Science

I now have two sets of photos after this one, but I’m still nervous. If you have good wildlife photos, please sent them in. Thanks!

It’s been a cold week in Chicago (right now it’s 9°F or -13°C), and it’s going to be cold this coming week as well. I hope the turtles at the bottom of Botany Pond are okay. But given the weather it’s appropriate that today we have photographs of Antarctica from reader Paul Turpin.  Paul’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

My brother Mark recently returned from a cruise to the Antarctic on the Scenic Eclipse. I told him you loved penguins and he gave me permission to send you these photos.  I believe these are all gentoo penguins [Pygoscelis papua] except for one which included a chinstrap friend [Pygoscelis antarcticus].  The open water photo is when they were at the Antarctic Circle. 

A new census of more than 8,000 galaxies finds active black holes rising in frequency with galaxy mass, jumping sharply in galaxies similar in mass to the Milky Way.

Engineers have created a device that generates incredibly tiny, earthquake-like vibrations on a microchip—and it could transform future electronics. Using a new kind of “phonon laser,” the team can produce ultra-fast surface waves that already play a hidden role in smartphones, GPS systems, and wireless tech. Unlike today’s bulky setups, this single-chip device could deliver far higher performance using less power, opening the door to smaller, faster, and more efficient phones and wireless devices.

Engineers have created a device that generates incredibly tiny, earthquake-like vibrations on a microchip—and it could transform future electronics. Using a new kind of “phonon laser,” the team can produce ultra-fast surface waves that already play a hidden role in smartphones, GPS systems, and wireless tech. Unlike today’s bulky setups, this single-chip device could deliver far higher performance using less power, opening the door to smaller, faster, and more efficient phones and wireless devices.

Researchers have turned artificial intelligence into a powerful new lens for understanding why cancer survival rates differ so dramatically around the world. By analyzing cancer data and health system information from 185 countries, the AI model highlights which factors, such as access to radiotherapy, universal health coverage, and economic strength, are most closely linked to better survival in each nation.

A United Nations agreement for the “conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity” in the open oceans has now taken effect

Our nearest neighbor, the Moon, is still something of a mystery to us. For decades, scientists have wondered why it appears so lopsided, with dark volcanic plains on the near side (the side we see) and rugged, cratered mountains and a thicker crust on the far side. Now we might be closer to knowing why.

Physicists at the University of Oxford have contributed to a new study which has found that iron-rich asteroids can tolerate far more energy than previously thought without breaking apart - a breakthrough with direct implications for planetary defence strategies.

This collection of new images taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope showcases protoplanetary disks, the swirling masses of gas and dust that surround forming stars, in both visible and infrared wavelengths. Through observations of young stellar objects like these, Hubble helps scientists better understand how stars form. These visible-light images depict dark, planet-forming dust disks […]

Chemistry on other worlds varies widely from that on Earth. Much of Earth’s chemistry is driven by well-understood processes, which typically involve water and heat in some form. Mars lacks both of those features, which makes how some of its chemicals formed a point of ongoing debate in the scientific community. A new paper led by Alian Wang and Neil Sturchio of Washington University of St. Louis and the University of Delaware, respectively, and published recently in Earth and Planetary Science Letters offers a new framework for understanding chemical reaction processes on Mars. Despite the differences, Earthlings will still be familiar with the driving force behind Martian chemistry - electricity.

“When a regime turns off the Internet during mass killings, and at the same time the leaders of the same regime [use] the privilege of freedom of speech on social media to mislead the rest of the world, it is not about restoring order. It is about destroying the evidence.”  —from Masih’s speech below

In a comment this morning, Norman Gilinsky linked to the speech below given to the UN Security Council by anti-Iranian-regime activist Masih Alinejad. Norman called it amazing, forceful, unrelenting, and powerful. As a huge fan of Masih, I of course had to listen to it, and yes, it’s forceful, passionate, and ineffably sad given the UN’s inaction. I’ve put it below for your edification: it’s 15½ minutes long.

So far the UN hasn’t issued any statements criticizing the behavior of the Iranian regime in massacring thousands of protestors.

Masih calls out the UN for failing to respond to the massacres, sending a message to Iran that what it’s doing is pretty much okay. She argues that “it will get much worse if the world does not take serious action”, and that all Iranians are united in calling for the freeing of Iran from the present regime. (This is in sharp contrast with the UN’s repeated criticisms of Israel during the war with Gaza, apparently sending the message that massacres are okay with the UN so long as they don’t involve Jews)

Masih probably knows more about what’s going on in the streets of Iran than anybody else, as she has lines of communication with the protestors that others don’t have. (Iranians are using Starlink satellite phones.)

