This week: Cranberries as a Thanksgiving classic / Watch the history of presidents / 2025 hurricane season enters history books / Texas men planned to invade Haitian island and enslave women / MAGA singles look for love / Potential 2028 presidential candidates aren’t shy about ambitions
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1. 2025 Atlantic hurricane season marked by striking contrasts
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration | November 2025
“The 2025 Atlantic hurricane season, which officially ends on November 30, was notable for its striking contrast — wavering between periods of relative calm and bursts of intense activity, generating very powerful storms. Overall, the season fell within the predicted ranges for named storms, hurricanes, and major hurricanes issued in NOAA’s seasonal outlooks.”
2. How are Americans using AI? Evidence from a nationwide survey
By Malihe Alikhani, Ben Harris, and Sanjay Patnaik | Brookings | November 2025
“The rapid emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology has heightened the need to better understand its adoption across various aspects of social and economic applications. In this essay, we present new evidence on the extent of AI adoption across a host of dimensions, including use in households, by employees in the workplace, and by owners and workers in small businesses.”
3. The botany behind why cranberries became a Thanksgiving staple
By Serina DeSalvio | The Conversation :: PBS Newshour | November 2023
“Cranberry cultivation began in 1816 in Massachusetts, where Revolutionary War veteran Henry Hall found that covering cranberry bogs with sand fertilized the vines and retained water around their roots. From there, the fruit spread throughout the U.S. Northeast and Upper Midwest.”
Also see, from the Associated Press: Remember to give thanks to yourself during the holidays and beyond
4. How food assistance programs can feed families and nourish their dignity
By Joslyn Brenton, Alyssa Tindall, and Senbagam Virudachalam | The Conversation | November 2025
“Food is not just a matter of survival. What and how you eat is also a symbol of your social status. Being unable to reliably feed your family healthy and nutritious foods in a way that aligns with your values can feel undignified. It can make people feel unseen and less important than others.”
5. Texas adds new ID restrictions on vehicle registrations and renewals
By Ayden Runnels and Alex Nguyen | The Texas Tribune | November 2025
“The restrictions, which went into effect on Nov. 18, could upend the ability of many undocumented residents to legally own vehicles.”
6. ‘The blight seeped into your soul’: How ‘Seven’ reflected fears in the US in the 1980s
By Tom Joudrey | BBC News | November 2025
“David Fincher’s gritty thriller commented on the urban blight and religious conservatism of the Reagan era. But it also predicted our obsession with true crime today.”
7. The Vanquishing of Military.com
By Liam Scott | Columbia Journalism Review | November 2025
“Former staffers say a new owner dealt the respected publication a death blow when service members and veterans needed it most.”
8. How Gabbard’s ‘hunters’ pounced on secret CIA warehouse for Kennedy files
By Phil Stewart and Jonathan Landay | Reuters | November 2025
“The case casts new light on the tension between two forces in Washington, the CIA and Gabbard’s ODNI, as Trump appointees sought to act on the president’s orders to swiftly release the full accounting of Kennedy’s murder in 1963, as well as the high-profile 1968 assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.”
9. Texas men indicted in plot to take over Haitian island and enslave women and children
By Kristin Wright | NPR | November 2025
“Gavin Weisenburg, 21 years old of Allen, and Tanner Thomas, 20 years old of Argyle, along with other co-conspirators planned to murder all men on the Haitian territory before taking over the island, and enslaving the women and children as ‘sex slaves.’ “
10. McCarthyism Is Back. You Can Thank This Woman.
By Joshua Kendall | Politico Magazine | November 2025
“History has overlooked the real architect of Joe McCarthy’s purges: his wife.”
11. US leaders are erasing Black history. That threatens our future
By Stacey Abrams and Esosa Osa | The Guardian | October 2025
“DEI is being used as a smokescreen to roll back progress and consolidate power. The goal is to rewrite our nation’s story”
12. Potential presidential candidates are less coy about 2028 plans: ‘Of course I’m thinking about it’
By Jill Colvin | Associated Press | November 2025
“With no clear party leader and Democratic voters raring for a fight, some could-be candidates are being far more transparent about their intentions, doing away with pretensions as they try to gain maximum visibility at a time when authenticity is in high demand.”
13. Texas’s Water Wars
By Rachel Monroe | The New Yorker | November 2025
“As industrial operations move to the state, residents find that their drinking water has been promised to companies.”
14. A ‘win-win’ partnership brings a surge of reporting firepower to hyperlocal news outlets around Boston
By Sarah Scire | Nieman Lab | November 2025
“The Boston University Newsroom has published nearly 400 news articles in hyperlocal outlets in and around the city.”
15. The Encyclopedic Genius of Melville’s Masterpiece
By Suzanne Conklin Akbari | LitHub | August 2019
“Time is not the principle of order in this book; it is a manifestation of chaos. Instead, the principle of order in Moby Dick is that of the encyclopedia, foreshadowed in the book’s first pages and then bursting forth exuberantly in the classification and the anatomy of the whale.”
16. MAGA singles are looking for love in Washington. It’s a challenge.
By Jesús Rodríguez | The Washington Post | October 2025
“The politics of trying to find a partner in an overwhelmingly liberal city can be tricky: ‘My partner can’t think I’m a fascist. That’s crazy.’ “
17. Mariners Wanted: Six-Figure Salaries and Months at Sea
By Peter Eavis | The New York Times | November 2025
“There are few American mariners today because only a small proportion of international commercial shipping is done with vessels flying under the American flag, meaning they are registered in the United States, follow the Coast Guard’s regulations and employ American citizens. The jobs pay well but often require people to be away from home for months at a time.”
18. The Presidents
American Experience :: PBS | 1990-2025
John and Abigail Adams | Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided
Ulysses S. Grant | Murder of a President (James Garfield) | TR
Woodrow Wilson | FDR | Truman | Eisenhower | The Kennedys and JFK
LBJ | Nixon | Jimmy Carter | Reagan | George H.W. Bush | Clinton
George W. Bush
Also see: The American Vice President | Eleanor Roosevelt | Kissinger
(Many of these films are also available on YouTube.)
19. Midnight Cowboy: On the Fringe
By Mark Harris | The Criterion Collection | May 2018
“As a New York movie, as a barrier breaker in terms of adult content, as a representation of a new, more daring Hollywood, as a buddy film, and most complexly as, if not a gay movie, a movie that at least helped to make the notion of a gay movie possible, the film represents a true dividing line, albeit not one that everybody immediately recognized.”
20. An Intoxicating 500-Year-Old Mystery
By Ariel Sabar | The Atlantic | August 2024
“The Voynich Manuscript has long baffled scholars—and attracted cranks and conspiracy theorists. Now a prominent medievalist is taking a new approach to unlocking its secrets.”
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