Sunrise, 7:13... afternoon, 3:58.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"I can't believe the bespoke NY magazine biz hasn't yet realized that an Annie Leibovitz puff piece photoshoot is a political death sentence."

I can't believe the bespoke NY magazine biz hasn't yet realized that an Annie Leibovitz puff piece photoshoot is a political death sentence pic.twitter.com/INL4dWe7Hb

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) February 2, 2026

"And some 'disabilities' are just downright silly. Students claim 'night terrors'; others say they 'get easily distracted' or they 'can’t live with others.'"

"I know a guy who was granted a single room because he needs to wear contacts at night. I’ve heard of a girl who got a single because she was gluten intolerant. That’s why I felt justified in claiming endometriosis as a disability.... The application process was very easy.... The system is staffed largely by empathetic women who want to help students.... In addition to a single housing assignment, I was granted extra absences from class, some late days on assignments and a 15-minute tardiness allowance for all of my classes.... Had I been pushier, I am sure I could have received almost any accommodation I asked for. While I feel entitled to my single room, I would feel guilty about some of the perks I have — except that so many of my fellow students have gamed the system...."

Writes Elsa Johnson, a Stanford student, quoted in "Nearly 40% of Stanford undergraduates claim they’re disabled. I’m one of them/One of the most prestigious universities in the US offers perks to those who say they have ADHD, night terrors, even gluten intolerance. You’d be stupid not to game the system" (London Times).

"The constant activity is better than therapy. It’s a lot of work, but running this restaurant is my passion, my dream. I don’t feel like I have Tourette’s anymore."

Said Dylan Larson, quoted in "Teen with Tourette’s Syndrome operates restaurant by himself — and the 'constant activity is better than therapy" (NY Post).

Larson, now 21, is the sole employee at Rare Earth Goods Café in Ishpeming, taking every order, cooking every meal, washing every dish, and balancing the books.... He works without a stovetop or full-sized oven, relying instead on a small electric griddle, a four-slice toaster and a countertop convection oven. On busy days, customers wait up to 45 minutes for their breakfast and lunch meals.... 

Doctors later diagnosed him with Tourette’s at age 8.... “I was noisier or a bit more, I don’t know, just louder than other people.” Larson said. “I was like, shouting in class. And when I got excited about something, my first word would be like, yelling at you. Sometimes, it would scare people.”

You may remember the chef with Tourette's from "Curb Your Enthusiasm":

"The Government Published Dozens of Nude Photos in the Epstein Files. The photos, which showed young women or possibly teenagers with their faces visible..."

"... were largely removed after The New York Times began notifying the Justice Department.... As part of its required disclosure of the Epstein files, the federal government was tasked with redacting both sexually explicit imagery and information that could be used to identify victims. But in the process of reviewing more than three million pages uploaded to the Justice Department’s website on Friday, The New York Times came across nearly 40 unredacted images that appeared to be part of a personal photo collection, showing both nude bodies and the faces of the people portrayed...."

The New York Times reports.

Government-issued pornography. Presumably accidental, but what can you expect with this longstanding prurient interest in Jeffrey Epstein?

That can't feel good.

"Her custom negligee dress and matching cape were crafted in silk georgette in a deep red garnet. But once Roan removed the cape, the result was a naked dress that seemingly exposed her breasts, with the silk georgette suspended by nipple rings."

I'm reading "Chappell Roan’s Naked Dress at Grammys Shocks Social Media/The double Grammy nominee created what was arguably the night's first viral moment when she turned up in a sheer look by Mugler" (Hollywood Reporter).

Congratulations on getting attention. It's quite a look, and it kind of looks good. But I'm just worried about that kind of weight suspended from pierced nipples. You're treating your breasts like hooks on the back of a bathroom door, things to hang clothing on.

Here's a closeup (on X) that highlights the pulling. It's not just an illusion that the whole bottom of the dress is hanging from those nipple rings. You can see the distortion from the weight. You can see the risk of injury. The viewer is drawn into the experience of pain and danger. Who is that for? 

"Well, of course, we contact our Trinidadian friends and all the people that like to eat iguanas... and they eat the eggs and they eat the legs and they eat the tail."

"So this is easy snacks, fallin' out the trees this mornin'."

Meet Jessica Kilgore the South Florida iguana slaying queen!!!! pic.twitter.com/CDNQvsok8O

— Branch Floridian (@JackLinFLL) February 1, 2026

"I've got nothing but respect for Don Lemon's husband."

"Do you see that man's face?"

"A mind-set shift involves changing what you notice, what you remark upon, where you place your focus."

"[C]oncentrat[e] on what you like about winter (cooking, cozy indoor reading, the quiet after snowfall) over what you don’t.... 'Appoint yourself a wintertime ambassador this year... and encourage everyone around you to notice what they like about the winter as well.'... [G]et outside, to figure out the layering situation such that experiencing the Norwegian concept of 'friluftsliv,' or “'open air life,' isn’t excruciating. The Swedish author of 'There’s No Such Thing as Bad Weather' (I think that sentence usually completes with 'only bad clothes') [said] 'There are some days when it’s harder to get outside than others, but I know that if I do, I’m never going to regret going outside.'... This is the sort of mantra that works on me. Every fiber of my being may disagree with it, but if I allow my brain to override the resistance, if I believe intellectually that it’s true, I’ll go out in the cold and quite possibly discover the physical and mental benefits of 'outdoorphins.' If I can take a break from my usual winter pastimes of turning up the thermostat when no one is looking and making others touch and offer sympathy for my corpse-cold extremities, there’s a different relationship with winter awaiting."

