Welcome to Sunday, November 15, 2026: Sabbath for goyische cats and National Raisin Bran Cereal Day. This is one of the few cereals I’ll eat, though I never buy the stuff (I also eat granola if it’s not half candy-fied). The cereal has a long history involving its name:
Skinner’s Raisin-BRAN was the first raisin bran brand on the market, introduced in the United States in 1926 by the Skinner Manufacturing Company. For 17 years, Skinner had ownership over the product’s name, until Kellogg’s and Post began to sell their own versions of raisin bran. With concerns of losing money within grocery store sales, Skinner filed a cease-and-desist in an attempt to keep ownership over his raisin bran product.
The name “Raisin-BRAN” was at one time trademarked by Skinner, however in 1944 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit found:
The name “Raisin-BRAN” could not be appropriated as a trade-mark, because: “A name which is merely descriptive of the ingredients, qualities or characteristics of an article of trade cannot be appropriated as a trademark and the exclusive use of it afforded legal protection. The use of a similar name by another to truthfully describe his own product does not constitute a legal or moral wrong, even if its effect be to cause the public to mistake the origin or ownership of the product.
Now, any brand or manufacturer may create their own version of raisin bran and name it just that.
So, be careful when you’re buying it as it’s not a proprietary name. Actually, after I wrote this I went grocery shopping and, hungry for Raisin Bran, looked at it in the store. It was NINE DOLLARS FOR A BOX! This is what happens when you haven’t bought cereal in a long time. I gave it a pass.
Here’s a bowl:
It’s also National Bundt Day (the cake), National Spicy Hermit Day (a cookie), and Steve Irwin Day, though he was neither born nor died on Nobember, 15.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 15 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*As they suspected, the nationwide flight ground stop two days ago was due to a computer glitch, not terrorists. But traffic is still snarled, and will be for a while. (Article archived here.)
Federal officials said the cascading communications failures that forced the government to shut down flights across the United States on Friday started with a contractor upgrading air traffic control equipment, replacing copper wire with fiber optic cable.
The upgrade set off communications failures across the facilities that manage the national air space, the officials said. Alarmed at the scope of the problem, the Federal Aviation Administration decided to issue a rare nationwide ground stop for several hours.
Speaking at news conference in Washington, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that the specific problem with the upgrade, which took place in what he called a “remote” facility, was not yet known. The contractor, L3Harris, has worked for the Federal Aviation Administration for decades, he said.
Mr. Duffy said his agency was trying to determine whether the problem had been caused by the contractor’s incompetence or faulty equipment. “We haven’t determined what the fault was,” he said. He added, “We’re going to hold people accountable.”
The F.A.A. administrator, Bryan Bedford, said there was no evidence the communication problems had stemmed from a cyberattack or the use of artificial intelligence.
Mr. Bedford said that he expected the system to be back to normal by Sunday night. “The worst is behind us,” he said.
But even though the system came back online Friday evening, the effects of the shutdown were vast and continued on Saturday.
Travelers across the United States were still facing delays and cancellations on Saturday as airlines and airports struggled to recover from the ground stop.
The NBC news on Friday said night that flights might still be affected during the Thanksgiving holidays, and since I’m flying then, I’m concerned—but not all that concerned. Imagine the money that this glitch cost; will the contractor have to pay for it?
*CBS news echoes a report from Iranian state media that three oil tankers have hit mines in the Strait of Hormuz, and of course those are Iranian mines.
Iran’s military said on Saturday that fires had broken out on a total of three oil tankers that struck mines in the Strait of Hormuz.
Tehran has insisted vessels obtain its authorization to cross the strait since war erupted with the United States in February, and has attacked ships that do not comply.
“A short while ago, two oil tankers that had switched off their radar and positioning systems and were secretly attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz through an unauthorized route exploded and caught fire after striking a naval mine,” the Revolutionary Guards Corps said in a statement on the incident in the south of the waterway, carried by the Iranian state broadcaster early on Saturday.
A separate statement from Iran’s conventional navy said another tanker “navigating through the unsafe and prohibited zone east of the Strait of Hormuz with its tracking and identification systems switched off, caught fire and was forced to stop after striking a naval mine”.
The statements did not provide the names or origins of the vessels but the Guards said one of those hit in south Hormuz was a supertanker.
