Bonus farm news: I had no idea about the existence of Cucurbita melo var. flexuosus, a k a the cucumber melon! I totally want to try that. Also check out this very cool long-storage cucumber. Must try that as well.
Not all audio in this group, though in part because three of them don't exist in audio (as far as I know).
You're the Problem, It's You by Emma R. Alban -- (audio) This is the same author as Don't Want You Like a Best Friend, and in fact this book is in the same continuity, with characters from the earlier book showing up in this one. M/M historic romance. Honestly, the things that bothered me about the previous book continued to be annoying in this one. The characters are modern teenagers dressed up in costume. The social dynamics, conversation, and language in general are intrusively contemporary. On top of that I didn't find the plot interesting and the final twist was obvious from a mile away. That said, the writing is technically competent, and if you like your historicals to be modern teenagers in cosplay, you might enjoy it.
The Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo -- (audio) Part of the Singing Hills cycle, in which cleric Chi wanders around collecting stories with their sentient hoopoe bird. This one partakes strongly of horror elements. The climactic twist wasn't a surprise to me, though the details weren't obvious earlier. Quite solid, although not my favorite book in the series.
A Sweet Sting of Salt by Rose Sutherland -- (audio) Lovely writing! This is a not-revealed-until-very-late-but-obvious-if-you-know-the-tropes selkie story. F/f romance. The plot is both sweet and menacing, though the protagonist has a few "are you really that dense?" moments. Content notes for animal death and for main character peril but a happy ending.
Harvest Season by Annick Trent -- (print) I have loved everything I've read by Trent and should really track down the works of hers that I haven't read yet. Historic f/f romance short story. Sometime lovers get involved in labor activism for the weavers and find their chance to be together when they need to flee the law. The history feels very solid and the writing is gorgeous.
The Lotus Empire (The Burning Kingdoms #3) by Tasha Suri -- (audio) I had so very many thoughts when reading this, but my notes just say "very satisfying ending" (to the series). Alt-India. High politics, warfare, magic, and creeping infiltration by an alien presence whose goals are extremely different from what any of the humans might want. It gradually becomes apparent that this is a science fiction setting rather than a fantasy setting, without dropping any of the trappings of high fantasy. There has been a f/f romance thread throughout the series, with the pair alternating between lovers and deadly enemies. The romance wraps up in a much more satisfactory way than previous events led one to believe was possible. I loved loved loved this series.
I Shall Never Fall in Love by Hari Connor -- (graphic novel) I was charmed this graphic novel taking a queer twist on Jane Austen's Emma, which presents the Knightley character as a transmasculine age-mate to Emma and gives Emma a cousin who is mixed race and becomes the primary focus of Emma’s misdirected match-making. Much of the plot involves the Knightley character coming to terms and acceptance with their gender identity and Emma recognizing her romantic attraction to them. While the cast changes take the plot in some new directions, there are also parts where the story follows the beats of Austen’s original rather strongly.
Masters in this Hall by K.J. Charles -- (print) M/m historic romance. A short caper-style adventure involving characters related to the "Lily-White Boys" series, which ties in various characters seen in that continuity. Clever.
Bold Privateer by Jeannelle M. Ferreira -- (audio) Short f/f historic romantic adventure, written in Ferreira's usual poetic/impressionistic style. There is violence but no tragedy. This appears to involve characters related in some way to the protagonists of The Covert Captain, but who receive only a brief passing reference in that book.
A Ruse of Shadows (Lady Sherlock #8) by Sherry Thomas -- (audio) One of the things I've enjoyed about this Sherlock-Holmes-is-a-woman mystery/adventure series is how the non-linear presentation and severely unreliable viewpoints keep you guessing...and then you want to read it all again immediately to see how it fits together. Unfortunately I just wasn't feeling it in this one. The non-linearity shifted into incoherence I kept losing the plot (and I normally love that sort of thing).
The Duke's Sister and I by Emma-Claire Sunday -- (audio) I don't know what it is with so many of the current crop of sapphic historicals from major publishers being so...so MEH. The plot is generic and there isn't enough of it, the characters spend too much time angsting over their relationships, and it's only tenuously grounded in its alleged historic setting. It's not exactly *bad*, it just isn't *good*.
And that finishes up the 2024 reads. Only another whole year to go!
A surfer avoided injury after being attacked by a shark Monday morning at Marin County’s Dillon Beach, officials verified Tuesday.
The attack occurred around 9 or 10 a.m. near the mouth of Tomales Bay, said Graham Groneman, a battalion chief with the Marin County Fire Department. The area is a known habitat for sharks where sightings aren’t abnormal.
“It’s where shark experts do research on Great White sharks,” he said.
The attack damaged the surfer’s surfboard. California Department of Fish and Wildlife investigators swabbed the surfboard for a DNA sample to help identify the shark species involved, said Peter Tira, a CDFW information officer.
“Given the holidays, we won’t have results on that analysis for a while,” he told The Press Democrat in an email.
Monday’s attack was the second to occur this month along the coast of Marin and Sonoma counties. On Dec. 12, a surfer was hospitalized after being attacked at North Salmon Creek Beach in Bodega Bay. He was treated for a bite to his hand while his surfboard was left with bite marks.
Groneman said shark activity may increase in the area due to a growing presence of sea lions and seals that serve as prey. Experts have previously said encounters between sharks and humans are infrequent but may occur when the predators mistake surfboards for prey.
According to CDFW data, there have been 229 documented encounters involving sharks and people along the California coast since 1950. The data pertains to sharks that physically touched swimmers, boards or kayaks. Not included are shark sightings or incidents involving hooked sharks.
Sixteen of the 229 incidents were reported along the Sonoma County coast and there were 18 along the Marin County coast. Great White sharks were involved in 199 of the incidents, according to the data. Five of them involved Hammerhead or Blue sharks while the rest weren’t specified.
Outside of the North Bay, a shark attack is believed to have been involved in the disappearance of a triathlete at Lovers Point in Monterey. Erica Fox, 55, was last seen Sunday after a member of her swim club spotted a shark in the area she’d been swimming.
Beaches are expected to remain open this week even though the Northern California coast is being pounded by a winter storm. Officials are encouraging visitors to use caution when going to the ocean.
“It’s definitely not gonna be your ideal beach weather,” Groneman said.
Slightly to my surprise, earlier today I got a text from my GP saying approximately "yes your serum ferritin is now 'normal', but also, uh, by this we mean '15, with a reference range of 13-150, after six weeks of supplements', so... keep taking the supplements and we'll retest in six weeks!!!"
It is possible that the reason this actually got flagged at all was in fact that I've got a slightly elevated white cell count, and had I just had normal serum ferritin I'd have had to submit the "uhhh sooooo..." eConsult. Which I'd been gearing up to do, because the serum ferritin result showed up in the NHS app sooner than anything else!
Unfortunately, I had been working myself up to mentioning some Possible Additional Signs Of Concern in said eConsult (the various unimportant bleeding, like "there is usually old blood when I blow my nose BUT/AND I am very much using a steroid nasal spray every day") and I now have a solid excuse to keep putting it off for another six weeks, but hey. No longer officially anaemic! Pity about what's going to happen when I run out of supplementary iron, huh!
Christmas is here aaaaaaah I am somehow not mentally prepared for Christmas Eve to be tomorrow.
However, all my preparations are sorted except for the things I need to do on Christmas morning, and I have done the tragic washing up so my house is ready for me to mostly abandon it for a couple of days.
Choir went pretty well - our Christmas concerts have had real issues with falling audience numbers for the last few years; we used to sell out four or five concerts, but lately it's been more like "two or three half-full". So this year they obviously decided to try something new, and we did three different, although overlapping, concerts with different vibes - two were basically sold out, and the third was all but the top tier, which only had about 50 people in it, but was probably still better turnout than any of the concerts last year. So it looks like that has worked, and we can expect more of that in the future.
We did a lot more "popular" music - White Christmas, Mariah Carey, the JoBros, Shakin' Stevens... I'm kind of torn, because I'm not really good at that sort of thing, and I'm not really sure why you would want to come and see us do "Like It's Christmas" rather than a rock or pop choir, whereas we can do you a genuinely excellent rendition of O Magnum Mysterium or Stars or something like that which plays to our strengths. But the audiences really seemed to enjoy it, and most of the songs were quite fun to sing. And we did do Darius Battiwalla's arrangement of "O Holy Night", which is gloriously over-the-top (the bit where the fortissimo orchestra drops out from under the chorus!).
Our conductor kept encouraging us to "bop" while singing the more fun pieces, but I really wasn't sold - the community choir were doing something similar, and frankly I thought it looked messy and distracting no matter how often he claimed it was essential for the music. I think you do actually need to do properly synchronised movement if you want it to look good (NB: I absolutely do not want to do properly synchronised movement either! this is not why I am in a choir!).
Tomorrow I'm going for brunch with Miss H and then over to my parents', probably to help with last-minute prep before the rest of the family arrive! I won't see them, though, because I'll be off to church before they get there. That will be a Christmas Day treat.
Well. Almost there. I'm not cooking Christmas dinner this year—Bun and MRBun2B have invited us there—but tomorrow I am producing Afternoon Tea for them, plus BIL, Boy, and MrBun2B's parents. The most concise way I have found of referring to this couple is "Bun's in-laws", though they are not that at present. Beast feels there should be a word for this relationship, but I don't think there is. Am I wrong?
