USPS quietly changed its postmark rules — mail is no longer dated when you drop it off. The “official” date is when it hits automated sorting — sometimes days later Which could have major implications for mail in voting — it’s a clever way to disenfranchise voters that’s going largely overlooked

A favorite essay on snow, by Charlie Fox, in @cabinetmagazine.bsky.social www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/59/fo...

(daft punk One More Time voice) Auld Lang Syne

Fascinating interview about cultural restitution. Things I learned: The stolen jewels were purchased off the private market by the museum in the 1980s, and Hitler blocked the return of the Nefertiti bust from Berlin to Egypt in 1933. I need to read her books now.

Pope Leo decried conditions for Palestinians in Gaza in his Christmas sermon on Thursday, in an unusually direct appeal during what is normally a solemn, spiritual service on the day Christians across the globe celebrate the birth of Jesus. For @reuters.com:

Parson Brown wept

‘tis the season for giving (back plundered heritage), so I interviewed a champion of restitution, the art historian Bénédicte Savoy. We discussed the Napoleonic origins of the “encyclopedic” museum, Hitler’s love for Nefertiti, and the recent heist at the Louvre… www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

“there are only 7 full-time book critics left in the US: three at NYT ( Jacobs, Garner, Szalai), 2 at WaPo(Rothfeld, Charles), 1 each at WSJ (Sacks), NY mag (Chu), Slate (Miller) more people have walked on the moon than write book reviews for a living” worldliteraturetoday.org/2025/septemb...

Imagine interviewing a victim of torture and independently confirming the details of his torture and then being told you can’t broadcast it because the people who ordered the torture wouldn’t give their side of the story.

Got to tell Samuel Delany’s daughter that her baby teeth were in her father’s “papers” at the Beinecke

Per NY Times’s Michael Grynbaum on X, this is Sharyn Alfonsi’s email to her “60 Minutes” colleagues in full:

‘tis the season for giving (back plundered heritage), so I interviewed a champion of restitution, the art historian Bénédicte Savoy. We discussed the Napoleonic origins of the “encyclopedic” museum, Hitler’s love for Nefertiti, and the recent heist at the Louvre… www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Bénédicte Savoy has emerged as one of the art world’s leading thinkers. In a new interview, she talks about Donald Trump’s attacks on the Smithsonian, and the prospects for restitution amid the breakdown of the liberal international order. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/Iymz65

An immigrant works a dangerous job to protect Americans. It puts him in medical debt. Now he also has to worry about being deported by ICE when he goes to work or takes his kid to a soccer tournament. Feel safer?

I’m sorry but ‘heritage American’ makes you sound like a tomato

do leaders of the top investigative newsroom in the country not understand what makes their journalism valuable??????

A “take” on (or ode to) Mary McCarthy in last week’s mag www.newyorker.com/magazine/tak...

Merriam-Webster’s human editors have chosen ‘slop’ as the 2025 Word of the Year.

One of the many reasons AI can't produce good writing is it can't hate its own writing. It can't think to itself "Maybe I'm illiterate" during the writing process. And that's essential

I've been reading Sven's book, and it is terrific and groundbreaking. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/b...

TRUMP [after spending 5 minutes with Zohran]: surplus value, it’s a very wonderful thing, very wonderful, and they’re stealing it. Can you believe that? We’re going to be looking very strongly at the bourgeoisie, what they’re up to

79-year-old Paul Bojerski was born to Polish parents in a WWII German refugee camp. His family legally emigrated to the U.S. when he was 5. He’s been taken by ICE in Florida. www.orlandosentinel.com/2025/11/16/s...

This is far worse than anyone expected. Trump's HUD plan would cut *two-thirds* of permanent housing and push as many as 170,000 formerly homeless people back onto the street—redirecting funds to work mandates, forced treatment, and encampment sweeps. All as mass internment camps are being built.

We gotta have a clear term for people so cynical they become gullible.

Benjamin Lay was out there THROWING FAKE BLOOD on Quakers in the damn EARLY 1700s because HE KNEW that enslaving Africans was a SIN, INHUMANE and should end IMMEDIATELY.

Republicans took away your healthcare. We refused to fight back. Please rush us $3

Quite a headline.

One analytical model shows that, as of November 5th, the dismantling of U.S.A.I.D. has already caused the deaths of 600,000 people, two-thirds of them children. https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/jUzNSc

Breaking News: Late last night Conde Nast illegally fired 4 union organizers who asked company execs to explain the downsizing of Teen Vogue and continued layoffs. We’ve filed a grievance.

the password to the louvre surveillance server was "louvre" www.thesocialpost.it/2025/11/02/f...

Zohran Mamdani caught lying that he understood Plato’s allegory of the cave, yet when asked to explain it, he seemed to instead explain Baudrillard’s theory of Simulacra and Simulation where reality has been replaced by symbols and signs, which seems similar to Plato’s theory but is not the same

What kind of fresh hell is this? Trump is taking white, Christian nationalism to... Nigeria, with the world's largest Black population. (Read the quotes.) www.ft.com/content/d0c7...

“Wikipedia has proven itself to be incredibly resilient because it is a project that specifically leans into the shared wisdom and collaboration of humanity . . . That is something that an LLM will never be able to compete with.” www.404media.co/grokipedia-i...

the absolute king youtu.be/cQPFijGyZ_E

Just so we're clear: This administration's blatant, unapologetic choice to deny food to 42 million people—to have the money sitting there and say, "No, we'll let them go hungry"—is simply a more overt display of why homelessness and poverty keep worsening in this country. Because it's *decided.*

I’m not a believer but I very much believe in the power of Alice Coltrane’s work. In the new @nybooks.com I write her musical and spiritual journey. www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Being historically illiterate costs us a lot.

Makaya McCraven • 4 EPs: The People's Mixtape / Techno Logic / PopUp Shop / Hidden Out! October 31 • International Anthem intlanthem.bandcamp.com

Don't know if any of you have ever been tempted to use Evernote, but any company that eliminates their free tier AND makes current users subscribe to extract their own data is little better than a protection racket in my book.

“The elites are ecstatic about imagining a vast, uneducated, and unproductive population forced to pay companies like OpenAI to access the written word and to approximate thought” thebaffler.com/salvos/we-us...

Again, not the most important here, but I'm begging for a journalist to figure out how/why NPS put up a Confederate statue DURING A GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN. How is this "essential" when food stamps are not?

Jack DeJohnette, the renowned jazz drummer who played in Miles Davis’ electric period band and one of Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Drummers of All Time, has died at age 83. Access the free article here: www.rollingstone.com/music/music-...

As the Trump administration pushes for the restoration of Confederate monuments, Kara Walker has turned one an undead centaur. My review of “Monuments,” an extraordinary show that juxtaposes the lies of the Lost Cause with the black histories they eclipse www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

As the Trump administration pushes for the restoration of Confederate monuments, Kara Walker has turned one an undead centaur. My review of “Monuments,” an extraordinary show that juxtaposes the lies of the Lost Cause with the black histories they eclipse www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

well this kicks ass www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Building up: The annual replastering of the Djinguereber Mosque, also known as Djingareyber, in Timbuktu. It was erected in the 14th century during the reign of Mansa Kankou Moussa and is 700 years old. Photo: Hameye Capii/AFP

The whataboutism on Gaza really rankles, especially for those of us who have spent our careers reporting on the crises Israel's defenders cynically invoke as so much worse than Gaza. I wrote about how it actually compares, and what the true toll may be. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/23/o...

If I had explain American history in one sentence, I could do worse than "John Brown was hung for treason, but Robert E. Lee was not."