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My cellphone’s apps serve as my alarm clock, meteorologist, GPS, and e-reader. FaceTime is the portal to my nieces who live 500 miles away. Chase Mobile is the reason I seldom deposit checks at a physical bank. Hinge has provided me with an overabundance of dating horror stories and—after copious swiping—an incredible partner. Let me declare at the onset, these apps are useful—even pretty good!

The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Importantly, this is a completely non-exhaustive and subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy or discontent. Enjoy. There’s a lot that can scare off the newbie fly fisher.

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. A conspiracy theory that airplanes are leaving nefarious “chemtrails” in their wake due to a sinister government plot has been given fresh impetus in the US amid a swirl of concerns and confusion about proposals to geoengineer a response to the climate crisis. State legislation to ban what some lawmakers call chemtrails has been pushed forward in Tennessee and, most recently, Florida.

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The climate crisis caused an additional six weeks of dangerously hot days in 2024 for the average person, supercharging the fatal impact of heat waves around the world. The effects of human-caused global heating were far worse for some people, an analysis by World Weather Attribution (WWA) and Climate Central has shown.

For President Jimmy Carter, morality was a personal obligation that became a national calling. A deeply religious man, he taught Sunday school for most of his adult life until the point in 2020 when he physically couldn’t anymore, and he projected that same moral leadership from his entry into politics through his ascendance to the presidency.

Fortunately, new leadership willing to restore America’s military to its historic role of defeating our enemies appears to be on the way.