The Daily Gathering
Grounded wisdom for curious souls
Good morning, beloved community. It's Wednesday, January 7, 2026. Today: Trump's wet dream of seizing Greenland gets dangerously real, Australia's fire scientists are screaming into the void about LA-style infernos, genocide scholars are sounding the fucking alarm on trans rights in America, and the life hack that'll change your fucking week.
Editor's note: The winter light is thin and honest today—use it.
The Big Three
The Arctic land grab that could end NATO
The smell of jet fuel and diplomatic panic hangs over Copenhagen this morning—sharp, metallic, impossible to ignore.
Donald Trump wants Greenland. Not as a trading partner. Not as a defense ally. He wants to fucking own it—and he's now openly discussing military force to make that happen.
The Damage:
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt dropped the bomb Tuesday: "Utilizing the U.S. Military is always an option at the Commander in Chief's disposal." The Hill Senior adviser Stephen Miller went on CNN to smugly declare, "Nobody's going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland." CNBC This isn't hypothetical dickwaving anymore. This is a NATO ally threatening to invade another NATO ally's territory for the first time in the alliance's 70-year history.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned that any seizure attempt would effectively "end NATO"—and she's not being dramatic. The Hill Article 5, the mutual defense clause that holds the whole damn thing together, would technically obligate NATO countries to defend Greenland against the U.S. Senator Chris Murphy spelled it out: NATO allies would "of course" have to defend against an American invasion. "We're laughing," Murphy said, "but this is not actually something to laugh about now because I think he's increasingly serious." CNBC
The Stakes:
Greenland hosts the Pituffik Space Base, a critical U.S. military installation. The Arctic is melting, opening shipping routes and resource access that the Pentagon has been drooling over for decades. Trump told reporters, "Greenland is so strategic right now. We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it." The Hill
Otto Svendsen from the Center for Strategic and International Studies cut through the bullshit: "What do you do when a member of the herd all of a sudden becomes a wolf?"
The Response:
Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen called U.S. rhetoric "completely unacceptable." European NATO leaders issued a joint statement: "Greenland belongs to its people. It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide." Senator Ruben Gallego is introducing a resolution to block any invasion, tweeting: "WAKE UP. Trump is telling us exactly what he wants to do."
Even Senate Majority Leader John Thune—a Republican—said he doesn't "see military action being an option there." When your own party is backing away from your batshit territorial fantasies, maybe take the goddamn hint.
Australia's cities are fucking tinderboxes
The taste of smoke sits at the back of your throat before you even see the flames—dry, chemical, wrong.
A new report from the Climate Council and Emergency Leaders for Climate Action is screaming what Australian fire chiefs have known for years: 6.9 million Australians now live in suburban areas primed to burn exactly like Los Angeles did last January.
The Science:
The report, titled "When Cities Burn: Could the Los Angeles fires happen here?", lays out the brutal math. Population in high-risk outer suburbs—where houses meet highly flammable bush and grassland—has increased 65.5% since 2001. Melbourne and Perth's outer suburbs have more than doubled. Up to 90% of homes in fire-prone zones were built before modern bushfire-resilient standards existed.
Former NSW Fire Commissioner Greg Mullins, who's worked with U.S. fire authorities, doesn't mince words: "Nearly every Australian capital city has a dangerous mix of preconditions for a catastrophic fire like LA—the possibility of extreme dry periods, severe winds, steep slopes, bushland near homes and a history of destructive fires."
The Damage We Know:
Fire frequency and intensity have more than doubled in twenty years. Australian fire seasons have extended by 27 additional days since 1979. During Black Summer 2019-20, fire-generated thunderstorms—which took 40 years to record 60 of—produced 45 in a single season. The fire danger index, once capped at 100, hit over 200 on Black Saturday 2009.
Ten percent of fires cause 78% of fatalities, and most of those deaths happen exactly where millions of Australians have moved: the suburbs where flammable terrain meets cities.
Genocide scholars say what nobody wants to hear about trans Americans
The sound of paper shredding—federal databases being erased, health records disappearing into silence.
Two former presidents of the International Association of Genocide Scholars are warning that the United States has entered the early stages of genocide against transgender people. This is not hyperbole from activists. This is formal assessment from the people who literally study how extermination begins.
The Evidence:
Dr. Gregory Stanton, founder of Genocide Watch: "I think what they're doing here is they're trying to destroy a gender group. And so I do think it's genocidal. I think that the objective here is literally, physically, to destroy this group."
Dr. Henry Theriault: "I think we're already at the point for trans folks, for immigrants, where the damage is being done. So it's not so much 'will genocide happen?' as 'we got to stop it from happening.'"
Dr. Elisa von Joeden-Forgey, founder of the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, places the U.S. in the "early-to-mid stages of a genocidal process" against trans, nonbinary, and intersex people.
The Pattern:
Executive orders banning trans people from the military. NIH defunding LGBTQIA+ research. The federal government now defines sex as a male-female binary—period. Federal webpages referencing transgender populations have been removed from existence. Wikipedia
At the state level, more than half of U.S. states restrict youth access to gender-affirming care. Twenty states regulate transgender bathroom use. Since 2020, over 250 bills have been introduced to limit or ban gender-affirming care. WLU Scholarly Commons
Michael Knowles at CPAC 2023 said the quiet part loud: "eradicate transgenderism from public life entirely."
"It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences."
— Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider
On This Day In History:
1610: Galileo Galilei observes Jupiter's moons for the first time—Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. The Catholic Church would spend the next few centuries being salty about it.
1785: First aerial crossing of the English Channel, when Jean-Pierre Blanchard and John Jeffries floated from Dover to France in a balloon. Two and a half hours of "holy shit, we might die" followed by champagne.
1891: Zora Neale Hurston is born— novelist, folklorist, Harlem Renaissance icon, and author of Their Eyes Were Watching God. Her work continues to illuminate Black women's autonomy and self-discovery.
1927: First transatlantic telephone call between New York and London. A three-minute call cost $45—about $550 in today's money. Worth every cent to hear someone's voice across an ocean.
1927: The Harlem Globetrotters play their first game in Hinckley, Illinois, beginning a century of athletic comedy that still tours today.
1955: Marian Anderson becomes the first Black performer to sing with the Metropolitan Opera in New York—breaking a barrier that should never have existed.
1979: Vietnamese forces capture Phnom Penh, ending the Cambodian Genocide and overthrowing Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime, which had murdered between 18-30% of Cambodia's population.
Etcetera
Our favorite fever dream of the week: While everyone debates whether Trump would actually invade Greenland, let's follow the logic to its natural conclusion. Step 1: Trump dreams about Greenland. Step 2: Trump has increasingly vivid nocturnal fantasies about everything with "America" in the name becoming U.S. territory. Step 3: Pan-America? Sure, why the hell not—if we're already threatening NATO allies, might as well manifest destiny the whole damn hemisphere. Sleep well, Western Hemisphere!
Medieval England was an immigrant nation all along: A first-of-its-kind study analyzing 700+ skeletal remains from AD 400-1100 reveals migration into England was continuous for centuries, with people arriving from the Mediterranean to the Arctic Circle. Phys.org The traditional "Anglo-Saxon invasion" narrative? Not supported by the bones. Dr. Sam Leggett from University of Edinburgh: "Migration patterns are gendered, regionally distinctive and fluctuate chronologically." Britain was never isolated. It never has been. Medievalists
The world's most dangerous bird is actually a devoted father: Cassowaries—six-foot velociraptors with dagger claws who can run 31 mph— are listed as endangered in Australia with fewer than 4,600 left in the wild. Despite earning "world's most dangerous bird" status, scientists say they're misunderstood. Males incubate eggs and raise chicks for up to 18 months. They disperse seeds of 200+ rainforest plants. Their call is so low you feel it in your chest before you hear it. HowStuffWorks They're not monsters—they're just dinosaurs trying to survive while we destroy their habitat.
MTV Rewind: A 48-hour love letter to music videos: After MTV killed its last 24-hour music video channels on December 31, a developer called "Flexasaurus Rex" built a free tribute site in two days: 27,000+ classic videos across 11 channels including Headbangers Ball, Yo! MTV Raps, and MTV Unplugged. Zero algorithm, random discovery, retro commercials. The creator: "MTV was a cultural institution that changed music, fashion and youth culture. Then they stopped showing music videos and became reality TV. I felt a wave of sadness... So I started coding." Free forever. No ads. Pure goddamn nostalgia. Upworthy
House Republicans enter 2026 with a one-vote margin and a prayer
The dry scratch of procedural paperwork shuffling through a chamber held together by dental floss and desperation.
House Republicans are staring down 2026 with a 218-214 majority—meaning they cannot lose a single GOP vote on party-line legislation until at least March 10, when Georgia holds a special election to replace former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Conference Chair Lisa McClain is selling the message: "2026 is going to be about lowering prices and giving people bigger paychecks." The Hill The reality is messier. Obamacare subsidies expired January 1, and premiums are set to rise "exponentially." Democrats secured 218 signatures—with four Republican defectors—to force a vote on a three-year extension. The healthcare fight is already here.
Nine of twelve appropriations bills still need to pass by January 30 to avoid another shutdown, after a record-breaking 43-day closure that ended with only three bills passed. The "One Big Beautiful Bill Act"—rebranded as "Working Families Tax Cut"—passed on July 4, 2025, but appetite for another reconciliation fight is low.
The November 2026 midterms threaten to end everything. Democrats need to net just three seats to flip the House. Trump himself is reportedly frustrated, complaining about "high-maintenance" members who need "love" and last-minute phone calls. His quote: "I have a couple that are going to be with us all the way, but they just want the call. They want love. They need love. They're more insecure than a lot—most of you."
The Republican Study Committee has proposed an agenda focused on "affordability, law and order, and the American family." Whether a caucus that can't pass basic spending bills can execute anything more ambitious remains the question nobody wants to answer.
