Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Since I had my first disastrous cataract operation on Sept. 22 (not the doctor’s fault!), I haven’t been able to read a book on paper. I can read the computer if I close my right eye because the right and left have different middle-distance prescriptions. But not reading a real book is depressing, and I’ve basically been walking around with my right eye shut for a month.
This situation is of course intolerable, so I asked the ophthalmologist to give me a prescription for interim glasses until I get the left eye done. (Believe me, after my ocular trauma, I’m not in a rush!). Although he cautioned me that it may not work well, I was willing to take the chance rather than walk around like Popeye, unable to read anything but a can of spinach. Today I went to Costco to get those glasses, which should be ready in a week or ten days. Costco is, I’ve found, the best and most reasonable place to get specs, and the service is fantastic.
But Costco also has other great stuff, and while I was there I picked up, besides their hot dog special (footlong dog and endless fountain drink for $1.50), the Big Three items I always get there (the pie is seasonal).
From left to right: The famous Costco rotisserie chicken. Three pounds of delectable pullet, and about five bucks. This will last me at least four meals.
Extra virgin olive oil, single origin, harvested this spring. About $16. Costco’s “extra virgin” is reliable, not so with the oil you get from other places, which often fails laboratory tests for virginity.
And, since it’s the season, the 58-ounce Costco Pumpkin Pie, which will last about a week and a half kept in the fridge. I also have some vanilla ice cream to go with it–the making of a perfect breakfast. It’s huge, better than any commercial pumpkin pie I’ve had, and, for nearly four pounds of pie, it’s less than six bucks.
You can’t go into a Costco without getting a chicken and a pie at the very least. If I can’t read a book for a week, at least I can eat.
Today’s new Jesus and Mo strip, called “spying”, breaks the wall to bring the artist right into the strip. And the book they’re reading is one I just received (see below):
The “thing” is the artist, of course, who has just produced a new book: Jesus and Mo: The Chosen Ones, a “best of” collection covering the last two decades. And the cartoons really are a hilarious collection: 151 pages of them. You can buy it here for only $18, and it would make a good present for heathens during the upcoming religious season.
Welcome to a Hump Day (“El ombligo de la semana” in Spanish): Wednesday, October 21, 2026, and National Reptile Awareness Day. Here’s a big ‘un I photographed in the Galápagos three years ago. These guys can live up to 175 years in captivity and weigh up to 880 pounds (400 kg.).
Again, posting will be light today as I have to drive a long way to Costco to get new (temporary) glasses. My retinal exam yesterday indicated that all was fine and healing up.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 21 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Three NYT science writers, Carl Zimmer, Kenneth Chang, and William Broad, discusses the biological question, “How did life arise?”
Here’s what’s known about three of the biggest inflection points in the evolution of life on Earth.
William Broad: “Where did life first emerge?”
Scientists agree on little regarding the origins of life, including where it might have arisen — at Earth’s surface, or in its watery depths.
“It’s hard to answer these questions,” said Joanna Masel, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona. “The evidence is sketchy. So people argue.
. . .On the other side of the argument is the watery-depths camp. In 1977, American scientists exploring the Pacific seabed stumbled upon an alien world of volcanic vents and otherworldly ecosystems, including eerie fields of albino tube worms. They drew their energy not from sunlight, which powers surface ecosystems, starting with plants, but instead from chemicals emitted by the hot springs.
As other deep-sea ecosystems came to light, scientists proposed that all life on Earth had perhaps arisen in the depths, nurtured by a warm, steady diet of chemicals and sheltered from the killer rocks and cosmic radiation that bombarded the planet’s surface early on.
In recent years, new discoveries have bolstered both sides of the argument.
In 2009, for instance, John D. Sutherland, a chemist at the University of Manchester, in England, described a new way that the molecules of life, energized by the sun’s ultraviolet rays, could have assembled spontaneously on the surface of a primitive Earth. And in 2017, an analysis of mineral deposits in Australia suggested that surface hot springs had nurtured the land’s earliest signs of life. In 2024, an influential group of scientists voiced strong support for the finding.
Even so, the deep springs theory has also gained new support. This summer, a team led by scientists at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, Germany, proposed that the warm chemicals available in the deep sea included metals such as nickel, cobalt and palladium. These metals, the researches contend, could have served as catalysts that helped the earliest forms of life build metabolic pathways.
Broad suggests that both theories could be right—that life could have risen twice independently. That seems unlikely given the common features of life (L amino acids, methods for making proteins, etc.), suggesting one common ancestor of all living organisms.
“How did life get complex? by Carl Zimmer
About two billion years ago, a new kind of cell emerged on Earth, one much bigger and more complex than the microbes that had come before. Today, these so-called eukaryotic cells inhabit our own bodies, as well as those of other animals, plants and fungi. How this new brand of cell emerged remains one of biology’s great mysteries.
“Eukaryotic” comes from a Greek term meaning “true nut,” a reference to the nucleus, the compartment in which eukaryotic cells coil their DNA. Eukaryotic cells have many other vital compartments, including thousands of mitochondria, which generate energy. The huge volume of a eukaryotic cell is supported by a scaffolding that can be quickly dismantled and reassembled; it also serves as an internal shipping network, whizzing packages of molecules from one compartment to another.
In contrast, a single-celled microbe such as Escherichia coli is far simpler. No mitochondria, no scaffolding, no nucleus; a nut-free “prokaryote.”
Eukaryotes — organisms composed of eukaryotic cells — all descend from a common ancestor, which in turn descended from ancient prokaryotes. The earliest eukaryotes were single-celled protozoans; their oldest known fossils date back 1.8 billion years. How long before that the first eukaryotes evolved, scientists can’t say.
Recent studies suggest that the final exchange that gave rise to eukaryotes was the most spectacular. Around 2.25 billion years ago, one species of bacteria took up permanent residence inside Asgard-like cells, using their own metabolism to generate fuel for the cells they occupied. They began to be passed down from one generation of hosts to the next, evolving into our mitochondria.
. . . And they don’t know why the merging of microbes apparently gave rise to big, complex cells just once in the history of life. Was there some exquisitely rare set of circumstances that allowed it to happen? Or did evolution conduct other experiments in complexity that ended in extinction long ago?
There’s another kind of complexity, too: that of multicellular organisms like redwoods and kangaroos. You can ask the same question about this “complexity,” but the answer will be different from that above.
“Why did life get big?” by Kenneth Chang
Then, about 720 million years ago, the world went haywire.
First, Earth froze over, sealing the planet in an icy shell that blocked sunlight from the oceans and shut off photosynthesis. Except for a 10-million-year thaw in the middle of it, Earth remained a shiny white snowball, not a blue marble, for 85 million years.
Scientists marvel that life did not die out. Instead, after that long era of darkness, it underwent a mysterious jump in size and complexity.
“That is the absolute wackiest interval of Earth history that anyone’s aware of,” said Nick Butterfield, a paleobiologist at Cambridge. “You go in the one end, and it’s this old, dreary, boring microbial world, and you come out the other end after these two massive glaciations, and all of a sudden, there’s animals on the scene, and all the microbes have changed.”
From then on there’s disagreement, even whether larger organisms occur before or only after the Ediacaran. And there’s disagreement about what allowed size increase. It could have been an increase in oxygen due to the advent of photosynthesis, or perhaps something else. The article, part of the NYT’s “unknowns” series, clearly shows how little we know about the origin of life—called “abiogenesis” in the trade. If you ask evolutionists if they could have one question about life answered, many would say “How did it start?” Abiogenesis is technically not part of evolutionary biology, since evolution can’t proceed until there are already organisms with heritable material, but it’s damn close to evolution.
*Over at the Free Press, Douglas Murray analyzes the recent unrest in France (which has spread to several European countries) in a piece called, “France stares down the abyss of history.” subtitled “Even great things come to an end. There’s no guarantee that French culture and traditions will survive ceaseless attacks from discontents inside the country.”).
It does not take a historian to notice that the current events do not look like school protests. Even if it were true that some students were protesting about their schooling, they would have absolutely no justification for doing so. Last year, French government spending accounted for a staggering 57 percent of gross domestic product, and French education spending is above average within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. This is in a country whose debt-to-GDP ratio is 115 percent. France is, if anything, spending too much on the education of its youth. Or rather, it is borrowing money to educate a generation, portions of which are now protesting against their expensive (though clearly inadequate) education.
When I say it does not take a historian to understand what is going on this month, I mean that identifying what is fueling these protests requires nothing more than having eyes.
Yes, there are students involved. But since the early days of the protests, groups of hardened, adult rioters have moved in and stoked the unrest to its current level of conflagration. The result has been apocalyptic scenes, including the burning down of the historic town hall in Limoges and the ransacking of the Galeries Lafayette in Paris. Those responsible are not students demanding better math instruction. They are far-left activists, anti-capitalists, green activists, and Palestine fetishists.
Importing generations of people who have no loyalty to or love for the country, many of whom desire to burn it down, has contributed to France’s climate of disorder. The snarky, schadenfreude-filled nature of much of the international commentary is itself sickening. “The French voted for this,” many online warriors have said as they watched tearful French shopkeepers trying to stop mobs from destroying their livelihoods. But that is not true. The French public never voted for this. Like their counterparts across Europe, in Britain, and indeed, in America, the public has consistently voted for governments that promised to secure the nation’s borders, maintain order on the streets, and prevent the civil-war scenarios that so many people, inside and outside the country, have warned about. Their leaders simply never heeded them, or failed trying.
. . . . More than any other country in Europe, France has suffered decades of attacks and riots linked to lax border and immigration policies and an atrociously failed integration policy. It has one of Europe’s largest Muslim populations relative to its size, yet rather than integrating these newcomers (if integration is possible), the country has become a breeding ground for resentment and extremism. In just a couple of years, from 2015 to 2017, the country witnessed Islamist militants kill figures ranging from the nation’s most famous secularists—the journalists of Charlie Hebdo—to Father Jacques Hamel, 85, whose throat was slit while celebrating Catholic Mass in a church in Rouen. It has endured nights of terror across the country, including November 2015, when Islamists attacked the Bataclan theater, the main soccer stadium outside Paris, and cafés and restaurants. And it has seen the murder of schoolteacher Samuel Paty by an Islamist who beheaded him for the supposed crime of “blasphemy.”
. . .French politicians have no answer to this. President Emmanuel Macron has once again used his silky words to talk at the nation, but he seems incapable of listening, changing course, or doing anything about the catastrophe. Even after the police have lost control of the streets in Marseille, France’s second-largest city, and Parisians and others have been forced to protect their own homes as the disorder has worsened, the president still refuses even to declare a state of emergency. His rivals on the left and right are no better. The socialist Jean-Luc Mélenchon fans the flames because many of the rioters are his left-wing supporters, who believe that violence always brings something beautiful and constructive in its wake. Meanwhile, right populist Marine Le Pen tries to pander to what she imagines to be the political middle ahead of the next presidential election, refusing to seize the moment to call for the remigration even of those caught burning France’s cities.
Generations of French politicians, commentators, activists, and others have helped bring about this moment. But, like children who start a fire, they have no idea how to put it out. For now, almost all are running away—unequal to the moment and inadequate to the challenge. Meanwhile, the socialist left is aligning politically with discontented immigrants, forming a movement large enough to vie for real power.
Murray tends to blame unrestricted immigration and lack of integration to many of Europe’s woes, and in this case he’s at least partly right, but we—or I—can’t be sure whether these riots would be taking place even if there was no immigration. The omnipresence of Palestinian flags and chants at least suggests that sympathy for Islamist terrorism and/or antisemitism is at least playing a role.
Here’s a tweet Jay suggesting (which seems reasonable) that the media is, for ideological reasons, largely ignoring the violence in these protests:
JUST IN: The BBC calls these fiery protests “mostly peaceful.” 🤦♂️
*As I’ve mentioned before, Marine Le Pen, head of France’s National Rally Party that’s invariably called “far right” in the media (some readers disagree), is gaining considerable political clout from the riots and demonstrations in France. The WSJ explains:
The riots sweeping France have rocked the country’s political establishment, but one person is positioned to emerge from the chaos with a stronger hand: Marine Le Pen.
For more than a decade, the far-right leader has cast France as a nation adrift, buffeted by waves of immigration and lawlessness that have torn at the country’s social fabric. As bands of hooded rioters in dark clothing have descended on city centers across France, raiding city halls and looting thousands of stores, Le Pen has sought to present herself as the sole candidate in this spring’s presidential election willing to restore order.
The strategy was on display this week as Le Pen released a video address that bore the hallmarks of a president addressing the nation. Seated at a desk before an august bookcase and flanked by France’s tricolor flag, Le Pen cast the riots as a crisis of faith in President Emmanuel Macron’s authority.
“Our country is caught in a vice, held hostage between violence and powerlessness,” Le Pen said. “In six months, the French people will be able to choose a different path—one of authority and restored security.”
The approach has given Le Pen an air of inevitability as she pursues France’s highest office.
“It’s as if she’s at the office, already at the Élysée Palace,” said Adélaïde Zulfikarpasic, a pollster at the French polling firm Ipsos Bva.
Le Pen’s long-running focus on law and order, Zulfikarpasic said, allows her to position herself as a guarantor of stability when democracy itself is in crisis.\
. . . The riots are working to Le Pen’s advantage in other ways. As the violence has flared, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the far-left firebrand running for president, has dominated headlines with his support for protesters, drowning out establishment candidates and bolstering his chances of reaching the second-round runoff with Le Pen. If he succeeds, polls show, Le Pen would beat him handily.
. . .“The social instability over the weekend absolutely plays into Le Pen’s campaign that the establishment has delivered chaos and now is the time to try something different,” said Mujtaba Rahman, head of Europe for risk analysis firm Eurasia Group.
Rahman said Le Pen ultimately aims to persuade voters that she “is not the risk, voting National Rally isn’t the risk. The risk is coming from the established parties that are failing to deliver on the economy.”
Le Pen’s anti-immigration stance, meanwhile, gives her another way to frame the unrest. Le Pen has cast the unrest as the work of far-left radicals allied with youths from France’s banlieues, the poor urban outskirts where much of the country’s minority Muslim population resides.
While the unrest, partly motivated by France’s economic problems, is playing right into Le Pen’s hands (a nightmare for the protestors), she herself may exacerbate those problems since one of her past campaign promises is to lower France’s retirement age to 60, which will jack up the national debt. Another issue is her legal problems:
As Le Pen approaches the final stretch of the campaign, however, she faces a legal minefield stemming from her 2025 conviction for misusing European Parliament funds. Le Pen has denied any wrongdoing. In July, an appeals court upheld the ruling, sentencing her to a three-year prison term, with two of the years suspended. The remaining year, judges said, could be served wearing an electronic bracelet, raising the possibility that Le Pen will have to campaign under judicial surveillance.
I have no prognostications here for the elections, which will occur on April 18 of next year. And of course if the riots get worse, her chances are boosted.
*At It’s Noon in Israel,” Amit Segal has been suggesting that both Israel and the U.S. are planning some kind of big attack on Iran—and soon. That’s suggested in yesterday’s piece, “Bibi’s secret meeting in the desert.”
It’s Tuesday, October 20, and last night Benjamin Netanyahu skipped the Beitar Jerusalem game. Instead of a roaring welcome from 30,000 potential voters at Teddy Stadium, he flew to Nevatim Air Base in the south to meet U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and, according to Walla, Emirati officials.
The game ended in a goalless draw. The meeting’s outcome is classified, but it’s safe to assume it matters more for Israel’s future than Maccabi Tel Aviv extending its unbeaten streak.
That Netanyahu, a week before an election, gave up a stadium holding roughly three-quarters of a Knesset seat’s worth of voters says how serious it was. Recent waves of attacks show that Tehran is recovering its ability to target ships in the Strait of Hormuz. On one day last week, only seven tankers made it through, under half the weekly average and the lowest since July.
There is also the possibility that Iran is preparing to attack immediately following the Israeli election to sink Republican chances in the midterms.
The visit came a day after President Donald Trump formally endorsed Netanyahu, declaring that without him as prime minister the U.S. would have to go it alone. Whether that was a threat or an observation about the opposition’s mettle remains unclear. A trip by his defense secretary a week before the vote could be either, or not politically connected whatsoever.
The next round with Iran remains murky, but let us hope it ends more conclusively than last night’s game.
Segal’s reporting over the last week suggests that he knows something that the Western media doesn’t. I guess we’ll find out.
*And from the UPI’s odd news, a Canadian man who won a seat on the local city council despite a campaign averring that he didn’t want the job:
A British Columbia city council candidate whose humorous campaign signs went viral appears to have won his election, despite branding himself as unqualified.
Brady Rogers, 33, gained attention online for his Kelowna City Council campaign signs, which bore slogans such as “I barely want to do this,” “Just trying to pay my rent,” “Fine. I’ll do it,” and “How hard can it be.”
Here’s a news report on Brady’s campaign, which include an interview with the candidate (he says the job is something “he feels he can do.”
Even Rogers’ campaign website opens with the message: “Do I enjoy politics? No. Do I know what I’m doing? No. But am I qualified? Also no.”
Preliminary results from Saturday’s municipal election show Rogers receiving 12,635 votes, coming in fourth among the 37 candidates. If those election results are certified on Tuesday, Rogers’ seat on the council will be guaranteed.
Rogers released a video on his campaign’s social media page after the preliminary results were announced, saying that despite his campaign’s tone, he plans to take the job seriously.
Preliminary results from Saturday’s municipal election show Rogers receiving 12,635 votes, coming in fourth among the 37 candidates. If those election results are certified on Tuesday, Rogers’ seat on the council will be guaranteed.
Rogers released a video on his campaign’s social media page after the preliminary results were announced, saying that despite his campaign’s tone, he plans to take the job seriously.
“I’m being a little bit tongue-in-cheek when I say I’m unqualified,” Rogers told Global News before the election. “I’ve never been a politician, but I certainly have experience that I think is very relevant and helpful.”
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili insulted Andrzej:
Andrzej: Why are you staring at me like that? Hili: I’m listening to all that nonsense you’re muttering to yourself.
In Polish:
Ja: Czemu się tak przyglądasz?
Hili: Słucham co sam do siebie wygadujesz.
One post at Townhall speculates why she’s leaving, though I have not an inkling of its truth:
CNN is bracing for a “bloodbath.” Paramount’s merger with Warner Bros. has been approved after an antitrust lawsuit was settled, paving the way for the $110 billion deal to close. In its wake, CNN could undergo massive changes, with even CBS News’ Bari Weiss considered to retool the network’s editorial direction. Weiss already has her hands full with the 60 Minutes revamp, but her name has been tossed around. Should she be selected, it’ll be hell on Earth for liberals. For now, the news of the settlement has many walking around the network offices like a funeral is about to begin (via Variety). . . .
I hadn’t hear of the latest lunacy from Trump, but the Number Ten Cat did:
Much more of this nonsense and we’re going to have to insist that America stop using British places in their names – we’re talking to you New York, Boston and Washington
Here’s Greta touting her latest cause du jour: Zionism is racism and Israel is a genocidal “apartheid state”. It’s hard to get so many things wrong in one minute, but Greta manages to do it.
Greta Thunberg has come out to defend the Green Party’s racist Zionism is Racism policy. The enthusiastic jump from the environment to antisemitism shocks me still. https://t.co/VQLhccxmDM
.@netanyahu: “On October 7, @EmmanuelMacron called me and asked for an immediate ceasefire and to solve this by diplomacy… I told him that if we don’t stop Hamas here, you’ll see them on the streets of Paris.” https://t.co/3FAGOY07yd
This Dutch Jewish girl and her mother were both gassed to death as soon as they arrived in Auschwitz. The girl, Roza, was three years old, and would have been 88 today had she lived.
And one from Doctor Cobb, who says, “This is true.” I am not so sure as I don’t have the data. Several people in France were injured though, as far as I know, nobody was killed.
As I’ve mentioned, posting will be light for a week or so as I have to deal with eye issues. Today I go to the retinologist and have little time to post, but as I was perusing my list of favorite music this morning, I came upon my subsection of “Worst lines in popular songs.” I did a post on it in 2023, which I now repost exactly in the form from 1 July, 2023. Perhaps there are enough folks who haven’t seen it that I can get away with posting it again.
So here it is, below the line. I’ve added a newer discovery of bad lyrics at the end.
I was looking at my very long list of “best and worst” music today, and found an old section called “The worst lines in popular songs”. I present them to you as an inspiration. There are many more, of course: I expect people may bring up “MacArthur Park” or “I’ve got a brand new pair of rollerskates,” but those are just overall bad songs. Bad songs needn’t contain bad lines, though. Here’s some of the lines that I’ll never be rid of as earworms:
This is a story about Billy Joe and Bobbie Sue Two young lovers with nothin’ better to do Than sit around the house, get high, and watch the tube And here is what happened when they decided to cut loose They headed down to, ooh, old El Paso That’s where they ran into a great big hassle Billy Joe shot a man while robbing his castle Bobbie Sue took the money and run
. . . . Hoo-hoo-hoo, Billy Mack is a detective down in Texas You know he knows just exactly what the facts is He ain’t gonna let those two escape justice He makes his livin’ off of the people’s taxes
—Steve Miller “Take the Money and Run”
Rhyming “El Paso” with “hassle” and “Texas” with “facts is” are just not rhymes. And someone should remind Mr. Miller that “facts” is plural. Steve Miller may in fact be the premier producer of the worst lines in rock music. Don’t forget “Abracadabra” and the immortal lines in “The Joker”:
Some people call me the space cowboy, yeah
Some call me the gangster of love
Some people call me Maurice ‘Cause I speak of the pompatus of love
There is no such thing as “pompatus,” at least not in the Oxford English Dictionary
Here’s an example of a not-bad song with terrible lines. The first two just make me cringe, and the words “when we rode the horse we got some thrills” does likewise. Only one horse? Some thrills?
“Sittin’ in my car outside your house
Remember when I spilled Coke all over your blouse.
. . .Miniature golf and Hondas in the hills (Miniature golf and Hondas in the hills) When we rode the horse, we got some thrills.”
–Beach Boys, “All Summer Long”
This is a good song but Loretta strains for rhymes several times. Here’s one example:
“The work we done was hard
At night we’d sleep ‘cause we were tard.” [“tired”]
–Loretta Lynn, “Coal Miner’s Daughter”
Here we have one of at least three uses of the word “chicken” in a rock song (can you name another?), but rhyming “chicken” with “bit me” doesn’t work. That said, I love this song; it’s bouncy and one of the best songs Stevie wrote:
“I was knee high to a chicken
When the love bug done bit me.” (a rhyme)
This song was on the jukebox in the greasy diner where we ate every night in college (99 cents per meal, including rice pudding!). It is one of the worst songs of that era. And the verse just cuts off: we don’t know what they will find in 2525!
In the year 2525,
If man is still alive,
If woman can survive
They may find.
–Zager and Evans, “2525”
I never understood this verse. These words may make some arcane sense to the band Chicago, but didn’t to me:
Should I try to do some more?
25 or 6 to 4.
–Chicago, “25 or 6 to 4”
I’m a huge fan of Steve Stills, but when he got it wrong, he got it wrong big time. And here’s one of those times!
The deeper you go ’cause of the pressure of the air
The nitrogen comes and goes (gets you high)
It’s an alien atmosphere
They call it rapture of the deep
Be you not afraid
You’re too far down by now to be scared
Two hundred and eighty-seven feet
I saw Jesus and it made sense that he was there
–Stephen Stills, “Black Coral”
This comes from my late friend Kenny, who found the lyric:
“Ooooh, poor Romeo
Sitting’ all on his own-e-o.
Ooooh, poor Romeo.
–Phil Lynott, “Romeo and the Lonely Girl”, from “Jailbreak”, by Thin Lizzie
UPDATE (AT THE TIME): I’ll retract the last quote as “bad rhyming” based on one a comment in the thread by Brendan Teeling, who says that “own-eo” was normal Dublin parlance at the time. Also, this was the only quote that was given to me by someone else; all the rest I’m well familiar with.
2026 UPDATE: And a new one. The song “Drops of Jupiter,” by Train is FULL of awful lines and I didn’t put it in the previous post. In fact, though the melody is okay, the entire song’s lyrics qualify as dreadful. Here are a couple of stinkers. (Note: this is one of only two rock/pop songs I know of that contains the word “chicken.” The other is mentioned above.)
Now, that she’s back from that soul vacation
Tracin’ her way through the constellation, hey-hey (Mmm)
She checks out Mozart while she does Tae-Bo
Reminds me that there’s room to grow, hey-hey, yeah Now, that she’s back in the atmosphere
I’m afraid that she might think of me as
Plain ol’ Jane told a story about a man
Who was too afraid to fly, so he never did land
“Checks our Mozart while she does Tai-Bo“, indeed. Checks him out!
But wait! There’s more! Another verse from the bridge:
Can you imagine no love, pride, deep-fried chicken
Your best friend always sticking up for you
Even when I know you’re wrong?
Can you imagine no first dance, freeze-dried romance
Five-hour phone conversation
The best soy latte that you ever had, and me?
My technician at the time loved soy lattes and made me drink one. It was dreadful and I’ll never have another. The “best soy latte that you ever had” is worse than emulsified cow pies.
2026: You know the drill: NOW IT’S YOUR TURN! Put your worst lyrics below.
Welcome to The Cruelest Day: Tuesday, October 20, 2026, and it’s National Chicken and Waffles Day, celebrating a dish that is purely American, and arose in kitchens of the Pennsylvania Dutch. From Wikipedia:
Chicken and waffles, as a combined recipe using pulled boiled chicken, first appeared in the United States’ colonial period in the 1600s in Pennsylvania Dutch country. The traditional Pennsylvania Dutch version consists of a plain waffle with pulled, stewed chicken on top, covered in gravy.
A version using fried chicken is associated with the American South. The soul food version of chicken and waffles grew in popularity after the opening of the Wells Supper Club in Harlem, New York, in 1938. The waffle is served as it would be for breakfast, with condiments such as butter and syrup. This version of the dish is popular enough in Baltimore, Maryland to become a local custom.
I’ve never had it, but would gladly devour it were I presented with a dish (to be sure, lots of restaurants on the South Side serve it). I’d prefer the Southern version with butter and syrup, as I think the salty chicken would go good with a sweet waffle. Here’s a photo from Wikipedia:
Evan Swigart, TheCulinaryGeek from Chicago, USA, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
More than half a million people joined some 110 marches throughout France on Saturday, the interior ministry said, in the biggest day of protest since the demonstrations began about a month ago. A major union, the C.G.T., gave a higher estimate, saying 800,000 protesters had turned out.
Amid many peaceful demonstrations, rioters vandalized roughly 1,500 shops and many symbols of the French state, leading to roughly 2,000 arrests. An arson attack largely destroyed the town hall in Limoges, in central France. In Marseille, the second-largest city, masked people broke into a government building and tipped over a bust of Marianne, a symbol of the Republic.
. . . Why are students protesting?
High school students started protesting last month to express frustration with the condition of their schools.
They have pointed to crumbling infrastructure, overcrowded classrooms, overloaded schedules, a shortage of teachers and staff, and underfunding in schools. Many are also calling for an overhaul of state-run admissions platforms for higher education and universities that they call unfairly selective.
Students have blockaded hundreds of schools. They have set fire to, or damaged, at least 24 of them, according to the government. Thousands have been arrested since September and over 1,000 police officers, students and school staff have been hurt.
. . . Why did other groups join the students?
Throughout October, labor unions and other campaign groups have increasingly joined the students’ demonstrations. They have held bigger rallies to express solidarity with the students as well as to protest a broader range of issues.
Some are angry over the cost of living and rising fuel prices that have surged, in part, because of the Iran war. Farmers have joined in, angry at agricultural costs.
. . . And left-wing parties have also seized on the protests as part of a wider expression of discontent at President Emmanuel Macron, who is limited to two terms and is nearing the end of his time in office.
. . . What is the political fallout?
On Sunday, far-right leaders and the centrist government blamed the far left for the chaos. They pointed in particular to a major far-left party, France Unbowed, that they said provoked the unrest.
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has accused party leaders of sowing distrust about the police among student protesters, and said some rioters were members of the “ultra-left.”
France Unbowed has rejected that accusation and its leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, has instead blamed the government for actions that he said made the unrest more likely.
And that’s about it. No mention of pro-Palestinian protestors and Palestinian flags, no mention of immigration, no mention of looting of the “vandalized shops”. All of that, of course, would make the protestors/rioters look worse.
*For another view, read the WSJ’s editorial-board op-ed, “Why France is burning.” In fact, the piece doesn’t tell us at all why France is burning (apparently the paper did that before), but discusses how French politicians on the right and on the left are using the protests/riots to their advantage.
We’ve explained the underlying fiscal and political woes behind the crisis, but the news this time is the pre-election play by far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Heretofore Mr. Mélenchon, head of the far-left Indomitable France party, had taken a somewhat detached attitude to the protests. But this weekend he participated in protests in Paris. He also blamed police for “unleashing” on protesters, while condemning looting and arson.
The riots are ostensibly about declining public services, but the presidential election next April figures into the protest calculations. Marine Le Pen of the insurgent right National Rally is leading in current presidential polls. Mr. Mélenchon is in a three-way tie with two candidates on the center-left.
The race now is to see who can emerge from the first round of voting to get to the two candidate runoff, probably against Ms. Le Pen. If the riots help Mr. Mélenchon consolidate support on the left, he could be the one. If the riots move more center-right voters away from the centrist candidates and toward Ms. Le Pen, Mr. Mélenchon may figure he has a fighting chance to become the next President in the May runoff.
. . .The parties of the right and left see a rare opportunity to use the moment to gain the Élysée Palace. It’s no coincidence that some protesters came uncomfortably close to the palace before police dispersed them.
Mr. Macron addressed the country Sunday evening, asking for public calm and order. But as a lame duck, he is left to rely on police to protect the French streets. They couldn’t do it on Saturday, as protesters ransacked shops in Marseille and elsewhere, and even torched the historic town hall in Limoges that survived the Nazis.
France is in a violent democratic funk, and it will probably get worse. Don’t think it can’t happen in the U.S. given the current state of American politics.
That’s a lot of the editorial’s content. Not only does it not answer the title question, but it doesn’t even show how the parties are using the unrest to their advantage. All it shows is what the consequences will be if the riots move the public in one political direction or another. Sadly, this op-ed appears to be a waste of space.
President Trump, defending his decision to ease tariffs and other sanctions against Russia, said on Sunday that he was making “great progress” in a peace deal with the Kremlin and suggested for the first time that the process included “hostage negotiations.”
He did not specify whose release he was seeking. But the only American now categorized by the State Department as “wrongfully detained” in Russia is Stephen Hubbard, a Michigan teacher who was seized from his home in Ukraine just months after Russia invaded that country in February 2022 and was charged with being a mercenary. He was sentenced to more than six years in a penal colony, on charges that the United States has said are fabricated.
“My decision on Russia is a very simple one,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media, an apparent reference to his move late on Friday to neutralize the sanctions resolution that he had signed only a few weeks earlier. “I am in the process of negotiating Peace in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and don’t want to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table.”
Until Sunday, Mr. Trump had said little about the remarkable, rapid-fire steps he has taken over the past 10 days to side with the Russians in a conflict that has now gone on longer than World War I. Those steps amount to the reversal of nearly five years of sanctions following President Vladimir V. Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.
In that time period Mr. Trump has announced that the United States will buy diesel fuel from Russia — though the announced purchases are far too small to have a significant effect on prices, despite Mr. Trump’s claims — and that he will waive imposing tariffs on Russia under a newly signed law named for its chief proponent, Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who died in July.
Both decisions have been criticized by U.S. lawmakers, including fellow Republicans. Senator Darline Graham of South Carolina, who was appointed to her brother’s seat and is now running for a full term, gently disagreed on Saturday with Mr. Trump’s decision on the sanctions law, saying that she “would choose to put the pressure on Russia to end the war and get gas prices down.”
The breach with Ukraine has been sudden and perhaps irreparable.
Indeed! Presumably a peace deal will require the cooperation and assent of Ukraine and Zelensky, and you don’t get that by suddenly cozying up to Russia. (There has been no cozying up to Ukraine.) And one hostage does not a peace deal make. All we have is the depressing site of Trump cozying up to a dictator and blaming Ukraine for America’s high gas prices. .
Halley Froehlich was sure she’d spend her scientific career in the United States. Her family has been in America since the 1700s.
But over the past two years, delayed federal grants and fears about the future motivated her to pack her life into boxes. She moved to Finland with her husband and daughter and is continuing her research — studying how fish, shellfish and seaweed that humans eat are responding to climate change — at the University of Helsinki.
Since then, many have taken the bait. While there is no way to quantify the overall change across the nation, scientists, researchers and professional groups say the shift is clear, unprecedented and concerning.
“You can almost talk to any vice president for research at a university and they will tell you of one or two top faculty that they’ve lost,” said Tobin Smith, senior vice president of government relations and public policy for the Association of American Universities.
. . .White House spokesperson Liz Huston said Trump is “ending waste” and is “committed to keeping America the world leader in scientific innovation, and that means funding real science.”
But more than half of American states have lost scientists to recruitment programs in other countries, according to an April report from the Business for Federal Research Funding Coalition. Last March, early-career biomedical scientists were about 20 percentage points less likely to say they would “now” stay in the U.S., compared to their recollection of how they felt six months earlier. And physics Ph.D. graduates in 2025 left the U.S. at the highest rate in 30 years, according to the American Institute of Physics.
Countries including Canada, France, Belgium and Finland are touting their recruits from U.S. institutions, a disturbing and surprising development, scientists say, for a country that far and away leads the world in Nobel prizes for medicine, physics and chemistry.
“It used to be the shining city on the hill where we all want to go,” said Christine Stawitz, now at the University of Birmingham in England. “That reputational loss, I think, is hard to quantify, but also really damaging.”
International scientists who have come to the U.S. because of its research reputation are also leaving the country. And of course the less attractive America becomes for science, the more scientists leave, so we’ll get a snowball effect. Now I’m not worried that in the long run this will persist, as Trump won’t always be President, and I presume that future Presidents, even if they’re Republicans, will have the sense to stop cratering science. But it looks like these scientists move only when they can continue their research, so the amount of research by them won’t change. Frankly, I don’t care which country is ahead so long as the work gets done. What is more worrisome is when science is quashed, and that is also being done with Trump’s widespread cancelation of grants.
*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal theorizes why Trump finally endorsed Netanyahu. Segal floats the suggestion that the endorsement, if it’s successful, will make the U.S. partner with the Jewish state on what Segal thinks is an upcoming Big Attack on Iran.
If this episode teaches anything, it is that, like Mark Twain’s death, the reports of daylight between Trump and Netanyahu are greatly exaggerated. The difference is that the media only announced Twain’s death once before they learned their lesson.
When it comes to Trump and Netanyahu, there is always more to the relationship than what makes it into print. Here, the “more” is the subject the endorsement kept returning to: Iran.
It appears that after vanquishing Israel’s opposition, Trump and Netanyahu plan to move on to what is left of the Islamic Republic. If plans have already been set, it is understandable why Trump would want the leader already briefed to remain at the helm.
Whether Trump’s claim that without Netanyahu “America will have to do this work ourselves” is a threat or an observation is an open question. If Trump is demanding Netanyahu as a precondition, that doesn’t mean he is voting for the coalition, only for a government with Netanyahu.
America doing the job alone is threatening Europe with a good time but would spell disaster for Israel. If the U.S. is returning to Iranian skies, likely for the last time, Israel needs to get its punches in before the window closes. “Unity” may be a dirty word in the opposition today, but we will see how the term evolves if Trump adds Iran into the equation.
The truth is, unity is likely the only way Bibi remains at the head of a stable coalition. Trump would be angry to find out that his name alone is insufficient to net Bibi another five or six seats. That reflects the dive in both Trump’s and Bibi’s popularity, and the difficulty of convincing what even Moses called a “stiff necked people.”
All of this implies that Segal has some secret information that both Israel and the U.S. want to finish off Iran fairly soon. I have seen nothing about this in any other American media, but of course Segal has “ins” in Israel that the U.S. media doesn’t. I would not be unhappy to see Iran “finished” to the extent that there is regime change, and I don’t think that’s a clear objective of Trump, but it may be a felicitous byproduct of military action.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s sensitive ears detect a catlike noise:
Hili: A child is crying. Andrzej: Where?
Hili: One floor up.
In Polish:
Hili: Dziecko płacze.
Ja: Gdzie?
Hili: Piętro wyżej.
From Give Me a Sign. This might be a jab at all the flavored beers being made:
This video from Masih will make you tear up:
Emotional moment two women blinded under Islamic regimes meeting each other for the first time.
Fahimeh is from Afghanistan. Her husband threw acid on her face because she was fighting for women’s rights against the Taliban. As her face burned, he told her: now I have taken your eyes and your face, people will be scared of you, so I dare you to go out and talk to people.
I invited her to come on stage with me and talk directly to thousands of people in Poland.
She met Kosar, an Iranian woman who was blinded by the Islamic Republic during the Woman life Freedom uprising.
We are now together stepping into Jewish history in Poland, including Auschwitz, and understanding the connection between the Holocaust and the Islamic Republic’s massacre on 2026.
If any of you think it’s easy to live under Islamic republic or Taliban just listened to their stories.
These women are not fighting for themselves. They are fighting to protect democracy everywhere from the most dangerous cancer, which is called Islamism.
Rawan Osman blames most of the unrest in Europe on Islamists? I’m not sure I agree:
Who Is Setting Europe on Fire?
After a weekend offline celebrating my son as his childhood came to an end, I switched my phone on and saw Europe ablaze.
My immigrant family, who once punished me for being an outspoken Zionist, is staying with me. They finally understand: Israel is not the problem. The Palestinian cause is our crucifix.
In 2015, I warned that imported misogyny and antisemitism would fuel the far right. The Washington Institute published what I wrote. Europe dismissed it, Germany most of all. Germany’s reconciliation with the Jews after the Holocaust stalled. Since October 7, it has gone into reverse.
So who is setting Europe on fire? The men stealing jackets and food can’t organize riots across a continent. The mastermind who wrapped Greta Thunberg in a keffiyeh can. He recruits young Westerners to open the gates of their cities in the name of human rights.
Who comes through the gates?
Victims, and the abusers they fled. A system that can’t tell them apart will be seized by extremists who punish everyone. Alice Weidel would deport Syrians and Afghans without exception, including the Druze, Afghan women, and Yazidis. Denmark moved to deport an Iranian activist back to Iran. A Yazidi woman met her ISIS tormentor in a Berlin supermarket; Germany had granted him asylum. Still, Weidel sounds more realistic than Macron, who vows to make masked, unregistered rioters pay. How will he find them?
How are the gatekeepers recruited? Through unions, universities, parties, mosques, and social media. Workers mobilize for money, students for ideals, politicians for votes, radicalized Muslims for faith. The strongest is the Islamist. His project belongs to the ummah, for Allah’s sake. Jail or kill him and it goes on. How do you defeat someone who wins even when you kill him? Victimhood, martyrdom, paradise.
What does this model remind you of?
Half-measures won’t stop it. Ban the keffiyeh. Dissolve UNRWA. Abolish Palestinian refugee status, so that “Palestinian” becomes a cultural identity, not a citizenship. Let those who want to leave the West Bank and Gaza resettle elsewhere: Islamists where Islamists belong, those with family in Jordan in Jordan, and those who value Israel on a path to citizenship if they prove to be law-abiding.
I hope the West finds the courage to act before more tragedies force its hand.
Translated from the Turkish (of course): “The fisherman, noticing that the pregnant cat he feeds fish to every day is visiting more frequently, finally can’t resist following her and learns that she’s not taking the fish for herself 🥹♥️”
Her gün balık verdiği hamile kedinin ziyarete daha fazla geldiğini fark eden balıkçı, sonunda dayanamayarak kediyi takip ediyor ve kedinin balıkları kendisi için götürmediğini öğreniyor 🥹♥️ https://t.co/QWbBRLyUEq
Scrolling back through my phone; just re-discovered this random photo that I took in Antarctica last winter. It shows a blizzard over an ice-speckled ocean. Seems almost surreal – not sure if this is a good photo or not!
Have some Buddy Holly: in my view, his best song, “True Love Ways“, which he co-wrote with Norman Petty. It was first released in 1960, almost two years after Holly’s death on The Day the Music Died (February 3, 1959). Holly was 22 when he perished in that plane crash.
From Wikipedia:
Holly biographer Bill Griggs points out that the melody borrows heavily from the gospel song “I’ll Be All Right,” a favorite of Holly’s, and one that would be played at his funeral in 1959. According to Griggs, the framework of the melody was written by Buddy, with the remainder, and lyrics, added by Petty.
Holly’s widow, Maria Elena Holly, claimed that the song was written for her as a wedding gift. On April 29, 2011, she unveiled the never-before-seen “True Love Ways” photo of their wedding kiss, now displayed at P.J. Clarke’s above Table 53, the table where they became engaged while on their first date, on June 20, 1958.
And did you know this>?
John Lennon and Paul McCartney saw Holly for the first time when he appeared on Sunday Night at the London Palladium. The two had recently met and begun their musical association. They studied Holly’s records, learned his performance style and lyricism, and based their act around his persona. Inspired by Holly’s insect-themed Crickets, they chose to name their band “the Beatles“. Lennon and McCartney later cited Holly as one of their main influences.
I don’t know a rock/pop song this old that has a jazz-influenced saxophone riff:
Buddy Holly and the Crickets, 1957 (Holly’s in the middle):
Coral Records, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
. . . seem to be getting worse. What started out as relatively peaceful protests against poor school conditions have devolved into full-scale rioting complete with arson, mass destruction, and looting. The far left and French unions have joined in, as well as a lot of young pro-Palestinians, many of whom may be immigrants or from unassimilated immigrant communities.
Here’s a BBC videoabout the riots:
My Facebook feed is full of people using the riots as a reason to stem immigration to France (and Europe in general). As I’ve said, I don’t want to use these protests so much to call for a total ban on immigration (though clearly some restrictions are in order) as to call attention to the pro-Palestinian and anti-Western nature of the demonstrations, which suggest that Europe is in danger of losing its liberal democratic culture. Why on earth should a protest that’s about schools and national budgets be replete with people waving Palestinian flags and calling for another intifada? Why the destruction, symbolizing the destruction of Western liberal values.
Here’s Noa Tishby, an Israeli actress now living in America, making that point. Click the screenshot to see her video post:
Many shopkeepers have had to stand by, like this poor woman, as protestors invaded their shops, wrecked them, and looted the goods, ruining their life’s work. This woman is apparently host with her own petard:
What we know:
1. She’s a member of the French left-wing party and an activist, one of the biggest advocates for opening up migration to North African peoples.
2. She owns a small chic boutique in an upscale spot, she stood in her shop trying to save it from looting and theft telling them that she’s a famous activist.
3. She told them I’m so-and-so, the activist for asylum, I’m with you, I’ve defended you and your entry and stay in France, they spat on her, knocked her down, and trampled her with their feet, good thing she’s still alive.
4. And they looted the whole shop, losing all the struggle and work of her lifetime in a moment. Standing there stunned, not believing that these thieving, rabble-rousing, criminal, barbaric hordes are the ones she’s spent her whole life defending, and advocating for them to invade her country and destroy it
A French woman who supported France’s left wing government and the protests asks why left wing protesters are looting her store. It’s a perfect distillation of left wing decisions, this is where it all leads. https://t.co/qSwKyXK7DV
France has a long history of protest, student, and otherwise, but I’m worried about two things here.
First, the role of pro-Palestinians and anti-Western actors in these riots, which will have turned many Europeans into advocates (or at least osculators) of terrorism. Second, the fact that these riots may put into power far right-factions in Europe, some of which are Nazi-adjacent.
I am no pundit, but surely the solution involves recognizing the problem of immigrant communities who won’t assimilate into the European liberal-democratic tradition, as well as somehow enlightening those blockheads who shout “free Palestine” while waving Palestinian flags and chanting “from the river to the sea”. Is either of these possible? I don’t know.
And I have a bit of a worry that something like this will happen in America, as there are signs of it now in the ascendancy of Democratic Socialists and the increasing demonization of Israel and rise of anti-semitic crimes. But, as they always say, “It can’t happen here.” Well, it’s happening in Europe.
All the ducks have gone, and the sky is gray. (People keep asking me, “Where do you think the ducks are?” My answer is, “My best guess is that they’ve gone south for the winter.”) But the squirrels and turtles are still here, and I’m been remiss in feeding the rodents. (The turtles get their own food from a feeder person.) One squirrel remembered me yesterday, crawled into my lap repeatedly, and was rewarded with two walnuts and four peanuts. I haven’t kissed him yet.
It’s been cool but sunny these last few days, and the turtles have taken advantage of the weather to soak up some rays and jump-start their metabolism. Yesterday afternoon four of them found their way to a sunny rock and, stretching out limbs and necks in what we call “turtle yoga”, basked for a long time. Here are four red-eared sliders absorbing UV.
Note that they’re all facing the same direction: the sun is behind them, and they’ve exposed as much of their bodies as they can. If I don’t miss my guess, there are two more turtles in the pond.
Notice how their rear feet are stretched out behind, and their necks are extended.
Finally, here’s a video in which turtle #4 joins the three that were already there. Be sure to watch until the end.
I haven’t seen a single duck even stop briefly at the pond since Miss Duck left along with her brood (Rupert was the last). I do wonder where they are.
