Welcome to The Cruelest Day:Tuesday, February 17, 2026, and Pączki Day, celebrating the rich, filled Polish donut traditionally eaten before Lent. Here are a bunch with different fillings in Katowice, Poland (I ate two):
It’s also Chinese New Year, Mardi Gras, International Pancake Day, National Café au Lait Day, National Indian Pudding Day, and National Public Science Day.
There’s a nice Google Doodle for the Chinese New Year (it’s the Year of the Fire Horse); click on the image below to see where it goes:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the February 17 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The great actor Robert Duvall, who loved the smell of napalm in the morning, died yesterday at 95.
Robert Duvall, who drew from a seemingly bottomless reservoir of acting craftsmanship to transform himself into a business-focused Mafia lawyer, a faded country singer, a cynical police detective, a bullying Marine pilot, a surfing-obsessed Vietnam commander, a mysterious Southern recluse and scores of other film, stage and television characters, died on Sunday. He was 95.
His death was announced in a statement by his wife, Luciana Duvall, who said he had died at home. She gave no other details. He had long lived on a sprawling horse farm in The Plains, in Fauquier County, Va., west of Washington.
Mr. Duvall’s singular trait was to immerse himself in roles so deeply that he seemed to almost disappear into them — an ability that was “uncanny, even creepy the first time” it was witnessed, said Bruce Beresford, the Australian who directed him in the 1983 film “Tender Mercies.”
His chameleonlike skill invited comparisons to the incomparable Laurence Olivier; indeed, in 1980, Vincent Canby of The Times flat-out called him “the American Olivier.” A similar sentiment was expressed earlier by Herbert Ross, who directed “The Seven-Per-Cent Solution” (1976), in which Mr. Duvall, barely recognizable yet again, played Dr. John Watson to Nicol Williamson’s Sherlock Holmes. (Olivier himself played Holmes’s archnemesis Prof. James Moriarty in the movie.)
Only Mr. Duvall and George C. Scott, Mr. Ross said at the time, “have the range and variety of Laurence Olivier.”
That Mr. Duvall could become practically whomever he chose was foreshadowed in his first film, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a 1962 classic based on Harper Lee’s novel about racial prejudice in a Southern town. He played Boo Radley, the reclusive, hollow-eyed neighbor who fascinates and ultimately rescues the two small children of the defense lawyer Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck).
I didn’t know that Duvall polayed Boo Radley! Here’s a short retrospective of his accomplishments (I haven’t seen “Tender Mercies”):
*This just in: Jesse Jackson died.
At the height of his influence, Rev. Jackson was widely regarded as the nation’s preeminent civil rights leader, a ubiquitous presence before the television cameras. He showed up at protests and marches across the country to champion civil rights and social justice. And when civil disorder broke out — as it did after King’s assassination in 1968 and, decades later, after the fatal police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 — he urged restraint and nonviolence
In the late 1970s, he began to expand his activities beyond the United States. He thrust himself into Middle East peacemaking, prisoner-release efforts and the movement against apartheid in South Africa, and he was regularly seen in the company of presidents and foreign leaders.
*For the first time since the war between Israel and Hamas began, Doctors Without Borders (“MSF” in French) has admitted that armed terrorists are present in some of the Gazan hospitals where the organization works.
When Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) revealed over the weekend that it had suspended all noncritical operations at Nasser Hospital in January after staff reported armed men moving weapons and interrogating patients, it did something no other major medical or humanitarian organization has done since October 7.
It inadvertently validated what Israel has been saying for years.
According to the organization’s statement, armed individuals had been seen in recent months using the hospital compound for military-related activity.
More specifically, MSF stated that its medical teams witnessed suspected movement of weapons, as well as incidents of intimidation and arbitrary arrests of patients by armed terrorists, noting an uptick in such activity since the ceasefire began.
MSF’s acknowledgment is limited and cautious. It does not mention any terrorist organization by name, and includes a call on “all armed groups, as well as Israeli forces, to respect medical facilities.”
However, its significance cannot be understated.
For the first time during the war, a major international organization has publicly recognized the presence of armed groups operating within a Gaza hospital.
For years, the IDF has maintained that Hamas systematically embedded itself in and beneath civilian infrastructure, including medical facilities. Hospitals across Gaza, including Nasser Hospital, were exploited by Hamas terrorists and used as command centers, weapons storage, and an operational human shield against Israeli strikes, the army has repeatedly said. Some hospitals even served as links in Hamas’s vast tunnel network, which the group poured millions into building, while Gaza’s civilians were left to fend for themselves above ground. These claims were often dismissed or downplayed by international NGOs and UN agencies, many of which accused Israel of exaggeration or fabrication to justify military action. Now, MSF’s own words echo the IDF’s continued warnings about Hamas’s militarization and exploitation of Gaza’s hospitals.
The reason that MSF systematically ignored all the evidence, including video evidence, that terrorist organizations operated in and under hospitals is, of course, because the organization hates Israel. It is shameful that only now, several years after the war began, does it mention what everybody with a brain knew several years ago.
*I’m no fan of AOC, and the recent talk that she should run for President (or VP) makes my stomach ache According to an op ed by Jim Geraghty in the WaPo, when asked a simple question about the U.S. defending Taiwan against China, AOC emitted a word salad that would do justice to Kamala Harris.(article archived here).
“You know, I think that this is such a, you know, I think that this is a, this is, of course, a very long-standing policy of the United States. And I think what we are hoping for is that we want to make sure that we never get to that point, and we want to make sure that we are moving in all of our economic research and our global positions to avoid any such confrontation and for that question to even arise.”
This was a yes-or-no question, and Ocasio-Cortez did not answer it. There’s been a lot of speculation about the congresswoman running for president in 2028. The question of what the United States should do if China invades Taiwan is probably one of the biggest and most consequential problems facing the next president — assuming, of course, that China doesn’t invade before Donald Trump’s second term ends. If Ocasio-Cortez has put any thought into this foreign policy challenge, she hid it well in Munich.
For starters, it was a little surprising that the congresswoman asserts that committing U.S. troops to defend Taiwan is a “very long-standing policy of the United States,” because it isn’t.
The author goes on to explain why we should have a formal commitment to Taiwan, but don’t yet, although there are hints.
One reason AOC may believe that the U.S. has “a long-standing” commitment to defend Taiwan is because Joe Biden, at least four times during his presidency, said the U.S. would do this. For example, on August 2021, Biden said, “We made a sacred commitment to Article V that if in fact anyone were to invade or take action against our NATO allies, we would respond. Same with Japan, same with South Korea, same with Taiwan.”
. . .Deterring a Chinese invasion of Taiwan must be a top five U.S. geopolitical priority, and some might put it at the top of the list. The consequences of an invasion would be catastrophic — a massive loss of life; destruction of Taiwan’s best-in-the-world semiconductor production; disruption of Pacific Rim trade with the potential to do serious and lasting damage to the global economy.
Anyone who wants to be the U.S. president needs to have a well thought-out plan to preserve the status quo in the Taiwan Strait. The question will come up again. If AOC wants to be taken seriously as a candidate, she needs a serious answer.
AOC is not good with questions. I consider her savvy, in that she knows how to push her progressive agenda, but also see her as a disaster for Democrats, for in today’s political climate she would be unelectable. And I think we need to formalize and firm up our commitment to Taiwan, for, believe me, if China invades Taiwan, as it keeps hinting, it won’t be a Ukraine/USSR situation. The island democracy will instantly—and with much Taiwanese blood spilled—be converted into a part of the DPRC’s autocracy. Here’s a video from an MSC townhall. I swear, she sounds just like Kamala Harris.
*The Dispatch joins the ranks of gleeful believers and believers-in-belief in an article by Nick Pompella: “Why New Atheism Crumbled” (article archived here; h/t Reese) It’s the same stuff as usual: ground that has been gone over dozens of times:
America’s oft-discussed “decline in religion” is actually a story about a decline in church attendance; one’s investment in an institutional religious community is separate from belief in a god (or gods) of any variety. The unchurched “nones,” named so because they respond “nothing in particular” when asked about their beliefs by survey organizations, are a fast-growing group, to be sure. But a solid majority of nones still believe in a “higher power”—not often the biblical God, but in some spiritual concept like it. Even 23 percent of declared atheists proclaim belief in some kind of spiritual force, interestingly enough.
The ranks of the truly irreligious, then, appear to have flatlined. And that might come as a surprise to those of us who followed New Atheism, an explosive social trend in the 2000s and early 2010s that was defined by its most popular intellectuals, known as its Four Horsemen: Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett. At the time, it seemed like New Atheism would never stop growing. So where did all that momentum go, and will the atheist faction in the U.S. ever make a comeback?
Yes, the God- (or spiritual-)shaped hole is the reason. Atheism doesn’t give us satisfaction because it doesn’t give us purpose and meaning:
But if the statistics tell us anything, it’s that this phenomenon has evaporated. People aren’t on the whole very enthusiastic about going to church, but most Americans still believe in some kind of god, and we have not been mass-unbaptized as New Atheists. Davis thinks the reason why is clear: New Atheism’s scorched-earth policy taught people to burn, but not build.
“I think a lot of people experimented with that life going into adulthood,” Davis told me. “I think it left a lot of [them] isolated, feeling confused about why, perhaps, their career wasn’t filling up their soul. So I think it ran out of steam as we experimented with it as a culture.”
New Atheism struggled to even see this missing sense of spiritual purpose as a problem. Most of the New Atheist intellectuals (with one notable exception—more on that in a moment) didn’t take religious and spiritual experiences seriously, leaving the door open for religion to come back into public life once the movement ebbed.
. . . . One consequence of (not necessarily Christian) resurgent spiritual practices often filling in the power vacuum left by New Atheism is that vocal atheists are noticeably more accommodating to spirituality. To his credit, Sam Harris has always made this concession. In the first 10 minutes of the influential “Four Horsemen” DVD, which put the men at the vanguard of New Atheism in the same room in the late 2000s, Harris is the first person to raise the fact of spiritual and mystical experience, and defends the proposition that something out of the ordinary is really happening to the people who have them. His own spiritual practices in various strains of Buddhist meditation have even become a core component of his personal brand, and he is not eager to talk up the influence of New Atheism, referring to it in many places as simply a “publishing phenomenon” that has come and gone. Even Dawkins, maybe the most openly hostile of the four, recently said that he is a “cultural Christian” who can appreciate the religion’s place in British life.
America today, then, seems rife with opportunities for God to seep in. Davis has even suggested that we may have the “Four Horsemen of New Theism” rising up with the likes of Ross Douthat, David Bentley Hart, Rod Dreher, and Paul Kingsnorth all writing to large audiences about religion as the cornerstone of society. Douthat’s book, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious hit the top 10 on the New York Times’ bestseller nonfiction list around this time last year. Kingsnorth’s latest book, Against the Machine, later hit No. 11 on the same list, and Kingsnorth recently wrote that it is getting reprinted and translated in new regions. The book is pitched as “the spiritual manual for dissidents in the technological age.” Outside of these four, a book entitled Why I Am Not an Atheist: Confessions of a Skeptical Believer—by former Harper’s Magazine editor Christopher Beha—will come out on Tuesday. The publisher is Penguin Random House, which means that a book making the case against atheism will be in every major bookseller in the country.
Oh, and I’m in there, too, in a somewhat snarky comment:
A steady stream of “Hitchslaps” (i.e. videos of Christopher Hitchens supposedly humiliating interlocutors) on early YouTube, combined with a publishing craze that extended beyond the Four Horsemen and gave pop book careers to the likes of Jerry Coyne and Lawrence Krauss, did seem to successfully convert some untold number of young people—at least for a time. Dawkins’ The God Delusion was Amazon’s No. 5 bestseller in November 2006, and a representative from a U.K. bookseller thought that one would have to go back to the famous skeptic Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian in order to find similar bestsellers in this vein. Less than a year later, Hitchens’ God Is Not Great was the No. 1 New York Times bestseller. All of this output was tonally similar, even if the substance and angles of attack varied.
Pompella’s conclusion is that all the spiritual “dark energy” floating about America simply needs to be channeled into a coherent religion, and then all will be well:
New Atheism is dead—in fact, hardline atheism in general seems to have stopped in its tracks. But American religions still have to reintroduce people into a fruitful, perhaps even difficult religious life dedicated to one institution, with one internally coherent set of beliefs. They will have to contend with this raw spiritual energy and channel it to the right places. The one piece of good news for the American faithful is that New Atheism isn’t one of their obstacles anymore.
What bullpucky! First of all, while New Atheism is dead in the sense that the in-your-face books by Hitchens et al. are now two decades old, its legacy continues in the rise of “nones”. In fact, “New Atheism” wasn’t really new, it was just different from old atheism in that it was infused with science and pushed by people who were remarkably eloquent; but the arguments against God were the same as those adumbrated by the likes of Robert Ingersoll and Bertrand Russell. It seems as if when journalists runs out of material, they simply phone in an article about how “New Atheism is dead.” Still, it refuses to lie down.
*If you’re one of the folks who eats not for enjoyment but for longevity, you’ll want to read the WaPo’s new article, “As an oncologist, these are the foods I recommend to lower cancer risk.” You can guess what the good oncologist tells us:
Eat your fruits and vegetables.
The investigators found that high cruciferous vegetable consumption (cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts and turnip greens) – cooked and raw – seemed to reduce the risk of at least six types of cancer compared with low consumption, including cancers of the mouth and throat, esophagus, colon and rectum, larynx, endometrium, and ovary. When comparing the highest 20 percent of vegetable eaters, who eat multiple servings per week, with the lowest 20 percent, who may eat less than one serving per week, high intake was associated with a reduced risk of 11 cancers.
High fruit consumption was associated with a reduced risk of seven cancers, including cancers of the mouth, esophagus, stomach, colon and rectum, pancreas, larynx and lymphoma. High intake of citrus fruits in particular was associated with reduced risk of cancers of the digestive tract and larynx, while high consumption of apples and tomatoes appeared to reduce the risk for digestive tract cancers.
Prioritize whole grains
One research review, which included studies that followed more than 2 million people for five to 26 years, suggested that consuming three servings of whole grains daily might lower your risk of dying from any cancer by 6 percent. The cancer-reducing benefits could be due to a few factors, including how whole grains accelerate food transit time through the colon and lower inflammation in a couple of different ways.
Avoid red meat and processed meats
There are more than 800 scientific articles that explore the relationship between meat consumption and cancer. The largest body of data links colorectal cancer with consumption of red meat (think: beef, veal, pork, lamb) and processed meat (bacon, sausage, ham, hot dogs). It shows that for every 100 grams of red meat consumed per day (imagine half a cup, or a piece of meat the size of a deck of cards), the risk of colorectal cancer increases by 17 percent. For every 50 grams of processed meat eaten daily, the risk increases by 18 percent.
Ditch the sugary drinks [JAC: he’s talking about drinks, and the author does eat some sweet foods in moderation]
Sugar does not directly fuel cancer growth. This is a myth. However, raw and processed sugar, corn sweetener, high-fructose corn syrup and other sugars in beverages and fast food or processed food may increase the risk of weight gain and obesity. Any resulting insulin resistance and chronic inflammation can be indirect risk factors for cancer.
What’s the proof? The Iowa Women’s Health Study followed more than 35,000 women for the development of cancer for over 25 years. Women who consumed high levels of sucrose or sucrose-containing foods were no more likely to develop colorectal cancer than women who consumed the lowest levels of sucrose. (Sucrose is the type found in table sugar.) In another study of more than 90,000 people in Japan, total sugar, specific types of sugar and fructose intake also had no association with development of colorectal cancer.
This is a man who has no fun! Seriously, though, if your concern is avoiding cancer, then pay attention to the article. Or, to quote the old saw, “Ask your doctor.”
*Finally, from the reliable AP’s “Oddities” section, we have a short notice of an injured bird that sought help—at a hospital!
An injured seabird sought help by pecking at the door of an emergency room at a hospital in Germany until medical staff noticed it and called firefighters to help with its rescue.
The cormorant, a shiny black waterbird, had a triple fishing hook stuck in its beak when it made its presence known at the glass door of the Klinikum Links der Weser hospital in the northern city of Bremen on Sunday.
In a joint effort, medical staff and firefighters removed the fishhook and treated the wound, the Bremen firefighter department said in a statement. The bird was later released back into nature on the grounds of the hospital park.
“When an injured cormorant does approach humans, it is usually an animal in extreme distress that has lost its natural shyness,” the statement said.
A cormorant is a large bird with a long neck, wedge-shaped head and a distinctive sharp beak with a hooked tip. A fishhook in the bird’s beak would be extremely dangerous for the animal. Infections, pain and even starvation are possible, the firefighter department said.
I still find such stories amazing: a bird that is evolved to avoid humans suddenly seeks their help when it’s injured? And at a a hospital? In fact, I find it hard to believe that the bird even knew what it was doing. But all’s well that ends well!
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili wants to relive the life of her ancestors:
Hili: When you finish reading that article, give me a pillow, because it’s hard here.
Andrzej: Then go to the sofa.
Hili: I can’t, I’m thinking about my poor ancestors who slept on tree branches.
In Polish:
Hili: Jak skończysz czytać ten artykuł, to daj mi jakąś poduszkę, bo tu twardo.
Ja: To idź na sofę.
Hili: Nie mogę, myślę o moich biednych przodkach, którzy spali na gałęziach drzew.
*******************
From The Language Nerds, a very clever Q&A:
From Give Me a Sign:
And one Andrzej posted on FB:
From Masih; be sure to look at the picture in the second tweet:
President @realDonaldTrump, Iran’s regime told you that it had stop executions of protesters, a move we believe was designed to ease international pressure and create space for talks. But now, as negotiations continue, young Iranians are once again facing imminent execution.… https://t.co/WoYWCbiIKW pic.twitter.com/nCJnIJ6cMh
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) February 16, 2026
From Malcolm; do they recognize the smell as feline?
Cats’ reactions to tiger scent.
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) January 14, 2026
Larry just celebrated his fifteenth year at 10 Downing Streeet:
Wish I could remember where I’d left that folder… https://t.co/5vLwIean1s
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) February 15, 2026
Ricky Gervais on cultural appropriation—the right and wrong ways:
We invented that!
— The Ricky Gervais Clips (@gervaisclips) February 16, 2026
One from my feed that I retweeted because I love it. The kids are very good and quiet:
One of my favorite tweets. EVERYONE loves ducks and especially ducklings! https://t.co/Is0zuzADci
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) February 16, 2026
One I retweeted from the Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed as soon as he arrived in Auchwitz. He was twelve years old. https://t.co/hL8JY8KYL4
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) February 17, 2026
. . . and two from Dr. Cobb. First a d*g rescue. Both of these are good boys!
This teenager saved his neighbor's dog from drowning in a freezing pond. This is Bernard. His family contacted emergency services right away, but high school senior Hugh Pinneo got to Bernard first. Hugh said he's "just glad I acted that day and saved the dog's life." We are too. 12/10 for all
A grizzly bear, floating into a school of salmon and about to chow down:
Franzi Schimmer captured this Grizzly bear in Brooks Falls, Alaska just floating along, tippy-tapping down the river, browsing the salmon.Prior to hibernation, up to 40% of a bear's body mass is fat, which is less dense than water (~0.9 g/cm^2), so the murder-monster is also a floaty-boaty.
— c0nc0rdance (@c0nc0rdance.bsky.social) 2026-02-14T21:47:31.491Z
” sprawling horse farm in The Plains, in Fauquier County, Va., west of Washington.”
– God Robert Duval was incredibly talented: that’s just where you’d expect to find the coolest man alive!
Not so PLO lover Jesse Jackson who was, in essence, a proto-race grifter who called my city “Hymetown” – on account of the Jews don’tcha know? Want to know where black people lost their trust in Jews (as the host often asks) – people like shakedown artist JJ.
D.A.
NYC/CT
Once again I wish Hitch were still with us. People would be afraid to publish such daft articles and books, as he would review them, mercilessly.
Can you imagine, even for a moment, that Hitch would have filled his “god-shaped hole” with religion by now? Thought not.
Duvall also plays a role in the unjustly neglected 1963 movie Captain Newman, M.D., starring Gregory Peck, Tony Curtis, and Angie Dickinson, about an Air Force psychiatrist. Duvall is one of the patients.
I think Andrzej forgot about the British, the last of the lot.
Readers who actually known something about this should correct me, but I kinda look at the British and French as liberators of millions of Arabs from being under the Ottoman thumb through the Mandate mechanism post WW1.