My Four Best Pieces of 2025
As this year ends, and AI slop is everywhere, I’ve been feeling very grateful that I have the freedom to think and write.
I wanted to share four pieces I wrote this year that I’m especially proud of. Each one demands that we start looking at power, who holds it, how it hides, and what it does to human experience.
If you’re looking for something to read during the quieter days ahead, I hope one (or more) of these might be worth your time:
1. When It Comes to Understanding the Dangers Posed by Big Tech, We’re Lost in the Cloud
I wrote about how “the cloud” and AI are treated as abstract and inevitable, when in fact they are physical systems and deeply political systems, controlled by a handful of corporations with enormous influence over our economy, speech, and our future.
Alexandra Adelina Nita
2. New York City Has the Power to Bring Down Grocery Prices. All Cities Do.
As some of you know, I'm on Mamdani's legal transition team. But before that happened, I wrote for the New York Times making the case for municipal power at a moment when many people are told there’s nothing to be done about rising food prices. Cities have more leverage than we’re led to believe--I'm hopeful that Mamdani is going to use many of these tools.
3. How a New Media Oligarchy Fuels Corruption and Concentrated Power
The Trump scandals can be overwhelming, but as I argue in this piece, his corruption is enabled by media consolidation. We tend to think of antitrust and corruption in separate buckets, but the Jimmy Kimmel scandal shows how concentrated control over information becomes the ground on which corruption thrives.
Lara-Nour Walton
4. Selling a Defective Dream
This is the one I'm most proud of– I love writing for the New York Review of Books– its in part a review essay of the great new book on ponzi schemes, Little Bosses Everywhere, and in part a reflection on how the categories of worker and consumer are getting increasingly blurred, and how that enables mass scamming in a heartbreaking way.
I’m grateful to everyone who reads, shares, argues back, and keeps these conversations alive. Writing is hard, but a privilege, and I don’t take that for granted.
Wishing you rest, joy, and moments of democracy in the year ahead.
With gratitude,
Zephyr
(Also supergrateful that Tim Wu is now also joining me in this newsletter! Antimonopolists, unite!)
