Bellingcat's forensic analysis of the second deadly shooting in Minneapolis:

A video taken shortly after the shooting shows two agents searching Pretti’s body with one appearing to be heard asking: “Where’s the gun?”.

Henry Mance in the Financial Times:

Say what you like about Donald Trump, but the man has devoted much of his career to world peace. Between 1996 and 2015, he was a co-owner of the Miss Universe pageant.

On Thursday, the US president took his passion to a new level. On stage at Davos, he inaugurated a new “Board of Peace”, an organisation which, although it may lack Miss Universe’s credibility, compensates through sheer chutzpah.

Read it all: From bored of peace to the board of peace

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to delegates at the World Economic Forum:

Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in his window: ‘Workers of the world unite’. He doesn't believe it, no-one does, but he places a sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persist – not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.

Havel called this “living within a lie”.

The system's power comes not from its truth, but from everyone's willingness to perform as if it were true, and its fragility comes from the same source. When even one person stops performing, when the greengrocer removes his sign, the illusion begins to crack. Friends, it is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.

Read (or watch) his full remarks.

This fascinating tour of New York's Central Park, presented with great enthusiasm by architect Michael Wyetzner, is well worth your time:

Brilliant take on how to introduce new generations to classical music. Evan Shinners writing in the New York Times:

For classical music to endure, we need to demonstrate to a new audience that the form is not similar to modern music but actually very different in important and — once you acquire a taste for it — enjoyable ways. In execution, this theory works very simply: Don’t change the music; change the way you deliver it. Do the opposite of what institutions are doing when they offer radically shortened operas or watered-down symphonies.

Read it all: Bach Doesn’t Need a Glow-Up

A reasonable person might conclude that the American project is in terminal decline. But the same numbers that document the dysfunction point toward a different, more optimistic conclusion.

America’s problems are solved problems.

Universal healthcare is not some utopian fantasy. It is Tuesday in Toronto. Affordable higher education is not an impossible dream. It is Wednesday in Berlin. Sensible gun regulation is not a violation of natural law. It is Thursday in London. Paid parental leave is not radical. It is Friday in Tallinn, and Monday in Tokyo, and every day in between.

There is another America inside this one, visible in the statistics of nations that made different choices. Call it Latent America: the nation that would exist if our democracy functioned to serve the public rather than protect the already powerful.

-- Stanford Professor of Political Science Adam Bonica on his Substack. Read it all: The Wall Looks Permanent Until It Falls

An unnamed 41-year-old Redditor explains why she spends time dishing out advice on r/momforaminute:

Have you heard of the water-bucket theory? The analogy is that every time something good happens to you, a drop of water goes into your bucket. Every time something frustrating or bad happens to you, a drop comes out; eventually, you’re going to be really angry and really frustrated when there’s nothing in your bucket, so you’re supposed to be looking for ways to put drops of water in your bucket for yourself. When you do good things for other people, they get a drop in their bucket, and you also get a drop in yours. That’s the way that I engage with the sub-Reddit, like I’m putting drops in other people’s buckets. Repairing relationships with family is tenuous and very difficult, and this feels like a very nice, clean way to help people get a little bit more in their bucket and give them strength to carry on.

The Cut: They’ll Be Your Mom for a Minute

Elizabeth Lopatto in The Verge:

You know what’s “offensive and sexualized,” you worthless fucking cowards? Nonconsensual AI-generated images of women in bikinis spreading their legs, and of children with so-called “donut glaze” on their faces — which, by the way, were being generated at a rate of one per minute. I’d also call that “offensive, insensitive, upsetting, intended to disgust, in exceptionally poor taste” and especially “just plain creepy”! Do you need a back brace to stand up straight, buddy? Because at this point, I am certain you haven’t got a single vertebra.

Read it all: Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai are cowards

A former BBC colleague Dmitry Shishkin scoured the more than 200 predictions in Nieman Lab's annual package on the future of media. He picked out Susie Cagle's entry -- "AI will force us to be more ambitious, more human storytellers" -- as the best. Here's what she said:

The human hands behind news will need to be more obvious. Writing that’s original and fun without being GPT-sycophantic to keep reader interest. Good-as-hell yarns with strong characters and compelling narratives that Claude could never replicate. Beautiful photo essays of real people and places, and illustrations created by actual artists. Bylines that are more clear and prominent. Stories that reflect a view from somewhere in original analysis or perspective. Moderated comments and communities where our fans can connect and create new online third spaces. And a peek behind the curtain, sometimes, to see how the work is done, and allow readers to connect with reporters in a more direct and vulnerable way.

Read it all: AI will force us to be more ambitious, more human storytellers

"Is there a backlash when people disagree? Is there a risk of cancellation? I used to worry about that a bit but soon realised that the reason I love this newspaper and its sister, The Times, is their utter contempt for digital backlashes. We are not like independent media types, who surf the current waves of popularity and then disappear without a trace. We are built to last (240 years and counting) — and that can never happen by pandering. Indeed, that could almost be the catchphrase of this newspaper. And it’s why the thrill I get from writing has never faded."

-- Matthew Syed for The Sunday Times. Read more: Matthew Syed’s guide to writing a newspaper column

“It is financially devastating but morally exhilarating."

-- Doug Varone, of Doug Varone And Dancers, on pulling out of performing at the "Trump"-Kennedy Center.

New York Times: New Year’s Eve Concerts at Kennedy Center Are Canceled

"The person who checks their notifications is, afterward, exactly the same person who wanted to check their notifications five minutes ago."

-- Joan Westenberg: Thin Desires Are Eating Your Life

"So, if I might speak on behalf of my country – which I most certainly do not – our message to you, our friends across the pond this Christmas is: don’t give up on us. We’re going through a bit of a wobble right now, but we’ll come around."

— Jimmy Kimmel’s alternative Christmas message.

From Chris Baraniuk, a climate story from an unlikely source:

"[Yangang] Xing, Knight and their colleague Bruno Bingley published a paper in the journal Buildings & Cities, which describes preliminary data gleaned from 18 organ tuning books. These records were sourced from churches in London, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire and date back to 1966. They indicate a rise in average temperatures inside churches since then, during winter and summer periods."

Read it all: Church organ tuning records mirror our warming climate

There's an awful lot of predictions in the annual Nieman Lab bumper feature on the future of journalism. This one from Google's Kawandeep Virdee stood out to me most:

[O]ver the next year we’ll see more custom tools and applications actually created by journalists, editors, and other non-technical staff in newsrooms.

I’ve shifted to throwing vibe-code jams — casual events where participants, regardless of technical expertise, rapidly build out 2-3 ideas within an hour. I see the most potential in niche areas of expertise, hyper-individualized tools just for you and your workflow.

I'm all for this, though one challenge might be how newsrooms encourage experimentation while keeping within the bounds of their own policies on data security. Vetting new AI tools at the rate of innovation is an impossibility but, at the very least, newsroom IT departments should be working overtime to make as many tools available as possible.

Read: Rise of the vibecoding journalists