* “Shallow Graves: The novels of Paul Auster,” from 2009 and one of the most hilarious reviews I’ve ever read; somehow I missed it at the time.

* “Doomsday Prep for the Super-Rich.” It’s a good article and has been making the rounds online; if I were super-rich I’d be doing the same thing, for reasons listed in “Trump fears and the nuclear apocalypse.” Again, look at history: The craziness of World Wars I and II are (almost) impossible to believe, if you really study them. Entire countries marched in virtual lockstop into existential horror. People follow the crowd and do what they’re told, even if the crowd walks off a cliff and the leader tells them to walk off a cliff. The probability of extremely bad things happening is low, but it’s higher than it was on Nov. 7.

* A shockingly good explanation of why the Hobbit movies were so terrible.

* We will miss antibiotics when they’re gone.

* Where the Second Avenue Subway Went Wrong.

* On Building the Skyline, a history of New York’s skyscrapers. Also, A single city in China built more skyscrapers last year than the US and Australia combined. Pretty sad.

* Tom Wolfe’s new book is terrible. I started it and gave up maybe a quarter of the way through.

* The Many, the Humble, the Ubuntu Linux Users. About using Linux from the perspective of a writer rather than a programmer. There are also now very good laptops that come with Linux pre-installed, like this Dell XPS 13″.

* The System Has Failed and a Con Artist Has Won.

* “Blue Lies Matter: How Video Finally Proved That Cops Lie.”

* Yes, there have been aliens.

* The next [debt or financial] crisis?

* “What the Death of the T.P.P. Means for America.” The short answer is, “Very little that is good.”

* On Forged Through Fire: War, Peace, and the Democratic Bargain