Thank You for Reading Contra

Sliding into the New Year.

My kids are playing with their German cousins in the next room, building odd little creatures and machines with bricks plucked from a mountain of Legos that I will end up cleaning later. But that’s okay. I like seeing what their imaginations turn out.

There’s a saying here that people use on New Year’s Eve: Guten Rutsch. It means “good slide,” and is a shortened version of Einen guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr, which translates as, “Have a good slide into the new year.” I like it because it seems pregnant with cautious optimism. But if you’re a pessimist, you might like Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s send-off better. “The end of 2025 has been difficult for all of us,” she said. “Don’t worry, because next year will be much worse.”

I’m somewhere between the two. Pessimistic by nature, but for some reason that is hard to explain, cautiously optimistic. Perhaps it’s certain trends I’m seeing, or it’s the bonds I’ve made with new friends over the last year, which this Substack, with your support, has made possible.

Even though I have shifted away from pure political content, Contra slid at one point into the middle of the pack of the top 100 Substacks for U.S. politics. That was a nice feeling. But what I’m happiest about is the conversations I’ve had with people over common cultural ground and an appreciation for the art and craft of making beautiful, meaningful things. Poets, filmmakers, bookmakers, novelists, publishers, and more. I think that’s why I’m cautiously, tremulously optimistic about what could be around the corner.

Thank you so much for reading—and listen to—Contra. And if you want to help and support what I do, consider subscribing for $5 a month. It means a lot.

Here are a few of top posts from 2025.