Thusday: Hili dialogue

November 5, 2026 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Thursday, November 5, 2026. I am declaring it International Hili Day, for, as Andrzej wrote yesterday in answer to several of my questions:

Hili was born in early spring 2013, and Paulina and her sister brought her to us. Hili will be buried tomorrow, under the pear tree she loved to climb when she was little.

The Queen was buried this morning. Here’s another nice photo of her:

We’ll have shortened Hili dialogues (yes, I’m keeping the name) for a a few days, as today I go to the ophthalmologist for my checkup and tomorrow I have visitors from out of town. Plus I haven’t prepared this post in advance, as I usually do, as yesterday I went to get glasses (and a pumpkin pie) at Costco yesterday and still have not recovered from Hili’s crossing of the Rainbow Bridge. Bear with me; I do my best.

It’s also Basketball Day, National Nachos Day, and National Saxophone Day.  Here’s Stan Getz  playing “Body and Soul”.  I posted Coleman Hawkins’s version of this song not long ago.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 5 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*I’m sure people are up to their ears in post-election analysis, so I’ll just post a couple of short items. This is from the NYT’s daily newsletter by Adam Kushner and Even Gorelick:

Two parties remade:

Democrats. Tuesday’s result will send both moderates (such as Adam Hamilton of Kansas) and progressives (such as Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan) to Washington. The two factions fought bitterly in many primaries this fall, but candidates from both sides won Election Day victories. Progressives want the party to push bold, transformative ideas like Medicare for All. But Democrats can’t maintain their momentum in 2028 if they can’t persuade Trump voters to back them again. Which way will the party go? The argument between the camps will define the next two years.

Republicans. Trump pushes his allies to parrot his ideas — on war, government spending, the economy. He threatens apostates that he will back their opponents in primaries. But it hurt Republicans in this election to be seen as proxies for an unpopular president. Now that he’ll be a lame duck, Republicans may feel comfortable putting distance between themselves and Trump. It began yesterday, when Vice President JD Vance attributed the electoral drubbing to the war in Iran. After a defeat come the recriminations.

*Trump admitted yesterday that the U.S. war with Iran contributed to the Demoocratic landslide in the midterms,

President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday blamed Republicans’ stunning midterm losses on the administration’s unpopular war with Iran, though Trump said he had no choice but to launch the conflict and would do it again.

“It’s largely true because it drove the gasoline [prices] up a little bit,” the president said Wednesday afternoon on the site of his half-finished White House ballroom, his first public appearance since voters handed Democrats significant majorities in the House and Senate.

“At the same time, if I had to do it again, I’d have to do it again,” Trump said of the war, before directing the attention of his aides and reporters to the helipad he had installed on the White House lawn in September. “You can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”

Though Trump himself made the decision to go to war with Iran — egged on by powerful outside advisers and some aides, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — Trump continued Wednesday to distance himself from the GOP’s losses. Late Tuesday, he insisted that “if I was on the ballot, we would have won.” On Wednesday, he noted that “thousands” of people packed his rallies in competitive states in the final month of the campaign.

Trump’s acknowledgment of the war’s role in Tuesday’s Democratic landslide came after Vance posted lengthy remarks on social media saying voters wanted Trump to end the war, focus on the cost of living and inflation, put America first and “change our relationship to Israel.”

“The reason we lost is the war,” said Vance, who opposed the conflict and is considering a run for president in two years.

Vance’s post echoed the recriminations among many other Republicans, who blamed Trump for their party’s historic midterm rout. In private calls and texts through the night and into the morning, Republicans lamented political strategies — like an unprecedented mid-decade redistricting gambit in southern states — that failed to make up for politically damaging actions by the president, including launching the war with Iran and dismissing popular anger over high gas prices.

But surely a lot of things contributed to the Republican rout, and surely the cost of living played a substantial role.  Although Trump said he’d work with Democrats, but he also said this:

“My message is, congratulations to the Democrats, and I look forward to working with you for the good of our country,” he said.

The president said he plans to work with the opposing party, saying, “I know a lot of Democrats. I have total veto power and I’m sure we’ll be able to work things out.”

“I think they’re gonna want to work with me,” he said. “Otherwise I’d just veto everything and they’re not gonna want that.”

The president insisted that so many Republicans lost because he wasn’t on the ballot.

“I feel that I wasn’t on the ballot, and there was nothing that could be done about that,” he said. “If I was, we would have won.”

What he meant was “Congress damn well better do what I want, or I’ll kick their bills right back into the Capitol.”

*Over at “It’s Noon in Israel,” Amit Segal sees a bit of positivity for Israel in the U.S. slections, even though Democrats, mostly not friends of the Jewish state, took control of Congress.

It’s Thursday, November 5, and “There’s no question that the anti-Israel core in the House of Representatives has grown,” former Prime Minister Yair Lapid commented following the Democratic sweep in the midterms. But, he argues, there is still an opening with reasonable Democrats: “These people aren’t against Israel. They’re against extremist ministers who say crazy things.” Most importantly, he insists, “they’re against Netanyahu.”

Democratic congressman Brad Lander chose to stone rather than pick Lapid’s olive branch: “We aren’t starving for a barnstorming tour. We’re hungry to see respect for international law and human rights.”

New Michigan senator Abdul El-Sayed made sure to make his views on Israel clear in his victory speech: “We don’t want our money sent to do apartheid, or genocide, or war.” I’m certain Donald Trump’s announcement that the aid is coming to an end will now put El-Sayed’s mind at ease about the cost of bananas in Michigan.

What an odious, Jew-hating man!  Genocide and apartheid, indeed. This, of course, echoes Cenk’s infamous commercial blaming American problems on Israel and its “genocide and apartheid”—an arrant blood libel from Michigan’s Senator-in-Waiting. More:

But this blue tsunami has a silver lining. The blue wave raised all boats, and several strongly pro-Israel Democrats who were at risk are now safely sitting beside their significantly less friendly colleagues.

The fight to come will undoubtedly be over the source of the wave. The big winners of Tuesday were the Blue Dogs, the Problem Solvers and the New Dems. The DSA candidates were not the ones flipping R+15 seats. Still, as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez declared in Michigan, “If we can win here, we can win anywhere.”

The fact that El-Sayed won by only six points, compared with Texas Senate winner James Talarico’s 12, will not stop them from proclaiming 2026 Year One of the revolution.

Their revolutionary plans face a challenge in a House majority of around 40 seats. That overwhelming majority means the 10 to 15 new DSA members won’t have the numbers to hold the caucus hostage on votes. Meanwhile the Democrats holding the key positions next Congress are pro-Israel.

. . .The more immediate question for Israelis is whether the wave washed away Trump’s appetite for war with Iran. Thankfully, the president appears to be unaffected. Despite the Vance wing seeing the Republican defeat as its chance to end the Iran war, Trump flatly stated he would launch the war again, because “long term, it’s the only answer.”

. . . With his domestic agenda dead on arrival and just a dash of Trump’s stubbornness, the greatest losers of the midterms may still be the ayatollahs.

From Stacy. This is true: just google the word:

From Melissa Steinberg on Facebook. All American Jews need this sign in their front yard:

From Cats That Have Had Enough of Your Shit:

From Masih; two of 12 young men who were hanged. One was put through a mock execution before he was actually hanged.

From the Number Ten Cat, whose dislike of Trump is frequently on display:

From Luana, and this approbation from a member of the Muslim Brotherhood appears to be true (El-Sayd has credibly denied that he has ties to the Muslim brotherhood). Note al-Dardiri’s blatant Islamism.

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

And an amazing video from Matthew Cobb:

Fire ants build a bridge using their own to cross the waterTag someone who needs to see this 🐜#ants #insects #nature

— Ants Life 🐜 (@antslife.bsky.social) 2026-11-04T14:09:59.881738Z

In memoriam: Hili

November 4, 2026 • 8:30 am

As most readers know by now, Hili—the beloved cat of Andrzej and Malgorzata, and then of Andrzej after Malgorzata passed away—died yesterday afternoon, or rather was “put to sleep” by the vet in Dobrzyn.  Hili had been under the weather for several days, and then stopped eating. On her first visit to the vet, she was suspected of having pancreatitis, an inflammation of the pancreas. The vet started Hili on IV fluids with antibiotics and prescribed force feeding. But still Hili ate and drank very little, and was losing weight.

On the next visit, the vet said that, well, Hili might have liver or kidney disease and advised continuing the fluids.  Hili did not resume eating or drinking. Finally, on a third visit the vet took an X-ray and found a tumor on her liver, saying he suspected cancer all along. An operation was scheduled, and, when they opened Hili up, they found a tumor that had metastasized throughout her innards.  According to Andrzej’s wishes, Hili was not brought out of anesthesia, but was euthanized while still under.  It was a merciful death, and Andrzej’s only comfort is that Hili is no longer suffering.

What can I say about a cat I knew for over a decade, a cat that, along with Andrzej and Malgorzata, made me fly to Poland every year or two? I’ve written about Malgorzata and Andrzej, of course, and how their warm hospitality and strict work ethic provided the ideal place for me to chill out while working.  Andrzej and Malgorzata would sit at their computers all day writing Listy, while I would lie on the small green couch and try to lure Hili to sleep on my chest or lie beside me, like this:

Hili was her own cat, and she would come to you on her own terms.  When she was through sleeping with me in the bed, she’d go to the bedroom door and leave, most often to go sleep with Andrzej and Malgorzata. She would tolerate being picked up, but barely.  She was independent and opinionated, and that gave rise to the personality that Andrzej confected for her, a personality expressed in the daily dialogues on this site. In the pictures below you can see that she’s was sometimes opposed to being held.

After a few visits it became clear that I was greatly enamored of this cat—so enamored that I had Hiroko, in Japan, embroider Hili’s likeness on a shirt. It’s a precious garment:

Although she liked me, sometimes, she clearly loved Malgorzata and Andrzej. She would often sit on their laps or their desks as they worked:

Malgorzata didn’t often like her picture being taken, but Hili didn’t mind:

Hili slept with Andrzej and Malgorzata, but I believe she favored Malgorzata, who would complain because Hili slept on her face. Here they are in the morning:

Common scenes in the house:

Andrzej and Hili

Szaon, another stray, was tamed by Andrzej over a period of months and then learned to live inside. She was a very loving cat who became a fast friend of Hili.

Hili especially loved Cyrus, the adopted stray dog, and they often cuddled up together. During walkies to the river, Hili would follow Cyrus:

Here’s the whole happy family: Hili, Cyrus, Malgorzata, and Andrzej. I love this picture.  Alas, Cyrus passed away several years ago.

Hili showed up in the Spring of 2013, brought to Andrzej and Malgorzata’s doorstep by a little girl who was trying to give away the kittens in a litter.  Here’s Kitten Hili, sitting on the jar of coffee.  When she got bigger, she still sat in the same spot, but it took more jars to support her.

I loved the photo of Kitten Hili, and so made it into a mug which I gave Andrzej and Malgorzata.  I then took a picture of Hili drinking milk from the mug:

. . . and then I made a mug with the photo of Hili drinking milk from the mug:

There was one more mug to go, with the picture above on it. I believe Andrzej still has them.

Hili was a cat, not a person, but she knew her position in the household: she was The Queen. She would meow to go outside, but when she wanted in, she refused to meow at the door. She would jump onto the windowsill where Malgorzata and Andrzej could not avoid seeing her. One of them would then have to go outside and fetch her. But you couldn’t just call her and have her jump down and follow you inside through the door: you would have to pick her up off the windowsill and carry her inside in your arms.  She insisted on this throughout her life, though when she was left out on warm nights she’d curl up on the veranda before getting fetched.

Here she’s waiting, and, on another occasion, I went out to fetch her (picture by Andrzej):

Hili was always a climber, though she did less of it when she was older (and a bit heavier!):

Finally, a group of photos showing the many moods of Hili:

Basking in the sun on the outside windowsill:

 

Sleepy:

Formal portraits:

Her memory is a blessing, and we’ll miss her terribly:

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

November 4, 2026 • 7:00 am

This is the first “Hili dialogue” post without a new Hili dialogue. I don’t want to recycle old ones, at least today, and don’t know if I’ll retitle these posts, which have been going for over a decade.  What do you think.

Welcome to a Hump Day (“Środek tygodnia” in Polish): Wednesday, November 4, 2026, and National Candy Day. Below you see a box of the apotheosis of affordable American quality chocolates: See’s.  One of my great pleasures is going into one of See’s brick-and-mortar shops and picking out a pound, chocolate by chocolate (they let you do that, and even give you a gratis chocolate to eat). I believe some kind reader sent this box to me a decade ago:

It’s also Eat Smart Day, National Chicken Lady Day, and National Skeptics Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 4 Wikipedia page.

UPDATE: Democrats won nearly everything yesterday, taking both Houses of Congress. See my early-morning post here. The news below was written yesterday afternoon.

Da Nooz:  (Excuse me if the news is truncated, as I’m sluggish today because Hili died.)

*Trump just announced a cutoff in military aid to Israel, largely as a last-minute way of defusing a talking point that the Democrats are using (that this is seen as a positive talking point tells us where we are.)

President Trump said Tuesday that the U.S. would cut off military aid to Israel by the end of the year, suggesting the phaseout of grants to the U.S. ally could occur much faster than expected.

“We won’t be paying anymore to Israel,” Trump said during an interview with Fox News on Election Day. “We’ve already agreed that by the end of this year, we won’t be paying Israel.”

The phasing out of direct U.S. military aid to Israel has been under discussion for months, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly saying the country should eventually wean itself off U.S. assistance. Netanyahu had previously proposed eliminating direct military aid over the next decade.

The White House and an Israeli government spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

“As far as paying Israel, Bibi Netanyahu and I have made a deal that we give Israel $4 billion a year and we made a deal months ago that we’re stopping and they’re fine with it,” Trump said. “They’ve become a very successful country. They don’t need it.”

According to the Congressional Research Service, the U.S. has provided Israel with about $174 billion in military assistance and funding through May 2025.

Trump cast the decision as a political calculation, arguing that ending the aid would deprive Democrats and other critics of Israel of a political talking point. “Why should we suffer the slings from lunatics like El-Sayed when they don’t need it? It’s a bad talking point,” he said, referring to Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee. “The left uses the $4 billion payment…as a signal of unfairness. It’s almost too easy a target.”

El-Sayed has campaigned on ending unconditional grant payments to Israel.

It’s a shame Trump had to say it’s a way to go after Democrats, which is an insult to Israel’s autonomy and suggests that his alliance with Israel is paper thin or nonexistent.  He’s being an opportunist at the expense of the Jewish state. If the Israeli government is okay with this, then fine: it’s probably for the good that Israel wean itself away from the U.S. in this way. But remember, nearly all the money that the government gives to Israel for military aid is required to be spent buying weapons and other stuff from American companies. In the end, it’s one way the government has to funnel money from American taxpayers to the “military-industrial complex.”

*It’s a little earlier than I predicted, and it’s not clear how much of an escalation this is, but on Monday Trump ordered strikes on Iranian targets in the Gulf of Hormuz.

The United States launched strikes on Iranian targets, a U.S. official said, in what appeared to be a limited operation on the eve of Tuesday’s crucial midterm elections.

Iranian state media reported explosions being heard on the islands of Qeshm and Hengam in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, and in the nearby mainland area of Bandar Abbas. Unlike earlier in the war, the strikes were not publicly announced.

President Donald Trump previously said the U.S. wouldn’t launch strikes on Iran before the midterms. The unpopular war and the resulting impact on U.S. gasoline prices and other parts of the economy have been a vulnerability for his Republican Party as it tries to keep control of Congress.

A U.S. official, who wasn’t authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said Monday that the strikes targeted Iranians using surface-to-air missiles against the U.S. in the strait. The move came as Iran said it had a two-day plan to reopen the critical waterway, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil supply flowed during peacetime, and resume nuclear talks with the United States.

. . .Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pushed for another wave of strikes on Iran after the U.S. elections, according to two regional officials and a third person familiar with the matter.

A return to full-scale war with Iran could help Netanyahu form an emergency government after he and his far-right allies lost their parliamentary majority in last week’s elections. Trump has alternated between threatening major strikes and pushing for a deal with Iran.

The two officials said diplomatic efforts have made progress and that mediators are trying to advance a framework for Iran to cease its attacks in the Strait of Hormuz in return for the U.S. lifting its blockade on Iran’s ports.

They said more talks are planned for this week

I give up on any more predictions, including about what the U.S. is trying to do with Iran. Perhaps there’s a secret plan, but Trump hasn’t seen fit to make his objectives clear to the American people.  Initially they were to prevent Iran from making nuclear weapons, with a brief mention of the people taking back the government, but we’ve heard precious little lately.

*Over at the Free Press, James Kirchick writes about Haley Stevens “treasonous defection” from the Democratic Party in a piece called, “When ‘Country over Party’ goes only one way” (the subtitle is “Haley Stevens is being called a traitor, but by reversing her endorsement of Abdul El-Sayed, she is showing exactly the kind of courage moderate Democrats once cheered.”) h/t: Barry. The article starts off with a comparison between Stevens and Liz Cheney:

Running for Senate two years ago, Michigan Democratic congresswoman Elissa Slotkin proudly accepted an endorsement from her former Republican colleague Liz Cheney. “It is a privilege to be here in Grand Rapids, the hometown of former President Gerald Ford,” Slotkin said to a room full of people holding “Republicans for Slotkin” and “Country over Party” placards. The 38th president, who also happened to be a Republican, “was a leader who understood courage in public service and putting your country over your party.”

Fast-forward to the weekend before the 2026 midterms, when another of Slotkin’s congressional colleagues, this one a fellow Democrat from Michigan, decided that she too could no longer stomach the burgeoning extremism in her party.

“Anyone who makes an election this important about themselves, and not Michiganders and our democracy, should think hard about whether they are serving the greater good,” Slotkin posted on X with respect to her fellow Michigander Haley Stevens, who had earlier that morning revoked her endorsement of Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed and thrown her backing to Republican nominee Mike Rogers.

As we know, Stevens was disinvited as a supporter of El-Sayed because he refused to condemn two ads (not one), at which point she endorsed the Republican.

Compared to her fellow Democrats, Slotkin was mild in her rebuke to Stevens. “A despicable betrayal,” thundered Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer. “She’s evil,” seethed far-left shock jock Mehdi Hasan. “This person stands for absolutely nothing but herself,” fumed former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau.

Stevens’s switch was easily preventable. After losing the primary to El-Sayed by a single percentage point this August, Stevens immediately endorsed him. Earlier last week, however, a PAC run by progressive podcast host Cenk Uygur released an online advertisement, the message of which could have been lifted straight from the crusty pages of Der Stürmer. A couple is shopping at a supermarket when the wife tells her husband to “put those eggs back” because “we have to set that $7 aside for killing Palestinians.” When the husband points out plaintively that Israel has “universal healthcare,” she replies, “We’re paying for that too, probably.” Even the noted white nationalist Richard Spencer was embarrassed by this clumsy foray into fascist propaganda, lambasting Uygur for his “clownishly antisemitic” ad. All that was missing was a black screen at the end with the slogan Die Juden sind unser Unglück—the Jews are our misfortune.

. . .Since mounting his Senate bid, El-Sayed has given decent Michiganders across the political spectrum ample reason to believe that they too do not belong in his campaign. There was his callous remark after a Hezbollah-inspired terrorist rammed a car into a Jewish day school in a thankfully failed attempt to murder 120 children and their teachers: “hurt people hurt people.” There was his refusal to acknowledge the death of Ayatollah Khamenei because “there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad.” There was his decision to campaign multiple times with Hasan Piker, the Mao- and Castro-loving useless idiot who recently compared suburban Jewish Michigan voters to the KKK. There was his outrageous statement that Israel represents a threat to the United States as great or even greater than Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and a regime with the blood of thousands of Americans on its hands. There was his courting voters at mosques whose imams cursed this country as the “House of Satan” and called for the “final annihilation of Jews.” This is a man who should never get a security clearance, never mind a seat in the United States Senate.

In an attempt to distract the electorate from these clear disqualifications, El-Sayed’s defenders would have us believe that expressing concerns about them is “Islamophobia.” It’s true that President Trump and others have made bigoted remarks about El-Sayed and his faith, and for that they should be condemned. But it’s not Michigan’s mosques that are under 24-hour security, nor is it Michigan’s Muslims who are being instructed to “sacrifice” their “own safety” and “future” in support of a candidate whose beliefs and associations represent a clear and present danger to them.

. . .But the question in this election actually has very little to do with those things. The question is El-Sayed’s radicalism. So important is his antisemitic worldview that El-Sayed is willing to lose a winnable seat rather than simply admit that, no, the Zionist lobby isn’t responsible for the rise in the cost of bananas, or your skyrocketing healthcare premiums, or the dismal student-teacher ratio in your child’s school.

What’s shocking isn’t Haley Stevens’s decision to wash her hands of El-Sayed and his rancid campaign, but that so few other Democrats have had the moral courage to emulate her. “Country over Party,” apparently, only goes one way. For those calling Stevens a “despicable” “traitor,” I have four words for you:

Hurt people hurt people.

Ouch! But “hurt” here means hurt feelings, not physical injury.

*The NYT reports that, in violation of the law, medical insurance companies are simply refusing to pay for some emergency care. It begins by recounting how the insurance company Anthem has stopped paying “Flight for Life,” an organization that flies patients who need immediate care to hospitals. This stoppage is against the law.

. . .The insurer’s willful nonpayment is the latest in a cascade of unintended consequences brought about by a widely supported law that was intended to protect patients from surprise medical bills.

The law, which took effect in 2022, calls for arbitrators to decide appropriate levels of reimbursement, and it has already triggered millions of disputes between medical care providers and insurers. Doctors have prevailed overwhelmingly, winning arbitration settlements that sometimes far exceeded the usual insurer rates.

Now, fed up with what they consider unfair outcomes, insurers are fighting back by refusing to pay.

The law, the No Surprises Act, was enacted with a large bipartisan majority to ensure patients never got excessive bills in situations, like emergencies, where they could not pick their doctors.

The arbitration system set up by the law was supposed to resolve billing disputes when health care providers and insurers could not agree on a price: An arbitrator reviews a proposed dollar amount from each side and decides which one is most reasonable. Insurers are required to pay that amount within 30 days, and billing patients for anything beyond that is prohibited.

Lawmakers expected the system to be used rarely and to produce reasonable payments. Instead, doctors and other health care providers have been swamping arbitrators with millions of claims, often for amounts that far exceed what is customarily paid for a service. And they have won the vast majority of their cases — sometimes receiving sums such as $440,000 for a breast reduction, $73,000 for an ankle X-ray, or $125,000 for assisting on prostate surgery.

Insurers have sued doctors and lobbied Congress to change the law, contending that the large awards and lopsided results are driving up health insurance premiums.

But with Washington moving slowly, they have adopted the strategy of simply declining to pay.

Everyone is at fault here: the doctors who overbill, the insurance companies who refuse to pay, and the government, which is moving too slowly. Since the law was a bipartisan bill, an important task of the new government should be to simply speed up the system. Here’s the NYT’s list of the frequency with which various insurance companies pay arbitrated settlements. Anthem and Cigna are by far the worst offenders, and remember, this is after the arbitration figure is set:

*A WaPo op-ed by Columbia biology professor Stuart Firestein emphasizes that the uncertainty of scientific results is not a bug in science, but a feature, for uncertainty is an essential part of science.

If you are worried about the world’s uncertainties, science has an answer for your anxiety. In fact, uncertainty is an essential part of science. It is what makes science the most powerful system for accumulating knowledge that humanity has ever devised. In science, revision is a victory.

This is not the science that you were taught in school, where there was a single right answer to every question on the test. But it is the real practice of science.

There is a tendency to ask: “How can uncertainty lead to knowledge?” But that’s the wrong question. Uncertainty is knowledge. To make progress, scientists depend on the fact that there is always the potential to improve existing knowledge, and they know that any scientific finding — no matter how powerful — can be refined. This is the nature of the scientific method, the process by which scientists collect data and test their hypotheses. In fact, a good scientific finding always acknowledges its limitations — which then point to what needs future investigation. Understanding and appreciating uncertainty for the possibilities it presents, in other words, are the keys to successful science.

If the world’s uncertainties are raising your blood pressure, you are in luck: You can take one of nine different classes of medication for hypertension, each working through a distinct pathway — despite the fact that scientists are still uncertain what regulates blood pressure in the first place. Roughly 90 percent of hypertension diagnoses are idiopathic, meaning a doctor cannot identify its root cause. Yet, here as elsewhere, imperfect knowledge means the potential for progress: Better drugs, or alternatives to drugs, may emerge as understanding improves. In the meantime, these medications have already prevented millions of premature deaths since their introduction 50 years ago.

Everyone benefits from scientific advances. I cannot imagine that anyone would prefer to be sick 25 years ago rather than today. Yes, some scientific progress has produced unintended, or even regrettable, consequences: The chemistry behind anesthetics advanced from research on the atomic bomb. But either way, it is not so much the shiny products of progress that have had the greatest effect. It is the ideaof progress, which has altered how human beings see the world.

Asking science to be definitive is making the wrong demand. Science gives the best answer, or answers, available — not the final word, but a provisional answer, with some indication of how dependable it is.

. . . Uncertainty in the practice of science is optimistic. Yes, optimistic: the optimism of possibility, of being able to imagine that things could be otherwise. Don’t wait around for the final answer that will never come. Take your blood pressure medicine. Act on the nearly correct science we have now.

Unsettled science is not unsound science. It is the real science.

Well, all scientists know this, but perhaps the lesson needs to be given to the public each generation. But the author neglects a very important point: some scientific knowledge is as close to absolute truth as you can envision. Examples: every normal water molecule consists of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.  The Earth revolves around the Sun, and is smaller than the Sun. Whales evolved from terrestrial mammals. And so on. Any of us would bet our life savings on the veracity of these statements, and that is close to absolute truth as you can get.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is being laid to rest, presumably in the garden.

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

From The Absurd Sign Project Uncensored:

From Wholesome Memes:

From Meow:

From Masih: an actress who gave up everything: her career, her health, and her freedom—just for posting one photo of herself without a hijab:

Did you know that Hasan Piker, who campaigned not only for El-Sayed but also for Zohran Mamdani:

From Malcolm: a man speaking fluent cat:

The Number Ten cat is not just Labour, but a Democrat. Here he talks to Trump:

Two from my feed. First, a real hero:

A brave moggy:

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed as soon as he arrived in Auchwitz. He was 12 years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-11-04T12:30:00.741Z

And one from Dr. Cobb. There’s an informative thread about this snake, which is a hybrid species that produces only clones of the mother from unfertilized eggs:

This 'earthworm' has a flickering tongue! And that's because it's NOT an earthworm, it's a Brahminy blind snake (Indotyphlops braminus).They live in the dirt, eating insect larvae, harmless to humans.Let's talk about this ALL-FEMALE SPECIES & their genetics.(📷: thezenhenandthehoneybee, IG)

— c0nc0rdance (@c0nc0rdance.bsky.social) 2026-11-03T13:59:54.286Z

Democrats crush GOP, take both houses of Congress and disputed governorships

November 4, 2026 • 6:00 am

Yesterday I vowed not to stay up to watch politics, but I did watch the news for an extra hour after dinner. At that time it was already clear that the GOP was going to be routed. But I had no idea how thoroughly the rout would be.  In a clear repudiation of to Trump and his policies, the Dems took the House, the Senate, all the “swing seats,”, and even the governorship of Texas. Here’s the headlines from the morning NYT (click to read). Remember that all the results aren’t yet in, but the Democratic hegemony of Congress is clear:

House elections, by district:

 

Senate results by state:

There will be plenty of pundits to chew over these results in the coming days, telling us “what we need to know” and giving us “ten lessons from the midterm elections”.

I am no pundit, am pretty pleased with the results save in Michigan, and am curious to see what will happen in the next two years.  Will Trump work with the new Congress, as he said, or will there be a string of vetoes?  Will Congress somehow pull us out of the Iran war? Can the Democrats start making good on their promise to curb inflation? What will happen with healthcare? Will this result empower the “progressives,” further dividing the Democrats?  Will this resounding victory put wind in the sails of the next Democratic Presidential candidate in two years? (The NYT has a list of rising Democratic “stars”.)

I have a busy day ahead, including a trip to Costco to get my new glasses and, really, I have little taste for giving my take, which is clearly inferior to that of people who really study politics.  Let us hope that Trump and the new Congress can work together and that the Democrats will begin to fix the issues that sank their opponents in this election.

Readers are invited and welcome to share their thoughts, their joy, their beefs, and their thoughts on the election.

Bill Maher on “Halloween safetyism”

November 3, 2026 • 10:00 am

Although Halloween is over, Maher is kvetching on Real Time about “safetyism” rules, including curfews that end trick-or-treating at 7 pm or even 5 pm! But then he reminisces about Halloween when he was a kid and the joys of running around on your own. Now, of course, kids rarely go trick-or-treating unaccompanied by parents, even though it’s safer now than it was when Maher and I were kids (I, too, was a “free range kid”).

The spiel continues with the Maher detailing the bad effects of spending a lot of time on the internet—something that results from kids not being allowed to roam on their own.(62% of kids 12 and under have never walked or biked anywhere without an adult, and 50% of parents won’t even let their kids roam to another aisle in the grocery store). He describes an alternative called “trunk or treat”, a fun-killer that you’ll have hear about by watching the short video below.

Ah, the joys of roaming free, biking off alone to see friends after school!  That is dead and gone.

The guests you’ll see are musician Kid Rock and Jim VandeHei, Co-founder and CEO of Axios.

Bret Stephens on El-Sayed

November 3, 2026 • 8:30 am

I was going to put this in my critique of Abdul El-Sayed yesterday, but forgot. Fortunately, Bret Stephens, in his latest NYT column, alludes to something like what I’m about to say:

This is what I forgot to add to my own post:

Imagine that a white American had some relatives killed by Islamic militants in Somalia (this has happened, albeit rarely, to both American civilians and military personnel).  Devastated, the American gets a gun, drives his truck into the The West Michigan Somali Cultural Religious Center in Grand Rapids, Michigan and opens fire on a group of children, wounding a security guard. Fortunately, nobody was killed, and the attacker takes his own life.  When asked about the attack, a white politician proffers an explanation: “Hurt people hurt people.”

Can you imagine how people would come down on that politician for heartlessness and obtuseness?

When Abdul El-Sayed said precisely that phrase after an attack on a Michigan synagogue and preschool this spring (apparently, some relatives of the would-be murderer were killed by the IDF in Lebanon), it was not just an explanation but an excuse.  El-Sayed later apologized for the statement, but I don’t believe his faux contrition. But he got away with it, even though it encapsulates his entire view of Jews and Israel.

But enough; Bret Stephens, a far better writer than I, draws the parallel in his latest NYT column, which you can read by clicking on the screenshot below. You can also find his piece archived here.

Excerpts (I hope you’ve seen Cenk’s pro-el-Sayed ad):

The stakes in the race were again brought home after Representative Haley Stevens, who had been El-Sayed’s opponent in the Democratic primary, endorsed Rogers after a falling-out with El-Sayed, largely over his refusal to condemn what may be the most nakedly antisemitic political ad in modern U.S. political history.

The ad, which came from an El-Sayed-friendly political action committee founded by Cenk Uygur, a left-wing media personality, features a couple shopping for groceries while discussing why they can no longer afford a $7 carton of eggs: The money has already been stripped from their wallets by the federal government so that it can be sent to Israel and spent on “killing Palestinians” while also “probably” funding Israel’s universal health care.

A voice-over then asks, “Why does Mike Rogers care so much about what Israelis want, and so little about what you want?”

What’s wrong with the ad? For starters, the price of a dozen eggs has fallen by about half since Trump returned to office; a price-conscious shopper in Michigan could pick up a dozen eggs at Walmart for under $2. And while prices for groceries have undoubtedly been affected by higher energy costs because of the war with Iran, for which Israel is partly responsible, they’ve also been affected by the war in Ukraine; droughts in Brazil, China and the Midwest; and Trump’s capricious tariffs. Is Israel to blame for all that, too?

The larger problem with the ad is that it unites three of the oldest antisemitic tropes in history. First: There’s a powerful Jew out there who’s picking the pockets of the less fortunate. Second, that Jew is doing so to slaughter the innocent. Third, he’s paying a non-Jewish intermediary (who, by implication, is either a dope or a stooge) to do his bidding. To suggest the ad is only about U.S. policy toward Israel would be like arguing that an ad denouncing foreign aid to African countries while featuring the worst stereotypes about people in those countries isn’t racist. It doesn’t pass the smell test.

That’s the ad, but what about El-Sayed’s reaction to it?  His failure to denounce it is one reason why Stevens endorsed Rogers. Bret Stephens says this:

It would have been morally right — and a political no-brainer — for El-Sayed to forthrightly and unequivocally denounce the ad. A similar dynamic played out in early 2008, when Barack Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., turned out to have a record of incendiary rhetoric. Obama denounced the pastor’s statements, and, after Wright kept it up, broke off relations with the man. Doing so drew a firm and effective line under the controversy, underscoring Obama’s insistence that he was no radical.

Yet the most El-Sayed has said about the ad was that it “was not made by me,” that he didn’t agree with its content but that the controversy was “not worth my time.” That’s odd: It was El-Sayed himself who called Israel “an affordability issue” while adding “we should keep our money here instead of sending it there to drop bombs on people’s schools or their hospitals.” Nor has he been shy about denouncing Israel at nearly every opportunity he gets. The ad he now says he has nothing to do with merely expresses what he plainly believes.

It’s part of a broader pattern.

His initial response to the Temple Israel attack, where only a miracle spared the over 150 children and staff inside from death or injury, was that “hurt people hurt people.” It took him five months to offer a quasi apology. (“My comments may have been misconstrued.”) He campaigned alongside the antisemitic media personality Hasan Piker (who recently compared campaigning for El-Sayed in heavily Jewish West Bloomfield Township to campaigning for a Black candidate in a “Klan K.K.K. neighborhood”) and quietly distanced himself from him because he feared it was costing him votes, according to reporting by CNN. Tucker Carlson, the right’s most prominent normalizer of antisemitism, now features in one of El-Sayed’s campaign ads.

A question for Michigan voters, especially those who lean left: If the stigmatized minority here weren’t Jewish but, say, gay or Latino or Black, would you even consider a vote for any candidate abetting, or at least tolerating, the stigmatizing?

Remember that El-Sayed gained nothing with his “hurt people” statement, but he said it anyway. This is why I think it represents what he really believes, and why I distrust all his later apologies. El-Sayed doesn’t have much of a filter between his brain and his mouth.

Stephens finishes this way:

None of this will matter at all to voters who thrill to El-Sayed’s message. Nor will it matter enough to voters willing to put their misgivings about him aside because they feel that Rogers, for his part, has failed to call out the rhetorical excesses of Republicans, and that nothing is more important than sending Trump the sternest electoral rebuke they can. Yet come January, Trump will still be president, no matter how well Democrats do in the midterms.

The real issue for voters in Michigan is what moral price is worth paying for an additional seat in the Senate. There are, after all, other winnable Senate races in other states. And a vote to further strengthen the forces of antisemitism in American politics, under any party banner or political justification, is no vote for democracy, either.

This is a clear declaration that Stephens thinks El-Sayed an antisemite. I agree. But antisemitism and demonization of Israel are rapidly becoming hallmarks of not just “progressive” Democrats, but of mainstream Democrats as well. If party affiliation should always override principle, we are truly lost. And one principle should be that attacks on Jewish children, simply because they were Jewish, are evil and should at least be denounced.