The Freep ran a weird story on Sunday, noting that the many protests against the Trump regime in Detroit last year were overwhelmingly white. No argument here; I was at most of them, and they were indeed on the pale side. But I noticed the writer using a particular usage that’s become common in recent years:
I first noticed this in Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me,” bodies used as a synonym for people. It struck me then, and it still does. Coates is a skilled writer, and his usage suggested a world where black people aren’t seen as fully human, just bodies, flesh in human form but a color others won’t acknowledge as their equals, which was exactly the point of his book. But the widespread imitation of it just seems trendy, like describing everything as iconic.
And this is the sort of woolgathering that goes on during a winter storm. Gazing out the window at the all-day snowfall, trying not to return, yet again, to the news from Minneapolis, about which I have nothing to say that hasn’t been said already.
And it’s still snowing. Not the fatfluffyflakes of some storms, but a fine, dry powder that just keeps coming and coming. It takes a long time to pile up, but at the end we’re probably looking at five inches. Nothing compared to what Ohio is getting, but enough to cancel a lot of events and make an all-day stay-home the wisest course of action.
At one point, bored, I checked to see how far out you could pull a Google map and still see highway conditions. Pretty far:
You can almost see the path of the storm reflected there. Then I pulled out farther to check to see if Google was still a bunch of lickspittles, and yeah, they are:
More bloggage:
An occasional commenter here, Nancy Friedman, works in business naming, mostly — maybe entirely — in the San Francisco area. She has a Substack, and a very amusing take on an overused word many tech bros are hot to include in their startup’s handle: Praxis. One even wants to found a new city — in Greenland, natch — and call it that. Writes Nancy:
Dryden Brown, who is 29, would appear to be very interesting himself, but he doesn’t have his own Wikipedia page. Here’s how the Wiki entry for “Praxis (proposed city)” introduces him:
Dryden Brown was raised in Santa Barbara, California and was homeschooled in order to pursue competitive surfing. He stated that as a high schooler, he studied Ayn Rand and Austrian economists, and when he applied for college, he limited his applications to Harvard University, Stanford University, the University of Oxford, and the University of Cambridge. He was rejected by them all and he attended New York University before dropping out.
A 2023 story in Mother Jones provided a few more biographical details: Brown’s father “worked in private equity and owned a seven-bedroom, 6,200-square-foot home that recently sold for more than $6.5 million.”
Yes, I felt that familiar full-body twitching at the mention of Ayn Rand, the “Objectivist” author of the bad novels Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. They’re frequently the only novels that “libertarian utopians” boast of having read.
And, as surely as “utopia” follows “libertarian,” PRAXIS is the name they default to for their endeavors.
I’ll remind you that this “charter cities” scam is what’s behind the revival of the stupid Belle Isle scheme that I wrote about recently.
Finally, a gift link to a NYT magazine story about year one in Kash Patel’s FBI. It’s enraging.
Still snowing. Let’s get through the next week, shall we?
Jeff Borden said on January 25, 2026 at 4:21 pm
Snow in Chicago continues to fall, too, erasing my beautifully shoveled walks (as well as my side-by-side neighbors, whose walks I also cleared.) Don’t need a gym with this kind of winter. Well, we were warned. A weather reporter this morning said it would be a “long-term snow event” requiring multiple shovel. I wish they were wrong.
My rage about the DHS goons murdering a Veterans Administration ICU nurse in cold-blood is turning into an icy desire for revenge. I want to live long enough to see this entire cabal arrested, tried, convicted and jailed. All of them. Every damned one. I wish them misery in every facet of their lives and hope they never enjoy a minute’s peace for what they have done to this nation. Let them live the lives they wish for immigrants.
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Deborah said on January 25, 2026 at 4:54 pm
I tried to read that NYT article about the FBI a couple of days ago and I couldn’t get very far into when I decided I couldn’t go on. It’s so maddening and depressing, I tried again today but I can’t go on now either.
We finally went to a protest this morning in Santa Fe in solidarity with Minneapolis that they had at the Plaza, it was super last minute so only about 75 people were there which wasn’t bad for 18º weather, snow and some wind which came up later and had us hightailing for the coffee shop at the book store nearby. We only heard about it an hour before it started. I used my old Stephen Miller rat poster that I made a while ago, I have yet to get my new Kristi Noem liar with a cowboy hat printed, but I’m doing that tomorrow for sure. We had bought 100 whistles for $24 from Amazon, only took 50 to the protest and gave them all away so we know there were at least 50 people attending. Mostly white people there, a few hispanics and even younger people pushing strollers. The plaza is a great place to have a protest, there or at the capitol which they call the Roundhouse. This is the first protest that we were able to get the info on before it was over since this ICE stuff in Minnesota started.
To those people who’ve maybe never been to Santa Fe, there’s a webcam in the plaza which shows what a great place it is and a perfect place to have a protest. https://www.earthcam.com/usa/newmexico/santafe/?cam=santafe
We’re having our new neighbor over for wine and cheese later this afternoon, I think I mentioned here that she’s a retired appellate court judge from Arizona who worked with Napolitano, I can’t wait to hear her stories. She’s hispanic so this should be very interesting.
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ROGirl said on January 25, 2026 at 5:21 pm
I already shovelled about 4 to 5 inches (with drifts) earlier today, and it’s still coming down. The temp wasn’t in the single digits today, but the lack of sun didn’t help.
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Mark P said on January 25, 2026 at 8:37 pm
Despite fear mongering so bad our notorious roads department sprayed de-icer on our rural roads, the most we got out of the storm was a very thin coating of ice on some limbs at the top of our little mountain. It was well over freezing all day. However, the low tonight is predicted to be 23, barely reaching freezing for a high tomorrow and then 16 Monday night. So we may have icy spots on the roads.
I’m sure you have all seen the reports about Kash Patel’s wish list for a Five Eyes intelligence meeting. It’s so ridiculous I’m inclined to doubt it. Then again, maybe not.
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alex said on January 25, 2026 at 10:23 pm
I doff my hat to Mark P @ 32 in the last thread. I’d completely forgotten about Duck Duck Go, but it’s exactly what Google used to be before it went to shit. It seems that for the last year or so, Google has become especially worthless at finding things that used to pop up automatically.
I would occasionally Google my own name to see what’s floating around out there about me, and there’s not much anymore, but on Duck Duck Go there’s this: https://www.howealumni.org/howe-herald/21-apr-1978/
It links to a high school newspaper piece I wrote at age 16, and I’d never seen it before on the internet, and in fact had forgotten about it completely.
What strikes me about it isn’t so much that I was rather a prodigious writer at that age, but that I was writing an ebullient fluff piece about a place that I absolutely loathed and detested. This was full-on Stockholm syndrome.
But more than that, there is a memory attached to this particular writing. I was punished for writing it after it was published and the teacher who was the student newspaper advisor got his ass reamed as well. For “taking the Lord’s name in vain.” Yes, the words “by God” landed me and the teacher in hot water.
The teacher shared with me at the time that he didn’t think the fuss was at all warranted. He wanted me to know that he was firmly in my corner and he candidly ridiculed the bizarrely Victorian sensibilities and cosplay of the outraged fuddy-duddy school superintendent, a man with a childless and presumably sexless marriage that was held up as exemplary despite being an obvious front for closeted homosexuality. There were other faculty and staff there who played the same game, not to mention the vicar, who got to prance around in dresses and be the most femme of them all and didn’t have to be married.
This school was one of the last refuges for the closeted, I’ve come to believe. It existed to beat the gay out of kids, or pray it out or whatever, but it kind of helps me understand what a threat the counterculture posed to the house of cards so many had built for themselves in those days.
Today I had to unfriend someone on Facebook because she posted a question to liberals: Why do you hate Trump more than you love America? I didn’t bother to respond because my answer is that I hate Trump precisely because I love America and if you can’t understand that then you’re not my friend. And I voted with my feet. And she can figure it out for herself if she has the wherewithal which I doubt but I don’t fucking care.
I walked away just like I did in 1978 when I persuaded my parents to let me out of that fucking hellhole of insane-ass sexless pious people who weren’t all that sexless or pious, actually, just with their spouses.
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Gretchen said on January 26, 2026 at 2:19 am
One forum I’m on, some black writers say that they did everything they could to prevent this and warn us, and white people went ahead and did it anyway. So white people got us into this, and white people can get us out, and we’re not going to risk our lives to save the situation others put us in.
Coates chooses his words very carefully. If he uses bodies, not people, it’s deliberate, not a buzzword. From things I’ve read about ICE, they see us as bodies, not people. As NonPlayer Characters that they can manipulate to win the game, not people like them. Like muttering “fucking bitch” over Renee Good’s body, clapping over Alex Pretti’s body, saying gleefully “it’s just like Call of Duty” after launching a barrage of teargas at a crowd. It’s a video game to them, and we’re just cartoon characters in the game to mow down for points.
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Jeff Gill said on January 26, 2026 at 8:52 am
Gretchen, SNL actually dealt pretty directly with just that, sadly near 12:30 at which point I was asleep, but my son told me about it on Sunday and I saw it last night. Rather relevant, and I suspect it was written even before the Pretti killing, which may be why it went late, for fear it would seem almost too on the nose:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUsWF70IS9Y
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Deborah said on January 26, 2026 at 1:35 pm
My niece in Minneapolis told me about this and I signed up for it, it’s a call tonight about how to document and video stuff that’s happening with ICE etc in your communities when they come for you or your neighbors here’s a link for it. Apparently over a million people have signed up for it already. It’s something by the No Kings group https://mobilize.us/s/wSER1z
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Icarus said on January 26, 2026 at 2:06 pm
i posted something but I guess it is in moderation because it was a link? I’ll post the text and JC can delete if there are too many duplicates.
“Nothing that has happened this past week is new. We have MULTIPLE examples from just the past 15 years of unarmed Black people getting shot and the authorities saying they had guns, of people who were not under arrest getting shot when they tried to leave, of people lying about that what is apparent on film, of peoole harming protestors and those attempting to document harm
And when Black people told folks that these things were happening, we were told to just follow the law. That it wasn’t really happening the way we said it was. That all we needed was better training for LEO. That it wasn’t systematic. That we weren’t indeed the test cases for this level of brutality being normalized in society.
I am so tired of people acting like getting rid of these violent, murderous institutions is some kind of radical position when we’ve seen time and again that when you give folks guns and tell them there’s an enemy they will commit unspeakable acts in the name of the ones who deputized them.”
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Suzanne said on January 26, 2026 at 8:31 pm
Apparently, ICE is now in Phoenix, prancing around in gas masks and body armor, brandishing weapons at a sports bar on Central Ave between Thomas & Osborn (for any of you familiar with Phoenix). I got this tonight from a relative that lives not far from there.
Funny how they never seem to go to areas where gang members hang out, isn’t it?
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Julie Robinson said on January 26, 2026 at 8:34 pm
Bovino is out! One small bit of progress.
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Sherri said on January 26, 2026 at 8:51 pm
Bovino is out, but Tom Homan is coming in. Homan is too corrupt for a Senate-confirmed post like head of DHS, and we still don’t know what happened to the bag of cash he took from FBI officers who were investigating him for taking bribes before Trump’s DOJ shut down the investigation.
Homan is the guy who came up with the idea of family separation, back when he was working for ICE in the Obama administration. Homan was one of the acting ICE directors in the first Trump administration, because he couldn’t get Senate confirmation, and this time he’s the border czar, which doesn’t require confirmation.
I keep remembering the words of Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation and one of the architects of Project 2025, that they “were in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
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Deborah said on January 26, 2026 at 9:23 pm
I watched that live No Kings program. I thought it was interesting, they explained what our constitutional rights are to observe, record and document what we see ICE etc doing in our communities. One thing I thought was particularly interesting was whistling, it has not been tried in court yet so they don’t really know if it is something you can be arrested and convicted for participating in. LB and I gave 50 whistles away yesterday at the protest we went to, we have 100 but didn’t expect that many people, so now we have to ask ourselves if we have contributed to getting people in trouble for using. Personally, I don’t care, if I get in trouble for it, so be it. I wish I had known though that other people could possibly get in trouble for using those whistles without knowing it could be a risk. Good to know, we’ll prepare a tag or something that explains what might be a risk for people to use. My guess is more people will choose to use them knowing that.
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Peter said on January 26, 2026 at 9:30 pm
Don’t get too happy about Bovino being turfed – it’s the same MO that happened in Chicago – he shows up all the time to do his Nazi impression, some people get shot or killed, and they “remove” him from the scene, only for him to pop up at the next spot.
