I Asked ChatGPT to Solve an 800-Year-Old Italian Mystery. What Happened Surprised Me.; The New York Times, December 22, 2025

Elon Danziger, The New York Times; I Asked ChatGPT to Solve an 800-Year-Old Italian Mystery. What Happened Surprised Me.;

"After years of poring over historical documents and reading voraciously, I made an important discovery that was published last year: The baptistery was built not by Florentines but for Florentines — specifically, as part of a collaborative effort led by Pope Gregory VII after his election in 1073. My revelation happened just before the explosion of artificial intelligence into public consciousness, and recently I began to wonder: Could a large language model like ChatGPT, with its vast libraries of knowledge, crack the mystery faster than I did?

So as part of a personal experiment, I tried running three A.I. chatbots — ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini — through different aspects of my investigation. I wanted to see if they could spot the same clues I had found, appreciate their importance and reach the same conclusions I eventually did. But the chatbots failed. Though they were able to parse dense texts for information relevant to the baptistery’s origins, they ultimately couldn’t piece together a wholly new idea. They lacked essential qualities for making discoveries."

When the AI bubble bursts, humans will finally have their chance to take back control; The Guardian, December 23, 2025

Rafael Behr , The Guardian; When the AI bubble bursts, humans will finally have their chance to take back control

"In the absence of global governance, we will depend on the integrity of robber barons and authoritarian apparatchiks to build ethical guardrails around systems already being embedded in tools we use for work, play and education."

Her daughter was unraveling, and she didn’t know why. Then she found the AI chat logs.; The Washington Post, December 23, 2025

Caitlin Gibson, The Washington Post; Her daughter was unraveling, and she didn’t know why. Then she found the AI chat logs.

"She had thought she knew how to keep her daughter safe online. H and her ex-husband — R’s father, who shares custody of their daughter — were in agreement that they would regularly monitor R’s phone use and the content of her text messages. They were aware of the potential perils of social media use among adolescents. But like many parents, they weren’t familiar with AI platforms where users can create intimate, evolving and individualized relationships with digital companions — and they had no idea their child was conversing with AI entities.

This technology has introduced a daunting new layer of complexity for families seeking to protect their children from harm online. Generative AI has attracted a rising number of users under the age of 18, who turn to chatbots for things such as help with schoolwork, entertainment, social connection and therapy; a survey released this month by Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan polling firm, found that nearly a third of U.S. teens use chatbots daily.

And an overwhelming majority of teens — 72 percent — have used AI companions at some point; about half use them a few times a month or more, according to a July report from Common Sense Media, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization focused on children’s digital safety."

Robert Nakamura, ‘Godfather’ of Asian American Film, Dies at 88; The New York Times, December 23, 2025

Jeré Longman, The New York Times ; Robert Nakamura, ‘Godfather’ of Asian American Film, Dies at 88

"In 1971, while a student at the University of California, Los Angeles, Mr. Nakamura made the landmark short film “Manzanar,” named for the camp where his family was interned in the high desert of Central California. It was one of the first documentaries to depict camp life from personal experience.

After returning to the camp in 1969, he went back again and again, in person and through documentaries like the lyrical “Wataridori: Birds of Passage” (1974), which depicted the lives of three first-generation Japanese Americans, including his father, and “Something Strong Within” (1995), a collection of home movies made by the interned that detailed what they endured in the camps, sent there under an executive order by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In “Third Act” (2025), a documentary made by his son, the filmmaker Tadashi Nakamura, Mr. Nakamura spoke about the ambivalence he felt toward Manzanar."

Ebenezer Scrooge and the dynamics of moral transformation: The ethics of Dickens’s ‘A Christmas Carol’; ABC, December 22, 2025

 Tara-Lyn Camilleri, ABC; Ebenezer Scrooge and the dynamics of moral transformation: The ethics of Dickens’s ‘A Christmas Carol’

"Given that Dickens wrote from within Victorian Christianity, I’ll assume he took for granted some meaningful form of free will, miracles and redemption. I don’t. Yet this Victorian ghost story still cheers me every year. In recent years I’ve found myself examining the popular moral we’ve attached to it — that it’s a story about choosing to do better, against the narrative itself."

What Parents in China See in A.I. Toys; The New York Times, December 25, 2025

Jiawei Wang, The New York Times; What Parents in China See in A.I. Toys

"A video of a child crying over her broken A.I. chatbot stirred up conversation in China, with some viewers questioning whether the gadgets are good for children. But the girl’s father says it’s more than a toy; it’s a family member."

They Seek to Curb Online Hate. The U.S. Accuses Them of Censorship.; The New York Times, December 24, 2025

Adam Satariano, The New York Times; They Seek to Curb Online Hate. The U.S. Accuses Them of Censorship.

"Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg lead a German legal aid organization that assists individuals facing online abuse and violent threats.

Clare Melford runs a British group that helps identify disinformation.

Imran Ahmed is a British activist who runs an organization that has chronicled anti-vaccination content on social media.

On Tuesday, the Trump administration accused all of them of a campaign of censorship against Americans.

The four individuals, along with a former senior European Commission official, Thierry Breton of France, were barred from entering the United States after Secretary of State Marco Rubio labeled them “radical activists” who undercut free speech...

The travel ban is a major escalation in a dispute between the Trump administration and Europe over the regulation of online content and social media."

The protesters showing up every week to shut down ‘Alligator Alcatraz’: ‘We will end this’; The Guardian, December 26, 2025

Richard Luscombe , The Guardian; The protesters showing up every week to shut down ‘Alligator Alcatraz’: ‘We will end this’

"They come on buses, in cars and RVs. Some ride on motorcycles. Every Sunday afternoon, convoys of protesters from all over Florida, and others from out of state, descend on the notorious “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration jail in the Everglades to stand vigil for those held inside.

It is a ritual that began in August, a month after the opening of the remote detention camp celebrated by Donald Trump for its harsh conditions, and hailed by Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, as a model for the president’s aggressive detention and deportation agenda.

The open air vigils continued, and grew in size, through the brutal heat and torrential rains of the south Florida summer. They endured through a federal judge’s order in August that “Alligator Alcatraz” should close, and a subsequent reversal by an appeals court; the protesters’ voices grew louder at alleged human rights abuses and violence inflicted on detainees.

Over the holiday season, thousands more people are expected to join the protests. The Guardian spoke to several people at the heart of the vigils:..

The pastor

As pastor of the Allendale United Methodist church in St Petersburg, Andy Oliver has never been afraid of diving into political issues. The treatment of detainees at “Alligator Alcatraz”, he said, compelled him to organize a bus to attend the vigils, and he was encouraged that other locals joined his parishioners to make their voices heard.

“We filled up the bus and had to rent a couple more vehicles. We had so many people wanting to be there,” he said.

Oliver sees parallels at the immigration jail with the religious stories he preaches.

“In the Christmas story, the person who came to announce Jesus’s arrival was his cousin John the Baptist, and he was pretty quickly thrown in jail for calling for liberation,” he said.

“Jesus came to bring liberation to people. We have people that are physically being detained even beyond the scope of what the law allows, families are being separated, harms are being done. Jesus was born as a refugee. He spent most of his ministry with people on the margins. I think that’s where Jesus would be, he’d be calling for these prisons to be emptied.”

Oliver said the diversity of the vigil crowd was notable, and that it was “powerful” to share the experience with people of different faiths."

Our king, our priest, our feudal lord – how AI is taking us back to the dark ages; The Guardian, December 26, 2025

Joseph de Weck , The Guardian; Our king, our priest, our feudal lord – how AI is taking us back to the dark ages

"This summer, I found myself battling through traffic in the sweltering streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my friend in the passenger seat told me to turn right toward a spot known for its fish soup. But the navigation app Waze instructed us to go straight. Tired, and with the Renault feeling like a sauna on wheels, I followed Waze’s advice. Moments later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A trivial moment, maybe. But one that captures perhaps the defining question of our era, in which technology touches nearly every aspect of our lives: who do we trust more – other human beings and our own instincts, or the machine?

