You may track your incoming packages pretty closely. But most of us ignore the much longer, more circuitous trip that begins when we return something. What happens after you drop off your package might surprise you. Amanda Mull in The Atlantic (Gift Article): This Is What Happens to All the Stuff You Don’t Want. "When you order a pair of sweatpants online and don’t want to keep them, a colossal, mostly opaque system of labor and machinery creaks into motion to find them a new place in the world. From the outside, you see fairly little of it—the software interface that lets you tick some boxes and print out your prepaid shipping label; maybe the UPS clerk who scans it when you drop the package off. Beyond that, whole systems of infrastructure—transporters, warehousers, liquidators, recyclers, resellers—work to shuffle and reshuffle the hundreds of millions of products a year that consumers have tried and found wanting. And deep within that system, in a processing facility in the Lehigh Valley, a guy named Michael has to sniff the sweatpants."

+ Sometimes we return stuff right away. Other times, we wear an item a few times before tossing it. "When you purchase an item of clothing from a fast fashion brand, the likelihood is that you’ll wear it just seven times before throwing it away." Because of this, many big, fast fashion outlets have created a program that lets consumers drop off the clothes they're done with. "It is not unreasonable, then, to assume that when a garment is returned to a store as part of a take-back program that it either be used to make another item or, if it’s in bad condition, shredded into textile fibers and used for insulation. The reality, however, is complicated—and can be far more insidious. When a green skirt was returned to an H&M store on Oxford Street in central London in 2022, the hope was, as a sign on the shop floor read, “to close the loop” and contribute to a circular fashion system. Instead, that same skirt traveled 15,467 miles across the world through the United Arab Emirates SOEX processing facility only to be dumped in a vacant lot in Bamako, Mali, five months later, according to research by the Changing Markets Foundation." Why One H&M Skirt Traveled 15,000 Miles After It Was Brought Back to the Store.

2

CheatGPT?

"There was a panic that these A.I. models will allow a whole new way of doing something that could be construed as cheating ... [But] we’re just not seeing the change in the data." According to a pair of Stanford researchers, concerns about a mass increase in cheating with ChatGPT hasn't necessarily happened, as the overall level of cheating has remained pretty static. NYT (Gift Article): Cheating Fears Over Chatbots Were Overblown, New Research Suggests. That said, the amount of cheating students do is, well, significant. "In surveys this year of more than 40 U.S. high schools, some 60 to 70 percent of students said they had recently engaged in cheating — about the same percent as in previous years." At the time of the survey, about two-thirds of students said they only knew a little or nothing at all about ChatGPT. So they still have time to learn to cheat more (or at least better).

3

Pill Cutters

"Conservative groups filed lawsuits targeting mifepristone, which is the only drug approved specifically for abortion, seeking to reverse its approval or rollback policies that have made it easier to obtain. The Supreme Court will hear a case in the spring that could block mail-order access to mifepristone and impose restrictions on its use, even in states where abortion remains legal." The judicial war on choice is likely to continue as the Supreme Court agrees to hear a case that could limit access to the most common abortion pill.

+ "Dobbs was never about protecting mothers, or their babies. It was about control, and the abject awfulness of what the state of Texas has imposed on Kate Cox, her family, and her doctor makes that plain." Dahlia Lithwick in Slate: Who Determines Kate Cox’s Health Care.

4

The Nord of Damocles

"The four underwater explosions on September 26 made any debate over Nord Stream moot. The attack on the pipeline—without loss of life, as far as we know—was one of the most dramatic and consequential acts of sabotage in modern times. It was also an unprecedented attack on a major element of global infrastructure—the network of cables, pipes, and satellites that underpin commerce and communication. Because it serves everyone, global infrastructure had enjoyed tacit immunity in regional conflicts—not total but nearly so." Mark Bowden in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Most Consequential Act of Sabotage in Modern Times.

5

Extra, Extra

Justice Delayed? "The Supreme Court’s ultimate ruling, which may not arrive until June, is likely to address the viability of two of the main counts against Mr. Trump. It could severely limit efforts by the special counsel, Jack Smith, to hold the former president accountable for the violence of his supporters at the Capitol. The court’s eventual decision could also invalidate convictions that have already been secured against scores of Mr. Trump’s followers who took part in the assault. That would be an enormous blow to the government’s prosecutions of the Jan. 6 riot cases." NYT (Gift Article): Justices to Decide Scope of Obstruction Charge Central to Trump’s Jan. 6 Case.

+ Bank Credit: "An opinion poll carried out between 22 November and 2 December by a respected Palestinian think-tank, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, found that support for Hamas had more than tripled in the West Bank compared to three months ago. Supporters of Hamas were still in a minority, but 70% of the respondents said armed struggle was the best means of ending the Israeli occupation." Support for Hamas grows among Palestinians in West Bank. On the world stage, the bigger question is about America's support for Bibi. Today, Biden met with some family members of Americans held hostage by Hamas. Here's the latest from CNN, BBC, and Times of Israel.

+ Hunter's Hunters: "Hunter Biden on Wednesday defied a congressional subpoena to appear privately for a deposition before Republican investigators who have been digging into his business dealings, insisting outside the U.S. Capitol that he will only testify in public."

+ Greasing the Skids: "The deal falls short of the language that most activists and negotiators had called for, namely a complete “phase out” of fossil fuels. It also lacks specific targets for climate impact adaptation, leaves unresolved questions over controversial carbon-capture technology, and eschews a mandate for wealthy countries to ramp up financial assistance for clean-energy in developing countries. Still, the agreement leaves no ambiguity that the official policy of global governments is that the era of fossil-fuel consumption and production is ending." It took an oil executive to secure the end of oil.

+ Braugher: "Andre Braugher, the two-time Emmy winning actor who starred in the hit television series 'Brooklyn Nine-Nine' and 'Homicide: Life on the Street,' died Monday after a brief illness. He was 61." He was so great on Homicide, a show that was so great.

+ Red Card: The Verge has a multipart piece on the year that Twitter died.

6

Bottom of the News

"First of all, this workout is a behemoth. Even ultra legend Courtney Dauwalter usually caps her long runs at three hours. But not T-Swift. To prepare for a career-spanning show with ten costume changes (depending on the acoustic set, give or take an additional costume) and upwards of three guest appearances and bonus tracks, Taylor dropped miles like they were scarves at Jake Gyllenhaal’s house. Not only did she likely log as many miles as many marathoners (I propose we now measure time in 'Eras,' or 3.5 hours. As in, 'I’d like to run a sub-Eras marathon this year.'), but she did so while singing. Well." I’m an Ultrarunner. Taylor Swift’s Treadmill Workout Wrecked Me.

+ "The first ‘What We Watched’ engagement report is the clearest look yet at how much people are watching Netflix’s TV shows and movies."