Wednesday: Hili dialogue

Welcome to a Hump Day (“El ombligo de la semana” in Spanish): Wednesday, October 21, 2026, and National Reptile Awareness Day.  Here’s a big ‘un I photographed in the Galápagos three years ago.  These guys can live up to 175 years in captivity and weigh up to 880 pounds (400 kg.).

It’s also Apple Day (mainly in the UK), Garbanzo Bean Day, International Day of the Nacho, National Pumpkin Cheesecake Day,  and National Mezcal Day.

Again, posting will be light today as I have to drive a long way to Costco to get new (temporary) glasses. My retinal exam yesterday indicated that all was fine and healing up.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 21 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Three NYT science writers, Carl Zimmer, Kenneth Chang, and William Broad, discusses the biological question, “How did life arise?”

Here’s what’s known about three of the biggest inflection points in the evolution of life on Earth.

William Broad: “Where did life first emerge?”

Scientists agree on little regarding the origins of life, including where it might have arisen — at Earth’s surface, or in its watery depths.

“It’s hard to answer these questions,” said Joanna Masel, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona. “The evidence is sketchy. So people argue.

. . .On the other side of the argument is the watery-depths camp. In 1977, American scientists exploring the Pacific seabed stumbled upon an alien world of volcanic vents and otherworldly ecosystems, including eerie fields of albino tube worms. They drew their energy not from sunlight, which powers surface ecosystems, starting with plants, but instead from chemicals emitted by the hot springs.

As other deep-sea ecosystems came to light, scientists proposed that all life on Earth had perhaps arisen in the depths, nurtured by a warm, steady diet of chemicals and sheltered from the killer rocks and cosmic radiation that bombarded the planet’s surface early on.

In recent years, new discoveries have bolstered both sides of the argument.

In 2009, for instance, John D. Sutherland, a chemist at the University of Manchester, in England, described a new way that the molecules of life, energized by the sun’s ultraviolet rays, could have assembled spontaneously on the surface of a primitive Earth. And in 2017, an analysis of mineral deposits in Australia suggested that surface hot springs had nurtured the land’s earliest signs of life. In 2024, an influential group of scientists voiced strong support for the finding.

Even so, the deep springs theory has also gained new support. This summer, a team led by scientists at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, Germany, proposed that the warm chemicals available in the deep sea included metals such as nickel, cobalt and palladium. These metals, the researches contend, could have served as catalysts that helped the earliest forms of life build metabolic pathways.

Broad suggests that both theories could be right—that life could have risen twice independently. That seems unlikely given the common features of life (L amino acids, methods for making proteins, etc.), suggesting one common ancestor of all living organisms.

“How did life get complex? by Carl Zimmer

About two billion years ago, a new kind of cell emerged on Earth, one much bigger and more complex than the microbes that had come before. Today, these so-called eukaryotic cells inhabit our own bodies, as well as those of other animals, plants and fungi. How this new brand of cell emerged remains one of biology’s great mysteries.

“Eukaryotic” comes from a Greek term meaning “true nut,” a reference to the nucleus, the compartment in which eukaryotic cells coil their DNA. Eukaryotic cells have many other vital compartments, including thousands of mitochondria, which generate energy. The huge volume of a eukaryotic cell is supported by a scaffolding that can be quickly dismantled and reassembled; it also serves as an internal shipping network, whizzing packages of molecules from one compartment to another.

In contrast, a single-celled microbe such as Escherichia coli is far simpler. No mitochondria, no scaffolding, no nucleus; a nut-free “prokaryote.”

Eukaryotes — organisms composed of eukaryotic cells — all descend from a common ancestor, which in turn descended from ancient prokaryotes. The earliest eukaryotes were single-celled protozoans; their oldest known fossils date back 1.8 billion years. How long before that the first eukaryotes evolved, scientists can’t say.

Recent studies suggest that the final exchange that gave rise to eukaryotes was the most spectacular. Around 2.25 billion years ago, one species of bacteria took up permanent residence inside Asgard-like cells, using their own metabolism to generate fuel for the cells they occupied. They began to be passed down from one generation of hosts to the next, evolving into our mitochondria.

. . . And they don’t know why the merging of microbes apparently gave rise to big, complex cells just once in the history of life. Was there some exquisitely rare set of circumstances that allowed it to happen? Or did evolution conduct other experiments in complexity that ended in extinction long ago?

There’s another kind of complexity, too: that of multicellular organisms like redwoods and kangaroos. You can ask the same question about this “complexity,” but the answer will be different from that above.

“Why did life get big?” by Kenneth Chang

Then, about 720 million years ago, the world went haywire.

First, Earth froze over, sealing the planet in an icy shell that blocked sunlight from the oceans and shut off photosynthesis. Except for a 10-million-year thaw in the middle of it, Earth remained a shiny white snowball, not a blue marble, for 85 million years.

Scientists marvel that life did not die out. Instead, after that long era of darkness, it underwent a mysterious jump in size and complexity.

“That is the absolute wackiest interval of Earth history that anyone’s aware of,” said Nick Butterfield, a paleobiologist at Cambridge. “You go in the one end, and it’s this old, dreary, boring microbial world, and you come out the other end after these two massive glaciations, and all of a sudden, there’s animals on the scene, and all the microbes have changed.”

From then on there’s disagreement, even whether larger organisms occur before or only after the Ediacaran.  And there’s disagreement about what allowed size increase. It could have been an increase in oxygen due to the advent of photosynthesis, or perhaps something else.  The article, part of the NYT’s “unknowns” series, clearly shows how little we know about the origin of life—called “abiogenesis” in the trade. If you ask evolutionists if they could have one question about life answered, many would say “How did it start?” Abiogenesis is technically not part of evolutionary biology, since evolution can’t proceed until there are already organisms with heritable material, but it’s damn close to evolution.

*Over at the Free Press, Douglas Murray analyzes the recent unrest in France (which has spread to several European countries) in a piece called, “France stares down the abyss of history.” subtitled “Even great things come to an end. There’s no guarantee that French culture and traditions will survive ceaseless attacks from discontents inside the country.”).

It does not take a historian to notice that the current events do not look like school protests. Even if it were true that some students were protesting about their schooling, they would have absolutely no justification for doing so. Last year, French government spending accounted for a staggering 57 percent of gross domestic product, and French education spending is above average within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. This is in a country whose debt-to-GDP ratio is 115 percent. France is, if anything, spending too much on the education of its youth. Or rather, it is borrowing money to educate a generation, portions of which are now protesting against their expensive (though clearly inadequate) education.

When I say it does not take a historian to understand what is going on this month, I mean that identifying what is fueling these protests requires nothing more than having eyes.

Yes, there are students involved. But since the early days of the protests, groups of hardened, adult rioters have moved in and stoked the unrest to its current level of conflagration. The result has been apocalyptic scenes, including the burning down of the historic town hall in Limoges and the ransacking of the Galeries Lafayette in Paris. Those responsible are not students demanding better math instruction. They are far-left activists, anti-capitalists, green activists, and Palestine fetishists.

Importing generations of people who have no loyalty to or love for the country, many of whom desire to burn it down, has contributed to France’s climate of disorder. The snarky, schadenfreude-filled nature of much of the international commentary is itself sickening. “The French voted for this,” many online warriors have said as they watched tearful French shopkeepers trying to stop mobs from destroying their livelihoods. But that is not true. The French public never voted for this. Like their counterparts across Europe, in Britain, and indeed, in America, the public has consistently voted for governments that promised to secure the nation’s borders, maintain order on the streets, and prevent the civil-war scenarios that so many people, inside and outside the country, have warned about. Their leaders simply never heeded them, or failed trying.

. . . . More than any other country in Europe, France has suffered decades of attacks and riots linked to lax border and immigration policies and an atrociously failed integration policy. It has one of Europe’s largest Muslim populations relative to its size, yet rather than integrating these newcomers (if integration is possible), the country has become a breeding ground for resentment and extremism. In just a couple of years, from 2015 to 2017, the country witnessed Islamist militants kill figures ranging from the nation’s most famous secularists—the journalists of Charlie Hebdo—to Father Jacques Hamel, 85, whose throat was slit while celebrating Catholic Mass in a church in Rouen. It has endured nights of terror across the country, including November 2015, when Islamists attacked the Bataclan theater, the main soccer stadium outside Paris, and cafés and restaurants. And it has seen the murder of schoolteacher Samuel Paty by an Islamist who beheaded him for the supposed crime of “blasphemy.”

. . .French politicians have no answer to this. President Emmanuel Macron has once again used his silky words to talk at the nation, but he seems incapable of listening, changing course, or doing anything about the catastrophe. Even after the police have lost control of the streets in Marseille, France’s second-largest city, and Parisians and others have been forced to protect their own homes as the disorder has worsened, the president still refuses even to declare a state of emergency. His rivals on the left and right are no better. The socialist Jean-Luc Mélenchon fans the flames because many of the rioters are his left-wing supporters, who believe that violence always brings something beautiful and constructive in its wake. Meanwhile, right populist Marine Le Pen tries to pander to what she imagines to be the political middle ahead of the next presidential election, refusing to seize the moment to call for the remigration even of those caught burning France’s cities.

Generations of French politicians, commentators, activists, and others have helped bring about this moment. But, like children who start a fire, they have no idea how to put it out. For now, almost all are running away—unequal to the moment and inadequate to the challenge. Meanwhile, the socialist left is aligning politically with discontented immigrants, forming a movement large enough to vie for real power.

Murray tends to blame unrestricted immigration and lack of integration to many of Europe’s woes, and in this case he’s at least partly right, but we—or I—can’t be sure whether these riots would be taking place even if there was no immigration. The omnipresence of Palestinian flags and chants at least suggests that sympathy for Islamist terrorism and/or antisemitism is at least playing a role.

Here’s a tweet Jay suggesting (which seems reasonable) that the media is, for ideological reasons, largely ignoring the violence in these protests:

JUST IN: The BBC calls these fiery protests “mostly peaceful.” 🤦‍♂️

You Can’t Hate The Media Enough https://t.co/GXfw3bwIbb

— The Rubin Report (@RubinReportShow) October 19, 2026

*As I’ve mentioned before, Marine Le Pen, head of France’s National Rally Party that’s invariably called “far right” in the media (some readers disagree), is gaining considerable political clout from the riots and demonstrations in France. The WSJ explains:

The riots sweeping France have rocked the country’s political establishment, but one person is positioned to emerge from the chaos with a stronger hand: Marine Le Pen.

For more than a decade, the far-right leader has cast France as a nation adrift, buffeted by waves of immigration and lawlessness that have torn at the country’s social fabric. As bands of hooded rioters in dark clothing have descended on city centers across France, raiding city halls and looting thousands of stores, Le Pen has sought to present herself as the sole candidate in this spring’s presidential election willing to restore order.

The strategy was on display this week as Le Pen released a video address that bore the hallmarks of a president addressing the nation. Seated at a desk before an august bookcase and flanked by France’s tricolor flag, Le Pen cast the riots as a crisis of faith in President Emmanuel Macron’s authority.

“Our country is caught in a vice, held hostage between violence and powerlessness,” Le Pen said. “In six months, the French people will be able to choose a different path—one of authority and restored security.”

The approach has given Le Pen an air of inevitability as she pursues France’s highest office.

“It’s as if she’s at the office, already at the Élysée Palace,” said Adélaïde Zulfikarpasic, a pollster at the French polling firm Ipsos Bva.

Le Pen’s long-running focus on law and order, Zulfikarpasic said, allows her to position herself as a guarantor of stability when democracy itself is in crisis.\

. . . The riots are working to Le Pen’s advantage in other ways. As the violence has flared, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the far-left firebrand running for president, has dominated headlines with his support for protesters, drowning out establishment candidates and bolstering his chances of reaching the second-round runoff with Le Pen. If he succeeds, polls show, Le Pen would beat him handily.