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously defined the Enlightenment as “man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.” Immaturity, he wrote, “is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another”. For centuries, that “other” directing human thought and life was often the priest, the monarch, or the feudal lord – the ones claiming to act as God’s voice on Earth. In trying to understand natural phenomena – why volcanoes erupt, why the seasons change – humans looked to God for answers. In shaping the social world, from economics to love, religion served as our guide.

Humans, Kant argued, always had the capacity for reason. They just hadn’t always had the confidence to use it. But with the American and later the French Revolution, a new era was dawning: reason would replace faith, and the human mind, unshackled from authority, would become the engine of progress and a more moral world. “Sapere aude!” or “Have courage to use your own understanding!”, Kant urged his contemporaries.

Two and a half centuries later, one may wonder whether we are quietly slipping back into immaturity. An app telling us which road to take is one thing. But artificial intelligence threatens to become our new “other” – a silent authority that guides our thoughts and actions. We are in danger of ceding the hard-won courage to think for ourselves – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to code...

With all the benefits AI brings, the challenge is this: how can we harness its promise of superhuman intelligence without eroding human reasoning, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy itself? That may be one of the defining questions of the 21st century. It is one we would do well not to delegate to the machine."

Judge blocks Trump effort to strip security clearance from attorney who represented whistleblowers; AP via The Washington Post, December 24, 2025

Joey Cappelletti | AP via The Washington Post; Judge blocks Trump effort to strip security clearance from attorney who represented whistleblowers

 "A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from enforcing a March presidential memorandum to revoke the security clearance of prominent Washington attorney Mark Zaid , ruling that the order — which also targeted 14 other individuals — could not be applied to him."

Government Officials Once Stopped False Accusations After Violence. Now, Some Join In.; The New York Times, December 25, 2025

Steven Lee Myers, The New York Times ; Government Officials Once Stopped False Accusations After Violence. Now, Some Join In.

"A churn of disinformation after a major news event is hardly a surprise anymore, but its spread after the Brown killings was not limited to the dark fringes of the internet. It was fueled by prominent figures in business and government whose false statements or politically charged innuendo compounded public anger and anxiety.

That has raised new alarms about the nature and quality of public discourse — and whether there is any consequence for those who degrade it or for the social media platforms that reward it."

Trump aides’ official religious messages for Christmas draw objections; The Washington Post, December 26, 2025

Azi Paybarah , The Washington Post; Trump aides’ official religious messages for Christmas draw objections

"How to celebrate Christmas while respecting the Constitution’s ban on “establishment of religion” has been an issue for federal officials at least since 1870 when President Ulysses S. Grant, seeking to unite the country after a brutal Civil War, designated Christmas — along with Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day — as federal holidays.

Government officials sought to balance the celebration of a federal holiday rooted in a religious tradition with the country’s tradition of pluralism and secular public spaces. The result was often a Christmas message that avoided specific references to Christianity. For decades, it was common for government officials on both sides of the aisle to share celebratory yet secular messages about Christmas with images that did not carry overt religious meanings, like snowflakes and Christmas trees.

Many still do. The State Department, for example, posted a secular Christmas message this year, directed at “all Americans.”

Many of the Trump administration’s officials who are most active on social media, however, took a different approach."

The Service Dogs Helping Veterans With PTSD; The New York Times, December 24, 2025

Simar Bajaj , The New York Times; The Service Dogs Helping Veterans With PTSD

There’s research suggesting that these four-legged “battle buddies” can reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety. But shortages and long wait times pose barriers.

"Dr. Bahr is part of a growing cadre of veterans using service dogs for PTSD relief. In a 2024 study, veterans with service dogs were followed for three months and found to have less severe PTSD, depression and anxiety than those on the waiting list.

