Welcome to Thursday, November 12, 2026, and I can feel December coming on fast. It’s National Pizza with the Works Except Anchovies Day, and that’s good because anchovies are dreadful—especially on pizza. But here’s a pizza with the works (including pineapple: don’t judge me!) that I shared with a friend at Dragon Pizza in Somerville, MA.

It’s also Chicken Soup for the Soul Day, Fancy Rat and Mouse Day, Guinness World Records Day, International Tempranillo Day (it’s a wine grape), and National French Dip Day.

There’s a Guinness World Records YouTube channel, with lots of cool and bizarre achievements, Here’s an nine-minute video of the best records from 2025, and you should definitely watch it:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 12 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*On his Substack site, Jesse Singal has his take on “The midterms, a week later“, and most of it appears to be free to read.  (it’s where I found Lozada’s article that follows this piece). Excerpts

In this case, though, the election was a very clean test of voters’ response to “stuff Trump did.” That’ll get you most of the way to explaining what happened. And it’s hard to overstate how unusual, direct, and obvious this got. Because of a mix of the decades-long expansion of executive power, Trump’s narcissism, and a Congress that offered as much pushback and balance as a single sheet of paper blowing gently in the wind, never before has the connection between a POTUS and his policies been clearer.

These policies, particularly Trump’s tariffs, the immigration crackdown, and the war with Iran, tended to have very obvious effects. As I am the eight zillionth person to point out, in many cases they had a disproportionately negative impact on key parts of Trump’s own coalition — many Latinos who had recently swung toward Trump because they wanted some enforcement at the border hated the mass deportations, and what more even needs to be said about the harm inflicted on a subset of rural Trump voters, in particular, by the tariffs?

. . .Remember when Democrats embraced weird and unpopular views on race and sex and gender and other stuff? Remember when they started talking like robots — insufferable, smarmy robots? The sorts of robots who call your boss to try to get you fired?

The most straightforward explanation for that period was that Dems, awash in the panic inflicted on liberal and leftist America by Trump’s first election, listened to their younger staffers, to social media, to The Groups (overlapping categories). They lost sight of what Americans care about most and got into some pretty weird, esoteric stuff.

I don’t want to overstate the impact of wokeness on recent Democratic travails. In fact, the Dems had a very good 2018 midterm, won the 2020 election, and had a less-bad 2022 midterm than expected, given the fundamentals. But still: No one is even bothering to deny that things got quite weird. Witness Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s annoyingly flip, borrowed “Woke 1 was crazy” comment; witness Zohran Mamdani’s transition toward status-quo positions on policing now that he is running the NYPD instead of yelling into a megaphone about it — a shift that started during his campaign.

Perhaps most importantly, witness how mealymouthed or suddenly quiet the vast majority of Democrats running last Tuesday’s races got about transgender issues, which until recently were touted as the most important civil rights issue of our day, and one where compromise or moderation was morally unthinkable. Witness all the moderate candidates running on pro–law-enforcement platforms. Witness all the backtracking. Not “I was wrong,” in most cases, but rather quiet shifts in tone and framing.

. . .Now Republicans face their own attempt to play the part of Homer backing quietly into the hedges, except it’s going to be much, much harder. Republicans have signaled far more fealty to Trump than most Democrats ever did to woke ideals. Trump is their party — still — even if Tuesday marked the beginning of the end of that era. It’s definitely possible that in the case of figures like AOC, their woke-era comments were so weird that they will permanently hinder their attempts at higher office. I distrust politicians who get batted around by the culture-war winds that easily, especially if they refuse to explain their changes in position.

But politicians flip-flop all the time. Republicans tried desperately to make this election about woke excess, and it just didn’t work. Does that mean anti-woke campaigning won’t ever work? Of course not. In a more favorable climate, it might.

. . .Now Republicans face their own attempt to play the part of Homer backing quietly into the hedges, except it’s going to be much, much harder. Republicans have signaled far more fealty to Trump than most Democrats ever did to woke ideals. Trump is their party — still — even if Tuesday marked the beginning of the end of that era. It’s definitely possible that in the case of figures like AOC, their woke-era comments were so weird that they will permanently hinder their attempts at higher office. I distrust politicians who get batted around by the culture-war winds that easily, especially if they refuse to explain their changes in position.

But politicians flip-flop all the time. Republicans tried desperately to make this election about woke excess, and it just didn’t work. Does that mean anti-woke campaigning won’t ever work? Of course not. In a more favorable climate, it might.

. . .What all this adds up to is a generational opportunity, and I don’t think this party is going to blow it by pulling the kente cloths out of the closet. Forces in the party who want moderation and who want the big tent can point to what just happened and say, “Isn’t this nice? Don’t you like winning? Is dying on the hill of, like, self-ID in high-school sports so important to you that you’ll trade Senate seats in Texas and Mississippi for it?”

Of course they won’t.

And so it goes: back and forth. Since I can’t read the end, I can’t see the conclusion, but the long bit that produced the excerpts above suggest that a. Trump has hurt the Republicans for several election sycles, and b. the Democrats should learn their lesson and get back to non-crazy business, but to Singal that’s unlikely.

*From the NYT in August, we had this op-ed headline. Click to read, or find it archived here. I’ve brought up this issue before, but nobody seems to care whether progressives like AOC who are changing their tune because they want a higher position in politics, really believe the new tune or they’re just singing it while keeping their real beliefs quiet.

An excerpt:

There is a difference between changing your mind and shifting your tactics, between evolving in your views and abandoning them because they’ve become unpopular or politically perilous.

When Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, quoting a political ally, recently suggested to ABC News, with a laugh and a smile, that “Woke 1 was crazy,” she became the most prominent progressive figure distancing herself, whether subtly or overtly, from what is known as wokeism — from the stringent positions on race, policing, gender, identity, social justice and language that constituted progressive orthodoxy over the past decade or so. Ideas once upheld in doctrinaire terms, with dissenters dismissed as lazy (do the work) or inhumane (you literally don’t want me to exist), are now treated as an embarrassing phase, the gawky formative years of cultural and political progressivism.

