AND EVEN MORE CRITTERS
THE PERSON who MAKES the FIRST COMMENT WILL GET TWO CRITTERS
EVERY PERSON WHO COMMENTS WILL GET A CRITTER
RULES IN THE DIARY
WHEN YOU FIND SOMETHING in the DIARY that you LIKE
YOU CAN REPOST IT AS COMMENT in the DIARY
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Sunday long read: Tariffs, Greenland, Venezuela, Minnesota...why is Trump causing all this senseless mayhem? And why are a Republican administration, the Supreme Court, and most of congress cheering him on? This terrific article describes Trump’s addiction to power and is well worth a full read.
It is possible to become addicted to power — particularly for certain character structures. Individuals with pronounced narcissistic, paranoid or psychopathic tendencies are especially vulnerable. For them, power does not merely enable action; it regulates inner states that would otherwise feel unmanageable.
Donald Trump is an extreme illustration of this dynamic. From a psychoanalytic perspective, his narcissism is malignant in the sense that it is organized around a profound inner emptiness. (NYT-shared)
The idea that the powerful should always win and that justice is for liberal sissies is echoed in Trump’s frequent comments that Ukraine should surrender because Russia is “bigger.” His administration sings the same song. Who would expect this comment to come from the Treasury secretary?
The new “might makes right” focus isn’t just among Trump and his cronies. There’s an echo among the conservatives who favor white supremacy and the Andrew Tate-style “manosphere” as well: people saying that those with power deserve everything they want.
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Back to Minnesota. Not that kraigo didn’t cover it masterfully from on the spot yesterday, but every day there’s something new.
On NPR news this morning: Governor Walz is preparing to deploy the Minnesota National Guard to support local police (who are outnumbered by ICE five to one). So the president is preparing to send in cold-ready troops from Alaska to bolster ICE. That would pit US military forces against US military forces. I’ve wondered for years what the civil war that right wingers have been touting would look like without a Mason Dixon line. This was never on my bingo card.
I hear a future history student saying in bored tones, “So the Battle of Minneapolis in 2026 was the start of Civil War II. Do we hafta know this for the test?” What would our country look like to that child?
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More on yesterday’s water balloon battle between pro-ICE demonstration leader Jake Lang and anti-ICE demonstrators. It evolved into some sort of mayhem. Lang claimed he was stabbed but news reports indicate some doubt about that.
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David French of NYT analyzed the likelihood of Renee Good’s family successfully suing and concludes that success is unlikely.
The government is defended by a phalanx of immunities and privileges, buttressed by the president’s unchecked pardon power — a vestige of royal authority that should no longer have any place in our constitutional republic.
He adds tellingly,
President Trump is stress-testing American law, and the law is failing the test. The health of the American experiment rests far more on the integrity of any given American president than we realized. (NYT — paywall. Bolding mine.)
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This ought to win a photojournalism prize for both photographers.
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Photo by Pierre Lavie. Yes this is me. And I threw my Leica. It landed on the bass plate with hardly a scratch. Another Photographer grabbed it along with my phone and I was able to track him later. I was held face down tear gas deployed right in front of me and pepper sprayed directly into the eye.
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— John Abernathy (@john-abernathy.bsky.social) January 17, 2026 at 7:57 AM
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So they’re arresting members of the press now for covering the very events they instigated. And of course to prevent more coverage.
Saw a sign a while back that borrowed from the Martin Niemöller poem:
“First they came for the press. We don’t know what happened after that.”
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— Kristin Wilson 📎 (@kristin-wilson.bsky.social) January 17, 2026 at 7:22 AM
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Speaking of the press, the administration threatened CBS with a lawsuit if they did not air the entire interview with Trump unedited.
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Back to Greenland with some background.
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In 1916, the US was worried that Germany might take control of the Danish West Indies to use as a submarine base. So, Denmark sold the Danish West Indies to the USA, with the colony becoming the US Virgin Islands. In exchange, the USA acknowledged Denmark's complete sovereignty over Greenland.
