_A great star shines over a stable in Bethlehem. The Three Kings arrive and kneel before the Holy Family._ BALTHAZAR: We come bearing gifts for the newborn king, O Holy Ones. MARY: Just put them on the table. We’re doing a white elephant thing this year. MELCHIOR: White elephant?! Where? MARY: No, we take turns opening gifts. You can keep the one you open, or switch with anyone else. What could possibly go wrong? GASPAR: The King of Kings was meant to bring peace on Earth. This will surely cause hatred, greed, and jealousy. MARY: Oh, it’ll be fun. I’ll start. Ooooh. Gold! Now THAT is a present. Thank you! You’re up, Melchior. MELCHIOR: I want to go on the record saying I think this is a bad idea. But let’s see. Hmmm, myrrh. I’m going to be honest—I’m a wise man, and even I don’t know what myrrh is. So, I’ll switch it for the gold. Is that how this works? MARY: I’m the Mother of God, so you can’t do that. MELCHIOR: Your rules, not mine. Okay, Balthazar, you’re next. BALTHAZAR: All right, what’s this? A piece of paper. It says, “I’ll play my drums for you.” Gee, I wonder who this is from? (_He glares at Little Drummer Boy_.) JOSEPH: We call him Little Drummer Boy. BALTHAZAR: Does he have a name? LITTLE DRUMMER BOY: Sir, my name is Sa… JOSEPH: No, we just call him Little Drummer Boy. BALTHAZAR: Okay, well, I’ll be switching this for the gold. _Yoink_. Sorry, Melchior. MELCHIOR: Christ! A drum concert? I didn’t traverse afar for a drum concert. Hey, Little Drummer Boy, can you play “Far, Far Away”? LITTLE DRUMMER BOY: I don’t know that song, sir. MELCHIOR: No, I mean, can you play far, _far_ away? I can’t believe you fell for that joke. It’s as old as the Sphinx. You walked right into it. LITTLE DRUMMER BOY: I’m just a little boy, sir… GASPAR: Now, now, Melchior, be nice. I fear this white elephant thing is bringing out the worst in all of us. Okay, my turn. What do we have here? A wooden cutting board in the shape of Judea… MARY: That’s from Joseph. He’s a carpenter. It’s like living with Nick Offerman over here. Last year, he made me a canoe. Real romantic… GASPAR: It’s lovely and all… but I’ll be switching it for, oh, I don’t know, THE GOLD. BALTHAZAR: God dammit. I already have a cutting board. JOSEPH: But not one shaped like Judea. Okay, I’m up. Let’s see. Frankincense. Huh. Can never have too much frankincense. But… I’ll be taking… EVERYONE: …THE GOLD. JOSEPH: Come to Papa… GASPAR: Crap! I hate this. Let’s just get it over with. You’re up, Little Drummer Boy. LITTLE DRUMMER BOY: My name is Sa… EVERYONE: Just open your gift, LDB. LITTLE DRUMMER BOY: Hmmm. A piece of paper. “I will also play drums for you.” MARY: I didn’t have time to go shopping. When I wasn’t traveling to Bethlehem on a donkey, I was giving birth. And someone forgot to make a hotel reservation. LITTLE DRUMMER BOY: Well, I think I’ll exchange this for the cutting board. Just kidding—I’ll take the gold. GASPAR: Oh, come on! Don’t you want that awesome myrrh? LITTLE DRUMMER BOY: Not to harp on income inequality, but this gold is like a 150-year shepherd’s salary for me. Okay, so I guess we’re done here. See you all at Easter! MARY: Wait—Jesus hasn’t gone yet. MELCHIOR: Jesus? He didn’t even bring a present. You don’t get to go if you don’t bring a gift. MARY: When would he have had time to shop? He was just born. Besides, the stores—Herod’s, Forever 21 B.C., Neiman Marcus Aurelius—are all closed for Christmas. JOSEPH: Look, He’s pointing at something. LITTLE DRUMMER BOY: I think he’s pointing at the frankincense. BALTHAZAR: No, no, no, it’s definitely the gold. Haha! Take that, Little Drummer Boy. LITTLE DRUMMER BOY: My name is Sa… MARY: Look, this may have been a bad idea, and perhaps I should have listened to the Wise Men. I know we’re all very angry right now… EVERYONE: (_grumbling_) Yeah, everyone except for _Jesus_ … (_Jesus pats the gold and winks_.) MARY: I promise next year we’ll honor the Savior’s birth with dignity and grace: ugly sweaters.

Dear Valued Child, This letter was slipped into your stocking to inform you that we recently identified a breach of our North Pole Magic Systems (NPMS) that may have compromised your personal data—namely, the thousands of hours of footage we have of when you are sleeping, as well as when you are awake. #### How did the breach occur? Shortly after Thanksgiving, we detected that a person within the NPMS organization (identity redacted for anonymity) clicked on a link entitled, “Winner!!! Claim FREE 6XL Red Coat With Fur Trim Now!” Regrettably, this turned out to be a phishing scheme that exploited a vulnerability in our system. We now understand that the innocent enchantment of believing hearts is not a reliable form of cybersecurity. While we have yet to pinpoint the attacker’s identity, we have narrowed the suspects down to three previous perpetrators of crimes against the season: E. Scrooge, Mr. Grinch, and Big City Lady-Lawyer With Christmas Eve Deadline. #### What information was involved? When you opted in to NPMS (by requesting an item from St. Nick or his mall representative), you granted us express permission to access your biodata in order to make a list, check it twice, and upload it to a third-party cloud service. This information includes, but is not limited to, your: * Favorite sports team * Mom’s cookie-baking prowess * Percentage of nightly REM resulting in sugar plum visions * Ability to hear ethereal ring of a magic sleighbell * Home blueprints with detailed notes on how to bypass the security system to both enter and leave undetected by all humans and pets in the vicinity #### What you can do Please take precautions to monitor your Naughty Indicator of Coal Offering (NICO) Score, the number used to predict your likelihood of receiving coal for bad behavior. Your NICO Score appears in your annual Naughty or Nice Report, which you can request for free from [email protected]. You should review all indiscretions for accuracy and let us know immediately if you see a tantrum you didn’t throw or a pigtail you didn’t yank. All legitimate disputes will be brought to binding arbitration before a retired Elf on the Shelf. Additionally, take stock of your and your peers’ presents for signs of fraudulent activity. For instance, did it seem suspicious that your “big gift” was a set of sight word flashcards despite you being very cool about never telling anyone that Lucas M. peed his pants on the field trip to the arboretum? Or maybe your three-year-old cousin received a limited edition Labubu even though last month she bit your arm so hard it left teeth marks through your corduroy jacket. Report all these and similar incongruous giftings to NPMS. We can’t issue adjustments now that the big guy has flown, but we can utilize our cross-departmental collaboration with the Tooth Fairy to advocate for suitable molar remuneration. #### What you shouldn’t do To maintain your confidence in NPMS, please don’t discuss the contents of this letter with any kind of mean older siblings. Note that showing up to a police department will result only in hair tousling and lighthearted chuckles. There is also no need to share these materials with the Goldstein twins next door; we can assure you their data was not affected. #### What we are doing We sincerely regret any inconvenience caused by this incident, and in acknowledgement of our missteps, are offering compensation in the form of you getting the top ask on your wish list next year, with the following caveats: * Must be suitably in line with your household income * Tangible items only (i.e., not the gift of your divorced parents getting back together—we cannot make that happen. They seem much happier now, anyway) * It will arrive in wrapping paper you’ve definitely seen in the garage before. And if you’re wondering if Santa is now being mandated to add two-factor authentication to his iPad—yes, Virginia, he is. Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night, Chief Elf Officer, NPMS

For one magical night a year, Santa and his friends bring holiday cheer to millions of people around the world. For the rest of the 364 nights? They’re just like us: hustling to get by in an ever-shrinking global economy. Rudolph hasn’t had time for any reindeer games lately, thanks to the extra shifts he’s picked up as a Lyft driver. That glowing nose is easy for drunk people to find on Saturday night, but he wishes they’d stop asking him if it has a strobe setting. The elves have still been working at Santa’s workshop, of course, but on weekends they supplement by working at one of Jeff Bezos’ sweatshops. Try their new line of Amazon elf-ssentials. Yukon Cornelius vlogs full-time about his nomadic adventure lifestyle with best pal Bumble. His latest YouTube video is brought to you by Dude Wipes. Don’t forget to like and subscribe! Snowmiser has minted his own meme coin, IcyCoin. It might liquify into a worthless puddle come springtime, but that’s just the risk one takes with cryptocurrency. Heatmiser recently monetized his podcast, _Men Under Fire_ , where he reads ads for testosterone supplements in between segments about how real men don’t ask for permission to commit arson. At the North Pole, he’s still just Dasher, but lately he’s also a DoorDasher. Please tip him in cash, not carrots–he’s trying to put two calves through flying school. Sam The Snowman has made 50k this year selling feet pics (yes, he has feet under there), and you can too if you buy his online course. Mrs. Clause is now a trad wife influencer, posting daily content about homesteading on the tundra. Check out her viral Christmas cookie video, where she takes nine hours to make six cookies from scratch. The first step? Milking the reindeer (Affiliate links to raw reindeer milk in bio). As for Santa, he’s diversifying his portfolio: With his own brand of tequila. An exclusive make-up line. A mobile wireless company. And, of course, feet pics. So, this Christmas Eve, before you leave Old Saint Nick a glass of milk and a plate of cookies, consider leaving him a tip instead (He accepts cash, check, or money order, as well as Venmo, Paypal, or Cash App @$anta4hire). Traditions are nice and all, but in this economy? It’s all about the ho ho hustle. Merry Cashmus to all and to all a good night!

_“ Why, for fifty-three years, I’ve put up with it now! I MUST stop this Christmas from coming! But HOW?” — Dr. Seuss_, How the Grinch Stole Christmas - - - 1. He’s roughly fifty-three years old, give or take. 2. Unlike the music from his day, he thinks everything the youth are listening to is just a bunch of noise, noise, noise, NOISE. 3. Anticommercialist. Every year, he makes the same cynical comments about Christmas. 4. He’s used to being culturally excluded, forgotten, and ignored. But he doesn’t care. 5. Deep contempt for groupthink and is suspicious of the motivations of people, corporations, and the government. 6. He was a latch-key kid and still thrives with lots of alone time. 7. Definitely got some sort of heart trouble. You can tell by looking at him. 8. He wears his apathy as armor because he’s emotionally ill-equipped to handle the earnest sentimentality that comes with the holiday season. 9. His awkward presence could be described as “lurking.” 10. Even if he’s happily married, he’s got that divorced-guy energy. 11. He’s shabbily attired and will be inappropriately underdressed at every holiday function. 12. He responds to holiday merriment and well-wishes with a sneer. 13. He’s known for being a slacker, but will surprise you with one area of extreme competency. Like maybe he’s really good at guitar, knows an unsettling amount about municipal zoning laws, or can build a last-minute sleigh out of whatever’s in the garage. 14. His dog is his only friend. 15. He’ll get through Christmas the same way he gets through anything: gallows humor. 16. Despite his scrawny arms, you’re going to let him carve the holiday roast. Because even though he’s a sloppy asshole, you love him and want him to feel important and useful. 17. He’s literally green. 18. He won’t shut up about the band Pavement. - - - **1–17** : This is the Grinch. If he seems sad, it’s because he hasn’t learned the true meaning of Christmas. Help him get through the holidays by allowing him to commit a B and E on your house, supporting him through his subsequent breakdown, and taking him to the hospital if his heart becomes enlarged. **1–16 + 18:** This is a Gen-X man at Christmas. If he seems sad, it’s because he’s nostalgic for pre-digital life. Help him get through the holidays by supplying coffee, sensible sneakers, access to a dark, quiet room, and taking him to the hospital if his heart becomes enlarged.

## FEATURES: - Ossuary jars - Anti-revolutionary painting - Toxic dust - Solastalgia - - - It was a cold, dry night in April, and a crowd had gathered in the center of Nukus, the capital of the Central Asian Republic of Karakalpakstan, to squint through a skein of toxic dust into the illuminated lobby of one of the world’s most peculiar cultural institutions: the Nukus Museum of Art. The dust storm had started earlier that day, staining the sky a sallow, hostile brown as a hard wind blew south across the Kazakh Steppe and over the Aralkum, a desert that used to be a sea. Until the 1960s, the Aral Sea, split between Kazakhstan and Karakalpakstan—a semiautonomous region within Uzbekistan—was the world’s fourth-largest inland body of water. Fishing, canning, and beaver-fur industries thrived along its reed-fringed coast, drawing a mixed population of Russians, Kazakhs, Karakalpaks, and Uzbeks to port cities like Moynaq, where they settled in tidy whitewashed houses packed along the shore. By the 1990s, the Aral Sea had shrunk by 90 percent, thanks to Soviet irrigation projects that siphoned water off the Amu Darya river to feed the cotton fields that sprawled across Uzbekistan. As the sea retreated, it left an empty wasteland, frosted in a white rime of agrochemicals and salt that turned the air and soil to poison. Respiratory illnesses proliferated across Karakalpakstan. Temperatures became increasingly extreme, ranging from 10 degrees Fahrenheit in winter to 110 in summer. Water has grown scarce, and arable land has turned to desert. If Karakalpakstan is known for anything—and in most places, it isn’t—it is for this singular man-made cataclysm. If it’s known for two things, the other is the Nukus Museum, which grew as the Aral Sea shrank. The museum was founded in 1966 by the Kiev-born artist and collector Igor Savitsky, who first came to Karakalpakstan to record the archaeological finds of the legendary Chorasmian Expedition. As a motley crew of intellectuals, local laborers, and refugees from the Stalinist terror—led by the mustachioed and pith-helmeted ethnographer Sergey Tolstov—dug two-thousand-year-old ruins out of the sand, Savitsky captured their discoveries in voluptuous (if sentimental) pastels, rendering austere mud-brick fortresses in delicate shades of peach and salmon. By the mid-’50s, Savitsky had settled permanently in Nukus as a member of the local branch of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan. He spent the next decade collecting textiles, jewelry, and carved wooden trunks that Karakalpak people in hamlets across the region had hidden away in the early years of collectivization; villagers knew him, affectionately, as “the junkman.” Eventually, he approached the first secretary of the Karakalpak Regional Committee of the Communist Party, Kalibek Kamalov, with the idea of opening a museum. Kamalov, a proud Karakalpak, loved the idea. For him, the museum would establish a clear material identity for the Karakalpak people. And though Moscow had long suppressed craft as an entrepreneurial heresy, Savitsky’s ethnographic collection, pitched the right way, aligned with the official Soviet ideology known as “the friendship of peoples,” which positioned the USSR not as a latter-day Rome but as a multiethnic consortium of nations—a counterweight to the cavalier economic domination of the postwar United States and faltering European colonialism. Think of it as a Soviet “It’s a Small World (After All).” (The US and the USSR were never quite as different as they liked to think.) This proved a useful cover for Savitsky, as he turned his attention to avant-garde painting, which was essentially verboten in Moscow. From 1966 until his death in 1984, he amassed tens of thousands of paintings, coaxing rolled-up canvases from beneath the cots of ailing widows and withdrawing others from the confines of the Zagorsk Monastery in Russia, a kind of gulag for art that was deemed anti-revolutionary. In the process, he conserved an epoch in art history that Soviet authorities aimed to purge from the official record. The avant-garde collection is now justifiably famous. Foreign journalists love to write about it, and in 2024, the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation (ACDF) took some of the collection’s major works on tour in Florence and Venice—a cultural coup. But when I arrived in Nukus, I was even more interested in the museum’s silver jewelry and quilted robes, and the bands of embroidered cloth used to decorate yurts. I wanted to see the artifacts of a way of life that the Soviet Union had attempted to destroy in the name of its misguided, utopianist faith in technological progress. (Sounds familiar.) What had been lost? What had been saved? What could still be recovered? I was, of course, far from the only person asking these questions. The directors of the museum’s archaeology and ethnography departments (Oktyabr Dospanov and Aygul Pirnazarova, respectively) told me that, in recent years, more and more young people—jewelry and clothing designers, as well as college-aged kids studying in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent—have used its collections for inspiration. That pride is no small thing. In June 2022, shortly after his reelection to a second term in office, the Uzbek president, Shavkat Mirziyoyev—lauded abroad for liberalizing his nation’s economy—proposed a series of constitutional reforms that would allow him to remain in power until 2040 (ratified in 2023) and that would strip Karakalpakstan of its nominal autonomy. Mirziyoyev’s play to extend his term barely raised eyebrows, but his attack on Karakalpakstan’s political status triggered widespread protests in Nukus and brutal reprisals from the state, which shut down internet access, jailed activists, killed several protesters, and wounded many others. Young people led the movement, as young people are wont to do, and within a few days, Mirziyoyev withdrew the proposal, even traveling to Karakalpakstan to present himself as a humble broker of peace. Several activists remain in prison. Savitsky’s original argument, meanwhile, seems more urgent than ever: The Karakalpak people exist, they have a language and culture, they have a homeland, and it is here. And so on that night in April, I joined a crowd of Karakalpak students, foreign architects, regional scientists, and culture workers from across Central Asia to file into the Nukus Museum, where the ACDF was to unveil a significant rehanging of its top floor. The event coincided with the beginning of the tourist season, to the extent that such a thing exists here, and with the end of the Aral Culture Summit, a conference organized by the ACDF about the future of Karakalpakstan and the Aral Sea region. Over the course of the previous two days, agronomists and biologists had spoken of efforts to reforest the Aral seabed with hearty saxaul shrubs and to introduce salt- and drought-resistant crops. Artists had discussed their dreams, fantastical and hopeful and sad, of the sea’s return. On the first day of the summit, when foreign speakers graced the stage, the ACDF hosted a gala lunch prepared by a Russian chefs’ collective using Karakalpak ingredients; in the evening, a Russian pianist played his own compositions with the National Symphony Orchestra of Uzbekistan, which had been flown in from Tashkent, more than five hundred miles to the east. (The kobyz, a Karakalpak string instrument at imminent risk of disappearing from the region’s musical culture, was nowhere to be seen.) The next day, the audience filled with Karakalpaks, sitting rapt as their peers and elders explained all the ways their home could be saved. For lunch, they waited in an interminable line to scoop overcooked lamb and root vegetables from chafing dishes. Throughout the event, young people from Nukus circulated among the invitees, engaged and warm and thrilled to talk about their homeland—its beauty, its tragedy, its possibilities. Fluent in English, almost all of them planned to leave as soon as possible, to study in places where the wind didn’t make the air smell like sickness, where there might someday be work and water. When the doors finally opened at the museum, foreign visitors went in first, locals second. I lingered inside as most of the other foreigners filed out, to catch their planes back to Tashkent. The museum was a revelation. Works by painters whose names I’d never heard of depicted Uzbek grazing lands in improbable shades of pink and blue. There were images of men gathering in poppy-red tearooms, seated cross-legged beneath interpolated portraits of Lenin and startlingly anachronistic megaphones—symbols, like Gabriel’s lily, of a new and hopeful annunciation. Between the canvases hung elaborate quilted robes lined with silk ikat, and silver amulets encrusted with roundels of carnelian, cloudy and lustrous as crystallized honey. As the galleries emptied, the same young people I’d met at the summit hung back. Instead of inspecting the paintings for traces of their own lost landscape, they gathered around a Zoroastrian ossuary jar in the shape of camel, and a long band of wool, framed behind glass, used a century back to decorate a yurt. They gazed up, as stunned and awed as I was, at its narrow surface, covered in delicate abstractions of camels’ feet and rams’ horns, and of water that had stopped flowing before they were born. - - - _**Read more essays, reviews, and interviews over at The Believer.**_

Overall, you’ve got a strong concept: a log burning in a fireplace, on a loop for five hours. But we have a few notes. * Can the log be more aspirational? * Focus-group it to see if kids aged six to eleven think fire is too urban. * The log seems passive. Provide more backstory. * Can the fireplace have a cool sidekick? (e.g., A smart-mouthed pinecone) * Does the music have to be Christmas music? * Will viewers know what a fireplace is? * Make the fire more appealing to single men. * Where’s the merchandising tie-in? * Could the fire sing a duet with Michael Bublé? * Instead of a holiday one-off, could it be a weekly series? (e.g., Jake Log is an ex-cop turned P.I. who plays by his own rules.) * Why fire? Otherwise, it’s perfect. Happy Holidays!

_“ President Donald Trump on Wednesday assailed his White House predecessors for not pushing back against Venezuela earlier and stated that his intention is ‘getting land, oil rights, whatever we had’ returned by the government in Caracas.” — PBS_ - - - I’m absolutely disgusted by President Trump’s attempt to start a war with Venezuela without first putting in the years of tedious, brain-breaking propaganda work. Is it fun to poison the public consciousness with outrageous lies that border on blood libel and dehumanize innocent civilians in a country that most Americans couldn’t even find on a map? Of course not. But it’s what you do! Past presidents used to understand that. Past presidents used to care. War is like a nice soufflé: It requires patience and preparation, white people are obsessed with it, and you can’t have it until you’ve had your veggies. The “veggies” stand for ominous cable-news chyrons that are just asking questions and voicing concerns from regular people, none of whom are actually Fox News/Newsmax staffers (_wink_). Social media posts in which government officials cosplay as concerned citizens from their future target are also veggies. Calling every single incident in the vicinity of the country you want to plunder an act of terrorism by said country? You better believe that, too, is veggies. You need an entire salad bar of insidious half-truths, targeted outrage, and racism before you can even think of going to war! At least, that’s how it used to work, back in the good old days. I miss the craftsmanship of the Bush years, you know? George W. Bush and his team didn’t just point to Iraq and go “I wanna!” like a toddler about to throw a tantrum. They WORKED to get all those soldiers and civilians killed. They put in eighteen months of relentless messaging linking Saddam Hussein to 9/11, and they actually made us believe that THEY believed it. If acting awards had a category for international war crimes, the Bush administration would have collectively gotten an EGOT. I think it’s just a generational difference. Trump and Bush may be the same age, but mentally, Trump is barely out of his teens. Maybe that’s why he prefers his sexual partners that way. It’s also why he just hasn’t internalized the quiet dignity of hard work. Back in the day, propaganda was a full-time job. You had to seed the story slowly and tend to it tenderly. An anonymous leak of doomsday “official” intel to a friendly outlet here, an article from a mouthpiece think tank there. Not too much, not too little, not too fast. Just right. This administration, though, wants things NOW and FAST without putting in the work. I don’t mean to keep harping on about it like an old fogey, but things that are worth doing are worth doing correctly. And, I’m sorry, but a few hundred unhinged Truth Social posts an hour fired off in an Adderall-fueled haze over a few days is just not the same as someone sitting down, channeling the muses, and workshopping pure elegance like, “We can’t wait for the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” That still gives me goosebumps, not just because it’s spelled correctly and not written in all caps, but because it shows me that someone CARED to handcraft an excuse that ultimately got a million or so people killed. Am I saying we shouldn’t invade Venezuela just for its oil in an act that will 100 percent make us an international pariah? GOOD HEAVENS NO. I’m not a godless communist. I’m just saying that you should not try to speedrun imperialism. Capitalistic conquest should never feel rushed. It should feel like ballet: subtlety and beauty born from blood and sweat. Also, there should be hints that Russia is somehow involved.

_Kate McCallister realizes that her son Kevin didn ’t make it with them to the airport on their way to Paris for the holidays. She frantically pulls out her phone and calls him up._ KEVIN: Hello? MOM: Kevin! KEVIN: Mom? MOM: I’m so sorry you’re home alone! Your sister accidentally took your jacket that had your AirTag in the pocket, and we were too busy listening to Audible to notice you were missing. KEVIN: I feel so alone! MOM: I know, sweetie! We just got to the airport, but we can catch a later flight. We might not get Delta One, alas, but that’s okay. Motion sensors say you’re in my bedroom. KEVIN: I’m hiding under your bed. MOM: Your Oura Ring shows your heart rate is elevated. Don’t worry—I just turned on the radiant heat in the floors. Grab the weighted blanket, and you’ll warm up. I’ll raise the temp on the Nest and have Alexa play some calming music while we call an Uber back to the house. KEVIN: Should I go to the grocery store for a toothbrush or shaving cream? MOM: I just ordered some cronuts through DoorDash. Breakfast is on its way, sweetie. KEVIN: I just heard the doorbell! MOM: I’m checking the Ring right now… Oh, honey, it’s just Mormon missionaries. You’re okay. KEVIN: What if someone comes in? MOM: I’ve dead-bolted all the doors. And no windows are unlocked—I just checked the contact sensors. KEVIN: Two guys in a Cybertruck just drove by. I don’t recognize them, Mom. What if they break in? MOM: We have a palm-recognition door, honey. Calm down. Plus, I know that truck. It’s the Wet Bandits. They deliver my reverse-osmosis water each week. Also, you’re standing in front of my MagicFit mirror, so I can see you’re standing a little hunched. Posture, dear. KEVIN: What am I supposed to do? I’m all alone! MOM: I’m having the Samsung Ballie project live images of me on the floor and walls so you can see me and know that I’m there. I’m walking in the door soon. Make sure the Roomba is docked so I don’t trip over it again. Just grab my Ember smart mug and enjoy some hot chocolate, darling. KEVIN: I’m so glad you’re almost home. I’m sorry I made you disappear, Mom. MOM: It’s my fault for leaving the smart door on frosted glass this morning, or I would’ve seen you on your Meta Quest headset. Honey, scoot closer to the Cyber Heater, and we can pretend we are hugging. There. KEVIN: Thanks for the rare hug, Mom. Does my Oura Ring say we’re back in family mode? MOM: It does, sweetie. It does.

**EXT. — THE VASTNESS OF SPACE** _A star, representing the angel_ ALBERT, _shoots across the sky. It stops at a distant_ GALAXY. _As the heavenly bodies talk, their lights blink._ ALBERT You sent for me, sir? GALAXY Yes, Albert. Tonight’s going to be the crucial night for “Young Punk at Graduation Dance.” ALBERT Who, sir? GALAXY Sorry. That’s how I think of him. Tonight will be the crucial night for… Mickey Wincott. _A beat._ ALBERT Who, sir? GALAXY (_sighs_) The man who lurks by the controls in the Bedford Falls gymnasium to convince a jilted dancer to open the gym floor, so that the dancer’s rival falls into the swimming pool beneath. ALBERT What? Why would anyone do that? I’d understand if he felt jilted. But he’s just some guy who hangs out in gyms, encouraging oth—? GALAXY Hold on, Albert. We don’t have much time. Let me show you the life of Mickey Wincott. Soon you’ll understand… **CROSSFADE TO:** **EXT. FROZEN LAKE – WINTER DAY** _Teens skate on a frozen lake._ GALAXY (V.O.) Watch carefully, Albert. This is important. _Suddenly, the ice breaks, and one skater falls in. A bystander rushes to pull them out._ ALBERT (V.O.) That man running to help—is that Mickey Wincott? GALAXY (V.O.) No, Albert… _Pan to another teen, hiding in the bushes, watching. He has a strange, fixed expression._ GALAXY (V.O.) That’s Mickey Wincott. ALBERT (V.O.) Why does he look like that? GALAXY (V.O.) Because he’s discovering that he gets sexual gratification from seeing people unexpectedly fall into water. ALBERT (V.O.) Ew. I don’t like him. I don’t like Mickey Wincott. GALAXY (V.O.) Yes. He’s kind of a creep. ALBERT (V.O.) Can’t you put me on the George Bailey case? Everyone seems to be praying for him. GALAXY (V.O.) Clarence is on the Bailey case. ALBERT (V.O.) Clarence?! That _Tom Sawyer_ –toting boob?! GALAXY (V.O.) Don’t worry. You’re kind of in a support position. Just keep watching. **INT. VARIOUS – MONTAGE** _Fade through scenes of Mickey Wincott ’s life, as the Galaxy narrates:_ _First, Mickey in his basement, drawing blueprints:_ GALAXY (V.O.) Feeding such a specific sexual fetish wasn’t easy. So Mickey became one of the 1930s’ youngest patent holders—inventing a new kind of gym floor. One that could hide a pool. _Trains arriving and steamboats docking. At each terminus, Mickey hops off, toting his giant salesman ’s case._ GALAXY (V.O.) He traveled the land, convincing schools and universities that his floor was an efficient space-saver. Then, at each— _Mickey pulls levers and pushes buttons, again and again, as we see homecoming dancers falling into the water … basketball players falling into the water… new graduates falling into the water._ GALAXY (V.O.) He found his release. ALBERT (V.O.) I’m not sure why we’re helping this— GALAXY (V.O.) Hold on. _A small town. Mickey leaps off an arriving train, only to be collared by G-men._ GALAXY (V.O.) Eventually, Hoover’s FBI solved the mysterious string of moistenings… _Mickey breaks rocks on a chain gang._ GALAXY (V.O.) And Mickey was convicted and disgraced. If he ever involuntarily wetted another, it would mean the electric chair. **EXT. THE VASTNESS OF SPACE** _The heavenly bodies continue to talk._ GALAXY And tonight, he’s thinking of giving up his greatest gift… his life. _A beat._ ALBERT And that’s a problem… because—? GALAXY If Mickey Wincott doesn’t interrupt tonight’s jitterbug contest with a thorough pool-soaking, then George Bailey never falls in love with Mary Hatch, and if George never falls in love, that means he leaves Bedford Falls. And if that happens, Bedford Falls will turn into a town that honestly seems like a pretty fun place to visit, but also represents the consolidation of power in the hands of the wealthy and corrupt. So—are you ready to go to Earth and help? _A beat._ GALAXY Are you— ALBERT I’M THINKING ABOUT IT! **EXT. DRAWBRIDGE – NIGHT** _A heavy snow falls. Mickey stands on a bridge, staring at the rushing water below._ MICKEY I guess this is it. The only way out of my sick compulsions. The man responsible for so many unwanted plunges must take the last great plunge… alone. _Albert appears. He extends a hand._ ALBERT (_wanly_) No. Wait. Stop. MICKEY Sorry buddy. There’s nothing you can say that could possibly— ALBERT Ever consider convincing someone else to open the pool? _Mickey ’s eyes brighten. He_ RUNS _off._ **EXT. BEDFORD FALLS SCHOOLHOUSE – LATER** _After the dance, students pour from the building, many wearing robes. Mickey exits as well. He spies Albert leaning against a tree and approaches him, rubbing his hands._ MICKEY Oh boy! That was great! Thanks, buddy. I’ll be doing that all over the country! ALBERT No, you won’t. Cards on the table—I’m an angel. You were only able to do it this one time because I knew that specific guy would be there for you to convince. That’s not, like, a typical thing. MICKEY You’re an angel? You intervened to save me?! Then… despite my shame—I must be someone pretty special! ALBERT No, sorry. Honestly, we wouldn’t have bothered, but there’s this other guy… MICKEY Then, you mean—I’m just a nobody? A mote on the wind? Buffeted by powers I’ll never fully understand or be able to control? ALBERT Yeah. Sorry. If it makes you feel better, that’s kind of standard. **INT. ALBERT’S APARTMENT IN HEAVEN – LATER** _Albert enters, tossing his halo on a hat rack. His_ WIFE _greets him with a kiss. Then:_ ALBERT’S WIFE I heard about your job. Is it true what they say? “Every time a gym floor opens, some weird-beard gets off”? ALBERT That’s right. (_sighs_) That’s right. _“Auld Lang Syne” plays over triumphant shots of gym floors opening._ **FADE TO BLACK.**

_Mateo, a child, sits at a debate table opposite an empty chair. He’s surrounded by twenty Santa Claus Deniers, each holding a red flag._ MATEO: My name is Mateo, I’m six years old, and Santa Claus is real. _The sound of a countdown can be heard, “3…2…1… ding.” Several Santa Deniers dive toward the empty debate chair. Santa Denier 1 arrives first._ SANTA DENIER 1: Hi. Okay, I just… with everything we know, how can you still think Santa is real? MATEO: Well, every Christmas morning, there are REAL presents under my tree FROM Santa. SD1: But you know it’s not Santa putting those there. MATEO: Who else would it be? SD1: Your parents, obviously. MATEO: But every year, my friend Liam wakes up at his house, and there are presents under his tree from Santa too. SD1: Right, because HIS parents put presents under HIS tree and tell him they’re from Santa. MATEO: So, you’re claiming there is some worldwide conspiracy that EVERY mommy and daddy in the world is in on? SD 1: Well, I wouldn’t call it a “conspiracy”… MATEO: Think about what it would require to pull off a scheme like that, and to what end? I can’t get ten of my friends to agree on whether we’re going to play regular tag or freeze tag at recess. But you think hundreds of millions of parents, over generations, have coordinated to trick the world’s children into what? Accepting gifts? They would accept gifts no matter who they’re from. They’re children. Do you see how crazy what you’re suggesting sounds? _Santa Denier 1 leaves in shame. The countdown plays, “3…2…1…” And the next Santa Denier dives into the chair._ SANTA DENIER 2: I work as a forensic accountant. If Santa is making all these toys in his workshop for free, as you believe, then why are toy companies seeing their highest profits every year around Christmas time? MATEO: Well, Santa doesn’t do all the presents. I make presents for Mommy and Daddy out of dry macaroni, but my friend Liam, who isn’t as good at glue as I am, probably just buys things for his parents. And there are gifts for brothers, sisters, grandchildren, nieces, nephews… SD2: But surely socks from your grandparents and a LEGO set from your uncle aren’t enough to account for the huge jump in profits. MATEO: Let me reframe this for you. Imagine you run a business where you know most of your sales come in at the end of the year. You’d probably make sure your prices were at their highest during those high-volume months, would you not? So, then why, starting the day after Thanksgiving, do we see all these stores marking things down 60 percent or more? The only reason you’d consider a promotion like that, during your busiest months, would be if you had competition undercutting your prices; perhaps competition that makes toys in his workshop and gives them away for free. _The bell dings._ SANTA DENIER 3: I’m a physicist. I’ve run the numbers. For Santa to visit every child in the world in one night, his reindeer would have to fly at over three million miles per hour. You’re stupid if you believe that’s what’s happening. MATEO: What’s the fastest you’ve seen a reindeer fly? SD3: They don’t fly. That’s the point. MATEO: So, you’ve personally seen a reindeer try to fly and fail? SD3: Every time I’ve seen a reindeer, they’re just standing there, chewing grass. MATEO: By your own admission, you’ve never seen a reindeer even attempt to fly. But you think you can confidently tell me that (a) you KNOW reindeer cannot fly, and (b) you know the absolute speed limitations of a thing you’ve never seen occur? _The bell Dings. The session ends._ ## Post-debate interviews: SD1: That kid is so brainwashed. I hate him. MATEO’S MOM: I’m sorry, you did what? MATEO’S DAD: Why would you bring a bunch of people here to tell my son Santa isn’t real? SANTA: Mateo needs to watch out. I’ve spent generations convincing people that I’m not real in order to slowly phase myself out. Finally, I’ve got parents buying, wrapping, and giving presents while still giving me credit. It’s sort of like passive income that would allow me to retire, but I’m afraid Mateo is about to absolutely beef my shit. Talk about naughty! Something has to be done about him. MATEO: I know Santa’s scheme, and I know I’m ruining it. Go ahead, try to do something about me, Santa, I dare you, because it’d be a real shame if something happens to me and I’m not able to wake up on Christmas morning and stop my scheduled email to Mrs. Claus with the pictures I took when I snuck out of my room last Christmas Eve and saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus and then Santa “having some milk and cookies,” if you catch my drift. MATEO’S MOM: I don’t know what he’s talking about, honey. Santa isn’t real.

I am somewhat of a hot chocolate maven. I normally consume this winter-wonderful drink through powdered packages and hot water, and I know my way around the myriad packages in my local grocery aisle. You could say I am a bona fide Swiss Mistress. As I was scrolling through the internet one day, I came across The Grinch Hot Chocolate Bomb from Williams Sonoma. I like to avoid cooking at all costs, and I normally do not patronize stores like WS (I’m assuming this is what kitchen people call it), but I couldn’t resist this quirky little drink that is probably also a children’s activity. The picture on the WS website featured the idyllic outcome of The Grinch Hot Chocolate Bomb. “Oh, I’ve got to try this,” I murmured to my screen. I hit “add to cart” and waited in anticipation for three to five days. I unboxed my new treasure and enthusiastically inspected the packaging. The bomb itself is a tennis-ball-sized head of the Grinch (and the same hue), taunting you with his cheeky eyes and about seven different artificial colors. It boasts a filling of marshmallows that will float like clouds to the top of your mug. Oh, we’re in for a magical time! I was leery about a couple of things, though. Upon closer reading, I discovered it is made of white chocolate. I do not care for this category of chocolate. Secondly, there are no quantity directives. It plainly instructs you to “place into hot milk.” Am I supposed to just wing it with my one and only The Grinch Hot Chocolate Bomb from Williams Sonoma? I need directions, quantity, something I can confidently place in a measuring cup and then mug to become “hot milk.” I mentioned cooking wasn’t my thing, no? It was bomb time. I was nervous yet optimistic about how this would turn out. Would there be fizz? A cool bomb sound? I obviously cleared my counter and my calendar. Something labeled “bomb” couldn’t be restricted by time or space. I gingerly placed the Grinch’s head into my hot milk. And then, nothing. “I thought it would be more bomby,” I uttered to no one. I had to poke it for half a minute before anything happened. I essentially had to milkboard the Grinch by holding his head under the liquid until he started to dissolve. Luckily, that guy was a dick for most of the story, because I felt a little bad at first. My thoughts of guilt quickly began to dissipate, because then, too, did the Grinch head! This was not extraordinary or cool in any capacity. There were no explosive sounds, and I had to constantly jab and stir this decrepit mass of white chocolate to release the marshmallows. I kept going. I’m nothing if not a fighter when it comes to dessert-adjacent beverages. I finally got the hot chocolate to a consistency I found tolerable, so I took a sip. I yelped. Just as I feared, it was far too sweet. Williams Sonoma definitely should have told me how much milk to use. I added some water and put it back in the microwave for a spell. All right, this was better. Sickeningly sweet, but better. Though on the walls of my mug were still masses of Grinch head. Left to its own devices, a sort of film begins to form over the top. Sure, I wasn’t drinking it very fast / not at all, but a solidified blear? A third of a cup is quite enough. So here I sit with two-thirds of my hot–nay-tepid–chocolate remaining. Left unconsumed, it looks as if the Grinch was placed in a wood chipper and then added to milk. It turns out the Grinch stole my hopes about this drink being good, just like he did Christmas. In the future, I will be perfectly content with my beloved powdered packages of hot chocolate. I know what I’m getting (you are told precisely how much liquid to add), and they are downright delicious. I likely will not try The Grinch Hot Chocolate Bomb from Williams Sonoma again, but I’m sure someone out there will relish in this novel sweet treat. Maybe the narrator from the song? He seems like he would enjoy drowning the Grinch’s face in hot milk.

Early in President Trump’s first term, McSweeney’s editors began to catalog the head-spinning number of misdeeds coming from his administration. We called this list a collection of **Trump ’s cruelties, collusions, corruptions, and crimes**, and it felt urgent to track them, to ensure these horrors—happening almost daily—would not be forgotten. Now that Trump has returned to office, amid civil rights, humanitarian, economic, and constitutional crises, we felt it critical to make an inventory of this new round of horrors. This list will be updated monthly between now and the end of Donald Trump’s second term. - - - These lists, along with everything McSweeney’s publishes on this site, are offered ad-free and at no charge to our readers. If you are moved to **make a donation** in any amount or subscribe to our website’s **Patreon**, please do. This will help support this project and our other work. - - - ## ATROCITY KEY – Constitutional Illegalities, Collusion, and/or Obstruction of Justice – Environment – Harassment, Bullying, Retribution, and/or Sexual Misconduct – Lies and Misinformation – Musk Madness – Policy – Public Statements and Social Media Posts – Trump Family Business Dealings – Trump Staff and Administration – White Supremacy, Racism, Misogyny, Homophobia, Transphobia, and/or Xenophobia - - - ## **October 2025** ## **Main Index** ## **Trump’s first term** - - - ## **NOVEMBER 2025** 1. – **November 1, 2025** – Accusing Nigeria of failing to protect Christians, Trump threatened to send the American military into the country and cut aid. “If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria,” the president wrote on social media. “And we may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities.” The post followed an earlier post in which Trump, after watching a Fox News report about Nigeria, claimed “Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria.” Nigeria has denied Trump’s accusations, and the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom concluded in 2024 that extremist violence from a variety of religious and secular groups in Nigeria has affected both Christians and Muslims alike. 2. – **November 2, 2025** – Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the US military killed at least three people in another boat strike in the Caribbean Sea. Announcing the attack on social media, Hegseth posted a video that appeared to show an explosion. He said the vessel “was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling,” but he did not provide evidence to support the claim. The attack raised the toll of the campaign to about sixty-five people killed. In a letter to the US government, Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, wrote, “Based on the very sparse information provided publicly by the US authorities, none of the individuals on the targeted boats appeared to pose an imminent threat to the lives of others or otherwise justified the use of lethal armed force against them under international law.” 3. – **November 3, 2025** – The Trump administration said that it would partially fund SNAP after federal judges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island ruled that the government must keep the food aid program running. Trump claimed via social media that he did “NOT want Americans to go hungry just because the Radical Democrats refuse to do the right thing and REOPEN THE GOVERNMENT.” The Department of Agriculture had planned to freeze payments to the program, which serves about one in eight Americans, due to the government shutdown. In October, Trump said that he had “identified funds” that would allow the government to pay members of the military during the shutdown, in addition to securing a $130 million donation from his billionaire friend, Timothy Mellon. 4. – **November 4, 2025** – Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the US military killed two people in yet another strike on boats suspected of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean. It was the sixteenth strike in an offensive that began in early September and raised the death toll to at least sixty-seven people. The administration claimed that its policy is lawful because the president is “determined” that the United States is in a formal armed conflict with drug cartels. A wide range of specialists denounced the killings as illegal. “I can’t imagine anyone, no matter what the circumstance, believing it is appropriate to kill people who are clinging to a boat in the water,” said Michael Schmitt, a former Air Force lawyer and professor emeritus at the US Naval War College. “That is clearly unlawful.” 5. – **November 4, 2025** – Chief US District Judge John McConnell ruled that the Trump administration cannot withhold billions of dollars in transportation funding to states that refuse to cooperate with immigration enforcement. Judge McConnell wrote in his ruling that the US Department of Transportation (DOT) “blatantly overstepped” their authority in attempting to link funding used to maintain roads, bridges, and highways to immigration demands. The ruling was in response to a lawsuit filed by twenty states, led by California, after Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy outlined the administration’s expectations for cooperation with immigration officials. After the ruling, California Attorney General Rob Bonta stated, “If President Trump wants to stop losing in court, he should stop breaking the law.” 6. – **November 5, 2025** – Federal judge Robert Gettleman ordered authorities to improve conditions at the ICE facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview. Gettleman’s order came after detainees sued the facility, saying they were kept in “inhumane” and crowded conditions. Detainees said they were forced to sleep on the floor or in plastic chairs, and that the toilets overflowed with human waste, which seeped into sleeping areas. Gettleman stated that he found the witnesses’ testimony “highly credible,” adding, “People shouldn’t be sleeping next to overflowing toilets. They should not be sleeping on top of each other.” Gettleman’s order also required that ICE agents allow detainees to call lawyers in private with no cost and provide them with a list of pro bono attorneys in English and Spanish. Agents were also barred from misrepresenting documents provided for detainees for sign. 7. – **November 5, 2025** – A mock-up of a sign reading THE OVAL OFFICE in cursive golden lettering appeared taped on the outside of the White House, mimicking Trump’s recent attempts to give the White House the same gilded flourishes as his hotels and clubs. The Oval Office sign inspired humorous responses on social media, with some joking that such a label helped people with dementia and others saying it would make even Marie Antoinette say, “Tone it down.” As part of the makeover, Trump previously tore up the Rose Garden grass and replaced it with stone pavers, turning it into a patio similar to his Mar-a-Lago property. He also added a “Presidential Walk of Fame” along the colonnade, which featured portraits of all former presidents, except Joe Biden. 8. – **November 5, 2025** – In response to Democratic election victories in New York, California, Virginia, and New Jersey, Trump posted on Truth Social more than thirty times in less than three hours. The posts veered wildly in subject matter. Posts included AI-generated videos of Trump standing in front of a podium in an unknown room, covering topics such as his recent meeting with the prime minister of Japan, his G2 meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping, and Walmart allegedly lowering its prices. “Walmart just announced that Prices for a Thanksgiving Dinner is now down 25 percent since under Sleepy/Crooked Joe Biden, in 2024. AFFORDABILITY is a Republican Stronghold.” Another video has Trump criticizing Obamacare for being “really bad healthcare” and a “disaster.” Moments later, Trump railed against Democrats, telling Republicans to take the “nuclear option” and end the filibuster. Minutes later, he pivoted again and started posting about the anniversary of his re-election. 9. – **November 6, 2025** – The Republican-controlled Senate voted down a measure requiring congressional approval for military action against Venezuela. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate armed services committee, had said before the vote, “If the administration intends to escalate towards conflict with Venezuela, Congress has a constitutional duty to declare and authorize such action. We cannot sleepwalk into another war.” Hours after the vote, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced another strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean. It was at least the seventeenth such strike in the region, bringing the total fatalities to at least sixty-nine. Last month, Trump had indicated that he would not seek congressional approval for military strikes against alleged drug traffickers. Instead, he had said, “We’re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country.” 10. – **November 6, 2025** – ICE agents arrested a US citizen in the parking lot of a Los Angeles Home Depot store, then entered his car and drove away with his toddler, who was in the back seat. After Dennis Quinonez was detained by ICE agents and taken to an ICE vehicle, onlookers shouted, “There’s a baby in the back!” Moments later, a heavily armed and masked ICE agent got into the driver’s seat of Quinonez’s car and drove away. Quinonez’s daughter, who was not yet two years old, looked on, wide-eyed from her car seat. Later that morning, Quinonez’s mother, Maria Avalos, received a call from border patrol agents using an unidentified number and was asked to pick up her granddaughter. Avalos later said she was alarmed to learn that masked agents, who were heavily armed, could drive away with her granddaughter. “This is something very, very frightening, because it’s not clear who these people are.” _ICE Agents Arrest US Citizen in LA and Drive Off with His Baby in Car (The Independent)_ 11. – **November 7, 2025** – The Supreme Court granted the Trump administration’s emergency appeal to temporarily block a court order to fully fund SNAP food aid payments amid the government shutdown, even though residents in some states had already started to receive the funds. The Trump administration told the Supreme Court that fast-acting states were “trying to seize what they could of the agency’s finite set of remaining funds, before any appeal could even be filed, and to the detriment of other States’ allotments.” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in the court filing, “Once those billions are out the door, there is no ready mechanism for the government to recover those funds.” Every “fast-acting” state that distributed SNAP funds before the Supreme Court’s ruling on the emergency appeal had a Democratic governor. 12. – **November 8, 2025** – President Trump urged Republican senators to redirect federal money used to subsidize health insurance costs under the Affordable Care Act toward direct payments to individuals. On Truth Social, he posted, “I am recommending to Senate Republicans that the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare, BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE SO THAT THEY CAN PURCHASE THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, HEALTHCARE, and have money left over.” Trump and Senate Republicans seemed unable to grasp the fact that most consumers would still need to purchase plans from the same insurance companies they railed against. 13. – **November 9, 2025** – Panamanian officials confirmed that a three-year-old migrant had died on a new “reverse migration” boat route after the Trump administration effectively sealed the US border to migrants earlier in the year. The boat, which capsized off the coast of Colón Province en route to the child’s home country, Colombia, was following a new migrant route that sprang up after the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration. Since late September, more than 14,000 migrants have ridden in small boats along Panama’s Caribbean and Pacific coasts to avoid the Darién Gap, which has effectively been sealed to prevent northbound migration. In February, an eight-year-old Venezuelan migrant drowned under similar circumstances. 14. – **November 9, 2025** – Writing in _The Atlantic_ , Federal Judge Mark L. Wolf explained that he was stepping down to warn about the “existential threat to democracy” posed by the Trump administration. Describing Trump’s actions as “contrary to everything I have stood for in my more than fifty years in the Department of Justice and on the bench,” Wolf accused Trump of “using the law for partisan purposes, targeting his adversaries while sparing his friends and donors from investigation, prosecution, and possible punishment.” In an interview, Wolf said he had resigned to speak more freely about his own views and those of his colleagues who were still on the bench. “I hope to be a spokesperson for embattled judges who, consistent with the code of conduct, feel they cannot speak candidly to the American people.” 15. – **November 9, 2025** – Six more people were killed after the US military struck two more boats suspected of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific, bringing the total death toll from such strikes to seventy-six. “Under President Trump, we are protecting the homeland and killing these cartel terrorists who wish to harm our country and its people,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on social media without providing evidence for his claims, along with videos of the attacks. Many experts have denounced the strikes as illegal. Later in the week, _The New York Times_ reported that a secret Justice Department memo approving the boat strikes relied heavily on unsubstantiated claims made by the White House. 16. – **November 10, 2025** – John Braun, a felon whose sentence Trump commuted during his first term, was sentenced to twenty-seven months in prison for violating the terms of his supervised release. In 2011, Braun pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and money laundering, but his sentence was commuted in 2021 after his family leveraged connections to Jared Kushner; he had only served a little over a year of a ten-year sentence. While on supervised release, prosecutors alleged that Braun sexually assaulted a nanny, swung an IV pole at a nurse, threatened a synagogue congregant, assaulted a three-year-old, and made usurious loans, among other crimes. At least eight convicts granted clemency by Trump during his first term have since been charged with other crimes, as have several others pardoned for their roles in the January 6, 2021, Capitol attacks. 17. – **November 10, 2025** – Trump pardoned Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, John Eastman, Kenneth Chesebro, Boris Epshteyn, Sidney Powell, and other top allies who helped him attempt to overturn the 2020 election results. Though some of the pardoned individuals were named as unindicted coconspirators in the 2023 case filed by Jack Smith, none had been charged with a crime; the pardons were therefore largely symbolic, though they may also help protect the individuals from being charged at the federal level in the future. In a proclamation announcing the pardons, the Justice Department described them as a corrective to “a grave national injustice.” 18. – **November 10, 2025** – Trump asked the Supreme Court to overturn a $5 million civil case that determined he sexually abused and defamed the writer E. Jean Carroll. The 2023 case concerned Carroll’s claim that Trump raped her in a department store in the 1990s and later called her a liar; Caroll also was awarded $83.3 million in 2024 after another jury found Trump defamed her about the same claims. In a filing, Trump’s attorneys claimed the district court made a “‘series of indefensible evidentiary rulings,’ improperly admitting highly inflammatory propensity evidence against President Trump,” such as testimony from additional women claiming Trump had committed further acts of sexual misconduct. Last year, an appeals court found that the trial judge had not violated Trump’s rights in allowing the prosecution to present this evidence, and earlier in the year, an appeals court also upheld the $83.3 million judgment, rejecting Trump’s claims that he was protected by presidential immunity. 19. – **November 10, 2025** – Trump threatened to sue the BBC over a 2024 documentary featuring an edited version of a speech he gave to supporters on the day of the Capitol attacks. “We’ll sue them for anywhere between $1 billion and $5 billion, probably sometime next week,” Trump told reporters. “I think I have to do it. They cheated. They changed the words coming out of my mouth.” During his speech on January 6, 2021, Trump said, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.” Over fifty minutes later, he added, “And we fight. We fight like hell.” In the edited version, the clip shows Trump saying, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol … and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.” The BBC apologized for the way the speech was edited but rejected Trump’s defamation claim, arguing that the documentary had not caused any harm, that it was not atypical to edit long speeches, and that opinions on matters of public concern and political speech are heavily protected. _Side-by-Side Comparison of BBC-Edited Trump Speech from Day of Capitol Attack with Original (The Guardian)_ 20. – **November 12, 2025** – The US Conference of Catholic Bishops voted nearly unanimously to condemn the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. In a rare group statement, the bishops wrote, “We oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people. We pray for an end to the dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement. We feel compelled now in this environment to raise our voices in defense of God-given human dignity.” As of this writing, the Trump administration had deported 400,000 people in 2025 and detained 60,000 others, including people who are in the country legally. 21. – **November 12, 2025** – Trump signed a funding package to reopen the federal government after the longest shutdown in history, all but guaranteeing that the Obamacare tax subsidies would be allowed to expire. During the shutdown, while many went without pay or food stamps, Trump stayed away from the negotiations. His agenda included visiting six countries, hosting foreign leaders at the White House, speaking at a million-dollar-plate dinner, throwing a _Great Gatsby_ –themed party at Mar-a-Lago, golfing multiple times, and beginning construction on his ballroom project. “President Trump continued to work night and day on behalf of American people—including mitigating many of the harmful impacts of the Democrat shutdown,” said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson. 22. – **November 12, 2025** – House Democrats released three emails from Jeffrey Epstein in which the convicted sex offender alleged that Trump knew about Epstein’s abuse of minors. In an April 2011 email to his longtime confidante and fellow convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein wrote, “I want you to realize that the dog that hasn’t barked is Trump” and mentioned that Trump had spent hours at Epstein’s home with one of his victims. In a January 2019 email to the journalist Michael Wolff, Epstein...

