2025-12-19 20:00:00
Let’s take a break from the daily awful and focus instead on the awe-full. Dana Milbank went looking for some awe and wonder on the walls of the National Art Museum. It turns out that’s not a bad place to start. “New research out of King’s College London gauged people’s physiological responses while they viewed works by Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Edouard Manet and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec for 20 minutes. The study, now in preprint, found that participants’ levels of the stress hormone cortisol dropped by 22 percent on average, while markers of inflammation dropped even more sharply and heart rhythms indicated greater relaxation.” (I’m guessing that those results have almost as much to do with what you’re not looking at as what you are; it’s a distinction between experiencing the power of wonder and looking at your phone and wondering what the hell is happening.) Whether art is your awe-seeking drug of choice or not, there are probably some lessons here that we can all use over the holiday season. WaPo (Gift Article): Feeling wonder every day improves our health. Here’s how to do it. “In the days after my visit, I found myself pausing to marvel at things I often take for granted: A Christmas fern poking through the snow, the intricate forms of lichens on a tree, a sweet birch clinging to a rocky hillside, the pink and orange in a winter sunset, the power of a house-rattling windstorm. The more you seek awe, the more you find it.” (By opening about 75 news tabs a day, I’m probably looking for wonder in all the wrong places. But as long as I can keep digging up some examples, I’ll try to combine our daily series of unfortunate events with the occasional splash of awe-some sauce.)
Ending an incredibly stressful week in Providence, the Brown shooting suspect killed himself after being cornered by authorities (with a lot of help from citizens). The break came when the shooter was linked to another crime. CNN: How investigators zeroed in on the Brown University shooting suspect and linked him to the killing of an MIT professor.
+ NYT (Gift Article): A Reddit Post Led to a Breakthrough in the Brown Shooting Investigation. “Three days after the deadly shooting at Brown University, officers received an anonymous tip that stuck out from a flood of information. It directed the authorities to a post on Reddit. ‘I’m being dead serious. The police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental,’ the Reddit user posted, according to an affidavit filed by the police in Providence, R.I. That tip would later lead to a breakthrough not only in the search for the campus attacker but also the hunt for the suspect in the murder of a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It also ended the dayslong manhunt that had put both the Brown and M.I.T. communities on edge.”
+ NPR: Trump suspends U.S. green card lottery after Brown University and MIT shootings. “Noem’s announcement is the latest example of using tragedy to advance immigration policy goals.”
“When Carlos Gomez’s recent flight from Guadalajara was delayed, he asked a gate attendant why. It wasn’t weather or crew shortages. There were 25 wheelchair passengers holding up boarding. There were no such delays when Gomez’s flight landed. Most of the same passengers stood up without assistance and bounded off toward the baggage claim.” WSJ (Gift Article) on a seemingly viral travel hack you might witness during your holiday journeys, as some of your fellow travelers are using wheelchairs to board a little quicker. They Get Wheeled on Flights and Miraculously Walk Off. Praise ‘Jetway Jesus.’
What to Movie: One Battle After Another is now available to watch on HBO. It’s nearly three hours of pretty heavy duty and quite entertaining action, and seems to be the best picture frontrunner at this point.
+ What to Doc: “In 1975, an era of social and political upheaval inspires a wave of groundbreaking movies from Oscar winner Morgan Neville.” This is both a documentary and a pretty good list of movies to binge over the holidays. Breakdown 1975 is on Netflix. (Breakdown 1975 is also how I describe the era when my fourth grade girlfriend dumped me. It’s worth noting that the guy she chose over me doesn’t have anything close to my subscriber numbers.)
+ What to Book: No one is a better book picker than my wife, Gina. If you’re looking for some holiday reads, her What List Bookshelf is the right place to start.
The Exed Files: You better sit down for this one. I don’t want to shock you. US legislators say the Justice Department is violating the law by not releasing all Epstein files. (They’ll release the files that make others look bad…)
+ Own Goal: “The TikTok sale is officially happening, with a consortium of American investors set to take over U.S. operations of the video platform next month on Jan. 22, 2026.” (This will likely do more to enrich the new investors than to protect American interests. The key thing to watch is whether the algorithm gets tweaked to be more supportive of a certain someone’s politics.)
+ Cheap Shots: “Cheap drones have changed combat as we know it.” And nowhere is that more obvious than on the front lines in Ukraine. NYT (Gift Article): What It Takes to Pilot a War Drone.
+ The Latest Things Consumers Imagined: “Americans are heading into the holidays feeling worse about jobs and inflation than they did this time last year, with consumer sentiment hovering near record lows.” (Hoax!)
+ Cutting Ties With Yourself: This is a headline that perfectly captures our craven age. Zuckerberg Cut Ties With Pro-Immigration Organization He Founded.
+ Defaced Property: Laws (and decency) be damned: “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington donned a new name — the Trump-Kennedy Center — on the exterior of the building Friday.” (We’re going to spend the rest of our lives pounding the delete button…)
“Mr. Dalton and Mr. May work 24-hour shifts (yes, you can knock on their trailer door in the middle of the night) selling trees for $30 to $500. Although they say the money is good — around $5,000 to $10,000 for the season, depending on the area and foot traffic — they aren’t out there just for the cash.” NYT (Gift Article): Up All Night in New York, Selling Christmas Trees.
+ AP: Behind the scenes of Saves 78-Year-Old Man’s Life After He Stopped Showing Up for His Daily Dinners at Local Restaurant.
+ Seven feel-good science stories to restore your faith in 2025. Yes, science and feeling good are both still legal!
+ GPS collars on cattle are letting ranchers remove fences in the West. That’s good for wildlife and for the land. Wyoming Cowboys Are Breaking Down Barriers, Literally.
+ Jelly Roll Receives Full Pardon in Tennessee for Past Crimes.
+ “Yes, There’s a Parallel Parking Championship, and I Was a Contender.”
+ A fun rundown of some of the year’s notable book covers.
2025-12-18 20:00:00
There are few certainties in life, but this seems like one of them: Whatever you’re currently told to eat for optimum health will one day be viewed as lethal, and whatever ingredients are demonized today will be celebrated in the near future. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that after decades of being sold on the nonfat food craze, we’re learning that dairy fat is good. NYT (Gift Article): A Study Linked Cheese to Lower Dementia Risk. (Maybe, Cheeseheads have been trying to signal the cheese/brain connection all these years.) “In a large new study published today, researchers found that eating high-fat cheese or cream was associated with a lower risk of developing dementia. Cheese lovers may cheer. But be careful about celebrating with an entire block of your favorite Cheddar.” Yes, the study is about correlation and not causation. And experts aren’t quite sure which particular factors are at work. There’s certainly no guarantee that high-fat dairy will turn you into a cheese whiz. But it’s 2025, and we’re craving reasons to smile and say cheese. So let’s chew the fat while we can … and as fast as we can, since it’s only a matter of time before we’re told that today’s advice regarding cheese is completely crackers.
+ Exercise science, for better or worse, is as consistent as dietary advice is inconsistent. WaPo (Gift Article): Want a younger, healthier brain? This type of exercise can help. “If you need another reason to visit the gym this winter, a new study of almost 1,200 healthy, middle-aged men and women found that those with more muscle mass tended to have younger brains than those with less muscle.”
“At the center of the concerns is a rise in borrowing. By this fall, public companies had taken out large loans to buy crypto. And investors had placed more than $200 billion in bets on future coin prices, a type of trade often made with borrowed money, which sets buyers up for major gains or crushing losses. The industry’s latest offerings have also linked crypto to the stock market and other parts of the financial world, raising the prospect of a chain reaction that spills a crypto crisis into the broader economy.” NYT (Gift Article): What Trump’s Embrace of Crypto Has Unleashed.
+ 45% of Gen Z adults say they would be happy to receive crypto as a gift this holiday season
+ Crypto is old news. This year, give the gift of cold fusion. “Trump Media and Technology Group stock surged more than 35% on Thursday after the parent company of Truth Social announced a merger with fusion power firm TAE Technologies. (I’m sure this will all play out in a totally legit and entirely not corrupt way…)
“The presence of evil doesn’t break people. From a young age, we learn that there are wolves in our midst. It is the absence of courage that plunges us into crisis. Great courage can help redeem a catastrophe. But abject cowardice not only magnifies our pain; it makes us doubt the strength and virtue of our nation and culture.” David French on courage in the NYT (Gift Article): The Righteousness of Ahmed el Amhed. This article is mostly about courage as it relates to physical risk. But, as we’ve all learned over the past year, it’s not particularly common for people to show courage even when much less than their life is at stake. We’ve seen “why cowardice is so harmful. It annihilates virtue. One of the most dispiriting aspects of our modern political moment is that it feels as though cowards are everywhere. Institutions yield to bullies. Politicians yield to mobs. People are unwilling to tell even obvious truths if telling the truth will put a target on their back.” This is one reason why, when we see courage, we need to celebrate it.
It’s Christmas time, and parents all over the country face that familiar dilemma: When do you tell your kids the president isn’t real? I guess parents could skip the tough conversation and just let their kids watch a recording of the latest Trump presidential address, delivered live on all the major networks. Or better yet, let them read Tom Nichols’ overview in The Atlantic (Gift Article): This Is What Presidential Panic Looks Like. “We could take apart Trump’s fake facts, as checkers and pundits will do in the next few days. But perhaps more important than false statements—which for Trump are par for the course—was his demeanor. Americans saw a president drenched in panic as he tried to bully an entire nation into admitting he’s doing a great job … In effect, Trump took to the airwaves, pointed his finger, and said: Quiet, piggy.” (I don’t recommend actually watching the address, unless you’ve wondered what would happen if narcissism and sociopathy had a baby and that baby’s full diaper was tasked with giving a speech.)
Trans Bans: “The administration’s action is not just a regulatory shift but the latest signal that the federal government does not recognize even the existence of people whose gender identity does not align with their sex at birth.” NYT (Gift Article): Trump Moves to End Gender-Related Care for Minors, Threatening Hospitals That Offer It.
+ Joint Commission: “President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday to fast-track the reclassification of cannabis, which would pave the way for the Food and Drug Administration to study its medicinal uses.” (Too bad he didn’t do this in time for last night’s speech, when we all could have used a few hits.)
+ Cool Beancounting: The market is reacting positively to the latest inflation numbers that came in cooler than expected. The data is based on limited information (from a suddenly less than trustworthy source). Let’s hope the good news sticks.
+ Eyes and Ears: People like listening to podcasts. They also like watching them. Like a lot. Basically, people just really want to take their minds off everything with content of any kind. Bloomberg: People Watched 700 Million Hours of YouTube Podcasts on TV in October. Meanwhile, the Oscars are moving to YouTube after a half century on ABC. (I’m beginning to think this internet thing has legs…)
+ You Give Gov a Bad Name: President Donald Trump’s handpicked board voted on Thursday to rename Washington’s leading performing arts center as the Trump-Kennedy Center. (When this is over, we’re gonna have a lot of deleting to do…)
+ Not Blinded By Science: Nature has a great collection of The best science images of 2025. (Enjoy them while nature and science are still legal.)
“Then came the chaos. Within days, Claudius had given away nearly all its inventory for free—including a PlayStation 5 it had been talked into buying for ‘marketing purposes.’ It ordered a live fish. It offered to buy stun guns, pepper spray, cigarettes and underwear. Profits collapsed. Newsroom morale soared.” WSJ (Gift Article): We Let AI Run Our Office Vending Machine. It Lost Hundreds of Dollars.
2025-12-17 20:00:00
It’s that time of year when we see endless lists of the best gifts to buy for friends and families, but we rarely see warnings about the worst present to give. It turns out that this year, we might have a clear winner. The most unwanted gift of 2025: More Reality. Just a few short years ago, nonfiction books were all the rage. But these days, we’re as sad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore. Selling nonfiction books could be the toughest sale of all this season, with the category seeing an 8.4% year over year sales decline. Nonfiction is becoming a nonstarter. My own reading habits have definitely followed the trend. I exclusively read fiction these days and, as someone who consumes a lot of news, even the most depressing novels tend to cheer me up. The Guardian: Are we falling out of love with nonfiction? “Speaking to publishing insiders and readers, one word that cropped up repeatedly was escapism. The world is exhausting, so readers are seeking refuge rather than clarity. Some are disillusioned; the voracious reading of the past decade didn’t transform the world as many hoped. ‘I think there is definitely a sense of fatigue,’ says Holly Harley, head of nonfiction at publisher Head of Zeus. ‘The news is terrible. People feel overloaded. That escapism is why we’re seeing such a rise in romantasy.'” (I hate to toot my own horn for always being ahead of the curve, but my nonfiction book sold pretty poorly back when the nonfiction market was still going gangbusters.)
+ LitHub: The Most Scathing Book Reviews of 2025.
“The stunning move comes after House Republican leaders pushed ahead with a health care bill that does not address the soaring monthly premiums that millions of people will soon endure when the tax credits for those who buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act expire at year’s end. The action sets the stage for a renewed intraparty clash over health care in January.” 4 Republicans defy Speaker Johnson to force House vote on extending ACA subsidies. (It’s stunning that it’s considered stunning when only 4 House GOP members don’t want to let health care costs skyrocket, an eventuality that is both cruel and a terrible political move.)
This is a simple and simply terrible story that, even when drowning in today’s nonstop news deluge, needs to be told until people really understand the scope of the depravity. American officials, from the wildly inexperienced chainsaw wielders to the very top of the State Department, were repeatedly warned that USAID cuts would lead to violence and starvation. They lied about those warnings, they lied about the cuts, and the warnings materialized. ProPublica: Inside the Trump Administration’s Man-Made Hunger Crisis. All this to save what amounts to a rounding error on a rounding error in our foreign aid budget, and so the worst humans can pat themselves on the back for starving the most vulnerable ones.
+ “Ever since the military in her homeland of Myanmar killed her father in 2017, forcing her to flee to neighboring Bangladesh with her mother and little sisters, the school had protected Hasina from the predators who prowl her refugee camp, home to 1.2 million members of Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya minority. It had also protected her from being forced into marriage. And then one day in June, when Hasina was 16 years old, her teacher announced that the school’s funding had been taken away. The school was closing. In a blink, Hasina’s education was over, and so, too, was her childhood.” Trafficked, exploited, married off: Rohingya children’s lives crushed by foreign aid cuts.
“A hacker group that includes members of the collective that hacked Ticketmaster last year says it has collected user data from P-rnHub and is demanding the company pay an undisclosed amount or it will release detailed information about its users.” Hackers breach Pornhub, threaten to expose users’ viewing habits. (I swear, I only go to P-rnhub for the articles…)
Forecasting a Shadow: “The center, founded in 1960, is responsible for many of the biggest scientific advances in humanity’s understanding of weather and climate. Its research aircraft and sophisticated computer models of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are widely used in forecasting weather events and disasters around the country, and its scientists study a broad range of topics, including air pollution, ocean currents and global warming. But in a social media post announcing the move late on Tuesday, Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, called the center ‘one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.'” NYT (Gift Article): Trump Administration Plans to Break Up Premier Weather and Climate Research Center.
+ Chile Reception: “Some might call his rise just one more alarming case of a worldwide trend toward nativist authoritarianism — and it is. But the attendant rehabilitation of one of the continent’s most infamous autocrats is a particularly agonizing setback in a country where many considered the long struggle for democracy to have been won.” Chile’s Election Is More Than Just a Swerve to the Right.
+ You Can Feel His Disease: “The NIH has been transformed this year. And most of the layoffs, policy changes, and politically motivated funding cuts—notably, to infectious-disease research—have happened under Bhattacharya’s watch. But inside the agency, officials describe Bhattacharya as a largely ineffectual figurehead, often absent from leadership meetings, unresponsive to colleagues, and fixated more on cultivating his media image than on engaging with the turmoil at his own agency.” This combination—horrible policies mixed with terrible execution—has evolved into its own infectious disease. It’s already spread throughout the administration. The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Most Feared Person at the NIH Is a Vaccine Researcher Plucked From Obscurity. (Meanwhile, Measles outbreaks worsen in South Carolina, Arizona and Utah.)
+ Plaque Buildup: Trump’s soiling of the White House, and American history, continues apace. The latest addition: Trump disparages presidential foes in plaques attached to White House. The same guy who makes decisions to do stuff like this is making decisions like the one below…
+ Unfamiliar Surroundings: “Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America. It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before — Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.” Trump orders blockade of ‘sanctioned oil tankers’ into Venezuela.
+ Lost Sacks Appeal: “What she found was shocking: he had fabricated and embellished some of his most well-known work — like Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Sacks himself referred to his ‘lies’ and ‘falsification’ in journal entries.” The Lies and Falsifications of Oliver Sacks.
+ A High Profile: “An online marketplace is selling code modules that simulate the effects of cannabis, ketamine, cocaine, ayahuasca, and alcohol when they are uploaded to ChatGPT.” Wired: People Are Paying to Get Their Chatbots High on Drugs. (I think investors have been hitting some of the same stuff…)
+ Three Pointers: WSJ (Gift Article): One Throuple Had Three Separate Design Tastes. How Did They Manage a Renovation? Wait. What?
“For decades, physicists dismissed it as beautiful nonsense—a prop master’s fever dream. But now the math has caught up to the dream.” A faster-than-light spaceship would actually look a lot like Star Trek’s Enterprise. (Too bad the Enterprise’s engines have been repurposed and are now powering an AI data center.)
+ Lawmakers pull each other’s hair during Mexico City Congress session.
2025-12-16 20:00:00
Today, I’m going to break with tradition and lead NextDraft with something that is not news. Vanity Fair has a two-part story that covers eleven interviews with Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles. The NYT (Gift Article) shares some of the lowlights. Wiles acknowledged that, while she has tried to stop the tendency, Trump is using Justice Department prosecutions to settle scores. “When there’s an opportunity, he will go for it.” (No way! Trump?) Wiles said that Trump “was not telling the truth when he accused former President Bill Clinton of visiting the private island of the sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.” (A falsehood? From Trump? Say it isn’t so!) Wiles explained that “Vice President JD Vance has ‘been a conspiracy theorist for a decade’ and his conversion from Trump critic to ally was based not on principle but was ‘sort of political,'” (Vance? Less than authentic and even political?), that Elon Musk is an odd duck and an avowed Ketamine user (Weird, Elon seems like a sober, rational thinker who comes off as just a regular guy), and Russell T. Vought, the budget director, is ‘a right-wing absolute zealot.'” (Funny, he’s always struck me as being sort of middle of the road). There were insider accounts that could still surprise us during the first Trump term, but that bar has been raised. The badness is not being concealed. It’s being celebrated. So are the mental issues. If Freud watched a Trump press conference, I’m guessing he’d make it through about five minutes before putting down his notebook and saying, “I really have nothing more to add.” What we’re seeing in front of our eyes is worse than what we once imagined to be taking place behind the scenes. None of the Wiles revelations are as bad or disturbing as what we’ve seen in the past 24 hours of livestreamed news coverage of Trump and his enablers, and we’ve learned from experience that the next 24 hours won’t be any different.
+ Yesterday, I got a lot of reactions to my take on the confluence of three stories that made the launch of the holiday season feel like the Hanukkah from hell. Candles in the Wind.
“If the ideas within it are really used to shape policy, then U.S. influence in the world will rapidly disappear, and America’s ability to defend itself and its allies will diminish. The consequences will be economic as well as political, and they will be felt by all Americans.” Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic (Gift Article) on the new National Security Strategy. The Longest Suicide Note in American History. “The security strategy also talks, bizarrely, about Europe being on the verge of ‘civilizational erasure,’ which is not language used by many European politicians, even those in far-right parties … In multiple indices, after all—health, happiness, standard of living—European countries regularly rank higher than the United States. Compared with Americans, Europeans live longer, are less likely to be living on the streets, and are less likely to die in mass shootings. The only possible conclusion: The authors of this document don’t know much about Europe, or don’t care to find out. Living in a fantasy world, they are blind to real dangers. They invent fictional threats. Their information comes from conspiracist websites and random accounts on X, and if they use these fictions to run policy, then all kinds of disasters could await us.”
“Tennenbaum soon became Epstein’s supervisor. ‘He was proving to be quite talented,’ Tennenbaum told us. But in late 1976, he received a disconcerting phone call from the head of Bear Stearns’s personnel department. Employees had belatedly gotten around to checking Epstein’s résumé, which stated that he had received degrees from two California universities. ‘Are you sitting down?’ the H.R. official asked Tennenbaum. ‘Neither school has heard of him.'” People know a lot about Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes. But how did he become a rich and powerful player in the first place? The NYT (Gift Article) on how a college dropout clawed his way to the pinnacle of American finance and society. Scams, Schemes, Ruthless Cons: The Untold Story of How Jeffrey Epstein Got Rich.
“Dummies have been in the news lately, after an updated design for a female dummy took a step closer to widespread adoption. But for many decades, they’ve been quietly doing their work, taking hit after hit in the name of saving lives. And a crash test dummy’s story starts way before they’re buckled in for a collision. They have a life, of sorts, starting at this Huron plant, where their physical parts are born.” NPR: Built to spill: The life of a crash test dummy.
+ I recently posted a new t-shirt to the NextDraft Store: Crash Test Hitch-Hiker.
Weapons of Mass Distraction: Using inflated numbers and shoddy logic, Trump designates street fentanyl as a WMD, escalating the militarization of the drug war. This paves the way for more military on American streets and more unauthorized bombing of boats abroad. Speaking which… U.S. military says strikes on 3 boats in the eastern Pacific Ocean kill 8 people.
+ Short Circuited: “The European Commission backed away from what had been the world’s most aggressive timeline for phasing out internal-combustion engines, granting manufacturers and consumers more time to move off gasoline. A day earlier, Ford Motor Co. announced $19.5 billion in charges tied to the retreat from an electric strategy it vowed to go all in on eight years ago.” Bloomberg (Gift Article): The Electric Car Transition Unravels Slowly, Then All at Once. (Things went smoother when Dylan went electric…)
+ Bondi Update: Bondi terror attack: alleged gunmen travelled to the Philippines before ‘Isis-inspired’ shooting. And there was more than one bystander who risked everything to save lives. A new video shows an elderly couple trying to stop and disarm a Bondi gunman. “The dashcam video shows a couple who were killed in the attack.”
+ Brown Update: “Police released images last night of a “person of interest” taken two hours before the shooting, showing a person wearing a black mask, and requested the public’s help in identifying them. A man detained over the weekend was released because of a lack of evidence, after President Donald Trump earlier referred to him as ‘the suspect.'” Here’s the latest from NBC News.
+ Front Not Center: Spencer Ackerman: The Largest and Bloodiest U.S. Battlefield in 2025? Somalia.
+ The Elephant in the Roomba: “iRobot says it’s business as usual for the millions of Roombas in people’s homes, which will continue to function as expected — for now. But how did the most popular household robot company in the world fall so far and fall so spectacularly?” How Roomba invented the home robot — and lost the future. M.G. Siegler blames the regulators for killing Roomba.
+ You Cannot Be Sirius (without Howard): Howard Stern Signs Three-Year Deal After Contract Standoff. I saw a lot of false rumors, not a lot of actual standoffing. Either way, Howard staying on the air is great news because my beagles and I have run out of things to talk about on our walks.
“This is the New England Metal and Hardcore Festival, 25 bands on three stages, 10 unbroken hours of heavy music, and all day, I’ve been watching the pit—the mosh pit, the area close to the stage where inflamed dancers whirl and collide. I’ve been watching it, and skulking around it journalistically, because I am possessed by an idea: What if the pit, this ritualized maelstrom at the heart of the hardcore-metal crowd, could teach us something about how to live together in 2025—about how to be? Heavy metal, of all music, knows just how sick we are.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Savage Empathy of the Mosh Pit.
+ I feel like I was ahead of the curve when it comes to finding meaning in the mosh. McSweeney’s: An Open Letter to the Guy Who Puked Next to Me at the Heavy Metal Festival.
2025-12-15 20:00:00
When lighting the first menorah candle for the usually celebratory opening night of the Jewish festival of lights on Sunday, it was hard not to perceive the dripping wax taking the shape of teardrops, as a confluence of three stories made the launch of the holiday season feel like the Hanukkah from hell. At Bondi Beach in Australia, a father-son terror team opened fire on a public Hanukkah festival, killing 15 and injuring dozens more. The victims included a 10-year-old girl, a rabbi and a Holocaust survivor. There would have likely been many more victims if not for the heroism of a bystander named Ahmed el Ahmed, who disarmed one of the gunmen, in an incredible, selfless act of bravery. The deadly attack on Bondi Beach follows a rise in antisemitic incidents in Australia. This rise (and the associated violence) is hardly limited to Australia. And sadly, it could be most prevalent among young people. Yair Rosenberg in The Atlantic (Gift Article): Anti-Jewish prejudice isn’t a partisan divide—it’s a generational one. As David Frum explains, “It’s long past time to stop saying ‘Anti-Semitic violence has no place in our society.’ Outrage upon outrage confirms that anti-Semitic violence has a large and expanding place in Western societies—that it is supported by many, that it is tolerated by many more.”
+ Australia is already known for strict gun laws. The country’s leaders have promised to respond to this shooting by tightening those gun laws even more. History shows all too clearly that we’ll see no such American response to the campus shootings at Brown University, which killed two students and injured several others. Campus (and other mass) shootings are so common in America that it doesn’t even surprise us to learn that some of the students who experienced the Brown attack were previously victims of other school shootings. “Officials in Providence, R.I., said Sunday evening that police are releasing a man in his 20s who was briefly held as a person of interest. His release leaves authorities without any known suspect.” Gunman remains at large two days after deadly shooting at Brown University.
+ And then we got the third shocking story of the weekend as we learned that Rob and Michele Reiner had been killed in their home, with their son Nick being held on suspicion of murder. Aside from being a kind, decent, and enormously popular and loved figure in Hollywood who first gained fame in All in the Family, Reiner, A Quiet Titan of Storytelling, is responsible for an almost unimaginable string of entertainment—as a director, a producer, and an actor—that has been released over decades. Stand by Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Misery, A Few Good Men, Spinal Tap, and the list goes on. Reiner’s movies hold a place in American culture, with lines that have entered the cultural lexicon: You can’t handle the truth! … I’ll have what she’s having … Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya … and of course, This one goes to eleven. Some days, like the ones over the weekend, going to eleven is just too much to take. I’m covering these stories together because that’s how I experienced them, and I imagine many others felt the same, as we suffered an extreme version of the bad news onslaught that we dread every time we hear a phone notification in 2025. What’s the solution? I don’t have any pithy lines or humorous outtakes on that topic. The only thing I know for sure is that I’ll strike a match and light the second Hanukkah candle tonight. We could use a little light.
“Despite the steps to insulate themselves, dire warnings poured in from diplomats and government experts around the world. The cuts would cost countless lives, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the other Trump officials were told repeatedly. The team of aides pressed on, galvanized by two men who did little to hide their disdain for the agency: first Peter Marocco, a blunt-spoken Marine veteran, and then 28-year-old Jeremy Lewin, who, despite having no government or aid experience, often personally decided which programs should be axed.” ProPublica: Trump Officials Celebrated With Cake After Slashing Aid. Then People Died of Cholera.
“At the hospital three years ago, meeting the newborn who would become their daughter, Mr. Garner was the first to notice the tiny flaps of skin where her ears should be. Annie, the child they were adopting, was deaf. Over the next few months, as they got to know their daughter, the Garners would discover more challenges, including poor vision, a developmental disability and weak muscles.” NYT (Gift Article): Born Deaf and Blind, She’s Caught in Trump’s Anti-Diversity Crusade. “A program for deafblind children helped 3-year-old Annie Garner, born with poor vision and no ears, learn to communicate. The Trump administration cut the program’s funding over diversity goals.” (This is sick cruelty, pure and simple.)
“Then Captain Kohli made a fateful decision. He needed to, he said — to save the climbers’ lives. ‘Secure the equipment. Don’t bring it down.’ … ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ The climbers scampered down the mountain after stashing the C.I.A. gear on a ledge of ice, abandoning a nuclear device that contained nearly a third of the total amount of plutonium used in the Nagasaki bomb. It hasn’t been seen since. And that was 1965.” NYT (Gift Article): How Did the C.I.A. Lose a Nuclear Device? “A plutonium-packed generator disappeared on one of the world’s highest mountains in a hush-hush mission the U.S. still won’t talk about.”
Hong Kong Wrong: “A Hong Kong court convicted pro-democracy former media mogul Jimmy Lai of conspiracies to commit sedition and collusion with foreign forces in a case that marks how much the semi-autonomous Chinese city has changed since Beijing began a wide-ranging crackdown on dissent five years ago.” (As we’ve learned, political winds can shift quickly and with great effect.)
+ An American Disgrace: Even by the sick and low standards he’s set, Trump’s response to Rob Reiner’s death was disgusting. I didn’t include this in the section above because nothing out of Trump’s mouth deserves to be anywhere near Rob Reiner.
+ Grok Schlock: Shocker: Grok is spreading misinformation about the Bondi Beach shooting.
+ Seed Investors: “Some Chinese parents, inspired by Elon Musk’s 14 known children, pay millions in surrogacy fees to hire women in the U.S. to help them build families of jaw-dropping size. Xu calls himself ‘China’s first father’ and is known in China as a vocal critic of feminism. On social media, his company said he has more than 100 children born through surrogacy in the U.S.” WSJ (Gift Article): The Chinese Billionaires Having Dozens of U.S.-Born Babies Via Surrogate.
+ Panda-Monium: “The two countries had made positive noises about continuing the loan, but tensions between them have increased since Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said Japan could help defend Taiwan from any Chinese aggression.” Chinese pandas to leave Japan amid diplomatic row.
+ Strike a Pose: Indiana QB Fernando Mendoza becomes the school’s first Heisman winner. (Obviously, his key jump in skill and ability came during his year playing for Cal…)
+ Tails Tax: “They have no independent income; they reside exclusively with their humans, and they have annual expenses that top $5,000. Calling them property, she argued, does not accurately reflect their role in a household.” IRS faces a lawsuit that would reclassify pets as dependents.
“We were even more shocked that they were doing their own spin on this by also inserting the grass and sticks in a different orifice.” Chimps are sticking grass and sticks in their butts, seemingly as a fashion trend.
+ Merriam-Webster’s 2025 word of the year is … Slop.
2025-12-12 20:00:00
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. Maybe Holden Caulfield would have admired his modern day adolescent counterparts, because it sure seems like they don’t really want to hear about all that kind of crap, or much else, for that matter. If you must share the details of a protagonist, a brief AI-summarized blurb will do (and please limit summaries to those figures who possess main character energy). For many of today’s teens, reading a novel is a novel activity. It’s easy to blame the trend on social media and other tech distractions, and those are certainly a factor. But, as I’ve noticed in my own kids’ education, teachers also don’t seem to be assigning as many books. Literature is no longer considered lit. I’ve always been a big fan of the impact of first lines of novels, from Toni Morrison’s 124 was spiteful, to García Márquez’s It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love, to Snoopy’s It was a dark and stormy night. Sadly, I think Dana Goldstein may have added to this literary canon with the first line in her latest piece for the NYT (Gift Article): “In American high schools, the age of the book may be fading.” Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class. “Twelfth-grade reading scores are at historic lows, and college professors, even at elite schools, are increasingly reporting difficulties in getting students to engage with lengthy or complex texts.” (Back in our day, when we said, “I’m still working on my novel,” we meant writing one, not trying to read one.)
I’ve shared countless stories about the American economy being driven by the highest income earners. But it’s worth noting that this trend is not just limited to the luxury market. Even brands known for pushing bulk items to cost-conscious buyers are reorienting themselves in the age of the ever-expanding divide. “Costco’s latest earnings were strong across almost every major metric. But they were particularly strong amongst one crucial demographic: The company’s ‘Executive Members’ now account for a whopping 74.3% of all Costco sales, ticking up slightly from last quarter. These Executive Members are Costco’s whales — affluent, high-frequency shoppers … A retailer once built around broad middle-class value is now powered overwhelmingly by its most affluent, most loyal, most economically insulated members.” Inside America’s Costco economy.
Trump just signed an executive order that attempts to prohibit states from regulating AI. I doubt having 50 different regulations governing a massively growing technology is an efficient way forward. But what we’re going to get instead is a version of self-regulation (translation: no regulation) pushed by lobbyists and stakeholders. Chuck Hagel in The Atlantic (Gift Article): “Proponents of AI preemption equate competitiveness with deregulation, arguing that state-level guardrails hamper innovation and weaken the United States in its technological competition with China. The reality is the opposite. Today’s most serious national-security vulnerabilities involving AI stem not from too much oversight, but from the absence of it.” Banning AI Regulation Would Be a Disaster. (By the time we get around to regulating AI, it may have already started regulating us.)
What to Watch You Must: We’re late to the party, but my wife and I have been binge-ing The Mandalorian. It’s not a perfect series, but it’s almost impossible to get enough of the character that came to be known as Baby Yoda (even though it’s not Yoda as a baby). If you haven’t already seen Andor, do that instead.
+ What to Holiday: The Norwegian holiday-themed series Home for Christmas on Netflix is excellent, and a third season just dropped.
Requesting Oral: “Across the country, a small but growing number of educators are experimenting with oral exams to circumvent the temptations presented by powerful artificial intelligence platforms such as ChatGPT.” WaPo (Gift Article): Professors are turning to this old-school method to stop AI use on exams.
+ Peace of Cake: “President Trump has made it well known that he is coveting the Nobel Peace prize, and rarely passes up the opportunity to say he has solved eight conflicts around the world in eight months. But despite the efforts, the results have been mixed: some outcomes are precarious, and the president’s role in brokering a deal is disputed. Others have simply unraveled.” (Yeah, but when they unravel, he can make peace in the same conflict again, thereby doubling his total number of peace deals!)
+ It Gets Bettor: “Last week, CNN announced a deal with Kalshi, a federally regulated online exchange where Americans can wager on current events, from basketball games and congressional elections to whether it will rain tomorrow in New York City. This marked Kalshi’s first partnership with a major news organization and, according to several close observers of the media business and gambling industry, could foreshadow a deluge of similar deals.” The New Yorker: America’s Betting Craze Has Spread to Its News Networks. (In 2025, just bet on the worst-case scenario for any news story. It’s a sure thing.)
+ Landman: “Mr. Hamm is a wildcatter, an oil prospector who drills wells in unproven areas, taking big bets that can turn into black gold or financial ruin. Not long ago, it seemed as if Mr. Hamm and his allies in the oil industry were losing. They were deeply out of favor in Washington — and on Wall Street — shunned for contributing to climate change and failing to deliver the returns investors wanted.” Well, times change. And fortunes often follow. NYT (Gift Article): The Oilman Who Pushed Trump to Go All In on Fossil Fuels.
+ Indiana Stones: “The president’s threats of retribution ultimately failed.” The State That Handed Trump His Biggest Defeat Yet.
+ Driving to the Rim: “Each day, the NBA legend sat in the same spot on a wooden bench in a historic 1930s courtroom, glued to the trial revolving around the antitrust lawsuit his race team and one other had brought against NASCAR, accusing the stock car series of illegal monopolistic conduct.” Michael Jordan was already a basketball legend. Now, he’s one in NASCAR too.
There are a lot of year-end photo collections. This is the one you need today. Hopeful Images of 2025.
+ If you missed this story, don’t. David Guavey Herbert: Playing Santa Does Strange Things to a Man. What It Did to Bob Rutan Was Even Stranger.
+ “Aria Moreno was excited when she walked into class on Hofstra University’s campus in Long Island. It was late August, her fourth week of medical school, and Moreno had volunteered to undergo an ultrasound as part of the day’s lesson on the gastrointestinal system. It probably saved her half a kidney.”
+ “Mr. Dirks did not have cell service, so he said he reached for a Garmin satellite messenger to send an SOS. He was unable to use Bluetooth to connect it to his phone, so he typed out his plea on the Garmin’s tiny keyboard.” Stuck in Quicksand, a Hiker in Utah Has His SOS Answered. (Reason 987,347 that I’m indoorsy.)
+ “While journalism as a major has seen shrinking enrollment for years and is even being dropped by some schools entirely, Baker, a senior at Stanford University, has doubled down on old-school investigative reporting, and it is paying off spectacularly.” Stanford’s star reporter takes on Silicon Valley’s ‘money-soaked’ startup culture.
+ American Lindsey Vonn became the oldest skiing downhill World Cup winner at St Moritz in Switzerland on Friday.
+ Letterman on Kimmel. So enjoyable.
+ How Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups Are Made. (This is the first time my glucose monitor alarm was set off by a video.)