Reading archive 2026-02-04

Stephen King’s The Shining, If the Hotel Had Possessed Wendy Instead of Jack

The Evolutionary Brilliance of the Baby Giggle - "Indeed, this idea — that laughter is primarily social, less about comedy and more about connection — holds true for adults as well, and has been underscored by research showing that laughter overwhelmingly occurs in the company of others and typically follows banal remarks in conversation, rather than in response to jokes or punchlines. 

"The signature belly laughs seen in the video above are involuntary, bursting forth during genuine, uncontrollable amusement. This type of laughter is driven by the brain’s limbic system, structures crucial for emotion, memory and motivation. But by 6 months, our lab has found, infants can intentionally produce a laugh. This ability comes not from the limbic system but from the brain’s language areas and emerges at the same time as babbling. Six-month-olds will deploy laughter to prolong a game of peekaboo or to signal a desire to join in."

Texas Democrats taste victory, then turn on each other: Days after their win in a state Senate race, reports of a racially charged comment roil the U.S. Senate primary contest.

As cold-stunned invasive iguanas fall from trees, Floridians scoop them up for killing: These cold-blooded reptiles’ nervous systems shut down when temperatures dip into the 40s and below. This time, that meant killing season.

Choose your crisis, Congress: Six paths to fiscal disaster: The national debt is nearing $39 trillion. Dire consequences are coming.

Trump, in an Escalation, Calls for Republicans to 'Nationalize' Elections: The comments, made on a conservative podcast, follow a string of moves from his administration to try to exert more control over American elections.

What a swing House district in Colorado shows about Republicans’ immigration fallout in the midterms

Kansas Legislature Passes Trans Bathroom Bounty, Drivers License Revocations: “They're using very overtly anti-democratic measures to pass all this stuff because they know that it's unpopular.”

These Trump voters 'formed a suicide pact' and Republicans are panicking: ex-GOP operative

‘They Voted For Trump, And Now They’re In Tears’—Now Rural Farmers Say Tariffs & Costs Are Pushing Them Toward Bankruptcy

St. Peter police chief intervened and got federal agents to release resident, sources say

Donald Trump vowed to unleash U.S. oil. A year later, low prices are squeezing Texas producers.

Reading archive 2026-02-03

The Melania Trump Documentary Is a Disgrace: The exorbitant film captures the rotten state of the entertainment industry.

Trump’s New Method of Humiliation: The president doesn’t seem to fire people anymore, but he marginalizes them in other ways.

Moderna’s chilling announcement is a symptom of a deeper sickness China is on track to become the world’s pharmaceutical leader if the U.S. keeps blowing its edge. - "China’s pharmaceutical industry, long known for making precursor chemicals and cheap generics, is steadily moving up the value chain into innovative compounds. If China gains the upper hand, the U.S. risks seeing supplies of critical drugs held hostage during conflict. The pandemic gave a taste of what that might look like, as did China briefly cutting off U.S. access to critical minerals. No one in the free world wants to face blackmail to access cutting-edge medicines."

Homeland Security is targeting Americans with this secretive legal weapon: In October, a retiree emailed a DHS attorney to urge mercy for an asylum seeker. Then DHS subpoenaed his Google account and sent investigators to his home. [ed. note: administrative subpoenas]

House vote could upend D.C.’s tax code, hit revenue mid-tax season: D.C. officials say the potential action from Congress would sow fiscal chaos for the city.

The grave risk of Trump’s Kennedy Center shutdown: Even in the best-case scenario, the president’s plan will only strain the performing arts ecosystem required for the center to thrive.

What to know about rats and trash during the cold: “Dog poop is a snack for rats,” one rodent expert said. “It’s like an energy bar.”

How D.C. allowed ‘completely inappropriate’ spending by anti-violence group: Life Deeds used more than $400,000 in city funds to hire businesses owned by its employees and spent money on trips to a New Jersey shopping mall, lavish meals and a pool party with alcohol. - "'It cannot be a free-for-all,' Pinto said. 

