November 18, 2016

The president-elect is planning a victory tour of the states he won. / Politico

“In the seventies, eighties, and nineties... there was a baseline of facts that we could all work off of. And now we just don’t have that.” Obama talks constantly about the destabilizing effect of social media on the grounds of civil discourse. / The New Yorker

Park Geun-Hye just faced the largest protests since democracy came to the nation, and just one in 20 South Koreans approve of her presidency. / The Economist

“A story out of Louisiana about Republican weakness would reinforce the case that Trump isn’t very popular, just as the Republican victory in a Massachusetts Senate election in January 2010 hurt Barack Obama’s ability to convince anyone of his own popularity.” Because every seat matters: Democrats should give all they’ve got to win the Louisiana runoff. / Bloomberg

Minor fake news panic: Jesse Singal, in a Twitter thread, suggests Trump is throwing false information to the press on purpose to gauge his ability to get away with lies. / Twitter

For many, the recent election’s shocks have been somewhat tempered by a deluge of memes celebrating outgoing Vice President Joe Biden as a merry prankster bent on messing with the incoming administration. / Jezebel

“Listen,’ I said, ‘I know this is delicate, and I don’t want to put you in a difficult position, but would you please ask your mother to stop calling me every 10 minutes? She’s complaining about your visit, and I don’t know how much longer I can put up with her crying.” Dating back to 1996, a brief Thanksgiving diary from David Sedaris. / Slate

“In Liberia, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the first Thursday in November. Families gather to eat cayenne-spiced roast chicken, mashed cassavas, and green-bean casserole.” Thanksgiving celebrations in Liberia, Leiden, and the South Pacific enhance our own traditions, says Graham Beck. / TMN

Politics divides families, possibly now more than ever. A survival guide for getting through politically divided meals. / The New York Times

1. Advice for a Trumpland Thanksgiving: “Show up and stuff your face.” / thebaffler.com

2. Kristi Coulter on how not to get wasted over dinner. / The Awl

“Thanksgiving came and went. There were rolling brownouts when everything went dark and still. I lay in my bed and ate Snickers and drank little bottles of whiskey from the minibar while I watched television programs that seemed as strange and bleak as my new life.” Possibly the best Thanksgiving literature is also the saddest: Ariel Levy’s award-winning “Thanksgiving in Mongolia.” / The New Yorker

A Muslim registry, really? Public shame over Japanese internment camps during World War Two might not override the Constitutional right—technically on the books—for the government to register and inter based on race (or any other classification). / Time

Feeling overwhelmed by your Thanksgiving planning? Check out Thomas Edison’s extremely ambitious to-do list from 1888 and you’ll feel much better (or embarrassed). / seriouseats.com, openculture.com

“The fixation on diversity in our schools and in the press has produced a generation of liberals and progressives narcissistically unaware of conditions outside their self-defined groups, and indifferent to the task of reaching out to Americans in every walk of life.” Thought-provoking op-ed argues that the American left’s devotion to identity politics has been disastrous for its ability to govern. / SundayReview

To: TMN Editors From: Andrew Womack Also helpful: Melissa Zimdars compiled a massive list of the sources that should raise your suspicions. / docs.google.com

1. A conversation with Robert Caro about power, which (regretfully) never once mentions Trump. / Medium

2. A readling list to inspire political action. / Literary Hub

3. Bad sex writing has the power to ruin a book, but also to entertain when judged on its own merits. / New York

4. The power of global warming: The North Pole is 36 degrees warmer than normal. / The Washington Post

5. Aired last night: How electricity transformed music. / PBS

Oh good. The British government can now record web history in real time, require decryption, and hack citizen’s devices. / zdnet.com

“The postelection United States is now routinely depicted as one leg of a global tripartite menace, along with China and Russia, bearing down on fragile Western democracies.” Call us the Axis of Menace? Yes, it’s the perspective from France, which hardly warmed to George W. Bush. But as much as we worry about China and Russia, to much of the world we’re lumped in with them, too. / New York Times

Putin’s pursuit of neo-Soviet ideals, like projecting Russian strength in foreign policy, paired with his near-total control of the media, has resulted in “a generation whose dreams are the embodiment of everything Putin desires them to be: conformist, materialist, and highly risk averse.” / National Geographic

A short film by Vivian Kubrick, Stanley Kubrick’s daughter, Making the Shining. Though really it’s about Jack Nicholson’s onscreen wattage. Starts at about 02:38. / YouTube