But here's Robin Givhan — in "Why Is Shopping an Abyss of Blah?" (NYT) — "Shopping has become a drag. A bore. An obligation. A thing you do alone on your phone, not out in the world.... Shopping should be about lust. Instead, shopping has become a slog.... Our senses are flattened, our appetites dulled. Nothing seems quite right.... Shopping has become a grotesquerie of commodified consumerism and environmental waste.... Retailers became more corporate and mimed soliloquies on status and trends. Shoppers’ aesthetic discernment grew weak and flabby. A once lively conversation between sellers and buyers quieted. Shopping lost its fizz...."
December 23, 2025
I thought it was just me, but apparently it's a big, sad trend.
I don't like shopping. I can't make myself go (other than food shopping). Occasionally, I consider forcing myself to go shopping — find some clothes to try on and buy at least something — but I'm beset with boredom, and I do not go. Have I even set foot in a clothes store in the past year? Somehow I pictured other women going into the shops, getting excited about clothing items, and splurging on things.
"It begins in 1976. Epstein is a teacher at the Dalton School in Manhattan, and he gets invited to a reception at an art gallery, and he goes kind of grudgingly...."
"And at the reception, he bumps into the parent of one of his students who is impressed with his math chops. And the parent suggests that maybe he is wasting his time being a teacher and instead should consider a career in Wall Street. And the parent then introduces Epstein to a guy named Ace Greenberg.... a top executive at Bear Stearns, which is this scrappy Wall Street investment bank. And one of the ways in which it's scrappy is that it is not going to hire Ivy League MBAs. It is looking for what Ace Greenberg likes to call PSDs, which stands for poor, smart, and deeply desirous of being rich. And Epstein goes in to meet Greenberg for a job interview, and Epstein fits the bill. Greenberg is bowled over by the guy's charisma and charm and apparent math prowess and offers him a job. So he arrives at Bear Stearns and he quickly becomes the protege to some of the firm's top executives. One is Greenberg, the guy who hired him, who is so taken with Epstein that he introduces him to his own 20-year-old daughter and they start dating, which affords Epstein something akin to protected status at the firm...."
From today's excellent episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, "The Origins of Jeffrey Epstein."
So: a scrappy executive enamored of the idea that there are PSDs out there — that's the explanation....
"What we have is Karoline Leavitt's soundbite claiming they are evildoers in America (rapists, murderers, etc.). But isn't there much more to ask in light of the torture that we are revealing?"
"Tom Homan and Stephen Miller don't tend to be shy. I realize we've emailed the DHS spox, but we need to push much harder to get these principals on the record."
Also at Axios: "Yanked '60 Minutes' episode aired in Canada."
Wrote Bari Weiss, in an internal memo justifying her action, noting the failure to "present the administration's argument."
It's easy to find the whole segment on line, but I'm not going to link to it.
Here's the NYT article about the controversy: "Turmoil at CBS News After Bari Weiss Pulls a ‘60 Minutes’ Segment/Several veteran correspondents questioned how Ms. Weiss, the new CBS News editor in chief, had handled the segment, after she defended her decision on a call with the newsroom." Excerpt:
December 22, 2025
"I love the way an audiobook brings me one step closer to a story, removing the middleman of paper or a screen. I’m not just hovering over the action, I’m in it. Channeling it."
Writes Elisabeth Egan, in "Why I Stopped Reading and Embraced Audiobooks/On the joys of having stories in my ears — and yes, listening counts" (NYT).
This is a genuinely new point in what is for me a very old question/"question." (What's the question? Do audiobooks "count"? What does that even mean?) Egan also makes many of the familiar points about audiobooks: You can do other things while listening — chores, crafts, exercise — and it's good for people with vision troubles, great for drifting off to sleep, etc. etc.
But I love this idea that the audiobook is more intimate, bringing you closer to the material. Is that even true?! I think she's saying something about the experience of hearing in contrast to seeing. When seeing, you are looking at a physical object outside of your head. Or so it seems. The words are out there, on the page, your eyes allow you to sense them. But sound feels like it has entered your head, almost like your own thoughts, especially if you're using earphones. And yet both hearing and seeing happen in your brain, through a nerve located deep inside the organ that is part of your head — your optic nerve in the back of your eye or your auditory nerve in your inner ear.
