Happy New Year.

In the two months since the election, Slate Plushas grown by 40 percent—from about 18,000 members to more than 26,000. Everyone at the magazine is grateful for and profoundly encouraged by your support.

Slate’s writers and editors are gearing up for the work ahead. We at Slate Plusare planning a bunch of exciting initiatives that you’ll hear more about soon—some ambitious public-facing projects that your contributions will support and some cool stuff for members only. Watch this space.

Meanwhile, here’s some reading for the weekend.

From Slate

• Reihan Salam argues that Senate Republicans are walking into a trap, and Donald Trump might be the only person who can save them from themselves.
• How Vladimir Putin made Russia great again.
• Gwyneth Paltrow is worried about our gastrointestinal tracts.
• Jamelle Bouie points out that our government is entirely in the hands of the most extreme party coalition since the Civil War. (He also reminds us that new NBC star Megyn Kelly is a racial demagogue. Everyone knows Milo Yiannopoulos is a racial demagogue, but Slatesters differ on whether Simon & Schuster should be publishing his book.)
• Donald Trump is disparaging the intelligence community at his own peril, argues Fred Kaplan.
• And if you don’t have plans for the weekend, why not spend Saturday night catching up on the nonexistent Sinbad classic Shazaam?

Not From Slate

• Why America’s Golden Age of Restaurants is coming to an end.
• “Don’t know if I’ve ever read such an intellectually substantive obituary in a major newspaper before,” tweets former Slatester Judith Shulevitz about this, from the New York Times.
• “Drug use offers a starkly efficient window into the cultures in which we live.”
• Florida librarians created fake readers to save thousands of books from algorithmic purges.
• A remarkable transcript of a conversation between a cab driver and passenger in Beijing.
• How Robert Jensen became the best at the worst job in the world.

From the Archives

Anne Dailey, of Northern Virginia, writes:“If I have to pick just one thing to say GO CONSUME THIS NOW, it would be a conversation with Rosalind Wiseman from Mom and Dad Are Fighting.  As the mom to a seven-year-old girl (who can see the “mean girls” already), I was appreciative of Dan’s and Alison’s thoughtful questions and the feedback from Ms. Wiseman on how to help our daughter handle the crappy teen and tween years; I cried while listening.”

What Slatecontent nugget stands out in your memory? Email it to me! Or just email to say hello, whatever, always happy to get email. From you,at least. Thank you for your membership, which helps make our journalism possible. See you next week!

Gabriel Roth
Editorial director, Slate Plus