In case you didn't know... Both male & female Reindeer grow antlers, but males lose them in late Autumn. All Santa’s reindeer are therefore female, which means Rudolph is persistently misgendered.

James Merril’s poem “Christmas Tree,” written while he was dying of AIDS. 1995.

Second anniversary of our Apple TV’s spectacular attempt to understand me asking for “Hercule Poirot’s Christmas”

Happy Wreath of Khan season to all who celebrate

I also want to say thank you to the person who introduced me to the French word 'beaucoup' this year. It means a lot.

Sincerely one of the funniest things the WSJ has ever written or done. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anth...

NB: When I, a professor of law, profess that an act is unlawful, I am not doing it to inform the lawbreaker, but rather to inform you, the reader. So the question “what, like you think he cares?” is inapposite. The question is whether *you* care. I think you should, which is why I bother.

I'm at that stage of work where you go 'Tee hee, I can put this off until January, which is several years away. I'm so clever!'

I'm sharing this here, as I have on Facebook and Instagram, but there's no account on here to share from, and I just think this is wonderful. A really good balance of design and implementation, and appears to achieve everything it set out to do, and it *SO* appeals to my inner 'work nerd'.

The is a taxi driver in Ballaghadereen called Abdul. But locals call him Abdul Abhaile. (“ag dul abhaile”is Irish for “going home”)

You've heard of Elf on the Shelf but how about

Greta Thunberg could've become a cuddly celebrity activist, giving talks about sustainability at Davos to audiences of people who've been to Epsein's Island. It's to her eternal credit that she chose to do the exact opposite.

When the heist goes wrong

Virginia Heffernan wrote this shortly after the 2016 election and it still holds true

Saying that the European Convention on Human Rights has gone too far is like saying that seat belts have gone too far. Because really, seat belts are non invasive, a minor thing, something you hardly notice. That is, of course, until things get really bad. Then you’re really glad about the seat belt

This how you’re *supposed* to waste your time on the internet.

We saw the prototype of the Nero Doctrine with Twitter. The goal wasn't to make it profitable or "free." The goal was to break the one place where news broke faster than the state could spin it. They bought the town square not to speak in it, but to burn it down so we’d have nowhere else to gather.

12 dead at a mass shooting at a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach.💔 A 43-year-old father of two, Ahmed al Ahmed, snuck up & tackled a gunman to disarm him. Ahmed was shot twice. Both Jewish & Muslim faiths teach that “to save one life is to save all humanity.” Let us hold fast to our humanity.❤️

I guess it's fitting that it's a reimagined, worse version of someone else's artwork

Stopping immigration won’t return you to a wonderful past, but it might deprive you of a wonderful future.

philosophy (n.) the art of finding ingenious ways to make the facts fit your intuitions

I don't think even the wonkiest high seas policy wonks I work with are ready to grasp the absolute global chaos that will be unleashed if major powers start deciding that they no longer need to defer to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Trying to think through this. This requires there be work: a) not so mission critical you're paying humans to do it b) useful enough you'll pay to have an agent built c) AI will be good at d) that carries limited legal risks so you can tolerate screw ups Sure this exists. Less sure of scale.

choo choo, motherfucker

Yep

I don't suppose the competition for the FIFA Peace Prize could have been fixed, could it?

The Four Seasons Total Landscaping Peace Prize.

If I was a West Indian cricket fan I'd 100% be posting about how sad it is to see the decline of English cricket and how the world needs a strong England.

Want to hear my theory of theories? Theories are a form of knowledge transfer: knowledge that has been acquired in one case can be applied to another. But the problem is that you need to be sure that the different cases are similar in all relevant aspects and that’s where use of theory can go wrong.

The Nobel Prize committee should announce the World Cup winner tomorrow

Not Irish? You won't have heard of the Late Late Toy Show - an Irish Christmas tradition since 1975. Imagine if your biggest late night chat show did a 3 hour Christmas special with dancing kids, Toy demos and Make A Wish stunts. And every Irish person on the planet has to watch

Nerd humor coming your way 😂

Farage can't hit back at Badenoch without confirming the very suspicions he is desperately trying to refute.

Yup

Ho Ho Ho to your house!

This is wonderful! youtu.be/PNmcF6eRE7w?...

So, older than Shamima Begum was when she ran away from home?

An addendum to today's post paulkrugman.substack.com/p/trump-pro-...

Indeed. This is not the BBC's job and to make it worse, in the same piece, Chris Mason again lurches into opinion and gives government carte blanche when he absolutely should not have!

Cyber Monday?

Seconded. That last line hits hard.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…

I was going to comment on the news about the latest UK political party, but I've now fallen out with myself.

Latest from Your Party conference debate on dual membership... Chair: "We're going to have to cut the mic [of the speaker]. We have to keep order. We have to keep order!" The speaker wouldn't stop speaking. Chair: "My glass of wine later is turning into a bottle."

There's one trot faction, meeting in the hall; One trot faction, meeting in the hall; And if one trot faction, should start an ugly brawl; There'll be two trot factions, meeting in the hall...

Problem: you have two left wing parties in British politics. Solution: start a new left wing party to unify the movement Problem: you now have four left wing parties in British politics