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susan said on January 26, 2026 at 10:19 pm
Icarus @9 – This might be along the same lines.
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Deborah said on January 26, 2026 at 10:58 pm
Susan, if that’s a link it’s not opening for me?
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susan said on January 27, 2026 at 12:24 am
Hmmm… Maybe this will work?
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Julie Robinson said on January 27, 2026 at 5:08 am
Geez guys, can’t you let me have one little happy moment?
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David C said on January 27, 2026 at 6:12 am
I will Julie. They know they have blood on their hands and nobody but the Trump dead-enders are buying their horseshit. They’re trying to shuffle the deck chairs, but we’re not stupid enough to know it will be a difference without a distinction. They are that stupid. More innocents will die. That’s a fact. That’s what Miller, Noem, and Bondi want. But the public knows and they’re not going to take it. The die has been set. We know resistance works.
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Dexter Friend said on January 27, 2026 at 12:46 pm
So how are ‘you people’? Ba Ba BOOM !
Just checking in. I have been constantly following the news and there is no need to write words that you have already processed.
I haven’t been on the desktop posting much this year as I follow the news so closely.
Furnace purring, plenty of grub in the pantry and freezer, TV humming constantly. Yes, I prefer Springtime, but I am surviving this brutal weather. I predicted a hard winter, just figuring the averages. Many mild winters , then…take it or leave it. On that note, all airports are up to nearly 100% since the sun came up over CONUS. My daughter and SIL wanted me to jet down to Port St. Lucie for a few weeks. I just didn’t do it.
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Icarus said on January 27, 2026 at 2:14 pm
susan @17: in this state to log into blusky I have to verify my age. The tools provided require I share info that isn’t linked to my bluesky account. The horse may have left the barn but I’m trying to protect my data as much as I can.
I’m sure your link is relevant though.
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alex said on January 27, 2026 at 5:32 pm
Finally making my Marcella Hazan bolognese and I took Suzanne’s suggestion of adding pancetta. I still have hours and hours to go; right now still cooking off the wine. I doubled the recipe. Smells heavenly.
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Dorothy said on January 27, 2026 at 6:01 pm
Wow Alex – my daughter made that same recipe last night and raved over it! How fun and what a nice coincidence.
After being home bound for 3 straight days we got out to PT this morning, Kroger, CVS and ate lunch at Athena’s. It was good to get out. DAMN is it ever cold here! Mike is navigating on this new knee without the cane. Tomorrow is 4 weeks post surgery. The only time he uses the cane is on stairs. He’s doing really well. And he had a spiral CT scan on Saturday and the report is very positive. We’re confident he made the right decision not to get radiation. His voice is likely going to be raspy for the rest of his life but we’ll see. Dr. M said last week that there are ‘things she can do’ if he wants to improve his voice in the future. We’re feeling all kinds of confident and positive going into 2026.
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Julie Robinson said on January 27, 2026 at 7:00 pm
Dorothy and other knitters/crocheters, have you read about Melt the Ice hats? They’re modeled on the anti-Nazi hats knitted by Norwegians in the early 1940’s. A Minnesotan named Sarah Sward has written a pattern and is selling it on Ravelry for $5, which goes to anti-immigration efforts there. I don’t knit, and it’s been many years since I crocheted, but I still have my hooks. I bought the pattern and will look for yarn in the next couple of days, and I’m going to give it a try.
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alex said on January 27, 2026 at 8:54 pm
I’d forgotten that Hazan’s recipe was pretty basic and that I could never resist the temptation to tweak it as I went along, so tonight that’s exactly what I did — with a pinch of brown sugar here, a pinch of dried basil there, a sploosh of Tamari, some garlic powder — and it’s becoming quite a flavor bomb. And I still have about 40 minutes to go before I “marry” it to some tagliatelle which I have yet to boil. Effing starved and the aroma’s driving me up a wall.
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Dorothy said on January 27, 2026 at 9:01 pm
Julie I have been reading some information about the hats but I currently have a scarf on needles. It’s going to be a birthday gift for someone soon; I also finished a mitten yesterday and have to make the mate. In other words, I have other project going on but I’m betting some of my friends might be helping out with that project.
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