On the matter of new characters

Jan. 7th, 2026 09:34 am
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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
My other group is moving to CoC 3rd edition. That's the one the GM owns. It turns out between the group we own a vast assortment of CoC editions, generally speaking one edition per player, including an original from 1981.

My character, Daniel Soren, has some good stats (Strength, Constitution, Intelligence) and some terrible stats (Dex, Power, and Edu). Unfortunately, in 3E you get Intx5 and Edux15 skill points, so being smart doesn't make up for being a grade school dropout. He does have some decent skills, but very narrowly focused: he's a competent cabbie and a moderately successful pulp writer with ambitions to appear in Weird Tales.

Power governs sanity in CoC so I don't know how long he will last.

mana

Jan. 7th, 2026 07:16 am
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[personal profile] prettygoodword
mana (MAH-nah) - n., (Polynesian culture) prestige, moral authority, spec. the power of the elemental forces of nature embodied in an object or person; (gaming) a unit of magical energy.


The concept of mana, and the word itself, is universal across Polynesia, and based on its meaning in other Oceanic languages apparently had a root sense of storm wind. The word was introduced to Europe by missionary and Melanesian ethnographer Robert Henry Codrington in 1891, apparently taking his cue from Maori, and popularized in Mircea Eliade's writings on religion. With that in the cultural background, Larry Niven used mana (iirc explicitly citing it as Maori, but I need to confirm this) as the name for fuel for magic spells in his The Magic Goes Away series of contemporary fantasy stories starting in 1969, and table-top RPGs such as D&D took the concept from there, and of course FRPGs took most of their framework from TTRPGs.

---L.

Cool

Jan. 7th, 2026 08:59 am
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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
astrafoxen on blusky created some visual aids showing Saturnian moon orbits.

They're all great but a detail in this one is worth mentioning.



The odd green squiggle to the right is a visual of Neptune's outer irregular moons, whose orbits around Neptune are large enough to be visible across the solar system. https://www.dreamwidth.org/comments/recent

Reading Wednesday

Jan. 7th, 2026 07:10 am
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[personal profile] sabotabby
 Just finished: The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. Did you know that the edition I have ends with an afterword from the author asking people to read his 1200-page book twice? Anyway I am very proud of myself as I managed to finish it around 30 minutes before the hold was due back at the library.

So, is it good? Yes. Do I totally get it? Not totally, though yes, more than I would have if I'd read it when I was 16. Definitely the time stuff, the illness stuff, the characters who are thinly veiled stand-ins for pre-WWI European political debates, yes. But of course, it's a very different world now—there is no longer the temptation to embrace illness as freedom, the idea that you can just convalesce for years in what amounts to a different reality, the fairy-tale world of the sanatorium. Which is why the ending hits so brutally hard. Structurally, the first half of the book is Hans Castorp's first three weeks on the mountain, and then it goes blurry, and the next seven years pass in a dreamlike state, with the changing of the seasons and the coming and going (through death and otherwise) of the patients being the only sense that time exists at all. And then there's essentially a massacre of half the cast in various ways, culminating in the arrival of WWI, and Hans disappearing into a viscerally described battlefield; time and history do exist after all, and it collides with the dream.

Reading it in 2026, of course, I am struck by the debates between Settembrini, representing humanism, and Naphta, representing totalitarianism (Catholicism/communism/fascism, but look, Mann was very much working out his political ideas in this book), but something I didn't talk about last week is Mynheer Pieter Peeperkorn (yes this is a character name) who pops up late in the book as Clavdia Chauchat's sugar daddy. He's a larger-than-life figure who gets described as kingly and charismatic despite being far too old for her, distracting Hans from the aforementioned philosophical debate with revels, partying, and a hella Freudian love triangle. I'm particularly struck by his speech patterns. Look, the guy is basically Trump; he is charismatic because the other characters (except Settembrini, who winds up being the only character who comes off well by the end) read meaning into his rambling words that isn't there. This book feels so incredibly apropos for our present day despite being over a century old.

Anyway, I finished The Magic Mountain, ask me anything lol.

Currently reading: Invisible Line by Su J. Sokol. You know, something light and fun after reading all that. Ahahaha. This is hopepunk but I'm assuming that the hope part comes in more towards the end. It was first published in 2012 and the first 50 pages were such that I had to text the author and ask if xe had like, rewritten it for the current edition to update it or something? Xe had not. I suppose the direction was obvious in 2012 where the political climate was moving but it's nonetheless one of those unsettling dystopian books, set in a crumbling fascist US rife with surveillance and police brutality.

Laek, a history teacher, Janie, his activist lawyer partner, and their two kids, Siri and Simon, are doing their best to live a normal life in New York, but Laek was a bit more of a spicy activist when he was a teenager, and his fake ID is no longer cutting it. So they make the decision to flee by bike to Montreal, which has declared itself a sanctuary city in tension with the Canadian government. It's basically too relatable, with a bunch of moments where the characters wonder if it's too much, if they should stay and fight the small battles they can or GTFO while it's still a possibility. There's a scene early on of a teachers' union meeting where a new policy means that the teachers must report their children to immigration, and it's the most accurate depiction of this kind of scenario I've run across in fiction, and yeah. If your feelings about living under fascism, or next door to fascism, are escapism, this book is going to be too real; if however, like me, you need to just read more about living under fascism, you'll be into it.

Grant

Jan. 7th, 2026 03:32 am
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[personal profile] calimac
Ron Chernow, Grant (Penguin, 2017)

Chernow is the author whose biography of Alexander Hamilton inspired Lin-Manuel Miranda. I decided to see what he could do with a thousand pages on U.S. Grant, most of my reading on whom had been quite succinct.

What interests me about Grant is this: after brave and intrepid service as a junior officer in the Mexican War, he was a complete failure in the peacetime army and then in civilian occupations after he resigned his commission. But when the Civil War broke out, and men with military experience were at a premium, no matter how shoddy they might seem, as soon as he reached command level Grant showed instant assuredness and promptly became the most successful general on the Union side, a status he kept to the end despite various setbacks. How did he do this?

My conclusion is that Grant had what might be called moral courage. This is, as Grant discovered the first time he led troops into action, a different thing from personal bravery under fire. It's the courage to lead and order other men into battle, knowing that many will be wounded or killed, and then to do it again the next day. Many of the generals either shied at the idea of exposing their troops to injury or death, or were so appalled at the results when they did that they withdrew and did not press the attack - which only, Grant felt, made the war last longer and become even bloodier.

The problem with this book is that Chernow never discusses where Grant's moral courage came from or how he developed it. The very first time Grant led troops into combat was early on in the Civil War. He was a colonel looking for the camp of some Confederate raiders led by one Col. Harris, and he was extremely nervous about commanding an attack on the enemy, but when he got to the camp he found that the rebels had learned he was coming and vamoosed.

In his memoirs, Grant writes two key sentences: "It occurred to me at once that Harris had been as much afraid of me as I had been of him. This was a view of the question I had never taken before; but it was one I never forgot afterwards." Chernow quotes the first of these but not the second. He doesn't address the question of Grant's moral courage at all until he gets to the Overland Campaign of 1864, when Grant for the first time faced an opposing general with as much moral courage and tactical skill as his own, and the results were an impasse leading to grisly slaughter. But Grant carried on, despite the toll, knowing that, if he was to prevail, to withdraw and lick his wounds would be worse. Here Chernow quotes from Grant defining this courage in the way I did above, but he doesn't analyze or discuss it.

The questions that interest Chernow are very different. He is absolutely absorbed by the rumors of Grant's alcoholism. This is probably the book's major theme. Repeatedly Chernow quotes testimony swearing that Grant had been seen falling-down drunk, and repeatedly he insists that other evidence renders these stories extremely doubtful. So were these malicious lies, or what? We never learn.

In the postwar part of the book, a recurrent theme is Grant trying to make up to the Jews for an injudicious order he'd issued early in the war, expelling all Jews from the territory he controlled on the grounds of the actions of some rapacious Jewish merchants. His subsequent regret for this becomes a major theme.

Of course by the end of the war, Grant's sad earlier life had vanished from his personality. Now he was the Army's chief general, then President of the U.S., and he was used to being in command. Chernow depicts Grant as chief peacetime general in the Johnson administration as developing a degree of political savvy he'd never previously had to show, but then he depicts Grant as president and afterwards as politically naive and the constant victim of scoundrels and shysters - something that had happened during the war too, but only as a minor feature. Chernow does not attempt to reconcile the savvy and the naive Grant.

I was also puzzled by some fragmentary material testifying to hints in Grant's earlier life of the greatness he would only display later. There's a story of Gen. Taylor, the army commander in the Mexican War, coming across Lt. Grant taking charge of his men in clearing a waterway, and saying "I wish I had more officers like Grant." Wow, what a testimony. But what is the source? Endnotes reveal it's from a newspaper article published on the occasion of Grant's death 40 years later. Somehow I doubt its veracity. Elsewhere Chernow is sometimes cautious about accepting unverified stories, but not here.

There's a lot of useful and well-researched material in this book, but for all its extent I do not find that this book captures the man.

Back to Fujisawa

Jan. 7th, 2026 07:45 pm
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[personal profile] mindstalk

I have returned. Another 90 minutes journey. Fortunately, the Shonan line emptied out at Shibuya so I got a seat most of the way.

Discoveries:

  • the JR train doors are labeled with a sticker, "car 15 door 2". You'd think they'd like the flexibility of mixing units, but nope, a traincar is dedicated to being Car 15 for the rest of its life. Weird.

Read more... )

Choice (3)

Jan. 7th, 2026 08:37 am
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[personal profile] the_comfortable_courtesan
A reasonably contented man 

Sir Harry Ferraby considered himself a reasonably contented man. Whenever he went to Firlbrough – and sure, they would soon have to be decamping to go there with this election impending, would look very strange did he not return there to support Bobbie Wallace! – was obliged to indicate, o, very subtly, of course, that was somewhat of a trial to be the one that represented the interests of Ferraby, Dalgleish and Gaskell in the metropolis, but alas, someone had to be on the spot. To be able to go into the City – talk to Government offices – meet with Members of Parliament - &C&C.

As well as keep up with all the new developments! Some of what one heard at lectures at the Royal Society or saw at demonstrations at the Royal Institution might still be somewhat theoretical, but nonetheless, worth keeping one’s eye upon. Fellows that it was sensible to make the acquaintance of.

But, taking it all in all, he was happy living here in lovely leafy Blackheath with his lovely lively Louisa and his adored offspring – very convenient for the City and for Westminster but entirely healthful. And then, here were his brothers and sisters close at hand – Meg in Highbury with Sebastian – Quintus and Sukey in that part just north of Oxford Street that medical men were beginning to move into – his beloved baby sister Flora no great distance away in Surrey – and for the past few years they had had the delightful presence of Josh, rather than the worry of what might come to him upon some zoological expedition.

And perhaps it was for the best for familial harmony that Bess resided in Leicestershire on the Ollifaunt estates, because even in these years of maturity they were wont to fall into brangles, though now it was over business matters. Indeed they were greatly fond of one another, and Harry had been able to be of considerable assistance to Bess over certain stage machinery in her theatres, but quarrelling was something of an antient habit with 'em.

Had been a great pleasure to turn his hand to those matters of machinery – for was there one source of regret and discontent, was that his course had not led him into the career of an engineer. Had been well-trained in that, but had fallen out that by the time he was out of his articles, his father had been in the greatest need of a reliable deputy by his side.

For there was Josiah Ferraby – shortly to be knighted and subsequently raised to the rank of baronet – an MP that took his responsibilities in the governance of the realm with all due seriousness, and attended the Commons a deal more regularly than many that wrote those letters after their names! – and also undertook a deal of work in the matter of getting up private bills, and talking to government offices, for the improvements under hand in Firlbrough. While Mama had been entirely capable of dealing with most of the business matters as far as correspondence went, it seemed prudent to send young Mr Ferraby, that was being brought on in the family enterprize, to meetings in the City &C. Had been provided with a cicerone in the person of Sebastian Knowles, some few years his senior, already part of the Raxdell House set through his sister’s marriage to the Duke of Mulcaster.

There had been a good deal of fascination in it all – and talking it all over with his mother and father, and Sebastian, and then with Sandy MacDonald, that was entirely an intimate of the east wing household at Raxdell House. Then having the occasional flash of illumination from a passing comment of Clorinda Bexbury’s.

No, he could not say he had been forced to drudge at uncongenial toil –

Although there had been times – after his father’s sudden, too early, death, and then during his mother’s long and painful illness – when indeed he had felt it a weight bearing upon him – had more than once even come to weeping in Lou’s arms.

But they had pulled through.

Did Harry occasional desire to have work in his hands, why, he had a workshop at this house where he might tinker a little, and where he might convoke with Ben Wilson and others about their inventions, and make suggestions.

He had lately observed Una Wallace, that he fancied, from how she went about with the wooden bricks, showed a talent towards engineering. For were you the brother of Flora Ferraby you did not suppose that women were incapable of such! And had they not heard of Clorrie Thorne, in New South Wales – that was now Clorrie Hackstead – had been trained as surgeon by Mr Carter and was as competent a hand with the scalpel as any product of your fine hospitals? Quintus indeed would say that in past times had been noted female physicians and surgeons, 'twas entire vulgar prejudice to suppose their sex incapable.

He had seen Lou’s warm heart moved to pity at Una’s plight – dispatched much like a parcel by her father in Nova Scotia to his Wallace relatives in London – some little worries about her health, her mother, a lady of the native tribes of Upper Canada, having died of consumption shortly after her birth, making residence in Town seem somewhat imprudent –had led 'em quite to concede to her suggestion that Una should come live in the healthful airs of Blackheath. Saw how it painfully reminded her of when she herself had been dispatched, along with her governess Miss Millick, to reside with her horrid relatives the Fraylinghams.

Knew that Lou greatly regretted that she had not been able to bear him more children – had been a number of sad miscarriages 'twixt Maria and Hal – and that perchance led her to extend her maternal care – had greatly taken to the young Frinton boy that was a schoolfellow of Adam Knowles and the Ollifaunt boys –

But though he might be fatherless one saw that Ginevra Frinton was an excellent woman that brought him up in quite exemplary fashion! And sure, 'twas hardly for the Ferrabys to go be priggish in such cases – for Harry himself had been born somewhat precipitate after his parents’ nuptials, that having been the only means Eliza Hallock had found to get her father to concede to her wedding that scapegrace Josiah Ferraby! Was not Clorinda Bexbury, in the days of the Regent a crack Lady of the Town, entirely in the capacity of a beloved family member, even was she not the actual relative that rumour gave out?

He hoped that this mission that Clorinda and Sandy MacDonald – himself quite part of the family – were about today did not distress Una.

One quite saw the sense in it. Here was a young man, a groom of good character and given out an excellent hand with horses, taken in enmity by a fellow of wealth and influence, turned off without a character, and 'twas feared he might be in further danger from having, perchance, in all innocence, witnessed some malign acts. So might it not be a fine thing for him to go seek his fortune in Nova Scotia? Surely the Collinses and Colonel Wallace could use a chap of his talents in their enterprize raising work-horses as well as fine riding-nags.

Was certainly a prepossessing young fellow! Fine open face – had clearly took trouble over his appearance, though one saw the clothes were somewhat patched and mended. Harry caught Nick Jupp’s eye and Nick nodded approvingly – one might apprehend that he had been making his own judgements and that they were positive. Dared say that would have been entire happy to advance him to a place in his brother Sam’s livery stables: but one felt young Oxton might be safer well out of Town, where he might catch his former employer’s eye.

This surmize was confirmed by Sandy – Nick felt quite a regret that Jupp’s might not have the services of the fellow! Quite the nicest hand with horseflesh, The Lady herself had commented upon it.

One might trust Belinda Penkarding’s opinions in the matter!

So here was an introduction being made, and Oxton being very civil to Una, and demonstrating an ease that suggested he had sisters of his own –

Let us not hover, said Clorinda, but stand back a little and discourse of indifferent matters.

In due course Oxton came and said, sure Nova Scotia sounded to be a very fine place, and Miss Una gave the finest character to the Collinses. And indeed, had oft wished to see the world but had not seen how that might be without 'listing, or going for a sailor, that had no taste for.

So he and Sandy went convoke somewhat over the practicalities.

Harry went over to Una, and saw that her eyes looked a little damp.

Come, he said, let us go into my workshop for a spell.

Once inside he handed her his large clean handkerchief and she mopped her face and blew her nose and said, 'twas nothing – just remembering –

Are you homesick?

She frowned a little, and was silent for a moment and at length said, sometimes she was – would strike her quite sudden –

But, she cried, almost in agitation, you must not suppose that I wish to return!

No? Just because your Papa thought it a good idea to send you here, does not mean one might not reconsider –

She gave a little sigh. It was very lonely – I should feel that more now after being here – and I should not have the advantages of a good girls’ school

He minded that that had been a strong argument for Blackheath!

– I should miss you all very much.

And we should miss you.

A light tapping on the door and came in Clorinda.

Well, that is very happily resolved!

She glanced from one of them to the other. Lou tells me that Una becomes quite your apprentice – shows a talent towards engineering –

She does so, said Harry.

Una quite glowed.

Clorinda smiled. I fancy, she said, that requires more mathematics than she is like to get at that very good school. Here is Janey Merrett, trying to get up interest for a young woman in her coterie to go give lessons

Harry grinned. So you go about to contrive! Should you like that, Una?

She looked quite ecstatic at the thought.


Just One Thing (07 January 2026)

Jan. 7th, 2026 08:33 am
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[personal profile] nanila in [community profile] awesomeers
It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

Have some unsolicited duck pics!

Jan. 7th, 2026 09:22 am
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[personal profile] luzula
Joke stolen from [personal profile] the_siobhan, because it was too good not to.

Read more... )

January 6, 2026

Jan. 7th, 2026 07:28 am
[syndicated profile] heathercoxrichardson_feed

Posted by Heather Cox Richardson

“They say that when you win the presidency you lose the midterm,” President Donald J. Trump said today to House Republicans. “I wish you could explain to me what the hell is going on with the mind of the public because we have the right policy. They don’t. They have a horrible policy. They do stick together. They’re violent, they’re vicious, you know. They’re vicious people.”

“They had the worst policy. How we have to even run against these people—I won’t say cancel the election, they should cancel the election, because the fake news will say, ‘He wants the elections canceled. He’s a dictator.’ They always call me a dictator. Nobody is worse than Obama. And the people that surrounded Biden.”

And there you have it: in a rambling speech in which he jumped from topic to topic, danced, and appeared to mimic someone doing something either stupid or obscene, Trump explained the ideology behind his actions. He and MAGA Republicans have absorbed the last 40 years of Republican rhetoric to believe that Democratic policies are “horrible” and that only Republicans “have the right policy.” If that’s the case, why should Republicans even have to “run against these people?” Why even have elections? When voters choose Democrats, there’s something wrong with them, so why let them have a say? Their choice is bad by definition. Anything that they do, or have done, must be erased.

That is the ideology behind MAGA, amped up by the racism and sexism that identifies MAGA’s opponents as women, Black Americans, and people of color. In their telling, the world Americans constructed after World War II—and particularly after the 1965 Voting Rights Act protected Black and Brown voting—has destroyed the liberty of wealthy men to act without restraint. Free them, the logic goes, and they will Make America Great Again.

As tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel wrote in 2009: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” He continued: “The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women—two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians—have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.”

“Because there are no truly free places left in our world,” he wrote, Thiel called for escaping into cyberspace, outer space, or seasteading.

While tech leaders are focusing on escaping established governments, Trump’s solution to an expanded democracy appears to be to silence the voters and lawmakers who support the “liberal consensus”—the once-bipartisan idea that the government should enable individuals to reach their greatest potential by protecting them from corporate power, poverty, lack of access to modern infrastructure, and discrimination—and to erase the policies of that consensus.

Nowhere does Trump’s conviction that he, and he alone, has the right to run the United States show more clearly than in the White House’s rewriting of the history of the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol were Trump supporters determined to overthrow the free and fair election of Democrat Joe Biden by more than 7 million votes in 2020, replacing him with Trump by virtue of their belief that no Democrat could be fairly elected.

But the official White House website reversed that reality today, claiming that the insurrectionists who beat and wounded at least 140 police officers, smeared feces on the walls of the Capitol building, and called for the hanging of Vice President Mike Pence were “peaceful patriotic protesters.” The real villains, the White House wrote in bold type, were “the Democrats who staged the real insurrection by certifying a fraud-ridden election, ignoring widespread irregularities, and weaponizing federal agencies to hunt down dissenters.”

In reality, modern Republican policies have rarely served everyday people, while the policies enacted by Democratic president Joe Biden demonstrably did. Biden rejected the ideology that called for cutting taxes, regulations, and social services in the name of liberty. Instead, he urged Congress to invest in public infrastructure, creating jobs, and he shored up the social safety net.

As Biden prepared to leave office in January 2025, Trump claimed that the U.S. was in freefall, “a disaster, a laughing stock all over the World!” But Peter Baker reported in the New York Times that the opposite was true: Biden and his administration were leaving behind a country that was in the best shape it had been since at least 2000.

There were no U.S. troops fighting in foreign wars, murders had plummeted, deaths from drug overdoses had dropped sharply, undocumented immigration was below where it was when Trump left office in 2021, stocks had just had their best two years since the last century. The economy was growing, real wages were rising, inflation had fallen to close to its normal range, unemployment was at near-historic lows, and energy production was at historic highs. The economy had added more than 700,000 manufacturing jobs among the 16 million total created since 2020.

Baker quoted chief economist of Moody’s Analytics Mark Zandi, who said: “President Trump is inheriting an economy that is about as good as it ever gets.”

Once in office, Trump set about dismantling the policies that had achieved those results. And now, after destabilizing the country at home, he is working to destroy the rules-based international order that has stabilized the world since World War II. In addition to an illegal attack on Venezuela to extract Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, Trump is threatening Colombian president Gustavo Petro, saying “Cuba is ready to fall,” and warning Mexico to “get their act together.”

Although his sights are primarily on countries in the Western Hemisphere, Trump has also warned that if Iran starts “killing people like they have in the past, I think they’re going to get hit very hard by the United States.”

Trump has also threatened Greenland, which is a self-governing island that is part of Denmark, an ally in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. As NATO allies, Greenland and the U.S. have cooperated on defense for decades, so Trump’s declaration that the U.S. needs Greenland for national defense makes no sense.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in a statement Sunday: “The Kingdom of Denmark—and thus Greenland—is part of NATO and is therefore covered by the alliance’s security guarantee. We already have a defense agreement between the Kingdom and the United States today, which gives the United States wide access to Greenland. I would therefore strongly urge the United States to stop the threats against a historically close ally and against another country and another people who have said very clearly that they are not for sale,” she said.

On Monday, Fredriksen said: “If the United States chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops. That is, including our NATO and thus the security that has been provided since the end of the Second World War.” Today, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Denmark issued a statement of support for Greenland, Denmark, and NATO.

In Venezuela, the U.S. took Maduro and Flores but rather than supporting the actual winner of the 2024 presidential election, Edmundo González, or opposition leader María Corina Machado, the administration left the Maduro government in place, led by former vice president Delcy Rodríguez.

María Luisa Paúl reported in the Washington Post today that in the hours since Maduro’s removal, the Venezuelan government has cracked down on those showing support for the U.S. operation. It detained at least 14 journalists, sent armed gangs into the capital, restricted protests, and arrested citizens who appeared to be “involved in promoting or supporting the armed attack by the United States of America.”

Machado said the government’s actions are “really alarming.”

Trump claims that the U.S. is “running” Venezuela, and he has dropped the pretense that he is concerned about drug traffickers or Maduro’s seizure of the presidency. Instead, he has made it clear that what he really wants is for the Venezuelan government to give him access to the country’s oil. In much the same way as he claims Democrats were responsible for January 6 because they honored the will of the voters and refused to give him the second term he wanted, Trump maintains that Venezuelans “stole” the American oil that sits under their own land.

Trump’s plan to tear up the rules-based international order and replace it with U.S. control over the Western Hemisphere will cost the world dearly, but using the U.S. military to threaten other countries and seize control of their resources does create big winners:

This evening, Trump’s social media account posted: “I am pleased to announce that the interim Authorities in Venezuela will be turning over between 30 and 50 MILLION Barrels of High Quality, Sanctioned Oil, to the United States of America. This Oil will be sold at its Market Price, and that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America, to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States! I have asked Energy Secretary Chris Wright to execute this plan, immediately. It will be taken by storage ships, and brought directly to unloading docks in the United States. Thank you for your attention to this matter! DONALD J. TRUMP PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.”

Notes:

https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian/

https://www.whitehouse.gov/j6/

https://www.businessinsider.com/capitol-riot-custodial-staff-cleanup-janitors-maga-trump-white-supremacists-2021-

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/05/us/politics/trump-us-disaster-numbers.html

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5672700-trump-venezuela-cuba-mexico-threats/

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/04/trump-denmark-greenland-frederiksen-venezuela.html

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/danish-prime-minister-us-takeover-greenland-mark-end-128924806

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/01/06/venezulea-maduro-rodriguez-government-repression/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/01/06/white-house-floats-military-option-greenland-rattling-denmark-nato/

https://time.com/archive/6847602/oil-venezuelas-own/

https://www.caracaschronicles.com/2025/12/26/the-theft-that-never-was-inside-venezuelas-1976-oil-takeover/

Bluesky:

chrisgeidner.bsky.social/post/3mbsd2onn6s2t

atrupar.com/post/3mbrbomjxnu2w

atrupar.com/post/3mbran2ykv52g

optimist-press.bsky.social/post/3mbrdg7i67k2n

atrupar.com/post/3mbrfdybhxj2l

meidastouch.com/post/3mbra343lt223

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Hard Things

Jan. 7th, 2026 12:02 am
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[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Life is full of things which are hard or tedious or otherwise unpleasant that need doing anyhow. They help make the world go 'round, they improve skills, and they boost your sense of self-respect. But doing them still kinda sucks. It's all the more difficult to do those things when nobody appreciates it. Happily, blogging allows us to share our accomplishments and pat each other on the back.

What are some of the hard things you've done recently? What are some hard things you haven't gotten to yet, but need to do? Is there anything your online friends could do to make your hard things a little easier?

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Jan. 6th, 2026 11:57 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Recreating an Ancient Pump (with no moving parts)

This historic pump uses a mixture of flowing water and air bubbles to lift water high above its original level. While not as efficient as some other methods, it has two tremendous advantages: 1) It requires no electricity, fuel, or animal power. 2) With no moving parts, it avoids the problems of wear and clogs that threaten more complex pumps. Given the increasing issue of climate change, there is great value in any useful technology that runs entirely on renewable energy and doesn't need repair or replacement at all often.  

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sorcyress: Drawing of me as a pirate, standing in front of the Boston Citgo sign (Default)
Katarina Whimsy

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