. . .“The social instability over the weekend absolutely plays into Le Pen’s campaign that the establishment has delivered chaos and now is the time to try something different,” said Mujtaba Rahman, head of Europe for risk analysis firm Eurasia Group.

Rahman said Le Pen ultimately aims to persuade voters that she “is not the risk, voting National Rally isn’t the risk. The risk is coming from the established parties that are failing to deliver on the economy.”

Le Pen’s anti-immigration stance, meanwhile, gives her another way to frame the unrest. Le Pen has cast the unrest as the work of far-left radicals allied with youths from France’s banlieues, the poor urban outskirts where much of the country’s minority Muslim population resides.

While the unrest, partly motivated by France’s economic problems, is playing right into Le Pen’s hands (a nightmare for the protestors), she herself may exacerbate those problems since one of her past campaign promises is to lower France’s retirement age to 60, which will jack up the national debt. Another issue is her legal problems:

As Le Pen approaches the final stretch of the campaign, however, she faces a legal minefield stemming from her 2025 conviction for misusing European Parliament funds. Le Pen has denied any wrongdoing. In July, an appeals court upheld the ruling, sentencing her to a three-year prison term, with two of the years suspended. The remaining year, judges said, could be served wearing an electronic bracelet, raising the possibility that Le Pen will have to campaign under judicial surveillance.

I have no prognostications here for the elections, which will occur on April 18 of next year. And of course if the riots get worse, her chances are boosted.

*At It’s Noon in Israel,” Amit Segal has been suggesting that both Israel and the U.S. are planning some kind of big attack on Iran—and soon. That’s suggested in yesterday’s piece, “Bibi’s secret meeting in the desert.”

It’s Tuesday, October 20, and last night Benjamin Netanyahu skipped the Beitar Jerusalem game. Instead of a roaring welcome from 30,000 potential voters at Teddy Stadium, he flew to Nevatim Air Base in the south to meet U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and, according to Walla, Emirati officials.

The game ended in a goalless draw. The meeting’s outcome is classified, but it’s safe to assume it matters more for Israel’s future than Maccabi Tel Aviv extending its unbeaten streak.

That Netanyahu, a week before an election, gave up a stadium holding roughly three-quarters of a Knesset seat’s worth of voters says how serious it was. Recent waves of attacks show that Tehran is recovering its ability to target ships in the Strait of Hormuz. On one day last week, only seven tankers made it through, under half the weekly average and the lowest since July.

There is also the possibility that Iran is preparing to attack immediately following the Israeli election to sink Republican chances in the midterms.

The visit came a day after President Donald Trump formally endorsed Netanyahu, declaring that without him as prime minister the U.S. would have to go it alone. Whether that was a threat or an observation about the opposition’s mettle remains unclear. A trip by his defense secretary a week before the vote could be either, or not politically connected whatsoever.

The next round with Iran remains murky, but let us hope it ends more conclusively than last night’s game.

Segal’s reporting over the last week suggests that he knows something that the Western media doesn’t.  I guess we’ll find out.

*And from the UPI’s odd news, a Canadian man who won a seat on the local city council despite a campaign averring that he didn’t want the job:

A British Columbia city council candidate whose humorous campaign signs went viral appears to have won his election, despite branding himself as unqualified.

Brady Rogers, 33, gained attention online for his Kelowna City Council campaign signs, which bore slogans such as “I barely want to do this,” “Just trying to pay my rent,” “Fine. I’ll do it,” and “How hard can it be.”

Here’s a news report on Brady’s campaign, which include an interview with the candidate (he says the job is something “he feels he can do.”

Even Rogers’ campaign website opens with the message: “Do I enjoy politics? No. Do I know what I’m doing? No. But am I qualified? Also no.”

Preliminary results from Saturday’s municipal election show Rogers receiving 12,635 votes, coming in fourth among the 37 candidates. If those election results are certified on Tuesday, Rogers’ seat on the council will be guaranteed.

