The political empire of Trump has always been built on vibes, not facts. He was never a successful businessman — he sucked at it, actually — but he •played• one on TV. People voted for the character on The Apprentice, the character in the QAnon posts, the collectively imagined Second Coming cult leader with ripped muscles, the generic racist whose granting of permission to indulge in collective cruelty offered a kind of euphoric bonding.
The facts are never what gave him power.
3/

Had Fun

Bought a car/micro-camper

Bought a van to do up as a micro-camper, and did a temporary rush job of that conversion myself while waiting in the list for the pro to do it.
Then the pro gave himself a health criss the week it was booked so I took apart my temp job and only got another temp kit-job in it's place.
Went out in it like four times during that and then broke my wrist and couldn't really use it or improve it.
Then had to take it apart even more to try
and figure out where the ad-blue hole was.
I will do a proper permanent job of the
floor and walls and ceiling and adjustments to the kit-job to make it the nicest it's been so far during the spring next year.
My assumption that the prior conversion
into a van and for wheelchair-access meant the microcamper conversion was half-done already turned out to be false.
If I buy a new one, it'll be one that has never been wheelchair adapted.
But it's going okay. Only scraped it once so far.
Fewer than aimed for or booked, but I broke my wrist and had to cancel the second half of the summer.
Went to a conference about money and computers and fringe decentralized social media and it wasn't as boring as you might expect and felt pretty much like a festival.
Exactly the target number! It's lovely.
Took 3 times longer than I'd hoped and
50% more money than I'd planned for really.
Still improvements to make but they will
be incremental and gradual over the coming year or two now.
It's been interest-only for 20 years so a big old lump sum payment that I never really expected to be able to make. Expected to have to sell and move at the end of the mortgage term.
But surprisingly the stocks ISA got high enough to pay it off after all, so I did that.
Cash-flow ruined by that and the bedroom but should start to feel a bit richer next year.

Trump pardons major drug traffickers despite his anti-drug rhetoric
Donald Trump — who campaigned against America’s worsening drug crisis and promised to crack down on the illegal flow of deadly drugs coming across the border
— has pardoned or granted clemency to at least 10 people for drug-related crimes since the beginning of his second term, according to a Washington Post analysis.
He also granted pardons or commutations to almost 90 others for drug-related crimes duri…

Trump pardons major drug traffickers despite his anti-drug rhetoric
The president has granted clemency to about 100 people accused of drug-related crimes during his two terms in office, a Post analysis shows.

My big gripe with "AI" is that a big reason why it's sold as the second coming of Jesus is that most tech people fundamentally do not understand how it actually works.
Their reasoning goes something like, "It works sort of ok for code generation, and programming is the hardest possible thing in the world to do, every other human endeavor is trivial compared to writing code, therefore it must excel at anything else!".
So it ends up being pushed due to a mixture of ignorance and hubris; and especially being stuffed into things it should never be used for (usually when users don't have a say which software they need to use for work).
The finbros are happily along for the ride because they just need something that can be hyped to pump and dump.

Trump’s team raised more than $100 million for a super PAC in the second half of 2025,
with much of the money coming from wealthy people and corporations with issues before the administration.
The haul by MAGA Inc., detailed in a campaign finance report filed on Thursday night,
reveals how aggressive fund-raising has continued for a political operation that revolves around Mr. Trump,
giving the organization over $300 million ahead of this year’s midterms.
The d…

Trump Super PAC Raised More Than $100 Million in Recent Months
The haul highlights how the president’s team has continued aggressive fund-raising from donors with interests before the administration.

Let's face it: Trump's attack on Venezuela is about fossil fuels* once more. Another reason to resume working on the energy transition this coming Monday!
*) Confirmed by Trump himself:

"2025 was third-warmest year on record, research shows"
#Climate #ClimateChange
https:/…

2025 was third-warmest year on record, research shows
2025 was the third-warmest year on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The warmest year on record is still 2024, with 2023 coming in second. The global average surface temperature for 2025 was estimated to be 1.44° Celsius (2.59° Fahrenheit) higher than preindustrial levels. The last 11 years have been the warmest 11 years […]

2025 was third-warmest year on record, research shows https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2026/01/2025-was-third-warmest-year-on-record-research-shows/

2025 was third-warmest year on record, research shows
2025 was the third-warmest year on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The warmest year on record is still 2024, with 2023 coming in second. The global average surface temperature for 2025 was estimated to be 1.44° Celsius (2.59° Fahrenheit) higher than preindustrial levels. The last 11 years have been the warmest 11 years […]

Javonte Williams' resolution for 2026: 'To win the Super Bowl' https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/javonte-williams-resolution-for-2026-to-win-the-super-bowl

Very difficult to suspend disbelief with the new Stranger Things season. The kids all look like they're in their late 30s and coming off their second divorce.

@… Y2k38 is the second wave. Bigger than Y2K because today everything is software — and everything depends on time. And as with second waves, most people don’t see it coming. We should change that.

Raiders to hold head coach interview with Klint Kubiak in coming days https://raiderswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/raiders/2026/01/28/raiders-schedule-head-coach-interview-seahawks-oc-klint-kubiak…