The “work” week is at an end; it’s Friday, October 17, 2025, and National Pasta Day. I may in fact have some bucatini tonight, but made with Alfredo sauce. Fettuccine Alfredo is one of my favorite pasta dishes, though normally not made with bucatini, but I do love like fat noodles with a hole in the middle. Wikipedia tells us that the dish is a fairly recent invention:
Modern fettuccine Alfredo was created by Alfredo Di Lelio in Rome in the early 20th century. According to family lore, in 1892 Alfredo began to work in a restaurant located in Piazza Rosa that was run by his mother, Angelina. He cooked his first fettuccine al triplo burro (‘fettuccine with triple butter‘—later called fettuccine all’Alfredo, and eventually fettuccine Alfredo)[1] in 1907 or 1908, in what is said to have been an effort to entice his convalescent wife, Ines, to eat after giving birth to their first child, Armando. Recipes attributed to Di Lelio include only three ingredients: fettuccine, “young” Parmesan cheese and butter. Yet there are various legends about the “secret” of the original Alfredo recipe: some say oil is added to the pasta dough; others that the pasta is cooked in milk.
Here’s a picture of Alfredo himself in front of his restaurant:
It’s also Four Prunes Day (the right number to relieve digestive issues, it’s said), Forgive an Ex Day (some I can, some I can’t), National Mammography Day, and World Trauma Day.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 17 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Some state governors have formed a “health alliance” to counter the mess and misinformation that’s coming out of the government since RFK Jr. became Secretary of Health and Human Services.
The alliance,spanning states where roughly 1 in 3 Americans live, underscores the increasing fragmentation of a public health system that has been upended by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Kennedy’s challenge to long-standing vaccine recommendations has already prompted Democratic governors to form regional initiatives to provide immunization guidance. The latest alliance goes further in rebuking the Trump administration, encroaching on the federal government’s typical role coordinating the country’s preparation for disease threats and cooperating with global authorities.Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont (D) said in an interview that the alliance mirrors how his state worked with neighboring ones to coordinate public messaging during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic. “We’re in another period where there’s a lot of contradictory information coming out of HHS, our departments of public health and what people are reading,” Lamont said.
I’m not sure how this is going to work, but we’ll see. Is there going to be a website, and announcments? Will the announcements be made only for the states in the alliance, or for the whole country?
Here’s a map from the WaPo of states that have formed the alliance. I count only 11 but the article above says the alliance comprises fifteen governors . All blue states, of course, though Maine is a bit mixed. Of course Illinois is one of them. Pritzker might be a good Presidential candidate for 2028, but I’d like to be sure he’s healthy.
*Hamas now says it’s delivered to Israel all the bodies of hostages it has, and 20 are still missing. This may jeopardize the peace deal. My first reaction was that in reprisal Israel shouldn’t then let some convicted Gazan murderers go free (the deal has already permitted that), but I realized that Israel should, as far as it can, keep its part of the deal with Hamas even though, as I wrote yesterday, Hamas is not keeping its part of the deal.
Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, said on Wednesday night that it had handed over all of the remains of Israeli hostages that it had been able to recover without additional equipment, potentially putting a cease-fire with Israel in the Gaza Strip at risk.
In a statement, the Palestinian militant group said that it has “committed to what was agreed upon and handed over everyone it had in terms of living captives and what it had in terms of bodies that it could recover.” But it said that it needed “special equipment” to find and extract the remains of the rest of the deceased captives, adding that it was “making great efforts.”
According to the terms of a cease-fire brokered by international mediators last week, Israel and Hamas would stop fighting and the militant group would return all the hostages it held — both living captives and the bodies of those who had died, totaling 48 people — in exchange for the freeing of Palestinians held by Israel, among other provisions.
Hamas freed the 20 living hostages on Monday, and militants in Gaza had in the days since handed over the remains of eight people. Israel has identified six of those bodies as Israeli and one as Nepali. The identity of the eighth was not yet clear.
The announcement that Hamas was unable to retrieve the remains of additional hostages came after the militant group handed over two more coffins to the Red Cross on Wednesday, putting the total number of bodies it has handed over at 10. That, however, left the remains of over a dozen people unaccounted for.
According to a news analysis in the Free Press, though, Hamas doesn’t want peace:
But even cornered and diminished, the Islamist movement that started this disastrous war remains as determined as ever to cling to power. Within a day of the ceasefire taking effect, Hamas’s internal security forces were staging public executions. Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel were dragged out and shot or hanged from lampposts in Gaza City’s main squares. There were no trials, no evidence, not even a pretense of due process—just a crude display of terror meant to remind everyone who was still in charge. Soon after, Hamas gunmen turned their weapons on powerful clan militias that had filled the vacuum during the war, sparking running battles in Shuja’iyya, Sabra, and beyond.
Peace is a process that takes hard efforts, and not something that will simply magically appear from an agreement. But it will never arrive at all if the world allows Hamas to regroup under the cover of a ceasefire and continue on the path of jihad.
These actions exposed a critical truth: Hamas never viewed the Trump deal as a real step toward peace or coexistence, because that is just not how their framework for understanding the world works. Peace is not their aspiration. For their purposes, the ceasefire is a temporary reprieve: a chance to regroup, rearm, and prepare for the next round of fighting, which could start in five days, five years, or 50 years. In Islamist political thought there’s a word for it—hudna—a temporary truce with non-Muslim adversaries that can be discarded as soon as the balance of power shifts. Then the time for jihad against the Jews and other non-Muslims will arrive again.
As I’ve predicted (and I’m no pundit), the cease-fire is likely to dissolve because Hamas refuses to give up power. But we will see what happens when the interim “phase 2” solution begins.
*If Trump wants to get his mitts on a Nobel Peace Prize, the way to do it is not to forment war with Venezuela. Yet it looks like that is what going on. Now the US is going to plant CIA agents in the South American country. (And do they KNOW that those Venezuelan boats that they blow up with drones are really carrying drugs?)
President Trump has authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct covert action in Venezuela, while also floating the idea of land strikes, in a broadening campaign against alleged drug trafficking.
“I authorized for two reasons,” Trump said Wednesday at the White House, alleging Venezuelan leaders have “emptied their prisons into the United States of America” and “we have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela.”
The authorization enables the CIA to operate clandestinely in the country and potentially take action against Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro, his government and drug traffickers, according to an administration official. Covert action, which is authorized in what is known as a presidential finding, can involve a range of secret activities including paramilitary and lethal operations meant to influence political, economic or military conditions in foreign countries.
Asked if the CIA had the power to remove Maduro, Trump said it was a “ridiculous question” but added, “I think Venezuela is feeling the heat.” Administration officials have argued that by designating Latin American drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, the U.S. has the power to use lethal force.
A CIA spokesman declined to comment. The New York Times earlier reported the CIA authorization.
In a televised speech Wednesday night, Maduro called on the U.S. to end its pressure campaign, condemning it as an imperialist effort to loot Venezuela’s natural resources. “We don’t want war in the Caribbean nor South America,” he said, adding: “How many more coups by the CIA? Latin America doesn’t want them, doesn’t need them and repudiates them.”
The move by Trump comes amid the biggest U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean in decades, including the deployment of guided-missile destroyers, F-35B jet fighters, MQ-9 Reaper drones and a special operations ship.
And get a load of this:
On Tuesday, Trump announced the U.S. military had attacked a fifth alleged drug-smuggling vessel off the coast of Venezuela. At least 27 people have been killed in the U.S. strikes since last month. Maduro has denied that drug smuggling is occurring and denounced the U.S. strikes as a pretext of regime change, portraying them as violations of sovereignty and international law.
Trump said Wednesday that strikes could take place on suspected drug smugglers on Venezuelan soil. “We are certainly looking at land now because we’ve got the sea very well under control,” he told reporters.
Oh man, if we start bombing the country itself, rather than boats at sea, there is going to be a huge brouhaha! Trump has also said that for every small boat destroyed, 25,000 American lives are saved. I wonder how they calculated that.
*I’ve written a lot about the MSM’s touting of religion—especially Christianity—in America lately, and NYT op-ed writer David French (a Christian himself), has noticed it, too. But French is nervous, as recounted in his latest op-ed, “Something is stirring in Christian America, and it’s making me nervous” (article archived here).
Despite what you may have heard about the renewal of interest in religion in America, we are not experiencing a true revival, at least not yet. Instead, America is closer to a religious revolution, and the difference between revolution and revival is immensely important for the health of our country — and of the Christian church in America.
At this point it’s almost beyond debate that something important is stirring in American religion. There is too much data — and too many anecdotes — to ignore. The steady decline of Christianity in America seems to have slowed, perhaps even paused. There’s evidence that Gen Z men in particular are returning to church and younger generations of Americans are now attending church slightly more regularly than older generations.
Americans just witnessed an immense stadium filled to the brim with people mourning Charlie Kirk, in a memorial service that was one part worship service, one part political rally. And that service was replicated at a smaller scale at vigils across America. Fox News reported that an average of 5.2 million people watched its coverage of Kirk’s memorial service, with the audience spiking to 6.6 million viewers during Erika Kirk’s remarks.
I can sense the change myself. When I speak on college campuses, students seem more curious about faith than they were even five years ago. When I write about faith, I get a larger — and more personal — response than I get when I write about any other topic. My inbox fills with heartfelt personal testimonies, including stories about how people both found and lost God.
But French isn’t happy about this (note the mention of that damn “God-shaped hole,” which is becoming trite:
As a Christian who has long lamented the decline of church attendance in the United States, I should be very happy about all these developments. After all, if people feel a God-shaped hole in their lives, shouldn’t we rejoice when they find, in the words of scripture, the “peace of God, which surpasses all understanding”?
The bad parts:
There is darkness right alongside the light. Christians stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Christians have believed and applauded dark prophecies that compare Donald Trump to Jehu, a murderous Old Testament king who commanded the slaughter of the previous queen, Jezebel, and had the severed heads of the previous king’s sons brought to him in baskets.
Incredibly, Christians are attacking what they call the “sin of empathy,” warning fellow believers against identifying too much with, say, illegal immigrants, gay people or women who seek abortions. Empathy, in this formulation, can block moral and theological clarity. What’s wrong is wrong, and too much empathy will cloud your soul.
There was the ReAwaken America tour that crisscrossed America during Joe Biden’s presidency, during which angry Christians called for vengeance at sold-out venues from coast to coast. And, as I wrote last month, the Kirk memorial itself mixed calls for love (most notably Erika Kirk’s decision to forgive her husband’s killer) with the Trump administration’s explicit hate.
And here’s what bothers French:
. . . . [genuine Christian] revival begins with the people proclaiming, by word and deed, “I have sinned.”
MAGA Christianity has a different message. It looks at American culture and declares, “You have sinned.”
And it doesn’t stop there. It also says, “We will defeat you.” In its most extreme forms, it also says, “We will rule over you.” That’s not revival; it’s revolution, a religious revolution that seeks to overthrow one political order and replace it with another — one that has echoes of the religious kingdoms of ages past.
And don’t be fooled when these revolutionaries call themselves “conservative.” All too many conservative Christians are actually quite proudly radical. They want to demolish the existing order, including America’s commitment to pluralism and individual liberty, and put their version of Christianity at the center of American political life.
French also beefs about a decline in church attendance, so that these new “Christians” aren’t really religious by his lights. His big problem is that this new religious revival seems to him to embody the sins of Trump, not the salvation of Jesus:
We will know when revival comes because we will see believers humble themselves, repent of their sins, and then arise, full of genuine virtue, to love their neighbors — to help them, not hurt them — and in so doing to heal our nation.
Unlike French, I don’t welcome a religious revival because it is the spread of superstition, proselytizing, and marks an attack on rationality. Let French beef all he wants about Christian nationalism: religion is still on the way out. It’s already largely gone in Europe, but its disappearance will be slower in the U.S.
*Finally, if you love mountains like I do, youi’ll want to know that the last Sherpa on the first expedition that conquered Mount Everest just died (I’ve been to Everest twice, but of course just to look, not to climb). The mountain was conquered on May 29, 1953 by Edmund Hillary and the Sherpa Tenzing Norgay.
Kanchha Sherpa, the last surviving member of the mountaineering expedition team that first conquered Mount Everest, died early Thursday, according to the Nepal Mountaineering Association.
Kanchha died at age 92 at his home in Kapan in the Kathmandu district of Nepal, confirmed Phur Gelje Sherpa, the association president.
“He passed away peacefully at his residence,” Phur Gelje Sherpa told The Associated Press, adding that he had been unwell for some time. “A chapter of the mountaineering history has vanished with him.”
Last rites will be held Monday, he said.
Kanchha Sherpa was among the 35 members of the team that put New Zealander Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay atop the 8,849-meter (29,032-foot) peak on May 29, 1953. A mountain guide for most of his life, he was one of three Sherpas to reach the final camp before the summit with Hillary and Tenzing.
But he never climbed to the summit of Everest himself, as his wife considered it too risky, he said in a March 2024 interview. He forbade his children from becoming mountaineers.
Well-liked and widely respected in the climbing community, Kanchha “was full of energy, and even after retiring and in his old age, he was trekking to monasteries all over the Everest region for religious ceremonies,” said Ang Tshering Sherpa of the Nepal Mountaineering Association.
Here’s a short video about Kanchha:
This is the ice axe that Hillary used on the ascent; I photographed it when I visited the Auckland Museum (Hillary was a Kiwi, of course):
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s pondering self-censorship:
Hili: I’m thinking about censoring my own thoughts.
Andrzej: That’s what some folks refer to as psychotherapy.
In Polish:
Hili: Zastanawiam się, czy nie zacząć cenzurować własnych myśli.
Ja: Niektórzy nazywają to psychoterapią.
*******************
From Things With Faces, an angry log:
From Cats that Have Had Enough of Your Shit:
From Give me a Sign:
Masih is quiet, but this critique of the Taliban, posted by Masih’s stand-in JKR, could have been posted by Masih:
Hannah Neumann, Member of the European Parliament, says European governments are “making deals with Taliban group instead of standing with the women and girls of Afghanistan.”
She added that the EU is breaking its promise to the people of Afghanistan. pic.twitter.com/jR0rEo0JkW
— Jahanzeb Wesa (@JahanzebWesa) October 9, 2025
From Simon; this is hilarious:
— G (@stevensongs) October 15, 2025
*Zohran Mamdani, NYC’s future mayor on NYC, has a strict stand on gun control. But he won’t call for Hamas to lay down their arms. He’s slippery and, I suspect, a sleazy, dissimulating antisemite. But somehow many Jews in New York will vote for him. Chickens for KFC!
In a sit down interview on Fox News, leftist NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani declines repeatedly when asked if Hamas should be excluded from Palestinian leadership. pic.twitter.com/mvxBDLm7hh
— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) October 15, 2025
From Malcolm: bafftime for kitten!
Mama cat cleaning her baby 😍 pic.twitter.com/YmIy7BfAsR
— Antidepressant Content (@depressionlesss) September 8, 2025
One from my feed. This bear has a bad case of bedhead:
A bear coming out of its hibernation period. pic.twitter.com/g8CSr8Gay7
— The Best (@Thebestfigen) October 15, 2025
One that I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
A Hungarian Jewish woman was sent to Auschwitz at age 30. "She did not survive." She was one of one million Jews who died in the camp.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-10-17T10:07:23.345Z
Two posts from Dr. Cobb, still in Shanghai. First, a mustelid.
Look at this beautiful creature!#PineMarten #mammals #wildlife
— Brenna Populin (@brennafiona.bsky.social) 2025-10-15T23:41:51.057Z
I wonder if this wasp can get rid of its passenger:
Phoresis! Poor wasp!
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-10-11T17:06:36.584Z
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Don’t be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value. -Arthur Miller, playwright and essayist (17 Oct 1915-2005)
Aha! So that’s why he was considered un-American 🙂 I’ve been meaning to visit Salem. Haven’t yet.
Thank you for the Alfredo story. Fettucine, parmesan, and butter: my three basic and favorite food groups, though I might add heavy cream as a fourth.
What a nice video interview with Kancha Sherpa. I remember my father’s excitement at that first summiting in 1953.
… and is rapidly being re-established in the form of Islam, owing to mass migration into Europe of multiple millions a year.
In the UK, in a typical week, about 2,000,000 people attend a Mosque, whereas about 500,000 people attend a church.
Wow. Do you know if that is a count of separate unique individuals or a total people at services? Wonder how many attend minyan at shul. UK is probably not a national Jewish homeland (north edition).
That’s unique individuals. Note that immigrants are highly religious, with about half of Muslims attending a Mosque weekly. Britain’s “cultural” Christians hardly ever attend church, apart from an occasional wedding or carol service. An estimate for weekly attendance at a synagogue is 20,000.
Thanks, Coel.
There is also a dynamic that Islamic societies, at home or immigrant ghettos, are WAAY more religious than…. Christendom.
This is a BIG problem b/c secular westerners, “cultural Christians” can’t get their head around a society where religion is really a HUUUGEE motivating and moving framework. We can’t imagine it. Which is why we dismiss jihadism as some kind of tick or extreme. No. It is as regular there as …capitalism is here.
It hit me once in Tripoli, Lebanon… walking down the street I was deciphering in my bad Arabic spray painted graffiti.
It was religious. Where we’d have dicks or punk “tags” they had “ALLAH AKBAR”.
You see it in every movement and incident in the Islamosphere.
D.A.
NYC
Sometimes I think the atheists are fighting the wrong battle, as if the enemy is the Spanish Inquisition or the Dutch Reformed Church. The real coming fight is the do-over of the Battle of Tours. The Saracens are on the march and we can’t rely on Israel to do our fighting for us.
If the schools teach creationism and the Ten Commandments, who cares really? Life would go on pretty much as before. I just can’t see rolling over for what Islam would demand of us. The non-empathetic Christians may be onto something.
Peter Boghossian wrote up a “Modest Proposal” in his Substack a while back arguing that Europe should just surrender to the inevitable Muslim victory. The only thing that fully tipped me off (other than the title) that it was satirical was that he didn’t specify exactly which sultan Europe should kneel to. Rahman al-Gahfiqi?
It’s not a binary. In a free, secular society, both forms of religious incursion can and should be fought against. And “teaching creationism and Ten Commandments” is a miniscule fraction of what the theocrats in America want. And once zealots get a win, like outlawing abortions in benighted states, they will always want more- like banning it in all states.
Here is what the government of the state of Victoria in Australia is planning
https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/about/publications/research-papers/statewide-treaty-bill-2025/
Thanks for the info Deodand.
Now I’m going to be subtle b/c last time I sounded off about Aussie stupidity the boss disapproved.
But THIS is typical now of the state I grew up in. I have a particular ire and venom for Aussie stupidity. And Victoria is the intergalactic center of woke now. Take THAT, Ontario and NZ.
D.A.
NYC
What about poor BC ?
Of course Melbourne is fast becoming an absolute hole of a place. The authorities kept this story quiet for about 2 weeks whilst they blathered on about how safe the CBD was.
https://x.com/TruthFairy131/status/1979118998211224030
To further illustrate how captured Melbourne is they have tried to stop the wonderful Helen Joyce from speaking. Would not want a reasonable truthful discussion out there would we.
https://x.com/rachelbaxendale/status/1979128994286178422
https://x.com/DoNoHarm79/status/1978938925973671991
RE time-travelling* dietician: As I said, moderation.
🙂 Good heavens! Is this what they call the counter-enlightenment? I wonder if they will try to get SCOTUS to change its mind about teaching creationism in public schools. That would be fun.
It’s distressingly worse than that. The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism by Tim Alberta, himself an Evangelical, is IMO a must read, unless one suffers from nightmares. Truly.
I count fifteen (fourteen blue+Maine) health alliance states on the WaPo map.
I surmise the Venezuelan/Maduro take-over/regime change has everything to do with oil. The Caribbean is a very small drug-trafficking lane. The vast majority of cocaine travels up the Pacific coast (if moving by sea) and ALL fentanyl (by far the most dangerous drug, duh!) is created and shipped from Mexico.
Trump is obviously obsessed with money and fossil fuels. My theory, which is mine, is he wants to overthrow Maduro, install some MAGA lackey as faux-dictator and steal as much oil as he can. Similar to what the neocons wanted to do in Iraq. He can be the Sheikh of Venezuela, has a nice ring. And hopefully, as a bonus, overthrowing Maduro will finally nab him the coveted NPP!
And it’s worth noting that the Admiral who oversaw the Caribbean forces, Admiral Holsey, just stepped down yesterday (was fired) as he was at odds with Trump’s/Hegseth’s aggressive actions in the Caribbean blowing up boats and such. And to reiterate, “drug-boats” in the Caribbean account for very little drug smuggling to the US, and no fentanyl smuggling. It’s a ruse. I also have another mini-theory, which is mini-me’s, that Hegseth just likes to blow shit up.
As much as Hegseth uses the word, perhaps it should be the Department of Lethality.
A quick check by using Google translate reveals that the sign in question actually says “Don’t walk around IN YOUR SWIMSUIT.” Kindof anticlimactic no?
Re that damn God-shaped hole, I propose we slightly rename it as that goddamn shaped hole.