We're coming to the end not only of another month but another year. And, once again, I'm asking myself where 2025 went. There's still five and a half weeks of the year, so maybe we should enjoy them while we can.

With that out of the way, let's get Monday started with these links:

AI will never be a shortcut to wisdom — Jeff DeGraff laments how AI is eroding peoples' ability to think and analyze, to deeply ponder concepts and ideas. Instead, more and more people are taking shortcuts and offloading their critical thinking to a chatbot. In the long term, that can't be good.

From the article:

This is no way to live. Because if you see the world as nails, you’ll mistake noise for knowledge. You’ll assume volume means validity. And when you no longer know how to recognize true expertise — because you yourself have never gained any — you will fall for the confident fool. The YouTube doctor. The Instagram monk. The LinkedIn philosopher.

The Great French Fry Mystery — Sometimes, people do strange things which perplex and frustrate others. This is a story of one of those things: a mysterious person named Rodolphe who left bags from the A&W fast food chain on the property of the article's author, and the attempts to figure out who Rodolphe was and why they did what they did.

From the article:

A friend of mine suggested that a technological glitch was to blame and that the fries were being reordered by mistake every night. But, if some computer somewhere was malfunctioning and placing the same order again and again, why were the deliveries coming at irregular times throughout the night? It was too personal, too human. Was it a scam? I wondered if someone on the other side of the world was hacking a delivery app during their nine-to-five, our middle of the night.

The unconscious process that leads to creativity: how ‘incubation’ works — Nothing really new here, but it's worth sharing to remind all of us that sometimes, to crack a problem, we just need to step back, tune out, and woolgather.

From the article:

One of the most marvellous properties of the brain is its ability to continue working unconsciously when the conscious mind has moved on to something else. I’m not talking here about basic processes such as the regulation of breathing or the control of motor functions during a walk, but about higher cognitive processes. If you ponder the solution to a management crisis and take a walk around the block, your brain will persist in looking for answers.

The controversial sweet that fuels Norwegians — I'm not entirely sure about the controversy surrounding this chocolate bar, but I definitely would like to try one (and not just because to the little storks imprinted on it!).

From the article: But despite its strong Nordic roots, Kvikk Lunsj has long been shadowed by a controversy. For much of its nearly nine-decade history, this notably Norwegian treat has been accused of being a KitKat knockoff. The chocolate-covered four-fingered wafers are nearly identical in appearance to the famed British treat.