A representative of Iran was among the listeners, but I wonder if any of them really took to heart what Masih says. Particularly moving is her description of some of the young protestors who were killed, which she does to personalize and drive home the regime’s brutality, and she breaks down in tears at 11:35, unable to give more names of the slaughtered.

What is she asking the UN to do? She’s not explicit, but something to stop the killing—perhaps to stop treating Iran as a “legitimate government”.  The UN of course cannot do that, though it can help.  I hope that after hearing the list of murders and murderers, the listeners absorb the same lesson George Patton imparted to his soldiers from his real speech of June 5, 1944 (not the movie speech):

“When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt from your face and you realize that it’s not dirt, it’s the blood and guts of what was once your best friend, you’ll know what to do.”

Young protostars populate the cloudy regions in the Orion Molecular Cloud complex in these images from the Hubble Space Telescope. Three of the telescope's new images are part of a scientific effort to understand the gaseous, dusty envelopes around protostars. Scientists know that these young stars have powerful stellar winds and jets that carve caverns and bubbles out of the surrounding gas, but they have unanswered questions about that process.

I’m not sure that the readers here, though savvier than those on most Internet sites, fully realize how dire the free-speech situation is in Europe. Germany, France, and, especially the UK are rife with “hate speech” laws that would not be be passed in the U.S. because they violate the First Amendment.  And yet there are still calls in America to limit free speech.  One example includes those people who argue that we should ban statements like “Globalize the intifada” because, somewhere down the line, such statements may contribute to someone’s harming of Jews.  But of course all hate speech is of that nature: it may, by demonizing a group or even questioning their principles, lead some loon to go after people (it’s usually minorities at issue, but no group is immune, nor is any religion).

In the post below on his site The Eternally Radical Idea, Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), calls attention to the growing suppression of speech in Europe, giving lots of examples. He does this to warn Americans that we cannot allow ourselves go down that route, and to remind us why “hate speech” banned in Europe should never be banned in America.

I remind you that Lukianoff is a liberal and an atheist, so when he defends the promulgation of religious and conservative ideas that most of us find odious, he’s only adhering to the First Amendment. FIRE, because it promotes free speech, is sometimes demonized by blockheads as a “right-wing organization”. It’s far from it. Promoting freedom of speech is a liberal, humanistic, and democratic idea.

The article is long, but I recommend reading it (it’s free if you click on the link below) to buttress your commitment to free speech and to learn how Europe is convincing itself to punish people who wouldn’t be punished in America. I’ll give extensive quotes in case you’re too busy to read. (But if that’s the situation, you need to chill!)

Lukianoff begins by giving kudos to Kristen Waggoner, president of the conservative religious group Alliance Defending Freedom. Despite their political differences, Waggoner and Lukianoff share a commitment to free speech, and Waggoner won (as did Lukianoff last year) the Richard D. McLellan Prize for Advancing Free Speech and Expression.  Although Lukianoff and Waggoner differ on many isssues, her acceptance speech apparently prompted Greg to write this article.

In what follows, my own headings and comments are flush left, while quotes from the article (or other sources) are indented.

Why America should not crack down on ‘hate speech” and maintain our present construal of free speech

Here’s the thing: censors always think their motives are pure. From inquisitors to commissars to modern “hate speech” units, they all believe they’re preventing some existential harm. That has never made it okay to strip people of their basic rights, and it doesn’t change the fact that this is precisely what they’re doing.

In the United States, we (still) recognize that. In the EU and the UK, they increasingly do not. And that’s more dangerous to how we treat speech in the US than the abuses that happen in places like China or Iran, because we aren’t likely to turn into China or Iran. But we may turn into the UK, or Germany, or Finland, where they purport to maintain their belief in free expression but have rationalized it into a corner where it can do very little good. So while we’re never shocked at horrifying censorship in China or Russia, we should continue to be shocked by the retreat from liberalism that we’re seeing in the Anglosphere and in Europe. We also need to be vocal in opposing it, because it really could happen here.

If the forces arrayed on the left have their way, we will look a lot more like the UK. And if the forces on the right have their way, we will look a lot more like Hungary. Either way, we won’t be recognizably American.

. . . .Equal citizens in a free society have a right to:

• Object to immigration policy.
• Quote their religious texts on sexuality.
• Say “there are two sexes.”
• Insult a rapist or abuser in a private text or message without becoming the one the state prosecutes.
• Quote the Bible.

If you can be arrested, prosecuted, fined, or professionally shattered for any of that, you are not living under free speech in the sense the First Amendment enshrines.

The Supreme Court has a blunt way of putting this: Speech on matters of public concern is “at the heart of the First Amendment’s protection,” because speech about public affairs is “the essence of self-government.” In other words, we don’t protect speech because it’s polite. We protect it because we are supposed to be citizens — voters — whose judgments matter. And voters can’t do their job if the state trains them to speak in euphemism, or only in whispers, or not at all.

And if we, in the United States, start to lose faith in that — if we decide that the European model is more “civilized,” that being spared offensive opinions is more important than retaining equal rights — then the strongest bulwark for free expression left in the world will have fallen.

A decent way to measure whether you’re actually free is to ask what you’re allowed to say about the subjects that matter most: rape, child rape scandals, violent crime, immigration policy, religious doctrine, war, and even basic claims about sex and the human body. If you have to watch your language on questions that cut to the very heart — because the wrong phrasing can bring the police, a prosecutor, or a professional tribunal — then you’re not a free and equal citizen in the ordinary sense. You’re a subject being managed.

And, once again (we can’t hear this too often), we learn why free speech was instituted by the Founders:

Here’s another radical idea: you are an equal citizen, not a subject. You get to hear ideas, weigh evidence, change your mind, or not, without the government protecting you from other people’s thoughts. If your rights end where someone’s feelings begin, you don’t have free speech of any kind. China is just as willing to let you say things that don’t offend anyone; it’s just more honest about whose feelings are really determining when the cops show up at your door.

Probably the most important point to make here is that, if you have even one example of someone being arrested, getting a visit from the cops, or being charged for taking an unpopular position on one of the biggest political hot-button issues in a society — immigration, crime, religious fundamentalism, religious expression — they will not trust what they hear in the media, or even what they hear in society, as being genuine or authentic.

This leads to a genuine epistemic crisis, where people cannot tell what their countrymen honestly think, or what the world actually looks like in terms of public opinion and perception — and that is a disaster. People in control, or at the top of society, can be such fools in thinking that if they could just better control the opinions people express, popular opinion will go right along assuming the preferred ruling class’ position is correct. But that relies on a model in which people are even stupider than ruling class people often assume they are.

What happens instead is people conclude that no one is saying what they really think, and that the media, politicians, and even their fellow citizens cannot be counted on to show what they really think — because if there’s even the slightest risk of being arrested or punished for it, who would?

That’s what a chilling effect is, and it is poison to any society — particularly a democratic one, or at least nominally democratic one.

Lukianoff concludes that Europe, with its bans on hate speech, is going down the wrong road, for those bans chill you from speaking up, and, by quashing what we know about other people’s views, put democracy in a vise.  I agree. The examples that he gives are telling.

What’s happening in Europe.

Professor and philosopher Peter Singer talks about the “expanding circle”: the way moral concern spreads over time to include more groups — slaves, women, racial minorities, LGBTQ people, and so on. That’s real, and often good.

But there’s a dark twist. In much of Europe and the UK, we’ve now used that expanding circle logic to shrink the circle of free speech. We say, “To show compassion for vulnerable groups, we must criminalize speech that offends them. It’s not really censorship if we do it to protect people.”

From the UK:

If you want to see what speech policing looks like in a country that still considers itself a liberal democracy, look at the UK.

Between the Communications Act of 2003 and the Malicious Communications Act of 1988, British police have broad power to arrest people for messages that are “grossly offensive,” “annoying,” or likely to cause “distress” or “anxiety.” Recent statistics show more than 12,000 arrests in 2023 for online speech — over 30 people a day. (For a sense of scope, If the US were to arrest people at the same rate per capita, it would be 60,000 a year.)

Behind that number are real people in real handcuffs.

A 51-year-old army veteran named Darren Brady shared a meme that arranged pride flags into a swastika to make a heavy-handed point about authoritarian tendencies in parts of the LGBT movement. Hampshire Police turned up at his house, arrested him, and, in a bodycam clip, an officer calmly explains that someone has “been caused … anxiety” by his post, and that’s why he’s being taken away. He was offered a “hate awareness” course in lieu of prosecution — ideological homework as punishment. Only after national outrage did the police back down and scrap the course.

Catholic commentator Caroline Farrow was making dinner for her kids when Surrey officers came through her front door in 2022, arrested her on suspicion of “malicious communications” and harassment over a feud with a trans activist, and seized phones and laptops — including her children’s devices. She was taken into custody, questioned for hours, then released without charge.

Here’s one of the most surreal cases I’ve seen: a 34-year-old mother of four, Elizabeth Kinney, who says she was beaten badly enough by a man to require hospital treatment. In private text messages to a friend afterwards, she called him a “faggot.” The friend reported her, and prosecutors charged her under the Malicious Communications Act. She pled guilty and was convicted of a homophobic offense, receiving an enhanced community order, unpaid work, and rehabilitation days. As of the last reporting, no one had been charged for the assault.

