Weekend Reads 12/9/17

Dictionary.com's 2017 Word of the Year Is ‘Complicit’

"This year a conversation that keeps on surfacing is what exactly it means to be complicit," lexicographer Jane Solomon said. "Complicit has sprung up in conversations about those who speak out against powerful figures in institutions, and those who stay silent."

Democrat asks why FCC is hiding ISPs’ answers to net neutrality complaints

Twenty-eight Democratic senators led by Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire wrote to Pai today, and their letter also refers to the "50,000 consumer complaints [that] seem to have been excluded from the public record in this proceeding." In addition, "there is good reason to believe that the record may be replete with fake or fraudulent comments," they wrote.

The Saddest Thing About Living In Our ‘Playdate Society’

To be fair, it wasn’t perfect then, either, but many innovations, including the Internet, have led to a culture where we simply know more about things like crime, about what’s going on in the world, outside of our (unlocked) front doors. Unlike neon colors and androgynous pantsuits, the ‘80s aren’t coming back; playdates are likely here to stay.

The 'War on Christmas' predates Trump and Fox News by almost 400 years

Christmas has been dividing the nation along predictable lines since before the Civil War. Pious Northerners preferred Thanksgiving over Christmas as their big holiday. Southerners, meanwhile, saw Christmas as one of the peak days of the social season, and it was made an official holiday in Alabama in 1836, then in Louisiana and Arkansas in 1838, long before it became a federal holiday.