Come on WaPo. This feature of American journalism where they'll report on wars, disasters & crimes and then suddenly turn prudish—won't someone think of the children?—baffles me. If the story is bigotry in the GOP, the reporter owes us Fuentes's racist comments about Usha Vance.

I am very proud of the work The Economist Educational Foundation does in teaching children around the world to think critically about the news. I hope you will consider donating to the charity as it seeks to reach 1m children globally in 2026: bit.ly/3YFqomo

There isn't a reaction GIF of Andy Rooney giving his usual grumpy face, but there should be. Younger readers may not even have heard of the concept of must-see news TV. But 60 Minutes was. My parents, not particularly political, never missed it and it is a beloved early-80s memory.

Read about the Economist Educational Foundation’s work on news literacy in schools, which I’m proud and happy to support with some time every month or so, and which you can help too. economist.com/leaders/2025...

Slang, and me, have a Christmas outing in the current double-issue of the Economist. www.economist.com/interactive/...

Read the excellent piece by @lanegreene.bsky.social and marvel at the intoxicating interactive by @fteoldi.bsky.social here www.economist.com/interactive/...

The best Christmassy, but not Christmas, films

It’s like a Rorschach test: they see an immigrant with a gun and decide the problem is immigrants.

Give him the FIFA Fields Medal for mathematics.

Each December we try to identify the place that has improved the most, whether economically, politically or in any other way that matters. Here’s our pick for 2025

Not even the Kennedy-Trump Center.

Gift link, probably the funniest thing the Wall Street Journal has done this year.

This is fabulous. Probably nobody's going to know to buy it for me so I'll unload my own donkey and buy my own copy of Adam's book after the holiday,...

This is some seriously awful slut-shaming—and biology. A Vox local counsellor in Spain says that "The woman who decides to have an abortion could have decided before having the orgasm that the child caused her."

I didn’t know Uniqlo’s founder was Japan’s richest man. That puts him in a small category with Spain’s richest man, Armancio Ortega, founder of Zara/Inditex.

Worth remembering: Modern Standard Arabic (“classical” or fusha) is also a foreign language to Moroccans, whose Arabic dialect is so different that MSA (as elsewhere in the Arab world) is laboriously and often only partially learned in schools. Not saying more Arabic is a bad idea. Just saying.

Good read on an oddly interesting and contested topic. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

I don't know if I remember this kind of three-fer happening before. I wrote my "slop" column before but published after Macquarie also chose "AI slop". Now M-W. I did say I felt unusually confident about this year's choice...

Does Trump count each renewed round of fighting-and-ceasefire as another war ended?

Oh WSJ social person, I am sorry for this but Mick Jagger: frontman *Keith Richards*: guitarist, the man in your picture, the subject of this story.

This is a Simpsons bit.

It exists!

'Merry' is an adverb in this case.

This week all the photos in the Britain section of The Economist are the work of the just-passed Martin Parr. I was never a fan of his style, which always felt vaguely mean to its subjects to me. But you have to give him great credit for recognisability & vision, and I enjoyed our little tribute.

I never knew until stumbling over this today that Gerald Scarfe did at least one cover for us—this is 1976, 3 years before that handwriting and style would become famous for "The Wall".

A new print dictionary is the opposite of online slop... www.merriam-webster.com/collegiate-d...

That or trusting only information whose source you know might one day matter again. It's hard to be an optimist at the moment. But as slop supply approaches infinity its value surely has to approach zero.

He felt the need to deny "shithole countries" in Trump 1. Now it's a laugh line for him, and an audience member also shouted it out yesterday. abcnews.go.com/Politics/wir...

BREAKING: Supreme Court agrees to hear Trump v. Barbara, a case teeing up the constitutionality of his order rescinding birthright citizenship. Oral argument is likely in March or April with a decision in June.

Not a mention of Russian aggression. But centrist democratic Europeans, you have a target on your back. economist.com/united-state...

BREAKING: Supreme Court sides with Texas Republicans in fight over congressional map. The new gerrymandered map will be used in the 2026 midterms. The vote is 6–3, with the Republican appointees siding with Texas.

“If there is a Conservative government, I can sleep at night.” A right-wing populist Reform UK government, however, “is a different proposition”. Starmer speaks to @zannymb.economist.com; note by @duncanrobinson.bsky.social www.economist.com/britain/2025...

It's time. www.economist.com/culture/2025...

It would be fun to write a history of the phrase "air-conditioned offices" as abusive for namby-pamby non-warfighters, as if the Pentagon and White House (and Fox News studios) are not air-conditioned. Real men sweat.

I wasn't sold on "the cruelty is the point" in the first term. But they're making it hard for me to hold that line.

Genuinely puzzled and curious about this one. Identifying a language is an old and trivially easy task.

Ambiguous chyron of the day, from the BBC: "Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year is rage bait"

100% this was written by an English-lit grad with shining eyes, contemplating her John Connor moment as she composes the sonnet that will convince the machines to self-destruct.

It's decoration-retrieval-injury weekend

My son is doing algebra so I decided to show him, absolutely not à propos of recent news, how old you should be, according to the venerable rule of “half your age plus seven”, to date someone 36 years younger than you.

I think the "crazy-to-policy" ratio is the new metric to watch. Seriously. Some data-head should start tracking how many of Trump's promises and Truths are turned into action (& of which successful action, not blocked by courts or reality) and how many are just blown-off steam.

I should have mentioned that they'll offer an annual pass to the National Parks for $250 to non-residents. (For residents, $80.) Here's the release, including a charming juxtaposition of Washington and Trump. www.doi.gov/pressrelease...

John Bolton: “Trump believes that the world is what he says it is. It’s not that he lies; it’s not that he knows the difference between truth and falsehood and consciously chooses falsehood. He just makes things up.” 1/ www.economist.com/insider/insi...

The Interior Department has announced it will charge $100 per head for non-US residents to visit the most popular 11 national parks. Stupid and self-defeating. Millions have visited those parks and left with with affection for America. No more, except those who can afford $400 per family per park.

It would be great if our politicians, especially in America, would hear, heed and repeat this message: "Our enemies are trying to divide us to weaken us, and if you take part you are helping them. We refuse to do so." Sigh. In a better world, with grown-up leaders. www.ft.com/content/b9ab...

A young student from my alma mater, Tulane, interviewed me about breaking into journalism, and then specialising, & my career path since. Maybe it'll be useful to someone you know; I did not grow up around media and so my flailing may be instructive. www.thepathwayblogkc.com/blog/lane-gr...

Indeed. Trump practically fawns over others he perceives as strong or charismatic. They can be literal communists (Xi) or former communists (Putin) or people he thinks are communists (Mamdani) but if they project what he thinks he has in big-man energy, he can't get enough.

Can I write the reply piece? Being a night person is great right now, at 8pm with my brain humming and good to go for a few hours yet. I pay for it, with interest, for hours every morning, when school and work schedules force me to be awake at my very worst.

“The transition to democracy is not hypothetical; it has already begun,” argues the opposition leader and winner of the 2025 Nobel peace prize. “The fear inside the regime is palpable” econ.st/4r9KvWX Illustration: Dan Williams