Writes Melissa Kirsch, in "Cold Comfort/How can the perpetually shivering warm up to winter?" (NYT).

I don't need that advice. (I'm acclimated.) But maybe you do. It's all in the mind. I mean, you have to dress for the occasion, but go outside in the cold. It's exciting. It's beautiful. I love winter!

Sunrise — 6:59, 7:14.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"Newsom was profoundly dyslexic.... By the third grade, he had worked himself into a panic over his trouble with reading and math."

"'I’m faking being sick, because I hate school and I’m stressed, and they’re always having to pick me up early,' he recalled.... He was a scrawny, shy boy with a bowl cut. 'He always called himself stupid,' his sister said, and other kids apparently agreed. 'The guys kept saying, "If you’re looking for your brother, he’s hanging from his underwear on a lamppost."'  In middle school, Newsom took steps to reinvent himself as an athlete. 'Rocky' had recently come out, and he emulated the main character—running up and down hills, drinking raw eggs, learning to box. His sister remembers falling asleep night after night listening to the sound of him relentlessly practicing basketball: shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting. Learning to read was a similar feat."

Writes Nathan Heller, in "Gavin Newsom Is Playing the Long Game/California’s governor has been touted as the Democrats’ best shot in 2028. But first he’ll need to convince voters that he’s not just a slick establishment politician" (The New Yorker).

"When I asked Newsom about his dyslexia in his office one afternoon, he showed me an overstuffed folder of printed material, his reading from the previous evening. Almost every word of text was underlined. He flipped through a galley proof of his memoir, in which the underlining covered whole pages—the only way, he said, that he could read any book, even his own. He produced another folder filled with lined paper and covered with his handwriting: he copies all the text he underlines onto writing pads...."

"Muzzle velocity, in its literal sense, describes the ferocious speed of a bullet at the moment it exits the front end of a gun."

"The term came from an interview that Steve Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist, gave in 2019. 'All we have to do is flood the zone,' Bannon said. 'Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done. Bang, bang, bang. These guys will never — will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity.'"

Writes Ezra Klein, in "Trump Has Overwhelmed Himself" (NYT).

But has Trump "overwhelmed himself"? Listen to last night's press gaggle — all the topics he crunched through in 15 minutes. Iran. Venezuela. Cuba. China and India. Crime in Minneapolis and Chicago. ICE protests. The 250-foot arch and the ballroom, the Epstein files, suing Michael Wolff, suing the FBI. Greenland. And that "sleazebag" Don Lemon. 

He didn't seem overwhelmed at all, and that was at night, on a gruelingly noisy plane, grilled by reporters after an evening event where, as WaPo puts it, "Trump tries humor, gets some silence, at black-tie dinner with 'people I hate.'"

He seemed to be up for all of it.

Has there ever been a worse impersonation on "SNL" than Pete Davidson's complete failure even to attempt to seem the slightest bit like Tom Homan?

Look:

I guess they just hoped the audience didn't know Homan, but if you've ever seen him talk, you know he has an especially funny way of talking. What a treat for a comedian to be invited on the show to do a long Homan impression in the cold open. Maybe they thought we'd just be so thrilled to see Pete Davidson again that it would be okay for him to do Homan as just some guy in a bald wig.

Davidson, you lazy bum, compare your Homan to Jim Carrey's brilliant Broderick Crawford:

Ever since I first heard Tom Homan, he's reminded me Carrey's Broderick Crawford. I watched that in real time, some 30 years ago and I've always remembered it as one of the funniest things I've ever seen on television.

"President Trump Gaggles with Press on Air Force One En Route Palm Beach, FL, Jan. 31, 2026."

I'm going to pick through the transcript and will update in about an hour. Meantime, you can pick over the text and pull out your favorite highlights

ADDED: From the YouTube transcript:

"The weekly gatherings of knitters at Needle & Skein, a yarn store in Minneapolis, are typically filled with giggles and storytelling."

"But, earlier this month, a heaviness hung in the air. 'It was just collective exhaustion,' said Paul Neary, a shop employee. 'Minnesotans — we're not going to say the big thing, but we often know what the big thing is just by looking at each other.'... They pulled out their knitting needles and got to work. Neary created the pattern that has now become the well-known 'Melt the ICE' hat, a red beanie-shaped cap topped with a braided tassel.... As a history buff, Neary chose the pattern based on a Norwegian hat used to protest the Nazi occupation of Norway in the 1940s. The hats were called 'nisselue,' which roughly translates to Santa hat...."

From "A red hat, inspired by a symbol of resistance to Nazi occupation, gains traction in Minnesota" (NPR).

"Peter Fritzsche, a history professor at the University of Illinois, said the Nazis were operating on 'obviously a very, very different scale,' but with ICE's presence in Minnesota, people can still feel 'occupied.'... Wendy Woloson, a history professor at Rutgers University at Camden and fellow knitter, said the red hats are a classic response of the crafting world. When knitters want to help in their community, they put their hands to work, she said.... She recalled the pink 'pussy hats' from the 2017 Women's March...."

It's poignant, this urge to do something that finds its release in knitting. It's something very calm indoor people can do when they want to feel they too are engaging in activism. 

ADDED: Speaking of hats in Minnesota, I just ran across this fascinating passage in a NYT article from April 2025: