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There are few certainties in life, but this seems like one of them: Whatever you’re currently told to eat for optimum health will one day be viewed as lethal, and whatever ingredients are demonized today will be celebrated in the near future. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that after decades of being sold on the nonfat food craze, we’re learning that dairy fat is good. NYT (Gift Article): A Study Linked Cheese to Lower Dementia Risk. (Maybe, Cheeseheads have been trying to signal the cheese/brain connection all these years.) “In a large new study published today, researchers found that eating high-fat cheese or cream was associated with a lower risk of developing dementia. Cheese lovers may cheer. But be careful about celebrating with an entire block of your favorite Cheddar.” Yes, the study is about correlation and not causation. And experts aren’t quite sure which particular factors are at work. There’s certainly no guarantee that high-fat dairy will turn you into a cheese whiz. But it’s 2025, and we’re craving reasons to smile and say cheese. So let’s chew the fat while we can ... and as fast as we can, since it’s only a matter of time before we’re told that today’s advice regarding cheese is completely crackers.
+ Exercise science, for better or worse, is as consistent as dietary advice is inconsistent. WaPo (Gift Article): Want a younger, healthier brain? This type of exercise can help. “If you need another reason to visit the gym this winter, a new study of almost 1,200 healthy, middle-aged men and women found that those with more muscle mass tended to have younger brains than those with less muscle.”
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Thrown into Con Fusion
“At the center of the concerns is a rise in borrowing. By this fall, public companies had taken out large loans to buy crypto. And investors had placed more than $200 billion in bets on future coin prices, a type of trade often made with borrowed money, which sets buyers up for major gains or crushing losses. The industry’s latest offerings have also linked crypto to the stock market and other parts of the financial world, raising the prospect of a chain reaction that spills a crypto crisis into the broader economy.” NYT(Gift Article): What Trump’s Embrace of Crypto Has Unleashed.
+ 45% of Gen Z adults say they would be happy to receive crypto as a gift this holiday season
+ Crypto is old news. This year, give the gift of cold fusion. “Trump Media and Technology Group stock surged more than 35% on Thursday after the parent company of Truth Social announced a merger with fusion power firm TAE Technologies. (I’m sure this will all play out in a totally legit and entirely not corrupt way...)
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Bold Type
“The presence of evil doesn’t break people. From a young age, we learn that there are wolves in our midst. It is the absence of courage that plunges us into crisis. Great courage can help redeem a catastrophe. But abject cowardice not only magnifies our pain; it makes us doubt the strength and virtue of our nation and culture.” David French on courage in the NYT (Gift Article): The Righteousness of Ahmed el Amhed. This article is mostly about courage as it relates to physical risk. But, as we’ve all learned over the past year, it’s not particularly common for people to show courage even when much less than their life is at stake. We’ve seen “why cowardice is so harmful. It annihilates virtue. One of the most dispiriting aspects of our modern political moment is that it feels as though cowards are everywhere. Institutions yield to bullies. Politicians yield to mobs. People are unwilling to tell even obvious truths if telling the truth will put a target on their back.” This is one reason why, when we see courage, we need to celebrate it.
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Networks Let Sleeping Dog Lie
It’s Christmas time, and parents all over the country face that familiar dilemma: When do you tell your kids the president isn’t real? I guess parents could skip the tough conversation and just let their kids watch a recording of the latest Trump presidential address, delivered live on all the major networks. Or better yet, let them read Tom Nichols’ overview in The Atlantic (Gift Article): This Is What Presidential Panic Looks Like. “We could take apart Trump’s fake facts, as checkers and pundits will do in the next few days. But perhaps more important than false statements—which for Trump are par for the course—was his demeanor. Americans saw a president drenched in panic as he tried to bully an entire nation into admitting he’s doing a great job ... In effect, Trump took to the airwaves, pointed his finger, and said: Quiet, piggy.” (I don’t recommend actually watching the address, unless you’ve wondered what would happen if narcissism and sociopathy had a baby and that baby’s full diaper was tasked with giving a speech.)
5
Extra, Extra
Trans Bans: “The administration’s action is not just a regulatory shift but the latest signal that the federal government does not recognize even the existence of people whose gender identity does not align with their sex at birth.” NYT (Gift Article): Trump Moves to End Gender-Related Care for Minors, Threatening Hospitals That Offer It.
+ Joint Commission: “President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday to fast-track the reclassification of cannabis, which would pave the way for the Food and Drug Administration to study its medicinal uses.” (Too bad he didn’t do this in time for last night’s speech, when we all could have used a few hits.)
+ Cool Beancounting: The market is reacting positively to the latest inflation numbers that came in cooler than expected. The data is based on limited information (from a suddenly less than trustworthy source). Let’s hope the good news sticks.
+ Eyes and Ears: People like listening to podcasts. They also like watching them. Like a lot. Basically, people just really want to take their minds off everything with content of any kind. Bloomberg: People Watched 700 Million Hours of YouTube Podcasts on TV in October. Meanwhile, the Oscars are moving to YouTube after a half century on ABC. (I’m beginning to think this internet thing has legs...)
+ You Give Gov a Bad Name: President Donald Trump’s handpicked board voted on Thursday to rename Washington’s leading performing arts center as the Trump-Kennedy Center. (When this is over, we’re gonna have a lot of deleting to do...)
+ Not Blinded By Science: Nature has a great collection of The best science images of 2025. (Enjoy them while nature and science are still legal.)
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Bottom of the News
“Then came the chaos. Within days, Claudius had given away nearly all its inventory for free—including a PlayStation 5 it had been talked into buying for ‘marketing purposes.’ It ordered a live fish. It offered to buy stun guns, pepper spray, cigarettes and underwear. Profits collapsed. Newsroom morale soared.” WSJ(Gift Article): We Let AI Run Our Office Vending Machine. It Lost Hundreds of Dollars.