T.C. Sottek

Alex Karp has Palantir; Palmer Luckey has Anduril; Peter Thiel has Mithril Capital. Together they’re like a Silicon Valley axis of cursed Lord Of The Rings references. Sons and daughters of actual Earth: hold your ground! Hold your ground!

We just flew around the Moon, which remains an incredible feat for human beings. On this planet, I’m really psyched to print and frame the official NASA posters for the Artemis II mission. And because they’re public works you can get them for free. What a great use of taxes.

Okay: almost nobody wants a year-end “wrapped” for most things we do — food delivery, subscriptions, you name it. It’d be too embarrassing to look into that mirror. But this one seems legitimately useful to help Americans understand how their taxes are being spent. Enter Tax Wrapped, from Riley Walz. Find out how much of your money is going to health, war, and more.

We love a good space mission patch and this one worn by the Navy rescue team is top-tier. You can check out more photos from the Artemis II splashdown from NASA right here.

The dismantling of the US Forest Service is going to be devastating in a way we can’t yet calculate. USFS manages an enormous amount of land across 44 states and conducts useful public research. No more! The Trump admin has decided we don’t need any of that science and is “reorganizing” the agency to be closer to interests that want to privatize our public lands, while shutting down a ton of research centers. One step closer to a Trump hotel appearing on our sacred public lands.

If the states are laboratories of democracy, Maryland has been the laboratory of speed camera installations. In my own MD hometown of Montgomery County, these things seemed to pop up overnight and saturate our roadways.

Wisdom Kaye is one of the most impressive creators I’ve had the joy to experience, and one of my favorite TikTokers. If you want to go down an incredible rabbit hole just go watch all of his videos. (Here’s one of my favorites.) But this one is for the ages — he just styled the solar system. If you’re not blown away you’re living in another galaxy.