Excerpts (it’s worth reading the entire 4,500 words):
The biggest story of 2025, to judge from the number of people who sent it to me, was this raccoon:
In case you somehow missed this story: In late November, this raccoon got into a state liquor store in Ashland, Va., by falling though the ceiling. Once inside, the raccoon ransacked the store, leaving a trail of broken bottles…
FEBRUARY
…President Trump threatens to slap tariffs on goods from Mexico, Canada and China, all of which were originally built by Americans. Tariffs are taxes, so this would mean that the American consumer would pay more for these goods. To understand why this is a shrewd business tactic, consider an analogy: You’re in a dispute with your neighbor, Bob. So you go to Bob’s house and ring his doorbell. When he opens the door, you turn around and punch the American consumer in the face. Take that, Bob!
MARCH
On a happier note, two astronauts finally return to Earth after being stranded aboard the International Space Station for nine months. They say they’re “happy to be home,” but add “that’s the last time we’re booking on Spirit.”
MAY
On Memorial Day, a somber occasion when America honors its war dead, Trump posts a social-media message strongly reminiscent of the Gettysburg Address in its dignity and thoughtful eloquence. It begins (really): “HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY TO ALL, INCLUDING THE SCUM THAT SPENT THE LAST FOUR YEARS TRYING TO DESTROY OUR COUNTRY THROUGH WARPED RADICAL LEFT MINDS…”
…and so on for 109 thoughtful capitalized words, not one of which mentions our nation’s war dead, but you only have so much space on social media.
In 2025 the world produced record harvests of wheat, rice and soybeans for the third consecutive year, pushing grain prices down 8 percent and rice prices to their lowest in 18 years…
In September, The Lancet released a report with one of the most extraordinary statistics I’ve ever seen: since 2010, humanity’s total burden of illness and early death has dropped by 12.6 percent, driven by declining deaths from the world’s deadliest infectious diseases: tuberculosis, lower respiratory infections, diarrhoea, HIV/AIDS, all down by between 25 and 49 percent. This progress has been so dramatic that for the first time in our species’ history, lifestyle diseases (heart disease, cancer, diabetes) have displaced infectious illness as the dominant global threat. And here, mortality is falling too.
In 2025 the United States will almost certainly record its lowest murder rate in history. Not since the pandemic, not since the 1990s crime wave, but lower than any year since the FBI began tracking in 1960. Violent crime is at its lowest level since 1968. Property crime is at the lowest rate ever measured.
In August, the WHO and UNICEF released data showing that over the last decade 961 million people gained access to safe drinking water, 1.2 billion gained safe sanitation, and 1.5 billion gained basic hygiene services. Over the same period the number of people without electricity fell by 292 million, even as the global population grew by 760 million. According to the International Energy Agency, this represents the fastest expansion of electricity access in history.
Divide these numbers by ten to get the annual improvements. (For “access to safe drinking water,” that works out to 263,000 people per day.) Read the entire thing to feel better!
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