Kottke Wrapped 2025

Spotify really started something, didn’t they? Everyone has a “Wrapped” this year; I even got an email one from the cruise line on which I took a trip this summer. Like, “Congratulations! You went on {1} cruise for {7} days!” — and then nothing else. Two stats. So I thought for an end-of year thing here on KDO, I would write a post with a title like “Kottke Wrapped 2025” and then say, “haha, just kidding, I’ll see you jokers next year”. Fun gag.

But then I started thinking about it, running some SQL queries, and looking at my stats and decided to do a Kottke Wrapped for real. (All stats as of today.)

262. That’s the number of distinct days someone (me or a guest editor) published at least one post to KDO in 2025. How does that compare to past years? In 2024, we blogged on 267 days. 2023: 275 days. 2022, I went of sabbatical for 7 months but still managed 129 days. From 2007-2021, the average is around 275 days. In 2004, the year before I started working on KDO full-time, I posted on 344 days! (The average American work-year in ~250 days — maybe I should take more time off?)

2142. The number of KDO posts for 2025. That’s 8.2 posts/day on days that we posted.

1084. The number of members who either commented on (964 ppl) or faved (513 ppl) a KDO post this year. All told, we left 4474 faves and 4983 comments on posts in 2025. Compared to the number of total members, that is an absurdly high participation rate. Thank you so much for taking part!

845. That’s the number of distinct tags used for entries this year. The list of most-used tags included movies, art, astronomy,music, design, science, books, remix, politics, photography, sports, travel, lists, and Japan. That’s a pretty good encapsulation of my (and hopefully your) general interests.

4.9%. The amount by which KDO membership numbers increased from Jan 1. At one point in the year, membership numbers were up almost 10% (!) but that came back down steadily as the year went on. I only made a couple of membership calls during the year — most of the time I was just heads down on site work. I know this has been a tough year for a lot of folks out there and I really appreciate the support. If you’d like to help support this paywall-less site (a rarer and rarer thing as 2025 comes to a close), you can sign up for a membership for as little as $3/mo. ✌️

And now a bunch of links to the most popular posts of the year according to three different metrics: visits, comments, and faves. Some random thoughts to follow.

The Most Visited Posts in 2025

1. JD Vance Chastised by Vermont Snow Reporter
2. Questlove’s Fantastic Video Mix of 50 Years of SNL Music
3. 80 of the Most Iconic Guitar Intros
4. The Official Map of the Star Wars Galaxy
5. All the Dogs Explained
6. Football Stadium Turned Community Garden
7. The World’s Largest Data Center Rises in Texas
8. The 2025 Kottke Holiday Gift Guide
9. Extinction Burst Explains MAGA Voters’ Racist Anger
10. I Want No One Else to Succeed
11. Meet the Aphantasics: Those Who Can’t See Mental Images
12. TV Garden: stream television channels from all over the world for free…
13. USPS Announces Goodnight Moon Stamps
14. Hard Things Are Supposed to Be Hard
15. The Design of the New Swiss Passport
16. WWII Vet Crushes a Tesla With a Sherman Tank
17. Six Films Better Than the Books They’re Based On
18. Weird Al Yankovic Covers Killing in the Name by Rage Against the Machine
19. Real Photos That Look Fake
20. Bernini’s Ratto di Proserpina
21. Lololol: Max is changing its name back to HBO Max.
22. Can I Lick It? Yes You Can
23. A Comprehensive Guide to Yellow Stripey Things
24. The Prayer of Saint Francis
25. 87% Of Loud Crashing Noises Are Nothing, Report Top Experts From Other Room.

The Most Commented-On Posts in 2025

1. A Programming Note
2. How Are You?
3. “What is the best album released by a music act at least 15 years after its debut album?”
4. I’m Heading to Japan. What Should I Do?
5. Are You Looking for Work? Are You Looking to Fill a Position?
6. Six Films Better Than the Books They’re Based On.
7. My Recent Media Diet, the Resistance Edition
8. Wind It Back
9. Can You Recommend a Good Bookmark Manager?
10. What’s All the Fuss About Pluribus?
11. Some KDO Updates: We’ve Got Ourselves a Stew
12. What are the five things that are essential in your kitchen?
13. In Praise of Comfort Films
14. Glass Onion
15. The End of College Life?
16. How Much Do I Really Need to Know?
17. This One Goes to 27
18. Biking Is Therapy
19. iOS 26 / Liquid Glass is terrible.
20. I disagree with Quentin Tarantino on what his best film is.
21. A Quick Anniversary Note
22. There’s No Undo Button For Our Fallen Democracy
23. You’ll Never Get Off the Dinner Treadmill.
24. Instances of haptic nostalgia (“the poignant memory of the physicality of an obsolete thing”).
25. Trump Ejects Zelenskyy From White House

The Most Faved Posts in 2025 (from May 18)

1. This Is Your Captain Speaking…
2. Some Recent Tweaks (and Post Faving!)
3. A Bright Light Has Gone Out
4. Every Tree Can Be a Buddha
5. Bernini’s Ratto di Proserpina
6. I Want No One Else to Succeed
7. There’s No Undo Button For Our Fallen Democracy
8. Slow Start to the Week
9. Pediatrician Dr. Annie Andrews is running against Lindsey Graham…
10. The Underscore Music Player
11. Walking the Earth
12. I Am An AI Hater.
13. The Kottke.org Rolodex
14. Q: “Want to Feel Old?” A: “Yes.”
15. Refusing to Choose Is a Choice
16. Taking the Day
17. What Makes for a Healthy Society?
18. Proof of life! I’m writing a longer post about my time in Kōyasan, but in the meantime…
19. Some KDO Updates: We’ve Got Ourselves a Stew
20. The 2025 Kottke Holiday Gift Guide
21. Biking Is Therapy
22. What Are You Thankful For?
23. For They Shall Inherit
24. Owls in Towels
25. When In Rome

It’s interesting to look at the differences between these three lists. (Major caveat: the faved posts are all from the second half of the year because that feature didn’t launch until May.)

In general, the most visited posts are due to outside traffic, not regular readers; i.e. it got linked from Google News or Reddit or Morning Brew and blew up a little.

I feel like the most commented & faved posts are a bit more representative of what makes a “good” kottke.org post, whatever that means. But I also think that a number of my favorite posts, the s-tier stuff, didn’t make any of these lists — not that I can think of any of them right now. 😂

Largely though, kottke.org isn’t a “popular post” blog — it’s a “several small things a day” kind of site. It’s about the day-after-day accretion, the steadiness, the rhythm. I’m not trying to make a few chart-topping hits here — it’s much more about hitting a baseline of quality each day, building a bit more on the previous day, days, weeks, months, years, decades. (Yes, decades…gotta flex a litte here. 🤷‍♂️)

Ok, that’s all I have for now. I hope you have a healthy and safe start to 2026. I’ll see you in a few days. 🎉👋

Note: I used the awesome Space Type Generator to make the header graphic. Here are a few of the alternatives I considered:

• kottke.org