. . . . In her interview, Ocasio-Cortez attributes the excesses of the woke era in part to the pressures of pandemic restrictions, saying that “of course, rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today.” But that’s just a canny restatement of her shift, not an explanation for it. Would Ocasio-Cortez not use the same rhetoric today because she no longer buys it — or because she can no longer sell it?

. . . . James Talarico, the Texas Democrat running for a U.S. Senate seat, has admitted that “there are some statements that I’ve made that I certainly regret,” and that some of his old comments may now seem “cringey.” (All this when a journalist asked him about his past assertion that God is “nonbinary,” a claim Talarico now says was “intentionally provocative.”) Some commentators on the left have joined in the revisionism, acknowledging, for example, that cancel culture may have occasionally gone too far and that, yes, elements of the woke agenda may appear silly in hindsight.

. . .So, before that time goes farther down the memory hole, discarded as just one of so many vibe shifts, I have one question for the formerly woke:

If you can dismiss it so casually now — all the defunding and abolishing, the BIPOCing and Latinxing, the canceling and decentering and my truthing — how much of it did you truly believe at the time? How much was conviction, how much was a pose, how much was groupthink, how much was fear?

. . .If you did believe it, jettisoning it now should take something more than a sheepish grin. If you didn’t believe it and yet declared it with such passion, with such pretensions to moral clarity, with such disdain for contrary perspectives, then the least you can do now is acknowledge that dissonance. You should explain the shift, not just explain it away.

Some writers and thinkers have admitted that they supported certain progressive verities — or didn’t push back against them — because they felt cowed by their audiences, or because they feared for their careers. My hope is for a modicum of such intellectual accountability from the political class, too, just enough grace to blush.

You won’t get it. Politicians are experts at evading tough questions, but as “formerly woke” candidates emerge in the next two years, the press should be asking them these questions. Yes, much of the MSM are liberal and “progressive,” and might ask softballs, but they should remember their job, and that voters want to know. 

*The Kennedy family is trying to prevent the construction of Trump’s huge “Triumphal Arch,” by the Potomac river in Washington, D.C., claiming that it would overshadow the graves of their family at Arlington National Cemetery and block the line of sight from the eternal flame by JFK’s grave.(Both of my parents are buried near JFK’s tomb as well, as my dad was a veteran.)

The Kennedy family is joining the efforts to block the construction of President Trump’s 250-foot triumphal arch between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.

Nine members of the Kennedy family are the latest parties to challenge the development of an arch near Arlington National Cemetery, according to a Tuesday legal filing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The Kennedy family members said the massive arch would “permanently cast shadows” over the graves of their relatives and those of fallen American servicemembers and obstruct the designed sightline from the eternal flame at President John F. Kennedy’s gravesite.

“We believe Donald Trump has violated the laws and procedures established by Congress to protect this most sacred national memorial,” Rory Kennedy and Maxwell Kennedy, children of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy, said in a joint statement Tuesday.

“A towering arch casting shadows across the graves of our father, mother, and uncles, as well as the graves of so many who have served our country, would also cast a shadow over our democratic principles, undermining the safeguards established by our elected representatives to protect this hallowed ground for generations to come,” they added.

“It is unfortunate to see that some members of the Kennedy family have joined the litigation against the Arch as the project is intended to honor our heroes who rest in Arlington Cemetery,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement.

A federal district judge temporarily blocked construction of the arch last week. The decision came after the National Capital Planning Commission, led by Trump appointees, approved plans for the project. The triumphal arch, as Trump calls it, is being constructed to honor the nation’s 250th anniversary, according to the National Park Service. Trump has said it would also serve as a military complex with snipers and drones.

We all know that the arch was not intended to honor “our heroes,” but rather to honor Donald Trump. Although I guess the White House has scuppered plans to sequester both drones and snipers in the arch, there are still at least four lawsuits against it in the works. I know this area well, as I grew up near it, and the arch at that location (or anywhere, really) would be an abomination.

*The NYT reports a dramatic fall in the number of Ph.D. degrees given in STEM areas in America, concurrent with a fall in research support given by the Trump administration. It’s not archived, so you’ll have to subscribe to read the whole long article. The thesis:

For nearly a century, the United States has been the global leader in cultivating young scientists, training them at the nation’s vast network of universities and harnessing their talents to ensure American dominance in research and innovation.

But now that Ph.D. pipeline is in turmoil.

An analysis by The New York Times of university and federal data found that the Trump administration, in its broader dismantling of the American scientific machinery, has undermined opportunities for young scientists.

Many of the nation’s top research universities, facing uncertainties in federal funding, are offering fewer Ph.D. spots across the sciences. Federal programs created long ago to finance doctoral students are mired in chaos. Widespread grant cancellations and funding delays have made it harder for recent graduates to find jobs and start new labs. Some institutions have managed to adapt by marshaling funds from elsewhere, but the sudden instability of federal support has led many others to scale back their Ph.D. programs.

This is all true; moreover, American scientists are fleeing to other countries, especially in Europe, who have tendered attractive offers.

. . .But interviews with dozens of early-career scientists — Ph.D. applicants, doctoral students and newly minted graduates — revealed deep concern that even two years of disruption could permanently alter the storied success of federally funded science in the United States.

Facing uncertainty in the flow of federal funding, many university departments significantly reduced the size of their incoming Ph.D. student classes last year, even as the number of applications rose.

The Times analyzed data from 27 of the nation’s top research universities. Between 2024 and 2025, new Ph.D. enrollments declined by about 18 percent in engineering programs and by about 10 percent in science and health disciplines. New enrollments in math and computer science programs also dropped by roughly 10 percent.

Overall, these declines are steeper than those seen in other fields, such as economics and anthropology.

Here’s the data:

I’m confident but not certain that American science will recover after Trump is gone. After all, the drop is measured only between 2023 and 2024, but the latest are about the same as in 2021 and 2022.  But the dismantling of American science won’t create a level playing field all over the world just because American scientists go overseas. Only the best ones do, and given everything, there is less opportunity for science to be done here. What that means is that the total quantity of science in the world will decrease.

