2025 roundup: a dumpster fire of a year, really

I'm starting to see some of the "2025 in review" posts here and there, so I thought I would begin a round-up of the most interesting ones. If I find more, then I'll do another batch tomorrow. 

First, some short posts:

The 2025 Year in Review: It sucked.

- Howard Fox

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Works as a 2025 metaphor on so many levels!

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— Betty Cracker of Florida (@bettycrackerfl.bsky.social) December 28, 2025 at 1:38 PM

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SHOWN: 2025 in a photo.

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— Middle Age Riot (@middleageriot.bsky.social) December 29, 2025 at 10:02 AM

Interesting but I don't think I can bring myself to read these:

A comprehensive list in chronological order of the 500 Worst Things the Trump Admin Did in 2025. Here is Part 1: 1-100. Jan-Feb 2025. open.substack.com/pub/meidasto...

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— Ron Filipkowski (@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social) December 27, 2025 at 3:24 PM

Financially, emotionally, historically, psychologically, intellectually, culturally, spiritually, aesthetically, thematically and existentially speaking, what happened this year can never happen again

- Jonathan Edward Durham

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Canada, Greenland, and Ukraine all go to bed at night with monsters under their bed.

— Edge O. Erin (@edgeoerin.com) December 29, 2025 at 3:38 PM

But it isn't all doom and gloom.

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- Kier Atkinson 🇨🇦

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Next, an entertaining interactive article from the New York Times:
How do we make sense of an overwhelming year? Writing a list is a great place to start (gift link)

...List making is ultimately a forward, affirmative act — the wish to impose order on a chaotic world. In that spirit, we present lists on economics, fandom, nostalgia, fashion, politics, culture and other subjects. These are human-made lists for human-made readers in an uncertain time....

Click the link above to read the whole thing.

And here's another good one:

Evan Scrimshaw / Scrimshaw Unscripted

2025 Year In Review: A Very Good Year
On A Very, Very Good Year
There are two big themes I’m thinking about when it comes to 2025’s year in review - the need for honesty and the need for humility. In many ways, 2025 was a vindicating year for me, with the Liberal revival once Trudeau was gone and the collapse of the NDP proving long running commentary on this site correct. And yet, while I was obviously correct about the need to get rid of Trudeau and Singh, it would be completely absurd to pretend that when I was writing my screeds against them, I could see what was going to happen this year.
...This site is something that’s rare these days - it’s a place that doesn’t shy away from the dual purposes of leading a movement and electing governments. Lots of the writing about the split in modern conservatism, whether in the National Post or other Substacks, are interesting reads as articulations of the movements they represent. But they’re either reckoning with the moral case for their version of conservatism or they’re attempting to make an electoral argument. This site is both. I’ve criticised Carney, and before him Trudeau, heavily when they’ve deserved it, because it needs to be done. But I am a Liberal at my core, and this site is about trying to elect as many Liberals and progressives as possible at every opportunity. When my principles and that mission collide, the sparks fly - but it’s about a fundamental belief, which is that a bad Liberal government is better for the country than any Conservative one....

Here are two thoughtful pieces I also liked:
A Little Detour with Tove Danovich

In which I use a dung beetle as a metaphor
Looking back on 2025
...Microcosmos was released in the U.S. 1996 with the tagline, “It’s Jurassic Park in your own backyard!” The mostly silent film takes a close-up view of the insect world, letter the scenes speak for themselves. An ant protects an aphid farm from an invading ladybug. Two snails do what I can only describe as making love in an absolutely transcendent scene. Wasps tend to their young. Then, about halfway through, there’s a dung beetle. He’s working hard to roll his ball along the rocky soil. He walks backward, pushing the ball with his (stronger?) back legs. The journey is hard but he mostly makes progress. Sometimes the ball rolls downhill but the beetle moves back up again. (Cue Chumbawamba).
Then the ball rolls onto a stick or a thorn coming out of the ground. The wood skewers the dung ball! The beetle pushes but all he can do is turn the sphere on its axis. He’s working so hard; he shovels half his little body into the ground, pushing.
The beetle changes tactics, using his head instead. Nothing. No amount of pushing is going to help him. The strength of two beetles wouldn’t be enough to move the ball forward. Watching the scene, I know what he needs to do is backtrack—push the ball off the thorn. But he’s doing everything but that until, of course, he does. The ball goes free.
That’s when things get interesting. Because, rather than continue to follow the beetle, whose story of perseverance has filled the screen for roughly three minutes, we zoom out.
We still see the beetle and his progress but now we see that he’s been traveling in the grooves of a patchy gravel road in a field with even more land in the distance. We watch him continue to make his zig-zag way across the road, only now he’s so small in the scheme of things. The beetle’s struggle—so difficult, it was worthy of a classical music soundtrack—is one tiny moment in a big world. I rewound the scene and watched it through a second time.
I know it all matters so much and nothing matters. The world needs all of us to push our dung balls with everything we’ve got, and, god, if this isn’t a universe full of the exact same struggles. Which is to say, perspectives makes a difference. Which is to say, I should remember to zoom out, to turn down the volume on my soundtrack. There’s always another year and more obstacles ahead.

Richard’s Substack

What a "Year-in-Review" can't tell you...
...Apple Music sent me my “Year in Review.”
YouTube did the same.
Wikipedia, of all places, joined the party.
The trend has gotten so ubiquitous that Saturday Night Live even spoofed it this year .
Apparently, my year is now available in chart form.
Which made me stop and ask a simple question:
What is a year-in-review actually for?
''''Algorithms are very good at summarizing behavior.
They’re terrible at helping us assign meaning.
That part is still on us.
...There’s a subtle danger in letting platforms do our reflecting for us.
They make it feel like the work is done:
Your year has been reviewed. You’re all set.
But real reflection is slower. Quieter. More uncomfortable.
...Reflection for the Last Week of the Year
As you move into the final days of the year, consider this:
If no app were allowed to summarize your year —
what would you say mattered most?
And what’s one thing you’re ready to leave behind before the calendar turns?...

Finally, some perspective:

It took 9 years and 3 billion miles to get this shot. Pluto’s icy Mountains.

- Sebastian Barros

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From the first sighting of a colossal squid in the wild to a seriously goofy octopus, 2025 delivered some astounding photos from the ocean’s depths

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— Scientific American (@sciam.bsky.social) December 27, 2025 at 12:58 PM

And it goes to show you never can tell...

Back in the early 90s, I attended the concert of a singer who’d had a few huge hits early in her career but was now playing a half-filled 500 seat theater in Spokane, WA. She was drunk onstage and angry. Exhausted from the road. Exhausted by the huge expectations and shrinking crowds. Her concert became a monologue about pain and loneliness. She died young. Yesterday, I heard one of her songs on Sirius and I immediately thought, “Damn, she would’ve had loving and appreciative audiences if she were now playing Indian casinos.” Indian casinos are morally and ethically complicated. I mean—talk about the total tribal assimilation into capitalism. But so many classic rock, soul, and country musicians—the ones who aren’t big enough to draw thousands of us nostalgic Boomers and Gen Xers into arenas—are able to draw hundreds at Indian casinos. Who wouldva thunk it? Indians saving the rock stars who saved us with their music.

- Sherman Alexie

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