Season’s greetings, odious Western fucksticks of Wonkette! It is I, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, here to make the Christmas speaking at you! Ah, Christmas. Which you celebrate on wrong date. Also, you do not make twelve-course feast to honor Apostles. And you do not spend all night in church. There is perhaps one hour giving thanks to God, and 20 hours opening decadent number of expensive gifts and stuffing faces with ham. Then the googling of how to order gym membership or Wegovy or amphetamines.

But Vlad loves holiday for different reason: It is time for his end-of-year press conference! Is wonderful day when reporters line up for hours to ask good, patriotic questions to which I give strong, patriotic answers. Questions such as “Mr. President, please tell us how your leadership this year made Russia greatest country in world,” and “President Putin, please accept gift of Rolls Royce Ghost and humblest apologies from publisher who you have threatened with confinement in Siberian prison colony.”

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In truth, Vlad is worried about Donald. The falling asleep in meetings! In front of cameras, even. Cameras! Donald loves those more than he loves own children. And the constant cognitive tests and the weird-looking hands. His health is of great concern to Vlad! Mostly because if he dies, JD Vance becomes president, and that guy is such a dick.

Anyway! S Rozhdestvom to all of Wonkette! Vlad wishes you great joy opening all your new Rollerblades and Labubus and guns on Christmas morning! Remember, no matter how materially happy you may be, you are still capitalist swine that Mother Russia will one day squash like particularly annoying ant!

The first Donald Trump presidency brought us the Trump University settlement, then a massive New York Times expose on the Trump Organization’s years of tax evasion, then the forced shutdown of the Trump Foundation, then his first impeachment over Ukraine, then the botched response to the COVID pandemic (aside from Operation Warp Speed). After Trump lost reelection in 2020 to Joe Biden came his well-documented, criminal efforts to overturn the election and a second impeachment: this one over inciting a violent insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. Then came multiple federal felony indictments for the insurrection and for his removing and concealing classified documents. Then came his May 2024 conviction in New York on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records and a Supreme Court decision a month later granting the president absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions “within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority.”

Americans reelected Trump president in November 2024. The indictments were dropped.

Just so we are up to speed.

Simmering below the surface was financier and former Trump pal Jeffrey Epstein’s 2008 non-prosecution agreement in Florida for solicitation of prostitution and one count of solicitation of prostitution from a minor, and then his arrest in 2019 for child-sex trafficking. Epstein died in prison awaiting trial. His partner in perversion, Ghislaine Maxwell, was convicted and sentenced four years ago to 20 years in federal prison. Trump ran in 2024, in part, on promising his pedophile-conspiracy-obsessed MAGA base that he would release immediately all the Epstein investigation files. Epstein survivors mounted a vigorous public lobbying effort to demand he follow through. In the end, that took an act of Congress.

After twelve months of delay, after twelve months of Trump 2.0 cabinet sycophants like AG Pam Bondi prostrating themselves before such a man and snarling through non-responsive answers to oversight committee questions, Trump and his Department of Justice were forced by law and an overwhelming vote in Congress to release the Epstein files in full by Dec. 19. They released only about ten percent of them on Friday. Surprise.

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What the actual, clinical, OSHA-reportable fuck did we watch the other night?

That was billed as a White House “address,” which is adorable — like calling a Times Square Elmo knife fight a wellness retreat. What we got instead was a prime-time address delivered with the unhinged cadence of a ventriloquist’s dummy whose puppeteer wandered off to smoke behind the building, leaving Satan — recently lobotomized, to freestyle.

It wasn’t calming. It wasn’t steadying. Hell, it wasn’t even English half the time. Watching him try to string together sentences was like watching someone in oven mitts try to defuse a bomb—sweaty, desperate, and liable to end with a fire drill and a visit from animal control.

Honestly, if you told me that was Candid Camera on crack, filmed during a power surge, and nobody bothered to tell him the joke was over, I’d believe you. It was like Captain Kangaroo got blackout drunk, snorted a line of Metamucil, and wandered onto the C-SPAN set with a head full of Ambien, just making up words and numbers for the fuck of it.

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The festive movie season is upon us, and one of my perennial favorites is Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. I will die on this hill: it is better than the original. But rewatching it as an adult raises an awkward question. How on Earth did the Wet Bandits survive the first film at all, let alone escape without lasting injuries?

Ten-year-old Kevin McCallister, the boy left home alone, sets up traps that are played for laughs, but many involve levels of force that would be catastrophic in real life. A 100lb (45kg) bag of cement to the head, bricks dropped from height, or heavy tools swung at the face are not things a human body can simply shrug off. High-impact trauma to the head and neck rarely ends well.

To understand why, it helps to know a little about skull anatomy. The skull has a protective "vault" that encases the brain, while the bones of the face contain hollow spaces called sinuses. These spaces reduce the weight of the skull but also act as a biological crumple zone, helping to absorb force and protect the brain during impacts. But that protection has limits.

A rough calculation of the forces involved when a 100lb bag of cement strikes the head suggests instant fatal injury. The neck simply cannot absorb that level of force. To put that in perspective, research shows that the cervical spine suffers severe damage above about 1,000 newtons of force. A 100lb (around 45kg) cement bag already exerts roughly 440 newtons under its own weight, and when falling, it decelerates over a very short distance on impact.

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With many people now heavily relying on electronic devices to communicate with others, connecting on a deeper level with others, particularly face-to-face, can prove challenging. Recent nationwide surveys and psychological studies suggest that today many people feel lonely, socially isolated and/or disconnected from others living in their same geographical area.

Understanding the factors that contribute to social connection could inform the development of more effective interventions aimed at reducing loneliness and improving people's mental health or overall well-being. As communication is generally crucial for the formation of social bonds, listening behaviors and an openness towards what others share might be key drivers of social connection.

Researchers at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill recently carried out a study aimed at testing this hypothesis by examining the behavior of strangers engaged in conversation with each other. Their findings, published in Communications Psychology, suggest that people who engage in high-quality listening behaviors tend to feel more socially connected to others, even if they are meeting them for the first time.

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To quickly respond to what others are saying, a person should, theoretically, be listening to them. This idea is what ultimately inspired the researchers to explore the relationship between listening behavior and social connection.

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MOM: I’m so sorry you’re home alone! Your sister accidentally took your jacket that had your AirTag in the pocket, and we were too busy listening to Audible to notice you were missing.

KEVIN: I feel so alone!

MOM: I know, sweetie! We just got to the airport, but we can catch a later flight. We might not get Delta One, alas, but that’s okay. Motion sensors say you’re in my bedroom.

KEVIN: I’m hiding under your bed.

MOM: Your Oura Ring shows your heart rate is elevated. Don’t worry—I just turned on the radiant heat in the floors. Grab the weighted blanket, and you’ll warm up. I’ll raise the temp on the Nest and have Alexa play some calming music while we call an Uber back to the house.

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What a year it has been; in so many ways worse for our democracy and our sanity than we ever imagined. Donald Trump’s constant bombardment of offenses, lawlessness, cruelty, vulgarity, and ignorance has made it hard to keep up. So, as this tumultuous year draws to a close, The Contrarian will provide a series of best and worst lists, covering everything from bold court decisions to Truth Social rants.

To get the ball rolling, let’s looks at the powerful figures who rolled over and played dead, when they surely could have defended themselves, democracy, vulnerable Americans, and civil society with just a modicum of courage.

Worst of News Outlets: Of all the legacy outlets to turn tail, none exceeded CBS in its utter forfeiture of moral authority and journalistic principles. Arguably the worst of the media “settlements” (more like payoffs to a mobster threatening to burn down their business) was CBS’s payment of $16 million in July for editing its 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, delivered apparently to grease the skids for a major merger between Paramount and Skydance. There was no basis for liability here; its owners’ unwillingness to defend their premier show’s journalistic integrity should have the Murrow boys spinning in their graves. Their subsequent hiring of the manifestly unqualified and unserious Bari Weiss—a demagogic columnist foreign to a newsroom—seemed akin to tapping professional suck-up Pete Hegseth to run the Pentagon. She promptly embarrassed herself and tarnished the network’s reputation. Then, to top it all off, CBS conducted a softball interview with Trump that allowed him to spew falsehoods with virtually no pushback—which the network then edited.

Worst of Law Firms: It’s hard to remember back to March, but one of the country’s most progressive minded law firms, Paul Weiss, was among the first to cave to Trump’s bullying by executive order. Agreeing to do Trump’s work pro bono and reject DEI principles, it abandoned the principles that had long guided the firm, horrifying its founder’s family. Worse, it set the example for a slew of other firms to roll over. There was a silver lining: it lost clients and attorneys who prioritized integrity. It might have been a tad embarrassed when other firms chose to fight back rather than cave—or when the D.C. bar recently suggested that the sort of deal it struck raised legal ethics concerns.

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Democratic congressmembers are significantly more likely to post on social media following a mass shooting event in the US compared to Republican congressmembers, according to a study published in PLOS Global Public Health by Dmytro Bukhanevych from New York University, United States, and colleagues.

How politicians use social media after shootings

Social media is now a key tool for politicians to communicate directly with the public, especially in the wake of important events. Previous studies have shown that voters perceive social media posts from politicians as more honest compared to news interviews. Here, the authors assessed how members of the US Congress responded to mass shooting events (as defined by the Gun Violence Archive, where four or more people, excluding the shooter, were shot) on social media.

Guns are a divisive topic in the United States, with Democrats tending to call for stricter gun control laws, and Republicans citing the Second Amendment as rationale for keeping guns relatively unrestricted.

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Improvising music could help to improve older people's cognitive skills, such as learning and memory, according to research from the University of Sheffield and Western Sydney University.

The study, led by Dr. Jennifer MacRitchie from the University of Sheffield's School of Languages, Arts and Societies, is the first to compare how different ways of making music—improvisation versus replication—can affect people's learning and cognitive abilities.

Improvisation tasks people with creating a new melody on the spot, whereas replication asks people to repeatedly play a given melody. Findings show both methods can improve older people's brain functions, but learning by improvisation brings enhanced benefits.

Published in the journal Royal Society of Open Science, the research could change the way music is taught as a brain training exercise and help music teachers tailor their programs so that individuals can be supported to develop skills to the best of their ability.

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The side-by-side comparison between Australia’s response to a gun massacre and the United States’ non-response to the mass shooting at Brown University highlights the contrast between a functional democracy and a dysfunctional one, between one governed by a grown-up and one ruled by a self-obsessed man-child with aspirations of autocratic control.

From the start, we saw the vivid contrast in both competence and compassion between the two governments. In the United States, the Trump regime played the role of crank commentator. In the middle of the emergency, with students and faculty hunkering down in closets, cafes, and dorms, Donald Trump falsely announced that the suspect was in custody.

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In Australia, information about the slaughter of 15 Jews (with scores more injured) was released in a formal, dignified appearance by top officials once they had solid information. Within hours of the mayhem, the police commissioner declared it was a terrorist attack; New South Wales Premier Chris Minns said the shooting was a targeted assault on Sydney’s Jewish community. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese spoke with dignity and authority at a press conference:

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We have a popular consensus on many gun safety measures (e.g., red flag laws). However, we have a democracy problem preventing their enactment. So long as one party (insulated from accountability by gerrymandering) remains in the thrall of a paranoid anti-government cult allergic to social responsibility, we will be stuck in the endless loop of death, finger pointing, and paralysis.

Australia shows us there is another way for democracies to function. Perpetual slaughter of our children is a choice—one no civilized country should make.