Do you really want to live forever?
things I'm thinking about 12/23/25
Bari Weiss’s decision to pull the 60 Minutes segment reporting on torturous conditions at CECOT was, unsurprisingly, a political decision. Her politics aside, Weiss was always incredibly unqualified to head CBS News; the most popular Substack you can imagine still has an audience much smaller than any cable television network. That being said, she’s going to fail upwards forever, because no one ever gets what they deserve in Trump’s America.
Robotaxis are going to be everywhere very soon. Waymo is in talks to raise $15 billion next year, which would be more than double the amount they raised during their last funding round. It doesn’t seem like they’re ready to go nationwide just yet, but what do I know? I’m not a billionaire VC.
American Girl dolls are turning 40! God, do you remember what a status symbol it was to have one? (I never did, but I read all of the books.) A lot of media marketed for young girls kind of sucks, but I like that the American Girl company has always taken young girls and their engagement with history and the world very seriously.
It’s very likely the government will shut down again in January. Last week before taking off for the holidays, the Senate failed to pass a funding package. These people don’t do anything.
Universities helped kill New York’s proposed landmark AI safety bill. The AI Alliance, a nonprofit made up of tech companies as well as universities like NYU, Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania, Carnegie Mellon, Louisiana State University and Dartmouth spent tens of thousands of dollars on an ad campaign against the RAISE Act. I know academia has much bigger problems right now, but it really is a problem that tech companies provide so much research funding to universities. I don’t know how you get around the fact that compute is very expensive, and there aren’t many sources of funding that can actually provide that kind of money. Then again, a lot of these elite schools have billion dollar endowments that they can use at any time.
Everyone should read Moe Tkacik’s deep dive on Marco Rubio’s adventures in that great American tradition of regime change in Latin America. As a teenager, Rubio worked for his brother-in-law cleaning exotic animal cages, the sale of which was a front for smuggling cocaine and marijuana. Not much has changed in the ensuing decades; as Secretary of State, he’s busy appointing drug kingpins by force to head basically every Latin American country in the name of fighting the drug cartels.
The Education Department will resume wage garnishment for people who have defaulted on their student loans next year. I am sure this will do great things for Donald Trump’s approval ratings.
The founder of Telegram has at least 100 known biological children. This story is so crazy. Someone needs to study the minds of billionaires to get to the bottom of why they’re so obsessed with having children and why they seem to believe this is a public service.
Another preoccupation with the rich is getting out of hand: living as long as possible. “Longevity tourism” in some form or other has always been a lucrative industry, but treatments are getting more expensive and more central to the experience of luxury travel. It’s unclear whether this stuff actually does anything.
Rich people aren’t the only ones who want to live longer. According to this Consumer Trends report by Dan Frommer, an estimated 36 percent of people claim they want to live forever. Another interesting bit from this report: 75 percent of Gen Z and millennials believe “content creation” is a viable career path.
Can Zohran Mamdani actually do anything about the housing crisis? Samuel Stein writes for Jewish Currents about the structural impediments Mamdani will face in office, chief among them the obstacles Eric Adams has set in his way as a parting gift.
As of 2025, parents in New York City spend an average of $22,500 per child per year in childcare. Bill de Blasio’s landmark accomplishment of expanding pre-K to every child in the city was an incredible example of what government can do to benefit working people. Winning universal child care will be even more complicated.
Rama Duwaji’s profile in The Cut is very sweet. Duwaji talks to The Cut’s Danya Issawi about her career as an artist, how she’s adjusting to all of this newfound fame, her relationship with Zohran and how she feels about being the next First Lady of New York. I like that all the fabulous clothes she’s photographed in are specified to be on loan. The people’s princess!
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