*
Have spent an hour or so arranging holly (we have a tree with berries!), ivy, acuba japonica and white lilies (still in bud) to decorate the dining room. Very casual arrangements, but I like the effect. Also very economical, as all the greenery was culled from the garden and we only needed to buy two bunches of lilies. If any of you is worried about the cat, I can promise there will be *no* difficulty keeping her out of the dining room, when it is filled with People. She can have a nice, peaceful Christmas Day to recover.
*
Final chorus engagement for the year was at the Hamlet Centre last Friday. Now that the chorus is so much younger, a large proportion of members are working during the day )we used to have more pensioners and housewives) so there were only five of us, but we duly turned up. This particular version of the Hamlet Centre is for young adults with various disabilities. In the past we've also sung at the children's version, which is usually delightful because at least one little girl always got up and danced as we sang. I wasn't expecting a dancer this time, but I was wrong! There were a couple of kids there, and the little girl danced!
With only five of us—three Leads and two Baritones—there wasn't a lot we could do in terms of Christmas repertoire, but there was a recording of various Christmas songs which we sang along with, and we did manage to throw in Silent Night, White Christmas and the Carol of the Bells acappella. I harmonised happily as the mood took me.
It's a fairly unique experience. It's always kinda bizarre and quite joyous. I didn't take part last year, for reasons of New Hip, and remembered all over again why it is a good thing to do. I think the three newcomers among us were all hooked!
A South Bay school district agreed to pay $5.75 million to settle claims that a teacher impregnated a 15-year-old student at Leigh High School during a long-running illegal sexual relationship, and then forced her to have an abortion.
The Campbell Union High School District’s payout comes nearly two years after the allegations surfaced against Shawn Thomas, a physical education and social science teacher who also worked as a football and track coach at Los Gatos High School. The alleged abuse happened during the early 2000s, and came to light decades later after the former student’s sister urged her to go to authorities.
Thomas, who was arrested in March 2024, now faces numerous criminal charges, including rape, sexual penetration of a minor and lewd and lascivious acts on a minor.
The former student’s attorney said the payout represented a measure of justice for the former student, now in her late 30s, and “sends a clear message that schools must take their duty to safeguard students seriously.
“After all these years, my client is finally being vindicated and the school district is finally being held accountable,” said the attorney, Lauren Cerri. “Her entire life was derailed because no one listened to her, and no one believed her.”
The lawsuit accused Thomas of grooming the girl while she was a freshman at Leigh High School, by giving her “special attention” during the 2002-2003 school year. He was already known to be “overly touchy” with students, the lawsuit claimed, and he went on to ask the girl to wear a skirt to school and drove her around.
Their illicit relationship escalated to sexual encounters at his home, a friend’s home, and in his classroom, the lawsuit claimed.
At one point, Thomas’ wife — a dean at the school — nearly walked in on the two during one of those encounters in a classroom. When the student later alerted Sarah Thomas to her pregnancy in spring 2023, the lawsuit claims the dean responded by blaming her.
Neither Sarah Thomas nor anyone else at the school ever reported suspicions of her husband’s sexual abuse to authorities, the lawsuit said. Shawn Thomas allegedly insisted that the girl get an abortion, the lawsuit claimed, which she did.
Both Shawn and Sarah Thomas were placed on paid administrative leave when the allegations came to light in March 2024, Cerri said. Their statuses at the school district were not immediately clear Tuesday.
Leaders with the Campbell Union High School District did not immediately respond to requests for comment from this news outlet.
The case highlighted the peril of teachers or coaches being supervised by their romantic partners, as happened in this case. Cerri stressed that such arrangements never should happen, because it “clearly creates a conflict of interest.”
“The safety of the children always has to come first,” Cerri said.
The sister of the former student said in a statement provided by the former student’s attorneys that the settlement offers “one more step toward my sister reclaiming her life after the immense harm she endured.” The woman and her sister were not named in the statement, and the Bay Area News Group typically does not identify victims of sexual assault.
“While nothing can undo what happened, we are grateful that the district is finally being held accountable for its failures,” the former student’s sister said. “Our hope is that this moment not only helps my sister move forward, but also ensures that no other student is ever ignored or unprotected in the way she was.”
Staff reporter Robert Salonga contributed to this report.
Jakob Rodgers is a senior breaking news reporter. Call, text or send him an encrypted message via Signal at 510-390-2351, or email him at jrodgers@bayareanewsgroup.com.
I am delighted to announce that the 4th Penric & Desdemona collection on paper is coming from Baen Books in May, 2025, to be titled Penric's Intrigues. (I believe we had some title brainstorming on that a while back in a comments section on this very blog. Titles are always a challenge...)
It will contain the novel-length The Assassins of Thasalon, and the novella "Knot of Shadows".
I proofread the galleys last week. Cover art is not yet available, but the copyright page lists the artist as Kieran Yanner. This is a new artist to me, but a visit to his website looks promising.
I hope Baen will be encouraged to reprint the mass market paperbacks of first two collections, which have been out-of-print for a while. (All the hardcovers, plus the paperback of Penric's Labors, remain available.)
Because I am a nerd — no, really — every time I watch Monsters, Inc. I think about the biology and physiology of its monsters. As in, I very strongly believe that all the different monsters in the film are the same species, rather than separate species of monsters who have all decided to live together in harmony (a la Zootopia). I hypothesize the monster DNA does not strongly code for morphology, and so you get this wide range of body shapes, limb numbers, squish levels, etc, and just because the parents look one way doesn’t mean their offspring look similarly. You never know what you’re going to get until it comes out. So, like apples and dogs, every monster, as a phenotype, is a complete surprise.
Have I thought about this too much? Yes. Yes, I have. But if I have, it’s because Monsters, Inc. has encouraged me to do so. The filmmakers at Pixar, whose fourth film this was, went out of their way to build out a monster world so detailed and complete, and so full of little grace notes, details and Easter eggs, that one can’t help but follow their lead and build it out a little more in one’s head. Thus, the intriguing nature of monster DNA, and how it is (in my head canon, anyway) why you see so many weird and wonderful monster designs in this film.
The story you will know, especially if you were a kid at any point in the 21st century (or had a kid at any point in this time). The monsters under your bed exist, and they are using you for responsible renewable energy! Turns out that the screams of children are an extremely efficient source of clean power (this is not explained, nor should it be). The monster world has become equally efficient at scaring the ever-living crap out of kids, through a corps of professional scarers, who lurk and roar and flash their teeth and fangs and what have you. These scarers are not just municipal workers but the sports stars of the monster world, with other monsters having posters and trading cards of them.
This premise, I will note, could be played for absolute “R”-rated terror, and has been, several times — not necessarily an entire power plant apparatus, but surely the idea of horrifying creatures feeding off the fear of children. But as we all know, life is easy, comedy is hard. The real expert mode is taking this terrifying premise and wringing laughs out of it.
Monsters, Inc. does it by, essentially, being a workplace comedy. The monsters aren’t monsters when they’re off the clock — well, they are monsters, but they’re not scary. They’re just getting through their day like everyone else. Our two protagonists, James P. Sullivan (John Goodman) and Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) are your typical Mutt n’ Jeff pairing and workplace partners; Sully, who is big and blue and can roar with the best of them, is a champion scarer, and Mike is his sidekick and support staff, keeping him in shape and making sure they meet their scare quota and then some. Mike and Sully have great chemistry and it’s easy to overlook that they’re the reason you have to put a pee sheet on your kid’s bed.
The film also flips the script: Yes, the monsters’ job is to scare kids, but the fact is, the monsters are flat-out terrified of children — like a toxic game of tag, if one of the kids touches you, you could die. Even a sock brought back into the monster world is cause for a biological detoxification regimen not seen this side of a chemical spill. So naturally a toddler named Boo slips into the monster world and follows Mike and Sully home, and from there — well, things get squirrely. There is also some workplace espionage, and a subplot with Mike trying to get a girlfriend, and tales of energy extraction gone too far, but you hopefully get the point, which is that the filmmakers decided that the terror aspects of the film were the least interesting things to follow up on.
I love all of this. Also, it shouldn’t be a surprise — this is a Pixar film, and it is rated “G,” so the chance that this movie would go Full Thing were never exactly high to begin with. But anyone who has ever read my work knows that what I’m fascinated with is the mundane in the fantastic. Yes, it’s nice you’re a James Bond villain, but how are you making that work financially and logistically? Sure, there are 300-foot monsters that stomp about, but what is their actual ecology? And so on and so forth. It’s no great trick to make a monster. It is a trick to make a monster city where there is a logical reason for monsters to do what they’re famous for doing, and where doing that thing leads to very human complications.
The folks at Pixar are with me on this, overengineering their monster city with gags and bits and sly asides (the fanciest restaurant in town called Harryhausen’s? Chef’s kiss. The tribute to the Chuck Jones – Michael Maltese classic animated short “Feed the Kitty”? Two chef’s kisses! Two!), and giving us characters whose monstrous nature is a source of comedy. Having Sully voiced by John Goodman, an Actual Human Teddy Bear, is inspired, especially for his scenes with Boo. Meanwhile, Mike Wazowski is a literal ball of anxiety, and Billy Crystal has never been better cast. I would watch an entire movie of Mike and Sully just riffing, a fact which informs Monsters University, the movie’s sequel (well, prequel), which is not as good as the original but that hardly matters because we get more time with these two.
Monsters, Inc., is probably no one’s pick for the best film Pixar has ever made (that’s probably Toy Story 2, maybe Wall-E, with Coco being the dark horse candidate), but as I noted before, this series isn’t about the best movies, it’s about the movies I can settle in and rewatch over and over. Of all the Pixar films, Monsters, Inc., is this for me. You probably won’t weep watching this, like you might with those other Pixar films I mentioned. This one is thoroughly low-stakes. But low stakes is okay! I love looking at it, and keep wanting to be able to look around corners and go into shops and see how all the monsters are going ahead and living their lives.
There’s a whole world here I want to explore, and many things I want to speculate about. I want to tell the monsters my theory about their DNA. I’m sure that will go over super well.
The questions here sometimes feel random and sometimes aren't very relevant to me (how many one-night stands, bless; that feels like such a fossil of the height-of-LJ days when I first encountered this meme), but I do like it as a way to think a bit differently than I normally do about my life, and some things that had a big impact on me (like what a dog-hospital year it was for Gary) barely show up here. I do find myself at random points through the year noting things I do that I haven't done before, or wondering what my musical discovery might be, or whatever.
So here we go for 2025
1. What did you do in 2025 that you'd never done before?:
Wrote an extensive as the writer and basically project lead on a report at work -- never did this before, did it three times in a row this year.
Met a person from the internet and ended up having sex with them the same day. (Sorry if this is tmi, there will be no more details about it.)
2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?:
I didn't call it a resolution but when asked later about what I'd like to have this year that I lacked the previous one, I said
Another sexual and/or romantic partner? This feels impossible but so do the last four years' worth of things and they all happened!
Like three days after I wrote this I started talking to somoene on the social media site that's basically a kinky version of Facebook which, like regular Facebook, you can only access if you have an account and I was getting memes and events linked to by a friend until I got fed up and made an account. Six months later, I got a random message from someone who wrote a comment that I'd "liked" (as with Facebook, it tells you when people like your shit and then you can go look at their profile and all that) and in August I met him and it was fun to have a no-strings arrangement with a friend.
Will I make more for next year? I'm not sure, I think the coming year is more about keeping what I have stable: work, house, relationships, friendships, life....
50. What are your plans for 2026?
Laat year I wrote
Try to help everyone survive it with as much comfort and joy as we can manage, especially in the U.S. but everywhere really.
And I don't think I can improve on that answer either.
In a lot of ways it's been a rough year: the quick and steep decline of human rights in the U.S. has been hard to watch and harder to be affected by so personally. Work has been so difficult. I've had such a miserable experience trying to get referred for top surgery -- in the process bringing up so much medical fatphobia that I haven't even blogged about the whole saga, I can barely even think about it without panic or tears. Even my escapist hobby of MLB has been reminding me that billionaires feel
But in other ways it has also been a good year: it was really nice to be able to provide a safe landing place for angelofthenorth and Mr Smith, it was nice to get through a November without anything (new) and terrible happening. Connections with the local queers have been deepened and I'm delighted that D and I are now on the small committee of people who've taken over from the two founders who have reasonably been able to step back and enjoy the thing they made as the ordinary attendees the rest of us have gotten to be the last two years.
Today is sunny and cool, almost warm -- too warm for a jacket even. That's warmer than even the January thaw used to get.
I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.
I put out water for the birds.
EDIT 12/23/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
EDIT 12/23/25 -- I did more work around the patio.
EDIT 12/23/25 -- I did more work around the patio.
EDIT 12/23/25 -- I filled the trolley twice with twigs from the parking lot brushpile, then dumped them in the firepit in the ritual meadow.
I saw a flock of mourning doves in the trees around the ritual meadow.
EDIT 12/23/25 -- I dumped another trolley of sticks in the firepit.
EDIT 12/23/25 -- I dumped another trolley of sticks in the firepit.
I've seen a fox squirrel running through the trees. I heard a woodpecker but didn't see it.
EDIT 12/23/25 -- I dumped another trolley of sticks in the firepit. I think I've actually removed all the ones with berries that I want to burn, so the rest should be free for other uses.
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LIVERMORE — Perhaps this romance just wasn’t meant to be.
A first date between a man and a woman at a Livermore winery ended with the man filing a police report on battery and vandalism charges, claiming that their rendezvous went so badly, she shoved him and then keyed his car, causing $7,000 in damage, as he filmed her with his cellphone.
Now, Alameda County prosecutors have filed a felony case against the woman, court records show.
The woman, a 40-year-old resident of Salida, a census designated place in Stanislaus County, was charged with a single count of felony vandalism. Police allege she keyed the man’s Acura SUV, and shoved his arm out of the way as he filmed it. She wasn’t charged with the shoving.
The two went on a first date at a winery on the 5000 block of Arroyo Road in Livermore last July 13, the charging documents say. The woman was charged on Dec. 10 and hasn’t yet appeared in court, records show.
The man, an Alameda County resident, told police they met up as planned but got into an “altercation” that ended the date. That’s when she allegedly walked into the parking lot and keyed his car. The man called police and later identified her out of a photo lineup, court records show
Regardless of whether "AI" ever actually becomes intelligent, rather than just being an increasingly good "predict the kind of thing you want or should see out of this query" machine (a completely separate and also increasingly complicated subject), LMM and related "huge trained neural network" AIs are here and people have invested unfathomable amounts of money into them. Even if the bubble explodes, these AIs will still exist.
So what SHOULD they be used for?
Well, right off we get a conflict between "in the ideal world" and "in the current world".
You see, an awful lot of the conflict about AI right now -- the copyright suits, the arguments about using it for doing desk work, for finding ways to emulate dead, or even still living but aged, actors, etc. -- REALLY boils down to this:
Our society has no support network. So anything that humans do that sustains them is specifically a matter of SURVIVAL.
It's not just a matter of writing fun stories or making silly pictures. It's a matter of that being a significant survival element, perhaps the ONLY survival element, that many people have to keep them from disaster. Thus, any device or method that looks to make the individual's contribution to this work less valuable is a direct threat.
For AI, the problem is that it is QUALITATIVELY, as well as quantitatively, different from prior technological advances. It is GENERALIZABLE to tons of tasks that were until now almost entirely the domain of human endeavor. Trained LLMs are getting better and better at recognizing and copying and adapting multiple different types of writing - not just individual human styles, but different kinds of writing -- professional proposals, book reports, novels, patents, etc. -- and there's a LOT of people that threatens, and the number of people whose jobs are at risk is increasing with every improvement of the technology.
It is also inherently FAR more deployable for such tasks. If I want to make, say, a Terminator bot, even assuming I have the AI for it available, building a militarily robust, armed, flexible, powerful independent robotic platform is TOUGH, and takes a long time, just like retooling a factory.
But if your AIs are already generating text and can format it into Word, it takes basically NO effort to replace the guy at the desk with the AI writing software package.
In the IDEAL world, human survival and basic happy living would be ensured -- the robotic deployment and increase in productivity would be partially diverted to supporting all the people involved. Such people could then write what they wanted, paint what they wanted, with or without AI assistance or interference, and it would not impact their ability to live well.
That's not the way it currently works, though, so I am very much against the current trend to try to find ways to use AI to displace existing human workers in areas the humans depend on.
However, there ARE areas in which modern large-trained-neural network systems absolutely can and should be used even now.
For example, AIs are extraordinarily good at pattern discovery, and can also be trained to ANALYZE the patterns to see if a coherent framework emerges.
This is ideal for things like mathematical and physical/materials research, especially in the theoretical areas or the design realms where much of the problem is that the overall subject area is far, far too huge for a human being to comprehend. An AI properly designed could, at the least, pull out multiple "huh, that's funny" areas in a given field and draw a human's attention to them for further analysis. Some AIs are already showing the ability to perform what appear to be solid mathematical proofs, which is quite an interesting capability and has implications not just for mathematicians but for things like quantum computation and materials design.
AIs of this nature can also probe and model the structure of an astonishing number of chemical compounds and, perhaps more importantly, metamaterial structures, to discover materials that can do things we didn't know were possible -- or ones we did know were possible, but were having problems finding practical methods to achieve. New antibiotics, perhaps; optical metamaterials with negative indices of refraction; superconductors and super-insulators of both electricity and heat. This is the kind of thing AI is properly made for -- locating patterns within masses of data or of processes that are far too complex for human beings to view as a gestalt.
The same thing applies to medical advances; understanding the complexities of modern medicine is mindboggling, and what's needed is a way to somehow locate the important anomalies within a vast ocean of data. AI can do that.
Back in the 1700s-1800s, it was possible for one bright person to know pretty much everything in the sciences, and thus be able to make cross-connections between the fields, synthesizing knowledge from the combination. That's an impossible thing for one human being to do now.
But a human with an AI to help make the connections? That's not ridiculous at all.
In 2024, EFF wrote our initial blog about what could go wrong when police let AI write police reports. Since then, the technology has proliferated at a disturbing rate. Why? The most popular generative AI tool for writing police reports is Axon’s Draft One, and Axon also happens to be the largest provider of body-worn cameras to police departments in the United States. As we’ve written, companies are increasingly bundling their products to make it easier for police to buy more technology than they may need or that the public feels comfortable with.
We have good news and bad news.
Here’s the bad news: AI written police reports are still unproven, untransparent, and downright irresponsible–especially when the criminal justice system, informed by police reports, is deciding people’s freedom. The King County prosecuting attorney’s office in Washington state barred police from using AI to write police reports. As their memo read, “We do not fear advances in technology – but we do have legitimate concerns about some of the products on the market now... AI continues to develop and we are hopeful that we will reach a point in the near future where these reports can be relied on. For now, our office has made the decision not to accept any police narratives that were produced with the assistance of AI.”
In July of this year, EFF published a two-part report on how Axon designed Draft One to defy transparency. Police upload their body-worn camera’s audio into the system, the system generates a report that the officer is expected to edit, and then the officer exports the report. But when they do that, Draft One erases the initial draft, and with it any evidence of what portions of the report were written by AI and what portions were written by an officer. That means that if an officer is caught lying on the stand – as shown by a contradiction between their courtroom testimony and their earlier police report – they could point to the contradictory parts of their report and say, “the AI wrote that.” Draft One is designed to make it hard to disprove that.
In this video of aroundtable discussion about Draft One, Axon’s senior principal product manager for generative AI is asked (at the 49:47 mark) whether or not it’s possible to see after-the-fact which parts of the report were suggested by the AI and which were edited by the officer. His response (bold and definition of RMS added):
“So we don’t store the original draft and that’s by design and that’s really because the last thing we want to do is create more disclosure headaches for our customers and our attorney’s offices—so basically the officer generates that draft, they make their edits, if they submit it into our Axon records system then that’s the only place we store it, if they copy and paste it into their third-party RMS [records management system] system as soon as they’re done with that and close their browser tab, it’s gone. It’s actually never stored in the cloud at all so you don’t have to worry about extra copies floating around.”
Yikes!
All of this obfuscation also makes it incredibly hard for people outside police departments to figure out if their city’s officers are using AI to write reports–and even harder to use public records requests to audit just those reports. That’s why this year EFF also put out a comprehensive guide to help the public make their records requests as tailored as possible to learn about AI-generated reports.
Ok, now here’s the good news: People who believe AI-written police reports are irresponsible and potentially harmful to the public are fighting back.
This year, two states have passed bills that are an important first step in reigning in AI police reports. Utah’s SB 180 mandates that police reports created in whole or in part by generative AI have a disclaimer that the report contains content generated by AI. It also requires officers to certify that they checked the report for accuracy. California’s SB 524 went even further. It requires police to disclose, on the report, if it was used to fully or in part author a police report. Further, it bans vendors from selling or sharing the information a police agency provided to the AI. The bill also requires departments to retain the first draft of the report so that judges, defense attorneys, or auditors could readily see which portions of the final report were written by the officer and which portions were written by the computer.
In the coming year, anticipate many more states joining California and Utah in regulating, or perhaps even banning, police from using AI to write their reports.
This article is part of our Year in Review series. Read other articles about the fight for digital rights in 2025.
The US legal profession was just one of the pillars of American democracy that was targeted in the early days of the second Trump administration. At EFF, we were proud to publicly and loudly support the legal profession and, most importantly, continue to do our work challenging the government’s erosion of digital rights—work that became even more critical as many law firms shied away from pro bono work.
For those that don’t know: pro bono work is work that for-profit law firms undertake for the public good. This usually means providing legal counsel to clients who desperately need but cannot afford it. It’s a vital practice, since non-profits like EFF don’t have the same capacity, resources, or expertise of a classic white shoe law firm. It’s mutually beneficial, actually, since law firms and non-profits have different experience and areas of expertise that can supplement each other’s work.
A little more than a month into the new administration, President Trump began retaliating against large law firms who supported had investigations against him or litigated against his interests, representing clients either challenging his policies during his first term or defending the outcome of the 2020 election among other cases. The retaliation quickly spreadtootherfirms—firms lost government contracts and had security clearances stripped from their lawyers. Twenty large law firm were threatened by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over their DEI policies. Individual lawyers were also targeted. The policy attacking the legal profession was memorialized as official policy in the March 22, 2025 presidential memo Preventing Abuses of the Legal System and the Federal Court.
We also thought it critically important to publicly state our support for the targeted law firms and to call out the administration’s actions as violating the rule of law. So we did. We actually expected numerous law firms and legal organizations to also issue statements. But no one else did. EFF was thus the very first non-targeted legal organization in the country, either law firm or nonprofit, to publicly oppose the administration’s attack on the independence of the legal profession. Fortunately, within the week, firmsstarted to speakup as well. As did the American Bar Association.
Each December we take a moment to publish a series of blog posts that look back at the things we’ve accomplishes in fighting for your rights and privacy the past 12 months. But this year I’ve been thinking not just about the past 12 months, but also over the past 25 years I’ve spent at EFF. As many folks know, I’ve decided to pass the leadership torch and will leave EFF in 2026, so this will be the last time I write one of these annual reviews. It’s bittersweet, but I’m filled with pride, especially about how we stick with fights over the long run.
EFF has come a long way since I joined in 2000. In so many ways, the work and reputation we have built laid the groundwork for years like 2025 – when freedom, justice and innovation were under attack from many directions at once with tech unfortunately at the center of many of them. As a result, we launched our Take Back CRTL campaign to put the focus on fighting back.
In addition to the specific issues we address in this year-end series of blog posts, EFF brought our legal expertise to several challenges to the Trump Administration’s attacks on privacy, free speech and security, including directly bringing two cases against the government and filing multiple amicus briefs in others. In some ways, that’s not new: we’ve worked in the courts to hold the government accountable all the way back to our founding in1990.
In this introductory blog post, however, I want to highlight two topics that attest to our long history of advocacy. The first is our battle against the censorship and privacy nightmares that come from requirements that internet users to submit to age verification. We’ve long known that age verification technologies, which aim to block young people from viewing or sharing information that the government deems “harmful” or “offensive,” end up becoming tools of censorship. They often rely on facial recognition and other techniques that have unacceptable levels of inaccuracy and that create security risks. Ultimately, they are surveillance systems that chill access to vital online communities and resources, and burden the expressive rights of adults and young people alike.
The second is automated license plate readers (ALPR), which serve as a mass surveillance network of our locations as we go about our day. We sued over this technology in 2013, demanding public access to records about their use and ultimately won at the California Supreme Court. But 2025 is the year that the general public began to understand just how much information is being collected and used by governments and private entities alike, and to recognize the dangers that causes. Our investigations team filed another public records requests, revealing racist searches done by police. And 12 years later after our first lawsuit, our lawyers filed another case, this time directly challenging the ALPR policies of San Jose, California. In addition, our activists have been working with people in municipalities across the country who want to stop their city’s use of ALPR in their communities. Groups in Austin, Texas, for example, worked hard to get their city to reject a new contract for these cameras.
These are just two issues of many that have engaged our lawyers, activists, and technologists this year. But they show how we dig in for the long run and are ready when small issues become bigger ones.
The more than 100 people who work at EFF spent this last year proving their mettle in battles, many of which are nowhere near finished. But we will push on, and when those issues breach public consciousness, we’ll be ready.
We can only keep doggedly working on these issues year after year because of you, our members and supporters. You engage on these issues, you tell us when something is happening in your town, and your donations power everything we do. This may be my last end-of-the-year blog post, but thanks to you, EFF is here to stay. We’re strong, we’re ready, and we know how to stick with things for the long run. Thanks for holding us up.
This article is part of our Year in Review series. Read other articles about the fight for digital rights in 2025.
Surveying the sight, Ambassador William Walker, a seasoned American diplomat who had witnessed his share of atrocities while serving in Central America and who now headed the KVM, described what he had seen: [gory details redacted]
A good full-throated defence of the NATO conflict with Serbia over Kosovo in 1999, written shortly after the event, and coinciding largely with my own views: the conflict was a deliberate, unforced choice by Slobodan Milošević, and western policy rather floundered into NATO participation, but once a ground invasion was seriously being discussed, the Serbian leadership folded and the conflict ended with NATO and the UN, and of course the Kosovars, taking control.
It was written so soon after the conflict that a lot of important later developments are missing because they had not happened yet: the 2001 Macedonia conflict, the 2004 Kosovo riots, the 2006-08 independence process. This last, the future status of Kosovo, is the one point that the authors are a bit mealy-mouthed about, as the Western policy community had not quite got to the stage of comprehending that it was only going in one direction. (I am glad to have been part of the debate pushing that comprehension.)
But otherwise, the authors deal efficiently with a number of counter scenarios as to how the conflict could have been averted; the fact is that the USA and the rest of the western alliance had limited scope for affecting events, and while that limited scope was not always exploited to the full, in particular in the early phase of the NATO bombing campaign, this was not the big problem; the big problem was Milošević and his policies.
This was my top unread book about Kosovo acquired in 2022. Next on that pile is Outpost: Life on the Frontlines of American Diplomacy, by Christopher R. Hill.
Had not been seeing these lately, but over the past few days have been spotting several out of the back windows.
Which is one cheering thing among various niggles and peeves -
Yesterday I was informed that my order from Boots was being delivered, and then got two texts saying they had tried to deliver it but no-one answered. WOT. There was somebody here all the time.
Also a text that my other package (fresh yeast via eBay) had been delivered (this comes through the letterbox) - no sign of this so presume it has gone to the wrong door, and so far nobody has come round to pop it through ours.*
However, at least the Boots parcel turned up today: address label had street number blurred so reasons for mistaking, usual postperson recognised name, possibly yesterday was a seasonal worker?
Other annoyance: Kobo ereader running very sluggish - though this does not seem to apply across all books, which is weird?? Anyway, I connected to wifi in order to update the software, as possibly bearing on the matter, and dash it, it synced a whole load of things I had already downloaded and I have been obliged to clean up the duplicates.
I am, though, grateful that Christmas grocery orders have been nothing missing and no substitutions except for 1 thing which was not at all critical. Also oops, the pudding I ordered was rather smaller than I anticipated, but I feel one can have too much Xmas pud, and there are mince pies, brandy butter, etc.
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