At least 2456 fossil fuel lobbyists have passes to Dubai's COP28 climate talks. / Kick Big Polluters Out

Jonathan Krishner: Washington's hawkish bipartisan consensus on China's hawkish intentions is wrong. / The Los Angeles Review of Books

Related: Americans did the "China shock" to themselves. / Policy Tensor

Air pollution is likely costing residents of New Delhi about 12 years of life. / Goats and Soda

African sports economies can be unpacked by studying foreign and domestic capitalists, commercialization in Africa, and sports diplomacy. / Africa Is a Country

Globally, women's sports are expected to earn more than $1 billion for the first time in 2024, up 300% since 2021. / NBC News

Less than 30% of people pay their medical bills immediately and in full—suggesting a significant portion of patients put off getting health care. / STAT News

From August: Virtual clinics are embracing allergy drops as an alternative to shots. "Why would you want to get stabbed by a needle?" / Undark Magazine

San Diego's Nature-to-You loan library enables patrons to borrow dead animals. / Atlas Obscura

From last year, explaining how the Shazam app works on your phone. / Cameron MacLeod

A round-up of some of 2023's best memes. Also, some useful principles to help make sense of the world—e.g., "work expands to fill the time allotted for it." / Mashable, The Prism

Footage from 1902 of a German "flying train" that's still in use today. / Futility Closet

Young South Africans have a "love-hate relationship" with Nelson Mandela on the 10th anniversary of his death. / BBC News

Mexican politicians find "a goldmine" among Swiftie fandoms on TikTok. / rest of world

The United States breaks its record for the most mass shootings in a single year. / The Guardian

Two dozen points of view on what Donald Trump may do if he returns to the White House. / The Atlantic

See also: Most Americans don't care that we're about to face an existential crisis. / The Bulwalk

"True diva representation in Congress is now back to zero." Gen Z already misses George Santos. / Business Insider

"Millennial mom dread" refers to women today seeing motherhood as something "thankless, exhausting, and lonely." / Vox

"Well, I lost half a day of skiing." A round-up of jokes told in 2023. / The New Yorker

The year's best house as selected by the Royal Institute of British Architects. / Bloomberg 

A company's prospectus, required for an IPO and almost never read by anybody, can cost $900,000 to draft and print. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

A next-generation geothermal plant has started sending carbon-free electricity to the grid in Nevada. / Grist

Rarely seen orange auroras, which technically shouldn't exist, were recently photographed in the sky above Scotland. / LiveScience

While everyone's paying attention to Gaza, Israeli settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank is on the rise—and could lead to outright war. / Vox

Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen fired ballistic missiles on multiple vessels, including a US warship, which shot down three drones. / Associated Press

The recent discovery of a new human organ—the interstitium—isn't because scientists hadn't seen it before, but because beliefs obscured observation. / Orion

See also: "The most interesting interaction you can have with the Chimp-Pig hypothesis is to let yourself believe it...then observe what it feels like to have your world overturned." / Atoms vs Bits

Despite skyrocketing interest rates, Americans continue to spend with wild abandon, flummoxing economists. / BBC

See also: Although the Squid Game reality series discards its predecessor's satire, the show ends up "seemingly accidentally" reinforcing how people will do anything for capitalism. / Vox

Behind the scenes of one of the most technologically advanced and complex entertainment spectacles going: Sunday Night Football. / The New York Times [+]

RIP Taco Bell Quesarito, Dunkin' Dunkaccino, and the other snacks and fast food we lost in 2023. / The Takeout

From large-scale intelligence gathering to the use of microfilm to transfer vast amounts of information, American librarians played a key role in World War II. / JSTOR Daily

On the healthy state of book publishing—which is notably "the one form of media that hasn't slipped into unpaywalled expectations of 'free.'" / Book Work

A reasonable argument for why humor is what makes the classics endure—yes, even Tolstoy. / The Bulwark

"The US Defence Department earns $100m/year operating slot machines used by soldiers on their bases." Tom Whitwell's annual list of what he learned this year. / Magnetic Notes

Fighting has resumed between Israel and Hamas—the White House blames the ceasefire's end on Hamas's failure to produce a new list of hostages for release. / Reuters

Gaza City officials accuse Israel of deliberately destroying its main public library, home to thousands of books and historical documents. / Literary Hub

See also: An artist is trying to preserve the Palestinian internet of the late '90s and 2000s. / VICE

As some countries lobby the US to limit AI-controlled killer drones, some nations—including the US—are resisting the regulations. / Business Insider

A UK customer finds what appears to be a Chinese prisoner's ID card inside a newly purchased coat, raising concerns about prison labor. / The Guardian

"The mace fell back toward Earth, and [Shane] MacGowan caught it and handed it back. A Christmas miracle." The real story behind the "Boys of the NYPD Choir." / The New York Times [+]

An apparent hacking campaign earlier this year that flooded accounts with Lil Durk streams is skewing people's Spotify Wrapped results. / VICE

The tennis-pickleball turf wars—which have escalated all the way to an act of arson in Santa Monica—as revealed in local government documents. / 404 Media

A site dedicated to the "books that have been neglected, overlooked, forgotten, or stranded by changing tides in critical or popular taste." / The Neglected Books Page

Zines made by children are exactly what they sound like. / Mini-Zine Library

See also: From 2007, laptops drawn and designed on construction paper, by seven- to nine-year-olds. / The Morning News

Test your skills at a game about guessing words through other words—e.g., an "electric brain" is a "computer." / Noun Noun

US life expectancy has rebounded by more than a year, but still remains below 2020 levels. / Associated Press

Following on yesterday's news about African cocoa producers, farms in Ghana that supply the Mars company have children as young as five harvesting cocoa beans. / CBS News

Untold numbers of Cambodians died at Kissinger's hands—first through his bombing campaign, which catalyzed the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror. / The Conversation

"Henry Kissinger, war criminal beloved by America's ruling class, finally dies." / Rolling Stone

E.g., "The surprising dating life of Henry Kissinger, a West Wing 'playboy.'" / The Washington Post [+]

At least a dozen US states have reported cases of an unidentified, infectious respiratory disease among dogs. / CNN

Google's DeepMind AI has predicted the structure of more than two million new materials, a process that typically takes decades of research. / Reuters

Paste Magazine has purchased the recently deceased Jezebel, and may relaunch it as early as this week. / Variety

"Witch bottles" containing vegetation and other objects—and of course spells—are washing up on Texas beaches. / Houston Chronicle

"The pressure to view all work as enterprise is not just fashion. It is being promoted." When a form asks for your "industry," pandemonium follows. / The Hedgehog Review

The iconic Shane MacGown of the Pogues has died at 65, and it's always as good a time as any to listen to "Fairytale of New York." / The Guardian, YouTube

"I bought the new seven-CD Garth Brooks box set from Bass Pro Shops (a true story)." / Uproxx

Collaborators? Your mom? No one? An analysis of who gets thanked in Grammy speeches. / Can't Get Much Higher

Peru's glaciers are melting, forming high mountain lagoons that are trapping Peruvians' water reserves—should the lagoons overflow, widespread flooding may follow. / Reuters

The COP28 president has been using his role at the climate summit to lobby foreign governments on oil and gas deals. / Center for Climate Reporting

See also: Saudi Arabia's state investment firm finances fossil-dependent infrastructure in developing countries in an attempt to lock in oil demand. / The Guardian

African activists decry handing McKinsey control of the continent's renewable energy goals—pointing to, among other issues, its fossil-fuel clients. / Climate Home News

In Côte d'Ivoire, where 45% of the world's cocoa comes from, cocoa producers want to decolonize their product, and become a chocolate-producing nation. / Le Monde

Ahead of major elections, the front pages of major outlets remain unfortunately free of policy coverage—the same missteps that led up to 2016. / Columbia Journalism Review

Using AI, scientists have built an equation that can predict when rogue waves will strike. / Live Science

Sports Illustrated has been publishing AI-generated articles with bylines—and headshots—from AI-generated authors. Now they've deleted the content and are blaming a contractor. / Futurism

In the age of student debt and hybrid learning, assessing the future of the campus novel as the lines blur between college and real life. / Esquire

Well this is cool: a book about the history of books in their many, many forms. / Hyperallergic

See also: How video game designers are using their craft to tell personal stories of food. / The New York Times [+]

"Former police chief John Anderton's Tesla spontaneously shuts itself off while he's driving." Popular dystopian fiction if it were describing 2023. / McSweeney's

A history of Snoopy at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. / Art Dogs

TMN is taking a break for the Thanksgiving holiday and will resume publishing on Wednesday, November 29.

Israel and Hamas agree to a four-day ceasefire and an exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners. / Al Jazeera

The Harvard Law Review spikes a fact-checked article about genocide in Gaza. / The Intercept

Mark Harris on what it's like to be Jewish right now among people who are "paranoid about becoming paranoid Jews." / Intelligencer

Sketchy details suggest a plot to kill a Sikh separatist in the United States was foiled, and a warning was sent by the US to India over concerns the government was involved. / The South China Morning Post

A secretive government program gives law enforcement access to phone records for millions of Americans who aren't suspected of a crime. / WIRED

See also: A normie's guide to the soap opera playing out in artificial intelligence. (Versus a more expert guide from earlier in the week.) / Read Max, The Atlantic

The garment workers behind the "Made in America" slogan often are paid far below minimum wage. / The Nation

Nearly half of millennial and Gen Z consumers say they've been "scammed" purchasing a dupe product on social media. / Womens Wear Daily

Related: "It's Too Easy to Buy Stuff You Don't Want." / MSN

Mexico City's plummeting murder rate may be based on homicides being reclassified as missing people. / The Guardian

One of California's fastest-growing areas—Mountain House—may soon become a city; charts show how rare that is. / The San Francisco Chronicle

Unrelated: Making the argument that hotels should not be sexy. / GQ

Assessing a collection of dictionaries that occupied every flat surface of a woman's two-bedroom Manhattan apartment. / Atlas Obscura

Qatar's foreign ministry says negotiations between Israel and Hamas are in their "final stages" over a potential release of hostages. / Al Jazeera

Casualities are mounting on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border. / The New York Times [+] 

Julien Barnes-Dacey and Jeremy Shapiro: Now's the moment for the West to ditch its illusions about a liberal rules-based order—and get down to making deals. / Foreign Policy

The number of Mexican states exposed to high water stress is at risk of doubling (to 20) by 2050. / Americas Quarterly

Electric bikes displace four times as much demand for oil as all the world's electric cars. / Ars Technica

See also: The UN's Emissions Gap Report (sadly) embraces the metaphor of a broken record. / Kottke

A woman who died from cancer this weekend erased approximately $14 million of other people's medical debt with a posthumous plea. / The Associated Press

A study finds that Black women who perceive experiences of racism have a 38% chance of having a stroke compared to those who don't. / NBC News

A new biography of Lena Horne says "to be Hollywood's Black belle came at the unforgivable price of sexual harassment, racism, and cruelty." / The Cut

Some thoughts from a Norwegian on Britain's carpets: "How they clean these floors is still a mystery." / Vestoj

Why do so-called public intellectuals condescend to readers? Because they're often pandering, "not thinking at all." / The Yale Review 

Working through concerns about stolen valor for people who enjoy vintage military garments. / Permanent Style

A reminder for Americans this week: Cook the turkey, not your home. / X

The annual long list—our fricking 20th—is now here for the 2024 Tournament of Books! / The Tournament of Books

The Dept. of Defense fails its sixth consecutive Congressionally mandated audit, and doesn't appear to have any plans for that to change. / The Intercept

When wildfires hit the tundra, thawing permafrost releases ancient carbon that converts into large amounts of methane, further accelerating climate change. / High Country News

Meta disbands its responsible AI team, Cruise's CEO quits amid a safety review, and as of last night OpenAI was on its third CEO of the weekend. / CNBC, Reuters, The Verge

See also: "New OpenAI CEO was a character in a Harry Potter Fanfic that's wildly popular with effective altruists." / 404 Media

How a magician allegedly helped Britain deceive the Nazis—including by erecting fake buildings to conceal the entire city of Alexandria from German bombers. / BBC

See also: A top-secret unit in World War II that included Bill Blass, Ellsworth Kelly, and Art Kane used inflatable tanks and sound effects to fake out the enemy. / The Morning News

And also: "Magicians less prone to mental disorders than other artists, finds research." / The Guardian

Italy's Culture Ministry opens an exhibit on J.R.R. Tolkien—in the far-right Meloni era, it's a choice that's rife with political connotations. / The New York Times [+]

It's the 400th anniversary of the printing of Shakespeare's First Folio, which has been stolen countless times. / CrimeReads

Researchers find public opinion around committing fraud is changing, with more people feeling it's "reasonable" to lie on a CV or act as a "money mule." / The Guardian

"As you walk the rows of strangers' belongings, some make you feel guiltier than others." Shopping at the lost baggage store. / The Washington Post [+]

See also: Mapping Mallorca's worst tourist spots by the number of scam ATMs. / Twitter

Published in 1922, Robert Mallet-Stevens's Art Deco visions of the ideal city. / Flashbak

New research finds gig workers may be missing from government job reports, which could have massive implications for how the Fed assesses inflation risk. / Reuters

Signal's president breaks down what it costs to keep the platform afloat, which by 2025 will add up to around $50 million a year. / Signal

Joanne McNeil on the empty promises of self-driving cars, which could actually be useful if companies weren't so focused on dazzle. / Esquire

"It's been a little over a year since Elon Musk officially took over Twitter, and I'm prepared to admit that—on at least one count—I was wrong as shit." / Read Max

Experiencing a toddler learning to talk teaches lessons about large language models. / The New Yorker

See also: "The study and building of neural networks have become central to learning about the mind." / Scientific American

The world of 1800, when artists revolted against the technocracy, is remarkably similar to today—maybe we're headed into a new Romanticism? / The Honest Broker

Unrelated: Recalling the New Romantic aesthetic from the late 1970s/early '80s, which "burned briefly but brightly." / Aesthetics Wiki, Museum of Youth Culture

"Can Jeff Bezos, Kid Rock, or George W. Bush lasso a steer or fix your truck?" Why rich guys love dressing like cartoon cowboys. / Texas Monthly

Cold calling people around the world to find out if they're familiar with Thanksgiving: "I think of America, I think of gun violence and sad people." / The Morning News

A short story for your weekend: Sheila Heti's "According to Alice." / The New Yorker

"When the mega-mansion developer said, 'Build,' he willed the entire life of a neighborhood into despair." Martin Luther in the West Village. / McSweeney's

The FTC is trying to stop industry groups and nutrition influencers from pushing guidance without disclosing that it's paid advertising. / The Washington Post [+]

Did Osama bin Laden's "Letter to America" really go viral on TikTok? Not exactly—and besides, how views are counted on TikTok is murky at best. / Garbage Day

Related: "Bin Laden was a billionaire who did the thing billionaires do: play with the lives of others. He made his preoccupations and pathologies everyone else's problem." / Forever Wars

See also: In the past three years TikTok has had the fastest uptick as the social platform where Americans say they get their news. / Axios

Antibiotic resistance is getting worse—the vast majority of infections seen at a hospital in Nigeria are resistant to at least one antibiotic. / The Conversation

Water shortages in Mexico are intensifying, and quickly have become a central issue in next year's presidential election. / Americas Quarterly

Why a pond in Hawaii has turned bright pink—it's probably from halobacteria, which love extremely salty water. / Atlas Obscura

An exhibit explores how US National Park signage tells a narrative of "a nation attempting to explain itself, to itself." / Hyperallergic

"What had been utilitarian farm architecture was becoming symbolic stone archaeology." On New England's stone walls. / Smithsonian Magazine

Appreciate the web in entirely new ways by taking an internet walk. / Syllabus Project

"This is as rich a psychological portrait of a cartoon character that has ever been put onto film." A reviewer screens Coyote v. Acme. / Cartoon Brew

Photos from Salvador Dalí's home and studio where he created his best-known works. / It's Nice That

A long lull in Russian bombing has left people in Kyiv finally getting some decent sleep. / The New York Times [+]

Of the 36,000 small- and medium-sized companies registered in Ukraine this year, 51% are run by women. / The Economist

The IMF says central bank digital currencies have the potential to replace cash. / CNBC

See also: Anger appears to be driving the United States economy. Meanwhile, what if money expired? / Bloomberg [+], Noema Magazine

Since 2022, Meta has quietly allowed Facebook and Instagram to run political advertising saying the 2020 election was rigged. / The Wall Street Journal [+] 

Watch: A New Zealand family visits an American Walmart for the first time. / YouTube

A longtime Amazon veteran says that under the company's success, "there's a startling level of disorder." / Big Technology

Related: A row boat made from an enormous Jeff Bezos head. / YouTube

Researchers studying Marie Curie are required to sign a liability waiver because her research papers, notebooks, and clothing will remain radioactive for another 1,500 years. / Open Culture

Another tribute to the women's website Jezebel, this time from former staffers and contributors. / Dirt

André 3000 releases a solo album that's all flute, no rap. / NPR

In the fashion industry, what should we expect next after this year's Y2K-inspired fashion? "More Y2K fashion." / The Cut

A map shows the US distribution of people who say "sneakers," "gym shoes," or "tennis shoes." / Kottke

The United States now experiences a "billion dollar" disaster event every three weeks. It was every four months in the 1980s. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

ICYMI: The veterans and civilians who volunteer to do disaster relief as a form of group therapy. / GQ

"Do we or don't we need to hate America?" Ahead of President Biden and Xi Jinping's summit, China's propaganda machine pulls a 180. / The New York Times [+]

A journalism professor implores the media to adopt a mantra for the upcoming presidential election: "Not the odds, but the stakes." / Reliable Sources

Republican lawmakers are wearing a new accessory: semi-automatic lapel pins. / The Guardian

Sweden is suffering from a wave of gang violence. Travelers, especially young travelers, are flocking to Japan. / The Economist, Bloomberg

A survey of AI systems being deployed to predict the weather. A survey of the infinite art of the great Holly Herndon. / TechCrunch, The New Yorker

A new book by Robert Sapolsky argues we're not in control of or responsible for our decisions. / Ars Technica

TikTok users deploy glitter to detect—or get revenge after—moments of infidelity. / Nyon

Unrelated: "Super glues are super, but you have to know how to use them." / Popular Mechanics

The American Ornithological Society decides to change all English language common names of birds that honor people (because racists). / University of Illinois

Lucy Sante pays tribute to the hipness of Glenn O'Brien. Lynell George pays tribute to Mike Davis one year after his death. / The New York Review of Books, truthdig

Watch: The results of 4,000+ Americans tasting the same exact four coffees. / YouTube

A high-ranking Israeli official says the country and Hamas are closing in on a deal to free some hostages. / The Washington Post

From Gaza to Ukraine, Myanmar to Sudan, diplomats are "running out of bandwidth." / The Economist

Global negotiators reconvene in Kenya to create a landmark treaty to end plastic pollution. / The Associated Press

Related: Why do corporations struggle to reach net zero? "The materials we tend to use these days are simply very good at doing what they do." / Material World

Nepal joins India in banning TikTok entirely, to protect the nation's "social harmony." / TIME

Regarding loneliness: "Even when one has a caring and supportive network of relationships, one will often experience 'reverse culture shock.'" / aeon

A visualization of the London skyline in 2030 if 11 new towers get built. / Building Design

Some sublime views of the American West by Korean photographer Jungjin Lee. / Howard Greenberg Gallery

"Make candlelight ordinary." A nice list of ideas for addressing the gloom in the dark half of the year. / The Clearing

A short recording captures a hook to a 1980s-style New Wave song—but internet sleuths can't figure out what it is. / Rolling Stone

See also: Dolly Parton's final song, locked in a "dream box" at her theme park, won't be released before 2046. / Atlas Obscura

Launched on Saturday, a first-of-its-kind satellite will detect carbon dioxide emissions from individual facilities. / Reuters

An explainer on the subsea cables that the internet depends on, and that will surely be targets in any sort of kinetic conflict." / CNET

As if deepfaked nudes of private individuals weren't already chilling enough, now an online AI marketplace has introduced "bounties." / 404 Media

The US Army has overturned the convictions of 110 Black soldiers accused of mutiny in the 1917 Houston race riot. / Houston Chronicle

After 28 years of monthly meetups, a book club finally reaches the end of Finnegans Wake. / The Guardian

See also: A detailed interpretation of Finnegans Wake's final page. / From Swerve of Shore to Bend of Bay

What happens when you take a ChatGPT-guided walking tour of Sydney: exceedingly distant recommendations for soup and straight-up lies. / The Guardian

See also: Armed with a fistful of maps from 1901 and a smartphone bristling with data-recording apps, an attempt at uncovering a city's secrets. / The Morning News

After training a GPT as his assistant, John Warner has notes: "It is not me in ways that are frankly, sort of disturbing." / The Biblioracle Recommends

Are any words the same in all languages? The answer: two, almost. / Duolingo

"I started thinking about why I play this game in the first place, a typical thought one has when one is losing." Diary of a chess tournament. / Dirt

Competing in the annual Man Against Horse Race, which is exactly what it sounds like. / GQ

"I recently sent out a survey asking parents to describe the situations that make them feel the most competent and the most like wayward teens." / The Cut