1 We are saying goodbye to social media.
Two of the 10 most asked questions of Google this year turned out to be, "How do I delete Instagram? and "How do I delete Facebook?"
Given the accusations of human rights abuses and environmental violations in Myanmar that have emerged against the latter that is a pretty fair question in the circumstances.
2 Rubik's cubes are still a thing
Another of Google's most asked questions of the year was how to solve a Rubik's cube. Some of us gave up asking that around about 1983.
3 Brexit is still a skip fire
To be honest we could probably write this every week between now and next March and it would still apply.
4 Christmas is cancelled
If you're a journalist with an invitation to the White House Christmas party. The President. (let's not sully ourselves with a namecheck) has cancelled the festive media get-together. Not enough peace and good will to go round, we guess.
5 Christmas telly is going to be rubbish.
We have checked the Christmas bumper edition of the Radio Times and unless you like Mrs Brown's Boys its going to have to be Netflix
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here