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Marjorie Taylor Greene is sounding sensible now. We live in the Upside-Down.

I did my entire 94-minute dog walk this morning without listening to podcasts, music, audiobooks or anything but the world. One of the lenses popped out of my glasses and that’s the third time that’s happened in the past year so time for new glasses. I went to a Masonic event where all they had was Folgers coffee made in a drip machine with no creamer or sweetener and I enjoyed it, so now I’m rethinking my entire relationship to coffee. And I got a haircut. So I’m experiencing a lot of change now.

President Trump posted a long Truth Social rant about his new ballroom — amid devastating winter storms and fallout from federal agents shooting a protester in Minneapolis.

He complained that his “gift to the American people” is not being properly appreciated.

— Political Wire

ICE agents killed a mother of three and emergency room nurse Despite blatant video evidence of the victims’ innocence, Trump, Vance and Noem smeared the victims with lies. Any of us could be next.

… the Trump administration is embracing Nazi propaganda, trying to convince Americans that the nation’s roots are not in human equality but in the hierarchical system of European fascism. Rejecting the idea of liberty and equality proposed in the Declaration of Independence and defended by people like Abraham Lincoln as the nation’s foundational principle, they are trying to define the United States of America in an entirely new way: one made up of white Protestants who, in their minds, “belong” to the land here. Rather than a nation based in ideals, they want a nation based in “blood and soil.”

In the 1770s, and again in the 1850s, everyday Americans recognized the radicalism of those extremists who were trying to erase the nation’s principles and the rule of law, ignoring the longstanding rights of the people to liberty and equality and instead trying to impose a despotism.

Today a protester in Minneapolis, one of those tens of thousands who filled the streets in below-zero weather to demand that ICE end its violent occupation of their city and its abuse of immigrants and people of color, made it clear that Americans in 2026 still believe in the nation’s founding principles of equality and the rule of law, and they utterly reject the right wing’s blood-and-soil radicalism.

— Heather Cox Richardson, Letters From An American, January 23, 2026

Noem Says ICE Is Being Menaced By Ice Cubes, Protesters Should Be Cooped Up In ‘Free Speech Zones’

This administration only knows two moves: bluster and gaslighting. Whatever you saw, you didn’t see. Whatever violations the government committed never happened. Whatever can be disputed by facts is just the ravings of leftist liars and mainstream media losers. As for everyone caught in this crossfire, fuck ’em. This party only serves itself. If there’s any silver lining here at all, it’s that Noem is too busy being Trump’s Bigot Barbie to kill her children’s pets any time soon.

— techdirt.org

Why this winter storm will likely be a wild one

“People say, ‘Oh, well, it’s really cold or we’re getting a lot of snow — how is the world warming?’ Climate change is an increase in the baseline temperatures, but it’s also an increase in extremes from both ways,” says Kaitlyn Trudeau, a senior research associate at the nonprofit Climate Central. “It can make more extreme cold outcomes; it can make more extreme warm outcomes … judging climate change by a cold storm is like judging a baseball season by a single inning.”

— theverge.com

Charter accused of backdoor attack against fixed wireless

The Wireless Internet Service Providers Association complained to the FCC that Charter Communications is blocking WISP backhaul access.

“In rural areas where there are no or few other options for these services, Charter’s internal policy could have the effect of cutting off internet service to the communities WISPA’s members serve or increasing costs resulting from a reduction in competition for upstream wholesale services,” wrote WISPA.

The dispute comes as cable companies like Charter are getting hammered by competition from telcos.

My colleague Linda Hardesty reports for Fierce Network.

ICE Is So Bad At Immigration Enforcement That It’s Detaining Native Americans

Trump’s version of ICE has always assumed that if your skin shade is anything darker than right-wing podcaster translucent, your ass needs to be gone from this country.

…

When you’re rounding up Native Americans, you’re rounding up the people who have done the least amount of immigration ever.

…

It’s been obvious since the inception of this so-called “immigration enforcement” surge: anyone not white would be rounded up.

…

And the surge in Minnesota is proving that being white is no protection either, not if you’re opposed to what this regime is doing. With threats of a military deployment to Minnesota looming, no American worth their citizenship should continue pretending this is anything more than white nationalism draping itself in executive power

www.techdirt.com/2026/01/2…

Facebook keeps showing me the same ad for a $60 sling bag, over and over. It’s a nice-looking bag, looks like a good alternative to cargo pants and shorts, which I am getting tired of wearing. And $60 isn’t a lot of money.

But $60 isn’t a small amount of money either. And I. Do. Not. Need. Another. Bag.

The Woman Who Spent Five Hundred Days in a Cave

By D. T. Max at The New Yorker:

I asked her what she’d missed down below, and she told me roast chicken with French fries—“the kind where you can soak the bread and the potatoes in the sauce.” The caterer had sent down decent food, but never that. Over all, she insisted, the time had passed quickly: “For me, it was just a moment—a single night. I didn’t have time to miss anyone.” In a vibrant, emotive voice, she spoke about her happiness underground so adamantly, and repeatedly, that it was a little hard to believe.

RIP "Uncle Floyd" Vivino, who hosted the cult "Uncle Floyd Show" starting in the 1970s

Fans included David Bowie, who said in 2002:

“Back in the late 70’s, everyone that I knew would rush home at a certain point in the afternoon to catch the Uncle Floyd show,” Bowie said. “He was on UHF Channel 68 and the show looked like it was done out of his living room in New Jersey. All his pals were involved and it was a hoot.

“It had that Soupy Sales kind of appeal and though ostensibly aimed at kids, I knew so many people of my age who just wouldn’t miss it. We would be on the floor it was so funny. I just loved that show.”

Vivino was 74

nj.com

I bought a new strap for my computer bag the other day and now I’m on the luggage company’s mailing list. This could be one expensive luggage strap.

Here in brief is the method I’ve honed to optimize a two-week vacation: When you arrive in a new country, immediately proceed to the farthest, most remote, most distant place you intend to reach during the trip. If there is a small village, remote spa, a friend’s farm, or a wild place you plan on seeing on the trip, go there immediately. Do not stop near the airport. Do not rest overnight in the arrival city. Do not pause to acclimate. If at all possible proceed by plane, bus, jeep, car directly to the furthest point without interruption. Make it an overnight journey if you have to. Then once you reach your furthest point, unpack, explore, and work your way slowly back to the big city, wherever your international departure airport is."

— Kevin Kelly, 50 Years of Travel Tips

This afternoon, Rebecca Santana of the Associated Press reported that ICE has been breaking into homes under the authority provided by a secret memo of May 12, 2025, signed by the acting director of ICE, Todd Lyons, saying that federal agents do not need a judge’s warrant to force their way into people’s homes.

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, one of the ten amendments that make up the Bill of Rights, says: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

As Joyce White Vance of Civil Discourse notes, courts have always interpreted that amendment to mean that a judge must sign a warrant to allow law enforcement to break into a home. Now the Department of Homeland Security says it does not need such a judicial warrant, but can simply use an administrative warrant signed by an official at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or ICE if immigrants believed to be inside a home have a final order of removal.

The legal training manual for DHS itself quotes a 1984 Supreme Court decision that “the ‘physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed.”

Immigration law specialist Aaron Reichlin-Melnick noted that this memo is a big deal: it is “the federal government conspiring in secret to subvert the Fourth Amendment.”

“Every American should be terrified by this secret ICE policy authorizing its agents to kick down your door & storm into your home,” [Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT)], wrote on social media.

…

Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), who at the beginning of 2025 was considered a moderate on immigration, wrote: “Yeah I am not voting to give whatever ICE has become more taxpayer money. It’s no longer an immigration enforcement arm of the US government.”

— Heather Cox Richardson, January 21, 2026

ICE agents are hanging around schools, threatening children. Reg Chapman of CBS News in Minnesota reported today that ICE has detained a five-year-old preschooler after using him as bait to get someone in his house to open their door. Then ICE transferred him and his father from Minnesota to detention in Texas. His family has an active asylum case and it does not have an order of deportation, meaning they are in the U.S. legally.

Video footage from Minneapolis also shows a federal agent spraying chemical irritants directly into the face of a man agents had pinned and held to the ground. Other video shows Customs and Border Protection leader Greg Bovino throwing tear gas at peaceful protesters.

—Heather Cox Richardson, January 21, 2026

Yesterday Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, police chief Mark Bruley told reporters that the police were getting repeated complaints about violations of civil rights by ICE and that ICE agents were stopping off-duty police officers of color. He recounted that ICE agents had stopped an off-duty police officer, demanded her paperwork—she is a U.S. citizen—and then held her at gunpoint. When she tried to film the interaction, they knocked the phone out of her hand. Finally, when she identified herself as a police officer, they got in their vehicles and left.

“This isn’t just important because it happened to off-duty police officers,” Bruley said, but because “our officers know what the Constitution is, they know what right and wrong is, and they know when people are being targeted, and that’s what they were. If it is happening to our officers, it pains me to think [of] how many of our community members are falling victim to this every day.”

— Heather Cox Richardson, January 21, 2026

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this morning, a visibly exhausted president of the United States of America rambled in angry free association in a speech before the world’s leaders. At one point, speaking of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) dignitaries, he told the audience: “Until the last few days when I told them about Iceland, they loved me. They called me daddy, right, last time. Very smart man said, ‘He’s our daddy. He’s running it.’”

He meant Greenland.

The president of the United States went on to give a virulently racist, insulting, rambling speech in which he complained that people call him a dictator but that “sometimes you need a dictator.” More than anything, though, the speech demonstrated his mental unfitness for his position.

— Heather Cox Richardson, January 21, 2026

Dementia Don says he has the "concept of a deal" on the future of Greenland and the whole Arctic Circle

This deal will get the US nothing new, at the expense of burning down 80 years of relations with our strongest allies and trading partners and weakening the US with respect to China and Russia. Nonetheless, MAGA will applaud the deal as a triumph. The Trump family will get hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit gains.

I have zero details about the deal. But that’s how things work in the Trump White House.

Also, the Epstein files were, by law, supposed to have been released Dec. 19.

Risk, reward, and revenue: Defining the telco role in the AI economy

Now I can reveal what I was working on much of the last six months — this massively researched Fierce Network report on the role of telcos in the emerging AI economy: Risk, reward, and revenue: Defining the telco role in the AI economy

Artificial intelligence is reshaping network requirements and creating new revenue opportunities for service providers. As AI adoption accelerates, telcos must define how they will participate in this shift - whether as infrastructure providers, enablers of AI service ecosystems, or builders of their own AI-driven solutions.

This report explores how carriers can leverage existing strengths, including resilient networks, edge assets, and deep enterprise relationships, to compete and grow in the AI economy.

The report draws on industry perspectives and a recent survey of 500 telco leaders worldwide — yes, that’s five hundred — along with 11 in-depth interviews with executives at global telcos and cloud providers, including AT&T, Bell, Zayo Group, C Spire, MetTel, Microsoft, Google Cloud, Oracle, Cisco and more. The report highlights where the strongest opportunities are emerging, the barriers that could limit progress, and how collaboration across the ecosystem can help unlock long-term value.

Download the report to gain timely insights into the changing role of telcos in the AI era and what it means for future growth.

I preordered the Clicks Power Keyboard. It’s a slide-out thumb keyboard that attaches to your phone with MagSafe. $79 early-bird pricing, delivers in the spring. I’d love to be able to do more things on my phone that now require me to be on my MacBook.

If I hate it, there’s a one-month refund policy. Hopefully that’s a month from when it’s delivered, not a month from now ha ha.

There's an observation that every Star Trek is an observation on the state of the US at the time it was made

Sometimes Trek anticipates the future, but only by three to five years

The original series: Cold War. Klingons are Russians, Romulans are Chinese.

“The Next Generation:” America ascendant. The lone superpower. The Enterprise is an embassy, bringing diplomacy and classical music to other nations.

“Enterprise” became paranoid post-9/11.

“Strange New Worlds” is nostalgic for the good ol' 20th Century, when things were simple (or at least that’s how we remember it).

“Starfleet Academy” anticipates the post-Trump world, when the US has to rebuild on the ruins of what MAGA destroyed. In the second episode, the Betazoids come to the Federation and say why should we trust you now when you betrayed us before?

We just had our fourth visit from refrigerator repair people since the fridge broke the day after Thanksgiving, and I guess he got tired of visiting us because he fixed the refrigerator this time.

We watched “Fallout” (violent, profane, cynical) and “All Creatures Great and Small” (wholesome, uplifting, optimistic family entertainment) on two consecutive nights and my brain can’t handle the disconnect.

This morning, I saw two squirrels chasing each other up and down the big palm tree in the backyard. Minnie was straining at the leash to get at them. So I let her off the leash to circle around the tree and jump for a while. Whether this was kind or cruel of me depends on whether you view things from the perspective of the dog or the squirrels. 

After washing up for bed I put on my sleep T-shirt and then I realized I had absentmindedly put on my exercise T-shirt, so I took it off and put on my sleep T-shirt, but then I realized I had absentmindedly put on my everyday T-shirt and I took that off and put on my sleep T-shirt.

Then I thought of a recent post by John Scalzi in a similar situation where he talked about needing to sit his brain down and have a conversation about how T-shirts work.

Nobody remembers the planes that don't crash

The Rest is History is doing a multi-part series on the Iranian Revolution. I have listened to the first episode, covering the fall of the Shah and the US’s complete failure even to anticipate the revolution. Literally days before the fall, Jimmy Carter went to Tehran for a celebration, and he gave a speech proclaiming that the Shah was a stable presence, an advocate for human rights (which the Shah most decidedly was not), and that the Shah would rule for decades. This was also the consensus behind the scenes in American diplomatic and spy circles. Nobody saw the Iranian revolution coming, right up until the moment it was happening.

I look at that, and I look at similar failures with the fall of the USSR and 9/11, and I’m tempted to think, well, the CIA and State Department are bumbling clowns — completely useless!

But what I’m not seeing is occasions when diplomats and spies headed off catastrophe, and did so deftly enough that it never even made the news.

Nobody remembers the planes that don’t crash.

Anti-vaxxers look around and say we don’t have tuberculosis or measles or polio anymore, so those vaccines are useless! Even dangerous! But what anti-vaxxers don’t see is that vaccines are the reason we don’t have those diseases.

Trump has hit the basement of his support now — and he's never going to lose these supporters

For the people who still support Trump today, no revelation or action will cause them to give up on him.

Based on what we know so far, it seems likely that Trump engaged in vile, depraved sexual practices. His business was a massive money-laundering operation. He openly and nakedly accepts bribes in staggering volumes. He falls asleep in meetings and demonstrates mental incompetence.

And yet Trump’s approval rating stands at 40%. Two fifths of America voters look at Trump and think that he’s their boy!

If the Republicans are soundly defeated this year — and pray that happens! — the people who support Trump today will continue supporting him for decades and believe that he was betrayed.

The game now is to activate the apathetic voters, the people who believe that Democrats are no better than Trump, and that there’s nothing we can do to make things better. That’s the Democrats' job, and the Democrats have been shit at it so far (which a few exceptions — hi, Zohran Mamdani!).

We did not watch the new Star Trek last night, because we watched The Pitt instead. I plan to watch the new Trek tonight. I’m not the only one making that decision, but I expect Julie will agree.

I hated the previews of the new Trek and planned to stay clear, but the consensus online seems to be that, yeah, the previews are dreadful but the show is good-to-great.

As for The Pitt — I’m still having feelings about that.

My oatmeal was the perfect consistency this morning so I know it’s going to be a good day.

I’m going to need to take a personal day from work tomorrow to recover from watching “The Pitt.”

Julie and I were mega “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” fans. We tried a rewatch recently and one thing that jumped out at me was that the show is set in SoCal and Giles wears tweed and sweaters ALL THE TIME, which is ridiculous. Maybe 20% of the days in the year here are cool enough for tweed.

Also, Giles initially drives a decrepit 1963 Citroën, to comedically illustrate his nature as an impoverished eccentric English academic. But how did he get a Citroën on the U.S.? Did he have it shipped from England? Where does a high school librarian get that kind of money?

I know a surprising amount about men’s style for someone who goes around wearing cargo pants and food-stained T-shirts 97% of the time.

I’m looking for recommendations for a good spam-blocker for text messages that works across the iPhone, iPad and Mac. In addition to general spam-blocking, I want to block all messages containing a specific string of text — I get a lot of spam messages from Democrats seeking political donations, and virtually all of them have links to actblue.

When Julie is out of town and I’m at home, I rewatch the tv show MASH. It holds up pretty well, although I wish there was some way to watch on streaming without a laugh track. You can find MASH without the laugh track on DVDs, but I don’t want to go to the hassle and expense.

I am amazed that for much of my life we watched comedies with a laugh track. I have lost the skill to tune the laugh track out.

I started traveling for business 37 years ago and during that time electronics has of course gotten exponentially lighter and more powerful. So why has my day bag gotten heavier? Am I carrying anvils around?

The refrigerator repair guys have come and gone and it turns out they did not have all the parts needed to repair the refrigerator after all! They replaced the compressor and motherboard, plugged it in and sparks flew, which is (they explained to Julie, who explained it to me) bad.

Recapping: This morning our main refrigerator was not working. Now it’s not working and there’s solder powder all over the kitchen, which Julie, bless her, is cleaning up.

I'm reading a paper book for the first time in 16 years

I switched to ebooks-only in 2010, when the Kindle app for iPad came out.

However, yesterday I decided I wanted to reread “Funny Papers,” by Tom De Haven (I discussed that here yesterday) and I could not find an ebook version of the novel. I do have a paperback copy at home so now I’m rereading that.

I like it. I can’t say I have any interesting new insights about ebooks vs. paper, but maybe I will after I’ve read more of the book.

Last night, when I was reading in bed, Julie said, “Oh, wow, the sound of a turning page. We haven’t heard that in a while.” Julie reads ebooks too, when she reads books — lately she’s been doing crossword puzzles.

Since I made the switch to ebooks, society’s views toward digital vs. analog has changed, and we’re rediscovering the benefits of analog technology. But I like ebooks. I like my Kobo.

One of my main reasons for switching to ebooks is that paper books take up so. much. space. That hasn’t changed.

Exciting refrigerator news

We are scheduled to get our fourth visit from a refrigerator repair guy this morning, and this time they plan to actually bring the part they need to repair the fridge. The fridge broke down Nov. 30 — we bought a smaller fridge after about 10 days when we could see this was going to go on for a while and I was feeling like I was getting too close of a personal relationship with the guys at the liquor store where I was buying ice.

I am grateful to the missus for many things but particularly for working with the buffoons at the refrigerator repair company on this, and also for shopping for and buying the Emergency Auxiliary Backup Refrigerator.

… while we think of the role of the finance sector as “capital allocation” – that is, using investors' money to fund new businesses and expansions for existing business – that hasn’t been important to finance for quite some time. Today, only 3% of bank activity consists of “lending to firms and individuals engaged in the production of goods and services.” The other 97% of finance is gambling."

— Cory Doctorow, A perfect distillation of the social uselessness of finance

We're all just content for ICE

Ryan Broderick at Garbage Day:

During my four days in the Twin Cities, I watched the fabric of American society start to break down. ICE agents armed with assault weapons, tear gas, stun grenades, and pepper spray balls drive cars off the road and break down people’s doors with abandon. The institutions that are meant to protect us — local law enforcement, local politicians, the basic machinery of democracy and accountability — have all but thrown their hands up. “They have bigger guns than we do,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said during an interview over the weekend.

…

ICE agents are, simply put, fucking clowns. According to The Atlantic, they receive 47 days of training — in honor of Trump, the 47th president, naturally. Many of them, also, can barely read or write, apparently. The ones I spent the weekend following around didn’t even have proper uniforms, with some wearing sneakers. In Minnesota. In January. These dipshits are also wearing camo in the snow. They clearly do not have any training when it comes to their own weapons either. Multiple times over the last few days, I watched officers fire pepper spray balls at the feet of protestors barely a few inches away from them. These weapons are basically paintball guns full of concentrated pepper spray. So when they hit a target, they explode into the air. Which meant ICE agents regularly ended up poisoning themselves with their own weapons. I also watched two agents ask each other if a canister they were about to fire at the crowd was tear gas or a stun grenade. (It ended up being a stun grenade that then ignited the tear gas they had already shot at us, which started a fire in the street that a protestor had to help them put out.)

…

The lesson here is clear: We’re on our own now. They have guns and drones and they can hack our phones and smear our names online and arrest us without a warrant and charge us with terrorism. And all we have are whistles and protests and TikTok and group chats and maybe some journalism. Our local leaders are admitting they can’t help us. So we’re left with nothing but hope that all of that will be enough. But it’s impossible to shake the profoundly unsettling feeling that we have clearly stepped across the threshold into a very different political reality. And it’s not a matter of if it arrives in your town, but when.

