"But local civil rights leaders decided not to make Ms. Colvin their symbol of discrimination."

"She was, she later said, too dark-skinned and too poor to win the crucial support of Montgomery’s Black middle class. (She was not, as some later claimed, pregnant at the time, though she did become pregnant later that year.) Instead, the leaders waited...."

From "Claudette Colvin, Who Refused to Give Her Bus Seat to a White Woman, Dies at 86/Her defiance of Jim Crow laws in 1955 made her a star witness in a landmark segregation suit, but her act was overshadowed months later when Rosa Parks made history with a similar stand" (NYT).

"For Nguyen, the point — and pleasure — of games is play, not efficiency; a person who simply wants to catch more fish would trade Nguyen’s feathery hand-tied flies..."

"... for a big net or a blast of dynamite.... Nguyen, whose day job is as a philosophy professor at the University of Utah, contrasts the delightful thrill of playing games like basketball, The Legend of Zelda and Dungeons & Dragons with the demoralizing pursuit of university rankings, page views and social media likes: 'Why is it that mechanical scoring systems are, in games, the site of so much joy and fluidity and play? And why, in the realm of public measures and institutional metrics, do they drain the life out of everything?'... Nguyen, 48... brought out various toys...yo-yos, spin tops, a Japanese ball-and-cup thingumajig known as a kendama.... 'All of my hobbies involve basically micro-dosing epiphanies,' Nguyen said at one point. 'Every time you’re yo-yoing, you’re like, If I change my angle this much, or if I pull a little bit here, or if I drop it, oh, then it works!' The fact that the stakes are so low is not a deficit of the yo-yo (or the kendama, or D&D, or fly-fishing); low stakes are part of the point, allowing us to move from one game to another. Nguyen argues that problems emerge when the stakes become all-consuming, taking over our sense of self and dictating what we should value...."

I'm reading "Why Keeping Score Isn’t Fun Anymore/In a new book, C. Thi Nguyen looks to his personal passions — from video games to yo-yoing — to illuminate the downside of our increasingly gamified world" by Jennifer Szalai (NYT)(gift link).

I see the connection to blogging. I'm going to read Nguyen's book, "The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game" (commission earned).

I thought the article was going to have something in it about how sports betting ruins the fun of spectator sports, but no. Is that in the book? I can tell you that the word "football" does not appear in the book and "baseball" only appears in the context of a baseball cap worn by Tsukasa Takatsu, "a minor saint, beloved of a very tiny sect of passionate yo-yo players."

ADDED: Nguyen sees low stakes as a positive force, but the most famous thing anyone ever said about low stakes is Sayre's law: Responding to "In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake," Sayre quipped: "That is why academic politics are so bitter." Usually restated as: "Academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small." 

What is excluded by that "almost"?

"Cinemark is going all out for National Popcorn Day in 2026 [January 18 and 19], offering moviegoers in Austin and around the country the chance to BYOBucket: bring almost any kind of container to the theater and fill it up for just $5 (plus tax)...."(culturemap).

MEANWHILE: Another Austin movie theater distinguishes itself in a wholly different way:

Pick your style of theater here in the Magnited States of America.

Mamdani gives clear instructions on how to deal with ICE.

Does he get anything wrong?

It's this blog's 22nd anniversary.

22 years of doing exactly this. Year 23 begins today. 

The bloggiversary arrives 2 days after my birthday, but I didn't blog about my birthday — though I appreciated the birthday wishes that popped up here and there in the comments section. And it was one of those big birthdays, the 3/4 of a century mark, 75.

Here on the blog, it's the bloggiversary that matters. This is the milestone I choose to highlight. I'm delighted to be here to blog another day, Day 8,037.

Thanks for reading!

Sunrise — 6:58, 7:21, 7:35, 7:51, 8:03.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

Rand Paul on the Joe Rogan podcast.

Transcript here, at Podscribe.

"Live Updates: Transgender Athletes Ask Supreme Court to Overturn State Bans."

Here's a gift link to the New York Times, which has been providing a lot of clips and quotes and summaries.

I listened to a big segment of the oral argument, which has already been going on for more than 2 hours, but it's not over yet, so drop in over here if you want to get a sense of how it is going.

I'll just make one observation, about something I was hearing for the first time, which is the idea that male-bodied persons who take puberty blockers might be disadvantaged in sports because they have larger bones but these bones are not powered by the strength and drive that the testosterone of puberty would have provided. By taking puberty blockers, they are choosing to go forward with underpowered bodies. That is, in this way, these children not only don't have an advantage if they play in girls' sports, they have a disadvantage!

ADDED: An interesting comment by Adam Liptak over in the NYT live updates: "The question before the court is whether states may exclude transgender athletes from women’s sports. Questions from Justices Kavanaugh and Kagan raise an issue not directly before the court: must states exclude them?"

AND: You can listen to the entire argument here, at YouTube.

ALSO: Here's that argument that struck me. From the transcript, page 112, Kathleen R. Hartnett, for the respondents: 

"But I think the point is that sometimes counter-intuitively it's like having a larger frame but not having the muscle and the testosterone to drive it could actually put the person in a worse position. And that's a study that was commissioned by the Olympic Committee -- it's Footnote 6 of our brief -- indicates that actually it could be actually put the transgender woman at a disadvantage if they happen to have larger bones and less testosterone or muscle to drive those bones."

"Many of my Christian friends have asked me to find Jesus before I go. I’m not a believer, but I have to admit the risk-reward calculation..."

"... for doing so looks so attractive to me. So here I go. I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and look forward to spending an eternity with Him. The part about me not being a believer should be quite quickly resolved; if I wake up in heaven, I won’t need any more convincing than that. I hope I’m still qualified for entry."

Wrote Scott Adams, just before dying.

It's an impressive mix of intelligence, respect, humor, and honesty. He implicitly concedes that he doesn't really believe, but anticipates instant arrival in a state of true belief if he finds himself waking up in Heaven. He acknowledges that that form of belief might not count as sufficient, but he expresses hope. And he did have that part where he incanted the key phrase: "I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior." That might be what it takes, and it's worth the risk — no risk. It will make some of his friends feel better, and if there are others who don't like it, they can take comfort in his assurance that he's not a believer. 

ADDED: In the preceding post, Paul Zrimsek said: "His support for Trump probably means he's been darned to Heck, and that Phil, the Prince of Insufficient Light, is poking him with that big spoon now." That nudged me to find this:

Goodbye to Scott Adams.

He shared his dying with us right up to the end. We knew he was going, and now, suddenly he's gone.

I received the news through my son John, who's put up this post at Facebook that provides a gift link to the Washington Post obituary, which has a headline that I don't like, "Scott Adams, ‘Dilbert’ creator who poked fun at bad bosses, dies at 68/His three-panel comic strip was once published in more than 2,000 newspapers. Publishers cut ties with Mr. Adams after he made racist comments on a YouTube live stream."

From the obituary: "His former wife Shelly Miles announced his death in a live stream Tuesday morning, reading a statement she said Mr. Adams had prepared before his death. 'I had an amazing life,' the statement said in part. 'I gave it everything I had.'"

Coffee with Scott Adams moves to The Scott Adams School 01/13/24 https://t.co/RsXWMvV6yA

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) January 13, 2026

"Philosophy professor Martin Peterson was ordered to remove excerpts from Plato’s 'Symposium' that seemed to violate the new guidelines..."

"... passages about Diotima’s Ladder of Love and Aristophanes’ speech regarding split humans. Peterson was told the course would be reassigned to someone else if he didn’t delete the readings from his introductory philosophy syllabus. Peterson says his course does not 'advocate' for any ideology but teaches students how to structure and evaluate moral arguments."

From "Plato falls victim to campus culture wars/Jettisoning the Greek philosopher hurts students who yearn to learn how to reason, argue and think" by the Editorial Board of The Washington Post.

What's really going on here? Wasn't this some sort of "malicious compliance" move by opponents of restrictions on left-wing gender ideology?

"The Quest to ‘Make America Fertile Again’ Stalls Under Trump."

The NYT reports.

[O]ne year into President Trump’s second term, his administration has enacted few policies to reduce the rising cost of having children — frustrating some conservatives who expected Mr. Trump to prioritize their plans to boost the U.S. birthrate as it continues to drop.... 

Conservative advocates in touch with the White House said family policy issues were not a current priority for Mr. Trump’s domestic policy team, which has been hyper-focused on immigration.

"The thing that has made doctors raise an eyebrow and reach for the defibrillator... is... 'We are ending the war on protein.'"

"Red meat, in particular, is fine. Steak, meatloaf and cream are back on the table of God-fearing Americans. Plus, they need to aim for three servings of full-fat dairy a day.... To see whether these dietary guidelines are going to make me live for ever or are a recipe for cardiac arrest, I tried out RFK’s butter and steak diet for a few days...."

I'm reading:

He looks skeptical, but skip past all the details of what Harry Wallop ate, here's where he ends up: "Curiously, over the four days on the Maha diet I have lost 3lb and gained some strength — I manage 72 push-ups on day 5. The weight loss is almost certainly because I cut out most carbohydrates and I studiously avoided any added sugar...."

"My implicit equation of attention is: Curiosity plus conflict equals attention."

Says Ezra Klein, in his podcast, which is titled "Can James Talarico Reclaim Christianity for the Left?" (NYT).

Talarico is on the podcast because, as Klein puts it, he "was breaking through on TikTok, Instagram and viral videos" and "ended up on Joe Rogan’s podcast — the first significant Democrat that Rogan seemed interested in, in a very long time."

And now "Talarico is running for Senate in Texas. He’s running in a primary with Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett...." There's no other mention of Crockett in the article. Why not? Talarico was never invited to speak against her, but this podcast is clearly boosting him, which is inherently against her. I presume hardcore Democrats, focused on winning the Texas Senate seat, don't want Crockett to win the primary.

The question isn't really Can James Talarico Reclaim Christianity for the Left? It's Can James Talarico Seize the Nomination from Crockett?

Ezra Klein says: "The biggest concern I hear about you in Texas is that you’re sort of a liberal’s idea of what a Christian politician should be."

Sunrise — 6:58, 7:08, 7:16, 7:28.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

A short tower of Reddit shavings.

1. "Babe wake up, they gerrymandered reincarnation."

2. "I live on my own right now and she saw my room and said it is an instant red flag."

3. It's mildly infuriating when the delivery guy takes that photo of the delivered package and includes your bare legs in the picture. Presumably, you were wearing shorts.

4. "Decorative tower in South Korean plastic surgery clinic made from the jawbones of patients who received plastic surgery for jawline reduction."