Hello!

It's 2025!! A normal thing to want at the beginning of a year is some amount of clarity. Unfortunately, I have none to offer you. Sometimes I think that I have a job that is somewhat similar to the TV pundits. I've been in internet arguments with people like that and, let me tell you, it helps me understand that I don't want that job!

But one thing those people seem to have buckets of is clarity.

One thing they have very little of, though, is accountability. This time of year, those folks tend to make a lot of predictions about what the next year will hold, and when it inevitably turns out that their predictions were bad, no one really notices.

People want clarity, and so pundits sell us some. Perhaps this is harmless! But I am glad I'm not in that business. I can't predict the price of a stock or what will happen in Ukraine. So when I made my 2025 Bingo Card this year, I did it with the knowledge that I'm actually quite scared about what this year will hold, but also with the knowledge that no great harm has ever been done by goofing around a little bit on New Year's Day.

I will make one prediction, I guess. On my bingo card, one of the squares will get checked off if "A Weird Pickle Thing" happens. And, folks, if I know anything about my culture, it's that we will not let a whole year go by without at least one weird pickle thing happening.

So that's my 2025 prediction. Beyond that, we're just gonna have to see.

We're here because we're here,

Hank

You can always email us at [email protected]

This Week in Stuff

• WeRateDogs shared their top 5 dogs of 2024!

• Veritasium explained how train tracks became silent.

• Sam Bentley told 12 good news stories from last year that you might have missed.

• Is weed worse than gambling? Hank took us along on an exercise to understand his own biases.

• Vox created a 4-minute video summary of 2024.

Please send us stuff you think we should feature to [email protected]

In some countries, far more people consider friends very important than in others

Simon van Teutem

This chart shows the share of people who consider friendships “very important” in their lives.

There are clear differences between countries: Northern Ireland (70%) and Sweden (65%) rank highest, and the United States (51%) and Indonesia (42%) are near the middle. In comparison, in Peru (17%) and Myanmar (12%), smaller shares of the population say that friendship is very important to them.

These differences suggest that the value people assign to different relationships varies significantly across cultures. In some societies, friendships might hold a central role in everyday life, whereas in others, people might place greater importance on family, work, or personal independence.

It's worth keeping in mind that such surveys don't only capture people's different views on friendship but also how they communicate their views when asked in surveys. For example, in some countries, people might be quicker to call something very important than in others.

Explore more data on the importance of friendships.

Our World in Data is a UK-based non-profit organization that publishes research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems. You can find more of their data insights here.

This Week at Complexly

The deepest hole we've ever been able to dig is just 0.2 percent of the way to the center of the Earth. What would we encounter if we could drill all the way?

The word anarchy is synonymous with chaos, but what does it mean to political theorists? Crash Course Political Theory explores the theories and practices of anarchism.

Some Games to Play!

Metaflora

SpellCheck.xyc (by Answer in Progress)

Download Gubbins on iOS or Android!

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We’re Here Because…

We asked you to tell us what you’re looking forward to in 2025 and you delivered! Thank you to everyone who sent a bit of excitement to our inbox.

And that’s the end of the newsletter!

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Send us a silly 2025 prediction. If it happens, you get bragging rights for the rest of the year.

We're Here is the newsletter of Nerdfighteria; the community of people that sprung up around Hank and John Green's YouTube videos. That community has many focuses and has spawned many projects but the overarching theme is that hopelessness is the wrong response to imperfection. What makes the world better is groups of people trying to understand and solve problems, and people can only do that for an extended period if they're having at least a little bit of fun.