In the weeks since the election, I’ve been thinking about the woman who told me she’d heard that Kamala Harris “let in all the illegals who killed all those cops.”
I met her when a few of us from Pod Save America were knocking doors in Las Vegas the Sunday before the election. She was listed in the voter file as a 72-year-old registered Democrat who hadn’t voted yet, so we rang the doorbell and were greeted by a small Asian woman and a very large dog.

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Dear James,
A few months ago, I came out to my high-school friend group as bisexual. They were supportive and appreciated my request to keep it on the down-low.

In 1829, the Presbyterian minister Sylvester Graham invented a cracker made from coarse wheat that he believed would help restore American health. He lamented the “miserable trash” that made up the average diet, especially white bread, and thought his eponymous crackers would curtail masturbation, which he deemed deleterious to both moral and physical well-being. (As someone who condemned sweet treats, he would have seen the s’more as an abomination.

ESA / Webb, NASA, CSA, A. Hirschauer, M. Meixner
Day 10 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: the glow of hot, young stars. The James Webb Space Telescope captured a spectacular view of the galaxy I Zwicky 18 (I Zw 18). This galaxy, roughly 59 million light-years away, is typical of the kinds of galaxies that inhabited the early universe and is classified as a dwarf irregular galaxy. Two major starburst regions are embedded in the galaxy’s heart.

For more than two years, every new AI announcement has lived in the shadow of ChatGPT. No model from any company has eclipsed or matched that initial fever. But perhaps the closest any firm has come to replicating the buzz was this past February, when OpenAI first teased its video-generating AI model, Sora.

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This past weekend, Syrian rebels prompted the downfall of a more than 50-year fascist regime. Yesterday, rebels freed detained prisoners; people trampled on burning images of ousted President Bashar al-Assad; families strolled through a ransacked presidential palace, taking pictures.