OPEN THREAD: Ring out the weekend.
November 2, 2026
OPEN THREAD: Yeah, the night’s not over. You’re not trying hard enough.
THE GROUND ZERO OF POLLING DISASTERS:
#OTD in 1948, the most dramatic U.S. #pollfail, ever, in a presidential race: the Dewey "defeats" Truman election, 78 years on@chicagotribune pic.twitter.com/RiCKpOmNsc
— W. Joseph Campbell (@wjosephcampbell) November 2, 2026
Of course, Truman couldn’t have done it without dropping his share of F-bombs, a reminder of another element of American politics that never changes:
KURT SCHLICHTER: Your Vote for the Republicans Is a Vote Against Tyranny.
You need to go vote for every Republican on your ballot. The election Tuesday isn’t going to be the breaking point for this little experiment we call the “United States of America,” but if the Democrats substantially improve their position, it could haul us a long way down the dark road they seem intent on following to its dead end. And it is a dead end, not only for the country but perhaps for a lot of people, as early as 2029. That may sound alarmist to the Color Revolution Deniers™, but facts are facts. I got grief recently from a glorified blog nobody reads because I was amplifying @DataRepublican’s horrifying research revelations about a potential color revolution here in the United States. Apparently, warning people not to do things that could lead to civil conflict is somehow the same as advocating civil conflict. It’s not.
Read the whole thing.
I DO NOT TRUST THE INTERNET OF THINGS: Shop freezers in seven European countries hit by cyber-attack.
Dozens of supermarkets across seven European countries have been hit by a cyber-attack affecting their refrigerators and freezers.
Around 40 Delhaize supermarkets in Belgium and Luxembourg were affected, while a smaller number of shops were hit in Sweden, Ireland, the Netherlands, Estonia and Finland.
Sabcobel, a Belgian company that manufactures some of the affected refrigerators, said the units’ evaporators were switched to defrost mode, causing them to warm up, in what is believed to be the same method used in last month’s incident that hit hundreds of French supermarkets.
Millions of euros worth of food had to be thrown away in October, local media reported at the time.
Stephan Moelans, the CEO of Sabcobel, which operates Delhaize’s systems, on Monday told the Belga news agency that the incident was a cyber-attack and that the company had been “working all night and morning to disconnect the affected units from the network”.
He said since the French attack in early October, the company had been working to “protect our customers fridges against this vulnerability” but that the units needed physical modifications, not just software updates.
Most supermarkets across Europe are linked to the internet, and maintenance and troubleshooting can be done remotely.
Bad things can be done remotely as well:
Today attackers remotely accessed freezers across 7 European countries and turned up the temperature, destroying loads of food.
There's been losses of millions of euros.
Maybe not a good idea to have freezers connected to the internet.
— PeterSweden (@PeterSweden7) November 2, 2026
THIS IS WHAT CAMPUS BIAS-REPORTING SYSTEMS ARE FOR, WHETHER UNIVERSITIES ADMIT IT OR NOT: An Oregon State instructor filed a bias report against a student for arguing there are only two sexes. Cases like this are why I changed my mind about these systems and why FIRE now judges them more harshly.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Former MIT scientist wins $6M defamation verdict against colleague who accused him of sexual misconduct.
A former Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) scientist won a legal victory this week after losing his position following sexual misconduct allegations made by a female colleague.
Dr. David Sabatini, a former MIT biology professor and prominent biomedical researcher, was awarded $6 million in damages Friday after a jury found that his former colleague, Dr. Kristin Knouse, had defamed him.
At the time of the allegations, Sabatini had led a research lab at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for approximately 24 years.
His work focused on cell biology and its connections to neurodegenerative diseases, diabetes, aging and cancer.
In 2021, Sabatini lost his position at Whitehead following an internal investigation into allegations made by Dr. Kristin Knouse, a younger colleague who worked at the institute.
The pair met in 2012 and began a sexual relationship in 2018, which ended the following year, according to court documents obtained by Fox News Digital. Knouse later alleged the relationship was coerced.
Read the whole thing. As Richard Fernandez says, “Lysenkoism is alive and well and its new name is Wokism. The immense prestige of the Ivy League, Oxbridge and les grand ecoles attract not only the tall trees, but growing in its shadow, also the malignant creepers of envy, deceit and greed.”
That a Nobel mooted institute director in a hard science field could be framed by a seeming cabal of Woke women causing not only the destruction of a leading cancer expert's life but also of the institute itself for the pettiest of motives at MIT is more horrifying than the…
— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) November 2, 2026
THE 21ST CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I’D HOPED: The Eerie True Story of The Nightmare Face Haunting The Internet. “Among the hundreds of Loab iterations Supercomposite has summoned into being, many feature dismembered or screaming children in the background. Some AI-generated images were so grotesque that the artist decided not to share them publicly.”
RICH-MOGGING BILL GATES:
Elon is The Master of His Domain 😂🤣 pic.twitter.com/w6THUp0dmY
— TheMastiffMafia (@mafia_mastiff) November 2, 2026
Elon is always amusing.
Also, “I made Microsoft!” isn’t the flex Bill seems to think it is . . .
UPDATE: It’s fake, but it’s funny.
A GALLON WEIGHS ROUGHLY EIGHT POUNDS, SO THAT’S A GOOD PRICE. OR, ALTERNATIVELY, SHE’S DRUNK.
The View’s Ana Navarro: “Ground beef is $6.30 a gallon. Guys, please vote these bums out.” pic.twitter.com/vLMjZNMbTN
— Bad Hombre (@Badhombre) November 2, 2026
NO, IT’S NOT METFORMIN THIS TIME. Scientists Say This Medication Could Be the Next “Wonder Drug.” “Researchers at Michigan Medicine also found that sotagliflozin suppresses excessive platelet activity, a process that can block blood flow to the heart or brain. Published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, the findings suggest a possible explanation for the drug’s ability to reduce heart attack and stroke risk beyond its effects on blood sugar.”
MUST-READ LONG-FORM PIECE FROM DATA REPUBLICAN: The Shadow Cabinet of Soros. “Inside the Soros-Funded Nonprofit That Hand-Picked Biden’s National Security Team, Then Pretended to Dissolve.”
I’m just getting into this one, but can already tell you’ll want to block off enough time to do it justice.
ICYMI: I READ IT, I BLURBED IT, AND I RECOMMEND IT: Kurt Schlichter’s new book American Warlord.
Vic Kinkaid is a middle manager at a trucking company, answering to HR Karens and reading Roman history at night.
Then the world ends, and it turns out he's exactly the man America needs. pic.twitter.com/3SDZ4sgreq
— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) October 30, 2026
BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: Talarico Staffers Confirm His Moderation Is Fake. “He [Talarico] probably said that to try to make himself appear more centrist. He’s very liberaL… but we’ve got to get elected, so we can do something.”
SAYING THERE ARE TWO SEXES IS A REPORTABLE OFFENSE: An instructor at Oregon State filed a bias report against a student for arguing just that. This is why I changed my mind about bias-reporting systems and why FIRE now judges them more harshly.
PRO TIP: If you’re waling on someone with a stout stick like this, jab it like a spear, don’t swing it. What this guy is doing will just leave some bruises. Jabbing would break ribs, and it’s harder to block.
Seeing a white Christian and an Indian Sikh come together to whoop a criminal’s ass is the white pill you didn’t know you needed. pic.twitter.com/fwfyX8MOBO
— Frank McCormick (@CBHeresy) October 31, 2026
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: More Evidence Emerges That Dating Is Becoming a Bleak, AI-Powered Office Job. “The New York Times story about San Francisco’s singles scene is worth reading in full—particularly the sections about people making startup-style pitch decks for their friends at singles events, and about the tech entrepreneurs who can barely squeeze dating into their self-imposed ceaseless workdays.”
AND ANOTHER ONE:
JUST IN: Another Michigan Democrat just crossed over. State Rep. Karen Whitsett is endorsing the Republican, Mike Rogers, and rejecting El Sayed.
When Democrats in Detroit start walking away, the party has a problem.
Michigan, go finish it. pic.twitter.com/WZvfTEkPPN
— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) November 2, 2026
J.B. PRITZKER IS A JERK: Don’t Illinois Our Texas: Billionaire Governor Throws $1.2 Million at Abbott’s Democrat Challenger.
UNIVERSITIES ARE SUPPOSED TO SEEK TRUTH, NOT ENFORCE POLITICAL ORTHODOXY, BUT IDEOLOGICAL CONFIRMITY IS INCREASINGLY TAKING PRIORITY OVER OPEN INQUIRY. In Part 2 of Breaking the Academic Filibuster, I explain how what I call “Political Cooties” allows academia to dismiss arguments based on the speaker’s perceived politics rather than evidence.
ICYMI: The Day After Tomorrow’s Midterm. “I’d like nothing better than to revisit this column in a few days, shaking my head at myself.”
LIMITED TIME DEAL: Bose QuietComfort Headphones (2nd Gen). #CommissionEarned
