The riots in Europe. . .

October 19, 2026 • 10:00 am

. . . seem to be getting worse. What started out as relatively peaceful protests against poor school conditions have devolved into full-scale rioting complete with arson, mass destruction, and looting. The far left and French unions have joined in, as well as a lot of young pro-Palestinians, many of whom may be immigrants or from unassimilated immigrant communities.

Here’s a BBC videoabout the riots:

My Facebook feed is full of people using the riots as a reason to stem immigration to France (and Europe in general).  As I’ve said, I don’t want to use these protests so much to call for a total ban on immigration (though clearly some restrictions are in order) as to call attention to the pro-Palestinian and anti-Western nature of the demonstrations, which suggest that Europe is in danger of losing its liberal democratic culture. Why on earth should a protest that’s about schools and national budgets be replete with people waving Palestinian flags and calling for another intifada? Why the destruction, symbolizing the destruction of Western liberal values.

Here’s Noa Tishby, an Israeli actress now living in America, making that point. Click the screenshot to see her video post:

Many shopkeepers have had to stand by, like this poor woman, as protestors invaded their shops, wrecked them, and looted the goods, ruining their life’s work. This woman is apparently host with her own petard:

The woman speaking, with subtitles:

Apparently mosques (unlike churches and synagogues) have been spared vandalism, as have many Muslim-owned shops.  Here’s a tweet I got from Luana:

In contrast, a non-Muslim immigrant who lost everything:

A good post from Maarten Boudry (click to read):

France has a long history of protest, student, and otherwise, but I’m worried about two things here.

First, the role of pro-Palestinians and anti-Western actors in these riots, which will have turned many Europeans into advocates (or at least osculators) of terrorism. Second, the fact that these riots may put into power far right-factions in Europe, some of which are Nazi-adjacent.

I am no pundit, but surely the solution involves recognizing the problem of immigrant communities who won’t assimilate into the European liberal-democratic tradition, as well as somehow enlightening those blockheads who shout “free Palestine” while waving Palestinian flags and chanting “from the river to the sea”. Is either of these possible? I don’t know.

And I have a bit of a worry that something like this will happen in America, as there are signs of it now in the ascendancy of Democratic Socialists and the increasing demonization of Israel and rise of anti-semitic crimes. But, as they always say, “It can’t happen here.”  Well, it’s happening in Europe.

Fall at Botany Pond: The turtles soak up some sun

October 19, 2026 • 8:15 am

All the ducks have gone, and the sky is gray. (People keep asking me, “Where do you think the ducks are?” My answer is, “My best guess is that they’ve gone south for the winter.”) But the squirrels and turtles are still here, and I’m been remiss in feeding the rodents. (The turtles get their own food from a feeder person.) One squirrel remembered me yesterday, crawled into my lap repeatedly, and was rewarded with two walnuts and four peanuts. I haven’t kissed him yet.

It’s been cool but sunny these last few days, and the turtles have taken advantage of the weather to soak up some rays and jump-start their metabolism. Yesterday afternoon four of them found their way to a sunny rock and, stretching out limbs and necks in what we call “turtle yoga”, basked for a long time. Here are four red-eared sliders absorbing UV.

Note that they’re all facing  the same direction: the sun is behind them, and they’ve exposed as much of their bodies as they can.  If I don’t miss my guess, there are two more turtles in the pond.

Notice how their rear feet are stretched out behind, and their necks are extended.

Finally, here’s a video in which turtle #4 joins the three that were already there. Be sure to watch until the end.

I haven’t seen a single duck even stop briefly at the pond since Miss Duck left along with her brood (Rupert was the last). I do wonder where they are.

Monday: Hili dialogue

October 19, 2026 • 7:00 am

Welcome to another damn week: it’s Monday, October 19, 2026, and it’s Rainforest Day. Here are shots, in order, from Costa Rica (La Selva) in 2017 and Oahu (Mānoa Falls) two years later:

It’s also International Gin and Tonic Day and National Seafood Bisque Day.

Posting will be light today as I’m off to see Richard Dawkins speak on “Genes and the Meaning of Life” at Symphony Hall this evening (I prepare most of these dialogues the day before they appear).

UPDATE: It was a good time; Richard was interviewed byNicholas Epley , a behavioral scientist and professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. It was at Symphony Hall in downtown Chicago and lasted about an hour and a half.  I had given Nick a list of ten questions that I’d ask Richard (I don’t have the list) and was glad to see that about half of them came up: memes, evolutionary psychology, genetically based sex differences, Richard as a “cultural Christian” and so on. At 85, Richard hasn’t lost a lick: he’s still thoughtful, eloquent, and, as the audience appreciated, funny. It’s hard to think of another academic who could draw such crowds and entertain them and educate them so thoroughly. The crowd was urprisingly young—I estimate the mean age of about 40.  Here’s a shot of the venue from my seat on the main floor:

I found the list of questions I’d sent to Nick as suggestions to ask Richard. I know what Dawkins’s answers would be to some of them, but the audience doesn’t.

1  Of all the books you’ve published, which is your favorite, and why?
2  What do you think has been the greatest discovery in evolutionary biology in the last several decades?
3 If you could have one unanswered question about evolution or biology answered for you, what would it be?
4. Given the mountains of evidence in favor of evolution, why do 73% of Americans believe that God had some hand in human evolution (see attached Pew Survey, adding pure creationists and partial creationists)?
5. People are now proclaiming that religion is coming back, based on the fact that the number of “nones’ (people without a formal church affiliation) has slowed down or reached a plateau in the last two years. Do you think religion is inexorably on its way out in America, or has the decline stopped?
6. Evolutionary psychology, the idea that human behaviors, preferences, and thoughts, have been heavily influenced by evolution, has been widely criticized as “just-so stories”. I presume you don’t agree with that because, after all, why is the human brain exempt from natural selection? What do you make of these criticisms and could you give us some examples of human behaviors that you think have been clearly instilled in us by natural selection.
7. Your late friend and colleague Daniel Dennett called Charles Darwin’s idea of evolution by natural selection “the single best idea anyone has ever had.” Given that the competitors include Newton and Einstein, do you agree?

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 19 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*After a long period of silence, Trump has finally endorsed Netanyahu in the Israeli elections (October 27).  The Prime Minister of Israel, though, is not elected directly, but rather emerges from a coalition-forming caucus after the election of Parliament.  I’m not a fan of Netanyahu, and am hoping for a better PM, but it doesn’t matter who emerges as the leader, for the world will hate Israel no matter who runs the government. And you know why. (Netanyahu was just one more excuse to hate Israel)

*France is rocked with riots that have arisen from protests, and yesterday the protestors rioters burned most of an old city hall in Limoges (see archived article here).

France was in a state of shock on Sunday, as citizens walked through streets lined with shattered storefronts, charred cars and burned-out government buildings after the country’s largest demonstrations in years devolved into riots and looting.

The unrest on Saturday — which led to some 2,000 arrests — caused widespread damage to several symbols of the state, including a 19th-century city hall in Limoges, a town in central France renowned for its porcelain, that was largely destroyed in a nighttime arson attack. More than 600 police officers were injured, Laurent Nuñez, France’s interior minister, said on social media on Sunday.

Rioters attacked city halls from Lille in northern France to Marseille in the south, where they broke into the local government headquarters and tipped over a bust of Marianne, a symbol of the French Republic. A fire also destroyed a tourist office in Lyon, and 1,500 shops were damaged or looted nationwide, according to Alexandre Bompard, head of the French federation of commerce and distribution, who estimated that the cost of repairs could run into hundreds of millions of dollars.

“I’ve never seen this before, I am disgusted,” said Sophie Vanpoperinghe, 47, as she gazed at ransacked shops on Boulevard Magenta, the road in Paris where she has lived for 22 years and which is frequently used for demonstrations.

More than half a million demonstrators marched on Sunday to protest the rising cost of living and poor conditions in schools, among other grievances. Many were stunned on Sunday at how rioters had used those demonstrations as a smoke screen for vandalism.

. . . On Sunday, the violence and protests had subsided and given way to a political blame game. Government officials and far right leaders accused the far left of stirring up the unrest, and left-wing leaders blamed the government.

These riots are, as you see from the second tweet below, being blamed on immigrants and are boosting an anti-immigrant parties and politicians like Marine Le Pen. The question is to what extent are immigrants involved and, beyond that, why would immigration itself lead to rioting? The MSM is largely silent on the immigration component, though I found this in the Spectator (archived):

As Sébastien Lecornu said, the violence was perpetrated by two groups: far-left extremists and what he termed ‘criminals’.

Far-left extremists are usually white, like those arrested earlier this year after the death of a nationalist student in Lyon. The people seen on television forcing their way into the city halls of Marseille and Lille were mainly white. On the other hand, the ‘criminals’ filmed looting in Paris, Marseille and Bordeaux appeared to be of immigrant background.

All the demonstrations I’ve seen involve some Palestinian flags being waved, but of course we saw that among American college students.  Frederick Alexander says this at The Gadfly (h/t Anna):

The hard left has spent weeks turning a legitimate grievance about failing schools into a much wider confrontation with the state.

And then there’s the Islamist connection, which the mainstream media would rather not talk about. Outside a school near Paris, a student was filmed shouting, “In the name of Allah, we can kill them all!”, to the cheers of other teenagers.

Elsewhere, there’s footage of students singing along to a rap song invoking Mohammed Merah, the Islamist terrorist who murdered Jewish schoolchildren in Toulouse, and the Bataclan massacre. Meanwhile, a 2025 parliamentary inquiry revealed the growing proximity between figures in Mélenchon’s party and organisations associated with political Islam.

So much for a protest about maths lessons.

None of this means that every student demanding a better education is an Islamist revolutionary. But it’s hard not to conclude that the political forces seeking to exploit their grievances have other ideas. France’s disaffected students offer a useful point of combustion for wider political violence.

What we’re looking at is an increasingly visible convergence between the revolutionary left and political Islam, alongside the familiar collection of hooligans and nihilists who see any disorder as an occasion to indulge their grim hobby, not just in France but across the West.

We’ll have to wait and see what the role of immigration is in these ongoing unrests, but it’s already clear that the far-left native populations are involved. And regardless of who is demonstrating, the spread of political Islam is concerning.

A tweet from Jay showing the fracas, with the English translation, “⚠️🔴 WATCH UNTIL THE END I CANNOT DESCRIBE WHAT I JUST EXPERIENCED IN MARSEILLE. ”

And a possible result (h/t Luana):

*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal describes the clashes between Palestiniand and Israelis in Judea and Samaria that is always described by the press as “settler violence.” In reality, says Segal, both sides can incite this violence, so it’s “chaos” mistakenly attributed by the press as totally the acts of Israelis.

t’s Sunday, October 18, and two events on Saturday captured the problem of settler violence. The first was a little-publicized provocation by Palestinians during the olive harvest, when they approached a settlement’s grazing lands pelting a shepherd with stones. The second was an unprovoked settler attack on European diplomats who had come to protect the harvest.

At 7:35 a.m., according to an Israeli emergency-response group, a shepherd from the Ma’ale Ahuvia farm was hit by stones in the farm’s grazing land near Taybeh. He was lightly hurt and got himself to treatment. Residents say the harvesters began on Deir Jarir’s land and then crossed into pasture the IDF had approved for the farm.

Palestinians, for their part, claim that settlers advanced on their harvest under IDF guard, firing live rounds. The IDF has not commented on the clash or its alleged presence, and no footage corroborates the gunfire. The casting of the IDF as an accomplice to settler violence is narratively compelling for those who see all Israelis as equally malicious, but it also sets off alarm bells for Israelis who know that if the IDF is there, it is far more likely to be separating the two sides than supporting a settler attack.

The second incident took place six hours after the Ma’ale Ahuvia clash, a few kilometers away. A little before 1:30 p.m., masked men with metal bars descended on a delegation of Belgian, French and Polish diplomats in Taybeh. A French mayor put on his tricolor sash, and it didn’t help. The window of the Belgian consulate’s car was smashed. It was a disgusting act of baseless vigilante justice.

Belgium’s foreign minister blamed Israel’s settlement policy and pledged to push for further EU sanctions. France demanded that Israel arrest those responsible, and Poland declared itself deeply outraged.

The latter incident has rightly been condemned by nearly every corner of the Israeli establishment. The IDF called it a severe act of violence by Israeli rioters, and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar condemned it without caveats. The Prime Minister’s Office said any violence against diplomats is unacceptable.

A similar incident a day earlier is covered in the shadow of provocation and response. According to the Binyamin Regional Council, hundreds of “terrorists and anarchists” threw stones and fired fireworks directly at Israelis, Palestinian Authority vehicles were allegedly on hand, and left-wing activists had organized the confrontation so the cameras could film the Israeli response.

The response, when it came, was itself highly problematic. According to one witness, 50 Israelis, many masked and some carrying gas canisters, came down the hill onto the terraced groves. Some set trees alight and used slings to throw stones at the harvesters, who retreated downhill and threw stones back.

Caught in the middle was Heidi Levine, a photographer working for The Washington Post. Wearing a vest clearly marked “Press,” she was pushed to the ground and beaten, and was left with a broken rib, a broken vertebra and a finger injury that needs surgery. President Isaac Herzog, who called Heidi Levine after Shabbat to apologize for her beating, said Taybeh weighed on his conscience as well.

Segal’s take is that the situation is complicated, but the media and the world want to simplify it by blaming all the violence on Israelis. The world’s push for sanctions, he adds, is based not on “settler violence” in the West Bank, but on Israel’s actions in its war on Gaza.  The end:

The tragic reality of Judea and Samaria will not bend to the wishes of its indignant defenders. Palestinian violence against Israelis will always be played down or omitted altogether, while settler violence will always erode Israel’s standing abroad. Israel must reconcile itself to this reality and act accordingly.

*The NYT has two articles (here and here) suggesting that O. J. Simpson might not have acted on his own if he did murder his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her companion Ron Goldman in 1994 (remember that Simpson was found not guilty). When Simpson wrote his fictional memoir, If I Did It, he told his ghostwriter he could not have done the murders alone.  Now there’s evidence that that might have been the case:

In the failed murder prosecution of O.J. Simpson in 1995, the government professed that he alone had killed his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.

Among the issues that hampered the case: the lack of a murder weapon, which has never been found. Its absence has long stoked speculation about whether the killer had assistance.

Now, records unsealed after 30 years at the request of The New York Times show that a prized government informant had told law enforcement key information about the killings, including the supposed location of the murder weapon and details about Mr. Simpson’s efforts to evade prosecution. Together, the findings challenge the popular narrative around the case.

This year, the informant’s brother told The Times that his sibling’s role in the case went much deeper. And the brother said he actually helped discard a bag, containing a heavy object, in the hours after the murders.

Joseph Ippolito, known as Joey, a convicted drug trafficker and mafia associate, escaped from a Florida prison a month before the 1994 murders.

Mr. Ippolito’s brother said the siblings went west after the escape to Los Angeles. Before his incarceration, Mr. Ippolito had operated a popular restaurant there and was a close friend of Al Cowlings, the longtime confidant of Mr. Simpson.

In the wake of the infamous Bronco chase with Mr. Simpson and Mr. Cowlings, investigators found photos in the vehicle of one of Mr. Ippolito’s girlfriends, along with her phone number.

Mr. Ippolito was eventually brought back into custody a year later. Right away, records show, he fed federal investigators in New York information about the mafia and set up meetings with undercover drug agents, with prosecutors saying that they “found Ippolito to be a remarkable source of information.” Mr. Ippolito risked his own safety to help them, prosecutors wrote in a memo lobbying a federal judge for leniency in his sentence.

He also divulged information about Mr. Simpson and the killings.

. . .“The O.J. Simpson case remains an open and ongoing investigation,” a spokesman for the L.A.P.D. said. Because there was no conviction in the murders, “the department has an obligation to continue to pursue justice in this matter.” The spokesman added, “at a point that new evidence is found, detectives will follow those investigatory leads.”

As part of a re-examination of the Simpson case, The Times has unearthed tales of secret audiotapes, mafia links, a prison escape, and backchannel communications between state and federal prosecutors. The reporting also came across a dramatic account from the rapper Fat Joe that bolsters the informant’s supposed role in the case.

You can read more about the NYT’s investigation at the archived link here.

*When I was looking for jobs in the early 1980s, it was tough to find one. After many rejections, I finally got an offer from the only remaining school: the University of Maryland.  Soon thereafter, the job market for STEM Ph.D.s expanded and things became easy. Now it’s tough again, as exemplified by this Ph.D., from chemical engineering (Princeton) who got rejected from over 2300 jobs. 

Jack Weiss likes to joke that he’s just another unemployed guy living in his parents’ basement.

That leaves out a few key details: The Salt Lake City native has applied to more than 2,300 jobs since he graduated from Princeton in 2024 with his Ph.D. in chemical engineering. And he still doesn’t have a job.

He first pursued corporate science jobs and prestigious postdoctoral fellowships at national laboratories. Then he cast a wider net, applying to software engineering and other roles. Eventually, he was getting ghosted for food-preparation jobs, including at a company that sells frozen crab cakes.

For a time, Weis got a gig training AI on his expertise, including in engineering and fluid mechanics. That work dried up too.

I first interviewed Weis late last year, the day before his 30th birthday. Covering careers and the labor market, I endeavored to meet job seekers in all 50 states, hoping it would help me understand why many people felt so dim about their futures. Just 34% of Americans surveyed by Gallup in August said it was a good time to find a quality job.

The picture remains murky. The latest jobs report fell far short of expectations. The unemployment rate remains low, but the percentage of unemployed people out of work for 27 weeks or more was higher this summer than it’s been for more than a decade, with the exception of Covid-19 and its immediate aftermath.

The promise of AI—and unease around its application—also contributes to an environment that is harder than usual for young, college-educated workers to find work, while the opposite is true for those without degrees. More than 70% of U.S. respondents to a Pew Research Center survey released last month said they expected AI would lead to fewer jobs overall.

After dozens of interviews across all 50 states, Weis’s story struck me for the way it embodied the deep freeze that has paralyzed the current labor market in the past few years—what economists refer to as a low-hire, low-fire environment.

Many people have jobs, but they’re not leaving them, limiting opportunity for others. Those who don’t have a job are locked out of the growing economy as if it were a fortress, leaving them puzzled by the headlines of low unemployment and an accelerating GDP.

The guy is no slouch:

The son of two physicians, Weis graduated summa cum laude from Rice University and enrolled at Princeton for his Ph.D. in 2018. His research on ice formation was cited by the Nobel committee when it awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 2024.

The situation is exacerbated not only by fear of AI, but by applicants who submit hundreds of applications using AI, and employers, drowning in applications, uses AI to screen them.  I’d still want to be 30 again if I had the choice, but the job market is one of the things on the downside of that.

*Yesterday’s Washington Post article by Mark Wagner—”My sister may have visited me after death. There’s a term for it“—doesn’t show the supernatural, it at least suggests it (see article archived here).

One summery Friday, as I mowed the lawn, I’m pretty sure my dead sister, Caroline, appeared to me as a peach. On a tree that had in five years never borne fruit, a single, perfectly ripe peach nearly touched my nose as I bobbed my head under the boughs.

How and why Caroline became a peach is a story that begins in August 1985. As part of her wedding ceremony, we sang “Amazing Grace.” At 30, Caroline was no shrinking violet. She’d been hired as a technology analyst by the CIA. She insisted that she would not sing, “To save a wretch like me,” demanding instead that we sing, “That saved a peach like me.” So we sang Christianity’s most notable hymn with new words. No divine punishment ensued. In fact, Caroline went on to have a healthy family and succeed in her career in higher education.

After her wedding, she embraced all things peachy. We called her “Sweet Peach.” At our “Yankee swaps” at Christmas, each year a niece or nephew would give her a peach candle, and they would all sing the SNL carol — “It’s a candle, that same peach candle.”

. . .And here I was, two months later, staring at a peach dangling in front of my face. I pulled it clean and ran into the house to show my wife and son.

We went out to check. There were no other peaches on the tree. We have another peach tree, one that’s actually fecund, but those peaches were weeks from being ripe.

What else could we do? My son and I made a smoothie, and I called my siblings.

And I told the story to friends. To my surprise, many shared a similar tale: After a death, a special bird appears. Or the loved one arrives with surreal lucidity in a dream. Or they catch an unexpected whiff of cinnamon, or lilacs, a scent the person had loved the most.

Of course the author can’t really say this was a miracle—a sign from his dead sister—but when you read the end, it sort of becomes ambiguous:

Was the peach Caroline? Perhaps Shakespeare said it best. As Hamlet instructed his friend Horatio, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophies. I would suggest the working word at the tip of Shakespeare’s pen is “dreamed.” Our philosophies and models of what is possible are dreams. The true reality of our lives and deaths is something other, something we struggle to put into words. Sometimes, it tastes sweet.

If you can figure out what the guy is saying, you’re better than I am! It seems deliberately ambiguous.

I take the appearance of the peach as a coincidence, and nothing more.  Sometimes it happens, sometimes this stuff happens, and sometimes doesn’t, but many people are looking for some affirmation that the deceased live on, or at least something that vividly reminds them of those who died. And you don’t hear about the coincidences that don’t occur. I suggest this article verges on affirmation of the supernatural more than it does on extolling coincidences that, after all, happen many times in a huge population.

There are two successive comments with opposite views:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili shows her erudition:

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 Things With Faces:

From Cheryl’s Amazingly Positive, No Politics Allowed, Interesting People Group:

From Terrible Maps: U.S. states that have more cows than people:

Masih gets emotional speaking of Iranian protestors on death row:

From Luana; the town hall of Limoges, France, coming down after an arson attack:

J. K. Rowling is opposed to death threats no matter who makes them. This one is pretty scary, though.

Two from my feed. First, Greta has moved onto the latest cause:

A funny bit from Stephen Fry and Hugh Lsurie:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

And two from Professor (Emeritus) Cobb. Here’s the first cat in space. Sadly, as Wikipedia notes, “Félicette euthanized two months after the launch so that scientists could perform a necropsy to examine her brain.” That is horrible—NO MORE CATS IN SPACE!

It's Félicette Day!On the date in 1963 the first cat went to space. Here's the song we wrote about her youtu.be/70VCY9Iu6qc?…

— SPRAY (@spraypopmusic.com) 2026-10-18T07:50:41.344Z

Matthew asks, “What do they use it for?” Good question, and you can find the answer here. (It anchors the sponge in the sediment, but also keeps the animal above accumulating sediment.)

Some glass sponges may be the oldest animals on Earth. Individuals of Monorhaphis chuni are estimated at over 11,000 years old, and they build a single skeletal spike up to 3m long, the largest natural glass structure any animal makes. 🧪 #SpongeThursday #HowToBuildAGiant #marinelife

— Dr Craig R McClain (@drcraigmc.bsky.social) 2026-09-17T17:17:26.475Z

Sunday: Hili dialogue

October 18, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Sunday, October 18, 2026, sabbath for goyische cats, and National Exascale Day, which celebrates this:

Founded by CRAY, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, National Exascale Day takes place on October 18—1018 (one followed by 18 zeros). This number, 1,000,000,000,000,000,000, is a billion billion, or a quintillion. This relates to exascale in that an exascale is a quintillion computations per second. A quintillion computations is also known as an exaFLOP. An exascale computer can do a quintillion computations in a second, and exascale computing is working with computers that can do at least one exaFLOP per second. Exascale computers are about a million times faster than a laptop from the 2020s. The benefit is that these quicker computers will lead to quicker discoveries and innovations, which may lead to more lives saved from disease and natural disasters, and more food provided to more people.

Wikipedia adds this:

In 2022, the world’s first public exascale computer, Frontier, was announced. As of June 2026, Shenzhen Cloud Computing Center Co., Ltd’s LineShine is the world’s fastest exascale supercomputer.

Here’s a photo of the Frontier computer:

OLCF at ORNL, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also National Chocolate Cupcake Day, National No Beard Day, and World Menopause Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 18 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*In his ongoing osculation of the autocrat Vladimir Putin (and the “President”‘s attempt to lower gas prices), Trump just suspended a number of financial sanctions that Congress had imposed on Russia.

President Trump signed an executive order on Friday night exempting Russia from a new sanctions measure that Congress passed last month, offering another economic lifeline to Russian President Vladimir V. Putin as the United States turns to Russia for help in lowering gas prices.

The sanctions were intended to target Russian officials, oligarchs and financial institutions, and were part of a law that was named after Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who died in July after spending more than a year building support for the measure.

The law, which is intended to squeeze the financial lifelines sustaining Russia’s war against Ukraine, also provided Mr. Trump with additional tariff authority that he could use to punish countries that continue to trade with Russia.

The White House has broad authority to issue sanctions exemptions or waivers, and the new law requires Mr. Trump to notify Congress only if he opts against imposing the economic restrictions on Russia. Two days before the law is set to take effect, Mr. Trump exercised that power.

