Performance Anxiety

Is the Reading Writing on the Wall?

I was recently talking to a couple teenagers about their reading habits (or lack thereof) when one of them explained: "Usually when you see someone our age reading for pleasure, they're just being performative." Reading seems like it requires a lot of work to virtue signal — compared to wearing a T-shirt with a catchy slogan, affixing a sticker to your bumper, or just having the NextDraft app on your iPhone homescreen. But it got me wondering about the current stats related to American reading habits. The latest research is not promising. "Leisure reading among U.S. adults 15 and older has dropped 40 percent in the past 20 years." WaPo (Gift Article): Why so few Americans read for pleasure. This article won't impact the trend, since browsing its findings definitely doesn't qualify as reading for pleasure.

+ Not all of today's printed media news is bad. The Onion Brought Back Its Print Edition. The Gamble Is Paying Off. According Chief Executive Ben Collins: "People like getting something in the mail that’s not f—ing awful."

2

This is Not OK, Boomer

"Officials from the Trump administration have applauded the net outflow, asserting that pressures on government services have eased and that job markets have rebounded. And some supporters of the immigration crackdown say it hasn’t gone far enough. But experts predict looming negative economic and demographic consequences for the United States if the trend persists. Immigrants are a critical work force in many sectors, and the country’s reliance on them is growing as more baby boomers retire." NYT (Gift Article): Immigrant Population in U.S. Drops for the First Time in Decades. For some proponents of this shift, reversing demographic trends trumps the economic damage.

3

MEGA: Make Empathy Great Again

"Empathy is usually regarded as a virtue, a key to human decency and kindness. And yet, with increasing momentum, voices on the Christian right are preaching that it has become a vice. For them, empathy is a cudgel for the left: It can manipulate caring people into accepting all manner of sins according to a conservative Christian perspective, including abortion access, LGBTQ rights, illegal immigration and certain views on social and racial justice." Is empathy a sin? Some conservative Christians argue it can be. (Maybe they have a point because I have zero empathy for this perspective.)

4

Check This Out

"Here’s a short but by no means comprehensive list of items that patrons of Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick, Maine, can check out for free: A dumpling steamer. Cannoli-making tubes. A ukulele. A heated leg massager. A Happy Birthday sign. Easels. A foam ax throwing game. A KitchenAid mixer, in chrome or red." NYT (Gift Article): Why Shop? In Maine, the Library of Things Has It All (Almost). "Items in high demand can be checked out for only a week, and include a grain mill for grinding fresh flour, a nut wizard to gather acorns and other nuts, and, this being Maine, a blueberry rake." (As a city boy, I assume those are used to shovel blueberries into your mouth at a faster clip.)

5

Extra, Extra

Do One's Damnedest: For those who subscribe to the pay attention to what they do school of thought, there's this: "Two Russian cruise missiles slammed into an American electronics factory in a remote corner of far western Ukraine ... The attack came as Russia carried out one of its largest airstrikes of the war."

+ Bibi's New Offensive: "Israel launched strikes on Gaza City overnight as it moved forward with a new offensive in the Palestinian enclave despite international condemnation and mounting domestic protests."

+ Cutting a Fine Figure: New York appeals court throws out Trump's more than $500 million fraud judgment. "Some judges of the state Appellate Division's First Department agreed that Trump and his companies had engaged in fraud, but agreed with their colleagues that the award was an 'excessive fine.'"

+ Who's Your Daddy? "Since the first commercial DNA test débuted, in 2000, the market has exploded. A 2025 YouGov poll found that one in five Americans has taken a direct-to-consumer DNA test. A few years ago, a research team at Baylor College of Medicine surveyed more than twenty-three thousand customers of these kits and learned that three per cent of them had discovered that a person whom they’d believed to be their biological parent wasn’t." The New Yorker: The Family Fallout of DNA Surprises. (I will never question my mom as my biological parent as long as she remains a subscriber with a consistent open rate.)

+ Bargaining Chips: "The failed payoff — a wad of cash in a red envelope stuffed inside an opened bag of Herr’s Sour Cream & Onion ripple potato chips — was made by Winnie Greco, a longtime Adams ally who resigned last year from her position as the mayor’s liaison to the Asian community after she was targeted in multiple investigations. She resurfaced recently as a consistent presence in his re-election campaign." (I'm starting to wonder if modern politics is attracting our best and brightest...)

+ Sub Optimal: "Where protest movements take hold, symbols of resistance soon follow. In Washington, since the Trump administration has taken over the city’s police force and ordered the National Guard to patrol the streets, that symbol has taken the form of a person who flung a footlong sub. His name, colloquially, is 'Sandwich Guy.'"

+ The Anti-Rainbow Fanatics: "A rainbow crosswalk was removed overnight outside of Pulse nightclub in Orlando, one of the most significant LGBTQ sites in Florida, as part of state and federal transportation officials’ aim to wipe 'political banners' from public roadways." Rainbow crosswalk outside Pulse nightclub removed overnight. "The rainbow was first installed on Esther Street in 2017, a year after 49 were killed and 53 were wounded at Pulse."

+ Bottom of the Barrel: Cracker Barrel outrages conservatives with new logo: ‘This is your Bud Light moment.' (Our era is reaching unimagined levels of idiocy.)

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Bottom of the News

"There it was: another A&W bag, containing a dozen or so french fries and, this time, two packets of ketchup. This was the fifth night, the fifth bag of fries, the fifth 'Rodolphe.' Two was a potential coincidence, three an oddity, four a puzzle. But five? I was obsessed." The Great French Fry Mystery.

+ Via Kottke: YoYo Elevated to Performance Art.