Hmmm. Where oh where did those pesky Republican Presidents go on the cover of TIME magazine? On newsstands now is a possibly oldish TIME special that I just noticed on my local go-to Barnes & Noble newsstand. An edition labeled for display until mid-February of 2026. It is titled as follows:                  Best of PERSON of the YEAR               Leaders Who Made a Better World Dominating the cover is a sparkling Taylor Swift on stage somewhere, with guitar, arms flung wide open, big smile on her face as she apparently is singing one of her hit songs. Just below her are six previous TIME Person/Man of the Year covers from over the decades. They feature: “The Guardians and the War on Truth: The Staff of the Capital Gazette on December 9” - Prominently listing the murder of journalist  President-elect  Jimmy Carter (in January of 1977 for 1976, the year Carter came from political nowhere to win the presidency) Bill and Melinda Gates and Bono as “The Good Samaritans” for 2005 The American Soldier featuring three uniformed soldiers in fighting gear for 2003. Greta Thunberg: The Power of Youth in 2019 President-elect Barack Obama in 2008  (It must be noted that the staff of the Capital Gazette are featured because they were subjects of a murderous assailant who disliked something that appeared in the Gazette. Five staffers were killed, two were wounded.)  Beneath the images of these six TIME covers are photos, although not on TIME covers, of Britain’s young Queen Elizabeth II, Astronaut Frank Borman and his two Apollo 8 colleagues, and last a color photo of President John F. Kennedy standing in front of an American flag as he gives a speech. Open this “Best of Person of the Year” issue and there is immediately something curious to be seen. Of the 48 people listed inside over the decades as “Person of the Year” or “Man of the Year” - there are seven Presidents of the United States. They would be Presidents FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, JFK, Carter, Obama and Biden. Other than the GOP’s Eisenhower, those selected by TIME are Democrats one and all. Again curiously, while Dwight Eisenhower is included, his picture and a good bit of the bio material accompanying his story focuses not on Ike’s presidency but on his time as the commanding General on D-Day and in World War II. His presidency - he was a Republican - is not in major focus. Amusingly, Russia’s President Mikhail Gorbachev was named Person of the Year in 1987. But, again curiously, in this issue that celebrates Gorbachev there is zero mention - none - that Gorbachev’s accomplishments on the international scene were made possible in the first place because of U.S. President Ronald Reagan seeking him out as a partner in ending the Cold War. Reagan made a point of negotiating in person with Gorbachev three different times, on one occasion inviting him to the White House to sign a nuclear agreement Reagan had negotiated with the Russian. That was a big deal - and as a young Reagan staffer in the day I was lucky enough to witness the Gorbachev arrival at the White House for myself. In fact, Reagan was selected more than once during and after his White House tenure as a TIME Man of the Year. Surely that would be a reason to include him in this TIME round up of “Leaders Who Made a Better World” over the decades. But alas, Reagan is nowhere to be found in this issue. Neither, for that matter are the Republican Presidents Nixon, Ford, George H. W. and George W. Bush. Every one of whom, like their Democrat presidential colleagues, had some contribution to make during their time in office. Indeed, the back cover of this issue features the images of 42 TIME covers from over the years. Among them are covers featuring Democrat Presidents Obama, Carter, Biden, Kennedy, Roosevelt and Truman. The only GOPer present is Eisenhower, and the main focus there is Ike as World War II General, replete with photo of a uniformed Ike in World War II talking to American troops getting ready to go into battle. But appearances by GOP Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan or either of the Bush Presidents? Much less the currently sitting GOP President Trump? All of whom more than arguably easily rank as “Leaders Who Made a Better World” in their time in office? Nothing. Are you kidding? That makes six GOP Presidents completely ignored by TIME in this issue, with recognition of six Democrats from FDR to Biden. Yet it is very safe to say that the group of former GOP Presidents from Nixon to the Bushes have indeed made the world a better place during their individual tenures. Whether launching a roaring economy or winning the Cold War, GOP Presidents have seriously made a better world in their times in office. That’s an awful lot of American history being ignored for what cannot help but be seen as decidedly partisan reasons, a national “news” magazine put together by a staff of “journalists” whose job is supposedly to revolve around the facts. Just the facts. But in reality, as this edition clearly shows, the TIME journos are clearly more involved with boosting Dems and freezing out Republicans. One thing can be said of this collective “Best Person of the Year” issue: TIME loves the Left. And can’t stand Republicans. Suffice to say: “Message received.”

THE INTERNET CAN LOCATION-CHECK YOUR ASS:

He made this post when it was 65 degrees (at night, 80 during the day) in Gaza.

And then three days later, we find out he’s actually in Poland.

It’s all fake. Always has been. https://t.co/08pkA4ptZn

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) November 22, 2025

More:

Breaking: @elonmusk just turned on the location spotlight and the entire “Gaza resident” influencer industry & fake IDF soldier industry just imploded.

Turns out the “eyewitness in Rafah living under bombardment” has been live-tweeting from a comfy flat in Islamabad while the… pic.twitter.com/qx0fWbH2Bj

— Faerie 🧡 (@LiquidFaerie) November 22, 2025

More to come?

SMART CITIES WILL KILL FREEDOM:

This same urge might explain the impatience of the smart city urbanist, née venture capitalist, who told The New York Times that “human beings currently live in cities that are the equivalent of flip-phones”. There’s a keen sense of waste; our sheer lack of optimisation offends. Another investor-urbanist, a Mr Huh, complains: “We have not affected the fundamental building blocks of infrastructure and society.” The Times reporter writes that Mr Huh gestured to his laptop and said: “We’ve made this better. We’ve made the new things better. We haven’t made the old things better.” In a helpful gloss, the reporter points out that in thinking about how to make the old things better, “people in tech prize ‘first principles’, a concept that suggests that historical awareness and traditional expertise can get in the way of breakthrough ideas”.

Here we see the old drama of modernism playing out one more time. The urban blank slater reminds us of Thomas Hobbes’ disgust with the customary or common law, that body of precedents and practices that ordered English life, but which appeared to his impatient mind as a sediment of inherited mindlessness. For him, life needed to be governed by laws that would be excogitated from scratch (by him), according to clear principles, not by the haphazard accumulation of informal usages and understandings. Rather than seeking the reasons latent in our unthought practices, and from them trying to reverse-engineer the logic of a city, the smart city epigones of Hobbes place their trust in their own powers of a priori reason.

But governing by syllogism doesn’t work very well. For one thing, the sovereign forfeits that easy, habitual law-abidingness that custom secures. As Thomas Schrock said in his critique of Hobbes: “We follow customary laws, not out of fear, but because they are here with us, our own, part of us.”

Governing by syllogism, on the other hand, requires heavy police work. Call Security!

It sure does, particularly when the smart cities’ residents’ lifeclocks start blinking red:

The 15-minute city idea trades freedom for a life of routine drudgery, mating high-tech with urban density:

This is the horror movie they are bringing to life in your city soon. #15MinuteCity https://t.co/rQXNju2Dzl

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) April 1, 2024

But as we saw in 2020, at quite a cost:

As Glenn wrote in 2020: Coronavirus lessons on density, mass transit, bureaucracy and censorship: They kill.

Kudos to the Guardian for not soft-pedalling this:

Chomsky had deeper ties with Epstein than previously known, documents reveal

The philosopher and the sex trafficker were in contact long after Epstein was convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor, documents reveal

The prominent linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky called it a “most valuable experience” to have maintained “regular contact” with Jeffrey Epstein, who by then had long been convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor, according to emails released earlier in November by US lawmakers.

Such comments from Chomsky, or attributed to him, suggest his association with Epstein – who officials concluded killed himself in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges – went deeper than the occasional political and academic discussions the former had previously claimed to have with the latter.

Chomsky, 96, had also reportedly acknowledged receiving about $270,000 from an account linked to Epstein while sorting the disbursement of common funds relating to the first of his two marriages, though the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor has insisted not “one penny” came directly from the infamous financier.

That is not much of a defence. Money is fungible.

Later, the article quotes from a letter written by Chomsky praising Epstein:

“The impact of Jeffrey’s limitless curiosity, extensive knowledge, penetrating insights and thoughtful appraisals is only heightened by his easy informality, without a trace of pretentiousness. He quickly became a highly valued friend and regular source of intellectual exchange and stimulation.”

In fairness, all that stuff about penetrating insights and thoughtful appraisals was probably true. Epstein would not have been able to rise as high – or sink as low – as he did without being able to read people. Epstein’s forte was befriending famous people, introducing them to each other, being at the centre of the networks of the global elite. My guess is that of the pleasures this position brought him, the status ranked higher in his mind than the money or the sex.

Marcel Duchamp’s urinal was named most influential work of modern art of all time, according to a vote by 500 critics. Duchamp named it Fountain. It was initially rejected for display at the Society of Independent Artists exhibit in 1917, whereupon Duchamp’s allies argued that it was a worthy work of art along four lines: […]

This cult of safety has risen inexorably alongside the bloated state, the proliferation of lanyards dangling from corporate necks like talismans or morality nooses, – I mean look at us here, at the Margaret Thatcher Centre all proudly wearing our own blue ropes – and the insidious creep of human resources culture. HR departments, those modern inquisitors, enforce “safe spaces” where dissent is heresy, and risk assessments stifle innovation and free speech goes to die. It’s a world where playgrounds are padded to absurdity, and employees are trained not in skills, but in avoiding offence. This isn’t safeguarding; it’s societal strangulation, a slow garrote on the British spirit.

– Gawain Towler