Welcome to Friday, October 16, 2026 and it’s Global Cat Day! Here is a celebratory drawing, courtesy of ChatGPT, and below it a photo of the Queen of all Cats, Hili:

See the Hili dialogue below for more celebration of Cat Day:

It’s also National Learn a Word Day (here’s one “jocund”), National Liqueur Day (I’ll take green Chartreuse), World Bread Day, and World Food Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 16 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Trump has canceled the planned publicly livestreamed firing-squad execution for Nidal Hasan; the execution with guns will still take place and be livestreamed, but only the family will be able to watch.

President Trump on Thursday canceled the Pentagon’s planned livestream of the execution of the Army officer who was convicted in the 2009 Fort Hood mass shooting.

Pentagon officials said last week that the execution of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 people and wounded 32 others at Fort Hood, Texas, would be broadcast via livestream. But Mr. Trump said Thursday that only immediate families of Mr. Hasan’s victims would be able to watch the execution in person.

“Many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device,” he wrote on social media. “He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed.”

Democrats and Republicans in Congress panned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plan to livestream the shooting, and even Vice President JD Vance expressed doubt about the plan.

“I’m not going to be watching it,” he said. He added: “I don’t know that that’s actually going to happen.”

The plan to broadcast Mr. Hasan’s execution, which the Pentagon said is scheduled for 1 p.m. on Dec. 3 at the same Army post where the massacre took place, had also drawn widespread condemnation from retired military officials, religious leaders and even some of the wounded soldiers who survived.

On Wednesday, dozens of retired admirals, generals and other officers published an open letter opposing the plan.

“Livestreaming this execution would clearly violate the basic human dignity of the condemned prisoner,” they wrote. “It turns what should be the solemn and grave punishment of a member of our society for committing the most serious crimes into a carnival for the enjoyment of voyeurs and spectators.”

. . . In an interview with Real America’s Voice, Mr. Hegseth said he supported the public execution of Mr. Hasan “because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.”

Mr. Trump, in his post on social media, contended that streaming the execution “might have been a strong deterrent” to show how “America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan,” but he said it would not go forward.

If it’s to be a deterrent, then why not let everybody watch? What better way to let people know the “serious consequences” for mass murder? (Don’t we already know that?) The real reason is that it’s a barbaric spectacle that appeals to the worst of human nature, and Trump knows it. And I still predict that the execution will not take place.

*There’s been another sexual assault at a fraternity party, this time at the University of Chicago.  Neither the accused assailant nor the reported victim went to school here, but we do have fraternities and one of them is where it is said to have occurred.  From the NYT:

A 21-year-old woman reported that she was sexually assaulted last weekend at a fraternity house near the University of Chicago, the city police said, putting another campus on edge over accusations of misconduct tied to Greek life organizations.

The woman said the assault occurred in the early hours of Sunday during a party at the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity, the police said, though neither the victim nor the suspect were students at the school. One witness said in an interview that she had interrupted an attack. That prompted the suspect to flee the house, according to the university, which called the episode “deeply concerning.”

The Chicago city police are investigating and did not provide further details, nor say whether there had been an arrest. On Tuesday, the school said it had identified a “person of interest” in the assault, adding that the person has been barred from campus.

Accusations of sexual misconduct are grimly plentiful on American campuses, and the report at the University of Chicago, a campus of Gothic architecture and intellectual rigor, came after a reported gang rape at Cornell University in New York propelled the issue back into the national debate.

The Chicago episode took place at a Saturday night fraternity party boisterous enough to be heard blocks away. Klara Grant, an 18-year-old chemistry student, said there was a D.J., dance floors on two levels of the house and a bar.

Mia Lara, a 21-year-old student at a nearby university, said she had seen the event advertised on the fraternity’s Instagram account. She and the woman who reported the attack, along with a third friend, decided to go.

It was the first time any of them had been to a fraternity party, Ms. Lara said. At the door, they were asked for identification, but not whether they attended the University of Chicago.

The trio danced in the basement. Ms. Lara’s friend and a man began kissing and Ms. Lara lost track of them. She searched the house, eventually finding a small group of men cheering outside a locked bathroom door in the basement, she said.

“They were saying things like, ‘When’s it my turn?’ and, ‘I want to go in there,’” Ms. Lara said.

Ms. Lara jimmied the lock and forced her way inside. She found her friend sitting on the floor, slumped against the wall with her clothes and undergarments pulled down. The man whom her friend had been kissing had his hands on her wrists, Ms. Lara said.

.. .Her friend began saying, “Make it stop” and “Get me out of here,” Ms. Lara said. Ms. Lara began screaming and the man left. She and her friend carried the woman out of the bathroom.

Outside the fraternity house, Ms. Lara chased the man, a scene captured in a social media video. In the clip, Ms. Lara yells at the man, accusing him of assaulting her friend.

“She wanted to,” the man replies. Ms. Lara swats the man with her hands, and he runs.

According to the Chicago Maroon (the student newspaper), a suspect has been identified:

Multiple people confirmed to the Maroon that Raihaan Khaja, a first-year student at Purdue University, was the individual in a TikTok video that purported to show the perpetrator of a sexual assault early Sunday morning.

The people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern that they would be associated with the incident, attended the party at the Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi) fraternity house where the assault occurred or were otherwise familiar with Khaja.

The attendees independently corroborated some details released yesterday by the Chicago Sun-Times and provided additional insight into Khaja’s activities at the party and immediately afterward. Their accounts also align with a Monday statement by AEPi saying that no members of the fraternity were involved in the assault.

Khaja, who was on fall break at the time, came to the party with a group of friends from his hometown in the northern suburbs of Chicago.

The University declined to name the accused assailant, but at least they banned him from campus. I would hope so!

*There’s an unresolved central question in “You Can See Everything”, Lance Oppenheim and Nathan Fielder’s new documentary about grifter Elizabeth Holmes: was she really a grifter, or a huge case of self-delusion. A review in the WaPo describes the film, in which the filmmakers moved in with Holmes and her husband for several weeks before she went off to jail. (Why would she do that if she was obviously a grifter?). From the review by Will Leitch:

One of the surprises of Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s breathtaking new (pseudo?) documentary “You Can See Everything,” which opens nationwide this Friday, is that you come away understanding how Holmes was able to draw people in. In fact, you might even get drawn in yourself.

The film chronicles (among many, many other things) the final weeks in 2023 before Holmes reports to federal prison (where she remains today) for defrauding investors. Fielder and Oppenheim had extraordinary access to their subject. Fielder not only moves in with Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, he’s also the last person to see her before she’s put in the car to be whisked away. And as we see Holmes up close, it becomes clear that there is something unique about her — a wide-eyed guilelessness that marks her, as Fielder notes in the film, as either the most sincere person on the planet or the most sociopathically manipulative one. The filmmakers embed with her for weeks, at the most trying time of her life, and can’t seem to figure out which it is. What hope did Mattis and the rest of them have?

*The WSJ has more information on the government’s investigation of Ilhan Omar, which is beginning to look a lot like a tempest in a teapot.

The Trump administration’s investigation into Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) is aimed at building a case to strip her of her U.S. citizenship and ultimately deport her, according to U.S. officials and other people familiar with the probe.

The multipronged effort is focused at least in part on how Omar obtained her citizenship after she arrived in the U.S. from Somalia decades ago. Investigators are focused both on the congresswoman and actions of her deceased father, some of the people familiar with the probe said. Nur Omar Mohamed brought his daughter and other family members to the U.S. from a refugee camp in Kenya in 1995.

. . .At the center of the immigration investigation is whether Omar or her father changed her age on her citizenship application to show she was 17 years old rather than 18, according to people familiar with the probe. If Omar was 17 at the time her father applied for citizenship, she would have qualified automatically rather than needing to pursue her own immigration process. She became a citizen in 2000.

Officials at Homeland Security Investigations looked into a similar tip under the Biden administration, according to people familiar with those efforts, but they decided not to move forward because they lacked evidence of fraud.

The government can’t simply strip a person of their U.S. citizenship. The Justice Department must file a lawsuit in federal court and prove that the person lied in a material way to gain their citizenship. Most of the cases the Justice Department has filed this term haven’t yet been decided.

Leon Fresco, a top immigration official in the Justice Department during the Obama administration, said the Trump administration’s case would hinge on finding material evidence that Omar lied about her own age, rather than her father lying on her behalf.

“That would make the case significantly easier to prosecute,” he said. “But either way, they are not traveling a well-paved road here.”

Oy vey! It’s the matter of one year, and how are they going to prove that Omar lied about her own age instead of her father doing it? And even if they can, it smacks of Trumpian vengeance to prosecute her with the intention of deporting her, an effor that will, in the end, fail.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is celebrating her day (which is every day):

Andrzej: Today is Global Cat Day.
Hili: As far as this household is concerned, every day is Cat Day.

In Polish:

Ja: Dziś Światowy Dzień Kota
Hili: W tym domu każdy dzień jest Dniem Kota.

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

From Terrible Maps:

From CinEmma:

From Give Me a Sign:

From Masih: recordings of two women awaiting their execution in Iran:

Two women on death row in Iran have recorded audio messages from their prison cells and asked the free world to save their lives. Now I bring their voices to you.

Najmeh Amini is 23. An accounting student. Her crime? A post on social media. The regime calls it insulting the prophet. For one post, they will hang her.

Mahboubeh Shabani is 33. During the protests, she carried wounded demonstrators to the hospital. Her crime? Saving lives. The regime calls it waging war against God. For saving lives, they will hang her.

Let me be honest. Hashtags and tweets alone will not stop these executions. This regime only understands pressure.

So I call on American, European, and world leaders: make these executions your red line. Tie every sanction, every deal, every negotiation to the lives of political prisoners. Demand their release now. Impose real costs for every hanging.

Najmeh Amini and Mahboubeh Shabani must not die for the crime of freedom.

Act now. Before it is too late.

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) October 15, 2026

From Luana. Khadija Khan clarifies what “Islamophobia” is about.

It’s not “bringing back blasphemy laws through the backdoor” any more. We are witnessing the gradual but steady imposition of Islamic blasphemy laws in our society. The term “Islamophobia” is not about protecting Muslims as people. The term has become a synonym for Islamic blasphemy laws, and you should not doubt it.

— Khadija Khan (@KhadijaKhan__) October 15, 2026

Three from my feed (readers are welcome to submit tweets). I reposted the first one. The movie is terrific:

Two great scenes from “My Cousin Vinnie.” Marisa Tomei won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance.

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) October 15, 2026

Bill Maher should get a bodyguard after this:

Bill Maher is destroying the Muslims religion. Allah https://t.co/lfD9BYZ3Q9

— Larry Dean (@larry_mcwethy) October 14, 2026

It’s pretty clear what he did:

Bill Maher is destroying the Muslims religion. Allah https://t.co/lfD9BYZ3Q9

— Larry Dean (@larry_mcwethy) October 14, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This German Jewish woman was sent to Auschwitz at age 21. She died 12 days after she arrived.

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) October 16, 2026

And two from Doctor Cobb.  First, another attempt to solve the mystery of how Amelia Earhart vanished. Click to go to the original:

Note the two-part call:

Kookaburra Call

— San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance (@sandiegozoo.bsky.social) 2026-10-08T16:53:04.618Z

Welcome to Thursday, October 15, 2026, and National I Love Lucy Day. Why today? The link tells all:

On October 15, 1951, I Love Lucy burst onto the American television scene and immediately began making history. In a revolutionary move, it became the first scripted program to be filmed in front of a live studio audience. To make this happen, the studio famously knocked a hole through a concrete wall, building theater-style seating to welcome fans to see the magic happen in person—for free! This innovative format and the show’s undeniable charm led to five Emmy Awards and countless nominations.

The show ran for six seasons.  Here is what I think is the most famous scene from the show, when Lucy and Ethel (Vivian Vance) are working at a chocolate factory:

It’s also Global Handwashing Day, National Cheese Curd Day, National Chicken Cacciatore Day, National Lemon Bar Day, National Mushroom Day, National Real Sugar Day, National Red Wine Day, National Roast Pheasant Day, and National Roast Pheasant Day.

Posting will be lighter than usual for a while; among the issues with my operated-on eye is the sudden appearance of a small retinal tear, which was repaired with laser surgery two days ago.  More regular checking by doctors, involving trips downtown, will ensue.  On the upside, I saw this rabbit on the way to work this morning; he is always around in the early morning, and I’ve named him Rocky Bun-Bun Coyne:

Here’s a photo taken 12 years ago yesterday: I’m cuddling Hili while wearing the shirt embroidered by Hiroko with Hili’s likeness:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 15 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The Israeli elections are on Tuesday, October 27, and a lot is at stake, especially whether Netanyahu remains as Prime Minister. Over at the Free Press, Yonah Jeremy Bob, a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, suggests that Gadi Eisenkot, former head of the IDF, might be a likely replacement.

I first met Gadi Eisenkot in March 2017 at Israel’s parliament, the Knesset. At the time, he was the chief of the Israeli military and he was explaining to legislators that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were handling a new challenge from Hamas. The terrorist group was operating freely within the tunnel network it had built beneath Gaza, the extent of which had first been revealed in an assault on Israel a few years before.

As he explained the crisis, Eisenkot struck me immediately as amiable and much more subtle in expression than you might expect from a typical commanding general. And that ability—to be commanding in practice but project the aura of an everyday person—is part of the magic that could make him Israel’s next leader.

As of this week, his Yashar party is topping the polls in the election to be held on October 27, with about 22 percent of the vote compared with 20 percent for Netanyahu’s Likud party. Although the most likely election scenario is a deadlock leading to a second round between Eisenkot and Netanyahu, Eisenkot is widely viewed as having a better chance to build a majority coalition after the election, as a large share of seats will likely go to parties that oppose Netanyahu on similar grounds.

Eisenkot, 66, has a public image that is relatable to less-elite Israelis, including his lack of fluency in English. He is capitalizing on being the un-Netanyahu—someone with little in-your-face charisma but who underneath projects a depth of power that is undeniable.

Eisenkot is from Eilat, which is known globally as a prized resort. But internally in Israel, for locals who live there, it is known as a more depressed development town. He would be the first prime minister of Moroccan descent, as opposed to the European-Israeli background typical of his predecessors.

His background has helped him unexpectedly nab some support from Israel’s large Sephardic population. Though they typically support Netanyahu and right-wing coalitions, many of them see Eisenkot as personally representing them.

Eisenkot’s humble persona and roots also distinguish him from Netanyahu’s other top rival, Naftali Bennett. Bennett, the right-wing pol who was prime minister for just over a year from 2021 to 2022, differs from Netanyahu on policy in many of the same ways as Eisenkot. Yet Bennett has the same smooth delivery and elite background as the current prime minister, while Eisenkot projects a less polished authenticity that may remind some Israelis of simpler times in their history.

. . .Looking forward, the largest policy difference between Eisenkot and Netanyahu isn’t Gaza, but the West Bank.

Both intend to crack down on Palestinian terrorism there, which according to Israel’s Shin Bet security service involves 1,000 attempted attacks per year, and between around 30 to 170 successful attacks.

Yet Eisenkot also accuses Netanyahu of letting the West Bank transform into a chaotic maelstrom of Jewish extremist violence against innocent Palestinians. The prime minister, Eisenkot says, has empowered right-wing allies who are encouraging the trend, including ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir and Shin Bet director David Zini.

. . .Whether or not he chooses it, the gaze of every Israeli prime minister is inevitably drawn overseas, with Iran looming as the largest adversary. Eisenkot says he would focus on two major direct threats: nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

He has an innovative approach to the nuclear issue, which involves persuading the U.S. to enforce a “kill zone” around the few areas where Iran’s 60-percent enriched uranium (close to weaponized levels) is still underground.

. . .Eisenkot is more open to working with other political interests to replace Hamas. For example, he dislikes the PA, but he concurs with most of Israel’s defense establishment that Hamas is much worse than the PA—if stuck choosing between the two.

While Eisenkot wants to preserve a Gaza security corridor, he would likely accept a smaller corridor than Netanyahu, if it preserves the military high ground. He is ready to agree to the thrust of the Trump deal or other initiatives which would be a step toward partial Hamas disarmament. That might require Israel, for example, to commit more aid for the rebuilding of Gaza, but it could also help regain the confidence of foreign allies.

In Lebanon, the largest difference between Netanyahu and Eisenkot would probably be the role of a third party: France. Eisenkot is committed to restoring Paris to a significant mediation role in Lebanon while Netanyahu has looked to pick fights with France and other traditional European allies nonstop in every arena. The split reflects Eisenkot’s belief that he can vigorously pursue Israel’s security interests while also inviting European cooperation in ways that could rebuild trust over time.

. . . If American diplomats are greeted by an amiable Israeli prime minister who wants to say yes to Western normalization initiatives, Eisenkot believes, possibly naively, that the current hostile dynamic can be changed fundamentally, even if he cannot endorse all Western priorities.

I’m pretty sure that even if Eisenkot becomes PM, the worldwide damnation of Israel won’t abate, despite the fact that he’s more receptive to Western suggestions and the governance of Gaza by the PA. The damnation will continue not because of Netanyahu, but because Israel is a Jewish state.

*And on that subject, over at It’s Noon In Israel, Amit Segal gives four reasons why Trump hasn’t endorsed Netanyahu.

So why, 13 days before Israelis vote, is he sitting this one out? I’d suggest four reasons.

The first is Budapest. Trump did everything he could to get Viktor Orbán reelected in Hungary, and Orbán lost. Trump does not like being seen with losers. He likes it even less when he’s photographed endorsing them. He will put his name on an Israeli candidate only if he is sure his name is what gets them over the line. Currently, neither candidate in Israel looks likely to be one Truth Social post from victory.

Trump may be especially conscious of that risk. A week after Israelis vote, Americans go to the polls for the midterms, with all 435 House seats and 35 Senate seats up for grabs. If Trump’s writ runs overseas, it’s a show of strength. If Israelis reject his candidate, it could be a preview of more rejections to come.

The second is the polls. The numbers sitting on desks in the White House veer closer to the majority of Israeli polls than the more rare ones predicting a comfortable Netanyahu win. The White House runs its own polls in the country. If those surveys begin to show Netanyahu closing the gap in the final week, the math could change.

The third is the cat. Hebrew has an idiom for a falling-out: a black cat has passed between them. I wouldn’t go so far as black. But a dark shade of gray cat has certainly passed between Trump and Netanyahu. In July, Netanyahu flew to Washington hoping for a public show of support. According to Axios, when the race came up, Netanyahu hesitated, and an adviser stepped in: “Mr. President, he is winning.” The endorsement never came. Since then, Trump has kept pressing Israel to halt the targeted strikes in Gaza that are stalling his 20-point plan.

The fourth is Tucker Carlson. Not the man himself, but the impression he has helped create that a slice of Republican voters is allergic to Israel. Whether or not that electorate is real, it is doubtful that the conversation in the Oval Office centers around how to bring Bibi into the national conversation before the midterms.

A senior White House official put the odds to me plainly. A 60 percent chance we stay out. A 30 percent chance we help Netanyahu. A 10 percent chance we help the other one.

Trump’s endorsement woiuld likely help Netanyahu in his goal to remain PM, for Trump has historically appealed to those who supported Netanyahu in Israel: the right-wingers.  When I asked Grok about Netanyahu’s chances, it told me this:

Roughly 30–40% chance of heading a new majority government, but a substantially higher chance (likely 60–80%+) of remaining in office in the near term as caretaker prime minister if there is a deadlock.

*Joni Mitchell has become an American citizen after more than 6 decades of living in America.

“Joni Mitchell, Canada.” Loud applause surrounded this call-out at a U.S. citizenship ceremony on Tuesday morning, as Ms. Mitchell was summoned to the front of a room to take her oath.

Wearing a red beret and a navy blue floral shirt, she had been sitting in the front row waiting her turn. Ms. Mitchell, the folk singer known for defining the genre with anthems like “Big Yellow Taxi” and “Woodstock,” later shared a video of the moment on social media, alongside a photo of herself with a U.S. flag in hand and a larger one behind her.

She captioned her post: “A journey that began 62 years ago.”

. . .Ms. Mitchell, now 82, was a young Canadian folk singer with no record deal and only a handful of songs to her name when she arrived in Detroit in the mid-1960s, alongside her husband, Chuck Mitchell, also a musician. They had wed in June 1965 and were looking to make it as artists in America.

Two years later, when their marriage dissolved, Ms. Mitchell traded her sprawling five-bedroom apartment in Detroit (she called it her “tenement castle” in the song “I Had a King”) for a one-bedroom in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. It was there that she wrote “Chelsea Morning.”

. . .Around that time [1968], she moved to Los Angeles, first to Laurel Canyon in 1968, then to Bel Air in 1975. She would travel between California and British Columbia, Canada, where she had at one time bought a seaside property. She resides in Santa Barbara.

Ms. Mitchell has made no public mention of why she had chosen this moment to embrace U.S. citizenship, and a request for comment to her representative went unanswered.

She had, however, touched upon the issue in 2024 at a performance in Los Angeles roughly two weeks before the presidential election. “I wish I could vote,” she said onstage.

Here’s her tweet:

A journey that began 62 years ago. https://t.co/y1eGhP3kBo

— Joni Mitchell (@jonimitchell) October 13, 2026

It’s kind of late for her to begin voting now!

*The WSJ reports (in big print!) that inflation rose to 3.7% in September, though within the last decade it’s been a lot higher than that. A lot of the rise is due to higher energy prices (i.e., gasoline), which affects many other prices. And have you been to the grocery store lately?

Inflation picked up in September, a sign that high energy prices are tightening their squeeze on consumers ahead of next month’s midterm elections.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is plumping for beef again:

Andrzej: I’m going to sit here.
Hili: Make yourself some coffee first, and while you’re in the kitchen, get something nice for me from the pantry.

In Polish:

Ja: Zamierzam tu usiąść.
Hili: Zrób sobie najpierw kawę, a jak już będziesz w kuchni, to wyjmij ze spiżarni coś dobrego dla mnie.

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From Stacy:

From CinEmma:

From Give Me a Sign:

From Masih: another peaceful protestor sentenced to death:

He climbed the Himalayas. Now the Islamic Republic wants hang him in Iran for protesting.

Ali-Sina Mostafavi, an Iranian mountaineer, has been moved to solitary confinement. His family was called for a final goodbye.

World media, athletes: BREAK THE SILENCE. Save his life. https://t.co/xsIQh2ShRD

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) October 14, 2026

The Number Ten Cat shows himself off despite the scar from his recent operation to remove a cyst:

Always a pleasure to pose for my old pal @imageplotter

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) October 13, 2026

From Luana; this appears to be true (see here).

🇩🇪 German police are advising women to stick their fingers down their throats and vomit to deter sexual attackers.

The tactic was reportedly taught at workplace safety as a way to “disrupt an assault.”

Follow: @europa https://t.co/3W0J5kAgt1

— Europa.com (@europa) October 12, 2026

Two from my feed. Look at this beaver!

A baby beaver cleaning his chubby little belly.. 😊 https://t.co/I2pIPSQwx3

— The Nature Girl (@thenatureegirl) October 13, 2026

Here’s a video of some brave women athletes.  You can read the backstory in The Chronicle. Here’s an excerpt:

On Sept. 15, there was something more important to Skyview High School cross country athletes Charlie Garrett and Sierra Retzlaff than their race at Camas High School. The girls felt it was important to make a statement in support of the rights for girls like them not to be forced to compete against biological males.

Let’s Go Washington officials and news personality Brandi Kruse each reported this week that an athlete at Camas High School had competed on both the boys’ cross country and the girls’ cross country teams in the same season. Clark County Today also published an opinion written by Editor Ken Vance about this news.

Garrett, a junior captain of the Skyview team, and Retzlaff, a sophomore, are two of the top runners on their team. Garrett is a past state meet participant. Each of the two have goals they hope to accomplish this season.

But they set those goals aside at that meet three weeks ago.

“We found out a biological boy would be in our race running for Camas,’’ Garrett said. “I decided to step off the line with one of my teammates (Retzlaff) and protest against this. We lined up on the start line like we normally do. Once the gun went off, me and my teammate walked about five meters and then stepped off the course.

“I felt that it was unfair for me and that girls were having our opportunities taken away by something we couldn’t control,’’ Garrett said. “The kid started as a biological male at the beginning of the season and then a week later decided they would like to be entered in girls’ races. It troubles me that spots are being taken away from me at bigger meets like districts, regionals and state. Athletes’ spots are being taken away and scholarships are being taken away.’’

BREAKING: Nearly half of the girls cross-country team in Camas, Washington, just forfeited their race. They refused to compete against a boy. This is bravery. Vote YES on I-638 to stand with them. Video: @KnownHeretic https://t.co/Sh4LKXOCt3

— Brandi Kruse (@BrandiKruse) October 14, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Czech Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was 12 years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) October 15, 2026

And two from Professor Emeritus Cobb. I haven’t read these volumes by Darwin and now won’t even try. He corrected the date to 1868:

Having slogged my way through both volumes of Darwin’s 1866 VARIATION OF ANIMALS AND PLANTS UNDER DOMESTICATION all I can say is I’m glad I won’t ever have to read it again. What a load of confused, boring tosh. Not his fault, in a way, but he really didn’t need to go on so.

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-10-13T17:57:51.946Z

Sound up for this one:

yall ever just watch a wombat eating grass

— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew.bsky.social) 2026-10-14T14:07:37.633Z

Welcome to a Hump Day (“Ziua Cocoașei” in Romanian): Wednesday, October 14, 2026, and National Dessert Day, celebrating everyone’s favorite course. Here’s a fine treat of Hawaiian “shave ice” with matcha ice cream, sweet red beans, and vanilla ice cream on top and mochi on the side.  Shave ice hasn’t made it to the mainland yet, but I remember that Obama loves it:

It’s also National Chocolate-Covered Insect Day, National Fossil Day. and National Bring Your Teddy Bear to Work and School Day. I have Toasty, who’s always here with me:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 14 Wikipedia page.

Hili will be short today as I went to the eye doctor yesterday, consuming the time I usually use to prepare this feature. Bear with me (this could be the title of the photo above); I do my best.

Da Nooz:

*During an operation yesterday to remove a nodule from his lung, Pope Leo was diagnosed with lung cancer, and a portion of his lung was removed. He’s only 71–young for a Pope:

Pope Leo was diagnosed with lung cancer on Tuesday, and a lower lobe of his right lung was removed during surgery, ​the Vatican said in a statement.

It said an examination of a nodule during the operation had confirmed a diagnosis of ​lung adenocarcinoma. It said cancer had been “suspected by preoperative tests.”

The surgery itself lasted approximately 90 minutes, and the pope, 71, was in the operating room for about 3 hours. “The surgery was successful, and there were no complications,” the statement said.

The statement did not say whether the pope would undergo further treatment. A Vatican spokesman said that the statement spoke for itself.

On Wednesday, the Vatican issued a statement saying that the pope “had a restful night.”

Lung adenocarcinoma is a common form of lung cancer. Survival rates for it vary greatly depending on the stage of the cancer and a patient’s overall health.

The information released about Leo thus far seems to indicate he has early-stage lung cancer, which is typically treated with surgery and tends to have a very high survival rate, said Dr. Sudish Murthy, a thoracic surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic.

The surgery was performed at a hospital in Rome, the Policlinico A. Gemelli. The Vatican had said previously that Leo was expected to spend about a week recovering in the hospital after the surgery and that all audiences with him would be canceled until Oct. 20.

An oncologist interviewed on NBC News last night said that if the cancer was stage 1, no other treatment would ensue, but if it were 2 or 3, he would have other treatment: presumably radiation or chemotherapy. I don’t think it was stage 4, which has a dire prognosis.

*The embattled U.S. Ambassador to Greece, Kimberley Gilfoyle, has resigned since the pressure on her was too great.

Kimberly Guilfoyle resigned as the U.S. ambassador to Greece on Tuesday after the White House asked her to do so following a string of damaging reports, including that she had asked a Republican donor to pay off her credit card.

In response to a question from a reporter about Ms. Guilfoyle’s status, President Trump’s new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, said: “We have asked Ambassador Guilfoyle to resign. She has been a wonderful asset to the team, and we wish her well.”

Mr. Trump said Tuesday that Ms. Guilfoyle “was doing a good job” but that he “didn’t like what I read.” The president also downplayed his connection to Ms. Guilfoyle, who was once engaged to his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr.

“She wasn’t a member of my family,” he told reporters before leaving the White House for Alaska. “She, I guess, dated my son a long time ago.”

In a lengthy post on social media, Ms. Guilfoyle said that her time as ambassador was “coming to an end” and that she planned to “vigorously defend my name, my reputation, and my integrity.”

“I will not allow false accusations to define my decades of public service,” she wrote.

A donor, Eric Deters, first told The Wall Street Journal that Ms. Guilfoyle asked him to wire her $100,000 to pay off her American Express card just before her Senate confirmation hearing in July 2025. According to messages Mr. Deters provided to The New York Times, Ms. Guilfoyle promised to serve as his “ride or die in Trump world” if he sent her the money.

Ms. Guilfoyle was one of the first ambassadors to be nominated in the president’s second term. In Greece, she has been a highly visible ambassador, appearing on the cover of Vogue Greece and at parties around Athens. Ms. Guilfoyle told The Times last year that her active social life demonstrated her commitment to the job.

What Gilfoyle did was bribery, plain and simple: “I’ll put in a good word for him with Trump if you give me the money.” Now whether an ambassador to Greece can have a lot of influence with the President is dubious, but nobody should be allowed to serve after saying something like that. And she’s not particularly qualified, either, though lots of ambassadorships are offered merely as political plums.

*The WSJ urges Trump to throw in his lot with the Saudis in attacking the Houthis.

Missile and drone attacks by Yemen’s Houthis over the weekend have Saudi Arabia reeling. The skies over Riyadh emptied after a Saturday strike on the international airport killed 13 and injured more than 300, and a Sunday attack killed one more. Now comes the test for U.S. policy.

Asked Saturday about joining Saudi strikes against the Houthis, President Trump said, “We may. We’re going to look at it.” Yet the last thing he seems to want before midterm elections is a military escalation. That hesitation may be what Iran and its Houthi militia proxies, whom it arms and finances, are counting on.

The U.S. could let the Saudis fend for themselves against the Iranian axis, but at great strategic cost. The region is watching what Washington will do when the cornerstone of its Gulf alliance system is under attack.

This doesn’t require a blank check for Riyadh, and U.S. interceptor shortages constrain what Mr. Trump can provide on defense. But this fight won’t be won on defense, continuing to play whack-a-mole with Houthi projectiles. That points to offense, where munitions stocks are healthier and U.S. help is needed to take out Houthi surface-to-air missiles.

Real-time U.S. intelligence support is more discreet but equally important. The Saudi-backed Yemeni government offensive already has the Houthis under pressure along Yemen’s western coast and Red Sea corridor, but it’s moving slowly.

The U.S. can also continue its diplomacy to rally a regional anti-Houthi coalition, including Israel and the United Arab Emirates. The Houthis threaten the region and international shipping, not only Saudi Arabia, and they operate as part of a larger Iranian strategy. Though Houthi-Saudi conflict predates the current Iran war, the war has put Saudi Arabia in the line of fire. Iran may believe it has identified the weak link in the U.S. regional alliance.

. . . . It didn’t have to be this way. The original Western error was to restrain the Saudi-Yemeni alliance when it had the Houthis on defense. Amid international humanitarian concerns over civilian casualties, a chance to defeat the Iranian proxy was missed in 2018 and 2019. In February 2021 the new Biden Administration cut off all support—arms, intelligence and logistics—for the anti-Houthi offensive.

To accommodate Iranian power, Joe Biden even lifted the Houthis’ terror designation. This for a group whose chant is: “God is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse be upon the Jews, Victory to Islam.” The Saudis then cut a deal to appease the Houthis, including funneling money to grease the peace. As with Qatari money in Gaza, it didn’t work. The Houthis used the reprieve to rearm.

As with Hamas, there is no diplomatic way to eliminate the Houthis threat. Yes, diplomacy may be needed to forge an anti-Houthi alliance, but, like all Islamist Iranian proxy groups, there is no solution but military engagement.  And “rallying a regional anti-Houthi coalition” means putting together a plan of military strikes.  It’s less than two months until the midterms, but the Houthis can do a lot of damage to Saudi Arabia before then.

*Over at the Free Press, Tony Blair takes on the antisemitic Greens: “Britain’s fastest-growing party has an anti-Jewish problem.”

This weekend, the Green Party of England and Wales crossed a line. A dangerous line. One that it is unacceptable to cross. It passed a resolution which effectively denounced the State of Israel’s right to exist.

By a vote of 1,022 to 813, the party passed a motion entitled “Zionism Is Racism,” which commits the party to a single Palestinian state covering all of historic Palestine—which is to say, to a world in which Israel, the state which contains the largest population of Jews on Earth, does not exist.

To understand the full depth of this shift, consider what the motion says. It defines Zionism not as the movement for Jewish self-determination in the historic Jewish homeland, but as an ideology demanding “an ethnonationalist Jewish State in historic Palestine to the exclusion and/or domination of the non-Jewish population.” It instructs that Zionism will be “treated as any other form of racism” and rejects any attempt “to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism.”

Since at least two-thirds of British Jews call themselves Zionists, the party has, in effect, branded the majority of the country’s Jews racists, while declaring that doing so cannot be antisemitic.

. . .There are those in my party, Labour, who might be tempted by the so-called progressive Red-Green coalition—an alliance between Labour and the Greens to unite the British left. But this vote should serve as a warning of the dangers such an alliance would bring.

Zionism was never a movement started in support of Jewish supremacy. It started because Jewish people found that the original preferred strategy of assimilation was impossible. Throughout the centuries Jews in Europe and elsewhere were subject to persecution. Sometimes treated less badly than at other times, but never treated equally. So in the late 19th century, the movement began for a Jewish homeland. The terrors of the Holocaust gave it unstoppable force. But it was never, and has never been, incompatible with self-determination for the Palestinians.

“Zionism is racism” is not fresh moral thinking about the Middle East. In 1975, the Soviet bloc and its Arab allies pursued United Nations Resolution 3379, which declared Zionism a “form of racism and racial discrimination.” Britain voted against the resolution in 1975 and for its revocation in 1991. Now, a Soviet propaganda campaign, which should have died with the Cold War, is being given a second life in 21st-century Britain.

. . .This weekend’s motion overturns decades of international consensus. It rejects the two-state solution. With it goes the architecture of every attempt to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 1947, when the UN General Assembly first voted for a Jewish state alongside an Arab one. In this, the party is unashamedly aligning itself with the most extreme elements of Middle East politics.

Those of us working, through the Board of Peace, to ensure that the bloodshed of October 7 is never repeated, and that Gaza has a different and better future, understand very well the legitimate global concern about Gaza. We have a plan—the only viable plan on offer—whose framework is designed to create a new Gaza in which Israel’s security is protected and the Palestinians in Gaza have the chance of a different and better future. And we know that only by freeing Gaza from the control of Hamas, so long as it remains a group committed to the destruction of Israel by violence, can the Palestinians of Gaza have a chance at freedom.

This is very refreshing coming from a Labour Party man, though he’s misguided about the two-state solution. But Blair is right about freeing Gaza from the control of Hamas.  He should realize that that will never be effectd by the “Board of Peace”, but only through military compulsion.  I’d be delighted if Hamas laid down its weapons and disbanded, but can’t imagine the latter happening without the former—or ever. Hamas without weapons is like a lioness without teeth.

The black-footed ferret (Mustela nigripes), brought back from near extinction and always precarious, is in more trouble now, as the founding population seems to have largely disappeared.  A plague is ravaging the species as well as its main prey, prairie dgs. (“Sylvatic plague” is caused by the same bacterium that produces bubonic plague, but this strain appears to affect rodents and mustelids, though its effect on ferrets is largely by killing their prey, not the ferrets themselves.)

Wyoming wildlife managers are reporting that no black-footed ferrets are being detected in the cradle of the species’ conservation: the Absaroka Range foothills outside of Meeteetse, where the ferrets were saved after presumed extinction in the 1980s.

A tough combination of plague and drought — both big issues for the embattled western species — are suspected causes of a population collapse in the Meeteetse area, where wildlife managers returned ferrets to the wild in 2016 after a three-decade-long absence. It’s not assured that the reintroduced population is completely gone, but it’s not looking promising, Wyoming Game and Fish Department small carnivore biologist Andy Gygli said.

“We spent a couple hundred hours of effort surveying 4,000 to 5,000 acres of the Meeteetse reintroduction area,” Gygli said. “We didn’t see any ferrets.”

Wyoming wildlife managers are reporting that no black-footed ferrets are being detected in the cradle of the species’ conservation: the Absaroka Range foothills outside of Meeteetse, where the ferrets were saved after presumed extinction in the 1980s.

A tough combination of plague and drought — both big issues for the embattled western species — are suspected causes of a population collapse in the Meeteetse area, where wildlife managers returned ferrets to the wild in 2016 after a three-decade-long absence. It’s not assured that the reintroduced population is completely gone, but it’s not looking promising, Wyoming Game and Fish Department small carnivore biologist Andy Gygli said.

“We spent a couple hundred hours of effort surveying 4,000 to 5,000 acres of the Meeteetse reintroduction area,” Gygli said. “We didn’t see any ferrets.”

. . .“We’ve heard a lot about deer, elk, pronghorn and cattle having hard times,” Gygli said. “It’s the same with our other herbivores. Prairie dogs also have to eat, and lack of (vegetation) coverage can result in low recruitment, which can result in downstream effects.”

For ferrets, those downstream drought effects are severe. They, too, haven’t had enough to eat. Indirectly, drought caused the numbers of rare mustelids in the world’s largest wild black-footed ferret population, in South Dakota’s Conata Basin/Badlands, to plummet from 250 to 70 animals between 2024 and 2025, according to biologist and ferret expert Travis Livieri, who studies that population.

“In my 30 years of doing this, I’ve never seen (drought) this bad, where prairie dogs failed to reproduce at a high rate,” Livieri said. “The prairie dogs don’t do well, the ferrets won’t do well.”

. . .There are some skeptics that Meeteetse will ever be home to self-sustaining ferrets. Oakleaf, the Game and Fish retiree, says he understands the desire to restore the historically significant population, but he worries that it’s just not the right place — it’s too small and has too much plague, he said.

“Everybody involved feels obligated to put them back in Meeteetse.” Oakleaf said, “But, man, I don’t know how you do it. It just hasn’t shown over the years that it could support a ferret population.”

For now, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department is not giving up.

“This is a place that we’re going to continue to work on,” Gygli said. “It’s the place where ferrets persisted.”

There are about 500 of these ferrets left in the wild and around 300 in captivity. Here’s a photo from Wikipedia:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has an odiferous premonition:

Hili: There’s something scary over there.
Andrzej: I don’t see anything threatening.
Hili: Neither do I, but I don’t like the smell.

In Polish:

Hili: Tam coś straszy.
Ja: Nie widzę niczego groźnego.
Hili: Ja też nie, ale zapach mi się nie podoba.

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

From Meow Incorporated:

From CinEmma:

From Give Me a Sign 2.0:

From Masih: Here’s the funeral announcement for a woman murdered by her brother in an “honor killing” in Iran. The killer is listed among the mourners and organizers, with the honorific “esteeemed”:

And then came the funeral announcement…Surreal? No. This is real life under Islamic Republic of Iran.

Guess whose name appeared among the mourners and organizers? Her killer. Maryam was murdered by her own brother, with the help of her husband, in the name of “honor.”

And to make this sick joke even sicker, his name was preceded by an honorific: “Esteemed.”

Yes. The murderer gets respect. The murderer gets recognition. The murderer gets to play the grieving relative.

But here’s the detail that should terrify everyone.

Maryam’s son’s full name appeared in the announcement. Her daughter? No name. Just “the grieving daughter.”

The alleged killer deserves a name and a title. The innocent girl doesn’t even deserve an identity.

Think about that. Even on a funeral announcement for a woman murdered in the name of honor, the next generation of women is already being erased.

This is what happens when women are treated as men’s honor instead of human beings with their own dignity.

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) October 13, 2026

The Number Ten Cat is recovering from a removal of a cyst, and his fur is growing back. But he’s still cracking jokes:

I told the dog that if you think my scar is bad, you should see the other guy…

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) October 13, 2026

From Luana. The riots in France are spreading, and Luana thinks that immigrants are one of the causes:

The Islamic riots in France have spread to Belgium, and Brussels looks like a war zone right now.

This is the capital of the European Union. 88% of people under 18 have a foreign background, and more than half are Muslim.

What has Europe done to itself? https://t.co/gVDGj9DKPf

— Dr. Maalouf ‏ (@realMaalouf) October 9, 2026

Two from my feed. First, Hasan Piker cooks himself in his fancy Mao suit. Did he really say he had to “slope himself out”, or am I mishearing?

In less than two minutes, Ziwe cooks Hasan Piker more thoroughly than 1,000 MAGA influencers and 2,000 more irrelevant cable news segments. https://t.co/EYAlnsd7Qc

— Rob Smith (@robsmithonline) October 12, 2026

D*gs in flight!

This is beautiful ❤️ https://t.co/Y1vcp2QQUE

— Science girl (@sciencegirl) October 13, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was two years old and would be 86 today had she lived.

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) October 14, 2026

Two from Dr. Cobb. We’ve seen the first spider before, but not, I think, like this:

Here's a spider 🕷️ using a web 🕸️ like Spider-Man: it creates a thin line of web that can be used to yank something in towards you at VERY high speed!doi.org/10.1016/j.cu… 🧪Hat tip to @brembs.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy

— Zen Faulkes (@doctorzen.net) 2026-10-13T12:53:37.415Z

A cute Halloween runner duck:

Runner duckling Boot on pumpkin inspection duties

— Chris and his farmily of forever farm friends (@caenhillcc.bsky.social) 2026-10-12T19:59:17.519Z

There are many good doo-wop songs from the early days of rock, but this one’s my favorite: “So Much in Love” sung by the Tymes and released in 1963.  It’s street-corner music of the highest order, complete with background wailing and great harmony. Note that it begins with the sound of seagulls at the shore. There’s at least one other pop song that begins that way; can you name it?

Welcome to The Cruelest Day, Tuesday, October 13, 2026 as well as National Yorkshire Pudding Day. I don’t have a picture of this delectable treat, always served in England with the Sunday roast, but here are two plump puddings from Wikipedia as part of the whole dinner:

It’s also Ada Lovelace Day, English Language Day, International Day for Failure, National M&M Day, and National No Bra Day.

And in Illinois we’re busy voting by mail:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 13 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The WSJ describes how the Houthis, proxies of Iran, are making big trouble for Saudi Arabia and its Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman started the year on a high note. He had just visited the White House where he was embraced by President Trump. Even after the war with Iran kicked off, Saudi Arabia looked relatively well positioned. It could export oil through a pipeline that bypassed the blocked Strait of Hormuz.

But the Saudis’ escalating fight with Iran-backed Houthi militants in neighboring Yemen now poses new challenges to the kingdom’s security and the crown prince’s ambitious but already struggling plans to transform the country’s oil-dependent economy.

On Saturday, at least one Houthi missile slammed into the Saudi capital’s international airport, killing at least 13 people and injuring hundreds more, many seriously. It was the single deadliest attack on the U.S. or its Gulf allies in the conflicts related to the Iran war. A 28-year-old Egyptian flight attendant bled to death after her arm was blown off, one of several victims to lose limbs, officials briefed on the attack said.

. . .As recently as this summer, Saudi officials briefed journalists that the Houthi situation was under control. But the militants’ escalating attacks, which they say are retaliation for Saudi actions against them, have hit airports and energy facilities—including the kingdom’s main east-west pipeline and refineries—showing the growing threat along the southern border.

The conflict is jeopardizing Saudi efforts to build travel and tourism into a pillar of the economy, including a marquee international investment conference scheduled for the end of the month that is now increasingly in doubt. The costs of the war have already widened the budget deficit and threaten to push the economy into contraction.

How Prince Mohammed handles this test will have consequences that stretch well beyond the kingdom. Saudi Arabia is a major source of funding for the global tech industry and artificial intelligence projects. It is also a crucial provider of basing and overflight rights to the U.S. military.

. . . The Saudi leader has few good options, said Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a Persian Gulf expert and fellow with Rice University’s Baker Institute. “Any military response risks getting drawn in deeper to an asymmetric conflict in which the Houthis have shown they have the ability to inflict significant and symbolic damage.”

It’s surprising that the Saudis, with a big army and a crack air force, is the weaker side in an “asymmetric conflict”. It would become less asymmetrical if the U.S. joined with the Saudis, as Trump has intimated in the last few days. But we get very little of our oil from Saudi Arabia (most imported oil comes from Canada), so, given his concern for gas and diesel prices (driving him into the arms of Putin), Trump may not decide to help out the Saudis.  On the other hand, the oil market would react strongly to a closure of the Red Sea and the Suez Canal—something that the Houthis have the potential to do.

*Abdul el-Sayed, an Islamist Democrat running for Senate in Michigan, is well known for evading hard questions about his affection for Iran, is taken apart at the Free Press in a piece by Audrey Fahlberg called, “Abdul El-Sayed’s Unanswered Questions.”

Few things seem to infuriate Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed more than questions about the Iranian regime.

During a press gaggle last Thursday afternoon in Grand Rapids, I asked him whether he regrets comments he made on a private campaign strategy call in March. That’s when he said, according to The Washington Free Beacon, that “I just don’t want to comment” on the assassination of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei, because “there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad today” about his death.

Before I finished my question, he cut in to insist that the topic is completely “irrelevant” to the Senate race. The leaked audio, he explained, is “not relevant to people’s lives,” and he’s “just not interested in this dog and pony show” solely intended to create media “clicks.”

. . .El-Sayed’s sensitivity to questions about the Iranian regime is revealing, as is his short fuse. This progressive Democrat’s campaign platform revolves around Medicare for All, getting corporate money out of politics, and ending U.S. military aid to Israel. He insists that questions about Iran are a distraction from issues voters care more about, like healthcare and the cost of living, even though, as I reminded him during our roughly one-minute exchange, he spent the entire primary campaign talking about foreign policy—railing against Israel, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and the Iran war.

Our exchange is part of a broader pattern for El-Sayed, who has repeatedly declined to disavow the Iranian regime. He dodged questions during a town hall last month about whether he would renounce people who held vigils for Ayatollah Khamenei and whether he stands “unequivocally against” the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the world’s largest sponsor of terrorism. El-Sayed will not directly say whether he believes Israel or Iran is a bigger threat to America, calling it a “dumb question” to a News Nation reporter last week and a “ridiculous hypothetical”on the debate stage Thursday evening.

“Both of them have proven dangerous in their own way,” he said during the debate when pressed by a moderator on Israel and Iran. “One at risk of attacking us, one getting us into wars we have no business fighting.”

And here’s a scary statement:

Progressives believe El-Sayed will be a bellwether for the future of the Democratic Party. “What we do is that we break open the entire political calculus in America—period,” Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said at a recent New York fundraiser, according to The New York Times. “If Abdul can win in Michigan, anybody can win anywhere. Anywhere.”

Like a good politician, El-Sayed is skilled at evading questions that require him to make a moral judgment, like his refusal to say that Iran is a bigger threat to America than Israel, which is palpably true.  Like Mamdani, Omar (see below) and Tlaib, I think he’s a somewhat covert Jew-hater and Israel-hater—people who, when they’re not “progressive,” are siding with terrorists or dissing Israel. Here’s the tweet that links to “short fuse” above:

Here’s El-Sayed arguing with a t.v. interviewer at the “short fuse” link above.  Surely campaigning with the odious Hasan Piker says something:

Abdul has a TEMPER TANTRUM when pressed about his close association with Hasan Piker. I’ve never seen a candidate blow up like this at a host. Abdul has a bad temper… just ask that shopkeeper…

We can’t have this radical extremist as our Senator!! https://t.co/UKrvjPlsxi

— Democrats For Mike Rogers (@DemsForMike) October 10, 2026

He’ll win, though, for the Democrats have lost it.

*Over at It’s Noon in Israel, Amit Segal describes how Hamas (and the world’s media) are using dead Hamas terrorists as examples of Israel’s genocide.

It’s Monday, October 12, and it took a Holocaust scholar six days after October 7 to accuse Israel of genocide in print, and South Africa less than three months to take the charge to the International Court of Justice. The Gaza Ministry of Health beat both to the punch: its count began with the first Hamas gunman to fall in southern Israel.

So far, researcher Salo Aizenberg has identified by name 364 Hamas attackers killed on October 7. Eighty percent of them appear on the Health Ministry’s list, counted among the victims of the “genocide.”

This not-so-subtle sleight of hand has been there for anyone to see for years. Of the 692 Gazans the ministry lists as dying on October 7, 2023, 646, or 93 percent, were men of fighting age. Most of the children recorded that day were boys aged 14 to 17.

More recently, under the October 2025 ceasefire, Israel returned roughly 400 Palestinian bodies to Gaza. To help families identify them, the Health Ministry published photos of the bodies along with the names of those already identified. Of 396 bodies listed, 91 have been named.

All 91 are on the ministry’s casualty list. All are men between 18 and 60. Sixty-three of them, 69 percent, are listed as having died on October 7, 2023, the day they crossed into Israel.

. . . All of them, regardless, made it into the database as victims of a supposed genocide.

. , , ,Add this to the mounting blows against the genocide accusation, and the charge is faltering. On Friday, the Nobel Committee tried to shore it up by awarding its Peace Prize to Navi Pillay, the South African jurist whose U.N. commission accused Israel of genocide last year. The infinitesimal courage it took to condemn Israel from a U.N. commission does not earn her a place beside laureates like Nelson Mandela, Elie Wiesel and Yitzhak Rabin, though she would have a comfortable seat beside Yasser Arafat.

The committee honored her for her efforts to promote “peace and international law.” Yet few things have done less to advance peace and international law than the genocide libel. The accusation did nothing to hasten the end of the war or the suffering in Gaza. If anything, it prolonged both by generating American pressure that could not stop Israel, only delay it. As for international law, the genocide campaign degrades law’s most basic principle: impartiality. In the trial of international law, its blatant anti-Israel bias is Exhibit A.

The latest tally of the dead in Gaza is about 70,000 to 74,000, and on this Hamas and the IDF agree. Hamas can’t or won’t separate combatants from civilians, but the IDF estimates that 24,000 of the dead were combatants.  That give about a 2:1 ratio of civilian dead to combatant dead, which remains an extraordinarily low ratio, especially for urban warfare (the ratio of 2:1 is close to that of WWII, Korea, and Vietnam).

*A man entered the enclosure of an Siberian (aka Amur) Tiger in England by going around whatever barriers existed, and, as expected, he was mauled to death. It’s very sad, but I have to say that the guy should have stayed out of the tiger cage!  The good news is that the wildlife park announced that they would not euthanize the tiger, which apparently some people expected as a form of retributive punishment.

A man has died after he entered a tiger enclosure at an animal attraction and was attacked by a Siberian tiger in Yorkshire, England, on Saturday, according to the police and park officials.

South Yorkshire Police said in a statement that they received reports of a man entering the tiger enclosure at Yorkshire Wildlife Park at 1:35 p.m. local time.

“The tiger subsequently attacked the man, resulting in serious injury,” the statement said, adding that “despite the best efforts of medical personnel,” the man died at the scene.

The man’s identity was not released, but the police said his family was aware and receiving support from the department.

Video surfaced on social media showing a man in a dark long-sleeve shirt and light-colored pants close to a tiger, which at one point grabs and bites him near the middle of his back. The tiger lunges at the man repeatedly and faces him before tapping him a few times with its front paws.

The police said they are aware of multiple videos of the event circulating online and encouraged people not to share the footage.

Yorkshire Wildlife Park’s website describes it as “the U.K.’s No. 1 walk-through wildlife adventure.”

I won’t share the footage, but here’s the park’s announcement. I’m glad they’re not going to kill the tiger, for what did it do besides acting like a tiger should act. There should be no punishing animals that act normally when somebody stupidly comes into their enclosure.  The guy was nuts to go into a tiger cage, of course, but it’s still sad that he was killed. But what did he expect? Regardless, there should be no euthanizing animals in cases like this.

https://t.co/6rdieTvUhD

— Yorkshire Wildlife Park 🦁 (@YorkshireWP) October 11, 2026

*The WaPo recounts that the feds have searched Ilhan Omar’s home.

Federal authorities searched the D.C. home of Rep. Ilhan Omar on Monday morning, three people familiar with the matter said, intensifying long-standing immigration-related accusations from Republicans regarding the nation’s first Somali American lawmaker.

Homeland Security Investigations, the investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security, executed the search. The Justice Department confirmed that it secured a court-authorized warrant for a law enforcement action Monday morning, but it did not name Omar or confirm what investigation the search was connected to.

“Today in the Washington, D.C. area, Homeland Security Investigations executed a judicially authorized search warrant secured by the Department of Justice. This enforcement action is part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation,” the Justice Department statement said.

In a statement on X, Omar (D-Minnesota) said she “will not be silenced.”

“Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement,” she wrote. “For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation.”

Last month, U.S. officials said federal authorities were investigating whether Omar unlawfully entered the country by falsifying her immigration paperwork. Omar and her team have repeatedly denied accusations that she committed immigration fraud. Omar’s team did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday morning.

The search of Omar’s home appears to be the type of action that law enforcement officials have typically avoided so close to an election in the past. Omar is up for reelection in November after winning the Democratic primary in her district.

The Wall Street Journal adds this:

Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin told a conservative podcaster in September that there was a continuing federal investigation into Omar, who he said “married her brother to try to bring him into the United States.” That is a claim she has denied for more than a decade.

Mullin said federal officials are investigating her past marriage as well as how her family immigrated to the U.S. In a Wall Street Journal interview earlier this year, Omar said she was never married to her brother and never committed immigration fraud.

Much as I dislike Omar as a Representative, an investigation only 20-odd days before the election violates the unwritten rule 60-days that federal investigative agencies like the DOJ have refrained from publicly announcing investigations that could influence an election. And lots of investigations have turned up no credible evidence that Omar married her brother to circumvent immigration laws. On the other hand, there remains that huge and still unexplained increase of the net worth of Omar and her husband, which jumped in one year from near zero to millions of dollars. Omar has said that is due to an accounting error, but there are also claims that there was money transferred from Omar’s campaign fund to her husband’s business. That may be worth investigating, but still, the DOJ should keep a low profile until after the election.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili notes with annoyance the coming of winter:

Hili: And the leaves are falling from the trees again.
Andrzej: The trees are getting ready for their winter sleep.

In Polish:

Hili: I znów spadają liście z drzew.
Ja: Drzewa układają się do zimowego snu.

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

From Things With Faces, a squash looking at you:

From Jesus of the Day:

From My Cat Is An Asshole:

An Iranian “honor killing” described by Masih. I can’t find details of what the woman’s so-called “crime” was, but the other stuff appears accurate.

⚠️ Warning: Reading this woman’s story could break your heart.

Her husband took the children outside. Her brother came with a knife. And her family reportedly defended her killers.

This is not a horror movie. This happened in Iran.

Her name was Maryam Yarmohammadi. She was only 28 years old. A mother of two children .

On October 5, in Qeshm, southern Iran, her husband took their two children out of the house, reportedly to make way for her murder. Then her own brother entered. I cannot believe that I Am even writing this .😔

Her brother came with a knife and stabbed his sister in the neck, breasts, and genitals. He literally, stood over her body, butchered his sister and waited as long as he was certain she was dead, then he took her to the hospital.

But the most horrifying part of this story came afterward.

Some of Maryam’s own relatives gathered outside the hospital. Not to demand justice for her. Not to mourn her murder. They protested the arrest of her brother and husband.

They said death was the least punishment she deserved.

They called it HONOR.

What kind of honor requires a brother to butcher his sister? What kind of honor turns a husband into an alleged accomplice in the murder of his children’s mother? And what kind of society allows a woman’s life to be treated as family property?

Let me tell you why honor killings happen in Iran; Under the laws of the Islamic Republic, misogyny is not just a mindset. It is taught, institutionalized, and protected by law.

From childhood, boys are taught that a woman’s body, her hair, her sexuality, and her choices are matters of male honor.

In schools, universities, state media, and religious institutions, the message is repeated: A woman belongs to a man. First her father. Then her brother. Then her husband. At the end the strangers in the street called “morality police “.

And when a woman dares to disobey, these men think they have the right to punish her.

In Iran, a woman get arrested, beaten, and flogged for showing her hair in public. But a man who beheaded his 17-year-old wife and paraded her head through the streets received just over eight years in prison.

Eight years. For cutting off a woman’s head.

And you wonder why women are being murdered in the name of honor again and again!

A woman’s hair is treated as a greater threat than a man holding his sister’s or his wife’s dead body.

Now, do you understand why we try to educate some men in 21st century and shout laud that, we are not your honor. We are not your property. We are not your family reputation.
Our bodies do not belong to our fathers, brothers, or husbands.

Stop killing women in the name of honor. Stop controlling women in the name of religion. Leave women alone.

I cannot stop thinking about Maryam’s two children.💔

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) October 12, 2026

From Simon. Larry, still recovering from surgery, makes a funny:

f you could find a way to generate electricity from Ronald Reagan spinning in his grave you’d be able to power the Eastern Seaboard right now.

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) October 10, 2026

From Luana (the link to the NY Post article is wrong; the right one is here).

Whizzing college professor pees on student’s backpack, found to be campus’s mystery serial sprinkler: records https://t.co/UAvjrPVMfy

— New York Post (@nypost) October 12, 2026

Two from my feed. First, the translation from the Spanish says this:

Not a single United Kingdom flag. Not one. That monument in the background there is the only clue to the location. London is now Palestine. That’s all I got out of this. Creepy.

And the poster  Medvin notes that “The image is from the pro-Palestine “National March for Palestine: End the Genocide” held on Saturday, 10 October 2026.”

Ni una sola bandera del Reino Unido. Ni una. Ese monumento al fondo ahí es la única pista de la ubicación.

Londres es ahora Palestina. Eso es todo lo que saqué de esto.

Espeluznante.

— PaoShara🇦🇷 ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (@PaoShara) October 11, 2026

Whose idea was this?

Unlikely friends https://t.co/73T48fgoji

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) October 12, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial.

This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she got to Auschwitz. She was three years old and would have been 87 today had she lived.

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) October 13, 2026

Two from Doctor Cobb. A wet frog hopped here:

The most fun thing ever to randomly see

— Oregon 🕎🎲 (@oregonthedm.bsky.social) 2026-10-11T17:03:10.775Z

This poor bird could not catch a break!:

Today is World Migratory Bird Day. Please say hello to the Pfeilstorch (‘arrow stork’). In 1822 this bird was shot in the German village of Klütz. It already had a 30-inch arrow in its neck. The arrow was made of African wood, and this bird played a pivotal role in our understanding of migration.

— Lev Parikian (@levparikian.bsky.social) 2026-10-10T20:42:35.661Z

It’s just another Manic Monday: October 12, 2026, and National Pulled Pork Day. Here’s a plate of the stuff at the Waiahole Poi Factory (it’s the Hawaiian version: kalua pig), along with beef laulau, a vegetable, and, my favorite, poi.  I love poi, though others can’t abide it, and the Waiahole Poi factory, where it’s made on the spot, is the best poi  I found in Hawaii. Sadly, I’ve never found the real stuff on the mainland.

It’s also Indigenous Peoples’ Day, National Gumbo Day, and in Canada it’s Thanksgiving.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 12 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The Houthis attacked the Riyadh airport in Saudi Arabia, killing at least 12 people and injuring 309. Big time attack, requiring a big time response:

 A missile attack on Saudi Arabia’s international airport killed at least 12 people and injured hundreds more on Saturday, in strikes carried out by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militants to which the kingdom’s military vowed a response.

The attacks, the deadliest in Saudi Arabia in more than a decade, shook the kingdom, which has struggled for weeks to fend off militant strikes amid a surge in cross-border tension.

Major General Turki Al-Malki, a spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, said that the attack, which killed and injured civilian passengers and airport workers, amounted to a war crime by the Houthi militia and that coalition forces would respond.

Among the dead were one American, four Saudi nationals, a Palestinian and residents from Bangladesh, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Sudan, according to the kingdom’s civil aviation authority.

Missiles landed direct hits on Terminals 3 and 4 of the King Khalid International Airport, injuring more than 300 people, the civil aviation authority said. Several of them remained in critical condition, and the airport suffered extensive damage, with parts of the roof falling on people inside, Saudi officials said.

Ambulances and helicopters were sent to collect the wounded and take them to hospitals nearby, the officials said. Doctors were called in from other hospitals to help with the surge of patients, they said.

Saudi Arabia has vowed a big-time response:

Saudi Arabia said Sunday it would “respond decisively” against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen a day after a strike on Riyadh’s international airport brought the expanding Middle East conflict home for the Saudi capital and its residents.

The attack, which left 12 dead and 309 injured and came without warning, revealed the vulnerability of the U.S. ally and the ramifications of the Trump administration’s reluctance to openly help fight the Houthis more than seven months into Washington’s war with Iran. Riyadh’s airport is the country’s second largest for civilians and is frequently used by royals and visiting dignitaries, including President Donald Trump in his last visit to the kingdom.

The United States is providing Saudi Arabia with intelligence support, analysts and U.S. officials say. But the administration has so far stopped short of the direct military assistance that officials in Saudi Arabia and its allies in Yemen’s internationally recognized government have sought.

After Saturday’s attack, Trump told reporters he was weighing whether to join Saudi strikes on the rebel group, later adding that the U.S. “has communication with the Houthis.”

Trump has been reluctant to go after the Houthis, even though they’ve participated in blocking the Red Sea and impeding traffic through the Suez Canal by blocking the narrowBab al-Mandeb Strait. They’re also fundamentalist Shiite Iranian proxy and are trying to take over Yemen. Given that Saudi Arabia has a large army and an especially good Air Force, I wouldn’t mind them joining forces with the U.S. and Israel (see the next piece) to extirpate the Houthis.

UPDATE: Several places report a Saudi military response, but details are missing.  Yesterday, the Houthis struck the Riyadh airport again, killing one and injuring 11.

*In response to the Houthi attack, Amit Segal argues, on the It’s Noon in Israel site, that “The Saudis need to become Israeli.”

It’s Sunday, October 11, and last night at least 12 people were killed and 309 wounded in a Houthi attack on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport. Saudi Arabia’s response is unlikely to prioritize the “protection of civilians, and self-control” as it encouraged Israel to do in the wake of October 7. But nor, to its great detriment, will it take the Israeli route: the one that leads to lasting security.

The strike comes a week into Operation Dawn of Yemen, a Saudi-backed offensive by Yemeni government forces against the Iranian-backed Houthis. With the help of some 100 Saudi jets, government-aligned forces have already retaken key stretches of coast along Bab el-Mandeb. But even as the Houthis are hard-pressed, and Yemeni officials talk optimistically of driving all the way to Houthi-held Sanaa, the Saudis are keeping one eye on the rearview mirror.

After joining the Iran war late and hesitantly, firing their first missiles at Israel only a month in, the Houthis largely held their fire against the Jewish state and found a much softer target in the Gulf monarchy. In July they declared a naval blockade on the kingdom. Riyadh’s response has typically been tepid: limited airstrikes and quiet diplomacy.

That has long been the Saudi playbook. Even at the height of its war on the Houthis, the kingdom kept one hand extended. In 2019, after Houthi-claimed drone strikes on its oil facilities, it said it viewed a Houthi truce offer “positively.” In 2020 it told the Houthis, through back channels, that it would sign a UN-brokered nationwide ceasefire in exchange for a buffer zone on its border. In 2021 it publicly offered a ceasefire and the reopening of Sanaa airport, with its foreign minister declaring “it is up to the Houthis now.” Since the 2022 truce, the kingdom has largely halted offensive operations even in the face of sporadic provocations. Even when the United States and Britain began addressing the Houthi problem in January 2024, Riyadh called for “self-restraint” from the sidelines. As recently as mid-September, with the Houthis fresh from seizing Mocha, the kingdom reportedly offered them a two-week ceasefire and direct talks through Omani mediators.

Rather than a new dawn for Riyadh’s Yemen policy, this war is simply a means to negotiate. After the Houthis’ advance last month, Riyadh concluded that it could not enter new talks while the Houthis held Bab el-Mandeb. Without U.S. support, it will likely declare victory if it simply pushes the Houthis off the Red Sea coast and restores quiet.

This is where the two countries [Israel and Saudi Arabia] diverge.

Surveying the destruction of its territory, Israel understood that such a threat could not be allowed to rebuild on its border, and, despite American misgivings, went about uprooting Hamas. The Saudis, looking at their burning tankers and smoldering oil facilities, also resolved that the situation had to be dealt with. So they called Washington for help, were rebuffed, and settled for a particularly aggressive round of mowing.

. . .That Israel has never had the luxury of the status quo lies at the root of what separates it from many of America’s allies, and from America itself. It is why the Houthis will happily strike King Khalid International Airport but now think twice about Ben Gurion. It is why the Saudis will not try anything without Washington holding their hand, while Washington grips Israel’s for dear life to keep it from upending the status quo.

. . . The Houthis in the mountains of northern Yemen present a different challenge from Hamas in its tunnels under Gaza, but the lesson of appeasing terror is the same. If the Saudis want to find themselves safer five years from now, they should start reading up on Zionism.

Indeed, for the Houthis have missiles and will have more if they’re not stopped. They’re just a short rocket flight from Saudi Arabia, and of course the Saudis have all the oil, oil that has to be moved.  Amit Segal is right: the Saudis need to do something, and do it now.

*More juvenile behavior from Trump: now he’s going after Ukraine’s President Zelensky, blaming him for the high price of diesel gas in the U.S. and saying that Ukraine should get a new leader.

President Donald Trump said Saturday it was time for Ukraine to get a new president, suggesting Volodymyr Zelenskyy has not done enough to end his country’s war with Russia and blaming him for high diesel prices in the U.S.

“I suggest they get a new leader who can make a deal because he could have made many deals and for some reason he never does,” Trump said.

The president, who on Friday struck a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to buy diesel from Russia in an attempt to address high fuel prices ahead of the U.S. midterm elections, has been urging Zelenskyy for weeks to stop strikes on Russian energy infrastructure. He has also sought to blame record U.S. diesel prices on Ukraine rather than the U.S.-led war in Iran, which has elevated world energy prices.

“He wants to make problems for the world. He wants to make problems for our farmers, our ranchers, with diesel fuel,” Trump said, before departing for Tennessee where he was set to rally Republican voters.

No, Zelensky just wants to survive in the face of a very real threat to his country. And he’s done a good job as leader, but all Trump can do is beef about gas prices. I don’t expect him to send more help to Ukraine, even though gas prices will not appreciably fall before the midterms.  And of course Trump made a deal with Putin to get more diesel, which is like making a deal with the devil. But here’s what he’s saying now:

Ukrainian and European officials on Saturday reacted to Trump’s diesel deal with dismay, saying it will help pay for Russia’s war efforts. Diesel prices have skyrocketed due to a collision of events, including the difficulty of getting oil out of the Middle East since the start of the Iran war, which has raised the price of all oil products.

Trump also suggested that if he had been U.S. president in 2022, “that war would have never started. There was no reason that war with Ukraine and Russia started. It started due to incompetence.”

Whose incompetence is he talking about? Biden’s? Zelensky’s? Because he’s sure not talking about Putin.

*The pushback on the award of the Nobel Prize to Navi Pillay, an advocate of The Genocide Lie, has received surprisingly widespread pushback, though of course the liberal MSM won’t decry it (the NYT has an admiring profile of Pillay).  But the WSJ said what needed to be said, and I found a screenshot of their op-ed on Facebook (click to enlarge it):

Granted, Pillay did some good stuff, but it’s recognized that the Prize came largely from her work on a UN committee trying to prosecute Israel for genocide. I can’t figure out what’s the worse award: Pillay’s or Yasser Arafat’s.  In response to the award, Trump went into full Two Year Old Mode, saying that he should have won eight Nobel Prizes.   Here’s his self-aggrandizing Truth Social post. He’ll never get a Nobel Prize. Notice the misspelled “Nobel” in the last line. Does nobody check his tweets?

*Among a host of rare birds in New Zealand, the black robin (Petroica traversi), once reduced to a single breeding pair (4 males and one fertile female named “Old Blue”), has been named the country’s Bird of the Year after a striking comeback. There are now about 390 of them.

The black robin, once the world’s rarest bird before an extraordinary conservation project brought it back from brink of extinction, has been crowned New Zealand’s bird of the year, after record voter turnout.

The tiny bird is found only in the Chatham Islands, 800km east of mainland New Zealand. Called kakaruia in Māori and karure in Morirori – the language indigenous to the Chathams – the birds are also fondly known as the “goth” of New Zealand’s bird world, for its striking black plumage, black eyes and a little pointy black beak.

Habitat loss and introduced pests devastated its population, and by the 1970s there were five birds left. Just one breeding pair remained: Old Blue, the matriarch, and Old Yellow. A breeding programme that pioneered using other species to foster parent the robins’ eggs proved a success, and its numbers have steadily climbed to 350 adult birds, although it is still classed as “threatened”.

“They are really cute,” said Jess Mackenzie, spokesperson for the Chatham Islands Landscape Restoration Trust, adding that the black robin has been in the top five birds for the past few years but never clinched a win.

“It’s a bird that New Zealanders definitely love and know,” she said.

Despite the name, the black robin is not in the same family as overseas robins and is a distinct species. In the Chathams, they live in lowland coastal forest on two restricted, pest-free nature reserves.

While a conservation success story, the black robin is not “saved yet”, Mackenzie said. Habitat on their islands is is nearly at capacity, and a third pest-free island is needed.

. . .The 2026 competition attracted a record 105,000 votes. About 88% of the votes were cast from New Zealand.

The world’s heaviest parrot, the kākāpō, came second and the 2025 winner, the country’s only falcon, the kārearea, finished third.

Over the years, the contest has been subject to scandal, from crowning a bat the winner in 2021, to accusations of Russian interference in 2019, and claims Australians attempted to rig the contest in favour of the shag in 2018.

In 2023, British-American comedian and talkshow host John Oliver ran a global campaign for the threatened pūteketeke, which was then crowned the winner that year.

Only Kiwis should be allowed to vote in this contest. And a bat???

Here’s a photo from Wikipedia (they can’t say whether it’s male or female). Isn’t it cute?

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej has cleaned house on the Listy website:

Hili: You look like something’s bothering you.
Andrzej: I threw out three trolls today. I’m afraid they might be upset.

In Polish:

Hili: Wyglądasz jakbyś miał jakiś problem.
Ja: Wyrzuciłem dziś trzy trolle, martwię się, że im może być przykro.

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

From Meow Incorporated:

From

From 2025 Darwin Awards!!!/Epic Fails!!!:

An odious man claiming that whipping of women in Iran is very gentle. The picture give the lie to that. From Masih.  If you can’t see the tweet, click here to see it. (Embedding is probably prohibited for reasons I’m not clear on.)

Let me introduce you to another Iranian woman who received 74 lashes for removing her hijab in public.

A woman from Tehran sent me this video showing the scars left on her body. Her crime? Refusing to cover her hair.

Mohammad Marandi, one of the Islamic Republic’s defenders in Western media, justified the flogging of women by saying: “It’s not like hitting a horse. It was a very light strike, in a particular way.”

Look at her wounded body. Does this look like a light strike to you?

74 lashes. For showing her hair. In the 21st century.

To those who still deny the suffering of Iranian women: Look at these scars. Look at what this regime does to women who demand control over their own bodies.

The Islamic Republic whips women in Persian and then tries to justify it in English.

We will not let them hide the scars. We will not let them silence these women.

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) October 10, 2026

From Matthew. Larry was operated on, but it appears to be just a nonmalignant cyst. We love him!

The Number Ten Cat’s tweet:

Chicks dig the scar

— Larry the Cat (@number10cat.bsky.social) 2026-10-11T17:59:49.878Z

From Simon: Larry on Trump:

f you could find a way to generate electricity from Ronald Reagan spinning in his grave you’d be able to power the Eastern Seaboard right now.

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) October 10, 2026

John Cleese got reported to the coppers for “Islamophobia”!

I can’t wait to be arrested

This is a real life sitcom !

Please tell the police to contact my agent

— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) October 5, 2026

Two from my feed. This first one is fantastic:

Great kindness https://t.co/dUNZyPjog9

— Wolf of X (@WolfofX) October 11, 2026

From a fellow squirrel lover:

This guy built a squirrel city with over 1,000 homes, complete with cameras to capture what they get up to

including hugging and “kissing” their loved ones in the privacy of their own homes. https://t.co/J59oPC62KH

— Science girl (@sciencegirl) October 11, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish infant, David, was gassed as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz–along with his older brother. David was two years old and would b 86 today had he lived.

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) October 12, 2026

Some music: a very famous jazz version of “Body and Soul” recorded by Coleman Hawkins (aka “Bean”) in 1939—nearly a decade after it was written by Johnny Green, Edward Heyman, Robert Sour and Frank Eyton. It was intended as a pop song, not a jazz song, but Hawkins did the most famous version.

From Wikipedia:

One of the most famous and influential takes was recorded by Coleman Hawkins and His Orchestra on October 11, 1939, at their only recording session for Bluebird, a subsidiary of RCA Victor. The recording is unusual in that the song’s melody is only hinted at in the recording; Hawkins’ two-choruses of improvisation over the tune’s chord progression constitute almost the entire take. Jazz critic Leonard Feather says, “This became his biggest hit and established him as a national name.”  Because of this, as well as the imaginative use of harmony and break from traditional swing cliches, the recording is recognised as part of the “early tremors of bebop“.  In 2004, the Library of Congress entered it into the National Recording Registry.

You can hear a more standard version, with the lyrics, in this recording by Frank Sinatra. It shows how much improvisation went into Bean’s version below.

Welcome to CaturSaturday, October 10, 2026, shabbos for Jewish cats and International African Penguin Awareness Day.  Here’s a young African penguin (Spheniscus demersus) I photographed two years ago at Boulders Beach near Capetown, South Africa:

The gang:

It’s also many other holidays, including International Pinotage Day, International Save the Vaquita Day (it is this critically endangered porpoise), National Angel Food Cake Day, National Chess Day, National Metric Day, National Tic Tac Day, Squid and Cuttlefish Day, World Porridge Day, and World Day Against the Death Penalty.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 10 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Several readers have sent me articles about Pete Hegseth’s claim that the upcoming firing-squad shooting of Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood murderer, will be livestreamed.  Yes, the desire and claim are brutal and shocking, but I believe that neither the livestream nor the shooting will take place.

The Pentagon said it planned to livestream the firing-squad execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, a former officer who admitted to killing 13 people in a 2009 shooting at Fort Hood Army base in Texas.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in an interview with a conservative news outlet aired Thursday that he had wanted to ensure “people are able to watch it” because “people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.”

The execution is scheduled to take place on Dec. 3 at Fort Hood.

Hegseth said it would be carried out on a Thursday at 1 p.m. Central time, which was the same day of the week and around the same time of day Hasan opened fire at the base on Nov. 5, 2009.

He called the decision to execute Hasan by firing squad a “no-brainer.”

Hasan’s execution would be the first by the U.S. military in more than 65 years. A servicemember hasn’t been executed by firing squad since 1945.

“It hadn’t been since World War II since we’ve done that. Well, I kind of like the mentality we had in World War II, which was: ‘win,’” Hegseth told Real America’s Voice.

“It was a radical Islamist attack in uniform inside the ranks, and so he’s going to get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be,” Hegseth added.

Under existing Army regulation, an execution can be attended by select members of the public, including family members of the victims and members of the media. But executions aren’t witnessed by the broader public.

When asked for comment, a Defense Department official said in a statement that “it will be livestreamed” without providing further details.

As I said, given the rarity of firing squads in military executions (one was used to kill Gary Gilmore in a state execution in 1977), I am not confident that it will even take place. But even if it does, I think the livestreaming of the event would be too much for Americans to take, and would be barbaric.  Granted, if you’re going to use execution as a deterrent (it isn’t), you would want the gory details publicized as widely as possible. But it isn’t a deterrent and we shouldn’t be killing people. I am not 100% sure about this, but even when Hegseth proclaims it I am not confident that it will happen.

*In his weekly NYT op-ed column, “There’s another cockpit Israelis need to rush“, Bret Stephens opposes two strains in Israeli politics—entitlement versus service—and says that the latter strain needs to win the upcoming election (note, that does not include Netanyahu). The title refers of course to the recent Israeli prevention of the hijacking of the FlyDubai flight to Tel Aviv. (Article is archived here.)

The division inside of Israel, in the broadest sense, is between the spirit of entitlement and the spirit of service. That’s the basic choice that faces Israelis when they go to the polls late this month.

On the entitled side: the leaders of the fast-growing ultra-Orthodox population, who believe their voters are owed welfare from the government along with a categorical exemption from military service, even as the army groans under an acute manpower shortage. Also, the far-right Messianics, who are convinced they have a divine right to the entirety of the West Bank, along with an exemption from legal consequences for bullying and terrorizing their Palestinian neighbors.

Most entitled: Benjamin Netanyahu. The prime minister has real achievements to his name, above all his willingness to confront Iran head-on instead of fighting only its proxies. But he also thinks he can stay in office forever by assembling coalitions of the entitled, seeking legal impunity, dividing the country against itself, resisting calls for an independent commission of inquiry into Oct. 7, blaming his own senior security and ministerial officers for the catastrophe and taking credit for achievements against Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and other foes that remain tenuous.

On the opposite side are the service Israelis. They are the hundreds of thousands of Israeli civilians, done with their regular army service but still in the reserves, who have spent hundreds of days in uniform and often in combat, away from careers and communities and families. They are the spouses of those reservists, who have raised children, gone to work, kept up appearances of normality and prayed they won’t be left bereaved. They are the Israeli passengers who last week rushed the cockpit of the almost-hijacked FlyDubai flight, unhesitatingly risking their necks for the common good. They are the thousands of Israelis who have lost loved ones in this war. That includes Gadi Eisenkot, the former army chief of staff and leading opposition candidate, who spent 41 years in uniform and lost a son and two nephews in the fighting in Gaza.

The difference between the two sides is profound and potentially irreconcilable. It’s also nothing new in Jewish history. “Ancient Israel’s political collapse was spawned by internal strife, underscored by a dozen civil wars, which ultimately resulted in Israel’s loss of its power, dignity and land,” Amotz Asa-El, author of “The Jewish March of Folly,” a brilliant reinterpretation of Jewish political history, told me over drinks last week. “All these forces are now back in play in Israel.”

. . .All of which is why, with Wednesday’s third anniversary of the Oct. 7 massacre, stories like Avinatan Or’s and the FlyDubai passengers’ are so instructive. For Israelis to surmount the formidable challenges they face, in pursuit of both victory and peace, the spirit of service — of giving yourself, doing it yourself, taking possession of your destiny against daunting odds — must win out over the spirit of entitlement. And for Israel’s genuine well-wishers, including the good-faith critics, to push that spirit forward, they need to draw a firm moral line against those who simply want Israel gone.

At the ballot box this month, there’s one more cockpit the people of Israel need to rush.

The rush, of course, is against Netanyahu, who’s in the cockpit.

*There is nobody who can produce the Free Press‘s news-and-snark summaries as well as Nellie Bowles, but sadly she’s AWOL this week. Instead, we have as her replacement Chelsea Jacobson with “TGIF: Nudity is optimal“. But I will, as usual, steal a few of the items:

→ Cornell sex ed: While the school battles a tsunami of bad headlines, its official sex-ed materials have also been making the online rounds. Cornell student Jared Lederman shared them in a viral blog post that he adapted for us at The Free Press.

One guide is titled Sexual Pleasure: Finding the “Sweet Spot,” and it opens by declaring that “sexual pleasure is a worthy pursuit.” It directs students to “feminist porn,” whatever that is. I have never seen porn titled Stepsister Teaches Her New Bro That Human Rights Are Women’s Rights and Women’s Rights Are Human Rights, but to be fair I wasn’t looking too hard. My favorite guide, titled “Sensate Focus,” gives tips on how students can touch each other and tells them, crucially, that “nudity is optimal.” Step one is titled “non-genital touching,” where “ideally, both partners are undressed, showered, and free of watches or jewelry.” Nudity. For sex? I’ll try to remember next time.

These kids are 18 years old and self-report that they’re barely having sex. In 2024, 69 percent of Harvard students said they entered college as virgins. But Cornell still wants them filling out worksheets on their favorite sex positions. It seems like we blew past the “sweet spot” in the middle when we decided to make sex education less about the birds and the bees and more a bureaucratic exercise in risk management, with a kink manual attached. And now we’re surprised when students end up either sexless or caught in a hellish ketamine orgy. Luckily, there’s a solution: Bring back first dates.

→ Obama campaigning with El-Sayed: Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Michigan’s open Senate seat, has a problem. Given Michigan’s liberal lean, Trump’s dismal approval ratings, the price of gas and, well, everything, he’s favored to defeat Republican Mike Rogers. But—and here comes the problem—polls show El-Sayed with only a narrow lead over Rogers in a race Democrats see as a must-win.

Why can’t he get ahead? Jewish voters, for one thing: El-Sayed is a virulent critic of Israel and campaigned with Hasan Piker, of “America deserved 9/11” fame.

But his bigger issue, from an electoral standpoint, is black voters, who make up roughly 14 percent of the state’s population and some 75 percent of Detroit’s. They tend to be more moderate than the arch-leftist Abdul, and they don’t seem much swayed by his cringey attempts to win them over. Apparently, just saying “I am both African and Arab,” as El-Sayed has done in a nod to his Egyptian heritage, isn’t enough.

So Barack Obama—still broadly popular a decade after leaving office, and particularly so with black Democrats, is swooping in later this month to bail El-Sayed out. They’re going to campaign together on October 24. Problem solved, right?

Perhaps not! For one thing, as was noted frequently throughout his presidency, Obama is very good at getting himself elected, but not so good at convincing voters to elect other people. (To use one prominent example, he led a huge rally for Hillary Clinton in Philadelphia on the eve of the 2016 election, then Trump became the first Republican in almost 30 years to win Pennsylvania.)

El-Sayed also called Obamacare “a watered-down reform that kowtows to the interests of healthcare lobbies.”

→ It is a small price to pay: While speaking to a rally in Grand Island, Nebraska, about the war with Iran and the resulting high gas prices, Trump said the ayatollah can have Los Angeles. “I want to see a tremendous victory. You want to see a tremendous victory because it verifies all the things we did. And again, remember, with the war, it’s just artificial. It’s a little bit high,” he said. “It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe.”

He went on: “They can take out a city. Let ’em take out Los Angeles; let ’em take out San Diego. That’s—this is a very small price to pay, and it’s going to be over with very soon. It’s essentially almost over with.”

I agree, Mr. President. Los Angeles is vacuous. There is no culture, only traffic. I am a New York 7 and an LA 3. Let the mullahs have it.

Naaah, Nellie is still a gazillion times better.

*Coincident with the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Navi Pillay, largely because of her participation in finding Israel guilty of “genocide,” the Trump Administration has levied new sanctions on the International Criminal Court in an attempt to dismantle it. (The ICC has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, charging them with both war crimes and crimes against humanity. (The U.S. does not recognize the ICC nor the charter that created it.)

The Trump administration has imposed sweeping new sanctions on the International Criminal Court as part of its campaign to dismantle the tribunal over investigations into the United States and its allies, including Israel.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the sanctions Friday, after the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to South African jurist Navi Pillay, a former judge at the ICC and other international courts. Trump has coveted that prize for himself.

“We will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate against us,” Rubio said in a video address posted to social media. “The United States and the American people are not subject to the jurisdiction of this fake ICC.”

The sanctions cut the court off from U.S.-based financial services, technology companies and even using U.S. dollars. They set a six-month timeline for U.S. companies and individuals that have business with the court to wind that business down.

The ICC denounced the step as an attack on the rule of law and the foundations of international order, themes that Rubio had appeared to embrace only two days ago in a speech in front of the Acropolis in Athens.

“It is an attempt to obstruct the course of justice and to prevent the court from doing what it was created to do,” the court said in a statement. “It is an assault on the rule of law and on the very foundations of the international legal order which strikes at the simple principle that no one stands above the law.”

Given that neither the U.S. nor Israel has signed on to the court’s jurisdiction by ratifying the Rome Statute, I don’t see why either country is compelled to support the ICC.  Nor do I see that the actions taken by the U.S. will “dismantle” the ICC, even though it may make it harder to do business.

*The Washington Post interviews Walter Willett, American’s most well-respected expert on nutrition, and of course you’ll be interested in what he eats during the day.

What is your philosophy on nutrition?

I try to follow the best evidence on diet and health. What I eat now is very different from what I ate when I was growing up in the Midwest. Back then, we ate mashed potatoes, beef and gravy. But as the evidence came in, I shifted to a Mediterranean diet. . .

What’s your typical breakfast?

I usually have steel-cut oats as a base. Then I add a cup of Greek yogurt, some nuts and fruit. I try to eat blueberries on most days as part of my fruit. In study after study, berries appear to be protective against neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. It’s an area where we need more research, but berries do seem to stand out, especially blueberries.

I also have a small glass of orange juice in the morning. There are studies in multiple cohorts showing lower rates of cognitive decline when you drink orange juice on a regular basis. Orange juice does have a lot of sugar like all fruit juices do. But I only have one small glass a day. 

What do you eat for lunch?

Lunch is my plant-based meal for the day. If I’m at work at the school of public health, we have a really good salad bar. So, I’ll make a big Mediterranean type of salad with fresh greens, chickpeas, nuts, hummus, tofu, and olive oil and vinegar.

When I’m at home, I don’t have time to put a lot of stuff together. When we did the Eat-Lancet Commission report, the issue of cost and convenience came up, and I said I can make a lunch for under three minutes that costs less than a dollar. It’s basically whole-grain bread with peanut butter and a little bit of jam or a touch of honey. And a carrot.

I did the calculations. It came out to 72 cents, and it takes less than three minutes. You can see a video of me preparing it on YouTube.

What do you eat for dinner?

My wife and I will usually have fish or poultry. Yesterday my wife made a really nice Persian dish. It was whole-grain rice with saffron, and a stew with walnuts, chicken and pomegranate. It was really good. It’s a dish that I had in Tehran when I was first there.

When we want something quick, we might bake some fish with olive oil, and we’ll have it with cooked greens or veggies.

If I’m by myself, I will usually make a salad. The quickest thing for me is to go to Trader Joe’s and get their washed spring greens. I’ll add some olives and fresh vegetables. And often I’ll get a tin of oysters or mussels and put that on the salad. I can make that in under five minutes. Oysters and mussels are very nutritious, and they’re sustainable.

Do you ever snack?

I always try to have apples and carrots on hand. . .

Oy gewalt! Talk about an article that makes me feel guilty! But clearly Willett wants to live a long and healthy life, and cake, ice cream, and steak be damned! And he’s right, at least according to the most recent evidence.  But for many of us there’s a tradeoff: some of us (including me) are willing to eat some “bad” stuff because it enhances life.  But he doesn’t mention alcohol as part of his diet, and I bet he doesn’t drink any wine.  I couldn’t live like that. So sue me.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the Hili/Kulka feud continues.

Hili: You have absolutely no right to lie in my spot!
Kulka: Do you really have to be so revoltingly jealous?

In Polish:

Hili: Nie masz prawa leżeć na moim miejscu!
Kulka: Czy naprawdę musisz być tak obrzydliwie zazdrosna?

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

From Stacy:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Bad Spelling or Grammar on Signs and Notices:

. . . and a bonus video from Anna:

From Masih; an Iranian woman given 74 lashes for not wearing the hijab. That looks quite painful to me:

To those who claimed that no woman in Iran has ever been flogged for refusing to wear the hijab: LOOK AT HER BACK.

This woman is one of the brave members of my #WhiteWednesdays campaign against compulsory hijab.

She sent me this photo of her scarred back after being punished with 74 lashes for the “crime” of showing her hair.

Holding a Woman, Life, Freedom slogan, she refused to be silenced. Here is her testimony:

“The morality police arrested me for resisting their van. My ‘crime’ was unveiling. After months of court hearings, I was sentenced to 74 lashes. The cleric overseeing the punishment stood there to ensure it was carried out.

I won’t give up my fight against this brutal regime, but we are fed up with living as prisoners in our own homeland.”

Seventy-four lashes. For showing her hair. In the 21st century.

This is barbarism. And you tell me, how is this different from ISIS?

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) October 8, 2026

From Luana. The guy shown was arrested and suspended at Haverford, accused of stalking and threatening a Jewish colleague and his infant child in a stream of antisemitic rants posted on anonymous social-media accounts:

The face of the guy writing “Goyim are taking America back” on Twitter (he’s a scholar of Chinese Sufism) https://t.co/kzqiTISD9G

— Park MacDougald (@hpmcd1) October 7, 2026

A Jewish American man with a message to his friends:

Three years ago I told my non-Jewish friends they could sit this one out. I take it back. 3 years later, I’m afraid I have a different message for you.

I wrote an open letter about what being Jewish has felt like since October 7, and I need you to hear it from me. https://t.co/dhDhPykxHw

— Jonah Platt (@JonahPlatt) October 9, 2026

From Jeff Maurer:

A wacky theory: It is possible to treat transgender people with dignity and still have some rules that acknowledge biological sex.

— Jeff Maurer (@JeffMightBWrong) October 6, 2026

Tw from my feed. First, cat software:

Size doesn’t matter: all cats on Earth run on identical software. https://t.co/vhs7lWrCdn

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) October 8, 2026

Useful knowledge on how to save yourself if you fall through ice:

This guy shows how to rescue yourself if you fall through ice.

[📹 rewildu] https://t.co/T7NkdvLsuR

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) October 9, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Hungarian Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwit. She was eleven years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) October 10, 2026

And one from Doctor Cobb. The flashing lights on the ctenophore are only visible because the submersible creates reflections:

Like approaching a giant alien spaceship…

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-10-08T22:01:22.343Z

Today’s music is “Without a Song“, composed in 1929 by Vincent Youmans, “with lyrics later added by Billy Rose and Edward Eliscu.” The jazz version is performed here by Billy Eckstine, recorded live in Las Vegas in 1960. I like it because of its swinging tempo (other versions don’t have that) and Eckstein’s rich baritone voice.  Wikipedia notes that there the earlier lyrics were racist:

Lawrence Tibbett, Nelson Eddy and Frank Sinatra recorded versions of the song with what appears to be the original lyrics, including the line, “A darkie‘s born, but he’s no good no how, without a song.” In subsequent recordings, Sinatra didn’t use the term “darkie”, and later recorded versions included the altered text “a man is born, but he’s no good no how, without a song.” The original was played in error on BBC Radio 4’s PM program on 9 April 2020, prompting an apology on the same program four days later.

. . . the version by the Carpenters is very different, but of course features one of the greatest voices of our era, and I don’t mean Richard’s.  The ending is a bit much. . .

Welcome to the tail end of the week: Friday, October 9, 2016, and Submarine-Hoagie-Hero-Grinder Day, and that’s all the names of America’s beloved long sandwich. But here’s a Mexican version I had in Puebla in 2018.  It was part of a multicourse meal.

It’s also International Beer and Pizza Day, National Moldy Cheese Day, National Polenta Day, and World Egg Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 9 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The WSJ reports on the possible Democratic agenda should that party take back the House of Representatives during the midterm elections. Were that the case, it says, Hakeem Jeffries is likely to become the next Speaker of the House.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Democrats would move swiftly to reverse Trump-era cuts to healthcare spending and bring down households’ costs, expressing confidence that his party would win a majority during President Trump’s final two years in office.

The New York Democrat, speaking with a group of reporters, laid out some of his key priorities Wednesday should his party win back control of the House in November’s midterm elections, while also nodding toward planned investigations of GOP “crooks” but giving few details.

Jeffries said he was “very confident” the party will win enough seats to regain a majority, while cautioning it “remains to be seen what that looks like in terms of the number of seats.”

Democrats need a net gain of three seats to win back the House, which would put Jeffries in a strong position to become the nation’s first Black speaker. A large majority could give him more ability to keep Democrats’ agenda on track and push back against any small group of holdouts in the party.

