Trump stuns the rest of the government by declaring victory over ISIS and ordering a complete withdrawal from Syria.

Such a move offers “a prime opportunity” for the Islamic State, Iran, and Russia.

“Donald is right.” Putin backs Trump in somewhat intimate terms during a press conference.

Speaking of Putin, thirty-four journalists were murdered this year in direct retaliation for their reporting, nearly double the figure for 2017.

Suicide prevention efforts are supposedly the Department of Veterans Affairs’ top priority. For the last two years the agency has failed horribly.

Related/unrelated: the Air Force buys coffee cups that cost $1,280 each and break easily.

A very good round-up for the year in pictures.

The single largest jump in usage rates of any drug in a single year: the number of teenagers who vaped in 2018.

The best "visualizations of tomorrow" from a year of crowd-sourced submissions.

The number of people living on the streets in LA and San Diego, two epicenters of the American homelessness crisis, fell this year.

To understand the extremity of Venezuela's economic crisis: one full day's wages buys 1.7 eggs.

Slavery is alive and well in Libya, where black Africans trying to get to Europe instead find themselves bought and sold.

Your new sportswear imported from China could have been manufactured by slave labor in an internment camp.

The west coast got slammed this week by high surf. Here’s footage from Monday at Maverick’s, northern California’s notorious big wave.

A brief profile of the best releases from Brainfeeder, the record label helping to push jazz back to the forefront.

Azealia Banks’s “Anna Wintour” makes number four on the Passion of the Weiss’s 50-videos-strong “Best Rap Songs of 2018.”

See also: The Best of 2018’s Bad Restaurant Reviews.