Rogers released a video on his campaign’s social media page after the preliminary results were announced, saying that despite his campaign’s tone, he plans to take the job seriously.

Preliminary results from Saturday’s municipal election show Rogers receiving 12,635 votes, coming in fourth among the 37 candidates. If those election results are certified on Tuesday, Rogers’ seat on the council will be guaranteed.

Rogers released a video on his campaign’s social media page after the preliminary results were announced, saying that despite his campaign’s tone, he plans to take the job seriously.

“I’m being a little bit tongue-in-cheek when I say I’m unqualified,” Rogers told Global News before the election. “I’ve never been a politician, but I certainly have experience that I think is very relevant and helpful.”

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili insulted Andrzej:

Andrzej: Why are you staring at me like that?
Hili: I’m listening to all that nonsense you’re muttering to yourself.

In Polish:

Ja: Czemu się tak przyglądasz?
Hili: Słucham co sam do siebie wygadujesz.

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

From CinEmma;

From Cat Memes:

From Terrible Maps, and it’s true that in Jersey you can’t pump your own gas. This has been true since 1949, but curiously diesel is exempt.

And lagniappe from Scott:

Christiana Amanpour leaves CNN after 43 years. Here’s her announcement:

An update from me… https://t.co/AKLOEekEO2

— Christiane Amanpour (@amanpour) October 19, 2026

One post at Townhall speculates why she’s leaving, though I have not an inkling of its truth:

CNN is bracing for a “bloodbath.” Paramount’s merger with Warner Bros. has been approved after an antitrust lawsuit was settled, paving the way for the $110 billion deal to close. In its wake, CNN could undergo massive changes, with even CBS News’ Bari Weiss considered to retool the network’s editorial direction. Weiss already has her hands full with the 60 Minutes revamp, but her name has been tossed around. Should she be selected, it’ll be hell on Earth for liberals. For now, the news of the settlement has many walking around the network offices like a funeral is about to begin (via Variety). . . .

From Luana. Unlike the destroyed-store story I posted yesterday, this one appears to be true:

🇫🇷 Owner of La Barrique, Aline, was beaten and disfigured. Her restaurant was completely burned down. She has lost everything… https://t.co/gFqDUZPP85

— Asian Dawn (@AsianDawn4) October 18, 2026

I hadn’t hear of the latest lunacy from Trump, but the Number Ten Cat did:

Much more of this nonsense and we’re going to have to insist that America stop using British places in their names – we’re talking to you New York, Boston and Washington

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) October 19, 2026

Here’s Greta touting her latest cause du jour: Zionism is racism and Israel is a genocidal “apartheid state”.  It’s hard to get so many things wrong in one minute, but Greta manages to do it.

Greta Thunberg has come out to defend the Green Party’s racist Zionism is Racism policy. The enthusiastic jump from the environment to antisemitism shocks me still. https://t.co/VQLhccxmDM

— Heidi Bachram (@HeidiBachram) October 19, 2026

Two from my feed. First, a horse/dolphin encounter:

A horse meeting a dolphin in crystal clear waters https://t.co/cY7ZmXa5Hl

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) October 20, 2026

From Jay, a prescient Netanyahu:

.@netanyahu: “On October 7, @EmmanuelMacron called me and asked for an immediate ceasefire and to solve this by diplomacy… I told him that if we don’t stop Hamas here, you’ll see them on the streets of Paris.”
https://t.co/3FAGOY07yd

— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) October 19, 2026

Kitty discovers sunbeam:

Kitty discovers a sunbeam for the first time and is utterly baffled by the sudden warmth https://t.co/OiWuyzXAUm

— Science girl (@sciencegirl) October 20, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish girl and her mother were both gassed to death as soon as they arrived in Auschwitz. The girl, Roza, was three years old, and would have been 88 today had she lived.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-10-21T11:02:52.234Z

And one from Doctor Cobb, who says, “This is true.” I am not so sure as I don’t have the data. Several people in France were injured though, as far as I know, nobody was killed.

— Xela Hart (@xelahart.bsky.social) 2026-10-19T13:38:35.626Z