What can history teach us about what happens when a populist strongman with an idiosyncratic taste for low interest rates undermines central bank independence?

In plain sight...

NEWS: A day after the Minneapolis shooting, Secretary Noem quietly signed a new policy barring congressional visits to ICE facilities without a week's advance notice. That policy change led to three MN Dems being blocked from accessing an ICE facility today. www.politico.com/news/2026/01...

The Greenland fixation feels like a personal insult to anyone who's spent more than about five minutes thinking about national security. "Hey, let's demolish our most valuable alliance so we can get get access to arctic territory we already have access to!"

(whispered) remind them how much of their money is actually in continental europe and has not been ‘repatriated’ to the US and maybe it’s time to discuss the terms of those arrangements

Somehow, there is a recent documentary about #DreadZeppelin (for the uninitiated, a band fusing Led Zeppelin and reggae, sung by an Elvis impersonator...just accept the reality) and it's not too shabby at all. www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-X1...

The FBI documented this, and while I think they’ve taken down the report on their site, the Internet doesn’t forget. For your consideration, 2006’s FBI report “White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement.”

#QoTD "I object to people who are rich in politics. I don't think they should be allowed to be in politics. It is bad that rich people are in politics, it is bad for everybody but rich people, and rich people don't need any more help." - Fran Leibowitz

Sir, if any of your followers haven't read George Washington's letter to the Touro synagogue, I would urge them to. He's quite clear that religious pluralism is the way forward, and rejects "tolerance" as implying that one religion has veto power over the others. tsfnewport.org/history/geor...

WATCH: More than 80% of U.S. children attend public schools. Some of the Education Department’s ultraconservative advisers, led by Secretary Linda McMahon, want to change that. Here’s an inside look at their dismantling of public education:

Angine du Poitrine is like King Crimson and Primus run through a Loony Toons filter: www.youtube.com/watch?v=V83S...

Blue Sky is generally great, but there is still a layer of self-righteously hamstrung clown shoes tap-dancing about that really need to take a gander in the mirror and discover the concept of embarrassment.

I see HIPAA and similar based lawsuits on the horizon...in bulk.

#workinprogress #art using mixed media (analog + digital).

The comms part is something that should have been done at Day zero of his administration, by the Dems. Instead we've had erratic tutt-tutting from skeletally gelatinous buffoons like Schumer and Jefferies.

The highlight of Paul Reisers entire acting career is him getting skidded by a #xenomorph in "Aliens". God, what an awful actor.

You don’t have to give a personal testimony about your reading habits and literacy. The problem is that Americans in general are becoming less literate and literacy is one of the things tied to not just a happier intellectual life but also to one’s potential of moving up the economic ladder.

Snark applied with panache is always enjoyable...

Another reason to never use Intuit. There are plenty, and people should be advocating for simple filing processes like they have in Europe and elsewhere, but in the meantime, do not use anyone that touches your personal financial data in an undefined way with an llm.

To say Mike Johnson has been notably un-notable is itself quite largely unnoticed, if not for the fact that he's made a spectacle out of being anything but spectacular. He seems to enjoy taking the most embarrassing sycophancy and wrapping it onto itself, like an Ouroboros that likes it's own farts

But it could be worse, and in all likelihood will indeed become so soon enough... All because we collectively lost any meaningful capacity for critical thinking.

Samuel Alito flew two flags used by insurrectionists. Clarence Thomas' wife plotted to overturn the 2020 election. Both justices refused to recuse themselves from SCOTUS cases related to the January 6th plot. It's a stain on our nation that this has effectively been forgotten.

The chance of this working is abysmally poor. He's eroded trust even in his own bloc, and becoming so erratic that more and more people see the best strategy is just sitting it out and watching it continue to degrade.

Frank Burns was more likable, and he was 10 of the most boring people I knew... #IYKYK

I still remember hearing the bumpers/credits for the CPB on shows like Sesame Street and NOVA, but the GOP fixation on destroying anything of lasting value in the US is without boundaries.

Has a court ruled on whether, under Section 230, a web site’s AI generating content based on a user prompt is treated as the web site’s speech? Seems to me it should be, just as if the site operator published speech answering someone’s question. BWEPRA

Funding cuts by the Trump administration represent a departure from long-standing bipartisan support for criminal justice research and data collection — the cuts undermine that work and, by extension, public safety. bit.ly/3Y4QGP2

When America abdicates its role as a defender of freedom and becomes the oppressor, it emboldens dictators everywhere. We are about to learn some hard lessons. One being how instrumental we used to be at preventing the world from descending into madness.

One thing I wrote about here is how technology has made buses *way* more convenient while techno-futurists were obsessed with flying taxis and self-driving cars.

Canada: Our Prime Minster studied at Oxford and Harvard, was the Governor of both the Banks of England and Canada, and is recognized as one of the sharpest financial minds around. America: oh yeah? Our guy has to take dementia tests every week.

If you are a resident of California, the state now has a portal where you can demand deletion of your personal data from 500+ registered data brokers with a single request form, for free. consumer.drop.privacy.ca.gov

#zeruchontour this is from today's road tripping around Cayuma/Soda Lake, et al. The moon came out early and made this shot right before golden hour possible.

Ending 2025 with #art, starting 2026 the same. #abstractpainting #workinprogress

My main takeaway from the Jack Smith testimony: we should push our presidential candidate to make him Attorney General in 2029.

This LONG Politico piece on how Dems anticipated and responded to Trump's bid to avoid democratic accountability is worth your time. www.politico.com/news/2025/12...

It's January 1st... which means NEW WORKS ARE IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN. And, like every year, we celebrate with a public domain game jam. The tools for creating games are getting easier and easier so consider joining in and making something amazing out of the public domain!

But that's what @reason.com has become. A farce.

🗓️ Today in one sentence for Tuesday, December 30, 2025. Day 1806: "The guy is just incompetent."

This is the key. You can win some elections, but you can't force people to like or respect you; ironically, Trump's people want that respect from people they claim to care nothing about. They don't hate the "elites" - they envy that club, and they're mad because money and power can't buy them in.

The last finished #abstractpainting of 2025 for me. "Disquiet 58 (o amor que foi preciso para dizer adeus)" is mixed media (acrylics/coaches/graphite) on several sheets of cold press board and sketch pad paper, then digital pixel alchemy. #art #artshare

Very few #progressiverock bands ever progressed past a certain overwrought point. There are a few exceptions: #Marillion has done so by marrying arty ambitions with artful chamber-pop sensibility. An uncontrived merge of Pink Floyd and Radiohead on a good day... www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbZu...

"On January 1, 2026, thousands of #copyrighted works from 1930 enter the US #publicdomain, along with sound recordings from 1925. They will be free for all to copy, share, and build upon" including stuff by Faulkner, Dos Passos, and Maugham. web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicd...

#sketchbook December 2025. In high school and college I had a holy trinity of contemporary political satirists that I read and listened to fervently. Molly Ivins, Hunter S. Thompson, and Hunter's drinking buddy PJ O'Rourke, pictured crudely here in cretacolor graphite pencil. #art #drawing

Adrian Vermule is one of the most insufferably clown-ass dysintellectuals the alt-blight has managed to ripen from spore to complete cerebral fungus in quite some time. Like Vought but with less likability, or Vara with less familiarity with reality.

So good. Thank you. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/24/o...

It does have variations; the Chinese, Indians and to a lesser extent Russians, have some nominal interest in their neighbors (for different incentives) but the US truly even lacks curiosity of that. We work hard to grasp little, especially if it challenges a comfortable prejudicial assumption.

To set the seasonal mood: "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence" on solo piano by Ryuichi Sakamoto. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELJf...

Ben Kenney (The Roots, Incubus) has some new material out, including a cover of one of my favorite #LivingColour tunes, "Type" www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5RN...

Not pointing at anyone specifically, but some FBI docs being released are basically tip reports -- people contacting the FBI with information. Not fake documents, but, the info in them could be 100% false, including from cranks or people hoping to hurt Trump back in term 1.

To be honest, I think a lot of people are surprised by this.