Greetings and welcome to this 19th edition of the Carnival of Fools! Hey, remember when this newsletter was supposed to be a fun potpourri of interesting and silly news stories? But then the presidential campaign’s madness blotted out the sun? Well, the evils of 2024 may yet live on, but since I interred the year’s bones in this newsletter over the last two weeks, I’m done with it forever — even if its consequences are nowhere near done with us yet. That means that it’s time to return to form, just in time for a new (but also old) administration to take office. George R. R. Martin may have dropped work on writing his Song of Ice and Fire, the lazy millionaire, but some of us still have bills to pay.
Greenland Is an Idle Distraction
One marvels at Donald Trump’s ability to sidle up to any microphone, whether real or virtual, and immediately set the media world aflame with commentary. Admittedly, part of the reason is that he is president-elect of the United States, but this doesn’t explain all of it: The only way Joe Biden ever dominated a news cycle during his entire administration, as Trump does every week, was by spontaneously wilting ...
