Pun Salad

If you can make it through Dave Barry's Year in Review without a guffaw or two, or 46, then congratulations on your igneous ticker. An excerpt, from …

It was a funny old year, and it's not over yet.

Also of note:

• And another retrospective that might amuse you. The Free Press editors reveal their picks: Our Funniest News Items of the Year. Here's Oliver Wiseman:

  It has been a heavy year in news, but 2025 was not without its lighter moments. After all, this was the year someone known as “Big Balls” briefly held a very important government job. And the year that the leader of the free world sprayed an Islamist fighter turned Syrian president with cologne and asked him how many wives he has. And the year that FIFA, an organization charged with running international soccer tournaments, launched its own “Peace Prize” and awarded it to—who else?—Donald Trump.

  But my personal favorite moment of levity this year came in September, with the publication of Kamala Harris’s election memoir, 107 Days. The book is not supposed to be funny, but it is. As I wrote at the time, the former vice president’s day-by-day account of her doomed White House bid is a petty burn book. It is strangely authentic. She roasts assorted senior Democrats (an odd thing to do if you plan on running for president again, as she seems to). When she’s not outwardly aggressive, she’s spectacularly passive-aggressive. And no one is spared, including her poor husband, Doug. The most entertaining entry in the book is for October 20, 16 days before the election and Harris’s birthday. The former vice president gives a detailed rundown of all the ways in which her poor Doug failed to meet the moment that was her 60th. It is amusing. Whether she meant it to be, I’m not so sure.

  Another funny thing: The book tour is still happening. Harris has recently added dates through April next year, featuring a few stops in swing states. How will this work? Will she go straight from plugging 107 Days into the Iowa caucus, where she can start gathering material for the sequel?

  More info on Kamala's ongoing book tour is here. With ticket buying links. Nowhere in, or even near, New Hampshire, which makes me think she's already given up on winning the primary here. (She dropped out of the 2020 race … before 2020.)

  Let's see how much she wants to go see her in, oh, say, Indianapolis. … Whoa, the cheapest seats there are $150?! That is… about $150 more than I'd be willing to pay, Kamala.

• OK, enough levity, let's get serious. A perceptive and sensible take on AI, and proposed AI legislation, from Cameron Berg and Judd Rosenblatt in the WSJ this Boxing Day morn: If AI Becomes Conscious, We Need to Know. (WSJ gifted link)

  An Ohio lawmaker wants to settle one of science’s thorniest questions by legislative fiat. Rep. Thaddeus Claggett’s bill would define all artificial-intelligence systems as “nonsentient entities,” with no testing mechanism and no way to revisit this judgment as systems evolve. While the bill tackles real questions about liability and legal clarity as AI systems become more autonomous, it goes off the rails by declaring all AI nonsentient forever. This closes off the possibility of updating our understanding as evidence accumulates.

  The French Academy of Sciences tried a similar approach in the late 18th century, solemnly declaring that rocks couldn’t fall from the sky because there were no rocks in the sky. They had to issue a correction after the evidence kept hitting people on the head.

  Mr. Claggett doesn’t know whether current systems have properties we should care about or when future systems might cross that threshold. No one does. Yet his bill attempts to settle the question as evidence is emerging that the question deserves serious investigation.

  Berg and Rosenblatt point out that there's no reason to think AI "consciousness" would be anything like human consciousness; would we even recognize it if we saw it? Should we believe AIs who claim to be conscious? Heck, should we believe them when they say they're not? Maybe they just were programmed to say that by some nervous coder in a cubicle.

  And, for that matter, we don't even understand human consciousness that well.

• There are no “controlled substances,” there are only controlled citizens. Steven Greenhut recounts 54 years of failure: From Nixon to Trump, the 'War on Drugs' has been a disaster.

  The United States government first launched a War on Drugs on June 17, 1971, when President Richard Nixon declared: "America's public enemy number one…is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new all-out offensive…This will be a worldwide offensive dealing with the problems of sources of supply."

  The war has ebbed and flowed over the past 54 years, but the results are clear. Drugs won. But instead of learning the requisite lessons, the Trump administration is ramping up anti-drug-war rhetoric to lunatic levels. The president recently issued an executive order designating fentanyl as a "weapon of mass destruction." He's empowered the military to destroy Venezuelan boats that likely aren't carrying that synthetic opioid or even headed to the United States.

  The administration's rhetoric is mind-numbingly off the rails. For instance, Attorney General Pam Bondi in April claimed during congressional testimony that Donald Trump's policies have saved the lives of 258-million people. It's highly unlikely that 75% of America's population would have died from drug overdoses, just as it's highly unlikely that, per Trump, each boat strike saves 25,000 lives.

  This item's headline is an old Thomas Szasz quote. Also appropriate would have been that one usually (and falsely) attributed to Einstein: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result."

• The WaPo editorialists continue to amaze and delight. A Christmas Day editorial: Socialized medicine can’t survive the winter. (WaPo gifted link)

  It wouldn’t be Christmas in Britain without an imminent threat of the health care system collapsing. This year, it was the combination of a “flu-nami” and a five-day strike by residents that had U.K. Health Secretary Wes Streeting warning about “the Jenga piece that collapses the tower.” That tower is the National Health Service.

  The circumstances may change, but the sense of crisis is not new. The NHS has existed for years in a perpetual state of emergency. This was the case before the pandemic hit, and it has only gotten worse. Hospital corridors overflow and routine procedures get canceled due to a catastrophic event commonly known as “winter.” It comes around every year, yet the system, despite annual funding increases, still somehow remains unable to cope.

  A campaign to keep people away from hospitals during the holidays is underway, which includes begging the public to seek out other forms of treatment for “less serious” injuries and ailments. The British press compares the messaging to “Covid-era stay-at-home pleas,” which included asking patients who needed care to avoid medical facilities in order to “protect the NHS.”

  Something to bookmark when your local "progressive" starts blathering that what the USA needs is "Medicare for all".