"The Discombobulator. I’m not allowed to talk about it. They never got their rockets off. They had Russian and Chinese rockets, and they never got one off."

"We came in, they pressed buttons and nothing worked. They were all set for us.”

Said Trump, quoted in "Trump reveals to The Post secret ‘discombobulator’ weapon was crucial to Venezuelan raid on Maduro" (NY Post).

Trump commented on the weapon when asked about reports this week that the Biden administration “Havana Syndrome.” Not much is known about the weapon, but those reports followed on-the-ground accounts from Venezuela describing how Maduro’s gunmen were brought to their knees, “bleeding through the nose” and vomiting blood. One member of the deposed strongman’s team of guards recounted afterward that “suddenly all our radar systems shut down without any explanation. The next thing we saw were drones, a lot of drones, flying over our positions. We didn’t know how to react.... At one point, they launched something; I don’t know how to describe it. It was like a very intense sound wave. Suddenly I felt like my head was exploding from the inside... We all started bleeding from the nose. Some were vomiting blood. We fell to the ground, unable to move. We couldn’t even stand up after that sonic weapon — or whatever it was."

We made it to the sunrise vantage point at 7:26, with the temperature at minus 15° (the windless wind chill also minus 15°).

Meade got his video:

That was 6 minutes after the official sunrise time, but the sun did not pop, and we made it back to the car and over to Whole Foods, where we were the first customers, slipping in as the door was unlocked.

With a trunk full of things I feel RFK Jr. would approve of, we headed back home, eastward, and — at 8:26 — experienced a double sunrise:

Spotify had decided that the "daylist" for me this morning was "cowboy country western swing saturday early morning" and at that precise moment, this was the song:

"Texas in My Soul."

Bloviate.

From a biography of Warren G. Harding:

That was sent to me by my son Chris, who is quite far along toward his goal of reading a biography of every U.S. President. 

In the 22-year history of this blog, I've never used the word "bloviate." Twice, though, I've quoted someone else:

1. My November 1, 2019 post, "An impeachment trial would help Joe Biden — because Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, and Cory Booker would all face the obligation to do their job as Senator," quoted NY Magazine writer Ed Kilgore, who wrote:  "[An impeachment trial] could be a boon to non-senators — particularly Joe Biden, who can bloviate to his heart’s desire about the lessons he learned on impeachment and all the issues involving Trump during his 44 years as a member or presiding officer of the Upper Chamber...." 

2. On October 7, 2004, the first year of this blog, I quoted Al Franken, who was boasting about his radio show on the radio network Air America: "We do a different kind of show. I'm not the mirror image of Rush Limbaugh. I do a totally different kind of show. I don't bloviate for three hours and pull stuff out of my butt and mislead and lie. We're very scrupulous about our facts. I'm proud of that." (I do go on to quip about whether Franken "did in fact bloviate," so count that as my using the word if you must, but I'm really still essentially quoting him.)

In both of those instances, the user of "bloviate" is insulting someone else. President Harding, the popularizer of the word, used it about himself, self-deprecatingly. 

***

Here's the biography — commission earned — "Warren G. Harding: The American Presidents Series: The 29th President, 1921-1923." Warning: It's by John Dean. Chris says: "It’s part of a series of very short books that I use when the options are very limited." He's relied on that series to read about William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Franklin Pierce, and Benjamin Harrison.

We got out for the sunrise when it was 18 below 0 with a "feels like" of 35 below.

7:09:

7:29:

I hope you're keeping warm... at least most of the time. I recommend getting out and challenging yourself to feel the cold. It's thrilling.

But watch out for exploding trees!

"New York City Could Get a Foot of Snow. Mamdani Knows It’s a Test."

The NYT puts its finger on why this foot of snow is such a big deal. It's hitting political hot spots.

Subheadline: "Plenty of New York City mayors have faced blowback over their handling of blizzards. In several appearances this week, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has sought to show he is prepared."

I guess his opponents are hoping for a snow nightmare.

As for Mamdani, he's getting out in front of Snowmageddon and endeavoring to seem lovable:

Stay warm, stay safe New York. pic.twitter.com/aFbDsOkzLn

— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) January 18, 2026

What, really, does Donald Trump have to do with Thomas Mann's "Magic Mountain"?

I'm prepared for this. I read "The Magic Mountain"... 50 years ago. And right now I'm reading "It’s Time to Talk About Donald Trump’s Logorrhea/How many polite ways are there to ask whether the President of the United States is losing it?" by Susan B. Glasser, in The New Yorker). '

So let's see:

[I]n rambling on so much, Trump reveals just about everything one could ever want to know about him—his lack of discipline, his ignorance, his vanity, insecurity, and crudeness, and a mean streak that knows no limits. “It is remarkable how a man cannot summarize his thoughts in even the most general sort of way without betraying himself completely,” Thomas Mann wrote a century ago, in his novel “The Magic Mountain,” set in a sanitarium perched above the Swiss mountain town of Davos, where Trump spent the better part of this week proving to the stunned attendees of the annual World Economic Forum the continuing relevance of Mann’s observation....

[W]hen Trump reached the fulsome self-praise section of his speech, he explained that he was such an incredible peacemaker that he had even managed to end wars in places where he had not known they were happening. Imagine admitting this about yourself. Another quote from “The Magic Mountain” sprang to mind: “I know I am talking nonsense, but I’d rather go rambling on. . . .”

1. It's not rambling. It's the weave. There's no acknowledgement that Trump himself has explained what he is doing. He calls it the weave. He's in control of it. You just don't like the elaborate tangles of verbiage. 

2. And yet you push "The Magic Mountain" at me! Why isn't Trump terse and to the point? Why isn't Thomas Mann!!!?

3. You don't want to follow the complex feats of language that require you to keep track of numerous threads to visualize the luminous tapestry.

4. Many a reader has gotten fed up with "The Magic Mountain," and she knows it, but I doubt that Susan B. Glasser would regard Thomas Mann as some kind of nut. I picture her denouncing the reader for not digging in, paying attention, trusting the author, and taking the time to understand. 

5. It's not as though Glasser drew upon deep literary experience to come up with material from "The Magic Mountain." It's the famous book set in the location where Trump spoke. To quote it is like quoting your last fortune cookie or scrap of litter right at your feet.

6. What does Glasser really know of "The Magic Mountain"? She's got 2 quotes, and if you go to Goodreads, you'll find both quotes within the top 6 quotes from the book. They are #5 and #6.

7. ##1-4: "Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil"/"It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death"/"Laughter is a sunbeam of the soul"/"There are so many different kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst." I'm tempted to ask Grok to write a pro-Trump essay using those 4 quotes.

"At a mushroom hot pot restaurant there, the server set a timer for 15 minutes and warned us, 'Don't eat it until the timer goes off or you might see little people."

"It seems like very common knowledge in the culture there."

The quote is from Colin Domnauer, "a doctoral candidate in biology at the University of Utah and the Natural History Museum of Utah, who is studying L. asiatica," quoted in "'They saw them on their dishes when eating': The mushroom making people hallucinate dozens of tiny humans" (BBC).

Every year, doctors at a hospital in the Yunnan Province of China brace themselves for an influx of people with an unusual complaint. The patients come with a strikingly odd symptom: visions of pint-sized, elf-like figures – marching under doors, crawling up walls and clinging to furniture.... 

In a 1991 paper, two researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences described cases of people in Yunnan Province who had eaten a certain mushroom and experienced "lilliputian hallucinations" – the psychiatric term for the perception of tiny human, animal or fantasy figures....

[O]ther known psychedelic compounds also usually produce idiosyncratic trips that vary not only from person to person but also from one experience to the next within the same individual. With L. asiatica, though, "the perception of little people is very reliably and repeatedly reported", Domnauer says. "I don't know of anything else that produces such consistent hallucinations."

Do rats see little rats? 

Are there other substances that produce such specific hallucinations?

Brisk.

Sunrise — 7:04, 7:11, 7:13, 7:28.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"I mean, heck, Donald Trump tried to steal the election, the last election."

BREAKING: Newsom at Davos: "There's no rule of law. It's the rule of Don... I mean, heck, Donald Trump tried to steal the election, the last election. Tried to light democracy on fire, and then pardoned everyone that participated in that."

He just hit the nail in the head here.… pic.twitter.com/ETAqF9SjX4

— Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) January 22, 2026

"When tourists go on vacation, the area around them becomes a liminal space. Their geographic location is no longer real..."

"... but a fantasy that they are living in. If tourists have the fantasy disrupted, they can get really mean. And that is why this raccoon biologist has to conduct her research wearing a bikini."

A discussion at Metafilter.

The Oscar nominations are out.

Here.

I don't think I've ever been less interested in the nominations. I haven't seen or been interested in seeing any of these movies. 

It's happening!

@PatMcAfeeShow it’s happening… pic.twitter.com/4GbBspkFlU

— Bob Rae (@TheBobRae) January 22, 2026

"The swan, who had recently lost his mate, would not move away from a vending machine at Tri-Township Park in Troy, Ill."

"The swan stared at his reflection below the Dr Pepper dispensers, thinking it showed his mate, park officials said. The swan needed a new partner, but the parks department would not be able to budget for new swans until April, said Sandy Pensoneau, the office manager at the Tri-Township Park District.... Park regulars had been clamoring for a response, Ms. Pensoneau said. 'The people that walk the park every day, they’re like, "Hey, you guys need to do something. This is sad,"' she said...."

From "Swan Seeks Mate: Must Like Cold Lake and Small Flock/An Illinois parks department sought help from the community to find mates for two swans after they lost their companions. Residents responded" (NYT).

"And this is for the people of Gaza. We've developed it into zones. In the beginning, we were toying with the idea of saying, let's build a free zone and then we have a Hamas zone."

"And then we said, you know what, let's just plan for catastrophic success. Hamas signed a deal to demilitarize — that is what we are going to enforce. Rafah we'll start with. This will show a lot of workforce housing. We think this could be done in two-three years. We've already started removing the rubble and doing some of the demolition. And then new Gaza. It could be a hope. It could be a destination. Have a lot of industry from the private sector. There'll be amazing investment opportunities. I know it's a little risky to be investing in a place like this, but we need you to come, take faith, invest in the people, try to be a part of it."

Acclimated.