Things Are Getting Better

The Council for Foreign Relations has a post listing 10 ways things got better in 2017, a reminder that the dust Trump has raised in the US shouldn't get in our eyes.

Life Lessons from Kevin Drum

Kevin Drum had earlier blogged about the idea his cancer wasn't a particularly educational illness; no big revelations about life had followed from the discovery or treatment .

In this piece he muses about the idea that sharing one's personal experience can help others, even if it is only to say people are not alone. There shouldn't be the expectation that illness is life-changing; sometimes it's just something to work through, or not.

"Power is just really icky."

From a sarcastic post at University Diaries.

Words of Wisdom From a Teenager

“You can create your own miracle,” Shiffrin said when the gold medal was on a sash draped around her neck. “But you do it by never looking past all the little steps along the way.”

From NYTimes

Wisdom from a Man

Via Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution, here's words of wisdom from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Words for the Ages?

"A little petting each day goes a long ways towards making the livestock [people] manageable."  From the Sugar Mountain Blog, brackets added.

Wrongest Sentence of the Day

From Ta Na-hesi Coates: "The people" is not a synonym for "all those who agree with me."

At least as a description of how "the people" is used, this is 100 percent wrong.