Welcome to Friday, October 23, 2026, with November coming on fast. And it’s National Mole Day, celebrating not the animal but the unit of measurement. Note that the holiday is time-specific, spanning 12 hours, and has already begun.

National Mole Day

More specifically, the celebrations take place between 6:02 AM and 6:02 PM. In the U.S., the time and date are written 6:02 10/23. The time and date are derived from Avogadro’s number. Avogadro’s number is approximately 6.02×10^23. Hence, defining the number of particles (atoms or molecules) in one mole of a substance, one of the seven base SI units.

From Wikipedia:

The Avogadro number is an exact number equal to the number of constituent particles in one mole of any substance (by definition of the mole), historically derived from the experimental determination of the number of atoms in 12 grams of carbon-12 (¹²C) before the 2019 revision of the SI, i.e. the gram-to-dalton ratio, g/Da.

Here’s the Italian scientist Amadeo Avogadro, from whom the constant comes. He looks a bit scary:

It’s also Global Champagne Day, National Boston Cream Pie Day, National iPod Day (RIP), Swallows Depart from San Juan Capistrano Day, and National Slap Your Irritating Co-Worker Day. 

About those swallows:

On or around October 23rd, the Day of San Juan, the swallows gather in a swirling, breathtaking mass before departing for their winter home—a 6,000-mile journey to Goya, Corrientes, Argentina. Then, with what seems like clockwork precision, they return to the exact same spot in San Juan Capistrano on or about March 19th, St. Joseph’s Day, to the delight of locals and visitors who gather to welcome them home.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 23 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The NYT hasn’t yet sided with Putin in the Ukraine/Russia war, and in fact they’re still criticizing both him and, of course, Trump, who seems to be courting the Russian dictator. In a new headline called “Putin Nears a Prize: Restoring Ties With the U.S. While Giving Up Nothing” (subtitle “Russia has sought to separate the war in Ukraine from potential business deals and diplomacy with the United States. Its efforts now appear to be working”), Putin is clearly cast as the overall winner. It gets goodies and its war with Ukraine isn’t impeded. (The article is archived here.)

Now, exactly a year after the oil sanctions, Mr. Putin has never been so close to his goal of normalizing relations with Washington without having to make any compromises on Ukraine.

Over the past week and a half, Mr. Trump has set aside years of U.S. foreign policy by openly embracing Mr. Putin and easing the economic pressure on the Kremlin. At the same time, Mr. Trump has vilified President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, the putative American ally trying to defend his nation against a Russian invasion.

On Oct. 9, Mr. Trump announced that the United States would buy Russian diesel, asking for no concessions from Mr. Putin in return. The Trump administration went on to pressure Ukraine to stop striking oil refineries — Kyiv’s most powerful lever — and suspended Russia sanctions that Mr. Trump had just signed into law. Mr. Trump declared that “Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine.”

The diesel deal was in part a political calculation by Mr. Trump before the midterm elections, as he tries to lower fuel prices. But that action and others that followed also reflect the president’s long-evident affinity for Mr. Putin, which the Russian leader has assiduously cultivated even while continuing the war and denying Mr. Trump a coveted prize.

Ever since Mr. Trump returned to office, Russia has sought to separate the conflict in Ukraine from potential business agreements and closer diplomatic ties with the United States. The Trump administration held back, even as it slashed aid to Ukraine, largely continuing a Biden administration policy of refraining from economic deals with Russia until Mr. Putin stopped the war.

. . .“In my personal view, victory has already been achieved,” the pro-Putin journalist Marina Akhmedova wrote on social media on Wednesday. “It is not just a matter of the 20 to 25 percent of territory we have liberated,” she added, referring to Russian-occupied land in Ukraine. “It is also about how the United States now engages with Russia.”

Many analysts call the economic incentives offered by Mr. Trump the wrong solution to a war being waged over political and security questions. Still, during his visit to St. Petersburg, Russia, on Wednesday, Mr. Witkoff said that the diesel deal was “another example of what we can achieve by working together.” Mr. Putin, in turn, suggested a deal on Russian fertilizer.

I don’t see how the U.S. can ethically separate helping a dictatorship from the fact that the dictatorship invaded a democratic country that is (or was) our ally. It’s like Churchill giving economic aid to Hitler after he invaded Austria and Czechoslovakia.

*The field of “fat studies” has become polluted by an ideology arguing (misleadingly) that being obese carries no health penalties. (The mantra is “Healthy at Any Size.”) This, at least, was the message of a panel discussion at Harvard Medical School and described by the Free Press.

Obesity isn’t unhealthy. Medical paperwork is violence. We’re living under fascism for fat people. All these arguments have been asserted not in an uber-woke Reddit thread—or, not only there—but at a panel sponsored by Harvard Medical School.

“Against the Pathology of Unruly Bodies” took place on September 30, and I had the pleasure of attending, via Zoom. The event featured a research-based criticism of established obesity medicine from a series of qualified experts and scientists. Just kidding. It was, instead, a bizarre panel conversation of far-left, Covid-mask-wearing activists seeking to promote—at an elite medical school—an alternative version of reality. It was also a disturbing reminder that, in some of our most powerful institutions, progressive activism is still freely eroding well-established fact.

The event was hosted by New York Times contributing writer and famed left-wing author Roxane Gay, evidently in her capacity as a visiting professor and artist-in-residence at Harvard Medical School. (I wasn’t aware medical schools employed artists-in-residence.) She was joined on the panel by the socialist writer Da’Shaun L. Harrison, a biological male who identifies as transgender and uses they/them pronouns, and whose scientific credentials include authoring the book Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness, which won the 2022 Lambda Literary Award for transgender nonfiction. Harrison is perhaps best known for going viral in September after claiming at the Socialism 2026 conference in Chicago that GLP-1 medications like Ozempic are part of a “genocide” against fat people.

The other “expert” on the panel was activist and consultant Ragen Chastain, whose day job is essentially telling medical providers that the assumption that obesity has severe negative effects on overall health—which is the consensus of U.S. and global health authorities—is wrong. This is a core tenet of “fat positivity,” the movement that united to reframe obesity not as a disease but as another laudable identity in the diversity rainbow. Partly in response to the brutal weight shaming and utterly unrealistic body standards of the early aughts, it gained traction online in the late 2000s and early 2010s, moving from corners of the internet like Tumblr and ultimately making its way to magazine covers and elite media outlets. But alas, the science still doesn’t seem to have drawn the conclusions desired by the fat positivists. And so, they persist.

To be clear, none of the three main speakers at this Harvard Medical School event (a current Harvard medical student also participated) are medical doctors or scientists of any kind. Yet that didn’t stop them from making many of the same bold claims about health and medicine.

Have a look at this!

The most viral moment from the event came when, after an audience question mentioned health insurance companies, Gay cheered, “Free Luigi,” to applause. Unsurprisingly, a Harvard visiting professor openly expressing support for a targeted assassination made headlines and led to a Harvard spokesperson telling Fox News, “The views expressed by speakers at events are their own and do not represent Harvard Medical School or Harvard University.”

Calls for Fat Revolution!

First, Harrison claimed that the United States currently exists under “body fascism,” which he cogently defines as “a state, wherein everything that we know about how bodies are supposed to exist in the world, are supposed to function as, and are supposed to look like, has been perfected and overemphasized in modern society, as a way to discipline and punish . . .fat folks and fat bodies.”

Translation for normal people: He thinks modern American society so oppresses, mistreats, shames, and controls fat people that it constitutes a form of body-focused fascism. . . . Harrison, based on his past public comments, supports violent revolution.

And here, in a nutshell, is their argument (bolding is mine):

Next, Chastain questioned whether obesity even causes health issues.

Before you start wondering why you’ve been lied to your whole life: There is a clear, established causal pathway in medical literature that outlines how excess body fat leads to negative health outcomes like heart disease through increased inflammation. The American Heart Association states that obesity contributes directly to hypertension, sleep disorders, and type 2 diabetes. The Centers for Disease Control, for its part, says obese people are, compared to healthy-weight people, at increased risk for “stroke, many types of cancer, gallbladder disease, sleep apnea and breathing problems, mental illness, body pain, and difficulty with physical functioning.”

Chastain, however, argued that the negative health outcomes associated with obesity might actually have nothing to do with obesity itself and everything to do with society’s hatred of fat people. 

This flat denial of reality is what really angers me: it’s comparable to biologists and anthropologists denying that there are not two sexes, but rather there’s an entire spectrum.  You can read Luana’s reaction in her Heterodox STEM piece from June, describing her two encounters with “Fat Studies” lectures at Williams College.,

*To the best of my knowledge, Ilhan Omar hasn’t appeared after the feds raided her home save for a brief appearance on Instagram that I posted yesterday and now a 30-minutes interview with Christ Hayes at MS NOW (see link below). She’s still issuing statements, though, The latest is that she’s going to move out of her Washington, D.C. home because the raid made her feel unsafe:

U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar will move out of her Washington, D.C., home that federal agents searched last week, she said Wednesday, noting that attention brought on by the raid has made her feel unsafe there.

Federal authorities are investigating potential fraud in her family’s immigration paperwork and have issued grand jury subpoenas to some of her relatives, a person briefed on the investigation told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation.

Omar, who was born in Somalia and is a naturalized U.S. citizen, said Wednesday in her first interview since the search that she is “confident in the fact that I didn’t do anything wrong.”

The progressive Minnesota Democrat has been a frequent critic and target of President Donald Trump, who has on multiple occasions pushed for the prosecution of his perceived political enemies.

” alt=”” />

In the interview with MS NOW, Omar said she was rattled by the search weeks out from the Nov. 3 midterms, which will decide control of the House and Senate. She is running for reelection in a deep blue district centered in Minneapolis and is expected to retain her seat.

Omar recalled waking around 6 a.m. to Homeland Security investigators banging on her door with a warrant. They searched for four or five hours and seized 17 items, including phones, notebooks, a Somali language children’s book and a vintage camera that her husband had received as a gift, she said.

The Justice Department has shared few details about the case other than saying it was a criminal investigation.

Omar came with her family to the U.S. at age 12, after they obtained asylum. She became a U.S. citizen five years later, in 2000.

“It would be a huge undertaking to, I suppose, indict a 12-year-old for so cleverly conspiring to defraud immigration services to come to the United States. I’m sure there are a lot of smart 12-year-olds, but that seams like a leap,” she said in the interview.

Here’s an excerpt from the interview. I haven’t listened to the whole thing, but several sites, including yahoo! news, highlight a curious statement in the interview relating to the rumors she married her brother, and the “not to my knowledge” bit is at 14:59.

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., dismissed long-standing allegations that she married her brother as part of an immigration fraud scheme during a Wednesday interview, although she stopped short of categorically ruling out a family relationship with her former husband.

“Not to my knowledge,” Omar told Chris Hayes on MS Now when asked whether there was any “weird kernel of truth” to allegations involving Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, whom she previously married.

That statement, however, doesn’t seem like hedging to me, but rather an offhand response to the question. We’ll see what happens when this plays out. The latest update, reported by Newsweek and other sources, is that Ilhan Omar isn’t her real birth name:

A federal court filing submitted Wednesday by the office of U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, obtained by Fox News, refers to the congresswoman as “Ilhan Nur Said Elmi, a/k/a Ilhan Abdullahi Omar.” The filing concerns efforts to keep materials sealed in relation to the federal search warrant for Omar’s Washington, D.C.-area home.

*Speaking of Congress, division, and faith, one of the most acrimonious contests for the Senate is the Michigan race between Abdul El-Sayed and Mike Rogers. El-Sayed tars Rogers with his ties to Trump, and, in the other direction, El-Sayed is tarred with his supposed ties to terrorism. Bolding is from the Washington Post article:

Michigan’s open Senate seat is key for both parties’ hopes for controlling the Senate, where Republicans now hold a 53-47 advantage. Republicans view it as the best opportunity to flip a seat, even as they’re on defense elsewhere in the country. Democrats are aiming to hold every seat they have while flipping four Republican-held ones.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is still harassing Andrzej:

Hili: How many times a day are you wrong?
Andrzej: Seven.
Hili: How do you know?
Me: I’m guessing.

Hili: Ile razy dziennie jesteś w błędzie?

Ja: Siedem.

Hili: Skąd wiesz?

Ja: Zgaduję.

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

Via Divy on FB: a cat and d*g sleeping together make a weird combination:

From Terrible Maps. What’s with Greece and Albania?

From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:

From Masih: a heartbreaking video of a woman blinded by the Iranian regime for protesting, still wanting to look good on stage in a meeting in Poland:

Just before stepping onto the stage, Farideh asked me a simple question: “Should I leave my hair down, or tie it back?”

I said let it go.. but my heart broke. She can no longer see her own reflection in the mirror. She still wants to look beautiful, to stand tall, and to be seen.

Farideh was blinded in both her eyes by the Islamic Republic during the uprising in 2022, in Sanandaj.

She’s a hero and that is why I invited her to join our delegation in Poland while I receive an award.

With Farideh joining us, our delegation now carries three women blinded under Islamic regimes. Fahimeh is from Afghanistan. Her husband blinded her, just for women’s rights activities. And Kosar was only 22 years old when she took to the street after the murder of Mahsa Jina Amini in the hand of morality Police, shouting for freedom. The Islamic Republic shot her in the face and took one of her eyes.

Yesterday we visited Auschwitz. I walked where millions of innocent people were murdered. We could not hold back our tears. And you know what broke my heart even more? The dictators and oppressors who commit crimes against humanity are the same ones who deny the Holocaust in our country.
The Islamic Republic denies the Holocaust, they even hold cartoon contests mocking it, while they are committing their own crimes against our people in the streets of Iran.
This is what evil does. It denies the crimes of others while committing its own. That is why we must never be silent. We must speak, we must document, we must bear witness, so the world cannot say we did not know.

And at the end, I want to thank Poland for opening your doors to these brave women, for standing with us, for giving us this platform so the voices of the blinded women of Iran and Afghanistan can be heard. Poland knows the price of freedom, and that is why freedom echoes here.
My dream is to take these bra women to university campuses in Europe in America to tell the truth what it means living under Islamic Stats.
Hear Our Stories!

@FahimaSarfaraz
@kosareftekharii

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) October 22, 2026

The Number Ten Cat continues to drag Trump (and his VP):

Of all the lies told in this history of the world, this might be the biggest

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) October 22, 2026

From Malcolm; cat manipulation:

Interesting switches on cats 🐱cat https://t.co/Rnojdj1UYb

— Vexira Darneth (@VexiraDarneth) October 20, 2026

Two from my feed. First, an infant with good taste in music.

You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a baby with no teeth, no job, and no idea who Barbara Ann is absolutely losing their mind to “Ba ba ba, ba Barbara Ann!” by The Beach Boys! 😂🎶 https://t.co/RIjA3vaOA5

— G-PA (@IndianaGPA) October 22, 2026

Do you recognize the song? Think Frank Sinatra.

Violin teacher of 40 years gets teary after a surprise goodbye performance by her students 🥹 https://t.co/YUsx50VZZw

— Restoring Your Faith in Humanity (@HumanityChad) October 21, 2026

One I reposed from The Auschwitz Memorial:

Two from Doctor Cobb. First, a gorgeous piebald dear, with patches of pigment:

— Good Trailcams (@goodtrailcams.bsky.social) 2026-10-21T21:00:21.133Z

This isn’t AI, but it’s close, and nearly as unethical:

Ever wondered if a wildlife photo was staged? "Photography game farms" use captive animals for awards and stock photos, misleading viewers. Learn more in this episode of the 'Conservation, Entangled' series by Izzy Sasada.Find all the episodes in Mongabay's YouTube!mongabay.cc/Conservation…

— Mongabay (@mongabay.com) 2026-10-22T15:13:00.190Z

Music: Here’s an unreleased song written by Paul McCartney but never formally recorded by him or the Beatles. “Goodbye” was sung by Mary Hopkin in 1969, and you can see her version here.  It was a hit for her, reaching #2 in the UK but blocked from the top spot by, ironically, the Beatles song “Get Back.” McCartney’s demo was later released in an Abbey Road boxed set.

This is a mono-to-stereo remix of Goodbye—a rare home demo recorded by Paul McCartney during the sessions for Abbey Road.

One particularly interesting aspect of McCartney’s demo is his vocal performance. Not only does he sing the lyrics from a female perspective, but he also performs the backing vocal phrases within the same breath and during the same take.

For this remix, those backing vocal elements were separated and placed in another channel—similar to how backing vocals would normally appear in a stereo recording. With a bit of processing, the result creates the illusion of two singers: one performing the lead and another providing backing vocals.

To add a little more flair, McCartney’s verse where he sings the “da-da” vocal phrases has been super-imposed during the final verse so that it accompanies the lyrics, giving the impression of an additional backing vocal.

The demo itself was recorded by McCartney at his Cavendish Avenue home, not far from EMI Studios, using his personal home recorder. The recording was intended as a guide for Mary Hopkin, who had recently been signed to Apple Records.

A mono version of this original demo was eventually released decades later on the Abbey Road Super Deluxe Edition box set in 2019, giving fans a rare glimpse into McCartney’s songwriting process during that period.

With the added percussion, the demo now takes on a minimalistic production feel reminiscent of Blackbird from The Beatles—the same album that also featured “Mother Nature’s Son.” Paul would continue exploring this stripped-down musical style after the breakup of the band on his first solo album, McCartney.

From Wikipedia:

To assist Hopkin in learning the song, McCartney recorded a solo demo at his home, 7 Cavendish Avenue, London, in early February 1969. This demo was later released on the Abbey Road: 50th Anniversary Edition in 2019. The song was arranged by Richard Hewson, who had also orchestrated “Those Were the Days,” and produced, along with its flip side, “Sparrow”, by Paul McCartney on 1 March 1969 at Morgan Studios in Willesden. To better match Hopkin’s voice, the key was raised from C major to E major. The recording was Apple’s first official double-A-side, and the first Apple record to feature a full-fledged picture sleeve.

Hopkins’s “Those Were the Days,” produced by McCartney in 1968, was a huge hit, reaching #1 in the UK and #2 in the U.S.  I well remember groups (mostly of women, curiously) singing the song together in college. More from Wikipedia.

For the recording, Hopkin sang and performed acoustic guitar, while McCartney played bass guitar, an acoustic guitar introduction and solo, along with lap-slapping percussion and drums. Backing vocals, horns and strings, in Hewson’s arrangement, were overdubbed.^[11] The session was filmed by Apple’s Tony Bramwell for a promotional clip. In the footage, Hopkin can be seen miming to the song inside the studio, combined with shots of her and McCartney in the control room listening to a playback.

The McCartney demo (again, Hopkins’s released version is here):

Welcome to Thursday, October 22, 2026 and National Nut Day.  One of their more tasty incarnations is in pies, particularly pecan pie. Here are some of the pecan pies that competed in (and were on sale after) last year’s South Side Pie Challenge. I will be at this year’s competition on November 8, ready to buy four or five prizewinning slices.

It’s also Eat A Pretzel Day, National Tavern Style Pizza Day (meh), and Wombat Day.  If you don’t know by now that wombats are the world’s only organism that produces cubic poop, well, now you know. See the video below, and read this paper for more explanation.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 22 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The WSJ, in an article labeled an “exclusive,” says that Elon Musk was responsible for slowing Ukraine’s access to Starlink satellite data that provides it with military intelligence. Musk had earlier denied he bire any responsibility for this, blaming Trump or the administration.

Elon Musk ordered the slowdown of a military-grade version of Starlink relied on by Ukraine, a decision that sparked panic in Kyiv and confusion inside the Trump administration, U.S. officials and people familiar with the matter said.

Both Musk and President Trump have expressed anger at Ukraine for attacking Russian diesel refineries in recent weeks, which the president blames for high energy prices. Last week, Musk capped the speeds at which Ukrainian hardware could stay connected to the satellite-based network, the people said, rendering some offensive drones and interceptor drones virtually useless.

Musk and Trump discussed the Starlink decision in a call soon after the slowdown became public, while the president was campaigning last week, two of the people said. One of the people also claimed Musk and Trump discussed the matter prior to the decision to throttle Starlink.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s public complaints—namely that Ukrainians could die if the unrestricted service wasn’t restored—led to widespread confusion about who ordered the slowdown, and to an informal investigation inside the White House.

, , ,Musk himself posted on X hours after the slowdown became public, “Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS,” using the acronym for president of the United States. Trump told reporters Monday that he didn’t know who was responsible for the Starlink slowdown, “but I would like to find out.”

Some U.S. officials say that Musk acted unilaterally and that Trump didn’t specifically order any retribution against Ukraine. But a person familiar with the situation said Musk talked to multiple senior administration officials, including with Trump, before imposing the new speed cap, which Ukrainian officials said had allowed Russian missiles to evade their defenses.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the administration didn’t make any request for a throttling of Starlink. “There was no foreknowledge,” he told reporters during a visit to India.

Did Rubio lie? Who knows?  But it’s clear that both Musk and the Trump administration worked together in a way that hurt Ukraine in its war with Russia. It’s reprehensible for the U.S. to help the Russian oligarchy merely to punish Ukraine for supposedly driving up the price of oil in the U.S.,

*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal argues in a post called “Sooner or later,” that yes, Israel and the U.S. will attack Iran, but not before the midterms. But Iran might attack Israel between their elections (October 27) and the U.S. midterms (November 3), trying to get the U.S. involved so that the Republicans would lose seats in the House and Senate.

It’s Wednesday, October 21, and according to the Financial Times, Benjamin Netanyahu attempted what many suspected he might: start a war before the election. Three people familiar with the matter told the paper that Donald Trump shut down a multi-day campaign set for the weekend of October 10. “We will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the midterms,” Trump has declared, and he seems to be sticking by it.

This would undoutbly be a story about a rift if Trump hadn’t spent Sunday writing Netanyahu an endorsement that made the most ardent Bibi supporter blush. Add Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s visit to Israel on Monday, and it is clear that Washington and Jerusalem are in lockstep on everything but timing.

If Netanyahu did float an earlier date, I doubt he meant it in earnest. For a man with his ear firmly pressed to White House grounds, I doubt he would have missed Trump’s clear timing preferences. If it happened, Netanyahu was testing the waters, not drawing a line.

The plan the FT describes is roughly what many expect: a multi-day bombing campaign over a weekend, before markets reopen, hitting nuclear sites, the regime’s apparatus of repression and its energy infrastructure. Though not stated in the report, the plan afterward is likely to maintain the blockade and wait for the streets to fill with protesters.

The smooth plan obscures what will be far from a clean process. The fallout will send energy prices soaring, as the regime tries to take as much of the world’s energy capacity down with it. Meanwhile, whatever spring arrives to the streets would be far from bloodless.

But the enemy also gets a vote, and I doubt Iran is casting it for Trump. If Tehran takes his many statements at face value, or reads anything into the third aircraft carrier on its way, it knows an attack is coming and that it can do little to stop it. Waiting politely until every vote is counted and the markets close for the weekend buys it only a few more days of slow strangulation. The price of that reprieve is the initiative, and after twice seeing what Israel and the U.S. can do with it, Tehran knows exactly what waiting costs.

There is a week between Israel’s election and the midterms; there’s a good chance the Iranians won’t let it go to waste.

Yes, it will be messy, and yes, oil prices will rise. And no, I am not at all sure that the people will rise up and force regime change. But Iran has not yet gone to ground, and I am in favor of Israel and the U.S,. finishing the job.

*This morning I see a NYT article reporting that Israel and the U.S. are indeed hatching plans to attack Iran after the midterms.

The U.S. and Israeli militaries have developed specific plans for renewed strikes against Iran after the American midterm elections, according to U.S. officials and other people briefed on the deliberations.

As planning for a short but intensive operation progresses, the U.S. and Israeli militaries have stepped up exercises, flying planes over Iraq to practice strike maneuvers. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel this week to discuss new strikes, U.S. officials said.

The targets would likely include Iran’s energy infrastructure, nuclear facilities, and missile and drone arsenal. Some officials say one more big round of attacks could push Iran’s economy over the brink and force the country to make diplomatic concessions after nearly eight months of conflict.

Still, there are reasons to be skeptical that a renewed war would be any more successful than the first phase of intense U.S.-Israeli strikes between February and April. Those rounds of fighting drove up energy prices and inflation around the world, eroded security in the Middle East and severely strained the Pentagon’s supply of missile interceptors.

It is also far from certain Mr. Trump will approve fresh strikes. Repeatedly this year he has vetoed plans for a return to major combat operations, including this month when the U.S. and Israeli militaries were nearly ready to attack.

All of the officials interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss military planning.

Iranian officials have promised to retaliate this time by expanding their targets beyond commercial ships and energy infrastructure in the region to data centers and underwater internet cables.

They say the fighting will neither be quick nor limited.

Note that although this is a “news” piece, the NYT’s subheadline and text raise doubts about the success of the planned strike. This is not news but opinion, and of course the NYT wants the war over soon, with the U.S. sustaining a loss.

*Representative Ilhan Omar seems to have disappeared after the feds searched her house, also getting samples of her DNA (this site implies through “dumpster diving”) and taking her passport. The Times of India notes this:

Is Ilhan Omar missing from public view? The Minnesota Democratic congresswoman has reportedly not been seen in public since federal agents raided her Washington, D.C., residence last week as part of an investigation into alleged immigration fraud. According to Fox News Digital, Omar’s daughters have been spotted arriving at the property in recent days, while her husband, Tim Mynett, has intermittently appeared outside the home. Sources cited by the outlet said investigators are examining whether Omar or her father provided false information in her citizenship paperwork. Omar has strongly condemned the raid, accusing President Donald Trump’s administration of weaponising federal law enforcement against political opponents. Vice President JD Vance has denied that the investigation is politically motivated, saying it should be guided by the law and the facts.

Omar reappeared yesterday riding in a car, promising to reappear and asking for campaign money. (She doesn’t need it; her reelection is a sure thing.) Click on the screenshot to go to her Instagram post:

I’ve said that if the whole case is about Omar or her father lying about her age (by one year) to get her American citizenship, it’s not only making a molehill into a mountain, but it’s governmental persecution right before an election—something traditionally avoided.  Alan Dershowitz, someone not widely admired, says that Omar seems to be in deep trouble, though (h/t: Jay). Have a listen even if you don’t like Dershowitz.

Where is Rep Ilhan Omar? She used to be one of the Democrats loudest voices and most effective fighter — and now 2 weeks before the midterms she is missing in action. That may say quite a lot about the scope of the fraud case against her. https://t.co/B0ApuF0bIZ

— Leland Vittert (@LelandVittert) October 21, 2026

And a spoof from the Babylon Bee that’s hilarious (h/t Anna):

*The common wisdom of how magician and escape-artist Harry Houdini died at 52 is that he was subject to a “sucker punch” to the stomach from a visiting student who wanted to test Houdini’s claim that his muscles could withstand any blow. And, so the story goes, that blow either caused appendicitis or aggravated an existing case of appendicitis, causing Houdini’s death nine days later.  Now, says the NYT, a urologist went back, looked at the data, and has another theory, one involving Chinese-American food.  After running through a panoply of existing and probably incorrect theories, the urologist says this:

. . . . Many consider it more likely that the student’s punches simply brought attention to an existing case of advanced appendicitis.

Now Larrian Gillespie, a 77-year-old retired urologic surgeon, has deployed the skills of a forensic medical investigator to challenge the conventional wisdom and clear Whitehead’s name.

“This isn’t just a story about Houdini’s death,” Gillespie writes in “Houdini: The Man Who Died Twice,” released in July. “It’s a story about how truth disappears — and why, sometimes, it takes science to bring it back.”

. . . When she reviewed Houdini’s city death certificate, she thought it seemed off. Information was scratched out. Names were inaccurate. It was signed by a physician who had not been present when Houdini died.

“I knew immediately things were wrong, that this was not the way a death certificate is normally filled out,” she said in an interview. Gillespie was intrigued, even though she “had no interest in Houdini whatsoever,” she said, adding, “I’m not into magic.”

. . .To research Houdini’s death, Gillespie consulted 1920s medical textbooks, affidavits, death certificates, letters and newspaper accounts. She interviewed experts, medical practitioners and a Houdini relative.

Gillespie said that, in addition to the Michigan death certificate, there had been two others, one filed in Detroit and another with Houdini’s insurance company. The city one was later proven to be invalid by the head of fraud at the Michigan State Vital Statistics Department, Gillespie said, because of several indications of tampering.

Gillespie said she found a paper trail of misstatements and actions by more than a dozen people close to Houdini, including relatives and employees. Among them, she asserts, several helped to cover up of the date he died, in part to make it appear to be Oct. 31 — “we remember Houdini because of the association with Halloween,” she said.

. . .The accepted account is that Houdini died when appendicitis, aggravated by the blow, led to Streptococcus pyogenes peritonitis, a form of infection.

Gillespie argues that the appendicitis was not the primary cause, and that the punch was not a critical factor. Rather, she argues, the culprit was a bowel obstruction, brought on by a fibrous mass of chop suey that Houdini ate on Oct. 28.

The obstruction led to emergency surgery on Oct. 29 in the late afternoon, Gillespie argues, an enterotomy to evacuate the bowel. But it was too late; according to the author, septic shock set in, Houdini’s fever spiked to 105 and his rapid breathing led to muscle spasms and unconsciousness.

“You don’t expect someone to survive 24 hours in this condition,” she said, “and so he doesn’t.”

But the bowel obstruction was never mentioned in any of the death records.

Houdini was operated on a second time on Oct. 30. Gillespie’s research into the death certificates indicates that the magician died that afternoon at 1:26 p.m., not on the following day at 1:30 p.m. But the documents were manipulated to change the date.

“Not identifying on the death certificate the second surgery is the critical tip-off,” she said. “That’s the smoking gun. Why was that not mentioned?”x

. . .The accepted account is that Houdini died when appendicitis, aggravated by the blow, led to Streptococcus pyogenes peritonitis, a form of infection.

Gillespie argues that the appendicitis was not the primary cause, and that the punch was not a critical factor. Rather, she argues, the culprit was a bowel obstruction, brought on by a fibrous mass of chop suey that Houdini ate on Oct. 28.

The obstruction led to emergency surgery on Oct. 29 in the late afternoon, Gillespie argues, an enterotomy to evacuate the bowel. But it was too late; according to the author, septic shock set in, Houdini’s fever spiked to 105 and his rapid breathing led to muscle spasms and unconsciousness.

“You don’t expect someone to survive 24 hours in this condition,” she said, “and so he doesn’t.”

But the bowel obstruction was never mentioned in any of the death records.

Houdini was operated on a second time on Oct. 30. Gillespie’s research into the death certificates indicates that the magician died that afternoon at 1:26 p.m., not on the following day at 1:30 p.m. But the documents were manipulated to change the date.

“Not identifying on the death certificate the second surgery is the critical tip-off,” she said. “That’s the smoking gun. Why was that not mentioned?”

Death from chop suey!? I’m not surprised. But really, the truth is far less romantic than often described (including the claim that, contrary to Gillespie’s research, Houdini died on Halloween). It does, however, exculpate, Joscelyn Gordon Whitehead, the McGill University student who supposedly struck Houdini in the stomach.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is trying to be profound:

Andrzej: What can you see from this rooftop?
Hili: A wider horizon.

In Polish:

Ja: Co widać z tego dachu?
Hili: Szerszy horyzont.

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

From Meow Incorporated. I knew a guy who had a white cat and a black cat, and named them Null and Void respectively (true!):

From Give Me a Sign:

From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:

This tweet from Masih can’t be embedded, but I wanted to put it up anyway, and apologize if it upsets you. But these are public spectacles, and Iranian children are sometimes forced to watch them. The hanging is done on cranes that are slowly raised, so I suspect that the victims (protestors in this case) are slowly strangled rather than the faster process of “long drop” hanging that snaps the neck. Click the screenshot to go to the tweet:

From Luana. You can read the article here.

Accreditation standards were saturated with DEI for years, and the AAUP was fine with it.

The one kind of diversity they can’t stand is diversity of ideas. https://t.co/ekyx4Epivg

— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) October 16, 2026

Like me, Larry is peeved at hos Trump & Co. is treating Ukraine:

The stated position of the Trump administration is that the President of Russia is a humanitarian and that the President of Ukraine should be removed from office.
The American electorate have a chance to make their feelings about this known in less than two weeks.

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) October 21, 2026

From Jeff Maurer. Sadly, I don’t subscribe so can’t read the whole thing:

“If AOC is trying to memory hole past wokeness like it’s an ill-advised Mumford & Sons phase, she’s doing it in a weird way. Since her remark, she has repeated virtually every trope that most people now agree was, indeed, crazy with four ‘y’s.” (link in next tweet) https://t.co/rtNTBO1vnN

— Jeff Maurer (@JeffMightBWrong) October 21, 2026

The link to the above is here, and below is an excerpt:

AOC’s recent comment that “woke 1 was crazyyyy” rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. The problem, as I see it, is that she wasn’t saying “woke was crazy and we should not repeat those mistakes,” but rather “woke was crazy and you can’t hold me responsible for what happened way back five years ago.” At least, that’s how it seemed — I’m deducing meaning from the timbre of her laugh and the number of “y”s in “crazyyyy”.

But if AOC is trying to memory hole past wokeness like it’s an ill-advised Mumford & Sons phase, she’s doing it in a weird way. Since her remark — which was in August — she has repeated virtually every trope that most people now agree was, indeed, crazy with four “y”s. She’s like an ex-alcoholic informing us that she’s a reformed and sober person now while dropping the whiskey shot into an Irish car bomb.

Perhaps the most memorable woke 1 trope was the upgrading of institutional violence against Black people from “problem” to “the defining aspect of American society”. That habit was why at woke 1’s peak, large numbers of left-leaning people overestimated police shootings of Black people by several orders of magnitude. Last month, AOC recreated this logical flaw by tweeting this misrepresentation in response to an initiative by fellow Squad member Ayanna Pressley. . . .

Two from my feed. The first is funny, though a lot of kids don’t seem to have any idea what their dads do:

These kids were asked what their daddies do for a living, and their answers were absolutely hilarious and completely unexpected! 🤣🤣 https://t.co/zcGAVoNxet

— Simply Amaka (@StelxyG) October 20, 2026

I had no idea. It’s a good thing I don’t have a cat or I’d test it:

Did you know?

Cats are far more sensitive to sounds than humans, and they can hear frequencies that we cannot. So, when your cat hears the teeth of the comb being flicked around, it irritates them enough to make them gag. https://t.co/ybV7qHCMB9

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) October 21, 2026

And one I retweeted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

Four Dutch Jewish children were gassed together as soon as they arrived in Auschwitz. Betsy, pictured on the left, was seven years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-10-22T10:58:47.113Z

Two from Doc Cobb. Matthew didn’t know about beetles mimicking bees, and neither did I:

An insect from a different tribe altogether that's pretending to be something it isn't. Eurasian Bee Beetle, as the name suggests, is rocking a bumblebee look this season to deter bird predators that don't fancy dealing with a sting in the tail.

— Jon Dunn (@dunnjons.bsky.social) 2026-10-21T08:48:44.148Z

This was a real name; check the link. (He was called “Formalin” for short.)

My son very kindly sent me a link to the Wikipedia page for this gentleman, Preserved Fish. “There were at least ten other Fish family members with the Quaker given name Preserved, whose lineages are often confused.”en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preserv…

— MꙬse Allain (@mooseallain.bsky.social) 2026-10-21T09:48:11.621Z

Today’s song is “Taxi,” written and performed by Harry Chapin, who recorded it in 1972.  (Chapin died at only 38 in a car crash on Long Island.) It’s a sad song about a weed-smoking cab driver who picks up an old girlfriend who, in contrast to the driver’s meager life, has become wealthy.  They recognize each other and make plans to meet again, which are futile.

A lot of it is semi-autobiographical: Chapin got a cab license, but never drove a cab, and he did have an on-and-off romance with a woman who dreamed of becoming an actress (see Chapin’s intro below).

From Wikipedia:

Chapin debuted the song on NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, which prompted calls and telegrams from viewers requesting that Chapin return to the show. It was the first time in the show’s history that host Johnny Carson brought a performer back the very next night for an encore performance. “Taxi” helped to establish Chapin’s musical style and emerged as his early signature song, with Chapin often associated with taxi-related imagery.

. . .Chapin said, “there’s not a single line that tells how the guy or the girl felt. It’s a very cinematic technique. But it’s also a very uneconomical technique. That’s why my songs are so long. I literally put you in that cab and let you experience. It’s a more involving form of music than sitting and hearing somebody sing ‘I’m lonely’.

Record World called it “spell-binding,” saying that Chapin “sets up, develops and resolves a situation in 6:40. A very short 6:40.” Billboard called it “a strong piece of folk ballad material while lengthy, should garner hefty top 40 and FM play with sales and chart action to follow.”

The falsetto part is performed by John Wallace, one of Chapin’s backup musicians (3:38 in the video below). The version below is live; the original recording is here and the lyrics are here. Before the song starts at 1:08, Chapin is interviewed by John Denver and explains what factual basis there is for the song. The live performance ends at 7:35 and is followed by the recorded version.

It’s a beautiful but bittersweet song about romances that fade away, and it reminds me a bit of the Eagles song, “Lyin’ Eyes”.

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

Welcome to The Cruelest Day: Tuesday, October 20, 2026, and it’s National Chicken and Waffles Day, celebrating a dish that is purely American, and arose in kitchens of the Pennsylvania Dutch. From Wikipedia:

Chicken and waffles, as a combined recipe using pulled boiled chicken, first appeared in the United States’ colonial period in the 1600s in Pennsylvania Dutch country.  The traditional Pennsylvania Dutch version consists of a plain waffle with pulled, stewed chicken on top, covered in gravy.

A version using fried chicken is associated with the American South. The soul food version of chicken and waffles grew in popularity after the opening of the Wells Supper Club in Harlem, New York, in 1938. The waffle is served as it would be for breakfast, with condiments such as butter and syrup. This version of the dish is popular enough in Baltimore, Maryland to become a local custom.

I’ve never had it, but would gladly devour it were I presented with a dish (to be sure, lots of restaurants on the South Side serve it). I’d prefer the Southern version with butter and syrup, as I think the salty chicken would go good with a sweet waffle. Here’s a photo from Wikipedia:

It’s also International Chefs Day, National Brandied Fruit Day, National Mozzarella Stick Day, Office Chocolate Day, and World Calvados Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 26 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The NYT gives us a biased account of “what you need to know” about the riots and protests in France.

What happened this weekend?

More than half a million people joined some 110 marches throughout France on Saturday, the interior ministry said, in the biggest day of protest since the demonstrations began about a month ago. A major union, the C.G.T., gave a higher estimate, saying 800,000 protesters had turned out.

Amid many peaceful demonstrations, rioters vandalized roughly 1,500 shops and many symbols of the French state, leading to roughly 2,000 arrests. An arson attack largely destroyed the town hall in Limoges, in central France. In Marseille, the second-largest city, masked people broke into a government building and tipped over a bust of Marianne, a symbol of the Republic.

. . . Why are students protesting?

High school students started protesting last month to express frustration with the condition of their schools.

They have pointed to crumbling infrastructure, overcrowded classrooms, overloaded schedules, a shortage of teachers and staff, and underfunding in schools. Many are also calling for an overhaul of state-run admissions platforms for higher education and universities that they call unfairly selective.

Students have blockaded hundreds of schools. They have set fire to, or damaged, at least 24 of them, according to the government. Thousands have been arrested since September and over 1,000 police officers, students and school staff have been hurt.

. . . Why did other groups join the students?

Throughout October, labor unions and other campaign groups have increasingly joined the students’ demonstrations. They have held bigger rallies to express solidarity with the students as well as to protest a broader range of issues.

Some are angry over the cost of living and rising fuel prices that have surged, in part, because of the Iran war. Farmers have joined in, angry at agricultural costs.

. . . And left-wing parties have also seized on the protests as part of a wider expression of discontent at President Emmanuel Macron, who is limited to two terms and is nearing the end of his time in office.

. . . What is the political fallout?

On Sunday, far-right leaders and the centrist government blamed the far left for the chaos. They pointed in particular to a major far-left party, France Unbowed, that they said provoked the unrest.

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has accused party leaders of sowing distrust about the police among student protesters, and said some rioters were members of the “ultra-left.”

France Unbowed has rejected that accusation and its leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, has instead blamed the government for actions that he said made the unrest more likely.

And that’s about it. No mention of pro-Palestinian protestors and Palestinian flags, no mention of immigration, no mention of looting of the “vandalized shops”. All of that, of course, would make the protestors/rioters look worse.

*For another view, read the WSJ’s editorial-board op-ed, “Why France is burning.” In fact, the piece doesn’t tell us at all why France is burning (apparently the paper did that before), but discusses how French politicians on the right and on the left are using the protests/riots to their advantage.

We’ve explained the underlying fiscal and political woes behind the crisis, but the news this time is the pre-election play by far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

Heretofore Mr. Mélenchon, head of the far-left Indomitable France party, had taken a somewhat detached attitude to the protests. But this weekend he participated in protests in Paris. He also blamed police for “unleashing” on protesters, while condemning looting and arson.

The riots are ostensibly about declining public services, but the presidential election next April figures into the protest calculations. Marine Le Pen of the insurgent right National Rally is leading in current presidential polls. Mr. Mélenchon is in a three-way tie with two candidates on the center-left.

The race now is to see who can emerge from the first round of voting to get to the two candidate runoff, probably against Ms. Le Pen. If the riots help Mr. Mélenchon consolidate support on the left, he could be the one. If the riots move more center-right voters away from the centrist candidates and toward Ms. Le Pen, Mr. Mélenchon may figure he has a fighting chance to become the next President in the May runoff.

. . .The parties of the right and left see a rare opportunity to use the moment to gain the Élysée Palace. It’s no coincidence that some protesters came uncomfortably close to the palace before police dispersed them.

Mr. Macron addressed the country Sunday evening, asking for public calm and order. But as a lame duck, he is left to rely on police to protect the French streets. They couldn’t do it on Saturday, as protesters ransacked shops in Marseille and elsewhere, and even torched the historic town hall in Limoges that survived the Nazis.

France is in a violent democratic funk, and it will probably get worse. Don’t think it can’t happen in the U.S. given the current state of American politics.

That’s a lot of the editorial’s content. Not only does it not answer the title question, but it doesn’t even show how the parties are using the unrest to their advantage. All it shows is what the consequences will be if the riots move the public in one political direction or another. Sadly, this op-ed appears to be a waste of space.

*Trump is justifying his easing of sanctions on Russia because it’s part of a “peace deal” that presumably will end Russia’s war with Ukraine—by facilitating the release of unnamed hostages.

President Trump, defending his decision to ease tariffs and other sanctions against Russia, said on Sunday that he was making “great progress” in a peace deal with the Kremlin and suggested for the first time that the process included “hostage negotiations.”

He did not specify whose release he was seeking. But the only American now categorized by the State Department as “wrongfully detained” in Russia is Stephen Hubbard, a Michigan teacher who was seized from his home in Ukraine just months after Russia invaded that country in February 2022 and was charged with being a mercenary. He was sentenced to more than six years in a penal colony, on charges that the United States has said are fabricated.

“My decision on Russia is a very simple one,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media, an apparent reference to his move late on Friday to neutralize the sanctions resolution that he had signed only a few weeks earlier. “I am in the process of negotiating Peace in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and don’t want to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table.”

Until Sunday, Mr. Trump had said little about the remarkable, rapid-fire steps he has taken over the past 10 days to side with the Russians in a conflict that has now gone on longer than World War I. Those steps amount to the reversal of nearly five years of sanctions following President Vladimir V. Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.

In that time period Mr. Trump has announced that the United States will buy diesel fuel from Russia — though the announced purchases are far too small to have a significant effect on prices, despite Mr. Trump’s claims — and that he will waive imposing tariffs on Russia under a newly signed law named for its chief proponent, Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who died in July.

Both decisions have been criticized by U.S. lawmakers, including fellow Republicans. Senator Darline Graham of South Carolina, who was appointed to her brother’s seat and is now running for a full term, gently disagreed on Saturday with Mr. Trump’s decision on the sanctions law, saying that she “would choose to put the pressure on Russia to end the war and get gas prices down.”

The breach with Ukraine has been sudden and perhaps irreparable.

Indeed!  Presumably a peace deal will require the cooperation and assent of Ukraine and Zelensky, and you don’t get that by suddenly cozying up to Russia. (There has been no cozying up to Ukraine.) And one hostage does not a peace deal make.  All we have is the depressing site of Trump cozying up to a dictator and blaming Ukraine for America’s high gas prices. .

*The WaPo personalizes the U.S. administration’s war on science with a piece called “Meet the researchers leaving the U.S. because of Trump’s funding cuts and politicization of science“.

Halley Froehlich was sure she’d spend her scientific career in the United States. Her family has been in America since the 1700s.

But over the past two years, delayed federal grants and fears about the future motivated her to pack her life into boxes. She moved to Finland with her husband and daughter and is continuing her research — studying how fish, shellfish and seaweed that humans eat are responding to climate change — at the University of Helsinki.

When the Trump administration began upending U.S. scientific research last year, dismantling the federal grant-giving process and attempting to exert more political influence over what projects get funded, foreign universities saw an opportunity. They adopted programs to lure U.S. researchers abroad, promising more stable streams of funding and academic freedom.

Since then, many have taken the bait. While there is no way to quantify the overall change across the nation, scientists, researchers and professional groups say the shift is clear, unprecedented and concerning.

“You can almost talk to any vice president for research at a university and they will tell you of one or two top faculty that they’ve lost,” said Tobin Smith, senior vice president of government relations and public policy for the Association of American Universities.

. . .White House spokesperson Liz Huston said Trump is “ending waste” and is “committed to keeping America the world leader in scientific innovation, and that means funding real science.”

But more than half of American states have lost scientists to recruitment programs in other countries, according to an April report from the Business for Federal Research Funding Coalition. Last March, early-career biomedical scientists were about 20 percentage points less likely to say they would “now” stay in the U.S., compared to their recollection of how they felt six months earlier. And physics Ph.D. graduates in 2025 left the U.S. at the highest rate in 30 years, according to the American Institute of Physics.

Countries including Canada, France, Belgium and Finland are touting their recruits from U.S. institutions, a disturbing and surprising development, scientists say, for a country that far and away leads the world in Nobel prizes for medicine, physics and chemistry.

“It used to be the shining city on the hill where we all want to go,” said Christine Stawitz, now at the University of Birmingham in England. “That reputational loss, I think, is hard to quantify, but also really damaging.”

International scientists who have come to the U.S. because of its research reputation are also leaving the country.  And of course the less attractive America becomes for science, the more scientists leave, so we’ll get a snowball effect. Now I’m not worried that in the long run this will persist, as Trump won’t always be President, and I presume that future Presidents, even if they’re Republicans, will have the sense to stop cratering science. But it looks like these scientists move only when they can continue their research, so the amount of research by them won’t change. Frankly, I don’t care which country is ahead so long as the work gets done. What is more worrisome is when science is quashed, and that is also being done with Trump’s widespread cancelation of grants.

*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal theorizes why Trump finally endorsed Netanyahu. Segal floats the suggestion that the endorsement, if it’s successful, will make the U.S. partner with the Jewish state on what Segal thinks is an upcoming Big Attack on Iran.

If this episode teaches anything, it is that, like Mark Twain’s death, the reports of daylight between Trump and Netanyahu are greatly exaggerated. The difference is that the media only announced Twain’s death once before they learned their lesson.

When it comes to Trump and Netanyahu, there is always more to the relationship than what makes it into print. Here, the “more” is the subject the endorsement kept returning to: Iran.

It appears that after vanquishing Israel’s opposition, Trump and Netanyahu plan to move on to what is left of the Islamic Republic. If plans have already been set, it is understandable why Trump would want the leader already briefed to remain at the helm.

Whether Trump’s claim that without Netanyahu “America will have to do this work ourselves” is a threat or an observation is an open question. If Trump is demanding Netanyahu as a precondition, that doesn’t mean he is voting for the coalition, only for a government with Netanyahu.

America doing the job alone is threatening Europe with a good time but would spell disaster for Israel. If the U.S. is returning to Iranian skies, likely for the last time, Israel needs to get its punches in before the window closes. “Unity” may be a dirty word in the opposition today, but we will see how the term evolves if Trump adds Iran into the equation.

The truth is, unity is likely the only way Bibi remains at the head of a stable coalition. Trump would be angry to find out that his name alone is insufficient to net Bibi another five or six seats. That reflects the dive in both Trump’s and Bibi’s popularity, and the difficulty of convincing what even Moses called a “stiff necked people.”

All of this implies that Segal has some secret information that both Israel and the U.S. want to finish off Iran fairly soon. I have seen nothing about this in any other American media, but of course Segal has “ins” in Israel that the U.S. media doesn’t.  I would not be unhappy to see Iran “finished” to the extent that there is regime change, and I don’t think that’s a clear objective of Trump, but it may be a felicitous byproduct of military action.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s sensitive ears detect a catlike noise:

Hili: A child is crying.
Andrzej: Where?
Hili: One floor up.

In Polish:

Hili: Dziecko płacze.
Ja: Gdzie?
Hili: Piętro wyżej.

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

From Things With Faces:

From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:

From Give Me a Sign. This might be a jab at all the flavored beers being made:

This video from Masih will make you tear up:

Emotional moment two women blinded under Islamic regimes meeting each other for the first time.

Fahimeh is from Afghanistan. Her husband threw acid on her face because she was fighting for women’s rights against the Taliban. As her face burned, he told her: now I have taken your eyes and your face, people will be scared of you, so I dare you to go out and talk to people.

I invited her to come on stage with me and talk directly to thousands of people in Poland.

She met Kosar, an Iranian woman who was blinded by the Islamic Republic during the Woman life Freedom uprising.

We are now together stepping into Jewish history in Poland, including Auschwitz, and understanding the connection between the Holocaust and the Islamic Republic’s massacre on 2026.
If any of you think it’s easy to live under Islamic republic or Taliban just listened to their stories.

These women are not fighting for themselves. They are fighting to protect democracy everywhere from the most dangerous cancer, which is called Islamism.

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) October 19, 2026

Rawan Osman blames most of the unrest in Europe on Islamists? I’m not sure I agree:

Who Is Setting Europe on Fire?

After a weekend offline celebrating my son as his childhood came to an end, I switched my phone on and saw Europe ablaze.

My immigrant family, who once punished me for being an outspoken Zionist, is staying with me. They finally understand: Israel is not the problem. The Palestinian cause is our crucifix.

In 2015, I warned that imported misogyny and antisemitism would fuel the far right. The Washington Institute published what I wrote. Europe dismissed it, Germany most of all. Germany’s reconciliation with the Jews after the Holocaust stalled. Since October 7, it has gone into reverse.
So who is setting Europe on fire? The men stealing jackets and food can’t organize riots across a continent. The mastermind who wrapped Greta Thunberg in a keffiyeh can. He recruits young Westerners to open the gates of their cities in the name of human rights.

Who comes through the gates?

Victims, and the abusers they fled. A system that can’t tell them apart will be seized by extremists who punish everyone. Alice Weidel would deport Syrians and Afghans without exception, including the Druze, Afghan women, and Yazidis. Denmark moved to deport an Iranian activist back to Iran. A Yazidi woman met her ISIS tormentor in a Berlin supermarket; Germany had granted him asylum. Still, Weidel sounds more realistic than Macron, who vows to make masked, unregistered rioters pay. How will he find them?

How are the gatekeepers recruited? Through unions, universities, parties, mosques, and social media. Workers mobilize for money, students for ideals, politicians for votes, radicalized Muslims for faith. The strongest is the Islamist. His project belongs to the ummah, for Allah’s sake. Jail or kill him and it goes on. How do you defeat someone who wins even when you kill him? Victimhood, martyrdom, paradise.

What does this model remind you of?
Half-measures won’t stop it. Ban the keffiyeh. Dissolve UNRWA. Abolish Palestinian refugee status, so that “Palestinian” becomes a cultural identity, not a citizenship. Let those who want to leave the West Bank and Gaza resettle elsewhere: Islamists where Islamists belong, those with family in Jordan in Jordan, and those who value Israel on a path to citizenship if they prove to be law-abiding.

I hope the West finds the courage to act before more tragedies force its hand.

#FranceRiots

— Rawan Osman روان عثمان (@RawaneOsmane) October 19, 2026

The Number Ten Cat appears to be healing well from his cyst removal:

Feline fine.

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

From JKR, and the story is here:

The thing that never happens and could never happen and that only evil people predicted would happen has happened again.

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) October 5, 2026

Two from my feed. Sound up on the first one to hear the cat reading along:

Never gets old seeing this https://t.co/EaR4jwNfzz

— Cats with aura (@Catsworldtweet) October 18, 2026

Translated from the Turkish (of course): “The fisherman, noticing that the pregnant cat he feeds fish to every day is visiting more frequently, finally can’t resist following her and learns that she’s not taking the fish for herself 🥹♥️”

Her gün balık verdiği hamile kedinin ziyarete daha fazla geldiğini fark eden balıkçı, sonunda dayanamayarak kediyi takip ediyor ve kedinin balıkları kendisi için götürmediğini öğreniyor 🥹♥️ https://t.co/QWbBRLyUEq

— Serkan Tanyildizi (@srkntnyldz) October 18, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed to death (along with her mohter) as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. The girl was six years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) October 20, 2026

And one from Doctor Cobb; a photo (I like it):

Scrolling back through my phone; just re-discovered this random photo that I took in Antarctica last winter. It shows a blizzard over an ice-speckled ocean. Seems almost surreal – not sure if this is a good photo or not!

— Prof Michael Meredith 🌊🧪🥼❄️ (@oceanandice.bsky.social) 2026-10-19T14:53:30.538Z

Have some Buddy Holly: in my view, his best song, “True Love Ways“, which he co-wrote with Norman Petty.  It was first released in 1960, almost two years after Holly’s death on The Day the Music Died (February 3, 1959).  Holly was 22 when he perished in that plane crash.

From Wikipedia:

Holly biographer Bill Griggs points out that the melody borrows heavily from the gospel song “I’ll Be All Right,” a favorite of Holly’s, and one that would be played at his funeral in 1959. According to Griggs, the framework of the melody was written by Buddy, with the remainder, and lyrics, added by Petty.

Holly’s widow, Maria Elena Holly, claimed that the song was written for her as a wedding gift. On April 29, 2011, she unveiled the never-before-seen “True Love Ways” photo of their wedding kiss, now displayed at P.J. Clarke’s above Table 53, the table where they became engaged while on their first date, on June 20, 1958.

And did you know this>?

John Lennon and Paul McCartney saw Holly for the first time when he appeared on Sunday Night at the London Palladium. The two had recently met and begun their musical association. They studied Holly’s records, learned his performance style and lyricism, and based their act around his persona. Inspired by Holly’s insect-themed Crickets, they chose to name their band “the Beatles“. Lennon and McCartney later cited Holly as one of their main influences.

I don’t know a rock/pop song this old that has a jazz-influenced saxophone riff:

Buddy Holly and the Crickets, 1957 (Holly’s in the middle):

Welcome to another damn week: it’s Monday, October 19, 2026, and it’s Rainforest Day. Here are shots, in order, from Costa Rica (La Selva) in 2017 and Oahu (Mānoa Falls) two years later:

It’s also International Gin and Tonic Day and National Seafood Bisque Day.

Posting will be light today as I’m off to see Richard Dawkins speak on “Genes and the Meaning of Life” at Symphony Hall this evening (I prepare most of these dialogues the day before they appear).

UPDATE: It was a good time; Richard was interviewed byNicholas Epley , a behavioral scientist and professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. It was at Symphony Hall in downtown Chicago and lasted about an hour and a half.  I had given Nick a list of ten questions that I’d ask Richard (I don’t have the list) and was glad to see that about half of them came up: memes, evolutionary psychology, genetically based sex differences, Richard as a “cultural Christian” and so on. At 85, Richard hasn’t lost a lick: he’s still thoughtful, eloquent, and, as the audience appreciated, funny. It’s hard to think of another academic who could draw such crowds and entertain them and educate them so thoroughly. The crowd was urprisingly young—I estimate the mean age of about 40.  Here’s a shot of the venue from my seat on the main floor:

I found the list of questions I’d sent to Nick as suggestions to ask Richard. I know what Dawkins’s answers would be to some of them, but the audience doesn’t.

1  Of all the books you’ve published, which is your favorite, and why?

2  What do you think has been the greatest discovery in evolutionary biology in the last several decades?

3 If you could have one unanswered question about evolution or biology answered for you, what would it be?

4. Given the mountains of evidence in favor of evolution, why do 73% of Americans believe that God had some hand in human evolution (see attached Pew Survey, adding pure creationists and partial creationists)?

5. People are now proclaiming that religion is coming back, based on the fact that the number of “nones’ (people without a formal church affiliation) has slowed down or reached a plateau in the last two years. Do you think religion is inexorably on its way out in America, or has the decline stopped?

6. Evolutionary psychology, the idea that human behaviors, preferences, and thoughts, have been heavily influenced by evolution, has been widely criticized as “just-so stories”. I presume you don’t agree with that because, after all, why is the human brain exempt from natural selection? What do you make of these criticisms and could you give us some examples of human behaviors that you think have been clearly instilled in us by natural selection.

7. Your late friend and colleague Daniel Dennett called Charles Darwin’s idea of evolution by natural selection “the single best idea anyone has ever had.” Given that the competitors include Newton and Einstein, do you agree?

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 19 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*After a long period of silence, Trump has finally endorsed Netanyahu in the Israeli elections (October 27).  The Prime Minister of Israel, though, is not elected directly, but rather emerges from a coalition-forming caucus after the election of Parliament.  I’m not a fan of Netanyahu, and am hoping for a better PM, but it doesn’t matter who emerges as the leader, for the world will hate Israel no matter who runs the government. And you know why. (Netanyahu was just one more excuse to hate Israel)

*France is rocked with riots that have arisen from protests, and yesterday the protestors rioters burned most of an old city hall in Limoges (see archived article here).

France was in a state of shock on Sunday, as citizens walked through streets lined with shattered storefronts, charred cars and burned-out government buildings after the country’s largest demonstrations in years devolved into riots and looting.

The unrest on Saturday — which led to some 2,000 arrests — caused widespread damage to several symbols of the state, including a 19th-century city hall in Limoges, a town in central France renowned for its porcelain, that was largely destroyed in a nighttime arson attack. More than 600 police officers were injured, Laurent Nuñez, France’s interior minister, said on social media on Sunday.

Rioters attacked city halls from Lille in northern France to Marseille in the south, where they broke into the local government headquarters and tipped over a bust of Marianne, a symbol of the French Republic. A fire also destroyed a tourist office in Lyon, and 1,500 shops were damaged or looted nationwide, according to Alexandre Bompard, head of the French federation of commerce and distribution, who estimated that the cost of repairs could run into hundreds of millions of dollars.

“I’ve never seen this before, I am disgusted,” said Sophie Vanpoperinghe, 47, as she gazed at ransacked shops on Boulevard Magenta, the road in Paris where she has lived for 22 years and which is frequently used for demonstrations.

More than half a million demonstrators marched on Sunday to protest the rising cost of living and poor conditions in schools, among other grievances. Many were stunned on Sunday at how rioters had used those demonstrations as a smoke screen for vandalism.

. . . On Sunday, the violence and protests had subsided and given way to a political blame game. Government officials and far right leaders accused the far left of stirring up the unrest, and left-wing leaders blamed the government.

These riots are, as you see from the second tweet below, being blamed on immigrants and are boosting an anti-immigrant parties and politicians like Marine Le Pen. The question is to what extent are immigrants involved and, beyond that, why would immigration itself lead to rioting? The MSM is largely silent on the immigration component, though I found this in the Spectator (archived):

As Sébastien Lecornu said, the violence was perpetrated by two groups: far-left extremists and what he termed ‘criminals’.

Far-left extremists are usually white, like those arrested earlier this year after the death of a nationalist student in Lyon. The people seen on television forcing their way into the city halls of Marseille and Lille were mainly white. On the other hand, the ‘criminals’ filmed looting in Paris, Marseille and Bordeaux appeared to be of immigrant background.

All the demonstrations I’ve seen involve some Palestinian flags being waved, but of course we saw that among American college students.  Frederick Alexander says this at The Gadfly (h/t Anna):

The hard left has spent weeks turning a legitimate grievance about failing schools into a much wider confrontation with the state.

And then there’s the Islamist connection, which the mainstream media would rather not talk about. Outside a school near Paris, a student was filmed shouting, “In the name of Allah, we can kill them all!”, to the cheers of other teenagers.

Elsewhere, there’s footage of students singing along to a rap song invoking Mohammed Merah, the Islamist terrorist who murdered Jewish schoolchildren in Toulouse, and the Bataclan massacre. Meanwhile, a 2025 parliamentary inquiry revealed the growing proximity between figures in Mélenchon’s party and organisations associated with political Islam.

So much for a protest about maths lessons.

None of this means that every student demanding a better education is an Islamist revolutionary. But it’s hard not to conclude that the political forces seeking to exploit their grievances have other ideas. France’s disaffected students offer a useful point of combustion for wider political violence.

What we’re looking at is an increasingly visible convergence between the revolutionary left and political Islam, alongside the familiar collection of hooligans and nihilists who see any disorder as an occasion to indulge their grim hobby, not just in France but across the West.

We’ll have to wait and see what the role of immigration is in these ongoing unrests, but it’s already clear that the far-left native populations are involved. And regardless of who is demonstrating, the spread of political Islam is concerning.

A tweet from Jay showing the fracas, with the English translation, “⚠️🔴 WATCH UNTIL THE END I CANNOT DESCRIBE WHAT I JUST EXPERIENCED IN MARSEILLE. ”

⚠️🔴 À REGARDER JUSQU’À LA FIN

JE NE PEUX PAS DÉCRIRE CE QUE JE VIENS DE VIVRE À MARSEILLE.

#17octobre https://t.co/F8bLimtd7y

— confrontation française (@confrontfr) October 17, 2026

And a possible result (h/t Luana):

Close to 1 in 2 chances now for Le Pen after rioting https://t.co/uz3sT5xnxI

— Arpit Gupta (@arpitrage) October 17, 2026

*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal describes the clashes between Palestiniand and Israelis in Judea and Samaria that is always described by the press as “settler violence.” In reality, says Segal, both sides can incite this violence, so it’s “chaos” mistakenly attributed by the press as totally the acts of Israelis.

t’s Sunday, October 18, and two events on Saturday captured the problem of settler violence. The first was a little-publicized provocation by Palestinians during the olive harvest, when they approached a settlement’s grazing lands pelting a shepherd with stones. The second was an unprovoked settler attack on European diplomats who had come to protect the harvest.

At 7:35 a.m., according to an Israeli emergency-response group, a shepherd from the Ma’ale Ahuvia farm was hit by stones in the farm’s grazing land near Taybeh. He was lightly hurt and got himself to treatment. Residents say the harvesters began on Deir Jarir’s land and then crossed into pasture the IDF had approved for the farm.

Palestinians, for their part, claim that settlers advanced on their harvest under IDF guard, firing live rounds. The IDF has not commented on the clash or its alleged presence, and no footage corroborates the gunfire. The casting of the IDF as an accomplice to settler violence is narratively compelling for those who see all Israelis as equally malicious, but it also sets off alarm bells for Israelis who know that if the IDF is there, it is far more likely to be separating the two sides than supporting a settler attack.

The second incident took place six hours after the Ma’ale Ahuvia clash, a few kilometers away. A little before 1:30 p.m., masked men with metal bars descended on a delegation of Belgian, French and Polish diplomats in Taybeh. A French mayor put on his tricolor sash, and it didn’t help. The window of the Belgian consulate’s car was smashed. It was a disgusting act of baseless vigilante justice.

Belgium’s foreign minister blamed Israel’s settlement policy and pledged to push for further EU sanctions. France demanded that Israel arrest those responsible, and Poland declared itself deeply outraged.

The latter incident has rightly been condemned by nearly every corner of the Israeli establishment. The IDF called it a severe act of violence by Israeli rioters, and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar condemned it without caveats. The Prime Minister’s Office said any violence against diplomats is unacceptable.

A similar incident a day earlier is covered in the shadow of provocation and response. According to the Binyamin Regional Council, hundreds of “terrorists and anarchists” threw stones and fired fireworks directly at Israelis, Palestinian Authority vehicles were allegedly on hand, and left-wing activists had organized the confrontation so the cameras could film the Israeli response.

The response, when it came, was itself highly problematic. According to one witness, 50 Israelis, many masked and some carrying gas canisters, came down the hill onto the terraced groves. Some set trees alight and used slings to throw stones at the harvesters, who retreated downhill and threw stones back.

Caught in the middle was Heidi Levine, a photographer working for The Washington Post. Wearing a vest clearly marked “Press,” she was pushed to the ground and beaten, and was left with a broken rib, a broken vertebra and a finger injury that needs surgery. President Isaac Herzog, who called Heidi Levine after Shabbat to apologize for her beating, said Taybeh weighed on his conscience as well.

Segal’s take is that the situation is complicated, but the media and the world want to simplify it by blaming all the violence on Israelis. The world’s push for sanctions, he adds, is based not on “settler violence” in the West Bank, but on Israel’s actions in its war on Gaza.  The end:

The tragic reality of Judea and Samaria will not bend to the wishes of its indignant defenders. Palestinian violence against Israelis will always be played down or omitted altogether, while settler violence will always erode Israel’s standing abroad. Israel must reconcile itself to this reality and act accordingly.

*The NYT has two articles (here and here) suggesting that O. J. Simpson might not have acted on his own if he did murder his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her companion Ron Goldman in 1994 (remember that Simpson was found not guilty). When Simpson wrote his fictional memoir, If I Did It, he told his ghostwriter he could not have done the murders alone.  Now there’s evidence that that might have been the case:

In the failed murder prosecution of O.J. Simpson in 1995, the government professed that he alone had killed his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.

Among the issues that hampered the case: the lack of a murder weapon, which has never been found. Its absence has long stoked speculation about whether the killer had assistance.

Now, records unsealed after 30 years at the request of The New York Times show that a prized government informant had told law enforcement key information about the killings, including the supposed location of the murder weapon and details about Mr. Simpson’s efforts to evade prosecution. Together, the findings challenge the popular narrative around the case.

This year, the informant’s brother told The Times that his sibling’s role in the case went much deeper. And the brother said he actually helped discard a bag, containing a heavy object, in the hours after the murders.

Joseph Ippolito, known as Joey, a convicted drug trafficker and mafia associate, escaped from a Florida prison a month before the 1994 murders.

Mr. Ippolito’s brother said the siblings went west after the escape to Los Angeles. Before his incarceration, Mr. Ippolito had operated a popular restaurant there and was a close friend of Al Cowlings, the longtime confidant of Mr. Simpson.

In the wake of the infamous Bronco chase with Mr. Simpson and Mr. Cowlings, investigators found photos in the vehicle of one of Mr. Ippolito’s girlfriends, along with her phone number.

Mr. Ippolito was eventually brought back into custody a year later. Right away, records show, he fed federal investigators in New York information about the mafia and set up meetings with undercover drug agents, with prosecutors saying that they “found Ippolito to be a remarkable source of information.” Mr. Ippolito risked his own safety to help them, prosecutors wrote in a memo lobbying a federal judge for leniency in his sentence.

He also divulged information about Mr. Simpson and the killings.

. . .“The O.J. Simpson case remains an open and ongoing investigation,” a spokesman for the L.A.P.D. said. Because there was no conviction in the murders, “the department has an obligation to continue to pursue justice in this matter.” The spokesman added, “at a point that new evidence is found, detectives will follow those investigatory leads.”

As part of a re-examination of the Simpson case, The Times has unearthed tales of secret audiotapes, mafia links, a prison escape, and backchannel communications between state and federal prosecutors. The reporting also came across a dramatic account from the rapper Fat Joe that bolsters the informant’s supposed role in the case.

You can read more about the NYT’s investigation at the archived link here.

*When I was looking for jobs in the early 1980s, it was tough to find one. After many rejections, I finally got an offer from the only remaining school: the University of Maryland.  Soon thereafter, the job market for STEM Ph.D.s expanded and things became easy. Now it’s tough again, as exemplified by this Ph.D., from chemical engineering (Princeton) who got rejected from over 2300 jobs. 

Jack Weiss likes to joke that he’s just another unemployed guy living in his parents’ basement.

That leaves out a few key details: The Salt Lake City native has applied to more than 2,300 jobs since he graduated from Princeton in 2024 with his Ph.D. in chemical engineering. And he still doesn’t have a job.

He first pursued corporate science jobs and prestigious postdoctoral fellowships at national laboratories. Then he cast a wider net, applying to software engineering and other roles. Eventually, he was getting ghosted for food-preparation jobs, including at a company that sells frozen crab cakes.

For a time, Weis got a gig training AI on his expertise, including in engineering and fluid mechanics. That work dried up too.

I first interviewed Weis late last year, the day before his 30th birthday. Covering careers and the labor market, I endeavored to meet job seekers in all 50 states, hoping it would help me understand why many people felt so dim about their futures. Just 34% of Americans surveyed by Gallup in August said it was a good time to find a quality job.

The picture remains murky. The latest jobs report fell far short of expectations. The unemployment rate remains low, but the percentage of unemployed people out of work for 27 weeks or more was higher this summer than it’s been for more than a decade, with the exception of Covid-19 and its immediate aftermath.

The promise of AI—and unease around its application—also contributes to an environment that is harder than usual for young, college-educated workers to find work, while the opposite is true for those without degrees. More than 70% of U.S. respondents to a Pew Research Center survey released last month said they expected AI would lead to fewer jobs overall.

After dozens of interviews across all 50 states, Weis’s story struck me for the way it embodied the deep freeze that has paralyzed the current labor market in the past few years—what economists refer to as a low-hire, low-fire environment.

Many people have jobs, but they’re not leaving them, limiting opportunity for others. Those who don’t have a job are locked out of the growing economy as if it were a fortress, leaving them puzzled by the headlines of low unemployment and an accelerating GDP.

The guy is no slouch:

The son of two physicians, Weis graduated summa cum laude from Rice University and enrolled at Princeton for his Ph.D. in 2018. His research on ice formation was cited by the Nobel committee when it awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 2024.

The situation is exacerbated not only by fear of AI, but by applicants who submit hundreds of applications using AI, and employers, drowning in applications, uses AI to screen them.  I’d still want to be 30 again if I had the choice, but the job market is one of the things on the downside of that.

*Yesterday’s Washington Post article by Mark Wagner—”My sister may have visited me after death. There’s a term for it“—doesn’t show the supernatural, it at least suggests it (see article archived here).

One summery Friday, as I mowed the lawn, I’m pretty sure my dead sister, Caroline, appeared to me as a peach. On a tree that had in five years never borne fruit, a single, perfectly ripe peach nearly touched my nose as I bobbed my head under the boughs.

How and why Caroline became a peach is a story that begins in August 1985. As part of her wedding ceremony, we sang “Amazing Grace.” At 30, Caroline was no shrinking violet. She’d been hired as a technology analyst by the CIA. She insisted that she would not sing, “To save a wretch like me,” demanding instead that we sing, “That saved a peach like me.” So we sang Christianity’s most notable hymn with new words. No divine punishment ensued. In fact, Caroline went on to have a healthy family and succeed in her career in higher education.

After her wedding, she embraced all things peachy. We called her “Sweet Peach.” At our “Yankee swaps” at Christmas, each year a niece or nephew would give her a peach candle, and they would all sing the SNL carol — “It’s a candle, that same peach candle.”

. . .And here I was, two months later, staring at a peach dangling in front of my face. I pulled it clean and ran into the house to show my wife and son.

We went out to check. There were no other peaches on the tree. We have another peach tree, one that’s actually fecund, but those peaches were weeks from being ripe.

What else could we do? My son and I made a smoothie, and I called my siblings.

And I told the story to friends. To my surprise, many shared a similar tale: After a death, a special bird appears. Or the loved one arrives with surreal lucidity in a dream. Or they catch an unexpected whiff of cinnamon, or lilacs, a scent the person had loved the most.

Of course the author can’t really say this was a miracle—a sign from his dead sister—but when you read the end, it sort of becomes ambiguous:

Was the peach Caroline? Perhaps Shakespeare said it best. As Hamlet instructed his friend Horatio, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophies. I would suggest the working word at the tip of Shakespeare’s pen is “dreamed.” Our philosophies and models of what is possible are dreams. The true reality of our lives and deaths is something other, something we struggle to put into words. Sometimes, it tastes sweet.

If you can figure out what the guy is saying, you’re better than I am! It seems deliberately ambiguous.

I take the appearance of the peach as a coincidence, and nothing more.  Sometimes it happens, sometimes this stuff happens, and sometimes doesn’t, but many people are looking for some affirmation that the deceased live on, or at least something that vividly reminds them of those who died. And you don’t hear about the coincidences that don’t occur. I suggest this article verges on affirmation of the supernatural more than it does on extolling coincidences that, after all, happen many times in a huge population.

There are two successive comments with opposite views:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili shows her erudition:

Hili: Horace was right.
Andrzej: About what?
Hili: Almost everything.

In Polish:

Hili: Horacy miał rację.
Ja: W jakiej sprawie?
Hili: Prawie w każdej.

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

From Things With Faces:

From Cheryl’s Amazingly Positive, No Politics Allowed, Interesting People Group:

From Terrible Maps: U.S. states that have more cows than people:

Masih gets emotional speaking of Iranian protestors on death row:

Look at their faces. You can barely read their names and their age without breaking into tears.

The Islamic Republic is preparing to hang these innocent women and men.

Stopping these executions must be a global emergency. Every second counts.

Say their names. Stop the hangings NOW.

#StopExecutionsInIran

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) October 18, 2026

From Luana; the town hall of Limoges, France, coming down after an arson attack:

This is how you make Marine Le Pen the next president of France.

— Jake 🇺🇸 (@omni_american) October 17, 2026

J. K. Rowling is opposed to death threats no matter who makes them. This one is pretty scary, though.

In fairness, there are loads of videos of gender critical people saying the equivalent about trans-identified people. They just cunningly disguise their incitement to murder as ‘we don’t want men in women’s changing rooms.’ https://t.co/K5swM6FG7W

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) October 10, 2026

Two from my feed. First, Greta has moved onto the latest cause:

Greta Thumberg is now in France telling the Muslim rioters she is “proud of them” https://t.co/a5gGcqmeFo

— Pippa B 🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🚜 ❤️ 🇺🇸 (@pippaisright) October 18, 2026

A funny bit from Stephen Fry and Hugh Lsurie:

British comedy from the 90s. When was the last time you watched something like this? https://t.co/4XFd5OZeCa

— Love Classical Music and Movies 🎺🎻💖🎥🎬 (@AlexTran677026) October 18, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived at Auschwitz. He was ten years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) October 19, 2026

And two from Professor (Emeritus) Cobb. Here’s the first cat in space. Sadly, as Wikipedia notes, “Félicette euthanized two months after the launch so that scientists could perform a necropsy to examine her brain.” That is horrible—NO MORE CATS IN SPACE!

It's Félicette Day!On the date in 1963 the first cat went to space. Here's the song we wrote about her youtu.be/70VCY9Iu6qc?…

— SPRAY (@spraypopmusic.com) 2026-10-18T07:50:41.344Z

Matthew asks, “What do they use it for?” Good question, and you can find the answer here. (It anchors the sponge in the sediment, but also keeps the animal above accumulating sediment.)

Some glass sponges may be the oldest animals on Earth. Individuals of Monorhaphis chuni are estimated at over 11,000 years old, and they build a single skeletal spike up to 3m long, the largest natural glass structure any animal makes. 🧪 #SpongeThursday #HowToBuildAGiant #marinelife

— Dr Craig R McClain (@drcraigmc.bsky.social) 2026-09-17T17:17:26.475Z

Welcome to Sunday, October 18, 2026, sabbath for goyische cats, and National Exascale Day, which celebrates this:

Founded by CRAY, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, National Exascale Day takes place on October 18—1018 (one followed by 18 zeros). This number, 1,000,000,000,000,000,000, is a billion billion, or a quintillion. This relates to exascale in that an exascale is a quintillion computations per second. A quintillion computations is also known as an exaFLOP. An exascale computer can do a quintillion computations in a second, and exascale computing is working with computers that can do at least one exaFLOP per second. Exascale computers are about a million times faster than a laptop from the 2020s. The benefit is that these quicker computers will lead to quicker discoveries and innovations, which may lead to more lives saved from disease and natural disasters, and more food provided to more people.

Wikipedia adds this:

In 2022, the world’s first public exascale computer, Frontier, was announced. As of June 2026, Shenzhen Cloud Computing Center Co., Ltd’s LineShine is the world’s fastest exascale supercomputer.

Here’s a photo of the Frontier computer:

It’s also National Chocolate Cupcake Day, National No Beard Day, and World Menopause Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 18 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*In his ongoing osculation of the autocrat Vladimir Putin (and the “President”‘s attempt to lower gas prices), Trump just suspended a number of financial sanctions that Congress had imposed on Russia.

*Israeli residents of the West Bank are going on a rampage, first attacking Palestinian residents as well as Western news reporters and photographers, and now diplomats from Poland, France, and Belgium.

Masked settlers attacked a group of European diplomats during a visit to the occupied West Bank on Saturday, Belgium’s foreign minister said, on a second straight day of high-profile assaults on Palestinians and others during the sensitive olive harvest.

At least four people have been killed and more than 100 injured since the harvest began earlier this month, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Activists say Israeli authorities do little to stop attacks that involve weapons ranging from slingshots to guns. An attack Friday seriously injured a Washington Post photographer and others.

In Saturday’s attack in the Christian village of Taybeh, settlers targeted Belgium’s consul general, French and Polish diplomats and Catholic representatives, Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prevot said.

“A French mayor was assaulted and a Belgian vehicle damaged. Our team is safe,” Prevot said. He linked the attack to what he called Israel’s “illegal settlement policy” and pledged to push for further European Union sanctions. “Impunity for violent settlers must end,” he added.

Video shared by an activist at the scene, Amit Orfali, shows the French mayor, wearing a tricolor sash, leaning against a vehicle while sitting on the dusty ground. Other clips showed young masked men knocking insistently on a driver’s side window and asking for IDs, while other masked men carrying sticks advanced in the distance.

Orfali said the masked men “threatened to kill us.”

. . . Israel’s military in a statement confirmed Saturday’s attack on the diplomats and called it a “severe act of violence,” but said the visit had not been coordinated with it and no soldiers were at the scene.

. . .Israeli police said they had opened an investigation and vowed to work “until everyone who took part in these cases is brought to justice.” Foreign Minister Gideon Saar on X condemned the “severe acts of violence by Israeli rioters,” adding that his ministry was in contact with ambassadors from the countries concerned.

But Netanyahu’s office later issued a statement warning against “premature conclusions” in the incident and noted concerns about “a coordinated campaign to smear Israel.”

Well, no. NBC News showed Israelis attacking their reporter’s car, and breaking the window, for no reason, and also the Wahington Post photographer getting beat up. I don’t think conclusions are “premature.”  The whole mess is horrible, unconscionable, and Netanyahu needs to call it out for what it was and to provide more security from the IDF. Yes, Palestinians attack Israelis in the West Bank, too, but Israel has to have stringent control over its own citizens (Palestinians in Area C are not Israeli citizens). They can’t set an example of democracy and tolerance by allowing such violence (or not punishing it), and of course they surely realize that this kind of uncontrolled violence will further besmirch Israel’s already-rock-bottom reputation in the world.

*How many Press Secretaries has Trump had? At least six or seven, but I’m not going to look it up. The latest occupant of that woeful position, Katie Zacharia, lasted just five days after a pathetic first performance combined with her misrepresentations of her past.

“Maybe it’s not for her,” Trump told reporters outside the White House.

*Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian authority is now in the TWENTY-SECOND YEAR OF A FOUR-YEAR TERM, with the PLO regularly extending his term or postpoining elections.  Palestinians (and the world) should be outraged by this, but nobody seems to care. It’s not because Abbas is a “moderate,” for the PA still supports terrorism. The WSJ highlights this in an editorial-board op-ed called “The Palestinians see through Emmanuel Macron.” What does Macron have to do with this? Because the promise of elections led France last autumn to recognize Palestine as a state. Read an excerpt:

It’s that time of year again. Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority (PA), has issued a decree to postpone Palestinian elections. In exchange for recognition of Palestinian statehood last year, Mr. Abbas had promised French President Emmanuel Macron that he would hold elections in 2026 at last. Sometimes leaders and nations want to be lied to.

In June 2025 Mr. Abbas pledged that the PA was “committed to the organization of presidential and general elections within a year.” Weak at home, Mr. Macron touted this as a major breakthrough abroad. “In light of the commitments you have made,” he wrote, “France will proceed with the full recognition of Palestine.”

Yes, the WSJ op-ed section is said to be quite right-wing, but what I see in this column is not an ideological slant but the truth. Abbas keeps lying, he’s still enabling terrorism, and Western countries keep pandering to a man who enables terrorism.  Are we not supposed to recognize this?

Apropos, reader Bill sent me this cartoon. You probably know the background, which you can see in the background:

*Campaigning has become expensive, especially during the upcoming midterms where a number of races are tight. I learned of the price of the Senate campaign in Texas from Sam Sifton’s Oct. 15 NYT morning newsletter (article archived here). Texas is where, you may know, Democratic nominee James Talarico is running pretty even with his Republican opponent, state attorney General Ken Paxton. Look at the money these candidates are spending!

There are a number of tight races in the coming midterm elections, but there isn’t a more expensive one than the Senate showdown in Texas. It pits James Talarico, the Democratic nominee, against Ken Paxton, the state’s conservative attorney general. More than half a billion dollars has been spent on advertising already, and the race could become the most costly nonpresidential contest in U.S. history.

Democrats are hopeful, because Talarico has a tiny lead in the polls. But “such optimism stands in defiance of the political axiom that Texas is where idealistic Democrats go to be mugged by reality,” writes Robert Draper, a three-decade veteran of Texas political reporting. The party has not won a statewide race there for 32 years.

The race may turn on who each man says he — and his opponent — is.

Talarico has introduced himself to the state’s 32 million residents as a good Christian member of the Texas House, with a record of bipartisanship. At a town hall meeting last night, Talarico spoke about his faith and appealed to undecided voters. “I’m a proud Texas Democrat, but I already have a religion and I already have a sports team,” he said. “So, I have no problem sharing hard truths with my party if it’s what’s best for Texas.”

His appeal is meant to be broad, with proposals to cap credit card rates, cut middle-class taxes, lower prices and assist people with their first down payment on a home.

In return, Paxton and his supporters paint Talarico as a “weird” radical who believes that “God is nonbinary” and that there are more than two biological sexes. (Talarico did say those things but later renounced them.) Vice President JD Vance, stumping in Texas on Tuesday, mocked Talarico — whose girlfriend is a former aide — with a gay joke. “I love you too sir,” Vance told a man in the crowd. “In a totally platonic way, to be clear. I’m the vice president, not James Talarico.”

I’m glad I don’t live in Texas, as it would be hard to vote for Talarico with those ridiculous statements about sex and God, but harder to vote for Paxton. And I bet the total campaign expenses come near $750 million before election day.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has apparently failed to seize the day that has just gone by:

Hili: And so another day goes by.
Andrzej: Carpe diem.

In Polish:

Hili: I znów mija kolejny dzień.
Ja: Carpe diem.

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

From Stacy:

From Meow Incorporated:

From Cheryl’s Amazingly Positive, No Politics Allowed, Interesting People Group:

Here’s Masih speaking in Spain, which, being one of the most antisemitic countries in Europe, would not give visas to the blinded protestors she wanted to bring with her

Hear what happened; Europe issue visas to those who shake hands with the executioners of Tehran and Kabul. They roll out the red carpet for the men who hang our children. But some of the women in my delegation who are blinded by Islamic Republic and Taliban were denied a visa. They could not even stand here in Madrid.

To @sanchezcastejon: a woman shot in her eye by those who you shake their hands has a message for you.

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) October 17, 2026

I found this while looking at “X”. I think there are more than one bridge, but it’s not clear, and, at any rate, this is ludicrous.  See the WSJ article here.

It cost the UK roughly a quarter of a billion dollars to build a bridge just 20 yards (18m) long.

The structure in Oxford took longer to build than the Eiffel Tower and the Titanic – and cost way more.

Sure, it’s a rounding error beside the annual asylum hotel bill but still, it’s a perfect emblem of decline and the YooKay aesthetic

— Melissa Chen (@MsMelChen) October 16, 2026

From Luana. Yes, the man’s a hero for risking his own life to save children, but these situations wouldn’t occur nearly as often with strict gun control in the U.S.:

JUST IN: The man who stopped the school shooting in Bend, Oregon, has been identified as 36-year-old Kalub Giamanco.

Giamanco, a carpenter, was reportedly driving home for lunch when he heard gunshots.

After hearing the gunshots, Giamanco, who has a concealed carry permit, followed the suspect into the school.

He then shot and killed 16-year-old John J Griffin moments after the teen opened fire into a special education classroom.

Giamanco, who has two children of his own who attend the school, is family friends with one of the victims, a 7-year-old who uses a wheelchair and was shot in the face.

The 7-year-old survived and is in the hospital.

Three children at Silver Rail Elementary School were killed. Their ages are 5, 8, and 11.

According to Giamanco’s brother, Giamanco doesn’t feel like a hero because he feels guilty for not being able to save more children.

You are a hero, Kalub.

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 16, 2026

From Simon, who calls this “Another job for Marco.” I can’t figure out if it’s in bad taste but it’s funny:

Well, at least he’s a lawyer. https://t.co/fycJpvUlhe

— PaulleyTicks (@PaulleyTicks) October 16, 2026

One from my feed: an Irish joke:

Dave Allen: The Dying Irishman’s Final Words https://t.co/mTuZ7TAsCQ

— John Pitchford🌹💙 (@Johnnypapa64) October 17, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Belgian Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was 6 years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) October 18, 2026

And two from Doctor Cobb, both in a thread about spider silk:

Slimmer than a human hair, spider silk is an engineering powerhouse. 🕸️🧪Quinten Geldhof, also known as Microhobbyist, shows how a single spider can produce up to seven different types of silk, each with its own job. #Science #Microscope #Spiderwebs #Microscopy #Biology

— Museum of Science (@museumofscience.bsky.social) 2026-10-15T18:48:10.985Z

Sturdy dragline silk builds the web’s frame, while sticky blobs of silk set the trap for prey. Pound for pound, it’s up to five times stronger than steel, and a strand long enough to circle the Earth would weigh just 4.4 pounds! What would you use spider silk for?

— Museum of Science (@museumofscience.bsky.social) 2026-10-15T18:48:18.819Z

And three–count them, three–great songs for today’s music.  Here is the song that made Peggy Lee (real name: Norma Egstrom) famous, “Why Dont You Do Right?” , recorded in 1943 with Benny Goodman and his orchestra.  It was a huge hit and a million-seller back in days when that was a LOT of sales. As Wikipedia says, it was originally called “Weed Smoker’s Dream”, a song about drugs:

“Why Don’t You Do Right?” (originally recorded as “Weed Smoker’s Dream” in 1936) is an American blues and jazz-influenced pop song usually credited to Kansas Joe McCoy. A minor key twelve-bar blues with a few chord substitutions, it is considered a classic “woman’s blues” song and has become a standard. Singer Lil Green recorded a popular rendition in 1941, which Peggy Lee recorded the next year – accompanied by Benny Goodman – and made one of her signature songs.

Goodman was born to Jewish parents in Chicago, one of 12 children, and became one of the first jazz leaders to use black players in his groups. In this song, the combination of Goodman’s solos on the licorice stick and Peggy Lee’s soft delivery is lovely:

Speaking of a swing clarinet player who led small groups, here’s one whose proficiency rivals Goodman’s: Artie Shaw. This beautiful song, “All the Things You Are” , was recorded in 1939 as well, with Helen Forrest on vocals. The song was written by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein.

Shaw was married eight times; his wives included Ava Gardner and Lana Turner. Like Goodman, he was Jewish (so was Helen Forrest), and like Goodman, he was one of the first bandleaders to integrate his group, hiring Billie Holiday as a vocalist (she didn’t last long when the band toured the South).

If you want to hear Shaw at his best, listen to to “Frenesi” (like “All the Things You Are”, it has a great walking bass).

Wikipedia says this about the song above:

The chorus has become a favorite with many jazz musicians. The chorus is a 36-measure AA₂BA₃ form with two twists on the usual 32-bar AABA song-form: A₂ transposes the initial A section down a fourth, while the final A₃ section adds an extra four bars.

And when I heard Shaw and Forrest, I remembered that the same song was recorded, in several takes, by the immortal Charlie Parker. Here’s a 1945 recording with Dizzy Gillespie. It’s one of the first Parker songs I heard, and instantly fell in love with his music.

Welcome to CaturSaturday, October 17, 2026, shabbos for Jewish cats, and International Raw Milk Cheese Appreciation Day. Here’s a selection of cheeses, some made with unpasteurized milk, photographed in Paris six years ago. I wish this store were close to me in Chicago; I’d go for the goat cheeses on the bottom shelf.

It’s also Black Poetry Day, Bridge Day, Forgive an Ex Day, Four Prunes Day (what you’re supposed to eat if your gut is clogged), International Sloth Day, National Pasta Day, National Fetch Day, and Sweetest Day, when you’re supposed to buy your sweetheart some chocolates.

Here’s a Jewish joke for Fetch Day:

A guy gets a new dog and he can’t wait to show him off to his neighbor, when the neighbor comes over, the guy calls the dog into the house, bragging about how smart the critter is.

The dog quickly comes running and stands looking up at his master, tail wagging furiously, mouth open in classic doggie-smile position, eyes bright with anticipation.

The guy points to the newspaper on the couch and commands, “Fetch!”

Immediately the dog sits down, the tail wagging stops, the doggie-smile disappears; he hangs his head, looks balefully up at his master and says in a whiney voice, “Oy! My tail hurts from wagging so much and that dog food you’re feeding me tastes absolutely terrible. Also I can’t remember the last time you took me out for a walk…”

The neighbor looks puzzled.

“Oh”, explains the dog owner, “he thought I said ‘Kvetch!”

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 17 Wikipedia page.

Oh, and here’s a clay doll a friend found in a thrift store in Asheville, North Carolina.  Look familiar? Pure coincidence! It’s made by an artist named Diana Manning, it’s clay, and my friend is going to get it for me!

There’s a Google Doodle today celebrating the WNBA playoffs. Click below to see where it goes:

Da Nooz:

*Another day, another school shooting: this time in Oregon, where a 16-year-old killed four people, including a teacher and three children, and critically wounded two more.

A 16-year-old blasted his way through locked doors into an Oregon elementary school on Thursday, killing three children and a teacher before an armed bystander pursued him inside and shot him dead, the police said.

The suspect, who has not been named, forced his way into Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Ore., around 1 p.m., officials said at a news conference on Thursday. Minutes later, officers responding to the scene found three children, aged 5, 8 and 11, and a teacher dead. A 7-year-old and another teacher were critically injured.

*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal intimates that Trump is planning a huge strike on Iran before the midterm elections might, by changing Congress, take away his power to wage war. His piece is called “Something is coming for Tehran.”

It’s Friday, October 16, and on January 3, the members of the new US House of Representatives will walk into their offices. By all signs, several dozen Democrats will move into offices vacated by Republicans routed in the fall. The nearly certain loss of the House, alongside the fairly likely loss of the Senate, will make the president’s life hell. Not only his, perhaps.

U.S. law permits the president to launch military action, but after 60 days approval is required on Capitol Hill. The president, certainly the current one, can continue, but in that case he is exposed to legal risks and especially to budgetary ones. A hostile Congress can block budgets, and America, as is well known, does not fight with only its fingernails.

What can be done in two months that would change the picture? And if the goal is to get ahead of the hostile Congress, is it worth it for Trump, against all odds and analyses, to open a campaign even before then?

A growing buzz has surrounded Washington and Jerusalem in recent days. It is no longer false rumors and speculation. Something is happening. On its face, that runs counter to all logic. The Iranians don’t want to escalate before the elections in Israel, and Trump doesn’t want to escalate before the elections in America. But if you start a campaign at the end of October and then get approval from the still-Republican Congress at the end of December, perhaps that is the way to topple the regime? After all, the Iranians work for the long term, and two months to them is nothing.

Or perhaps the story is a limited, pinpoint event that won’t send fuel prices soaring but will bring a significant achievement that will, hopefully, end the debate over the war’s necessity and results. What could be short and elegant? How do you avoid getting entangled in a third round that ends with no clear decision, at a sensitive time for two politicians whom the polls predict a hard blow, on both sides of the ocean?

I haven’t heard anything elsewhere about this “growing buzz,” which I take to mean that the U.S. is going to take military action against Iran, or get permission from Congress to do so, before the New Year. He’d have to do that pretty soon, because if Congressional approval is needed to escalate or re-start attack on Iran, that will not be forthcoming from a Democratic Congress, which is a real possibility.

*As always on Saturday, I will steal a few items from Nellie Bowles’s news-and-snark column at the Free Press, called this week, “TGIF: The new school of American diplomacy.” Note that Greta has a brand new bag.

→ Greta pops up everywhere now: Greta Thunberg is now in France with the student protesters. I’m actually curious: Who pays for all this? On whose dime does Greta sail all around Europe? It’s an endless Euro Summer. Who is keeping her in keffiyehs? Who is she wearing? The protesters she was there to support, meanwhile, continue to just burn down Paris, including its oldest covered food market, a beautiful place called Marché des Enfants Rouges. (Okay it’s not confirmed who did, but I’m going out on a limb and assuming it’s the roving arsonists lighting their schools on fire.) But back to Greta. How does it work? She just sees stuff on TikTok and her mysterious benefactor is like, “I’m getting you on a sailboat there immediately!” Why? Why must we now listen to Greta explain school funding issues in France? The only thing that makes me believe in a globalist conspiracy is Greta and the fact that she rounds the corner anytime someone switches on a bullhorn. Why have I seen so many portraits of her in so many print magazines? Why was her face on a building in San Francisco looming over me and then she’s on the Gaza flotilla and now she’s in Paris. It actually sounds like a fun party circuit. Could she sell it as a cruise?

→ Churchill to be replaced by an animal, potentially a hedgehog: Following a public survey that drew more than 2.5 million selections, Winston Churchill, Jane Austen, J.M.W. Turner, and Alan Turing will be replaced on British banknotes by the puffin, barn owl, buff-tailed bumblebee, and hedgehog. The hedgehog proved the public’s favorite mammal, receiving 259,665 selections, so it is likely to be the one to dethrone Churchill. The Nazis couldn’t best this man in life, but a glorified porcupine is about to steal his money throne. They can’t pick any national heroes, so they just celebrate little animals. The great man who was Winston Churchill, ousted by a hedgehog. After surviving an armored train ambush, I doubt he expected his downfall to be a two-pound living pincushion.

And one about the odious Francesca Albanese, who won’t go away:

→ Where exactly are Israelis supposed to live? They can’t have vacation homes?: Here is the much-celebrated Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, commenting on a story about Israelis literally just buying vacation homes.

Hmm. So Jews are evil no matter where they go, is what you’re saying? An Israeli couple buying a bungalow in Serbia is globalizing apartheid. Got it. These folks want a genocide so bad—sorry, they want to “globalize the intifada”—and they’re getting worse at hiding it. (She deleted it.)

Meanwhile, take a look at the new medieval antisemitism that’s so hot for Halloween. That’s right, it’s witches with Stars of David on them! It’s Dr. Evil, but his ring is now a Jewish star! He wants 100 million shekels! How clever. Modern! I think I’ll go as the Jewish lady who pretended to be Palestinian.

*I’ve read about five reviews of the new movie about grifter Elizabeth Holmes, “You Can See Everything,” and they’re pretty similar.  All of them discuss the unresolved mystery of whether Holmes believes what she’s saying, and mention the aggressive, unempathic nature of filmmaker Nathan Fielder. The L.A. Times‘s review is typical, and is called, “A prank comic faces down a fraudster in the fab doc ‘You Can See Everything.’ Who blinks first?”

. . . .Co-directed by Fielder and Lance Oppenheim (“Primetime”), “You Can See Everything” is the closest Fielder has come to making a traditional documentary. A thrillingly cringe-tastic interviewer, he blurts out blunt questions like a bungee jumper leaping off a bridge, including asking Holmes’ romantic and business partner Billy Evans, the heir to a San Diego boutique hotel chain, whether it’s possible a woman convicted of fraud might be with him for his money.

At nearly three hours long, “You Can See Everything” won’t bore you for a minute. The hook is right there in the title, Fielder’s challenge to the audience: Here’s how Holmes held up to his scrutiny — do we think she’s telling the truth? But be alert. Fielder remains a trickster. One shot in particular proves you can see everything while being blind to what you’re actually watching.

In the first half of the movie, Holmes and Evans, the father of her two young children, give the small crew complete access to their lives during her last weeks of freedom, including inviting Fielder to sleep in their guest bedroom. It’s an act of “radical transparency,” Evans says. As evidence, there’s a fully nude shot of Evans in the shower, testifying to the intimacy the subjects claim they’re granting the team and the confidence they have that the documentary will make them look great. (Evans also boasts that he’s “excellent” in the sack.)

Holmes maintains both her innocence and her eerie smile, a rictus of empathy. She constantly nods, subliminally snake-charming the listener into a sense of agreement. That assessment might be fair or it might be her reputation making you over-analyze her tics. Doubling down, she even insists she’s never told a lie in her life — a claim that momentarily leaves Fielder at a loss for words.

Yet at times, Holmes really does appear to be sincere. Once she surrenders herself to the Bryan Federal Prison Camp in Texas (where, in an unmentioned coincidence, Epstein collaborator Ghislane Maxwell is also incarcerated), the tone shifts into film noir as Fielder struggles to reconcile Elizabeth Holmes’ dual identities. Is she the sweet-natured scientist, the only version of her he’s ever met, or a femme fatale who may still be running a scam?

. . .But thinking differently is Fielder’s awkward superpower. Sooner or later, all of his projects circle around to his concern that he’s simply wired to be unpleasant. His interactions with Holmes are pure cringe comedy, like when she starts to cry perhaps a bit on cue and he stiffly sputters, “Do you want, like, a tissue?” For the record, he brings her one.

. . . Ultimately, suspicion reigns. “You Can See Everything” is an absorbing study of public presentation and private doubts, a documentary that asks more questions than it answers. I hope Fielder will smile and nod approvingly at me if I say I left the film distrusting him, too, especially Seyfried’s re-staging of a long monologue Holmes delivered in prison where recording devices aren’t allowed. [JAC: Amanda Seyfried played Holmes in a biographical movie.] Can we believe that Holmes really did say, “I’m tired of having other people speak for me,” or was that laugh line written by the master manipulator himself? I’m now as paranoid as he is — and what a pleasure.

Yes, I will be seeing this movie. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a nearly perfect rating from a large sample of both critics and moviegoers (click to go to page):

*The NYT has an article on how Americans feel about socialism. Some of the polling results are interesting, even if as a whole they’re hard to interpret. Here are a few.

First, overall figures:

Americans are becoming more open to socialism, but they have not broadly embraced it. In August, positive impressions of socialism topped 40 percent for the first time since Gallup began tracking that figure in 2010. In contrast, negative views of capitalism have sharply increased.

This leads one to wonder, “What do Americans think that those systems mean?”  See second figure below:

So how do you explain the changes in definition over time? I’d attribute the increase in “equality” to the Left, which is more socialistic but also more adherent to the concept of equality (or equity).  The article says this later on:

A softening view of socialism has gained ground as voters have expressed increasing disenchantment with the political and economic system. About two-thirds of voters in a Times/Siena poll from May said that the system needed major changes or to be torn down entirely, up from 59 percent in October 2024.

And in a reversal from 2024, Democrats are now more likely than Republicans to say they want the system torn down entirely.

Those deeply disillusioned voters were more likely to view socialism positively than voters who said the system just needed to be changed, suggesting that Americans’ deep and growing frustration may be driving some voters to consider socialism.

Fine; let’s see how governance by the Democratic Socialists works out. Do voters know it goes with antisemitism?

Finally,

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is making threats:

Andrzej: Hili, don’t disturb me right now.

Hili: Well, if I’m disturbing you, I can move out.

In Polish:

Ja: Hili, nie przeszkadzaj mi teraz.

Hili: Jeśli ja ci przeszkadzam, to mogę się wyprowadzić.

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

From Give Me a Sign:

From The English Language Police. Find the mistake.

From Terrible Maps:

From Masih; a final letter from an imprisoned protestor in Iran written shortly before his execution. It is indeed heartbreaking.

“WHY?”
It is very heartbreaking to read this handwriting letter.
That was the last question 25-year-old Majid Nikandish asked the night before the Islamic Republic executed him:

“Tonight, I feel like a little child terrified of an injection. Only one question is on my mind: Why?”

We, the people of Iran, are living in horror. Every day, another execution. Another mother destroyed. Another life stolen.

In his final letter he asked his mother to smile at his funeral.

“I, Majid Nikandish, leave the few belongings I have in prison as keepsakes for my family.

Hello, my dear Mom.

I know you have had a very difficult life. I’m sorry if I wasn’t a good son. Please forgive me. Please don’t be sad. Stay strong, and please be happy at my funeral.

Take care of Mahnaz, Abolfazl, and Razieh.

Tonight, I feel like a little child who is afraid of getting an injection.

There is only one question left in my mind:

WHY?

To my sisters, Mahnaz and Razieh, I love you so much.

To my brother, Abolfazl, I love you so much.

I miss you all.

My final wish is that you take care of one another and stay together, no matter what.”

Why did he have to die? Why was his life stolen? Why must another mother bury her child?

I have no answer for his mother. We have no answer to his brother and sisters.

But let’s ask this question to the leaders of the democratic world:
Why are you silent? Why don’t you stop legitimizing the regime that is hanging innocent protesters every day?

Don’t look away. Don’t leave the people of Iran alone with their executioners.

Say his name. Majid Nikandish.

And make the world answer his final question:

WHY?

#MajidNikandish #StopExecutionsInIran

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) October 16, 2026

From Luana; there’s an independent investigation of Jason Arday after Cambridge decided not to go too deeply into the affair:

🚨BREAKING: CAF has commissioned an independent investigation into Cambridge’s appointment of Dr Jason Arday as its youngest ever black professor, amid growing professional disquiet over his academic record, the circumstances of his appointment, the University’s handling of concerns raised about his scholarship and, more recently, the scope and direction of Cambridge’s own inquiry.

You can find out more here:

https://t.co/5hIoPtTZrD

The investigation will be chaired by Professor Swaran Preet Singh, Lord Singh of Solihull, a former Commissioner of the Equality and Human Rights Commission who previously led the independent investigation into allegations of discrimination within the Conservative Party.

He will be joined by a distinguished panel comprising Harvard psychologist Professor Steven Pinker, UCL sociologist Professor Alice Sullivan, Cambridge historian Professor Robert Tombs and Labour peer Professor Maurice Glasman.

Award-winning investigative journalist Nick Wallis, whose work helped expose the Post Office Horizon scandal, will lead the investigation with a dedicated research team.

CAF has been contacted by numerous Cambridge academics who are deeply concerned that the University’s own investigation will fail to confront the wider institutional culture in which the Arday affair unfolded.

Whether these concerns are justified is for the independent investigation to determine. But Cambridge is one of the world’s oldest and greatest universities, and what happens to its academic culture has implications for higher education as a whole. So we think it’s worth going the extra mile to make sure the right questions are asked and the right lessons learned.

CAF strongly encourages current and former academics, students and other members of the University community, as well as others with relevant knowledge, to come forward with information.

This might include policy documents, internal correspondence or first-hand accounts concerning Arday’s academic record and appointment, the University’s response to concerns about his scholarship and its treatment of those who raised them, and the operation of institutional policies relating to recruitment, promotion, academic misconduct, research integrity and EDI.

Anyone wishing to contribute can contact the Investigator directly at:

investigator@ardayinvestigation.net

The investigation website provides further guidance on submitting information, including arrangements for particularly sensitive material:

https://t.co/5hIoPtTZrD

— Committee for Academic Freedom (@ComAcFreedom) October 15, 2026

The Number Ten Cat has it right:

If an amendment to your constitution results in children routinely being shot in school then it’s time to amend it again.

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) October 16, 2026

John Oliver makes a very weak argument for allowing trans-identified males to compete in women’s sports. J. K. Rowling replies, but with mixed feelings because Oliver had previously helped her with one of her charities.

Nothing about this feels good, because John Oliver generously gave his time for my charity Lumos and I liked him very much when I met him, but God knows, if you ever need an example of motivated reasoning and confirmation bias, this video’s for you. An undoubtedly intelligent person spouts absolute bullshit to support something he wants to be true, but isn’t.

According to the UN, female athletes have lost nearly 900 medals to trans-identified men competing against them in women’s sporting categories. Girls have been ousted from teams to make way for boys. Women have suffered serious injury playing against trans-identified men (see Payton McNabb, mentioned below).

Again and again I’ve come up against men who argue exactly what Oliver does here, using the very same talking points. With a straight face, the ‘believe the science’ guys will say ‘actually, we don’t yet have enough data to say whether men and boys are stronger and faster than women and girls’. The ‘be kind’ crew can’t see what the issue is. ‘Why are you bothered, it only affects a tiny minority of females?’

To prove to their progressive credentials – and (coincidentally, I’m sure) indemnify themselves against repercussions from cultural elites in the media, academia and publishing who’ve showed themselves more than ready to kick people to the kerb for failing to mouth the approved mantras – people with a lot to lose are currently prepared to make idiots of themselves. They’ll stare unabashedly into a camera and insist that their audiences’ eyeballs are incapable of seeing what’s plain as day, and that there’s something wrong with the great unwashed for believing that girls are being robbed of opportunities and put at physical risk.

If you want to tell the world you’re happy to watch females suffer injury, humiliation and the loss of sporting opportunities to bolster an elitist post-modern ideology embraced by a minute fraction of the world’s population, fair enough; you’re allowed your opinion. But if you’ve just told girls they don’t deserve fair sport, maybe rethink using all too real and common sexual predation against young women as a punchline for your ‘edgy’ closing joke.

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) November 17, 2024

One from my feed, and it’s some essay!

https://t.co/JcvXGgVs6D

— Eric Alper 🎧 (@ThatEricAlper) October 16, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was five years old and would be 90 today had she lived.

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) October 17, 2026

And two from Doctor Cobb. Apparently the 30th anniversary edition also had DNA of the wrong chirality (I’m seeing Dawkins speak in Chicago’s Symphony Hall on Sunday). The topic is “Genes and the Meaning of Life.”

Look at this from the link!

Tips to Prepare for Richard Dawkins Events

Attending a Richard Dawkins event is an exciting experience, but it’s important to be prepared. Here are some tips to help you make the most of your Richard Dawkins concert:

1. Arrive early: To ensure you get a good spot, it’s best to arrive at the venue early. This will give you time to find your seat or secure a prime spot on the floor.

2. Dress comfortably: Richard Dawkins concerts are known for their high-energy performances, so it’s important to dress comfortably. Opt for clothes and shoes that you can move and dance in.

3. Stay hydrated: With all the excitement and dancing, it’s easy to forget to stay hydrated. Make sure to bring a water bottle with you to the concert and drink plenty of water throughout the night.

4. Follow the rules: Each venue may have different rules and restrictions, so it’s important to familiarize yourself with them before attending the concert. This can include restrictions on cameras, bags, or outside food and drinks.

5. Bring earplugs: While Richard Dawkins concerts are known for their loud music, it’s important to protect your hearing. Consider bringing earplugs to help reduce the risk of hearing damage.

You know a gene is selfish when its DNA twists the wrong way, as demonstrated by the left-handed double-helix proudly adorning the 50th Anniversary Edition of the multimillion copy bestseller on this topic.

— Simon Fisher (@profsimonfisher.bsky.social) 2026-10-16T09:24:49.326Z

It’s a worm below. English translation: “I absolutely love creatures like this that seem to exist beyond human comprehension.”

こういう人智の外側にいるような生物だいすき

— でんか (@k-hermit.com) 2026-10-16T12:00:31.619Z