What the NYT ignores, though, is another important factor reducing the amount of science done in America: the decreasing size of labs because it costs too much to support graduate students. That support is usually via federal grants, but the yearly price of harboring a student, including tuition, is nearly $100,000 in some places.  Since federal grants (used to support students) are waning in both quantity and size, labs are shrinking. And the rise in stipends is often caused by the demands of graduate-student unions, who regard a Ph.D. as a job, not an apprenticeship.  But you won’t find the NYT emphasizing that aspect.

(This article is part of a three-part series on “science under siege.” You can find the other two articles here, and here.)

*George Will, the house conservative columnist at the Washington Post, discusses four problems the Democrat-dominated Congress will run into when it’s seated in January, but what he’s really going after is “progressive” Democrats (column is archived here).

In November, Democrats did well with voters, but beginning on Jan. 3, reality gets a vote. Consider four subjects: climate change, campaign finance, Medicare-for-all and racial gerrymandering.

Democrats’ autumn campaigning featured scant talk about what many of them have called the “existential” crisis of climate change. Fear of the extinction-level threat of global warming was displaced by indignation about … the high prices of fossil fuels (oil, gasoline, diesel).

Lower prices would increase consumption. But a hypothetical climate apocalypse is less disagreeable than a here-and-now $100 fill-up.

. . .Michigan’s Democratic Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed is another progressive vowing to get “money out of politics.” As the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a New York Democrat, was given to saying about progressive promises of government-driven wonders: “That will not happen.”

Regarding their promised government limits on political contributing and spending, progressives exemplify what Moynihan called “the leakage of reality from American life.” Progressives are not going to overturn or evade repeated Supreme Court affirmations of the obvious:

All political spending is for the dissemination of political speech. In a continent-spanning nation, this requires money. When government limits political spending, government enforces its belief about the proper amount of speech, which is incompatible with the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.”

. . .Progressives’ promises of “Medicare-for-all” elicit rapturous approval from progressive audiences. There is, however, this intractable reality: A large majority of Americans have private health insurance, and a large majority of this majority like their plans. Medicare-for-all must supplant these, which often are untaxed compensation provided by employers.

During World War II, companies competing for scarce labor evaded congressional limits on wages by offering health insurance as untaxed (the IRS agreed to this in 1943) compensation. Medicare-for-all would vitiate many of organized labor’s subsequent achievements. That will not happen.

What he means here is that organized labor secured health plans as part of the benefits offered by companies, and people (I’m one example) don’t want my health plan supplanted by Medicare for all. Medicare for Some would be okay if people don’t have these benefits or can’t afford health insurance. Finally: gerrymandering, which I’ve always objected to. Will sees it as not only patronizing but unnecessary:

Well. Columnist Quin Hillyer, a Louisiana native and resident, notes the following:

As you see, Will is objecting to “progressive Democratic views,” though some more centrist Democrats also favor these plans. And I think he has a point (the climate-change issue, however I see as more serious than he does), which is why he’s had such a long tenure at the Post. He ends this way:

Progressives should acknowledge all this. That will not happen.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili rests beneath a pear tree, but here’s a recycled old one from Andrzej:

Andrzej: According to experts, cat hair in food is unhealthy.
Hili: That’s an argument from authority, you need to test it.

In Polish:

Ja: Zdaniem ekspertów kocia sierść w jedzeniu jest niezdrowa.
Hili: To argument z autorytetu, musisz to przetestować.

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From Stacy:

From Cheryl’s  Amazingly Positive, No Politics Allowed, Interesting People Group. Actually, when I checked the meme below, I found the story is fake but does have a core of truth. I therefore left up the meme.

Google AI says this:

The viral story of a man named Dylan Raines attempting to rob a liquor store in Pensacola, Florida, using an avocado painted to look like a grenade is fake (“AI slop”). [1]

• • The Rumor: Social media posts and AI-generated memes claimed a 29-year-old man named Dylan Raines tried to rob “Gulf Coast Spirits” in Pensacola and was tackled by a mixed martial artist cashier named Marcus Bell. [1]

From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs or Notices:

From Masih. The Jerusalem Post names the committee:

The United Nations General Assembly elected the Islamic Republic of Iran to the UN Committee for Programme and Coordination on Wednesday, giving Tehran a seat on a key body responsible for reviewing and coordinating the organization’s programs and priorities, despite its record of human rights abuses and support for terrorist organizations.

How can a terrorist regime that blinded these women, sexually assaulted these political prisoners, and subjected them to mock executions be nominated to a UN committee that helps shape programs on human rights?

This is not just a slap in the face to the people of Iran. It is an insult to every democratic nation that claims to stand for human rights.

We are standing in German Parliament with a mother whose daughter was executed with a woman whose brother was executed by this regime.
They are holding the pictures of protesters who received death sentence.
Now imagine telling these women and men that the very regime responsible for their suffering has been nominated to a UN committee that helps shape the organization’s programs and priorities.

How can you look these women in the eyes and still call this human rights diplomacy?

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) November 11, 2026

From Luana, relevant to grad-student salaries discussed above (the Harvard Crimson article is here; two events were disrupted and canceled):

Harvard grad students are withholding their “labor” and disrupting classes because they make *only* $51k/yr and have to live with roommates and budget for fall vacations.

Harvard’s response? Keeping paying them and ask them nicely to please stop.

The whole thing is a LARP. https://t.co/xKOyqAt2qP

— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) November 10, 2026

From Jay: a Tom Jones spoof about women cats:

He knows what he is looking for in a lady.

She’s a Lady – Tom Jones https://t.co/KIRxAy660Z

— ILikeToasters (Latent Creations) (@LikeToasters) November 10, 2026

Once again the Number Ten Cat takes down Trump’s bragging:

Today is Remembrance Day, when we pause to remember the horrific sacrifices of war made on our behalf by the generations that came before. Donald the draft dodger has demanded that we do not use that name. As with so much else, he should be ignored. https://t.co/gq2ryzcFdT

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) November 11, 2026

From Malcolm: kitten rescue!

When the cat realized it was a rescue, she brought all her kittens, one by one, to be saved.
They were all adopted and even gained a crab friend🥹 https://t.co/hn0yNmtbVT

— We don’t deserve cats 😺 (@catsareblessing) September 7, 2025

One from my feed: a song about sending the Jews to the Moon:

I wrote this song because, for generations, the world has told the Jews to leave.

So imagine we all went to the moon. Within 50 years, we’d turn its lifeless craters into thriving cities filled with science, innovation, music and life.

And what would happen? The world would look up and accuse us of colonising the moon!

Because wherever Jews go, we build, create and transform.

The problem was never where the Jews lived. It was that some people couldn’t accept our existence.

We will shine wherever we are. Even on the moon. 🌙🇮🇱

— Yehuda Meitav (@YehudaMeitav) November 11, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This German Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was 11 years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-11-12T12:15:45.138Z

And two from Doctor Cobb. First, a bizarre coloring book.  It’s AI for sure, but is it sold as a serious work for kids?

Here’s a real sheet from a colouring book someone tried to sell me.

— The Boooook Shepherd 👻 (@thebookshepherd.bsky.social) 2026-11-11T01:01:21.557Z

How to pick up a duck. Click on the screenshot to go to the original.  I think it’s wrong; the duck could fall, and it won’t work with ducks that can fly:

Music:  Stephen Stills discusses three guitarists who greatly influenced him: Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Neil Young. Stills is quite eloquent and thoughtful about these choices.

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Welcome to a Hump Day (“Сряда – преломният ден от седмицата” in Bulgarian), Wednesday, November 11, 2026 and it’s Veteran’s Day, an official federal holiday in America.

It’s also Origami Day, Pocky Day (celebrating the Japanese snack), and National Sundae Day. According to Guinness, this is the world’s largest ice cream sundae:

The largest ice cream sundae was one weighing 24.91 tonnes (54,917 lb) made by Palm Dairies Ltd under the supervision of Mike Rogiani in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada on 24 July 1988. It consisted of 20.27 tonnes (44,687.64) of ice cream, 4.39 tonnes (9,678.28) of syrup and 243.7 kg (537.2 lb) of topping.

I have no photos of that behemoth, but here’s a FB video of what’s surely the largest sundae in Chicago, available at the fabled Margie’s Candies. I haven’t eaten one, but I’ve seen one. If you’re in Chicago and you want an old-fashioned ice cream parlor, I heartily recommend this place. The ice cream, hot fudge, and turtle sundaes are terrific. Have a gander:

As for origami, I asked my friend Robert Lang, physicist and origami master, to contribute one of his pieces in honor of Origami Day, and I got this:

Or, for something entirely different, this is “The Distance of the Sun,” a mobile of origami representations of transportation across history, culture, and imagination, a collaboration with artist Glenn Kaino (who conceived and spearheaded the project), installed at the Los Angeles Metro Connector train station (the connection station between LA’s light rail system and the Los Angeles Airport people-mover). The description is here.

The original was modeled in paper, but this large installation is of course made of more durable materials.

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Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 11 Wikipedia page.

Oh, and there’s a Google Doodle celebrating Veteran’s Day today. Click below to see where it goes. Note that the medals change, beginning with the Medal of Honor.

Da Nooz:

UPDATE: The first item below is now obsolete as yesterday evening the Republicans in the House unified to deep-six the impeachment charge against Hegseth.

House Republicans on Tuesday blocked an effort to impeach Pete Hegseth, rejecting allegations that the defense secretary had repeatedly violated the constitution through his handling of the Iran war and other conflicts globally.

The vote came a week after Republicans lost control of the Senate and House of Representatives in their worst midterm election in more than a half century, and underscored how lawmakers remain wary of crossing Donald Trump, who has signaled his continued support for Hegseth.

Thomas Massie, a Republican congressman who lost his primary after breaking with the president, had proposed impeaching Hegseth in September, alleging an array of illegal acts, including killing civilians in Iran, launching unauthorized operations in Venezuela and Yemen, and retaliating against a Democratic senator.

Top Democrats announced their support for the resolution, but Republicans moved to kill it by referring it to the judiciary committee. Their motion succeeded on Tuesday, by a 211-204 vote, largely along party lines. Massie was the sole Republican to oppose the motion, along with all Democrats.

*“Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth has at best a mixed record, but has soured his relationship with Congress and much of the public with his grandstanding and dumb decisions.  The Democrats, fired up by midterm victories, are trying to impeach him, with a Republican Congressman having prepared an impeachment proposal centered largely on the war with Iran:

Rep. Thomas Massie moved Monday to force a vote to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, pressing his fellow Republicans to remove one of the Trump administration’s most prominent figures following sweeping election losses blamed in part on fallout from the war in Iran.

Massie, a Kentucky Republican, read the impeachment resolution from the House floor just hours after it opened for the first day of sessions after the midterms. It largely focuses on the war in Iran but also includes references to Hegseth’s role in carrying out military actions in Yemen and Venezuela.

The congressman, who was defeated by a Trump-backed challenger in a primary earlier this year, said Hegseth’s actions amounted to “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Hegseth, he said, “knowingly executed and implemented unlawful orders” and “remains a threat to the Constitution.”

A vote in the House could come by mid-week, but next steps are highly uncertain. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries supports the measure. If most Democrats follow him, Massie would only need support from a few Republicans to impeach Hegseth.

. . . . If the House votes to impeach, it would fall to to the Senate to either dismiss the charges or hold a trial. Republicans remain in the majority in both chambers, until the new Congress convenes in January with Democrats in control.

But Hegseth will not go quiet into that good night:

.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dug in for a fight Tuesday against his potential impeachment in Congress, contending that a rogue lawmaker is undermining American troops in war zones by targeting him over mere “policy disagreements” and not the high crimes required in the Constitution for his possible removal.

The embattled Pentagon chief has launched a counteroffensive against outgoing Republican Rep. Thomas Massie’s effort to force him from office over his handling of the unpopular Iran war and other actions. A House vote on whether to move forward with the impeachment is expected later Tuesday.

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Hegseth gave a defiant and politicized defense of his stewardship of the U.S. military in his first news conference at the Pentagon in six months. He chose to hit back at the rising bipartisan anger over battlefield strategy while offering few details about intermittent operations against Iran or fatal strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in Latin America.

Not a good move, Democrats, especially not now.  While it’s barely possible that the House could vote to impeach him, the trial would be in the Senate, which requires a 2/3 majority vote to convict. The Democrats have only 54 seats there after January, and the impeachment will fail. It will be a show trial, and smacks of retribution when the Democrats should be moving forward. Believe me, if Hegseth were to go (VERY unlikely) Trump will, in further retribution, replace him with somebody worse.

JAC THIS MORNING: I told you so!  But they can try again after the newly-elected Congress takes its seats in January. But the Senate will not vote to have an impeachment trial, so if Republicans continue to stick together, it’s all futile.

*In a referendum, California rejected America’s first attempt to tax accumulated wealth: the so-called “billionaire’s tax.” This represents a setback for “progressive” Democrats, who want to level out incomes by taxing the rich.

California voters rejected a billionaire tax, The Associated Press determined on Monday, rebuking a measure that would have created the nation’s first wealth tax by targeting the assets of residents with a net worth beyond $1 billion.

Under the tax measure, Proposition 40, the state would have imposed a one-time, 5 percent tax on the personal assets of billionaires and devoted most of the revenue to health care.

The Democratic voters who dominate the California electorate generally support the concept of making wealthy people pay higher taxes. But Democratic leaders were divided over the proposal — Gov. Gavin Newsom opposed it while the California Democratic Party endorsed the tax. And some of the California billionaires who stood to pay the tax contributed heavily toward a campaign that slammed the proposal with attack ads on TV throughout October.

Proposition 40 also suffered from having a weak coalition of supporters who could not compete with those ads and relied on cheaper methods, such as social media and influencer campaigns, to rally support.

The race was not called until almost a week after the election as California counted mail ballots at a deliberate pace. Though the vote gap shrank as more ballots were tallied, the measure ultimately failed to get enough support despite it being a hugely

Here’s the vote as of yesterday afternoon:

It’s pretty close, but I would have expected it to pass given the public’s increasing denunciation of economic inequality. But the taxes haven’t worked in places they’ve been tried (which include several European countries) as they don’t raise a ton of revenue, and cause the very rich to simply leave the area for others. In addition, they impose double taxation on rich people who have accumulated wealth by paying, say, capital gains taxes.  Billionaire’s taxes, a plank in the Democratic Socialist and “progressive” Democratic platform, may sound good, but the Democrats should stay away from them, too.

*Lauren Boebert (R-CO), probably the dumbest person in the House, was finally defeated by a Democrat, even after Boebert tried to retain her seat by moving to a more conservative district.

Retired Rear Adm. Eileen Laubacher, a Democrat, will flip Colorado’s 4th District, CNN’s Decision Desk projects, ending conservative firebrand Rep. Lauren Boebert’s tenure in Congress.

Boebert’s loss comes after she elected to run in a more conservative district last cycle in an effort to preserve her political future. But Laubacher, who served more than three decades in the Navy, capitalized on the national headwinds against the GOP and focused her campaign on affordability issues.

The win denies Boebert, an ally of President Donald Trump and one of the most outspoken conservatives in the House Republican conference, a fourth term. Boebert was first elected in 2020, after she upset a fifth-term Republican incumbent in a primary.

. . . In that time, she has emerged as one of the most recognizable, and at times polarizing, faces of the GOP’s MAGA wing, drawing attention from both Democrats and Republicans. Former President Joe Biden, whom she heckled during his 2022 State of the Union address, once billed her as “one of the leaders of this extreme MAGA movement.” The 39-year-old has also been a source of frustration for Republican speakers Kevin McCarthy and Mike Johnson.

Good riddance.  (Remember that she’s also infamous for canoodling in a movie theater and getting kicked out.) Here’s the vote from CNN: which is pretty close, but remember that the district is conservative. Boebert has not yet conceded the election even though 98% of the votes are in.

*British entertainer Russell Brand, 51,was convicted of rape and sexual assault and was sentenced two days ago to 10½ years in prison. Over at the Free Press, Douglas Murray says that this marks the end of an undesirable era of British culture (Murray’s article is called “Russell Brand ran out of enablers”).

Brand emerged at a very peculiar moment in British life. The “lads’ mags” culture of the 1990s was still around and leaking into the 2000s. It was a period where a certain type of male—never female—promiscuity was admired and even encouraged. Brand himself was crowned “shagger of the year” several years in a row by Britain’s leading tabloid. Even a future Liberal Democrat deputy prime minister boasted in those days of the number of women he had managed to get into bed.

It was also a time when the nudge-nudge, wink-wink, say-no-more sauciness of British humor was still alive but not well. Elderly BBC executives imagined that perhaps in Brand’s effeminate, piratical popinjay persona they had stumbled on the much-coveted “voice of youth.” It soon became clear that their chosen voice was a liability.

. . . Sadly, there was nothing that Brand’s detractors could do. The political left in the UK fell in love with him. Writers like Guardian columnist Owen Jones enabled him and did public events with him, and each puffed the other’s books with absurd hyperbole. Brand labeled Jones “this generation’s Orwell,” showing that Brand had never read George Orwell. Jones returned the favor by describing Brand’s work as “funny, full of charm, and engaging.” Britain’s leading magazine of the political left, the New Statesman, gave Brand a guest editorship of the magazine and had him photographed with the staff sitting around him in wonder in a tableau meant to represent Jesus and his disciples.

. . . .Brand rose and fell because he emerged from a strange, highly specific, and confusing culture which still existed in the 2000s and started to dwindle in the mid-2010s. That was when, for better and worse, men—including, sometimes, famous men—were made to account for their past actions. Whether Hollywood is a good place to either set or reset the sexual ethics of the era is a question which was pretty much answered during the #MeToo era: yes and no. Yes, in that there are people who got away with things because they were “powerful.” No in that the entertainment industry is a very untypical ecosystem. A world in which Brand could whip his member out in a BBC studio or play the lothario title character in the lackluster and unneeded remake of the Dudley Moore vehicle Arthur was a time quite content with boundaries being crossed. Those who sought to enforce boundaries were denounced as “stick-in-the-muds” and “prigs.”

But then the music changed. The once-cheering supporters and partners slunk away or spoke out too late. The laughter died. Many questions remain in the rise and fall of Russell Brand. But the most obvious is why the culture so relentlessly celebrated and promoted him in the first place.

