My Meme of the Year and Other Highlights of 2025
Writing, Oregon Trail anxiety, parenting, doomscrolling avoidance, and watches.
Thing I Most Enjoyed Writing: The Affordability Framework
With my colleague Becky Chao, I wrote an Affordability Framework (pdf) for my new job at the Economic Security Project. Even as we began drafting, it was clear that affordability was becoming a central political focus, but also one in need of a fresh economic understanding of the problem.
It was well-received, with write-ups in Vox and Politico. I discussed it on The Realignment podcast, and Becky discussed it on the Liberal Currents podcast. Mark Schmitt wrote about the political dynamics of affordability and got what we were trying to do. I plan on expanding the framework further; expect more in the coming months. If you haven’t yet, check it out.
Another Thing I Enjoyed Writing
For Democracy Journal, I wrote The Abundance Doctrine, a joint book review of Abundance and Why Nothing Works. Rereading it now, I think it gets both the strengths and limits of the argument right. Law professor Noah Kazis gave it first place in his ‘review of the initial reviews’ competition.
Best Help to Stop Doomscrolling
I took the social media apps off my phone, which is a big help. But the biggest improvement was reviving a very Web 1.0 technology, the RSS feed. I started using Inoreader, though any reader works. More sites than you’d think have RSS feeds. Substacks all have them on the main page with /feed, such as here, for this one.
Take an hour or two to move your favorite reads over and customize it. You regain control over what you see and how you see it. Nothing is trying to hijack your attention or push you to engage beyond simply reading.
The late Aaron Swartz helped develop RSS at the age of 14, a technology closely aligned with his lifelong commitment to an open, decentralized internet. Aaron was a friend, not a close one, but one I did some work with and still miss. He is still remembered fondly by those who knew him, as recent pieces from Ryan Grim and Henry Farrell show. It makes me angry that the state prosecuted him for downloading files, something AI companies now do openly, at scale, in the service of turning the internet into something more enclosed and less human. Rebuilding an RSS feed is a small act to remind you of an earlier, better version of the internet.
Best Low-Stakes Personal Crisis
I was born in 1979, and turned 46 this year. I used to just think of myself as a very young Gen-Xer until a decade ago, when Anna Garvey coined the term “Oregon Trail Generation” to describe those of us born between roughly 1977 and 1983. (I will not be using the term Xennial.) Others have written about this cohort before: old enough to remember a pre-internet childhood, young enough to come of age alongside the web, but before social media colonized daily life. As Anne Helen Petersen describes that experience, “In 1999, the internet was not yet real life.” This in-between state fit.
But I think this year all of us have to pick a side. Gen-X, as a political and cultural bloc, is now widely coded as Trumpy and MAHA, and in 2024 they were among his strongest-leaning cohorts. That politics feels alien to me. Obviously this isn’t true of everyone, but it has become a dominant Gen-X posture, one I increasingly don’t recognize as my own.
Looking at it now, it makes sense that Gen-X’s vague distrust of authority, an ironic refusal of commitments, and a lowering of expectations have turned into measles outbreaks and deportation detention camps. It’s telling that many of the people who went Trumpy from liberal, left, or moderate spaces are now in their mid-50s, the core Gen-X years. For at least some, what once passed as ironic distance hardened into a politics comfortable with cruelty so long as it carried the aesthetic of anti-authority. (And the best book on this happening, Doppelganger by Naomi Klein, came from a Gen-X leftist who could see it happening in real time.)
Meanwhile, the millennial reconsideration has infiltrated my social media. As a recent ICYMI podcast described it, “millennial cringe” became “millennial optimism.” There are all these posts about living in Brooklyn and writing online in the early 2010s. And it’s like, yes, my blog did move me across the country to Greenpoint in 2010 to write online for a policy startup, and I even wrote a cringe, earnest blog post announcing it.
So the award for the best low-stakes personal crisis is whether or not to mentally rebrand as an elder millennial, perhaps the eldest millennial.
Best Fight I Failed to Break Up Between My Kids
<Scene> My two daughters, then 5 and 3, were in the backseat of the car while I was driving. 5 had a new interest in the Ghostbusters, just the theme song, not the actual movie. 3 loves to play a game where she says “no” to everything, even factual descriptions of the world. I, on request from 5, started playing the theme from Ghostbusters.
5, to 3: This song is about the Ghostbusters.
3: No it’s not.
5: It is! It’s the theme song for the Ghostbusters.
3: No, it is not.
5, getting upset: But it is!
3: No.
Me, to 3: Just tell your sister this song is about the Ghostbusters.
3: No, it is not.
Me: I think it’s a commercial in the movie? He’s saying to call the Ghostbusters.
3: No.
<5 has started to cry>
Me: The Ray Parker Jr. song Ghostbusters is on the movie soundtrack for the movie Ghostbusters. He wrote it for the Ghostbusters.
3: No.
<5 is wailing now, just absolutely lost it, tears down her face>
Me: Listen to the words. He’s not afraid of ghosts, busting ghosts makes him feel good. This is describing what it is like to be a Ghostbuster.
3: No. It isn’t.
5 stopped crying, after a while.
Watch I Wore Most This Year
I kept it basic. I bought a Casio G-Shock GW-M5610U-1 at the beginning of the year. This was a year of survival, of watching some pretty bad stuff happen. I wanted something stripped down for it. It’s a classic for a reason. I recommend the upgrade for solar charging and auto-time.
Last year was an early-1960s Omega Seamaster De Ville. I was (and still am, but less) daycare broke so I needed a dress watch that conveyed seriousness, but was also not crazy expensive. I originally found this in a small alleyway shop in Kensington. It was perfect, and I’ll be bringing it back out next year.
Meme of the Year: I’m a Mommy/Mamacita
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This short exchange from Love Island between contestants Huda and Nic, where Huda explains she’s a mom and Nic doesn’t get it, causing Huda to give an Oscar-worthy laugh to his questions, is my meme of the year. At a baseline, it required no understanding of the show, which I’ve never seen.
But it’s a perfect meme for two reasons. First, you can play it several different ways depending on your mood. You can do an ironic-yet-poignant address to yourself on becoming a parent:
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You can use the remix for a crazy baby shower theme:
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But you can play it up wholesome, Peppa Pig can join.
But the other, more important, reason it is a perfect meme is that you can play it equally from both sides. You can enjoy it from the perspective of being confused that someone is a parent, while also being confused that someone would be confused to learn someone is a parent.
So you can plug in when your friends with no kids come to visit:
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But also when someone without kids realizes that their coworker is raising a child on the same paycheck they get:
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Plus the more general trend of people having kids later, as noted by someone worried their 36-year-old sister has become a teen mom:
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In a year where the politics of kids went to extremes and have the potential to polarize, it’s good to know the best memes are able to navigate and communicate across these large boundaries. But I’m still not going to watch Love Island.
So glad millennials won 🥂