Inquiring minds at a house divided want to know: Do Santa and his elves wrap gifts or just dump them in front of the Christmas for all to see on Christmas morning?

Yes please! Don't cross the digital picket line. Don't read LA Times stories online Friday and don't share them on social media.

A good end-of-year rabbit hole: curiosity about Shohei Ohtani’s contract > wondering about the history of the time value of money and usury > a stimulating 2016 essay by Alex Mayyasi historicizing money and morals

I haven’t been able to stop thinking of Sydney Smith’s DO YOU REMEMBER?, all about memory and a loss that remains ambiguous for the reader. The book does what my favorite #picturebooks always do: hold our youngest readers in highest regard. holidayhouse.com/book/do-you-...

Wonder Foods! Meat Biscuits! 19th century artificially digested foods! Racist cornflakes! www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520...

Descartes thought a lot about pictures, going so far as to make them himself! His visual expression reimagined - and drew debate about - what physics (i.e. natural philosophy) could be in the 17th century. www.psupress.org/books/titles...

I am immensely grateful to @jaivirdi.bluesky.social and @cethompson.bsky.social for organizing the Authors Roundtable series at the 2023 @historyscience.bsky.social conference. My Science & Politics panel with #ErikConway, @naomioreskes.bsky.social, #TamarNovick, and #TimothyLorek was great. (1/3)

Calling all readers of Margaret Wise Brown’s _Little Fur Family_: what do you do when you get to the penultimate page? Do you read it? Sing it? And if you sing it, what’s the tune?