From a Washington Post story by Adela Suliman headlined “Afghan Girl from National Geographic cover evacuated to Rome”:

From a Wall Street Journal story by Tunku Varadarajan headlined “Walter Kirn Is Middle America’s Defiant Defender”:

The Kyle Rittenhouse case reminds Walter Kirn of an incident from his youth in rural Minnesota. “I remember one night, as a Midwestern kid out in the country, sitting with a loaded gun at the top of my stairs,” he says. A violent inmate had escaped from a nearby prison and was hiding in people’s barns. “I was 16,” Mr. Kirn chuckles, “and I sat up with a shotgun, probably somewhat delusional, convinced I could protect our farm.”

From a New York Times obit by Sheryl Gay Stolberg headlined “Lazlo Z. Bito, Scientist, Novelist, and Philanthropist, Dies at 87”:

Lazlo Bito, a research scientist who fled communist oppression in Hungary, discovered a breakthrough treatment for glaucoma while at Columbia University and then returned to his homeland for a second career as a novelist, philanthropist and public intellectual, died on Nov. 14 at his home in Budapest….

The cause was chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, said his wife, Olivia Carino, who attributed the illness to Dr. Bito’s work as a forced laborer in a coal mine in his late teens. He escaped after he and his fellow slave laborers disarmed their guards during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and headed to Budapest to fight the occupying Soviet forces.

From a story on niemanlab.org by Sarah Scire headlined “Now nonprofit, The Salt Lake Tribune has achieved something rare for a local newspaper: financial sustainability”:

The Salt Lake Tribune has plenty to celebrate in 2021. The first major newspaper to become a nonprofit is financially sustainable and, after years of layoffs and cuts, is growing its newsroom. Executive editor Lauren Gustus announced the news in a note to readers in which the relief of escaping hedge fund ownership was palpable.

“We celebrate 150 years this year and we are healthy,” Gustus wrote. “We are sustainable in 2021, and we have no plans to return to a previously precarious position.”

From a story on psypost.org by Eric W. Dolan headlined “New study identifies which types of humor are linked to reduced worry and increased wellbeing”:

New research indicates that people who use humor to arouse sympathy for human imperfections or act silly to make others laugh tend to experience less pathological worry. But the findings, published in Personality and Individual Differences, suggest there can also be a dark side to humor.

“Humor is one of the most effective forms of communication that humans employ, and it is of interest in the case of applied research into mental and physical health,” said study author Alberto Dionigi, a member of the International Society of Humor Studies who received his PhD from the University of Macerata.

From a Wall Street Journal column by Ben Zimmer headlined “An Expression for a Thought of Gratitude”:

Leave it to the sagacious Linus Van Pelt to strip away the trappings of the Thanksgiving holiday tradition and find its essence. In the classic 1973 TV special “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving,” Linus explains, “Thanksgiving is a very important holiday. Ours was the first country in the world to make a national holiday to give thanks.”

From a Washington Post column by Molly Roberts headlined “The pandemic has scarred our language”: