Winter
Seasonal affective disorder, your days are numbered. The winter solstice is only two days away. 😎
Mundane tasks can also entail bits of magic. Here's the laundromat I use when our washing machine is out of commission. North Conway, NH, Jan. 17, 2026.
Posted on Jan. 1, 2026.
Echo Lake, North Conway, NH, on Dec. 28, 2025.
Posted on Jan. 23, 2026.
Seen on the afternoon of Jan. 1, 2026. Peabody River in Gorham, NH. It was only 2:45 in the afternoon, but the sun was starting to disappear behind the mountain.
For six more wintry images, see my post from Jan. 23, 2026.
Social Web
People thinking about how to create web spaces for more productive and meaningful interactions might profit from a recent post by Mark Bernstein that draws inspiration from interwar Vienna’s coffee houses. See "Design for Amiability: Lessons from Vienna," A List Apart, Oct. 15. It is also relevant to people interested in online sociability more generally.
Disorder
'One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This' by Omar El Akkad
I’ve added Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (Penguin) to my list of books for the current moment. In one sense it’s a fairly short screed about the hypocrisy of Western values. From that point of view, this 2025 winner of the National Book Award had little new to tell me. Moreover, its dark context, the genocide in Gaza and the related suppression of free speech in the United States, led me to put it down several times in recent months. Nonetheless, its unusual and compelling style kept me coming back. On top of that, I was drawn to how he structures his reflections around elements of his own transnational life.
At times, the argument feels bothsidesist, but I don’t think it’s that easy. Besides, why doesn’t Western liberalism work harder to offer a positive vision that lives up to liberal values instead of relying on the adage that the other side is a whole lot worse. It is, but this rhetorical strategy clearly hasn’t worked, and it is irrelevant when it comes to the lives that Netanyahu has extinguished using US weapons. Despite my occasional ambivalence, this little book offers anyone who chooses to listen plenty to think about. We can’t overcome the current disorder without doing better in word and deed.
I feel sick every time I hear the U.S. president conflating Ukraine’s gradual loss of land with its overall strategic position. Is his team really so ignorant? Or is this yet another instance of their favoring the interests and nihilism of the few over the interests and values of the many?
Finished reading Andrey Kurkov’s Diary of an Invasion (Mountain Leopard Press, 2022) and Our Daily War (Open Borders Press, 2024). Lots of good observations and vignettes about life in Ukraine during war, but also before.
Kyiv Independent video: One night with a Kyiv family amid Russia’s mass attack (29 min)
The U.S. federal government is deliberately terrorizing American cities and is happy to sanction unnecessary and therefore illegal deadly force. The agents might be poorly trained; their leadership and culture is clearly rotten.
Dear Media: Could we please stop calling ICE terror in U.S. cities a “federal crackdown”? That legitimizes their presence and actions.
Might Europe’s clear “No” to Trump’s Greenland ambitions become the check on his rogue imperial presidency that so many U.S. institutions have been unable to manifest? Probably not, but I sure hope they stand their ground. Meanwhile, Mark Carney’s inspiring speech in Davos about the Canadian response to Trump’s weaponization of global economic integration offers a solid model for states that wish to meet the Trumpian threat head on.