Beyond The Last Minute

One of the surprisingly darkest pieces we published this year started from a light place—sales clubs that kids could sign up for from comic books—and ended with a devastating fire at a decommissioned paper mill. We specialize in light fare over at Tedium. But one company covered in our piece about youth sales clubs that was not involved in said fire was Sunshine Art Studios, which specialized in greeting cards that it expected 11-year-olds to sell. Hallmark might draw your attention, but what if you bought a bunch of old greeting cards from eBay? (For one thing, you’ll probably save a lot of money off of going to the Hallmark store.) You could share a link to our story about them and your loved ones will be feeling the history.

For that friend of yours who’s running a spam ring, you likely won’t find a product as suited to the job as a SIM card bank, the subject of a high-profile secret-service raid back in September. The idea of these things? Hundreds of SIM cards in one container, which can presumably be used to call or text hundreds of people at once. Since the story broke, some have expressed skepticism about whether it’s actually a big deal, but the hardware itself is still insane and awesome. If you ask me, it may be the weirdest news story of the year outside of the utter chaos that is literally everything else. These things are not easy to find, likely because they’re not 100% legal in the U.S., but if you’re willing to accept the risk, looking around on eBay and Made-in-China might help. Even if you can’t easily supply one, you can always buy hundreds of SIM cards for your hacker-in-waiting so they’re ready when they finally do get one off the black market.

Tedium contributor David Buck has spent the year working on small experiments—an audio series tied to Halloween, for one thing, but he also had one of our most successful pieces of 2025 with a thoughtful coda to Dr. Demento’s long broadcasting career, which goes back more than 50 years and officially ended in October with a final episode. Much of what Buck wrote emphasizes the impact that Demento‘s show has had on the lives of the many musicians that found followings and even careers thanks to the attention. But Demento himself deserves some attention, too. If you have a musically adventurous person in your life, consider buying them an annual subscription to the Demento Online Club, which lets users listen to Demento’s massive archive. If you have a person in your life who only binges a show after it’s gone off the air, it’s time to check out Dr. Demento.

I think I’ve sort it clear the last couple of months that writing Tedium has been harder this year. I think it’s important to me, as the editor and primary writer of Tedium, to make that clear to you, the reader.

Part of that is just the chaos of the news in 2025—often, I feel like Troy Barnes from Community, returning with pizza, only to find all hell has broken loose in the short time I’ve been gone. Writing about Manila envelopes does not always mesh with that.

But life is getting a little busier (my freelance business is picking up, always a good thing) and I’m also getting older, and focus is harder to come by. Recently, I found a cool tool called Super Productivity, which I think is helping with the last problem, but when you’ve spent so much of your life on something, maintaining that spark isn’t always easy.

(This is hard to explain, but I also think that a lot of my ideas have been inspired by things I’ve come across in my own life. After a decade of doing that, I have to dig deeper in the well to find something cool that also comes with some latent personal tie—or doesn’t.)

As we close out 2025, we have one holiday piece coming this week, along with our usual year-end content, so we’ll be in your inbox a lot over the next week and a half. My goal with this is to work on my rhythm. (I may go back to writing about less-timely topics as well, leaving the on-deadline strategy for when I have something novel to add.) I also am working on some ideas for regular features going into 2026 that I think will help us stay focused even when it feels like the news cycle is fighting with us for that focus.

I want to be careful, though, not to over-promise, because I ultimately want to deliver on this weird thing I do. (Actually, I should say “we”—David Buck is an important part of the Tedium endeavor at this point and he has been experimenting with a Tedium podcast that we hope to more formally launch at some point.) I think we always feel that tension to want to do everything and change the world, but I think a better strategy is to just be honest with myself. I run a newsletter where I post about the ideas and research that fascinate me. And sometimes, that research leads me to really weird-ass places.

Honestly, for the folks who have been there since nearly the beginning—you know who you are—thank you. Tedium is a gift, and it’s one that I’m still passionate about, even if the writing is more blocky than usual these days.

--

Find this one an interesting read? Share it with a pal! Back with more later in the week.

And by the way, one last entry to our gift guide this year: Our sponsor, la machine, the antidote to AI-infused nicknacks.