Note that being able to call someone a “faggot” is legal in America, yet also outs the person who says it.  One could argue, I suppose, that letting people use names like that could, in the future, promote violence against gays. But that’s not a good enough reason to prevent this kind of name-calling, odious as it is.  Lukianoff also argues against the tendency in the UK to “avoid recording or analyzing ethnicity in organized child-abuse cases,” for such recording could presumably promote demonisation of ethnic groups.  But he claims this is misguided, since suppressing that information not only fails to deter predators in a group, but conveys information that could be essential to the safety of young girls. Frankly, I don’t see why recording ethnicity (which also occurs in the U.S.) should be formally or informally banned, as it’s useful not only for “grooming gangs”, but for compiling statistics important to society. I believe John McWhorter recently discussed how Americans tend to drastically overestimate the number of African-American shot by white police officers. One example:

This media fixation on identity politics, alongside pre-existing misperceptions, ultimately skews the public’s sense of reality. The number of unarmed black men killed by police in the Washington Post’s own database in 2019 was between 13 and, using a very broad definition of “unarmed”, 27. Yet nearly half of “very liberal” Americans think the number is between 1,000 and 10,000. There were over twice as many unarmed whites killed by police as blacks but, as John McWhorter, author of the new book Woke Racism notes, this never makes the news because it doesn’t fit the narrative of white racial violence against African-Americans.

By withholding information from the public so as note to pollute a favored narrative, the press promotes misinformation that exacerbates racial tensions.

From Germany:

Germany, because it may have learned some of the wrong lessons from its history, has long had strict speech laws — among them, bans on Nazi symbols and Holocaust denial. But the logic has spread.

In Berlin, police raided the apartment of American novelist and political satirist C.J. Hopkins in November, seizing his computer and interrogating him on suspicion of spreading pro-Nazi propaganda. The basis for the accusation was a book critical of COVID-19 policies, its cover using a swastika-and-facemask image as political satire.

That’s it. That’s the “Nazi material.” Never mind that its use is to make an unflattering comparison between modern health policy and national socialism. Nobody who can read is going to look at the book cover and say, “Well, I was just in favor of mandatory masking, but now that I see this book cover, maybe death camps are a good idea.” Hopkins had already been prosecuted in 2023 for tweeting the image of the book cover.

Another case that deserves more international attention involves a group of nine young men who gang-raped a 15-year-old girl in Hamburg. They were convicted but because they were underage, all but one avoided jail time. Later, a woman in Hamburg sent furious WhatsApp messages to one of the perpetrators, calling him things like a “disgusting rapist pig.” The convicted rapist complained and the woman who sent the messages was prosecuted for insult and defamation, convicted, and ordered to spend a weekend in jail.

Yet another German case: politician Marie-Thérèse Kaiser, from the right-wing AfD, posted about gang rapes involving Afghan men and suggested that welcoming more Afghan refugees risked more such crimes. She referenced real statistics about Afghan suspects. Courts convicted her of Volksverhetzung, “incitement to hatred,” and an appeals court upheld the conviction, saying her post violated the “human dignity” of Afghans by presenting them as dangerous sex criminals.

From Finland (!):

Kristen’s speech in November started with a case from Finland, and once you know the facts, it’s hard to shake.

Päivi Räsänen is not some anonymous troll. She’s a physician, a mother, a grandmother, a long-serving member of Parliament, and a former interior minister. She’s also a conservative Lutheran.

In 2019, she posted a tweet criticizing her church leadership for officially supporting Helsinki Pride. Attached was a photo of Romans 1:24-27 — the standard “traditionalist” passage condemning same-sex relations. Years before, in 2004, she had written a short church pamphlet explaining the Lutheran view of sex and marriage. She also did a radio debate along the same lines.

For that, Finland’s Prosecutor General charged her with “agitation against a minority group” — essentially “hate speech” — under a section of the criminal code that sits next to war crimes and crimes against humanity. Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola was charged too, for publishing her pamphlet.

Police interrogated Räsänen for hours about her beliefs. Prosecutors pored over her pamphlet and sermons line by line, asking which parts of the Bible she intends to believe. She faced the possibility of fines and a criminal record.

She won. In 2022, a district court acquitted her unanimously. In 2023, the Court of Appeal acquitted her unanimously again.

That should have been the end of it.

It wasn’t, but before we finish, I want to point out that being visited by police and interrogated, even if you’re not convicted are jailed, are still things that will chill your speech.  Räsänen’s ordeal, in fact, continues:

Instead, prosecutors appealed again. In 2025, the Supreme Court of Finland agreed to hear the case. The state is still arguing that quoting Romans 1 and defending historic Christian doctrine about sexuality can be a criminal offense.

Switzerland (!):

It is not an especially controversial idea that sex can be usually determined by examining skeletal remains, even if there are exceptions. Not so in Switzerland, where Emanuel Brünisholz, a musical instrument repairman, was sentenced to ten days in jail for an anti-trans Facebook comment. In a 2022 reply to a member of the Swiss National Council (sort of their House of Representatives), Brünisholz wrote: “If you dig up LGBTQI people after 200 years, you’ll only find men and women based on their skeletons. Everything else is a mental illness promoted through the curriculum.”

Brünisholz was arrested in 2023 and convicted in December 2024, where he was fined 500 Swiss francs. After exhausting his appeals, he refused to pay on principle, announcing in September of 2025 that he would be serving his alternative punishment — ten days in jail — last month.

I’ve discussed the Swiss case before. If you have a whole skeleton, biological sex can be determined with 96%-98% accuracy, which falls to 90% if you have a skull with lower jaw. The diagnosis is not complete, of course, but if you look at skeletons 200 years old, the guy is pretty much right—the exceptions whose sex can’t be determined are rare. Note as well that there were no drug or surgical interventions back then that would modify skeletons, and even today this is something that should be investigated only in trans people, as LGBQ people undergo no modification of their bones.

The point is that jailing somebody for saying this is heinous, even if the guy were wrong about bones. (I’m not dealing with the “mental illness” comment, which, though odious, should not be illegal.) Because if he were wrong about skeltons, the proper remedy is counterspeech and criticism, not fines and jail time.

Wikipedia gives a long list of other countries with hate-speech laws—laws that can get you prosecuted, fined, or jailed for criticizing religion, ethnicity, gender identity, and even class.  Note that the “United States” entry says this:

The United States does not have hate speech laws, because the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that laws criminalizing hate speech violate the guarantee to freedom of speech contained in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.There are categories of speech that are not protected by the First Amendment, such as speech that calls for imminent violence upon a person or group.

Let’s keep it that way.

Longevity diets often focus on going plant-based, but a study in China has linked eating meat to a long lifespan, particularly among older people who are underweight

Humans pay enormous attention to lips during conversation, and robots have struggled badly to keep up. A new robot developed at Columbia Engineering learned realistic lip movements by watching its own reflection and studying human videos online. This allowed it to speak and sing with synchronized facial motion, without being explicitly programmed. Researchers believe this breakthrough could help robots finally cross the uncanny valley.

Professional mathematicians have been stunned by the progress amateurs have made in solving long-standing problems with the assistance of AI tools, and say it could lead to a new way of doing mathematics

If your New Year’s resolution is to understand quantum computing this year, take a cue from a 9-year-old podcaster talking to some of the biggest minds in the field, says quantum columnist Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

Well, folks, we’re plumb out of readers’ contributions, and it makes me weep bitterly that we get so few contributions.  If you have good photos, you know what to do.

Fortunately, I am able to plunder the photos of Scott Ritchie from Cairns, Australia, whose Facebook page is here. (Thanks to Scott for his kind permission to repost.) I’m adding the second installment of Scott’s favorite photos of 2025; his first installment is here. His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Here are some of my favourite pics from 2025. It was a big year, with trips to Florida, Costa Rica, Western Australia and Victoria/NSW. And I had a publication in Australia Birdlife showcasing the lovely Rainbow Bee-eaters at a local cemetery https://www.calameo.com/read/004107895fe9d41dc697d…. I hope you enjoy them.  Have a happy New Year all!

 

Latin America is a home of hummingbirds. Hear a Green-breasted Mango [Anthracothorax prevostii] feeds on a torch ginger. I just love the bright colors that do remind me of a mango:

Another lovely hummer, the fiery throated hummingbird [Panterpe insignis]:

Not all hummingbirds are colorful. But I just love the pose of this Long-billed Hermit [Phaethornis longirostris] as it came in to feed the torch ginger:

Costa Rica has many colorful songbirds. People think tanagers and warblers. This bird is a Golden-browed Chlorophonia [Chlorophonia callophrys],  You gotta love bird names:

This Ornate Hawk-eagle [Spizaetus ornatus] caused quite a stir among the twitchers at our lodge. You can see why, it’s quite an amazing bird:

Another truly magnificent bird was the King Vulture [Sarcoramphus papa], coming into land and feed on your corpse:

Back to far north Queensland. I got this Gray Plover [Pluvialis squatarola] in flight as he shook himself off after a refreshing bath: [JAC: Do enlarge this one!]