I neither worshiped him nor hated him, for I never watched him. Now he has his just deserts, and will be forgotten when he emerges from prison at age 61.

*And a quickie: a deer rescue recounted in the UPI’s odd news:

Animal rescuers in the Detroit area announced a deer with a plastic Halloween pumpkin stuck over its face has been rescued after over a week of sightings.

The Detroit Animal Welfare Group said members had been tracking sightings of the deer for about 10 days before they caught up to the animal on Sunday in Westland’s Hines Park.

AD

The deer, initially thought to be a doe but later revealed to be a young button buck, had been repeatedly sighted with the plastic pumpkin over its face, which rescuers feared would affect its ability to eat and drink.

The rescue team followed the deer through the woods and waded through a 20-foot-wide river “not once, not twice, but four times,” the DAWG said on social media.

The deer was tranquilized and the bucket was removed. The rescuers administered fluids to the deer before reversing the tranquilizer and releasing the animal back into the wild.

A yellow tag was placed on the deer’s ear to warn hunters about the tranquilizer.

“We will finally get some sleep tonight even though we are cold, wet and smell like swamp,” DAWG officials wrote.

Here’s a two-minute video and Ceiling Cat bless the rescuers!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili rests beneath a pear tree. And we resurrect an old Hili dialogue:

Hili: Why are you so stuck on the Sisyphus myth?
Andrzej: Because I’m trying once more to reconcile with the absurdity of continuance.

In Polish:

Hili: Czemu się uczepiłeś tego mitu Syzyfa?
Ja: Bo próbuję raz jeszcze polubić absurdalność trwania.

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

From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:

From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:

From Terrible Maps.  Actually, besides the U.S. and Palau, three other countries use Fahrenheit: Belize, Bahama, and the Cayman Islands.

From Masih about her “brother in arms”, Garry Kasparov:

My brother in arms, Garry Kasparov, could not join us in Berlin Freedom week that we created together because of serious threats to his life. Putin’s regime still wants him dead.

When a dictator fears your voice so much that he wants to silence you forever, that is a badge of honor.

Garry, they may keep you away from the room, but they will never silence your voice.
@Kasparov63

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) November 10, 2026

From Luana, one of many challengers that will undoubtedly vie for Fetterman’s seat. This one was born in Gaza.

My name is Ahmed Moor and I’m running for US Senate here in PA (election 2028). I’m running to end the war in Iran and to promote the dignity agenda: free healthcare, free childcare, and affordable housing.

I’m calling for accountability for genocide, for ICE and for corruption. And finally, for the protection of our civil liberties in America. Join the fight at https://t.co/gM0uBwST6b

— Ahmed Moor (@AhmedMoor) November 9, 2026

From Barry, a hilarious AI cat-and-music video:

The neighbor’s cat at midnight. https://t.co/IuprywFwNV

— fatedwanderer84 (@fatedwanderer84) November 10, 2026

Larry speaks up about Russell Brand:

“Whatever women wear, wherever they go, whatever they drink, they retain the right to say no and demand justice in the criminal courts when sexual predators act without their consent”

Mr Justice Bennathan, while sentencing Russell Brand to a decade in prison for rape and sexual assault.

Amen.

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) November 9, 2026

One from my feed. English translation from the Russian:

A large Hamas demonstration was supposed to take place in Brisbane, Australia. When Māori activists heard about it, they immediately organized a spirited haka in support of Israel at the site. As always, the Hamas crowd ended up being too chickenshit to show up for the demonstration. Thank you, my dear Māori people, from childhood! 🙏❤️🙏

В Брисбене, Австралия, должна была пройти масштабная демонстрация хамасовцев. Когда активисты из народа Маори узнали об этой демонстрации, они немедленно организовали на этом месте энергичную хаку в поддержку Израиля. Хамасовцы, как всегда в итоге зассали прийти на демонстрацию.

Спасибо, родные, с детства за маори! 🙏❤️🙏

— David Ilnitsky (@DavidIlnitsky) November 9, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial

This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was fourteen years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) November 11, 2026

And two from Dr. Cobb. We must look up this category!

important category on wikimedia commons

— depths of wikipedia (@depthsofwikipedia.bsky.social) 2026-11-09T20:13:42.904Z

A squirrel with gas. Matthew swears this is genuine:

Nothing says the weekend like a squirrel farting in the bath.

— SlenderSherbet (@slendersherbet.bsky.social) 2026-11-07T14:10:09.333Z

.No music today; few seem to listen.

Hili dialogues are back today, at least for a while, as Andrzej has resurrected a bunch of the cat’s philosophical musings. See below.

Welcome to The Cruelest Day: Tuesday, November 10, 2026 and National Vanilla Cupcake Day, which shows what a blah day it is. But it’s also the Báb’s Birthday (see below), honoring ʻAlí-Muḥammad Shírází (1819-1850), also know as “the Báb”, founder of Babism and one of the central figures of the Baháʼí Faith, which teaches that sequential prophets will occur, including Jesus, Muhammad, and, of course, the Báb.  He was executed for apostasy at the age of 30, but there are still 7-8 million followers of Bahái.

But the Báb was really born on October 20, so it’s unclear why his birth is celebrated today.

Here’s what Wikipedia calls “a historical depiction of the Báb”, and I’m not sure if its a drawing or a drawn-over photograph.

It’s also Area Code Day, the Birth of the Báb,

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

Da Nooz:

*There’s an op-ed by Megan McArdle in the WaPo that has a clickbait title, “Democrats won the midterms. Republicans may have won something bigger.”  WHAAAT?  The subtitle gives one part of the answer: “Social Security and Medicare will force painful choices for the party in control.”

But the biggest win may have been for the Republican Party. Now look, guys, I know it doesn’t feel that way. You not only took an epic thumping; you’ve probably lost any hope of holding the presidency in 2028. That doesn’t feel great, especially because Democrats are already murmuring about retribution. So I don’t blame you for failing to look on the bright side. But there is a bright side. In fact, there are two.

McArdle points out that several suggested solutions—raising the cap on payroll taxes and raising the retirement age—will tick people off and the Democrats will get blamed. Her solution is for Democrats to tackle this question NOW, but Trump will be President for two more years. I suspect that the next President will be a Democrat, so the party better get its act together now.

*The NYT reports that Joe Biden won’t be very active in promoting his new biography as he has metastasized prostate cancer (article archived here).

Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said Sunday that his health would prevent him from making as many public appearances to promote his forthcoming memoir as he had hoped.

The former president, 83, whose health has faced scrutiny since his time in the White House, was diagnosed last year with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that spread to his bones. Mr. Biden underwent radiation therapy and surgery to remove skin cancer lesions, and his son Hunter Biden said in an interview over the summer that his condition was worsening and causing him pain.

Mr. Biden said he had started writing the memoir, “Promise Me, America,” which covers his years as president, when he received the diagnosis. He indicated afterward that he felt intense pressure to finish quickly as he battled the disease, saying he was “working like hell” with his publisher.

Now, he says his cancer will also affect his ability to promote the book.

“Some days are better than others. It hasn’t stopped me. But sometimes it slows me down,” Mr. Biden wrote Sunday in a post on X. “What that means is, unfortunately, I won’t be able to do as many conversations about my book as I’d hoped.”

He added, “My doctors continue to be encouraged by how I’ve responded to treatment.”

Mr. Biden’s age and health set off an intense debate during his final year in office. Mr. Biden ended his re-election bid after a disastrous June 2024 debate performance against President Donald Trump, during which Mr. Biden repeatedly lost his train of thought.

Hunter Biden said on a podcast in July that he believed his father was unknowingly suffering from cancer during that debate. (Medical experts who were not involved in Mr. Biden’s care said it was unlikely that his debate performance was affected by the cancer diagnosed months later.)

This looks pretty much as if Joe doesn’t have that long to live, especially because he had to rush completing his book.  Although I’m not happy when anybody is suffering, Democrat or Republican, and I voted for Biden, we should prepare for his death, as I’m sure the NYT obituary section is doing.

*Texas voted Democratic (“blue”) in the midterms, but the Free Press claims that what went through Texas was a “purple tornado.”

Texans like [Suzanne] Bellsnyder have always had an independent streak, and the pent-up frustration that had been building for years toward establishment Republicans and the status quo finally reached a breaking point last week.

Abbott was swept out after three terms, James Talarico became the first Texas Democrat to be elected to the Senate since 1988, and Democrats won control of the state House for the first time since 2003. It was the first time any Democrat has been elected to statewide office in Texas in over 30 years.

While many pundits are calling what happened in Texas a blue tsunami, it was more like a purple tornado: a shift among moderate voters weary of extremism, cronyism, and corruption. Every single county in Texas—and there are 254 of them, the most of any U.S. state—swung toward the Democrats, but that doesn’t mean traditionally conservative Texans were swept away by the promises of the party’s ascendant left.

“Democrats didn’t necessarily win rural counties, but there was a shift in a lot of counties that made all the difference,” Bellsnyder said. “Rural Republicans have served as a firewall for the party for the last couple of decades, and the Republican Party lost their insurance policy last Tuesday.”

Much of Texas still appears solidly red on maps that show the election results based on which party earned a simple majority of the votes. Still, the results also show rising shades of purple in even the reddest and most conservative rural counties. An analysis by The Texas Tribune concluded that turnout increased by a lower amount in rural counties than in urban and suburban ones. The swing toward Democrats in some of the reddest counties was dramatic.

. . .What will political life in Texas look like now that Democrats have swept the state? Bellsnyder welcomes the return to a bipartisan Texas government, with Democrats in the governor’s mansion and in control of the board of education and state House, but Republicans still in charge of the state Senate.

. . . .“Whether it is the Republicans or Democrats, single-party rule isn’t healthy for democracy,” Bellsnyder said. Newly elected Democrats and other party leaders in Texas hopefully realize that they must deliver the bipartisan results that they campaigned on, because “if the blue doesn’t do what they said they were going to do, then I guarantee we’re going to go back red.”

Well, that’s clear, and if there’s any lesson for Democrats from the midterms, they are going to have to unify to some degree and deliver—and by that I don’t mean allowing men to participate in women’s sports or create free public transportation.  Somehow I sense the Democrats are going to have a big dust-up over their priorities, at least for a while.

*If the pro-Palestinian and anti-“Zionist” bike rally intended to shake up Jewish businesses, it was a miserable failure.

Massive crowds of counterprotesters waving Israeli flags and holding signs condemning antisemitism responded Sunday morning to a bicycle “boycott ride” targeting Philadelphia businesses that organizers said were owned by supporters of Israel.

State and local leaders widely condemned the bikers’ demonstration, saying it was targeting six Jewish-owned businesses. The cyclists on Sunday were met by what appeared to be hundreds of people protesting the ride, sparking some verbal confrontations in Pennsylvania’s largest city.

“Show your faces!” one counterprotester shouted as he flipped off a group of bikers in Rittenhouse Square in the heart of Philadelphia’s Center City neighborhood. Many of the bikers were wearing disposable face masks, helmets and sunglasses. Several bikers held Palestinian flags and were draped in keffiyehs.

Michael Balaban, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, decried the scene.

“When people come to attack the Jewish community, we want to meet those attacks tenfold, a hundredfold with people,” Balaban told CNN affiliate WPVI. “Philadelphia is the city of brotherly love and we want to make sure it stays that way and get the haters out of here….Don’t protest us because we’re Jewish.”

On one side of the road on Walnut Street downtown, a woman quietly held a sign above her head reading: “HATE is not Brotherly LOVE.” A few dozen feet away on the same side, a man held one that said: “Money loving Zionists.”

The protest was organized by Philly Bike On Your Left, a group describing itself as “anti-Zionist.”

The group has rejected the criticism, saying it was “grossly misrepresented” and is “firmly against racism and oppression of all forms, including fascism, antisemitism, islamophobia, and colonialism.”

“Ride around Rittenhouse with us as we show these zionist business owners that we see them for the disgusting humans they are,” the group said in its original October 30 Instagram post announcing the ride.

You’ll want to see it, of course, and there’s a long and boring video on YouTube, but I’ve put a short Here’s a short news video of the demonstration.  There seems to have been very little violence, although of course there was animosity on both sides.  Fortunately, in the main the peace was kept, and the restaurants were apparently packed. Note the trop of “Money loving Zionists”, which of course really means “Money loving Jews”: an obvious blood libel. And the cowardly protestors were largely masked, and you know why (I didn’t see any masked counterprotestors!):

I love this screenshot I took from one video, showing Jewish self-deprecating humor of the protestors:

*At It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal details the countdown to form a government coalition in Israel.

It’s Monday, November 9, and for all the frenzy in the country, the electoral process is far from instant. Last night, Gadi Eisenkot was handed the mandate, and a 91-day timer began.

Thirteen weeks. That’s how long coalition negotiations could drag on: six weeks for Eisenkot, four for Benjamin Netanyahu and three more for the rest of the Knesset.

“No one will be able to meet all the commitments they made,” Eisenkot declared last night at the President’s residence. “And all of us will be required to compromise.” “We must form a national emergency government” he added, “this will require creative and unconventional political steps.”

Eisenkot made three promises at the outset of this election: no Arabs, no Haredim, no Bibi. Last night’s speech gave little indication of which commitments he will meet and which will require compromise and creativity.

For months before the election Eisenkot signaled a creative approach to the Arab parties. His original plan for a “national emergency government” was, in reality, binational, resting on 19 Arab votes from parties that reject Israel’s Jewish statehood and refuse to label Hamas a terrorist organization.

That was until Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Lieberman pulled a sharp 180 and proposed a softer form of anti-Zionist support: the ultra-Orthodox. For reference, imagine the Democratic Party conceding a national abortion ban in exchange for evangelical support to oust Donald Trump. The man who triggered Israel’s political crisis in 2019 over his refusal to sit with the Haredim has chosen to don a shtreimel rather than a keffiyeh to defeat Netanyahu, in effect challenging Eisenkot to a game of chicken.

Eisenkot has already broken one promise; he would like to avoid breaking a second on the chance he is thrown into further elections.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog appointed Eisenkot (former head of the IDF and head of a centrist party) to try forging a consensus. Eisenkot ruled out using the Arab and ultra-Orthodox parties to do that, but it may not be possible, and he’d have to choose one, and it look likes he’s leaning on putting the ultra-Orthodox into a ruling coalition. But of course the ultra-Orthodox are at odds with the government because, in violation of government decree, most of them refuse to serve in the IDF or in alternative service; they think that Israel should honor their desire to spend their time studying the Talmud. As a formally secular state, Israel should not allow that, nor give the group a stipend for their religious labors.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej has just collected a bunch of old Hili posts in a Substack section called (in Polish) “Philosophy on four paws”, so let’s have one bit of wisdom a day for a while. Today she shows off her learning.

Hili: Horace was right.
Andrzej : About what?
Hili: Almost everything.

In Polish:

Hili: Horacy miał rację.
Ja: W jakiej sprawie?
Hili: Prawie w każdej.

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

From Kitty Litterposting:

From Science Humor.  Whenever I see a Facebook post starting, “I’m honored to. . .”, I know some bragging will ensue.

From Give Me a Sign:

From Masih, who introduces Iranian protestors in the German Parliament (in the tweet with a Farsi title, Masih speaks in English):

Today, we are at the German Parliament alongside brave women from Iran, Afghanistan, and other countries living under dictatorship, standing together to be the voices of our people behind bars, especially political prisoners facing the death penalty.

We are calling on Western governments to stop appeasing the murderers and perpetrators of repression and, instead, engage with the brave women who are fighting for freedom and justice.

We urge you to stand on the right side of history. History will judge you.

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) November 9, 2026

From my feed: The Italian Prime Minister and her cats:

🇮🇹 Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is a super cat lover!

Meloni has shared her affection for her own cats, Martino, a Scottish Fold, and Micia, a rescued female cat who became especially close to her daughter.

Meloni has also attended cat shows in Rome, supported rescue organizations and encouraged families to adopt homeless cats.

In 2019, she helped promote a cat adoption area at the SuperCat Show. 🥰🧡

— No Cats No Life (@NoCatsNoLife_m) November 9, 2026

From Luana. Colossal is plowing old ground with the “woolly mice” because, I get, their progress on making Woolly Mammoths and dodos is slow. Look how they tout these mice, not saying that more than half of the edited changes came from mutant mice and not elephant or mammoth genomes. Let’s see them make an elephant look like this–and then add big tusks, physiological tolerance, and a surrogate mother!

Meet Chip & Dale, the Colossal woolly mice.

They kinda blew up, so we got them headshots.

These tiny stars helped show we can engineer cold-adapted traits on the road to the woolly mammoth.

Write us a great letter about how much you love them, and we might send you one. 😆 https://t.co/q7uAwwbtSy

— Colossal Biosciences® (@colossal) November 9, 2026

From Malcolm, interspecies love:

This rabbit was abandoned by its biological mother as a baby and now sees an orange cat as its mother. https://t.co/Gjvzzp5jwS

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) October 20, 2026

A Diwali post from the Number Ten Cat:

Wishing a very happy Diwali to all my friends celebrating around the world. May light always triumph over darkness. https://t.co/UfEahgUf0k

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) November 8, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial: a survivor who turns 97 today:

A survivor of Thesienstadt, Mauthausen, and Auschwitz, this Czech Jewish woman turns 97 today. She's one of the few survivors who is still with us.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-11-10T11:49:49.071Z

Two from Dr. Cobb. First, office safety. I can’t say I squealed with laughter, but it was funny. Another tweet gave its source: “It’s a 1991 Barr Films instructional video from the ‘Excellence in Training’ series, I don’t think any of the actors are famous.”

“Office Safety”If you don’t squeal with laughter five seconds into this you may be clinically dead.

— David J (@damjef.bsky.social) 2026-11-08T12:33:58.545Z

A murmuration:

saw some starlings

— Lev Parikian (@levparikian.bsky.social) 2026-11-07T19:14:33.113Z

Music, from reader Bryan, who calls this rehearsal video “Best rare Beatles I’ve heard for a long time!” The song is by Harrison and it’s “For You Blue” from the Beatles’ Let it Be album.  

For my money, this is the most underrated Beatles track. https://t.co/jDeXkf2v4d

— Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) November 8, 2026