Great Reads of 2025

Well, it’s that time of year again where I share all of the interesting reads I encountered over the last 340 some-odd days. In compiling this year’s edition, I’ve gathered over 170 blog posts, books, research papers and news articles for your reading pleasure.

As with last year’s post, I encourage you to treat this like a buffet; try sampling something from every category. That said, this year I’ve made an extra effort to streamline the content in a way I hope you’ll enjoy.

For those who can’t sample much of the writing, but still want the narrative overview of what happened this year, I’ve curated each section into an overarching through-line. You might find that some of the article titles and topics of discussion become rather amusing when organized this way 😆 where as others are perhaps a little grim 😓

Either way, I hope you enjoy this year’s content.

Bon Apétitt!

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Table of Contents

• Original Content
• Books
• Academic Research
• Artificial Intelligence
• Career
• Climate Change
• Economics
• Feel Good
• Food for Thought
• Healthcare
• Information Security
• Pandemic
• Technology

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Original Content

• Financial vs. Technological Bubbles – in which I discuss the “AI bubble” and where I think things are heading
• Vibe Coding with Devcontainers in the CLI – lessons from sandboxing my vibe coding experiments
• If I were Eighteen Again – career advice I would give a younger version of myself now that Large Language Models exist
• Critical Thinking in the Age of AI – in which I share benchmark data and academic research on AI functionality, its impacts on critical thinking, as well as its effects on mental health (I also share a few predictions on what this likely means for the security industry at-large)
• On AI, Security, Reasoning, and Bias – a reflection on Davie Aitel’s “(the root of the root and the bud of the bud)” post where I respectfully disagree with some of his assertions
• Surviving the Pan-decade: How to avoid COVID/ConFlu while traveling – sharing the scientifically backed precautions (and evidence) I use to avoid catching COVID/ConFlu, which have successfully worked across five trips this year (three of which were international)

Books

• Mysteries of the Material by Sarah J. Hoodlet

  My wife independently published two more books this year (including a middle grade story!), and is in the process of wrapping up this series. I’m incredibly proud of what she’s accomplished, and truly cannot wait for Book 1 of her next series to be released 🤩 In the mean time, if you enjoy adult romantic fantasy, then this series is for you!

• The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst

  This is probably the “coziest” fantasy story I’ve ever read. It was absolutely delightful, and reminded me of a Studio Ghibli movie. It makes for a perfect read while snuggled in a blanket with a warm cup of tea.

• They Hang Me in Tokyo by Allan West

  I discovered this book entirely by accident. It tells the fascinating story of a world-renowned American Nihonga artist who set-out to make art that stands the test of time. I had the pleasure of meeting Allan during our trip to Japan this year 😊

• Zen Flesh, Zen Bones compiled by Paul Reps by Nyogen Senzaki

  A must-read book for anyone looking to further their meditation practice.

• The AI Con by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna

  While this book reads like a manifesto, it’s important to expose oneself to viewpoints that may challenge your worldview. Even so, I found myself agreeing with a number of the points they make – especially about the need for more skilled workers in certain professions.

• Slow Down by Kōhei Saitō

  Saitō-san walks through the impending challenges we should expect to face as a species resulting from climate change. He goes on to tie climate change directly to Capitalism, and proposes a path forward for how we might change the future we’re hurdling toward.

Academic Research

• Why Language Models Hallucinate
• Evidence of a social evaluation penalty for using AI
• The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking
• Lower Artificial Intelligence Literacy Predicts Greater AI Receptivity
• Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task
• How AI and Human Behaviors Shape Psychosocial Effects of Chatbot Use: A Longitudinal Controlled Study
• From CVE Entries to Verifiable Exploits: An Automated Multi-Agent Framework for Reproducing CVEs
• RepoAudit: An Autonomous LLM-Agent for Repository-Level Code Auditing
• Call Me A Jerk: Persuading AI to Comply with Objectionable Requests
• Design Patterns for Securing LLM Agents against Prompt Injections
• The Attacker Moves Second: Stronger Adaptive Attacks Bypass Defenses Against Llm Jailbreaks and Prompt Injections
• Security Degradation in Iterative AI Code Generation
• AIRTBench: Measuring Autonomous AI Red Teaming Capabilities in Language Models
• Lessons From Red Teaming 100 Generative AI Products
• Frontier AI’s Impact on the Cybersecurity Landscape
• Large Language Models Are Unreliable for Cyber Threat Intelligence
• Recitation over Reasoning: How Cutting-Edge Language Models Can Fail on Elementary School-Level Reasoning Problems?