So the intimacy of hearing as opposed to seeing is a subjective feeling, don't you agree? But then the question becomes whether we prefer this intimacy when reading? I suspect that by using vision to consume a book, you maintain a more sharply critical mind. The page is out there. It's the other. We're suspicious. Or admiring. The audiobook reaches us differently. It's automatically already inside us, stirring us like music, like the murmurings of a loved one.
First Ladies read a Christmas story.
It's not a competition. We cherish diversity of expression. It's all a matter of taste...ADDED: Sorry, I didn't see the slur on Melania's name until I put this up. I am offering the contrast among the ladies in a neutral spirit. Anyone who assumes Michelle's reading is superior to Melania's is simply being very conventional.
AND: Here's the full reading by Melania:
"My job is to make sure that all stories we publish are the best they can be. Holding stories that aren’t ready for whatever reason..."
"... that they lack sufficient context, say, or that they are missing critical voices — happens every day in every newsroom. I look forward to airing this important piece when it’s ready."
Said Bari Weiss, quoted in "'60 Minutes’ Pulled a Segment. A Correspondent Calls It ‘Political.' Sharyn Alfonsi, a '60 Minutes' correspondent, criticized the network’s decision to remove her reporting from Sunday’s edition of the show" (NYT).
Said Bari Weiss, quoted in "'60 Minutes’ Pulled a Segment. A Correspondent Calls It ‘Political.' Sharyn Alfonsi, a '60 Minutes' correspondent, criticized the network’s decision to remove her reporting from Sunday’s edition of the show" (NYT).
ADDED: Oh, for the golden age of "60 Minutes":
"I didn't bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to de-platform."
Said JD Vance, quoted in an NPR article by the Associate Press with the mean-spirited headline "Vance refuses to set red lines over bigotry at Turning Point USA's convention."
"Greenland is not for sale and will not be for sale, so you can forget about your plans for Greenland to become part of the USA."
"Nothing about us without us, and Greenland’s future is solely up to us. A majority does not want to become Americans, we do not want to be taken over by another country...."
Said Aaja Chemnitz, "a Greenlandic politician serving in the Danish Parliament," quoted in "Trump appoints Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry as special envoy to Greenland/The Danish territory has long been in the president’s sights. Trump said the Republican governor “understands how essential Greenland is to our National Security" (WaPo).
From the text of the article: "Trump has said repeatedly that the United States will 'get' Greenland, casting it as a national security objective for the U.S. His administration also covets Greenland for its untapped rare earth metals, an industry dominated by China globally. In April, The Washington Post reported that the White House was preparing an estimate of what it would cost the federal government to control Greenland as a territory."
"How big is Greenland?" — that question came up in a novel I'm reading. A child asks the question of her father who was telling her a story about the Greenlandic ice sheet melting and flooding the world and had said "Imagine, a slab of ice the size of Greenland!" The father "had no idea," only that Greenland "was notorious for being smaller than it looked on a Mercator projection, but he felt sure it was large, given that its melting would cause global sea levels to rise by something like seven meters."
The WaPo article offers an answer to the question: Greenland is "around three times the size of Texas."
Said Aaja Chemnitz, "a Greenlandic politician serving in the Danish Parliament," quoted in "Trump appoints Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry as special envoy to Greenland/The Danish territory has long been in the president’s sights. Trump said the Republican governor “understands how essential Greenland is to our National Security" (WaPo).
From the text of the article: "Trump has said repeatedly that the United States will 'get' Greenland, casting it as a national security objective for the U.S. His administration also covets Greenland for its untapped rare earth metals, an industry dominated by China globally. In April, The Washington Post reported that the White House was preparing an estimate of what it would cost the federal government to control Greenland as a territory."
"How big is Greenland?" — that question came up in a novel I'm reading. A child asks the question of her father who was telling her a story about the Greenlandic ice sheet melting and flooding the world and had said "Imagine, a slab of ice the size of Greenland!" The father "had no idea," only that Greenland "was notorious for being smaller than it looked on a Mercator projection, but he felt sure it was large, given that its melting would cause global sea levels to rise by something like seven meters."
The WaPo article offers an answer to the question: Greenland is "around three times the size of Texas."
"His daughter Lana... recalls flying to Austin to visit Nelson and failing to recognize him until her son shouted, 'That’s Grandpa!'"
"The last time she’d seen him, in Nashville, he had short hair and wore country-club clothes. Now he had long hair and a beard and wore a T-shirt, a bandanna, and an earring. 'He went from jazz musician to hippie,' she said.
In Texas, Nelson cut back on the drinking. His face thinned out. His features sharpened. He ran five miles a day through the Hill Country, practiced martial arts, kept smoking weed—it tamped the rage down, he said—and read spiritual tracts and 'The Power of Positive Thinking.' People who killed the mood didn’t stay in his orbit for long. 'Somewhere along the way, I realized that you have to imagine what you want and then get out of the way and let it happen,' he told me."
From "How Willie Nelson Sees America/On the road with the musician, his band, and his family" (The New Yorker).
"He has given so many people hope that there’s a chance to beat the bad guys..."
Said Nicki Minaj (talking to Erika Kirk about President Trump):
December 21, 2025
Solstice sunrise — 7:21, 7:36.
The solstice came at 9:03 a.m., the sunrise a bit earlier. Meade was out there in the bitter cold, walking the very rough and slippery terrain that I, in my weakness, eschewed. His pix:
Write about whatever you like.
Write about whatever you like.
Another snapshot from a presidential biography.
Texted, just now, from my son Chris, who reads presidential biographies:
The book is "The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism" (commission earned).
I think there's some fat-shaming there, no? Or fat-celebrating. Also: "Venezuelan troubles."
Well, what would you do with "a 'plain vanilla' box"?
After buying a “plain vanilla” box, a Chicago trio brought in an interior designer who blended their aesthetics and added elements like a moody den for socializing and a three-person bed.
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) December 18, 2025
🔗: https://t.co/b2Z4qO0bzg pic.twitter.com/2P6CpcN2xI
"This is the open question. When people are doing something risky or dangerous together, how much is one person responsible for the other?"
Said a University of Innsbruck law professor, quoted in "A Woman Froze to Death on an Alpine Trek. Is Her Boyfriend to Blame? A man in Austria was charged in the death of his girlfriend after leaving her behind, in a case testing ideas of freedom and responsibility in the mountains" (NYT).
The case has brought to the fore a legal doctrine known as Garantenstellung, a broad concept in Germanic law that establishes a responsibility to intervene for people who have a “duty of care” in a range of situations, including parents caring for children or a driver who hits a pedestrian — and can put liability on those people. It is often invoked on trips with hired guides, but has rarely been applied to a private hike like the couple’s excursion, experts said. Prosecutors argue that the man was liable for his girlfriend’s death because he planned the trip and was much more experienced than her....
The Eternal Cher.
Last night on SNL:
BONUS: Arianna Grande takes the Macauley Culkin role in a "Home Alone" takeoff... and really looks the part:
ADDED: I watched that second video after posting it, and I just want to add that I don't think they'd have gone through with it if they hadn't already put so much money and effort into producing it. The idea of beginning with a lovely Christmas celebration and descending into mayhem calls to mind the Conan O'Brien Christmas party and its horrible aftermath.
"This is the trap of being the person who always steps up: No one else will. As long as I shouldered the entire burden..."
"... my family had no reason to develop the skills and awareness to share it. It wasn’t really malicious on their part. They simply existed in a system where holidays happened automatically, and they’d never been forced to examine the machinery that made it work. The pattern is familiar to many eldest daughters, who inherit the invisible work of family cohesion through a mysterious combination of gender and birth order. We become the keepers of tradition and the executors of emotional labor, and we worry about the horrible things that might happen if we ever stopped — holiday chaos, forgotten family members or, worst of all, no longer being the woman who can 'do it all.' Our competence becomes a flattering cage.... I am here to tell you: You can step out of that cage. I have. People are surprisingly capable when they’re given no other choice...."
From "Why I Gave Up Holiday Hosting," by Elizabeth Austin, who hosted her family's Christmas dinner for 20 years.
From "Why I Gave Up Holiday Hosting," by Elizabeth Austin, who hosted her family's Christmas dinner for 20 years.
ADDED: It's not automatic that others will step up and make Christmas Christmas. It may very well be that everyone who might have stepped up will simply participate in the family-wide realization: Christmas was Mom. It's an echo of the childhood realization that Santa Claus is your parents. Once you have that realization, the magic is gone. You might have someone in your family whose newfound capability takes the form of becoming the new Mom, the new embodiment of Christmas — Christmas understood as a set of family traditions imbued with love and excitement. But the newfound capability might take the form of analyzing whether any of it mattered enough to play-act the traditions year after year. It might take the form of recapturing the religious narrative. The idea of just getting other people to cook the dinner might strike the younger folks as threadbare and sad.
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