* One of the weird solipsisms of American life, especially toward the end of the twentieth century, was that the news almost never talked about the weather outside of the United States unless there was some natural disaster unfolding. I guess I should also say that it is still kind of cool that you can download the Apology of Socrates for free on the internet.

* Zima was an alcoholic beverage that was a kind of low-quality precursor to twenty-first-century hard seltzer. It was terrible. I loved it. More importantly, many years later, I would hear marginal utility described almost exactly this same way on the NPR podcast Planet Money. Did that podcast and Todd have a shared source? Or is my memory being unreliable? I don’t know. What I do know is that my marginal utility curve still inverts after five drinks, just as it did in high school.

* I have known the novelist, Radio Ambulante cofounder, and Arsenal fan Daniel Alarcón since high school. Daniel was once asked in an interview if I thought of myself primarily as a YouTuber or as a writer. To my delight, Daniel answered, “John mostly thinks of himself as a Liverpool fan.”

* Just in case Ringo Starr or anyone who loves him is reading this: I think Ringo was a great Beatle. An excellent Beatle. I just don’t think he was necessarily the best Beatle.

* One of the very few bright spots of 2020 is that child mortality continued to decline globally, but it is still much, much too high. A child born in Sierra Leone is twelve times more likely to die before the age of five than a child born in Sweden, and as Dr. Joia Mukherjee points out in An Introduction to Global Health Delivery, “These differences in life expectancy are not caused by genetics, biology, or culture. Health inequities are caused by poverty, racism, lack of medical care, and other social forces that influence health.”

* As Bosley Crowther put it in the New York Times, “If a visit to the Astor, where it opened yesterday, does not send you forth into the highways and byways embracing a warm glow—then the fault will be less with Harvey, we suspect, than it will be with you.”

* It is used, for example, in the 2008 film Sex and the City.

* Yes, even in 2021.

* One could make a case for Poa pratensis in the Anthropocene if lawn grass was uniquely good at capturing carbon dioxide. But lawn maintenance creates more carbon emissions than lawns themselves can capture. It would be vastly better from an emissions perspective to have unkept grasses or clover or ivy or really anything that doesn’t need constant, resource-intensive care.

* The Art Assignment would later inspire Sarah’s wonderful book You Are an Artist, which combines art prompts from contemporary artists with art history and practical tips for creating.

* Once in a great while—say, once out of every twenty or thirty thousand signatures, I will make one that I am really properly happy with, and I will take it upstairs and show it to Sarah. I’ll point out how the line thins out in just the right place, and how I’ve hinted at the existence of the o in “John” with a little loop. Sarah will nod politely and look carefully at the near-perfect signature for a while before saying, not unkindly, “It looks exactly like all the others.”