Welcome to a Hump Day (“Aköl de Hump” in Dinka): Wednesday, January 21, 2026, and Squirrel Appreciation Day. Here I am appreciating a Botany Pond squirrel (they are getting walnuts every day in this cold weather):
It’s also National Hugging Day, International Sweatpants Day, National New England Clam Chowder Day (the only acceptable form), and National Granola Bar Day. According to Coyne’s Third Law, all snacks wind up as confections, and so it is with Granola Bars:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 2 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*France has refused to join one of at least five committees set up by Trump to organize and rule postwar Gaza, and, in view of their refusal, Trump says he’ll impose a 200% tariff on French wine. He’s also selling—for a billion dollars!—permanent memberships on his “Board of Peace,” which was supposed to oversee Gaza but is now conceived as a worldwide peacekeeping body.
President Trump threatened on Monday to impose 200 percent tariffs on French wine, including Champagne, if President Emmanuel Macron of France declined to join his proposed “Board of Peace” for Gaza.
France was among the countries the Trump administration invited last week to join the body, which Mr. Trump has said he plans to lead to oversee the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas and supervise the rebuilding of Gaza.
Critics said the board could undermine the United Nations, which Mr. Trump has accused of liberal bias and waste. A senior French official said on Monday that France did not intend to join, citing concerns that the board’s charter raised serious questions about respecting the role of the United Nations.
Asked on Monday about France’s refusal to join, Mr. Trump threatened to impose steep tariffs on some of the country’s best-known exports.
Mr. Trump said he would impose the tariffs if France took what he described as a hostile stance, suggesting that the pressure would push Mr. Macron to join the board.
Mr. Trump has increasingly used trade threats as a tool of diplomacy and a way to achieve his broader foreign policy goals. On Saturday, he demanded a deal to buy Greenland, warning that he would otherwise impose 10 percent tariffs on a group of European countries, which he said could later rise to 25 percent.
On Tuesday morning, Annie Genevard, France’s minister of agriculture, described Mr. Trump’s comments as a form of “blackmail.”
It’s also “bullying”. But it gets worse:
President Trump’s “Board of Peace” is billing itself as a new international peacekeeping body — and permanent membership won’t come cheap.
Mr. Trump is inviting countries to join beyond a three-year term, if they’re willing to cough up more than a billion dollars in cash within the board’s first year, according to a draft of the board’s charter reviewed by The New York Times.
And while the board was conceived as part of Mr. Trump’s plan to oversee Gaza, there is no mention of Gaza in the charter. That omission added to speculation that the group may have a broader mandate to cover other conflicts and could even be aimed at creating a U.S.-dominated alternative to the United Nations Security Council.
A Security Council resolution adopted in November 2025 endorsed Mr. Trump’s plan for ending the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and welcomed the establishment of the board as a transitional administration that would set the framework and coordinate funding for Gaza’s redevelopment
A billion dollars for membership! I think Trump is thinking of the Board of Peace not only as an alternative to the UN (which is pretty useless these days), but as a kind of country club where you have to pay dues.
*I hate so much of the Nooz being about Trump, but he’s the clown in the center of the world’s three-ring circus. Now he’s threatening to derail the World Economic Summit, taking place in Davos, Switzerland this week, in favor of his assault on Greenland. He’s also publicized what looks to be a private communication he received from President Macron of France.
Europe may not have a home-field advantage in Davos. The United States is seeking to dominate this year’s World Economic Forum by sending its largest and most senior delegation in history. Meetings with senior Trump officials are among the most sought-after engagements in town as European leaders, already reeling from U.S. tariff policies, find themselves once again navigating a ruptured relationship with the White House.
Over mulled wine and canapés, early-arriving guests tried to predict whether Trump’s visit would aggravate or avert the simmering conflict with Denmark, the NATO ally that controls Greenland. But 4,000 miles away from the parties in this Swiss Alps ski town, Trump went on an overnight social media tear that signaled little interest in reconciliation. He bashed Britain for handing over sovereignty of an island colony in the Indian Ocean and shared what appeared to be private messages from European officials.
French President Emmanuel Macron, in one text, told Trump that they are aligned on Syria and Iran, but he does “not understand what you are doing on Greenland.” Macron also offered to set up a Group of Seven meeting after the Davos forum. The authenticity of the message was confirmed by a French official close to Macron who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.
According to Newsweek, this message (and others) were leaked. Here, from the WaPo, is what Trump put on Truth Social. “I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland,” The language suggests that this was indeed a private message.
*Over at The Atlantic (link is archived), Arash Azizi has interviewed a lot of Iranians about whether they want the U.S. to intervene in the protests against the theocracy. The answers are surprisingly in agreement, with a few exceptions:.
Over the years, I’ve often sought the opinion of Iranians for or against foreign intervention. And it has long been a contentious question that’s sharply divided the opponents of the Islamic Republic. But posing this question to about a dozen Iranians in recent days has yielded answers that feel strikingly new. First, most of those I spoke with favored one form or another of intervention by the United States. Second, many favored what would have been unthinkable not long ago: for Trump to take out Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Melika, a 21-year-old Iranian student in Europe who left Iran a few weeks ago, strongly opposed the Israeli-American attacks on Iran last year. A socialist feminist who took part in the “Women, Life, Freedom” protests of 2022–23, she is generally skeptical of foreign intervention. But faced with the regime’s brutal violence over the past two weeks, she now can’t help but favor some kind of action from the U.S., especially given that Trump promised it.
“I’d frankly like Trump to kill Khamenei,” she told me. “I am worried about a broader war that would hurt Iran’s infrastructure. I wouldn’t like for us to become an Iraq, happy that Saddam is gone but becoming worse. But the Islamic Republic has to pay a price.” She speculated that killing Khamenei could heighten the power struggle inside the regime and perhaps stanch the repression and killing of protesters.
Shahrzad told me that many of those who protested with her agreed. “The people of Iran would like to see a Venezuela-style operation,” she said, “even if it seems like a strange demand for Iran.”
The sentiments of these young activists are shared by some internationally renowned opponents of the Iranian regime several decades their senior. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, the celebrated filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the scholar Mohammad Javad Akbarin, and four others issued an open letter calling for what they termed a “humanitarian intervention.”
Mostafa Saber, a Vancouver-based leader of a prominent left-wing Iranian party, does not share many political views with Akbarin but agreed with him on this point. “Regardless of what I think, many people in Iran want support from Trump,” he told me by phone. “They’d like him to hit Khamenei. This is what the people want. And if he does, this can benefit the revolution.”
Some activists have a different view of what sort of action Trump should take, however. Ali Vakili, an activist in New York City with extensive contacts in Iran, expressed reservations about an American hit on Khamenei. The supreme leader “shouldn’t be a martyr,” Vakili told me. “The people of Iran should decide his fate themselves.
. . . The consensus for foreign intervention among those I spoke with was wider spread and more politically diverse than ever before, in my experience, but it was by no means unanimous. Elahe Ejbari, a student activist who fled Iran in 2022, started a counterpetition to the one that Ebadi and Akbarin signed. Ejbari’s petition supports the people’s movement against the regime but declares that “tying the destiny of Iranian popular struggles to foreign intervention is dangerous and irresponsible.”
I’m glad that attacking Iran isn’t my decision to make. I’ve gone back and forth on this, and I’ll admit to feeling a frisson of pleasure when I read that U.S. naval vessels were steaming towards the Mideast. On the other hand, it’s not really America’s brief to be the World’s Policeman, deposing every dictator that exists. At least we had a U.S.-based reason for taking out Maduro, but Iran is different. And Trump seems to have backed off his plans and threats to go after the Iranian regime if they didn’t stop killing protestors (the killing has largely stopped, but known protestors are still being punished).
*The The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, a collaboration between the Associated Press and the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center, have taken the political temperature of America by publishing a series of polls on America’s governance, summarized by the AP. Here are a few of the AP’s graphs, just to see where we stand:
About 4 in 10 U.S. adults approve of how Trump is handling his job as president. That’s roughly in line with how it’s been throughout his second term. During his first White House stint, his approval in AP-NORC polling also stayed within a narrow range:
Americans’ opinions about Trump have barely shifted over the past few years, even after Trump was nearly assassinated and became the first president to have been convicted of a felony. The consistency of his favorability rating underscores just how difficult it is to change Americans’ minds about Trump.
But here’s a decline, one that could cost the GOP dearly in the midterms:
About two-thirds of U.S. adults continue to say the country’s economy is “poor.” That’s unchanged from recent months, and it’s broadly in line with views throughout Biden’s last year in office. It underscores the challenge of tackling Americans’ affordability woes that Trump is currently facing.
Vance, whom I’m guessing will be the next Republican Presidential candidate, is pretty much on Trump’s coattails:
When Trump announced his running mate in the summer of 2024, many Americans didn’t have an opinion of Vance, who was then serving as a U.S. senator from Ohio. Since then, his name recognition has increased, but as of October, about 2 in 10 U.S. adults still weren’t familiar with him.
*If you’re going to be staying at an American hotel, don’t be surprised if it doesn’t have a bathtub, and, worse, there may not be a bathroom door, or it could have a bathroom door that’s transparent, allowing you to see people doing their business. All this is happening, says the WSJ, because bathroom doors drive up costs.
First they came for the closets. Then they took the bath tubs. Now, hotels are stripping away the only thing separating us from the animals: the bathroom door.
Guests are waving goodbye to the luxury of a fully-closable opaque barrier between the restroom and bedroom, checking in to find sliding barn doors, curtains, strategically placed walls and other replacements that aren’t as proficient in the art of noise and smell containment.
In some cases, they’re not even good at hiding the view.
“You couldn’t see the fine details, but you could see everything else,” said Denise Milano Sprung of the frosted bathroom door of the hotel room she shared with her husband at the Calgary Airport Marriott. “I’ve been married for 25 years, I love my husband, but I don’t want to see him use the restroom.”
In the eyes of a chief financial officer, the humble door can look like a money pit.
Closing off an often-windowless room to natural light means guests will run up energy bills and leave maintenance with more lightbulb-changing work. Concrete and wood are expensive. Door handles jam and break.
The Americans With Disabilities Act requires a door frame wide enough for a wheelchair. Many of the early modifications had drawbacks. Hotel architects installed pocket doors that don’t require space to swing inward or outward, but have mechanisms that are costly to maintain. Curtains get dusty. Sliding barn doors have gotten more popular, but they can be unreliable closers.
“So when designing this we wanted a door that allows you to both see and hear everything that’s happening behind,” comedian Becca Herries said in a sketch about sliding doors that racked up 336,000 views on TikTok. “This door is designed to either move your relationship forward or end it.”
When digital marketer Sadie Lowell booked a twin room for herself and her father to share in London, she was horrified to find her room in the Holmes Hotel was lacking a solid bathroom door.
The trauma inspired her to start the campaign “Bring Back Doors.” Lowell has emailed hundreds of hotels with two questions: “Do your doors close all the way, and are they made of glass?” She uses her findings to regularly update two lists: Hotels with bathroom doors and hotels without. The second category is subdivided into “80% privacy: sliding/slatted doors,” “50% privacy: glass doors with walls,” and “zero privacy: no door, no wall, or wall with window.”
Have a look at the link; you can look up specific hotels and see what their bathroom doors are like.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej fields a hypothetical question. (I think he’d make a far better President than Trump.)
Hili: Would you like to be the American president?
Andrzej: I’ve never had nightmares that bad.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy chciałbyś by amerykańskim prezydentem?
Ja: Tak koszmarnych snów nigdy nie miałem.
*******************
From Funny and Strange Signs:
From Meow Incorporated:
From The Language Nerds (click to enlarge):
From Masih; another protestor killed:
The last selfie of Siavash Shirzad 💔✌🏻#IranRevolution2026 #DigitalBlackoutIran https://t.co/yErZo5TtkU pic.twitter.com/Q2h881qopj
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) January 20, 2026
From Luana; this letter appears to be real. “Jonas” is the President of Norway.
He may legitimately be turning senile.
You should have a maximum age limit of 75 for the presidency in addition to the 35 minimum age. pic.twitter.com/MuMDXcLpPE
— Jonatan Pallesen (@jonatanpallesen) January 19, 2026
From Simon, who seems to be obsessed with Trump collecting trophies after he collected a Nobel Prize Medal. Click screenshot to go to video original with sound:
Two from my feed. I think the first one is McKayla Maroney. She really sticks the landing.
At 16, she made a jump so perfect that not even the judges could believe it. 😮 pic.twitter.com/2nzTEWRp8F
— NO CONTEXT HUMANS (@HumansNoContext) January 19, 2026
And this is adorable:
This is how Mongolians traditionally dress their young children to protect them from the cold. pic.twitter.com/MMnTvDNO34
— The Best (@Thebestfigen) January 19, 2026
This Czech Jewish boy was gassed as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was fourteen. https://t.co/KTPQYwqUqv
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) January 21, 2026
Two from Matthew. This is apparently from Aristotle, though I can’t be arsed to check.
Also Aristotle: "you must wear socks to have sex".
— Adam Roberts (@adamroberts.bsky.social) 2026-01-18T11:05:33.422Z
A groaner:
— beetle moses (@beetlemoses.bsky.social) 2025-11-19T21:08:24.963Z
Trump’s plan (some kinda billion dollar club for people who want to continue to trade with the US, and nothing else) is a scam and everybody who knows anything about Palestine knows it is not going to work.
In Israel it is quite simple: You Pals lose, again, we rule.
Like the defeated psychopaths of yesteryear: Japan/Germany/Iraq.
Possibly….. better than the old days:
You lose? We kill you all, build a pyramid of your skulls, and expel any lucky survivors to tell others who would challenge us.
I said… possibly better.
D.A.
NYC
ps Freezing. I have NO idea how people in Chicago or worse Canada – Leslie? – endure this. You can’t have a dog, for instance, surely. Lucky I traded Florida for this. 🙁
Regarding your ps David. Hang in there. These three weeks are the worse. Next week is Jan 28, anniversary of Space Shuttle Challenger explosion, launched on a morning with ice coating the launch tower on the Atlantic Coast of Florida and snow on the ground in all of the lower 48 states…actually all 50 states if you count volcano peaks in Hawaii and, well, pretty much anywhere in Alaska.
But with the loss of NOAA data thanks to the Trump/DOGE boys and girls, it is more difficult for us to know exactly what to prepare for this weekend. Math models require input data and only with continued attention from scientists and mathematicians can those models be tuned as new data present themselves. So yes Virginia, it will be cold, but how cold? It will be wet but two inches of cold rain or two feet of snow or something in between, who knows? Examples of loss of expertise and data acquisition are in a Feb issue of The Atlantic article.
I was amused by this statement in a forecast of this weekend’s weather in Atlanta: “Very deep moisture will produce heavier rates of whatever falls from the sky, with the heaviest between 8 p.m. Saturday and 5 p.m. Sunday.” In other words, they’re only willing to say that something is going to fall from the skies this weekend, but unwilling to even venture a guess as to what it might be. I don’t know if that’s due to a lack of data, thanks to you-know-who, or due to an inherently ambiguous weather pattern or what.
I was thinking about you down there Jim in VA as I (stupidly) flew back home from Florida last week! 🙂 Tried to wave but maybe you weren’t looking up.
I remember the Challenger and later, the “o” ring seal disaster. One of the biggest moment of the 80s, my teen years.
Trump and Elon really did a number on NOAA.
best,
D.A.
NYC
Australia has just disgraced itself by yesterday’s passage, in parliament, of a bill (absolutely certain to erode long-cherished freedoms) against so-called “hate speech” under the guise of fighting against Islamism and rightwing extremism. Ever more hostile to unfettered expression grow the countries of the Anglosphere.
Wait, mate, apparently it gets worse. AFAIK hate is broadly defined and.. here’s the cherry on top… the law does not apply to “religious texts”.
So… all that Jew hate, pigs and monkeys guff, “defeat the infidels where ever you find them” which is IN THE KORAN and Hadith… is exempt. Not hate, apparently.
Buggering with the 1st Ammd (which Oz doesn’t have officially at least) is the stupidest thing a gvt can do b/c it effects EVERY aspect of society.
The people running my former country never cease to appall me these days.
best,
D.A.
NYC
Yes, hotels are now going the way of airlines and providing the fewest amenities they can and still get business. As for bathroom doors, I noticed several years ago that newer hotels had the “barn door” type doors, where the door us suspended from the track above and slides open and closed. I assumed that that was cost cutting. I’ve been a Hilton guy for the last dozen years are so. I noticed a trend towards not having business centers with printers.
I’m sure Lukashenko and Milei can find a billion somewhere. That shouldn’t be a problem.
A BIRTHDAY THOUGHT:
Walking is also an ambulation of mind. -Gretel Ehrlich, novelist, poet, and essayist (b. 21 Jan 1946)
Her comes my know-it-all attitude regarding the language nerds “zero fucks given”:
In Germany we are “anal related”, not “food related”. We say “Scheißegal”, which is literally translated as “shit no matter”. 😉
With regard to Vatican City: Nullae concubitus dandi
My favorite on that map was Denmark
“It bothers me like a cardboard duck.”
The “Aristotle” quote is, I suspect, from a medieval work falsely attributed to him. It’s a pornographic book about sex.
I like the places where fucks are given. Why would I want to be anywhere else?
Interesting that Aristotle had a sock fetish. Yes, he ‘splained it all in psy-entific language, but really, it was just a sock fetish. (As Tom Leahey says, the story may not even be true.)
And speaking of fetish, I so wish that Trump would get off the Greenland kick. He’s on his way to destroying our entire European alliance structure. Every time some defective synapse short circuits it initiates chaos and forces the entire world to attempt to mollify him so it can return to a tenuous balance for just one more day. With Trump, the state of the world is determined one day at a time. What will be left in his wake? We have three more years to find out—maybe more.
Latest news is that he’s ruled out military force for acquiring Greenland.
But he’s still obsessed with the idea.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/01/21/us/trump-davos-greenland-news
I don’t know what the billion dollar fee would go towards for membership in the board of peace. But if this is to somehow fill in the considerable credibility gaps of the UN (and there are many of those), it could be to support effective and tough-love initiatives like stability and governance in places like Gaza? Non-existent lord knows, funding from the UN is easily side-tracked in building tunnels and arming insurgents.
By the looks of it, a LOT of Greek philosophical works were produced tongue firmly in cheek. Aristophanes’s likely story of separating humans into male and female halves, Apollo stitching them up so they look funny as we do now, comes to mind.