Today in Tedium: If you’re reading this and just getting started on your Christmas shopping, what are you doing, honestly? You might want to stop reading and get on that. But before you do, maybe actually sit back down and read this. Tedium covers a lot of weird stuff every single year, and this year (though the schedule has admittedly slowed—working on that) is no exception. Each year, we share a bunch of stuff we covered, find some weird examples of people selling it, and call it a “last minute gift guide.” (It’s in the spirit of a Tedium holiday that the gifts you buy appear in the mail on January 2nd, of course. Wouldn’t have it any other way.) But with that in mind, check out our last-minute gift guide and relive the year in Tedium along the way. (Yes, there are affiliate links peppered in. No, not in every case. No, I don’t care if you use them, but it would support us.) We’d love to have you along the journey. — Ernie @ Tedium

The ultimate DIY experience: Convince your loved one that you can turn this rope into paper.

To start off, one of Tedium’s biggest pieces of the past year was about one of the most tedious topics we’ve ever covered—the Manila envelope and Manila folder. What was truly fascinating about the story is that this paper variant, closely associated with offices, was originally invented from old rope out of desperation. That’s easily one of the most unusual origin stories for something so dull that we’ve perhaps ever spotted. It makes one wonder what else that one might invent with such limitations. With that in mind, we recommend, in lieu of getting a pack of Manila envelopes in celebration of our Manila envelope piece, you instead get your loved ones a 150-foot coil of twisted Manila rope. If all goes well, they might figure out how to turn the rope into paper and use that paper to send you a letter expressing their frustration with the gift.

Skip the Hallmark store; by these 50-year-old cards on eBay instead. Your loved ones won’t even notice!

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.

In 2026, bring back the road atlas.

Speaking of things that were printed a long time ago, one thing that my May piece about MapQuest reminded me was that, growing up, I freaking loved giant road atlases—the use of typography, the lines, and the consistency. My favorite way to use one? Finding a highway of interest—I recommend U.S. Route 2, which covers most of the country minus a gap caused by Ontario—and following it all the way through to the end. There’s also a case that old, out-of-date road atlases may even be more interesting because they allow you to look at maps as artistic objects rather than simply tools. They tell a story—here’s what was there, and here’s how it came to life. Google Maps is many things, but one thing it isn’t is encased in amber, set in the past. With that in mind, I recommend a cool road atlas, perhaps one branded by a big company like State Farm, General Motors, or Holiday Inn.

Hey, you never know when you need hundreds of egg cartons that you randomly bought on Amazon for some reason.

**On the hunt for a … shall we say …**unusual way to stuff your stocking stuffers? Might we suggest egg cartons? They’re cheap. They’re easy to sort and manage. They don’t require a fireplace (in fact, I would recommend you not put them near fire, especially if they’re made of paper). They’ll be a discussion point when you hand out presents. And, unlike dairy crates, you can generally buy a bunch of them for fairly cheap on Amazon. Fortunately, unlike at the beginning of the year when we wrote about them, you can actually afford to buy eggs now, so there’s a chance you might have some already lying around. Your family might be confused—hey wait, it isn’t Easter—but do it anyway. Everyone can stand a little more dissonance in their lives, and it’s better they experience it with the people they love.

For the discerning mobile hacker who needs text 1,000 people an hour.

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.

The Commodore 64 Ultimate really lived up to the billing, didn’t it?

In terms of genuine ideas for gifts, odds are that if you haven’t already bought a new Commodore 64 from the reconstituted Commodore you’re not getting one before December 25. But you should maybe still buy one, if only because it represents one of the most charming stories of the year: A Commodore megafan (Christian “Peri Fractic” Simpson) decided he was going to buy the latent Commodore brand. He not only pulled it off (despite some community drama) but he managed to get a bunch of units shipped by Christmas. (Side note: I have a ton of extra referral codes—no money changed hands, my referral link apparently got used a lot of places—so if you’re hoping to buy one, bug me for a $10 discount.)

Fasten-ating, if you ask me.

Back in March, I tried an experiment—I published a three-part story on different types of fasteners. The first, on side-release handles, made perhaps the biggest impact, in part because the story of its invention was dramatic—its inventor came up with the idea after a close call with a waterfall. That incident inspired him to come up with a fastener that could be removed with just one hand. And that fastener—a key part of many modern bags, including my Chrome bag—can be had in packs of 100 for less than $10. Give your loved ones the hook-up.

Dr. Demento shown at w00tstock in 2010. His most famous protégé, Weird Al, is to his left. (leftlegofvoltron/Flickr)

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.

This is worth more than gold, we hear. (askoldsb/Depositphotos)

Finally: I don’t know if you’ve heard, but currently, RAM prices have gone through the goddamn roof, and are likely going to make buying computing products suck over the next couple of years. (Longtime readers know: Not the first time this has happened.) Now is an excellent time to upgrade your phone or laptop, because the next one might cost you thousands of dollars or come with an anemic amount of memory. (My advice: Buy an older machine with a lot of RAM, or that supports the less expensive DDR4.) The good news is that my advice from my 2019 piece, “Upgrade Arbitrage,” still holds up. Now’s a great time to go visit a Goodwill location to see what you might be able to find. The strategy I might recommend: Buy an old desk PC or mini PC from, like, 2018, and put in old DDR3 or DDR4 sticks of RAM (32GB if you can swing it). Then, install Linux, and throw Docker on the thing (or, if you’re less technical, YunoHost). Then check out the site Slfh.st for a guide on tools you can install on this machine you give to a loved one to replace some cloud service they don’t need. It’s a gadget that could help your loved ones in ways they haven’t even considered yet.

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.

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