"Her concerns were informed in part by feedback from University of Maryland professor Joseph Richardson and his research partner, Daniel Webster, who have been evaluating D.C.’s violence intervention programs for a forthcoming study. Webster, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, has testified that ONSE did not employ enough violence interrupters and did not use strategies backed by sufficient research. 

"'Thus far, I will be very clear and frank that we’re not seeing beneficial effects' from violence interruption programs in D.C., he said at a D.C. Council hearing in October 2024."

Why this nutrient is great for your gut health: What’s more, cooling and refrigerating certain foods like rice, potatoes and pasta boosts their resistant starch.

Reading archive 2026-02-02

What I discovered about Josh Shapiro at the Pennsylvania Farm Show: The governor champions a 67-county strategy to win voters in a critical battleground state.

Millions of gallons of sewage spilled into the Potomac. Here’s what we know.: Experts say clean up efforts could reach $10 million and environmentalists worry about impact to wildlife.

Trump wants to build a 250-foot-tall arch, dwarfing the Lincoln Memorial: The president is eyeing a plot of land near Memorial Bridge. The art critic who proposed the idea called for a smaller arch or for Trump to pick a new site.

Minneapolis’ Hotel Workers Are on Edge: Staff across the city told NOTUS how their lives have changed since the start of the federal immigration operation. “It’s frightening,” one said. - "The first woman, a foreign-born naturalized U.S. citizen, resents how her undocumented coworkers spend their days cleaning the rooms of agents who are 'hunting down their family members.'

"'When I see them in the hallways, they avert their gaze,' she said of the federal agents in her hotel. 'They know what they’re doing is shameful. They’re nearly all Hispanic, but they don’t speak Spanish! They’re the children of illegals. But they forgot where they came from.'

"A third woman at yet another hotel, who’s undocumented, said she observed what she called the 'typical' racial labor dynamic: a few polite white supervisors commanding Latino men. 

"'The supervisors are respectful. The agents — they aren’t really officers. These are delinquents,' she said.

For traditional Catholics, Charlotte Communion dispute is a battle line: A Charlotte bishop issued an edict about the preferred way to perform the sacrament: standing up. The backlash was fierce and speaks to a broader fight within the U.S. Catholic community.

The real reasons Sundance’s legendary film fest is done with Park City: Next year’s move to Boulder was foreshadowed by red flags and rising costs.

Inside Musk’s bet to hook users that turned Grok into a porn generator: Under pressure to boost its popularity, Elon Musk’s xAI loosened its guardrails and relaxed controls on sexual content, setting off internal concern.

Why do dead leaves stay on trees during winter?: Scientists are investigating the reasons some plants still wear last season’s tattered clothes.

Reading archive 2026-01-30

Don Lemon arrested by federal officials in connection with church protest: The former CNN host was taken into custody in Los Angeles.

As ‘Heated Rivalry’ takes off, the NHL faces questions about inclusion: The hit show about a romance between two professional hockey players has brought new fans to a sport that has struggled to welcome the LGBTQ+ community.

Virginia Democrats seek emergency halt to ruling that blocks redistricting: A motion filed with the Virginia Court of Appeals on behalf of House Speaker Don Scott argues that a circuit court judge is interfering with the democratic process.

Tulsi Gabbard’s appearance at Fulton County FBI raid raises questions: Lawmakers called for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to explain the presence of the country’s top spy agency official at a domestic law enforcement action in Georgia.

Attending a Protest

The New Shadowbanning Panic: Is TikTok censoring users on behalf of the Trump administration?

What Tearing Down Housing Projects Did for Kids: Bringing rich and poor together has major benefits. - "There is another process that improves neighborhoods around poor children, both by bringing higher-income peers nearer to them and by reducing the violence they are exposed to. This process often occurs without explicit governmental intervention or cost. The problem is that it is regularly dismissed as gentrification, a phenomenon that is not usually cheered. The most common objection to gentrification is that it results in displacement of incumbent residents. The empirical evidence for this is weaker than conventionally assumed. One paper examining children who received Medicaid benefits in New York City from 2009 to 2015 found no elevated rates of moving for those in gentrifying neighborhoods. The HOPE VI study suggests that gentrification should improve outcomes for kids, so long as it actually improves social integration."

America Can Have the Oil: Venezuela’s riches were squandered, souring many on national stewardship.

Battles Are Raging Inside the Department of Homeland Security: Officials overseeing Trump’s mass-deportation campaign are fighting one another for power.

Why the moral corruption of MAGA is so deadly

Heartwarming: Miserable Man Frustrated In Ultimately Insignificant Way

Pluralistic: Sorry, eh (13 Jan 2026) - "I'm sorry. As a technology writer, I'm supposed to be telling you that this bet will some day pay off, because one day we will have shoveled so many words into the word-guessing program that it wakes up and learns how to actually do the jobs it is failing spectacularly at today. This is a proposition akin to the idea that if we keep breeding horses to run faster and faster, one of them will give birth to a locomotive. Humans possess intelligence, and machines do not. The difference between a human and a word-guessing program isn't how many words the human knows."

At Yosemite, Rangers Are Scarce and Visitors Have Gone Wild: After the Trump administration’s cuts, workers at the national park are spread too thin to stop people from littering, flying drones and cliff-diving.

A cloud of fear hangs over Minnesota immigrant communities: Even citizens are afraid to go outside

Gingrich: Time for ‘national conversation’ about immigrants living in country illegally who ‘obey the law’

Reading archive 2026-01-29

How Battlefield Tech Was Used in Minneapolis: Our reporter Thomas Gibbons-Neff, who deployed twice to Afghanistan as a Marine and later was our Kabul bureau chief, looks at the battlefield technology used for an immigration arrest at a home in Minneapolis. [ed. note: video]

The powerful tools in ICE’s arsenal to track suspects — and protesters: Biometric trackers, cellphone location databases and drones are among the surveillance technologies that federal agents are tapping in their deportation campaign. [ed. note: horrifying]

Removal of flags for fallen Danish soldiers at U.S. Embassy sparks backlash: There was no malicious intent in removing the flags, said a State Department spokesperson, who added that the flags had been replaced.

Anthropic Is at War With Itself: The AI company shouting about AI’s dangers can’t quite bring itself to slow down.

If You Tax Them, Will They Leave?: A California wealth-tax proposal makes a high-stakes bet on billionaire psychology.

The Program That’s Turning Schools Around: The key to closing the achievement gap may lie outside the classroom.

Russia’s top diplomat rejects key part of deal to end war with Ukraine: Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismisses security guarantees demanded by Ukraine for any deal, once again saying the current regime in Kyiv should end. - "It is precisely the lack of high level officials in the Abu Dhabi talks that show they aren’t serious, said European Union foreign policy head Kaja Kallas, noting that the Russian delegation consisted of military and intelligence officials."

Trump faces fresh MAGA blowback for efforts to ‘de-escalate’ in Minnesota: The president’s response to widespread public dismay over the shooting death of another Minnesotan has put him in a bind with his own base.

Handling of Pretti investigation has some prosecutors on verge of quitting: Federal prosecutors in Minneapolis, frustrated by the response to the shootings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, have suggested they could resign en masse.

I’ve reported on UFO sightings for decades — and come to this conclusion

What the Neocons Got Right: David Brooks on moral collapse, the limits of politics, and what the neocons got right about America. Plus: Another ICE shooting in Minneapolis and Netflix’s Death by Lightning. - "And so what you have in the Trump administration is people with the same profile as the Dartmouth Review crowd: They went to elite schools, but they hated what they found there. That's Steven Miller, who went to Duke. That's Pete Hegseth, who went to Princeton. That's J. D. Vance, who went to Yale Law. Now, you can go down the list. It's Elon Musk and Donald Trump went to Penn. And so these are not pro-conservative. These are oppositional nihilists who hate the liberal establishment. And I found it easy, when I was saying college, to be more conservative than my professors but still have reverence for their learning. But these people do not have reverence for learning; they just want to offend the bourgeoisie. And so that's what it's become. And then they've produced spawn of young people who just think, That's cool. That's edgy. And of course, you have to up the dosage when you're giving people edgy nihilism - it just has to get worse and worse and worse. And as Richard Weaver, a philosopher from the 1950s, said, The problem with the younger generation is they haven't read the minutes to the last meeting. And so you get a group of people who, when they see fascistic behavior, don't understand where that eventually leads." [edit: also a bit on Reconstructions vs. modernization in the 1880s via Death by Lightning]

A case that lets billionaires spend big on elections never reached Supreme Court: While Citizens United became shorthand for unlimited political spending, a less-recognized campaign finance case made super PACs a reality. - "'SpeechNow, building upon the terrible flaws of Citizens United, has created a road map for billionaires and wealthy special interests to spend unlimited amounts of money to drown out the voices of ordinary citizens,' attorney David Kolker, who unsuccessfully argued the SpeechNow case on behalf of the FEC, told The Washington Post in an interview. 'This distorts our democratic process.'"

Why this Democrat refuses to retaliate against Trump’s GOP redistricting: Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson sank Democrats’ plan to pick up a congressional seat in Maryland, despite the rank-and-file tide seeking an aggressive fight against Trump.

America’s plan to protect pedestrians failed. A young woman’s death reveals why.: U.S. officials encouraged cities to adopt Vision Zero to save lives. Driver opposition and a lack of money derailed it.

The deadliest roads in America: The number of pedestrians killed by vehicles in the United States has surged amid neglect and lack of investment by transportation authorities.

Reading archive 2026-01-27

Maryland is getting a Sphere — and wasting millions in public subsidies: Wes Moore is wrong to compel Wizards and Caps fans to enrich the owner of the Knicks and Rangers. - "The deal announced recently to bring a smaller version of Las Vegas’s Sphere to Maryland’s National Harbor in 2030 includes almost $185 million of tax breaks, government-backed loans and incentive programs from the state and Prince George’s County.

"But the Las Vegas location, which is about three times bigger, was built without any government subsidies and pays property taxes."

Colorado has wolves again for the first time in 80 years. Why are they dying?: A controversial reintroduction program is off to a messy start.

Small study shows a promising path toward HIV cure: Antiretroviral drugs that prevent HIV and keep it in check have been transformative, but a cure has been a long-sought goal.

A 3-year-old’s lost life leads to reform in police pursuits in Md.: The Prince George’s County Council has passed a bill named after Zoey Rose Marie Harrison, who was killed in a police pursuit crash.

ICE would still operate in a partial government shutdown: Immigration and Customs Enforcement would be able to continue its operations due to $75 billion in funding from a 2025 GOP law.

What to know about the deadly Nipah virus, amid outbreak in India: Some airports in Asia are on alert after confirmed cases in West Bengal of Nipah virus, which has no cure. South Asia sees outbreaks nearly every year.

FBI takes over investigation into town hall attack on Rep. Ilhan Omar: In a video from the event, a man walks up and sprays what appears to be a liquid at the Minnesota Democrat — who is a frequent target of Trump — before he is taken away by security.

Your Leaders Were Lying. Now The People Are Driving: The depravity of ICE, the enthusiasm of Republicans and the cowardice of Democrats is breaking through hypernormalization

Here’s How Many ICE and CBP Agents Allegedly Preyed on Children: Apparently the institutions are riddled with accused sex criminals.

Inside the shadow war between Russia and Ukraine that exploits teens: Vika, 18, needed a job. Then came an offer for $2,500 to make a simple delivery that seemed too good to be true.

Museum curator, 77, learns Gen Z slang and goes viral: ‘Honestly, she ate’: “Look how bro glazed it,” said Alison Luchs, the National Gallery of Art’s deputy head of sculpture, pointing to a 16th-century Italian plate.

ICE agents blocked from entering Ecuadorian Consulate in Minneapolis, ministry says: Law enforcement is generally prohibited from entering consulates or embassies without permission. Ecuador’s Foreign Ministry said it had filed a formal diplomatic protest.

Americans should not trust ICE. Kristi Noem isn’t the only reason.: Assume this loutocracy’s statements on its deportation mania are lies until proven otherwise. - "Policing is a hard, dangerous profession. Done well, it demands of its practitioners discipline and judgment, and deserves from society a respect approaching reverence. The current administration, by erasing the distinction between police work and military operations — by allowing marauding ICEmen to pose as police — has grievously wounded the dignity of policing."

A Reckoning for the Tech Right: Silicon Valley’s top CEOs have been noticeably silent after the Minneapolis shooting.

Donald Trump Can Be Stopped: The president’s retreat in Minneapolis is a stinging defeat for the national conservatives.

Never Fight Alone: Anyone who would denigrate the service of our NATO allies clearly never spent a day in uniform.

South Carolina Is America’s New Measles Norm: The state’s measles outbreak could soon be bigger than West Texas’s. Are the two connected?

Minnesota Proved MAGA Wrong: The pushback against ICE exposed a series of mistaken assumptions. - "If the Minnesota resistance has an overarching ideology, you could call it "neighborism"-a commitment to protecting the people around you, no matter who they are or where they came from. The contrast with the philosophy guiding the Trump administration couldn't be more extreme. Vice President Vance has said that 'it is totally reasonable and acceptable for American citizens to look at their next-door neighbors and say, 'I want to live next to people who I have something in common with. I don't want to live next to four families of strangers.'' Minnesotans are insisting that their neighbors are their neighbors whether they were born in Minneapolis or Mogadishu. That is, arguably, a deeply Christian philosophy, one apparently loathed by some of the most powerful Christians in America."

...

"The federal surge into Minneapolis reflects a series of mistaken MAGA assumptions. The first is the belief that diverse communities aren't possible: 'Social bonds form among people who have something in common,' Vance said in a speech last July. 'If you stop importing millions of foreigners into the country, you allow social cohesion to form naturally.' Vance's remarks are the antithesis to the neighborism of the Twin Cities, whose people do not share the narcissism of being capable of loving only those who are exactly like them."

Reading archive 2026-01-27

How bad is your stove for your health? Look it up.

The ‘one-legged stools’ holding up a fragile economy: The U.S. economy is growing, but economists worry that its strength is too narrowly focused.

Outrage over ICE has spilled into typically apolitical online spaces: Fury over Alex Pretti’s killing has flooded forums for golfers, cat lovers and bourbon aficionados, reflecting a growing outrage over the Trump administration’s crackdown.

Trump’s Head-Scratching Turn Toward China: The president’s very personal approach to diplomacy poses real threats to American security. - "Although a hard line on China was a centerpiece of Trump's first term, he has gone soft in his second. The president has removed nearly all of the tariffs that he imposed on Chinese imports last year, and he has loosened controls on the sale of advanced American semiconductors to China-over the objections of national-security experts-on the condition that Nvidia coughs up a cut of its sales to the U.S. government. Trump also hailed his October 2025 summit with China's leader, Xi Jinping, as a meeting of the 'G2,' or 'Group of 2,' a flattering nod to the idea that the United States and China are the two most powerful countries in the world."

How the Bernie Goetz Shootings Explain the Trump Era: A notorious event in 1984 divided New Yorkers in ways that feel extremely familiar four decades later. - "White Americans in particular were offered a Faustian bargain during the Reagan '80s: accept a thinner safety net, a harsher economy, and a more unequal society - but in return, receive the emotional satisfaction of seeing the 'right' people punished by an ever-expanding criminal-justice system, and the tacit assurance that if they happened to visit their own frustrations on someone who did not look like them, that same system would protect them."