This week, we’re rewriting Dostoevsky, remembering Tom Stoppard, building community, and time-traveling back to the days of bulky iMacs and AIM.
THE DISCOURSE
And the Pantone color of the year is. . . white. Pantone released its annual color choice for 2026: Cloud Dancer, a “billowy white.” For some, the color is a “comfort neutral” or a “blank canvas,” exactly what we need as we face a new, likely turbulent year. For others, the lack-of-color color is everything from boring to a recession indicator to a subtle reminder of the Sydney Sweeney “good genes” controversy. Hard to say whether Cloud Dancer is being received any better than 2025’s Mocha Mousse (though, to be fair, people have worn a lot of brown this year).
The $140,000 poverty line: Substackers are debating what it costs to raise a family in the United States. In his Substack and for The Free Press, financial executive Michael W. Green took aim at the federal poverty calculation. Adjusting for modern expenses, he argues, the poverty line for a family of four should be raised from about $32,000 a year to about $140,000. Some have pushed back, including economist Noah Smith, who wrote a post in Noahpinion arguing that the idea was “very silly.” In The Purse, Lindsey Stanberry and Alicia Adamczyk took a practical approach, examining a few real families making that much and describing their lifestyle.
Spotify Wrapped is here. The “listening age” was an especially savvy addition this year, judging by the number of 20- and 30-somethings sharing their geriatric stats. Meanwhile, Substacker Alejandro Aboy created his own version specifically for Substack publishers. Go forth and wrap!
TRENDS
Patrick Kho reports on a new vision for third spaces—those gathering spaces beyond the workplace and the home. This new version is less a physical space where communities might (or might not) interact, and more intentional collectives that are “people first, space second.”
