Welcome to Sunday, November 3. 2024, and National Sandwich. Do you think that’s a sandwich? Now THIS is a sandwich (from Harold’s New York Deli in Edison, New Jersey):

A video: “This is a large sandwich”. I love the Pickle Bar. Be sure to watch the whole video. The latkes are as big as tires!

And Google tells us to vote. I voted by mail a long time ago, but I expect that all American readers here will either have voted already or will do so on Tuesday. Click to see where the Doodle leads (it tells me how to vote in Illinois, so perhaps you’d better click on your local Doodle).

It’s also, importantly, the end of Daylight Savings Time, which changed at 2:00 a.m., so if you missed that, set your clocks back an hour NOW. And it’s Cliché Day (when there are boots on the ground and people are taking deep dives into topics), World Jellyfish Day, and Zero-Tasking Day, a day in which you do bupkes. 

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 3 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*From the NYT we have an article called “In shift from 2020, identity politics loses its grip on the country” (archived here). The evidence:

If some Americans thought the left’s code of conduct went too far, most were not willing to say so. Polls taken in 2020 showed that large majorities of people — including self-described Democrats and liberals — said that they did not always speak freely about their beliefs for fear of retaliation.

Today, in this presidential election between Vice President Harris and former President Donald J. Trump, politics still burns hot, and voters are just as deeply divided.

But the country is also in a starkly different place from four years ago. Case in point: Ms. Harris is boasting about protecting her home with a Glock, proclaiming her patriotism and campaigning with Republicans like Liz Cheney.

. . . Yascha Mounk, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University, is the author of “The Identity Trap,” which traced how academic theories about the shared injustices of certain identity groups spread to mainstream organizations.

Today, he said of progressives, “The brief era of their unquestioned dominance is now coming to an end.”

It’s not that Americans have become more accepting of or inured to discrimination. Polling has consistently found that a majority of the country believes racism remains a problem. Black, Latino and Asian people say it is a bigger concern than white people do. And the country is still fighting over how to address discrimination based on gender, race and education.

What seems to have shifted, according to scholars and political strategists who have closely watched how public views have evolved, is that people are now acknowledging that certain identity-focused progressive solutions to injustice were never broadly popular.

. . . Mr. Trump’s attacks on the Democratic Party as captive to radicals and activists are not likely to mean much to many liberals. But some of the most effective pushback to the hard left has, in fact, come from within institutions sympathetic to progressive impulses.

In academia, many top universities no longer mandate diversity statements for job applicants. Some schools have rebuked student activists for heckling visiting speakers and suspended them for disrupting events. And to the consternation of free-speech supporters, they have cracked down on pro-Palestinian activists who have pitched tents in campus quads and taken over academic buildings.

I am a free-speech supporter, and free speech is NOT inconsistent with cracking down on violations of campus “time, place, and manner” regulations put in place to ensure free access to education and discussion. The last sentence above is misleading.  But there are signs that identity politics, an important part of wokeness, are abating a bit:

Attempts to integrate academic terminology into the vernacular have also not caught on. For instance, when the Pew Research Center asked Latinos in 2020 if they used the gender-neutral term “Latinx,” 3 percent said yes. When Pew asked the same question this year, it was 4 percent.

The article continues with some caveats: for example, DEI initiatives are firmly integrated into many areas of American society.  But we’re back in the “Is wokeness on the wane?” debate, and while my confirmation bias wants me to say “yes”, I’m not so sure. I think Kamala Harris, for example, has largely abjured identity politics because she knows that it turns off both the center Left and center Right, and I’m betting that if she’s elected, the issues will come roaring back, as progressives will feel vindicated. I hope I’m wrong, as I was wrong before when I though that Biden’s election signaled the end of wokeness.

*The Gatestone Institute discusses the ways that the Biden/Harris administration, despite promising to keep the bomb out of Iran’s hands, has actually facilitated it. I’ve been banging on about this for a while, and although I Gatestone is a conservative think tank, I do agree with their view that the U.S. doesn’t much are about whether Iran gets nukes:

One of the most alarming features of the Biden-Harris administration is its permissive stance towards Iran’s nuclear program. When this administration came into power, they promised that they would effectively address and curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Yet, nearly four years into Biden’s term, US Secretary of Stare Antony Blinken announced that Iran is “probably 1-2 weeks” away from having nuclear weapons — and that was in July.

Iran is now just a technical step away from acquiring a nuclear bomb, and these advances have been taking place while the Biden-Harris administration has done not a single thing to stop or even slow them.

According to the latest report of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, Iran has significantly enlarged its stockpile of enriched uranium, and brought it to enrichment levels dangerously close to weapons-grade. Tehran has also ramped up the number of operational centrifuges and invested heavily in the research and development of advanced centrifuge technologies. Iran is evidently on a fast track toward achieving full nuclear weapons capability. Earlier findings paint an even more troubling picture: Iran’s uranium enrichment levels reportedly reached 84%, just shy of the 90% level required for creating nuclear weapons.

Why are the US and its allies not alarmed?

Not only has the Biden-Harris administration failed to take any action to thwart the Iranian regime’s nuclear ambitions, it has actually facilitated Iran’s progress. Through its policies, the Biden-Harris administration has provided Iran with “closer to $60 billion,” funds that are almost certainly being used to bolster the regime’s military and nuclear programs.

The Biden-Harris administration has not only also failed to enforce sanctions on Iran, they have given it massive financial resources and political cover, allowing it to develop its nuclear program to the point of near-completion.

The Biden-Harris administration has, in fact, protected Iran’s progress. After Iran launched a barrage of ballistic missiles at Israel on October 1, the Biden-Harris administration immediately urged Israel not to target Iran’s nuclear facilities in retaliation. Israel has a clear opportunity to strike at the heart of Iran’s nuclear program and potentially it from acquiring nuclear weapons. The U.S. administration, however, has been trying to shield Iran from such consequences, allowing its nuclear infrastructure to remain intact and continue advancing.

By pressuring Israel to refrain from defending itself, the Biden-Harris administration seems to be protecting Iran’s nuclear ambitions, raising serious questions about U.S. priorities in the Middle East. At least one Iranian-American, Ariane Tabatabai, for instance, who has security clearance and close ties to the Iranian regime, not only still works at the Pentagon, but was recently promoted.

Iran, of course, has been lying about its ambitions all along. And if it gets the bomb, it’s bye-bye Israel—or so I think i my more pessimistic moments. Perhaps Israel is waiting until after the election to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. But the U.S. has been curiously incurious about Iran’s developing weapons. And I have no idea whether either election result will affect the outcome. I think that only Israel can take the decision to step in, and it will certainly need American help.

*Author Suzanne Nossel has led the PEN America, the free-expression writers’ organization, since 2013. Under her stewardship, according to the NYT,

. . . . . its membership increased to more than 4,500, while its annual revenue grew to about $25.8 million, up from $4.3 million.

The group, by far the largest of the national PEN International chapters worldwide, also expanded beyond its traditional focus on the literary world, starting initiatives relating to free speech on campus, online harassment, book bans and the spread of state laws restricting teaching on race, gender and other “divisive concepts.”

That sounds pretty good, right? But PEN America has also had its troubles, many centered around Charlie Hebdo and the war in Gaza. After all this, Nossel has decided to leave, for PEN, like many other groups, is imploding with wokeness, and Nossel is calling it quits:

. . . . .There have also been flare-ups of intense controversy within the group’s ranks. In 2015, when PEN America announced a decision to give a “freedom of expression courage award” to the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo, six writers serving as table hosts withdrew from the annual gala, while more than 200 members signed a letter that criticized honoring a publication that many Muslims in France saw as racist and Islamophobic.

It is ridiculous that this organization more or less defended the outrage of Muslims over a magazine that made fun of all faiths, and by so doing gave its imprimatur on censorship.  I’m not sure what the barriers were that prevented marginalized people from being heard, but they surely are largely gone:

In the aftermath of that controversy, PEN America worked to diversify its offerings and its ranks, while also increasingly emphasizing that free speech is not just about defending the right to speak, but also dismantling barriers that prevent marginalized people from being heard.

Finally, the war (Nossel is Jewish and has relatives in Israel):

But tensions exploded anew after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel ignited a war. Critics inside and outside the group charged PEN America with failing to adequately speak out about dire threats to Palestinian writers and cultural life posed by Israel’s devastating military campaign against Hamas in Gaza. Many saw a sharp contrast with the group’s full-throated defense of Ukrainian writers after the 2022 Russian invasion.

There was a series of open letters signed by hundreds of writers harshly criticizing the group, accusing it of betraying its ideals and displaying a bias. There were calls for Nossel’s departure, with one letter accusing the group of “parroting” the Israeli government’s talking points and blasting what it described as her “longstanding commitments to Zionism, Islamophobia, and imperial wars in the Middle East.”

In late April, PEN America canceled its literary awards ceremony and then its annual World Voices Festival, after many participants withdrew in protest. The cancellations in turn prompted charges and countercharges of bullying and intimidating. Some PEN members accused critics of acting in an “authoritarian” spirit, while others argued that some of the criticism of Nossel, who is Jewish, had crossed a line into antisemitism.

This is a damn shame, as Nossel was a good leader and PEN America was a good organization. But since the Charlie Hebdo fracas, I’ve been very wary of it, and finally Nossel is throwing in the towel. It seems that the organization is increasingly taking stands against free speech, and that may be its undoing.

*Our student newspaper, The Chicago Maroon, reports that after a student was placed on involuntary leave by the University for engaging in prohibited activities during a recent pro-Palestinian demonstration, the students and their supporters engaged in yet another demonstration, this time trying to get the punishment rescinded. As we’ve learned, one demand of these protestors, here and almost everywhere, is that they must be exempt from punishment when they break either the law or campus regulations. (They don’t seem to like the part of civil disobedience where you have to take the punishment for breaking the law.) There is nothing a student can do, apparently, that warrants any kind of university punishment (the City of Chicago also dropped trespassing charges against protesters arrested last spring).

Pro-Palestine protesters delivered a petition to the Office of the Dean of Students on Tuesday, urging the University to reverse the involuntary leave of absence on which a student was placed after being arrested at the October 11 protest. After being placed on leave, the student was ordered to immediately vacate student housing in accordance with the University’s involuntary leave of absence policy.

The rally, led by UChicago United for Palestine (UCUP), began at approximately 11:40 a.m. with around 40 protesters gathered outside Harper Memorial Library. It started with chants of “Free, free Palestine!” followed by speakers reading the petition aloud, referring to the student as “A.” to protect his identity.

“October 11 was A.’s first time going to a protest at UChicago. Now the university has forced him out of his home, threatened him with arrest if he returns to campus, and cut off his access to his meal plan—imposing an unjust, unlawful sanction on this student in violation of its own policies and state law,” the petition read.

The Maroon has verified that the petition to reverse the involuntary leave of absence gathered over 1,500 individual signatures, including students, faculty and staff, community members, and various organizations.

During the rally, speakers demanded that the student be permitted to return to campus and resume his education immediately. “An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us,” a speaker said, which was followed by cheers from the crowd.

According to University policy, the decision to place a student on involuntary leave of absence is up to the discretion of the dean of students. The student may request a review; however, once the dean reaches a final decision, it is “final and unreviewable within the University.”

. . . At approximately 11:52 a.m., the protesters entered Harper. The group continued chanting, “Hey deans, what do you say, how many kids did you bomb today?” and “UChicago loves investments, UChicago hates its students,” as they moved toward the Office of the Dean of Students.

Seriously? The deans are bombing Gaza? That’s is what used to be called a “stretcher” in America, and a big one.  Not only that, but if you go to the page containing this article, the Maroon has blurred the faces of the students entering the building to deliver the petition! Although many of the students are wearing masks or keffiyehs, the faces still get blurred. This is what makes me think that the student newspaper is actually protecting the protestors from being identified, though it’s perfectly legal to photographs students demonstrating in public. We’re not only in for another year of protests that violate laws and campus regulations, but also of the Maroon protecting them. (After a year of nonstop news siding with Palestine, the paper promised to print an article giving the Israeli side. It never did.)

*Finally, never-Trumper Andrew Sullivan, who said he is voting for Harris despite his conservative leanings, tries to reassure us that America will survive whoever wins on November 5. His column is “Does liberal democracy end next week?”, and to Sullivan, Trump is the archnemesis of liberal democracy:

Critically, the oldest and greatest cultural bulwark of liberalism — Christianity — also collapsed. The deep belief that we are all equal in the eyes of God and all equally flawed and forgivable gave way to a fundamentalist hubris on the right that saw liberals not as citizens who were misguided but as enemies who had to be destroyed. And on the left, Trump supporters soon became viewed as alien, anathema, unfathomable, deplorable — bigots for whom forgiveness was unthinkable.

That’s why we’re so on edge right now. For the two tribes, this has come to seem existential. If Harris wins, the right fears ever-more cultural onslaught, persecution, lawfare, and media gaslighting. If Trump wins, the left fears an end to the rule of law and the birth of a fascist regime — complete with camps, tanks, and an unquestionable leader. It feels less like an election than the eve of a final battle.

Well, of course I take issue with Sullivan’s encomiums for Christianity as “the greatest cultyural bulwark of liberalism” (how about “rationality”?), but let’s move on:

But is it? As someone who has seen our polity through this lens for some time, I’m now asking myself if I may have overstated the case. We will find out in the next few days and weeks if our worst fears materialize of a liberal democracy come undone. But here are some brief, unusually optimistic, thoughts ahead of the abyss in front of us.

Nothing is ever as bad as you think it is at the time. Yes, our discourse is horrid and made worse by social media. Yes, in the abstract, we have come to hate and fear one another. But in practice, in real life, I haven’t witnessed social collapse. Yes, things get a bit edgy. Yes, it’s hard to be a moderate in an evangelical church, or a liberal in a leftist corporation. But this is not 1968, as we saw this August in Chicago. American easy-going pragmatism still endures in both red and blue America. We feared American fascism in 2016. It didn’t arrive. The system survived one Trump term. It may well another.

Our 50-50 divide also helps in a way: it makes the red-blue gulf nerve-wracking — but it also effectively bars a huge victory for either side any time soon. We are more likely to continue gridlocked than descend into a civil war. Compared with any other developed nation, we’re also booming economically, despite our mutual loathing, innovating away, and still a cultural global hub. We’re not Weimar Germany — a new democracy wracked by hyper-inflation, mass unemployment, and wounded national pride. We are the oldest democracy in the world.

Federalism and the First Amendment are also the safety valves bequeathed us by our Founders. Some questions — like abortion — really are hard to compromise on, but forcing one side’s settlement on everyone (Roe) is the illiberal move. So in some ways, Dobbs has actually made liberalism easier, not harder. It allows for different legal regimes — and experience of them.

Is Roe really forcing one settlement on everyone? If you don’t want an abortion, don’t get one. If there is any forcing going on here, it is forcing women who want abortions NOT to get one. I suppose a pro-choice scenario could be seen as engaging in “forcing” if you think that abortion is murder and you’re allowing murder to take place, but there’s a reason why those who favor abortion are called “pro-choice.” But let me close with one more statement from that article:

. . . . . the most extreme woke attempts at a cultural revolution — the bid to end the reality of biological sex, for example — eventually reveal themselves as forms of insanity and cruelty, and fail.

But he appends this:

Even so, you can now move to Minnesota and have your child’s sex reassigned before puberty; and you can also move to a state where boys are not at risk of being chemically castrated because they act like girls.

And this bit, which is surprising:

Liberalism wins not because it is better; but because every other option is worse. And as we fret about this election and its aftermath, that’s worth remembering. Liberal democracy is under threat, and we should be vigilant in protecting it. But there’s a reason the liberal settlement has lasted, however ragged. You declare liberalism over … and then realize you’ve got nothing credible or unifying to replace it with.

Is Sully declaring himself a liberal? Well, I’ll take his vote regardless. Perhaps his Kumbaya Moment is overexaggerated, but in truth I’m trying to adopt his mindset, hoping that whoever wins the election, our Republic is sturdy enough to stand.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is both philosophizing and psychologizing:

Hili: How can scoundrels look at themselves in the mirror?

A: Easily.Rationalization always wins over rationalism.

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

From Jesus of the Day:

From Malcolm:

From The Cat House on the Kings, a new variant on an old meme:

From Masih; a particularly brave Iranian woman (un-hijabbed).  She fights a guy wearing a uniform!

See how this Iranian Iranian woman fight against a street harasser in uniform, showing fearless defiance. She’s one of many Iranian women refusing to stay silent and demanding their rights.

In my country, if you’re sexually harassed, authorities blame the victim, especially if… pic.twitter.com/ThWiBPE3SG

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) November 2, 2024

From Pinkah; you’d wait until the end of the Universe (whenever that is) until a monkey typed even one sentence from Shakespeare:

Monkeys will never type Shakespeare, study finds. (This deserves an Ig Nobel Prize!) https://t.co/j40EZxBASZ

— Steven Pinker (@sapinker) November 1, 2024

From Simon; a tweet by a Republican organization:

REMINDER: throw out rotting pumpkins now that it’s November pic.twitter.com/zBY4NF8Ssx

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) November 1, 2024

From Bryan, a science-based argument for free speech by Robert Oppenheimer (sound up):

“As long as men are free to ask what they will, free to say what they think, free to think what they must, science will never regress and freedom itself will never be wholly lost.”

– J. Robert Oppenheimer

pic.twitter.com/dJdZ9eCAED

— The Rabbit Hole (@TheRabbitHole84) November 1, 2024

From Malgorzata: The head of the UN gets his tweet “community noted”:

The UN Secretary General @antonioguterres gets Community Noted … again, over Russia and Ukraine. How utterly embarrassing and self-created by this pathetic man of a so-called leader. pic.twitter.com/seOXVwmkjx

— Arsen Ostrovsky 🎗️ (@Ostrov_A) October 27, 2024

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a pogrom that, if it lasted 24 hours, killed about one Jew every 30 seconds:

3-4 November 1943 | Aktion Erntefest (Harvest Festival) | The Germans murdered ca. 42,000 Jews in Lublin District of General Government. The massacre was the final element of Operation Reinhard – the murder of Polish Jews in GGhttps://t.co/9lx8CZBnNN pic.twitter.com/mIrGO2vqdo

— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) November 3, 2024

Two tweets from Matthew. Can you spot the odd items out?

Here’s something you might not expect: there’s a cigarette and a few insects stuck in the paint surface of this Jackson Pollock painting called “Lavender Mist.” 👀

Can you find it? pic.twitter.com/5oNvN8Cvvd

— National Gallery of Art (@ngadc) November 2, 2024

. . . and Matthew says of this one, “I don’t know who she is but she is dumb.”

I will never concede this. The notion that Jesus was a Jew only came into prominence after WWII. For literally nearly 2000 years this was not a thought except in fringe academic circles beginning in the mid 19th century and now many just accept it as fact. It is not. Jesus was… https://t.co/wLaAHWDNNi

— Kim Iversen 🇺🇸 (@KimIversenShow) November 1, 2024

Welcome to CaturSaturday, November 2, 2024. We’re into November already; where did the summer go? It’s National Deviled Egg Day (a good treat!). I could easily eat this whole bowl–and more!

It’s also All Souls’ Day, World Numbat Day, National Wine Tasting Day, Book Lovers Day (we’re all in the club!), and National Bison Day. 

Here is a short video about numbats, a termite-eating marsupial:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 3 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*In case you’ve forgotten about Ukraine, the NYT has a depressing article called “As Russia advances, U.S. fears Ukraine has entered a grim phase.” (It’s archived here.)

American military and intelligence officials have concluded that the war in Ukraine is no longer a stalemate as Russia makes steady gains, and the sense of pessimism in Kyiv and Washington is deepening.

The dip in morale and questions about whether American support will continue pose their own threat to Ukraine’s war effort. Ukraine is losing territory in the east, and its forces inside Russia have been partially pushed back.

The Ukrainian military is struggling to recruit soldiers and equip new units. The number of its soldiers killed in action, about 57,000, is half of Russia’s losses but still significant for the much smaller country.

Russia’s shortages of soldiers and supplies have also grown worse, Western officials and other experts said. And its gains in the war have come at great cost.

If U.S. support for Ukraine remains strong until next summer, Kyiv could have an opportunity to take advantage of Russia’s weaknesses and expected shortfalls in soldiers and tanks, American officials say.

U.S. government analysts concluded this summer that Russia was unlikely to make significant gains in Ukraine in the coming months, as its poorly trained forces struggled to break through Ukrainian defenses. But that assessment proved wrong.

Russian troops have advanced in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. They have clawed back more than a third of the territory that Ukrainian forces seized in a surprise offensive in the Kursk region of western Russia this year. The number of Russian drone strikes across Ukraine has increased from 350 in July to 750 in August and 1,500 in September.

This is deeply disappointing, but really: what chance did Ukraine stand against Russia, especially now that North Korean soldiers have joined the Russians. And, of course, if Russia swallows Ukraine, as it did Crimea, there is nothing we can do. Sanctions accomplish nothing. And I’m worried that China will take a lesson from Russia and go after Taiwan. After all, it’s been practicing to do that for some time.

*As usual, I’ll steal three items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news summary on The Free Press, this week called “TGIF:  We’re all garbage.”

→ We’re all garbage: While Kamala Harris stood outside the White House to deliver her closing pitch to America, looking amazing and elegant in a bright white cowl neck (not sorry! She’s a 10!), Joe Biden made his own closing remarks. From a video call at the White House residence, he called Trump supporters feral trash rats. In Biden’s words: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.”

He was responding to a fairly offensive joke said at a Trump rally by a boorish comedian: “I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.” The crowd reaction was mixed to negative. And then Biden said that the only trash is Trumpers—it was like watching the Democrats be handed a gift from Team Trump only to watch them crumple it up and hand it back.

Right on cue, America’s reporters snapped into action to deny that Biden said exactly what Biden said. He didn’t mean Trump supporters were trash, he meant that they litter, said The Washington Post. 

The White House press office slightly altered the transcript—a “breach of protocol and spoilation of transcript integrity,” according to the White House stenographers—making it seem like he was talking about the supporters’ rubbish, like “Hey, don’t forget your supporters’ garbage should be separated into plastic and paper,” and Politico ran cover. My only question is: Don’t mainstream reporters ever get tired of running interference for Joe and Kamala? Don’t they ever want to just relax, drop their shoulders, and write about the words they say out loud? You can have a hundred delicately placed apostrophes in that sentence; it won’t change the fact that Biden called Trumpers “garbage.” Then he went to the White House Halloween party and bit some costumed babies, which looked really fun. He’s having fun and he’s getting a little loose with the rhetoric. It’s okay!

→ AOC makes the best pro-Harris pitch: Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez made the most compelling Kamala Harris pitch I’ve ever heard. Here’s AOC: “I do not want to do four more years of resistance nonsense under Donald Trump, okay? Like, good god. Like, do we remember what it was like waking up every day and there was some shit going on?” Really, really fair.

The #Resistance era was a modern dark age. For starters, people showed up to dinner reservations acting like they’d just seen live combat when they’d only seen a Kayleigh McEnany press briefing. Journalists posted that they feared arrest and yet were never arrested; our president was communicating policy updates and major political appointments in all-caps Twitter screeds. Let’s just say the literature and paintings from those years will not be archived—no college libraries are bidding on those papers. Language slipped away. Comedy got self-conscious. AOC is completely right. We can’t survive as a culture. If the #Resistance/Twitter-screed era comes back, which I fear it may, we should just preemptively shut down publishing houses for a few years. Take the phones away and let’s do a real dictator run this time where Trump doesn’t call into Fox & Friends so much.

Here’s AOC (“like. . . like. . . like”):

“I do not want to do four more years of resistance nonsense under Donald Trump!” – @AOC pic.twitter.com/FP0tC11UU2

— Team AOC (@TeamAOC) October 27, 2024

→ A random shoot-out: In Chicago, a West African migrant went to a Jewish neighborhood and shot a Jewish man on his way to a synagogue—while screaming “Allahu Akbar.” He then ran around shooting anyone he could find near the synagogue until police came. It’s all captured on video, even the Allahu Akbar part. But here’s how the Chicago Tribune covered it:

Sure sounds like another racist police shooting if you ask me! Feels like there’s a silent unarmed there. Chicago’s mayor seemed unusually tongue-tied on the matter. And the police say they have no idea what the motive could be, with a spokesman explaining: “The statement that was made. . . is nothing that we could bring in as evidence at this point that would support any motive.”

*Another piece in the NYT, an op-ed by author Sara Sherbill, shows the desperation that people are bringing to next Tuesday’s election, “You might consider praying.” It’s not just the election, for there is global warming, the war in Gaza, and so on. A solution?:

What can we do when our hearts are breaking? When we are filled with stress and anxiety, when the sadnesses stack up, when hopelessness isn’t an irrational response but a genuine reflection of daily reality? What can we do when we don’t know what to do?

We can pray.

Prayer requires no formal religious observance. You need not attend a temple or church or synagogue or mosque. Prayer need not be a poem or acrostic or hymn. Prayers can simply bubble up from the deepest place inside of yourself. It can be prayer in your own words. It can be prayer with no words.

Many of us were raised to believe that prayer is about communicating with God. It can be, of course. But prayer can also be a way of communicating with ourselves, a tool of self-inquiry. It can be entirely our own, bespoke.

. . .And yet, even if prayer as you once understood it isn’t a place of solace, that doesn’t mean it can’t be once again. What if we redefine prayer entirely? What if, when you are home, you simply sit in a chair and breathe, imagining you are worthy of what you pray for? Maybe that’s peace in your heart, or the strength to act with courage even when you are terrified. Maybe you are asking for the clarity of mind to know which path to take next.

Prayer can also be less a request than a thank you. It can be a list of everything you are grateful for.You might direct prayer toward those you have lost: In my case I think of my grandfather, or my best friend who died in April after a long battle with cancer. What if prayer is asking those who are gone to watch over us? Maybe your prayer is a walk in the morning that takes in the world around you, observing the light bouncing off the leaves. It seems to me that, too, is a prayer. Who is to say it is not?

Sorry, but in my book praying has always been about either importuning or at least having a chat with a supernatural being. Now, as we see, it has turned into meditation. So why not call it meditation? Why redefine it—isn’t that just enabling faith? I remember once asking Sam Harris what kind of bedtime meditation he thought would help with my insomnia, and he suggested concentrating on what I’m grateful for. But that’s just what it says above!

*Speaking of elections, a Wall Street Journal article suggests that betting markets usually get elections right in advance, but not always!

Betting markets show former President Donald Trump has a roughly 60% chance of beating Vice President Kamala Harris next week. Should they be trusted?

History suggests that betting markets have generally been good forecasters of U.S. elections. More often than not, the presidential candidate with the best odds before Election Day goes on to take the White House.

. . . . Today’s prediction markets have seized on skepticism of opinion polls to argue that betting markets are a more accurate predictor of election results. Not only did pollsters miss badly in 2016, they have suffered from the growing difficulty of gathering information, as fewer Americans use landline telephones and many don’t answer calls from strangers.

“We believe Polymarket is the most accurate way to follow the election,” Polymarket founder and Chief Executive Officer Shayne Coplan said in an interview over the summer. “Nobody takes polling seriously anymore.”

In 2020, prediction markets gave Joe Biden lower chances of winning than polls implied—and their skepticism turned out to be prescient when Biden didn’t crush Trump in a landslide. At the end of October 2020, for instance, bettors on PredictIt were giving Biden a 65% chance of winning, while FiveThirtyEight’s poll-based statistical model put his chances at 89%.

But betting markets missed in 2022. Just before Election Day, PredictIt was giving Republicans a more than 70% chance of taking the Senate, reflecting media narratives of a “red wave” election. The Democrats ended up flipping a seat to win a narrow 51-49.

Here’s the figure the WSJ gives with its article, with three betting markets showing Trump leading:

*Move over, Fat Bear Week!  The Bat Beauty contest is over, and, as reported by the AP’s “Oddities” section, a hoary bat (Lasiurus cinereus) named “Hoary Potter” won this year:

A winged creature from Oregon was crowned this year’s winner Thursday in an annual bat beauty contest put on by the Bureau of Land Management.

On Halloween, which was also the last day of International Bat Week, a hoary bat with a feisty personality named “Hoary Potter” defeated “Lestat”, the western small-footed bat from Idaho, in the final round of the contest. It also bested a Townsend’s big-eared bat named “Sir Flaps-A-Lot” from Utah, among others.

The victory marks the third year in a row that a bat from Oregon has taken first place in the contest. Last year, “William ShakespEAR,” a female Townsend’s big-eared bat from southern Oregon took the title. In 2022, a canyon bat named “Barbara” also from southern Oregon was declared the winner.

The federal agency has held the competition since 2019 to raise awareness about the animal’s ecological importance. The bats are part of wild populations living on public lands, and are photographed by agency staff. BLM posted the photos on its Facebook and Instagram accounts, and asked people to vote for the cutest one.

Hoary bats are known for swift flight and wrapping themselves in their own tails to mimic leaves and to hide from predators, the agency said. Because of this attribute, it estimated Hoary Potter would be “the perfect candidate for seeker on this year’s Quidditch team,” referring to the game in Harry Potter that is played on flying brooms.

. . . aaaand, here’s Hoary Potter:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili speaks truth to power:

Hili: Do you really think there is no honest media anymore?

A: I’m afraid that you will not find them in the mainstream.

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

From Meanwhile in Canada, a witchy owl:

From Cat Memes:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Masih; Jamshid Sharmahd wasn’t an American, but a permanent American resident of German-Iranian ancestry. Still, for his political connections he was kidnapped from Dubai on his way to India and has recently been executed. Germany and the U.S. have pronounced his trial as a “sham”.

What happened to the only American on death row in Iran?

In my testimony at the House Foreign Affairs Committee, I warned the U.S. government about Jamshid Sharmahd’s life and the dangers of handing $6 billion to the terrorist regime in Iran.

Now the regime announced that… pic.twitter.com/GxfSfkd3Gc

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) October 30, 2024

Titania has tweeted for the first time since March! She’s touting zir new article in The Critic:

Surely most reasonable people would rather have their liberties restricted than live in a fascist state?

My latest column for @TheCriticMag.https://t.co/qSfWOtZpLo

— Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) September 29, 2024

Two from my feed.  The world is falling apart! Lesson: give your Halloween candy out by hand!

this is still my favorite halloween video💀 pic.twitter.com/GLjW2MRFqJ

— kira 👾 (@kirawontmiss) October 31, 2024

This seems to be true! Oy vey! And “Free snacks!

Breaking: Students at Toronto Metropolitan University are currently dressed up as PFLP terrorists and have taken over a building.

It continues to amaze me how students can wear terrorist clothing, take over buildings, and administrations do nothing.
pic.twitter.com/AnTyTIYmnD

— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) November 1, 2024

From Cate, and I’m with Twain (Clemens):

Fr9m the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I retweeted:

Gassed to death upon arrival, age five. https://t.co/BgCEugX5p4

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) November 2, 2024

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, a Google Street View:

Over the summer, I went to the very North of the Isle of Lewis on a field trip to map the geology there with a close friend of mine. The google street view car went past. We had a geological hammer. The following masterpiece, now on google street view, was the result pic.twitter.com/NIBPnxuIl5

— Gideon Futerman (@GFuterman) October 29, 2024

. . . and a gorgeous photo of the dark side of the Moon and the Earth behind:

This photograph reveals the far side of the Moon, which we usually do not see and Earth in view image by the Chang’e 5-T1 spacecraft on October 28, 2014.

Each “side” of the moon is fundamentally different in appearance, so much so that it is hard for most to “see” the Moon here. pic.twitter.com/TEKZ2O8H4y

— Brian Roemmele (@BrianRoemmele) October 28, 2024

Meanwhile, in Dobrzyn, Hili has a message for us all:

A: What are you thinking about?
Hili: About hope in hopelessness.
A: And what is your conclusion?
Hili: That it requires intelligence, knowledge and craftiness.

Ja: O czym myślisz?
Hili: O nadziei w beznadziejności.
Ja: I jaki wniosek?
Hili: Wymaga inteligencji, wiedzy i przebiegłości.

Meanwhile, in Dobrzyn, Hili is doing an experiment:

A: What are you doing?
Hili: I’m testing the efficacy of prayer for a rabbit pâté.

Ja: Co ty robisz?
Hili: Testuję skuteczność modlitwy o pasztet z krolika.

Meanwhile, in Dobrzyn, Hili has come to a conclusion:

Meanwhile, in Dobrzyn, Hili is preoccupied:

A: Can you have a look at this article?
Hili: Not now.

Meanwhile, in Dobrzyn, Hili notices the changing seasons, but Andrzej is not optimistic: