Christmas came early for Western Kentucky fans Friday night, when it was announced that wide receiver Dalvin Smith Jr. and cornerback Upton Stout would be returning to the Hill for the 2024 season. Stout’s announcement came after he had previously entered the transfer portal, while Smith was widely rumored to do so, even if to test the waters. The announcements were a major win not only for Tyson Helton, to continue the good mojo in a week that opened with a miraculous comeback win in the Famous Toastery Bowl, but for WKU’s NIL collective, the Red Towel Trust, who for a second-straight year has been able to ward off a top transfer candidate from a power program.

I’m grateful to Lex Fridman for kicking off an extended round of discourse about whether you should read books, and the precise situations in which it is cringe or based to do so. Book discourse returning to the zeitgeist is good for two reasons: for one, us readers momentarily become a little more high-status, receiving opportunities to flaunt good taste. It’s also good because, somehow, Regress Studies posts blow up when they’re about people arguing about reading books (for ex, Is It Okay To Finish Books?

This is designed to be a thought-terminating cliche, not an actual argument you can counter. The men you are talking to, as you correctly identified, feel threatened. So they want to shut down the discussion by depicting you as hysterical, out of control, and angry. The argument rests on two ridiculous ideas: that it is always wrong to have any animosity toward men, and that anyone who suggests any man or men should change necessarily hates men.

I’m heading to Paris.  I’ve been asked to cook for the inaugural Matter & Shape Design Salon with We Are Ona, a creative culinary studio creating unique dining experiences all over the world. I have been a fan of their work from afar for about a year now and it’s truly a dream to be working with them. Matter and Shape is a project of Journalist Dan Thawley, former editor in chief of A Magazine Curated By.

I was reading a book to my kids the other day when a curious thing happened. It was a “word of the day” book that introduced new vocabulary in big, bold letters at the bottom of a page with an illustration opposite showing the word in action. So for instance, the word might be “devour” and on the other page it would show a funny drawing of a bear devouring something.