Artificial Intelligence

• Are large language models worth it? [Nicholas Carlini]
• A cartoonist’s review of AI art [The Oatmeal]
• I looked into CoreWeave and the abyss gazed back [The Verge]
• China’s ‘autonomous’ AI-powered hacking campaign still required a ton of human work [CyberScoop]
• A new breed of analyzers [Daniel Stenberg]
• ‘I destroyed months of your work in seconds’ says AI coding tool after deleting a devs entire database during a code freeze [PC Gamer]
• Gartner Predicts Over 40% of Agentic AI Projects Will Be Canceled by End of 2027 [Gartner]
• AI layoffs to backfire: Half quietly rehired at lower pay [The Register]
• AI ‘Workslop’ Is Killing Productivity and Making Workers Miserable [404 Media]
• Endoscopist deskilling risk after exposure to artificial intelligence in colonoscopy: a multicentre, observational study [The Lancet]
• The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Criticizing AI [Cory Doctorow]
• Thoughts on Doctorow’s ‘Reverse Centaurs’ AI Talk [Daniel Miessler]
• OpenAI’s new reasoning AI models hallucinate more [TechCrunch]
• AI search engines cite incorrect news sources at an alarming 60% rate, study says [Ars Technica]
• Why I don’t think AGI is right around the corner [Dwarkesh Patel]
• Google’s AI Is Destroying Search, the Internet, and Your Brain [404 Media]
• Generative AI runs on gambling addiction — just one more prompt, bro! [Pivot to AI]
• AI Is A Mass-Delusion Event [The Atlantic]
• A.I. Is Homogenizing Our Thoughts [The New Yorker]
• My Thoughts on the Future of “AI” [Nicholas Carlini]
• NVIDIA Isn’t Enron - So What Is It? [Edward Zitron]
• The AI Wildfire Is Coming. It’s Going to Be Very Painful and Incredibly Healthy [CEO Dinner Insights]

Career

• Fake job seekers are flooding U.S. companies that are hiring for remote positions, tech CEOs say [CNBC]
• We’ve Hit Personal Agency Hyperfinflation [Joan Westenberg]
• AI is breaking entry-level jobs that Gen Z workers need to launch careers [Unusual Whales]
• Rolling the ladder up behind us [Xe Iaso]
• The Computer-Science Bubble Is Bursting [The Atlantic]
• In a dramatic shift, Americans no longer see four-year college degrees as worth the cost [NBC News]
• Job growth has slowed sharply; the question is why [Claudia Sahm]
• The Job Market Is Frozen [The Atlantic]
• Silicon Valley Software Engineers Horrified as They Can’t Easily Find Jobs Anymore [Futurism]
• Who’s Not Getting Laid Off? [Daniel Miessler]
• Jerry Seinfeld, Ichiro Suzuki and the Pursuit of Mastery [Trung Phan]
• ‘I feel completely drained’: young professionals swamped by ‘infinite workdays’ [The Guardian]
• The Bargain of Working Hard and Getting a Job Simply Doesn’t Hold Anymore [Slate]
• Four-day week ‘an overwhelming success’ in Iceland [BBC]
• The End of Work [Daniel Miessler]
• Let’s stop pretending that managers and executives care about productivity [Baldur Bjarnason]
• How To Respectfully Disagree With Your Boss [Forbes]
• “Technical” skills [Sasha Laundy]
• I work for an evil company, but outside work, I’m actually a really good person [Emily Bressler]
• The Need to Do Good [Niels Provos]
• Shields Down [Michael Lopp]
• I Don’t Network. I Write [Joan Westenberg]
• The Compound Effect of Consistency [Joan Westenberg]

Climate Change

• Google’s emissions up 51% as AI electricity demand derails efforts to go green [The Guardian]
• We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard. [MIT Technology Review]
• Planet’s first catastrophic climate tipping point reached, report says, with coral reefs facing ‘widespread dieback’ [The Guardian]
• The World’s Oceans Are a ‘Ticking Time Bomb,’ Reaching Dangerous Acidification Levels  Earlier Than Scientists Thought [Inside Climate News]
• Earth Is on the Brink of Breaching a Seventh of Nine ‘Planetary Boundaries’ That Support Life [Smithsonian Magazine]
• Removing CO2 from atmosphere vital to avoid catastrophic tipping points, leading scientist says [The Guardian]
• Going Out With A Bang [David Rosenthal]
• Global temperatures could break heat record in next five years [The Guardian]
• Spain records highs of 46C and France under alert as Europe swelters in heatwave [The Guardian]
• 52.8°C And Rising: Iran’s Deadly Heatwave Sparks ‘Irreversible’ Water Crisis [News 18]
• Iranians asked to limit water use as temperatures hit 50C and reservoirs are depleted [The Guardian]
• Revealed: Europe’s water reserves drying up due to climate breakdown [The Guardian]
• Climate crisis ‘wreaking havoc’ on Earth’s water cycle, report finds [The Guardian]
• Climate crisis could hit yields of key crops even if farmers adapt, study finds [The Guardian]
• Extreme heatwaves may cause global decline in dairy production, scientists warn [The Guardian]
• Meat is a leading emissions source – but few outlets report on it, analysis finds [The Guardian]
• ‘Could become a death spiral’: scientists discover what’s driving record die-offs of US honeybees [The Guardian]
• Canadian wildfires are record-breaking – and will threaten North American air quality [The Guardian]
• In 2025, Tornado Alley has become almost everything east of the Rockies − and it’s been a violent year [The Conversation]
• New England warming faster than most places on Earth, study finds [The Guardian]
• US north-east sees record tick season as climate crisis sparks arachnid boom [The Guardian]
• In a First, Solar Was Europe’s Biggest Source of Power Last Month [Yale School of the Environment]
• Analysis: Clean energy just put China’s CO2 emissions into reverse for first time [Carbon Brief]
• Global economy could face 50% loss in GDP between 2070 and 2090 from climate shocks, say actuaries [The Guardian]
• Humans inhale as much as 68,000 microplastic particles daily, study finds [The Guardian]

Economics

• The AI bubble is the only thing keeping the US economy together, Deutsche Bank warns [Techspot]
• AI Is the Bubble to Burst Them All [Wired]
• The ‘Big Short’ Guy Shuts Down Hedge Fund Amid AI Bubble Fears [Gizmodo]
• The melancholy of history rhyming [Baldur Bjarnason]
• Investors expect AI use to soar. That’s not happening [The Economist]
• Microsoft just revealed that OpenAI lost more than $11.5B last quarter [The Register]
• GPU depreciation could be the next big crisis coming for AI hyperscalers — after spending billions on buildouts, next-gen upgrades may amplify cashflow quirks [Tom’s Hardware]
• Jitters over AI spending set to grow as US tech giants flood bond market [Reuters]
• Part 1: My Life Is a Lie [Michael W. Green]
• Part 2: The Door Has Opened [Michael W. Green]
• The Era of the Business Idiot [Edward Zitron]
• Three Years After Trial Launch, Ireland Is Making Basic Income for Artists Program Permanent [The Irish Times]
• More Americans are losing their homes, as foreclosures jump 20%. [MarketWatch]
• What if You Only Invested at Market Peaks? [A Wealth of Common Sense]
• 50-year study of tax cuts on wealthy shows they always fail to “trickle down” [Salon]

Feel Good

• Warren Buffett’s final letter to investors as the CEO [Berkshire Hathaway, Inc.]
• Taylor Swift buys back the rights to the master recordings of her first six albums [The Guardian]
• Declassified CIA Guide to Sabotaging Fascism Is Suddenly Viral [404 Media]
• Ukraine Is Jamming Russia’s ‘Superweapon’ With a Song [404 Media]
• Russians Capture Ukrainian Drones Which Infect Their Systems With Malware [Forbes]
• Cards Against Humanity lawsuit forced SpaceX to vacate land on US/Mexico border [Ars Technica]
• Owning dog or cat could preserve some brain functions as we age, study says [The Guardian]
• People find relationship with their dog more satisfying than with best friend, study shows [The Guardian]
• Newly Approved Tartan Design Memorializes Those Persecuted Under Scotland’s Witchcraft Act [The Wild Hunt]
• Scientists use bacteria to turn plastic waste into paracetamol [The Guardian]
• The Unfinished List [Elizabeth Kleinfeld]
• 40+ sources of news and information for the US in 2025 [Robin Riley]
• Student Makes Tool That Identifies ‘Radicals’ on Reddit, Deploys AI Bots to Engage With Them [404 Media]

