In the midst of a new curfew time and talk of a new lockdown here in France, inspiration is more and more lointaine. Besides books and movies there is not much else to take the mind off the melancholy that comes with the season and this endless wintery month.

Some years ago, I was invited by my then boss, Jann Wenner, the owner of Rolling Stone, to be the lead singer in a band he was putting together from the magazine’s staff. I had just turned 41, and I jumped at the opportunity to sustain the delusion that I was not getting old. “Sign me up!” I said.

YESTERDAY, WAS FEELING out of sorts, even before realising that it was Blue Monday, the day that’s said to be the most depressing of the year. Had thought it was because the new marble coffee table I’d ordered arrived on Saturday morning in pieces, or perhaps because of the constant rain and gloomy skies, but whatever the reason, I’m happy that today is another day and that yesterday is firmly in the past …

How should we read? The S-word makes it sound, like it or not, like a moral injunction—deep, passionate and enthusiastic readers we may well be, there nonetheless remains something about the way we transform marks on a page or screen into images and ideas in the mind that leaves us feeling like failures.

I AM NOT sure why―when it happens every year―I am so unprepared for winter. The cold. The dampness. The continual overcast skies. And most of all, the darkness. Yes, the days have been, happily, incrimentally longer every day since winter solstice, but tonight, the sun still set 4:17pm. 4:17pm! On Sundays, everything moves a little more slowly …

It’s hard to imagine the internet without Wikipedia. Just like the air we breathe, the definitive digital encyclopedia is the default resource for everything and everyone — from Google’s search bar to undergrad students embarking on research papers. It has more than 6 million entries in English, it is visited hundreds of millions of times per day, and it reflects whatever the world has on its mind: Trending pages this week include Tanya Roberts (R.I.P.), the Netflix drama Bridgerton, and, oh yes, the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution.