Wednesday, January 28, 2026

Encounter(s)

The headlines these days are dominated by encounters, many of them unwanted, violent and deadly. While most of us watch them on screens, as opposed to in person, they still apparently provoke a similar physiological effect as they would if we were there at the scene. 

As a result, there are those who believe we are suffering from a “national trauma,” and they may be right. Not to avoid that ugly reality, but perhaps seeking a way to cope with it, I’m seeking other types of encounters these days of a more nourishing variety.

***

Yearning for balance as well as a respite from the news and the sheer weight of it all, I find comfort in walking outside, connecting with friends and gardening. Also, by reading books and long feature articles in the New Yorker.

But lately, even those options haven’t done the trick. Being retired and having too much time on my hands, I’ve somewhat guiltily turned to bingeing on melodramatic series on Netflix, like “The Diplomat,” “Virgin Spring,” and, most recently, the 2018 Korean romantic drama, “Encounter.”

I realize this may not be a genre that appeals to everybody, but what is compelling to me about “Encounter” is the sincerity and the excruciatingly slow pace of the developing love affair between a divorced hotel magnate (Song Hye-kyo) and her much younger colleague (Park Bo-gum). The characters first encounter one another by chance as strangers in a foreign land (Cuba).

In real life, Song is 12 years older than Park, but in appearance, at least by Western standards, they both could be teenagers who would probably get carded at a bar. Song has long been considered one of the most beautiful women in Korea and Park has a boyish beauty to complement hers.

Ignore the schmaltz and the soft but melodramatic soundtrack and some things lost in translation. Because both actors are superb, especially Song, whose character is layered with complexity. The pace at which the two of them get together may be glacial by Western standards, but the key to this story’s appeal is that we share this extended state of anticipation. And of course, anticipation of the romantic kind is one the most powerful emotional states we will ever experience in real life, so there’s that.

I’m guessing that the same experts I mentioned above would say that we may undergo a similar physiological response when watching such an encounter as if we were experiencing it ourselves.

In any case, even though it was vicariously, I found myself hanging on every twist and turn during this particular Encounter.

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Tuesday, January 27, 2026

The Stories to Come

One chilly morning a friend picked me up and we made our way into the city to an office where I used to work, just a couple blocks from a house where I used to live.

And although I may have felt a touch of nostalgia, this trip was not about the past but the future. Our purpose was to meet with a small group of young people just launching their new careers as journalists.

As is expected from an old guy, I told a few war stories, but we focused much more on their stories, especially the ones yet to be written. In this meeting, we were joined by other veterans of the news business, citing experiences from between ten and twenty years each.

I hesitated to bring up that I broke into journalism 60 years ago this month, so as not to appear to give my length of time more weight than it deserves.

After all, regardless of how long you do this, or how many thousands of stories you write, your entire career may well boil down to a few moments and a set of circumstances beyond your control.

And it’s how you apply the knowledge you gain from those few moments that can make all the difference.

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Monday, January 26, 2026

Turning Point

The confrontation between state officials and the Trump administration has reached the breaking point. The two sides have put forth two opposing narratives of what happened last week when ICE agents surrounded, pushed to the ground, disarmed and then executed Alex Pretti.

The video evidence is not ambiguous.

From the Times:

  • Brian O’Hara, the Minneapolis police chief, said on CBS that Pretti appeared to be “exercising his First Amendment rights to record law enforcement activity, and also exercising his Second Amendment rights to lawfully be armed in a public space in the city.” He described the city and his department as being at a breaking point. “People have had enough,” he said.

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Sunday, January 25, 2026

The Killers in Our Streets

Many, many American citizens do not agree with the Trump administration’s roundup of migrants for deportation. We have heard the propaganda — that those being chased down are dangerous criminals — and we’re not buying it.

Because we know it is a lie.

The crimes allegedly committed by the migrants targeted by federal officials in Minneapolis include possession of cocaine, prostitution and driving without a valid license.

Meanwhile, we know that the vast majority of these people are innocent of any crime and are our neighbors, our colleagues, our friends. So in some of our communities, when Trump send in his ICE agents, brave citizens come out to stand witness, blow whistles, and record video of the arrests.

For this, two citizens have been killed by ICE this month in Minneapolis, a 37-year-old woman and a 37-year-old man.

This is unacceptable. From my work over the years with the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, I’ve learned that obtaining justice and accountability in cases like these can take many years of painstaking work.

If this is still America, the truth shall prevail eventually and the perpetrators will be brought to justice. 

But the key word in that sentence is “if”.

(What follows is a detailed analysis of yesterday’s killing by ICE, courtesy of the New York Times.)

