Spain, Turkey, and some Arab states) have outright condemned the attack on Iran.  I’m surprised by the mildness of the reaction, but it seems to come from Iran’s position as a promoter of worldwide terror, combined with the reported killing of up to 30,000 of its own citizens who protested the government.

Those protesting the attacks include the MSM, including the New York Times. whose op-ed yesterday was called “Trump’s attack on Iran is reckless.”

Mr. Trump’s approach to Iran is reckless. His goals are ill-defined. He has failed to line up the international and domestic support that would be necessary to maximize the chances of a successful outcome. He has disregarded both domestic and international law for warfare.

. . .A responsible American president could make a plausible argument for further action against Iran. The core of this argument would need to be a clear explanation of the strategy, as well as the justification for attacking now, even though Iran does not appear close to having a nuclear weapon. This strategy would involve a promise to seek approval from Congress and to collaborate with international allies.

Mr. Trump is not even attempting this approach. He is telling the American people and the world that he expects their blind trust. He has not earned that trust.

The Washington Post is a bit milder, but also faults Trump for having no clear endgame and not getting Congressional approval:

It’s hard to see how “freedom for the people” can be accomplished in any meaningful sense without some U.S. boots on the ground, at least for a time. Yet Trump appears to lack any appetite for doing so. That might give pause to civilians trying to decide whether to risk their lives by rising up.

Whether Trump has made the right call will hinge on factors now beyond his control. No president has ever intended to get drawn into a quagmire.

The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war. Short of that, the War Powers Act ensures the legislative branch will get a say on this war of choice. It’s essential that the people’s elected representatives get to vote on whether these strikes are justified. A comprehensive case has yet to be made, and better late than never.

Most of the NYT op-eds are critical of Trump and say the attack either was useless or conducted incorrectly. Here’s a screenshot of some the paper’s op-eds (there is at least one pro-attack one, see below):

But then there’s Bret Stephens, whose take on the war seems to be sensible (i.e., it resonates with mine). His column yesterday was called “The case for striking Iran” (archived here). An excerpt:

It’s happening. On Saturday, the United States and Israel jointly launched what President Trump has described as a “massive and ongoing” series of strikes on Iran, aiming not only to destroy the Islamic Republic’s military capabilities but also to overthrow the regime itself. The president may rightly be faulted for barely bothering to spell out the reasons for war in the weeks leading to Saturday’s attack. But it doesn’t mean there isn’t a compelling case for action.

There are three, in fact.

Iran poses a threat to global order by way of its damaged but abiding nuclear ambitions, its deep strategic ties to Moscow and Beijing, its persistent threats to maritime commerce and its support for international terrorism.

It poses a threat to regional stability, not just through its support for anti-Israel proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah, but also by its meddling in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and (until the overthrow of the Bashar al-Assad regime) Syria.

And it’s a mortal threat to the life and safety of its own people, many thousands of whom it slaughtered last month. There was a time not long ago when Americans, both left and right, cared enough about human rights to believe it could, in some circumstances, justify military intervention.

Why is a military attack crucial? Look at what hasn’t worked to change the regime’s behavior.

He then lists all the sanctions, economic engagements, failed diplomatic efforts that have failed. Those failures would have simply continued without the US/Israel attack on Iran. Stephens concludes this way:

No wonder protests in Iran have resumed, this time among university students who are bravely undaunted by the terrifying risk. Their protests seem connected to the 40-day memorials for the victims of last month’s massacres. But it’s not a stretch to assume those protests are also a signal to Trump that his promise last month to Iranians that “help is on its way” hasn’t been forgotten, and that ordinary Iranians are prepared to join the fight for their own liberation.

If so, then there is at least a reasonable chance that a sustained military operation that not only further degrades the regime’s nuclear, missile and military capabilities — a desirable outcome in its own right — but also targets its apparatus of domestic repression could embolden the type of sustained mass protests that could finally bring the regime down. Even more so if the leaders who give the orders, including the supreme leader and his circle, are not immune from attack.

For all of its willfulness and the evil it has wreaked over 47 years, the regime does not stand 10 feet tall. It nearly fell during the 2009 Green Movement against that year’s fraudulent elections. It nearly fell again in 2022 during the Women, Life, Freedom protests.

