Hey friends,

2025 is coming to a close, and I'm about to embark on a holiday food coma until the New Year. If you're traveling, stay safe, and I'll see you all in 2026!

A Year In Review 🔭

Some Random Stats 📈

Last year, I tracked some random stats. Let's see how I did this year:

• 12 projects contributed to
• 1 personal project launched (it was a stealth launch, I'll talk more about it in 2026)
• 6 articles written
• 51 newsletters sent
• 1,001 GitHub contributions
• 1 conference talk
• 1 LabShare
• 1 experiment published
• 32 fiction books read
• 2 non-fiction books read

Best Book of the Year 📖

So many good books this year, but Will of the Many took the trophy with its whole "Harry Potter but he's a former pit-fighter-turned-student in a magic Roman Empire analog that's corrupt, and everyone's trying to kill each other" vibes. Good times.

Movie I Actually Remember 🎥

Maybe "Best Movie" to too big of a title for this year and we'll settle for "Movie I Actually Remember" which was Thunderbolts* for focusing just a LITTLE more on the emotional aspect of the characters and the traumas they've faced than just the action.

Best Video Game of the Year 🎮

Dredge is a Lovecraftian horror fishing game that I found engaging. I loved exploring the different islands and having NOPENOPENOPE moments as I dug deeper into what was going on. It doesn't ask too much of you either—I finished the base game in about 16 hours.

Best Board Game of the Year 🎮

Tag Team was released in late 2025 and immediately caught my interest with how much fun it was to set up this little auto-battler. The drama of the reveal in whether you correctly moved your block to the right sequence or whether you managed to land that combo made it my personal biggest board game hit of 2025!

Interesting Web Bits 🍜

Web Stuff

• Cassidy shows us how to pause CSS animations with getAnimations()
• Dan Abramov has built an explorer for RSC to help show folks how React Server Components work under the hood.
• Chris Feijoo has a wonderful post on achieving the liquid glass effect with SVG.

Other Stuff

• Jim talks about sitting with the "I don't know...". (Of which I have become increasingly convinced I know hardly anything at all!)
• But we often even forget what we know, especially when it moves outside 'our' area
• Marcin Wichary talks about {nostalgia of a childhood in Poland and clocks](https://aresluna.org/the-clock/). What is it for you that transports you back to simpler times?
• Taylor shows us how to title.

Weird, Watch, and Play

• 📺 I'm a sucker for both slomo AND factory videos. Watch this Japanese factory make wooden pencils.
• 📺 Or if you're feeling like you need to up your Christmas wrapping game, watch these japanese speed wrapping demonstrations.