Saturday, January 17, 2026

Links 1/17/2026

1 Year Into Trump 2.0, the Social Security Administration Is in Disarray

If you are so unfortunate as to need assistance from the Social Security Administration, good luck with that.

Book Review: A Portrait of the Arctic World in Flux

Neil Shea’s “Frostlines” captures the terror and beauty of the Arctic, a region often dismissed as “big, cold, white, and far away.”

Coffee Break: The President Fixes Health Care While Unfixing the Air We Breathe, Among Other Things

Part the First: The President Fixes Healthcare. Oh, joy!  A very long time ago I told myself that, surely, by the time I was eligible for Medicare the United States would have fixed our healthcare system so that job lock and other assorted problems would have vanished.  Silly me.  I have been eligible for Medicare […]

The Day of the Dollar: Is It Over?

More on the prospects for the dollar. Even under Trump, it remains the cleanest shirt in the laundry bin.

Links 1/16/2026

Why Keir Starmer’s Partial “U-Turn” on Mandatory Digital IDs Is Merely a Symbolic Victory

The UK government has no intention of changing course. But can the resistance grow?

The Economist Wrecks Its Limited Credibility in Article on Dark Factories That Ignores That China Already Has a Lot of Them

Time to stop reading The Economist. A story that looks like dark factory denialism completely discredits the magazine.

Critics Say Trump ‘Joke Healthcare Plan’ Nothing But a ‘Con’ of the American People

Trump’s latest afffordabilty headfake is a sketchy healthcare scheme.

A Quick Guide to the Power Restructure in the Middle East

The shifting power architecture of the Middle East explored through two new axes: religious politics and regard for territorial integrity

Trump’s “Fix Affordability” 10% Credit Card Interest Rate Cap: A Gimmick, Not a Solution (and It Won’t Happen Anyhow)

It has gotten through to Trump that the state of the economy, and particularly consumer suffering from persistently high costs, aka the affordability crisis, can’t be solved by his barker’s patter about how great things are. So he’s roused himself to try to find some quick and easy wins so he can present himself as […]

Links 1/15/2026

The Ever-Shrinking Eldercare Workforce

Another health industry train wreck in the making is the rising difficulty of staffing so-called eldercare needs, particularly dementia care.

Climate Engineering Would Alter the Oceans, Reshaping Marine Life – Our New Study Examines Each Method’s Risks

Sadly, climate engineering, aka geo-engineering, is coming. Is it possible to properly assess risks and choose least-hazardous approaches?

How Voting Systems Influence Immigration Policy

How America’s liberal immigration regime was a predictable result of how we decide elections.