(Photo Socotra, 29 January 2026)
“Waxing” is a term Rocket once applied to caring for his car. When the second word becomes Gibbous, the phrase usually refers to what’s happening up there in exo-space. The Moon.

That’s also how the weather feels.

The image above was taken yesterday morning—a cold, fanciful reminder that we’re spinning on our globe at 17,000 miles per hour. While turning, we are supposedly entering the crosshairs of what the Weather Guessers are calling a bomb cyclone, loaded with a foot of dry, swirling snow. Or a Nor’easter. Or a winter hurricane. We keep AccuWeather on the flat screen and the FCFD emergency channel humming, just in case the storm earns another name.

Section Leader Miles texted the group to charge all devices in the event of a power cut.

Which brought up Taiwan. Again.

Splash and Rocket served non-simultaneous tours in the Far East aboard USS Midway, home-ported in Japan, back when the possibility of war in the East China Sea felt sudden and real. Their recollections of show-of-force operations keep the alert level sensitive, especially as strange signals emerge from Beijing—hard to interpret from the West while a cyclone bomb approaches from the East.

We have an old shipmate, retired Navy Captain Jim Fanell. He is a former Pacific Fleet intelligence director and long-time China analyst. He believes policy changes are underway that could produce unexpected results.

That meant Vic leaning out of his wheelchair with both hands in cords, glowing tablet drooping below his seat. Rocket and Splash sat on the floor, untangling black and white cords feeding two phones, their iPads and power strips at the wall. It would be entertaining if this were a reality show, but outside the blue sky was already streaked with thin cirrus, scurrying ahead of the storm. We were sorting things into Now and Later.

Reports continue of restructuring inside China’s governing hierarchy. Chairman Xi recently removed two remaining senior generals. The move appears to have provoked resistance in parts of the chain of command. Some grassroots military personnel have mocked Xi using the nickname baozi—“steamed stuffed bun”—a derogatory reference to shengjian bao (生煎包).

There is also a notable collective silence surrounding the dismissals. Some Chinese military academy graduates report outright rejection of Xi’s authority within the PLA. Meanwhile, the cyclone bomb—whatever its name—will likely do nothing more than dump another foot of snow onto waist-high ice banks. If one metro model is right, it will hold our attention all weekend.

Other things continue in parallel: budget bills in the Senate, the House away until next week. So we’ll clean up, make sure we don’t need anything from the VABC or the commissary, and turn up the FireTV.

There is a bomb on the way, we think.

We just can’t tell what direction it’s coming from. Or whether it’s coming from all of them.
The situation feels like it is Waxing Gibbous, you know?
© 2026 VicSocotra.com
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Vic Socotra – Purveyor of glib words to the world