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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Wednesday, January 21, 2026

Off-Script

The problem with reality TV is when the show becomes reality, and that’s what happening now.

At this point, we should remind ourselves what we’re talking about. Quoting Wikipedia:

“Reality television is a genre of television programming that documents purportedly unscripted real-life situations, often starring ordinary people rather than professional actors. Reality television emerged as a distinct genre in the early 1990s with shows such as The Real World, then achieved prominence in the early 2000s with the success of the series Survivor, Idol, and Big Brother, all of which became global franchises.[1] Reality television shows tend to be interspersed with "confessionals", short interview segments in which cast members reflect on or provide context for the events being depicted on-screen; this is most commonly seen in American reality television. Competition-based reality shows typically feature the gradual elimination of participants, either by a panel of judges, by the viewership of the show, or by the contestants themselves.”

So Trump, the former realty TV star, which is the main reason he is president, wants Greenland. The Europeans don’t want him to take it by force. 

Eight European nations place a small military force on the icy island to defend it against the far larger U.S. military behemoth.

Everyone (even Trump) knows that the Europeans would stand no chance in a war, which would make them martyrs and the Americans look not like conquerors but fools.

Frustrated, Trump fumes and struts, seeking another way to seize his prize. He threatens large new tariffs on the Europeans, and awkwardly confesses that this entire show is because he didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize.

In this matter, he confuses Norway with Denmark, and an independent awards committee with a government, but who’s paying that much attention, really?

Today, Trump is in Davos, Switzerland, where the whole thing may come to a head. But he is ranting incoherently as I publish this, so stay tuned. This show has most definitely gone off-script.

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