That mean one, Mr. Grinch, came early and stayed late this year. He arrived before Christmas, then lingered like a bad smell days afterward. The killjoy of seasonal cheer has various guises, but his most common cover for interfering in everyone’s harmless pleasures is concern over climate change or animal welfare. He doesn’t deny that […]
“Santa Claus is delivering mid-season acquisitions,” back-to-back NCAA basketball champion Dan Hurley posted on Christmas. “This s*** is crazy,” the University of Connecticut coach added. Hurley was reacting to Baylor University coach Scott Drew signing a 7-foot center named James Nnaji to the Bears roster almost two months after the season started. Schools adding players […]
When politicos look back on President Donald Trump’s first year in his second stab at the presidency, early 2026 may mark the nadir of his career-wide economic approval. The inflation crisis inherited from former President Joe Biden has kept the cost of living the single most salient issue for voters across the political spectrum. So, […]
If you’ve ever ordered a pizza from Domino’s, Pizza Hut, or Papa John’s, you’ve probably eaten mozzarella made by Leprino Foods in Lemoore, California. But that era is coming to an end. Like hundreds of other companies, Leprino is pulling back from California and expanding operations in Texas. For decades, Leprino was a cornerstone of […]
Almost a full 10 years after debuting on Netflix, Stranger Things has finally come to a close in its fifth and final season. Ordinarily, one would say that audiences grew up with the children at the heart of the science fiction bildungsroman, but that’s not really true in a case where the actors have lapped […]
It’s slim pickings out there for the responsible progressive these days. What is he to do for a pastime without fear of becoming a right-winger? Is he allowed to like anything? To the long list of behaviors that the major media have branded as right-wing, readers of Politico and the Washington Post have been warned […]
People are generating wealth, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) wants to put a stop to it. First on social media and now on Sunday TV shows, Sanders has called for a “moratorium” on all data center construction until “democracy” can “catch up” with technological change. Like so many of his proposals, this one would inflict […]
When S.M. Arthur, an honorary fellow of the University of Cambridge, wakes up to the realisation that he’s dead, as he does in “Late,” one of five stories collected in Salman Rushdie’s The Eleventh Hour, he takes it rather well. True enough, having only just entered his seventh decade he “had not envisaged this turn […]
Some choices are minor and forgettable. Others have large, lasting repercussions. Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts’s decision to side with podcaster Tucker Carlson in an October 2025 video is decidedly the latter. Carlson had posted a softball interview with Hitler and Stalin devotee Nick Fuentes, in which Carlson attacked Christian Zionists as heretics with a […]
For the overwhelming majority of people whose families, jobs, and personal pursuits loom larger than the endless mergers and acquisitions in Hollywood, the hue and cry over Netflix’s plans to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery is likely to elicit not much more than a shrug. To most ordinary, well-adjusted people, the ownership of a movie studio […]
Stranger Things was never meant to end like this, largely because it was never meant to go on the way it has. The first season was conceived and written as a limited series, with the possibility of succeeding other, entirely different seasons, similar to True Detective or American Horror Story. Someone at Netflix decided during filming that […]
Looking back at it now, 10 years later, the warning signs were clear from the start — from the first trailer, in fact. Its initial image was a shot of a speeder zooming past the wreckage of a long-forgotten battle, an X-wing in the foreground dwarfed by a Star Destroyer in the background. Following it […]
After years of Scandinavian and Bauhaus-inflected minimalism, no-frills graphic design, and the Marie Kondo-inspired culling of closets, clutter is suddenly back in style. According to the New York Times, a Ralph Lauren Christmas was the trend of the holiday season, although you don’t need to shop at Ralph Lauren to get the look. Cost-conscious consumers […]
When President Donald Trump roared to victory in 2024, conservatives told themselves a number of just-so stories. Biden-era profligacy had driven the Democratic Party into its grave, leaving MAGA Republicans to plot America’s future alone. Former President Barack Obama’s “coalition of the ascendant” had permanently splintered. Most importantly, wokeness was spent as a cultural force. […]
