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Weekly Notes: December 29, 2025–January 4, 2026

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Happy holidays (part two)!

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

My wife's outstretched arms hold an iPhone taking a selfie, with her smiling face and me holding up my camera in front of my face visible on the iPhone's screen.
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.
Selfie of me, a white man with greying red beard, weraing glasses and a black coat and hoodie with the hood up, and my wife a white woman with wavy blonde hair and glasses, both of us smiling.
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.

📝 Writing

This week I recorded my responses to the current SFWA survey on AI use in the SFF writing/publishing industry, did my annual reading wrap-up for the year, and posted my resolutions for this year.

📚 Reading

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:

🔗 Linking

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.”

  • Robin Young and Emiko Tamagawa at WBUR: ‘Wake Up Dead Man’: Rian and Nathan Johnson on blending mystery and faith in new ‘Knives Out’ movie: Brief but interesting interview touching on the religious motifs in Wake Up Dead Man.

  • 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.

Thin Air by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch

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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.

Me holding Thin Air

The Flaming Arrow by Jerry Oltion and Kathy Oltion

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Book 67 of 2025: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

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.

Me holding The Flaming Arrow

Weekly Notes: December 22–28, 2025

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Happy holidays (part one)!

This past week was, of course, Christmas week. One of the really nice things about working at Highline is that this entire week was designated a work from home week, and Wednesday and Friday (the two days on either side of Christmas) are considered “personal development” days, with a pleasantly broad definition of “personal development”. Email was monitored and work was done, but it definitely makes for a comfortably low-key week.

Our Christmas day was quite nice: Slept in as late as we could, had a fun breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes with chocolate-infused butter and chocolate whipped cream (there was a bit of a theme there…), a comfortable walk around the neighborhood, opening presents, and a lot of relaxing and reading.

📸 Photos

A Nikon Z5II camera sitting on a green cushion with a Christmas tree just visible in the background.
My big present this year was upgrading my camera to a Nikon Z5II mirrorless camera, with the 24–50mm f/4–6.3 kit lens and the FTZ II adapter to allow me to continue to use my existing lineup of F-mount lenses.
A Nikon Z5II with an old 500mm reflex lens attached.
I did make myself laugh by half-seriously wondering if the Z5II is still a mirrorless camera if I attach a 500mm reflex lens to it (if you’re unaware, this is a catadioptric or mirror lens which, as the name implies, uses a pair of mirrors to pack a long telephoto range into a physically short lens).
Me aiming my camera at an odd-looking tree in a planter; the tree is bowed over into an arch shape, and there is a large holiday bauble hanging from the top of the arch.
Taking the new camera out for a first test run around our neighborhood. (Photo by my wife.)
Art installation of around 35 identical very cute little clouds with smiling faces hung evenly spaced and symmetrically from the ceiling of the Seattle Art Museum's lobby.
On Saturday we went up to the Seattle Art Museum, partly because it had been a few years, and partly as a good opportunity to take the new camera out for a spin. I posted a small set of photos from the museum to my Flickr account.

📚 Reading

  • I’m on a bit of a Star Trek binge to wrap up the year. Last week (though I forgot to include it in my weekly notes) I read Kij Johnson and Greg Cox’s TNG novel Dragon’s Honor; this week I’ve been working my way through the TOS “New Earth” series, getting through the first two of the six books, Diane Carey’s Wagon Train to the Stars and Dean Wesley Smith and Diane Carey’s Belle Terre. I thought I might get through the third book in the series today, but didn’t end up making it.

  • I also “finished” one I’ve been working on for a few months now (since this year’s major gift wasn’t a surprise), Thom Hogan’s Complete Guide to the Nikon Z5II. “Finished” is in quotes because as it’s something of a reference book, there were sections that I skimmed, and this is one that I’ll be sure to keep on my iPad to refer back to whenever I need.

📺 Watching

  • As befitting the season, we’ve binged our way through two seasons of The Great American Baking Show: Holiday Edition, which is just The Great British Baking Show but with American contestants. It’s a little jarring to be in the GBBS tent and hearing American accents, but it’s also really nice to see Americans in a competitive baking show actually being nice to each other (as is the standard for GBBS) rather than being snarky and rude to and about each other (as is the standard for, well, virtually every American reality show out there).