If Trump needed any excuse to resume hostilities with Iran, this is one. We can’t even keep the Strait of Hormuz open, so Iran still has the upper hand in that respect. Meanwhile, at the same link, Israel is reported as reaching the limits of its patience:
Invoking Iran’s pursuit to rebuild its nuclear program, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday it’s time to eliminate the threat from Iran “once and for all” in a speech about forming a new government following a meeting earlier this week with opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot.
“The Iranian regime, which seeks to destroy Israel, is once again working to revive its nuclear program,” Netanyahu said, translated from Hebrew. “And let this be clear: This murderous regime, which did not hesitate to murder many thousands of its own people, will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons against us.”
“It will do so the moment it manages to resume uranium enrichment and the accelerated development of nuclear weapons,” he continued.
Netanyahu said he met with Eisenkot on Thursday, and the meeting “only strengthened my understanding of how essential it is to establish a national unity government at this time.”
Eisenkot, who may be the next PM of Israel, was head of the IDF, is still in the IDF as well, and it looks as if he’s okay with going after Iran since he’s historically been a hawk on Israel’s security. If nobody does anything, the war will fizzle out, oil prices will remain high, the people of Iran will remain oppressed, and Iran can boast that it’s defeated the U.S. Not to mention that Iran will get busy trying to build nuclear weapons. Is this what most Democrats want? Apparently.
*You’ve probably heard that measles is coming back in the U.S., and for obvious reasons (RFK, Jr., the pandemic, distrust of science, etc.) Now the U.S. has lost its status as a country in which measles have been largely eliminated, a loss that has consequences beyond just an increased risk of getting the disease.
The Pan American Health Organization, an international health body, has revoked the U.S.’s measles elimination status, people familiar with the matter said, a stunning reversal for a nation that has kept the vaccine-preventable disease at bay for decades.
The U.S. achieved measles elimination status in 2000 after robust immunization campaigns and the creation of a program that made shots free for millions of children.
Many public health experts and epidemiologists expected the U.S. to lose elimination status, as outbreaks over the past two years have exploded to highs not seen in decades. States such as Pennsylvania, New York and Wisconsin reported five measles deaths so far in November from unrelated outbreaks.
To regain elimination status, the U.S. must halt the continuing spread of the highly infectious disease for at least 12 months—an effort that could take years of public health work and substantial political will to achieve.
PAHO didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
“Runaway measles outbreaks in the United States, as well as the needless deaths, are all due to low measles vaccination coverage,” said Noel Brewer, chair of an independent U.S. committee who presented findings about the country’s measles outbreaks to PAHO. “We’ve gotten comfortable letting children be stopped by a deadly disease and die from it.”
Measles is considered eliminated when a country has no continuous spread of the virus for at least 12 months. PAHO makes its determination based on a review of recent outbreaks and a report from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that shows whether disparate outbreaks are linked or whether any one outbreak lasted more than a year.
Measles has largely been under control in the U.S. over the past 30 years, with often just a few dozen cases recorded annually. Over the past two years, states such as Utah, Texas, South Carolina and Pennsylvania have all reported big outbreaks. In 2026 alone, the CDC has reported more than 5,400 cases—a level not seen since before measles was eliminated.
Now the big downside of this, of course, is the death of people from the disease (10 so far, as well as 5,400 cases) as well as a strain on the healthcare system, but there are also formal consequences for America, mainly a loss in reputation and the fact that to get the “elimination status” back again, the U.S. has to submit an elimination plan to PAHO, Two nights ago on the evening news, they reported on an outbreak in an Amish community (some Amish oppose vaccinations and others don’t), but they asked one woman whose large family of kids all got measles if she’d get vaccinated had she known that every child would get measles. She said no, becaue she considered the family outbreak a “bonding experience”! OY!
*Related to this, the WaPo editorial board reports and bemoans the reduction is critical Vitamin K shots for newborns: a casualty of the general rise in vaccine suspicion.
A new JAMA study, which examined 5.2 million infants, found that 6.8 percent of newborns did not receive vitamin K shots in 2025, more than double the 3.1 percent in 2017. Across the study period, infants who did not receive the shot had a 47 percent higher adjusted risk of bleeding in their first six months of life. Their risk of bleeding in or around the brain, which can lead to lifelong disabilities and death, was 2.43 times higher. Among the 235,000 infants who did not receive vitamin K, 69 died during their birth hospitalization with a concurrent bleeding diagnosis, a rate nearly three times that among babies who received the shot.
A separate JAMA Pediatrics study, encompassing 11 million infants, documented the consequences of this trend in another way. Between 2017 and 2025, the rate of diagnosed vitamin K-deficient bleeding rose 347 percent, from 24 cases per 100,000 infants to 107.4 per 100,000.
Some of those refusing the injections for their children are vaccine-hesitant parents who associate all shots with immunizations. Americans increasingly do not trust the medical establishment, often falling for social media influencers peddling false information and sketchy alternatives to well-established medicines. It didn’t help that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. refused to endorse vitamin K shots when pressed to do so during an April congressional hearing.
The result is a twisted sort of trypanophobia, or fear of needles. Some parents have opted to give their babies oral drops of vitamin K, despite warnings from pediatricians that they are not nearly as effective as the shots.
I had no idea that there were Vitamin K shots given to newborns, but they are safe and effective. I asked Grok how many American infants were affected by bleeding caused by lack of these shots, and it said that mortality data are sparse but added this (with a reference). This is a huge rise: nearly a doubling between 2024 and 2025.
“A JAMA Pediatrics research letter analyzing records for more than 11 million U.S. infants (birth to 6 months, roughly 2017–2025) found:
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1,764 cases of vitamin K deficiency bleeding in 2025, up from 903 in 2024 and 189 in 2017.
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Overall, 5,217 such bleeding events were identified across the multi-year period.
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The rate of VKDB nearly quadrupled from 2017 to 2025 and roughly doubled from 2024 to 2025.
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About 81% of the VKDB cases occurred in infants who had not received the vitamin K shot.”
The government needs to spend more effort and money educating people on the consequences of avoiding vaccinations and shots, but of course it’s too late, and that ain’t gonna happen with RFK Jr. at the helm.
*I have never heard of a homicide on a cruise ship, for there’s no escape! But last week there was one, and they’ve arrested a suspect. (Article archived here.)
A cruise passenger on the MSC Seascape was charged with murder on Tuesday after a woman was found dead in their shared cabin with multiple facial injuries, according to a criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
Jason Leon Watford, 48, a resident of Tyler, Texas, is accused of striking the female passenger “several times before strangling her with his hands and arm following a dispute in their room,” said the complaint.
Around 9 p.m., a housekeeper knocked on their cabin door and briefly spoke to Mr. Watford before noticing blood on his hands and clothing and saw the woman lying face down and motionless, according to allegations cited in the complaint.
After the incident was reported to the ship’s security, the woman was declared dead, and the F.B.I. was informed, prompting the ship to turn back to Galveston early Monday.
Passengers on the ship, which has a capacity for nearly 5,000 guests, posted videos on social media of Mr. Watford in handcuffs being escorted off the vessel by federal agents. The ship has since left Galveston and continued its seven-night western Caribbean cruise.
If convicted, Mr. Watford could face life in prison and a possible $250,000 maximum fine, according to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
Unless you want to spend the rest of your life in prison, it’s best to avoid killing someone on a ship—especially your cabinmate. There’s nowhere to go and you’ll be caught for sure. Below is the Tik Tok video showing Watford being escorded off the boat by cops.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili rests beneath a pear tree, but Andrzej has resurrected a Hili dialogue. These are some of Malgorzata’s favorites.
Me: What can you see from this rooftop?
Hili: A wider horizon.
In Polish:
Ja: Co widać z tego dachu?
Hili: Szerszy horyzont.
*******************
Gal Gadot doesn’t often talk about antisemitism, but here’s part of a statement she recently made at the Simon Wiesenthal Center:
From CinEmma:
From Terrible Maps: Countries that couldn’t think of a name for their capital
Masih is quiet today; she’s at a meeting in Berlin.
From Luana. I couldn’t find this in the news, but here’s Grok’s AI take:
“John Cleese arranged private security for Singh’s Dining (a non-halal Sikh-owned restaurant in Hammersmith, London) amid threats, protests, and alleged attacks on the owners.
