I went to the dentist yesterday to have my two front teeth worked on. A couple of weeks late if all I wanted for Christmas were my two front teeth 😆. Nothing dramatic—just fillings. My wife and I both carry dental insurance, so I walked out with my wallet still intact.
While I was in the chair, the dentist insisted on nitrous oxide because my blood pressure was running a little high. First time I’ve ever used it. I don’t know why I always said no before—probably some macho notion that I needed to “tough it out.” If I were truly that tough, I guess I would’ve said, “Skip the nitrous, skip the anesthetic, and hand me the drill” 😂.
One thing that always gets me in a dentist’s office is the sound of the drill. It hits the same spine‑tingling frequency as fingernails on a chalkboard 😱. My hearing aids seem specially engineered to pick up and amplify every annoying noise. I meant to turn them off before we started, but forgot. C’est la vie.
Not so long ago, I would’ve slipped away from work for the appointment and headed straight back afterward. Now? I declared a personal holiday and took a nap in my recliner. That’s the problem with being able to do what you want when you want—you actually can.
I recently poured a new driveway, and there’s a chunk of concrete from the old one sitting along the path to the mailbox. It’s not large, and I don’t need to move it, but every time I pass it, instead of tossing it into the brush, I tell myself I’ll get to it later. I have time to do or not to do—that is the question.
“Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what the hell happened.” — Jennifer Yane
“Blessed are they who hold lively conversations with the helplessly mute, for they shall be called dentists.” — Ann Landers
“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” — Albert Einstein
Colourful cartoon by David Revoy. A forest glade, with a cute smiling Firefox sitting on a tree branch. The fox is holding a saw and trying to saw through the branch it's sitting on. The magic AI parrot (from David's other cartoon series) is flying in to offer the 'fox a chainsaw with a blade labelled "AI".
Puppy Hearts by Lisa S Baker is a whimsical portrait inspired by the gentle, soulful expression of a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. Surrounded by colorful hearts, flowers, and playful details, this artwork celebrates pure affection, sweetness, and the quiet way dogs hold our hearts without ever trying.
I read as much as I could in 2025, but as ever, I finished the year bitterly aware of the wonderful books I didn't get to, whose spines glare daggers at me when I sit beneath my groaning To Be Read shelf. But I did write nearly two dozen reviews here on Pluralistic in 2025, which I round up below.
--
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
A male figure in heavy canvas protective clothes, boots and gauntlets, reclining in the wheel-well of a locomotive, reading a book. The figure's head has been replaced with the poop emoji from the cover of the US edition of 'Enshittification,' whose mouth is covered with a black, grawlix-scrawled bar. The figure is reading a book, from which emanates a halo of golden light.
Feeding Ghosts has gone on to win the Pulitzer Prize, only the second graphic novel in history to take the honor (the first was Maus, another memoir of intergenerational trauma, horrific war, and the American immigrant experience).
Timothy Snyder is an expert of modern authoritarianism.
A quote from an article by Timothy Snyder titled "What Does It Mean That Donald Trump Is a Fascist?" published in The New Yorker. The quote reads: "It is predictable ... that he will give free rein to the oligarchs who, he knows, will continue to generate the social and digital bases of a politics of us and them. It is predictable that, in returning to power, he will seek to change the system so that he can remain in power until death. It is predictable that he will use deportations to divide us, to accustom us to violence, and to make accomplices of us. It is predictable that he will create a cult out of the martyrs of January 6th. It is predictable that he will cooperate with similarly minded rulers abroad."
All the books I reviewed in 2025 ( pluralistic.net )
https://i0.wp.com/craphound.com/images/02Dec2025.jpg?w=840&ssl=1 ...
Tessa Hulls's "Feeding Ghosts" ( pluralistic.net )
https://i0.wp.com/craphound.com/images/02Jul2025.jpg?w=840&ssl=1 ...
Trump's FTC opens the floodgates for tariff profiteering ( pluralistic.net )
https://i0.wp.com/craphound.com/images/21Apr2025.gif?w=840&ssl=1 ...