The difference on those occasions was the absence of external military support. Donald Trump now has a unique opportunity to provide it. Despite the risk that military strikes entail, the bigger risk, in the judgment of history, would be to fail to take it.

His sentiments are echoed in the short video below  by Elica Le Bon, an Iranian-American activist and lawyer whose parents fled Iran during the Revolution. Here is her eloquent indictment of the Western media and defense of the attack on Iran. She winds up in tears. (If you can’t see this 3-minute video, go to her X page here.)

In my view, now that the attack has commenced, the horse has left the barn. It has to be seen through because the Iranian people need to live free. All the kvetching by the press seems to me like so much pilpul, writen largely because it was Trump who did it. It also seems that the MSM, and my own Democratic Party, would prefer that there would never have been an attack on Iran, and, though they criticize the Iranian regime, would sit on their hands rather than stop its horrors, its nuclear program, its spread of terror to other countires, including the U.S., and above all, the slaughter of its people.  The kvetchers would, I think, prefer Iran to continue as it has (as Stephens notes, no attempts to change the regimes behavior have worked). And if the results are nuclear weapons in Iranian hands, well, too bad.  Of course Trump needs a viable endgame, and he hasn’t articulated one, nor did he have a decent one in Gaza.  But once the attack was begun—and I was ambivalent about that from the start—it has to be carried through. We can’t simply stop and let Iran go back to how it was. And, in their hearts, I think that most Western countries agree, despite their calls for caution or even a ceasefire. I am moved by Le Bon’s words.

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

And we can’t forget The Princess!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is befuddled again.

Hili: I’m trying to understand the world and I’m not sure.
Me: What are you not sure about?
Hili: Whether these attempts aren’t a waste of time.

In Polish:

Hili: Próbuję zrozumieć świat i nie jestem pewna.
Ja: Czego nie jesteś pewna?
Hili: Czy te próby nie są stratą czasu.

 

Jupiter’s icy moons may have been seeded with the chemical ingredients for life from the very beginning. An international team of scientists modeled how complex organic molecules—essential building blocks for biology—could have formed in the swirling disk of gas and dust around the young Sun and later been carried into Jupiter’s own moon-forming disk. Their results suggest that up to half of the icy material that built moons like Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto may have delivered freshly made organic compounds without being chemically destroyed.

This is just a short update on the news, as I presume everyone with an interest in this conflict is following what is happening today. Below is the headline in the NYT; click on the screenshot to read or find the article archived here:

Of coure you wonder how Trump knew that. An excerpt:

President Trump announced on Saturday that the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran had killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the nation’s supreme leader for almost 37 years and an implacable enemy of Israel and the United States, in a potentially seismic political shift in Tehran and the broader region.

“Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel had said earlier that there were “many indications” that Ayatollah Khamenei was dead, but stopped short of making a definitive statement.

There was no immediate confirmation from the Iranian government. Earlier in the day Iranian officials had dismissed such claims as bravado or psychological warfare. Later the ayatollah’s official account on X later posted an image rich with Shia religious symbolism, of a faceless clerical figure holding a flaming sword.

It was not immediately clear which country’s forces had killed Ayatollah Khamenei, but either way, the action exhibited a high degree of coordination between the United States and Israel. Israel’s military said it had targeted a gathering of senior Iranian officials in the opening strikes. Satellite imagery showed a plume of smoke and extensive damage at the supreme leader’s high-security compound.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu both made clear that regime change was a goal of the massive waves of strikes on Iran that began around 1 a.m. local time Saturday.

But it is uncertain whether removing Ayatollah Khamenei, who was 86, would result in significant changes to the system he led, as many people in authority owed their positions to him.

The power to choose a new supreme leader rests with the Assembly of Experts, a conservative body of clerics who, given Ayatollah Khamenei’s age and infirmities, have likely given ample thought to potential successors.

In retaliation for the Israeli-U. S. attack, Iran fired waves of ballistic missiles at Israel, while the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait — all of which host U.S. military bases — said they had come under attack, as did Jordan.

So it is not definitive, but surely Israel has spies in Iran that could provide some confirmation. Eventually Iran will have to announce it.

So far there ha been little damage to the countries Iran attacked, and not one death in Israel.

Will there be regime change? I have no idea; it is foolish to predict such a thing so early in the conflict.  Perhaps the U.S. could find an amenable leader in the current regime to do its bidding, as it has in Venezuela, but that seems unlikely: all the rulers are, as it says, conservative theocrats. And the government has all the soldiers and weapons while the people have none.

Every day will tell a new story, but the critics of the attacks are predictable: most Democrats (save the rogue Fetterman) and the mainstream media (save Bret Stephens at the NYT).  We will know if the attack was a good thing only in retrospect.

Future farmers on the Moon and Mars will have a big challenge: how to grow healthy food in two extremely unhealthy environments. That's because the soil on both worlds isn't at all hospitable to plants and animals. Neither are other conditions. Both are irradiated worlds, Mars has a thin atmosphere and the Moon has none at all. So, how will future colonists on either world grow their food?

Everybody knows the famous slogan of the New York Times, here reproduced from a column about it’s 60,000th issue:

And my immediate interpretation is that the paper publishes all the news that is worth knowing. Indeed, the NYT is also known as the American “paper of record,” the paper one reads to see good, solid journalism. It’s still my go-to source though it has its biases.

I hadn’t thought too much about that slogan until I read Michael Shermer’s new book on truth. As I’ve said before, Shermer’s book is well worth reading, though I do disagree with his take on free will (he seems to accept its existence, though I think the discussion is misguided). But there are great discussions of religions, miracle, morality, truth denialism, and especially history and how to interpret it. I do recommend the book.

Last night, as I read his chapter six on history (the last chapter I’ve read, as I skipped around), I saw that Michael quoted the NYT motto, saying that it was shown with “no apparent awareness of self-contradiction”,

But is it self-contradictory? I didn’t see how.  It’s not a great motto, though it’s stood the test of time, but I couldn’t find an internal contradiction. Rather, I found a tautology. Here are the problems with the motto.

a.)  Does it leave out some of the news that’s fit to print? That doesn’t make sense because the motto asserts that the paper prints all the news that is fit to appear. Thus it’s impossible for the motto to be wrong, for if there’s news that doesn’t appear in the paper, it wasn’t worth putting in the paper.

b.) Does it put in some news that is not fit to print? This is a little trickier, for the motto could be construed as saying, “All the news that’s fit to print as well as some news that’s not fit to print.” That is neither contradictory nor tautological.

c.) But the motto could be considered tautological (see “a”). This rests on the fact that someone has to decide what news is “fit to print“.  News does not come with an inherent “print-worthiness”.  In that light, you could consider the motto to mean “We print all the news that we decide to print.” And they don’t put into print the news that they decide not to print. That is tautological.

In the end, the motto, which has appeared since 1897 (it was written by owner Adolf S. Ochs as an assertion of the paper’s impartiality), could be better written as “All the news you need to know,” which avoids the “fit to print” confusion. But it still implies some God-like figure that decides what we need to know. (This is why I object to journalism’s recent use of subheadings on news articles saying, “What you need to know about X.” They seem patronizing, as if I couldn’t myself decide what I needed to know.)

And that’s all you need to know about the motto.

We've been waiting a long time for the Vera Rubin Observatory to begin its work. The observatory features the largest digital camera ever built. It'll create a time-lapse of the southern night sky for ten years with its 3.2 gigapixel camera. An untold number of discoveries awaits.

Scientists racing to tackle plastic pollution have created a surprising new contender: a biodegradable packaging film made partly from milk protein. Researchers at Flinders University blended calcium caseinate with starch and natural nanoclay to form a thin, durable material designed to mimic everyday plastic. In soil tests, the film fully broke down in about 13 weeks, pointing to a realistic alternative for single-use food packaging.

Well, what seemed likely has now happened; here are the headlines in today’s NYT (click headlines to read live feed, article archived here):

Trump’s 8-minute statement, calling for the “elimination of major threats from the Iranian regime”, which endangers the United States troops, our overseas bases, and our “allies throughout the world” (that of course largely means Israel).  He asserts that Iran “can never have a nuclear weapon” and says that, despite negotiations, Iran refused to abandon its nuclear program. He vows to “obliterate” their nuclear program, “annihilate their navy”,  and assure that its proxies can no longer endanger the world.

Importantly, he tells the Iranian people that “the hour of your freedom is at hand”, asking them, when the attack is finished, to “take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be, probably, your only chance for generations. ”

Do listen to it:

A summary of the ongoing news:

The United States and Israel on Saturday launched a major attack on Iran, with President Trump vowing to devastate the country’s military, eliminate its nuclear program and bring about a change in its government.

Large explosions shook the Iranian capital, Tehran, where people reported seeing smoke rising from the district that includes the presidential palace. Witnesses described chaos in the streets as Iranians rushed to seek shelter, find loved ones or flee the city.

The American-led attack appeared to herald a much broader regional crisis. Iranian news media reported that Iran had targeted at least four U.S. military bases across the Persian Gulf — including in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, which said they had come under attack.

Iran also fired multiple waves of ballistic missiles at Israel, prompting booms in the skies as Israeli air defenses sought to repel them. Air-raid sirens sounded across the country, sending Israelis running to fortified shelters.

Mr. Trump vowed that the “massive and ongoing” campaign would target not just Iran’s nuclear program, which was the focus of a U.S. attack last June. Instead, Mr. Trump said the United States would “raze their missile industry to the ground” and “annihilate their navy,” arguing that Iran had refused to reach a deal with the United States that would have averted war.

He then called on Iranians to overthrow their government when the U.S. military assault came to an end. “It will be yours to take,” he said. “This will be probably your only chance for generations.”

Iran’s government vowed “crushing retaliation” against Israel and the United States and said it would not “surrender to their despicable demands.” Internet access in Iran plummeted amid the attack, making communication difficult.

And from the Times of Israel (click for free read):

From the ToI:

After long weeks of escalating regional tensions and burgeoning threats of conflict, Israel and the US launched a major joint strike on Iran on Saturday, with waves of attacks on sites across the Islamic Republic.

Strikes targeted Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Masoud Pezeshkian, an Israeli official said. Other top regime and military commanders were also targeted, according to the official. The results of the strikes were not yet clear.

Targets in the campaign also included Iran’s military, symbols of government and intelligence targets, according to an official briefed on the operation, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss nonpublic information on the attack.

Several senior Revolutionary Guards commanders and political officials were killed in the strikes, an Iranian source close to the establishment told Reuters.

US President Donald Trump announced that the US had begun “major combat operations in Iran,” calling the campaign “a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests.”

US President Donald Trump announced that the US had begun “major combat operations in Iran,” calling the campaign “a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests.”

“We are going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground. It will be totally… obliterated. We are going to annihilate their navy,” he said in a video statement posted on his Truth Social account. “We are going to ensure that the region’s terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region or the world and attack our forces.”

Trump indicated that the goal was to topple the regime, and he called on the Iranian people to seize the opportunity and take over their government.

Here are the questions that remain to be answered (my bold; indents from the news). Summaries are as of 5:30 a.m. today:

a.) What is happening to the Iranian people?  The brave people of Iran, many of whom have been killed by the regime in recent protests against the government, are naturally anxious and terrified. They don’t know what is going to happen to their country. From the NYT:

Just as Iranians began their workweek on Saturday morning, U.S. and Israeli strikes sent panicked residents of Tehran into the streets and parents racing back to schools where they had just dropped off their children.

Chaos and uncertainty set in as explosions shook the densely populated city, Iran’s capital, according to witnesses who spoke to The New York Times.

Ali, a businessman from Tehran, said in a text message that he was sitting in his office with many employees when they heard two explosions along with fighter jets streaking over the sky. Employees ran screaming out of the building, he said. He, like several other residents who spoke to The Times, asked not to be identified by his full name because he feared for his safety.

. . .When Israel launched surprise attacks on Iran last June, it targeted mostly military and nuclear sites and strikes in Tehran and assassinated its top military chain of command. The strikes on Saturday appeared far broader, including political targets like the intelligence ministry, the judiciary and the Pasteur gated compound where the president and supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, generally reside, according to residents in the area and local news outlets.

. . . Not all Iranians were angry as they watched the plumes of smoke rising from the blasts, said Arian, a resident of the Ekteban township west of the capital, who said some of his relatives were cheering the strikes. He said he could hear voices outside his building chanting, “Long live the shah,” a reference to Iran’s monarch, who was deposed in the 1979 revolution that brought the Islamic Republic to power.

As warplanes launched strikes across the country, President Trump released a video statement announcing to Iranians that “the hour of your freedom is at hand,” and urging them to rise up gainst the government once the bombing stops.

b.) Did the U.S. strike do substantial damage to Iranian leaders, the Revolutionary Guards, and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei? 

From the Times of Israel:

Channel 12, quoting unnamed Israeli sources, says the palace of Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei has been completely destroyed. It says it is not clear whether Khamenei was present. It also says all of Iran’s key leaders were targeted in the strikes so far today.

Which high officials have been eliminated remains to be seen; information out of Iran is thin because there’s an Internet blackout.

From the NYT:

Israel is still assessing its opening strikes, which hit a variety of targets, including figures considered essential personnel in the Iranian war machine, according to an Israeli military official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity, in line with army rules. The official refused to elaborate on the identity of those targets. He said that Iran had fired dozens of missiles at Israel so far.

. . . Satellite imagery shows a black plume of smoke and extensive damage at the secure compound of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, in Tehran, though his whereabouts were unclear. The image, taken by Airbus on Saturday morning, shows collapsed buildings at the complex, which typically serves as Mr. Khamenei’s residence and main premises for hosting senior officials.

c.) Where is Iran attacking?  So far, Iranian missiles have been fired at U.S. bases, at Jordan, at the United Arabe Emirates, and of course at Israel.

From the Toi:

An Iranian missile has fallen on a home in Jordan’s capital Amman, state media reports.

Footage published by Arabic media shows flames and smoke rising from the wreckage.

. . . Jordan’s military says its air force is at work to protect the kingdom and its people while the strikes are ongoing. A military official says that two ballistic missiles targeting the kingdom’s territory “were successfully intercepted by Jordanian air defence systems”.

From the NYT:

The Emirati defense ministry said in a statement that it had intercepted a number of Iranian ballistic missiles and that a person in the capital Abu Dhabi had died as a result of falling debris. “The UAE reserves its full right to respond to this escalation and to take all necessary measures to protect its territory, citizens, and residents,” the statement said.

There is not much reports of damage to U.S. military bases or to other Middle Eastern countries, though missiles have been fired at them:

The Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, called Iraq’s foreign minister, Fuad Hussein, to inform him that Iran will be targeting U.S. military bases in the region, according to an Iraqi foreign ministry statement published on the ministry’s website. One of those bases is in Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region. The Iraqi statement said Mr. Araghchi had “clarified that these attacks were not targeting the countries involved, but were limited to military sites.”

Likewise, Israel is sending civilians to bomb shelters, but not much damage has been reported. From the NYT:

Iran fired a barrage of missiles and drones at Israel, the Revolutionary Guard Corps said in a statement on Telegram.

It also launched missile attacks targeting U.S. military bases in the region, including Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait, Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates, and the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, Fars reported.

Qatar’s ministry of defense said that it had “successfully thwarted a number of attacks” targeting its territory. The attack echoed another strike last June, when Iran fired more than a dozen missiles at an American military base near the Qatari capital, Doha, in response to a U.S. attack on its nuclear facilities.

From reader Jay, who’s following the Israel Home Front Command’s warning system. Jay says that “I have now gotten red alerts for every region in Israel I have alerts set for: Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Be’er Sheva. Apparently the whole country is under attack by Iranian missiles.”  For example:

d.) How is the world reacting? They are, of course, distressed and worried, calling for the U.S. not to set off a wider war. From the ToI:

Countries in the Middle East and around the world voice fear of a regional conflagration after the United States and Israel launch long-feared strikes on Iran.

Russia calls on its citizens to leave Iran, with former president Dmitry Medvedev saying that talks with the United States had just been a “cover.”

The European Union warns the situation in the region is “perilous” and calls for civilians to be protected in any conflict.

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, on X, urges “all parties to exercise restraint,” stressing it is “critical” to “ensure nuclear safety” after the US indicated Iran’s nuclear sites were in its crosshairs.

The EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas announces the withdrawal of the bloc’s non-essential personnel from the region.

The UK government fears the strikes could blow up into a broader Middle East conflict, and urges its citizens in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE to find shelter.

“We do not want to see further escalation into a wider regional conflict,” a government spokesperson says, adding that the UK’s “immediate priority” is the safety of its citizens in the region.

From the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy / Vice-President of the European Commission. Note the beginning which takes Iran to task:

The latest developments across the Middle East are perilous.

Iran’s regime has killed thousands. Its ballistic missile and nuclear programmes, along with support for terror groups, pose a serious threat to global security. The EU has adopted strong sanctions against Iran and…

— Kaja Kallas (@kajakallas) February 28, 2026

UPDATE from the NYT:

Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada and his foreign minister, Anita Anand, backed the American action. “Canada supports the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent its regime from further threatening international peace and security,” they said in a joint statement.

******

Anthony Albanese, the prime minister of Australia, said his government endorsed the U.S. attacks on Iran. “We support the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent Iran continuing to threaten international peace and security,” he said in a statement. He said Iran has been a “destabilizing force” for decades, and pointed to the two terrorist attacks in 2024 in Australia that the Australian government had said had been directed by an arm of the Iranian military. In one attack, men set fire to a Jewish kosher restaurant, and in another arsonists firebombed a synagogue, injuring one congregant. Australia expelled the Iranian ambassador afterward. (Reporting from Washington)

The reaction of the West is surprisingly mild, and even positive, probably because they, too, have put sanctions on Iran, and are not that unhappy about the prospect of regime change in Iran.

I have been ambivalent about this attack, worried that there would be substantial death to civilians should the U.S. put boots on the ground, which I saw as necessary if the U.S. really wanted regime change.  Perhaps change can be effected without a ground war, but it’s early days now, and we’ll see. I am not sure, either, whether Iranian civilians truly can, in the face of the Iranian military, take over their government.  The Revolutionary Guard has substantial weapons; the Iranian people almost nothing.

I am less worried about Israel, which survived a previous Iranian attack without much damage; the Iron Dome and its successor defenses are good at taking down missiles. But they’re not 100% effective, and there could be substantial loss of life as well as destruction of historic sites.

The world has changed overnight, so stay tuned to the news. The outcome right now is completely unclear.

Astronomers have discovered a extraordinary celestial construction site hiding behind a natural magnifying glass in space and what they've found is unlike anything seen before. A cluster of at least 11 galaxies, all building stars at a ferocious rate in the early universe, has been caught in the act of becoming one of the most massive structures in the universe.

Astronomers have used a special class of ancient, pulsating stars as celestial lighthouses to map the earliest chapter of our Galaxy's life and what they've found is rewriting what we thought we knew about how the Milky Way was born. By building the largest ever catalogue of these stellar beacons and tracing their movements back billions of years, the team has uncovered surprising similarities between our Galaxy's earliest structures, and even found evidence of the same story playing out in our nearest galactic neighbour.

Del Bigtree and Toby Rogers, the authoritarians behind the “medical freedom” movement 

The post Why Should You Worry About My Vaccinated Child If Being Anti-Vaccine Works So Well first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Scientists have built a working model of Earth without any life on it and what they found might change how we search for aliens. By simulating 4.5 billion years of our planet's evolution minus every bacterium, plant, and creature that ever existed, they've created a new tool for spotting genuinely habitable worlds among the thousands of rocky planets soon to be studied by the next generation of space telescopes.

As part of a Golden Age of exploration and discovery, NASA announced Friday the agency is increasing its cadence of missions under the Artemis program to achieve the national objective of returning American astronauts to the Moon and establishing an enduring presence.

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and has proudly boasted about this since time immemorial, with its scientific confirmation occurring by Galileo Galilei in 1610. It was later found that Jupiter has a bulging equator caused by its rapid rotation, turbulent atmosphere, and complex interior mechanisms despite its massive size, and scientists have even measured its “waistline” down to a tenth of a kilometer. Now, imagine being the largest planet in the solar system and you’re told you’re not as big as you thought. Where probably most humans would be thrilled to find this out, how do you respond if you’re Jupiter?

The radio telescope LOFAR, with a major contribution from Leiden Observatory, has produced the most detailed radio map of the Universe ever made. Never before have so many cosmic radio sources been captured in a single survey: 13.7 million.

In what will certainly fail to go down as the news of the century, Imane Khelif, male boxer and women’s boxing Olympic medalist, has finally publicly admitted in a February 2026 interview that he is indeed biologically male. A large part of society specifically chose not to see. And another part chose not to care that eighteen months ago, two men were given a free pass to an abuser’s dream: the ability to not only assault women on an international stage, but the chance to be celebrated for it.

The 2024 Paris Olympics gold, silver and bronze medals, as designed by Chaumet (Credit: LVMH)

Boxers Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan entered the 2024 Olympics as a sex they were not and they did it with the full knowledge of the IOC. Two men, who according to an official release by the International Boxing Association in July of 2024, had failed more than one sex test for female eligibility in 2022 and 2023, and had been disqualified from female competition. For their fraud, both were rewarded with gold medals at the Olympics. One female boxer, Angela Carini, had to make the agonizing decision to forfeit rather than participate in the dangerous charade. How surreal it must have been to make that unbelievable yet necessary call, to not only go against everything one has trained for, but everything one stands for as an athlete, professional, and disciplined fighter.

For any inclined to give Khelif the benefit of the doubt that perhaps he just didn't know… if one is being raised as female and never begins menstruation at puberty, it will absolutely be examined why that is. Once illness and female conditions are ruled out, one is left with the “condition” of being male. In this case, a male with 46, XY 5-alpha reductase deficiency, as a medical report of his drafted back in 2023 outlined, later leaked to Le correspondant.

No one’s personal condition is ever a legitimate reason to disadvantage or endanger another demographic.

To ignore such disorders of sexual development in order to adhere to traditionally physical sex ideals is fairly common practice in conservative and religious countries, and African nations have a history of scouting such male individuals for the purpose of dominating women’s sports, to the overwhelming ignorance of the global athletics audience. As a result, most are still under the incorrect impression that athletes like Caster Semenya, the South African runner and two-time Olympic gold medalist, are simply women with higher testosterone and absolutely unaware of the reality that these are athletes with a male karyotype. Semenya confirmed in the Court of Arbitration for Sport to have 5-ARD, a genetic condition resulting in the inability to develop typical external male genitalia.

These disorders are unbelievably unfortunate for a multitude of medical reasons, beyond being tokenized and weaponized through identity politics. However, no one’s personal condition is ever a legitimate reason to disadvantage or endanger another demographic.

He just counted on larger society not bothering to care. And on that, he wagered well.

Nevertheless, such practice also happens to explain why Khelif, a Muslim in a Muslim nation, was conveniently free from traditionally mandated female attire, and able to be so comfortably hands-on with his fellow male trainers. And beyond that undisguisable situation, one must also genuinely ask why he never chose to appeal the International Boxing Association’s 2023 disqualification for failing to meet female criteria, or why he refused to participate in subsequent female competition that requires testing for sex.

So he knew. His family and community knew. He just counted on larger society not bothering to care. And on that, he wagered well.

It is the inevitable outcome of a societal ideology riddled with complacency for female safety and dignity.

Because despite the protests of the female boxers, certain boxing association officials, and few but genuine feminists against the unbelievable misogyny being broadcasted globally, many decided to protest calling a spade a spade. Widespread social media commentary of the ideologically-captured claimed that Khelif and Lin were simply masculine-looking women who shouldn’t be insulted for appearances beyond their control. That it was (stop me if you’ve heard this before) right-wing propaganda and Nazi TERF bigotry to suggest that such supposed gender nonconformity made them male. The pick-me cherry on top, of course, is that it was peak misogyny to call them men at all.

But this was only to be expected when the mainstream media “reporting” on such a farce fully fed this break from reality. During the 2024 games, at very best legacy organizations legitimized Khelif as the incorrect sex, and at worst, denigrated anyone pointing out the opposite truth. From the official Olympics reporting that ignored the situation itself entirely, to BBC and NYT accounts that comfortably crowned Khelif a woman, to USA Today fluff that belittled a serious slap in the face to females into “unhinged controversy,” the overwhelming majority of outlets at best passively accepted and at worst actively furthered the grotesque farce unfolding in front of the world.