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be

I think I will reread “Funny Papers,” by Tom De Haven, first of a trilogy of novels that I loved, about the writers and artists behind a fictitious newspaper comic strip featuring a boy named Derby Dugan. The novels span New York in the 1890s-1970s, exploring the worlds of the newspaper industry, pop culture and life in those eras. The books are beautiful and sad; the comic strip brings joy to millions of people but not to its creators, who are miserable sods. That doesn’t sound like a fun read, but it is. I am highly romantic about midcentury New York, a place and time that I missed by a few years.

I wrote a review of “Derby Dugan’s Depression Funnies,” the second book in the series: A talking dog and puckered shoes: Derby Dugan’s Depression Funnies

When I first read that novel, I had no idea it was part of a trilogy; I was surprised and delighted to find the first novel, “Funny Papers,” years later, and then surprised and delighted again a few years later to find the third novel, “Dugan Underground.” The first novel, “Funny Papers,” covers the golden age of tabloid yellow journalism in the 1890s, “Depression Funnies” is about the peak of newspaper comic strips in the 1930s, when newspaper cartoonists were millionaire pop stars, and the final novel is about the hippie counterculture underground comic scene in the 1960s and 70s.

I’m gratified to see that De Haven is still alive and working, according to Wikipedia, though I’m disappointed to see that he apparently hasn’t produced a novel in 20 years. On the other hand, there are a few novels of his that I have not yet read, so new De Haven is on the horizon for me!

De Haven’s most recent novel, “It’s Superman!” is a kind of Superman reboot, inspired by the strips of the 1930s-1950s, “in which the hero is less concerned with super-villains and Lex Luthor and more with clearing slums … and exposing corrupt politicians.” It’s very good.

From Wikipedia:

The author noted in an interview that he agreed with Robert Crumb’s observation that the Thirties was the pinnacle of American culture. He also notes in the same interview that he finds truth to Art Spiegelman’s statement “that we are, for whatever reason, most nostalgic for the decade before the one we were born in”, as he was born in the Forties

The 1930s were certainly a great period in American culture, though I don’t know if they were the pinnacle.

As for being most nostalgic for the decade before the one we were born in — I say baloney. That would make me most nostalgic for the 1950s, which is a decade I have little interest in. If I had to pick favorite American decades that I did not live through, I’d pick the 1930s, 1940s and maybe I’d throw in the 1960s and 1970s, which I was too young to fully appreciate.

Other than the rise of the tech sector, the 1980s and 1990s were not very interesting for American culture — although they were very interesting, both personally and professionally, for me individually.

Arguably the 1990s were the peak of American prosperity and influence. There’s a funny post about that:

The Matrix described 1999 as the peak of human civilization and I laughed because that would obviously not age well but then the next 23 years happened and now I’m like yeah okay maybe the machines had a point

That was posted in 2022; four years later, 1999 is looking better and better.

And another:

it is may 5th, 2000. you are in the crowd at 30 rockefeller plaza watching steely dan perform “peg” on the today show. al gore is up in the polls. a few miles south, the twin towers stand tall, a potent symbol of the might of american capital. everything is going great 👍

If you’re a Steely Dan fan, do watch the video at the preceding link and cry for a lost, under-appreciated golden age.

Mel Brooks is still raising hell at 99

Hadley Freeman at Jewish News:

“Some days I’m not feeling as great as I want to. But other days I don’t even notice that I’m not 37 anymore.” He keeps ‘showbiz hours’, staying up late, sleeping late, starting his day in the afternoon with a breakfast omelette. “Then I take a walk in front of the house, up and down the steps to stay limber. I talk on the phone and I write – every day. Always writing, always correcting, always questioning.”

Brooks on his World War II experience:

Enlisting at 18, he fought in France and Germany as a combat engineer. What does he remember about it? “I remember thinking there’s nothing better than a ham and cheese baguette on the Champs-Élysées. Delicious, but very treif.”

Kevin Roose @kevin@theforkiverse.com asked: “tell me the last thing you bought for under $50 that radically improved your life.”

I replied: “This $5 dog poop bag holder. After the dog does her business and you scoop it up, tie a knot in the top of the full bag, hang the knotted bag from the handle of the leash, continue the walk without having to hold the poop bag in your hands.”

The thread is fun to read.

Kevin is tech columnist for the New York Times and podcasts on Hard Fork.

Many people set goals for a number of books to read each year. I don't think that's a good idea.

Feeling like you have a target number looming over you discourages you from abandoning books if you’re not enjoying them. How can you abandon a book when you’ve already read 100 pages?! You’ll fall behind on your goal! Starting a new book feels like a commitment, so you’re careful about which books you start.

Whereas if you feel free to quit reading, then you’re more likely to try new authors, genres and themes. Expanding your reading is more important than hitting an arbitrary number.

Another reason I don’t hold with setting a target number for books to read each year is that it discourages you from tackling a big giant enormous book. I read Ron Chernow’s massive, 1,200-page biography of Mark Twain last year and loved it. I would not have been so eager to jump into that book it if I felt like it would put me behind on a target goal.

I try to set myself a target of reading a certain number of pages every day. And if I miss my goal, I try not to sweat it too much. Last week I barely read any books at all, just from adjusting to being back at work after the holiday break. But I picked it up this weekend.

Tom Homan: If Democrats Don’t Stop Calling Us Murderers, We’re Just Going To Be Forced To Keep Murdering You.

You can see how fragile and pathetic these men are. They are so desperate to subjugate and suppress people who disagree with them politically. They seemed to think that once they were in power, the public would love and admire them for their power. Instead, the vast majority of Americans see them for what they are: pathetic, insecure man-babies in way over their heads.

I loved the novel “The Ministry of Time” by Kaliane Bradley, which is a lighthearted workplace comedy and paranormal romance about colonialism and multigenerational trauma. You would not think those things go together but they do, splendidly well. 📚

I finished reading “Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell,” an anthology of several novels and short stories. I read two of the novels: “Wasp” and “Sinister Barrier.” A few months ago I read one more by Russell: “Men, Martians and Machines.” Classic sci-fi from the 1930s-50s.

I’ve watched the rise of dictation tools for the Mac with some interest. I dictate more than half of what I write into the iPhone — which is a lot — email, text messages, notes to myself — but if I have a full-size keyboard, it’s easier for me to type than dictate.

"American exercising their constitutional rights must submit, without question, to a white man holding a gun."

Heather Cox Richardson compares the murders of Renee Good and Ahmad Arbery, the jogger gunned down by white supremacists in 2021. In both cases, defenders of the shooters released video of the incident which those defenders claimed would exonerate the shooters. But in fact the videos showed the killings for what they were — murder.

In the case of the murder of Renee Good, the shooter and his protectors are clearly so isolated in their own authoritarian bubble they cannot see how regular Americans would react to the video of a woman smiling at a masked agent and saying: “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you,” only to have him shoot her in the face and then spit out “Fucking btch” after he killed her.

The thread that runs through both is the assumption that an American exercising their constitutional rights must submit, without question, to a white man holding a gun.

Mitchellaneous did not go out at the usual time yesterday morning. When I noticed this, I poked around for a few minutes looking for a technical reason for the problem. Eventually, I figured it out — I had scheduled it for 2025. D’oh! 🤦‍♂️It’s coming up in a few minutes.

Billy Crystal’s apartment in When Harry Met Sally is over the top even by NY movie apartment standards. That’s a billionaire apartment. Billy is clearly money-laundering. As is Hugh Grant in Notting Hill — no way he affords a flat in Notting Hill based on income from a failing travel bookstore.

Everyone inside America’s most flailing destination city has a theory for what’s wrong. Now I have my own.

At a bar downstairs at the Luxor Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, I recently found myself next to a 67-year-old man who had come to town to get a tattoo on his shoulder. The tattoo in question was of Yosemite Falls, in California. As best I could understand it, he was getting branded with the landmark because he was enmeshed in a situationship that wasn’t working out. He and this woman had apparently taken a memorable trip to Yosemite earlier this year, and he hoped that—after he showed her the tattoo—a tarnished spark would be rekindled. I wished him all the luck in the world as he took his leave of me, and for a few minutes, I was alone among the chirping slot machines, nursing a gin and soda and pondering how no place on Earth can make you believe the impossible quite like Las Vegas.

I know more people who hate Las Vegas than love it, and I’ve never been able to construct a convincing argument for why they’re wrong. We are granted only so many vacations in this life, and it might seem ill-considered to spend one of them watching the Blue Man Group in an Egyptian-themed hotel in the Nevadan desert. But here I was, at the Luxor, on a quest to renew my love affair with this city.

A well-reported, well written article.