Grounded wisdom for curious souls

Good morning, beloved community. It's Monday, January 26, 2026. Today: Federal agents kill a man filming with his phone in Minneapolis, Bezos's data centers devour the atmosphere, a gay lawmaker rises from assault, and the 90-10 rule that'll change your whole fucking week.

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Editor's note: Winter storms batter 80% of the nation while power brokers pretend the blood on snow is necessary.

New York: 32°F, snowdrifts piled like white mountains of consequence, the city locked in winter's grip while 1,000+ flights get cancelled and Citi Bike shuts the fuck down because nobody's pedaling through this frozen hellscape.

Kansas City: 14°F with brutal wind chill, the kind of cold that bites through your goddamn bones and makes you question every life choice that brought you to the Midwest, ice-slicked streets claiming metal and rubber.

Atlanta: 28°F, ice accumulations knocking out power for 300,000 souls, flight cancellations exceeding 1,000 at Hartsfield-Jackson, the South unprepared for this crystalline bullshit that's shut down whole interstates.

San Francisco: 58°F and crisp, the Bay Area dodging this frozen nightmare while the rest of the nation shivers, fog rolling in like a benediction for those who chose coastal mercy.

Detroit: 10°F, 17 snowy days predicted this January alone, windchill dropping below zero, the Motor City encased in white while snowplows mobilize like an army against nature's assault.

The cold steel of Minneapolis January cuts different when federal boots hit pavement. 37-year-old Alex Pretti—ICU nurse, lawful gun owner, keeper of others' lives—stands with his phone recording federal agents during an immigration operation. The air tastes of pepper spray before anyone processes what's happening. They pin him down. An officer removes his holstered firearm. Then another officer fires. Multiple shots crack the frozen air. The videos don't lie even when DHS Secretary Kristi Noem calls him a "domestic terrorist," even when they claim he "approached" them with a weapon visible only in their telling.

The damage:

Second fatal Minneapolis shooting in three weeks by federal agents. Local police blocked from investigating their own city. Marjorie Taylor Greene—yeah, that one—breaks with Trump to question ICE's tactics, asks MAGA to imagine if roles reversed. Congress teeters toward shutdown over it. Minnesota Governor Walz: "They want chaos." Trump defends the killing, blames Democrats for "ensued chaos" while his own Defense Secretary posts "ICE > MN." The winter storm can't freeze this rage.

The Hill

Picture the crackle of data centers humming like locusts across the Amazon's lungs. Jeff Bezos's empire just pushed Amazon's 2024 emissions up 6% to 68.25 million metric tons—triple what they emitted in 2019 when he promised net-zero by 2040. The math tastes bitter: every AI query, every cloud computation, every generative bullshit burns through concrete, steel, cooling water while Bezos counts billions.

The science: Data centers demand energy like open wounds demand blood. Amazon joins Google, Meta, Microsoft in their nuclear power deals—not to save the planet but to feed the machine. By 2040, ICT industry emissions will devour 14% of the global total. The mycelium networks beneath our feet communicate without electricity; Bezos's networks require the earth's combustion.

Action: The company sources "cleaner" energy while building more data temples. It's like putting solar panels on a slaughterhouse and calling it sustainable. Earth.org

Jeremy Moss's arm shattered on impact—metal crunching metal, airbag exploding, consciousness intact through every excruciating second. Weeks later, a bomb squad circled his home with X-rays and dogs while neighbors watched, someone's hatred made manifest in a mailbox threat. Two brutal wake-up calls in a single season, his body and his safety both targeted for refusing to buckle on bathroom bills, for being visibly, unapologetically queer and Jewish in an era that wants him erased.

But Moss carries ghosts with him—Ruth Ellis, Jeff Montgomery, decades of activists who pushed the boulder uphill so he could finally cross the tape with Michigan's LGBTQ civil rights amendment. At 39, he's running for Congress from Oakland County's diverse 11th district, outpacing opponents with endorsements from Governor Whitmer and out lesbian AG Dana Nessel, channeling trauma into voting rights legislation and marriage equality defense. He refuses to let violent threats rewrite his trajectory.

Years ago at Milwaukee Pride, Patti LaBelle—his assigned diva—pointed at the crowd as she left the stage and commanded: "Stay gay." Not tolerate it. Not overcome it. Stay gay. That moment crystallized everything: being queer isn't something to endure but to inhabit fully, defiantly, in a world that keeps trying to bomb you into silence. LGBTQ Nation

Walker nails the invisible theft we commit against ourselves. That gay lawmaker didn't lose consciousness because somewhere deep, he'd already decided unconsciousness wasn't an option. He'd claimed his power before the fist arrived. You do this too—every morning you get up despite the world's accumulated bullshit, every time you refuse to shrink because some asshole demands it.

Your power isn't in controlling what happens to you. It's in that millisecond choice: victim or navigator. The 90-10 rule applies here too—10% is the punch, the slur, the system rigged against you. 90% is whether you stay down or run for fucking Congress. Nobody's saying it's fair. But it's yours.

Practice: Notice today when you're about to give away power. That moment of "I can't" or "I shouldn't" or "who am I to." Stop. Breathe. Ask: what would I do if I knew I had the power? Then do that thing. Even scared. Especially scared.

Dylan Mulvaney steps into Broadway's Six as Anne Boleyn February 16, and the bigots lose their collective shit. Trans actress playing a queen in a feminist pop musical about reclaiming women's stories—the producers lock their X account against the flood of hate, disable Instagram comments, then release a statement: attacking Dylan is "never acceptable." She posts her own response: "Being trans in 2026 when this world works against us... to step onto a Broadway stage is a miracle." The show's always been about 21st-century girl power rewriting history—turns out some people only like feminist revolution when it excludes specific women. Playbill