This proposition popped out at me as odd, in that—believe what you will about the wisdom involved—there's little "classic" about these settlements with, and enriching, an antagonistic federal government, no sense in which it's business as usual. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/u...

Here is Louise Glück's extraordinary short essay on writing and the evolutions of a writer; it rings intensely true. "I think my life didn’t seem my life until I started to write." www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

The Times's No. 1 prediction for 2025 is about a turn in the battle for attention, citing the group I introduced in my long NYer piece on the battle for attention last year (www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...). Here's to a year of not letting ourselves be persuaded to waste our attention on dross.

Thanks so much to Lawrence O’Donnell for having me on last night to talk about "the ambience of information." www.msnbc.com/the-last-wor...