Soon We Shall Know

Soon we shall know everything the eighteenth century didn't know, and nothing it did, and it will be hard to live with.

-- Randall Jarrell (1914 - 1965), American poet, novelist, critic, and essayist, Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980) "On the Underside of the Stone," The New York Times Book Review (23 August 1953), p. 177

Delusional

Dear Jonas:

Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.  Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a "right of ownership" anyway?  There are no written documents, it's only a boat that landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also.  I have done more for NATO than any person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States.  The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland.  Thank you! President DJT

-- Letter from President Trump to Norway's Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, 19 January 2026, the latest and purest evidence that Mr Trump is detached from reality

Surmounting Obstacles

People are often surprised to learn that I am an optimist.  They know how often I have been jailed, how frequently the days and nights have been filled with frustration and sorrow, how bitter and dangerous are my adversaries.  They expect these experiences to harden me into a grim and desperate man.  They fail, however, to perceive the sense of affirmation generated by the challenge of embracing struggle and surmounting obstacles.  They have no comprehension of the strength that comes from faith in God and man.  It is possible for me to falter, but I am profoundly secure in my knowledge that God loves us; He has not worked out a design for our failure.  Man has the capacity to do right as well as wrong, and his history is a path upward, not downward.  The past is strewn with the ruins of the empires of tyranny, and each is a monument not merely to man's blunders but to his capacity to overcome them.

-- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "A Testament of Hope", published posthumously in Playboy magazine, January 1969 (h/t Andy Borowitz)

Autoimmune Disorder

The Trump Administration is an autoimmune disorder sabotaging the things that actually made America if not great at least powerful: its economy, its higher education system, its international relations, its crucial immigrant workforce, its functioning federal government, its public health systems, the rule of law, and lots of other things like food safety and clean water.

-- Rebecca Solnit (born 1961), American writer and activist, Notes on Unbearable Stupidity, January 6, 2026 Edition

Power Over The Rules

Power over the rules is real power.  That's why lobbyists congregate when Congress writes laws, and why the Supreme Court, which interprets and delineates the Constitution -- the rules for writing the rules -- has even more power than Congress.  If you want to understand the deepest malfunctions of systems, pay attention to the rules and to who has power over them.

-- Donella Meadows (1941-2001), American environmental scientist, teacher and writer, Thinking in Systems: A Primer (2008), Part three: creating change – in systems and in our philosophy, page 158

Evidence And Economic Conditions

On Friday, the Department of Justice served the Federal Reserve with grand jury subpoenas, threatening a criminal indictment related to my testimony before the Senate Banking Committee last June. 

I have deep respect for the rule of law and for accountability in our democracy.  No one -- certainly not the chair of the Federal Reserve -- is above the law.  But this unprecedented action should be seen in the broader context of the administration's threats and ongoing pressure.

This new threat is not about my testimony last June.  It is not about Congress's oversight role.  Those are pretexts.  The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President.

This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions -- or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.

I have carried out my duties without political fear or favor, focused solely on our mandate of price stability and maximum employment.  Public service sometimes requires standing firm in the face of threats.  I will continue to do the job the Senate confirmed me to do, with integrity and a commitment to serving the American people.

-- Jerome H. Powell, "Statement from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell" (11 January 2026)

Desensitization

Can I make an insane, possibly totally true claim, which is that, when your officials, from the president on down, lie about what happened in a shooting in the middle of the street, and therefore force everybody to go watch a shooting in the street -- my guess is there's desensitization that happens.

-- John Dickerson (6 July 1968 -), American journalist, contributing writer at The Atlantic, and past co-anchor of CBS Evening News, speaking on the Slate Political Gabfest podcast (8 January 2026)

HBD Milo Donaldson Appleman

Sunday was my grandfather's 160th birthday.  He was born January 11th 1866.

He was already 51 years old when my father was born in 1917.  And then my father was 42 years old when I was born in 1959.  So my grandfather was 93 years older than me, though he only lived to age 66.

He was Milo Donaldson Appleman, and I am his namesake.

Indirections

Any problem in computer science can be solved with another layer of indirection, except of course for the problem of too many indirections. 

-- David John Wheeler (9 February 1927 - 13 December 2004), computer scientist and professor of computer science at the University of Cambridge, PhD advisor to Bjarne Stroustrup

Deduced From Behavior

Purposes are deduced from behaviour, not from rhetoric or stated goals.

-- Donella Meadows (1941 - 2001), American environmental scientist, teacher and writer, Thinking in Systems: A Primer (2008), Part one: systems structure and behavior, page 14

A Hero

I imagine that a hero is a man who does what he can.  The others do not do it.

-- Romain Rolland (1866 - 1944), French writer, 1915 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Jean-Christophe (1904-1912), a novel in 10 volumes

Infamy

This is an attack on our democracy, our way of life, and not just by the criminals who assaulted our Congress today.  The good news is our Constitution is strong, and our people are overwhelmingly devoted to the rule of law.  What we need to do going forward -- what we have to do as a people -- not as Democrats, or Republicans, or independents, but as Americans, is to ask ourselves how did we ever get to this place.  We need to look infinitely harder at who we elect to any office in our land.  At the office seeker's character, at their morals, at their ethical record, their integrity, their honesty, their flaws, what they have said about women, and minorities, why they are seeking office in the first place, and only then consider the policies they espouse.

-- General John Kelly, USMC, retired (1950 -), former U.S. Marine Corps general who served as White House Chief of Staff for President Donald Trump from July 31, 2017, to January 2, 2019; he had previously served as Secretary of Homeland Security in the Trump administration, "Statement from General John Kelly, USMC (ret.)", at American Security Project (7 January 2021)

If You Think

If you think it's simple, then you have misunderstood the problem.

-- Bjarne Stroustrup (30 December 1950 -), computer scientist and creator of the C++ programming language, Bjarne Stroustrup's FAQ: (2007 - present) 

Most Predictable Thing

It's weird how I am constantly surprised by the passage of time when it's literally the most predictable thing in the Universe.

-- Randall Munroe (1984 -), American cartoonist, author, and engineer, in xkcd 1477

The Future Beckons

The past is over and it is the future that beckons to us now. 

-- Jawaharlal Nehru (1889 - 1964), principal leader of the Indian independence movement in the 1930s and 1940s, prime minister for 17 years, Tryst with Destiny speech (14 August 1947)