TOP STORY:

  • Timeline: A Moment by Moment Look at the Shooting of Alex Pretti (NYT)

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Saturday, January 24, 2026

Industrial Clock

Since humans ran out of new kinds of animals and foods to domesticate thousands of years ago, we can study almost any edible plant or farm animal as a microcosm of human history.

This leads me to the term “industrial clock,” which refers to how we cannot escape the rhythms of the 40-hour week even after we retire.

And that brings me to the origin of the coffee break, which was developed by industrialist managers as a way to squeeze more productivity out of workers. I first encountered this curiosity when I was reviewing a book on the history of sugar many years ago.

Like many other crops, sugar started out as a luxury for the rich and powerful but then gradually filtered down until it became one of the many excessive burdens of the poor and powerless.

Over 100,000 people die of diabetes in the U.S. each year, and they are disproportionately from minority and poor communities.

Taking sugar with coffee or tea became habitual for workers during the industrial revolution. By now, virtually everyone goes through at least some phase of sugar addiction, it’s endemic.

And of course there are other risk factors for diabetes — smoking and obesity among them.

But wars have been fought and empires built on control of sugar or tea or coffee or bananas and every other foodstuff; that much is indisputable.

Meanwhile, I’m over six years into retirement and still living on the “industrial clock.” 

(This is a rewrite of an essay from 2022.)

HEADLINES:

  • Winter Storm With 'Catastrophic' South Ice, Heavy Snow From Texas To Northeast To Affect Over 230 Million (Weather.com)

  • Zelensky says he hopes first Ukraine, Russia and US talks are ‘step towards ending war’ (BBC)

  • Territorial issue is key obstacle to Ukraine peace, Kremlin tells Trump envoys (AP)

  • Outrage as Trump undermines NATO role in Afghanistan war (DW)

  • UK’s Starmer slams Trump remarks on non-US NATO troops in Afghanistan as ‘insulting’ and ‘appalling’ (AP)

  • Signs of Wavering (Atlantic)

  • Businesses in Minneapolis close Friday to protest ICE (NBC)

  • D.H.S. Cited Foreign Students’ Writings and Protests Before Their Arrests (NYT)

  • Defund Science, Distort Culture, Mock Education (Atlantic)

  • Denmark offered to trade Greenland to the U.S. in 1910—and America thought it was crazy (Fortune)

  • Inside the effort to shield Stars and Stripes from Pentagon control (WP)

  • Stephen Colbert Ruthlessly Taunts His CBS Bosses With A Biting Trump Reminder (HuffPost)

  • Kimmel And Colbert Say FCC ‘Equal Time’ Rule Is A Bid To ‘Stifle’ Them (Forbes)

  • TikTok finalizes a deal to form a new American entity (AP)

  • Well, That Is One Way for J.D. and Usha Vance to Respond to the Erika Kirk Divorce Rumors (Slate)

  • Todoist’s app now lets you add tasks to your to-do list by speaking to its AI (TechCrunch)

  • How Meta Is Reshaping Its Organization for an AI Computing Blitz (The Information)

  • Trump Boys Put Nobel Peace Prize In Microwave (Onion)

 

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Friday, January 23, 2026

Don't Look Away

 


From Mark Fiore: “Impending Awfulness…Is Already Here.”

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Thursday, January 22, 2026

White Faces

As Trump rumbled through his confused and confusing speech at Davos yesterday, he was looking out at a sea of predominantly white faces.

When his cabinet gathers to heap praise on his fragile ego, it is a room of predominantly white faces.

His much-vaunted Board of Peace, once it is fully formed and gathers for a photo op will be predominantly white faces.

Although he threatens and bluffs, Trump will not invade Canada or Greenland or Denmark because he considers these places as homes for white faces.

When he bombs Iran or Venezuela or dismisses African countries at sh*t nations, it is primarily the color of the skin of their inhabitants that enrages him.

His private army of ICE agents is waging war on people of color, not white people. When a white woman was killed by ICE in Minneapolis, even Trump was momentarily taken back.

Every Black woman he attacks is in his words “low-IQ.” It matters not how accomplished she is, what elected office she holds, or anything else other than the color of her skin.

And of course his MAGA crowds, the hard-core supporters who stand by him no matter what, are composed of predominantly white faces.

Someone reading this will say, wait, there are exceptions. Of course there are exceptions, but I’m generalizing here for a reason.

Racism is and always has been at the root of Trumpism.

And the resistance movement gradually forming to resist Trump and his many depredations is composed of a rainbow of colors, including yes, many white faces.

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