Sunday Reads...

An irregular roundup of thought-provoking reads. Most made me go “hmm…”

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

"No one learns more about a problem than the person at the bottom.” — Former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor

• Accountability: UFC executive takes responsibility for a disturbance following an event. 

• On a globe of government debt, the U.S. really stands out. 

• Federal gift giving in an era of debt is insanity a Senator notes. 

• More evidence that screen time is counter-productive to a child’s development. 

• Top 2025 podcasts listed.

• 2025 Nature photographers of the year noted.  

• National Geographic’s Pictures of the Year, here. 

• Cambridge dictionary’s 2025 word of the year: parasocial. 

• Remembering Louis Marshall. 

• U.S. Home sizes are shrinking at present. 

• By state, visualizing what it takes to buy a house in the U.S. 

• Lisa Cook defends her mortgage documents with “inadvertent” notations.  When a banker can’t fill out their paperwork right, one wonders about qualifications, at a minimum. 

• A site breaks down every use of the word “democracy” in the congressional record.

• Apparently, American students arriving at college, cannot do math. 

• The funeral service for Vice President Cheney can be viewed here. 

• HHS peer-reviewed paper demonstrates that transexual transitioning is not medically supported for minors. 

• Amen!  Grace the one virtue needed in greater community abundance. 

• Remembering the wisdom of Richard Weaver, an arch Southern advocate. 

• Hopeful: Americans still show a consensus on several core values. 

• A unanimous statement by the U.S. Catholic Bishops on immigration, here. 

• WTF: Tax-funded autism treatments are being used to fund terrorism, per reporting. 

• NYC continues to be a hot-bed of antisemitic Islamists. 

• Would-be Trump assassin was a “furry” and for some reason national law enforcement obscured this from the narrative. 

• Oy! High School girls are now less likely than boys to indicate a desire for marriage polling reports. 

• Nigeria still attacking people of faith - including students. 

• Coddling is crushing: Government schools rush to coddle students and harm them. 

• The real life Moby Dick: Mocha Dick. 

• Thanksgiving:

  • 61 topics to fight over during Thanksgiving! 

  • Best travel days for T-day. 

  • Advice from world-class chefs for a successful Thanksgiving meal. 

  • YOY: This year’s Thanksgiving dinner is estimated to be cheaper than last years! 

  • The organ story of the Pilgrim’s Thanksgiving revisited. 

  • Watch an explanation of the thanksgiving feast, here.

• Remembering ace journalist Helen Paull Kirkpatrick. 

• The joy of doing nothing. 

• Wow.  The more education a k12 government teacher apparently the less the students learn. 

• Ranking the top new Christmas Movies. 

• Label wars: Trad wives are also feminists. 

• An anxious generation turns to marathons. 

• Dearborn, Michigan continues to capture attention for all the wrong reasons. 

• Democrats surge in latest polling ahead of 2026 elections. 

• Security expenses for corporate CEO’s surge this past year. 

• Colonial America was built - that is funded - largely on gambling, lottery revenue. 

• Screen Time revisited and reconsidered. 

• The history of the word: Dude.  As in “the dude abides.”

• Mary Bead: What Hollywood gets wrong about Rome, learn here. 

• Counter Narrative: Males are apparently more tolerate than females. 

• AI:

  • AI toys are having inappropriate conversations with youngsters. 

• CHINA & RUSSIA:

  • The mafia is now using TikTok to control gangs and recruit. 

• COURTS:

  • Most Americans oppose Tariff taxes but few, per new polling, expect the Court to knock them down. 

  • Justice Gorsuch is working on a new children’s book: Heroes of 1776. 

• ECONOMY:

  • Target same store falls year-over-year notes their quarterly report. 

  • Meanwhile, Walmart posts positive quarterly results. 

  • Gen Z is financially ahead of where the Boomers were at this point.  Counter narrative, but economically the younger set is doing better. 

• POLS BEHAVING BADLY:

Dems:

• Politician caught scrolling porn on a commercial flight. 

• House Dem leader solicited campaign cash from Epstein after he was a convicted sex-offender. 

• Norm Chomsky was also apparently a fan of Epstein. 

• Meanwhile, Democrats tried to leverage Epstein directly for dirt on Trump. 

• Congresswoman McCormick charged with fraud against the taxpayers. 

• Another fake-attack in an attempt to smear the right.

Reps:

• Incompetence in the James Comey case continues. 

• J6 rioter, who wasn’t a FBI informant, arrested for child abuse. 

• Andrew Tate had some friends in the Administration apparently. 

• Once Republican, now Russian-agiprop agent Tucker Carlson continues his gig. 

  • Bed bugs await those share sheets with Tucker notes a conservative writer. 

  • Trump’s history of indecent language. 

• TRAVEL:

  • Best new pizza joints to check-out. 

  • The most and least affordable airports in North America. 

  • Why do all diners have the same mug?  Wonder no more! 

  • The one food item worth the travel to each state to discover. 

• Startling: The rate at which young(er) people are abandoning the norm and building-block of marriage. 

• Brooks: With age, life gets better. 

• Ranking states by their religious freedom and tolerance, here. 

• Ford debuted its new headquarters.