At the Tuesday Night Café…

 … you can write about whatever you want. 

"In just four years, anti-gay bias rose by around 10 percent.... Just as bias against gay people fell especially steeply before 2020..."

"... it has surged particularly sharply since. Perhaps most surprising is that these trends were distinctly robust among the youngest American adults — those under 25. This group increased its animus against marginalized groups in general and gay people in particular at a faster rate than older Americans did. Also surprising is that although anti-gay bias has risen faster among conservatives, it has also risen among liberals. What explains this decline in tolerance?"

From "Americans Are Turning Against Gay People" (NYT).

Tolerance?! I would think it's considered homophobic just to use the word "tolerance," which connotes minimal acceptance and little more than a willingness to refrain from discriminating or saying actively mean things. In fact, I'd suggest it is the demand to do so much more — to celebrate pride in sexual matters and to endure indoctrination sessions that force feed questionable fine points — that has made people resistant and more likely to check a less gay-friendly box on the survey.

The authors of the NYT article reject the speculation that it's a reaction to the push for transgender rights or worry about sexually grooming children. They prefer to speculate that the decline in "tolerance" for gay people is tied to 1. "social instability" — "the Covid pandemic, economic strain and intensifying political conflict” — and 2. "a loss of confidence" in the establishment combined with a perception that gay rights is "an establishment position."

***

My rankling at the word "tolerance" was influenced by George Washington. In his famous 1790 Letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, he wrote: "It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights."

"Maybe Mr. Adams was an early Trump supporter because 'Dilbert' was itself proto-MAGA."

"The strip’s everyday resentments and cynicism added up to a now-familiar worldview. 'There’s no such thing as expertise. It just doesn’t exist,' Mr. Adams said. Mr. Adams thought this extended even to issues like international trade. 'In these big, complicated situations, no one really knows if we have a good deal. It’s best just to negotiate from ignorance and hope the other side gives in,' he told me. 'In the real world there is a fog. In a world where nobody knows, the loudest person is going to get the most.' From his point of view, I had lived so long among the well-credentialed languishing in abstract thoughts that I was fooled into thinking complex problems required expert solutions. 'In your movie,' by which he meant my perception of reality, 'there’s a big, incompetent guy who doesn’t know the details,' he told me. 'I’m telling you it’s the best thing possible. When President Trump acts without all the information and his facts are not accurate, he’s operating on a higher level, not a lower level. He’s operating in the real world.'"

Writes Joel Stein, in "'Dilbert' Was Always MAGA" (NYT).

With stacks of papers as props, Trump endeavors to prove to the press that the first year of his second term was jam-packed with amazing accomplishments.

I watched the entire thing, and you can too. If you don't already agree that it's been a great year, I don't think he can ever prove it to you, but he has to do this, because, he says, no one else is going to do it for him.

"As you know, this is the anniversary, first anniversary, January 20th. And it's been an amazing period of time. We have a book that I'm not going to read to you, but these are the accomplishments of what we've produced. Page after page after page, individual things. I could stand here and read it for a week and we wouldn't be finished, but we've done more than any other administration has done by far. And terms of military, in terms of ending wars, in terms of completing wars, nobody's really seen very much like it...."

On and on, for 2 hours.

When it gets to the Q&A, he gives short answers. The best example of that is, asked "How far are you willing to go to acquire Greenland?," he said, "You'll find out."

That answer called to mind something Chief Justice Rehnquist said in 2005 when he was asked if he was going to retire: "That's for me to know and for you to find out."  I reacted, blogging, "How near death can he be if he's horsing around like that?" He died less than 2 months later.

"China today is a country where many young people have no siblings. Because the one-child policy lasted so long, their parents also have no siblings..."

"... so they have no aunts, uncles, or cousins, either. That is complicating China’s war-planning efforts because the massive casualties required to invade Taiwan would mean many families lose their only child, who they’re counting on to take care of them in old age. Decades of sex-selective abortions have resulted in severe gender imbalances. Because there are tens of millions more men than women, dating or marriage — let alone procreation — is impossible for many. Intense pressure on the children who are born, plus child-raising costs that are among the highest in the world when adjusted for income, make the prospect of family life unattractive, even as loneliness eternally grates on the soul...."

From "China embraced population control. The damage may be irreversible. Despite the communist government’s efforts, women won’t have more children" by the Editorial Board of The Washington Post.

1. Taiwan has an even lower birth rate than China.

2. "loneliness eternally grates on the soul" — That was not a phrase I expected from the Editorial Board of The Washington Post.

3. I've seen so much social media touting the joy of a single life for women. There's a viral TikTok audio that begins with an ominous sounding warning of women about what will happen if they don't marry and continuing with a list of good things like having a clean, well-decorated house, peace and quiet, and the company of music, books, friends, and pets. And here are the WaPo editors anguishing over the solitude of the Chinese. Hmm.

4. I'm also surprised WaPo editors didn't try harder to align their language with the belief in the right to have abortions. These 2 sentences (not quoted above) jumped out at me: "Forced abortions and sterilizations, combined with fines and propaganda, snuffed out many millions of lives. Unborn girls were particularly victimized because of sex-selective abortions." 

"I mean, whatever you think about the operation to get rid of Maduro, whether you think it was wise, it was an astonishing display of military prowess."

"And if you are Donald Trump and you pull off such spectacular military successes and then get the reinforcement of the praise and the fear, it's self-reinforcing. And that's why you see him now saying, well what about Greenland? What about Cuba? What about regime change in Iran? Is he just going to continue to get lucky in all these circumstances? We don't know, we're still very early in the presidency... [I]t's true that the Europeans are now spending more on their defense. Donald Trump has managed to get them to do something that other presidents have not. And he should be credited for that. But... America's traditional allies will not go back to the way they were in terms of trusting America.... Even if we do get some restorationist type figure who's saying... you know, everyone needs to hold hands. They've now had this lived experience of an American president that says, we're gonna take this territory. And you know, to hell with you, you're just gonna have to live with it...."

Said Jonathan Swan in today's episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, "Trump 2.0: A Year of Unconstrained Power" (audio and transcript at Podscribe). As the episode title suggests, today marks the 1-year anniversary of Trump's second term in office.

Swan was responding to a prompt from the host, Michael Barbaro. Barbaro had said that Trump's "interventions," while "legally dubious," "have seemed to turn out pretty well for the United States." NATO is "paying more than ever for its own defense," and Latin America is doing "a heck of a lot more to fight those [drug] cartels."

What I'm sure Swan realizes even as he says those words — "America's traditional allies will not go back to the way they were in terms of trusting America" — is that the Europeans need us. Trump is using their dependence to bargain for things that benefit the United States. That's open and on the surface. Who is this character Swan calls the "restorationist" and what is he up to? Is he trustworthy? Is he lucky?

"The Department of Homeland Security and ICE must start talking about the murderers and other criminals that they are capturing and taking out of the system."

"They are saving many innocent lives! There are thousands of vicious animals in Minnesota alone, which is why the crime stats are, Nationwide, the BEST EVER RECORDED! Show the Numbers, Names, and Faces of the violent criminals, and show them NOW. The people will start supporting the Patriots of ICE, instead of the highly paid troublemakers, anarchists, and agitators! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN"

Writes Trump, just now, on his place called Truth.

He's disarmingly — alarmingly? — open about his rhetorical moves. This will work, do it my way, he says, not in a private phone call or memo to insiders, but to all of us. Perhaps he is saying something else to insiders, but what he is saying openly feels as though he is taking us into his confidence and trusting us to understand that political speech is manipulative and that he's got to do the manipulation in a simple and heavy-handed way and outshout the voices on the other side — those "highly paid troublemakers, anarchists, and agitators."

"Weight-Loss Drugs Could Save U.S. Airlines $580 Million Per Year... lower fuel costs as slimmer passengers lighten their aircraft’s loads."

The NYT reports.

"It is a slow craft in a fast world, learned through years of hands-on apprenticeships.... Each piece, including utilitarian bowls, art objects and more, requires over 100 steps..."

"... and a retinue of specialists — from shapers of the wooden bases to artisans who apply layers of lacquer to produce a veneer thick enough for artists like Yamagishi to carve or incise.... The speed of contemporary culture is also light years removed from the patience and precision required to produce lacquerware, originally intended to store paper, inks and brushes for calligraphy and for writing poems and haiku, said Hiro Minato, the owner of Design Work Studio in Nara. 'In lacquer and other hand crafts, you have to feel each moment'...."

From "After an Earthquake, Preserving a Slow Craft in a Fast World/In Wajima, Japan, where hundreds of homes and studios were destroyed, master-class artisans are struggling to keep lacquer alive and nurture the next generation of creators" (NYT)(gift link, so you can read more and see many good photographs of the laquerware and of the earthquake destruction).

"Hi, I'm Jerry Lewis. Bob Dylan has always been a protester not only to the fashion of his times but the trends of the thing."

"And that's super, simply marvelous. So when Parimutuel Records came to me and said, 'Hey, Jerry, whoever you want to record would you just do? Manilow would be good. You want we should give Barry a call? And I said, 'Uh-uh, I want to do Dylan 'cause he makes me feel good a lot and that's why I chose his stuff to be on my album 'Lewis Sings Dylan.' Oh yeah!"

An obscure but great clip of SCTV in 1984 at YouTube.

Amazing how long Martin Short has been around....

And amazing how long people have been kicking Jerry Lewis around. Here he is, in a musical scene, in his prime, in the 1960 movie "The Bellboy":

I ran across that movie on The Criterion Channel the other day, and I've been watching it in bits. I like watching things that can be watched in bits, and "The Bellboy" is great for that. As the opening monologue explains, "There is no story and no plot. That's right, I said, no story and no plot. It is actually a series of silly sequences, or you might say it is a visual diary of a few weeks in the life of a real nut." Perfect for our times. It's almost TikTok. 

Speaking of things that feel like we're in a movie, the President of the United States just posted this on his place called Truth.

Link.

"I want to give all the glory and thanks to God.... I would die for my team."

JUST IN: Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza gives all glory to God, breaks down in tears after winning the College Football National Championship.

“I was a two-star recruit coming out of high school. I got declined a walk-on offer to the University of Miami, full circle moment… pic.twitter.com/jhufc5yvVN

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) January 20, 2026

Chuck Culpepper at WaPo — "Indiana wins a national championship that is almost too much to fathom" (gift link) — begins:

Maybe sometime this month or this summer or this century, all the fans and alumni widely known as Hoosiers and all the people who follow college football might scale a deeply human mental hurdle about the rousing theater of Monday night. They might find a way to believe what they saw. They might believe the gobsmacking truth that when a storybook five months ended, the confetti in Hard Rock Stadium rained down Indiana crimson-and-cream. Many of the 67,227 might comprehend that, indeed, as the videotape shows, they hung around with their joy and their goose bumps and belted out “We Are The Champions.” They might grasp that they heard a revolutionary 64-year-old coach in his second Indiana season tell of “waxing tables” among the unglamorous tasks of a Division II coach a decade ago, at which time, of course, “I never really thought this was possible."... The first 16-0 team in the top level since Yale in 1894 was the losingest program in college football history as of 2023 when it hired [coach Curt] Cignetti from James Madison to very little national ripple on an innocuous Thursday in late November....

Hoosiers fans sing “We Are the Champions.” Incredible. pic.twitter.com/y6LWVXnKqt

— Blake Toppmeyer (@btoppmeyer) January 20, 2026

AND: Little fuss was made over it, and he wasn't the center of things, but Trump was there:

The crowd at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami roars as @POTUS is shown during the Star-Spangled Banner 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/gqQ3ojBXho

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) January 20, 2026

PLUS: A Cignetti quote that sounds Trumpy: "It’s a great story, a tremendous story. Probably one of the greatest stories of all time."

ALSO: Hoosiers take to the streets of Bloomington:

Safe to say Bloomington ain’t sleeping tonight
pic.twitter.com/vEcr7FU9tp

— Barstool Sports (@barstoolsports) January 20, 2026

AND:

Never Daunted. Tonight, our tower lights will shine in cream and crimson for one hour to celebrate @IndianaFootball winning the College Football Playoff National Championship! pic.twitter.com/S9a8tI7xbD

— Empire State Building (@EmpireStateBldg) January 20, 2026

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: