"Commentators should please stop using words such as 'digital' and 'progress' and 'efficiency' and 'vision' when describing this coup attempt." / Thinking about...

Related: The engineers playing a key role in Elon Musk's attempt to dismantle federal infrastructure are all recent college grads—one may still be in school. / WIRED

DOGE is what Biden warned about in his farewell address, and there's still so much we don't know about who they are and what they're doing. / Can We Still Govern?

If you're looking for hope, Democratic leaders' messages aren't the best place to look. / Welcome to Hell World

Finally, a Democratic senator announces he will obstruct Trump's State Dept. confirmations until Trump and Musk end their siege on USAID. / Outside the Beltway

An investigation into the criminal records of pardoned Jan. 6 insurrectionists reveals a variety of convictions or pending charges for rape, domestic violence, and other serious crimes. / NPR

As measles vaccine rates in Texas fall, four new cases are reported in Lubbock, where there hasn't been a new case in more than 20 years. / The Texas Tribune

Inside the illegal trade for conophytum, an especially unusual succulent. / Financial Times [+]

All communication now is near-instantaneous, and too much input may be too much for our brains. A new book argues for inserting more friction into the process. / Los Angeles Review of Books

"We would sit there and drink and smoke and pretend we were intellectuals." A friend remembers a teenaged David Lynch. / The Yale Review

See also: Both The Elephant Man and On the Air, Lynch and Mark Frost's post-Twin Peaks sitcom, are available to watch. / Internet Archive

"This kind of favor trading creates an incestuous and unmeritocratic literary ecosystem that often rewards connections over talent." Simon & Schuster's flagship imprint will no longer require blurbs. / Publishers Weekly

How the explosion in gluten-free packaged foods, paired with inaccurate labeling and confusing packaging, can end up harming those with celiac disease. / STAT

"You have retained the juvenile ability to love tons of candy." Caity Weaver quits sugar. / The New York Times Magazine [+]

Imagine an alternate timeline by changing the outcomes of key historical events. / A Better World?

It's no longer enough to measure income gaps to depict inequality; now, wealth gaps paint a far bleaker picture of American prosperity. / The Conversation

See also: The wildfires exposed a truth about how power operates in Los Angeles: "No city is more in need of its next incarnation." / Bloomberg

Labor unions are at their most treacherous moment in a century, a "result of both the forces arrayed against unions, and the weakness of unions themselves." / How Things Works

"The fallout from Chaplin's anti-fascist speech in 1940 is a sharp reminder that the other side has always been active here." Thinking under fascism. / Dada Drummer Almanach

Among the many topics DeepSeek refuses to address is Ai Weiwei, who calls his omission "quite telling" and says the West is compromising its values in similar ways. / Hyperallergic

CES this year was—unsurprisingly— all about AI, whose "exponents are no longer asking whether anyone wants what they're selling and simply asserting its inevitability." / Defector

Unrelated: Scientists discover a patch of dinosaur vomit. / The Guardian

There's no evidence internet brain rot is real—at least as far as technology can cause "permanent brain damage"—but that doesn't mean you aren't experiencing negative effects. / Dazed

Fake product reviews may be pervasive, but when you consider that any review on a retail site is part of a marketing strategy, all reviews are fake. / Internal Exile

See also: When you discover it's legal for your 911 call to be tracked and for your information to be provided as a sales lead to ambulance chasers. / A Whole Lotta Nothing

How the New York War Crimes—a print resource chronicling misrepresentations in the New York Times' Gaza coverage—is made. / Lux

"The level of manic energy—not to mention labor—it takes to come up with these drinks over and over is not sustainable." A history of why your cocktail is so damn weird. / Punch

A cozy game about cozy games—also, the new comfort movie canon. / Reuters, Cultured

More than half a million displaced Palestinians have returned to northern Gaza. / Al Jazeera

At least 30 people were killed during a crush at India's Kumbh Mela festival. / BBC News

A judge temporarily blocks President Trump's attempt to pause federal funding. / Reuters

A round-up of executive orders signed during Trump's first week in office. / NPR

See also: One Trump adviser says the administration hopes to make civil servants miserable in their jobs. / ProPublica

An escalation of orders against the trans community "paints a grim picture of what lies ahead." / Erin in the Morning

Larry Bartels: When popular grievances are used as a pretext for bad policy, it's politicians, not the citizenry, who are culpable. / Inside Story

An "elder millennial" battled Traump fans through TikTok comments and loved it, until it took up too much time. / Bumble

Related: A new parlor game, "who goes MAGA?" / The Sword & the Sandwich

"Challenge trials," in which people volunteer to get sick, are on the rise since the pandemic. / The New York Times [+]

Google searches for "no buy challenge" are up 40% year-over-year. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

What's it like to run a made-in-the-USA clothing company right now? "Everything is your own headache." / Outside

Studies are mixed on whether or not Americans desire urban sprawl. / Climate Connections

Some notes from regular visits to see Lee Krasner's "The Seasons," painted after the death of her husband Jackson Pollock. / Critical Thinking 

Edmund White's new memoir about 70 years of sex and lust is said to be mostly melancholic. / Slate

See also: Excerpt from a Japanese memoir about a cat. / The Paris Review

Human-like fossils found in China appear to have extremely large brains, bigger than ours. / RNZ

A study finds 55 percent of 18 to 34-year-olds approve of the use of violence, property damage, or misinformation to enact change. / VICE

College enrollment in the United States increased this fall, exceeding pre-pandemic levels. / Fast Company

How many people died from disasters in 2024? Less than the year before, thanks to fewer earthquakes. / Sustainability by numbers

Temporary housing has contributed to the deaths of at least 74 children in England in the last five years. / BBC News

One way to understand the current White House's politics: reduce everything to friends or enemies. / The New York Times [+]

Metadata from the Office of Personnel Management shows Trump devotees from the Heritage Foundation writing policies at federal agencies. / [citation needed]

Google says its maps app will change the Gulf of Mexico to "Gulf of America" and Denali to "Mount McKinley." / CNBC

The "Good Daily" newsletters, which operate in 47 states and 355 towns and cities across the US, are run by one guy using AI. / NiemanLab

Some trespassing directions—we do not advise this—if you wish to see Jeff Bezos's underground clock. / Asterisk Mag

Everything you need to know about DeepSeek. / Stratchery

Unrelated: A global atlas of sorts for the modern literary novel. / The Modern Novel

Interior design trends to anticipate for 2025. / Vogue

Remember that espresso machine that doesn't require water? How about a water machine for your kitchen. / dezeen

Some thoughts about laughter when it's not tied to humor, when it "appears to render us mechanical, terrifying, monstrous." / Sapiens

Something that's getting lost in yesterday's was-it-or-wasn't-it US-Colombia trade war: "Colombia accepted 475 deportation flights from the US from 2020 to 2024." / AP

And also: Because Trump wants to use military—not civilian—flights to transport deportees, "American taxpayers are paying 300% more for Trump's immigration plan than they should." / Proof

Federal prosecutors have dropped charges against a surgeon who all but admitted he leaked the medical records of underage patients receiving gender transition care. / The Texas Tribune

See also: 20 lessons on tyranny from the 20th century. / Thinking about...

"The entire food supply has been sewn up by cartels of 2-5 giant companies, and they colluded to raise prices, and bragged about it, and got away with it." It's not a crime if we do it with an app. / Pluralistic

See also: What if we had a maximum income? / How Things Work

Exercising your way through four years of all this and other ways to weather the storm. / The Cut, Kottke.org

See also: "Cute winter boots" is a form of algospeak TikTok users are using to message their resistance to Trump. / User Mag

This is fine: "Wind-blown avian feces may be route of transmission for bird flu, Minnesota's infectious disease expert warns." / CBS News

A recent poll showed 63% of Americans read at least one book in 2024, up from 54% in 2023. / The Washington Post [+]

In a new paper, researchers address the book-sorting problem, and introduce an algorithm that minimizes the time it takes to insert a book—or anything, really—into a sequence. / Quanta

LinkedIn's co-founder thinks AI should stop you from buying books you won't read, and Anthropic's CEO says AI will double your lifespan within the decade—but "this is not a very exact science." / The New York Times [+], Gizmodo

See also: "The less people know about AI, the more they like it." / WIRED

Unrelated: "The founder of an AI startup in San Francisco was indicted this week for allegedly conspiring with his wife for six years to defraud investors out of $60 million." / Ars Technica

Based on 60 years of data collection, a study finds men lose 50 percent of their emotional support networks between the ages of 30 and 90. / PsyPost

"I love being on the Earth at the same time as bears." Dance pioneer Carolyn Brown has died at 97. / The New York Times [+]

Photos from the David Lynch shrine at Bob's Big Boy in Burbank. / Los Angeles Magazine

With the inauguration of Trump's second term, the Doomsday Clock will move forward next week. / The Nation

See also: A subreddit that provides "the perfect soundtrack for your personal apocalypse." / r/CollapseMusic

Unrelated: When a scientist convinced members of the San Francisco 49ers to ingest radioactive material to determine if physical fitness predicts surviving a nuclear war. / Defector

"Humanity's Last Exam," a new test that's stumped every popular AI model, is now the yardstick by which AI is measured against humans' intellectual capabilities. / The New York Times [+]

Can the Stargate AI project really create as many as 100,000 jobs? Possibly, but they might not be for humans. / Vox

See also: According to a new poll, about half of US adults have an unfavorable view of Elon Musk, and even more disapprove of Trump relying on billionaires' advice. / Axios

A developer has released code that lures AI crawlers into a "tar pit" of randomly generated pages, and that website owners can deploy to defend their content, waste AI company resources—or both. / 404 Media

After the Supreme Court ended affirmative action in admissions, medical schools have reacted "overzealously," waving in a new era of discrimination. / STAT

"Being forced to really think whether you want to risk embarrassment by asking somebody if they carry a certain film or record in the shop goes a long way in learning to appreciate things." Bring back video rental stores. / The Melt

Trained on Minecraft, but without respecting object permanence, an AI model "fails so hard at being Minecraft that it becomes something else." / AI Weirdness

"If we want video game writing to be taken seriously as a craft, then we have to encourage players to engage with it as a creative process." / Florence Smith Nicholls

A very long, detailed history of how once-sprawling social media platforms splintered into smaller, politically homogenous communities. / Noema

Anne Helen Petersen: "I told myself I'd put both Instagram and email back on my phone at the end of the in-between weeks. Days kept passing, and I kept not doing it." / Culture Study

Biden's cabinet had a combined net worth of around $120 million, which is absolutely dwarfed by the $20 billion net worth of Trump's presumptive cabinet. / The Intercept

Spencer Ackerman: What starts as temporary, emergency measures tend to become fixed in the firmament of American governance and normalized. / Forever Wars

See also: A running list of Trump's planned executive orders, actions, proclamations, and legislation. / Politico

Scientists are worrying over threats posed by manufacturing bacteria that are mirror images of natural ones. / Undark Magazine

Previously: Built with a reverse set of amino acids and sugars, synthetic "mirror cells" pose an "unprecedented risk" for all life, scientists warn. / Smithsonian Magazine

See also: Photographs of uncanny objects by Joyce Lin Blur. / Colossal

A theory called "predictive processing" says that we don't experience the world as it is, but as we predict it to be. / Vox

Should children really learn about getting rich? "It conjures a fantasy world where people who 'deserve' it get rich and those who don't simply disappear." / The Cut

Chinese traditional medicine is now a $60 billion-a-year industry—and cows' gallstones have become the must-have item. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

Some sound advice for any people in Southern California worried about air quality. / Torched

TMN recommends: This Friday—for 24 hours only—you can stream the generative documentary film Eno. / Oh You Pretty Things

See also: A very cool interactive interpretation of Eno and Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies. / It's Simply a Matter of Work

NASA astronauts will search for life that can thrive in harsh environments by checking if there's any clinging to the exterior of the International Space Station. / Gizmodo

See also: "You never know true beauty until you see Earth from space, or true terror until you hear someone knocking on the space station door from outside." / Clickhole

Over 100 medal winners at last summer's Paris Olympics have complained their medals are crumbling. / Semafor

A round-up of President Trump's first day back in office, playing "ping-pong between the serious and the stunning." / The Wall Street Journal [+]

Trump's political urgency may be slowed "by a more languid Congress." / Semafor

The United States military debates possible deployment on US soil. / Politico

Molly White: No, Trump didn't make $50 billion from his memecoin. / [citation needed]

Democrats have in key ways helped expedite the formation of the tech oligarchy they are now decrying. / Blood in the Machine

Each time you see a targeted ad online, your personal information is exposed to thousands of advertisers and data brokers through a process called "real-time bidding." / EFF

See also: "FTC Surveillance Pricing Study Indicates Wide Range of Personal Data Used to Set Individualized Consumer Prices." / Federal Trade Commission

Some thoughts on how to "escape the algorithm." / escape the algorithm

Schools are using an AI simulation of Anne Frank that urges kids not to blame anyone for the Holocaust. / The__Byte

Related: A conversation with a virtual Anne Frank. / Bluesky

Trend experts attempt to predict the late 2020s. "Sports and wellness have not reached their apex." / The Trend Report 

A new sport takes off in the Bay Area, involving tricycles. / The San Francisco Chronicle

Fire rebuilding in Southern California may be on a collision course with Trump's immigration crackdowns. / The Los Angeles Times

From Los Angeles, some thoughts about how the past is not as easy to recover and rebuild after disaster strikes. / National Geographic

What happens when someone in a crowded LA movie theater yells "rape" at the screen? / Meditations in an Emergency

A 2016 documentary about David Lynch is free for anyone to watch through the end of January. / The Criterion Channel

The CDC is urging labs to accelerate testing patients hospitalized with flu to determine whether they have seasonal influenza or bird flu. / NBC News

The future of the West Coast is "hydroclimate whiplash," where, for example, mudslides are the result of wildfires followed by intense storms. / Defector

See also: In vast numbers, more homeowners who are eligible to do so are dropping their home insurance policies, even as climate risk increases. / The New York Times [+]

Imperialists who say America should annex Greenland or Canada also envision a world that's going down in flames anyway, so they may as well get rich off it. / Thinking about...

"In the spring, when it rained, I thought the rain was good. But it isn't good." Colm Tóibín on Gary Indiana's personal library, newly arrived in LA and lost to wildfire. / London Review of Books

Looking back at The Last Whole Earth Catalog: "How did all these good ecological intentions linked to tools go so wrong?" / Dada Drummer Almanach

Unrelated: "Hey man, didn't you just give the Presidential Medal of Freedom to a private equity billionaire?" It's looting season in America. / How Things Work

Reviewing a phone Interview you recorded with David Lynch only to hear dead air where his voice is supposed to be is about as Lynchian as it gets. / The Ringer

When David Lynch decided to live "the art life," he began a journey that left few creative mediums unexplored. / Welcome to Hell World

See also: From last August, "The Sound World of David Lynch." / The Wire

A 100-year-old piano virtuoso is the last surviving pupil of Sergei Rachmaninov. / Classic FM

TMN's Andrew Womack on the year in under-appreciated albums. / Andrew Womack's Newsletter

Younger fans empathize with how Joan Baez's toxic relationship with Bob Dylan is depicted in A Complete Unknown: "It's currently happening to girls everywhere." / The Guardian

See also: Bob Dylan joins TikTok days before it may be banned. / Consequence

On living in the West Village today: "We were essentially living in a museum—self-consciously, nostalgically, hopefully." / First Things

"I mean, yeah, you can have your 'story' about why you're on a walker." Catching up with a guy who had his legs surgically lengthened by three inches. / Heavies

From the archives: Photographs from a cross-country trip to document streets named after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. / The Morning News

Qatar, Egypt, and the United States announce a cease-fire deal, though Israel has yet to convene ministers to discuss it. / Reuters

Ilan Goldenberg: The most realistic scenario is that Hamas and Israel paper over their differences on post-conflict governance. / The Contrarian

Fires continue to burn in Los Angeles, and conspiracy theories continue to emerge. / The Guardian

Unrelated: "The impulse to do a smash and grab with one's audience, to retreat to some precarious platform or another, to exit the polity, is overwhelming." / The Late Review

LA's rebuilding will rely heavily on immigrants. / The Washington Post [+]

Also impacted by the fires: The livelihoods of nannies, housekeepers, and gardeners. / The Los Angeles Times

Meanwhile, so-called wellness influencers are hawking tinctures, detox products, and "parasite cleanses." / Mother Jones

The FDA's new nutrition labels may push the food industry to get healthier. / STAT

President Biden's green jobs program, the American Climate Corps, is now done. / Grist

Abortion rights supporters prevailed on ballot measures in seven of the 10 states this year, but matters may come down to judges. / KFF Health News

Dutch psychiatrists are seeing an upswing in requests for medical assistance in dying on psychiatric grounds. / Undark Magazine

"Russian roulette" may have been invented by Russian officers, but a Swiss author made it famous. / Swiss National Museum

If you wanted to store data for a century, where would you even start? / Harvard Law School Library Innovation Lab

For your weekly wanderlust, some photos and a report from a four-day bike trip through the Namib desert. / The Radavist

A new coffee machine draws water from the air. / Techradar

Yoon Suk Yeol becomes South Korea's first sitting president to be arrested. / BBC News

Stories from inside "Shein village," factories that supply the world's largest fast fashion retailer. / BBC News

Spain has experienced a migration of outsiders thanks to its golden visa program, which will expire in April. / Robb Report

Qantas delays several flights due to falling debris from SpaceX rocket launches. / Semafor

Donald Trump's former personal lawyer is said to be on "a glidepath" to becoming the next attorney general. / Politico

Unrelated: Apparently everyone who works on Capitol Hill drinks Celsius. / The Washington Post [+]

A profile of a Los Angeles man who spent years helping the homeless, who is now homeless. Meanwhile, how to spot GoFundMe scams. / The Los Angeles Times

Remembrances from growing up in Pacific Palisades, where fire was always a threat. / Mike Industries

Watch: An excellent monologue from Jimmy Kimmel about his Hollywood return. / YouTube

"I found this new encounter with social media surprisingly heartening." A man who's been off social media since 2016 downloads TikTok. / The New Yorker

Girls have been found to be losing ground in reading, math, and science "at a troubling rate." / The Wall Street Journal [+]

Some names for reasons why knowing things is hard. / Book and Sword

An AI app for creating nonconsensual nude images is getting most of its traffic from Meta platforms. / 404 Media

Casey Newton: Meta just flipped the switch that prevents misinformation from spreading in the United States. / Platformer

Zeynep Tufekci: Zuckerberg's macho posturing looks a lot like cowardice. / The New York Times [+]

The last surviving pupil of Sergei Rachmaninoff turns 100. / Classic FM

The National Weather Service issues a "particularly dangerous situation" warning for Southern California. / NPR

Since 2021, state authorities have declined to fund wildfire prevention efforts in communities devastated by the Palisades fire. / The Los Angeles Times

"Altadena Girls," a recovery fund for LA teenagers, is run by a 14-year-old whose school burned down. / TIME

See also: In national parks, "resource advisors" on fire crews protect sensitive habitats and cultural resources. / High Country News

Beijing is discussing selling TikTok's US operations to Elon Musk. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

American economists worry that nobody in government listens to them anymore. / The New York Times [+]

The US Army achieved its recruitment target last year for the first time in a decade—thanks to women. / Military.com

Global electric-vehicle sales rose 25% to a record 17 million cars in 2024. / Semafor

Things we learned about large language models over the course of last year. / Simon Willison's Weblog

Health and development experts pick buzzwords for 2025: "techquity," "enchantment," "belonging." / Goats and Soda

Themes expected to define the art market include gallery collaborations and crypto. / artsy 

Related: A judge ends a man's 11-year quest to dig up a landfill and recover $765 million in Bitcoin. / Ars Technia

Unrelated: The CEO behind a song-generating AI says most people don't enjoy most of the time they spend making music. / Futurism

From November, "The Silurian hypothesis" won the title of "most interesting hypothesis most likely to be false" in science. / Pacificklaus

What it was like being trapped on a train in the Sierra Nevada in 1952. / Smithsonian Magazine

Fans of the new vampire film Nosferatu aren't happy about young people laughing during scenes not intended to be funny. / Daily Dot

There are now at least 24 dead in the Los Angeles wildfires, with increasing winds bringing the potential this week for "explosive fire growth." / Los Angeles Times

"We're feeling the magnitude of shared suffering." TMN's Rosecrans Baldwin on the injustice of the LA fires, and the injustices that will surely follow. / GQ

Southern California is dangerously dry right now, and maps tell the story of just how parched the region is. / The Conversation

See also: How to build your own air purifier. / NPR

"Perhaps it wasn't Facebook's fact-checking systems that had a liberal bias, but reality." Elizabeth Lopatto endures three hours of Rogan and Zuckerberg. / The Verge

It's easy to remember the internet of old as always good, but it's more accurate to see it as a pendulum: "At first it disappoints you, but then it gives you hope again." / El País

Recent Gallup data show most US full-time workers want to change jobs this year, a third plan to quit no matter what, and "employees' life evaluations have reached a record low." / User Mag

See also: Is HR your friend? Probably not if they have to choose between you and your boss. / The New York Times [+]

Elon Musk's Boring Company is constructing a 68-mile tunnel system under Las Vegas—because it's privately funded, the project is moving ahead with little government oversight. / ProPublica

"It felt like an act of service." On the unspoken solidarity of flashing your brights to warn other drivers of a speed trap. / Texas Monthly

In an analysis of 160 protein powders, 47% were found to exceed safe amounts of heavy metals, including arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury. / Axios

See also: An exhaustive list of the yogurts, coffees—and even water purification tablets—that contain surprising amounts of plastic chemicals. / PlasticList

Walter White's house is up for sale. The owners lived there throughout the filming of Breaking Bad, and had to deal with an occasional pizza thrown on their roof—here's the listing. / Neatorama, Walter White's House

"Each book prescription is tailored to help clients understand emotions, gain insight, and discover new perspectives." On bibliotherapy as a means to treat depression. / Dazed

Jimmy Carter loved John Lennon's "Imagine," which was played at Carter's funeral and is hardly the anti-faith anthem critics try to make it out to be. / The Nation

Marking the beginning of a new phase of life and work by selling off a treasured eight-track collection. / Here's Where the Story Ends

A rare alignment of all the planets in the solar system will happen at the end of February. / ScienceAlert

Even as calm winds are providing firefighters in Los Angeles a chance to get ahead of the wildfires, forecasts show more rounds of wind are on the way. / Accuweather

As bad as the stress is right now for Angelenos, erroneous emergency alerts urging evacuations are only adding to the trauma. / Los Angeles Times

The Eaton Fire has devastated historic Altadena, displacing many Black families and destroying legacies. / BET

Joan Didion, 1989: "Anyone who has ever spent fire season in Los Angeles knows some of its special language." / The New Yorker

After hearing arguments this morning, the Supreme Court appears likely to uphold the TikTok ban, requiring ByteDance to divest or shut down the app in the US by Jan. 19. / Axios

See also: Local news just invented yet another fake TikTok trend: the door-kicking challenge. / User Mag

How the TikTok ban in the US would actually work: New installs of the app would be prohibited, effectively ending bug fixes and slowly eroding the app. / WIRED

Trump's advisers are looking for a public health emergency that can be used to justify plans for invoking restrictions on border migration. / The New York Times [+]

"As the argument might go, the threats that such non-physical violent acts pose are not only dire but also constantly imminent. Hence, every act of resistance is a matter of self-defense." Why did Luigi Mangione claim self defense? / Duke Center for Firearms Law

Canada is finally recognizing the life-saving work of Indigenous people, who for centuries have often been the first to help when disaster strikes British Columbia's coast. / Hakai Magazine

The science behind why bad sleep impedes the brain's ability to discard intrusive thoughts. / Scientific American

See also: A new study shows drinking coffee in the morning is associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease. / The Independent

"It could help with grief and death anxiety, and, you know, hopefully help people treat each other a little better." The scientists studying life after death. / The New York Times [+]

A history of women using thread—such as in embroidery, knitting, and crochet—as a medium for resistance. / Aeon

You must continue clicking for stimulation. / Neal.fun

California Governor Gavin Newsom says "there's no fire season—it's fire year." / The Los Angeles Times

A climate reporter in Pacific Palisades relates what it was like to lose her home. Similar: watching your home burn on a Ring camera. / New York Magazine, Curbed

Bandsplain's Yasi Salek pays emotional tribute to her burned house in Altadena. / Instagram

From 2022, a profile of the billionaire couple who use 150 billion gallons of California's water each year. / More Perfect Union

Homeowners in risky parts of California can't obtain adequate coverage as insurers flee the state. / Bloomberg 

Some of the world's biggest shipping nations back a flat tax on the industry's carbon emissions. / Semafor

"I knew nothing much about geopolitics before I left home." Interview with a war photographer. / China Underground

Remembering the panic over "political correctness" as a major American export in the 1980s and 1990s. / Slate

People in the US, UK, and Australia say they've noticed a rise in "flaking." / The Guardian

At the end of December, nearly 23 percent of people tested positive for norovirus at a sampling of clinical laboratories around the US. / Vox

Louisa Thomas explains why Magnus Carlsen, the best chess player in the world, got in trouble for wearing jeans to a tournament. / The New Yorker

Related: Jimmy Carter projected authenticity through denim. / The New York Times [+]

Unrelated: Photographs of Georgia O'Keefe at home. / The Atlantic

Migrants who successfully reach the United States use TikTok to document their new lives. / The New Yorker

A new cache of documents reveals how the CIA monitored Latino civil rights pioneers. / axios

The Heritage Foundation plans to "identify and target" editors at Wikipedia who it says are "abusing their position." / The Forward

In North Carolina, Democrats say they're experiencing "a nonviolent version of January 6." / Mother Jones
 
Wildfires spread through LA's Pacific Palisades, Altadena, Pasadena, and Sylmar. / The Los Angeles Times

"I really think this is a precursor for genocide." A former safety employee responds to Meta's new policies on speech. / Platformer 

An essay recalls the early dot-com days in San Francisco. "It seemed like everyone—in the Bay Area especially—was trying to get a piece of the action." / User Mag

Conspiracy theories swirl around the death of a software enegineer at Open AI. / The San Francisco Standard

Gisèle Pelicot doesn't see the men who raped her as aberrations, but as products of a "macho and patriarchal society." / The London Review of Books

New lithium discoveries have been made in both the US and China. / Semafor

Divers will soon move into an underwater shelter meant to be "a stepping stone to a more permanent modular habitat system." / IEEE Spectrum

Unrelated: 102,343 stuffed toys descend on an ice rink in a moment of "sweet, cuddly mayhem." / BBC News

A "hyper-realistic" robotic puppy is meant to comfort dementia patients. Meanwhile: a yakitori grill that resembles a toaster. / dezeen, Spoon & Tamago

Coming soon, a robot cat that will blow on your coffee. / TechCrunch

See also: After ruining the macchiato, Starbucks introduces a gigantic cortado. / Sprudge

With all the doomsday headlines, why continue to drink alcohol? "I enjoy doing dangerous things, and there's nothing more dangerous than defying fate." / Trying!

An Italian village forbids its residents from becoming ill—to highlight the country's decimated healthcare system. / BBC News

Unhoused people explain what it's like when city workers trash their belongings. / ProPublica

New and ongoing programs may be solving Los Angeles's biggest problems: traffic and homelessness. / The Atlantic [+]

A man was trapped in a Waymo while circling LA's airport, apparently causing him to miss his flight. / The Los Angeles Times

Unrelated: A new study finds California's squirrels beginning to eat other rodents. / CNN

Meta abandons fact-checking on Facebook and Instagram likely as a way to please President-elect Trump. / Kottke

Highlights from a trove of documents sent by a mole inside right-wing militias. / ProPublica

Ross Rosenfeld says it's a weird time in American politics to be a libertarian. / The New Republic

The Pentagon apparently tried to produce content last year with MrBeast, Kelly Clarkson, and Guy Fieri. / Rolling Stone

"Where does Taylor Swift meet the mythic?" An interview with TMN favorite Jamieson Webster, author and psychoanalyst. / Trebuchet

American dudes are visiting bookstores to read crime novels connected to hunting and fishing. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

A list of the most popular gifts received by Gen Z for Christmas this year: digital cameras, Ugg boots, peptide lip treatment. / After School

Headline of the week? "People Are Eating Their Christmas Trees, and You Can Too." / VICE

See also: A website to send yourself a letter that'll arrive on the next New Year's Eve. / Letter to 2025

"Technically, all pandemic flus start as bird flus." Everything you never wanted to know about H5N1. / Astral Codex Ten

Following the user exodus from X, Russia's "Matryoshka" disinformation network heads to Bluesky, posting videos to undermine US support of Ukraine. / The Insider

A violent criminal hacking ring has been targeting an unexpected wealth of non-public data: U-Haul user accounts. / 404 Media

"The popular vote result was almost entirely a collapse in support for Harris and Democrats, not an increase in support for Trump and MAGA." America didn't swing right, according to a new electoral analysis. / Weekend Reading

From 2021: If war correspondents reported on the MAGA riots in the same way they reported on coup attempts in other countries. / McSweeney's

Perhaps whether we are free or fated, morality and politics, science and medicine, art and literature will all go their merry or melancholy ways, unaffected. New books on free will. / The Hedgehog Review

A new documentary and book chronicle how New Wave music played a vital role for Vietnamese Americans growing up in Orange County in the 1980s. / Hyperallergic

Thanks to Illinois's newest and largest solar farm, all of Chicago's city buildings now run on 100% clean power. / Grist

When a geologist fought with cartographers over how to accurately shade relief maps in order to account for natural sunlight. / Swiss National Museum

How to ditch Duolingo and actually learn Japanese: First, you're going to need a grammar guide. / Unseen Japan

See also: Why Japanese cities are truly awesome. / Noahpinion

Ana Gavrilovska's favorite jazz albums of 2024. / Sick Sad Motherslug

An advent-style calendar of everything entering the public domain in 2025. / The Public Domain Review

Where every line is exposition: a very Hallmark supercut Christmas. / YouTube

"Of those 200 casualties, only 10 were confirmed as known Hamas operatives." Interviews with active-duty IDF soldiers about what's really happening in Gaza. (Content warning) / Haaretz

See also: 10 conflicts to watch in 2025. / International Crisis Group

As Biden departs office, a federal appeals court strikes down the FCC's authority to impose net neutrality rules. / The Verge

Right-wing attacks on Wikipedia follow a familiar playbook—from cherry-picked claims of bias, to questionable demands for balance, to attacking the entity's right to exist. / Citation Needed

When viral memes of drones doing amazing things are really just demonstrations of military capabilities. / Joshua Citarella's Newsletter

Climate change and increased Arctic development increase the risk for the thaw and spread of microbes that are more diverse and complex than the viruses we know. / Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

This week, Australia's new climate legislation takes effect, requiring business owners to disclose their emissions and deliver plans for how they'll approach future risks. / ABC

See also: "We are often pushed to equate 'climate action' with buying different stuff, when what we really need is to step off the treadmill altogether." / Slate

Mexico says it's creating a phone app for migrants to alert relatives and the nearest consulate in case they're detained by US immigration. / Axios

The Year That Was and Wasn't: We asked some of our favorite journalists, writers, and thinkers: What were the most important events of 2024, and what were the least? / The Morning News

See also: Links galore in 2024's Year in Weird and Stupid Futures. / Read Max

"In the search for the invisible components of the universe, dark matter reached a discouraging milestone." The year in physics. / Quanta

Compared to women, do American men really read less fiction? "It doesn't look like anyone has actually fact-checked this question in quite a while." / Vox

"A typical shot frames two characters, waist up, in profile as the camera slowly dollies across them, a slow and constant whir meant to inject motion into an otherwise inert frame." Why Netflix looks like that. / n+1

In 1900, a tinkerer set out to improve the light bulb's illumination abilities, and accidentally ended up inventing the snow globe. / Smithsonian Magazine