All posts tagged: 2025s

You’ve Got Another Shot at One of 2025’s Coolest (and Most Affordable) Watches

You’ve Got Another Shot at One of 2025’s Coolest (and Most Affordable) Watches

Last year’s Dennison x Collectability collaboration landed at a sweet spot rarely found in modern watchmaking: legitimate collector credibility at an impulse-buy price. The partnership between Collectability founder John Reardon and the revived British watchmaker sold enthusiasts on a simple proposition: good design, thoughtful provenance, and a sub-$1,000 price tag. Reardon—a former sales and marketing executive at Patek Philippe and senior watch specialist at Christie’s before founding the influential collector platform Collectability—brought a connoisseur’s eye to a watch that felt far more expensive than it was. Now, the partnership is back with a second act, and it arrives at precisely the right moment. The new Dennison x Collectability 2026 Edition Oblique Collection retails for $790 and retains the distinctive Dennison silhouette. However, this isn’t a simple reissue. The new watches push the concept in a more sculptural direction: the familiar case architecture has been reimagined with an asymmetrical motif that creates an entirely new dial geometry, resulting in a watch that feels more like a piece of wrist-borne design than a traditional dress watch. Reardon …

‘Mars’ is 2025’s most popular planet baby name

‘Mars’ is 2025’s most popular planet baby name

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. “Mars, can you please clean up your Legos?” “Jupiter, finish your peas.”“Don’t pull the cat’s tail, Mercury!” The Social Security Administration (SSA) has released its baby name data for 2025 and it’s clear that plenty of parents found inspiration in the cosmos for their little ones. The most popular proper planet in our solar system to name a baby after in 2025 was Mars, followed by Jupiter. Thankfully, no one named their child Uranus, but 80 parents did name their child Cosmo. Here’s the planet-baby name breakdown: Mercury: 10 males Venus: 96 females Earth: Eight females Mars: 27 females, 105 males (132 total) Jupiter: 84 females, 37 males (121 total) Saturn: 18 females, 8 males (26 total) Uranus: Zero Neptune: Eight males A couple of our solar system’s dwarf planets also made appearances on the list: Pluto: 11 males Eris: 128 females, 26 males (154 total) Of course it’s important to note that most of our solar system’s planets …

Four months and 40 hours later: my epic battle with 2025’s most difficult video game | Games

Four months and 40 hours later: my epic battle with 2025’s most difficult video game | Games

Last year I became uncomfortably well acquainted with suffering. In March I started experiencing excruciating pain in my right arm and shoulder – burning, zapping, energy-sapping pain that left me unable to think straight, emanating from a nexus of torment behind my shoulder blade and sometimes stretching all the way up to the base of my skull and all the way down into my fingers. Typing was agony, but everything was painful; even at rest it was horrible. I couldn’t play my guitar; I couldn’t play video games; I couldn’t sleep. I learned how quickly physical suffering lacerates your mental wellbeing. I’d had episodes of nagging pain from so-called repetitive strain injuries before, the product of long hours hunched over laptops and game controllers over the course of decades, but nothing like this. A few months later, after the initial unrelenting agony had subsided to a permanent hum of more moderate pain, it was diagnosed as brachial neuritis, inflammation of the nerve path that travels from the base of your neck down to your hand. …

2025’s 25 best new movies – from Frankenstein to Sinners

2025’s 25 best new movies – from Frankenstein to Sinners

It’s been another excellent year for new film releases in the UK – and as you can see from our top 25 below, a very eclectic one too. As ever, the year started with some great awards contenders that had debuted across the Atlantic at the tail end of 2024 – with the likes of The Brutalist, Nickel Boys and A Real Pain all featuring highly on our list. Meanwhile, it’s also been a spectacular year when it comes to horror, with first Sinners and then Weapons capturing the imaginations of the cinema-going public with bold, original takes on the genre, before Guillermo del Toro delivered his version of one of the most iconic of all horror tales: Frankenstein. It’s perhaps been a slightly less memorable year when it comes to the biggest blockbusters, but we do have at least one franchise film in our list as well: the fourth entry in the Bridget Jones franchise. Plus there are all sorts of great international films, independent gems and unexpected hits, so prepare to add a …

2025’s 25 best documentary series – from Flintoff to Grenfell: Uncovered

2025’s 25 best documentary series – from Flintoff to Grenfell: Uncovered

Across all the major streamers and broadcasters, documentaries have been at the forefront of major conversations this year. Whether it’s Disney+ taking a closer look at the untimely death of Caroline Flack, or Netflix examining injustice in the US, there have been plenty of thought-provoking series and films. These 25 picks are the very best released this year, forcing audiences to reappraise, reconsider and read further between the lines of stories that have dominated the headlines. As we near the end of the year, take the time to catch up on some of the best watches of 2025. 25. The Truth About Jussie Smollett Nuccio DiNuzzo/Getty Images Where to watch: Netflix In one of the most peculiar showbiz stories of recent years, Jussie Smollett created a drama that would have felt far-fetched even in Empire, the hip-hop epic that made his name. In 2019, the actor claimed to have been the victim of a racist and homophobic attack – an incident he was later accused of staging – and lengthy legal wrangling ensued. With Smollett …

2025’s best photos of the natural world, from volcanoes to icebergs

2025’s best photos of the natural world, from volcanoes to icebergs

Mount Etna erupting European Union, Copernicus Sentinel-2 imagery Mount Etna in Sicily is the world’s most active stratovolcano, which is a high, conical volcano created by repeated eruptions of viscous lava. In February, it erupted with ash clouds and a lava flow that travelled 3 kilometres, forcing a local airport to partially close. One of the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites captured this image of the lava flow on 12 February. An iceberg in Innaarsuit, Greenland Dennis Lehtonen / SWNS A giant iceberg drifted into the harbour in Innaarsuit in western Greenland in July, looming over the village of 180 for more than a week. Authorities warned people to stay away in case it collapsed and crushed something or generated a destructive wave. This is the second time in less than a decade that a massive iceberg has threatened the town. As Greenland melts, more icebergs are calving off its glaciers. Hurricane Melissa destroyed buildings in Jamaica RICARDO MAKYN/AFP via Getty Images Hurricane Melissa tied with the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane as the strongest …

2025’s Best Phones Were Also Its Wackiest

2025’s Best Phones Were Also Its Wackiest

This was a surprisingly fun year for smartphones. I wasn’t expecting it to be; the category is often described as stale or “plateaued.” But as WIRED’s resident phone reviewer, I’ve tested nearly all of this year’s handsets—devices as cheap as $130 all the way to an eye-watering $2,000—and I don’t think there’s been a year filled with as many varied styles in quite some time. It all started with the Nothing Phone (3a) series, which the UK company launched at Mobile World Congress early in the year. While I wasn’t a fan of the Pro model’s top-heavy camera module, the electric blue Phone (3a) is a standout. It looks like no other smartphone on the market, with a transparent backplate, a pop of color from a small red square, and the company’s signature Glyph lights, which blink when you receive notifications. Those LEDs may not be the most useful, but they’re fun and wacky. That whimsical design has been sorely lacking for several years. Remember 2020’s LG Wing? The five-camera Nokia 9 PureView from 2019? …

AI dominates 2025’s words of the year

AI dominates 2025’s words of the year

For us linguists, the flurry of “word of the year” announcements from dictionaries and publishers is a holiday tradition as anticipated as mince pies. The words of the year aren’t just a fun peek into new slang and language changes, they also tell us quite a bit about the worries, trends and obsessions of the English-speaking world. And this year’s list has one clear theme. In 2025, artificial intelligence (AI) played a huge role in our offices, social media feeds, music and film, and now – dictionaries. One of the first announcements this year was Collins Dictionary, who selected “vibe coding” as their word of the year. Vibe coding refers to using AI tools to generate code rather than manually coding software programs. When I first heard this, my initial reaction was that this is a very niche phrase, not in most people’s vocabulary. However, if we look back to Cambridge Dictionary’s selection for 2023 – which was “hallucinate”, referring to the false or nonsense responses generated by AI models – many people felt the …

9 films that helped decode 2025’s absurd reality

9 films that helped decode 2025’s absurd reality

In the heated climax of a confrontation between Alma Imhoff — Julia Roberts’ harried Yale professor in this year’s “After the Hunt” — and her one-time protégée, Maggie Resnick (Ayo Edebiri), Alma leans forward to cut through the bullsh*t. Despite waging this war between student and teacher, Maggie’s not prepared for battle, telling Alma she’s no longer comfortable with their conversation. Steadfast and pissed off, Alma smacks her lips and smirks, leaning forward with a cutting whisper: “Not everything is supposed to make you comfortable.” There’s a whole world of truth inside Alma’s remark, no matter how unpleasant it may be to accept. We live in a uniquely uncomfortable time, and no matter how many years in a row it’s true, 2025 was unlike any other year. There were political assassinations, censorship scandals, back-alley knockoffs of a viral toy, stomach-churning developments in AI, jewel heists, gutting celebrity deaths, blue jean boycotts, and perhaps one of the longest, most exhausting first years of any American presidency on record. Some good stuff happened, too, but it’s already …