Weekly Filet Awards 2025
The best of the web, in 13 categories you won't see anywhere else.
This is David, your personal curator of the best of the web. You're reading the Weekly Filet, the newsletter for curious minds who love when something makes them go «Huh, I never thought of it this way!».
We're rounding off this year with the second edition of the Weekly Filet Awards to remind ourselves of some of the outstanding work published this year. As last year, all categories are tailor-made so I can put just the right people in the spotlight again.
Before we get to the winners, I want to thank you for following along and allowing me into your inbox every Friday. Thank for your kind and motivating messages (you can reply to every newsletter issue, and there's always a good chance that your message will make my day). I wish you a calm and happy end of the year and look forward to seeing you again in 2026.
Ok, ready? Let's go.
Most Morbidly Useful Listicle of The Year
One day after I had read this and had earmarked it for the newsletter, I learned that a colleague of mine, barely older than myself, had died unexpectedly. A terrible reminder that it's never too early to prepare. Quite likely, none of these ten questions will be new to you. And yet chances are, you haven't found answers and made arrangements for all of them – I know I hadn't. While some only take a few clicks, others require time and mental space – both of which I'm not overly keen on spending on contemplating my own death. But one day, it will be too late.
Maura McInerney-Rowley
(After recommending this in October, I got to work and now have a six-pages long document «In case I die unexpectedly». One of the most challenging things I've done this year – and also one of the most meaningful.)
Enshittification of The Year
«Enshittification» is such a great term for describing why most of the web is way shittier than it could be. The idea: Platforms like Facebook attract people and businesses, but as soon as they've locked them in, they gradually turn on them until in the end, only the platform's own interests count. In this essay, the author transfers the concept to geopolitics – and it is illuminating. Military hardware, the US dollar, satellite constellations can be seen as platforms; platforms that were attractive to many countries that now rely upon them. And with Trump comes enshittification: «The United States is beginning to monetise its hegemony.»
Henry Farrell
AI Mindbender of The Year
«DeepSeek is more humane, my mother told me in May. Doctors are more like machines.» There's obviously a bitter irony in this, but it's real and it's happening faster than we're ready to cope. People are finding connection (and empathy and patience) in AI that they are missing in interactions with other humans – in this case: doctors.
Viola Zhou
Honorable mentions:
Dark Essay of The Year
An essay that doesn't just hit a nerve when you read it, but that lingers at the back of your mind and refuses to leave you. It's about that «certain type of darkness in the world that most people simply cannot see.» The author argues that we are perfectly able to see that the world is broken. However, most of us cannot see a world that is unacceptable. «Upon noticing that the world is broken, they reflexively list reasons why it is still tolerable.» Hence, a call to action: «So see the dark world. See everything intolerable. Let the urge to tolerify it build, but don't relent. Just live there in the intolerable world, refusing to tolerate it.»
Nate Soares
Hopeful Essay of The Year
Rebecca Solnit, always clarifying to read. In this essay, she writes about «near enemies». By those, she means all the cynics, political hobbyists, defeatists on the sidelines «who in theory agree with our goals but in practice are forever sabotaging them» – by criticising tactics, by calling goals unrealistic, by calling activists naive to try. In times like these, Solnit writes, «no one should be on the sidelines, and no one should be undermining those who are showing up for justice, human rights, and environmental protection.»
Rebecca Solnit
Epic Out of This World Video of The Year
2025 was the year I discovered the videos of Epic Spaceman. The combination of captivating storytelling and out-of-this-world animations is unlike anything I know. (So good that I wanted to learn more about how they are done – which blew my mind even more: Turns out it's all done by one man, who taught himself to animate stuff during the pandemic.) This one is about the unimaginably large number of planets (and moons!) out there that could have alien life – and the disappointingly simple reason why we haven't found anyone out there yet.
Gut Punching Pause of The Year
«I would like you to pause with me here for a moment, at least for the duration of this column, and allow those statistics to become tragedies. Each one of those deaths is a singular tragedy: a child robbed of a future, of a chance to find out who they are, to know the world, to be a person.»
Nesrine Malik
Uncomfortably Honest Field Guide to The Deeply Bizarre Now-Now-Soon of The Year
Wow. I can’t exactly tell you what this is, but you’re in for a wild ride. It claims to be written by «a semi-sentient AI-integrated art project». Try to keep that in mind as you delve (see what I did there?) into this essay on the near(ing) future with artificial intelligence. «None of this will look like a sci-fi apocalypse. It’ll look like another tool being adopted. Another budget adjustment. Another quiet month.» How so? «They won’t call it a god. They’ll call it an upgrade. They won’t say they believe. They’ll say it works.»
Uncertain Eric
Career Advice ASMR of The Year
I have worked with Adam this summer and his coaching has been tremendously valuable to me. In this video, he distills all of his coaching experience into an elixir of career advice. With the subtle background music and the great recording quality, it's almost career advice ASMR. That's not to say you shouldn't pay attention. I'd say it's especially valuable for generalists, but even if you're more the specialist type, I'm sure you'll find something insightful for yourself, too.
Call to Action of The Year
To be very clear: I want you to click this link and read this article. Rishad Patel stresses the importance of a clear call to action in communication. Whenever you write something and want whoever reads it to take some action, be explicit about what action you want them to take. You don't have to be a professional writer for this to be relevant to you. Think of the many times each day – at work and outside of it – you write someone to achieve something. The best and simplest advice from the article: «Write your call to action before you write the rest.»
Rishad Patel
Speaking of which:
Book Recommendations of The Year By The Newsletter Community of The Year
What a joy it has been to work through all the books you submitted and the beautiful, sometimes very personal notes you sent along. Readers of the Weekly Filet have told us about a book they wished they'd discovered sooner in their lives. They are writers, journalists, photographers and YouTubers. Professors of art, religion, history. Gardeners and trail runners. Cooks and web developers. Poets and self-declared overthinkers. Designers and basketmakers. Nonprofit leaders, librarians, climate advocates. Autists, moms, dads. And, my favourite description among them all: a «wickedness and hardship survivor, now paralegal».
Nerdy Deep Dive of The Year
They first occurred in 1479. Nowadays, they are most commonly used in emoji form: little hands like 👉 these 👈. An eye-catcher that always directs your attention to something else (see how it's impossible to properly reference them in the sentence before?). This is their story.
MessyNessy
Podcast With The Largest Total of «Huh, I never thought of it this way!» Moments of The Year
The podcast I needed most in the final stretch of the year that had been particularly challenging with the kids. After one too many moments when I felt like the worst version imaginable of myself as a father, I stumbled upon this new episode from Trevor Noah's podcast. What a breath of fresh air! A wonderful conversation with clinical psychologist and parenting expert Dr. Becky. Full of new insights, apt reminders, and anecdotes that are so relatable you can't help but laugh. So, if you have kids in your life, this two-hour conversation is a gift you deserve. It delivers a complete recharge of your ability to be empathetic towards tantrum-throwing kids, and to be kind with yourself.
Pocket Casts
Go deeper
The Weekly Filet archive now holds 2857 manually curated recommendations, some of the best things on the web since 2011. You can search the archive, click for a random gem or browse my collections:
- Making Sense of the Climate Crisis
- Making Sense of Artificial Intelligence
- The Stuff Our Modern World Runs On
- The Art of Thinking (Differently)
- Bingeworthy Podcasts
- Great Reads That Aged Well
So, that's it for this year. Thank you for following along, I hope you enjoyed the newsletter most of the time. I wish you a happy new year and look forward to seeing you again in 2026.
— David