Chromosomes, anatomy, and human sight are disregarded in favor of false passport markers and old photos of pink dresses, because apparently that is the only acceptable (and desired) proof of what “woman” means. 

Yet beyond entrenched media preferences is another incentive as well. This was, and is still, today’s gender misogyny in action. Ironically, those who consider truth too “offensive” for the prioritized male in question never seem to consider the unimaginable offense for the women, who must not only unfairly face a recognizable man, but are expected (as women usually are) to simply take it with grace and a smile. So, concessions will be made to spare male feelings in the name of “inclusion,” ultimately excluding women from their very own opportunities.

Chromosomes, anatomy, and human sight are disregarded in favor of false passport markers and old photos of pink dresses, because apparently that is the only acceptable (and desired) proof of what “woman” means. It is the inevitable outcome of a societal ideology riddled with complacency for female safety and dignity.

Fortunately, despite a seemingly ingrained forfeit of biological honesty, the tide is beginning to turn, with the release of necessary reports and a new, supportive political landscape. The once sacrosanct gender ideology is now beginning to be questioned as a whole in the mainstream, no longer only by brave feminists. We can see the effects of this in the athletic realm through changes in various governing organizations, including World Boxing itself, who are beginning to demonstrate the bare minimum of competition integrity through mandating sex testing for eligibility. And as IOC relies on individual sport federations to set eligibility standards, this nightmare will hopefully one day all but completely fade into history.

 Imane is and was always exactly as his own name states.

As it tends to go, many who put on blinders then will now be miraculously blind to the harm they supported. Khelif’s unforgettable selfishness will get purposely memory holed, along with their own unforgivable enablement in this feint of reality. But as USA Today once wrote in support of Khelif and wild disregard for truth, this indeed “can never happen again” … just not in the way that they meant.

Imane is and was always exactly as his own name states. And now that the rest of the world can no longer pretend that they do not know, they will have to finally decide whether they still believe men are entitled to women's earned opportunities, or if they are truly for women after all.

Researchers in Brazil have discovered another tektite field. Tektites are gravel-sized chunks of natural glass formed by impacts and spread over a wide area. Their presence indicates that a powerful impact occurred 6 million years ago.

I’ve said several times that the best rock/pop song I know of is “A Day in the Life,” the last track on the Beatles’ 1967 “Sgt. Pepper” album.  As usual, its composition is credited to “Lennon/McCartney”, but in this case the lyrics and melody are mainly from Lennon. But McCartney and also Harrison and Ringo contributed, with important additions by producer George Martin. (I’ve put the released version at the bottom.)

The video below by David Hartley, called “The world’s greatest song that simply shouldn’t exist”, was put up only a month ago. It shows how the song was inspired and constructed, and includes verbal quotes from the Beatles (and George Martin), early takes of the song, and snippets of the final song itself.

Why shouldn’t it exist? You can see how a lot of accidents, both sung and played, found themselves into the song, with sporadic suggestions from Martin and the boys, and yet the song worked together not just as a whole, but as an “organic whole,” looking as if it were planned.

Far from it!  At that time there were only four tracks available to mix for the final version, and a lot of manipulation was needed.  The ending was particularly problematic, and how George Martin helped finish it, using half of a full orchestra at Ringo’s suggestion, is fantastic. (Martin actually wrote all the orchestral parts that sound like random noise.) Likewise for the final extended chord, which began as a sung note but wound up, at Paul’s suggestion, with a long instrumental chord played on three pianos and a harmonium.

If you like the song, this analysis is fascinating.

 

There’s also a breakdown of the song by Rick Beato, which you can see here (unlike wasn’t allowed to play snippets of the song). Beato calls it “the best Beatles song.” He’s right, which means it’s the best rock song ever.

I’ve put below a screenshot from Hartley’s video apparently showing an early take of the song, with Paul on Hammond Organ, John on piano, Ringo on congas, and George on guitar:

Here’s the final released version (official video):

Astronomers have spotted what may be one of the universe’s earliest barred spiral galaxies — a striking cosmic structure forming just 2 billion years after the Big Bang. The galaxy, COSMOS-74706, dates back about 11.5 billion years and contains a stellar bar, a bright, linear band of stars and gas stretching across its center, similar to the one in our own Milky Way.