“It would be nice if real life worked like this story. The world would be a better place if otherworldly spirits troubled the sleep of mercilessly exploitative men and gave to them all a vision of the celebration destined to follow their inevitable death. But it doesn’t work that way. The Spirits of Christmas aren’t coming with sweet dreams and nightmare visions to compel such men to repent. The only way to show them the inevitable misery of their Yet To Come is to show it to them now, in the waking world.”
“Confused Why Your Spotify Wrapped Sound Town Is Burlington, Vermont? So Are the People of Burlington.”
“After over 30,000 language lovers around the world got involved to help refine our shortlist of eight words, we are pleased to announce that the Oxford Word of the Year 2023 is rizz.”
Wait, there’s a sequel to This Is Spinal Tap in the works? How did I now know that?
“Santos’s next act, of course, may very well be prison. And it’s possible that our fickle attention economy, having picked Santos up, will just as quickly put him down. But he has already exploited multiple pathologies of that attention economy, rising to Congress thanks in no small part to a deficit of timely attention, then riding the surfeit of it to celebrity; if you think he can’t leverage this into long-term relevance—who knows, maybe even a political comeback—I have some precedents to show you. If he does, it will be a feat inextricable from his current status as a media object. Selling himself as one might just be his greatest grift, perpetuated in plain sight.”
“A WIRED investigation into internet censorship in US schools found widespread use of filters to censor health, identity, and other crucial information. Students say it makes the web entirely unusable.”
Here’s a reason to skip watching the Frasier revival, if you’re looking for one.
“The case of the Zieglers, the Florida GOP traditional values power couple, caught up in a case of three-ways and alleged rape took several turns for the weird and the worse over the weekend. […] The story has a complicated, uncanny dynamic because, on the one hand, it’s that old as the hills story of a family values Republican caught up in sexual practices which, if harmless themselves for consenting adults, don’t at all square with their public personas or policy agenda. On the other, buried in that schadenfreude-y story of Republicans with their pants down is a very credible accusation of rape.”
“The reason I have so little patience for NYT’s decision to dedicate the resources of three senior reporters to warn about the dangers of a second Trump term is not that I disagree about the second term. They’re right that it would be far worse. It’s that the same reporters continue to downplay Trump’s past corruption — some of which Maggie Haberman specifically enabled — and outright ignore the ongoing effects of it.”
RIP, Norman Lear, legendary TV producer and screenwriter.
“You never know when these moments are going to sneak up on you. I kind of held it together, [but] then we were singing ‘movin’ on up to the East Side’ and I heard myself saying ‘to a deluxe apartment in the sky,’ I just lost it. Because he’s going to some deluxe apartment in the sky.”
“He is making this choice because the Committee has demonstrated time and again it uses closed-door sessions to manipulate, even distort, the facts and misinform the American public—a hearing would ensure transparency and truth in these proceedings.”
“Within hours of Tuberville’s decision, the Senate confirmed hundreds of nominations.” About damn time.
RIP, Andrea Fay Friedman, actor best known for Life Goes On.
RIP, India, Bengal tiger who made national news two years ago when he went for a stroll through the streets of west Houston.
“Elijah Wood and Other Actors Were Duped Into Making Russian-Propaganda Videos on Cameo”.
“European Union negotiators clinched a deal Friday on the world’s first comprehensive artificial intelligence rules, paving the way for legal oversight of AI technology that has promised to transform everyday life and spurred warnings of existential dangers to humanity.”
RIP, Ryan O’Neal, Oscar-nominated actor best known for Paper Moon, Love Story, and What’s Up Doc.
Who is coming to dinner? If you are a Republican and your guest is a Nazi sympathizer the you are in the clear! The Texas GOP executive committee says that is just fine.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/04/texas-republican-party-vote-antisemitism
Also, guess who went in for some super profiteering that made inflation much worse. Many of the biggest companies, who control the prices of most of the products we buy.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/12/7/2210250/-New-report-unsurprisingly-shows-that-profiteers-have-raised-prices-well-above-the-rise-in-costs?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web