Let's Celebrate
November 26, 2025
Of all the mindless abominations we endure in corporate America, the Status Meeting is the worst.
This horrific gathering — often called a check-in or alignment meeting or even a huddle — involves a generic weekly agenda and a mind-numbing trip “around the horn” where each colleague recites a list of things he’s working on at the moment.
The newest and youngest workers feel the most pressure during these sessions, compelled to show that their to-dos are important and meaningful to the company.
Status Meetings will make you question whether you want to remain alive, yet many Americans can’t resist calling a family Status Meeting on Thanksgiving. We need to make it stop.
Gratitude is underrated. It’s a state of mind that keeps us grounded and helps us prioritize what’s really important. As an added bonus, it’s impossible to experience bad vibes while feeling grateful, as gratitude crowds out the negative stuff.
Gratitude is also deeply personal. The things we feel most grateful for are often private and visceral and difficult to put into words, and definitely not something we want to share with drunk Uncle Gary.
Yet during Thanksgiving dinner, someone will invariably suggest that the guests go around the table and share what they are thankful for this year.
It sounds innocent enough, but this simple suggestion transforms a perfectly nice meal into a Status Meeting.
Each guest is then forced to put down his fork and rack his brain until he comes up with a fully processed and easily digestible example of something he’s thankful for, something like “family” or “health” or “just being here together with you guys.” Barf.
This exercise always falls short because real gratitude is not easily shared. It’s particularly stressful for the newest and youngest members of the family who feel pressure to come up with an example that sounds important and meaningful, something that will earn a nod and a “that’s nice” from the aunts.
This year, let’s dispense of the Thanksgiving Status Meeting and try something new. Let’s exchange our Reasons to Celebrate.
Maybe you got promoted this year. Maybe you quit a job you hated. Maybe you exercised 11 days in a row or finally dumped your drip of a boyfriend or lost 25 pounds. Maybe you ran a half marathon or canceled a bunch of subscriptions. I promise you have something that deserves to be cheers-ed.
If an entire dinner gathering takes turns sharing successes and clinking glasses, party mode will be fully activated by the time we get to grandma. You won’t even notice that Uncle Gary has disappeared with the bourbon to watch the Chiefs game.
Thanks for reading Squirreled. I’m grateful celebrating that you’re here, and I hope you take a few moments this weekend to let gratitude fill you up and crowd out the bad stuff.
Each week in Squirreled I’ll drop links to four stories. Each one should be (1) useful, relevant, weird or otherwise interesting, (2) off the beaten path of the internet, and (3) free to read. The longer the story, the more captivating it needs to be to make the cut. We all have attention spans to manage.
This Week’s Links (click the headings; excerpts in italics)
Turkey doesn’t make you tired. Your loudmouth cousin has been lying to you: turkey doesn’t actually contain any chemicals that make you sleepy. It’s probably just the beer and mashed potatoes and anticipation of Iowa football.
The origin of the myth that turkey is responsible for post-Thanksgiving sleepiness is based on turkey containing tryptophan, an amino acid that converts to serotonin and melatonin, two chemicals associated with sleep regulation. But, turkey doesn’t have significantly more tryptophan than other common foods like chicken, beef, nuts or cheese. So why do we get so tired after Thanksgiving dinner? Overeating, alcohol consumption and even seasonal factors. But the main cause of drowsiness is the mass consumption of carbohydrates.
The 100 most dreaded life decisions, ranked. I already knew that we stress out over taking a new job, getting married and having kids. But I had no idea that you’d rather start smoking than get vaccinated.
The majority of people most frequently associate risk with accepting a new job. This was immediately followed by quitting a job, as well as investing money, driving, becoming self-employed, and buying a house. Surprisingly, the results were often contrary to what many of the study’s authors assumed before conducting the survey. Where researchers assumed health or daily activities like traveling alone might top the list, it turned out to be the opposite.
Google’s AI is really good at hurricanes. Google quietly rolled out a hurricane forecasting bot this year, and you will not be shocked to learn that it was more accurate than old fashioned human predictions. Soon the world won’t need people at all.
Google’s model was so good that it regularly beat the official forecast from the National Hurricane Center, which is produced by human experts looking at a broad array of model data. The AI-based model also beat highly regarded “consensus models.” It’s worth noting that Google’s model also did exceptionally well at intensity forecasting, which is the fluctuations in the strength of a hurricane. So in its first season, it nailed both hurricane tracks and intensity.
Scary movies are good for you. I have never loved horror movies, mostly because I wasn’t in a hurry to drive to a theater and pay someone to terrify me. But science has discovered that there health benefits to watching scary movies (as long as you don’t have a heart attack).
Evidence indicates that horror stories tap into key processes of the brain that help us deal with uncertainty. The latest results suggest these fictional tales of terror may even bring some serious psychological benefits – including reducing the anxiety we feel about events out in the real world. They are a salve for our worries.
OK, back to work.