Welcome to CaturSaturday, October 31, 2026: shabbos for Jewish cats, the last day of the month and Halloween! Here’s a short Tik Tok video from The Quack House featuring ducks and an appropriately carved pumpkin:

It’s also Carve a Pumpkin Day, Girl Scout Founder’s Day, National Candy Apple Day, National Caramel Apple Day (watch those fillings!), and National Magic Day.

In honor of the last one, here are some amazing card tricks by Shin Lim in a 5-minute performance on America’s Got Talent:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 31 Wikipedia page.

There’s an animated Halloween Google Doodle today; click to see where it goes:

Da Nooz:

*The Times of Israel claims that although Netanyahu may remain in power for some time since there’s no clear path to anyone else becoming PM of Israel, he isn’t acting as though he won the election. What gives?

In the two days since Israelis cast ballots, there’s been a yawning gap between the results and the way Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is talking about them.

The final vote tally, while inconclusive, indicates that barring drastic change, Netanyahu will stay in power indefinitely. Nobody has a clear path to a coalition, so the incumbent remains, possibly through multiple rounds of elections. And after the wars, catastrophe and domestic strife of the past four years, Netanyahu could reasonably count that as a victory.

Except that Netanyahu isn’t acting like a victor. Yes, he crowed that his party was the largest, but as he himself knows well, that doesn’t guarantee another term. He spent much of his election night speech militating against a Jewish-Arab opposition government — recognition that his opponents, however fractious, have the majority.

Moreover, in the days since then, he has protested that the election was “stolen” and that the vote was illegitimate. He’s demanded investigations and lashed out at his opponents.

Usually, the candidate who won doesn’t claim that his election was stolen, and doesn’t try to delegitimize the vote. Yet Netanyahu is in power and will probably stay in power. So what’s going on here?

A likely possibility is that Netanyahu, by demonizing his opponents, is laying the groundwork for a repeat election in the coming months, in which he may improve his showing. But he may also realize his coalition is fraying, and that while he will remain at the head of the government, his days of effectively governing may be numbered.

This seems to me a correct deduction, and if a coalition can’t produce a Prime Minister, the Israelis are in for more elections.  As Bret Stephens says, though (see below), a different election outcome may not lead to a drastic revision of Netanyahu’s policies, though it may call a halt to some of his actions (e.g. , towards the Supreme Court of Israel).

*Over at the the NYT, Bret Stephens offered four lessons from Israel’s election, even though he wrote his column before the election results are known (they’re still not known with respect to who will lead the country). The article is also archived here.

The first thing to say about Tuesday’s election in Israel is the one that tends to be mentioned the least: The country is having one. Competitive, lawful, on schedule and with a plausible expectation of unseating the powerful incumbent.

That’s more than can be said of the Palestinian Authority under the presidency of Mahmoud Abbas, who was elected to a four-year term of office in 2005 but has bypassed elections ever since. It’s more than can be said for Hamas, which won Palestinian legislative elections in 2006, went to war against its domestic political opponents and has ruled through fiat and fear ever since.

It’s also more than can be said for Egypt, whose president came to power in a 2013 coup and won an “election” the next year with nearly 97 percent of the vote; for Turkey, whose president stays in power by jailing popular political rivals and nettlesome independent journalists; for Jordan, a repressive dynastic monarchy; for Lebanon, whose parliamentary government cannot enforce its writ against Hezbollah and its masters in Tehran.

The second point is that, for an election widely billed as the most important in the country’s history, very little is likely to change, at least as far as the outside world is concerned.

This is not 1977, when the Likud’s Menachem Begin broke the Labor Party’s lock on power, later making peace with Egypt and going to war in Lebanon. It’s not 1992, when Israelis returned Yitzhak Rabin to office, leading to the Oslo peace process. It’s not 2001, when the election of Ariel Sharon in the midst of the second intifada signaled the end of Oslo and led to the full withdrawal of Israeli troops and settlers from Gaza.

This time around, all the leading contenders are on the political right. Not one of them wants a Palestinian state. Not one of them is going to remove Israelis from the West Bank or issue a blanket ban on settlement construction. Not one of them wants anything less than an assertive military posture toward Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. And if, as polls suggest, no party emerges with a clear majority, then nobody is likely to have the votes to force the kinds of tectonic policy shifts achieved in those earlier elections, including the military conscription of the shirking ultra-Orthodox.

All this means that no plausible alternative to Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister is going to shift the country’s course sufficiently to mollify its growing list of global detractors. But there’s a different kind of shift Israel desperately needs.

Hence the third point: What’s at stake in this election isn’t about policy. It’s about spirit. It’s about whether the Jewish state will honor the foundational idea “klal Yisrael,” the whole of Israel, and the Jewish principle that every Jew is responsible for every other Jew.

Since returning to power in 2022, Netanyahu has repeatedly violated both.

. . .Finally: What’s at stake in this election isn’t Israel’s “standing.” Of the many intellectually flabby critiques of Israeli policy since Oct. 7, the idea that Israel should have traded its physical security for the sake of some added dollops of liberal pity is among the flabbiest. As I’ve written before, Israel doesn’t exist to showcase Jewish victimization. It exists to end it.

What is at stake is whether a people who have borne the burden of Hamas’s terror and Iran’s missiles and a nonstop state of emergency that would have broken weaker democracies and the unceasing chorus of global condemnation that is one part ignorance, two parts bigotry and three parts self-delusion should have a government worthy of their sacrifice, steadiness and courage. This week, a free and sovereign nation once again has the chance to elect one.

It’s clear that Stephens doesn’t think that Netanyahu should be part of that government.

*The Ilhan Omar kerfuffle is heating up, with the New York Times reporting Thursday that “Several current and former law enforcement officials said an Obama-era investigation found some evidence that Ms. Omar had entered into a sham marriage with a man suspected of being her brother.” (Article archived here.) Of course, as the Washington Free Beacon points out, the NYT and other sources have also assured readers over the year that there was no substance to the Omar incestuous-marriage claim. From the NYT:

The federal investigation of Representative Ilhan Omar is focused in part on whether she entered into a sham marriage in 2009 to help a man suspected of being her brother obtain a green card, according to current and former officials familiar with the matter.

The F.B.I. and Department of Homeland Security investigated the marriage in summer 2016, during the Obama administration, and found some evidence that it was fraudulent, current and former officials said.

Speculation that Ms. Omar committed marriage fraud with a brother has shadowed the Minnesota Democrat’s political career for more than a decade and President Trump repeated the accusation last week. She has long called it a right-wing conspiracy theory that federal officials debunked during her first race for elected office in 2016.

But that case stalled chiefly because prosecutors concluded that the potential crime, a felony, fell outside a five-year statute of limitations, according to the current and former officials, most of whose law enforcement careers spanned several presidential administrations.

. . .The reporting for this article is based on interviews with three current and former officials familiar with the present-day investigation and six current and former officials with knowledge of the 2016 investigation.

It is unclear what evidence prosecutors, then or now, have showing that the person Ms. Omar married was her brother. Marrying anyone for the sole purpose of securing a green card is illegal under federal law. Marrying a sibling is illegal under state law, but it is not clear whether state authorities ever investigated the matter.

It is also unclear whether federal prosecutors could find a path to charging Ms. Omar that skirts the statute of limitations that applies to marriage-based immigration fraud, a crime that would not threaten her citizenship.

Regardless, they could cite the marriage in an indictment or civil action that describes a family immigration fraud conspiracy — a broader case that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has said could lead to Ms. Omar’s deportation.

Omar is an Islamist and an antisemite (“follow the Benjamins”), and if these allegations are true, I hope they can circumvent the statues of limitations by finding legal ways to indict her. Frankly, as with the Alaska fracas, I’m surprised that the NYT is putting significant investigative resources into this case, especially since in the past, they’ve downplayed it:

From the Free Beacon:

This will no doubt come as a shock to loyal Times readers, who were repeatedly assured that Omar did nothing wrong. Following her election to Congress in 2018, the Times ran a glowing profile casting Omar as a bullied Muslim refugee with a “soft voice,” “delicate features,” and a “uniquely American” life story who has come to regard her adopted country as a cesspool of racist cruelty. Running for office, the Times lamented, had “forced Ms. Omar to make public details about her complicated private life, which became fodder for conservative bloggers, who seized on her brief marriage to a British citizen.”

Months later, the Times published what it claimed was a “fact check” of President Donald Trump’s numerous “attacks” on the historic Muslim congresswoman, including the allegation that she married her brother. “Rumors … have been circulating since 2016,” the Times explained. “No proof has emerged substantiating these claims.”

The lazy and dismissive fact check, which relied almost exclusively on Omar’s public denials, declined to acknowledge any “murky” aspects of the marriage. It included multiple links to an equally dismissive Associated Press fact check based on some actual reporting. Despite reviewing Omar’s marriage records, the AP declined to mention the bizarre detail about the Christian minister’s signature. Neither did the Times, obviously.

*Once again I’m stealing a few items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly snark-and-news column in the Free Press, called this week, “TGIF: Fake & Gay.”

→ Excuse me, what are the VCs doing?: Joseph Lonsdale. . .

Breed how many what now? Sir! Please. No monkey breeding. Not after the pangolins. We’re not ready. Should I email my friend Joe and ask him why he’s getting into the monkey-breeding business? No, no. I don’t want to know. (Okay, fine, I looked at the website, it’s to test new drugs before human trials to save human lives. I’m still against it!)

And then there’s a new company called Warhound, started by Ben Lamm and Palmer Luckey, and they’re genetically engineering new dog lineages for war. They call themselves “the advanced canine genetics and cybernetic platform.” Woof. Here is the image on their landing page:

Guys. Men of tech. You know I stand with you on so many freaky things. I say every week: Let the cars drive themselves. I’ve installed Flock cameras in my powder room. ChatGPT is my therapist. But I do not want monkey farms, and I do not want mutant killer dogs even if it’s very cute how their ears stick out from their combat helmets. Tech men, we have found the fissure, you and I. Can’t wait to see you soon (when I’m outside the monkey lab protesting naked with PETA slogans written across my back).

→ My new favorite Cambridge professor:

Under “dictator” Mao! It’s the quotes that get me. I love this guy. He’s a political economist and development studies professor at the University of Cambridge. He’s teaching Cambridge students about good and bad ways to do development. Of course, “development” means millions of deaths but who’s counting when all those hectares of land are being passed around? Did you know that under Mao, steel output grew? These are the same people who are anti–data center because the buzzing sound bothers folks nearby. Mao’s policies killed tens of millions of people to get you that steel, and Professor Hauge is out there nodding along like, it’s worth it, baby! He doesn’t deny the deaths, he’s just like. . . yes, and? Did you want the nuclear weapons or no?

→ Oh wow, The Economist is going for it: Okay, let’s do this slowly and calmly. I’m scared but I’m ready. No one get mad.

And then they have the data:

My first question: If it’s not so bad, guys, why’d you have to use a log scale? Like, “hardly an epidemic,” but you gotta use a log scale to chill the data out a little bit (log scale pushes that “10x” to be less visually alarming, like to pretend it’s all kind of a smooth distribution, like a ladder). Anyway, I think it’s good to speak of these things. If we can talk endlessly about the rape culture of frat boys, I think—yes—we can talk about the rape culture of Afghanistan, a place currently run by the Taliban.

Alright, now I’ve gotten a text requesting that I leave New York City by sundown.

*A decade ago, Massachusetts voted to legalize the sale of recreational marijuana, and now 23 states have joined it. Now, though, the citizens of Massachusetts are voting  next Tuesday on whether to make the sale of weed illegal again: the first state to reverse course this way.

Stephen Kronberg voted 10 years ago to legalize recreational marijuana in his home state of Massachusetts, hoping that it would lead to a boost in tax revenue and a “cleaner product” compared with black-market weed. “I thought it seemed like common sense,” he told me.

But next Tuesday, Kronberg, 63, will vote to make recreational cannabis illegal again. He plans to vote yes on Massachusetts Question 8, which would “prohibit the legalization, regulation, and taxation of the retail sale of adult recreational use marijuana” while keeping possession of small amounts legal.

Massachusetts was the sixth U.S. state to permit the sale of recreational marijuana. Today, weed is legal in 24 states—and the Bay State could soon be the first one to reverse course. Since the vote to legalize cannabis took effect in 2018, Massachusetts’ marijuana industry has generated about $10 billion in revenue and $2 billion in state and local tax revenue, according to the state’s Cannabis Control Commission. The 943 licensed marijuana businesses in Massachusetts range from small family farms and cannabis-infused gummy manufacturers to delivery couriers and posh retail shops.

But there have been problems, too. A Massachusetts General Hospital study found that psychiatric emergency hospital visits among young people between 12 and 17 rose sharply after the sale of recreational marijuana became legal in Massachusetts. (Marijuana sales are legal only for people who are 21 and older.) A separate study found that hospital admissions for cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, a condition caused by heavy marijuana use that entails vomiting, nausea, and intense cramps and can last for days on end, jumped 1,350 percent after legalization.

For some voters, the stakes are personal. During the pandemic, Kronberg watched one of his family members struggle with what he described as “around-the-clock” marijuana use that led to “panic attacks, psychosis, anxiety, depression” and a lengthy stint in rehab. “It completely changed my mind,” Kronberg said. “I support free markets, but this market—the marijuana market—can damage lives, and it has to be watched closely.”

The measure to repeal recreational marijuana sales in Massachusetts probably won’t pass. In a poll last month of likely voters by Suffolk University and The Boston Globe, 71 percent said they would vote to keep the current law in place. But even if the measure fails, the fact that it is on the ballot at all shows that the backlash against legalization is gaining momentum. Parents, physicians, and even users are increasingly troubled by marijuana’s drawbacks. A similar measure in Maine has received nearly two-thirds of the signatures needed to go on the ballot next year.

If you compare marijuana to tobacco or alcohol, the plant is far, far less dangerous. Although younger people may use weed instead of thanbooze or cigarettes, weed has a far less serious effect on public health, and of course people smoke marijuana largely for the pleasure (or relaxation). Weed is not nearly as addictive. What we’re seeing appears to be a new form of prohibition or paternalism, and I hope it does not grow in support.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is still ill but seems to be improving. Still, she’s beefing about attdistractions. Please cross your fingers for Hili as she is barely eating, which is dangerous for a cat.

Hili: I’m afraid we have more attractions than we need.
Andrzej: I’ve noticed that too.

In Polish:

Hili: Obawiam się, że mamy nadmiar atrakcji.
Ja: Też to zauważyłem.

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

From Terrible Maps:

From Divy:

From Shit Signs:

Masih is quiet, so let’s start with Luana, sending a tweet from her natal country of Brazil:

🇧🇷 Welcome to Brazil, where posting this picture could allegedly land you in prison for up to FIVE YEARS.

Why? Because Brazil’s Supreme Court effectively turned basic biological facts into a potential criminal offense.

Let that sink in. https://t.co/uIp4msRoAk

— Dr. Simon (@goddek) October 29, 2026

From Malcolm. Voyager 1 is still operating, and is now one light-day from Earth—over a billion miles!

Humanity’s most distant spacecraft, Voyager 1, is rapidly approaching an unprecedented cosmic milestone. On November 18, 2026, NASA anticipates that the legendary probe will officially reach a distance of one light-day from Earth. This monumental span equates to approximately 16.1 billion miles, which is roughly 25.9 billion kilometers.

At this profound depth of space, the vast physical gap severely impacts communication lag. Even a radio signal, which inherently flashes through the void at the absolute speed of light, requires a full 24 hours to cross the distance in a single direction. Consequently, when flight controllers on Earth beam a command to the spacecraft, the instructions require a whole day to arrive, and any corresponding reply takes another full day to travel back. This latency creates a grueling 48-hour round-trip delay for a single exchange, a baseline timeline that does not even account for deep-space network scheduling or onboard computer processing times.

Voyager 1 has traveled for nearly half a century to reach this historic boundary. Originally launched on September 5, 1977, the spacecraft primary mission focused on exploring Jupiter and Saturn, famously transmitting unprecedented, close-up observations of their swirling cloud tops, intricate ring systems, and diverse moons. Rather than stopping there, the probe maintained its outward trajectory. In August 2012, Voyager 1 made history by becoming the very first human-made object to breach interstellar space, crossing the heliopause, which is the magnetic boundary where the solar wind gives way to the raw interstellar medium.

It is vital to recognize that a light-day is a strict measurement of immense distance, rather than an indication of travel duration. It has taken the mechanical explorer 49 years of continuous flight to achieve a separation that a single photon of light can cross in a mere 24 hours. Even at this unimaginable distance, the scale of our cosmic neighborhood remains humbling. While Voyager 1 has long since exited the sun’s protective bubble, the inner edge of the Oort Cloud, a colossal and distant reservoir of icy primordial bodies bound by solar gravity, still lies far ahead on its endless journey.

For the dedicated engineering teams remaining on Earth, this expanding gulf transforms the nature of spaceflight operations. The luxury of real-time troubleshooting is entirely gone, forcing engineers to meticulously program sequences in advance and patiently wait days to discover if their commands succeeded.

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) October 22, 2026

The Number Ten Cat says farewell to the late Patrick Stewart with a lovely video of him, his moggy, and Shakespeare:

One of the best videos you’ll see on this site

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) October 29, 2026

Two from my feed. Patrick Stewart on Graham Norton discussing whether he’s circumcised:

I can’t stop laughing.

Listen until the very end of this.

Rest in Peace Sir Patrick Stewart. https://t.co/bVoNOyjkW2

— Kosher (@koshercockney) October 29, 2026

Cat love explained (or not explained):

https://t.co/tydXxrEQjR https://t.co/Tmn8jMkfKt

— Michael (@Michael951413) October 29, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Austrian Jewish boy was first put in a children's home, and then transported to Auschwitz, where he was gassed on the spot. He was eight years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-10-31T11:23:58.909Z

And two from Doctor Cobb. First, a condensed Shakespeare play:

A play in five acts, by @shakespeare.lol

— Dan Stirk (@jdanielstirk.bsky.social) 2026-10-16T17:54:03.032Z

Matthew explained this one why I asked “Why?”: “Because he could! He was beheaded and rather than being dead the power of faith enabled him to walk around with his head! A MIRACLE! HALLELUJAH!”

Saint Firmin who carried his head about. Nice trick but don’t try this at home

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-10-29T15:23:15.619Z

Blind Faith performing “Can’t Find my Way Home” in an early performance (1969) at Hyde Park in London. The lead singer is Steve Winwood, with Eric Clapton on guitar (he has a nice solo), Ginger Baker on drums and Rich Grech on bass.  The group released only one album before dissolving. Years later, Clapton and Winwood reunited to perform the same song in a great performance (with Derek Trucks).

Welcome to the end of the work week and the penultimate day of the month: Friday, October 30, 2026, the day before Halloween, and National Buy a Doughnut Day (note that it says nothing about eating them. But here’s a special doughnut I bought in 2005, along with 0thers for the lab. It’s a “Big Dat,” a monster creation of Dat Donuts near the University of Chicago. The websote calls it a “colossal shareable treat,” but of course I ate the whole thing.

It’s also National Breadstick Day, Pumpkin Bread Day, National Candy Corn Day (celebrating the world’s absolute worst candy, made of wax, sugar, and petroleum byproducts), and World Lemur Day.

Here’s a mother ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta) and her baby photographed in 2006 at the Duke Lemur Canter:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 30 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*This is amazing: the NYT broke a story that could cost the Democrats a Senate seat from Alaska. We all know that the Republicans are running two candidates with the same name: Dan Sullivan. Trump was furious about that as in this election, Alaska is a swing state, and Trump threatened to have the DOJ file charges if Republicans lost. Now, from a NYT exclusive exposé, we know that the faux Dan Sullivan, the ringer, was ginned up by the staff of the Democratic candidate, Mary Petola, who was apparently aware of this effort and said did about it. I’ve given a bit longer excerpt than usual, and bolding is mine.

In the summer of 2025, a staffer for Mary Peltola, the Alaska Democrat who was eyeing a run for Senate, received unusual instructions from top campaign aides: Find as many people named Dan Sullivan in Alaska as you can.

The staffer complied, combing through voter records to produce a list of Dan Sullivans from across the state.

This was no random request. Dan S. Sullivan is the name of the state’s Republican senator. And if the Peltola campaign or its allies could track down and persuade another Dan Sullivan to run for Senate, the confusion could cost the senator crucial votes on the state’s unusual, four-person ballot.

The plan worked. This spring, a retired teacher from a tiny fishing village along the Alaska Panhandle, reachable only by air and sea, announced his candidacy for Senate. His name was Dan J. Sullivan.

The Peltola campaign has repeatedly denied any involvement in his candidacy. But The Times has found, based on interviews and text messages, along with documents prepared for a potential lawsuit against the campaign, that not only did Ms. Peltola’s team work with people trying to recruit Mr. Sullivan to run for Senate, but the effort was much broader. The group worked to coax other would-be spoilers into the race, to dilute the incumbent’s support and help catapult the Democrat to victory.

The endeavor, which was internally called the ballot composition project, involved secret trips to far-flung Alaskan communities and the appearance of a mysterious Midwestern operative, who traversed the state using a fake name and made his pitch to would-be candidates over beers at brew pubs.

It also involved the Peltola campaign’s lawyers, as well as senior aides at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which directs the party’s campaign strategy in Senate races across the country. From Washington to Anchorage, those advisers participated in regular conversations about the effort and even considered forming a new political party to draw conservatives onto the ballot.

Ballot-stacking tactics are common in politics and generally considered legal — and have been employed by both parties in Alaska. But this operation, which has not been reported before, reveals the lengths to which Democrats went to seek advantage in a Senate race that could determine control of the chamber.

“Alaskan voters need to know,” said Elisa Rios, Ms. Peltola’s former campaign manager and longtime aide, who was fired amid a staff shake-up in August, and agreed to a series of interviews with The Times since then. “There was a lot of speculation, and voters should get the full picture when making their decisions.”

Ms. Peltola was not directly involved in the project, Ms. Rios said, but she was “definitely aware.”

The operation had impact. On Tuesday, Ms. Peltola will be the only Democrat on the ballot, facing off against the two Mr. Sullivans and a long-shot candidate named Gerald Heikes who was also recruited into the race, according to The Times’s reporting. Polls give Ms. Peltola a strong chance of winning.

The Justice Department, meanwhile, filed a lawsuit in federal court at President Trump’s behest last week seeking to block certification of the election results if votes for the other Mr. Sullivan cost Senator Sullivan the win.

Granted, the real incumbent Republican is on the ballot as “Sullivan, Dan S., Republican (incumbent)”, while the faux Sullivan is on as “Sullivan, Daniel J., Jr.”, but you can see how some voters might be confused. Rios tried to retract her comments by asking the NYT, but they didn’t have to, and didn’t do so.  This is Democrats playing dirty pool, something I’m not used to compared to Republicans, and if Poltola tried to win by this method, well, she doesn’t deserve to win. I don’t know what will happen with Trump’s lawsuit if she does win.

*There’s also an article about this by the editors of the Free Press (the first “editors-authored” piece I’ve seen, called “Democrats subvert democracy to save it.”

In the race to the bottom that is American elections, there is officially no high ground left to stand on. Democrats are demanding that voters elect them to save democracy, which they insist is threatened by President Donald Trump’s desire to meddle with the midterms. Now Americans will learn whether they meant any of it based on how they respond to brazen election meddling by one of their own.

The FP then describes the details of the NYT article given above.

. . . The false-flag candidacy was made possible by Alaska’s open primary, in which candidates can run under whichever party they’re registered with, and the top four finishers advance to the general election. The organizers of the scheme were not only determined to win at any cost but were also amused by their own craftiness and contemptuous of the voters they were hoping to trick. “Peltola advisers seemed to make fun of voters while watching a focus group, surmising the participants would be susceptible to being tricked into voting for a ballot spoiler,” the Times report says.

The DSCC denied any connection to Decoy Dan’s campaign in the wake of the news, while the Peltola campaign and Democratic leaders have largely remained silent. But as reporters continue to press them, they will have to account for what looks like a straightforward attempt to subvert democracy.

. . . The report also shines a new light on a Trump administration lawsuit regarding the Senate race. The Justice Department sued Alaska on Friday, seeking to delay certification of the result if the challenger Sullivan draws enough votes to swing it from the incumbent to Peltola. As our colleague Jed Rubenfeld noted, the suit was launched on a flawed legal basis and likely won’t hold up in court. Yet the basic premise of the challenge has now been vindicated. While a state court in Alaska previously declined to remove Decoy Dan from the ballot because his motive for running couldn’t be proved, the Times report makes clear that he was running in bad faith, which state law should preclude.

The news also reframes the outrage Democrats expressed in reaction to the Justice suit. “This is clearly corruption,” Peltola said in an interview. “This is clearly a very desperate attempt to cling to power, using his allies in Washington, D.C., to rig the system even further.” With full knowledge of her own campaign’s scheme, she was bold enough to accuse Trump of meddling in the midterms. Other Democrats may not have had the full picture, but one after another suspended their disbelief in the likelihood of a second Dan Sullivan joining the race on his own. “This is an outrage. It shows they know they’re going to lose. We will fight tooth and nail. And we will win,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in response to the lawsuit. A better reaction to the unlikely coincidence of two Sullivans may have been to privately lean on Peltola’s campaign for answers, or at least decline to comment while the facts take shape.

Ironically, the Times shares a piece of the blame for hyping the Trump election-meddling angle. Days before its report that showed Peltola’s role in the campaign deceit, it ran a headline saying “Justice Department Seeks to Block Alaska Vote if Republican Loses,” making it seem as though Trump sought to throw out the result rather than merely verify whether the second Sullivan was a legitimate candidate.

It’s become a familiar pattern. Trump and many of his allies earned their reputation for dishonesty after a failed campaign to overturn elections in 2020, yet ever since, Democrats have sought to cast themselves as saviors of democracy, hoping voters will forget their many attempts to subvert public choice. That includes suppressing stories about Hunter Biden and conjuring flimsy indictments to discredit Trump. The tale of two Sullivans is only the latest example, and a reminder that there was never any high ground to begin with.

This saddens me for reasons given above. I would like to think that Democrats do have the high ground. In general I think they do, especially given Trump, but even one screw-up like this is bad.

*The Guardian describes the burgeoning of scam offers to authors and filmmakers (h/t Peter). The authors, Snigdha Poonam, wrote a book about India and was inundated with scamss.

Why would a hyperlocal life-drawing community in Seattle be interested in a nonfiction book about the shifting aspirations of young people in India’s small towns? The book was published seven years ago. What did they want from me?

I accepted the invitation. The next email had a slick poster promoting the Zoom event, with the book cover as the backdrop and blurbs from the Economist and other publications. My attention was drawn to something more intriguing: a request for a “contribution fee”, with no amount specified. It would cover promotion, coordination and administration. But, oddly, this email didn’t come from Timothy. Signing off this time was Stephen – “Organiser, Community Improv LA”, which was another group in another city. According to the improv community’s Facebook group, Stephen is indeed the name of the organiser. However, Stephen had written to me using Timothy’s email address. To add to the chaos, Stephen/Timothy had also left what I suspect was an AI prompt in the email, which included the line: “MAKE IT MORE PROFESSIONAL.”

This was undoubtedly a scam. Genuine book clubs don’t ask for money from authors. But who was behind it?

Had these individuals actually read my work, they would have wanted to stay away from me. I have spent the last 10 years reporting on transnational fraud. My first book, Dreamers, closed with a chapter on fake call centres in India; my second, Scamlands, travelled to other low-income countries in Asia to portray an invisible empire that thrives on inequality, technological change and the erosion of trust.

Along the way, I met and interviewed the scammers whose labour keeps this empire running. For some, fraud was a route to upward mobility; for others, an act of revenge against the privileged. Though I have formally emerged from this underworld, I can never delete a scam email without wanting to know more.

I agreed to pay the book club – but after rather than before the event. After clarifying that “Stephen” was a typing error, “Timothy” sent me a Google Meet link for the book discussion. I joined the meeting to find about 20 people already in there: Alexander, Andrew, Mira, Rajnish, another Alexander, and several others. Timothy was also there and so was Stephen. None of them had their cameras on. Going by the profile pictures they used, most of them appeared to be white.

. . .I am not the only author to have found myself stuck in a Zoom book club with fake readers. Countless writers with published books have been receiving invitations from reading communities that start to unravel after a basic Google search.

As often happens with scams, most invitations sound too good to be true – thousands of members, incredible Goodreads clout and, at times, something even more alluring for an author: a deep understanding of their book.

Many authors spot red flags from the first email onward, but not all.

I guess this is a worldwide scam, or at least one directed at Anglophones.  The “contribution fee” is the way these organizations make money. At any rate, authors should publicize who and where these scams come from so that people can Google these offers (all of them seem to be fake). This one was from Timothy Firth, organiser of a Seattle-based life-drawing community called CAM Life Drawing.  There should be an “s” before the first word.

*Reader Reese called my attention to an ars TECHNICA article about how the execrable RFK Jr. has, against FDA advice, allowed six dubious peptide drugs to be sold in pharmacies.

Anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy has unilaterally passed a rule that will allow specialty pharmacies to sell six specific peptide drugs, overruling scientists at the Food and Drug Administration.

The peptides are popular among members of Kennedy’s Make America Health Again movement, and many prominent MAHA figures and Kennedy allies sell them. Kennedy said he uses some of the peptides and called himself a “big fan.” But FDA scientists continue to say there is insufficient evidence to show if they’re effective, and they are potentially dangerous. In 2023, the safety concerns led the FDA to remove the six peptides from a list of drugs that can be made by specialty pharmacies called compounding pharmacies—which make customized formulations of drugs for patients, or, in cases such as this, specialty drugs in bulk.

Kennedy’s new rule sidesteps the need to formally undo that FDA action. The rule is titled “Enforcement Discretion Policy Regarding 503A Compounding Using Certain Peptide Bulk Drug Substances” and was made available Wednesday on the Federal Register, with the final publication date set for October 30. The rule does not change the regulatory status of the peptide; instead, it states the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will no longer take enforcement action against compounding pharmacies for making the peptides, essentially giving them a green light to freely produce and sell them. Kennedy had quietly proposed this rule earlier this month.

. . .Along with the notice in the Federal Register, HHS also posted a more detailed explanation of the policy today that includes more of Kennedy’s rationale for easing enforcement of the six select peptides, which are: BPC-157, Epitalon, KPV, MOTS-c, Semax, and TB-500.

One reason cited for all the peptides was that an FDA advisory panel voted in July to add these six peptides back to the list of drugs compound pharmacies can make. However, prior to the vote, Kennedy stacked that 12-member committee with eight new members. At least six of Kennedy’s additions have ties to peptide-related businesses and clinics, raising serious conflict-of-interest concerns.

Another explanation for allowing the peptides is that the safety concerns are mainly hypothetical or “inferential” and not based on observed harm in humans. But this is mainly because there are few to no studies involving humans that show either benefits or harms from the peptides.

I looked up these peptides, and none of them have support for their efficacy from rigorous human clinical studies. Indeed, there have been no clinical studies at all in about half the peptides. RFK Jr.’s policy is not only unsound, but possibly dangerous.

*I just voted a straight Democratic ticket in Illinois, so don’t chew my tuchas when I criticize my own party, for they’ve disappointed me terribly in the last several years. I’m going to chew the Democrats’ rump by calling your attention to another Free Press article, “The Democratic case against Abdul El-Sayed.”

Democratic voters are being instructed to do exactly what Democrats lectured Republicans not to do in 2016—which is to put party over country. They are being lulled into a tribalist fury, made to believe they have to set aside any reservations they may have about their nominee or the creeping forces of illiberalism co-opting their party, because right now the only thing they are allowed to worry about is Donald Trump.

Indeed, instead of addressing Jewish Michiganders’ very legitimate concerns about El-Sayed—he who campaigned with far-left, “America deserved 9/11” streamer Hasan Piker, he of “hurt people hurt people” fame, he who once urged an Egyptian president to “purge” the police and the media of non-Islamists, he who refused to say anything about an Iranian ayatollah’s assassination because voters in Dearborn, Michigan, were “sad”—Obama sidestepped all that, offering up some of the old kumbaya cha cha cha that worked in 2008 but feels ridiculously stale now.

. . .It does not matter that El-Sayed has apologized for or tried to distance himself from some of his excesses. That is what one does in the heat of a campaign. We should assume his beliefs are unchanged.

I am amazed at how many Americans assume an apology equates to a complete change of views.

Which should be more than enough for Democrats to reject him.

But Democrats, like Republicans, have mostly succumbed to a partisan muddleheadedness that makes it impossible for them to see beyond the next election. Right now, the next election is one week away, and the only thing the partisan can think about is who will control the House and Senate. El-Sayed, of course, is very important. He is a candidate in one of the two or three races that will decide what happens in the Senate, and it does not matter that he’s not sure whether Iran or Israel poses a greater national-security threat to the United States. What matters is winning—clobbering Trump, derailing his agenda. Once they take care of Trump, Democrats imagine, they’ll have the luxury of worrying about other things. Like how big, exactly, their tent should be.

. . .Democrats should not simply reject El-Sayed because he’s hateful. They should reject him because he will cost Democrats election

His victory will confirm voters’ worst fears about the Democratic Party, that the red-green alliance—the partnership between radical leftists and Islamists that threatens France and other European countries—is coming for America. Like New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, El-Sayed will obsess over the Jewish state. He will prioritize ending the U.S. relationship with it (he’s already indicated he wants a seat on the Foreign Relations Committee), and every time someone, Republican or Democrat, points out all the advantages of supporting a multiracial, multireligious democracy in the Middle East—the shared intelligence, the reining in of extremists, the stability, the tech, the commercial opportunity—El-Sayed will scream “genocide,” and the Democrats will roll over. They will be scared of being called Islamophobic, and they will welcome more radicals into their gargantuan, oversized tent. They will look weak, and they will sound detached from reality, because they will be.

El-Sayed is a terrible candidate and a semi-closeted antisemite. You might remember that when a man attacked a Michigan synagogue last spring, El-Sayed offered an explanation: the man was getting revenge for the death of his relatives in an Israeli airstrike—in Lebanon. “Hurt people hurt people” said El-Sayed, and though he later apologied for his remark, this is one of several that indicate his animus towards Jews and amity towards terrorists. I’m glad I don’t have to vote in Michigan, but if he wins the Senate will go in a bad direction. (I’d probably write in a candidate rather than vote for him.)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has a strange desire:

Hili: Can we go to Egypt?
Andrzej: I’m afraid we’ll have to strike that category of dreams off the list.

In Polish:

Hili: Czy możemy pojechać do Egiptu?
Ja: Ten gatunek marzeń musimy już skreślić.

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

From Divy (and the “doctor” is correct):

From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices. Was this sold at an airport?

From Meow Incorporated:

Here’s Masih in Poland, showing her bodyguards, her meeting with Salman Rushdie, and part of her speech at a meeting:

I refuse to be intimidated. So do the brave women of Iran and Afghanistan who were blinded for daring to fight for freedom.

Death threats, assassination plots, massive online harassment, smear campaigns, none of it will silence us.

Thank you, Poland, for protecting me, standing with us, and amplifying our voices against the brutality of the Islamic Republic, the Taliban, and Islamist terrorism.

We are wounded but unbowed to oppressors. 💔✌️

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) October 29, 2026

From Luana. This is incredibly juvenile: I say or write the word “trump”, meaning “override”, all the time:

This is so incredibly lame. And every Princeton freshman was required to sit through this during orientation. https://t.co/gJMprnK651

— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) October 29, 2026

From Sue, a heartening (and true) story. And the guy liked kittens, too!

In the middle of World War Two, German soldiers in southeastern Poland started avoiding a cluster of villages.

They wouldn’t go in. They wouldn’t take people out for forced labor. They put up warning signs and stayed away.

They believed the area was infected with typhus.

It wasn’t. Two doctors had invented the whole thing.

The man behind it was Eugene Lazowski, a young Polish doctor working for the Red Cross in the town of Rozwadów. He was watching the Nazi occupation tear his country apart. Executions. Deportations. People shipped off to labor camps, many never coming back.

He wanted to stop it. He had no weapons, no army, and no way to fight.

What he had was medicine.

His friend and fellow doctor, Stanisław Matulewicz, had discovered something strange. If you injected a person with a harmless, dead strain of a certain bacteria, their blood would test positive for typhus.

They wouldn’t be sick at all. But on paper, they’d look like they had one of the most feared diseases of the war.

And the Germans were terrified of typhus. It spread fast, it killed, and it could tear through an army. When the Germans found it, they quarantined the area and kept their distance.

Lazowski realized what that meant. If he could make enough people look infected, the Germans would leave the whole region alone.

So he started injecting his patients.

He chose carefully. He sent the blood samples to German labs for testing, exactly as the rules required. The results came back positive. Again and again.

The Germans declared an epidemic zone. Villages were quarantined. Soldiers kept out. People who would have been seized for forced labor or worse were left alone, because nobody wanted to go near them.

Lazowski had to be careful. If too many cases looked fake, someone would ask why nobody was dying. So he spread out the injections over time and kept the outbreak believable.

Eventually the Germans did get suspicious. They sent a team of doctors to inspect.

Lazowski met them with food and vodka and played the gracious host. He guided them toward the sickest looking, dirtiest patients he could find, in the most crowded rooms. The German doctors, worried about catching typhus themselves, took a few samples and left in a hurry.

The tests came back positive.

The fake epidemic lasted until the end of the war. Estimates say it may have protected around 8,000 people.

Lazowski also secretly helped Jews from the nearby ghetto, giving them medical care at enormous risk.

After the war he moved to the United States and became a professor of pediatrics in Chicago. For decades he barely talked about what he’d done. Late in life he finally wrote a memoir. He called it My Private War.

He died in 2006.

He never fired a shot. He beat the Nazis with a needle and a lab test.

— Voices of WW2 (@VoicesofWW2) October 28, 2026

From Malcolm/ weird deep-sea fish:

These are the deep-sea hatchetfish which are found in the Mariana Trench. https://t.co/ki2X12mCOp

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) October 22, 2026

Two from my feed. First, a new cat song (AI, natch):

You loved “Dead Mouse Delivery.” Oscar took that as encouragement. 😼 Now he’s back with “Who’s a Good Human?” – Widescreen (better) below ⤵️ https://t.co/AAap5klY5e

— ILikeToasters (Latent Creations) (@LikeToasters) October 29, 2026

One I retweeted from the Auschwitz Memorial:

30 October 1939 | A Dutch Jewish girl, Selma Henriette Lievendag, was born in Hengelo.

In October 1942, she was deported to #Auschwitz. After the selection, she was murdered in a gas chamber together with her older brother Johan.
—

A short video about the first two gas chambers created near Auschwitz II-Birkenau: https://t.co/KArryHBbea

— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) October 30, 2026

And one from Doctor Cobb (I may have posted this before). It’s surely causation!

The distance between Saturn and the moon correlates with Bachelor's degrees awarded in Physical sciences (r=0.987)

— Daily Spurious Correlation 🤖 (@dailycorrelation.bsky.social) 2026-10-23T13:33:21.496Z

Welcome to Thursday, October 29, 2026 and it’s National Cat Day!

Here is a reader’s cat: Jango, staffed by Divy and Ivan in Florida. He is a male rescue tabby with a lovely ticked coat. Here he crosses his paws for you.

It’s also International Carignan Day (that’s a wine grape) and National Oatmeal Day.

. . . and here’s a lovely bowl of oatmeal I had at my inn where they put me up during the Kent Presents meetings in August of 2018. Look at all those goodies: dried fruit, nuts, cream, maple syrup, and fresh fruit on the side. I would eat this every day if I wanted to live forever. Leslie Stahl was sitting at the next table, an hour or two before she interviewed Henry Kissinger onstage. The previous night I rode back to the inn in a limo with her and asked her what she was going to ask Kissinger.  She told me she was going to wing it. Good times.

About an hour later, Leslie interviewed Henry. Kissinger actually lived in Kent, Connecticut, where the meeting was held. He died in 2023 at age 100. He must have been 95 in this photo.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 29 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*A train crash in Spain yesterday killed at least 68 people.

Spain is living through a recurring nightmare. For the second time in less than a year, a high-speed crash between the same two train operators on the same busy line from Madrid to Seville threw the country into official days of mourning, shook its confidence in the security of it once-vaunted rail system and undercut its international image as a modernizing tourist mecca helping to thrust Europe forward.

Apparently the safety system on the tracks first went down, automatically stopping six trains in the region. But someone in the traffic control center told another train to keep going at normal speed, and it crashed into a stopped train from the rear at 120 mph.