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— StrictlyChristo 🇺🇦🌻🚫👑 (@strictlychristo.bsky.social) January 17, 2026 at 12:23 PM
Trump has levied a 10% tariff on NATO countries that are protecting Greenland.
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Follow the money.
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$1.5T for the military budget
$170B for ICE and Border Patrol
$1B to refurbish Trump's Qatar jet
$470M to send National Guard into cities
$230M for Trump's DOJ "compensation"
$200M for Kristi Noem's jets
$100M for Trump's golf outings
But no money to lower your healthcare costs.
— Robert Reich (@rbreich.bsky.social) January 17, 2026 at 4:00 PM
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"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
-Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953
— Robert Reich (@rbreich.bsky.social) January 10, 2026 at 12:00 PM
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Trump is trying to raise money too, albeit in a shameful way. Where would this money go? To the US Treasury or to some private account?
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In more humorous news, Trump wheedled a Nobel Peace Prize medal from its owner this week, apparently unaware that possession of the symbolic trinket does not make him the prize winner. Wags are suggesting a number of other prizes he might co-opt.
Close your eyes, Indy!
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Don’t forget that Tuesday is the date of Walk Out and Free America protests. Check for one in your area.
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Sunday Science
Geoengineering in action: experiments in de-acidification of the oceans.
Since the advent of the industrial age, the oceans have absorbed about one-third of humanity’s heat-trapping carbon emissions. Were it not for that immense buffer, the planet would be substantially warmer and more tempestuous than it is today. As carbon dioxide from the atmosphere dissolves into the ocean, however, it reacts with seawater to form carbonic acid, which disrupts the ocean’s chemical balance and reduces its capacity to absorb more carbon. Prolonged acidification will severely threaten marine ecosystems and fisheries on which more than one billion people depend.
To counteract these effects, scientists have proposed a type of geoengineering known as ocean alkalinity enhancement, which essentially involves concocting antacids for the sea. Modifying the planet’s chemistry in this way allows more carbon to flow from the atmosphere to the ocean, where it can be stored for thousands of years. Experts emphasize that such mediation would be entirely ineffectual without first slashing greenhouse-gas emissions. (NYT shared article)
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How scientists pinpointed the exact year of a disastrous eruption of Mt Rainier. Knowing the date helps predict future danger.
An outpouring of magma isn’t the biggest risk to people downhill from Mount Rainier in Washington. The active volcano’s greatest danger comes from lahars — amalgams of mud, rock and water that are as dense as wet concrete.
Over the past several thousand years at least nine large lahars have barreled down the steep slopes of the 14,410-foot mountain, sometimes reaching as far as the Puget Sound some 60 miles away. The largest lahar of the past 1,000 years was known as the Electron Mudflow, named for the small hamlet of Electron.
That event buried the nearby landscape in nearly 20 feet of mud. But scientists have struggled to precisely date when this event occurred. Knowing the year could make it possible to correlate the lahar with other events and therefore better predict future muddy outbursts. (NYT shared article)
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Saunas improve health...for frogs.
Frogs and other amphibians play a critical role in the planetary ecosystem, consuming many insects that transport human diseases. Their skin is considered an important potential source of new painkillers that may be less addictive than opiates and could help with antibiotic resistance. The fungus infecting them is almost always deadly, and can rapidly wipe out populations.
In an attempt to slow the march of the disease, Waddle began a novel experiment: building frog saunas. Working out of his lab in Australia during the pandemic, he and a fellow researcher began experimenting with masonry bricks for their perfect, frog-sized holes. Soon, stacks of bricks housing endangered green and golden bell frogs rose “like a Jenga tower, three levels of bricks with a greenhouse over the top” at the test site, Waddle says. They hoped that by raising frogs’ body temperatures, the saunas would help stave off the chytrid fungus – which, like the flu, runs rampant in the winter months. (The Guardian)
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Today is the birth date of...
Thomas A. Watson (1854-1934) - Alexander Graham Bell's assistant who helped with the invention of the telephone.
Daniel Hale Williams (1856-1931) - Cardiologist who performed the first open heart surgery.
Oliver Hardy (1892-1957) - Comedian and half of the duo Laurel and Hardy.