We’ve also watched several movies, two from the stable of holiday favorites, one new holiday favorite, and a couple that we’ve been looking forward to seeing. This week’s lineup was:

  • The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), which is always good.
  • Violent Night (2022), which was new to us, but which we enjoyed more than we thought we would. It lives up to its title, but it’s a very fun holiday action/comedy.
  • Die Hard (1988), our annual Christmas Eve tradition (along with many others).
  • Fackham Hall (2025) has been on our radar for a while now, and it just became available to rent this week. It’s Downton Abbey meets The Naked Gun, and we laughed a lot — it will definitely eventually be going in our home collection once it’s available on physical media.
  • Wake Up Dead Man (2025), the latest Knives Out film, is excellent. Continues the twisty mystery fun of the prior two, and incorporates some really neat political and religious commentary as well. Rian Johnson is so good at what he does (I need to go back and watch Brick again at some point, too).

🔗 Linking

  • Walter Chaw at Film Freak Central: Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025): Absolutely devastating zero-star review of James Cameron’s latest “Dances With Ferngully” film. “The indigenous people, the Na’vi, are giant blue cats who literally meld with the natural elements on their planet, Pandora, through their naked mole-rat tails, and boast of a harmonious existence that nonetheless requires a warrior class because those are the two things indigenous people in white fantasies are allowed to be: ferocious warriors and children of the Earth.”

  • Randall Munroe’s xkcd: Funny Numbers: “The teens picked a new funny number.”

  • Ben Keough at The New York Times‘ Wirecutter: The First Nikon Z-Mount Mirrorless Lenses You Should Buy (archive.is link): Now that I have a new camera, though I can use (and absolutely will be using) my existing F-mount lenses, eventually I’ll be adding newer Z-mount lenses to my collection. Time to start dreaming!

  • Barry Petchesky at Defector: What Did We Get Stuck In Our Rectums Last Year?: The annual report! “This is the time of year to be grateful for not having things stuck in our asses, and to think of those less fortunate than us. So spare a thought for those Americans who misjudged the capacity of their own orifices.”

  • Lorraine Boissoneault at Smithsonian Magazine: A Civil War Cartoonist Created the Modern Image of Santa Claus as Union Propaganda: I had no idea about any of this.

  • Infinite Ball Drop: “On New Year’s Eve, the Times Square Ball drops for only 60 seconds over a measly 139 feet. What if we extrapolated from that and covered the entire year?”

  • Robin Buller at The Guardian: How effective is protesting? According to historians and political scientists: very: “From emancipation to women’s suffrage, from civil rights to Black Lives Matter, mass movement has shaped the arc of American history. Protest has led to the passage of legislation that gave women the right to vote, banned segregation and legalized same-sex marriage. It has also sparked cultural shifts in how Americans perceive things like bodily autonomy, economic inequality and racial bias.”

  • Doug Henwood at Jacobin interviews Émile Torres: Tech Capitalists Don’t Care About Humans. Literally.: “…there’s also a kind of capitalist influence, the idea that human beings do not matter in and of ourselves. In this worldview, we matter for the sake of value, rather than value mattering for the sake of us. ¶ …we are just means to an end. The only end is value, this abstract yet quantifiable concept that should be maximized to the physical cosmic limits. We matter only as the conduits through which this value can come into existence.

Complete Guide to the Nikon Z5II by Thom Hogan

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Book 65 of 2025: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Really, this kind of needs two ratings: Five stars for the content, and two stars for the editing. Thom is incredibly knowledgeable about photography and Nikon cameras, and this book is an incredible deep dive into the Z5II, how it works, why it works the way it does, what all those settings mean, and suggestions on how to get the best results out of the camera. However, as he has obviously (and quite transparently; he mentions some of this on his website) adapted large swaths of this book from very similar books on other cameras in Nikon’s Z series, there are a lot of instances where the shift from one camera to another wasn’t caught, leading to everything from the wrong camera model being mentioned to slight errors (I’ve not come across anything major or that would cause a problem, though). Still very worthwhile, and I’ll be sure to keep this easily available on my iPad so I can reference it whenever I need.

Me holding The Complete Guide to the Nikon Z5II on my iPad

Belle Terre by Dean Wesley Smith and Diane Carey

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Book 64 of 2025: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

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.

Me holding Belle Terre

Wagon Train to the Stars by Diane Carey

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Book 63 of 2025: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

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”.

Me holding Wagon Train to the Stars

Space Oddity by Catherynne M. Valente

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Book 61 of 2025: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

So much of this made me laugh, and it all wrapped up in an extremely satisfying way. Valente is a hilarious writer (the “Douglas Adams on a sugar high” quote on the book cover is spot on); my only disappointment (and it’s not with the book) is that I was busy enough at last spring’s Norwescon where she was a guest of honor that I barely crossed paths with her and didn’t get to say how much I enjoy her work.

Me holding Space Oddity