A Broad Compendium

Here’s what happened, in order:

1. Andy Borowitz is one of “about a dozen New Yorker staffers” being laid off in Condé’s ongoing end of the year effort to juice its profits a little bit more. He plans to spend more time with his “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” residuals. That’s a little Borowitz humor to remember him by.

2. “Block whoever you want. Block liberally. Block joyously. It's not rude; it's not an act of censorship, and you don't owe anyone an explanation.” —Joan Westenberg

3. Can you ever have too many Babies Grinch? Brian Feldman doesn’t think so. Here are his “favorite Baby Grinch gifts for dads, grads, mothers-in-law, second cousins, or your child in 2023.”

4. DMs have arrived in Strava, long after everyone forgot the brief “every app is a social network” fad that also gave us nonsense like Venmo’s public transaction feed and all of Google+. “You might say this is the perfect time for predatory men to decide to join the app,” wrote Gemma Abbot. If they’re just joining now, at least they’ll be slow.

5. Even if you’re as despairing about American politics as I am these days, this Jamelle Bouie post might give you a little bit of hope.

6. For adoption: Grumpkin Spice. (via Garbage Day)

7. “Governments spying on Apple, Google users through push notifications,” reported Reuters. Your FBI agent knows you haven’t been doing your Duolingo.

8. “Husbands” by Savages is today’s song.

9. If you’re reading this on Thursday December 7th, the Washington Post Guild is on strike and requests that we not engage with any Post content. Washingtonian’s Andrew Beaujon reported that management plans to try to publish the paper without its striking staff, and are desperately trying to drum up news in advance. The links in Tabs today are Washington Post free, so you can click without concern.

10. John Fetterman hired George Santos on Cameo to dunk on corrupt New Jersey Democrat Bob Menendez. None of this makes any sense.

11. Kevin McCarthy, failed GOP House Speaker and vacuous walking haircut, will retire from Congress at the end of this year “to serve America in new ways,” presumably by leveraging his unique ability not to inspire anyone.

12. Let’s go back to George Santos though, who is apparently minting cash on Cameo charging $200 a video and is well on his way to “making a living that dwarfs the $174,000 salary he earned as a member of Congress” according to Ben Smith and Kadia Goba. “[A]t least he’s making his money legally this way” pointed out Anna Tingley in Variety. I bet he’s keeping careful track of his self-employment taxes.

13. Me and who?

14. Norman Lear, who did not write “The Princess Bride” despite what Variety’s initial obit seemed to claim, died at age one hundred one comprehensively outliving Kissinger.

15. “Overloooked at its release,” The Killers’ Mr. Brightside “has become one of the most inescapable rock songs of its time.” “I just want someone to love me as much as white people love Mr Brightside.”

16. “Podcasters Took Up Her Sister’s Murder Investigation. Then They Turned on Her.” I’ll never forget the day I found out that “Murderinos” wasn’t a dark joke about podcast fans but just what some of them call themselves.

17. “Quincentennial” means five hundredth anniversary, so the upcoming two hundred fiftieth anniversary of American independence is our nation’s semiquincentennial, a fun word that the Buzz Killingtons of shi-shi design studio Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv absolutely failed to make any use of in their staunchly mid semiquincentennial logo design.

18. Recapping the year AI blew up, Karen Weise, Cade Metz, Nico Grant and Mike Isaac produced a timeline of big tech abandoning its own ethical concerns in an all-out effort to catch up to OpenAI. It seems like this will result in every tech product getting AI jammed into it within the next few months. Should be fun!

19. Sycamore Gap’s eponymous tree is growing back.

20. Time named Taylor Swift its 2023 Person of the Year, and somehow made her look like Nicole Kidman on the cover.

21. Uvalde police were less prepared for the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting than the kids getting shot, according to this devastating report by Lomi Kriel, Lexi Churchill, and Jinitzail Hernández for The Texas Tribune and ProPublica.

22. Via Dearest, Today in Crabs: Tiffany crab ink stand. Opening bid, just $10,000.

23. WindCORES is a German company that’s sticking whole data centers directly in wind turbine pylons, to use wind power that would otherwise be dumped due to insufficient grid capacity.

24. X is in its death spiral, argued Ed Zitron:

25. You might enjoy some of Luke O’Neil’s fifteen best songs of 2023.

26. Zach Gage’s Puzzmo has been acquired by Hearst approximately 18 minutes after it launched. I guess I called it.

Oh my god, I will never do this again. Please subscribe so I can pretend it was worth it.