Sunrise — 7:01, 7:26.

Temperature: 15 below zero!

Talk about whatever you want in the comments.

"This was not a date, but a meeting to see if they could be successful co-parents — two adults with no expectations of maintaining a relationship..."

"... outside the shared raising of a child (or two or three). 'A co-parent doesn’t need to be my romantic partner,' said Ms. Reid, who would like to have a child before she turns 36. She added that she spent the dinner looking for stability and shared values with the stranger rather than flirty chemistry. 'They need to be a great teammate.' Interest in platonic co-parenting is growing, with specialty apps experiencing substantial growth over the last few years. Modamily, the app Ms. Reid is using, connects people looking to start a family through dating, sperm donation or platonic co-parenting. In 2020, the app reported having 30,000 users registered to the platform. By 2025, that number was 100,000...."

From "In Search of a Platonic Co-Parent/Platforms that match partners in procreation are experiencing a post-pandemic uptick" (NYT)(gift link).

Person shot.

 

Both The Washington Post and The New York Times say that a "person" has been shot. Is there some question whether this was a woman or a man? If not, it's oddly dehumanizing.

From WaPo: "Federal agents shot another person in Minnesota on Saturday morning, Gov. Tim Walz said in a social media post. Police did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the incident, and Walz provided few details. It was not immediately clear which federal agency was involved, and the condition of the apparent victim was unknown."

Checking Walz's X post, I see it doesn't even say "person," just "another horrific shooting" (along with the demand, "The President must end this operation. Pull the thousands of violent, untrained officers out of Minnesota. Now").

Taste the delicious penguin bait.

Embrace the penguin. pic.twitter.com/kKlzwd3Rx7

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 23, 2026

"If ideological consistency can’t explain the enduring loyalty of Trump’s base, what does?"

I'm reading "The Four Types of Trump Supporter/The president’s political power depends on his ability to play different roles for different parts of his coalition," by Daniel Yudkin and Stephen Hawkins" (The Atlantic)(gift link).

1. "MAGA Hardliners" — 29% — "mostly composed of white Gen Xers and Baby Boomers," "animated by the belief... in America’s existential struggle between good and evil."

2. "Anti-Woke Conservatives" — 21% — "a more secular and affluent group of voters deeply frustrated by what they perceive as the takeover of schools, culture, and institutions by the progressive left."

3. "Mainline Republicans" — 30% —  "a more racially diverse group of middle-of-the-road conservatives who prioritize border security, a strong economy, and cultural stability."

4. "Reluctant Right" — 20% — "ambivalent" people who thought Trump "seemed 'less bad' than the alternative." (I'm laughing at "the alternative" — the name Kamala doesn't even appear in the article.)

Those are the 4 types of Trump supporters, we're told. Then there are 4 roles that Trump plays:

"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.

Sunrise — 7:28, 7:46.

Talk about whatever you want in the comments.

"Barron Trump was on a video call with a woman in London when he saw her ex-boyfriend allegedly grab her hair and push her to the floor while shouting 'you are not worth anything'..."

"Snaresbrook crown court was told. Trump phoned the police immediately after he believed he had seen Matvei Rumiantsev, a Russian citizen, repeatedly punch the woman. In court, a dramatic call was played in which Trump’s son can be heard calling 999 operators and telling them: 'I just got a call from a girl I know. She’s getting beaten up.'... Trump, 19, was heard pleading... 'It’s really an emergency, please. I got a call from her with a guy beating her up.' The 999 operator then told off Trump for refusing to answer questions, saying: 'Can you stop being rude and actually answer my questions. If you want to help the person, you’ll answer my questions clearly and precisely, thank you. So how do you know her?' Trump replied: 'I met her on social media. She’s getting really badly beat up and the call was about eight minutes ago, I don’t know what could have happened by now.' He added: 'So sorry for being rude.'"

From "Barron Trump ‘saved woman’s life’ in London/The US president’s youngest son tells court that he saw his friend being assaulted by a former boyfriend during a video call and called the police" (London Times).

Barron made that emergency call on January 18, 2025. The trial is going on now.

