Prose and Cons

Nonfiction's Nonstarter, Whack Hack

It’s that time of year when we see endless lists of the best gifts to buy for friends and families, but we rarely see warnings about the worst present to give. It turns out that this year, we might have a clear winner. The most unwanted gift of 2025: More Reality. Just a few short years ago, nonfiction books were all the rage. But these days, we’re as sad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore. Selling nonfiction books could be the toughest sale of all this season, with the category seeing an 8.4% year over year sales decline. Nonfiction is becoming a nonstarter. My own reading habits have definitely followed the trend. I exclusively read fiction these days and, as someone who consumes a lot of news, even the most depressing novels tend to cheer me up. The Guardian: Are we falling out of love with nonfiction? “Speaking to publishing insiders and readers, one word that cropped up repeatedly was escapism. The world is exhausting, so readers are seeking refuge rather than clarity. Some are disillusioned; the voracious reading of the past decade didn’t transform the world as many hoped. ‘I think there is definitely a sense of fatigue,’ says Holly Harley, head of nonfiction at publisher Head of Zeus. ‘The news is terrible. People feel overloaded. That escapism is why we’re seeing such a rise in romantasy.’” (I hate to toot my own horn for always being ahead of the curve, but my nonfiction book sold pretty poorly back when the nonfiction market was still going gangbusters.)

+ LitHub: The Most Scathing Book Reviews of 2025.

2

All Health Breaks Loose

“The stunning move comes after House Republican leaders pushed ahead with a health care bill that does not address the soaring monthly premiums that millions of people will soon endure when the tax credits for those who buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act expire at year’s end. The action sets the stage for a renewed intraparty clash over health care in January.” 4 Republicans defy Speaker Johnson to force House vote on extending ACA subsidies. (It’s stunning that it’s considered stunning when only 4 House GOP members don’t want to let health care costs skyrocket, an eventuality that is both cruel and a terrible political move.)

3

Hunger Strikes

This is a simple and simply terrible story that, even when drowning in today’s nonstop news deluge, needs to be told until people really understand the scope of the depravity. American officials, from the wildly inexperienced chainsaw wielders to the very top of the State Department, were repeatedly warned that USAID cuts would lead to violence and starvation. They lied about those warnings, they lied about the cuts, and the warnings materialized. ProPublica: Inside the Trump Administration’s Man-Made Hunger Crisis. All this to save what amounts to a rounding error on a rounding error in our foreign aid budget, and so the worst humans can pat themselves on the back for starving the most vulnerable ones.

+ “Ever since the military in her homeland of Myanmar killed her father in 2017, forcing her to flee to neighboring Bangladesh with her mother and little sisters, the school had protected Hasina from the predators who prowl her refugee camp, home to 1.2 million members of Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya minority. It had also protected her from being forced into marriage. And then one day in June, when Hasina was 16 years old, her teacher announced that the school’s funding had been taken away. The school was closing. In a blink, Hasina’s education was over, and so, too, was her childhood.” Trafficked, exploited, married off: Rohingya children’s lives crushed by foreign aid cuts.

4

Whack Hack

“A hacker group that includes members of the collective that hacked Ticketmaster last year says it has collected user data from P-rnHub and is demanding the company pay an undisclosed amount or it will release detailed information about its users.” Hackers breach Pornhub, threaten to expose users’ viewing habits. (I swear, I only go to P-rnhub for the articles...)

5

Extra, Extra

Forecasting a Shadow: “The center, founded in 1960, is responsible for many of the biggest scientific advances in humanity’s understanding of weather and climate. Its research aircraft and sophisticated computer models of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are widely used in forecasting weather events and disasters around the country, and its scientists study a broad range of topics, including air pollution, ocean currents and global warming. But in a social media post announcing the move late on Tuesday, Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, called the center ‘one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.’” NYT (Gift Article): Trump Administration Plans to Break Up Premier Weather and Climate Research Center.

+ Chile Reception: “Some might call his rise just one more alarming case of a worldwide trend toward nativist authoritarianism — and it is. But the attendant rehabilitation of one of the continent’s most infamous autocrats is a particularly agonizing setback in a country where many considered the long struggle for democracy to have been won.” Chile’s Election Is More Than Just a Swerve to the Right.

+ You Can Feel His Disease: “The NIH has been transformed this year. And most of the layoffs, policy changes, and politically motivated funding cuts—notably, to infectious-disease research—have happened under Bhattacharya’s watch. But inside the agency, officials describe Bhattacharya as a largely ineffectual figurehead, often absent from leadership meetings, unresponsive to colleagues, and fixated more on cultivating his media image than on engaging with the turmoil at his own agency.” This combination—horrible policies mixed with terrible execution—has evolved into its own infectious disease. It’s already spread throughout the administration. The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Most Feared Person at the NIH Is a Vaccine Researcher Plucked From Obscurity. (Meanwhile, Measles outbreaks worsen in South Carolina, Arizona and Utah.)

+ Plaque Buildup: Trump’s soiling of the White House, and American history, continues apace. The latest addition: Trump disparages presidential foes in plaques attached to White House. The same guy who makes decisions to do stuff like this is making decisions like the one below...

+ Unfamiliar Surroundings: “Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America. It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before — Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.” Trump orders blockade of ‘sanctioned oil tankers’ into Venezuela.

+ Lost Sacks Appeal: “What she found was shocking: he had fabricated and embellished some of his most well-known work — like Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Sacks himself referred to his ‘lies’ and ‘falsification’ in journal entries.” The Lies and Falsifications of Oliver Sacks.

+ A High Profile: “An online marketplace is selling code modules that simulate the effects of cannabis, ketamine, cocaine, ayahuasca, and alcohol when they are uploaded to ChatGPT.” Wired: People Are Paying to Get Their Chatbots High on Drugs. (I think investors have been hitting some of the same stuff...)

+ Three Pointers: WSJ (Gift Article): One Throuple Had Three Separate Design Tastes. How Did They Manage a Renovation? Wait. What?

6

Bottom of the News

“For decades, physicists dismissed it as beautiful nonsense—a prop master’s fever dream. But now the math has caught up to the dream.” A faster-than-light spaceship would actually look a lot like Star Trek’s Enterprise. (Too bad the Enterprise’s engines have been repurposed and are now powering an AI data center.)

+ Lawmakers pull each other’s hair during Mexico City Congress session.