On a hot August Wednesday, I approach the six-hundred-acre Dhamma Suttama silent-retreat center in Montebello, Quebec, a ninety-minute ride from Montreal, where I'm spending the summer. My driver, a Cameroonian man in his forties, hooks into a narrow forest corridor. We pull up to a concrete parking lot that wraps around a building paneled with wood and stone. Built in the eighties as a high school, it's now made up of sleeping quarters and meditation halls. "You? At a silent retreat?" a friend asked me before I left. I admit, it's a stretch. I've been surrounded by noise my entire life. As a Black man, it's how I know everything is all right. When I hear laughter and arguments all on the same block in Flatbush, Brooklyn, where I live most of the time, that signals safety. But as the area gentrifies, it quiets—a form of "silent colonialism," Willie Mack, assistant professor of Black studies at the University of Missouri, told me on a call—which makes me feel uneasy. |
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Why You Should Ditch Black—and Replace It With Navy Blue |
It's funny how life has a habit of throwing up serendipitous style moments. Right before Halloween, my son asked me if I could cough up a black suit for him to wear to a bash in Manhattan. He and some mates were doing Men in Black. "I cannot," I told him. "I don't own a black suit. Not even a tux." "Why?" he asked. It's a good question, especially when you're asking someone who's approaching 35 years in the fashion mag business. For most of that, though I must have styled a thousand of them, I have not owned a black suit. So, I thought it might be interesting for this first Big Black Book-themed newsletter to parse out what led me to this position. |
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Is Lewis Black okay? That's the natural fear many fans had when the comedian who has been mad-as-hell-and-not-going-to-take-it-anymore for decades announced that he actually wasn't going to do it anymore. The now 77-year-old stand-up legend has retired from touring, and his recent "Goodbye Yeller Brick Road" performances were his last. But Black, the longest-serving contributor to The Daily Show, whose appearances started back in 1996 when Craig Kilborn (remember him?) was still the host, is not finished with comedy. He's just finished with delivering it from town to town. He assures us there are no health worries that contributed to the decision, despite rampant speculation about that on social media. Black got a dog, actually. That's why he wants to stay closer to home. It's a big, fluffy, white doodle named Sammy, who is testing the limits of Black's misanthropy by gleefully attracting the adoration of everyone who catches a glimpse of the pair during their walks around New York. The truth is, Lewis Black succumbed to his own personal kryptonite: happiness. |
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72 Gifts Your Wife Won't Return This Holiday Season |
She deserves the world. Your wife, that is. I will be so bold as to assume that she's an incredible human full of wisdom, laughter, beauty, and emotional complexity. You love her a whole hell of a lot, so yes, she's entitled to more than just a last-second, half-baked gift. Getting her the perfect present, no matter the occasion, is paramount, because she really is that special. Get her a gift that's so romantic she'll brag about her partner's superior gift-giving prowess. Hey, dream big. There's a secret sauce: Don't get her something she needs but rather something she wants. This long, definitive list can guide you to the best tech, fashion, and home gifts out there. All these are vetted—and many owned—by me, a snobby wife and professional shopper. |
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You'll never hear a complaint come out of Billy Bob Thornton's mouth about where he is or what he's achieved. The problem is, he knows he'll never be as good as Frederic March, the first and greatest naturalistic actor, knows he'll never be as good as the Beatles, and knows he'll never, ever be as happy as he was before his brother Jimmy died. Even after three or four decades in this business, both as a musician and an actor, he's an outsider. He looks up into the ocean of black sky and dreams dreams he knows will never come true, and yet he feels at peace. And that's a very weird thing for Billy Bob. Very weird. Peace is not something he's known ... maybe ever, in any of the lives he's lived. He's not sure he likes it. |
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All the Weird Things The Running Man Predicted About 2025 in 1982 |
"No smell but the decaying reek of this brave year 2025…" By the time you hit that evocative scene-setting line on page 5 of Stephen King's novel The Running Man, you've already tripped over several other staggering references that make you wonder if the author had access to time travel or a crystal ball while writing this book more than 40 years ago. The grim science fiction tale, about a desperate man in the far-off future who goes on a kill-or-be-killed TV show to save his family from poverty, overflows with asides, observations, and background details that seem astoundingly familiar. Some are actually important, like the book's notion that U.S. currency ("oldbucks") will be increasingly replaced by the "New Credit Dollar," which sounds a lot like crypto. (It's especially haunting if you note that the sitting president's son, Eric Trump, recently went on Fox Business to declare: "There is no doubt in my mind, cryptocurrency is going to replace traditional finance.") |
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Saturday, November 15, 2025 |
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You already know November is the best month of the year to shop everything on sale. It doesn't matter that Black Friday is still a few weeks away—you can take advantage of huge discounts across the Internet right this second. Whether you're on top of your holiday shopping and getting gifts for loved ones or just need to replace those AirPods you lost over the summer, we found a ton of tech deals that shouldn't be missed. The Apple Watch SE 3 is only $200 and The Samsung Frame is 50% off. Don't wait. — Krista Jones, commerce director |
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Why wait to shop for gifts? These are on sale now. |
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All our favorite cashmeres, shetlands, and merinos make an appearance. |
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The less cords, the better. |
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Trust us, he won't be regifting these. |
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Having the right product makes all the difference. |
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Think you're not ready? Trust us, you are. |
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