Charlie Sykes in his newsletter, To the Contrary, outlines the continued uselessness of the Washington Post.

To fully absorb the profound stupidity of the Wapo’s decision, consider the alternative timeline in which the paper published Telnaes’s sketch. If the Wapo had published it, both the paper and Bezos would have looked… better. The paper would have reasserted a modicum of independence and integrity; and even Bezos would have benefited.

Instead of looking like a thin-skinned, craven autocrat, he would have looked like someone big enough to tolerate criticism.

The Streisand Effect is in full effect here. Just weak management, poor decisions, and complete all around stupidity. Of course, the cartoon can be seen everywhere.

The annual Death List has been posted for 2025. What famous people will probably drop in the coming year?

I’d wager a buck or two that Dick Van Dyke and Eve Maria Saint likely won’t make it through the year. I hope Mel Brooks and Clint Eastwood last a while longer. I would love it if Rupert Murdoch would slither off this mortal coil and put Fox News in jeopardy. One can only hope.

Global Data created a rather thorough 3D animation that compares the size of common items, land animals, sea creatures, flying creatures, historical monuments, skyscrapers, air and land vehicles, universe objects, planets and constellations within our entire universe.

Spend 20 minutes and go from infinitesimally small to infinitely large.

The New York Times asked Colson Whitehead what he hoped to see in 2025, and he replied with this bleak statement:

“I have no hopes for 2025. Humanity is disappointing. We killed the Earth. Villains triumph and the innocents suffer. I imagine these trends will continue.”

Feels that way, doesn’t it?

I must say it is interesting that the fall of the SEC’s dominance, the fall of Alabama, and Georgia coming back to normal all happened as soon as every team could start legally paying players.

— Brandon Walker (@BFW) January 2, 2025

In just the past three days:

Illinois football beat an SEC football team for the first time in history.

Illinois basketball posted the largest road win over a Top 10 basketball team in the history of the game.

That's quite a week.

— Dave Wischnowsky (@wischlist) January 3, 2025

Wayne Osmond, the fourth oldest child of the Osmond family and second oldest Osmond Brother, died at the age of 73. The New York Times reports that his daughter Amy Cook confirmed he died at the University of Utah Hospital from complications from a recent stroke.

He wrote one of the all-time best rock riffs and solo with “Crazy Horses.”

John Scalzi posted some resolutions for 2025 that I really liked.

1. Renew my commitment to my own personal health and fitness, because the next few years will not be ones in which to rely on the US heath care system;

2. Spend more time on friendships and community, and both be looking out for friends, and letting friends look out for me;

3. Cut back on new spending to focus on enjoying what I already have. So, as just one example, I’m not buying any additional guitars in 2025. I have enough, and 2025 will be a fine year to use the ones I have in recordings;

4. Somewhat related, prioritize enrichment over doomscrolling, because I think in the next few years I would rather read a book or write a song than “entertain” myself with social media’s outrage du jour;

5. Engage with the fights that need fighting in ways that work for me now. There are lots of topics I care about and ever more limited time and energy to engage with them, and in 2025, in addition to my own projects, we’re going to be working to get Scalzi Enterprises up to speed. How to engage in important things and still have time and energy for all the things I want and need to do? Turns out, in my particular case, there’s a solution: I have money! In 2024, I argued less and donated more, and it turns out that is a combination that’s working for me. I plan to do more of that in 2025, both personally and via the Scalzi Family Foundation.

Outrageous Predictions 2025 [Saxo Bank]
PS Commentators' Predictions for 2025 [Project Syndicate]
12 Predictions for Life in 2025 [NY Times]
End Times: Legendary oracle Baba Vanga’s scary predictions for 2025 [Euronews]
10 AI Predictions For 2025 [Forbes]
The Ultimate 2025 Horoscope Prediction Guide, According to a Celebrity Astrologer [People]
15 predictions for 2025 [Platformer]
The World Ahead 2025 [The Economist]

HT: Metafilter

Jimmy Carter, former president of the United States, died Sunday at 100. He was the longest-living president in US history.

His 1977–1981 term in office saw a landmark Egypt-Israel peace accord, economic struggles, and a failed Iran hostage rescue. After his presidency, he championed peace, human rights, and the environment, earning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

One of the most remarkable one-term presidents of my lifetime. We will never see the likes of him again. He was a phenomenal person. By far the most impactful former president in US history and, too rarely, a good and honorable man.

President Carter was the first president that I remember being president. An incredible loss to our nation.

Heather Cox Richardson has the best piece on the life of President Carter.

If you are tired of reading about the man, you might want to listen to him speak. Here is Jimmy Carter himself on the Fresh Air podcast.

This pretty well covers all the bases of what people voting for DJT in the 2024 election really meant/means 🎯👇🏾 pic.twitter.com/CR8hAC7Q58

— armand~ (@AreMond2) December 30, 2024

Longtime sports broadcaster Greg Gumbel died at the age of 78 on Friday, December 27, reports CBS News.

Dan McQuade, writing at Defector, has a smart retrospective on Gumbel’s career.

Frank Landymore, writing in futurism.com, talks about “brain rot.”

…a growing body of scientific evidence over the past decade suggests that consuming mind-numbing content, from sources ranging from algorithmically driven social media junk to sensationalist news, can literally reduce the physical gray matter in our brains. That’s along with wreaking other pernicious effects like shortened attention spans and weakened memory.

So maybe put the phone down and touch some grass or feel the sunshine on your face. It can only help.

From The Atlantic Science Desk, 77 Facts That Blew Our Minds in 2024. My faves:

3. A group of butterflies flew across the Atlantic Ocean without stopping. It took them only about eight days.

7. Early space capsules lacked handholds and footholds on the outside, and some spacewalking astronauts really struggled to make it back on board.

20. You can buy a fitness tracker for your pet.

27. AI image generators have a penchant for rendering hot people.

37. When our writer ran his own dissertation through the plagiarism-detection software that was likely used to help bring down Harvard President Claudine Gay, it initially claimed that his work was 74 percent copied. The correct number was zero.

52. Dogs may be entering a new wave of domestication.

71. The 10,000-steps-a-day goal doesn’t originate from clinical science. Instead, it comes from a 1965 marketing campaign by a Japanese company that was selling pedometers.

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