Current House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) has predicted that Republicans will defy historical trends and keep the majority, despite the party of the president almost always losing seats in the midterms. He has cast Democrats as wanting to roll out socialist policies that will hurt voters. Election watchers currently see Democrats as favored to take the House and having a good shot at winning back the Senate as well.

Asked about working with Trump as a potential House speaker, Jeffries said, “We will cross that bridge when we get to it, based on what happens on Nov. 3, and then it will fall into the hands of the caucus to determine who is put in position to help lead us forward.”

Jeffries said a Democratic-led House would tackle Trump’s sweeping 2025 tax-and-spending law that cut taxes and slashed more than $1 trillion in healthcare spending. He said Democrats would be united around reversing cuts to Medicaid and restoring expired enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits “right out of the gate.”

Any legislation would face a possible filibuster in the Senate and Trump’s veto pen, setting up possible policy showdowns headed into the next presidential election.

It looks pretty likely that Democrats will capture both houses of Congress in November, and I’m happy with what Jeffries says are Democratic priorities. Further, Jeffries is one of the few Democratic Representatives who openly supports Israel,but not without criticism.  Remember, though, that Trump still has veto power over a Democratic Congress, and he won’t hesitate to use it.

*The WaPo tells us that the U.S. B-1 bombers removed from a British airbase were the target of an Iranian drone attack.

Pentagon commanders abruptly evacuated a fleet of long-range B-1 bombers from a British air base over the weekend when fears spiked of a potential Iranian drone attack against planes and personnel at the facility, according to two people familiar with the decision and a British official.

The two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters, said about a dozen B-1 bombers were moved from Royal Air Force Fairford in response to multiple streams of intelligence warning about possible attacks. Particularly concerning was the possibility of a swarm drone attack similar to one Ukraine launched against Russia in June 2025.

In that attack, known as “Operation Spiderweb,” Ukraine smuggled more than 100 small armed drones into Russia concealed in cargo trucks and stationed near air bases; the operation destroyed an estimated one-third of Moscow’s long-range bomber fleet.

Concerns for the security of the U.S. bombers began to rise in late September, when police arrested five men in white vans outside of RAF Fairford, although they found gasoline, not drones or explosives. Top U.S. and British officials said Iran might have paid them, but to do what is unclear. All five, as well as a sixth suspect detained later, were released on bail.

British police said Tuesday that they had made a seventh arrest in the case, detaining a 22-year-old British national in London on suspicion of planning an act of terrorism.

. . .The people familiar with the decision to move the aircraft noted also that the long-range conventional bombers could still launch from U.S. bases as needed in operations against Iran.

Britain has faced dozens of plots traced to Iran in recent years, but no details have surfaced from these cases to suggest that Iran is capable of orchestrating a sophisticated swarm drone attack on a high-security military bases used by American bombers.

Attacks attributed to Iran in recent years have mainly been low-level sabotage operations or violent plots involving proxies recruited from criminal networks on social media platforms. Even the arrests near RAF Fairford ended with the release of suspects after no explosives or other weapons were detected.

But if Iran was behind the massing of suspicious vehicles and personnel at the very edge of the air base, it may have been sending signals that it is capable of taking at least “the initial steps” of such an operation in British territory, even it stops short of carrying them out, said Ali Vaez, deputy Middle East program director at the International Crisis Group.

Military drones can now travel up to 2500 km (about 1500 miles), about the distance from Turkey to England, so they would have had to have been launched from either within England or from some European country.  As for the “warning shot” scenario, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me: you don’t need to get a bunch of your people arrested just to show that you are serious, particularly if you cant even carry out the threatened act.

*I haven’t thought of the journal Perspectives in Biology and Medicine as a particularly heterodox journal, but the latest issue (ahead of print) is entirely about the politicization of science, with most of the articles being critical of that trend, but some approving of some mixture of science and politics, but prescribing limits. Click on the cover below to go to the list of free articles, and I’ll put the contents (with links) below. You’ll have heard of a few names:

Playing Field, or Sidelines? Should physicians engage in politics?

Donald M. Berwick

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.0.a1002386

• DownloadPlaying Field, or Sidelines? Should physicians engage in politics?

 

The Intersection of Politics with Medical Practice, Education, and Research

Jeffrey S. Flier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.0.a1002387

• DownloadThe Intersection of Politics with Medical Practice, Education, and Research

Kudos to CUDOS: Resurrecting Mertonian principles to remedy politicized science

Medhini Urs, Cory J. Clark

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.0.a1002388

• DownloadKudos to CUDOS: Resurrecting Mertonian principles to remedy politicized science

Incorporating Social Justice and Activism in Medicine and Medical Education

Harold L. Manning, Richard M. Schwartzstein

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.0.a998133

• DownloadIncorporating Social Justice and Activism in Medicine and Medical Education

Ideological Restrictions in Research Funding

Jessica Flanigan

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.0.a995377

• DownloadIdeological Restrictions in Research Funding

Sex, Medicine, and Moralization

Carole Hooven, Alex Byrne

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.0.a995378

• DownloadSex, Medicine, and Moralization

Whiplash: Politicization and Counter-Politicization in Research Funding

Anna I. Krylov, Jay Tanzman, Evan D. Morris, Julia Schaletzky, Elena Atochina-Vasserman, Igor R. Efimov

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.0.a995379

• DownloadWhiplash: Politicization and Counter-Politicization in Research Funding

Against Incorporating Politics into Medical Professionalism

Thomas Huddle

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.0.a993982

• DownloadAgainst Incorporating Politics into Medical Professionalism

Science Journalism and Advocacy: disseminating, facilitating, defending, shaping, terrorizing, or usurping science?

John P. A. Ioannidis

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.0.a993983

• DownloadScience Journalism and Advocacy: disseminating, facilitating, defending, shaping, terrorizing, or usurping science?

Social Justice and Politicizing Psychotherapy

Richard J. McNally, Sally Satel

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.0.a993984

• DownloadSocial Justice and Politicizing Psychotherapy

The Fourth Estate in Medicine: medical journals and politics from 1797 to the present

Scott H. Podolsky

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.0.a993985

• DownloadThe Fourth Estate in Medicine: medical journals and politics from 1797 to the present

*I can’t say that this headline at the Free Press made me happy, but it didn’t surprise me: “Ross Douthat: I’m writing a column for the Free Press.” Douthat is a conservative, of course, which doesn’t violate the FP’s stand of being centrist, but he’s also way religious, and the venue. like many MSM sites, is getting softer and softer on religion. Frankly, I’m tired of seeing superstition presented unquestioningly in the NYT and the Washington Post, and the FP is following the trend.  I can’t remember reading any article espousing nonbelief in these venues in donkey’s years.  Here, let Ross speak. And now he’s a correspondent for 60 Minutes!

 . . . . here I am, six years later [Douthat had discussed the possibility of a centrist site with Bari Weiss back then], about to start a column for a thriving general-interest magazine with a remarkable cast of writers and an independent perspective on the world. And it’s a privilege to be here.

When Bari and I had our conversation, I had just published a book entitled The Decadent Society, which argued that Western civilization had slipped into an age of repetition, drift, and uncomfortable stagnation.

Because God likes to amuse Himself at my expense, the book appeared just as the Covid-19 pandemic swept across the world and the artificial intelligence revolution began in earnest. The decadent patterns I had described in that book haven’t disappeared: Human beings are still having ever-fewer children, political futility still grips the United States and Europe, superhero sequels still bestride the movie box office. But they coexist with more hopeful and more apocalyptic trends—with technological breakthroughs and signs of artistic and religious and political ferment, but also with growing extremism, mounting fears of human obsolescence, and dark post-human trends.

My hope is that my writing here will help make sense of all these developments, in a landscape where both cultural renaissance and total dystopia seem more plausible than they did when The Free Press was just an interesting media idea.

This is not my day job. I am a newly minted correspondent for 60 Minutes, where the goal is to ask probing questions, not sling political hot takes. If all goes well, this column will complement that work, staying a little bit above the partisan fray while giving readers useful frameworks (or, sometimes, truly eccentric frameworks) through which to understand our strange-and-getting-stranger century.

I think that aspiration is in keeping with the larger mission of The Free Press: an independent-minded vantage point on a world that defies simplistic categories, tidy ideological expectations, and easy certainty about what is normal and plausible and real.

I look forward to exploring all this complexity with you every week in these pages.

All this sounds okay except that at the NYT he wrote about religion constantly, and, as a pious Catholic, believes literally in the Nicene Creed, which asserts that Jesus rose bodily from the dead. Here: from a 2025 essay by Douthat:

When I say the Nicene Creed, I mean it. I am open to hidden complexities and unexpected syntheses, but in the end I think that God has acted in history through Jesus of Nazareth in a way that differs from every other tradition and experience and revelation, and the Gospels should therefore exert a kind of general interpretative control over how we read all the other religious data. I think the New Testament is just clearly different from other religious texts in a way that stands out and demands attention, that the figure of Jesus likewise stands out among religious founders, that together the sources and the story and the Nazarene Himself all seem God-touched to a degree unmatched by any of their rivals. So where there is uncertainty, tension, a wager to be made, I make my bet on Jesus.

Christopher Hitchens once asked me in the kitchen of a house in D.C.: “If Jesus did rise from the dead, what would that really prove?” The easy answer is that it should at least make someone like Hitchens a lot more interested in the truth claims of religion. But really I think one can go much further than this, for reasons connected to the assumption that God is not trying to trick us, that if the universe offers us clues to its purpose we should follow them with confidence, that the path to truth may be extremely hard, but it shouldn’t be deceptive or impossible.

Given that Douthat has touted Christianity in at least two pro-Christian pieces for the Free Press (here and here), we can expect him to crank out more of them as a regular columnist. If the FP really wants to be an objective news site, it’s incumbent on them to give voice to nonbelievers. After all, the evidence is on their side, not Douthat’s.

*If you’re in the mood for sleuthing, the NYT has an AI-generated photo (below) that is hard to tell as a fake, but there are a few subtle clues. If you subscribe,click on the photo below to see them, or see the clues without details at the archived version:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the gang at Listy is still lazy:

Andrzej: We need to get moving because we’re falling behind with our work.
Hili: That’s what happens when you’re lazy and spend so much time walking the dog.

In Polish:

Ja: Musimy się zmobilizować, bo mamy zaległości w pracy.
Hili: Tak się mści to twoje lenistwo i długie spacery z psem.

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

From Stacy:

From Now That’s Wild:

From Meow Incorporated:

From Masih; this Iranian girl needs both better food and some medical attention:

Want to know why Iranians are furious at the Islamic Republic, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis?

Watch this little Baluchi girl in Iran. Look at her infected eyes. Listen to what she eats for lunch and dinner.

Meanwhile, the Islamic Republic reportedly pledged $200 MILLION to Hezbollah supporters, after pouring billions into Hezbollah over the years.

Billions for Hezbollah. Hunger and misery for Iranian children.

They call it the “Axis of Resistance.” Resistance to what? Feeding your own children? We called them terrorists. Because we have lived in the Middle East.

— Masih Alinejad (@AlinejadMasih) October 8, 2026

From Luana; once again biological women are forced to compete in sports against biological men. But this pair decided not to compete, as their principles were more important.

Sierra and Charlie are breaking their silence. The 16-year-old cross-country runners chose to WALK OFF the starting line rather than race a biological boy from Camas, Washington. https://t.co/NYyhSa5Cvm

— Brandi Kruse (@BrandiKruse) October 8, 2026

From Malcolm; somebody loves their squirrels:

A squirrel eating at a table with its tiny umbrella on a rainy day https://t.co/p5C4vnerOm

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) September 29, 2026

From Bryan. Individual monarch butterflies can now be tagged and traced, and oy, do they fly far!

Super exciting stuff coming from #ProjectMonarch ! This collaboration, forged by the @cmpsciencecentr and @CellTrackTech and now over 70 collaborators – is uncovering the mysteries of monarch migration at an unprecedented level of detail! Download the app and follow along live!

— Cellular Tracking Technologies (@CellTrackTech) September 26, 2026

Larry really does need his own banknote (the other three species are the Atlantic puffin, the barn owl, the buff-tailed bumblebee):

Presumably the other three are me?

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) October 8, 2026

One from my feed; a performance report on a d*g:

Dog’s Quarterly Review 🤣 🤣

— Wolfy (@Wolfy435) October 8, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This French Jewish girl was gassed to death along with her mother and younger sister when they all arrived at Auschwitz. Rose was eleven years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) October 9, 2026

And one from Dr. Cobb; an amazing pulsar:

This thing is insane. The Cannonball Pulsar is travelling at 1127 km/s and has moved 53 light years from its formation supernova. It will eventually leave the galaxy. It is currently 6,500 light years away in Cassiopeia, rotating 8.6682 times a second and has a 13 light year wake tail!

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-10-07T14:59:08.652Z

Here’s another pop hit rendered only with voice and guitar: “Eternal Flame,” written by Tom Kelly, Susannah Hoffs, and Billy Steinberg, and here performed by the lead singer of the Bangles, Susannah Hoffs.  The song was released in 1989, topping the Billboard charts as well as charts in many other countries.  It’s a lovely song, with the lyrics by Hoffs—the object of every young Jewish boy’s desires in that era. I have no idea who the guitarist is, but perhaps a reader knows.

I prefer the live and simpler version to those by the Bangles; this one comes from 1996, when Hoffs was 37.