"After a Thursday board meeting in New York City, Mr. Klempf, 34, flew to Athens for eight hours, where he toured the Parthenon."

"He then hopped on a flight to Egypt, saw the pyramids, rode a camel and visited the Grand Egyptian Museum, all before returning to San Francisco in time for Sunday dinner.... Mr. Klempf is among the growing number of travelers, short on vacation time or looking to save money, who are embarking on whirlwind itineraries that take advantage of time zones and credit card points to string together one- to three-day trips."

That's the travel trend called "microvacations," from "Travel Trends in 2026: Uncertainty, Face Scans and ‘Microvacations'" (NYT).

How awful!

I can see taking trips that are only 2 or 3 days, but not with all that time on a plane. Go somewhere nearer! But it seems people want "bucket list" credit, and there's nothing more bucket-list-y than the Parthenon and the pyramids. 

"Based upon a very productive meeting that I have had with the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, we have formed the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland..."

"... and, in fact, the entire Arctic Region. This solution, if consummated, will be a great one for the United States of America, and all NATO Nations. Based upon this understanding, I will not be imposing the Tariffs that were scheduled to go into effect on February 1st. Additional discussions are being held concerning The Golden Dome as it pertains to Greenland. Further information will be made available as discussions progress. Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, and various others, as needed, will be responsible for the negotiations — They will report directly to me. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"

Writes President Trump, at Truth Social.

ADDED: I just want to note that I have seen that Trump kept calling Greenland "Iceland," and I'm not buying the theory that he was merely calling it an ice land and not mixing it up with the country named Iceland.

Trump is now confusing Greenland and Iceland: "They're not there for us on Iceland, that I can tell you. Our stock market took the first dip yesterday because of Iceland. So Iceland has already cost us a lot of money." pic.twitter.com/Iu9CI6M2ku

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 21, 2026

I thought of another excuse that could be attempted. Trump likes to rename things, notably the Gulf of Mexico, so maybe part of his plan is to rename Greenland, which, after all, was misnamed in the first place. I do not think it's a good idea to use a name that another country is already using, but at least, he's not calling it Trumpland.

"Learning cursive will provide New Jersey students with 'the skills they need to read our nation’s founding documents'...."

Said New Jersey governor Phil Murphy, quoted in "Cursive Makes a Comeback in New Jersey Schools/In one of his final acts in office, Gov. Philip D. Murphy signed a bill on Monday requiring third, fourth and fifth graders to learn cursive" (NYT).

Proponents of cursive cite studies that link handwriting to better information retention and writing speed, and say — as Mr. Murphy did in a statement released as he signed the bill — that knowing script can help people read the original U.S. Constitution....

On Tuesday, Gabrielle and Kurt McCann, of Lebanon, N.J., were waiting to break the news to their 9-year-old son, Atlas McCann, when he got home from school. “I think it is important that kids are able to use that refined motor skill,” Ms. McCann said in an interview shortly after a meeting where she said she had taken all her notes in longhand.

But Atlas, she said, was thinking, “What’s the point of having to sit here and torture myself?”

The poor boy has the weight of the world on his shoulders. And now, this additional burden — handwriting! What for? Who reads the Constitution in the original handwriting? It's not even cut-and-paste-able. It's not searchable in handwritten form. Atlas will grope forward, if the time ever comes, asking AI what constitutional clause goes with whatever is the issue of the day. What constitutional clause deals with transgender women in girls sports? What constitutional clause gives cis gender girls the right to undress at public school in a single-sex locker room? The ancient handwriting will not say. AI will.

Let's consult not a politician but an expert:

“Oh, God,” Morgan Polikoff, an education professor at the University of Southern California, said when he learned of the New Jersey law.... He attributed the renewed affection for the style’s curlicues and squiggles to “boomerish nostalgia,” and said he was struck by cursive’s bipartisan appeal, with states as different politically as Arkansas and California requiring its instruction. Conservatives, the professor said, promote its utility for reading old documents; liberals like it for its beauty as an art form....

Fight the decline lest the day come when we cannot read the documents. Then what?

"The pink forests of the northern pre-spring."

"To day is a tree found in several communes in Mu Cang Chai such as Kim Noi and Mo De, and in Pung Luong Commune. The trees bloom at elevations above 1,000 meters. The H'Mong people there call them pang to day, or wild peach blossoms. It is one of the most distinctive flowers in Vietnam's northwestern mountains when spring approaches."

Reports VnExpress. Nice photos at the link. Great name for the tree — "to day." I love the idea of pre-spring, but it wouldn't apply very well to the forests of the Upper Midwest of the United States.

I'm seeing "Exploding trees possible across Minnesota, Iowa, and South Dakota" (KKRC Sioux Falls). That does not mean "exploding" with flowers. "[S]ap and moisture inside trees freeze rapidly... it expands, creating immense pressure within the trunk. If temperatures fall quickly enough, this pressure can cause the tree to split or explode with a sound like a gunshot or thunderclap...."

Notorious crackhead and grifter...

The White House distributed a print-out to reporters in the briefing room listing out “365 wins” from President Trump’s year back in office. #243 stands out: “Stripped notorious crackhead and grifter Hunter Biden of his taxpayer-funded secret service detail.” pic.twitter.com/LtpAC1wPGY

— Elizabeth Landers (@ElizLanders) January 20, 2026

What was so bad about 1976?

That's the teaser on the front page of the NYT for an article with a different headline, "The Conservative Conspiracy Against Women’s Progress Is Real" (by Jessica Grose).

The article says nothing about the 1970s. I do see a reference to the 1960s: "The report’s authors know they can’t tell all women to be stay-at-home mothers (returning the country to 1960s employment levels for women) because that would contradict their other goal, to dismantle the welfare state and put even more work conditions on parents receiving government aid." The 60s were 60 years ago, and the article does call the report "a curious set of guidelines for the future, since it seems mired in culture war battles from the 20th century, unable to face the past 60 years of change."

Usually the 1950s are selected as the era of the traditional wife and the 1960s represent the exciting period of changing gender roles. The 70s were the heyday of feminism. These decades feel quite distinct from each other to me, a person born in 1951. Jessica Grose was born... when? Maybe to millennials, the 50s, 60s, and 70s seem like one big chunk of boomer oldness. 

Winter morning.

Trump live, now, at Davos.

A quote (re drug prices): "You've been SCREWING us for 30 YEARS!!!"

"On social media, Mr. Macron’s sunglasses were seen as a political statement, projecting a tough image in the face of Mr. Trump’s threats to..."

"... impose tariffs on French wine and champagne and to annex Greenland. He has previously used his clothing to send a message, donning a turtleneck in the winter of 2022 as Europe contended with an energy crisis in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Some people likened the bespectacled Mr. Macron to the naval aviator played by Tom Cruise in 'Top Gun.' Others recalled former President Joe Biden’s penchant for aviators, though Mr. Biden was not known to wear his sunglasses while addressing world leaders...."

From "Why Was Macron Wearing Sunglasses at Davos? An eye condition, not a style choice, prompted President Emmanuel Macron of France to don aviators to address the World Economic Forum" (NYT).

I've written about aviator sunglasses before. Let me find that. Here, from March 2017, "And gold aviator eyeglasses are one of the sexiest shapes you could possibly wear." I wrote:

For the annals of sexiest shapes imaginable. Aviator glasses are back in style, we're told in the NYT.

I'm not buying that these glasses are obviously sexy. There's also... 

"One of my style icons is Gloria Steinem, and she’s worn that look forever."...

Aviator glasses were adopted by stylish people in the 60s. I'll never forget seeing Mort Sahl — the political satirist — on "The Tonight Show" holding up a picture of Gloria Steinem and railing against her, harping specifically on her glasses. As I remember it, he took the position that it was ludicrous to wear aviator glasses unless you were an aviator.

"President Trump has said he would ensure Iran was 'wiped off the face of the Earth' if the country carried out any assassination attempt against him...."

"In an interview with NewsNation that aired on Tuesday... the president said: 'I’ve left notification, if anything ever happens … the whole country’s going to get blown up. I would absolutely hit them so hard. I have very firm instructions, anything happens, they’re going to wipe them off the face of this Earth.'"

The London Times reports.

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:

"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: