Are its days numbered? Photo: Airair, via Wikimedia Commons.

• In London, the anti-café has arrived. It’s a place where you pay about a nickel a minute to sit around and drink free coffee. Will the intelligentsia cotton to it? We’ll keep you posted.
• Golden Globes be damned—yesterday also saw the announcement of the National Book Critics Circle award nominations.
• If you must transpose real people into fictional avatars, heed Christopher Isherwood’s advice: “You can question their morals, call them liars, expose them as thieves—as long as you describe them as attractive.”
• Arthur Schopenhauer: post-Kantian metaphysician, notorious curmudgeon, prophetic technofuturist?
• The Supreme Court is about to argue semantics. Among the prickly issues to be addressed: what does happenmean?