1.31 SI: 44 current or former NFL players aged 50 or younger have died since the start of 2021, according to Pro Football Reference.
1.30 Bobby Hull dies at 84.
1.29 The Chiefs beat the Bengals 23-20. Earlier in the week, Aftab Pureval, the mayor of Cincinnati, referred to Kansas City’s Arrowhead Stadium as “Burrowhead Stadium” and says star Joe Burrow had taken a paternity test to see if he’s Patrick Mahomes’ father. After the game, Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce responded with a quotation from The Rock: “Hey, I’ve got some wise words for that Cincinnati mayor. Know your role and shut your mouth, you jabroni!”
1.29 Megan McArdle in the Washington Post: “People making $400,000 a year] are rich by any measure, and they are spending their money on things only rich people can afford, such as living in the best school districts and in or near amenity-rich megacities. However, they are rich in a peculiarly 
modern way: in the context of a meritocracy where elites are supposed to re-earn their position anew each day. Compared with the old establishment that survived on inherited wealth and social position, they are insecure, and many worry that their offspring will be downwardly mobile, which leads them to spend virtually all of their outsize disposable incomes on preparing the children to become star performers in the next round of competition. (For this is primarily a problem of parents; you almost never hear a childless couple making $400,000 a year claim to really be just ordinary middle-class folks.) One way to cope with this insecurity is to try to lean into it, strive to accumulate so-called generational wealth, so your children never have to wake up at 4 a.m. wondering where the next tuition check will come from. Another is to look for a political solution, which might be one reason the highly educated have migrated toward the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, generational wealth is an impossible dream for even most highly educated people for the very reason that it’s so attractive: the competition for scarce slots at a limited number of highly selective colleges (and the schools that feed into them) that function as the gatekeepers to the 2 percent, or the 3 percent, or the 10 percent. This zero-sum bidding war will consume any amount of extra money a normal professional can earn, because there is always something else you could be doing to give your kid a better shot at a good school and a good life — another tutor, another consultant, another enrichment program.”
1.26 Saratoga Historical Society talk at Abner Doubleday’s birthplace in Ballston Spa.
1.23 Victor Navasky dies at 90.
1.22 About five inches of snow.
1.21 After an exciting turnaround season, the Giants are clobbered by the Eagles 38-7. Tim and Cathy join us to view.
1.20 CNN: The big stories coming out of Davos this year are full of phrases like “fragmenting global economy,” “economic uncertainty” and “the year of inflation.”While many executives and economists are now are striking a more optimistic tone, global leaders are still fretting about the economic outlook. That’s not surprising since they’re contending with worrisome uncertainties — Russia’s war in Ukraine is still raging, inflation and interest rates remain elevated, there are looming energy and food crises, supply chain kinks and the debt limit standoff in the United States, not to mention the threat of global recession. The meeting began with a new report by the WEF that dubbed this decade the “turbulent 20s” and the “age of the polycrisis.” Business executives, politicians and academics, the report said, are bracing for a gloomy world battered by intersecting crises, as rising volatility and depleted resilience boost the odds of painful simultaneous shocks. Gita Gopinath, the number two official at the International Monetary Fund, said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that the IMF is worried globalization is in retreat. “We’re very concerned about geoeconomic fragmentation.”
1.19 David Crosby dies at 81.
1.16 Gina Lollobrigida dies at 95.
1.16 Dallas placekicker Brett Maker misses 4 extra points in team’s playoff win.
1.15 Giants defeat Vikings 21-24, their first playoff win in 11 years.
1.14 Alexander Burns, in the New York Review of Books: “But there really are profound structural problems with American democracy, and two of the worst—the composition of the Senate and the Electoral College—mainly serve to disempower the Democratic Party and its voters. You would never know that from the reverential way most Democratic leaders talk about the country’s constitutional structure. Or at least the way they talk about it in public. Setting aside what would be helpful for Democrats and just considering what makes sense for the country, it seems inarguable to me that we have a needlessly elaborate political system that resists change. Our dense structure of checks and balances makes it incredibly difficult for either political party to pass federal legislation that fulfills the promises made to voters during an election. It would be good for voters’ confidence in democracy if there were a clearer connection between what people vote for in an election and what a governing party is able to do once it wins power.”
1.9 Georgia annihilates TCU 65-7 to repeat as national champions.
1.8 Bolsinaro supporters storm the legislature in Brazil.
1.7 Hakeem Jeffries in the House: “We will never compromise our principles. House Democrats will always put American values over autocracy. Benevolence over bigotry. The Constitution over the cult. Democracy over demagogues. Economic opportunity over extremism. Freedom over fascism. Governing over gaslighting. Hopefulness over hatred. Inclusion over isolation. Justice over judicial overreach. Knowledge over kangaroo courts. Liberty over limitation. Maturity over Mar-a-Lago. Normalcy over negativity. Opportunity over obstruction. People over politics. Quality-of-life issues over QAnon. Reason over racism. Substance over slander. Triumph over tyranny. Understanding over ugliness. Voting rights over voter suppression. Working families over the well connected. Xenial [hospitality] over xenophobia. ‘Yes, we can’ over ‘you can’t do it,’ and zealous representation over zero-sum confrontation.”
1.7 After five days, on the 15th round, Kevin McCarthy was elected Speaker of the House in the early morning, It was the fifth longest election for Speaker in history.
1.6 Bloomberg: “[A]s robots take control. . . .[T]here’s a surge in demand for ancient artisanal trades including lacemaking, leatherworking, weaving and tailoring. Two decades of industrialization of luxury goods have given way to a return of consumer yearning for opulence. As a result, luxury houses are scrambling to find skilled workers.”
1.4 Another corneal transplant.
1.4 After awaking in a Cincinnati hospital Wednesday, one of the first things Damar Hamlin asked was, “Did we win?”
1.3 Fintan O’Toole in the New York Review of Books: “[T]he most important question about the coup [is] why it failed. Or to put it another way: If you were planning a future coup, what could you learn from this one?. . . .It is important for actual democrats to understand this. Dark fantasies about martial law and mass repression may deliver a certain masochistic thrill. Yet the lesson from the events of two years ago is that, spectacularly horrifying as it was, the attack on the Capitol was not the main event. It was a poorly conceived and (by Trump) badly led reaction to the failure of the much more feasible coup—which Trump just might have pulled off in November or December 2020.’’
1.2 In the first quarter of a game between Buffalo and Cincinnati, Buffalo safety Damar Hamlin suffered a heart attack and collapsed on the field.
1.1 After a six year absence, the Giants return to the playoffs.