At the Winter Night Café...

... you can talk, watch the big game...

Go Hoosiers! #Hoosiers #Football #championship #miami pic.twitter.com/KR2Q17xqIF

— John Mellencamp (@johnmellencamp) January 19, 2026

... or dance all night.

@_chorgi_

♬ Charleston - Swing Jazz Parade

"'Choiceful,' a term that started becoming popular among executives a few years ago...."

Last May, for example, Rick Gomez, the chief commercial officer of Target, said that 'consumers have been choiceful in their buying decisions.' In November, he used the term again, saying that 'guests are choiceful, stretching budgets and prioritizing value.' Tony Spring, the chief executive of Macy’s, discussed 'the reality of a more choiceful consumer' on the company’s earnings call in December, using the term four times during the call...."

From "No One’s Buying? Maybe Consumers Are Just 'Choiceful,' Executives Say. A new way to characterize unenthusiastic consumers has overtaken earnings calls" (NYT).

We already had the word "choosy." I think what we're talking about is being choosy where one of the options is to choose nothing at all. 

There are some really old examples of "choiceful" in the OED, but they're about having a wide array of choices and not holding back from choosing. And even "choosy" lacks the connotation these executives are trying convey. They're saying people are averse to buying at all. I think the best word is "frugal."

"The Minnesotans I met on the streets of Minneapolis and St. Paul were determined to resist and fight back."

"The Trump administration has tried to paint the anti-ICE activists as hard-left agitators, 'blue-haired' domestic terrorists bent on stirring up mayhem. But I found they looked a lot more like a woman I met named Hillary Oppmann, a blonde, 50-something solar energy consultant who lives in South Minneapolis. I stumbled upon Oppmann on a frigid morning last week, when I rolled up on a corner near a high school in South Minneapolis.... A few minutes before I had come upon her, Oppmann had heard the sound of whistles like the one that she wears around her neck, and hustled to the spot.... Oppmann had gotten involved as a volunteer in this group through a parents’ group at the local high school.... She told me she wasn’t surprised at how quickly her neighbors had sprung into action. The community groups that formed in the wake of the murder of George Floyd quickly reactivated, she told me, making it much easier to organize a response. The killing of Renee Good was a horrific shock, but it has not deterred the volunteer observers — if anything, Oppmann said, their ranks have swelled. 'Minnesotans are really good at chipping away at ice,' she dryly noted...."

Writes Lydia Polgreen, in "In Minneapolis, I Glimpsed a Civil War" (NYT).

I remember when "blue-haired" was used in descriptions of little old ladies, nice grandmas, who got their white hair tinted slightly blue to keep it from tending toward yellow. Oppmann is portrayed as someone like that even as she is contrasted to "hard-left agitators, 'blue-haired' domestic terrorists." That's a different blueness, an aggressively intentional unnatural look. The little old lady blueness was a byproduct of gentle dithering over the appearance of age.

"Professional ski jumpers are artificially enlarging the genital area before official measurements by using substances such as hyaluronic acid — sometimes placed in a silicone, condom-like sleeve..."

"... to boost crotch dimensions.... The enlarged genital area allows athletes to wear a slightly bigger ski jumping suit that generates more lift and improve aerodynamic.... The crotch measurement is taken from the lowest point of an athlete’s genitals.... 'If you manage to move that point downward, you automatically get more surface area on the suit.... Norwegian ski jumper Halvor Egner Granerud ... said that while being warm during measurements can matter, the notion of injecting substances into the penis to gain an advantage 'sounds extreme' and is not something he believes is happening in the sport."

From "Ski jumping rocked by ‘penis-gate’ claims athletes manipulated genitals for aerodynamic edge" (NY Post).

Such a bloggable headline. Once seen, this post was inevitable. It is not the result of my trying to get 2 Norway posts in a row, but that's what I've got.

Speaking of penis manipulation and the Olympics, I see, via Grok:

"The Kremlin has announced that Vladimir Putin has been invited to join Donald Trump’s 'board of peace'..."

"... set up last week with the intention that it would oversee a ceasefire in Gaza. The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told journalists on Monday that Russia was seeking to 'clarify all the nuances' of the offer with Washington, before giving its response. The claimed invitation comes as Putin shows no signs of ending his invasion of Ukraine, in which hundreds of thousands have been killed..."

The Guardian reports.

"U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Monday that it would be 'completely wrong' for President Donald Trump to slap tariffs on European nations opposing his plan to take over Greenland...."

"In remarks to reporters, Starmer denounced economic coercion against allies as the wrong approach to resolving disagreements. He described tariffs as harmful to British workers and businesses — even as he praised and sought to preserve the relationship with the United States, which has underpinned Europe’s security and economic interests for more than eight decades...."

From "Europeans see alliance at risk as Trump stokes trade war over Greenland/U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said it was 'completely wrong' for President Donald Trump to threaten tariffs on allies who oppose his push to seize or buy Greenland" (WaPo).

"Trump has insisted that controlling Greenland is necessary for national security reasons — a point disputed by allies and some senior members of Congress who have rebutted the president’s claim that the Arctic territory faces imminent security risks from Russia and China. Trump’s unwillingness, so far, to back down risks driving a deeper wedge in the Western alliance or, some fear, causing an irreparable break."

Is the dispute about what counts as "imminent"... or rather how early we need to act in advance of a security risk becoming imminent? I go back to what Scott Bessent said yesterday: "The national emergency is avoiding a national emergency."

Why doesn't Europe want to give us what we need to provide the defense that they rely on?

ADDED: Trump wrote this letter to the prime minister of Norway: "Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a 'right of ownership' anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT"

"'Fun Times Square' said no New Yorker ever...."

‘Fun Times Square’ said no New Yorker ever...

— Seán Ono Lennon (@seanonolennon) January 17, 2026

Sunrise — 7:08, 7:16, 7:31, 7:31.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"Is President Trump serious about annexing Greenland?"/"President Trump strongly believes that we cannot outsource our security."

 

BESSENT: It might not be next year. Might not be in 4 years. But down the road this fight for the Arctic is real. We would keep our NATO guarantees. And if there were an attack on Greenland from Russia, from some other area, we would get dragged in. So better now, peace through strength, make it part of the United States.... The Europeans project weakness. The U.S. projects strength....

"Mr. Trump does not attempt to hide his use of law enforcement powers for vengeance. He glories in it...."

"His usurpation of law enforcement power threatens us all.... His move to control investigation and prosecution from the White House portends an America where the state uses force to promote the political interests of its leaders, rather than uphold the laws passed by our representatives. One year into his second term, America risks losing a central feature of our democracy: that we are a country ruled by laws, not by one man.... The Justice Department was hardly perfect before Mr. Trump took the oath of office a year ago. Still, between Richard Nixon’s resignation in disgrace and Mr. Trump’s second term, the department under both political parties took steps to remain independent from the White House so that Americans could have confidence that federal law enforcement was nonpartisan. If the government investigated somebody — or decided not to — the reasonable assumption was that it was on the merits. That assumption is in tatters.... The Minnesota fraud is real, and the people who perpetrated it deserve to face charges.... But Mr. Trump’s interest in fraud is selective...."

Writes The Editorial Board of The New York Times, in "For Trump, Justice Means Vengeance."

"Now, JD, why don't you give us an update.... while you're talking, I'm just gonna sort of walk around in the background and look out windows...."

Says SNL Trump (at 2:00):

The windows bit references this real-life Trump incident:

The grandeur of extreme cold.

The numerical reality:

Meade's interpretation:

Sunrise — 7:13, 7:17, 7:25.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"One day, he is a man who loves his wife and has just bought a terrifically expensive mattress for their bed."

"The next he tells her, his eyes narrowing into a shape she had never seen before: 'I thought I was happy but I’m not. I thought I wanted our life but I don’t.' He tells her she can have everything, including custody of the children. 'I don’t want it,' he says. 'I don’t want any of it.'"

From "Her Life Was an Old-Money Dream. It Collapsed in a Moment. Born into exceptional privilege, Belle Burden had it all: love, money, family. Then her marriage fell apart" (NYT).

Now, I clicked on that link because the headline bugged me. I keep seeing these sudden-collapse headlines. Articles are always offering to pinpoint the moment when things changed. There's one on the front page of The London Times right now: "The moment Landman’s teenage blonde changed American TV." It's annoying me. They think we're manipulable by our belief in the magic moment.

But I'm blogging because of the mattress, the "terrifically expensive mattress." I think I've blogged about that mattress: "[T]he most preposterously priced mattress, a king-size Grande Vivius, costs $539,000...." I've made a new tag, "mattress," and added it retrospectively, which is a much bigger task than you might think. There are so many posts about someone known as "mattress girl" and I've repeatedly blogged about the line "it balances on your head just like a mattress balances on a bottle of wine."

But really, if you were the stay-at-home wife to a rich man, would the purchase of a terrifically expensive mattress make you think he is more likely to stay or less likely to stay? He might want to cushion your fall, to pacify and lull you. What is the meaning of a mattress?

AND: Maybe the mattress was the tipping point. That mattress was exactly what made him see that the life they'd formed together was her vision of the good, and he couldn't relate to it at all. She wanted grand material things and he didn't want any of it. You don't need me, you have the mattress. 

Have you experienced this "Derisive Term for White Women Spreads on the Far Right" or is the NYT pushing it at us to foment contempt for conservatives?

I'm reading "After Renee Good Killing, Derisive Term for White Women Spreads on the Far Right/Vocal Trump supporters are demonizing Renee Good, her partner and their allies, with some even using an acronym: AWFUL, or Affluent White Female Urban Liberal" by Clyde McGrady.

I hadn't seen this term, and I read all sorts of things every day, so that makes me think this term isn't really a thing... though I've certainly noticed that people of the right are passing around a lot of videos of highly emotional left-wing white women.

But then I asked Meade, and he had heard the term and it seems to be catching on. 

Needless to say, I don't like the term. I don't like expressions of contempt and I don't like commentators  trading on the idea that women are over-emotional. I also don't like freaking out and yelling in public (or at home), but you can say just that, without contributing to sex-based hatred. 

Despite that NYT headline, McGrady's column isn't really about the term AWFUL. It's more about the phenomenon of going after activist liberal white women:

"What's the original version of the adage 'Friends don't let friends [blank]'? Is it about drunk driving? is it 'vote Republican'? What's the first one and where did it go from there?"

Just a random A.I. prompt of mine. That came up this morning.

Yesterday's equivalent was: "What was that hippie poster that was mostly text and included something like and if we find each other it will be beautiful?"

On Thursday, my idle musings got me to: "What is the old waltz most associated with ice skating?"

Without A.I., things like this would float along, fermenting, festering, and maybe one day you'd happen to run into the answer and think aha! I've been wondering about that for the longest time. Now, you can get the answer immediately, and it doesn't amount to much other than that I've destroyed the groundwork for what might have been a delightful aha moment somewhere done the road.