Slate Plus

For the Sake of Old Times

The Slate Plus Digest for Dec. 29.

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People celebrate New Year’s Eve at Times Square on Jan. 1 in New York.

Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AFP/Getty Images

Finally, 2017 is about to come to an end. Let’s wrap up the year with some reads.

From Slate

Looks like everyone got an Amazon Echo this Christmas. If you’re one of the newly anointed, here’s how a few households have welcomed (sometimes begrudgingly) Alexa into their homes.

Road fatalities have gone up in the past two years, and smartphone use is likely a major factor. But curbing distracted driving is a deeply complicated issue, and autonomous cars likely won’t solve it either.

The “silver tsunami” is coming! Even though the baby boomer generation is reaching retirement age, many will continue working, and American workplaces are woefully ill-equipped to handle the needs of an aging workforce. Meanwhile, Meals on Wheels—one of our best senior programs—also remains chronically underfunded.

Lastly, an important plea: Stop with the personal essays prefacing online recipes! And a begrudging defense: Yes, it’s OK to put a cute sweater on your dog.

Not From Slate

Turn Up the Volume

With the end of the year comes Slate’s Music Club. This time ’round, we’ve got critics Carl Wilson, Ann Powers, Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, Chris Molanphy, and others assessing the year in music, like: the end of the empowering pop anthem and the rise of mumbling men; how country music played with personal ethics; how the “browning of America” infiltrated pop music; and the hopeful anthems we escaped with in 2017. Catch up on all the features here.

Thank you for your Slate Plus membership, which makes our journalism possible. And if you’re doing any more holiday season travel before the end of the year, remember the Kindly Brontosaurus. See you in 2018!

Chau Tu
Associate editor, Slate Plus