Book 2 of 2026: Challenger by Diane Carey: ⭐️⭐️⭐️.
The tone of this one was really odd. Much of it is centered on the main crew of another ship, which is fine in and of itself, but there was something about their interactions that was so flippant and irreverent that for me, it blew right past “different ship with a different, quirkier feel than the Enterprise” all the way to “how are these people functioning with each other, within Starfleet, or in the universe in general?” As a capstone to the series, it wrapped up all the major plot points well enough, but the odd tone was really off-putting for me.
Well, we wrapped up 2025…and as happy as we were to see 2025 end, 2026 is already looking to keep the dumpster fires burning bright.
At work, the week was fine. Back in the office this week, though as it was still in the holiday break, it was another pretty slow week. Next week classes start, so things will pick back up again. The slowdown is always nice, but it’ll also be good to have things back to normal after the holidays.
Here at home, we had a nice quiet New Year’s Eve. It was even a bit quieter than we expected, as there weren’t as many local unsanctioned fireworks as there have been in years past.
Out in the wider world, though, we all woke up one morning just a few days into the year to discover that the US had invaded Venezuela and abducted its president and his wife. Because…sigh. We are continuing to speed run becoming everything as a country that I was brought up being told that we weren’t. And even though the older I get and the more I learn, the more obvious it is how far we always have been from the ideals we claimed to uphold, it’s still mind-boggling to be where we are now.
As I said on Mastodon: “I’m confused: Is being a brown-skinned person accused of being involved with drugs something that gets you kidnapped and forcibly kicked out of the country or kidnapped and forcibly brought into the country?”
Though really, after what we saw of Trump in his first term and so far in his second, the only thing that’s really surprising me about all of this is how many people are just…going along with it (most notably Congress — especially, but not at all limited to, the Republican party — and the Supreme Court). The system of checks and balances has apparently given up trying to either check or balance, and that’s perhaps the most troubling part of all of this.
📸 Photos
Got this really cute shot of Prairie getting a selfie of us as we were on an evening walk on the last day of 2025.And then this selfie on our first walk of 2026, during which I discovered that my new camera has an automatic selfie mode with a short timer that is activated when you flip the screen out and backwards.
Finished my last book of the year, Rough Trails by L.A. Graf, and my first book of the year, Thin Air by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch, both parts of a six-book TOS-era Star Trek series.
📺 Watching
We watched two movies over the weekend:
The Woman in Cabin 10 (2025): ⭐️⭐️⭐️: Decent thriller with a very satisfying ending.
NOTE: For regular readers (assuming there are any), a bit of clarification on how I link some items: I use archive.is for pages on sites that are paywalled (including sites that will only show content if adblockers are disabled) and for Substack pages (because Substack is another Nazi bar). Starting with this week’s post, I will also include links to the original pages, as not everyone has the same attitudes as I do about these things and may have subscriptions to the sites in question, not be as annoyed as I am at dealing with paywalls, ads, and the like, or have either accepted Substack as a “necessary evil” or are unaware of their problematic practices.
National Society of Tax Professionals: USPS Announces Changes to the Postmark Date System: “…while a postmark confirms the USPS possessed a mail piece on the date inscribed, that date does not necessarily align with the date the USPS first accepted possession of the item.” Potentially impactful in a number of important scenarios, including voting by mail. Undated informational page, but the rule took effect in November 2025.
Foz Meadows: Against AI (archive.is link of Substack original): “AI is unethical on a scale that SFF authors should be uniquely placed to appreciate, its evils mirroring metaphors that are older than our present civilization. AI is the cursed amulet, the magic mirror, the deal with the devil, the doppelganger that learns our secrets and steals our face; it’s a faerie illusion, leprechaun gold, the fox’s trick that gives rot the look of resplendence, the naked emperor parading with his cock out; it’s the disembodied voice that whispers let me in, the zombie virus that transforms the known into the unrecognizable, the corrupting fungi whose tendrils invade and poison. It’s the literal fucking One Ring, telling us that of course we’d use its power for good, compelling us to pick it up so that through us, it might do great evil.”
Chuck Wendig: My Open Letter to That Open Letter About AI in Writing and Publishing: “AI IS NOT INEVITABLE. ¶ The only strategy here is the sum total pushback against its uncanny horrors and its non-consensual intrusion into every corner of our world — it steals our content, guzzles our water, increases our power bills, is crammed into services we didn’t ask for it to be crammed into while also charging us more money for the “privelege.” There is no strategy here except to find the fields where the AI grows and metaphorically set them aflame. ¶ And shame and anger against corporate overreach is a powerful fire.”
Trekorama!: 3D walkthroughs of locations on various Star Trek ships, including the Enterprise 1701 (main bridge), 1701-D (main bridge, engineering, sick bay, Ten-Forward, transporter room, Picard, Data, Troi, and Worf’s quarters, and a shuttle), 1701-E (bridge), and Kelvinverse version (bridge and corridor), Defiant (deck one), Voyager (deck one, sickbay, transporter room, engineering, mess hall), Discovery (bridge, transporter room, mess hall, and corridor), and Klingon Bird of Prey (bridge), plus the real-world ISS.
David Reamer at the Anchorage Daily News: Termination dust: Its history, evolution in meaning and possible origin (archive.is link of a paywalled original): “…the history and evolution of termination dust as a turn of phrase offers education, enlightenment and entertainment. Over the decades, there have been changes in meaning and connotation. Throughout those years, it remains a significant detail of local history, a widely recognizable bit of slang whose lore maps closely against that of the town itself.”
John Scalo: Was Daft Punk Having a Laugh When They Chose the Tempo of Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger?: “I think our helmet-clad robot friends might have been making a little joke that we’ve apparently all missed. The BPM of Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger is actually 123.45.” Fun bit of music trivia, plus a bit of a peek at the difficulties of having a computer do something that seems relatively easy for humans; in this case, determining a song’s tempo.
Book 1 of 2026: Thin Air by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch: ⭐️⭐️⭐️.
Another decent book in the series, with another crisis for the Enterprise to solve and the colonists to endure. I’m starting to wonder if they’ll actually be able to wrap up all the dangling threads in just one more book.
Almost a four-star, due to a particularly imaginative doomsday weapon that really had me lost as to how they were going to technobabble their way out of it. Settled on three, though, as it is a “middle book” that doesn’t stand alone on its own. Still, a more engaging entry than many middle books end up being.
Colonization adventures continue on Belle Terre, as Sulu, Uhura, and Chekov deal with troublesome splinter groups and environmental aftereffects of the events of the prior book in the series. A solid mid-series entry, with a good focus on this secondary trio while the Enterprise is busy elsewhere.
Having made it through saboteurs and alien conflicts, the colonists now need the Enterprise’s help dealing with a moon set to explode in a week. The setup sounds far-fetched, but works to keep the overall tension going, plus a few new mysteries are tossed in, sure to be addressed again later in the series.
An interesting start to this six-part series. Shortly post-V’ger, Kirk and the Enterprise guide a 70-ship convoy of 60,000 settlers to a new home six months away. Of course, things do not go well. Most interesting so far for its treatment of Kirk, somewhere on his road from the (perhaps overly) brash self-assurance of TMP to the depression of the start of TWoK, questioning his place and the effects of his career. The new alien races are interesting, as well. However, the primary antagonist is a little too one-note, and while “the Orions” are involved, I’m very confused by them, as they’re described in ways that don’t match the green-skinned humanoids we know as Orions (descriptive bits include: “…slimy muscular arm…”, “…arrowlike orange eyes…”, “…his many-fingered limb…”, “…his claw still tightened around [their] jaw…”, “…purple skin…”, “…turned burgundy with both fury and fear…”, “[his] excuse for eyes…those milky orbs…”). At some point in the editing process, those descriptions should have been corrected or they should have been given some other name than “Orions”.
A promising setup, as the Enterprise finds itself caught between two factions of a pre-warp interstellar conflict, with one side unaware the battle was still going on as the other’s fleet slowly approached. The antagonist is a little too one-note Evil Leader, though, and I question a society holding onto a 6,000-year grudge. Still, a nicely average Trek adventure.
This, of course, was Thanksgiving week here in the U.S., so it was a three-day work week followed by a four-day weekend…which, really, is just how it should be every week, isn’t it? We did our usual thing of staying home and avoiding holiday travel, having a nice quiet holiday weekend of resting, munching on good food, reading books, watching a couple movies, and bringing out the Christmas decorations.
📸 Photos
Our winter holiday LEGO village, with an ever-growing collection of creepy Santas.We’d already done our holiday shopping, so our tree is already all decked out with presents. We’ve also discovered that reusable cloth bags are much easier to deal with than wrapping paper!Out outdoor gnome corner has been refreshed again with the Christmas collection.All lit up out front as well, as always.
📚 Reading
I finally finished Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which I’d been slogging through for over a month. Had it not been part of my Hugo Best Novel reading project I’d probably have given up midway through, but I’m stubborn. This just was not my kind of book.
📺 Watching
Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) ⭐️⭐️⭐️: Amusing, but not a regular tradition; it kind of drags on. It was fascinating seeing and remembering what travel (and dealing with travel problems) was like in the mid-80s, without cell phones, internet reservations, ATMs, and similar modern conveniences.
Edward Scissorhands (1990) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: Still excellent. Also, and amusingly, while it was all very Tim Burton, and being in the mansion on the hill was like being in Burton’s head, many of the scenes in the town struck me as having nearly a Wes Anderson feel. More saturated, of course, but there was a lot of symmetrical framing of shots and stylized dialogue that were very reminiscent of Anderson’s films.
🔗 Linking
David Roskin in The Guardian: Hollywood’s dark era: where did all the colour from movies go?: “We all know the late-night slog of finding something to watch, flicking between streaming services until settling on a series someone mentioned at work. And then a few minutes later, you’re squinting, adjusting your lighting or playing around with TV settings – it’s a night-time scene and you’re unable to make out what’s going on. Prompting the question: ‘When did everything on screen get so dark?’”
Alexa Peters at KNKX NPR: Local businesses reconsider live music as licensing fees soar: “PROs are companies that represent songwriters, composers and music publishers and collect royalties from the live performance of their copyrighted works on their behalf. Per U.S. copyright law, any establishment that presents live or recorded music must obtain a “Public Performance License” from a PRO to legally use copyrighted music they represent for performances, overhead house music, jukeboxes, and even karaoke. ¶ For years, this relationship between venues and PROs has gone on behind the scenes as a necessity of live music presentation. But, as more PROs have emerged, and rising costs make it more difficult for grassroots music venues and third places, like restaurants, to keep live music going, PROs are drawing more scrutiny.”
Brian Merchant in The Atlantic: The New Luddites Aren’t Backing Down (archive.is link): “Now, with nearly half of Americans worried about how AI will affect jobs, Luddism has blossomed. The new Luddites—a growing contingent of workers, critics, academics, organizers, and writers—say that too much power has been concentrated in the hands of the tech titans, that tech is too often used to help corporations slash pay and squeeze workers, and that certain technologies must not merely be criticized but resisted outright.”
T.M. Brown in The New York Times: They’re Trying to Ditch Their Phones. Their Methods Are Unorthodox. (gift link): “The Lamp Club is part of a growing ecosystem of ‘neo-Luddite’ groups across the country that encourage people to transform their relationship to technology. Other groups include the Luddite Club, APPstinence and Breaking the (G)Loom — organizations that, for the most part, were started not by parents wishing their teens would get off their devices but by the teens themselves, who fault phones for fraying human connections as well as accelerating inequality and climate change. There are now more than two dozen Luddite Clubs in North America, from Ithaca, N.Y., to Irvine, Calif.”
Elizabeth Spiers: Requiem for Early Blogging: “The growth of social media in particular has wiped out a particular kind of blogging that I sometimes miss: a text-based dialogue between bloggers that required more thought and care than dashing off 180 or 240 characters and calling it a day.”
Josh Collinsworth: Alchemy: “The struggle that produced the art—the human who felt it, processed it, and formed it into this unique shape in the way only they could—is integral to the art itself. The story of the human behind it is the missing, inimitable component that AI cannot reproduce. ¶ That’s what I and so many others find so repulsive about generative AI art; it’s missing the literal soul that makes art interesting in the first place.”
Aaron Greenbaum at Slashgear: Legendary Sci-Fi Vehicles: How They Were Really Built: “If a producer wants a sci-fi vehicle to have a tangible presence and a sense of realism, they have to use a live, physical model. For larger vehicles or when cars and spaceships perform feats of fantastical daring, a miniature is often required, but when the vehicle has to interact with actors or live sets, it is usually built to scale using available parts. Here are 10 iconic sci-fi vehicles and how they were made.” Light on details, but still entertaining.
ableplayer on GitHub: “Able Player is a fully accessible cross-browser HTML5 media player.”
Rebecca Solnit at The Guardian: A year on from Trump’s victory, resistance is everywhere: “Resistance is everywhere, both geographically and in terms of the constituencies participating: civil society and civil servants; human rights, climate and environmental groups (who in many cases had plans in place before the election and hit the ground running when the new administration came in); religious leaders and institutions, elected officials at all levels from city councils to the US Senate, the military, lawyers and judges, educators and students, librarians, of course, medical professionals, journalists, editors and publishers, people in the arts. Of course there’s been shameful collaboration, submission and silence from many figures in most of these constituencies as well. It has been striking that the most wealthy and theoretically most powerful have, in this crisis, often been the first to surrender. It’s non-elites who have stood on principle even when it means taking risks.”
Nicholas Deshais at The Seattle Times: Light rail’s push to Federal Way gives students, workers front-door access (archive.is link): “Unless you were looking for it, Highline College used to be kind of hard to find, even when it was right next to you. ¶ Not anymore, thanks to the region’s growing light rail and its new Kent Des Moines Station directly across 99, which, not coincidentally, was almost called Highline Station. With the train coming, Highline reoriented itself to the east, widened the alley and renamed it College Way, demolished the ice cream shop and, in 2019, erected the Campus View building, which has retail and office space on the first floor and housing for 160 students on the four floors above. Two tall signs blare out the college’s name on either side of College Way, for any driver — or light rail passenger — who may be unaware.”