Double-eyed Fig-parrots [Cyclopsitta diophthalma] are one of my favorite birds. And green ants are one of my most despised insects. I think the fig parrot would agree:

Here’s a stampede of Chestnut-breasted Mannikins [Lonchura castaneothorax]. I call this a WTF moment, as a bird in the middle got caught a bit off guard:

A Great Egret [Ardea alba], enjoying a prawn for breakie. Cairns Esplanade:

We get many shorebirds to the Cairns Esplanade foreshore in our summer. Before they head back to Russia, China, Japan, even Alaska, they color up into their breeding plumage, and hope to attract a mate. These two Bar-tailed Godwits [Limosa lapponica] are coloring up very nicely:

“Will you play ball with me?” Nordmann’s Greenshank [Tringa guttifer], a.k.a. Nordy, is a very rare bird that has visited Cairns for six years running. He’s the only one of his kind here. I often wonder if he’s a bit lonely:

Volunteers consider it relatively unacceptable to cancel social plans – but they are more forgiving if it's someone else cancelling the plans

Welcome to the end of the a frigid week in Chicago: it’s Friday, January 16, 2026, and National Fig Newton Day. Called “fig rolls” in the UK, the most famous U.S. version is from Nabisco, which has trademarked the name. Here’s some Fig Newton Trivia from Wikipedia:

In the 1939 promotional short Mickey’s Surprise Party, produced by Walt Disney for Nabisco’s exhibit at that year’s World’s Fair, Mickey Mouse proclaims the Fig Newton to be his favorite cookie.

And here’s the cartoon (“produced for the National Biscuit Company”).  The Fig Newton bit appears at 4:52, saving the day after Minnie burns her homemade cookies, which are accidentally mixed with popcorn.

It’s also International Hot and Spicy Food Day, National Quinoa Day, and Religious Freedom Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 16 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*If Trump continues to go after Greenland, he’ll be called a Nazi even more often, as he seems to be seeking Lebensraum.  And yes, Trump appears to be serious about acquiring Greenland. But the Greenlanders and Denmark aren’t having it. (Article is archived here.)n First from the NYT:

But if President Trump gets his way and, as he has insisted, takes over Greenland “whether they like it or not,” it would be bigger than any of those [California, the Louisana Purchase and other territories acquired by conquest or purchase], according to the National Archives, the U.S. census and the C.I.A. World Factbook. At 836,000 square miles, Greenland is bigger than France, Britain, Spain, Italy and Germany — combined. It would be the largest territory the United States ever added, if the United States were to acquire it.

Mr. Trump has based his fixation on Greenland, which has been part of the Danish Kingdom for more than 300 years, on reasons of “national security,” citing threats from Russia and China. But he made a past remark about Greenland’s size, and scholars say the territorial grandeur itself is at least part of what appeals to him.

“Trump’s a real estate guy,” David Silbey, a historian at Cornell University, said in an email, “and the idea of grabbing that much land seems to me his particular guiding force: THE MOST LAND EVER.”

He added that Mr. Trump “likes to pick on targets that are too weak to fight back, which certainly describes Denmark,” he added.

This week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is meeting to discuss the future of Greenland with Danish and Greenlandic officials, both of whom say that the island, the world’s largest, is not for sale.

But that has not deterred Mr. Trump and his team so far.

In an interview last week with The New York Times, Mr. Trump said the best way for the United States to handle Greenland would be to own it because ownership is “psychologically needed for success.”

But, from the WaPo:

Denmark’s foreign minister said there had been a “frank but also constructive” conversation with the Trump administration during a high-stakes White House meeting about the fate of Greenland on Wednesday, but that the two sides had come to no agreement about President Donald Trump’s demands to “own” the Arctic territor

“We still have a fundamental disagreement,” said Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the top Danish diplomat, speaking alongside his Greenlandic counterpart, Vivian Motzfeldt, outside the Danish Embassy in Washington. “We didn’t manage to change the American position.”

The White House meeting, which was hosted by Vice President JD Vance, did see the two sides agree to form a “high-level working group” to discuss Trump’s concerns about Greenland, Rasmussen said. The White House and State Department did not immediately provide their own readout of the meeting, which was also attended by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Trump told reporters after the meeting that he had not yet been briefed on the talks, but said that the United States had a good relationship with Denmark and he thought something would work out. “The problem is there’s not a thing that Denmark can do about it if Russia or China wants to occupy Greenland, but there’s everything we can do,” he said in the Oval Office.

This is the craziest thing that Trump’s tried to do, and that’s saying a lot. We already have a base in northern Greenland, and perhaps they’d let us build another one. But the hubris of trying to take over what is essentially part of Denmark, the EU, and NATO is breathtaking. It sound like some nutty idea that Trump had in the middle of the night, but he’s trying to make it come true. I’m betting he won’t.

*David Plouffe argues in today’s NYT that “To win everywhere, Democrats must change everything” (op-ed archived here).

. . . to win races in politically unforgiving, even hostile, territory will require the party to overhaul its broken brand and stale agenda by elevating new faces and new leaders who promise to chart a course enough voters believe in.

Why? Because to have any hope of fixing the root problems that plague our democracy and our economy, Democrats need a majority that lasts, like the New Deal coalition. At least three, maybe more, Supreme Court justices could retire over the coming decade. Without sustained Democratic political power and control during that period, a conservative 8-to-1 court is not out of the question.