“I am hereby waiving the application of such sanctions, restrictions and duties provided for in the Graham Act,” Mr. Trump said in the order. “I have submitted to the Congress a certification that the issuance of such a waiver at this time is in the national interests of the United States.”

The order does not explain why waiving the sanctions is in the interests of the United States or what rationale Mr. Trump is providing to Congress for the waivers.

The explanation of the “national interest”:

The decision comes as Mr. Trump has in recent weeks embraced Russia and expressed frustration that Ukraine’s attacks on Russian refineries were helping to push up gasoline and diesel prices around the world. The biggest factor limiting supplies, though, remains the war in Iran.

Is it in the national interest to cozy up to Russia and Putin? Remember, the added influx of gas and diesel from the osculation of Russia will have very little effect on the American economy, with nearly all diesel and most gas produced in the U.S. with a much smaller amount coming from abroad—mainly Canada. This is all about Trump’s image, not the national welfare, but isn’t that the usual situation.

*Israeli residents of the West Bank are going on a rampage, first attacking Palestinian residents as well as Western news reporters and photographers, and now diplomats from Poland, France, and Belgium.

Masked settlers attacked a group of European diplomats during a visit to the occupied West Bank on Saturday, Belgium’s foreign minister said, on a second straight day of high-profile assaults on Palestinians and others during the sensitive olive harvest.

At least four people have been killed and more than 100 injured since the harvest began earlier this month, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Activists say Israeli authorities do little to stop attacks that involve weapons ranging from slingshots to guns. An attack Friday seriously injured a Washington Post photographer and others.

In Saturday’s attack in the Christian village of Taybeh, settlers targeted Belgium’s consul general, French and Polish diplomats and Catholic representatives, Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prevot said.

“A French mayor was assaulted and a Belgian vehicle damaged. Our team is safe,” Prevot said. He linked the attack to what he called Israel’s “illegal settlement policy” and pledged to push for further European Union sanctions. “Impunity for violent settlers must end,” he added.

Video shared by an activist at the scene, Amit Orfali, shows the French mayor, wearing a tricolor sash, leaning against a vehicle while sitting on the dusty ground. Other clips showed young masked men knocking insistently on a driver’s side window and asking for IDs, while other masked men carrying sticks advanced in the distance.

Orfali said the masked men “threatened to kill us.”

. . . Israel’s military in a statement confirmed Saturday’s attack on the diplomats and called it a “severe act of violence,” but said the visit had not been coordinated with it and no soldiers were at the scene.

. . .Israeli police said they had opened an investigation and vowed to work “until everyone who took part in these cases is brought to justice.” Foreign Minister Gideon Saar on X condemned the “severe acts of violence by Israeli rioters,” adding that his ministry was in contact with ambassadors from the countries concerned.

But Netanyahu’s office later issued a statement warning against “premature conclusions” in the incident and noted concerns about “a coordinated campaign to smear Israel.”

Well, no. NBC News showed Israelis attacking their reporter’s car, and breaking the window, for no reason, and also the Wahington Post photographer getting beat up. I don’t think conclusions are “premature.”  The whole mess is horrible, unconscionable, and Netanyahu needs to call it out for what it was and to provide more security from the IDF. Yes, Palestinians attack Israelis in the West Bank, too, but Israel has to have stringent control over its own citizens (Palestinians in Area C are not Israeli citizens). They can’t set an example of democracy and tolerance by allowing such violence (or not punishing it), and of course they surely realize that this kind of uncontrolled violence will further besmirch Israel’s already-rock-bottom reputation in the world.

*How many Press Secretaries has Trump had? At least six or seven, but I’m not going to look it up. The latest occupant of that woeful position, Katie Zacharia, lasted just five days after a pathetic first performance combined with her misrepresentations of her past.

The new White House press secretary, Katie Zacharia, is out of her role just five days into the job, two White House officials said Friday — ending a brief tenure that began amid West Wing infighting and voter discontent with Republicans, with midterm elections just weeks away.

The departure Friday was confirmed minutes after President Donald Trump said publicly that she should think about leaving, voicing support for her as a person but skepticism that she was right for the role.

“Maybe it’s not for her,” Trump told reporters outside the White House.

Her departure marked a rare and speedy retreat from a presidential appointment after a rough start to one of the highest-profile roles in the White House. Many Trump allies were taken aback by her, at times, halting appearance during her first White House briefing on Tuesday and in a succession of friendly interviews since then.

Trump picked the press secretary after minimal vetting. Questions about her background rapidly overshadowed her.

. . . . In his comments to reporters, Trump complained about the news media’s treatment of Zacharia. She has been enmeshed in questions about representing herself as an attorney even though she failed to pass the bar examination in California and is not licensed in any other state.

Trump cited two appearances on Fox News — an outlet that the White House generally sees as favorable.

“She’s been treated, I would say, pretty nastily. And I said to Katie just two minutes ago, I said, ‘Katie, you know, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want,’” Trump said.

“I said to her, ‘Honestly, if I were you, I’d reconsider,” he said.

One Trump ally said the feeling at the White House was that Zacharia did not have the necessary skills, or the “it” factor to be the press secretary, and it was better for the administration to move quickly to resolve the situation than to let it drag out shortly before the midterm elections.

. . .Zacharia’s downfall unfolded quickly.

On Thursday night, she did an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity in which the anchor pressed her extensively on her qualifications and appeared skeptical she was up to the job. Hannity speaks frequently with Trump, and his treatment of Zacharia was an indicator of her tenuous position.

Then, Friday morning, a “Fox & Friends” host asked Zacharia whether she had told Trump about her legal background. Her response made clear how little vetting had been done before her landing the role.

“You never want to be the story,” Fox’s Lawrence Jones said. “Do you wish you had disclosed to the president about the bar and not passing the bar?”

“Those questions weren’t asked,” Zacharia said. “I’m being hired as White House press secretary and not White House counsel.” [JAC: She lied about this repeatedly before she became press secretary: you don’t call yourself an “attorney” unless you’ve passed the bar exam.]

Here is her cringeworthy performance. One of the first comments says, “I thought this was SNL.” She reads, haltingly, from a script, begins by touting Trump’s “accomplishments” at length.  She mixes up Trump and her husband, and then winds up the conference after only about three questions. She would have been a huge embarrassment in the job and it’s appropriate that they deep-sixed her.

*Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian authority is now in the TWENTY-SECOND YEAR OF A FOUR-YEAR TERM, with the PLO regularly extending his term or postpoining elections.  Palestinians (and the world) should be outraged by this, but nobody seems to care. It’s not because Abbas is a “moderate,” for the PA still supports terrorism. The WSJ highlights this in an editorial-board op-ed called “The Palestinians see through Emmanuel Macron.” What does Macron have to do with this? Because the promise of elections led France last autumn to recognize Palestine as a state. Read an excerpt:

It’s that time of year again. Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority (PA), has issued a decree to postpone Palestinian elections. In exchange for recognition of Palestinian statehood last year, Mr. Abbas had promised French President Emmanuel Macron that he would hold elections in 2026 at last. Sometimes leaders and nations want to be lied to.

In June 2025 Mr. Abbas pledged that the PA was “committed to the organization of presidential and general elections within a year.” Weak at home, Mr. Macron touted this as a major breakthrough abroad. “In light of the commitments you have made,” he wrote, “France will proceed with the full recognition of Palestine.”

Australia and Canada joined the statehood parade while insisting that Hamas be excluded from the vote. Mr. Abbas has now postponed elections to September 2027 in consultation with the Hamas terrorists. Naturally the PA and Hamas blame Israel, whose fault it must be that they both run dictatorships, in the West Bank and Gaza, respectively.

By the new election date, Mr. Abbas will be 91, serving the 22nd year of what was a four-year term in office. There’s an excuse each year.

France, Canada, Australia and the U.K. published a statement Tuesday expressing “regret” over Mr. Abbas’s decision—but not their own. “Credible elections are an important element of the commitment that President Abbas and the Palestinian Authority made to reform,” they write. If they had really cared, they would have insisted that Mr. Abbas hold elections before they gave away recognition. But all they wanted from the PA was a fig leaf to cover their anti-Israel political pandering to Muslim and left-wing voters at home.

Mr. Abbas understood this only too well. Which is why the PA’s “pay-for-slay” program, which offers payments to terrorists who attack Jews, still persists under a new mechanism. Diplomatic recognition, which the West had long reserved for the day Palestinians made peace in negotiations with Israel, was surrendered for nothing. It won’t now be rescinded, at least not by these leaders.

Mr. Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and the rest have managed to prove how little influence they have—with both Israel and the so-called moderate PA.

In 2000, 2001 and 2008, the PA turned down Israeli offers of peace and Palestinian statehood. There is no sign that has changed, or that the PA is serious about reform, governance and democracy. There is no state-building going on in Ramallah—even Mr. Macron & Co. know that. Recognizing a State of Palestine was merely another way to bash Israel.

Yes, the WSJ op-ed section is said to be quite right-wing, but what I see in this column is not an ideological slant but the truth. Abbas keeps lying, he’s still enabling terrorism, and Western countries keep pandering to a man who enables terrorism.  Are we not supposed to recognize this?

Apropos, reader Bill sent me this cartoon. You probably know the background, which you can see in the background:

*Campaigning has become expensive, especially during the upcoming midterms where a number of races are tight. I learned of the price of the Senate campaign in Texas from Sam Sifton’s Oct. 15 NYT morning newsletter (article archived here). Texas is where, you may know, Democratic nominee James Talarico is running pretty even with his Republican opponent, state attorney General Ken Paxton. Look at the money these candidates are spending!

There are a number of tight races in the coming midterm elections, but there isn’t a more expensive one than the Senate showdown in Texas. It pits James Talarico, the Democratic nominee, against Ken Paxton, the state’s conservative attorney general. More than half a billion dollars has been spent on advertising already, and the race could become the most costly nonpresidential contest in U.S. history.

Democrats are hopeful, because Talarico has a tiny lead in the polls. But “such optimism stands in defiance of the political axiom that Texas is where idealistic Democrats go to be mugged by reality,” writes Robert Draper, a three-decade veteran of Texas political reporting. The party has not won a statewide race there for 32 years.

The race may turn on who each man says he — and his opponent — is.

Talarico has introduced himself to the state’s 32 million residents as a good Christian member of the Texas House, with a record of bipartisanship. At a town hall meeting last night, Talarico spoke about his faith and appealed to undecided voters. “I’m a proud Texas Democrat, but I already have a religion and I already have a sports team,” he said. “So, I have no problem sharing hard truths with my party if it’s what’s best for Texas.”

His appeal is meant to be broad, with proposals to cap credit card rates, cut middle-class taxes, lower prices and assist people with their first down payment on a home.

In return, Paxton and his supporters paint Talarico as a “weird” radical who believes that “God is nonbinary” and that there are more than two biological sexes. (Talarico did say those things but later renounced them.) Vice President JD Vance, stumping in Texas on Tuesday, mocked Talarico — whose girlfriend is a former aide — with a gay joke. “I love you too sir,” Vance told a man in the crowd. “In a totally platonic way, to be clear. I’m the vice president, not James Talarico.”

I’m glad I don’t live in Texas, as it would be hard to vote for Talarico with those ridiculous statements about sex and God, but harder to vote for Paxton. And I bet the total campaign expenses come near $750 million before election day.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has apparently failed to seize the day that has just gone by:

Hili: And so another day goes by.
Andrzej: Carpe diem.

In Polish:

Hili: I znów mija kolejny dzień.
Ja: Carpe diem.

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From Stacy:

From Meow Incorporated:

From Cheryl’s Amazingly Positive, No Politics Allowed, Interesting People Group:

Here’s Masih speaking in Spain, which, being one of the most antisemitic countries in Europe, would not give visas to the blinded protestors she wanted to bring with her

I found this while looking at “X”. I think there are more than one bridge, but it’s not clear, and, at any rate, this is ludicrous.  See the WSJ article here.

From Luana. Yes, the man’s a hero for risking his own life to save children, but these situations wouldn’t occur nearly as often with strict gun control in the U.S.:

From Simon, who calls this “Another job for Marco.” I can’t figure out if it’s in bad taste but it’s funny:

One from my feed: an Irish joke:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

And two from Doctor Cobb, both in a thread about spider silk:

Slimmer than a human hair, spider silk is an engineering powerhouse. 🕸️🧪Quinten Geldhof, also known as Microhobbyist, shows how a single spider can produce up to seven different types of silk, each with its own job. #Science #Microscope #Spiderwebs #Microscopy #Biology

— Museum of Science (@museumofscience.bsky.social) 2026-10-15T18:48:10.985Z

Sturdy dragline silk builds the web’s frame, while sticky blobs of silk set the trap for prey. Pound for pound, it’s up to five times stronger than steel, and a strand long enough to circle the Earth would weigh just 4.4 pounds! What would you use spider silk for?

— Museum of Science (@museumofscience.bsky.social) 2026-10-15T18:48:18.819Z

And three–count them, three–great songs for today’s music.  Here is the song that made Peggy Lee (real name: Norma Egstrom) famous, “Why Dont You Do Right?” , recorded in 1943 with Benny Goodman and his orchestra.  It was a huge hit and a million-seller back in days when that was a LOT of sales. As Wikipedia says, it was originally called “Weed Smoker’s Dream”, a song about drugs:

“Why Don’t You Do Right?” (originally recorded as “Weed Smoker’s Dream” in 1936) is an American blues and jazz-influenced pop song usually credited to Kansas Joe McCoy. A minor key twelve-bar blues with a few chord substitutions, it is considered a classic “woman’s blues” song and has become a standard. Singer Lil Green recorded a popular rendition in 1941, which Peggy Lee recorded the next year – accompanied by Benny Goodman – and made one of her signature songs.

Goodman was born to Jewish parents in Chicago, one of 12 children, and became one of the first jazz leaders to use black players in his groups. In this song, the combination of Goodman’s solos on the licorice stick and Peggy Lee’s soft delivery is lovely:

Speaking of a swing clarinet player who led small groups, here’s one whose proficiency rivals Goodman’s: Artie Shaw. This beautiful song, “All the Things You Are” , was recorded in 1939 as well, with Helen Forrest on vocals. The song was written by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein.

Shaw was married eight times; his wives included Ava Gardner and Lana Turner. Like Goodman, he was Jewish (so was Helen Forrest), and like Goodman, he was one of the first bandleaders to integrate his group, hiring Billie Holiday as a vocalist (she didn’t last long when the band toured the South).

If you want to hear Shaw at his best, listen to to “Frenesi” (like “All the Things You Are”, it has a great walking bass).

Wikipedia says this about the song above:

The chorus has become a favorite with many jazz musicians. The chorus is a 36-measure AA2BA3 form with two twists on the usual 32-bar AABA song-form: A2 transposes the initial A section down a fourth, while the final A3 section adds an extra four bars.

And when I heard Shaw and Forrest, I remembered that the same song was recorded, in several takes, by the immortal Charlie Parker. Here’s a 1945 recording with Dizzy Gillespie. It’s one of the first Parker songs I heard, and instantly fell in love with his music.

Caturday felid trifecta: Cat breeds that can’t be rehomed; cat taste testers; Pasadena’s CatCon; and lagniappe

October 17, 2026 • 11:00 am

We have three items today. The first, from AnimalsAroundTheGlobe, describes 19 cat breeds that, so the author claims, bond so much with their staff that they can’t subequently find new staff. Click to read:

An excerpt:

Most people think cats are aloof, coolly indifferent little roommates who “don’t really care who feeds them.” That myth falls apart completely with the breeds on this list. These cats don’t just prefer a favorite human – they fuse to one person so deeply that separation can look and feel like real grief, not simple adjustment.

Some of these cats will refuse food from anyone else. Some will pace by the door for hours, waiting for a specific set of footsteps. And at least one breed on this list has rescue workers describing them as “confused ex-partners” instead of surrendered pets. Keep scrolling, because the higher this list climbs, the harder these bonds are to break – and the final entry might change how you think about “just a cat” for good.

Here are two, and I’ll list the rest:

The Chartreux gets marketed as a “smiling, easygoing” French cat, but long-time fanciers will quietly warn you: once a Chartreux bonds, they are emotionally all-in. These cats rarely meow, yet they communicate volumes through eye contact, body language, and sheer physical closeness. They’re the type to park themselves on your laptop, not to be annoying, but to stay physically connected to you at all times.

Tonkinese cats sit genetically between Siamese and Burmese, and emotionally, they often feel like both breeds turned up to eleven. They’re social, extroverted, and crave near-constant interaction, but they usually choose one person as their emotional anchor and orbit them obsessively. That person gets the warmest greetings, the loudest purrs, and the most insistent lap invasions.

Tonks don’t do well in quiet, lonely homes. They want noise, activity, and – critically – their chosen human within easy reach. When separated, many turn vocal or destructive, not out of spite but sheer frustration. Rehoming a deeply bonded Tonkinese can feel like uprooting a tree with your bare hands; some never trust quite as fully again.

The others include Russian Blue, Korat, Burmese, Siamese, Ragdoll, Birman, Scottish Fold, Singapura, Oriental Shorthair, Turkish Van, Sphynx, Devon Rex, Cornish Rex, Abyssynian,  Maine Coon, Norwegian Forest Cat, and American Burmese.  Now you know some of these can be rehomed, but yes, I’ve heard that some of these breeds are “clingy.” If you have relevant experience with any, weigh in below.  One more excerpt:

The Bottom Line:

When people say “cats are independent,” they’re usually talking about the wrong cats – or no cats at all. The breeds on this list don’t just tolerate human company; they build an entire emotional universe around one specific person and defend that connection with startling intensity.

That devotion is what makes them magical in the right home and genuinely difficult to rehome once the bond is set. “Someone else will adopt them” isn’t a neutral fallback with these cats – for some, losing their one person is a real psychological wound, not a minor inconvenience.

A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.

Ernest Hemingway

If you change jobs often, move constantly, or treat pets as temporary houseguests, several of these breeds simply aren’t a fair match for your life. But if you’re ready for a ride-or-die relationship with fur, claws, and occasionally inconvenient devotion, these one-person cats offer a level of loyalty most dog owners insist doesn’t exist outside their own species. Which breed on this list do you think is the most impossible to rehome – and would you sign up for that kind of love anyway?

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This NYT article is really a 4-minute podcast segment about how cat food companies (and yes, there’s some about d*g food) tweak their products to deal with finicky cats whose preferences change over time.

And here’s a recent NYT article how animal food companies use captive moggies (and d*ggies) to decide what the market wants. Click to read if you subscribe:

An excerpt:

Imagine dozens of cats napping or milling around a space that looks a lot like a pet day care center.

Every day at 4 p.m., dinner is served. The cats step into cubbyholes, each with two trays of kibble atop scales. The cats choose which food they like better, and the scales measure how much they consume. Nutritionists at a Royal Canin pet center in southern France are watching: Which kibble do the animals prefer? How enthusiastically do they chow down? A team uses the data to adjust recipes and devise new ones.

Pet food makers like Royal Canin, owned by the global consumer conglomerate Mars, are pouring money into research to understand the palates of cats and dogs — and to cater to people who see their pets as family members. Even as the war in Iran has spurred inflation and wage growth has not kept up, the pet food market has kept growing.

And as pandemic pets, adopted in droves in 2020, enter middle age, pet food makers are zeroing in on foods aimed at aiding aching joints, strengthening tired muscles and protecting cognitive function.

“Aging is one of the biggest opportunities,” said Cécile Coutens, president of Royal Canin. The company’s senior cat food line includes extra-soft mousse for cats ages 11 and up and easy-to-eat kibble for cats 15 and up. Many companies sell supplements for cats with dementia and to support healthy brain aging.

. . . More than $17 billion was spent on cat food in the United States over the last year, up 14 percent from the same period two years ago, according to NielsenIQ, a consumer research firm. (Dog food sales were roughly even.) In contrast to previous generations, when parents took in pets at the request of their children, people today often have pets before they have children, if they have children, Ms. Coutens said.

Companies are investing in premium pet food lines that cater to wealthier people, as the K-shaped economy — shorthand for the widening gap between the rich and poor — persists.

While in some ways cats are lower maintenance than dogs, cats tend to require some human ingenuity when it comes to food.

. . . Like Nestlé, which has two centers where researchers study cat and dog behavior, Royal Canin has an extensive research program dedicated to dogs and cats. At Royal Canin’s pet center in Aimargues, only the most discerning eaters of the 377 dogs and cats that live on campus participate in taste tests. The company’s other pet center is in Ohio. As part of training, kittens are offered food of different textures and flavors to develop their senses. At 7 months, they are taught to eat from designated feeders.

. . .Taste is a big focus. Scott McGrane, a feline expert at Mars’s Waltham Petcare Science Institute in England, said his team was especially interested in understanding the senses and tastes of cats, including senior cats. Why didn’t they have a preference for sweet foods? Why do they love tuna so much? He said researchers determined that cats had the umami taste receptor, which enables them to taste and detect umami compounds. Tuna has a unique combination of compounds that is akin to “super umami” for cats, he said.

As cats age, some of their taste buds fade, but they retain their perception of bitterness, causing certain foods to become less appealing, Ms. Miret-Catalan said. Her team designs food for senior cats that masks bitterness and enhances attractive aromas to keep cats interested in their food as they age, she said.

Here’s an independent cat person discussing the Royal Canin cat food brand, which offer over 100 different type of cat foods (!), including foods for specific breeds, lifestyles, age, and so on. The review isn’t that glowing, criticizing the dry food for encouraging urinary problems. (It’s important to get your cat to drink.). She also says that for wet food, less expensive food may have a similarly balanced diet. A cat expert I talked to says that Royal Canin Food is okay, and so is Science Diet, and you may want to get your cat a mixture of wet and dry food, along with some NO SALT chicken broth to help them hydrate.  The Expert also said that you should take your cat to the vet once a year for a checkup, and get a blood panel to detect any problems (senior cats, over 6 or 7 years old, require additional blood tests).  Yes, it costs more, but cats are members of the family!

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Finally, a reader informed me that Pasadena, California has an annual Cat Convention that’s described in the article below (click to read for free):

At the Pasadena Convention Center on Saturday, a woman with bright green hair and enormous furry ears posed beside a man wearing matching ears and a mechanical-looking face mask. Nearby, a mannequin modeled a burgundy velvet robe embroidered with the words “Cat Lady.” Somewhere else, someone was in a booth for a video explaining how to pet a cat.

Welcome to CatCon 2026, where the cats are celebrities, the humans are devoted fans and nobody thinks twice about wearing whiskers in public.

Saturday’s festivities were sold out, according to floor manager Andru Cantu, who surveyed the bustling convention halls with satisfaction.

“We stopped selling tickets because we were sold out for Saturday,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of really good vendors giving away a lot of really cool treats and samples.”

And what a selection.

There were cat-themed stickers, plush toys, handmade blankets, elaborate costumes and enough feline merchandise to furnish a reasonably eccentric household. The Temptations booth featured a giant yellow “Cat Bodega,” while another vendor offered something called Rad Cat, complete with a retro beach-van illustration.

At “How to Pet Your Cat,” suggesting that even the most experienced cat owners might have something left to learn.

Presiding over the festivities was Stephen Ray Morris, CatCon’s emcee, a veteran convention moderator and former host of a cat-themed podcast called “The Pur Cast.”

For Morris, CatCon offers something beyond shopping and celebrity sightings. It provides a gathering place for people whose pets have no time for such silliness.

“Dog people [have] the dog park, whereas cat people have CatCon,” he explained.

Cantu suggested that the appeal goes even deeper.

“I think it helps the people who feel a little bit less included to feel included with fellow cat people,” he said.

Indeed, among the colorful costumes, elaborate displays and tables overflowing with feline paraphernalia, the convention seemed less like a trade show than an enormous gathering of people who understood one another perfectly.

After all, loving a creature that routinely ignores you requires a certain shared understanding.

And at CatCon, there was plenty of that to go around. Meow.

A half-hour video documenting CatCon, which appears to be one of the biggest cat shows/conventions in the U.S.:

Here’s a news video documenting one feature of this year’s convention: hunky beefcake Aussie firefighters who love cats:

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Lagniappe: Two items today.  First, cats who make weird meows, including one who grunts like a pig and another who sounds like a typewriter:

And The Kiffness returns with a new song, “Hey Luga Luga”:

h/t: Robert, Divy

Saturday: Hili dialogue

October 17, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to CaturSaturday, October 17, 2026, shabbos for Jewish cats, and International Raw Milk Cheese Appreciation Day. Here’s a selection of cheeses, some made with unpasteurized milk, photographed in Paris six years ago. I wish this store were close to me in Chicago; I’d go for the goat cheeses on the bottom shelf.

It’s also Black Poetry Day, Bridge Day, Forgive an Ex Day, Four Prunes Day (what you’re supposed to eat if your gut is clogged), International Sloth Day, National Pasta Day, National Fetch Day, and Sweetest Day, when you’re supposed to buy your sweetheart some chocolates.

Here’s a Jewish joke for Fetch Day:

A guy gets a new dog and he can’t wait to show him off to his neighbor, when the neighbor comes over, the guy calls the dog into the house, bragging about how smart the critter is.

The dog quickly comes running and stands looking up at his master, tail wagging furiously, mouth open in classic doggie-smile position, eyes bright with anticipation.

The guy points to the newspaper on the couch and commands, “Fetch!”

Immediately the dog sits down, the tail wagging stops, the doggie-smile disappears; he hangs his head, looks balefully up at his master and says in a whiney voice, “Oy! My tail hurts from wagging so much and that dog food you’re feeding me tastes absolutely terrible. Also I can’t remember the last time you took me out for a walk…”

The neighbor looks puzzled.

“Oh”, explains the dog owner, “he thought I said ‘Kvetch!”

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 17 Wikipedia page.

Oh, and here’s a clay doll a friend found in a thrift store in Asheville, North Carolina.  Look familiar? Pure coincidence! It’s made by an artist named Diana Manning, it’s clay, and my friend is going to get it for me!

There’s a Google Doodle today celebrating the WNBA playoffs. Click below to see where it goes:

Da Nooz:

*Another day, another school shooting: this time in Oregon, where a 16-year-old killed four people, including a teacher and three children, and critically wounded two more.

A 16-year-old blasted his way through locked doors into an Oregon elementary school on Thursday, killing three children and a teacher before an armed bystander pursued him inside and shot him dead, the police said.

The suspect, who has not been named, forced his way into Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Ore., around 1 p.m., officials said at a news conference on Thursday. Minutes later, officers responding to the scene found three children, aged 5, 8 and 11, and a teacher dead. A 7-year-old and another teacher were critically injured.

The spasm of violence is part of a long string of school shootings that have stricken the nation over the past three decades, leaving deep and lasting scars on communities, and in some cases on the entire country.

“Like so many in our community, I’m struggling to make sense of a loss that feels unimaginable,” Mayor Melanie Kebler of Bend said at the news conference.

The violence unfolded in minutes before the bystander put an end to it.

The police said they first received a call at 12:59 p.m. from a person in a car who said they had been shot at by someone with a long gun. In the moments that followed, dozens of 911 callers told the police a shooter was in the school.

By 1:02 p.m., the school was in lockdown, and police officers were on scene. There, they found the three children and the teacher dead, Chief Mike Krantz of the Bend Police Department said at the news conference.

The chief did not name the victims, the shooter or the bystander who killed him. Gov. Tina Kotek called the bystander a hero and addressed him directly.

If guns were banned, or restricted as severely as they are in Great Britain or Norway, this would happen less often (and we’d have fewer suicides, too). Yes, I know the arguments for guns, with the claim that America is special, and bad people would get guns anyway, but nobody’s tried the experiment.  And I bet that the gun that shooter used was obtained legally, like many of the parental guns that kids bring to school. All of this, of course, is in the Constitutionally mandated need for a “well regulated militia.”

*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal intimates that Trump is planning a huge strike on Iran before the midterm elections might, by changing Congress, take away his power to wage war. His piece is called “Something is coming for Tehran.”

It’s Friday, October 16, and on January 3, the members of the new US House of Representatives will walk into their offices. By all signs, several dozen Democrats will move into offices vacated by Republicans routed in the fall. The nearly certain loss of the House, alongside the fairly likely loss of the Senate, will make the president’s life hell. Not only his, perhaps.

U.S. law permits the president to launch military action, but after 60 days approval is required on Capitol Hill. The president, certainly the current one, can continue, but in that case he is exposed to legal risks and especially to budgetary ones. A hostile Congress can block budgets, and America, as is well known, does not fight with only its fingernails.

What can be done in two months that would change the picture? And if the goal is to get ahead of the hostile Congress, is it worth it for Trump, against all odds and analyses, to open a campaign even before then?

A growing buzz has surrounded Washington and Jerusalem in recent days. It is no longer false rumors and speculation. Something is happening. On its face, that runs counter to all logic. The Iranians don’t want to escalate before the elections in Israel, and Trump doesn’t want to escalate before the elections in America. But if you start a campaign at the end of October and then get approval from the still-Republican Congress at the end of December, perhaps that is the way to topple the regime? After all, the Iranians work for the long term, and two months to them is nothing.

Or perhaps the story is a limited, pinpoint event that won’t send fuel prices soaring but will bring a significant achievement that will, hopefully, end the debate over the war’s necessity and results. What could be short and elegant? How do you avoid getting entangled in a third round that ends with no clear decision, at a sensitive time for two politicians whom the polls predict a hard blow, on both sides of the ocean?

I haven’t heard anything elsewhere about this “growing buzz,” which I take to mean that the U.S. is going to take military action against Iran, or get permission from Congress to do so, before the New Year. He’d have to do that pretty soon, because if Congressional approval is needed to escalate or re-start attack on Iran, that will not be forthcoming from a Democratic Congress, which is a real possibility.

*As always on Saturday, I will steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s news-and-snark column at the Free Press, called this week, “TGIF: The new school of American diplomacy.” Note that Greta has a brand new bag.

→ Greta pops up everywhere now: Greta Thunberg is now in France with the student protesters. I’m actually curious: Who pays for all this? On whose dime does Greta sail all around Europe? It’s an endless Euro Summer. Who is keeping her in keffiyehs? Who is she wearing? The protesters she was there to support, meanwhile, continue to just burn down Paris, including its oldest covered food market, a beautiful place called Marché des Enfants Rouges. (Okay it’s not confirmed who did, but I’m going out on a limb and assuming it’s the roving arsonists lighting their schools on fire.) But back to Greta. How does it work? She just sees stuff on TikTok and her mysterious benefactor is like, “I’m getting you on a sailboat there immediately!” Why? Why must we now listen to Greta explain school funding issues in France? The only thing that makes me believe in a globalist conspiracy is Greta and the fact that she rounds the corner anytime someone switches on a bullhorn. Why have I seen so many portraits of her in so many print magazines? Why was her face on a building in San Francisco looming over me and then she’s on the Gaza flotilla and now she’s in Paris. It actually sounds like a fun party circuit. Could she sell it as a cruise?

→ Churchill to be replaced by an animal, potentially a hedgehog: Following a public survey that drew more than 2.5 million selections, Winston Churchill, Jane Austen, J.M.W. Turner, and Alan Turing will be replaced on British banknotes by the puffin, barn owl, buff-tailed bumblebee, and hedgehog. The hedgehog proved the public’s favorite mammal, receiving 259,665 selections, so it is likely to be the one to dethrone Churchill. The Nazis couldn’t best this man in life, but a glorified porcupine is about to steal his money throne. They can’t pick any national heroes, so they just celebrate little animals. The great man who was Winston Churchill, ousted by a hedgehog. After surviving an armored train ambush, I doubt he expected his downfall to be a two-pound living pincushion.

And one about the odious Francesca Albanese, who won’t go away:

→ Where exactly are Israelis supposed to live? They can’t have vacation homes?: Here is the much-celebrated Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, commenting on a story about Israelis literally just buying vacation homes.

Hmm. So Jews are evil no matter where they go, is what you’re saying? An Israeli couple buying a bungalow in Serbia is globalizing apartheid. Got it. These folks want a genocide so bad—sorry, they want to “globalize the intifada”—and they’re getting worse at hiding it. (She deleted it.)

Meanwhile, take a look at the new medieval antisemitism that’s so hot for Halloween. That’s right, it’s witches with Stars of David on them! It’s Dr. Evil, but his ring is now a Jewish star! He wants 100 million shekels! How clever. Modern! I think I’ll go as the Jewish lady who pretended to be Palestinian.

*I’ve read about five reviews of the new movie about grifter Elizabeth Holmes, “You Can See Everything,” and they’re pretty similar.  All of them discuss the unresolved mystery of whether Holmes believes what she’s saying, and mention the aggressive, unempathic nature of filmmaker Nathan Fielder. The L.A. Times‘s review is typical, and is called, “A prank comic faces down a fraudster in the fab doc ‘You Can See Everything.’ Who blinks first?”

. . . .Co-directed by Fielder and Lance Oppenheim (“Primetime”), “You Can See Everything” is the closest Fielder has come to making a traditional documentary. A thrillingly cringe-tastic interviewer, he blurts out blunt questions like a bungee jumper leaping off a bridge, including asking Holmes’ romantic and business partner Billy Evans, the heir to a San Diego boutique hotel chain, whether it’s possible a woman convicted of fraud might be with him for his money.

At nearly three hours long, “You Can See Everything” won’t bore you for a minute. The hook is right there in the title, Fielder’s challenge to the audience: Here’s how Holmes held up to his scrutiny — do we think she’s telling the truth? But be alert. Fielder remains a trickster. One shot in particular proves you can see everything while being blind to what you’re actually watching.

In the first half of the movie, Holmes and Evans, the father of her two young children, give the small crew complete access to their lives during her last weeks of freedom, including inviting Fielder to sleep in their guest bedroom. It’s an act of “radical transparency,” Evans says. As evidence, there’s a fully nude shot of Evans in the shower, testifying to the intimacy the subjects claim they’re granting the team and the confidence they have that the documentary will make them look great. (Evans also boasts that he’s “excellent” in the sack.)

Holmes maintains both her innocence and her eerie smile, a rictus of empathy. She constantly nods, subliminally snake-charming the listener into a sense of agreement. That assessment might be fair or it might be her reputation making you over-analyze her tics. Doubling down, she even insists she’s never told a lie in her life — a claim that momentarily leaves Fielder at a loss for words.

Yet at times, Holmes really does appear to be sincere. Once she surrenders herself to the Bryan Federal Prison Camp in Texas (where, in an unmentioned coincidence, Epstein collaborator Ghislane Maxwell is also incarcerated), the tone shifts into film noir as Fielder struggles to reconcile Elizabeth Holmes’ dual identities. Is she the sweet-natured scientist, the only version of her he’s ever met, or a femme fatale who may still be running a scam?

. . .But thinking differently is Fielder’s awkward superpower. Sooner or later, all of his projects circle around to his concern that he’s simply wired to be unpleasant. His interactions with Holmes are pure cringe comedy, like when she starts to cry perhaps a bit on cue and he stiffly sputters, “Do you want, like, a tissue?” For the record, he brings her one.

. . . Ultimately, suspicion reigns. “You Can See Everything” is an absorbing study of public presentation and private doubts, a documentary that asks more questions than it answers. I hope Fielder will smile and nod approvingly at me if I say I left the film distrusting him, too, especially Seyfried’s re-staging of a long monologue Holmes delivered in prison where recording devices aren’t allowed. [JAC: Amanda Seyfried played Holmes in a biographical movie.] Can we believe that Holmes really did say, “I’m tired of having other people speak for me,” or was that laugh line written by the master manipulator himself? I’m now as paranoid as he is — and what a pleasure.

Yes, I will be seeing this movie. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a nearly perfect rating from a large sample of both critics and moviegoers (click to go to page):

*The NYT has an article on how Americans feel about socialism. Some of the polling results are interesting, even if as a whole they’re hard to interpret. Here are a few.

First, overall figures:

Americans are becoming more open to socialism, but they have not broadly embraced it. In August, positive impressions of socialism topped 40 percent for the first time since Gallup began tracking that figure in 2010. In contrast, negative views of capitalism have sharply increased.

This leads one to wonder, “What do Americans think that those systems mean?”  See second figure below:

In 1948, when Gallup asked Americans to describe their understanding of socialism in their own words, about one-third defined it as government ownership or control; by 2018, just 17 percent defined it that way.

In practice, Americans have varying ideas about what constitutes socialism. Most Americans agree that free health care for all is socialism; more say public schools and libraries, both of which are taxpayer-funded services provided through the government, are not socialism than say that they are.

So how do you explain the changes in definition over time? I’d attribute the increase in “equality” to the Left, which is more socialistic but also more adherent to the concept of equality (or equity).  The article says this later on:

A softening view of socialism has gained ground as voters have expressed increasing disenchantment with the political and economic system. About two-thirds of voters in a Times/Siena poll from May said that the system needed major changes or to be torn down entirely, up from 59 percent in October 2024.

And in a reversal from 2024, Democrats are now more likely than Republicans to say they want the system torn down entirely.

Those deeply disillusioned voters were more likely to view socialism positively than voters who said the system just needed to be changed, suggesting that Americans’ deep and growing frustration may be driving some voters to consider socialism.

Fine; let’s see how governance by the Democratic Socialists works out. Do voters know it goes with antisemitism?

Finally,

Not all of the politicians who are described as socialists are affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, and some of them do not even identify as socialists.

In fact, some of the most well-known democratic socialists are not always thought of that way. Less than two-thirds of Americans identified Senator Bernie Sanders, who ran as a democratic socialist in the 2016 presidential election, as a socialist. Only a small majority used that label for Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, both of whom are members of the D.S.A.

The question is whether an association with the word “socialism” — whatever it might mean — matters at the ballot box.

When asked if a candidate’s D.S.A. affiliation mattered, just under half of voters in the Times/Siena poll from September said it did not matter either way. Still, voters were about twice as likely to say that they would not vote for a democratic socialist (29 percent) than that they would (14 percent).

Democrats are more likely than independents or Republicans to say they would support a democratic socialist candidate or that it does not matter. But even among Democrats, socialism is at the root of a persistent and heated debate about the future of that party.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is making threats:

Andrzej: Hili, don’t disturb me right now.
Hili: Well, if I’m disturbing you, I can move out.
In Polish:
Ja: Hili, nie przeszkadzaj mi teraz.
Hili: Jeśli ja ci przeszkadzam, to mogę się wyprowadzić.

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

From Give Me a Sign:

From The English Language Police. Find the mistake.

From Terrible Maps:

From Masih; a final letter from an imprisoned protestor in Iran written shortly before his execution. It is indeed heartbreaking.

From Luana; there’s an independent investigation of Jason Arday after Cambridge decided not to go too deeply into the affair:

The Number Ten Cat has it right:

John Oliver makes a very weak argument for allowing trans-identified males to compete in women’s sports. J. K. Rowling replies, but with mixed feelings because Oliver had previously helped her with one of her charities.

One from my feed, and it’s some essay!

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

And two from Doctor Cobb. Apparently the 30th anniversary edition also had DNA of the wrong chirality (I’m seeing Dawkins speak in Chicago’s Symphony Hall on Sunday). The topic is “Genes and the Meaning of Life.”

Look at this from the link!

Tips to Prepare for Richard Dawkins Events

Attending a Richard Dawkins event is an exciting experience, but it’s important to be prepared. Here are some tips to help you make the most of your Richard Dawkins concert:

  1. Arrive early: To ensure you get a good spot, it’s best to arrive at the venue early. This will give you time to find your seat or secure a prime spot on the floor.

  2. Dress comfortably: Richard Dawkins concerts are known for their high-energy performances, so it’s important to dress comfortably. Opt for clothes and shoes that you can move and dance in.

  3. Stay hydrated: With all the excitement and dancing, it’s easy to forget to stay hydrated. Make sure to bring a water bottle with you to the concert and drink plenty of water throughout the night.

  4. Follow the rules: Each venue may have different rules and restrictions, so it’s important to familiarize yourself with them before attending the concert. This can include restrictions on cameras, bags, or outside food and drinks.

  5. Bring earplugs: While Richard Dawkins concerts are known for their loud music, it’s important to protect your hearing. Consider bringing earplugs to help reduce the risk of hearing damage.

You know a gene is selfish when its DNA twists the wrong way, as demonstrated by the left-handed double-helix proudly adorning the 50th Anniversary Edition of the multimillion copy bestseller on this topic.

— Simon Fisher (@profsimonfisher.bsky.social) 2026-10-16T09:24:49.326Z

It’s a worm below. English translation: “I absolutely love creatures like this that seem to exist beyond human comprehension.”

こういう人智の外側にいるような生物だいすき

— でんか (@k-hermit.com) 2026-10-16T12:00:31.619Z

Readers’ wildlife video

October 16, 2026 • 8:15 am

If you have good photos or videos with a wildlive/biology theme, send them in.

Today we have a short but lovely video from reader Mark in Australia.  His notes are these:

The birds in the video are Little Corellas (Cacatua sanguinea), an Australian cockatoo, filmed at Winchelsea, in the state of Victoria. My drone was hovering  when the flock came from nearby to inspect the strange object in their airspace. 

When my daughter was quite young I asked her if she had noticed the large flock of corellas that had moved into the area. She asked “Are they the birds that sound like ghosts?” I had to say yes. Their call is not harsh like  a sulphur-crested cockatoo, but high pitched and sort of spooky.

If you want to hear their spooky calls, go to this video.