Week of December 22, 2025
Since I am traveling next weekend, this will be my last newsletter of 2025.
Thank you for all the comments, ideas, and engagement over the last 12 months. I am amazed that what started as a pandemic effort to organize my thoughts on the intersection of data, science, technology, and policy has, somehow, attracted a loyal following. Here are some end-of-2025 notes:
- In 2025, I integrated (and came to depend on) AI tools* for more consistent summarization and analysis.
- I sent 44 newsletters, containing comments on 36 different animal species, including 23 whale mentions, 21 dogs, 19 pigeons, 19 shrimp, and one comment about VR headsets for mice.
- I used the phrases "logical fallacy" and "game theory" 18 times each.
- I mentioned my kids 82 times.
- I wrote about coffee 54 times.
- Outside of writing, I turned 50 and noticed a statistically significant increase in how often my cellphone flashlight unexpectedly turned on. (Naturally, there's a HuffPost article on cell phone habits that mark you as old.)
Five years in and I'm only now realizing I'm writing a diary about kids, coffee, logical fallacies, and aquatic creatures.
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* AI tool use notes: I continue to use Grammarly as my primary writing platform. Claude is my favorite writing editor and article summarizer. As one loyal reader said, "LLMs are turning authors into editors."
Listen to a Google Notebook LM-generated podcast of the newsletter, featuring two virtual hosts.
Science and Technology Trends
Science Breakthroughs of 2025 - Science Magazine highlights 13 trends and breakthroughs that marked the most significant advances and changes of 2025, including renewable energy, Gene editing, Gonorrhea antibiotics, and xenotransplant. The article is a fantastic roundup of where science is and where it is going.
Article:
AI-assisted summary and analysis:
Nothing says Christmas like retrospective differential diagnosis of Victorian literature characters. Here is a 1992 JAMA Pediatrics article on Tiny Tim, the fictional character from Dickens' A Christmas Carol. The author is a pediatric neurologist who does a great job piecing together various hints in the text that point to a specific type of kidney disease he may have had (it is not clear why a neurologist would be interested in kidney disease, other than the intellectual exercise). It is a fantastic example of how trained clinicians can use logic and reasoning to understand illnesses.
Article (abstract):
AI-assisted summary and analysis:
Wired published an article on Science Corporation (founded by the former Neuralink president/founder). In concert with their computer-brain interface work, they are building organ perfusion systems to keep organs functioning outside the body, enabling longer time intervals between organ harvesting and transplantation. While this is a bit of a fluff piece, it is a very accessible review of how these systems work.
Learn more!
Anti-Science Articles of Note
Epidemiologist Dr. Dhruv Khullar wrote a fantastic article that captures a snapshot of the broader politics of medicine: "It's not just money that's being reallocated—it's trust." He argues that modern physicians must double down on being coaches and "healers." Though I am not sure doctors see themselves as "coaches and healers," I appreciated how his writing captures a shifting zeitgeist by framing American healthcare and science through Cold War political science.
"Historically, medicine's power rested on a specific kind of cultural authority—the ability to determine not only what diseases exist, who has them, and what to do about it, but also what counts as evidence or truth. [...] Legitimacy provides a basis for why people accept influence over their lives; dependency refers to the harm they're likely to face if they don't accept it. [Healthcare is increasingly spending time arguing for its value and veracity.] [But,] if you have to talk people into believing that you're right, it's because they don't think that you are."
Article:
AI-assisted summary and analysis:
Following reports that HHS may adopt Denmark's vaccine schedule, Stanford infectious disease physician Jake Scott reviews how Denmark's socialized healthcare system decided on its vaccination decisions and explains why these choices will not serve the U.S. well. Scott's analysis reveals textbook confirmation bias: HHS leadership knows what it wants to do (whittle away at recommended vaccines and sow doubt in the minds of Americans) and is shopping for justification, even when that justification doesn't apply.
Article:
AI-assisted summary and analysis:
Here is what lower vaccination rates look like: Multiple weeks of a smoldering (and otherwise preventable) measles outbreak. There are now 347 South Carolinians infected with or exposed to measles. Of the 126 infected, 119 were unvaccinated; 24 are children under 5.
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Living with AI
The AI Daily Brief podcast offered a "Predictions for 2026" episode.
I had Gemini summarize the episode and generate a table of the predictions:
"Nathaniel Whittemore [the host] evaluates ideas submitted by a16z partners on what people will build with AI 2026. He scores each idea on a scale of 1-5 across three categories:
- Likelihood: How probable it is to happen by 2026.
- Value: How valuable it would be if it happened.
- X Factor: A subjective "interest" score based on novelty or excitement."
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qZz1oU9a_B4syuA0lqKPRhBMw5EIuxE3c9tEHWXyNsA/edit?usp=sharing
OpenAI published a blog post demonstrating their AI models can propose novel scientific ideas that work in the real world—GPT-5 essentially "invented" a new molecular biology technique by reasoning about enzyme mechanisms. Please keep in mind that this is marketing dressed as science, with a sample size of 1, no peer review, and glossed over reproducibility issues. And yet, it is a sound proof of concept that LLMs can meaningfully contribute to science.
AI-assisted summary and analysis:
Article:
Infographics!
After five years of collecting infographics, AI has made everyone a graphic designer. Time to retire this section—infographics will now appear where they belong, integrated with the content.
Things I learned this week
Headline of the week: The Looming Reptile Sexpocalypse. Scientific American explains how climate change alters reptile gender (determined by incubation temperature rather than chromosomes). Not precisely the sexpocalypse I was expecting.
I am glad to see Saturday's 'funeral' for the penny, held at the Lincoln Memorial, seemed to be a non-partisan event. Numerous costumed reenactors portraying George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln, Pennywise the clown, and John Wilkes Booth (Lincoln's assassin) participated. Ramp (an expense management platform that helps companies automate inefficient spending), hosted the event. I would have enjoyed chatting with the Booth impersonator. I can only imagine this person's thought process on dressing as a presidential assassin.
and
and
Video on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/reel/1746167212707336
At dinner last week, a friend and I were reminiscing about defunct Baltimore restaurants. One, now closed Baltimore institution, Hausners, was known for its Bavarian theme, wall-to-wall and ceiling-to-floor art collection, an 825-lb ball of string, excellent baked goods, and an extensive menu. The friend recalled watching his grandfather eat a whale steak there in the mid-1960s. And, thus, the rabbit hole opened - leading me to the 2005 article "Whale Meat in American History." Historian Nancy Shoemaker explains why Americans, despite dominating global whaling, largely rejected whale as food (and how this culturally specific aversion helped shape modern international conflicts over whaling and the "save the whales" movement). (The real question is, does someone really need to explain why Americans rejected whale meat?) Oddly, all of this conversation and research happened before I calculated the voluminous whale comments across my 2025 newsletters.
I doubt anyone (even me) wants to read a 25-page academic paper on whale meat (sorry, Ms. Shoemaker). Instead, here is your infographic of the week:
Gemini's history of whale meat (you will want to look at this - it is unintentionally amusing).
Now, let us go further down the blowhole. I suspect I am the only living human to have checked the references (used for this article and infographic). I was intrigued by the notion that the US government actively marketed whale as an alternative to beef during WWI. Sure enough, I found the sources after looking at Ms. Shoemaker's references (see page 281, numbered, in the PDF for the quote that informed the part of the infographic on government-sponsored whale-as-food marketing). Indeed, the US Government's efforts on marketing whale meat and the comments about how unappetizing it is appeared in:
1) Bureau of Fisheries, U.S. Department of Commerce, "Whales and Porpoises as Food, With Thirty-Two Recipes," Economic Circular No. 38, 1918
I am incredulous at the fact that "Whale a la Mode" and "Corned Porpoise" have never caught on. (Again, you need to look through this resource. Someone who worked for the US Government in 1918 wrote this.)
and
2) [The most unfortunately titled book] She Blows! And Sparm [sic] at That! by William John Hopkins, 1922.
(Note that he is also the author of classics such as The Clammer, Old Harbor, and Burbury Stoke. And can a noun like sperm - as in sperm whale - have a past tense form like sparm?)
(You will have to search for the phrase "New York Hotels" to find the quote.)
I will resist the strong temptation to write an entire newsletter on whales and whaling.
In fact, dear readers, I endeavor not to write about whales in 2026.
AI art of the week
A visual mashup of topics from the newsletter, and an exercise to see how various LLMs interpret the prompt. I use an LLM to summarize the newsletter, suggest prompts, and generate images with different LLMs.
A visual mashup of topics from the newsletter, and an exercise to see how various LLMs interpret the prompt. I use an LLM to summarize the newsletter, suggest prompts, and generate images with different LLMs.
Claude suggested a super long prompt this week:
"The Everything Bagel" Newsletter Triptych
Format & Style Foundation: Create a three-panel triptych artwork combining the densely populated, moralistic chaos of Hieronymus Bosch with the precise, scientific botanical illustration style of Maria Sibylla Merian. The overall composition should feel like a medieval altarpiece reimagined through 19th-century natural history illustration, rendered in oil, with both fantastical and hyperrealistic elements coexisting.
Color Palette: Rich jewel tones (deep crimsons, emerald greens, sapphire blues) reminiscent of Bosch, combined with Merian's naturalistic earth tones (ochre, sepia, moss green). Gold leaf accents throughout. Warm candlelit glow as primary lighting source, creating dramatic chiaroscuro.
Overall Composition: Three equal vertical panels in ornate gilded Gothic frames, connected by flowing visual elements that cross panel boundaries. Each panel is densely packed with activity, but maintains clear focal points. The background-to-foreground progression in each panel creates depth.
The full prompt is here: https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/a3961fa8-f561-4fbc-91ad-a1ab086b6dbb
Exceptional prompt detail yields some amazing art:
One may recall that this newsletter began with the pandemic.
Flu and COVID are on the rise.
Yale's School of Public Health has a fantastic website with infectious disease prevalence dashboards.
The Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative (PMC) uses wastewater viral RNA levels to forecast COVID-19 rates over the next 4 weeks.
https://pmc19.com/data/
based upon https://biobot.io/data/
https://pmc19.com/data/
based upon https://biobot.io/data/
Wastewater Scan offers a multi-organism wastewater dashboard with an excellent visual display of individual treatment plant-level data.
https://data.wastewaterscan.org/
https://data.wastewaterscan.org/
Next issue in January. Happy New Year and Merry Christmas to those who celebrate.
Clean hands and sharp minds,
Adam
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