The restaurant is run by Harman Singh Kapoor (previously associated with Rangrez). He has long advertised it as non-halal (serving jhatka meat) and made public statements that drew strong backlash. This has led to months of reported problems, including:
- Daily death threats (one specifying a date in late October).
- An attempted break-in / attack in which his daughter reportedly got the shutters down in time; the group left shortly before police arrived.
- Egg pelting, forced early closures for family safety, alleged Google page issues/hacking, and online review campaigns.
- Protests outside the restaurant (including chants such as “Pakistan Zindabad”).
Kapoor and his wife have said police response has been inadequate. Cleese has publicly supported the family on X, criticizing the Metropolitan Police, recommending the restaurant, and arguing they were facing intimidation over their menu choices and free speech.What happened with the securityAccording to Kapoor’s wife, Khushi Kapoor (in a post on or around 14 November 2026), Cleese funded/sent 8 security guards to protect Singh’s Dining during a recent protest/incident. She wrote that without his help the family “might have been killed” by those she described as Pakistani supporters or Islamists.
Other accounts describe roughly a dozen private security personnel present alongside police. Police eventually attended; at least one protester was arrested. Kapoor himself was also arrested by the Met around the same period (the precise charge is disputed in posts; some claim it related to social media content or other matters).”
The tweet:
Without @JohnCleese’s help, my family might have been killed by Pakistani supporters last night.
He sent 8 security guards to defend Singhs DiningMy husband @kingkapoor72 was arrested yesterday by met police
Aggressive protesters chanted “Pakistan Zindabad”, outside my restaurant
Londonistan is done— Khushi Harman Kapoor (@kapoorkhushi31) November 14, 2026
Also from Luana, a “my type” test. But there are several
Looks like my type is 50% WHG, 50% Early steppe. Pretty cool test!
https://t.co/AgIpAbeBBz https://t.co/BbWuA7Zy37— Davide Piffer (@DavidePiffer) November 14, 2026
Go to this site, where there are three tests:
The Ancient Faces Attraction Test is based on facial reconstructions of people who lived in Europe and Anatolia thousands of years ago: the hunter-gatherers who followed the last Ice Age, the first farmers and the herders of the steppe. Each portrait is a new face drawn to a set mix of those three ancestries, so the faces you prefer show which of them you lean towards.
The Your Type Test looks at the kind of partner you are drawn to, the Mate Value Test at what you bring to a relationship, and the Beauty Privilege Test at how looks shape the way people are treated. To take the test, press Start test below.
I took the 53-question “your type” test, and got these results (I really wanted to take the “ancient your type” test but now I don’t have time.
From Simon, who’s trapped in Memphis by the groundstop. He says this deals with “the question that’s on everyone’s lips.”
Careful planning, preparation, and procedure is totally woke and gay
— Dom Ervolina (@dominicervolina.com) 2026-11-14T16:22:16.677Z
From Barry; why you can’t be staff for a big cat (watch to the end):
This is why big cats can’t be pets https://t.co/f3RUuNTRzX
— Science girl (@sciencegirl) November 14, 2026
One from Malcolm; I don’t know where it’s from but perhaps a Brit will know. It’s hilarious.
Wedding photographer group photos that get increasingly unhinged. The last request is pure chaos. Watch to the end. They don’t make comedy like this no more 😂 https://t.co/sJTwA4zJg0
— Bigmilez (@Bigmilez7) October 25, 2026
One from my feed; a good AI version of Seinfeld about the Democratic Socialists of America:
Love this. Thank goodness the DSA is finally being exposed as the elitist,
privileged, mostly white scammers they are. https://t.co/bpl5kjO17R— Jamie Metzl (@JamieMetzl) November 14, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed as soon as he got to Auschwitz (along with about 80% of the occupants of his transport. Bernard was six years old would be 89 today had he survived.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-11-15T12:02:05.938Z
And one from Dr. Cobb; a star vanishes in eight years:
Sometimes a star vanishes without a trace. According to theory, it can happen when a massive, aging star abruptly collapses into a black hole. Now it seems we're finding those stellar black holes. We can't see their light–but we can "see" their gravity. 🔭🧪www.caltech.edu/about/news/a…
— Corey S. Powell (@coreyspowell.bsky.social) 2026-11-13T18:18:13.352Z