Food for Thought

• The Everyday Magic Of Noticing [The Good Trade]
• Shokunin and Devotion [Kyoto Journal]
• What if every artwork you’ve ever seen is a fake? [The Guardian]
• A walk down the learning curve (and memory lane) [Halvar Flake]
• First-ever recording of a dying human brain shows waves similar to memory flashbacks [Univ. of Louisville School of Medicine]
• ‘Deeply concerning’: reading for fun in the US has fallen by 40%, new study says [The Guardian]
• Audiobooks vs. books in the brain [Indiana Public Media]
• The Two Primary Limitations to Our Creativity [Daniel Miessler]
• ‘The Internet Sucks.’ Cory Doctorow Tells How to Fix It [The Tyee]
• Almost half of young people would prefer a world without internet, UK study finds [The Guardian]
• Many in US and western Europe think ‘third world war likely within five to 10 years’ [The Guardian]
• The Extinction of Experience by Christine Rosen review – smartphone nation
• Your 80 Year Old Self Would Give Anything to Have the Day You’re Having [Joan Westenberg]

Healthcare

• ‘Universal cancer vaccine’ trains the immune system to kill any tumor [New Atlas]
• WHO warns of widespread resistance to common antibiotics worldwide [World Health Organization]
• Stop counting sheep – and 13 more no-nonsense tips for getting back to sleep [The Guardian]
• Parkinson’s Disease Might Not Start in The Brain, Study Finds [Science Alert]
• CDC vaccine report cites study that does not exist, says scientist listed as author [The Guardian]
• World may be ‘post-herd immunity’ to measles, top US scientist says [The Guardian]
• Age of the panzootic: scientists warn of more devastating diseases jumping between species [The Guardian]
• FDA making plans to end its routine food safety inspections, sources say [CBS News]
• This Hacker Conference Installed a Literal Antivirus Monitoring System [Wired]

Information Security

• Hackers Had Been Lurking in Cyber Firm F5 Systems Since 2023 [Bloomberg]
• First Malicious MCP in the Wild: The Postmark Backdoor That’s Stealing Your Emails [Koi]
• The Hidden Risk in Notion 3.0 AI Agents: Web Search Tool Abuse for Data Exfiltration [Code Integrity]
• CISA loses nearly all top officials as purge continues [Cybersecurity Dive]
• How North Korea pulled off a $1.5 billion crypto heist—the biggest in history [Ars Technica]
• Security-oriented reflections on Rosa’s uncontrollability [Jamie Finnigan]

Pandemic

• Threat Model (weekly newsletter from Violet Blue)
• Washington resident dies of complications from bird flu strain never before reported in humans [CNN Health]
• Symptom-free H5N1 infection in humans: Evidence remains scarce [Medical Xpress]
• The USDA fired staffers working on bird flu. Now it’s trying to reverse course [NPR]
• Kennedy’s Alarming Prescription for Bird Flu on Poultry Farms [The New York TImes]
• At least 216 children died in first high-severity US flu season in seven years, CDC says [The Guardian]
• Flu Epidemic Has Closed Schools in at Least 12 States, and Administrators Say That’s Not Normal [Newsweek]
• Measles outbreak spreads as 250 cases reported across multiple states [The Guardian]
• Ebola outbreak in DR Congo rages, with 61% death rate and funding running dry [Ars Technica]
• Long COVID takes $1 trillion global economic toll each year, analysis suggests [Univ. of Minnesota]
• COVID-19 pandemic linked to surge in digestive disorders, new study finds [Medical Xpress]
• CDC stops recommending COVID-19 shots for all, leaves decision to patients [AP News]
• The future of excess mortality after COVID-19 [Swiss Re]

Technology

• Building a Personal AI [Daniel Miessler]
• How I set up a new Mac [Dwight Silverman]
• Stack overflow is almost dead [Gergely Orosz]
• UBC instructor uses math to investigate possibility of time travel [Univ. of British Columbia]
• Curl project founder snaps over deluge of time-sucking AI slop bug reports [The Register]
• Wait, how did a decentralized service like Bluesky go down? [TechCrunch]
• Decentralized Social Media Is the Only Alternative to the Tech Oligarchy [404 Media]
• Dark energy: mysterious cosmic force appears to be weakening, say scientists [The Guardian]
• Apple to fix iPhone dictation bug that replaces word ‘racist’ with ‘Trump’ [The Guardian]
• Facebook Deletes Internal Employee Criticism of New Board Member Dana White [404 Media]

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As always, thanks again for picking through another year’s “Great Reads” 😊 While I consider my next post, you can git checkout other (usually off-topic) content I’m reading more regularly over at Instapaper.

Until next time, remember to git commit && stay classy!

Cheers,

Keith