2025 year in review
Reading time: 4 minutes
This year has certainly been tumultuous! For me personally, this included a car accident. Still, I continued working on Blocks Edit's expansion to web things, as well as a couple of Indie Aisle features.
Work
For Blocks Edit, we expanded to editing forms, and websites. Along with the upgrades came a forms guide, a web design guide, and a web page components template.
And Indie Aisle introduced an approach to creator discovery, and an email newsletter list feature. Along with a guide on the indie web, and added templates.
Blog posts
Along with my posts on Blocks Edit, Distinctive Quality, and Indie Aisle, here are some highlights of misc writings this year:
- Web design and the browser - in the introductory issue of Good Internet Magazine, I wrote an article on creating online
- Physical and mental stress - learning to be more aware of the stress put on our body and mind
- The benefits of walking - including mental health, and with creative thinking
- The updates formula - the best way to update your audience
- AI for generating truth - using AI to collate information and generate art for expression continues to raise questions
Videos and articles
- Can You Fool A Self Driving Car? (video) - the state of self driving cars and how there is a right and wrong way that they're being implemented
- 1000 Players Simulate Civilization (video) - players are put on two islands and the story that unfolds is pretty crazy!
- How to be more agentic (article) - court rejection, seek real feedback, increase your surface area for luck, and assume everything is learnable
- Cults Like Us (podcast episode) - super interesting interview with Jane Borden, author of Cults Like Us: Why Doomsday Thinking Drives America
- The impactful effects of alcohol (video) - Kurzgesagt on how harmful alcohol really is and why despite this, it's still such a prevalent part of our culture
- The Problem Is Bigger Than Apple (video) - the right take on AI right now
Movies
- The Wild Robot - one of my favorite movies of the year, be prepared to cry!
- Superman - makes the case that with how cynical things are these days, being punk rock means being kind
- Bad Faith - documentary on the Christian nationalism movement
- Carol Doda Topless at the Condor - documentary on Carol Doda and her role in the 1960's sexual revolution
- The Great Happiness Space - documentary on Japanese host boys, men who are paid to entertain wealthy women in exclusive nightclubs
- The Fall Guy - fun action movie about a stuntman
- Novocaine - fun action movie about a guy that doesn't feel any pain
- Confessions of a Good Samaritan - the latest documentary from Penny Lane on organ transplantation, kidney donation, and the science of altruism
- Spirited Away - the right level of odd, animated, Miyazaki vibes
- House - a fun, haunting Japanese film about the consequences of past trauma
- Silent Night, Deadly Night - the original 1984 version
Series
- Creature Commandos - from James Gunn, of Guardians of the Galaxy fame
- Wu-Tang: An American Saga - based on the true creative journey of the Wu-Tang Clan rap group, with some fun stories and great music!
- Adolescence - tough to watch, but so well done
- Pluribus - from the creator of Breaking Bad, if you haven't seen it yet, try to go in without learning too much about it!
- The Rehearsal - Season 2 of Nathan Fielder's reality show is on the airline industry and the mental health of pilots
- Dexter - always full of surprises, the series shows how far from black and white things can get
- Gotham - a lot of fun as a Batman universe thing
- Misfits - has great characters, funny moments, and uses its supernatural setup in fun ways
Video games
- Avowed - really enjoyed exploring its richly-designed world and following its well-written story
- Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines 2 - good storytelling and character development with a stylish original approach, and fun game mechanics
- Talos Principle 2 - I watched a play through and enjoyed how it built on top of the first game, a great example of what good science fiction is capable of!
- Mythwrecked - a fun, short weekend game about what ancient greek gods might be like today
- Also worth checking out: Split Fiction, The Alters, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and Doom: The Dark Ages
Comics
- Slaughterhouse-Five - based on the Kurt Vonnegut book
- Shadow Show: Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury - short stories from some of the many writers that Ray Bradbury inspired
- The Legend of Korra: Patterns in Time - another good addition to the comic stories based on the TV show
Music
- Skream! - an artist I listen to pretty regularly: Skream, an English DJ and dubstep and bass musician
- David Byrne - of Talking Heads fame is still coming out with great stuff, his latest album has some catchy tunes that would stick in my head
- RZA meditation - known for producing beats for the Wu-Tang Clan, this solo release is a guided meditation album that he released during the pandemic
To get my updates regularly, you can sign up for my monthly newsletter.