Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Welcome to CaturSaturday, October 31, 2026: shabbos for Jewish cats, the last day of the month and Halloween! Here’s a short Tik Tok video from The Quack House featuring ducks and an appropriately carved pumpkin:
In the two days since Israelis cast ballots, there’s been a yawning gap between the results and the way Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is talking about them.
The final vote tally, while inconclusive, indicates that barring drastic change, Netanyahu will stay in power indefinitely. Nobody has a clear path to a coalition, so the incumbent remains, possibly through multiple rounds of elections. And after the wars, catastrophe and domestic strife of the past four years, Netanyahu could reasonably count that as a victory.
Except that Netanyahu isn’t acting like a victor. Yes, he crowed that his party was the largest, but as he himself knows well, that doesn’t guarantee another term. He spent much of his election night speech militating against a Jewish-Arab opposition government — recognition that his opponents, however fractious, have the majority.
Moreover, in the days since then, he has protested that the election was “stolen” and that the vote was illegitimate. He’s demanded investigations and lashed out at his opponents.
Usually, the candidate who won doesn’t claim that his election was stolen, and doesn’t try to delegitimize the vote. Yet Netanyahu is in power and will probably stay in power. So what’s going on here?
A likely possibility is that Netanyahu, by demonizing his opponents, is laying the groundwork for a repeat election in the coming months, in which he may improve his showing. But he may also realize his coalition is fraying, and that while he will remain at the head of the government, his days of effectively governing may be numbered.
This seems to me a correct deduction, and if a coalition can’t produce a Prime Minister, the Israelis are in for more elections. As Bret Stephens says, though (see below), a different election outcome may not lead to a drastic revision of Netanyahu’s policies, though it may call a halt to some of his actions (e.g. , towards the Supreme Court of Israel).
*Over at the the NYT, Bret Stephens offered four lessons from Israel’s election, even though he wrote his column before the election results are known (they’re still not known with respect to who will lead the country). The article is also archived here.
The first thing to say about Tuesday’s election in Israel is the one that tends to be mentioned the least: The country is having one. Competitive, lawful, on schedule and with a plausible expectation of unseating the powerful incumbent.
That’s more than can be said of the Palestinian Authority under the presidency of Mahmoud Abbas, who was elected to a four-year term of office in 2005 but has bypassed elections ever since. It’s more than can be said for Hamas, which won Palestinian legislative elections in 2006, went to war against its domestic political opponents and has ruled through fiat and fear ever since.
It’s also more than can be said for Egypt, whose president came to power in a 2013 coup and won an “election” the next year with nearly 97 percent of the vote; for Turkey, whose president stays in power by jailing popular political rivals and nettlesome independent journalists; for Jordan, a repressive dynastic monarchy; for Lebanon, whose parliamentary government cannot enforce its writ against Hezbollah and its masters in Tehran.
The second point is that, for an election widely billed as the most important in the country’s history, very little is likely to change, at least as far as the outside world is concerned.
This is not 1977, when the Likud’s Menachem Begin broke the Labor Party’s lock on power, later making peace with Egypt and going to war in Lebanon. It’s not 1992, when Israelis returned Yitzhak Rabin to office, leading to the Oslo peace process. It’s not 2001, when the election of Ariel Sharon in the midst of the second intifada signaled the end of Oslo and led to the full withdrawal of Israeli troops and settlers from Gaza.
This time around, all the leading contenders are on the political right. Not one of them wants a Palestinian state. Not one of them is going to remove Israelis from the West Bank or issue a blanket ban on settlement construction. Not one of them wants anything less than an assertive military posture toward Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. And if, as polls suggest, no party emerges with a clear majority, then nobody is likely to have the votes to force the kinds of tectonic policy shifts achieved in those earlier elections, including the military conscription of the shirking ultra-Orthodox.
All this means that no plausible alternative to Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister is going to shift the country’s course sufficiently to mollify its growing list of global detractors. But there’s a different kind of shift Israel desperately needs.
Hence the third point: What’s at stake in this election isn’t about policy. It’s about spirit. It’s about whether the Jewish state will honor the foundational idea “klal Yisrael,” the whole of Israel, and the Jewish principle that every Jew is responsible for every other Jew.
Since returning to power in 2022, Netanyahu has repeatedly violated both.
. . .Finally: What’s at stake in this election isn’t Israel’s “standing.” Of the many intellectually flabby critiques of Israeli policy since Oct. 7, the idea that Israel should have traded its physical security for the sake of some added dollops of liberal pity is among the flabbiest. As I’ve written before, Israel doesn’t exist to showcase Jewish victimization. It exists to end it.
What is at stake is whether a people who have borne the burden of Hamas’s terror and Iran’s missiles and a nonstop state of emergency that would have broken weaker democracies and the unceasing chorus of global condemnation that is one part ignorance, two parts bigotry and three parts self-delusion should have a government worthy of their sacrifice, steadiness and courage. This week, a free and sovereign nation once again has the chance to elect one.
It’s clear that Stephens doesn’t think that Netanyahu should be part of that government.
*The Ilhan Omar kerfuffle is heating up, with the New York Times reporting Thursday that “Several current and former law enforcement officials said an Obama-era investigation found some evidence that Ms. Omar had entered into a sham marriage with a man suspected of being her brother.” (Article archived here.) Of course, as the Washington Free Beacon points out, the NYT and other sources have also assured readers over the year that there was no substance to the Omar incestuous-marriage claim. From the NYT:
The federal investigation of Representative Ilhan Omar is focused in part on whether she entered into a sham marriage in 2009 to help a man suspected of being her brother obtain a green card, according to current and former officials familiar with the matter.
The F.B.I. and Department of Homeland Security investigated the marriage in summer 2016, during the Obama administration, and found some evidence that it was fraudulent, current and former officials said.
Speculation that Ms. Omar committed marriage fraud with a brother has shadowed the Minnesota Democrat’s political career for more than a decade and President Trump repeated the accusation last week. She has long called it a right-wing conspiracy theory that federal officials debunked during her first race for elected office in 2016.
But that case stalled chiefly because prosecutors concluded that the potential crime, a felony, fell outside a five-year statute of limitations, according to the current and former officials, most of whose law enforcement careers spanned several presidential administrations.
. . .The reporting for this article is based on interviews with three current and former officials familiar with the present-day investigation and six current and former officials with knowledge of the 2016 investigation.
It is unclear what evidence prosecutors, then or now, have showing that the person Ms. Omar married was her brother. Marrying anyone for the sole purpose of securing a green card is illegal under federal law. Marrying a sibling is illegal under state law, but it is not clear whether state authorities ever investigated the matter.
It is also unclear whether federal prosecutors could find a path to charging Ms. Omar that skirts the statute of limitations that applies to marriage-based immigration fraud, a crime that would not threaten her citizenship.
Regardless, they could cite the marriage in an indictment or civil action that describes a family immigration fraud conspiracy — a broader case that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has said could lead to Ms. Omar’s deportation.
Omar is an Islamist and an antisemite (“follow the Benjamins”), and if these allegations are true, I hope they can circumvent the statues of limitations by finding legal ways to indict her. Frankly, as with the Alaska fracas, I’m surprised that the NYT is putting significant investigative resources into this case, especially since in the past, they’ve downplayed it:
From the Free Beacon:
This will no doubt come as a shock to loyal Times readers, who were repeatedly assured that Omar did nothing wrong. Following her election to Congress in 2018, the Times ran a glowing profile casting Omar as a bullied Muslim refugee with a “soft voice,” “delicate features,” and a “uniquely American” life story who has come to regard her adopted country as a cesspool of racist cruelty. Running for office, the Times lamented, had “forced Ms. Omar to make public details about her complicated private life, which became fodder for conservative bloggers, who seized on her brief marriage to a British citizen.”
Months later, the Timespublished what it claimed was a “fact check” of President Donald Trump’s numerous “attacks” on the historic Muslim congresswoman, including the allegation that she married her brother. “Rumors … have been circulating since 2016,” the Times explained. “No proof has emerged substantiating these claims.”
The lazy and dismissive fact check, which relied almost exclusively on Omar’s public denials, declined to acknowledge any “murky” aspects of the marriage. It included multiple links to an equally dismissive Associated Press fact check based on some actual reporting. Despite reviewing Omar’s marriage records, the AP declined to mention the bizarre detail about the Christian minister’s signature. Neither did the Times, obviously.
*Once again I’m stealing a few items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly snark-and-news column in the Free Press, called this week, “TGIF: Fake & Gay.”
→ Excuse me, what are the VCs doing?: Joseph Lonsdale. . .
Breed how many what now? Sir! Please. No monkey breeding. Not after the pangolins. We’re not ready. Should I email my friend Joe and ask him why he’s getting into the monkey-breeding business? No, no. I don’t want to know. (Okay, fine, I looked at the website, it’s to test new drugs before human trials to save human lives. I’m still against it!)
And then there’s a new company called Warhound, started by Ben Lamm and Palmer Luckey, and they’re genetically engineering new dog lineages for war. They call themselves “the advanced canine genetics and cybernetic platform.” Woof. Here is the image on their landing page:
Guys. Men of tech. You know I stand with you on so many freaky things. I say every week: Let the cars drive themselves. I’ve installed Flock cameras in my powder room. ChatGPT is my therapist. But I do not want monkey farms, and I do not want mutant killer dogs even if it’s very cute how their ears stick out from their combat helmets. Tech men, we have found the fissure, you and I. Can’t wait to see you soon (when I’m outside the monkey lab protesting naked with PETA slogans written across my back).
→ My new favorite Cambridge professor:
Under “dictator” Mao! It’s the quotes that get me. I love this guy. He’s a political economist and development studies professor at the University of Cambridge. He’s teaching Cambridge students about good and bad ways to do development. Of course, “development” means millions of deaths but who’s counting when all those hectares of land are being passed around? Did you know that under Mao, steel output grew? These are the same people who are anti–data center because the buzzing sound bothers folks nearby. Mao’s policies killed tens of millions of people to get you that steel, and Professor Hauge is out there nodding along like, it’s worth it, baby! He doesn’t deny the deaths, he’s just like. . . yes, and? Did you want the nuclear weapons or no?
→ Oh wow, The Economist is going for it: Okay, let’s do this slowly and calmly. I’m scared but I’m ready. No one get mad.
And then they have the data:
My first question: If it’s not so bad, guys, why’d you have to use a log scale? Like, “hardly an epidemic,” but you gotta use a log scale to chill the data out a little bit (log scale pushes that “10x” to be less visually alarming, like to pretend it’s all kind of a smooth distribution, like a ladder). Anyway, I think it’s good to speak of these things. If we can talk endlessly about the rape culture of frat boys, I think—yes—we can talk about the rape culture of Afghanistan, a place currently run by the Taliban.
Alright, now I’ve gotten a text requesting that I leave New York City by sundown.
Stephen Kronberg voted 10 years ago to legalize recreational marijuana in his home state of Massachusetts, hoping that it would lead to a boost in tax revenue and a “cleaner product” compared with black-market weed. “I thought it seemed like common sense,” he told me.
But next Tuesday, Kronberg, 63, will vote to make recreational cannabis illegal again. He plans to vote yes on Massachusetts Question 8, which would “prohibit the legalization, regulation, and taxation of the retail sale of adult recreational use marijuana” while keeping possession of small amounts legal.
Massachusetts was the sixth U.S. state to permit the sale of recreational marijuana. Today, weed is legal in 24 states—and the Bay State could soon be the first one to reverse course. Since the vote to legalize cannabis took effect in 2018, Massachusetts’ marijuana industry has generated about $10 billion in revenue and $2 billion in state and local tax revenue, according to the state’s Cannabis Control Commission. The 943 licensed marijuana businesses in Massachusetts range from small family farms and cannabis-infused gummy manufacturers to delivery couriers and posh retail shops.
But there have been problems, too. A Massachusetts General Hospital study found that psychiatric emergency hospital visits among young people between 12 and 17 rose sharply after the sale of recreational marijuana became legal in Massachusetts. (Marijuana sales are legal only for people who are 21 and older.) A separate study found that hospital admissions for cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, a condition caused by heavy marijuana use that entails vomiting, nausea, and intense cramps and can last for days on end, jumped 1,350 percent after legalization.
For some voters, the stakes are personal. During the pandemic, Kronberg watched one of his family members struggle with what he described as “around-the-clock” marijuana use that led to “panic attacks, psychosis, anxiety, depression” and a lengthy stint in rehab. “It completely changed my mind,” Kronberg said. “I support free markets, but this market—the marijuana market—can damage lives, and it has to be watched closely.”
The measure to repeal recreational marijuana sales in Massachusetts probably won’t pass. In a poll last month of likely voters by Suffolk University and The Boston Globe, 71 percent said they would vote to keep the current law in place. But even if the measure fails, the fact that it is on the ballot at all shows that the backlash against legalization is gaining momentum. Parents, physicians, and even users are increasingly troubled by marijuana’s drawbacks. A similar measure in Maine has received nearly two-thirds of the signatures needed to go on the ballot next year.
If you compare marijuana to tobacco or alcohol, the plant is far, far less dangerous. Although younger people may use weed instead of thanbooze or cigarettes, weed has a far less serious effect on public health, and of course people smoke marijuana largely for the pleasure (or relaxation). Weed is not nearly as addictive. What we’re seeing appears to be a new form of prohibition or paternalism, and I hope it does not grow in support.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is still ill but seems to be improving. Still, she’s beefing about attdistractions. Please cross your fingers for Hili as she is barely eating, which is dangerous for a cat.
Hili: I’m afraid we have more attractions than we need. Andrzej: I’ve noticed that too.
In Polish:
Hili: Obawiam się, że mamy nadmiar atrakcji.
Ja: Też to zauważyłem.
From Malcolm. Voyager 1 is still operating, and is now one light-day from Earth—over a billion miles!
Humanity’s most distant spacecraft, Voyager 1, is rapidly approaching an unprecedented cosmic milestone. On November 18, 2026, NASA anticipates that the legendary probe will officially reach a distance of one light-day from Earth. This monumental span equates to approximately 16.1 billion miles, which is roughly 25.9 billion kilometers.
At this profound depth of space, the vast physical gap severely impacts communication lag. Even a radio signal, which inherently flashes through the void at the absolute speed of light, requires a full 24 hours to cross the distance in a single direction. Consequently, when flight controllers on Earth beam a command to the spacecraft, the instructions require a whole day to arrive, and any corresponding reply takes another full day to travel back. This latency creates a grueling 48-hour round-trip delay for a single exchange, a baseline timeline that does not even account for deep-space network scheduling or onboard computer processing times.
Voyager 1 has traveled for nearly half a century to reach this historic boundary. Originally launched on September 5, 1977, the spacecraft primary mission focused on exploring Jupiter and Saturn, famously transmitting unprecedented, close-up observations of their swirling cloud tops, intricate ring systems, and diverse moons. Rather than stopping there, the probe maintained its outward trajectory. In August 2012, Voyager 1 made history by becoming the very first human-made object to breach interstellar space, crossing the heliopause, which is the magnetic boundary where the solar wind gives way to the raw interstellar medium.
It is vital to recognize that a light-day is a strict measurement of immense distance, rather than an indication of travel duration. It has taken the mechanical explorer 49 years of continuous flight to achieve a separation that a single photon of light can cross in a mere 24 hours. Even at this unimaginable distance, the scale of our cosmic neighborhood remains humbling. While Voyager 1 has long since exited the sun’s protective bubble, the inner edge of the Oort Cloud, a colossal and distant reservoir of icy primordial bodies bound by solar gravity, still lies far ahead on its endless journey.
For the dedicated engineering teams remaining on Earth, this expanding gulf transforms the nature of spaceflight operations. The luxury of real-time troubleshooting is entirely gone, forcing engineers to meticulously program sequences in advance and patiently wait days to discover if their commands succeeded.
This Austrian Jewish boy was first put in a children's home, and then transported to Auschwitz, where he was gassed on the spot. He was eight years old.
Matthew explained this one why I asked “Why?”: “Because he could! He was beheaded and rather than being dead the power of faith enabled him to walk around with his head! A MIRACLE! HALLELUJAH!”
Saint Firmin who carried his head about. Nice trick but don’t try this at home
Blind Faith performing “Can’t Find my Way Home” in an early performance (1969) at Hyde Park in London. The lead singer is Steve Winwood, with Eric Clapton on guitar (he has a nice solo), Ginger Baker on drums and Rich Grech on bass. The group released only one album before dissolving. Years later, Clapton and Winwood reunited to perform the same song in a great performance (with Derek Trucks).
Welcome to the end of the work week and the penultimate day of the month: Friday, October 30, 2026, the day before Halloween, and National Buy a Doughnut Day (note that it says nothing about eating them. But here’s a special doughnut I bought in 2005, along with 0thers for the lab. It’s a “Big Dat,” a monster creation of Dat Donuts near the University of Chicago. The websote calls it a “colossal shareable treat,” but of course I ate the whole thing.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 30 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*This is amazing: the NYT broke a story that could cost the Democrats a Senate seat from Alaska. We all know that the Republicans are running two candidates with the same name: Dan Sullivan. Trump was furious about that as in this election, Alaska is a swing state, and Trump threatened to have the DOJ file charges if Republicans lost. Now, from a NYT exclusive exposé, we know that the faux Dan Sullivan, the ringer, was ginned up by the staff of the Democratic candidate, Mary Petola, who was apparently aware of this effort and said did about it. I’ve given a bit longer excerpt than usual, and bolding is mine.
In the summer of 2025, a staffer for Mary Peltola, the Alaska Democrat who was eyeing a run for Senate, received unusual instructions from top campaign aides: Find as many people named Dan Sullivan in Alaska as you can.
The staffer complied, combing through voter records to produce a list of Dan Sullivans from across the state.
This was no random request. Dan S. Sullivan is the name of the state’s Republican senator. And if the Peltola campaign or its allies could track down and persuade another Dan Sullivan to run for Senate, the confusion could cost the senator crucial votes on the state’s unusual, four-person ballot.
The plan worked. This spring, a retired teacher from a tiny fishing village along the Alaska Panhandle, reachable only by air and sea, announced his candidacy for Senate. His name was Dan J. Sullivan.
The Peltola campaign has repeatedly denied any involvement in his candidacy. But The Times has found, based on interviews and text messages, along with documents prepared for a potential lawsuit against the campaign, that not only did Ms. Peltola’s team work with people trying to recruit Mr. Sullivan to run for Senate, but the effort was much broader. The group worked to coax other would-be spoilers into the race, to dilute the incumbent’s support and help catapult the Democrat to victory.
The endeavor, which was internally called the ballot composition project, involved secret trips to far-flung Alaskan communities and the appearance of a mysterious Midwestern operative, who traversed the state using a fake name and made his pitch to would-be candidates over beers at brew pubs.
It also involved the Peltola campaign’s lawyers, as well as senior aides at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which directs the party’s campaign strategy in Senate races across the country. From Washington to Anchorage, those advisers participated in regular conversations about the effort and even considered forming a new political party to draw conservatives onto the ballot.
Ballot-stacking tactics are common in politics and generally considered legal — and have been employed by both parties in Alaska. But this operation, which has not been reported before, reveals the lengths to which Democrats went to seek advantage in a Senate race that could determine control of the chamber.
“Alaskan voters need to know,” said Elisa Rios, Ms. Peltola’s former campaign manager and longtime aide, who was fired amid a staff shake-up in August, and agreed to a series of interviews with The Times since then. “There was a lot of speculation, and voters should get the full picture when making their decisions.”
Ms. Peltola was not directly involved in the project, Ms. Rios said, but she was “definitely aware.”
The operation had impact. On Tuesday, Ms. Peltola will be the only Democrat on the ballot, facing off against the two Mr. Sullivans and a long-shot candidate named Gerald Heikes who was also recruited into the race, according to The Times’s reporting. Polls give Ms. Peltola a strong chance of winning.
The Justice Department, meanwhile, filed a lawsuit in federal court at President Trump’s behest last week seeking to block certification of the election results if votes for the other Mr. Sullivan cost Senator Sullivan the win.
Granted, the real incumbent Republican is on the ballot as “Sullivan, Dan S., Republican (incumbent)”, while the faux Sullivan is on as “Sullivan, Daniel J., Jr.”, but you can see how some voters might be confused. Rios tried to retract her comments by asking the NYT, but they didn’t have to, and didn’t do so. This is Democrats playing dirty pool, something I’m not used to compared to Republicans, and if Poltola tried to win by this method, well, she doesn’t deserve to win. I don’t know what will happen with Trump’s lawsuit if she does win.
*There’s also an article about this by the editors of the Free Press (the first “editors-authored” piece I’ve seen, called “Democrats subvert democracy to save it.”
In the race to the bottom that is American elections, there is officially no high ground left to stand on. Democrats are demanding that voters elect them to save democracy, which they insist is threatened by President Donald Trump’s desire to meddle with the midterms. Now Americans will learn whether they meant any of it based on how they respond to brazen election meddling by one of their own.
The FP then describes the details of the NYT article given above.
. . . The false-flag candidacy was made possible by Alaska’s open primary, in which candidates can run under whichever party they’re registered with, and the top four finishers advance to the general election. The organizers of the scheme were not only determined to win at any cost but were also amused by their own craftiness and contemptuous of the voters they were hoping to trick. “Peltola advisers seemed to make fun of voters while watching a focus group, surmising the participants would be susceptible to being tricked into voting for a ballot spoiler,” the Times report says.
The DSCC denied any connection to Decoy Dan’s campaign in the wake of the news, while the Peltola campaign and Democratic leaders have largely remained silent. But as reporters continue to press them, they will have to account for what looks like a straightforward attempt to subvert democracy.
. . . The report also shines a new light on a Trump administration lawsuit regarding the Senate race. The Justice Department sued Alaska on Friday, seeking to delay certification of the result if the challenger Sullivan draws enough votes to swing it from the incumbent to Peltola. As our colleague Jed Rubenfeld noted, the suit was launched on a flawed legal basis and likely won’t hold up in court. Yet the basic premise of the challenge has now been vindicated. While a state court in Alaska previously declined to remove Decoy Dan from the ballot because his motive for running couldn’t be proved, the Times report makes clear that he was running in bad faith, which state law should preclude.
The news also reframes the outrage Democrats expressed in reaction to the Justice suit. “This is clearly corruption,” Peltola said in an interview. “This is clearly a very desperate attempt to cling to power, using his allies in Washington, D.C., to rig the system even further.” With full knowledge of her own campaign’s scheme, she was bold enough to accuse Trump of meddling in the midterms. Other Democrats may not have had the full picture, but one after another suspended their disbelief in the likelihood of a second Dan Sullivan joining the race on his own. “This is an outrage. It shows they know they’re going to lose. We will fight tooth and nail. And we will win,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in response to the lawsuit. A better reaction to the unlikely coincidence of two Sullivans may have been to privately lean on Peltola’s campaign for answers, or at least decline to comment while the facts take shape.
Ironically, the Times shares a piece of the blame for hyping the Trump election-meddling angle. Days before its report that showed Peltola’s role in the campaign deceit, it ran a headline saying “Justice Department Seeks to Block Alaska Vote if Republican Loses,” making it seem as though Trump sought to throw out the result rather than merely verify whether the second Sullivan was a legitimate candidate.
It’s become a familiar pattern. Trump and many of his allies earned their reputation for dishonesty after a failed campaign to overturn elections in 2020, yet ever since, Democrats have sought to cast themselves as saviors of democracy, hoping voters will forget their many attempts to subvert public choice. That includes suppressing stories about Hunter Biden and conjuring flimsy indictments to discredit Trump. The tale of two Sullivans is only the latest example, and a reminder that there was never any high ground to begin with.
This saddens me for reasons given above. I would like to think that Democrats do have the high ground. In general I think they do, especially given Trump, but even one screw-up like this is bad.
Why would a hyperlocal life-drawing community in Seattle be interested in a nonfiction book about the shifting aspirations of young people in India’s small towns? The book was published seven years ago. What did they want from me?
I accepted the invitation. The next email had a slick poster promoting the Zoom event, with the book cover as the backdrop and blurbs from the Economist and other publications. My attention was drawn to something more intriguing: a request for a “contribution fee”, with no amount specified. It would cover promotion, coordination and administration. But, oddly, this email didn’t come from Timothy. Signing off this time was Stephen – “Organiser, Community Improv LA”, which was another group in another city. According to the improv community’s Facebook group, Stephen is indeed the name of the organiser. However, Stephen had written to me using Timothy’s email address. To add to the chaos, Stephen/Timothy had also left what I suspect was an AI prompt in the email, which included the line: “MAKE IT MORE PROFESSIONAL.”
This was undoubtedly a scam. Genuine book clubs don’t ask for money from authors. But who was behind it?
Had these individuals actually read my work, they would have wanted to stay away from me. I have spent the last 10 years reporting on transnational fraud. My first book, Dreamers, closed with a chapter on fake call centres in India; my second, Scamlands, travelled to other low-income countries in Asia to portray an invisible empire that thrives on inequality, technological change and the erosion of trust.
Along the way, I met and interviewed the scammers whose labour keeps this empire running. For some, fraud was a route to upward mobility; for others, an act of revenge against the privileged. Though I have formally emerged from this underworld, I can never delete a scam email without wanting to know more.
I agreed to pay the book club – but after rather than before the event. After clarifying that “Stephen” was a typing error, “Timothy” sent me a Google Meet link for the book discussion. I joined the meeting to find about 20 people already in there: Alexander, Andrew, Mira, Rajnish, another Alexander, and several others. Timothy was also there and so was Stephen. None of them had their cameras on. Going by the profile pictures they used, most of them appeared to be white.
. . .I am not the only author to have found myself stuck in a Zoom book club with fake readers. Countless writers with published books have been receiving invitations from reading communities that start to unravel after a basic Google search.
As often happens with scams, most invitations sound too good to be true – thousands of members, incredible Goodreads clout and, at times, something even more alluring for an author: a deep understanding of their book.
Many authors spot red flags from the first email onward, but not all.
I guess this is a worldwide scam, or at least one directed at Anglophones. The “contribution fee” is the way these organizations make money. At any rate, authors should publicize who and where these scams come from so that people can Google these offers (all of them seem to be fake). This one was from Timothy Firth, organiser of a Seattle-based life-drawing community called CAM Life Drawing. There should be an “s” before the first word.
Anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy has unilaterally passed a rule that will allow specialty pharmacies to sell six specific peptide drugs, overruling scientists at the Food and Drug Administration.
The peptides are popular among members of Kennedy’s Make America Health Again movement, and many prominent MAHA figures and Kennedy allies sell them. Kennedy said he uses some of the peptides and called himself a “big fan.” But FDA scientists continue to say there is insufficient evidence to show if they’re effective, and they are potentially dangerous. In 2023, the safety concerns led the FDA to remove the six peptides from a list of drugs that can be made by specialty pharmacies called compounding pharmacies—which make customized formulations of drugs for patients, or, in cases such as this, specialty drugs in bulk.
Kennedy’s new rule sidesteps the need to formally undo that FDA action. The rule is titled “Enforcement Discretion Policy Regarding 503A Compounding Using Certain Peptide Bulk Drug Substances” and was made available Wednesday on the Federal Register, with the final publication date set for October 30. The rule does not change the regulatory status of the peptide; instead, it states the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will no longer take enforcement action against compounding pharmacies for making the peptides, essentially giving them a green light to freely produce and sell them. Kennedy had quietly proposed this rule earlier this month.
. . .Along with the notice in the Federal Register, HHS also posted a more detailed explanation of the policy today that includes more of Kennedy’s rationale for easing enforcement of the six select peptides, which are: BPC-157, Epitalon, KPV, MOTS-c, Semax, and TB-500.
One reason cited for all the peptides was that an FDA advisory panel voted in July to add these six peptides back to the list of drugs compound pharmacies can make. However, prior to the vote, Kennedy stacked that 12-member committee with eight new members. At least six of Kennedy’s additions have ties to peptide-related businesses and clinics, raising serious conflict-of-interest concerns.
Another explanation for allowing the peptides is that the safety concerns are mainly hypothetical or “inferential” and not based on observed harm in humans. But this is mainly because there are few to no studies involving humans that show either benefits or harms from the peptides.
I looked up these peptides, and none of them have support for their efficacy from rigorous human clinical studies. Indeed, there have been no clinical studies at all in about half the peptides. RFK Jr.’s policy is not only unsound, but possibly dangerous.
*I just voted a straight Democratic ticket in Illinois, so don’t chew my tuchas when I criticize my own party, for they’ve disappointed me terribly in the last several years. I’m going to chew the Democrats’ rump by calling your attention to another Free Press article, “The Democratic case against Abdul El-Sayed.”
Democratic voters are being instructed to do exactly what Democrats lectured Republicans not to do in 2016—which is to put party over country. They are being lulled into a tribalist fury, made to believe they have to set aside any reservations they may have about their nominee or the creeping forces of illiberalism co-opting their party, because right now the only thing they are allowed to worry about is Donald Trump.
Indeed, instead of addressing Jewish Michiganders’ very legitimate concerns about El-Sayed—he who campaigned with far-left, “America deserved 9/11” streamer Hasan Piker, he of “hurt people hurt people” fame, he who once urged an Egyptian president to “purge” the police and the media of non-Islamists, he who refused to say anything about an Iranian ayatollah’s assassination because voters in Dearborn, Michigan, were “sad”—Obama sidestepped all that, offering up some of the old kumbaya cha cha cha that worked in 2008 but feels ridiculously stale now.
. . .It does not matter that El-Sayed has apologized for or tried to distance himself from some of his excesses. That is what one does in the heat of a campaign. We should assume his beliefs are unchanged.
I am amazed at how many Americans assume an apology equates to a complete change of views.
Which should be more than enough for Democrats to reject him.
But Democrats, like Republicans, have mostly succumbed to a partisan muddleheadedness that makes it impossible for them to see beyond the next election. Right now, the next election is one week away, and the only thing the partisan can think about is who will control the House and Senate. El-Sayed, of course, is very important. He is a candidate in one of the two or three races that will decide what happens in the Senate, and it does not matter that he’s not sure whether Iran or Israel poses a greater national-security threat to the United States. What matters is winning—clobbering Trump, derailing his agenda. Once they take care of Trump, Democrats imagine, they’ll have the luxury of worrying about other things. Like how big, exactly, their tent should be.
. . .Democrats should not simply reject El-Sayed because he’s hateful. They should reject him because he will cost Democrats election
His victory will confirm voters’ worst fears about the Democratic Party, that the red-green alliance—the partnership between radical leftists and Islamists that threatens France and other European countries—is coming for America. Like New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, El-Sayed will obsess over the Jewish state. He will prioritize ending the U.S. relationship with it (he’s already indicated he wants a seat on the Foreign Relations Committee), and every time someone, Republican or Democrat, points out all the advantages of supporting a multiracial, multireligious democracy in the Middle East—the shared intelligence, the reining in of extremists, the stability, the tech, the commercial opportunity—El-Sayed will scream “genocide,” and the Democrats will roll over. They will be scared of being called Islamophobic, and they will welcome more radicals into their gargantuan, oversized tent. They will look weak, and they will sound detached from reality, because they will be.
The positives are fixing a party that has values: “We believe in markets and the Bill of Rights and the West, and we don’t make excuses for terrorists attacking synagogues, and we don’t cavort with Maoist streamers, and even though we have many problems with Donald Trump—the corruption, the embarrassing spectacle of it all—we’re not about to surrender our principles, even if that means losing a Senate seat. The republic is so much bigger than that. We are so much bigger than that.” The FP doesn’t go so far as to say that Michiganers should vote for Republican Mike Rogers; that advice is not mentioned once.
El-Sayed is a terrible candidate and a semi-closeted antisemite. You might remember that when a man attacked a Michigan synagogue last spring, El-Sayed offered an explanation: the man was getting revenge for the death of his relatives in an Israeli airstrike—in Lebanon. “Hurt people hurt people” said El-Sayed, and though he later apologied for his remark, this is one of several that indicate his animus towards Jews and amity towards terrorists. I’m glad I don’t have to vote in Michigan, but if he wins the Senate will go in a bad direction. (I’d probably write in a candidate rather than vote for him.)
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has a strange desire:
Hili: Can we go to Egypt? Andrzej: I’m afraid we’ll have to strike that category of dreams off the list.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy możemy pojechać do Egiptu?
Ja: Ten gatunek marzeń musimy już skreślić.
Here’s Masih in Poland, showing her bodyguards, her meeting with Salman Rushdie, and part of her speech at a meeting:
I refuse to be intimidated. So do the brave women of Iran and Afghanistan who were blinded for daring to fight for freedom.
Death threats, assassination plots, massive online harassment, smear campaigns, none of it will silence us.
Thank you, Poland, for protecting me, standing with us, and amplifying our voices against the brutality of the Islamic Republic, the Taliban, and Islamist terrorism.
From Sue, a heartening (and true) story. And the guy liked kittens, too!
In the middle of World War Two, German soldiers in southeastern Poland started avoiding a cluster of villages.
They wouldn’t go in. They wouldn’t take people out for forced labor. They put up warning signs and stayed away.
They believed the area was infected with typhus.
It wasn’t. Two doctors had invented the whole thing.
The man behind it was Eugene Lazowski, a young Polish doctor working for the Red Cross in the town of Rozwadów. He was watching the Nazi occupation tear his country apart. Executions. Deportations. People shipped off to labor camps, many never coming back.
He wanted to stop it. He had no weapons, no army, and no way to fight.
What he had was medicine.
His friend and fellow doctor, Stanisław Matulewicz, had discovered something strange. If you injected a person with a harmless, dead strain of a certain bacteria, their blood would test positive for typhus.
They wouldn’t be sick at all. But on paper, they’d look like they had one of the most feared diseases of the war.
And the Germans were terrified of typhus. It spread fast, it killed, and it could tear through an army. When the Germans found it, they quarantined the area and kept their distance.
Lazowski realized what that meant. If he could make enough people look infected, the Germans would leave the whole region alone.
So he started injecting his patients.
He chose carefully. He sent the blood samples to German labs for testing, exactly as the rules required. The results came back positive. Again and again.
The Germans declared an epidemic zone. Villages were quarantined. Soldiers kept out. People who would have been seized for forced labor or worse were left alone, because nobody wanted to go near them.
Lazowski had to be careful. If too many cases looked fake, someone would ask why nobody was dying. So he spread out the injections over time and kept the outbreak believable.
Eventually the Germans did get suspicious. They sent a team of doctors to inspect.
Lazowski met them with food and vodka and played the gracious host. He guided them toward the sickest looking, dirtiest patients he could find, in the most crowded rooms. The German doctors, worried about catching typhus themselves, took a few samples and left in a hurry.
The tests came back positive.
The fake epidemic lasted until the end of the war. Estimates say it may have protected around 8,000 people.
Lazowski also secretly helped Jews from the nearby ghetto, giving them medical care at enormous risk.
After the war he moved to the United States and became a professor of pediatrics in Chicago. For decades he barely talked about what he’d done. Late in life he finally wrote a memoir. He called it My Private War.
He died in 2006.
He never fired a shot. He beat the Nazis with a needle and a lab test.
Two from my feed. First, a new cat song (AI, natch):
You loved “Dead Mouse Delivery.” Oscar took that as encouragement. 😼 Now he’s back with “Who’s a Good Human?” – Widescreen (better) below ⤵️ https://t.co/AAap5klY5e
— ILikeToasters (Latent Creations) (@LikeToasters) October 29, 2026
One I retweeted from the Auschwitz Memorial:
30 October 1939 | A Dutch Jewish girl, Selma Henriette Lievendag, was born in Hengelo.
In October 1942, she was deported to #Auschwitz. After the selection, she was murdered in a gas chamber together with her older brother Johan.
—
A short video about the first two gas chambers created near Auschwitz II-Birkenau: https://t.co/KArryHBbea
Welcome to Thursday, October 29, 2026 and it’s National Cat Day!
Here is a reader’s cat: Jango, staffed by Divy and Ivan in Florida. He is a male rescue tabby with a lovely ticked coat. Here he crosses his paws for you.
. . . and here’s a lovely bowl of oatmeal I had at my inn where they put me up during the Kent Presents meetings in August of 2018. Look at all those goodies: dried fruit, nuts, cream, maple syrup, and fresh fruit on the side. I would eat this every day if I wanted to live forever. Leslie Stahl was sitting at the next table, an hour or two before she interviewed Henry Kissinger onstage. The previous night I rode back to the inn in a limo with her and asked her what she was going to ask Kissinger. She told me she was going to wing it. Good times.
About an hour later, Leslie interviewed Henry. Kissinger actually lived in Kent, Connecticut, where the meeting was held. He died in 2023 at age 100. He must have been 95 in this photo.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 29 Wikipedia page.
Spain is living through a recurring nightmare. For the second time in less than a year, a high-speed crash between the same two train operators on the same busy line from Madrid to Seville threw the country into official days of mourning, shook its confidence in the security of it once-vaunted rail system and undercut its international image as a modernizing tourist mecca helping to thrust Europe forward.
Apparently the safety system on the tracks first went down, automatically stopping six trains in the region. But someone in the traffic control center told another train to keep going at normal speed, and it crashed into a stopped train from the rear at 120 mph.
At the moment of impact, Antonio de la Corte, 77, was napping in the third carriage in the back of the Renfe train. “Bam!” he said, recalling that he was immediately awakened, lurched forward and banged his knees while his brother, with whom he was traveling, hit his head. A rail shot through the inside of his train car like a skewer, killing people seated to his right, he said.
As he and his brother climbed down to the field, farmhands cut the fences around the embankment so passengers could take shelter in the fields of alfalfa and almond trees. Word of the disaster quickly spread, and Yahadi Mohamed Maulud, 41, a resident in the nearby town of Yébenes, loaded his car with water bottles and rushed to help.
“We found a massacre,” he said, describing torn limbs and one woman, drenched in blood, searching for her brother. He said he was one of the first people on the scene and helped move the injured passengers on makeshift stretchers.
Soon, a long procession of ambulances, police cars and fire trucks arrived under the whir of rescue helicopters flying low overhead. Dozens of Civil Guard officers, many wearing the white protective suits and masks used by forensic investigators, inspected the scene and gathered evidence.
. . .The scene was eerily quiet because people were either dead or so hurt they couldn’t speak. He said survivors used parts of the destroyed train as makeshift stretchers to extract the injured from the wreckage. That’s when the screaming started. Doctors among the passengers treated people in what became a field hospital among almond groves.
At least 68 people died in the crash. More than 50 others were injured, some critically.
This is the second train crash in a year on the same rail line from Madrid to Seville, and involving the same train companies.
Near-final results show that a clear majority of Israelis voted for parties opposed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s continued rule, yet the longtime premier could remain in power — not because his opponents lack the numbers to replace him, but because some refuse to recognize Arab lawmakers as legitimate political partners.
A historic surge in Arab voter turnout in Tuesday’s election has placed Israel’s Arab-majority parties in a position to determine the next government, putting the Zionist opposition’s longstanding refusal to rely on their support to a potentially decisive test.
With 85.6 percent of ballot boxes counted as of 2:32 p.m. Wednesday, partial results published by the Central Elections Committee gave 53 seats to Netanyahu’s bloc and 48 to the bloc led by Eisenkot’s Yashar party. The two Arab-led parties are projected to win a combined 19 seats — an unprecedented high — with 12 for the Joint List and seven for Ra’am. The two parties have five seats apiece in the outgoing Knesset. The previous combined record was 15, in 2020.
Despite leading the largest party, Netanyahu has no obvious path to expanding his bloc beyond his existing far-right and ultra-Orthodox allies to get the 61-seat majority he needs to form a government.
Meanwhile, the Zionist opposition and Arab parties are projected to hold 66 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, reflecting widespread opposition to Netanyahu’s government, in part due to the extraordinary turnout by Arab voters driven by deep animus toward Netanyahu’s government and its far-right ministers, Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
Claiming yesterday’s election was “stolen” by Arab parties, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party demands an investigation by police and the Shin Bet into allegations of widespread voter fraud and intimidation.
“The elections in Israel were stolen by Arab parties that support terror and the elimination of the Jewish state through serious criminal offenses of bribery, threats, violence, forgeries and the use of illegal software to mobilize voters,” insists the Likud party in a statement.
The Arab-led political parties, Ra’am and the Joint List, which run in every election and hold seats in the Knesset, received a record number of votes yesterday, and are projected to win a historic high of 19 seats. That number means that both Netanyahu’s bloc and the Jewish-led parties opposing him will be far from achieving a Knesset majority.
Here’s a bar chart of the votes published by the ToI.
Like my heartthrob Gal Gadot, who went back to Israel to both get an honorary degree and to vote (there are no votes by mail), I would have “voted for change” too.
And so much for the apartheid state! The Israeli Arabs may decide the fate of the government!
*The El-Sayed campaign in Michigan is distancing itself from this ad, produced not by them but by Cenk Uygur’s “Rebellion Pac”. It’s pretty dire, for it blames Israel and its war with Hamas on high American grocery prices. Here, watch it by itself (it’s hard to find the ad without commentary!)
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan, sought to distance himself on Monday from an outside group’s political ad that endorses him and attacks his Republican opponent over support of Israel, a longtime U.S. ally.
. . .Dr. El-Sayed’s campaign emphasized that the ad, created by a left-wing political action committee called Rebellion PAC, was “not affiliated in any way” with him or his candidacy.
“Abdul is focused on pushing back against Trump’s agenda that is raising prices for Michiganders,” the campaign said in a statement on Monday. “No one speaks for Abdul but himself and his campaign.”
Dr. El-Sayed has been an outspoken critic of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which was set off by the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed 1,200 people. The war has killed at least 74,000 people, according to Gaza health officials.
The ad, a version of which first ran in 2024, has garnered more than six million views since it was posted on X on Friday. On Monday, Representative Haley Stevens, a pro-Israel Democrat whom Dr. El-Sayed narrowly defeated in the Senate primary, publicly criticized it for what she called “fearmongering about Israel.”
Antisemitism is said to be the socialism of fools. Well, it turns out that it’s also the populism of the innumerate. U.S. military aid to Israel comprises at most a half a percentage point of the U.S. federal government budget. The overwhelming majority of that money is poured back into the American economy because Israel is required to spend the aid on U.S. weapons systems. Also—not that it needs stating—the U.S. does not pay for Israel’s health insurance system. Claiming that aid to Israel is responsible for high grocery prices is a grotesque lie that resurrects an ancient and sinister trope that blames international Jewry for economic misery.
So it’s not surprising that prominent Democrats like the party’s former chairman, Jaime Harrison, and El-Sayed’s opponent during the primary, Haley Stevens (who has endorsed El-Sayed in the general election) have offered full-throated denunciations of the ad.
One might think El-Sayed would take the opportunity to forcefully demand that Rebellion PAC take it down. This would be an easy way to win back some of the Michigan Democrats that have committed to his Republican rival, Mike Rogers. It would help dispel the Rogers’ campaign message that El-Sayed has ties to the antisemitic Muslim Brotherhood and can’t be trusted with national security. And yet, the only comment from the El-Sayed campaign has come from a spokesman, who said the ad was “not affiliated in any way” with the campaign. That’s not a denunciation so much as a weasel-word salad.
So, why not take the high road? One reason might be that Rebellion PAC is run by an ally of the campaign, Cenk Uygur. He was once a middling progressive influencer. In recent years he has transformed into a hollering podcaster obsessed with the perfidy of Israel and its supporters in America. El-Sayed appeared on a panel with Uygur in September at a conference sponsored by the Islamic Society of North America. Uygur’s nephew is the anti-American streamer Hasan Piker, who campaigned with El-Sayed in the final weeks of his primary campaign. Piker has said that the authors of the October 7 massacre, Hamas, are morally superior to Israel. He once said his favorite flag was the flag of Hezbollah, the Lebanese terrorist group that until recently rained rockets and missiles over Israel. He has also said that America “deserved” 9/11.
. . .It’s accurate to say that AIPAC tries to influence U.S. foreign policy to pursue a good relationship with Israel. But claiming that the lobby dictates U.S. foreign policy to presidents is an exaggeration that is a mirror image of the antisemitic libel that Jews function as a disloyal fifth column inside their host countries—or the idea that you can’t afford groceries because of military aid to Israel.
Indeed, El-Sayed offered a very similar argument as the Rebellion PAC grocery ad in an interview with The Ink published on August 3. “Israel is an affordability issue,” he said. “Every time you want to put glasses on kids’ faces or give people healthcare or fix a school, somebody pops up and is like, ‘Well how are you going to pay for that?’ I don’t know. Maybe we should keep our money here instead of sending it there to drop bombs on people’s schools or their hospitals. That’s our money.”
So maybe the reason El-Sayed is not denouncing Uygur’s antisemitic ad is because he pretty much agrees with its content. At the very least, he doesn’t want to offend the antisemites in Michigan who he hopes will make him the state’s next U.S. senator.
Call me ignorant, but I didn’t know that Hasan Piker was related to Cenk. But they’re both odious human beings: is it in the genes? As for “hollering,” yes, I fear that Cenk is going to blow an artery some day. As for the disgusting ad, well El-Sayed should denounce it, as it’s damaging him. But he can’t, as he’s walking a fine line between being an anti-Semite and being someone that Democrats will vote for.
The defeated Brazilian presidential candidate, Flávio Bolsonaro, arrived in Miami Wednesday after fleeing to Argentina with his family and boarding a private plane to the U.S.
Television images showed Bolsonaro and his family stepping off the private jet they boarded in Argentina late Tuesday after fleeing across the border from Brazil.
The Trump administration has said it would issue visas to Bolsonaro and his family to allow them legal entry upon arrival.
The long journey, carried out largely in secret, came after Bolsonaro lost the presidential election to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Sunday by a close but convincing margin. Shortly after the results, Brazilian authorities demanded Bolsonaro turn over his passports and remain in the country as he faces investigation over alleged financial crimes.
The son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, Flávio Bolsonaro denies wrongdoing and says he and his family are the victims of a witch hunt by Brazil’s Supreme Court. He has refused to recognize Sunday’s election result—a position backed by Trump who told reporters Monday the race looked “rigged.”
Bolsonaro crossed from Brazil into Argentina at 10:50 p.m. local time Tuesday accompanied by his wife, Fernanda, and daughters Carolina and Luiza, Argentine authorities said. The family crossed into Argentina via the Tancredo Neves International Bridge in Misiones province, a remote area where the borders of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil meet.
Authorities in Argentina, where President Javier Milei has been one of Bolsonaro’s most fervent supporters, said they presented valid travel documents and faced no legal restrictions on entering the country.
At 11:30 p.m., just 40 minutes later, the family boarded a private aircraft operated by Baires Fly, with Guayaquil, Ecuador, listed as its destination on the flight plan—flight LV-JQW, according to Argentina presidential spokesman Fabian Fernandez.
I’m told the guy is a crook (but can’t vouch for any of that), but is he classified as a “refugee”? For sure he’s fleeing likely jailing, but I’m not sure how many dubious politicans we can absorb. After all, we abducted Maduro, who’s now in jail, whil Bolsonero will live a sweet life in the U.S. of A.
At a Rhode Island debate last week, two candidates for governor turned into hall monitors. Democratic front-runner Helena Foulkes and Republican Aaron Guckian each called out independent businessman Ken Block for bringing typed notes onstage in violation of the rules. The payoff for tattling came in the ensuing made-for-TV moment: Everyone watched a sheepish Block eat crow, tucking his cheat sheet away and showing his hands to the audience.
Fear of such minor missteps going viral is just one reason there have been fewer debates this midterm year. A review by ABC News found that 21 of 36 gubernatorial races will pass without a debate. In 2018, just two states skipped them. The same trend holds for Senate elections — 21 out of 35 races will not feature a debate, a 50 percent increase from four years ago. For all the advantages that can be gained from a solid performance, a gaffe or shaky showing can be disastrous. Today, a candidate’s calculus increasingly hinges on a simpler question: Why bother?
Their reasons for opting out are all over the place. In Alabama’s gubernatorial election, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R), a MAGA firebrand sitting on an 11-point polling lead, refused to debate on pragmatic grounds, declaring, “There’s no reason to get up there and argue about differences of opinion.”
In Florida, Democratic nominee for governor David Jolly took an ideological stance, saying the nation’s politics are broken, and debates only “further the division, further the toxicity, further the insults, further the mistruths, further the bad faith.” And in North Carolina, both Senate candidates have taken a strategic approach: be open to debate but never agree to one; better to spend that time on cable news appearances and curated events to rally the base. No matter the explanation, the outcome is the same: Voters are denied the chance to see the candidates face scrutiny and each other.
Political debates are most useful when they have clear rules and formats, when candidates believe engaging their opponent is worthwhile to the campaign and the public, and when they serve as important civic rituals in a democracy. Since the late 20th century, televised debates have been common and widely expected for candidates competing for federal and statewide office. They offer a rare chance to speak to large audiences, followed by extensive media coverage. And they provide voters an opportunity to see the candidates largely unscripted and in the hot seat — conditions favorable to getting a glimpse of character and preparedness rather than monologued quips in safe spaces.
. . . Sometimes they’re successful. . . But extreme polarization, alongside candidates’ ability to bypass traditional media for direct-to-voter social platforms, has upended the landscape. The civic ritual now is to flood airwaves and mobile devices with attack ads and caricatures of opponents. If the age of debate is ending, then what replaces it should be worrisome to voters.
. . . Besides, what advantage does debating offer candidates when there’s little penalty for skipping them altogether? The rebuttal from Republican candidates can be summarized this way: “Well, what are you going to do — vote for communism?” Democrats who opt out suggest that elections are not helped by giving credence to MAGA politicians co-signed by the historically unpopular President Donald Trump. Better to avoid the unpredictable made-for-TV moment by producing short ads clipping an opponent eating crow, perfectly curated for a media-saturated electorate to devour.
Unfortunately, the author is right. Nixon lost to Kennedy because Tricky Dick wasn’t as charistmatic and sweated too much. Biden dropped out after his debate performance was abysmal. But there’s no political theater better than a good debate. It’s much more fun that watching attack ads or listening to stump speeches.
It’s perhaps the most consequential map in American history. And it could be yours.
The hand-drawn chart of the Mason-Dixon Line that eventually divided the free from the slave states is going up for auction. Remounted on backing made of Japanese rice paper, the document will go on sale Thursday in a livestreamed auction.
“It’s not that often that you can really get this close to something that is so historically important,” said Lauren Brunk, vice president of Brunk Auctions in Asheville, North Carolina. “And it was awe-inspiring, really.”
Brunk estimates it could fetch anywhere from $800,000 to $1.2 million for the anonymous seller.The survey by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon was originally meant to settle a border dispute between the then-colonies of Maryland and Pennsylvania. But when it was used in the 1820 Missouri Compromise to establish the limits of human bondage in the still adolescent United States, it became synonymous with the fundamental divisions that exploded into civil war four decades later.
You can see the original map here (the current bid is $400,000), and here’s a map of the Mason-Dixon Line from Wikipedia:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili (who is not feeling well and went to the vet) ponders time and mortality with Andrzej:
Hili: October is coming to an end, and soon the trees will be bare. Andrzej: If we live to see spring, we’ll enjoy the greenery again.
In Polish:
Hili: Kończy się październik, zaraz drzewa będą gołe.
Ja: Jeśli dożyjemy do wiosny, będziemy się znowu cieszyć zielenią.
And one from Matthew; yesterday was the 113th anniversary of the cartoon strip Krazy Kat, created by George Herriman. It’s a cartoon series that both Matthew and I love. Click to go to the tweet.
Welcome to a Hump Day (“Il giro di boa della settimana” in Italian): Wednesday, October 28, 2026 and National Chocolate Day. Here are some profiteroles from one of myfavorite restaurants in Paris, filled with ice cream and topped with a warm and luscious chocolate sauce:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 28 Wikipedia page.
Posting will be light today as I have to go to the retina doctor for a checkup on the results of laser treatment. All was well last time, so I’m optimistic.
Da Nooz:
*There are conflicting results in the Israel vote. The NYT reports that it’s neck and neck between Eisenkot and Netanyahu (“Bibi”), but It’s Noon in Israel says that Bibi’s bloc is leading (“Bibi hasn’t won, but the opposition has lost“. We won’t know who will be prime minister until there’s until a coalition puts one forward or the country has another election.
NYT:
Israelis were bracing on Wednesday for what could be weeks of political gridlock after exit polls showed no clear winner in a national election that many have described as a make-or-break moment for the country.
Turnout in Tuesday’s election, widely seen as a referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government, was the highest in at least a quarter-century. It was the first election since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attacks ignited three years of war.
Exit polls — which have a spotty record in Israel — suggested that Mr. Netanyahu’s alliance was neck and neck with a bloc of opposition parties led by Gadi Eisenkot, leaving neither side positioned to form a government.
That uncertainty did not stop the leading candidates from making triumphant late-night speeches to their supporters.
Mr. Eisenkot, a former Israeli military chief of staff, struck a defiant tone toward Mr. Netanyahu, saying: “Tonight we got the answer: The public opted for change.”
It’s Noon in Israel:
It’s Wednesday, October 28, and with about 77 percent of the vote counted, Netanyahu’s coalition parties hold 54 seats to the change bloc’s 49. The Joint List has 11 and Ra’am six. Likud leads with 27 seats, followed by Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar with 22 and Naftali Bennett’s Beyachad with 12. The Democrats have eight, while United Torah Judaism, Yisrael Beiteinu, Otzma Yehudit and Shas each have seven, and Religious Zionism, running with Zehut, has six. These numbers will still shift, and the double-envelope ballots, cast by soldiers and other special voters, have yet to be counted.
Last night, the exit polls told one story: Netanyahu had lost, but it wasn’t clear who on the other side had won. This morning, the results are telling another. Netanyahu hasn’t won yet, but the change bloc has clearly lost.
I’ve covered politics since the start of the century. I have never seen a camp organize for an election as impeccably, as efficiently and as energetically as the change bloc did. It signed model surplus-vote agreements, so that no leftover votes would go to waste, and ran an unprecedented operation flying Israelis home from abroad to vote. And by the actual count, it ended up with more or less the same number of seats as in the last election.
Demography beat energy, and the message also proved flawed and unsuccessful. The public wasn’t convinced that the war had been a total victory, as Netanyahu claimed, but it also refused to buy the opposition’s claim that it was a total failure. It was repelled by Haredi draft-dodging, but didn’t think the solution was a minority government propped up by draft refusers and anti-Zionists. It was disgusted when ultra-Orthodox protesters chanted “We do not believe in the rule of the Zionists,” but it was just as shocked when “Biladi, Biladi,” the Palestinian national anthem, was sung at the Joint List’s headquarters last night.
As Yiddish speakers in Israel might say, “Oy vey!”
Finally, here was a subheadline in the NYT last night. You can always count on them to get in a dig at Israel, but this is ridiculous:
The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for the Trump administration to restrict a Biden-era policy that allows immigration judges to use their discretion to close thousands of deportation cases each year.
Immigration advocates say the practice allows judges to ease loads on strained immigration courts and spare some migrants — such as crime victims or neglected juveniles — from going through removal proceedings if they have a good case for remaining in the United States.
Critics call the procedure, known as “administrative closure,” a form of backdoor amnesty.
After the first Trump administration tried to bar judges from using administrative closure, the Biden administration codified the practice in 2024.It hasbeen going on in some form for decades, with roughly 360,000 migrants granted administrative closure since 1990, according to government statistics.
The cases are closed, but not dismissed, so they could now be reopened.
When Trump returned to office last year, the administration announced it would no longer defend the Biden-era policy. Texas then challenged the rule in afederal court inthat state.
The Department of Justice told the judge it supported a judgment favoring Texas. The judge entered a permanent injunction blocking the policy allowingadministrative closure.
Three cities with large migrant populations — Baltimore; Columbus, Ohio; and New Haven, Connecticut — and an immigrant rights’ group sought to intervene in the case to defend the Biden rule and overturn the judgment. Courts denied those moves, giving way to their appeal to the Supreme Court.
I guess they vote on these unsigned opinions, and I further guess that the vote was 6-3. Will we ever find out (I doubt it) or get any written opinions? The decision seems ok insofar as some immigrants who should be deported are allowed to stay, but I doubt that many (or any) of the closed-out cases involve clearly deporation-worthy people.
*I love quizzes in the news, and the Wall Street Journal has one placing you as either very liberal, somewhat liberal, moderate, somewhat conservative, or very conservative.
The Wall Street Journal found broad areas of agreement when it asked 1,500 voters recently about some of the top policy ideas circulating in Congress and on the campaign trail.
Conservatives, liberals and moderates all backed a set of ideas to make healthcare and other expenses more affordable, as well as to curb illegal immigration. Yet some ideas were sharply polarizing and drew staunch opposition along ideological lines.
Take our poll to see how your views compare with the liberals, conservatives and moderates in our survey.
First you self-identify (I said I thought I was “somewhat liberal), then you’re asked how you feel about policies in the three areas of cost of living, healthcare, and immigration and the border. You have to say how you feel about four statements in each area, then you get a score. Here’s my outcome, which is disparate in the three areas, and I’m typed as a “moderate” overall. I guess that’s okay, though I just voted by mail, and my votes would, I think, type me as at least “somewhat liberal.”
*Over at his Substack site, Maarten Boudry argues that “Islamo-Leftism is not a conspiracy theory“, using evidence to show that the “red-green alliance” is very real and is coming for the West. (The article is free.) It started with this tweet, which you should read in full:
We will all soon know what it feels like to be Jewish. In France, they already do.
It will be our just deserts for having abandoned the Jews, ignored their warnings, turned against them, and even marched alongside their oppressors.
For three years, you useful idiots have been parading Palestinian flags, sporting keffiyehs, screaming “From the River to the Sea”, and recognizing a fictitious Palestinian state as a reward for Hamas’s October 7 massacre (looking at you, @EmmanuelMacron). You have boycotted the only Jewish state in the world, vilified the Jewish people’s right to self-determination (aka “Zionism”), and spread the “Gaza genocide” blood libel.
Did you really think that if you fed the crocodile enough Jewish flesh, it would eventually be satiated? All you have done is embolden the monster and whet its appetite.
So you were worried about “colonization”? Look around. The only thing being colonized here are our own Western cities. The Palestinian flag has become a victory banner, proudly waved amid the ruins of looted and vandalized historic buildings—a symbol of hatred for our civilization and everything it stands for.
In its mainstream form, Islamo-leftism is simply the left’s love affair with Islam, which it regards as the religion of the downtrodden and oppressed. The bargain is straightforward: leftists coddle Muslims and give them preferential treatment, while Muslims respond by voting for left-wing parties. The perfect embodiment of this rapprochement is the concept of “Islamophobia”, which left-wing academics, journalists and intellectuals have brandished for decades to shield Islam from legitimate criticism, much to the delight of Islamists. Instead of contemplating the possibility that fear of Islam may be a rational response to certain Islamic doctrines (such as the death penalty for apostates) and to the attitudes of the many Muslims who endorse them, large swaths of the left have pretended that it is a form of mental illness, an irrational paranoia with no basis in fact.
,. . . Even progressives who don’t actively rally to Islam’s defense have often turned a blind eye to the homophobia, misogyny, antisemitism and violence against apostates that are rampant in Islam, while sternly condemning comparable tendencies among fundamentalist Christians. This double standard is in itself a passive form of Islamo-leftism: abandoning your own progressive values for the sake of one religion, because most of its adherents have a darker complexion and you’re afraid of being called racist.
. . . The most explicit form of the Red-Green alliance is plainly visible on the streets of every Western city. For years, radical-left and Islamist groups have marched shoulder to shoulder at demonstrations and rallies against their common enemies: Zionism and Western imperialism. This unholy alliance is now held together by the all-purpose Palestinian flag, which no longer represents a people or an aspiring country, but an avatar onto which all sorts of fantasies can be projected.
For Muslims, it stands for the religious struggle against both the Little Satan (Israel) and the Great Satan (the United States), and for the religious duty to reconquer every piece of land that was once under Islamic rule. For leftists, it is the one thread that will unravel the whole fabric of the despised world order. That is the only way to understand the Irish writer Sally Rooney’s bizarre claim that “the liberation of Palestine represents the liberation of the world”. Although both groups have their reasons for obsessing about Palestine, it is mostly the Muslims who lead and the leftists who follow. If your favorite victim group hates the Jews Zionists with such fervor, surely those Jews Zionists must be uniquely diabolical.
Still not explicit enough for you? In 2006, one of the most influential academics on the left, Judith Butler, has described Hamas and Hezbollah as “progressive” movements that are “on the left”. She also insisted that the October 7 attack was not a terrorist attack but “an act of armed resistance”.
Soccer star Kylian Mbappé apologized for comments in which he apparently referred to Mao Zedong, the founding leader of Communist China, as a dictator, after facing backlash and losing brand deals with at least three different Chinese companies.
“My comment was ill-judged, and I now understand that it hurt many people in China and in Chinese communities around the world,” Mbappé said in a statement Tuesday.
“I apologize to everyone my words have upset,” he said. “This was absolutely not my intention. I have deep respect for the Chinese people and their history, and I am sincerely sorry.”
The incident is the latest in a string of cases where China leverages its economic clout to compel foreign companies and individuals to toe its political line. In 2019, Chinese state television ceased broadcasting NBA games after then-Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted support for anti-government protesters in Hong Kong.
. . .Beverage maker Dongpeng, dairy giant Mengniu and cheese maker Milkground said in similarly worded statements Tuesday that they were ending agreements with the soccer star, each saying they oppose “any words and actions that hurt national sentiment.”
The companies did not specify what prompted their decisions, but they released their statements after a clip that appeared to show Mbappé being interviewed ahead of going on the French online talk show “The Bridge” circulated on X.
The China Football Association said in a statement Tuesday that it has “lodged a stern protest” with Real Madrid and demanded that both the player and the football club “issue a public and formal apology.”
What did Mbappé say? Here’s Wikipedia’s report:
On 26 October 2026, during a French talk show The Bridge, Mbappé said that a meme “that makes me laugh the most…the one where there’s a video of a guy, I think it’s a Chinese dictator”, which refers to Mao Zedong, the founder and first leader of the People’s Republic of China. Mao’s portrait superimposed with Mbappé’s face appeared as he spoke.
I wouldn’t apologize, though I’m far, far poorer than Mbappé. And how many Chinese really would be offended if Mao were called a dictator, especially because he was? Here’s a video showing Mbappé at work:
An Australian man serving a life sentence for murder lost his legal effort to be able to eat Vegemite behind bars when a state supreme court on Monday upheld a prison ban on the country’s beloved spread.
For some, being spared the salty, yeasty condiment might seem like mercy. But Andre McKechnie argued that it was a violation of his human rights.
He filed suit last year in the Supreme Court of Victoria, arguing that the state’s ban on serving the pantry staple in prisons denied him his “culture as an Australian.” Prison officials, however, saw a security risk: The pungent spread could distract police dogs trained to sniff out contraband and could also be used by prisoners to brew alcohol.
The court ruled that Mr. McKechnie’s cultural rights had been curtailed but that the restriction was justified because of security concerns. In a 47-page judgment, Justice Claire Harris identified a fundamental justification for the ban.
“The limitation on Mr. McKechnie’s ability to enjoy Vegemite in community with other persons of Australian background is primarily that he is a prisoner, having been sentenced by a court to a term of imprisonment,” she wrote.
In his suit, Mr. McKechnie noted that neighboring New South Wales did not ban Vegemite from its prisons and claimed that not eating it made him feel “sad and disconnected from my family and community.”
Justice Harris was unconvinced.
“It is difficult to accept that the inability to consume Vegemite, rather than the fact of his imprisonment, is a material cause of his sadness and disconnection from his family and community,” she wrote.
. . .Vegemite was invented in Melbourne in the 1920s and can be found in more than 80 percent of Australian households today, according to the company’s website. Like Marmite, its British forebear, the spread inspires intense loyalty and equal distaste.
President Barack Obama called it “horrible.” But for many in Australia, it is a cherished national icon.
Barack Obama was right.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili feigns ignorance::
Hili: If my bowl is empty… Me: It means somebody has eaten whatever I put in it.
Hili: Is it possible that somebody was me?
In Polish:
Hili: Jeśli moja miseczka jest pusta…
Ja: To znaczy, że ktoś zjadł to, co do niej włożyłem.
Hili: Czy to mogłam być ja?
From Luana. I have to note that I was once an “entitled hippy bastard”:
An oldie but a goodie. In 1968 a bunch of entitled hippy bastards sent a letter detailing their specious demands to the Warden and Fellows of Wadham College, Oxford. This was their letter of reply, which speaks to how far the academy has since fallen. https://t.co/si8oxve85p
Wisdom just welcomed another chick at approximately seventy-four years of age.
The most elderly documented wild bird on Earth has been breeding offspring since the era of President Eisenhower. Biologists originally placed an identification band on the Laysan albatross back in 1956, a time when she had already reached maturity and was occupying a breeding nest. Almost seventy years after that moment, she arrived back at Midway Atoll in the Pacific Ocean alongside a different mate and produced another egg during the final months of 2024.
Her historic partner, Akeakamai, had gone missing for numerous consecutive seasons. Although these seabirds typically establish permanent, lifelong unions, they possess the ability to choose a replacement companion if their original mate vanishes.
Conservation officers successfully captured footage of Wisdom softly leaning her head against her current mate shortly before he took his place on top of their shared egg.
Two from my feed. First, the infamous Michigan campaign ad made by Cenk Uygur’s organization. He has said it’s “defamatory,” but it’s not. Van Jones says that El-Sayed should denounce it, but he hasn’t, as far as I know:
I have spoken out against anti-Muslim hate in the Michigan Senate race. I will speak out just as loudly when the target is Jewish people.
Let me state a little-known fact: ISRAEL GETS LESS THAN 0.1 PERCENT OF THE FEDERAL BUDGET. That’s less than one tenth of a percent!
But there is an ad running that tells voters they can’t afford groceries because the United States gives so much money to Israel. In reality, the United States spends money in and on countries all around the world – but this ad singles out the Jewish state. The ad is as dangerous as it is dishonest.
You can disagree with how the United States spends money abroad. But telling hungry families that the Jewish state is the reason they are suffering is wrong and shameful.
Blaming Jews for people’s problems is an old story. Anybody who has read the last century of history knows where it leads. It is a dark pathway.
This ad is anti-Jewish hate and should come down immediately. Abdul El-Sayed should denounce it today.
This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed to death as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz, probably with his mother. He was three years old, and would be 88 today had he lived.
Two from Dr. Cobb. First, apparent REM sleep in spiders. Do they dream?
🕷️💤 New paper in time for 🎃!Do #spiders really sleep? In our new study on #Portia fimbriata we tested all behavioural criteria of #sleep and found evidence for regulated, two-stage sleep with recurring REM-like stages. Out in @pnas.org!@roesslerdaniela.bsky.social 📄 tinyurl.com/3fky8ze7🧵1/9
Look how deep this crab it! I don’t think it could walk to that spot:
The #SamplingGap team recorded this wily crustacean more than 4,300 m beneath the ocean surface. During this expedition, scientists are documenting biodiversity along the Romanche Fracture Zone, an active transform fault that serves as a vital corridor between the eastern & western Atlantic basins.
It’s clear that the two great female vocalists of our time were Karen Carpenter and Barbra Streisand. It’s harder to choose best male vocalists, but surely near the top should be Johnny Mathis, who is 91. What a voice! Among his great songs is “It’s not for Me to Say,” recorded in 1957 and here performed live.
Welcome to The Cruelest Day: Tuesday, October 27, 2026 and National American Beer Day. Here are the 10 top-rated American beers from the reliable Beer Advocate. The rankings are from the top down. You can go to the description of each beer by clicking on the links. (The taste of beer #1 is described as “Chocolate chip pancakes drenched with maple syrup served with espresso and a shot of bourbon, all in one sip. Our award-winning KBBS is decadence in a bottle.” What do you think a bottle costs? Yep, around $700 for ONE BOTTLE OF BEER! (That’s in Europe; I can’t find an American price because there isn’t any left for sale.)
Note that nearly all are very high in alcohol. I haven’t had any of these.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 26 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The elections in Israel are taking place at this moment, but it may be weeks before we know who the Prime Minister will be (the voting is for the Knesset, not the PM, who is selected after discussion and coalition-forming.) From It’s Noon in Israel:
It’s Tuesday, October 27, and election day has finally arrived. As some five million Israelis enter the voting booth today and survey their three dozen options, they will be thinking about one thing: October 7.
Polls opened at 7 a.m., but, like so much of contemporary Israel, it began at 6:29 a.m. three years ago. Roughly half the country will cast its ballot on the conviction that such an event must never happen again, and they see the hawkish national camp as the best guarantor. The other half remembers who was in power on October 7 and cannot tolerate them staying in office. Those two approaches have defined the last three years of Israeli public discourse and are likely to continue to define the next four years as well.
From Umm al-Fahm in the north to Be’er Sheva in the south, from Tel Aviv to Bnei Brak, an energy has taken hold of the country. We are already seeing the highest turnout in 45 years: 16.68 percent as of 10 a.m. The last time the numbers were this high, the choice was Menachem Begin or Shimon Peres, and Israel still used the old shekel.
The closest comparison I can draw to this moment is the feeling of waiting for an Iranian retaliation: the calm before the storm, the sense that something momentous, terrible or miraculous is on the horizon.
Yet if Israelis weather attacks as one, they face this day nestled in their respective camps.
In all my years covering elections this millennium, I have never seen the center-left so organized or so energized. “The most important election in Israel’s history” is a recycled phrase, but for this camp it may well be true. After taking to the streets regularly for nearly four years to little effect, they finally have the opportunity to topple a coalition they despise. Yet if Gadi Eisenkot, falls short, one has to wonder whether the camp can easily bounce back, swap one general for another and rally behind him for 2030. Depending on the outcome, this may well be the last gasp of what was once Israel’s dominant political force.
It may take weeks before we know who the PM will be.
Below is the radiant Gal casting her ballot today, apparently taken from an Instagram video I can’t find. The caption at the Times of Israel is, “Gal Gadot posts a recording of herself as she casts a vote on Israel’s election day, October 27, 2026 (Courtesy).”. h/t Bat
She’s apparently not a fan of the present government:
“I’m voting for change, and I hope that today, Tuesday, pa’amayim ki tov (Tuesdays are traditionally viewed in Jewish culture as a lucky day) that it will only be good for us all,” said Gadot, blowing a kiss at the camera.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil surged to a remarkable re-election on Sunday, according to official preliminary results, but his opponent, Flávio Bolsonaro, said he would not accept the results after a chaotic Election Day.
Mr. Lula’s victory, which ended a string of conservative wins in Latin America cheered on by President Trump, came after a judge ordered polls to remain open an additional two hours — a move requested by both campaigns after transportation delays and bad weather disrupted voting. At a news conference, Mr. Bolsonaro called for the election to be annulled, saying the decision to keep the polls open “changed the rules in the middle of the game.”
“There’s a lot that needs to be cleared up before Brazil simply accepts this foul play that took place in these elections,” he said.
Mr. Lula received 51.8 percent of the vote, versus 48.2 percent for Flávio Bolsonaro, with 99.9 percent of the ballots counted, according to official preliminary results.
The leftist’s margin of victory was wider than four years ago, and was predicted by few pollsters. Even more stunning was that he achieved the comeback after placing second in the first round of voting earlier this month, a first in Brazilian history.
“I would like to thank the Brazilian people for the generosity they have shown me for a long time,” Mr. Lula said in a victory speech in São Paulo.
Mr. Lula, 80, had framed his candidacy as a vote for democracy and the only way to bar the return of the Bolsonaro family to power. He has frequently and defiantly clashed with Mr. Trump, who attempted to use tariffs and sanctions to keep Mr. Bolsonaro’s father, Jair, out of prison for his attempted coup four years ago.
I’ve heard that both candidates are corrupt, but I can’t vouch for that. What puzzles me is that both candidates agreed to keep the polls open, but Bolsonaro subsequently beefed about the longer period of voting when he lost. What is better known is the Lula is more anti-Israel then Bolsonaro—a connection to the Left that seems to hold most everywhere.
Venezuela’s most popular opposition leader, María Corina Machado, returned home on Sunday after nearly a year in exile, increasing pressure on the country’s authoritarian government — and its new chief authority, the United States — to move quickly toward a democratic transition.
At 11:31 a.m. Venezuela time, Ms. Machado wrote on X: “I am here. With you all.”
Ms. Machado entered Venezuela from neighboring Colombia, according to two government officials who asked not to be named to be able to discuss sensitive matters.
In the past, the Trump administration had made clear in private exchanges to foreign officials that it did not support Ms. Machado’s return, according to U.S. officials, and her travel was blocked. But on this occasion U.S. officials decided not to intervene.
As critical U.S. midterm elections near, some voters in Florida have maintained that the United States is not pushing hard enough for democratic change in Venezuela.
Ms. Machado has called for elections in Venezuela by next July, and has expressed her interest in running for president. She would be an extremely competitive challenger to the interim leader, Delcy Rodríguez, who is part of the repressive government that has run the country for a generation.
and a tweet from her party (English translation): “#NOW | @MariaCorinaYA arrives at the Church of Santa Rosa, in #Lara, to thank the Divine Shepherdess for her return to Venezuela, after ten months out of the country. With faith and hand in hand with God, she reunites with the Venezuelans and her land! Welcome, your place and your task is here, with your people.”
#AHORA | @MariaCorinaYA llega a la Iglesia de Santa Rosa, en #Lara, para agradecer a la Divina Pastora por su regreso a Venezuela, luego de diez meses fuera del país.
¡Con fe y de la mano de Dios, se reencuentra con los venezolanos y su tierra!
Bienvenida, @MariaCorinaYA, tu lugar y tu tarea es aquí, con tu gente.
There’s too much God in there, but that doesn’t bother me too much. She’d be a much better leader than Rodriguez, who is basically a female equivalent for Maduro who was elevated to power by Trump in a deal for oil.
*It’s a movement among “progressives,” and even liberal Democrats, to call for a tax on billionaires (we have one on the Illinois ballot). But Democrats are actually divided on this tax, at least in California.
The idea seemed simple at first: a one-time tax on California’s billionaires to counter looming cuts to Medicaid.
Instead, the proposed wealth tax has exposed deep divisions among Democrats and created strange bedfellows on both sides working to defeat or pass the proposal.
Drama surrounding the measure includes a fight among labor unions worried their own priorities will suffer, tech elites putting down hundreds of millions to defeat it and allegations of extortion and harassment by the tax’s architect.
The messy fight has gripped California for the past year and shows how enacting a long-heralded concept on the left—taxing billionaires’ stratospheric wealth—is far from easy, even in one of the nation’s bluest states. It has been one of the costliest ballot fights in California’s history.
Voters will decide on Nov. 3 whether to approve the nation’s first-ever wealth tax targeting billionaires. The latest independent polls show slightly more voters support than oppose the tax, with large numbers undecided. Democratic voters show much stronger support—despite opposition by many of their leaders.
. . .The one-time, 5% tax would apply to the net assets of California residents worth $1 billion or more at the end of 2026. Rather than income or real estate, it would be levied on assets such as publicly traded stocks, bonds, private business interests, intellectual property and art. A person taxed on $10 billion in assets would owe $500 million.
The tax would apply to people who were California residents on Jan. 1, 2026, making it tougher for billionaires to skirt it by moving elsewhere. If the initiative passes, that retroactivity and other aspects of the law are expected to be tested in court.
Proponents estimate the tax will raise around $100 billion from between 200 and 300 California billionaires and argue it is necessary to prevent hospitals from closing, millions of residents from losing health coverage and insurance costs from spiking.
. . .The initiative set off a reordering of traditional political allies. A main concern: It might push wealthy people to leave the state, which over time could cause a painful hit to the state’s tax receipts. Gov. Gavin Newsom is against the measure, saying it could undermine California’s competitiveness.
Newsom has argued for a national wealth tax instead—the state’s top Democrat is finishing his final term in California and is discussing running for president in 2028. The Democratic candidate on the ballot to replace him as governor, Xavier Becerra, also opposes the measure.
But the state’s Democratic Party endorsed it—in a high-stakes weekend vote in August. Some progressives are in favor, including Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat representing Silicon Valley, as well as Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, who has held rallies in Los Angeles and San Francisco backing the tax plan.
The tax will probably be instituted as there are more Democrats than billionaires in California, and it sounds like a no-brainer, though there could be long-term consequences. All I can say is that taxing billionaires beats killing them, something that blogger P. Z. Myers and his acolytes apparently favor.
It’s Monday, October 26, 18 hours before the election, and “history will not forget the role Zamir played in the last few days,” a senior security source told Channel 12’s Yaron Avraham, as an unprecedented confrontation between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir came to a head.
According to the report, Zamir received a directive from the political echelon. Rather than carry it out, he asked for an in-depth discussion first, along with legal authorization signed by the political leadership. “This is an action that could lead to a lightning confrontation with Iran at a sensitive and dramatic moment, and create a miscalculation,” a senior security official told the channel. Two sources described a discussion between the prime minister and the chief of staff on Sunday as very tense.
Sources familiar with the details said the military fears an attempt “to exploit the Iranian issue for political momentum.” That is how many will read the story: Zamir as Vasili Arkhipov, the Soviet officer refusing to sign off on firing a nuclear torpedo. The reality is closer to an officer demanding final confirmation before turning the final key.
The dispute does not appear to be over a yes-or-no decision on striking Iran. It is over the moves short of a strike, and how Tehran might read them. Israel is already taking actions that could easily spiral into war. Last week, dozens of Israeli fighter jets and refueling planes flew across Syrian and Iraqi airspace to the edge of Iran, some 1,300 kilometers from home, and turned back. Israel notified Washington in advance and called the flight a “power projection” exercise meant to deter Iran from attacking before the election. But it could easily have been mistaken for something else. Even American officials were suspicious, telling Axios that Israel may have hoped Iranian air defenses would open fire and hand it a pretext to strike.
*Reader Barry sent me the “Headline of the week from the Sunday Times,” which you can see below and read here (if you subcribe). The title is definitely clickbait. And yes, that’s subject Juliana Glasse, erstwhile Christian pop singer, in the photo.
A short excerpt:
JuliannaGlasse had been caught red-handed.
Glasse and Ben Zobrist, then a professional baseball player, had three children together and were muscling through a difficult patch in their 13-year marriage. Zobrist gestured towards the piles of books that Glasse had hidden around the house: in the linen closet, beneath her hairdryer, under the kitchen sink with the cleaning supplies. The works of Plato, Simone de Beauvoir, Toni Morrison and Ralph Waldo Emerson all stared back at her.
“You see?” she recalled him saying. “This is what happens when you read!”
Glasse, originally from Iowa City, had grown up in an evangelical household and gone on to become a successful Christian pop star. Until that moment, at the age of 34, she had fully embraced her fundamentalist lifestyle. But the suggestion that books were making her unhappy and hurting her marriage stuck with her.
“This is what happens when women read”, Glasse typed into her phone’s notes app after the fight was over. For a long time, she had been able to keep up appearances as a “godly woman and submissive wife”, where she felt her voice, needs and desires were all secondary to her husband’s. “When he spoke those words … it was like the runway of my life lit up, and the exit sign of my life lit up at the same time,” Glasse, now 42, told The Times over Zoom recently.
The phrase became her personal mantra, a rallying cry, and the name of her eventual foundation, which aims to liberate women from fundamentalist backgrounds. From evangelical wife to chief executive and gay rights advocate, Glasse has shared her journey to fight back against the book-banning movement across the US: “Under a second Trump administration, as books are being pulled from shelves, Plato is policed in American classrooms, and religion is wielded around the world to control women’s bodies, minds, and votes.”
Glasse said her ex-husband was right. “This is what happens when women read. We notice the systems that we’re in, we can begin to articulate what feels repressive or suppressive within those systems, we begin to challenge them … [and] we can actually leave them.”
This is why literacy and free availability of books is so important, as you can’t change oppressive systems unless you are literate. Glass, of course, was literate, but she was forbidden to read. The piece is an excerpt from her new book, This is What Happens When Women Read—also the title of her foundation to promote women’s literacy.
*The video below is an antisemitic ad for Abdul el-Sayed, though it wasn’t produced by the Michigan senatorial candidate but by, of all people, the odious Cenk Uygur. From JFeed (their bolding):
A new ad from a political action committee founded by Cenk Uygur, the host of The Young Turks, tells Michigan voters that their struggles to afford groceries and health care are Israel’s fault, days before the state’s tight Senate race.
The spot, paid for by Rebellion PAC, backs Democrat Abdul El-Sayed against Republican Mike Rogers. It shows a family in a grocery store worrying over food prices and denied health care, and ties their hardship to American support for Israel. Uygur promoted the ad on X on October 24, writing: “We have to suffer here at home, so Israel can get all its wars. That’s why they buy politicians like Mike Rogers.” He added that Rogers had promised to serve Israel “unconditionally,” but never made that promise to Michigan voters.
The ad is an independent expenditure, and its disclaimer states that it was not authorized by any candidate.
Critics say the ad repackages an old antisemitic trope for a modern campaign: ordinary people are suffering, and the Jews are to blame. Simone Rodan-Benzaquen said it was one of the most antisemitic political ads she had ever seen, summarizing its message as: your life is hard, groceries are expensive, and the Jewish state is why.
The ad’s economic claims also fall apart on inspection. US military aid to Israel can by law only be spent on American-made weapons, meaning the money flows back into the US defense industry rather than coming out of Michigan families’ grocery or health care budgets. Critics pointed out that Israel has also bought more than $1 billion in additional American arms since October 7.
Uygur responded to the backlash with derision. He dismissed the criticism as the reflexive “antisemite” charge, and claimed people were being called antisemites simply for refusing to fund Israel’s “genocide.” In another post, he asked supporters to donate so the ad could run more, writing that doing so would “drive the radical Zionists crazy.”
It is not the first time Uygur has framed the race around Israel. Appearing on Piers Morgan in September, he declared that Rogers “works for Israel” and urged voters: “Do not let Israel buy that seat.”
Here’s the commercial, straight from the Cenk’s mouth:
New @RebellionPac ad dropping in Michigan. We have to suffer here at home, so Israel can get all its wars. That’s why they buy politicians like Mike Rogers. He promised to serve Israel “unconditionally,” but never made that promise to you. https://t.co/mtgVOyNczg
In a 12-minute speech in Poland, Masih compares the victims of Islamist Iran to the victims of Auschwitz (which is in Poland).
The Handmaid’s Tale is fiction for you. For us, it’s real life.
In Poland, I spoke about the victims of Auschwitz and the people massacred by the Islamic Republic in Iran. History teaches us what happens when the world looks away. We must remember the victims, confront tyranny, and refuse to let another massacre be met with silence.
This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arribed in Auschwitz, along with her mother and younger brother. She was two years old and would have been 86 today had she lived.
Welcome to another “work” week: it’s Monday, October 26, 2026, and National Pumpkin Day.
Pumpkins are not all of one species, though they’re all in the winter squash genus Cucurbita. This photo from Wikipedia shows two species: it’s labeled, “A variety of pumpkin cultivars. The central and rightmost orange fruits are Cucurbita pepo, all others are Cucurbita maxima.”
Election Day is a public holiday in Israel, with schools, government offices and many public services closed. In most of the country, polls are scheduled to open at 7 a.m. local time and close at 10 p.m., with hours slightly reduced in some small communities, hospitals and prisons.
Voters are assigned to a polling station near their registered residence and may vote only at that location. There are exceptions for soldiers, people with limited mobility and prisoners, among others.
All Israeli citizens 18 or older who are registered to vote may do so with a valid identification, such as a passport, driver’s license or Israeli identification card. Israel’s Arab citizens, who make up about 20 percent of the population, could play a significant role in the vote, depending on turnout.
What’s on the ballot?
Israel’s electoral system uses nationwide proportional representation. Elections to the Knesset, Israel’s 120-seat Parliament, are held at least every four years, though they can happen more often. In 2022, Israeli elections were held for the fifth time in three years after the Knesset dissolved itself.
Israelis cast a single ballot for a list of candidates affiliated with aparty. A party receives a number of seats proportional to the national vote it got. To gain a place in Parliament, however, a party or must receive at least 3.25 percent of the valid votes. About 10 parties are expected to clear that electoral threshold.
How is a government formed?
No single party has ever won a majority of votes, which means parties must form factions and party leaders try to forge a governing coalition of at least 61 lawmakers.
Within seven days of the official election results being announced, Israel’s president, who plays a mostly symbolic role, meets with elected representatives of the parliamentary factions.
Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, will assign a member of the Knesset — usually the leader of the party or faction that has won the most seats — to form a government. That candidate then has 28 days to negotiate with other factions and forge alliances to form a government, which must be approved by the Knesset in a vote of confidence. That person can request a 14-day extension to the deadline.
If this fails, they keep trying, and if failure continues, they have new elections. More:
Who are the top contenders?
Different polls in the week ahead of the election have suggested different outcomes, which is “very problematic for political scientists,” said Assaf Shapira, who heads political research at the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Israel.
Many Israelis consider this election to be a referendum on Mr. Netanyahu’s leadership. Mr. Netanyahu and his Likud party, and their hard-right allies, are in a close race with Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief of staff who heads the opposition coalition led by the Yashar party and has emerged as Mr. Netanyahu’s top challenger.
I have no predictions here, as I don’t follow Israel’s internal politics that closely. My only prediction is that whoever becomes Prime Minister, it won’t reduce the world’s hatred of Israel. Israel-dissing based on Netanyahu is, in my view, largely bogus: a mask for antisemitism (= anti-Zionism). Netanyahu despite his flaws, is simply an excuse.
The U.S.-Iran conflict has been going on for so long that it sometimes seems stuck on replay. But the chapter that began in February changed the Middle East battlespace, likely forever. Deterrence failed. U.S. military bases in the region were ravaged. So were Gulf nations that had relied on American power. The old regime in Tehran was decapitated, but it was replaced by cocky hard-liners who seem convinced they can outlast a war-weary superpower.
What’s next? For now, the region is holding its breath, awaiting the outcome of Israel’s election Tuesday and the U.S. midterms a week later. But U.S. forces are surging into the region, and commanders are said to be preparing military options for President Donald Trump. One ominous sign is that the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh ordered some employees to leave, and other U.S. embassies in the region are reportedly making similar moves.
. . . Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu still wants regime change. “There is only one way to remove this threat once and for all: overthrow the regime in Iran,” he said Wednesday. Trump hasn’t gone that far, but he said Sunday that “we will soon finish the job” if Iran’s leaders don’t “change their ways, rapidly.”
. . . After that failure [the “memorandum of understandibng], Trump settled on a policy that combined armed escorts of Western oil tankers through the strait with economic strangulation of Iran. That combination, to me, has been the president’s most successful approach to date. But it hasn’t guaranteed his red line: Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. So, after nearly eight months of war, Trump is weighing whether to resume combat.
. , .If America goes back to war, how will it organize its forces? That’s the second question planners need to assess.
. . . “This is the moment to rethink the shape of the American military presence in the Middle East,” argued Richard Fontaine, who heads the Center for a New American Security. “The archipelago of U.S. military bases has been shown to be vulnerable.”
For now, with the bases damaged and vulnerable to drones and missiles, Centcom will have to rely on stand-off forces at sea and distant air bases. That may be a better architecture for the future, too. These forces can be surged into the Middle East when there’s a crisis, and they can spend most of their time in Asia, to which successive administrations have tried to “pivot.”
But H.R. McMaster, a veteran of two decades of war in the Middle East and former national security adviser, cautions that “you can’t accomplish political goals with stand-off forces.” To reassure local partners, Centcom will need layered air defenses and some hardened underground military bases. The Middle East isn’t about to disappear, and the long-term need to contain Iran will probably continue.
The Iran war is unpopular because it lacks a coherent endgame. Rolling the dice once again on regime change, as Netanyahu urges, isn’t a wise bet.
n the eight years since [she was elected to the House], Ocasio-Cortez has been the one to shift tactics—in ways that would have once seemed unthinkable for the firebrand leftist. The result is a political transformation reflecting real-world lessons about how to win in Washington.
The 37-year-old lawmaker has tempered her combative style, cozied up to establishment Democrats and distanced herself from some extreme positions pushed by other Democratic socialists—such as abolishing prisons and the police.
Whether or not Ocasio-Cortez decides to run for president in 2028—a much-talked-about possibility she says she is considering—she has tried to broaden the progressive base to include voters whose views don’t traditionally align with the far left, including Black voters and segments of MAHA.
. . .Yet her evolving strategy risks alienating progressive and far-left voters she needs in any bid for higher office, whether the Senate or the White House.
Ocasio-Cortez’s more inclusive approach, viewed skeptically by colleagues wary of her Democratic socialist credentials, coincides with a growing embrace of a populist economic agenda among Americans in both parties, according to a Wall Street Journal poll in September.
“I personally don’t think that we need to water down on our policy and our agenda and our principles,” Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview. “But I do think that we can expand and evolve in the way that we talk to people, and the way that we include people and shift away from a culture of exclusion.”
To that end, Ocasio-Cortez has sought to become a team player. In the past, she backed primary challenges to Democratic incumbents. She now contributes to the party committee that boosts campaigns of vulnerable lawmakers, including those who in the past have criticized her far-left ideas. Ahead of the midterm election, she has so far brought in more than $37 million, making her a top Democratic fundraiser, Federal Election Commission filings show.
I am wary of any candidate who changes their philosophy just to get elected: it’s as if they’re duping the public and have a real agenda that is secret. In addition, although she is savvy, particularly with respect to social media, I don’t think AOC is particularly smart, accomplished in terms of having done much in Congress, or, especially, experienced. She attracts media attention, and that’s what she’s good at. In my book, that’s not enough to be a Senator, much less President.
If you go back far enough in time, of course, at some point this is no longer true. Humanity didn’t always exist; therefore for every piece of land, there was a first human to lay eyes on it, and a first human to say “This land is mine.” But by what right did this first human claim exclusive ownership of this land? Why does being the first person to see a natural object make you the rightful owner of that object? And why does being the first human to set foot on a piece of land give your blood descendants the right to dispose of that land as they see fit in perpetuity, and to exclude any and all others from that land? What about all the peoples of the world who were never lucky enough to be the first to lay eyes on any plot of dirt? Are they simply to be dispossessed forever?
I have never seen a satisfactory answer to these questions. Nor have I seen a satisfactory explanation of why ownership of land should be allocated collectively, in terms of racial or ethnic groups. In general, the first people who arrived on a piece of land did so in dribs and drabs, in small family units and tiny micro-tribes that met and married and fought and mixed and formed into larger identities and ethnicities and tribes over long periods of time. In most cases, the ethnic groups who now claim pieces of land as their own did not even exist when the first humans discovered or settled that land.
. . .But even in those cases when it did exist, why should land ownership be assigned to a race at all? Why should my notional blood relation to the discoverers or the conquerors of a piece of land determine whether I can truly belong on that land? Why should a section of the map be the land of the Franks, or the Russkiy, or the Cherokee, or the Han, or the Ramaytush Ohlone, or the Britons? Of course you can assign land ownership this way — it’s called an “ethnostate”. But if you do this, it means that the descendants of immigrants can never truly be full and equal citizens of the land they were born in. If Britain is defined as the land of the Britons, then a Han person whose great-great-great-grandparents moved there from China will exist as a contingent citizen — a perpetual foreigner whose continued life in the land of their birth exists only upon the sufferance of a different race. This is the price of ethnonationalism.
The downsides of ethnonationalism have been exhaustively laid out in the decades since World War 2, and I’m not going to reiterate them all now. Suffice it to say that most nations of the world have moved away from ethnonationalism — there is an informal sense in which some people still think of France as the land of the Franks and so on, but almost all nations define citizenship and belonging through institutions rather than race. Israel, one of the few exceptions to this rule, receives a large amount of international criticism for defining itself as an ethnostate.
And yet these days I am subjected to a constant stream of ethnonationalist claims from progressives in the country of my birth. Here’s one from the ACLU of Nebraska:
. . . Once the logic of land acknowledgements and “decolonization” is followed, it leads very quickly to some very dark futures. Assigning each person a homeland based on their ethnic ancestry, and then declaring that that homeland is the only place they or their descendants can ever truly belong, would not be an act of justice; it would be a global nightmare made real, surpassing even the horrors of previous centuries.
And in practice, any attempt to create such a world would inevitably lead to violent resistance by the groups in danger of being “decolonized”. The orderly world of nation-states would dissolve into a chaotic free-for-all of competing irredentist claims, backed by genocides and expulsions. Ten thousand October 7th-style attacks would be followed by ten thousand Gaza-style wars.
I do not want that, and you should not want it either. The American people certainly don’t want it, and the insistence of progressives on intoning land acknowledgements has probably tanked the movement’s cachet in wider society. I agree with Wayne Burkett when he says that land acknowledgements have probably hurt the Democratic party:
There’s a lot more to the longish piece, but I think most readers already want little to do with land acknowledgments.
I spoke to George Will, one of this country’s most prominent columnists, who simply “rejects the premise” that AI will ever write better than the best human prose stylists. “If you want AI to mimic Hemingway, that’s easy. To mimic George Eliot is not easy,” Will said.
Other writers and editors I’ve spoken with over the past month aren’t as sure. What they’re quietly asking one another is whether they’ve already written their last essay, the way you may have watched your last DVD or mailed your last letter without knowing it. Why would anyone pay to read them when a machine can mimic their voice, faster and cheaper?
. . .Most people initially reject this premise because they think they can tell whether an essay was written by a human. Enough data and anecdotes are pouring in to show this confidence is an illusion. In a study published in August by Villanova University researchers, 1,682 adults read short fiction written either by AI or human beings. They not only preferred the stories written by AI, but in follow-up experiments, they did no better than a coin flip in determining authenticity.
The educated literary elite performed no better—in a separate study, researchers at Columbia, Michigan, and Stony Brook universities had readers with MFAs try to distinguish between passages written by AI and passages written by writers with MFAs. When the models were trained on a writer’s body of work, the MFA readers preferred the AI-generated passages to MFA-generated passages, and the best detection tools only flagged the AI text 3 percent of the time.
You can take your own test in the article (if you can access it), Raskin then asks that what follows if we admit that AI can write better than humans. After all, computers can beat all human chess players, but chess hasn’t disappeared. Will writers? There’s a way to say “no”:
Take two of the most famous political writers of the 20th century: William F. Buckley Jr. and Gore Vidal. It is impossible to think of them just as writers. They had distinct public personas that they cultivated through television, public appearances, and profiles. We are still watching documentaries about them. Their writing was always going to be secondary to developing and promoting their personas. Even if a machine is able to generate prose as well as Buckley or Vidal, it can’t replace the social capital they accumulated to get them to where they were. They traded favors with friends, schmoozed opinion makers, and knocked their tribe’s enemies. Would anyone really have cared if someone found out they had a team of ghostwriters working for them?
. . .So what matters for publishing houses is not so much how the writing got done; it is the social or political capital writers have earned. Writers write stories that flatter their friends, advance their ideals, and attack their enemies. And fiction does not escape these considerations. As for the news business, it has always involved commercial decisions. Reporters aren’t going away—newsmakers don’t want to trade their valuable scoops with robots. But as for columnists, part of that commercial calculation is that tribal affiliation and status matter. We like our favorite writers and probably won’t feel the same way about our favorite robots. A perfect case is chess. Everyone knows that Magnus Carlsen can be beat by the processing power in an old iPhone. That doesn’t stop people from both playing and watching him.
Readers will still want a face to a name: George Will isn’t going anywhere. The writer of the future, much like the writer of today, will be much more a persona and brand than a craftsman or laborer.
I’m not sure I buy this argument, but it does have some force. What do you think?
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has a question:
Hili: Do you know the answer to my question? Andrzej: Probably not, but we can try.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy znasz odpowiedź na moje pytanie?
Ja: Prawdopodobnie nie, ale możemy spróbować.
This woman, who’s in Poland with Masih, had a hard row to hoe, but she’s brave. Look at the story of the monster she was married to in Iran:
She was born in Iran and built her life in Afghanistan a woman’s rights activist with a voice that frightened the men around her.
So her ex-husband threw acid on her face.
In the hospital, after the surgeries, she sat with her head shaved doctors had taken skin from her scalp to rebuild her face. She was still bandaged, still bleeding, still healing.
But her son was not by her side. He was living with his father. And his father set the condition: if you want to talk to your son, you will do it on a video call so I can see what you’ve become.
She accepted. She needed to hear her child’s voice.
On that call, her ex-husband looked at her destroyed face and smiled. He said: “Look at you. You’ve become like a monster. You’ll never dare go out in public again people will be terrified when they see you. I dare you. I dare you to go out and talk about women’s rights.”
He thought he had broken her. He thought that face was the end of her.
He was wrong.
Every scar on her face became a sentence in her speech. They took her beauty so she took his fear and turned it into courage. Today she walks in public with her head high, and she speaks about women’s rights louder than ever.
He wanted to bury her in shame. Instead, he gave the world a witness.
That is why I invited her to our Freedom gala in Poland to dedicate to her the Medal of Freedom I received. Because she is the symbol of resilience itself: the symbol of every woman whose face was burned but whose voice could not be silenced.
Thank you, Poland for opening your doors, for giving visas to my delegation of women from Iran, Afghanistan, and Cameroon.
We are about to start a global women’s rights movement and we will go together, all of us, to the German Parliament very soon.
This time, I invited 10 women. In Berlin, we will invite more dissidents.
@FahimaSarfaraz
From Luana; “women are the first victims of immigration”:
French women are speaking up 🔥
“It’s an immigration crisis. They come to France only for economic advantage. They don’t want to become French. They are not French in their spirits.
For women it is very complicated.
There is a lot of sexual harassment by migrants, a lot of rapes by migrants. And it’s not only in Paris, it’s in all the big cities of France. Where you have migrants, you have problems.
Women are the first victims. And the government don’t want to speak about that. It’s taboo.
It’s very difficult to get migrants to go back to their country, because their country don’t want them. We have a lot of left-wing liberals. For them migrants are victims all the time.
So it’s very unjust, because there are a lot of poor French people too.
You’re a racist if you just say the truth. Open your eyes and you can see what we say. This is the truth.”
Refreshing and necessary. This pattern is repeated across Western Europe.
A musical tribute to performative hatred, shared properly:
🎶 “I Think I Just Freed Palestine” 🎶
A heartfelt musical tribute to performative activism, where the slogans are loud, the Jew-hate is palpable, knowledge is optional, and the results are nonexistent.
Please support my original work by sharing directly from my post. https://t.co/MSZ403OLOe
And one from Doctor Cobb: look at the size of this behemoth!
This footage shot by a tourist aboard Jacksonville Boat Charters near Amelia Island, Florida shows a leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea).At 2000 lbs (900 kg) & 7 ft long (2.1 m) they're the largest turtles & indeed one of the heaviest extant reptiles on Earth.Here There Be Monsters!
Welcome to Sunday, October 25: the Sabbath for goyische cats and National Greasy Foods Day. Below you see your choice of meat in the back room of Black’s BBQ in Lockhart, Texas, the finest establishment of its kind in America. Starting at the left and going clockwise: brisket, ribs, link sausage, and giant beef ribs. This food has plenty of Vitamin G (grease). You tell the guy what and how much you want, and he hacks off the requisite portion. You get sides before you get to this room.
Many will be repelled by this photo. Those people will, on average, live longer than I, but I will be the one who’s eaten like a king. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said in his “I’ve been to the mountaintop” speech, “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life—longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now.”
Pepe’s white clam pizza is perhaps America’s most famous pie (as I said, I eat like a king), and here’s a short video about the place. As you’ll hear and see, the clam pie is made with freshly shucked clams, and sometimes they run out.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 25 Wikipedia page.
While protests in France have claimed most international attention, large demonstrations also rocked many European cities Saturday from Milan to Rome to Madrid, Lisbon and Tirana.
In Milan, huge crowds of mostly young people gathered as night fell, chanting insults to Meloni and holding aloft banners such as “No to lies of the state.”
. . . . A separate anti-war march took place in central Rome. Organizers sought to distance themselves from potential unrest, urging participants to keep their faces uncovered and hands visible.
But it was these marchers who briefly clashed with police near the Piazza della Repubblica, even as organizers were trying to hold the crowd back using batons and tear gas. In the end, the protesters pulled back when a water cannon was turned on. They retreated to a location about half a kilometer (mile) away.
. . . In Albania’s capital Tirana, riot police used water cannons on large groups of protesters, some of whom set government buildings on fire and threw projectiles at police. Authorities said 2,500 officers patrolled the streets Saturday.
Looting, however, was far less frequent than it was last weekend. Stay tuned.
Melania Trump, the first lady, said on Friday that she had brokered a cease-fire between Russian and Ukrainian forces in Oleshky, a southern Ukrainian city that is occupied by Russia and whose citizens are cut off from food and medical aid.
Mrs. Trump said the cease-fire would allow residents of the frontline city to leave “through a designated safe passageway.” The city, in the Kherson region of Ukraine, has been occupied by Russia since it began its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
“It was abundantly clear that without my intervention, the possibility to bring humanitarian aid into the city and to evacuate the elderly would be impossible,” she said in a statement, adding that the “localized cease-fire” would begin on Thursday. Pope Leo XIV also lobbied Vladimir V. Putin for a cease-fire in recent days, calling the Russian leader from his hospital bed after undergoing lung surgery.
David Arakhamia, the head of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s party faction in the Ukrainian Parliament, said in a statement that the cease-fire would begin in “the near future,” with the goal to establish “permanent humanitarian corridors for the safe evacuation of civilians and the delivery of aid.” He offered “sincere gratitude” to Mrs. Trump and the pope.
Dmitri S. Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, said in statement that the Russian military was “working on agreeing upon the timing of a cease-fire in that area to enable this humanitarian mission.” The first lady “made a significant contribution” to the negotiations, he said.
The unusual announcement by the first lady, who has tried to position herself as an intermediary between the warring sides, underscored the Trump administration’s freewheeling and unorthodox approach to diplomacy. It came as Ukraine and U.S. allies try to head off a turn toward Russia by President Trump that they fear could alter the course of the war.
In recent days, Mr. Trump has defended Mr. Putin and demanded that the Ukrainians replace Mr. Zelensky. He has also arranged to purchase diesel from Moscow and insisted to reporters that “Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine,” even as Russia attacks civilians with missiles and drones.
Earlier this week, Mr. Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, called Mr. Putin a “humanitarian” for releasing an American held for more than four years on what the State Department called fabricated charges.
Now Melania would not have been empowered to conduct these negotiations without the President’s assent—the very President who is coming down on Ukraine and praising Putin. And I have no idea whose idea this was. I suspect it’s Melania’s, in which case she deserves even bigger props for helping Ukrainians in a way that got praise from both that country and Russia. I doubt the idea was Trump’s: what does he care if a city in Ukraine gets cut off? After all, it doesn’t affect the price of diesel.
*Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican candidate for Ohio’s governorship, has ignited a controversy because he put out a ludicrous and insulting attack against his Democratic opponent Amy Acton, highlighting her estranged mother’s calling her a “liar.” As the NYT revealed earlier, the estrangement resulted from Acton having accused her stepfather of sexual molestation, and thus being removed from the home. Now Ramaswamy is using the “liar” characterization as fodder for his candidacy.
In the ad, Donna Arthur, Dr. Acton’s mother, says, “Don’t let her become your governor. If you think she’ll make your life better, you’re fooling yourself.”
The most explosive advertisement of the midterm elections has split Republicans and again posed the question of what is fair game for campaign attacks in American politics.
In the days since the leak of the ad from Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio, many fellow G.O.P. politicians have denounced, disavowed or distanced themselves from the spot. Yet President Trump and Vice President JD Vance have defended the ad, a remarkably ruthless one even by the standards of modern political campaigns.
The ad features the estranged mother of Mr. Ramaswamy’s Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, calling her daughter a liar and urging Ohioans not to vote for her. Ms. Acton has said that she has not spoken to her mother since she was 12 years old, when she was removed from her mother’s custody after her stepfather was arrested and charged with raping her.
The outrage over the ad’s dark backstory has left Mr. Ramaswamy, a billionaire entrepreneur who exemplifies the anything-goes, attack-at-all-costs ethos of Trump-era politics, at the center of a self-created political firestorm.
The Republican disagreements over the ad show that major figures in the party can still become divided over the rules and red lines of political warfare in the Trump era. And they set the stage for high drama on Election Day in Ohio, a state that has trended solidly Republican in recent years but now has outsize importance in the midterms. The overarching political question is: Will a potential backlash to Mr. Ramaswamy hurt other Ohio Republicans in competitive races, especially Senator Jon Husted, who is trying to fend off a well-known Democratic rival in a vital race for Senate control?
There is now a degree of unpredictability in the state. Campaigns in both parties do not know how voters will react.
Crikey! I was going to say that at least some Republicans have ethical standards about campaigns, but it looks as if they’re mainly worried about how this hamhanded ad will affect their candidate. Their concern appears to be more on the “did it work?” side than the”is it underhanded?: side. I couldn’t find the full ad on YouTube, but here’s a news report that shows part of it.
As U.S. hospitals buy up a growing portion of the doctors’ offices in the United States, patients are paying a steep cost: Routine medical care is often being billed at the much more expensive rate for hospital care, instead of the lower cost for procedures in a doctor’s office.
The higher rates along with hospital “facility fees” — tacked on even when patients never step into a hospital — can lead to bills 10 times costlier or more,according to research on patients’ bills.
“The numbers are staggeringly large,” said Blue Cross Blue Shield Association CEO Kim Keck, citing her organization’s estimate that hospitals would bill $500 billion less over the next decade if they were federally banned from charging higher rates for the same service offered through a hospital system rather than an independent physician’s office.
Doctor’s offices tend to say there is nothing they can do. It’s the hospital systems they are part of that charge hospital rates to insurance companies and therefore to patients.
Hospital systems, meanwhile, justify higher rates for doctor’s office procedures by saying the charges are necessary to subsidize the enormously complex round-the-clock care that happens at their hospitals. Limiting their ability to charge those fees would undermine their overall finances, potentially leading to reductions in services, they said.
Insurers and lawmakers are looking into ways to curb the practice of charging hospital rates for routine care or tacking on hospital facility fees for care that was not in hospitals. But it’s been going on for years with little progress made to stop it, and it is only getting more common as hospitals acquire more medical practices, now consolidating nearly half of all physicians in the U.S. into hospital systems, up from less than 30 percent in 2012.
This “we need to subidize other care” excuse won’t wash, at least in for-profit hospitals, which have a median profit of about 5.5%, but could be justifiable in nonprofit or government hospitals, which either are close to breaking even or are losing money. The solution would be to make it illegal for procedures in a doctor’s office to be charged at hospital rates, but we know that isn’t going to happen, as doctors themselves make more money when they are rembursed by insurance like Medicare at higher rates if they are affiliated with hospitals and thus allowed to add “facilities fees” to their bills.
Colorado and Washington are reliably Democratic states where elected officials have rejected moves to ban transgender women and girls from female sports competitions. Now activists have gone around lawmakers to put proposed bans on both states’ ballots.
At a time when some Democratic leaders nationwide are recalibrating their approach to transgender issues, particularly sports, and polls show Americans generally back the bans, supporters are optimistic they will pass and open the door to similar efforts in other places where lawmakers have blocked bans.
Though the issue has been debated in many legislatures, this is the first time it’s going to voters.
“What is happening in 2026 is a testing ground for the future,” said Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, executive director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, which supports LGBTQ+ rights.
Twenty-seven states — including all where Republicans control both the legislature and governor’s office — already have such laws.
Overall, Americans are opposed to trans-identified men competing in womens sports, and the “rights” of these males have to be balanced against the rights of women to compete fairly. As I’ve written repeatedly, the latter trumps the former, as the first right carries more unfairness. At any rate, if a law simply said that men and women could compete with each other until age ten or so, I wouldn’t have as much objection to that, as the differences in athletic ability are greatly enhanced at puberty. But I’d still object in general because I think a ban creates a better climate to keep the sexes separate at greater ages (stuff like dodgeball in elementary school might be excepted since it’s not a team sport). In general, and I must say this again, sports is one of the very few areas in which trans “rights” have to yield to other rights.
For nearly three years, fewer than 10 staffers at the New York-based indie film studio A24 knew that their 300-person company was making a genre-bending documentary about convicted Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes.
Keeping “You Can See Everything” off the radar, a minor miracle in an industry where leaks are routine, was intended to prevent any interference for directors Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim as they worked.
The secrecy around the film, the studio soon realized, could also be its most potent marketing weapon.
In June, A24 executive Nicolette Aizenberg texted the director of the Telluride Film Festival: “Have something…of note to talk to you about.” Though the Colorado festival’s lineup was almost locked, they hatched a plan to unveil “You Can See Everything” there. On Sept. 6, 650 people filled a theater and locked up their phones in Yondr pouches without knowing what they were about to see.
It was a major gamble for a movie company. A24 knew it had a notorious subject, surprise twists and, in Fielder, a filmmaker who was cult-famous for his attention-grabbing stunts. But was it enough to flip the switch from silence to buzz?
The ripple effect of ecstatic reactions set the tone for a sprint to theaters nationwide just over a month later. “It destabilized everything in the best possible way,” said Julie Huntsinger, the Telluride director. The movie teaser, dropped at the same time as the Telluride debut, was instantly viral, spawning memes of Holmes and Fielder locking eyes.
. . . . Last weekend, the film opened to $15 million in domestic ticket sales and more than 3,000 sold-out showings. It was the biggest box-office debut for a non-music documentary since Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” in 2004. Some 70% of ticketbuyers were under age 35, according to the studio. It will expand to 2,600 movie theaters this weekend—on par with wide releases from major studios.
The insatiable reception has already reconfigured the race for awards that will play out in the coming months. A24 plans to mount a campaign for best picture at the Academy Awards, where “You Can See Everything” could become the first documentary in Oscars history to be nominated for that top prize.
Most movie studios are valued on their record of hits and flops. A24 has built something rarer and more valuable: a brand identity. Young audiences trust that an A24 release will be as relevant for them as a Disney movie is for families. Fans of the studio buy its merchandise, subscribe to a membership club and use “A24” as an adjective to describe an edgy-yet-artful aesthetic.
“I’ve never seen anybody say ‘Let’s go see a Warner Bros. movie, let’s go see a Paramount movie, let’s go see a Sony movie.’ Young people are saying, ‘Let’s go see an A24 movie,’” said David Permut, who produced A24’s psychosexual relationship comedy “The Invite.”
I guess I’ll have to see this movie. Other A24 movie hits include “Marty Supreme” (I thought it was good but not great, “Backrooms,” and “The Drama”. If you’ve seen “You Can See Everything,” please weigh in below.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is pretending that Ancdrzej is prey:
Hili: I’m gonna pounce on you any second now. Andrzej: Fine, but then we’re going home.
In Polish:
Hili: Zaraz na ciebie napadnę.
Ja: Dobrze, ale potem wrócimy do domu.
It is characteristic of Masih to bring the blinded Iranian protestors onstage in Poland with her to show what the Islamist regime is doing. She is getting an award, but insisted on sharing it with the victims for whom she fights incessantly.
From Luana; this appears to be a real ad aired in Ireland, intimating that it’s a form of abuse when your grandma hugs you. The ad caused a big backlash and has been pulled.
The latest ad from the Irish Government to the Irish people, who are the font of all problems in the country and desperately need to be stopped from their bad behaviour.
Two from my feed. I love the first woman! “I bought loads of Israeli goods. . thanks for inspiring me.”
I was shopping in Brighton and antizionists tried to stop me buying Israeli goods from Waitrose. They said I’d be “racist” to buy them. I asked if it was xenophobic to boycott a whole nation. They had no answers. So I bought LOADS of Israeli products and they were NOT happy. https://t.co/LohsFNCcDM
In 1983, an orange cat named George got stuck on top of a 160-foot chimney in Bolton, England. Fred Dibnah, a famous steeplejack, tried to rescue him, but George wasn’t making it easy.
After a 30-hour standoff, George was finally brought safely back to the ground. https://t.co/JaSLCYtduv
A combination of the two greatest sax players of their era (note the difference in tone and style) and a beautiful song. Ben Webster starts off, and they switch to Hawkins at 2:25. It’s one verse repeated and improvised over and over.
