Intractable wars. A growing refugee crisis. An expanding economic divide. The endless exhaustion of the election and the transition reality show. The deaths of several beloved performers. The fake news. The real news we wished was fake. The festering hate. Billy Bush with Trump. Billy Bush with Ryan Lochte. Emails. Hacks. Leaks. A serious overuse of Emoji. It’s been a long and divisive year. So maybe this is the perfect Friday to lead with Micah Osler’s piece in The New Yorker: For the sake of the country, here are some politically neutral meerkat facts.

+ In 72,000 BC, “a Sumatran volcano erupted with the force of 1.5 million atomic bombs.” It’s still close, but I think that evidence proves that 2016 wasn’t really the worst year ever.