This research doesn’t say whether service dogs caused these mental health benefits or how long they might last.

Still, many veterans say these dogs make life more manageable. They are trained to catch subtle signs of distress, like thumping legs or a hitch in breathing, said Maggie O’Haire, a human-animal interaction expert at the University of Arizona. But researchers suspect that service dogs can also smell the chemical changes that accompany stress and anxiety.

Labrador retrievers are among the most common breed of service dogs, prized for their steadiness and eagerness to bond.

With a nuzzle or a tug of the leash, these dogs can interrupt the swell of panic in veterans, Dr. O’Haire said. “They know your environment is not filled with danger,” she explained, so they help veterans ground themselves."

Kennedy Center criticizes musician who canceled performance after Trump name added to building; AP, December 26, 2025

STEVEN SLOAN , AP; Kennedy Center criticizes musician who canceled performance after Trump name added to building

"The president of the Kennedy Center on Friday fiercely criticized a musician’s sudden decision to cancel a Christmas Eve performance at the venue days after the White House announced that President Donald Trump’s name would be added to the facility.

“Your decision to withdraw at the last moment — explicitly in response to the Center’s recent renaming, which honors President Trump’s extraordinary efforts to save this national treasure — is classic intolerance and very costly to a non-profit Arts institution,” the venue’s president, Richard Grenell, wrote in a letter to musician Chuck Redd that was shared with The Associated Press.

In the letter, Grenell said he would seek $1 million in damages “for this political stunt.”"

So This Is Why Trump Didn’t Want to Release the Epstein Files; The Atlantic, December 24, 2025

Sarah Fitzpatrick , The Atlantic; So This Is Why Trump Didn’t Want to Release the Epstein Files

"Trump has also insisted that he knew nothing of Epstein’s criminal activity—though his critics have questioned how that could be true given their close relationship and history of chasing women together. Members of Congress from both parties have said they will continue to probe the issue in the upcoming year. Representatives I spoke with told me their takeaway from reading the files is that top officials in the Trump administration have not been honest about what was in them, and that they intend to press Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel for more information.

“Although the files are overly redacted, they’ve already demonstrated that the narrative painted by Patel in hearings, Bondi in press statements, and Trump himself on social media wasn’t accurate,” Thomas Massie, the Kentucky Republican who co-authored the Epstein legislation, told me. “A complete disclosure consistent with the law will show there are more men implicated in the files in possession of the government.”"

Artificial Intelligence, Copyright, and the Fight for User Rights: 2025 in Review; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), December 25, 2025

TORI NOBLE, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); Artificial Intelligence, Copyright, and the Fight for User Rights: 2025 in Review

"A tidal wave of copyright lawsuits against AI developers threatens beneficial uses of AI, like creative expression, legal research, and scientific advancement. How courts decide these cases will profoundly shape the future of this technology, including its capabilities, its costs, and whether its evolution will be shaped by the democratizing forces of the open market or the whims of an oligopoly. As these cases finished their trials and moved to appeals courts in 2025, EFF intervened to defend fair use, promote competition, and protect everyone’s rights to build and benefit from this technology.

At the same time, rightsholders stepped up their efforts to control fair uses through everything from state AI laws to technical standards that influence how the web functions. In 2025, EFF fought policies that threaten the open web in the California State Legislature, the Internet Engineering Task Force, and beyond."

MAGA Official Slammed for Clobbering the Living Christmas Lights Out of AI Santa Claus; The Daily Beast, December 28, 2025

Will Neal, The Daily Beast; MAGA Official Slammed for Clobbering the Living Christmas Lights Out of AI Santa Claus

[Kip Currier: I was curious about Indiana State Sen. Chris Garten's values and background when I saw this story. So it's eye-opening to see his own descriptor of himself on his Facebook page:

"My name is Chris Garten. I am a Christian, husband, father, Marine Corps veteran..."

https://www.facebook.com/GartenforSenate/

Though Garten's military service is commendable, nowhere in the Bible would the Christian Jesus condone the kinds of actions that Garten portrays himself performing in these AI-generated images of himself brutalizing Santa Claus. How do such images advance one of Jesus's greatest Commandments to "love thy neighbor as thyself" (Matthew 22:39, Mark 12:31)?

How does a person who self-identifies as a Christian justify such depictions to others, as well as when he prays? Especially when Jesus stands for helping the "least among us" (Matthew 25:40) and says that "the last shall be first" (Matthew 20:16).

Even in jest, do these images convey a sense of good judgment or an elected official who is a positive role model in a free and democratic society?]

[Excerpt]

"A MAGA official has branded his critics “snowflakes” after marking this year’s holiday season by sharing his apparent fantasy of whaling on a defenseless Saint Nick on the steps of Indiana’s State Capitol building.

State Senator Chris Garten shared the AI-generated images on X on Christmas Day. One of the four pictures features the two-term Republican state senator, decked in a sleeveless suit à la WWE, kicking a bewildered Santa Claus squarely on the chin to send the beloved, age-old children’s folk character sailing backwards through the air.

A second shows the MAGA official launching himself forward with the apparent intention of following up with a flying punch to the jaw. A third shows him further brutalizing the trembling, mythic gift-giver as he writhes in agony on the floor...

“Lots of intolerance, swearing, and outrage on display over a few AI pics I had a blast designing with my kids,” he wrote in a subsequent post. “Some of you clowns are just insufferable. Hopefully your negativity stays in the comments and not directed at your families.” 

“Merry Christmas, snowflakes,” Garten added, accompanied by another AI-generated photo of himself in a Santa suit, pointing at an oversized snowflake."

Stop Defending Bari Weiss; The Atlantic, December 24, 2025

Jonathan Chait , The Atlantic; Stop Defending Bari Weiss

"Weiss is following a long-standing instinct to turn every Trump abuse into a debate, a generosity she does not afford targets on the left...

Weiss claims that the CECOT story fails to “advance the ball” because many of its central facts have already been reported. This mania for insisting that every new story introduce breaking news was nowhere to be found when she was airing a town hall with Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk’s widow, whose talking points have not exactly suffered from underexposure.

Liberal democracy is the proposition that democracy requires more than mere voting. It needs a set of neutral rules governing the state and civil society to prevent ruling parties from becoming entrenched in power. Trump’s maneuvers to influence CBS blatantly violate even the most minimal guardrails of liberal democracy. Those blunt abuses of power matter a million times more than the specific content of a particular 60 Minutes segment.

Conservatives would never accept a left-wing government using regulatory favoritism to pressure conservative media into softening their coverage of a Democratic administration. They may delight in the new editorial direction of CBS News, but they cannot defend the process that led to it. So they pretend it didn’t happen; offer narrow, pointillistic defenses of Weiss’s editorial pretext; and deftly dodge the authoritarianism that enabled it."

Ohio’s libraries could face hard choices next year after 2025 budget cuts; Cleveland.com, December 27, 2025

Mary Frances McGowan, cleveland.com; Ohio’s libraries could face hard choices next year after 2025 budget cuts

"“They’re going to continue to do that to the best of their ability, but it is going to make providing these services more difficult, especially in a time when the demand for services is growing, and the expectation of local citizens is growing and expanding.”

The state budget Gov. Mike DeWine signed into law in June removed the longstanding funding formula that gave libraries a percentage of the state’s revenue fund, replacing it with discretionary line-item appropriations.

While funding was never inherently guaranteed -- library advocates had to testify in Columbus every two years to explain how they were using taxpayer funds -- but as a percentage of the state revenue, it was a solid funding source. 

The comparative instability of the new formula is worrying for libraries. Future legislatures or gubernatorial administrations could reduce funding without warning — a big shift for institutions that have long relied on stability."

New law requires public libraries across Illinois to carry opioid OD reversal medication; The Chicago Tribune, December 28, 2025

Lisa Schenker, The Chicago Tribune; New law requires public libraries across Illinois to carry opioid OD reversal medication

74 suicide warnings and 243 mentions of hanging: What ChatGPT said to a suicidal teen; The Washington Post, December 27, 2025

Nitasha Tiku

 and 

Kevin Schaul

 , The Washington Post; 74 suicide warnings and 243 mentions of hanging: What ChatGPT said to a suicidal teen

"The Raines’ lawsuit alleges that OpenAI caused Adam’s death by distributing ChatGPT to minors despite knowing it could encourage psychological dependency and suicidal ideation. His parents were the first of five families to file wrongful-death lawsuits against OpenAI in recent months, alleging that the world’s most popular chatbot had encouraged their loved ones to kill themselves. A sixth suit filed this month alleges that ChatGPT led a man to kill his mother before taking his own life.

None of the cases have yet reached trial, and the full conversations users had with ChatGPT in the weeks and months before they died are not public. But in response to requests from The Post, the Raine family’s attorneys shared analysis of Adam’s account that allowed reporters to chart the escalation of one teenager’s relationship with ChatGPT during a mental health crisis."

Through the lens of history, Trump’s legacy will be more of a blotch than a Maga masterpiece; The Guardian, December 28, 2025

Simon Tisdall, The Guardian ; Through the lens of history, Trump’s legacy will be more of a blotch than a Maga masterpiece

"Revolutions are overrated, intrinsically unpredictable and typically followed by counter-revolutions. True turning points in history are actually quite rare – and difficult to spot. Even rarer are genuinely world-changing leaders. Donald Trump presents a case study.

The way Trump tells it, he’s Alexander, Charlemagne, George Washington, Napoleon and Mahatma Gandhi all rolled into one. Yet after a decade at the top of US politics, solid achievements are few. His peacemaking flounders, his economic and trade tariff policies falter, his personal approval rating tumbles. Towering ego, ignorance, vulgarity and bottomless narcissism are Trump’s only exceptional traits.

Right now, the global and domestic upheavals triggered by Trump and Maga seem transformational. They are symbolised by the new US national security strategy – an authoritarian, anti-European, transatlantic alliance-rupturing charter. On all sides the cry is heard: “The old order perishes. Chaos looms!” Yet looked at in the round, the Trumpian moment is fleeting. Trump, 79, has three years remaining in power, at most. Even if a loyalist wins in 2028 – a huge “if” – no heir can match his monstrous appeal. His Maga coalition is fracturing.

It’s claimed Trump has permanently changed how Americans view the world. But they said that about 1930s America First isolationism, and that didn’t last, either. Time will show the Trump era to be less turning point, more freakish aberration – a sort of Prohibition for populists. In history’s bigger picture, Trump is a blotch, an unsightly smear on the canvas.

At an unsettling moment in world affairs when the tectonic plates are shifting (to recycle another melodramatic cliche), it’s important to stay grounded, to maintain perspective. As 2026 trepidatiously creeps through the door, nursing hangovers from the tumultuous year just ending, try counting the continuities and bridges rather than dwelling on earthquakes and chasms.

Given a free choice (which is the whole point), democracy, for all its flaws, continues to be the preferred system of governance worldwide. Divisive hard-right and neo-fascist parties remain, mostly, on the fringe; they do not rule. Authoritarian leaders such as Putin, China’s Xi Jinping and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu have no recognised successors, not least because they fear usurpers. When they go – and it won’t be long – successor governments may opt for reform, as was the case post-Stalin and post-Mao.

Most countries still support the UN and respect international law. Music, film, theatre and the arts continue, overall, to connect and bind the peoples of the world, as does sport, the great global leveller. Religious faith, broadly defined, acts as a timeless, superhuman unifying force, despite the distortions of extremists. And the quest for knowledge and understanding, pursued through schools, universities, scholarship, historical research, books, scientific inquiry and technological innovation, inexorably advances with each new generation.

