Welcome to the 21st edition of the Sidney Awards. Every year, I give out extremely nonlucrative prizes, in honor of philosopher Sidney Hook, celebrating some of the best nonfiction essays of the year, especially the ones published in medium-size and small magazines. I figure this is a good time to take a step back from the Trump circus and read some broader reflections on life. The Sidneys are here to help.

‘The River House Broke …”

The first Sidney goes to Aaron Parsley’s “The River House Broke. We Rushed in the River” in the Texas Monthly. It’s an account of the July 4 flood of the Guadalupe River that killed all those children at Camp Mystic. His extended family had gathered at their house on the Guadalupe, and he describes what happened minute by minute, as the waters rise, as they seek to escape and as they get dumped into the surging river as the house disintegrates. Here’s Parsley’s description of one moment:

“I latched onto a tree with branches large enough to support me and pulled myself out of the water. My breathing was frantic but my mind was focused. I considered the possibility of death. I thought, If I survive, I’ll be the only one. I contemplated life without my husband, my dad, my sister, her family. How could the kids survive what I’d just endured? I felt fear, of course, but it wasn’t as intense as the terror I’d felt inside the house. In the kitchen, I had feared the unknown, what might happen if we were swept away. Now I experienced a moment when acceptance somehow repressed the fear of dying, of losing the people I love the most, of whatever else this catastrophe had in store.”

‘The Brother I Lost’

In “The Brother I Lost” for The Dispatch, Megan McArdle notes that the abortion debate goes round and round, like a bad carnival ride. But McArdle’s perspective deepened when her mother confessed on her deathbed that she had had a child out of wedlock and had given the boy up for adoption. The unplanned pregnancy derailed her mother’s entire life and made her fervently in favor of abortion rights.

McArdle sought out the brother she never knew, finding only that he had died and learning nothing about his life. She wondered: If she had a button that would magically erase her brother’s life so her mother could have lived a more fulfilling one, would she push it? This essay won’t change your mind on abortion, but it will ground the philosophic issues in the context of real lives and real choices.

‘Steam Networks’

I used to play Little League next to the ConEd power plant off 14th Street in Manhattan. I knew nothing about the technological marvel I was making throwing errors in front of. Jamie Rumbelow’s essay “Steam Networks” in Works in Progress magazine is a fascinating tour through the steam heating system that keeps many New Yorkers warm. Before centralized steam, many New Yorkers burned wood. But 85% of the heat generated this way is wasted up the chimney. Wood produces so many pollutants that every hour that you sit in a room with wood burning in the fireplace shortens your life span by 18 minutes. Today New York’s system consumes nearly two Olympic swimming pools’ worth of water per hour to produce enough steam. Moscow’s system extends over 10,000 miles of pipes.

‘When I Lost My Intuition’

Ronald W. Dworkin is an anesthesiologist who went on a vacation, and when he got back in the operating room, he found he could no longer make snap decisions. In “When I Lost My Intuition” in Aeon he describes suddenly being plagued by self-doubt when forced to make judgments that he once could navigate with agility. The essay reveals how many of the decisions we like to think are based on expertise and pure reason really depend on going with our gut. He quotes violinist Yehudi Menuhin, who also once lost his intuition: “When we are faced with 10 different factors, all acting upon each other and among them creating some astronomical total of variables, reason is defeated and only intuition can cope.” Dworkin’s patients will be happy to know he eventually got his intuition back.

‘Why Aren’t Smart People Happier?’

In Experimental History, his Substack, Adam Mastroianni asks a basic question in an essay called “Why Aren’t Smart People Happier?” Intelligence helps people solve problems and understand situations, so smart people should be leading happier lives, but they are not. He says it’s because we too narrowly define intelligence. We give people multiple-choice tests in reading, math, history and language, and we think we are identifying people who have general intelligence that helps them think through a wide array of domains.

But in reality, all these different tests are measuring only one ability: the ability to think through defined problems. These are problems with stable relationships among the variables, there’s no disagreement about when the problems have been solved, and the correct answers are the same for all people. But life, he continues, is largely about undefined problems. How do I get my kid to stop crying? Should I be a dancer or a dentist? How should I live? In these problems there is no stable set of rules to find the right answer. One person’s right answer might be another person’s wrong answer. We need a word for people who are really good at solving undefined problems.

‘We Live Like Royalty and Don’t Know It’

Charles C. Mann’s essay “We Live Like Royalty and Don’t Know It” from The New Atlantis reminds us that Thomas Jefferson “was rich and sophisticated, but his life was closer to the lives of people in the Iron Age than it was to ours.” Jefferson lived in a world of horse-drawn carriages, yellow fever and high infant mortality, but the big difference, Mann argues, is that while Jefferson didn’t even have a reliable water source for his house, most Americans get to live within systems that provide us with abundant food, water, energy and health care. Mann wrote a series for The New Atlantis on how these systems work, which will make you feel grateful for the things you may take for granted.

‘The Tune of Things’

Yale University poet Christian Wiman is one of my favorite essayists. His essay “The Tune of Things” in Harper’s Magazine walks us through some spooky phenomena. “Trees can anticipate, cooperate and remember, in the ordinary sense of those terms,” he writes. He continues: “Some people revived from apparent death report confirmable details they could not possibly have observed, at times far from their bodies. Cut a flatworm’s head off and it will not only regrow a new one but remember things only the lopped-off head had learned.”

Across the essay he mentions some more: Ninety-five percent of the past century’s Nobel Prize-winning physicists believed in God. If no one is watching, a photon behaves as a wave, but if someone is watching, it behaves as a particle. When scientists in the Canary Islands shot one entangled photon, it behaved as a wave. Then they went to a different island and shot another entangled photon, and it behaved as a particle. When they returned to check on the first photon, they found it had gone back in time and acted as a particle.

Wiman is saying the world is a lot more mystical and more fluid than we think. When you acknowledge that fluidity, some of our inherited dualisms don’t make sense — between reason and imagination, mind and body, belief and unbelief, consciousness and unconsciousness, even past and future. The kind of thinking you need to understand the ineffable flow of spooky reality is not contained in the linear, logical, machinelike process we call rationalism. Perhaps the kind of thinking we need to understand a fluid world is radically different, a kind of thinking artificial intelligence will never master.

David Brooks writes a column for the New York Times.

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Minnesota laws and policy changes taking effect Jan. 1 will create new work break requirements, end a long-standing hunting restriction and end state-funded health insurance for adults without legal immigration status.

Perhaps the most impactful change will be the launch of the state’s paid family and medical leave program. Minnesota is the 13th state to create such a benefit, which will apply to almost all workers in the state.

Here’s a look at what will become law at the start of the new year:

Paid Family and Medical Leave

At long last, Minnesota’s Paid Family and Medical Leave program will be active starting Jan. 1.

Most Minnesota employers will be required to provide employees with 12 weeks of family leave and 12 weeks of medical leave. Annual time off will be capped at 20 weeks.

It’ll be funded by a new 0.88% payroll tax, split between employers and employees.

State officials estimate nearly 132,000 people will apply for the benefit in the first year, and that the state will collect around $1.6 billion to fund it.

The dollar amount workers will qualify for under paid leave will depend on their wages.

Someone who earns less than 50% of the state’s average weekly wage, according to the state Labor Department, would get 90% of their normal pay.

A worker earning more than 50% of the state’s average weekly wage would get 66%. Those earning double the weekly average pay would receive 55% of their regular wage.

A person earning Minnesota’s annual average salary of $71,300 would get $1,076 a week in leave program payments. DEED’s website has calculators that provide estimates of premiums and weekly payments.

Federal government and railroad employees are not covered.

Health coverage for undocumented immigrants

As part of a budget deal reached between Democratic-Farmer-Labor and Republican lawmakers in the narrowly divided Legislature this year, state-funded health insurance coverage for adult immigrants in the U.S. illegally will end next week after just one year.

As of May, more than 20,000 undocumented immigrants had enrolled in MinnesotaCare. New enrollments for adults stopped after the Legislature ended eligibility on June 15.

Around 17,000 people will lose state health insurance in 2026 under the budget passed earlier this year. Undocumented children still will be eligible.

Republicans, who have the same number of House members as the DFL, said they were concerned the expense of the expanded benefit could reach $600 million — three times what DFLers appropriated for it when they had control of state government in 2023.

DFLers said that figure was exaggerated and decried the move as cruel, but it ultimately passed with narrow margins as part of a deal to avert a government shutdown.

Minnesota’s Emergency Medical Assistance Program remains available to people who don’t qualify for state Medical Assistance due to their immigration status.

Break requirements and minimum wage

Minnesota already requires employers to provide hourly workers with lunch and rest breaks depending on their schedules, but those rules will become more specific in the new year.

Rest breaks after four hours of work had to be “adequate time” under the previous statute, but now they must be 15 minutes or “enough time to utilize the nearest convenient restroom, whichever is longer.”

The same goes for lunch breaks. An employee who works for six hours soon must receive a 30-minute meal break rather than “sufficient time to eat.”

Minnesota’s minimum wage also gets an annual inflation adjustment, to $11.41, an increase of 2.5%.

End of ‘shotgun-only’ hunting zone

Since 1942, hunters in the southern parts of Minnesota have been prohibited from shooting large game with rifles, and instead had to use slugs from shotguns, muzzle loaders and handguns.

A bill that passed during the June special session ends that restriction. Counties may pass ordinances to restrict the use of rifles — but only if they are in the previously existing shotgun zone.

Supporters of the change, including the National Rifle Association, argued it was an antiquated rule from a time when the state was attempting to increase its deer population. Backers also said there’s little evidence the shotgun-only rule had any positive safety effect.

Protecting vulnerable adults from exploitation

In 2026, a person concerned that a vulnerable adult is falling victim to a scam or financial exploitation can petition for a protective court order.

If there is evidence of exploitation, a judge will be able to prohibit a person from making contact with a vulnerable adult, or even freeze a vulnerable adult’s assets and credit line. A petitioner must demonstrate the risk of serious harm to the vulnerable adult.

Absentee ballots

In a recent briefing on upcoming changes to state laws, House Public Information Services noted a few changes to state election statutes taking effect next year.

Online applications for absentee ballots will require a Minnesota identification card number and the last four digits of the applicant’s Social Security number — unless applicants certify they do not have one.

Candidates filing to run for office will provide a phonetic spelling or pronunciation of their name to election officials. They’ll also have to report their own campaign contributions to the Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board the next business day when they reach contribution limits.

Boat fees

Annual watercraft surcharges funding efforts to prevent the spread of invasive species are set to increase in 2026 from $10.60 to anywhere between $14 and $62, according to House Public Information Services.

The surcharge will now depend on the size, type and use of the boat. Nonprofits with boats for water-safety instruction would pay the minimum rate. Canoes, kayaks and sailboats have a $25 fee. Sailboats over 19 feet are classified as pleasurecraft and are subject to a higher surcharge. Pleasurecraft 40 feet or longer would pay the full rate of $62.

These changes come after a new safety-training requirement for boaters came into effect earlier in 2025. Boaters between the ages of 12 and 21 now have to take a $34.95 course offered by the Department of Natural Resources for a safety-training permit that does not need to be renewed. By 2028, everyone born after 1987 will have to take the class.

New in 2025

Many of the new laws enacted by the Legislature in 2025 took effect earlier this year. On July 1, the base recreational cannabis tax increased from 10% to 15%, on top of the regular sales tax rate of 6.875%.

The state also legalized lane splitting for motorcycles, required adults to pay minors for online content creation profits, and required ticketed entertainment events with 100 or more people in attendance to provide free water.

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As New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s inauguration looms, the wealthiest Americans are being targeted as a rallying cry. In recent weeks, Mamdani’s criticism of millionaires and billionaires has been echoed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, megamillionaire singer Billie Eilish, and even an entity called “Patriotic Millionaires,” which demands higher taxes on those wealthier than they.

Of course, philanthropy is patriotic. While the United States has the most billionaires and millionaires in the world, with 902 billionaires and almost 60 million millionaires, we are also the most philanthropic country across many financial and nonfinancial measures. And you certainly don’t have to be a high-net-worth individual to donate your money and time.

But calling billionaires policy failures is not about fairness. The rich pay much more than their “fair” share, with the top 5% paying 60% of all taxes collected in the U.S. It is a “luxury belief,” proclaiming an opinion to earn status.

Debating exactly how much money people should or shouldn’t earn pushes a cultural narrative that frowns on success, disdains merit and the pursuit of meaning, promotes zero-sum thinking, and completely misunderstands the system that led to that wealth and its vast benefits for society.

Critics forget the quintessential American Dream stories that have made the U.S. the land of opportunity. Politicians like Mamdani ignore the myriad of risk-takers and innovators who created job opportunities for millions and improved standards of living for everyone (including his own family ).

One of the best examples is Sam Walton, whose goal was to provide lower-cost items, so people had more disposable income. Walmart now employs 2.5 million people, and both the current and newly appointed Walmart CEOs started as store associates.

The world’s first self-made woman millionaire, Madame C. J. Walker, was a single mother, born to freed slaves. Was she too successful?

Other stories of people pursuing their purpose in life and becoming financially successful abound, such as FedEx founder Frederick W. Smith; Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts; and my own favorite, Walt Disney, who was born to a poor family with five kids and built an entertainment empire. All of these benefit society.

Financial success follows value creation. Less of it, either by disincentivizing or frowning upon that success, makes us all worse off. Creative entrepreneurial people leave countries that penalize success, such as the United Kingdom, France and more recently Norway. In countries that penalize success, inheritance matters more than effort. In the U.S., 73% of high-net-worth individuals are self-made, while in Norway and Sweden it’s only 47% and 42%, respectively.

Current discontent on affordability misleadingly attributed to billionaires has a clear root cause: lack of housing, “NIMBY” zoning, excessive fiscal spending, energy prices fueled by poor government policies, and even President Donald Trump’s tariffs. But two wrongs don’t make a right when it comes to affordability, and research has shown that there is an anti-profit bias narrative.

Let’s hope that New York’s experiment with democratic socialism is short-lived, and confined to the Big Apple alone. Let’s focus on upward mobility and less on the polarizing, zero-sum narrative of income inequality. Human flourishing comes from positive-sum narratives and from people pursuing their financial success.

Billionaires are the result of innovation, value creation and expanded opportunity that has enabled more paths to human flourishing for billions of people across the world. Dismissing the wealthy as policy failures might score political points, but it can destroy the foundation of a system that has done infinitely more good than harm.

As New York braces for Mamdani, all Americans should rally around the system that supports the American Dream for millionaires, billionaires and all of us who are empowered to flourish too.

Gonzalo Schwarz is president and CEO of the Archbridge Institute. He wrote this column for the Chicago Tribune.

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Today is Sunday, Dec. 28, the 362nd day of 2025. There are three days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Dec. 28, 2014, the U.S. war in Afghanistan came to a formal end after 13 years with a quiet flag-lowering ceremony in Kabul, marking the transition of fighting from U.S.-led combat troops to the country’s own security forces. More than 2,200 Americans had died in Afghanistan since the war began.

Also on this date:

In 1895, the Lumiere brothers, Auguste and Louis, held the first public showing of their films in Paris.

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In 1908, a major earthquake followed by a tsunami devastated the Italian cities of Messina and Reggio Calabria, killing at least 70,000 people.

In 1912, San Francisco’s Municipal Railway began operations with Mayor James Rolph Jr. at the controls of Streetcar No. 1 as 50,000 spectators looked on.

In 1945, Congress officially recognized the Pledge of Allegiance.

In 1972, Kim Il Sung, the premier of North Korea, was named the country’s president under a new constitution.

In 1973, the Endangered Species Act was signed by President Richard Nixon, a law designed to protect plants and animals from extinction.

In 1981, Elizabeth Jordan Carr, the first American “test-tube” baby, was born in Norfolk, Virginia.

In 1991, nine people died in a crush of people trying to get into a celebrity charity basketball game at City College in New York that was headlined by hip-hop stars.

In 2015, a grand jury in Cleveland declined to indict two white police officers in the killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was Black. He was shot while carrying what turned out to be a toy pellet gun.

In 2019, a truck bomb exploded at a a busy security checkpoint in Somalia’s capital of Mogadishu, killing at least 78 people, including many students.

Today’s Birthdays:

Actor Denzel Washington is 71.
TV personality Gayle King is 71.
Hockey Hall of Famer Ray Bourque is 65.
Linux creator Linus Torvalds is 56.
Political commentator Ana Navarro is 54.
TV host-comedian Seth Meyers is 52.
Actor Joe Manganiello is 49.
Musician John Legend is 47.
Actor André Holland is 46.
Actor Noomi Rapace is 46.
Actor Sienna Miller is 44.
Actor Jessie Buckley is 36.
Singer and songwriter David Archuleta is 35.