The United Nations climate talks in Dubai, aka COP28, may be in jeopardy over a draft deal on fossil fuels deemed “weak.” / BBC News

Young people around the world are holding their governments accountable for climate change inaction. / The Kid Should See This

A day in the life of an environmental activist at COP28. “He was ready to do it all over again the next day.” / Grist

Unrelated: A day in the life of a handyman. / Plough

Details behind Prime Minister Netanyahu’s years-long effort—billions of dollars over roughly a decade—to prop up Hamas. / The New York Times [+]

An official for the UN compares Gaza to “hell on earth.” / Al Jazeera

Zara says it regrets a “misunderstanding” about ads criticized for using photos resembling images from the Israel-Gaza war. / The Guardian

An ad agency repurposes aesthetics used by tobacco companies to highlight the deadly effects of loneliness. / It’s Nice That

“I try to focus on niacinamide and hydrating ingredients,” says an 11-year-old in an article about skin-care routines. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

See also: Is your smartphone the reason you feel broke? / Intelligencer

Google drops its “Year in Search” list. Matthew Schnipper drops his 100 best songs of the year. Also, perhaps some movies you’ve never seen. / Google Trends, Deep Voices, BFI

Some selections for the year’s best visual and data-driven journalism. / The Pudding

An interactive version of Wheel of Fortune with strategy tips. / The New York Times

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Citing incorrect analysis, the National Retail Federation retracts its claim that “organized retail crime” is to blame for nearly half of shrink losses. / CNBC

See also: “Nearly one in seven shoppers admitted to having purposely stolen items at self-checkout, and nearly half of those said they would do it again.” / Business Insider

American pedestrians are dying at night in record numbers—the reasons why range from smartphones to homelessness. / The New York Times [+]

“I felt myself seesawing between gratitude for my life and preoccupation with the void.” On contracting endocarditis—and then having open heart surgery. / Dirt

“Could long Covid ‘brain fog’ be an acquired form of ADHD?” / Undark

Digging into reviews and box office data to identify the actors who are loved the most (Lupita Nyong’o) and the least (Rob Schneider) by critics and audiences alike. / The Hustle

Caught in a battle over reliable sourcing, editors who contributed to Wikipedia’s road and highway infrastructure entries quit and make their own wiki. / Slate

Most Canadians live south of Seattle, Reno is west of Los Angeles, and more evidence of mental map oversimplification. / Atlas Obscura

From novelist Mphuthumi Ntabeni, five contemporary African must-read books. / Five Books

“Not that many people in the world will be able to do this.” AI can tell the estate Bordeaux reds come from with 100% accuracy. / New Scientist

Pantone’s 2024 Color of the Year is: Peach Fuzz. / Artsy

See also: “Trends are predictable, yet hard to predict.” Dozens of artists and other creative individuals predict 2024’s obsessions. / The New York Times Style Magazine [+]

Joshua Minsoo Kim’s 10 favorite albums and perfumes of 2023, paired. / Tone Glow

“But is every pop edit good? No. Is there such a thing as too many edits? Yes.” The year’s best club-friendly takes on pop tunes. / Resident Advisor

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No surprise here, but scientists say 2023 will be the hottest year on record. / ABC News

Jakarta is sinking, and what happens next could come down to one billionaire’s plan to save the city—which would also rake in profits for one of his businesses. / Bloomberg

The Electoral College never anticipated today’s hyper-targeted campaigning, which confers the most persuadable voters with an outsized electoral voice. / The Washington Post [+]

Right to repair has been the norm for most of modern history. Still, tech giants try to cheat their way around it, though luckily “they also kind of suck at it.” / Noema

“Once the [Polish] government got word of the scheme, they weren’t angry—they wanted in.” How forgers saved thousands of lives in World War II. / Atlas Obscura

What, exactly, do the Billboard charts measure? Because everything they appear to report on is data that is highly manipulatable by fans and other interests. / Can’t Get Much Higher

Sad news, Robert Birnbaum, who conducted a number of vast, wide-ranging interviews with authors, has died. Here’s a lovely remembrance of him. / The Morning News, Identity Theory

“By the first evening, they were drinking too much and gossiping.” On the great poets’ brawl of ’68. / Literary Hub

Here’s what enters the public domain in 2024. / The Public Domain Review

“In an age where ubiquitous algorithms have made short-form video and shallow thinking inescapable,” magazines are a luxury experience. / GQ

Watch: Increasingly complex holiday gift wrapping—from a simple box to a tennis racquet. / YouTube

“Of all the sad Yuletides of my life, the one I spent guarding $100,000 worth of explosives on the surface of the moon tops the list.” / Longreads

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Teenagers’ math and reading skills are in an unprecedented decline across dozens of countries, and Covid is only partly to blame. / Reuters

The world’s largest iceberg is on the move for the first time in more than 35 years. / CNBC

The United States’ first utility-scale offshore wind project starts operating off the coast of Long Island. / Heatmap

Hannah Ritchie: The world has enough minerals to move to a low-carbon economy, but the medium-term supply will be a challenge. / Sustainability by numbers

MoMA curator Paola Antonelli: “Our task is not to live forever.” / dezeen

Detailed information gleaned from seven current and former members of Israel’s intelligence community on the calculated bombing of Gaza. / +972 Magazine

Spencer Ackerman: Gaza is not just a (war-) crime scene, it’s an AI laboratory. / Forever Wars

British American Tobacco, maker of Camel and Newport cigarettes, envisions its business in the US dying off in 30 years. / BBC News

In Brazil, delivery workers protest bad customers en masse with horns and fireworks. / rest of world

In South Korea, a woman adopts her friend in order to become family under Korea’s strict family law. / Al Jazeera

Is the current wave of immersive art—e.g., Sphere in Las Vegas—a populist fad or a way to make art more accessible? / It’s Nice That

See also: Peak solar activity is forecast for 2024; some suggestions for places to catch the northern lights. / The Points Guy

It’s here! The shortlist for the 2024 Tournament of Books, our 20th (!) edition. / The Tournament of Books

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At least 2456 fossil fuel lobbyists have passes to Dubai’s COP28 climate talks. / Kick Big Polluters Out

Jonathan Krishner: Washington’s hawkish bipartisan consensus on China’s hawkish intentions is wrong. / The Los Angeles Review of Books

Related: Americans did the “China shock” to themselves. / Policy Tensor

Air pollution is likely costing residents of New Delhi about 12 years of life. / Goats and Soda

African sports economies can be unpacked by studying foreign and domestic capitalists, commercialization in Africa, and sports diplomacy. / Africa Is a Country

Globally, women’s sports are expected to earn more than $1 billion for the first time in 2024, up 300% since 2021. / NBC News

Less than 30% of people pay their medical bills immediately and in full—suggesting a significant portion of patients put off getting health care. / STAT News

From August: Virtual clinics are embracing allergy drops as an alternative to shots. “Why would you want to get stabbed by a needle?” / Undark Magazine

San Diego’s Nature-to-You loan library enables patrons to borrow dead animals. / Atlas Obscura

From last year, explaining how the Shazam app works on your phone. / Cameron MacLeod

A round-up of some of 2023’s best memes. Also, some useful principles to help make sense of the world—e.g., “work expands to fill the time allotted for it.” / Mashable, The Prism

Footage from 1902 of a German “flying train” that’s still in use today. / Futility Closet

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Young South Africans have a “love-hate relationship” with Nelson Mandela on the 10th anniversary of his death. / BBC News

Mexican politicians find “a goldmine” among Swiftie fandoms on TikTok. / rest of world

The United States breaks its record for the most mass shootings in a single year. / The Guardian

Two dozen points of view on what Donald Trump may do if he returns to the White House. / The Atlantic

See also: Most Americans don’t care that we’re about to face an existential crisis. / The Bulwalk

“True diva representation in Congress is now back to zero.” Gen Z already misses George Santos. / Business Insider

“Millennial mom dread” refers to women today seeing motherhood as something “thankless, exhausting, and lonely.” / Vox

“Well, I lost half a day of skiing.” A round-up of jokes told in 2023. / The New Yorker

The year’s best house as selected by the Royal Institute of British Architects. / Bloomberg

A company’s prospectus, required for an IPO and almost never read by anybody, can cost $900,000 to draft and print. / The Wall Street Journal [+]

A next-generation geothermal plant has started sending carbon-free electricity to the grid in Nevada. / Grist

Rarely seen orange auroras, which technically shouldn’t exist, were recently photographed in the sky above Scotland. / LiveScience

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While everyone’s paying attention to Gaza, Israeli settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank is on the rise—and could lead to outright war. / Vox

Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen fired ballistic missiles on multiple vessels, including a US warship, which shot down three drones. / Associated Press

The recent discovery of a new human organ—the interstitium—isn’t because scientists hadn’t seen it before, but because beliefs obscured observation. / Orion

See also: “The most interesting interaction you can have with the Chimp-Pig hypothesis is to let yourself believe it…then observe what it feels like to have your world overturned.” / Atoms vs Bits

Despite skyrocketing interest rates, Americans continue to spend with wild abandon, flummoxing economists. / BBC

See also: Although the Squid Game reality series discards its predecessor’s satire, the show ends up “seemingly accidentally” reinforcing how people will do anything for capitalism. / Vox

Behind the scenes of one of the most technologically advanced and complex entertainment spectacles going: Sunday Night Football. / The New York Times [+]

RIP Taco Bell Quesarito, Dunkin’ Dunkaccino, and the other snacks and fast food we lost in 2023. / The Takeout

From large-scale intelligence gathering to the use of microfilm to transfer vast amounts of information, American librarians played a key role in World War II. / JSTOR Daily

On the healthy state of book publishing—which is notably “the one form of media that hasn’t slipped into unpaywalled expectations of ‘free.'” / Book Work

A reasonable argument for why humor is what makes the classics endure—yes, even Tolstoy. / The Bulwark

“The US Defence Department earns $100m/year operating slot machines used by soldiers on their bases.” Tom Whitwell’s annual list of what he learned this year. / Magnetic Notes

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Fighting has resumed between Israel and Hamas—the White House blames the ceasefire’s end on Hamas’s failure to produce a new list of hostages for release. / Reuters

Gaza City officials accuse Israel of deliberately destroying its main public library, home to thousands of books and historical documents. / Literary Hub

See also: An artist is trying to preserve the Palestinian internet of the late ’90s and 2000s. / VICE

As some countries lobby the US to limit AI-controlled killer drones, some nations—including the US—are resisting the regulations. / Business Insider

A UK customer finds what appears to be a Chinese prisoner’s ID card inside a newly purchased coat, raising concerns about prison labor. / The Guardian

“The mace fell back toward Earth, and [Shane] MacGowan caught it and handed it back. A Christmas miracle.” The real story behind the “Boys of the NYPD Choir.” / The New York Times [+]

An apparent hacking campaign earlier this year that flooded accounts with Lil Durk streams is skewing people’s Spotify Wrapped results. / VICE

The tennis-pickleball turf wars—which have escalated all the way to an act of arson in Santa Monica—as revealed in local government documents. / 404 Media

A site dedicated to the “books that have been neglected, overlooked, forgotten, or stranded by changing tides in critical or popular taste.” / The Neglected Books Page

Zines made by children are exactly what they sound like. / Mini-Zine Library

See also: From 2007, laptops drawn and designed on construction paper, by seven- to nine-year-olds. / The Morning News

Test your skills at a game about guessing words through other words—e.g., an “electric brain” is a “computer.” / Noun Noun

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US life expectancy has rebounded by more than a year, but still remains below 2020 levels. / Associated Press

Following on yesterday’s news about African cocoa producers, farms in Ghana that supply the Mars company have children as young as five harvesting cocoa beans. / CBS News

Untold numbers of Cambodians died at Kissinger’s hands—first through his bombing campaign, which catalyzed the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror. / The Conversation

“Henry Kissinger, war criminal beloved by America’s ruling class, finally dies.” / Rolling Stone

E.g., “The surprising dating life of Henry Kissinger, a West Wing ‘playboy.'” / The Washington Post [+]

At least a dozen US states have reported cases of an unidentified, infectious respiratory disease among dogs. / CNN

Google’s DeepMind AI has predicted the structure of more than two million new materials, a process that typically takes decades of research. / Reuters

Paste Magazine has purchased the recently deceased Jezebel, and may relaunch it as early as this week. / Variety

“Witch bottles” containing vegetation and other objects—and of course spells—are washing up on Texas beaches. / Houston Chronicle

“The pressure to view all work as enterprise is not just fashion. It is being promoted.” When a form asks for your “industry,” pandemonium follows. / The Hedgehog Review

The iconic Shane MacGown of the Pogues has died at 65, and it’s always as good a time as any to listen to “Fairytale of New York.” / The Guardian, YouTube

“I bought the new seven-CD Garth Brooks box set from Bass Pro Shops (a true story).” / Uproxx

Collaborators? Your mom? No one? An analysis of who gets thanked in Grammy speeches. / Can’t Get Much Higher

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Peru’s glaciers are melting, forming high mountain lagoons that are trapping Peruvians’ water reserves—should the lagoons overflow, widespread flooding may follow. / Reuters

The COP28 president has been using his role at the climate summit to lobby foreign governments on oil and gas deals. / Center for Climate Reporting

See also: Saudi Arabia’s state investment firm finances fossil-dependent infrastructure in developing countries in an attempt to lock in oil demand. / The Guardian

African activists decry handing McKinsey control of the continent’s renewable energy goals—pointing to, among other issues, its fossil-fuel clients. / Climate Home News

In Côte d’Ivoire, where 45% of the world’s cocoa comes from, cocoa producers want to decolonize their product, and become a chocolate-producing nation. / Le Monde

Ahead of major elections, the front pages of major outlets remain unfortunately free of policy coverage—the same missteps that led up to 2016. / Columbia Journalism Review

Using AI, scientists have built an equation that can predict when rogue waves will strike. / Live Science

Sports Illustrated has been publishing AI-generated articles with bylines—and headshots—from AI-generated authors. Now they’ve deleted the content and are blaming a contractor. / Futurism

In the age of student debt and hybrid learning, assessing the future of the campus novel as the lines blur between college and real life. / Esquire

Well this is cool: a book about the history of books in their many, many forms. / Hyperallergic

See also: How video game designers are using their craft to tell personal stories of food. / The New York Times [+]

“Former police chief John Anderton’s Tesla spontaneously shuts itself off while he’s driving.” Popular dystopian fiction if it were describing 2023. / McSweeney’s

A history of Snoopy at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. / Art Dogs

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