Five Bullets 1.2.26: Welcome to 2026!

What's capturing my attention: Journaling tips; science discoveries of 2025; documentaries; and a life-saving cat.

Keith Walpole

Jan 02, 2026

Hi Friends -

Happy New Year! Here’s what’s capturing my attention week:

1931 — New Years Eve 1930, Times Square. © AP

Is journaling one of your New Year’s resolutions? I’ve been journaling every day for the past 8 years. Here’s my 5 Tips For Keeping A Daily Journal.
While compiling 2025’s Year in Review I noticed Five Bullets covered several scientific breakthroughs over the past year: discovery of a dwarf planet in our solar system; the James Webb telescope’s images of a star being born; and researchers discovered ultra-high energy neutrinos under the sea.
Over the holidays I caught up on movies and TV. In The New Yorker At 100, I loved getting an inside peek into the editorial team’s process preparing the magazine’s 100th anniversary issue. Cover-Up highlights the career of investigative journalist Seymour Hersh the writer who broke stories on the My Lai massacre, CIA domestic spying, and prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.
On December 31, 1904 the first New Year’s celebration was held in Times Square with fireworks presented by New York Times publisher Alfred S. Ochs to celebrate the opening of One Times Square. Three years later on New Years Eve 1907 Ochs began the ball drop tradition. Times electrician Walter F. Palmer suggested using a time ball like the one atop the Western Union Telegraph building, normally used for synchronizing maritime chronometers.
Good news to begin the new year with: a Ukrainian man escaping conscription said his kitten Peach kept him alive in the freezing Romanian mountains. Rescuers found Peach curled up on his owner’s chest who said “Peach kept my heart warm and he kept my faith alive.”

What are you looking forward to this year? Email me by hitting reply or by leaving a comment below.

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