Mitch Wagner

Here’s where you can watch the censored “60 Minutes” report about CECOT, the brutal El Salvadoran prison where the United States is sending migrants to be tortured and abused. Trump supporter Bari Weiss, who now heads CBS News, killed the report, even though it had been approved by strict editorial and legal review. However, the report aired in Canada, and is now all over the Internet.

“There’s a sort of pride around the poor conditions, and around the suffering.”

“It’s the year 2025 and Americans have to watch a bootlegged international version of a news program because it was censored here in our country to protect a criminal president.” — @jojofromjerz

Anyone with links to the livestreams could view them — no credentials required, as reported by 404 Media.

Emma Roth at The Verge:

“I watched a man leave his house in the morning in New York…. watched a woman jogging alone on a forest trail in Georgia. This trail had multiple cameras, and I could watch a man rollerblade and then take a break to watch rollerblading videos on his phone. How? Because the camera’s AI automatically zoomed in on it — just like it zoomed in on a couple arguing at a street market in Atlanta.”

On reddit.com/r/Judaism, I asked what folks are doing for Christmas, and the thread is interesting

I’ve converted my shikse wife to the all-American Jewish tradition of going out for Chinese food. But the restaurant has been packed the past few years. I’m sure they’re not all Jews — the goyim must be catching on.

I love podcasts. I listen to about two hours of podcasts a day. Most of that is while walking the dog, and I add a few more minutes while driving (which I don’t do a lot of — just a couple of short hops a week) and doing chores.

I’ve been hearing over the past few weeks that podcasts are moving to video and YouTube. It seems alien and unnatural to me. Podcasting is, to me, a listening medium. I guess people have it on as video wallpaper in the background when they do things around the house, or in some kinds of jobs at work, the way stereotypical housewives used to do with daytime TV.

So many of my interests are and always have been niche interests. Science fiction. Books. Blogging. Maybe now audio podcasts are joining that list.

Natasha Dangoor at The Wall Street Jourrnal:

When Carlos Gomez’s recent flight from Guadalajara was delayed, he asked a gate attendant why. It wasn’t weather or crew shortages. There were 25 wheelchair passengers holding up boarding.

There were no such delays when Gomez’s flight landed. Most of the same passengers stood up without assistance and bounded off toward the baggage claim.

Social media has credited a divine intervention for this sudden return to mobility. An enigmatic “Jetway Jesus” is curing these passengers by the time they land, and the remarkable recovery acts have been dubbed “miracle flights.”

This year I traveled with someone who legitimately used a cane to walk, and it occurred to me that if I simply carried a foldable cane with me in my travel kit, I could get VIP treatment. But I only gave it a second’s thought and decided that would be a terrible idea, because I am not a psycho.

For this multimedia report, The New York Times joined a Ukrainian drone team at the front to understand how cheap drones have changed combat as we know it. The equipment is hacked together — the explosive looks like it’s contained in a plastic soda bottle. By Mauricio Lima, Andrew E. Kramer and Josh Holder.

This drone team, part of the 34th marine brigade, works in two rooms. One is cluttered with wires, antennas, zip ties, duct tape and soldering irons to modify the drones. The other holds the explosives. A wood stove provides comfort in cold weather.

The ingenuity is wonderful and the butcher’s bill (to use an old-fashioned phrase) is horrible.

Gwilym Mumford at The Guardian::

Bohemian Rhapsody is a deeply weird mega hit, a song that explodes all the usual rules of success. Everywhere you look there are contradictions. It’s a multimillion seller that has no chorus, numerous tempo and key changes, ambiguous and difficult-to-parse lyrics and a long running time. Musically, with its Gilbert and Sullivan operetta leanings, it has more in common with the 19th century than the 20th, let alone the 21st, but it’s also the most streamed 20th-century song this century, a musical throwback that nevertheless dragged pop into the music-video age. It’s both celebrated as a queer anthem or an extended metaphor for coming out, and is the British armed forces’ favourite song. It’s an extremely silly, borderline novelty hit that is also sort of deeply serious: “If I’m not back again this time tomorrow/ Carry on, carry on as if nothing really matters.”

The phrase “this ain’t my first rodeo” goes back at least as far as the 1981 movie “Mommie Dearest,” where Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford proclaims, “Don’t fuck with me fellas! This ain’t my first time at the rodeo” to a room of high-powered male executives trying to get the better of her in a business deal. A Way With Words: “Earlier forms of this expression involve such activities as a goat roping, a goat race, pumpkin picking, or a frog race.” “This Ain’t My First Rodeo” was also the title of a 1990 country song.