October trees at 7:33 a.m.

"A mum of two died after she crashed her car en route to a hospital after being stabbed at a retirement village."

"Eleanor Barnfield sustained 'puncture wounds' after being attacked at work in Bridgend, South Wales. After being told by the ambulance service that there would be a long wait, the 47-year-old tried to drive herself to hospital, according to eyewitnesses." 

From "Mum of two dies in crash while driving herself to hospital after being stabbed at retirement village" (GBNews).

ADDED: How different is it in America? See "Shot or stabbed? You may not want to call an ambulance/Analysis: Victims more likely to die if transported to the trauma center by EMS" (Philly voice)("For certain types of injury, it might be best to call the police, Uber or a cab – however you can get to the trauma center fastest").

"That was great. Man. Wow. Man. I love that. I watched that. I saw that. That was incredible."

Trump said “Man, I loved that,” after a man allegedly punched a protester during a midterm rally in South Carolina. https://t.co/A9efIOdxEG

— The Mirror (@DailyMirror) October 22, 2026

"Did Elon Musk decide by personal fiat to cut off Ukraine's access to vital communications?"

Memeorandum organizes the links about Starlink:

 Paul Krugman:

It's Time to Take Starlink Away from Elon Musk  —  Americans did not give him the right to make national security policy  —  Did Elon Musk decide by personal fiat to cut off Ukraine's access to vital communications?  Although Musk claims that the decision was made by Trump … 

Discussion: No More Mister Nice Blog and twitchy.com

RELATED:

 The Hill:NEW!

Rubio, Hegseth point finger at Musk in Starlink slowdown  —  Top Trump administration officials are starting to point fingers squarely at SpaceX founder Elon Musk for the decision to slow down his company's Starlink satellite internet services and its military counterpart Starshield for Ukraine … 

Discussion: CNBC, Reuters, Ars Technica, The Daily Wire, Forbes, Stars & Stripes, Breitbart, Bloomberg, NewsMax.com, Mediaite and Mercury News

 Michael A. Cohen / MS NOW:
Elon Musk is trying to make himself more powerful than the government

Discussion: Townhall, Atlantic Council and Mediaite

The future, as envisioned in the past.

I'm just stumbling into the idea of "Blog fiction" I had back in 2004:

Good fiction blogging would involve several fictional characters, each with their own blog, linking to each other, discussing various fictional events in their lives, perhaps along with interesting other commentary on real world events. It would have to go on for years, like a comic strip that you read daily, and would contain thousands of entries.

Such tiny grandiosity, 22 years ago. 

Isn't the WNBA trying to build its audience?

That's my question as I'm reading "Atlanta Dream and Golden State Valkyries skip national anthem for third straight WNBA Finals game/The Atlanta Dream and Golden State Valkyries jogged off the court before the anthem in all three games of the series" (Fox News).

@ClayTravis While Pat Murphy’s rule with the Brewers is - miss the anthem, miss the game. It’s pretty simple.

— Matt Schaefer (@mschaef02) October 20, 2026

"is the man a lefty or is the woman?"

That's what I asked Grok after viewing this chaos:

The best 1:44 of tv you’ll ever see https://t.co/Nbs5jqtRCP

— Jake Wallis Simons (@JakeWSimons) October 21, 2026

Grok's answer here. Short answer: The man is the lefty.

For background on the controversy, see "BBC forced into embarrassing climbdown after civil servants caught working for 'fact-checking unit'/The Corporation confirmed those currently on secondment will not be involved in the publication of news while the scheme is under review" (GBNews).

"And I said, Sundar, I'm thinking of the Atlantic Ocean. Can you handle it?

Trump: I called Google Maps to change the name of the Atlantic Ocean to Trump Ocean. Sundar said, “No, no, no. This time I'm not doing it.” He said, “Oceans are different, sir. They cover a lot of countries. Please don't ask us to do that.” https://t.co/mfK2ugKs38

— The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) October 22, 2026

It's almost like he's saying he was always joking, and sometimes they do what he tells them to do.

Sunrise.

"I won’t normalize somebody who has said that my childhood is something I’m just complaining about."

Said Amy Acton, explaining why she won't debate Vivek Ramaswamy, quoted in "Attack Ad Featuring Candidate’s Mother Turns Ohio Governor’s Race Even Uglier/A Republican ad features Amy Acton’s estranged mother calling her daughter a liar. The two have not spoken since Dr. Acton’s mother backed her husband after his arrest on rape charges" (NYT).

You've probably seen the ad with Acton's mother, the worst ad I've seen in a long time. It's an ad in a unique category of badness. 

Here's a response from Acton's brother.

ADDED: Trump spoke out: "I hear the mother went very rogue on the daughter, doesn’t have a lot of respect for the daughter, and I think the mother is a witness to things, so who knows? It’s a very unusual situation to have a mother hate a daughter that much, but I don’t think that has anything to do with Vivek."

That was after J.D. Vance had said: "I’m a little bit disgusted when I see Republicans across the country who are whining more about that advertisement than they are about what the congressional Democrats and other Democrats want to do to the United States of America. So I would say to Ohio Republicans, do you actually think that Amy Acton is unfit to serve as governor of the state of Ohio? I do."

I got the quotes from this NYT article.

October sunrise.

"Bismillah, c'est les ténèbres" — "a seemingly nonsensical phrase that appeared to mimic the colloquial blend of Arabic and French that young people in France sometimes use."

Does that seem nonsensical to you?

I'm reading "Student Protesters in France Have a Strange New Slogan. What Does It Mean? 'Bismillah, c’est les ténèbres' has appeared on signs at recent demonstrations. It doesn’t make much sense (it means, 'In the name of God, it’s the darkness') but is seen as shorthand for a generational divide" (NYT).

It may be mysterious and confusing, but it's not nonsense. 

It sounds like something Batman would say:

One student leader explains the joke/"joke": "No young person talks like that.... Young people have reclaimed this phrase to point out that attempts to monitor and infiltrate their movements do not go unnoticed, and to assert their ability to organize in spite of them." It's a joke, another says, because "it is such a terrible impersonation of a young person." And it's racism, she adds, "because it implies that the people who are going to vandalize property are Arab.”

"There is a foreign manipulation of the information which has given rise to stupid and unacceptable comments from many people, including foreign leaders...."

"All the people who speak ill of our country at the moment, they are people who do not like France. Those people annoy me.... In these moments you see who likes France and who does not. All the people who speak badly of us now do not like our country."

Said French President Macron, quoted in "‘Stupid’ of Trump to blame immigration for riots, suggests Macron/French president singles out ‘those in campaign mode’ in swipe at Donald Trump and Binyamin Netanhayu’s comments on migrants and Muslims" (London Times).

What Trump said was: "France is burning. The immigration of people from an entirely different world, people with hatred in their hearts, has shattered that once great country. Close your Borders and take control, before it is too late!"

And, at a campaign rally, he said France is being “conquered, looted, and burned to the ground by migrants, jihadists, and communists.”

Meanwhile, Netanyahu attributed the rioting to an “invasion of extremist Islam.”

Wednesday sunrise, the heron is back it his spot, holding firm.

He does not fly away.

"When my agent called me about a 'Simpsons' audition, I knew exactly what role it was for, and the idea actually made my stomach sink."

Said Sunil Malhotra, quoted in "Apu Returns to ‘The Simpsons’ With a New Voice Actor/After almost a decade away from Springfield, the character returned to the show, this time voiced by a South Asian actor rather than a white man" (NYT).

Was it wrong to remove Apu in the first place?

If it wasn't wrong, is it right to bring him back? Do you remove the problem if you insert a voice actor of the same ethnicity as the character? If so, what was wrong with the TV version of "Amos 'n' Andy"? It had black actors.

"It's so funny because it's so nothing in a way, but incredibly profound. It reminded me of Sam Shepard."

nathan fielder creating a play called “smokers allowed” to get around the smoking ban

what’s the loophole? nathan’s responding “theater law” makes me laugh every single time 😭 pic.twitter.com/PLSnotfqC1

— susie (@susieetweets) October 20, 2026