Fatal Attraction
Pick Of The Week – 9th December 2025
This newsletter is a curated cornucopia featuring some of the best of Medium and Substack, and the wider world, rumoured to exist outside of these platforms.
Please note that in view of the impact of AI on the writing community, Eco has a stringent “No AI-content” policy, and will seek to actively avoid any articles we consider to be partly or fully generated by AI, and not feature authors believed to be using it in this way again. We are fully committed to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion. In support of our aims and objectives, 10% of earnings from this series will be donated to Greenpeace.🌈
This newsletter is currently published free on Substack, but if you would like to support us please do pay to subscribe.
Sponsors – a link to donors and paying Substack subscribers 🦄 will appear here:
Ecosia; The Environmental Transport Association; Mary Grindeland; Writer Chick With A Ukulele; Adéla Valčíková; Rob Moir;
Pick of Medium – (advisory allergy note – may contain poetry)
Smartphones and computers can become a harmful addiction. Shanti C K finds technology simultaneously a blessing and a curse, with much that we can probably all relate to in the modern world:
https://medium.com/@chelliahshanti/i-am-too-chronically-online-1c3bcd0132ca
Robin Wilding embraces the joys (?) of growing older:
https://medium.com/@robin_wilding/12-things-im-looking-forward-to-when-i-get-older-f2f38d89b852
Marya Khan preaches unity:
https://medium.com/readers-club/one-man-can-teach-you-that-all-men-are-not-the-same-27980947489d
Goodbye cruel world, says Samika Shrivastava: @Samiksha_shrivastava
https://medium.com/write-a-catalyst/goodbye-everyone-ca6655b978dd
Ravinimbus shares a tale of two horses:
https://medium.com/be-reaching-hearts/the-two-horses-and-the-truth-i-could-not-ignore-6d8103a734c6
Ripton Green is hanging in there:
https://medium.com/@ripton/why-im-choosing-to-stay-a-little-longer-6c7185d515ff
Here Ripton stumbles across an unlikely story:
Grace Kelly reflects on how we spend Christmas:
https://medium.com/gracetakesnotes/finding-your-own-holiday-rhythm-5cfb96718098
Marcia Abboud suffers a slap:
https://medium.com/know-thyself-heal-thyself/the-slap-that-ignited-my-terror-b98f75acc769
Eve Arnold returns to explain her absence:
https://medium.com/@eve-arnold/i-wrote-an-article-every-day-for-4-years-then-i-stopped-5236fcd82251
Tip of the week –
Walter Rhein gives some tips on how to succeed as a writer on different platforms:
https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-succeed-and-fail-as-a-human-writer-in-an-ai-world-01153e3e3a27
Pick of Substack:
Substack authors Melissa Corrigan, she/her and David Shuster helped to break a major news story:
Paul Krugman wonders if we are witnessing the end of the free world as the US drifts towards fascism:
https://substack.com/home/post/p-180978954
Veronica Llorca-Smith comments on the changing nature of Substack:
Mack Collier considers the future of Substack:
https://substack.com/home/post/p-178608330
Susie Kearley highlights the self-publishing option for aspiring authors:
Kristina God reviews the Substack Live feature and encourages its use:
Christopher Armitage writes on resistance and opposition:
Leonard Tillerman has a positive experience of (a) Medium:
One hit is all it takes for Marcia Abboud:
Dissent in Bloom highlights the strain on the caring profession:
Carlo Zeno discovers that ChatGPT has issues:
Wes Pearce considers viral Notes in this analysis:
https://substack.com/home/post/p-180991017
The wider world:
More on the nightmare of forever chemicals:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce8z8pv1e0ko
Red squirrels are surviving in Scottish strongholds:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/dec/05/red-squirrels-highlands-rewilding-uk
Advances in soil science may offer benefits to farmers and the environment, reveals George Monbiot:
Vested interests are damaging climate agreements:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1w9ge93w9po
Political News
As Trump challenges Europe, progressives wonder who is on their side:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/09/donald-trump-civilisation-war-europe
AI News
The great AI race:
More on the gold rush:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/dec/04/nevada-ai-data-centers
The energy demand from the AI boom is delaying home building:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0mpr1mvwj3o
From the article:
“Want to search pre-AI sources? Welcome to “Slop Evader”!:
https://www.popsci.com/technology/internet-browser-without-ai
A sizable portion of the internet has devolved into an AI-contaminated wasteland. While an easy solution remains elusive, a browser extension called Slop Evader offers a glimpse at what the internet used to be only a few short years ago.
While always prone to innumerable hazards, the online ecosystem is degrading largely due to the misuse of generative artificial intelligence content. Increasingly referred to as AI slop, this digital pollution often takes the form of torrents of uncannily realistic, wholly fake images and videos. These have inundated some of the most commonly used social media platforms, while countless shell websites push untrustworthy articles and blog posts penned by AI programs. Often trained on uncompensated human labour, these sites routinely game popular search engines that now prioritise AI results. This allows unverified AI slop to rise to the top of many queries while simultaneously burying actually legitimate websites underneath a mountain of garbage links.”
This article highlights the corrosive impact of AI on higher education:
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-destroying-the-university-and-learning-itself
Tech News
Scientists are developing carebots – this feature explains the future in store:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9wdzyyglq5o
Life Hack of the Week –
Enjoy the small things urges Notes from the Interior –
Quote of the Week:
“My father’s mother and father- my grandparents- were, as I earlier mentioned, illiterate. My father had, I suspect in consequence, a sense of the magic of words that never left him, an awareness that those twenty-six abstract symbols could liberate if you understood them and oppress you if you didn’t. He told me the written word was the first beautiful thing he ever knew, a line I stole and used elsewhere. What is a writer but a robber, and what is the history of literature but a Milky Way of theft?
- from “Question 7” by Richard Flanagan
Joke of the Week:
(Health warning – swallow coffee before reading)
I’m from a long line of ancestors who enjoy queuing.
I really enjoy a good coffee, but breathing is the one thing I couldn’t live without.
Did you hear about the paranoid snowman who went to a party. He felt frozen out.
My new article on exposing the drug cartels is going gangbusters.
Did you know?
Carol Finch gets in the Christmas spirit with some treemendous facts :
More Christmas fun from Carol with this one:
https://medium.com/@carol.finch1/one-minute-facts-christmas-stockings-567c149ac55c
Word of the Week:
misokinesia - a hatred of watching other people fidget.
Clip of the Week:
Photos from the annual Traveller Christmas horse drive through central London:
As always, thank you for reading, and enjoy your day.
Editor’s comment: It is noted that the authors featured above have not consented in advance to their inclusion - I have assumed that authors appreciate a mention and sharing of your work – but if you do not wish to be featured please let me know and apologies.
The energy it takes for you to put this together is absolutely overwhelming. I love it so much and it makes me miss medium alot.
Thanks for showing up here for us too sir 🩵
You are right, our gen is addicted to our phones and fallen to endless scrolling