That possibility should focus the mind. Right now, Democrats have no credible path to sustained control of the Senate and the White House. After the adjustments to the Electoral College map that look likely to come with the next census, the Democratic presidential nominee could win all states won by Kamala Harris plus the blue wall of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and still fall short of the 270 electoral votes needed to win. An already unforgiving map gets more so, equally so in the Senate.

His solutions? (condensed):

The existential question now is: How do Democrats get back to playing and winning in more places?

First, make our unpopular president and his vassals own everything — higher energy and health care costs, higher food bills, war. The Republicans in Congress stood by meekly as Mr. Trump took a wrecking ball to our economy. They deserve the blame for it.

That is Task 1. As important as it is, it’s far easier than Task 2. James Baldwin wrote, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it’s faced.” Democrats must face, honestly, where we are and how we are perceived.

That starts with offering a fresh agenda that voters believe can make a difference in their lives, not the same stuff they heard from Democratic candidates in recent years.

Each candidate is different. That said, the ideas below should find a home almost anywhere.

Here’s a list (bolding is theirs):

A plan to bring down costs. ‘

A plan to create the jobs America needs.

A plan for A.I.  [Plouffe thinks it will play a big role in the next elections]

A plan for reform.

Hold your own leaders to account.

You can see all the details in the archived account. That’s a lot of plans, and yes, if most of that stuff can be conveyed to the people (Plouffe uses Mamdani as an example), the Dems’ chances will improve. But as you know, Mamdani was short on details, and can you imagine a Democratic candidate trying to explain to Americans how they would reduce any pernicious effects of A. I.? Well, as someone said, “All this is as plausible as anything else.” There is no shortage of people telling the Democratic Party what to do, but is anyone listening?

*The WSJ reports that the protests in Iran may have quieted down, which of course will impede Trump from carrying out his threat to attack with the aim of toppling the regime.

A fierce crackdown by Iranian security forces that has killed thousands of people protesting against the country’s autocratic leaders has forced demonstrators off the streets in some cities, with residents reporting an eerie quiet after days of escalating violence.

Iran’s government has blocked the internet and deployed large numbers of police and troops in an effort to quell the biggest threat to the regime since a 1979 revolution that established theocratic rule overseen by Shiite clergy. Iranians said they were afraid to leave their homes.

President Trump on Wednesday said Iran had stopped killing people, after days of threatening to take action against the regime if it killed protesters. Asked if military action was off the table, he said, “We’re going to watch it and see what the process is, but we were given a very good statement by people that are aware of what’s going on.”

The number of new protests verified by Human Rights Activists in Iran dropped to zero for the first time on Tuesday and continued at zero on Wednesday, the rights group said. It acknowledged that this could be because of the severe communications restrictions, which include disruptions to phone service.

The group said it confirmed the deaths of more than 2,600 people and more than 18,000 arrests. European and Middle Eastern officials also said they were seeing a drop in protest activity.

“The reason is very clear: The regime has created a bloodbath. They brought down the iron fist without precedent,” said Ali Vaez, an Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group. “That creates a chilling effect among protesters.”

Iran signaled Wednesday it was preparing to conduct swift trials and the execution of antigovernment protesters. In a video released by Iranian state television, Iran’s judiciary chief said on Wednesday the courts should act quickly against protesters.

The quiet is likely temporary, analysts said, since the underlying anger against the state remains high and the government has few ways to resolve the economic problems at the root of widespread discontent.

“Even if the first round is done, the next round is around the corner, because the regime is unable and incapable of addressing legitimate grievances,” Vaez said.

Some rumors say that cops with rifles are stationed on every street corner in Tehran, ready to shoot anybody who even vaguely looks like a protestor. We can’t expect people to keep protesting if they’re going to be shot willy nilly.  I am torn about this, as I do want the regime gone, but not necessarily with American military intervention. On the other hand, nonmilitary intervention doesn’t seem to be working. I fully expected an American attack, but without one, things will go back to the way they were, though I’m hoping, as the piece says above, that “the quiet is likely temporary.” For the moment it looks like the score is Regime 1, Protestors 0.

*More Trump-o-centric news: the “President’ has threatened to quash the protests in Minnesota not only by sending in more troops, but by invoking the Insurrection Act.

 President Donald Trump on Thursday threatened to invoke an 1807 law and deploy troops to quell persistent protests against the federal officers sent to Minneapolis to enforce his administration’s massive immigration crackdown.

The threat comes a day after a man was shot and wounded by an immigration officer who had been attacked with a shovel and broom handle. That shooting further heightened the fear and anger that has radiated across the city since an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot Renee Good in the head.

Trump has repeatedly threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, a rarely used federal law, to deploy the U.S. military or federalize the National Guard for domestic law enforcement, over the objections of state governors.

“If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State,” Trump said in social media post.

Presidents have indeed invoked the law more than two dozen times, most recently in 1992 by President George H.W. Bush to end unrest in Los Angeles. In that instance, local authorities had asked for the assistance.

The Insurrection Act is old (from 1807), and says this:

The Insurrection Act authorizes the president to deploy military forces inside the United States to suppress rebellion or domestic violence or to enforce the law in certain situations. The statute implements Congress’s authority under the Constitution to “provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.” It is the primary exception to the Posse Comitatus Act, under which federal military forces are generally barred from participating in civilian law enforcement activities.’

Normally the military, including the National Guard, is not empowered to enforce civil laws, but the Act allows them to. And the Act allows them to do this even against the wishes of the state.  ICE, however, is not the military, so once again we see Trump trying to use the military to quash civilian dissent, calling it an “insurrection”. It’s been used about 30 times, most notably to enforce civil rights laws in the Sixties. But if it’s used now to supplement ICE with the military (who of course aren’t trained in law enforcement), it will only exacerbate tensions. It may quell protests, but at a steep price.

The NYT is all about the ICE attack, the shooting, and immigration. Here’s this morning’s front page:

*And things are so bad that I’m adding the last Nooz post as the equivalent of the “there’s good news tonight” segment of NBC’s Evening News. Here’s the good news from the UPI:

 Police responded to a retirement home in Washington on a report of a goat attempting to break into the facility.

The Auburn Police Department said on social media that officers arrived at Wesley Homes to find “a goat was attempting to gain entry into the building.”

The officers “safely ‘detained’ the suspect until a friend of the owner arrived to pick her up,” the post said.

The goat, named Ruby, posed for a photo with the officers before being taken home.

“Charges were dropped due to extreme adorableness,” police wrote.

Here’s Ruby the perp and the cops:

View this post on Instagram

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili invokes the “a pessimist is never disappointed” trope:

Hili: You’re doing fine.
Andrzej: Why do you think so?
Hili: Because you’re a pessimist, and every time you’re wrong, it’s something to celebrate.

In Polish:

Hili: Tobie jest dobrze.
Ja: Dlaczego tak sądzisz?
Hili: Jesteś pesymistą, więc ile razy okazuje się, że byłeś w błędzie masz powód do radości.

***********************

 

From Meanwhile in Canada:

From Cats, Coffee, & Chaos:

From Give Me a Sign:

This tweet from Masih suggests why the protersts may have cooled in Iran (sound up):

Received video with this description: “Martial law atmosphere in #Mashhad, #Iran, Tuesday, January 13, 2026.”#مشهد pic.twitter.com/y7TQZeIHKc

— Vahid Online (@Vahid) January 15, 2026

From Luana; progressives try to defund all immigration enforcement:

Ilhan Omar announces that the Democrat Congressional Progressive Caucus “has adopted an official position” to defund ICE.

OMAR: “Our caucus members will oppose all funding for immigration enforcement.”⁩ pic.twitter.com/bhBSTwYC1p

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) January 13, 2026

From Malcolm; fixing pipe leaks without digging them up. Pretty cool:

Cured in Place Pipe (CIPP) Lining is a structural “No-Dig” repair that creates a new pipe within a damaged sewer or drain.pic.twitter.com/yGuIRNAop8

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) January 2, 2026

One from my feed. How did they do this?

A Japanese restaurant in NYC has an interior designed to resemble a hand-drawn black and white sketchbook.pic.twitter.com/KY9cQbkFTg

— Interesting things (@awkwardgoogle) January 15, 2026

The Number Ten Cat argues that he did not trip a photographer:

Watch the video and judge for yourself if I “tripped” the photographer or if he stumbled and nearly squashed me https://t.co/cffwMpeL3H

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) January 15, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed to death along with his mother as soon as they arrived in Auchwitz. He was four years old and would be 87 today if he had lived. https://t.co/I09S5cuZw9

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) January 16, 2026

Two posts from Dr. Cobb: Here they are talking about autocratic tephritids and not Drosophila (Drosophila are not the “fruit fly” that worries California):

I don’t think we should have ceded control quite so quickly and without so much as a fight.

— Paul Brislen (@brislen.nz) 2026-01-10T02:52:23.109Z

This tweeter wrote an article criticizing panpsychism, the intellectually depauperate theory that everything has a form of consciousness. Both Matthew and I think the “theory” (for which there’s no evidence) is bogus.

Wrote a new essay: open.substack.com/pub/walterve…

— Dr. Walter Veit (@walterveit.bsky.social) 2026-01-14T08:11:15.922Z