“Here is a sentence I am pleased to be able to write in 2026: I like the new Amy Grant song.”
“Well, it turns out that some genius dogs can learn a brand new word, like the name of an unfamiliar toy, by just overhearing brief interactions between two people.”
“I am, I think, writing this for myself more than for anyone else, but for all of the yelling you do on Twitter at people who are nakedly wrong about things, the house always wins. You can’t meaningfully fight disgusting ideologies on a platform that has been redesigned from the ground up around amplifying said ideologies.”
“[A recent study] found that climate policies aimed at forcing lifestyle changes — such as bans on driving in urban centers — can backfire by weakening people’s existing pro-environmental values and triggering political backlash, even among those who already care about climate change. The findings suggest that how climate policy is designed may matter as much as how aggressive it is.”
“At present, there are 15 women in general manager positions across Minor League Baseball. When most fans think of the GMs in baseball, they likely assume the job is all about building a roster. Minor League GMs have nothing to do with rosters, but everything to do with a team’s financial stability and community impact, and the gameday experience of everybody — from fans to players and coaches to employees — who comes out to the ballpark.”
RIP, Bob Weir, guitarist, songwriter, founding member of the Grateful Dead.
“How IVF has led to a record number of single moms in their 40s”. I don’t know about you, but I can feel the rage emanating from certain corners of the Internet at that headline.
“Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly sued the Pentagon on Monday over attempts to punish him for his warnings about illegal orders.”
“When we think about how to understand Trumpism and what to do about it, we need to be thinking way beyond the literal and technicalities. It’s really about how we got to be like conquered territories in our own country and how we un-get there. That requires thinking beyond the narrow technicalities of civilian and military laws and life.”
“Rather than offer a traditional “how to fight book bans in 2026” guide, I’ve compiled a massive list of ideas for things you can do not only effectively to fight against book censorship but that also will increase your own knowledge, vocabulary, and fluency in the world of censorship as it is right now.”
“That heaviness you feel, that drag on your mental health, that drain on your emotional energy and lethargy in the face of world events, like [when Renee Nicole Good was murdered], is real. We are all carrying a lot of new weight in the era of Trumpism. It’s the weight of non-zero.”
Having an asteroid named after you, especially unprompted, is pretty damn cool.
“Malaysia and Indonesia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s company xAI, as concerns grow among global authorities that it is being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images.” I hope they’re not the last.
RIP, Scott Adams, “Dilbert” cartoonist.
RIP, Claudette Colvin, civil rights activist whose arrest for refusing to give up seat on a segregated bus preceded Rosa Parks’ by nine months. I knew there were others besides Parks who had done this but I didn’t know any of their names before now. Her arrest was finally expunged in 2021, with an African-American judge granting it to her. Rest in peace, Claudette Colvin.
“Anyway, please note that it bothers Bari Weiss when people publicly make fun of her bad decisions and utter lack of journalistic acumen, like the internet is always doing, and like Nikki Glaser did at the Golden Globes.”
“Your Data Center Is Either Closer Than You Think or Much Farther Away”.
“If you swear an oath while placing your hand on the Bible, you’re swearing an oath on a book that forbids you to do that.”
“Joe Rogan’s Harsh New Takedown of Trump ICE Raids Hands Dems a Weapon”.
“Inflation might be cooling down, but “Streamflation” is real, per new data from the U.S. government.”
“The only predicate here is winning power. And this is why I think it’s so important for both activists and politicians alike to approach the ICE challenge differently than they did in the past—with activists offering more generosity and specificity to Democrats trying to win elections, and Democrats earning that generosity by giving their voters reason to believe they won’t tuck tail.”
“I’m tempted to offer a lecture on how the 2017 Women’s March was about liberal women correctly understanding that a man accused by over a dozen women of sexual abuse was throwing up red flags about how he’ll govern, but there’s no reason to gild the lily here. What matters now is that resistance moms were the vanguard then, and they are the vanguard now.”
RIP, Professor Renfrew Christie, anti-apartheid hero who helped derail South Africa’s nuclear weapons program and was tortured in prison for that and for other acts of resistance to the apartheid regime. Read his story and be inspired by it – if you’re like me, you did not know who Renfrew Christie was before now – and remember that today’s Christian nationalists are the descendants of the men who were buying and telling others to buy krugerrands in the 70s and 80s. (Hint: One of their names rhymes with “Schmerry Schmalwell”.)
“Whether Minnesota ultimately prosecutes Ross remains to be seen, and state officials’ decisions will depend on careful legal and evidentiary analysis. Without predicting outcomes, however, it’s worth both clarifying the state of the law—especially in the face of false claims from the Trump administration—and identifying some of the key issues Minnesota prosecutors will have to consider.”
“More resignations of federal prosecutors are expected at the US Attorney’s Office in Minnesota amid ongoing frustration over the Trump administration’s response to the fatal shooting of Renée Good by an ICE officer in Minneapolis.”
Isn’t a bit of the frustration about Bari Weiss linked to concerns about her ultra-Zionism? I never see the Z-word here, even when we have a political prisoner over the issue held in custody right here in Texas: https://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2026/01/leqaa-kordia-remains-political-prisoner.html
And, all we can say is “RIP” about Scott Adams, not something like “a MAGAt went out to the crematorium trash” or something?