‘Some species officially bid us farewell this year.

They may have long been gone, but following more recent assessments, they’re now formally categorized as extinct on the IUCN Red List, considered the global authority on species’ conservation status.

We may never see another individual of these species ever again. Or will we?…’ (Hayat Indriyatno via Mongabay)

‘Researchers have discovered that Alzheimer’s disease may be reversible in animal models through a treatment that restores the brain’s metabolic balance. This study, published in the journal Cell Reports Medicine, demonstrates that restoring levels of a specific energy molecule allows the brain to repair damage and recover cognitive function even in advanced stages of the illness. The results suggest that the cognitive decline associated with the condition is not an inevitable permanent state but rather a result of a loss of brain resilience.

For more than a century, people have considered Alzheimer’s disease an irreversible illness. Consequently, research has focused on preventing or slowing it, rather than recovery. Despite billions of dollars spent on decades of research, there has never been a clinical trial of any drug to reverse and recover from the condition. This new research challenges that long held dogma.

…The researchers focused on a molecule called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, known as NAD+. This molecule is essential for cellular energy and repair across the entire body. Scientists have observed that NAD+ levels decline naturally as people age, but this loss is much more pronounced in those with neurodegenerative conditions. Without proper levels of this metabolic currency, cells become unable to execute the processes required for proper functioning and survival.…’ (Karina Petrova via PsyPost)

‘Earlier this month, the company behind the pioneering smart vacuum, iRobot, filed for bankruptcy. The remainder of the business will go to its primary manufacturing partner—the one it owes all that money to—Shenzhen Picea Robotics. It’s a stark reminder that the longevity of a connected smart device depends entirely on the financial health of the company that made it.

…Whether you have a Neato, a Roomba, or another robot vacuum approaching the end of its connected, you can mirror my steps to keep your device cleaning.…’ (Florence Ion via Lifehacker)

When Blaise Metreweli spoke recently, she didn’t issue the usual warnings about rising powers or looming catastrophe. Instead, she described something more unsettling: a world that has quietly slipped beyond the post–World War II order.

 In this world, wars are rarely declared, borders are routinely ignored, and power no longer rests only with nation-states. Conflict now unfolds through AI-enabled drones, autonomous weapons, hyper-targeted psychological operations, and algorithms that rival states in influence. Information itself has become a weapon.

 This isn’t a future scenario. It’s the terrain we’re already standing on.

 The conflicts Metreweli outlined don’t begin with explosions. They begin with destabilization—confusion, economic pressure, disinformation, and the slow erosion of democratic trust. The front lines are no longer just physical; they are digital, cognitive, and economic. War now moves from sea to space, from battlefield to boardroom, and from social media feeds directly into our heads.

 Perhaps most alarming is her core observation: power is becoming radically diffuse—shifting from governments to corporations, platforms, and even individuals. Private actors now control satellite networks essential to warfare, shape elections through information systems, and deploy AI faster than laws can meaningfully constrain them. This is conflict without uniforms and accountability without borders.

 What gives this warning real weight is what’s happening quietly alongside it. Across Europe, democracies are preparing. Britain’s military leadership is calling for a “whole-of-nation” response. Germany and France have reintroduced forms of national service. Europe is rapidly restructuring defense production, supply chains, and industrial capacity.

 These are not symbolic gestures. Democracies don’t mobilize like this unless multiple intelligence streams are telling the same story.

 The unsettling implication is simple: the war Metreweli described isn’t coming. It’s already underway. (Via Dean Blundell)

‘From mudstones on Mars to strange gases in exoplanet atmospheres, tentative evidence for extraterrestrial life is starting to come thick and fast. But when we’ve found it, how will we know for sure?…’ (Miriam Frankel via New Scientist)

So the shortest day came, and the year died,

And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world

Came people singing, dancing,

To drive the dark away.

They lighted candles in the winter trees;

They hung their homes with evergreen;

They burned beseeching fires all night long

To keep the year alive,

And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake

They shouted, revelling.

Through all the frosty ages you can hear them

Echoing behind us — Listen!!

All the long echoes sing the same delight,

This shortest day,

As promise wakens in the sleeping land:

They carol, fest, give thanks,

And dearly love their friends,

And hope for peace.

And so do we, here, now,

This year and every year.

Welcome Yule!!

‘The speech was a jumble of his usual false or even impossible claims — like a promise to reduce prescription drug costs by an impossible 400 percent — smashed together in no particular order. The speech began with a discussion of the cost of living, a subject he would drop and then return to as if just remembering that it was the number one reason his polls were low. Even the delivery was weird: Seemingly under network time constraints, the president read off the teleprompter angrily and quickly, speaking with the motormouth intensity of a 20-something banker who just discovered cocaine and now has a really great idea for a new restaurant.

So why am I writing about it at all?

Because the fact that it happened at all tells us something much more important: that the Trump administration is sinking, and his White House has no idea what to do about it.…’ (Zack Beauchamp via Vox)

‘Trump went to North Carolina to talk about the economy and ended up explaining how Melania organizes her underwear drawer.

President Trump traveled to Rocky Mount, North Carolina on Friday to deliver what the White House billed as an economic message. Ninety minutes later, he had covered his wife’s lingerie organization system, the proper arm shape for furniture, and why beating Hillary Clinton was more fun than he expected.…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing)

‘”Historians will study how bad this book is. English teachers will hold this book aloft at their students to remind them that literally anyone can write a book: Look at this, it’s just not that hard to do.”

That’s how Scaachi Koul describes American Canto, a memoir by journalist and political operative Olivia Nuzzi. Koul reviewed the book for Slate. This review is one of several collected by Literary Hub for a roundup of the most cutting book reviews for the past year.

Other books considered and then eviscerated are the first novel by comedian Louis C.K., a memoir by former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, and a posthumously published collection of short stories by Harper Lee.…’ (John Farrier via Neatorama)

‘Ryan Coogler’s bloodsucker blockbuster is all about Black creative freedom. No wonder the industry saw it as a threat.…’ (A.A. Dowd via American Prospect)

‘The internet makes most information instantly available. What if that’s why mass culture is so boring?…’ ( W. David Marx via The Atlantic )

‘Planning a trip to Cuba, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, or southern China? The CDC would like a word. The agency has issued Level 2 travel advisories — “practice enhanced precautions” — for all four destinations due to outbreaks of chikungunya, a mosquito-borne virus with no treatment and a name that sounds like it was invented to be unpronounceable by English speakers. Brazil, Colombia, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Thailand are also flagged as higher-risk destinations.

…Chikungunya won’t likely kill you, but it will make you miserable. Symptoms include fever, joint pain, headaches, muscle aches, swelling, and rash, typically showing up three to seven days after a mosquito bite. Most people recover within a week. The virus is vaccine-preventable, though, so if you’re heading to affected areas, get the shot and bring the bug spray.…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing)

‘…Sacks spent decades in therapy exploring why he couldn’t stop embellishing. He called his writing “symbolic autobiography” — projecting his own psychological conflicts onto patients. The healer who saw the hidden genius in broken minds was, in some sense, trying to heal himself through fiction he labeled fact.…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing)

‘There’s no better way to close out the year than with an awe-inspiring display of fireballs streaking across the sky. The Geminids are set to peak during this weekend under perfect conditions, giving sky-watchers a chance to marvel at up to 100 meteors an hour.

The annual Geminid meteor shower should peak on Saturday night and continue onto early morning on Sunday while remaining visible until December 20. This year, the prospects of viewing bright streaks of light are high with the Moon being in a waning crescent phase. That means Earth’s natural satellite will not hamper your viewing opportunities of the shower.…’ (Passant Rabie via Gizmodo)

‘The 2024 election was widely viewed as a referendum on diversity, equity and inclusion and, once in office, President Donald Trump wasted no time in dismantling programs in the federal government and pressuring the private sector to follow suit.

With DEI programs under attack from the administration, many companies scaled back or eliminated them. Others had already rolled back diversity commitments after facing anti-DEI campaigns from activists.…’ (uthor: Jessica Guynn via USA Today)

‘As BBC Sport reports, President Trump is now the proud recipient of the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize, an award that definitely existed before this week and wasn’t just invented by his close ally Gianni Infantino. The ceremony took place at the Kennedy Center before the 2026 World Cup draw, where

Trump received a large golden trophy, a medal, and a certificate — the full participation trophy experience.

“This is your prize, this is your peace prize,” Infantino told Trump, in case anyone was confused about whose prize it was. Trump called it “truly one of the great honors” of his life. And who wouldn’t be honored by getting a shiny medal from an organization famous for bribery, racketeering, and money laundering?…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing

‘CNN’s KFile unearthed multiple appearances where the then-Fox News contributor warned that service members had a duty to refuse illegal commands. “The military’s not gonna follow illegal orders,” Hegseth said on Fox Business. “You’re not just gonna follow that order if it’s unlawful,” he said on Fox & Friends.…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing))

‘The post-modern philosopher Jean Baudrillard infamously argued in 1991 that the Gulf War did not take place, by which he did not mean that no fighting had actually occurred, but that the real events were something entirely separate from the carefully choreographed presentation the world saw thanks to the novel phenomenon of 24-hour cable news.

It’s tempting to wonder what Baudrillard would have made of the current US military buildup targeting Venezuela, a campaign that often appears to be driven by narratives with only a tangential relationship to actual events taking place.

Take, for instance, President Donald Trump’s dramatic announcement on his Truth Social platform a little over a week ago: “To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.”…’ (Joshua Keating via Vox)

‘The Court’s Republican majority… plans to remake the separation of powers among the three US branches of government into a kind of hierarchy. Under this new vision, Congress’s power to create “independent” agencies that enjoy some insulation from the president must yield to a more powerful executive. And the executive’s authority over these agencies must, in turn, yield to a more powerful Supreme Court.…’ (Ian Millhiser via Vox)

‘….The psychedelic compound DMT disrupts a key brain rhythm linked to self-awareness, providing new insights into how the brain shapes our sense of self.

The research, published in The Journal of Neuroscience, investigated how DMT alters the coordinated brain rhythms linked to self-referential thought and internal narrative known as alpha waves. The team noticed this connection when they identified a neural signature associated with ego dissolution in study participants during the peak effects of DMT.…’ ( Austin Burgess via The Debrief)

‘But once you go back, you might not like what you find.…’ (Caroline Delbert via Popular Mechanics)

‘Across the internet, during the 2024 election and in the first year of his second term, MAGA influencers have increasingly used the R-word to insult and scandalize conscientious “woke” liberals, normalizing a slur that had been largely purged from the national vocabulary. The trend reflects not only a coarsening of public discourse under Trump but new depths of callousness and cruelty in America, with disability advocates warning of the term’s dehumanizing effect. Elon Musk alone has dropped the word more than 30 times on his X account since early 2024, while Joe Rogan has said that its return represents an important win for right-wingers. “The word ‘retarded’ is back, and it’s one of the great culture victories,” the podcaster crowed in an April episode of his show.…’ (Miles Klee via Rolling Stone)

 

‘A major seafood company wants to farm octopuses for their meat. Activists and academics say it’s impractical and cruel.…’ (Kenny Torrella via Vox)

‘The Mari Lwyd is a Welsh tradition in which a group of people carry a horse skull mounted on a pole — draped in a white sheet with the operator hidden underneath — to your door at Christmas and demand entry through song.

You are expected to refuse, also through song.

What follows is essentially a medieval rap battle: the Mari Lwyd party sings their case for why they should be let in, you sing back why they shouldn’t, and this continues until someone runs out of verses. If you lose, the skeletal horse and its entourage get to come inside, and you have to give them food and drink.

The tradition dates back to at least 1800, and the groups typically included the horse carrier, a leader, and people dressed as stock characters like Punch and Judy.…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing)

‘ARMR’s experimental vaccine is designed to neutralize fentanyl in the bloodstream before it reaches the brain. Keeping fentanyl out of the brain would prevent the respiratory failure that comes with overdose, which causes death, as well as the euphoric high people get while taking fentanyl.…’ (Emily Mullin via Ars Technica)

‘In 2002, astronomers at Johns Hopkins University set out to answer a question nobody asked but everyone secretly needed answered: what color is the universe? Not the black of space you see at night — the average color of all the light from all 200,000+ galaxies they surveyed.

…The corrected answer, published in 2003: a pale, creamy beige. Hex code #FFF8E7. The team needed a name for this color, so they ran a poll. Suggestions included “cappuccino cosmico,” “Big Bang beige,” and “primordial clam chowder.”…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing)

‘According to Trump’s new national security strategy, America is done with “democracy promotion”… except in Europe.…’ (Joshua Keating via Vox)

‘The Court’s Texas decision is a victory for Republicans, and it is a terrible blow to all gerrymandering plaintiffs.…’ (Ian Millhiser via Vox)

‘Trump is living his best life in this second and final turn in the White House. Coming up on one year back in power, he’s turned the office into an adult fantasy camp, a Tom Hanks-in-Big, ice-cream-for-dinner escapade posing as a presidency.

The brazen corruption, near-daily vulgarity and handing out pardons like lollipops is impossible to ignore and deserves the scorn of history. Yet how the president is spending much of his time reveals his flippant attitude toward his second term. This is free-range Trump. And the country has never seen such an indulgent head of state.

Yes, he’s one-part Viktor Orbán, making a mockery of the rule of law and wielding state power to reward friends and punish foes while eroding institutions.

But he’s also a 12-year-old boy: There’s fun trips, lots of screen time, playing with toys, reliable kids’ menus and cool gifts under the tree — no socks or trapper keepers.
Yet, as with all children, there are also outbursts in the middle of restaurants.
Or in this case, the Cabinet Room.…’ (Jonathan Martin via POLITICO)