Here’s a look back at 2025 through 12 of Pew Research Center’s most striking research findings. No pay wall.

47, alone & restless in the Florida darkness, consoles himself by imagining a war of liberation in a Middle Eastern nation of 92M. At 2:58 AM he wrote: “If Iran shots [sic] & violently kills peaceful protesters ... USA will come to their rescue. We are locked & loaded & ready to go.” Gift link.

If there now seems to be a broad cultural consensus that everybody hurts, that everybody ‘has’ mental health – even men! – and that it is very important to acknowledge this, there is little agreement on where the misery comes from or how to make it stop. A review of 2025 in mental health news.

From sequins, glass beads, rhinestones, plaster, paint, & more, Jorge Mañes Rubio sculpts new narratives from ancient tales. Drawing on motifs of Spanish illuminated manuscripts, as well as heirlooms & pop culture, he explores the relationship between past & present. Fabulous art! No pay wall.

The “super flu” behind outbreaks in US & UK is a new variant of influenza A H3N2, subclade K. The virus's danger is actually no different from the conventional H3N2 strain. The good news is that while antigenicity is not completely identical, the flu vax is effective in preventing severe illness.

1/ In his seminal 1993 book, The Politics Presidents Make, Stephen Skowronek, a political scientist at Yale, argued that such presidents as Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR & Reagan stand apart for reasons that have gone largely unrecognized. Free link:

A 2000 study claimed to set the record straight on glyphosate, a weedkiller used on 100s of millions of acres of land. The paper found the active ingredient in Roundup wasn’t a human health risk—despite evidence of a cancer link. The study is now retracted. Finally! Free link: : archive.ph/LfBLL

Ignore the lame language re. viral trends: This article is a good summary of how boredom is a important spur to creativity. The goal is not to wallow in feelings of malaise but to find some way to alleviate them. Start with a daily habit of boredom mode over 30 days. Free link: archive.ph/3axTl

Did you know Fritz Lang's silent classic Metropolis is set in 2026? I've seen it several times, but somehow that escaped my notice. Fascinating film warnings about 2026—some broadly applicable, but specifically far-fetched. Some are visionary; others just look like bad green screen. No pay wall.

You may've heard 47 attacked George Clooney recently. This article explains how a UK government warning that his wife Amal risks US sanctions over her role in the issuing of an arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister is key among reasons the couple have sought French citizenship. No pay wall.

Whether he was at a hip-hop club or a premiere party for a film, one thing on Mamdani's campaign trail rarely changed: he was almost always in a suit. Loosely tailored, modern w/ soft shoulders, yet conventional & ordinary, his is a typically middle-class millennial suit. No pay wall.

I need more new music in my life, so my New Year's resolution is to listen to at least one full album, from start to finish, that I've never heard before. My first choice, just yesterday, was Spanish singer Rosalía's Lux—which is utterly fabulous. So how delightful to see this article about her!

YMMV but the way I see this guy using the Tarot is exactly how I use it—not for divination, but in order to tease out the various threads of whatever question I'm asking. In this clip he points out some medically important facts, like how taking excessive aspirin can cause hemorrhagic stroke.

Cartoon by Peter Kuper @pkuper.bsky.social

Cartoon by Milt Priggee caglecartoons.com

Cartoon by Milt Priggee caglecartoons.com

Cartoon by Bill Day @billdayart.bsky.social

Cartoon by Tom the Dancing Bug by Ruben Bolling @rubenbolling.bsky.social Support Ruben at tomthedancingbug.substack.com

The Daily Kos presents Top Cartoons From a Terrible Year: ICE Edition.

Cartoon by David Horsey, Seattle Times

Cartoon by Mike Luckovich @mluckovich.bsky.social

No money for Musk, for anything, ever. Delete X. Boycott Tesla. Tell your reps to cut off all government contracts for Musk companies.

As trivial as this seems, it just gave @bbcnews-world-rss.bsky.social another opportunity to sanewash Trump. Its Iran report quoted his post - and claimed he wrote "shoots"

A must-read:

Jumaane Williams gave a moving and important speech yesterday at Zohran Mamdani's inauguration. (From 2:25). Key for me was his clear statement that the left's #1 job is to make government work. 1/ www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_Qa...

"If conservatives want someone to blame for the conditions that allowed for massive alleged fraud in Minnesota, they need only look in the mirror. They built this, and they spent years doing it." — @snipy.bsky.social

Dementia is a helluva drug

The WH began sending press Trump’s latest social media posts as some type of “briefing”.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Bizarrely Claims Dictator Is Offering US an ‘Olive Branch’ as He Takes Americans Hostage

Trump goes shopping for one of his asinine vanity projects while burning scads of taxpayer dollars as his motorcade full of SS agents sits idle.

Trump’s Motorcade Reportedly Stops At a ‘Random’ FL Strip Mall So He Could Buy Marble For His Ballroom Project

“Clearly this is a full-throttle attempt to help the fossil fuel industry and to hamper renewable energy,” said Sanya Carley, the director of the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. Read more here: https://go.govbrief.today/dcat-coal-emergency #ResistTrump

President Donald Trump’s personal travel routine has generated an estimated $70.8M in taxpayer costs this year, and projections based on federal audit data show the total could exceed $300M if the pattern continues. theintellectualistofficial.substack.com/p/trumps-gol...

I'm sorry, I just can't read this with my eyes rolling this hard

Center of Kharkiv, my native town. In the past 4 years, our house got hit, my school got destroyed, family graveyard, most importantly, people.

Any media outlet whose diagnosis of what's wrong with corporate media is *this* is about to deliver dogshit coverage the likes of which we've never seen Corporate media lost its way due to cowardice, profit motive, anti-intellectualism, and confusing neutrality with objectivity

Imagine believing, and getting mad about, Somali daycare centers having contributed $35 million to the Democrats - a nonsensical, demonstrable, obvious lie. And yet some *billionaires* believed it and then spread the lie over on Twitter. Some of the richest people are some of the dumbest.

Here is the editor of Tablet agreeably reposting someone calling nonwhite NYC immigrants "worthless biotrash." It's astonishing how quickly this stuff has escaped containment

The unsung heroes of all these fabulous astronomy images are the editors! They do a bangup job of cropping them for perfect composition. Like this one with delightful asymmetry:

I'm always evangelizing the Drinkaware app. Basically you log every unit, and probably find you're drinking a lot more than you think when you start using it. I've never worried about becoming an alcoholic as I've had enough times when the last thing I want is a drink.

This article pairs nicely with another one I read not long ago, about people dissing those who read books in public, claiming that anyone reading on a subway or a park bench—or my own favorite reading venue, a coffee shop—is an obnoxious show-off. No pay wall.

Yeah, I've never been convinced of the value of Dry January. On the other hand, giving up refined-sugar sweets for 60 days some years ago set me up nicely to lose a whole lot of weight. It taught me that my fierce cravings could be quieted down to almost zero, so long as I rarely indulged them.

Given the atrocious performance of Musk's starship project, it's not going to happen. Especially if they rely on SpaceX for Artemis.

Couldn’t every school just use the Ronald Reagan chestnut “I don’t recall” defense?

They said similar things about Hillary. “She was walking in the woods with her grandchild! 😱” And Obama (can’t remember precisely.) I remember saying “They’re private citizens, they can do anything they want”. 🙄

He’s a retired private citizen. Every day is vacation. #FoxLies knows trump is in the #epsteinFiles and the US economy is tanking. This is what they fill time with.

Almost none of the rightwing bimbos' drapes match their rugs. I'm a lifelong natural light blonde, so I'm adept at noticing bottle blondes. The most important tell is that their hair is too uniform in color. Real blondes have individual hairs in a wide array of shades, including very dark brown.

This article is worth a 3-minute read. These environmental breakthroughs are important and interesting and I had no idea they happened.

Good news! Despite major environmental reversals taken by 47's admin in 2025—including loosening fossil fuel rules & weakening endangered-species safeguards—conservationists, lawmakers & researchers still notched key wins at local & state levels. No pay wall.

The first ten miscarriages on-air? That could well have been bad luck. But to have an eleventh miscarriage on-air? I don't know... kinda seems like Leslie is an exhibitionist.