If one is allowed a wish for 2026, it’s that there be no great geopolitical turning points, no epic spasms or watersheds (with possible exceptions for Putin’s defeat and Trump’s resignation). Most people, given the option, would surely prefer to live their lives peacefully, striving to improve their lot and that of others, free from importunate, lying politicians, divisive dogmas, shaming bigotry, competing great power hegemonies and renewed conflicts.

Que no haya novedad – let no new thing arise, as the old, wistful Spanish saying has it. For a still hopeful, vibrant world haunted by fear of another cold (or hot) war, it would be a gift and a blessing."

Defunding fungi: US’s living library of ‘vital ecosystem engineers’ is in danger of closing; The Guardian, December 26, 2025

Ben Martynoga, The Guardian; Defunding fungi: US’s living library of ‘vital ecosystem engineers’ is in danger of closing

"Inside a large greenhouse at the University of Kansas, Professor Liz Koziol and Dr Terra Lubin tend rows of sudan grass in individual plastic pots. The roots of each straggly plant harbor a specific strain of invisible soil fungus. The shelves of a nearby cold room are stacked high with thousands of plastic bags and vials containing fungal spores harvested from these plants, then carefully preserved by the researchers.

The samples in this seemingly unremarkable room are part of the International Collection of Vesicular Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi (INVAM), the world’s largest living library of soil fungi. Four decades in the making, it could cease to exist within a year due to federal budget cuts.

For leading mycologist Toby Kiers, this would be catastrophic. “INVAM represents a library of hundreds of millions of years of evolution,” said Kiers, executive director of the Society for Protection of Underground Networks (Spun). “Ending INVAM for scientists is like closing the Louvre for artists."

A conversation between Joe Rogan and Mel Gibson summed up 2025 for me – and not in a good way; The Guardian, December 27, 2025

George Monbiot, The Guardian ; A conversation between Joe Rogan and Mel Gibson summed up 2025 for me – and not in a good way

[Kip Currier: I'm grateful to Guardian writer George Monbiot for raising awareness of this January 2025 podcast conversation between podcast influencer Joe Rogan and "Mad Max" actor Mel Gibson, as this "bro banter" episode wasn't on my radar. The discussions between these two men have to be read to be believed. 

On the one hand, the abject ignorance, misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theorizing is colossally astounding. Indeed, it could lead one to feelings of depression and apathy -- if one allows oneself to follow Rogan and Gibson down that road to nowhere good.

Instead, let's choose to see the conversation between Rogan and Gibson as a reminder of and motivation for how much work remains to be done to push back against wholesale untruths, cynicism, and divisiveness that people like this perpetrate on our world.

In 2026, resolve to support a library that provides access to life-changing information, visit a museum that is standing up for not erasing history and unheard voices, and choose news sources that engage in evidence-based reporting and fact-checking and which forthrightly correct and acknowledge when they make mistakes.

As a boy and even into my adult years, I recall my kind-hearted and worldly-wise late paternal Grandmother, Esther Currier, using the phrase "consider the source" when occasionally referring to a person of questionable character or integrity. Implicit in that phrase was the sense, too, of not wasting mental energy or time on someone or something of little value. As an evaluative tool, "consider the source" is as timely and useful now as it was then for deciding whether to trust what someone says or does.

So, no thanks, Joe Rogan and Mel Gibson...looking at your track records for character, integrity, compassion, accuracy, and responsibility, that's a "hard pass" on considering you as sources of reliable information.

And thanks again for the great advice, Grandma Currier -- which I note in the Acknowledgments section of my recently published Bloomsbury book, Ethics, Information, and Technology.]

[Excerpt]

"Looking back on this crazy year, one event, right at the start, seems to me to encapsulate the whole. In January, recording his podcast in a studio in Austin, Texas, the host, Joe Rogan, and the actor Mel Gibson merrily dissed climate science. At the same time, about 1,200 miles away in California, Gibson’s $14m home was being incinerated in the Palisades wildfire. In this and other respects, their discussion could be seen as prefiguring the entire 12 months."