Another thing, that I didn’t pay enough attention to. (It’s like reading Hamlet. There’s always something you missed – some theme or repeated metaphor or word with multiple meanings and overtones – so that it expands like one of those paper flower things, except that it never stops. In Hamlet, that is. In Trump it’s just a bit of stupidity or venality you didn’t notice fully enough the first few times around.)

Why did he send his idiotic letter to multiple ambassadors?

What was the plan? They were going to text each other and hastily put together a rebellion of the ambassadors and keep at it until Norway gave in and handed over the prize in a big silver-paper box … Read the rest

And another thing. I just can’t let go of this one, can I.

What could possibly be more uncool, more gross, more not in the spirit of the thing, more tacky, than telling the world that you think you should have won a big major famous global prize? You’re not even supposed to say you’d like to win, let alone screaming like a giant baby with a wasp up his ass because you didn’t, and let alone times a billion saying that you should have won it because you deserve it more than 8.3 billion people.

This is of course even more true when you are a murderous megalomaniac who has caused many deaths.… Read the rest

I wonder what he means by this bit:

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

What’s the logic? How is that not a non sequitur? Not to mention based on a false premise?

It wasn’t Norway that “decided” not to give him a prize, it was the Nobel committee. Except it didn’t have to “decide” anything because it never considered him for the prize. Ok I don’t actually know that for a fact, but why would it? Why of all people in the world to elevate as a force for peace would anyone pick out Donald Trump? He’s … Read the rest

To cheer us up:

Ht notBruce… Read the rest

Great god almighty.

This is one time when a post on TwitX is the actual source: the news outlets quote it as the source so I might as well start there.

NEW: @potus letter to @jonasgahrstore links @NobelPrize to Greenland, reiterates threats, and is forwarded by the NSC staff to multiple European ambassadors in Washington. I obtained the text from multiple officials:

Dear Ambassador:
 
President Trump has asked that the…

— Nick Schifrin (@nickschifrin) January 19, 2026

NEW:

@potus letter to @jonasgahrstore links @NobelPrize to Greenland, reiterates threats, and is forwarded by the NSC staff to multiple European ambassadors in Washington. I obtained the text from multiple officials:

Dear Ambassador:  

President Trump has asked that the following message, shared with

Hand it over or I’ll shoot the kid.

In a Truth Social post this weekend, President Trump gave an ultimatum to Europe: If they didn’t allow “the Complete and Total purchase” of Greenland, he would slap tariffs on a group of European countries, 10 percent in February, and then 25 percent in June.

European leaders responded that they would not be bullied.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain called the ultimatum “completely wrong.” President Emmanuel Macron of France went so far as to say Europe should retaliate with the strongest trade tool at its disposable: activating a regulation that could restrict the access of American companies to the E.U. market.

Within hours of the post, members of the

Hadley Freeman in The Times:

The process is the punishment. This is the conclusion every woman will draw from the experience of the Darlington Memorial Hospital nurses who were humiliated and degraded by their employer just because they didn’t want a man, known as “Rose” Henderson, to use the women’s changing room, where he could watch them undress.

On Friday an employment tribunal upheld the nurses’ complaints of discrimination and harassment, which is a victory and should be celebrated. But it is obscene this tribunal was necessary, and future generations will look upon cases like this with the same horrified bewilderment with which we look back on witch trials.

Or perhaps not quite the same because even more so … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Hand it over or else.

I remember from history classes that during hard times in absolutist monarchies, it was common, for those petitioning for the redress of grievances, to blame harmful conditions and bad policies on a rotten apple or two among the king’s counsellors, rather than the king himself, as complaining about the former was, sometimes, somewhat less dangerous than the latter.

Same in Mao’s China where the disastrous effects of things like the “Great Leap Forward” were always blamed on unfaithful underlings who abused the chairman’s trust and good intentions for their own self-serving ends. The more people were made to suffer as a direct consequence of the chairman’s policies, … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Your name’s not Bruce? on Hand it over or else.

This is a nightmare. How much farther into madness must Trump (and America) plunge before somebody calls for the invocation of the 25th Amendment? I wonder if Putin has the Epstein files, and this is what he’s been holding over Trump all of this time? Putin is the biggest beneficiary if Trump immolates NATO from within. It says nothing good about the United States (or our species) that the fate of billions of people hinges on the psychopathology of one man and his handlers, both American and foreign.

I remember from history classes that during hard times in absolutist monarchies, it was common, for those … Read the rest

Where did the adults go?

A professor was suspended after defending a gender-critical academic from accusations of “transphobia”.

Prof David Gordon said it was in the “interests” of staff and students at the University of Bristol to hear from Prof Alice Sullivan after he invited her to give a talk in November 2024. The Russell Group university’s LGBTQ+ Staff Network had claimed Prof Sullivan, of University College London, was guilty of “transphobia” and would cause “real and enduring harm” if allowed to speak.

But when Prof Gordon, Bristol’s professor of social justice, responded to their concerns via email, he was suspended because his manager had told him not to do so. An investigation concluded in March 2025 that he had

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think tariffs are supposed to be used as aids to extortion.

Trump said Saturday that he would impose a new 10% tariff on Denmark and seven other European countries until “a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland.”

The other countries affected would be Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Finland.

Trump said the duties would increase to 25% if a deal is not reached by June 1.

That seems like not so much a tariff as like a bunch of guys with baseball bats and guns holding up a 7-11.

“We will not allow ourselves to be blackmailed,” said Sweden’s prime minister

So what do Norwegians think?

Norwegian lawmakers reacted with shock and dismay over Venezuela opposition leader María Corina Machado’s decision to present U.S. President Donald Trump with her Nobel Peace Prize medal.

“It’s completely unheard of,” Janne Haaland Matlary, a professor of international politics at the University of Oslo and former state secretary in the foreign affairs ministry, told public broadcaster NRK on Friday. She called Machado’s gesture “disrespectful” and “pathetic,” saying it undermined the value of the prize, which the Norwegian Nobel Committee awards annually.

It does rather. It’s just so silly. The object is merely an object; the fact that the award was to Machado and not in any way to Trump makes the object irrelevant.

Only … Read the rest

From the Department of Weird Manipulative Headlines:

Emma Watson up for national award after JK Rowling comments

Weird because “after” anything and everything. Time is what it is, so pretty much everything is “after” any given X. Emma Watson up for national award after brushing her teeth, after lunch, after someone in China eats lunch, after everyone in China eats lunch – you get the idea.

It’s sly and sneaky, is what it is. They don’t want to say “despite” or similar, because it might make trouble, so they fall back on the neutral “after” and thus say something absurdly devoid of meaning.

Beware of “after”.… Read the rest

Poor Euan Weddell. He’s just not very bright.

0 days without trunes comparing black women to men. Maugham must be so proud of his pet victim. pic.twitter.com/yl6HilhqmR

— Stuart Macintosh (@stueymaco) January 17, 2026

Pointless question, bro. Knowing that men are not women is not comparable to racism. Even if you disagree with that knowing, even if you think it’s mean and harsh to act on that knowing, it’s still not comparable to racism.

And to look at it from the other angle, campaigning to force women to agree that men can be women is not comparable to campaigning to force segregationists to stop segregating people by race.

Random comparisons of non-comparable things are not a clever way to make … Read the rest

War fever heightens.

The Trump administration has opened a criminal investigation into elected Democrats in Minnesota, according to a senior law enforcement official familiar with the matter, a major escalation in the fight between the federal government and local officials over the aggressive immigration crackdown underway in the city.

Or to put it another way, Trump and his administration are treating a disagreement about immigration policy as a criminal matter. We know that Trump thinks it’s a crime to dispute his assertions, but we get a little edgy when he says it out loud.

The investigation would focus on allegations that Gov. Tim Walz and Jacob Frey, the mayor of Minneapolis, had conspired to impede thousands of federal agents

The BBC takes a detailed look at the Darlington ruling.

Hospital bosses never considered ‘female discrimination’, ruling says

When talking to the nurses, NHS managers did discuss “discrimination”, the tribunal found.

But they only ever referred to it in relation to Rose, they added.

Ah. That’s quite the punchline. It’s only the man who claims to be a woman who suffers discrimination. Women who don’t want him leering at them are the lords of the manor spitting on the peasantry.

Tribunal says ruling shouldn’t detract from transgender vulnerability

In its judgement, the panel said the purpose of the Trust’s Transitioning in the Workplace policy was “to create an environment that gave transgender employees comfort and reassurance that they would

Mmmmmmno.

No, see, because the Jews in question were not being told they were not Jews, they were being genocided for being Jews.

That’s a very big difference.

They didn’t “identify” into being Jewish and they couldn’t “identify” their way out. They couldn’t identify their way out of Auschwitz. They couldn’t identify their way out of the six million.

Sophie Molly’s pretending to be comparable to Jews in the Holocaust is about as disgusting as it gets.… Read the rest

And now for the cringe.

Political leaders in Norway have condemned the Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado’s “absurd” decision to present her Nobel peace prize medal to Donald Trump, accusing the US president of being a “classic showoff” who takes credit for other people’s work.

Good. It is absurd, of course. That’s not how this works. The whole point of it is recognition of Person X. Giving a physical emblem of the recognition to someone else entirely is dividing zero by zero. It’s like children pretending to be royalty or astronauts or moovee starrz.

Kirsti Bergstø, the leader of Norway’s Socialist Left party and its foreign policy spokesperson, said: “This is, above all, absurd. The peace prize cannot

Hmm.

Ah it’s only the KCs “with an axe to grind” who know that men are not women. What’s the axe? Knowing that men are not women, of course.… Read the rest

Yet another that’s not how it works.

Trump said Friday he may impose tariffs on countries “if they don’t go along with Greenland.”

Tariffs aren’t about forcing other countries to accept one rogue nation’s aggression.

Also wtf is “go along with Greenland” supposed to mean? They are “going along with Greenland”; it’s Trump’s plan to annex Greenland that they’re not going along with, for obvious reasons. Saying “Greenland” when he means “my determination to attack and absorb Greenland” is typical of his mind-blind sloppy way of assuming everyone sees what he sees, even when our refusal to see things the way he sees them is the very thing he’s talking about.

The Trump administration has previously said it is