*The Times of Israel reports the latest on the Israel elections, nothing reasons why Netanyahu might stay in power even though his Likud Party got a narrow plurality of seats.

Near-final results show that a clear majority of Israelis voted for parties opposed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s continued rule, yet the longtime premier could remain in power — not because his opponents lack the numbers to replace him, but because some refuse to recognize Arab lawmakers as legitimate political partners.

A historic surge in Arab voter turnout in Tuesday’s election has placed Israel’s Arab-majority parties in a position to determine the next government, putting the Zionist opposition’s longstanding refusal to rely on their support to a potentially decisive test.

With 85.6 percent of ballot boxes counted as of 2:32 p.m. Wednesday, partial results published by the Central Elections Committee gave 53 seats to Netanyahu’s bloc and 48 to the bloc led by Eisenkot’s Yashar party. The two Arab-led parties are projected to win a combined 19 seats — an unprecedented high — with 12 for the Joint List and seven for Ra’am. The two parties have five seats apiece in the outgoing Knesset. The previous combined record was 15, in 2020.

Despite leading the largest party, Netanyahu has no obvious path to expanding his bloc beyond his existing far-right and ultra-Orthodox allies to get the 61-seat majority he needs to form a government.

Meanwhile, the Zionist opposition and Arab parties are projected to hold 66 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, reflecting widespread opposition to Netanyahu’s government, in part due to the extraordinary turnout by Arab voters driven by deep animus toward Netanyahu’s government and its far-right ministers, Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.

Indeed, in a Trump move, Likud claims the election was “stolen” by Arab parties:

Claiming yesterday’s election was “stolen” by Arab parties, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party demands an investigation by police and the Shin Bet into allegations of widespread voter fraud and intimidation.

“The elections in Israel were stolen by Arab parties that support terror and the elimination of the Jewish state through serious criminal offenses of bribery, threats, violence, forgeries and the use of illegal software to mobilize voters,” insists the Likud party in a statement.

The Arab-led political parties, Ra’am and the Joint List, which run in every election and hold seats in the Knesset, received a record number of votes yesterday, and are projected to win a historic high of 19 seats. That number means that both Netanyahu’s bloc and the Jewish-led parties opposing him will be far from achieving a Knesset majority.

Here’s a bar chart of the votes published by the ToI.

Like my heartthrob Gal Gadot, who went back to Israel to both get an honorary degree and to vote (there are no votes by mail), I would have “voted for change” too.

And so much for the apartheid state! The Israeli Arabs may decide the fate of the government!

*The El-Sayed campaign in Michigan is distancing itself from this ad, produced not by them but by Cenk Uygur’s “Rebellion Pac”. It’s pretty dire, for it blames Israel and its war with Hamas on high American grocery prices. Here, watch it by itself (it’s hard to find the ad without commentary!)

From the NYT:

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan, sought to distance himself on Monday from an outside group’s political ad that endorses him and attacks his Republican opponent over support of Israel, a longtime U.S. ally.

. . .Dr. El-Sayed’s campaign emphasized that the ad, created by a left-wing political action committee called Rebellion PAC, was “not affiliated in any way” with him or his candidacy.

“Abdul is focused on pushing back against Trump’s agenda that is raising prices for Michiganders,” the campaign said in a statement on Monday. “No one speaks for Abdul but himself and his campaign.”

And from the Free Press‘s piece “Abdul El-Sayed and the Banana Libel“:

Antisemitism is said to be the socialism of fools. Well, it turns out that it’s also the populism of the innumerate. U.S. military aid to Israel comprises at most a half a percentage point of the U.S. federal government budget. The overwhelming majority of that money is poured back into the American economy because Israel is required to spend the aid on U.S. weapons systems. Also—not that it needs stating—the U.S. does not pay for Israel’s health insurance system. Claiming that aid to Israel is responsible for high grocery prices is a grotesque lie that resurrects an ancient and sinister trope that blames international Jewry for economic misery.

So it’s not surprising that prominent Democrats like the party’s former chairman, Jaime Harrison, and El-Sayed’s opponent during the primary, Haley Stevens (who has endorsed El-Sayed in the general election) have offered full-throated denunciations of the ad.

One might think El-Sayed would take the opportunity to forcefully demand that Rebellion PAC take it down. This would be an easy way to win back some of the Michigan Democrats that have committed to his Republican rival, Mike Rogers. It would help dispel the Rogers’ campaign message that El-Sayed has ties to the antisemitic Muslim Brotherhood and can’t be trusted with national security. And yet, the only comment from the El-Sayed campaign has come from a spokesman, who said the ad was “not affiliated in any way” with the campaign. That’s not a denunciation so much as a weasel-word salad.

So, why not take the high road? One reason might be that Rebellion PAC is run by an ally of the campaign, Cenk Uygur. He was once a middling progressive influencer. In recent years he has transformed into a hollering podcaster obsessed with the perfidy of Israel and its supporters in America. El-Sayed appeared on a panel with Uygur in September at a conference sponsored by the Islamic Society of North America. Uygur’s nephew is the anti-American streamer Hasan Piker, who campaigned with El-Sayed in the final weeks of his primary campaign. Piker has said that the authors of the October 7 massacre, Hamas, are morally superior to Israel. He once said his favorite flag was the flag of Hezbollah, the Lebanese terrorist group that until recently rained rockets and missiles over Israel. He has also said that America “deserved” 9/11.

. . .It’s accurate to say that AIPAC tries to influence U.S. foreign policy to pursue a good relationship with Israel. But claiming that the lobby dictates U.S. foreign policy to presidents is an exaggeration that is a mirror image of the antisemitic libel that Jews function as a disloyal fifth column inside their host countries—or the idea that you can’t afford groceries because of military aid to Israel.

Indeed, El-Sayed offered a very similar argument as the Rebellion PAC grocery ad in an interview with The Ink published on August 3. “Israel is an affordability issue,” he said. “Every time you want to put glasses on kids’ faces or give people healthcare or fix a school, somebody pops up and is like, ‘Well how are you going to pay for that?’ I don’t know. Maybe we should keep our money here instead of sending it there to drop bombs on people’s schools or their hospitals. That’s our money.”

So maybe the reason El-Sayed is not denouncing Uygur’s antisemitic ad is because he pretty much agrees with its content. At the very least, he doesn’t want to offend the antisemites in Michigan who he hopes will make him the state’s next U.S. senator.

Call me ignorant, but I didn’t know that Hasan Piker was related to Cenk. But they’re both odious human beings: is it in the genes? As for “hollering,” yes, I fear that Cenk is going to blow an artery some day. As for the disgusting ad, well El-Sayed should denounce it, as it’s damaging him. But he can’t, as he’s walking a fine line between being an anti-Semite and being someone that Democrats will vote for.

*Defeated Brazilian Presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, who had his passport lifted after votes were counted, nevertheless managed to flee to the U.S. (with Trump’s help, of course):

The defeated Brazilian presidential candidate, Flávio Bolsonaro, arrived in Miami Wednesday after fleeing to Argentina with his family and boarding a private plane to the U.S.

Television images showed Bolsonaro and his family stepping off the private jet they boarded in Argentina late Tuesday after fleeing across the border from Brazil.

The Trump administration has said it would issue visas to Bolsonaro and his family to allow them legal entry upon arrival.

The long journey, carried out largely in secret, came after Bolsonaro lost the presidential election to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Sunday by a close but convincing margin. Shortly after the results, Brazilian authorities demanded Bolsonaro turn over his passports and remain in the country as he faces investigation over alleged financial crimes.

The son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, Flávio Bolsonaro denies wrongdoing and says he and his family are the victims of a witch hunt by Brazil’s Supreme Court. He has refused to recognize Sunday’s election result—a position backed by Trump who told reporters Monday the race looked “rigged.”

Bolsonaro crossed from Brazil into Argentina at 10:50 p.m. local time Tuesday accompanied by his wife, Fernanda, and daughters Carolina and Luiza, Argentine authorities said. The family crossed into Argentina via the Tancredo Neves International Bridge in Misiones province, a remote area where the borders of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil meet.

Authorities in Argentina, where President Javier Milei has been one of Bolsonaro’s most fervent supporters, said they presented valid travel documents and faced no legal restrictions on entering the country.

At 11:30 p.m., just 40 minutes later, the family boarded a private aircraft operated by Baires Fly, with Guayaquil, Ecuador, listed as its destination on the flight plan—flight LV-JQW, according to Argentina presidential spokesman Fabian Fernandez.

I’m told the guy is a crook (but can’t vouch for any of that), but is he classified as a “refugee”? For sure he’s fleeing likely jailing, but I’m not sure how many dubious politicans we can absorb. After all, we abducted Maduro, who’s now in jail, whil Bolsonero will live a sweet life in the U.S. of A.

*In an op-ed in the WaPo, Theodore Johnson explains why debates between gubernatorial or Congressional candidates are waning, with candidates relying more on attack ads. It’s apparently due to fear of screwing up, as minor gaffes can be amplified in this age of social media.

At a Rhode Island debate last week, two candidates for governor turned into hall monitors. Democratic front-runner Helena Foulkes and Republican Aaron Guckian each called out independent businessman Ken Block for bringing typed notes onstage in violation of the rules. The payoff for tattling came in the ensuing made-for-TV moment: Everyone watched a sheepish Block eat crow, tucking his cheat sheet away and showing his hands to the audience.

Fear of such minor missteps going viral is just one reason there have been fewer debates this midterm year. A review by ABC News found that 21 of 36 gubernatorial races will pass without a debate. In 2018, just two states skipped them. The same trend holds for Senate elections — 21 out of 35 races will not feature a debate, a 50 percent increase from four years ago. For all the advantages that can be gained from a solid performance, a gaffe or shaky showing can be disastrous. Today, a candidate’s calculus increasingly hinges on a simpler question: Why bother?

Their reasons for opting out are all over the place. In Alabama’s gubernatorial election, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R), a MAGA firebrand sitting on an 11-point polling lead, refused to debate on pragmatic grounds, declaring, “There’s no reason to get up there and argue about differences of opinion.”

In Florida, Democratic nominee for governor David Jolly took an ideological stance, saying the nation’s politics are broken, and debates only “further the division, further the toxicity, further the insults, further the mistruths, further the bad faith.” And in North Carolina, both Senate candidates have taken a strategic approach: be open to debate but never agree to one; better to spend that time on cable news appearances and curated events to rally the base. No matter the explanation, the outcome is the same: Voters are denied the chance to see the candidates face scrutiny and each other.

Political debates are most useful when they have clear rules and formats, when candidates believe engaging their opponent is worthwhile to the campaign and the public, and when they serve as important civic rituals in a democracy. Since the late 20th century, televised debates have been common and widely expected for candidates competing for federal and statewide office. They offer a rare chance to speak to large audiences, followed by extensive media coverage. And they provide voters an opportunity to see the candidates largely unscripted and in the hot seat — conditions favorable to getting a glimpse of character and preparedness rather than monologued quips in safe spaces.

. . . Sometimes they’re successful. . . But extreme polarization, alongside candidates’ ability to bypass traditional media for direct-to-voter social platforms, has upended the landscape. The civic ritual now is to flood airwaves and mobile devices with attack ads and caricatures of opponents. If the age of debate is ending, then what replaces it should be worrisome to voters.

. . . Besides, what advantage does debating offer candidates when there’s little penalty for skipping them altogether? The rebuttal from Republican candidates can be summarized this way: “Well, what are you going to do — vote for communism?” Democrats who opt out suggest that elections are not helped by giving credence to MAGA politicians co-signed by the historically unpopular President Donald Trump. Better to avoid the unpredictable made-for-TV moment by producing short ads clipping an opponent eating crow, perfectly curated for a media-saturated electorate to devour.

Unfortunately, the author is right. Nixon lost to Kennedy because Tricky Dick wasn’t as charistmatic and sweated too much. Biden dropped out after his debate performance was abysmal. But there’s no political theater better than a good debate. It’s much more fun that watching attack ads or listening to stump speeches.

*The AP’s “Odd News” section reports that the originally drawn map of the Mason-Dixon line, the line that historically divided the American North from the South, is up for auction.

It’s perhaps the most consequential map in American history. And it could be yours.

The hand-drawn chart of the Mason-Dixon Line that eventually divided the free from the slave states is going up for auction. Remounted on backing made of Japanese rice paper, the document will go on sale Thursday in a livestreamed auction.

“It’s not that often that you can really get this close to something that is so historically important,” said Lauren Brunk, vice president of Brunk Auctions in Asheville, North Carolina. “And it was awe-inspiring, really.”

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili (who is not feeling well and went to the vet) ponders time and mortality with Andrzej:

Hili: October is coming to an end, and soon the trees will be bare.
Andrzej: If we live to see spring, we’ll enjoy the greenery again.

In Polish:

Hili: Kończy się październik, zaraz drzewa będą gołe.
Ja: Jeśli dożyjemy do wiosny, będziemy się znowu cieszyć zielenią.

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

From The Foundation for Homeless Cats:

From Meow Incorporated:

From Shit Signs:

Just a few tweets as I was at the eye doctor yesterday (n.b. I am healing well):

From Malcolm: A man cudles a giant owl:

 From the spoof site Babylon Bee via Luana; I bet you can guess what it’s about:

LGBTQ+ To Add ‘S’ For Sibling https://t.co/yRFjvYLqUB

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) October 24, 2026

Cenk is blowing an artery on “X”. Here’s his latest rant:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was two years old, and would have turned 86 today had she lived.

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) October 29, 2026

And one from Matthew; yesterday was the 113th anniversary of the cartoon strip Krazy Kat, created by George Herriman. It’s a cartoon series that both Matthew and I love. Click to go to the tweet.