Anthony Galla-Rini (1904-2006) - Accordion player credited with popularizing the use of accordions in contemporary music.
Ray Dolby (1933-2013) - Founder of Dolby Laboratories.
The Dolby B consumer noise-reduction system works by compressing (boosting) low-level high-frequency sounds during recording and expanding (decreasing) them symmetrically during playback, which also decreases inherent tape noise. This reduces the audible level of tape hiss.[3] The professional Type A system operates on four different frequency bands, and the final SR system on ten.
After his pioneering work with audiotape noise reduction, Dolby sought to improve film sound. As Dolby Laboratories' corporate history explains:[citation needed]
Upon investigation, Dolby found that many of the limitations in optical sound stemmed directly from its significantly high background noise. To filter this noise, the high-frequency response of theatre playback systems was deliberately curtailed… To make matters worse, to increase dialogue intelligibility over such systems, sound mixers were recording soundtracks with so much high-frequency pre-emphasis that high distortion resulted.
The first film with Dolby sound was A Clockwork Orange (1971), which used Dolby noise reduction on all pre-mixes and masters, but a conventional optical sound track on release prints. Callan (1974) was the first film with a Dolby-encoded optical soundtrack. The first true LCRS (Left-Center-Right-Surround) soundtrack was encoded on the movie A Star Is Born in 1976. In fewer than ten years, 6,000 cinemas worldwide were equipped to use Dolby Stereo sound. (Wikipedia)
R. Stevie Moore (1952-Still Living) - Considered the musical godfather of home recording.
Kevin Costner (1955-Still Living) - Multi-award winning actor with credits in The Untouchables (1987), Open Range (2003), Black or White (2014), and recently Yellowstone.
Amy Barger (1971-Still Living) - Astronomer who discovered dusty galaxies, quasars and supermassive black holes.
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On this day in...
1644 - Pilgrims report a UFO sighting.
According to [Massachussetts Bay Colony Governor Winthrop, James Everell, "a sober, discrete man," and two others reported seeing a strange green light in the night sky while rowing in the Muddy River, which emptied into a tidal basin in the Charles River.
Winthrop wrote, "When it stood still, it flamed up and was about three yards square. When it ran, it was contracted into the figure of a swine."
According to Winthrop, the men observed the light for two to three hours as it "ran as swift as an arrow" between them and Charlestown, some two miles away.
"Diverse other credible persons saw the same light, after, about the same place," Winthrop wrote. (WBSM)
1778 - Captain James Cook stumbled over the Hawaiian Islands, what he referred to as the Sandwich Islands.
1862 - The first piece of Arizona was formed as Confederate Territory.
On March 16, 1861, a group of prominent Arizonans met in convention at Mesilla, NM (near present-day Las Cruces) to announce that Arizona Territory was seceding from the United States of America and request annexation into the Confederate States of America. (Southern Arizona Guide.)
1896 - The first demonstration of an X-ray machine was held in NY City.
1916 - A meteorite hit a house in Stone County, MO.
1943 - The U.S. banned pre-sliced bread to reduce the need for metal parts as part of the war effort.
1962 - The U.S. began spraying foliage in Vietnam to reveal Viet Cong.
1964 - Plans for World Trade Center announced in NY City.
1993 - Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was officially observed for the first time in the U.S.
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It’s National Michigan Day!
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It’s National Thesaurus Day. Or, as you might say, Governmental Reference Book Day. Or Public Glossary Sunrise. Or Civil Onomasticon Daytime.
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It’s National World Religion Day, initiated by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United States to promote peace and understanding between people of all faiths.
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It’s National Peking Duck Day! You can make this delicacy at home if you have a duck and a bicycle pump.
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It’s National Winnie the Pooh Day! The movie is okay but the book is the best.
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Also National Gourmet Coffee Day! This treat is made with a neat trick.
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It’s World Snow Day, initiated by the Fédération internationale de ski et de snowboard to introduce children to snow sports.
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It’s the Feast of the Holy Child, a celebration of the image of the holy child, involving costumes, parades, dancing, and festivals.
Tomorrow is National Popcorn Day.
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Not news but this is fun.