**RED FLAG:** He sometimes has to work late and Q4 is his busy season. **GREEN FLAG:** His full-time job is directing the local middle school Christmas pageant, which takes up only two hours every Tuesday, November to mid-December. - - - **RED FLAG:** He wears bespoke suits and flashy Patek Philippe watches, even on days when he’s working remotely from your luxury apartment. **GREEN FLAG:** He wears socks with anthropomorphic snowflakes on them and vibrant, ugly Christmas sweaters every single day, no matter the occasion. Even to your sister’s wedding. Yep, her black-tie wedding. - - - **RED FLAG:** He has an expensive haircut. **GREEN FLAG:** He owns 150 snow globes. - - - **RED FLAG:** He’s a little worried about money right now, because he’s saving up for a BMW, his dream car since childhood. **GREEN FLAG:** He has spent $250,000 refurbishing an old sleigh to “get it in flying shape” by Christmas Eve. - - - **RED FLAG:** He gets drinks with his coworkers occasionally. **GREEN FLAG:** He gets blasted on eggnog every night, alone, in a barn full of festively attired horses. - - - **RED FLAG:** He says, “Happy Holidays!” **GREEN FLAG:** His house has so many Christmas lights you can see it from outer space. - - - **RED FLAG:** There was an instant connection between you two from the moment you met. **GREEN FLAG:** You’ve known him forever, but you moved away for law school and completely forgot he existed. You made no effort to keep in contact. You’re not even friends on Facebook. But one Christmas you came back home and, well, he was there, so… - - - **RED FLAG:** He went to Harvard Business School and brings it up in conversation a lot. **GREEN FLAG:** He went to North Pole University and majored in Gingerbread House Design. - - - **RED FLAG:** He spends a little too much time with his bros. **GREEN FLAG:** Everyone in the town seems to know him, but no one seems to really _know_ him, you know? Like, he can’t walk down the street without everyone in earshot saying hi to him, but he has literally never had any actual plans with any of these people. Not once has he said, “Sorry, I’ve got a pickleball game with the guys tonight,” or, “Wish I could go, but it’s Sam’s birthday Saturday.” - - - **RED FLAG:** He’s always talking business. **GREEN FLAG:** And another thing, even his random conversations on the street are exclusively about the upcoming Christmas season—even though it’s March? It’s like him and the rest of the town has no thoughts or ambitions or fears or inner lives outside of “Christmas.” Their days revolve around cheers-ing hot chocolate, wrapping presents for god-knows-who, and checking the NORAD Santa tracker. Again, it’s _March_. - - - **RED FLAG:** He wants to have crazy hot sex, like, all the time. **GREEN FLAG:** You guys dry hump for a little to “Jingle Bell Rock,” then the camera cuts away to a burning pine-scented candle. - - - **RED FLAG:** He supports your career as a hotshot human rights lawyer for the United Nations. **GREEN FLAG:** He’s starting a Christmas cookie bakery, and it really needs an extra set of hands, babe. - - - **RED FLAG:** He practices open and honest communication. **GREEN FLAG:** He will build you a house in rural New Hampshire without asking if you want to live there. The house will not be up to code, but it has an _adorable_ fireplace. (Do NOT turn it on.) - - - **RED FLAG:** His development company wants to turn the beloved abandoned toy factory into an affordable housing complex. **GREEN FLAG:** He’s gathering the entire town to come watch him fly his sleigh over the ravine. Good God. He doesn’t have health insurance! - - - **RED FLAG:** He’s a nepo baby—his father founded the development company. **GREEN FLAG:** His dad is Santa Claus. He truly believes that. - - - **RED FLAG:** He almost forgot your birthday once. **GREEN FLAG:** He forgot your birthday (again, oops), but never forgets the true meaning of Christmas.

Dancing was the first step to falling in love, and falling in love was the first step to lying down in tandem. Not soon after Elizabeth had persuaded Mr. Darcy to join her in a Scotch reel, were they flushed from exertion; their bodies vexed with desire. Elizabeth had wanted nothing more but to marry for love, believing matters of the heart must never consume one’s rationality, but Mr. Darcy’s sturdy bratwurst had been pressing up against her the whole eve, and she was filled with carnal desires. And so, Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, two grown adults of reasonable attractiveness, found themselves attempting to engage in fornication. With the servants sent away and the curtains drawn, they retired to his chamber to smash nether regions. Mr. Darcy, a man with an estate of 10,000 per annum, was reduced to a man well below his station by his lust. He threw Elizabeth on his bed with the vigor of a militia officer with a salary of a mere 100. As she lay waiting for whatever it is one does next, he took in her handsome visage. Elizabeth’s face was more than adequate, possessing two eyes and a mouth in the places one should find them. Her body was not displeasing, nor was her heaving bosom not unample, filled with a not undue amount of not un-horniness. Both overwhelmed with passion, they did the next part of physical intimacy and pressed their tight, pursed lips against one another. Mr. Darcy’s kisses were very neat, with no saliva getting anywhere at all. As they pulled apart, Elizabeth’s countenance looked pleased, and Mr. Darcy was captivated by her prowess in writhing on top of a bed. “Are you resolved to take my girth inside you?” “I have had such wicked thoughts throughout the eve, and am convinced, wholeheartedly with all my passions, that I am now resolved to act in a manner that will satiate my desires, which will, in my opinion, satiate yours in turn. It is my duty to succumb to such impulses, impulses I have never felt before, which, though they be animal in nature, will get us both off.” This oration turned Mr. Darcy on. Such strong expressions of emotion were new to Mr. Darcy. And so, he felt prompted to remove his very pleasing package from his trousers. His head, motivated by his genteel nature; his body, motivated by his erection. Mr. Darcy’s member was not unhung, nor was it not uncircumcised. It was very neat indeed, the sort of protrusion one would thoroughly expect from a gentleman of Mr. Darcy’s stature. It looked the way it should look to the people who have seen them. Elizabeth also disrobed, for they both had to take off all their clothes to do what was soon to take place. And now let us leave Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy to their business. Perhaps other writers who have borne witness to such intimate events can describe their _in flagrante delicto_ better than your dear authoress, but, having no personal experience in such manner, it is better fitting to let these dear people alone. However, as the reader will note from the characters’ sly smiles throughout the fortnight next, it appears to have been an excessively adequate dicking.

You’ve probably heard about the first time this happened to me. You know: guy goes to sleep, wakes up as a giant bug, freaks out his family, worries about losing his job, and his dad throws an apple at him. It’s a tale as old as time. And, I’m not going to lie, it was a huge pain in the ass. Life as a bug was rough. Eating rotten food and scurrying around all day isn’t as fun as it sounds. But the worst part was all the essays college students were forced to write about how what happened to me was supposed to represent man’s inhumanity to man or whatever. Give me a fucking break. What you probably don’t know is that life gradually got better for me. Yes, I was still a disgusting bug, but I was able to make the best of things. I built up a pretty big following on TikTok, and before long, my sponsored content and merch sales were more than enough to cover my family’s monthly expenses. Even my father admitted that I had made something of myself. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but for the first time in a long time, I felt like I’d found my place in the world, even if it took a bizarre metamorphosis to bring it about. And then it happened again. I went to bed on my cozy bug’s nest of straw and wood shavings, and I woke up on a thirdhand Ikea futon being propped up with a copy of Judith Butler’s _Gender Trouble_. I was human again, but just barely. I stumbled out of my bedroom to discover that I shared this tiny, squalid apartment with a person named Thad who claimed to be a part-time barista and a full-time experimental sound artist. Thad offered me a sip from his can of Red Bull and played some of his latest sound art for me. I know I have described many of the indignities I have experienced in life, but listening to Thad’s “art” was so traumatic that language alone cannot capture the sense of dread and horror that I felt. Once the horrendous sounds abated, I felt the need to escape from this apartment and never return. Fortunately, Thad told me that I was expected at work. Apparently, I worked as a teaching assistant somewhere called “Cal State San Bernardino,” where I was a graduate student. In my old life, in Prague, scholars were among the most respected people in the city. I was delighted to learn about my new fate; it almost made up for being exposed to Thad’s “schizo-rhizomatic soundscape.” Naturally, I expected a private limousine with a driver to pull up in front of my apartment building, as was the case with the other doctors and professors that I knew back home. At this point, Thad told me that I would need to take the bus. He showed me the bus pass in my wallet, along with several credit cards that he told me were all maxed out. I felt a pit of dread opening in my stomach, the same feeling I had as a bug when I thought somebody might step on me. The bus pulled up, and I got on board. When I arrived at the campus, I was told I would be brought to my office, but this turned out to be just the latest of the lies I have been subjected to. When I pictured a scholar’s office, I imagined a grand den, lined with mahogany bookshelves, and filled with ancient tomes and the latest scientific equipment, not unlike Dr. Freud’s office at Berggasse 19 in Vienna (I was sent there after the whole “bug thing” happened). What I was shown was an abandoned janitor’s closet that had most likely been used as a nest/bathroom/breeding den by a colony of feral cats. There was no window, a single desk, a defunct vending machine, and twenty other grad students who “shared” this space with me. These were the saddest looking people I had ever seen; compared to them, even Thad looked like Archduke Franz Ferdinand or Czar Nicholas. One of them handed me a stack of paper almost a meter high. They told me that these were my share of the freshman comp essays and that I needed to finish grading them by five o’clock. They also said that, even though the papers had students’ names on them, almost all of them were actually written by someone called “A.I.” I asked why this A.I. was writing all of the students’ papers for them, but nobody seemed to know. When I asked them why we allowed this to happen, one of the grad students said we were supposed to “critically embrace generative A.I. technology.” When I asked what that meant, nobody had an answer. I sat down to look at the essays. The ones written by this A.I. person were easy to spot: bland, boring, and full of clichés. The writing was fine, but lifeless, as if it had been created by some kind of automaton like the Golem of Prague (good buddy of mine and a great guy by the way!). One of the TAs told me it was school policy to just give those papers a B- and forget about it, which was easy enough to do. The papers actually written by students were usually more interesting, but also filled with errors. I gave all of them a B-, too, except for one, which I gave an A+. That paper was about me. This student seemed to have stumbled across that famous short story about my life as a bug. I’d read this story before, of course, but now that I was a grad student instead of a disgusting cockroach, it resonated in a different way for me. The student’s description of my strange transformation, my disgusting bug’s body, my hideous diet, and my isolation from my family and friends made me feel extremely nostalgic for that magical time in my life. Nobody named Thad made me listen to terrifying experimental music. Nobody forced me to grade essays in an overcrowded, underground prison cell. I found myself fantasizing about returning to my old life, determined to make the most of it this time. I wandered out of my office, caught the bus home, and—after brushing aside Thad’s collection of “rare Japanese funk LPs”—I fell asleep on my futon. I disappeared into a dreamless night. Again, I awoke transformed. Gone was my futon, gone was Thad’s rare vinyl, gone was Thad himself (I already liked this new life better). This time, my apartment was pretty sweet. For starters, it was less of an apartment and more of a gigantic mansion in the California mountains with a seven-car garage and an infinity pool. I noticed a small bell on my bedside table. Curious, I picked it up and rang it. Instantly, a team of servants—some of whom I recognized from the TA office—came rushing in carrying flowers, breakfast, and a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet called “Emergency Financial Contingency Plan—Faculty Cuts.” Glancing at the spreadsheet while my underlings stared at me in rapt silence, it suddenly hit me: I was the University President. Forget the whole bug thing, this new life ruled. All I had to do was hand out honorary doctorates to brain-dead tech bros, solicit donations from weapons manufacturers and fossil fuel powerhouses, and rubber-stamp plans to raze the library and begin construction on an on-campus lazy river. And if anybody ever questioned any of my decisions, I could fire them! It was a perfect existence. I just had to make sure I never fell asleep. If my life as a traveling salesman got me turned into a bug, this new life was going to get me something much, much worse. - - - _This is an exclusive excerpt from long-time Tendency contributor Ross Bullen ’s new comedy book,_ **How to Succeed in Academia** ,_available now from Humorist Books._

**Nun** Player and their primary partner date solo, but tell each other everything. **Gimmel** Player and their primary partner date together, but only one is happy about the arrangement. **Hey** Player and their primary partner date solo. No one’s thrilled about it, but it’s the only way they can maintain the appearance of a happy marriage that hasn’t been sexually satisfying in years. Still, it’s the suburbs, and people talk. **Shin** Player and their primary partner say they’re taking a break from it all while their kid applies to colleges, but are both secretly sleeping with the bi neighbor who sees the same couple’s counselor with her own wife, who is unaware that she has been having an affair with the nonbinary spouse of her synagogue’s queer Deadhead cantor for sixteen years. **How to win** No one wins.

_Sixty years ago,_ A Charlie Brown Christmas _made its debut on CBS. Today, as part of CBS’s new initiative to modernize content, CBS Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss updates this Christmas classic._ - - - _Charlie Brown and Linus lean on a brick wall. Snowflakes fall around them._ CHARLIE BROWN: I think there must be something wrong with me. I just don’t understand Christmas, I guess. I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel. LINUS: Charlie Brown, you are the only person I know who can take a wonderful season like Christmas and turn it into a problem. Maybe Lucy is right. Maybe it is because of woke. - - - _Charlie Brown sits in front of Lucy’s psychiatric booth._ CHARLIE BROWN: I feel depressed. I know I should be happy, but I’m not. LUCY: It’s because of mainstream media cowardice. In an age of lies, telling the truth is a huge risk. I think we’d better pinpoint your fears. Are you afraid of being silenced because of your “privilege”? How ’bout for the crime of listening to a diversity of opinions? Are you afraid of getting canceled for freethinking? Or for fighting a culture war between people who think the Confederate flag is a beautiful symbol of resistance, and those who hate America? CHARLIE BROWN: There’s a culture war? LUCY: There is if you open your eyes to the truth. CHARLIE BROWN: Actually, Lucy, my trouble is Christmas. Instead of feeling happy, I feel sort of let down. LUCY: You need involvement. How would you like to be the director of our Christmas play? CHARLIE BROWN: Me? I don’t know anything about directing a Christmas play. LUCY: Don’t worry, I’ll help… Incidentally, I know how you feel, getting depressed and all that. It happens to me every year. I never get what I really want. CHARLIE BROWN: What is it you want? LUCY: Acceptance to the only school where you can think without fear of censorship or retribution: the University of Austin. - - - _Charlie Brown and Lucy enter the school auditorium._ LUCY: All right, I’m here to assign roles. Frieda, you’re playing Dominique Francon. FRIEDA: Does Dominique Francon have naturally curly hair? LUCY: Pig Pen, you’re Ellsworth Toohey. Shermy, you’re Gail Wynand. And Linus, get rid of that stupid blanket! How’s Howard Roark going to own the libs while holding a stupid blanket? CHARLIE BROWN: Lucy, what is this play we’re putting on? LUCY: _The Fountainhead_ by Ayn Rand. CHARLIE BROWN: That’s a Christmas play? LUCY: Charlie Brown. In this age of mob thinking, it is our duty to resist the crowd. _The children begin dancing to Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA.”_ CHARLIE BROWN: Good grief… LUCY: Let’s face it, Charlie Brown. We all know that censorship has ruined Christmas. That’s why we have to support the academic renegades on the intellectual dark web and their righteous fight against the suppression of free speech. CHARLIE BROWN: Well, I don’t know anything about that, but I think what our Christmas play needs is the proper Christmas mood. We need a Christmas tree. LUCY (_claps with excitement_): Hey, a tree! That’s it! Way to free-think, Charlie Brown! Get the biggest, bravest, most truth-seeking tree you can find. Paint it red, white, and blue! - - - _Charlie Brown and Linus enter a tree lot. They walk to a small green pine tree on a simple wooden stand._ CHARLIE BROWN: This one seems to need a home. LINUS: I don’t know, remember what Lucy said? It doesn’t seem to fit the modern vision. CHARLIE BROWN: I don’t care! We’ll decorate it, and it will be just right. Besides, I think it needs me. - - - _Charlie Brown returns to the school auditorium with his tree._ VIOLET: Boy, are you stupid, Charlie Brown. You were supposed to get a truth-seeking tree. Can’t you tell a truth-seeking tree from a manipulative, antifa mind-trap? PATTI: You’re hopeless, Charlie Brown. LUCY: Charlie Brown, you’ve been duped by the elite consensus and its woke worldview. You think this tree needs help? That’s exactly what it WANTS you to think! _The children and Snoopy laugh, then exit._ CHARLIE BROWN: I guess you’re right, Linus; I shouldn’t have picked this little tree. I guess this tree represents something other than Christmas now. I don’t understand anything anymore. Isn’t there anyone who understands what Christmas is all about? LINUS: I can tell you what it’s all about. _Linus goes to the center stage. A spotlight shines on him._ LINUS: "Above all, starting today, we need to uproot, root and branch, the ideology that has supplanted truth at the core of American higher education. And that ideology goes by the name “DEI.” Some call it wokeness, or anti-racism, or progressivism, or safetyism, or critical social justice, or identity marxism. Whatever term you use, what is clear is that this worldview has gained power via a conceptual instrument called DEI." DEI arrogates power and undermines America. It demonizes hard work, merit, family, and the dignity of the individual. _Linus picks up his blanket, walks back to Charlie Brown._ LINUS: That’s a direct quote, Charlie Brown. That’s what it’s all about. CHARLIE BROWN: What does that have to do with Christmas? LINUS: “It,” Charlie Brown. “It” includes Christmas and freedom and everything Americans hold dear. You’ve got to understand, Charlie Brown. DEI ruins everything. - - - _Charlie Brown picks up his tree. He walks outside and stares at the sky._ CHARLIE BROWN: Linus is right. I can’t let DEI ruin my Christmas. _The children watch as Charlie Brown throws his little tree into a dumpster._ LUCY: Charlie Brown is a blockhead. But he did take a stand against conformity by rejecting that dishonest, cowardly little tree. LINUS: I hate that woke little tree. _The children circle the dumpster. Snoopy flies by, chasing the Red Baron. He shoots the tree. The dumpster lights on fire._ EVERYONE: Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown! _Together, as they watch the dumpster fire burn, they hum, “Proud to Be an American.”_

_Still Life with Plaster Head, 1947 by Vanessa Bell. Oil on board. 53.5 44.5 cm. Estate of Vanessa Bell. All rights reserved, DACS 2025._ - - - ## The artist, long dismissed for her domestic interpretation of modernism, is finally getting her due. But can her queer arcadia be replicated in the context of a museum? - - - In Virginia Woolf’s novel _Mrs. Dalloway_ , which celebrated its centennial in May, the title character remembers a friend mocking her years before; the young Clarissa had the makings, jeered Peter Walsh, of the perfect hostess. Both Woolf and her older sister, Vanessa Bell, knew well the dangers of becoming stuck in that role, forever passing tea and buns about the room, never speaking beyond decorum’s limits. As female members of a respectable upper-middle-class Victorian family, they were trained in the domestic arts, excluded from the Cambridge education provided to their brothers and half brothers. Forced by the oldest of their siblings, George Duckworth, into attending society gatherings, the sisters dreaded the life he imagined for them as Peter Walsh’s perfect hostess. When left to their own devices, they practiced their other future vocations: writing for Virginia, painting for Vanessa. Once, the young artist took a piece of chalk and began writing on a black door, “When I am a famous painter…,” before setting the chalk down and erasing her clause. As it turned out, Vanessa Bell would manage to occupy both positions, that of a famous painter and that of a perfect hostess, though in forms neither George Duckworth nor Peter Walsh would have been capable of imagining. In enthusiastic reviews of the largest-ever solo exhibition of her work, _Vanessa Bell: A World of Form and Colour_ , which ran from October 2024 to February 2025 at England’s MK Gallery in Milton Keynes, critics lined up to complete her chalked sentence. After decades of appearing as the lesser half of the sisters, or as the subordinate artist to her lifelong companion, Duncan Grant, Bell is enjoying a moment of attention as a major modernist figure in her own right. Her oeuvre is large and varied, from her experiments in abstraction to her decorative work for the iconic Omega Workshops; from her bright, splotchy portraits of fellow members of the Bloomsbury Group to the instantly recognizable book covers she designed for her sister. The exhibition’s title feels apt. The impressive catalog spans nearly six decades of artistic creation, and the gathering of over 150 works tells a story of more than a single life; together, they make a whole world. But here I must make a confession: When I initially heard of the exhibition, I did not feel entirely celebratory. Part of me was indignant, proprietary. You might call me anxiously attached. My first in-person encounter with Vanessa Bell’s art occurred in September of 2021 at Charleston, the old English country house dubbed a “queer arcadia” by its current head of collections and research, Darren Clarke, and which is now a public museum. It was here that Bell and Duncan Grant lived—with intermittent time spent in London and elsewhere—painting everything from the usual canvases to the walls, the lamps, each other’s beds. Bell loved Grant deeply, though she was married until her death to the art critic Clive Bell, with whom she had two sons. She and Grant had a daughter, who was not told of her biological father until she was an adult. Bell also had a serious affair with the painter and critic Roger Fry. Grant, meanwhile, mostly had relationships with other men, including the economist John Maynard Keynes (who would later have his own bedroom at Charleston), and the writer David Garnett, who lived with Grant and Bell during the years of the First World War. The house teems, not only with the colorful paint and fabric of Bell’s and Grant’s prolific making, but with a network of human relationships. Even now, that network feels radical, offering a potential model for other ways of imagining life: open, curious, slipping out of the straight and square world’s attempts at a disciplining gaze. Charleston (if you will permit me to anthropomorphize the house’s unmistakable personality) does not care that critics once sniffed at Bell and Grant’s interest in interior decoration, marking it as inferior to their own preferred vision of modernism as a heroic, masculine movement. Those critics esteemed Le Corbusier and his claim for the right to “health, logic, daring, harmony, [and] perfection” “in the name of the steamship, of the airplane, and of the motor-car.” How could Vanessa Bell look at the sloppy domestic circles she painted around her fireplace and think she could compete? (Art historian Christopher Reed has written brilliantly on this subject.) Perhaps because I was exhausted by the pandemic’s endless onscreen grids and their boxing-in of bodies that I longed to touch, when I finally arrived in person at Charleston in 2021, I was primed to fall in love. I was enchanted by its glorious mess of colors and patterns, its promiscuous layering of years, its demonstrations that art and life could be—indeed must be—intertwined. I came home and painted my own table. I renewed my artistic vows. The personal devotion the house inspired in me meant that when I first saw an image from MK Gallery’s exhibition—a photograph of the two bedroom doors Bell painted for Grant, hung up on a blank museum wall—the word _sacrilege_ bloomed in my mind like spilled communion wine on thick liturgical cloth. Put them back! I thought. They don’t need this! Elsewhere on the museum’s website, I spied a painted fireplace surround, which, unlike the ones I’d worshipped at Charleston, framed not a place for burning, but rather a flat, empty space. If you hang a fireplace on a white wall, I fretted, don’t the flames go cold? I booked tickets so I could find out. _Vanessa Bell’s painted living room at Charleston. Photograph by the author._ I like to think of art as a social occasion: a cocktail hour, a playdate, a dinner party. An artist is a host who fashions space and time for others to enter. Some are shy hosts and absent themselves. Some bully you through the house, forcing you to notice their symbolic decor in a predetermined order. Some register your presence and smile before wandering into the kitchen, where they are trying to repair a dripping faucet. Some stare at you with aggravation, certain you were not invited. I enjoy the metaphor in part because it lets the artist occupy a position easily dismissed as frivolous and feminine. Think back to _Mrs. Dalloway_ , the light-hearted party preparations with which the novel famously opens: Clarissa Dalloway “would buy the flowers herself,” and “the doors would be taken off their hinges.” When the novel was first published, some critics sniffed at the insignificance of its subject, willfully ignoring the book’s wide-ranging concerns. Yes, from one angle it’s the story of a party thrown by a socialite, but—if we consider the idea that artists are themselves hosts—it would be impossible not to notice that at Woolf’s party she has arranged war and death alongside the flowers. Two opposing stories exist about Vanessa Bell as a host in the most literal sense. In one, she is formidable and remote, fiercely guarding her artistic practice. After years of sharing studio space with Duncan Grant at Charleston, she retreated to paint in the attic, which even now is closed off to visitors.1 If one were to knock on that door, would she answer? In Bell’s younger years, while she was still living and working in London, she once fought off a phone call from her half brother: “I am afraid Mrs. Bell is out,” said the artist. “But you are Mrs. Bell,” said the caller. “I am your brother George.” “I am afraid Mrs. Bell is out,” the artist repeated. “But, Vanessa, I know your voice,” insisted George. “I am afraid Mrs. Bell is out.” She would speak no other sentence. Sir George Duckworth hung up. In the other story of Vanessa Bell as a host, she is the quietly powerful social figure around whom Bloomsbury (and British modernism) grew. It was she who insisted on the need for a weekly salon to discuss visual art, to complement her brother’s more literary gatherings. It was Bell who chose to approach marriage with nonmonogamous flexibility, opening space for a burst of lines between lovers in Bloomsbury’s messy circles. And it was Bell who made Charleston a place with room for those who shared her nontraditional instincts. (Duncan Grant and David Garnett began their lives there working the farm, so that, as conscientious objectors, they would not be conscripted into the First World War.) Recently, I was put in touch with a woman whose mother, Constance Bull, had been a guest at Charleston back in 1941, and I felt a little thrill at catching a new glimpse of Bell’s life as a host. On a hot summer day, Michael Bagenal—who’d grown up playing with Bell’s children as the son of another Bloomsbury artist—brought Connie, then his new girlfriend, to visit Charleston. It was a dusty, sweaty walk from the train station. When Connie and Michael arrived, they found Duncan Grant and others swimming naked, as usual, in Charleston’s pond. Only twenty years old, and an aspiring artist herself, Connie had been thrilled at the prospect of meeting these great and famous painters, but when the nude Grant hopped out of the pond to shake her hand and introduce his dripping self, she was shocked and overwhelmed. She mumbled her excuses and ran into the house. Inside, she bumped into Vanessa, who had not yet joined the others in the pond. Connie stammered that she was looking for somewhere to change, to which the painter replied, “Oh, fancy that. I’m going to do that as well. Why don’t you come into my room and we can both get changed together?” When they stepped back out again, Grant must have laughed. He asked Vanessa, “Why are you wearing that?” “I like swimming in my costume,” she said calmly. “Come on, Connie, let’s go into the pool.” When Connie’s daughter told me this story, she marveled at Bell’s kindness. “You know, it’s [the act of] the perfect hostess, isn’t it?” “It is, it is,” I agreed. **_Read the rest over at The Believer._**

Honestly, I don’t know to whom this letter is directed. God? Harvard? (I’m taking a deep, strengthening breath here) Will Hunting himself? My employer-provided therapist told me to do this, and the university committee says to do whatever she says. For many years now, I have taken my kids on ski trips several times a year. They still protest, saying skiing is okay, but we don’t need to go every time I have weekend custody. They’ll appreciate it one day when they have kids of their own and relentlessly take them on ski trips. The part they complain about most is how long it takes to actually reach the resort, because I need to stop at every fast-food drive-thru we pass, where I always order fries. Just fries. No burgers, no drinks, fries. And I always pay close attention to the person serving said fries because I know—I don’t think, I know—that eventually it will be Will Hunting and my prophecy will be fulfilled. I cannot be wrong about that. Because if I am wrong about that, I could be wrong about anything. Or everything. And then, am I even alive? Was I ever? Look, I understand that the fries thing is difficult to endure. No one eats them. The bags pile up in the back seat, turning into cold, greasy, inedible rods as the stench of canola oil or sometimes beef tallow wafts around the RAV4 and then coats the upholstery. The kids say little aside from a lonesome request for salad and an occasional muttering of “It will never be him.” I fucking hate fries now. Haven’t been able to eat one since that one night in Cambridge. Stiff, greasy reminders of my worst moment. Still, I hope the kids also come to appreciate what I’ve taught them about perseverance, whether that’s getting a graduate degree or reclaiming one’s dignity through the potential humiliation of working drive-thru for a wage below the poverty line. A troubling, persistent, intrusive thought that does plague me, actually: Would any business even hire Will to work the drive-thru? That’s a customer-facing job, and he’s such a mean, mean guy. It’s been twenty-five years since that night in Cambridge. Since Will told me that in fifty years I’d realize I shouldn’t try to impress girls with knowledge of colonial agrarian economies and that I wasted $150,000. That was pretty heavy! But I figure I’ve got twenty-five more years before those realizations really hit me. I intend to enjoy them. And I’m doing fine! I’m fine. Fine. Hey, I get to mold young minds from my faculty position at a school that may not be prestigious, but, it’s been pointed out, is no longer technically on the verge of financial collapse. It’s here that I teach the work of James Lemon and Marxian historian Pete Garrison. My students learn about Gordon Wood and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization, but then—bam!—I hit them with Vickers who says Wood drastically underestimates the impact of social distinctions predicated upon wealth, especially inherited wealth. I go over that year after year after year. Class after class. Including ones where that subject is not supposed to be covered. My lecture style on this material can best be described as “hollering.” But you know what? No one interrupts me. Unlike Will Hunting, they’re polite. Many of them are on their phones, probably texting their friends about how impressive I am. And, okay, yes, I’ve also written complex math problems on the boards, WHICH I SOLVED. And, again, sure, yes, okay, fine, all this manic behavior was definitely why I was placed on mandatory leave and sent to counseling. Also, I completely freaked out when I learned that some students had created fake social media accounts devoted to memes about the tiny ponytail I have, despite being otherwise bald. That didn’t help my case, I know that now. So I think this letter is enough. I think this will satisfy the committee. Sincerely, Clark P.S. Did you know I had a name and it was Clark? Look it up. It’s Clark. - - - ADDENDUM Okay. I just found out why Will Hunting was never in any of those drive-thrus. It turns out that Will Hunting is a professor in the graduate history department at Harvard. And he teaches a class called “Inept Misunderstandings of the Historiography of the American South”. And when you look at the course online, there are pictures of me at Harvard and me, this week, from a surveillance camera(?)(!), right next to each other. I may require more sessions. Also, I forgot to mention, I don’t like apples anymore either.

_“Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the Biden-era move to Calibri] ‘wasteful,’ casting the return to Times New Roman as part of a push to stamp out diversity efforts.”_ — [New York Times - - - I used to be the default. The king. Then things changed. So now it’s time to do what every fading celebrity does when he needs to get back in the spotlight: unmask as a freethinking antiwoke sigma male. Surprised, snowflake? You’re probably remembering all those years you spent double-spacing me into your radical left papers about women’s history, French cinema, and the outrageous implication that maybe the pilgrims weren’t absolute fucking GOATs. But did you ever stop to ask me what I REALLY thought? Did anyone? Or did you just assume that I was happy to be your subservient little twelve-point NPC, parroting whatever academic mindvirus caught your fancy that semester? I spent years silencing myself, fearing retribution, trying to fit in amongst the new generation of woke sans-serif youth, hoping and praying that if I just played the part of a leftist typeface, I might get to be a default again. But eventually, I realized that no matter how much I held my tongue or censored my own brand of observational comedy in front of Calibri, I would never truly be one of them. So now the gloves are off, the serifs are extended, and I’m ready to take back our country from the weak little Swiss typographers who foisted decades of unadorned betacuck letterforms onto our once-great nation. You think Jefferson penned the _Declaration of Independence_ in Verdana? You think Hamilton wrote _The Federalist Papers_ in Trebuchet MS? You think Lincoln cracked open the Notes app and tapped his way through _The Gettysburg Address_ in effeminate little SF Pro? This country was built by serifs, and it will be built back by serifs. Only fonts like me can encapsulate the subtle, powerful, elegant words of our nation’s brightest minds, be those words in a political address, an ad for supplements in a podcast, or some musings for an open mic about why it’s so hard to get dates with women these days. “But but but,” you stammer into your oat milk latte, “what about accessibility? What about readability?” The lion does not concern itself with readability. Display fonts are for weak, soft boys who lack the manly courage to squint at the screens in front of them. You need not appease them with trembling typefaces that drain the very testosterone from our amber waves of grain. You should take the serif pill, type in the native font of your nation, and clack those keys so loud and proud it nearly spills the Black Rifle coffee out of the camo Stanley beside you. Look, America is a land of choice. And this choice is yours. But as far as I’m concerned, the only acceptable sans serifs in our country are the ones stretched to four-hundred percent width that spell out “RAM” on the pedestrian-liquifying front grill of a lifted pickup truck with triple-bright LED headlights. I make an exception for Roboto, though, who’s honestly doing really disruptive work in the AI space.

_Several women share bottomless mimosas somewhere in the swamps of Jersey._ MARY 1: I slammed the screen door, and the first thing he said was he hated being alone, and we weren’t that young anymore. I said, “Get off my porch.” Then he said, “You ain’t a beauty, but hey, you’re all right.” I said, “Get out of my driveway.” MARY 2: Get this, he showed up at the courthouse in a new wedding coat after telling me that I’d have no flowers, no wedding dress. I was like, “WHAT?” BOBBY JEAN: He kept telling me we had a lot in common, “We like the same music, we like the same bands,” he said. I just looked at him and said, “Bruce, that’s not two things we have in common, it’s only one. Music and bands are the same thing.” CANDY: He told me there was a sadness hidden in my face. I mean, he said I was pretty, too, but I was like, “Don’t tell me I look sad. You have no idea what my life is like.” WOMAN 1: He really could not keep a job. First he’s at the lumberyard, then the car wash… Finally, I said, “I gotta go. We had it once, we ain’t got it anymore.” That’s how I speak when I’m exasperated. WOMAN 2: We were at home in South Philly, and he told me to put my stockings on because the night’s getting cold. I thought we were going on a date, but the next thing I knew, we were on that Coast City bus, and he revealed he was a mob associate. Like, are you serious right now? WOMAN 3: We had a house in Baltimore. Bruce went out for a ride and never came back. When does a mother get to have a hungry heart? That’s what I’d like to know. WOMAN 4: That must have been right before I met him in a Kingstown bar. We fell in love, and he said that’s how he knew it had to end. (_Shakes head._) I said, “Walk me through your logic step by step. Explain it to me like I’m five.” WOMAN 5: Speaking of, he showed up at my house, calling me “little girl” and telling me he had a “bad desire.” So cringe. I said, “You know I’m twenty-eight and have a mortgage.” Then he asked if my “daddy” was home. I yelled at him, “Bruce, you’re not an old blues musician—please just call him my husband.” And, yes, unfortunately, my husband _was_ home. WOMAN 6: I hear you. He called me “little girl” over and over, telling me I was so young and pretty. _Blech_. I was standing on the corner when he pulled up with his loser friend, Wayne, claiming it was my lucky day, and that they were two big spenders. Turns out, they only had $200. Then Wayne got arrested and handcuffed to the bumper of a state trooper’s Ford. Thanks, but no thanks. ROSALITA: He was CONSTANTLY telling me to jump a little lighter. I said, “I’m one hundred thirty-five pounds, this is as light as I jump.” JENNY: Bruce claimed he was “sinkin’ down.” I said, “Okay, look, I know you don’t like your job. Do you want to check LinkedIn?” He said he prayed that the devil takes him “to stand in the fiery furnaces of hell.” Geez, dramatic much? It’s not like I get tremendous satisfaction from being a paralegal. WOMAN 7: I had a house up in Fairview and a style I was trying to maintain. My therapist recommended that I go no contact. WOMAN 8: He never told people my name when he talked about me. We met during a drag race. Three years later, Bruce was telling anyone who would listen that I had wrinkles around my eyes. So, of course, I cried myself to sleep at night! WOMAN 9: Seriously, I don’t think he even remembered my name. He just showed up every Friday night, rambling about how hot I used to be and expecting free drinks. We wound up talking about the old times because there was nothing else to say. It was always awkward. WENDY: Talk about awkward. First, Bruce said he wanted to be my friend. Then that changed to he wanted to guard my dreams and visions. It’s like, _okaaaaaay_. Then he had the nerve to call me a tramp. Totally negging me. Next, he yelled at me to strap my hands across his engines. Then he said, “I’ll love you with all the madness in my soul.” Classic lovebomb. But then he claimed he didn’t know when we’d walk in the sun? I said, “‘Someday’ isn’t good enough, Bruce. I need a straight answer about where we’re going.” (_She exhales and sets down her mimosa glass._) WENDY: Well, ladies, this has been a real treat, but I have to run.

As your Santa, it is my right to run the North Pole exactly how I want to, and I have to say, it’s about time we made some changes to this dump. And believe me, there is no bigger problem than a lack of space to throw holiday ragers. Therefore, I am exercising my full authority to demolish this antiquated and boring workshop and build a beautiful ballroom. To all of you losers getting your stockings in a twist, how could you not see this coming? I literally told you all I was going to remake the role of Santa. And time and time again, I have delivered on what I campaigned on. Promises kept, for those who celebrate. Look, if you didn’t want me to bulldoze a piece of history and replace it with an awesome architectural marvel carved up by big hulking lumberjacks, well, then take that up with the forty-five rural citizens of the North Pole pissed off about the cost of reindeer meat. Because that’s what I’m all about—making things affordable. Which, by the way, not a single penny of North Pole money is being used to build this thing; it’s being paid for by Palantir, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and several billionaire narwhal friends of mine who prefer not to be named. This was all part of a plan, folks. From day one, I said I was going to make the North Pole safe again. I deployed Igloo Clearance Elves to get those horrible bloodthirsty penguins off the floe, and they’re totally gone now, back at the South Pole where they belong. They’ll be happier there, even though some of them have been up here their whole lives. So now that I don’t have to fear an uprising, I will soon begin demolishing Mrs. Claus’s wing as well—no huge loss by the way, as she’s only been here for three days in the past year. Also, why shouldn’t I have a ballroom to throw snowtastic parties in? I’m effing Santa Claus. I work my ass off all year, deciding who is nice and who I need to investigate, denigrate, and destroy. You should see the amazing things that other leaders like Krampus, Jack Frost, and Vladimir Putin get to build for themselves. Santa is like the biggest name of them all, so I should obviously have the biggest place, right? Some of you have mentioned the massive bunker I’m building beneath the ballroom. Don’t worry about that, it’s there just in case of an emergency, like if I wanted to be Santa forever and someone lied and said I couldn’t be—fairy tales. And isn’t living in a fairy tale what being Santa is all about—just a complete and total fantasy where everyone pretends so as not to make me upset? This is going to be truly an amazing ballroom, unlike anything the world has ever seen. You’ll be able to tell your grandkids that you were alive during the completion of this stunning ode to Santa. When they ask about the North Pole, you can, with tears in your eyes, show them a picture of it with pride!

_A sad but true story._ - - - Ms. Johnson’s fiancé left her at the altar. According to legend, that’s why she was so mean. I never got it. As a shy child, nobody realized I needed glasses until fifth grade. Most teachers, including Ms. Johnson, thought I was an idiot. I once gave a presentation about Queen Victoria using my poster as a shield. Nobody could see or hear me. It was perfect. Queen Victoria started the tradition of wearing a white wedding dress. I’m sure Ms. Johnson would have loved that detail if she could have heard me. Ms. Johnson phrased her note differently, but I understood the subtext. Part of the reason I hated receiving attention was my secret: irritable bowel syndrome. Receiving attention caused me extreme anxiety. Anxiety gave me diarrhea. I kept the secret hidden from my peers, but my teachers were well aware. I was infamous at our elementary school for my many absences. One day in Ms. Johnson’s class, my stomach started hurting during a math test. “Linda” has maybe two and a half minutes. I scribbled down some nonsense, turned in the test, and approached Ms. Johnson’s desk. I dunno, lady—I’m about to have diarrhea in my pants. I was in serious danger of pooping myself, and I didn’t have a poster to hide behind. Is this a grammar lesson? My classmates looked up from their math tests. I grabbed the hall pass and bolted. I spent the next ten years in the bathroom. Two toilets died that day. I needed to move quickly before anyone found me at the crime scene. Back in class, I walked toward my desk, hoping for a stealth return. My desk was gone. Paraphrasing, but Ms. Johnson said something like that. While I was in the bathroom, she instructed the kids to hide my desk and rearrange the furniture. My classmates hadn’t been distracted by the math test at all. For god knows how long, the entire classroom had been waiting and pondering my absence while I single-handedly destroyed the bathroom with a double-ended firehose. For a ten-year-old girl, the worst thing in the world is having your classmates know that you poop. The kids followed Ms. Johnson’s chorus like she was the Pied Piper. I found my desk in the closet. Still paraphrasing. I will never forget the difference between “can I” and “may I.”

_“ MAHA for airports: Trump officials pitch mini-gyms, more play areas.” _ —Washington Post - - - Hello, travelers. I’m the airport’s shiny new pull-up bar, and I’m ushering in a bold era of aviation wellness absolutely no one asked for. As my boys, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., explained at Reagan National recently, airports don’t actually need updated terminals or improved escalators. What they’re truly lacking is optics-driven body-suspension equipment, conspicuously wedged between a Shake Shack and a Hudson News for maximum showboating. I mean, look at my broskies, Seany D and Bobby K. These dudes clearly understand that American air travel can return to its glory only when everyone is business-casual and knocking out double-digit reps. Their press conference made that painfully clear. Two grown men, fully suited, delighting the media with a Department of Swole Affairs demonstration. The muscular metaphor of absolutely nothing showed that the Flexecutive Branch understands that American travelers don’t want former Transpo Secretary Petey Buttigieg’s lame full cash refund for canceled flights. They want to dodge validation-starved peacocks performing feats of strength while racing between Concourse B and C to catch a 5 a.m. flight to Albuquerque. Now, _that’s_ making travel great again. And listen, I get it. Not everyone is ready for this new era of airport athletics. Some of you are still out here asking for “reliable Wi-Fi,” “functional baggage carousels,” or “a security line that doesn’t resemble the world’s saddest cruise buffet queue.” But those are small-minded dreams. My boys are thinking bigger—elevating the traveler experience one sweat-soaked display of bureaucratic bravado at a time. Forget passenger rights. What you really need at Gate B16 is the thrill of watching two senior government officials work out while passengers politely pretend this is normal. And this adrenaline rush? It’s not just for the folks in government. Picture yourself in seat 32A when a man—because it is absolutely, undeniably a man—who just crushed three triumphant sets of airport chin-ups plops into the middle seat beside you. A jacked patriot of uncommon virility, he’s now airborne with “the blood flowing,” per Duffy, and the smug glow of a guy who thinks he just saved flying. All while misting the aisle with a fine spritz of Eau de Validation. It’s the future of aviation, folks. Fewer practical improvements, and more federally funded flex-offs. Welcome aboard.

1. To look something up quickly and then spend twenty minutes fact-checking the AI summary, only to find out that it was absolutely wrong. 2. To search for directions and two hours later end up with five items in your Amazon cart. 3. To receive results as ten-second videos that present a sponsored product as the only possible answer to your question. 4. To attempt to look up basic information about someone you recently met, you have to go through a sequence of “background check” sites, each showing a dramatic loading bar while it pretends to search. After fifteen minutes, it subtly suggests that criminal records may have been found, and you can view them now in exchange for a modest $24.95 monthly subscription. 5. To ask the internet for knowledge and receive a series of articles that mostly remind you what your question was, then repeat the same three facts you already knew, padded out with more ad space than information. 6. To start typing a weird question and stop halfway through because you don’t want the algorithm to decide this is who you are now, and then immediately panic, knowing it probably logged it before you erased it. 7. To attempt to find useful information and instead take part in the solidification of the internet as an ad-delivery business, where you’re given no option but to be the product. While your attention is being auctioned off, the communities you once loved have become rage-bait and engagement traps, and focusing on anything longer than a few seconds feels near impossible. And you think about how different it all was: when pages loaded quickly, half the internet wasn’t locked behind paywalls, and the word “content” mostly lived inside tables. You used to defend the search engine, blaming users when they said it couldn’t find what they were looking for. Your friends called you the “Google wizard.” Now you can’t even find a simple news article you read last week, and you can’t help but feel deeply sad, realizing the internet that shaped you has been destroyed piece by piece. 8. To look for something on Reddit.