2025 in review

This year has, to be frank, been exhausting. At least in a macro sense. It feels quite like the United States is collapsing as fascism and kleptocracy continue to take hold. Institutions are being turned inward to attack the most vulnerable, corruption is rampant, the economy is sliding and we're only a year into this nightmare. I'd say look to the midterms, but who the hell knows if we'll even be able to vote by then.

The primary processing facility for ICE in our county happens to be right here in Camarillo. It's been crushing to see hundreds of community members kidnapped. It's been heartening to see local volunteers and activists step up to help where they can and protect those that they can. Many cities have offered meaningful financial aid, assistance and the support they're able to at a local level. Camarillo's city council has done none of this and has, instead, followed the lead of a sheriff determined to cooperate with ICE to the greatest degree possible allowed under the law.

Do what you can. Start local, organize and resist where you can. It's vital and it's heartening to take action and have community. Seeing folks fight back in Chicago, Charlotte, Los Angeles — name a city that ICE has abused — is heartening. Keep your head down, do the work and fight to make things better.

Family

My wife served a year as chair of the board she was reelected to last year. She did an incredible job. She was a part of the ACLU's case in Los Angeles Press Club v. Kristi Noem and had a fucking weapon pointed at her by an ICE agent during the Glass House raid. I never cease to be amazed by her courage, leadership and compassion. She never stops fighting for what she believes in and pushes me to do the same.

Our kiddos are a year older and being there to see them grow and learn, being a parent, is the unequivocally the best thing in the world.

Tattoos

I'm taking a break from getting tattooed while I think of some other ideas. My last few pieces were on my left arm that isn't totally filled out yet.

Work

The job I started last year continues to be amazing. Our team got to meet up in New York and I had a blast (inasmuch as a serious introvert can). I remain thrilled to be a part of this team.

Projects

This site now runs on Laravel. It's allowed me to scale things to an even more absurd degree (creating pages for every album for a given artist in the scrobbling portion of the application, for example) and consolidate the codebase into a single framework and language. I rewrote the admin using the Filament framework (also a part of the same codebase) and moved off of Directus.

The templates for the site are written in Blade, the frontend continues to make calls to PostgREST for data. PostgREST and Filament connections to Postgres are routed through a PgCat connection pooler.

I'm still scrobbling listens from Navidrome. I've automated my reading progress updates. I've written importers to fetch book, music, TV and movie data from a number of sources.

I wrote my own Navidrome client.

Movies

My favorite movie of the year is — easily — Caught Stealing. One Battle After Another, Bugonia and The Smashing Machine were the other highlights.

Recent favorites

Some of my recent favorites, though ones that weren't necessarily released this year.

Shows

Considering only shows that started this year, I have a short list that consists of Alien: Earth, Task, MobLand, Stick and The Beast in Me. I spent a lot of time watching Dexter for the first time this year and can safely say that it's now a favorite. I'm working through the spin-offs now, starting with Dexter: New Blood.

Recent favorites

My favorite shows that I've watched recently (again — independent of the year).

Books

On the books front, my favorite of the year was Copaganda. It's an essential read. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This was another standout, as were Enshittification, This Is for Everyone, Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained.

Recent favorites

Yet more favorites, these being favorite books I've finished recently.

Music

Favorite albums are such an arbitrary thing, but I can rough out a list by taking a look and thinking through what I can see myself readily throwing on going forward.

1. 2000: In Search Of The Endless Sky by fleshwater
2. Superheaven by Superheaven
3. Observance by Primitive Man
4. Lonely People With Power by Deafheaven
5. Ego Dissolution by Ancient Death
6. The Sound a Body Makes When It's Still by Hot Mulligan
7. Silver Bleeds the Black Sun... by AFI
8. Goldstar by Imperial Triumphant
9. NEVER ENOUGH by Turnstile
10. At Peace by Propagandhi
11. Ashen Womb by Phrenelith
12. Corpus Offal by Corpus Offal
13. Bleed by Bleed
14. Malignity by Vile Apparition
15. Merged In Abstract Perdition by Undersave

I could have added some others, but 15 already felt like I was pushing it.

Top artists

The artists I listened to the most this year. This surprised me a bit but also not because bands like His Hero is Gone because they write many short songs.

Top albums

The albums I listened to the most this year. There's often a lot of overlap here with albums that were also released in a given year as I'll listen to new releases quite a bit to get a feel for them.

2025 albums

See? Here's that overlap I was talking about.

Concerts

I went to significantly more concerts this year. This was, in part, spurred by having a local friend to go to some of said concerts. Others were metal bands I've wanted to see quite a while and lucking into seeing Superheaven locally. fleshwater were another highlight. I loved their debut and their new album (hence it being at the top of my list for the year).

Next year

I typically keep pretty conservative goals and often refuse to set any. Just see how things go, right?

• I'd love less existential dread. I expect that we'll get more.
• I want to keep spending as much time as possible with my family.
• We've got tickets to quite a few concerts already, which is in line with my desire to go to more.
• I plan to keep experimenting with this site and other projects. Cadence feels stable and I'd like to sand down any rough edges I find here. More of the same at a slower pace.
• Learn and grow at work — I love that there are so many opportunities for this.
• I'll keep posting, logging activity and sharing on this site. I've thoroughly enjoyed getting in the habit and the indie web community that's continued to grow.

Those feel conservative and general enough.

Stats for the year