As I contemplate 2025 while sitting in the shade in the tropics 🏝️ on vacation, I realise how precious are the networks of relationships and friendships I have been lucky enough to accumulate. These are the many people who’ve helped me along the way, and whom I have also tried to help. With the various tragedies around the world and in our own city, it helps to remember that solidarity, small acts of kindness, and showing up for each other still matter.
This year has been a strange mix of grief, anger, bureaucratic absurdity, and unexpected joy. There were moments when the news felt unrelenting, and yet the day-to-day work of doing useful things with data and AI, building communities, and nudging systems in slightly better directions kept trundling on.
What made it bearable, and occasionally delightful, were the people: colleagues who generously shared their expertise, students and participants who asked the hard questions, collaborators who were up for trying odd ideas, and friends who supplied memes, drinks, cheese, and perspective when it was all a bit much.
So as this year winds down, please take this as a simple thank you. Thank you for reading, listening, debating, disagreeing in good faith, sending links, turning up to talks, inviting me into your projects, or just quietly cheering from the sidelines. It all helps more than you probably realise.
Here’s hoping 2026 brings more justice than we have seen in many places during 2025, more good works than empty rhetoric, and more time for conversations that actually change things (and the occasional silly BingoCard to mark the existential dread). Wishing you rest, health, and moments of unexpected joy in the months ahead.
