1. Angus Deaton: The U.S. system encourages rent-seeking.
2. World's Oldest Restaurants. Sort of puts those "Since 1979" signs in perspective.
3. The Year in Search.
4. End of year columns from two Daves, Collum and Barry. (tl;dr--It boofed)
5. Books are hot.
6. Oreos are NOT vegan. Suppose you see someone who is vegan eating because there is a myth that Oreos are vegan. You are not vegan. Should you tell them?
7. Increasingly interesting question: If you own a vehicle/appliance/phone/computer, can you repair or modify it? What really do you own? Article 1. And Article 2. And Article 3. On the other hand, some things survive unchanged for a long time, until we aren't sure of their actual origin.
8. BP makes a claim that is classic "broken window fallacy."
9. Anarchapulco. In which my man JT appears to be having some kind of ecstatic experience.
10. The Graham-Paul war for Trump's brain. Even tiny territories can be hard to control, it seems.
11. Booze-monks.
12. Foreign wars morph into domestic control.
13. EN-B makes a good point. The only reason Louis C-K is "out there being heard" is that you folks are giving him a platform. You can't think that the people who heard the set didn't know the content of the set. All you are doing is advertising for the man. And, sure, signalling your virtue to the tiny bubble of like-minded censorious cretins you hope to gain approval from.
14. A nice history of Westerly, hometown of the LMM.
15. Titania McGrath is back! Most excellent.
Grand Lagniappe: 2018--the Year We Lost Hope
Okay, seriously, the real GL: