“It turns out that banishing the slur from public discourse was, in fact, important. Because now it’s back and it turns out that it does matter when subtext becomes actual text, when terrible people enable open hatred and bigotry, encouraging others to emulate them, degrading us all.”

This Yglesias piece in the NYT is horrifically bad. Almost every "fact" it cites is provably false. At best it is cocktail party banter from a pundit who knows nothing of energy. At worst, it was cut/paste from oil industry talking points. So, a rebuttal: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/o...

Canadians are still super pissed at their treatment by the White House people around the world — Europe, Asia — are buying fewer American goods and traveling to the US less … … but with Canadians it’s even moreso booze: spectrumnews1.com/ky/louisvill... tourism: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/t...

it's the holiday season! which means it's time for some feel-good reading here's my two-part analysis of "the goriest fight scenes from the iliad" you're welcome clivethompson.medium.com/the-goriest-... clivethompson.medium.com/the-goriest-...

The newsletter is out! This week: some math tips for members of the Cabinet. www.howtoreadthisch.art/its-beginnin...

Because we all need a bit of optimism, today's new entry for the Historical #Dictionary of #ScienceFiction is "solarpunk". Apparently coined in a 2008 blog post; most recent example from @clivethompson.bsky.social. A few more of this sort are in the queue. sfdictionary.com/view/2916/so...

wait how did I not know this thing existed bsky.app/profile/iss-...

This drove me crazy about my kids’ MS & HS education — & it was a trend that seemed v clearly driven by the standardized testing emphasis on learning to “solve” fictional passages like puzzles, instead of immersing yourself in whole works of literature

Anti-vaxxism is an ideology with maybe the dumbest combination of pointless and evil that has ever existed bsky.app/profile/nyti...

Rope and string are some of humanity's oldest technologies ... ... and catalytic: They're tech that made *other* tools and technology possible we are "homo cordage" @ferrisjabr.bsky.social wrote an amazing piece about it item 12 in my latest "Linkfest", free here: buttondown.com/clivethompso...

If I didn’t see this myself on Truth Social I’d assume it was some phishing site

behold "Eschersque" ... ... a fun little browser game loosely based on M.C. Escher's famous stylings you use the spacebar to "flip" the landscape and help navigate through not hard; kind of soothing to play item #3 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free here: buttondown.com/clivethompso...

New gig! Extremely excited. See you at the theater… 🎭 www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/bus...

This is INSANE www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/t... and these are our closest allies!

Did you know that there's a function in Excel to turn regular numbers ... ... into Roman numerals? and back again? to convert a number into Thai Baht? More "weird excel functions" in item 4 of my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free here: buttondown.com/clivethompso...

Excellent @joshtpm.bsky.social essay on the unsettling parallels between the "nabobs" of late 18th century -- i.e. British dudes getting insanely wealthy plundering India, and then deforming politics back home ... ... with the rise of tech billionaires today: talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/will-...

Holy CRAP. Retired engineer takes random pics of *kids*, without consent or attribution, bins them into “autistic” or “not autistic”, and uploads that “data” for free on Kaggle. Well over a HUNDRED papers are published, 38 in Springer Nature, 25 in IEEE, using it. And no reviewers objected? WTF.🧪

In addition to all of the other benefits already reported about NYC congestion pricing, "In the first six months of the program, air pollution – in the form of particulate matter 2.5 micrometers and smaller – dropped by 22% in the Congestion Relief Zone (CRZ)" news.cornell.edu/stories/2025...

also always deeply funny that every sci-fi video game from 1999-2014 was trying to be Aliens, and copied everything except the...working class woman protagonist

I wanted dinner recommendations so I scraped 13,000+ London restaurants and accidentally discovered Google Maps is running a shadow economy. Anyway here's a dashboard and a political economy thesis: open.substack.com/pub/laurenle...

One theme here is the speed of American institutional collapse. “It took Erdoğan 15 years to do what Trump did in 100 days. If [Americans] do not accept the fact that this is a long game, and it will be brutal, I think you won’t have the patience and stamina to bear it.”

"Starting Jan. 1, in six states selected to take part in a federal pilot program, traditional Medicare recipients will face a new hurdle to get certain procedures covered -- private AI companies that get paid based on how many claims they deny..." www.kuow.org/stories/thou...

Holy shit. Reuters reporting that new admin instructions on visas are if you worked at a platform in trust & safety or content moderation or on fact checking or online safety at an platform you *and your loved ones* are ineligible for H-1B visa. www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...

One of the most disturbing things about the U.S. government getting themselves into the anti-vaccine game is that it is a time-release poison pill. It will take a few years before the worst of the harm is visible to enough people that they will truly understand what has been done to them.

just for the record, I would much prefer to live in a time where all it takes to support hundreds of good local jobs is to wake up every day and buy a newspaper for a nickel from a legally employed minor with a cool hat

So: "phytomining"! you take land where metals (like silver) are mixed into the soil you seed the land with "hyperaccumulators" -- plants that suck up metal as they grow when the crops are mature, harvest and burn them voila metals item #7 in my latest "Linkfest": buttondown.com/clivethompso...

for centuries, ghosts in English stories haunted geographic locations -- graveyards, bridges, crossroads sometimes individual people then in 1764 Walpole wrote "The Castle of Otranto", and invented ... ... the haunted *house* item #13 in my latest "Linkfest": buttondown.com/clivethompso...

This is the way. 😎

… and he SERVED ✨

These are amazing! (And, of course, I have a related book to sell! Check out “Empire of the Sum” for the story of how calculator watches got started in the first place: shadycharacters.co.uk/books/empire... .)

Casio just celebrated its 50th anniversary by producing a huge gallery of dozens of its digital watches, from the 70s to today they are gorgeous beasts here are are three, including the "tv remote" one from 1993 item #8 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free here: buttondown.com/clivethompso...

behold the gorgeous "aerial embroidery" of Victoria Rose Richards it's the landscape as seen from a plane, except as stitchwork Item #1 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free to read/subscribe to here: buttondown.com/clivethompso...

so, this kid popped a wheelie for 93 miles I've done lots of bike rides of 93 miles or more, but I used *both wheels*, which now feels like ... cheating? this guy is metal Item 2 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free to read/subscribe here: buttondown.com/clivethompso...

I think it's bad that the president is constantly saying things that would get you immediately removed from any work happy hour or neighborhood barbecue

I sat for a long while with my complicated feelings about "vibe coding". It is _genuinely_ empowering for many — opening a door to creating with code that otherwise would never exist. Also? It enables a dangerous dependency that could be a path to serfdom for coders. www.anildash.com/2025/12/02/v...

LEGS what a drag who needs em www.pcmag.com/news/microso...

Print your own Grid Paper, any size, any kinda squares, online with this tool (via @benbrown.bsky.social ) grid-paper.daverupert.com?gridtype=two...

Just imagining how much better it would be if ALL news stories about vaccine-preventable illnesses were illustrated with pictures of people with the disease, not pictures of needle injections. If you must show something that people will find scary & unpleasant, make it the disease, not the cure.

The secret to early retirement; dine out rarely, fly economy and be a Google employee making $390,000/year married to a fellow Google employee 17 years older than you who likely makes twice as much as you.

I am slowly arriving at the final phase, which is acceptance now I realize and accept reality people are just not gonna stop using the word “impactful” I’ll just need to get used to it

Does anyone want a survivorship bias shortbread

In case you’re wondering why Pete Hegseth is freaking out about a congressional video reminding the military not to participate in illegal orders:

More good news about coffee: www.kcl.ac.uk/news/coffee-...

Black bear Red fox Moose Muskellunge Raccoon (10 years in the Canadian Boy Scouts and a lot of time tramping around northern Ontario)

I always suggest that people think about what urban centres like New York or London were like 150 years ago — dangerous, unbelievably polluted air and water, desperately inequitable, few trees or green space. And then imagine building the cities where we look back to *today* and see the same thing.

What would Waldo do?

As @rusty.todayintabs.com pointed out a while back, this is why tech bros need poststructuralism. Language is a tool for thought that we mistake for thought itself

when we say we want more streets to be pedestrianized, this is what we mean

As the year comes to an end, I'm reposting some of the comics I made this year, including this ridiculous thing.

yes, hello, I would like to place an order for everyone’s funniest stories of holiday food-related family grudges / drama / chaotic incidents / lore I feel like we need this