Welcome to a Hump Day (“Ziua Cocoașei” in Romanian): Wednesday, October 14, 2026, and National Dessert Day, celebrating everyone’s favorite course. Here’s a fine treat of Hawaiian “shave ice” with matcha ice cream, sweet red beans, and vanilla ice cream on top and mochi on the side. Shave ice hasn’t made it to the mainland yet, but I remember that Obama loves it:
It’s also National Chocolate-Covered Insect Day, National Fossil Day. and National Bring Your Teddy Bear to Work and School Day. I have Toasty, who’s always here with me:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 14 Wikipedia page.
Hili will be short today as I went to the eye doctor yesterday, consuming the time I usually use to prepare this feature. Bear with me (this could be the title of the photo above); I do my best.
Da Nooz:
*During an operation yesterday to remove a nodule from his lung, Pope Leo was diagnosed with lung cancer, and a portion of his lung was removed. He’s only 71–young for a Pope:
Pope Leo was diagnosed with lung cancer on Tuesday, and a lower lobe of his right lung was removed during surgery, the Vatican said in a statement.
It said an examination of a nodule during the operation had confirmed a diagnosis of lung adenocarcinoma. It said cancer had been “suspected by preoperative tests.”
The surgery itself lasted approximately 90 minutes, and the pope, 71, was in the operating room for about 3 hours. “The surgery was successful, and there were no complications,” the statement said.
The statement did not say whether the pope would undergo further treatment. A Vatican spokesman said that the statement spoke for itself.
On Wednesday, the Vatican issued a statement saying that the pope “had a restful night.”
Lung adenocarcinoma is a common form of lung cancer. Survival rates for it vary greatly depending on the stage of the cancer and a patient’s overall health.
The information released about Leo thus far seems to indicate he has early-stage lung cancer, which is typically treated with surgery and tends to have a very high survival rate, said Dr. Sudish Murthy, a thoracic surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic.
The surgery was performed at a hospital in Rome, the Policlinico A. Gemelli. The Vatican had said previously that Leo was expected to spend about a week recovering in the hospital after the surgery and that all audiences with him would be canceled until Oct. 20.
An oncologist interviewed on NBC News last night said that if the cancer was stage 1, no other treatment would ensue, but if it were 2 or 3, he would have other treatment: presumably radiation or chemotherapy. I don’t think it was stage 4, which has a dire prognosis.
*The embattled U.S. Ambassador to Greece, Kimberley Gilfoyle, has resigned since the pressure on her was too great.
Kimberly Guilfoyle resigned as the U.S. ambassador to Greece on Tuesday after the White House asked her to do so following a string of damaging reports, including that she had asked a Republican donor to pay off her credit card.
In response to a question from a reporter about Ms. Guilfoyle’s status, President Trump’s new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, said: “We have asked Ambassador Guilfoyle to resign. She has been a wonderful asset to the team, and we wish her well.”
Mr. Trump said Tuesday that Ms. Guilfoyle “was doing a good job” but that he “didn’t like what I read.” The president also downplayed his connection to Ms. Guilfoyle, who was once engaged to his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr.
“She wasn’t a member of my family,” he told reporters before leaving the White House for Alaska. “She, I guess, dated my son a long time ago.”
In a lengthy post on social media, Ms. Guilfoyle said that her time as ambassador was “coming to an end” and that she planned to “vigorously defend my name, my reputation, and my integrity.”
“I will not allow false accusations to define my decades of public service,” she wrote.
A donor, Eric Deters, first told The Wall Street Journal that Ms. Guilfoyle asked him to wire her $100,000 to pay off her American Express card just before her Senate confirmation hearing in July 2025. According to messages Mr. Deters provided to The New York Times, Ms. Guilfoyle promised to serve as his “ride or die in Trump world” if he sent her the money.
Ms. Guilfoyle was one of the first ambassadors to be nominated in the president’s second term. In Greece, she has been a highly visible ambassador, appearing on the cover of Vogue Greece and at parties around Athens. Ms. Guilfoyle told The Times last year that her active social life demonstrated her commitment to the job.
What Gilfoyle did was bribery, plain and simple: “I’ll put in a good word for him with Trump if you give me the money.” Now whether an ambassador to Greece can have a lot of influence with the President is dubious, but nobody should be allowed to serve after saying something like that. And she’s not particularly qualified, either, though lots of ambassadorships are offered merely as political plums.
*The WSJ urges Trump to throw in his lot with the Saudis in attacking the Houthis.
Missile and drone attacks by Yemen’s Houthis over the weekend have Saudi Arabia reeling. The skies over Riyadh emptied after a Saturday strike on the international airport killed 13 and injured more than 300, and a Sunday attack killed one more. Now comes the test for U.S. policy.
Asked Saturday about joining Saudi strikes against the Houthis, President Trump said, “We may. We’re going to look at it.” Yet the last thing he seems to want before midterm elections is a military escalation. That hesitation may be what Iran and its Houthi militia proxies, whom it arms and finances, are counting on.
The U.S. could let the Saudis fend for themselves against the Iranian axis, but at great strategic cost. The region is watching what Washington will do when the cornerstone of its Gulf alliance system is under attack.
This doesn’t require a blank check for Riyadh, and U.S. interceptor shortages constrain what Mr. Trump can provide on defense. But this fight won’t be won on defense, continuing to play whack-a-mole with Houthi projectiles. That points to offense, where munitions stocks are healthier and U.S. help is needed to take out Houthi surface-to-air missiles.
Real-time U.S. intelligence support is more discreet but equally important. The Saudi-backed Yemeni government offensive already has the Houthis under pressure along Yemen’s western coast and Red Sea corridor, but it’s moving slowly.
The U.S. can also continue its diplomacy to rally a regional anti-Houthi coalition, including Israel and the United Arab Emirates. The Houthis threaten the region and international shipping, not only Saudi Arabia, and they operate as part of a larger Iranian strategy. Though Houthi-Saudi conflict predates the current Iran war, the war has put Saudi Arabia in the line of fire. Iran may believe it has identified the weak link in the U.S. regional alliance.
. . . . It didn’t have to be this way. The original Western error was to restrain the Saudi-Yemeni alliance when it had the Houthis on defense. Amid international humanitarian concerns over civilian casualties, a chance to defeat the Iranian proxy was missed in 2018 and 2019. In February 2021 the new Biden Administration cut off all support—arms, intelligence and logistics—for the anti-Houthi offensive.
To accommodate Iranian power, Joe Biden even lifted the Houthis’ terror designation. This for a group whose chant is: “God is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse be upon the Jews, Victory to Islam.” The Saudis then cut a deal to appease the Houthis, including funneling money to grease the peace. As with Qatari money in Gaza, it didn’t work. The Houthis used the reprieve to rearm.
As with Hamas, there is no diplomatic way to eliminate the Houthis threat. Yes, diplomacy may be needed to forge an anti-Houthi alliance, but, like all Islamist Iranian proxy groups, there is no solution but military engagement. And “rallying a regional anti-Houthi coalition” means putting together a plan of military strikes. It’s less than two months until the midterms, but the Houthis can do a lot of damage to Saudi Arabia before then.
*Over at the Free Press, Tony Blair takes on the antisemitic Greens: “Britain’s fastest-growing party has an anti-Jewish problem.”
This weekend, the Green Party of England and Wales crossed a line. A dangerous line. One that it is unacceptable to cross. It passed a resolution which effectively denounced the State of Israel’s right to exist.
By a vote of 1,022 to 813, the party passed a motion entitled “Zionism Is Racism,” which commits the party to a single Palestinian state covering all of historic Palestine—which is to say, to a world in which Israel, the state which contains the largest population of Jews on Earth, does not exist.
To understand the full depth of this shift, consider what the motion says. It defines Zionism not as the movement for Jewish self-determination in the historic Jewish homeland, but as an ideology demanding “an ethnonationalist Jewish State in historic Palestine to the exclusion and/or domination of the non-Jewish population.” It instructs that Zionism will be “treated as any other form of racism” and rejects any attempt “to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism.”
Since at least two-thirds of British Jews call themselves Zionists, the party has, in effect, branded the majority of the country’s Jews racists, while declaring that doing so cannot be antisemitic.
. . .There are those in my party, Labour, who might be tempted by the so-called progressive Red-Green coalition—an alliance between Labour and the Greens to unite the British left. But this vote should serve as a warning of the dangers such an alliance would bring.
Zionism was never a movement started in support of Jewish supremacy. It started because Jewish people found that the original preferred strategy of assimilation was impossible. Throughout the centuries Jews in Europe and elsewhere were subject to persecution. Sometimes treated less badly than at other times, but never treated equally. So in the late 19th century, the movement began for a Jewish homeland. The terrors of the Holocaust gave it unstoppable force. But it was never, and has never been, incompatible with self-determination for the Palestinians.
“Zionism is racism” is not fresh moral thinking about the Middle East. In 1975, the Soviet bloc and its Arab allies pursued United Nations Resolution 3379, which declared Zionism a “form of racism and racial discrimination.” Britain voted against the resolution in 1975 and for its revocation in 1991. Now, a Soviet propaganda campaign, which should have died with the Cold War, is being given a second life in 21st-century Britain.
. . .This weekend’s motion overturns decades of international consensus. It rejects the two-state solution. With it goes the architecture of every attempt to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 1947, when the UN General Assembly first voted for a Jewish state alongside an Arab one. In this, the party is unashamedly aligning itself with the most extreme elements of Middle East politics.
Those of us working, through the Board of Peace, to ensure that the bloodshed of October 7 is never repeated, and that Gaza has a different and better future, understand very well the legitimate global concern about Gaza. We have a plan—the only viable plan on offer—whose framework is designed to create a new Gaza in which Israel’s security is protected and the Palestinians in Gaza have the chance of a different and better future. And we know that only by freeing Gaza from the control of Hamas, so long as it remains a group committed to the destruction of Israel by violence, can the Palestinians of Gaza have a chance at freedom.
This is very refreshing coming from a Labour Party man, though he’s misguided about the two-state solution. But Blair is right about freeing Gaza from the control of Hamas. He should realize that that will never be effectd by the “Board of Peace”, but only through military compulsion. I’d be delighted if Hamas laid down its weapons and disbanded, but can’t imagine the latter happening without the former—or ever. Hamas without weapons is like a lioness without teeth.
The black-footed ferret (Mustela nigripes), brought back from near extinction and always precarious, is in more trouble now, as the founding population seems to have largely disappeared. A plague is ravaging the species as well as its main prey, prairie dgs. (“Sylvatic plague” is caused by the same bacterium that produces bubonic plague, but this strain appears to affect rodents and mustelids, though its effect on ferrets is largely by killing their prey, not the ferrets themselves.)
Wyoming wildlife managers are reporting that no black-footed ferrets are being detected in the cradle of the species’ conservation: the Absaroka Range foothills outside of Meeteetse, where the ferrets were saved after presumed extinction in the 1980s.
A tough combination of plague and drought — both big issues for the embattled western species — are suspected causes of a population collapse in the Meeteetse area, where wildlife managers returned ferrets to the wild in 2016 after a three-decade-long absence. It’s not assured that the reintroduced population is completely gone, but it’s not looking promising, Wyoming Game and Fish Department small carnivore biologist Andy Gygli said.
“We spent a couple hundred hours of effort surveying 4,000 to 5,000 acres of the Meeteetse reintroduction area,” Gygli said. “We didn’t see any ferrets.”
Wyoming wildlife managers are reporting that no black-footed ferrets are being detected in the cradle of the species’ conservation: the Absaroka Range foothills outside of Meeteetse, where the ferrets were saved after presumed extinction in the 1980s.
A tough combination of plague and drought — both big issues for the embattled western species — are suspected causes of a population collapse in the Meeteetse area, where wildlife managers returned ferrets to the wild in 2016 after a three-decade-long absence. It’s not assured that the reintroduced population is completely gone, but it’s not looking promising, Wyoming Game and Fish Department small carnivore biologist Andy Gygli said.
“We spent a couple hundred hours of effort surveying 4,000 to 5,000 acres of the Meeteetse reintroduction area,” Gygli said. “We didn’t see any ferrets.”
. . .“We’ve heard a lot about deer, elk, pronghorn and cattle having hard times,” Gygli said. “It’s the same with our other herbivores. Prairie dogs also have to eat, and lack of (vegetation) coverage can result in low recruitment, which can result in downstream effects.”
For ferrets, those downstream drought effects are severe. They, too, haven’t had enough to eat. Indirectly, drought caused the numbers of rare mustelids in the world’s largest wild black-footed ferret population, in South Dakota’s Conata Basin/Badlands, to plummet from 250 to 70 animals between 2024 and 2025, according to biologist and ferret expert Travis Livieri, who studies that population.
“In my 30 years of doing this, I’ve never seen (drought) this bad, where prairie dogs failed to reproduce at a high rate,” Livieri said. “The prairie dogs don’t do well, the ferrets won’t do well.”
. . .There are some skeptics that Meeteetse will ever be home to self-sustaining ferrets. Oakleaf, the Game and Fish retiree, says he understands the desire to restore the historically significant population, but he worries that it’s just not the right place — it’s too small and has too much plague, he said.
“Everybody involved feels obligated to put them back in Meeteetse.” Oakleaf said, “But, man, I don’t know how you do it. It just hasn’t shown over the years that it could support a ferret population.”
For now, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department is not giving up.
“This is a place that we’re going to continue to work on,” Gygli said. “It’s the place where ferrets persisted.”
There are about 500 of these ferrets left in the wild and around 300 in captivity. Here’s a photo from Wikipedia:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has an odiferous premonition:
Hili: There’s something scary over there.
Andrzej: I don’t see anything threatening.
Hili: Neither do I, but I don’t like the smell.
In Polish:
Hili: Tam coś straszy.
Ja: Nie widzę niczego groźnego.
Hili: Ja też nie, ale zapach mi się nie podoba.
*******************
From Meow Incorporated:
From CinEmma:
From Give Me a Sign 2.0:
From Masih: Here’s the funeral announcement for a woman murdered by her brother in an “honor killing” in Iran. The killer is listed among the mourners and organizers, with the honorific “esteeemed”:
And then came the funeral announcement…Surreal? No. This is real life under Islamic Republic of Iran.
Guess whose name appeared among the mourners and organizers? Her killer. Maryam was murdered by her own brother, with the help of her husband, in the name of “honor.”
And to make this sick joke even sicker, his name was preceded by an honorific: “Esteemed.”
Yes. The murderer gets respect. The murderer gets recognition. The murderer gets to play the grieving relative.
But here’s the detail that should terrify everyone.
Maryam’s son’s full name appeared in the announcement. Her daughter? No name. Just “the grieving daughter.”
The alleged killer deserves a name and a title. The innocent girl doesn’t even deserve an identity.
Think about that. Even on a funeral announcement for a woman murdered in the name of honor, the next generation of women is already being erased.
This is what happens when women are treated as men’s honor instead of human beings with their own dignity.
— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) October 13, 2026
The Number Ten Cat is recovering from a removal of a cyst, and his fur is growing back. But he’s still cracking jokes:
I told the dog that if you think my scar is bad, you should see the other guy…
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) October 13, 2026
From Luana. The riots in France are spreading, and Luana thinks that immigrants are one of the causes:
The Islamic riots in France have spread to Belgium, and Brussels looks like a war zone right now.
This is the capital of the European Union. 88% of people under 18 have a foreign background, and more than half are Muslim.
What has Europe done to itself? https://t.co/gVDGj9DKPf
— Dr. Maalouf (@realMaalouf) October 9, 2026
Two from my feed. First, Hasan Piker cooks himself in his fancy Mao suit. Did he really say he had to “slope himself out”, or am I mishearing?
In less than two minutes, Ziwe cooks Hasan Piker more thoroughly than 1,000 MAGA influencers and 2,000 more irrelevant cable news segments. https://t.co/EYAlnsd7Qc
— Rob Smith (@robsmithonline) October 12, 2026
D*gs in flight!
This is beautiful ❤️ https://t.co/Y1vcp2QQUE
— Science girl (@sciencegirl) October 13, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was two years old and would be 86 today had she lived.
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) October 14, 2026
Two from Dr. Cobb. We’ve seen the first spider before, but not, I think, like this:
Here's a spider 🕷️ using a web 🕸️ like Spider-Man: it creates a thin line of web that can be used to yank something in towards you at VERY high speed!doi.org/10.1016/j.cu… 🧪Hat tip to @brembs.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
A cute Halloween runner duck:
Runner duckling Boot on pumpkin inspection duties
— Chris and his farmily of forever farm friends (@caenhillcc.bsky.social) 2026-10-12T19:59:17.519Z
There are many good doo-wop songs from the early days of rock, but this one’s my favorite: “So Much in Love” sung by the Tymes and released in 1963. It’s street-corner music of the highest order, complete with background wailing and great harmony. Note that it begins with the sound of seagulls at the shore. There’s at least one other pop song that begins that way; can you name it?
Tony Blair was the chief originator and promoter of mass immigration into the UK. And it is, of course, mass immigration from Muslim countries that is the biggest driver of anti-Semitism in the UK. I wonder whether Blair does any pondering on that.
(People like Blair subscribe to the utterly ludicrous notion that if one transports migrants into the UK then they instantly become “British” in all important respects, including British values, and that differences between people amount to no more than different dress codes and a different choice of holy days.)
“Sitting on the Dock of the Bay,” is that the one? (I love the new music feature!)
Nice to hear and see activity at Caen Hill again. That is one cute duckling! Thank you.
Does the NYT article even mention that Kimberly Guilfoyle was the first wife of Gavin Newsom? Or does only her connection to Trump matter to them?
The UK Greens have become the Islamonazi party. And their resolution ignores the inconvenient truth that some 20% of Israelis are Arab Muslims, whereas the neighboring countries are all Judenrein. So if any movement is racist here it is Islamism not Zionism.
Ah, Tony Blair. Still thinks his thoughts on the Middle East are useful.
The spider is pretty nifty.