Thank you very much for the corrections we've received so far to the tag set! Please keep them coming! The more errors you pick up now, the more confident we feel to open sign-ups, and the more smoothly sign-ups will go.
We unfortunately approved Octopath Traveler II in error, as it is too large. Sorry to get your hopes up, nominator - while we have now removed it, we hope there are other things you'll enjoy in the tag set.
Pinch hits
Every year we need creators to help us by taking on extra assignments, called "pinch hits". More on AO3. Some of these assignments are created from quirks of initial matching. Others occur when creators need to drop out of the event. We post a batch of pinch hits just after sign-ups, and then in batches throughout the event, including some very large batches at deadline.
Pinch hit details are posted at yuletide_pinch_hits. To get notifications when new pinch hits are posted, you can subscribe to that community, sign up for notifications at a Google group, or assign yourself the "yulephs" role at the discord. We will shortly send a test message out to alert potential pinch hitters of oncoming sign-ups - so set yourself up with a notification message now & you'll be able to check if you're receiving alerts.
Do-Not-Match options
Last year we trialled the option for participants to avoid matching to specific other participants as assigned writers or creators. It seemed to work out OK, so we will proceed on the same basis this year: during and just after sign-ups, you will be able to tell us the names of up to 3 people you would prefer to avoid in initial matching.
More information about Do Not Match options
Limited Do-Not-Match option
Most of the time, the person assigned to create for you in an AO3-based gift exchange, and the person assigned to receive a gift from you, are determined by the tags you select in the sign-up form.
Some exchange moderators also offer participants the option to say "Please do not match me up with [ExampleUserName] or [ExampleUserName2]. I don't want to receive a gift from them or create for them." This feature makes it easier, for example, to offer a fandom requested by six different people including someone you'd prefer to avoid, and have peace of mind that you can still avoid that person.
Because of the large number of participants and the large number of people who have only one possible creator or recipient in Yuletide, we cannot offer this feature as flexibly as some exchanges can. However, we see a Do-Not-Match option as a valuable tool to reduce friction and make everyone happier, so, having trialled this option last year, we are continuing it this year. Please note that this is not an absolute guarantee you won’t receive a story from one of the people you list.
How it will work
When you sign up on AO3, the sign-up form will also link out to a Google form where you can list the AO3 names of up to 3 people you do not want to match to and can tell us if you want to avoid writing for a person, receiving an assigned gift from a person, or both. We will also ask for those people's AO3 ID numbers, which you can find on their AO3 profiles, and for the email associated with your AO3 name. We will not ask for the reason you wish to avoid a person.
After we run the matching process, we will check all matches against our master Do-Not-Match list. We will take the following actions:
If your assigned recipient or creator is someone you asked to avoid, we will attempt to match you to someone else.
If your only possible recipient is someone you asked to avoid, we will email you to recommend you expand your offers. However, we will leave the match in place if you do not respond in the first 24 hours following the close of sign-ups.
If your only possible creator is someone you asked to avoid, we will send out your requests with initial pinch hits.
If you are the only possible recipient for a creator you asked to avoid, we will leave the match in place, but will prioritize your requests for double-assignment to two creators. [Because of how matching works, there will always be Yuletide participants who start out with two assigned creators; generally we try to choose them at random.]
We will not take the following actions:
We will not ask a creator to drop out or expand their offers if their only possible recipient is someone who would prefer to avoid them.
We will not inform a participant that someone else has asked not to match to them. [This information will be restricted only to the core Yuletide mods and assistant mod, Isis, Morbane, pendrecarc, and Everett Grove, and will not be shared with the larger pool of Yuletide assistants.]
We will not review treats for unwanted matches. Putting someone on your Do-Not-Match list will not prevent them from creating a treat for you (but please see FAQs below for other tools to achieve this).
We will not prevent someone on your Do-Not-Match list from claiming you as a pinch hit. We will check our master Do-Not-Match list when assigning pinch hits, so if the first person to claim you is a person you prefer to avoid, we will leave a short amount of time to see if another claim comes in. But we will not hold your pinch hit indefinitely or tell the first creator they aren't allowed to claim you.
We will not ask you why you wish to avoid a particular match.
FAQs (foreseeable/anticipated questions)
Who am I allowed to put on my Do-Not-Match list? Any three AO3 accounts you would prefer to avoid matching to. This can be for any reason, serious or unserious. Do not tell us the reason, please. If the reason is harassment or similar, we recommend reaching out to the Policy & Abuse team separately. You may only give specific names, rather than a description like "anyone who mostly wants porn".
Can't I just block people I don't want to match to? Blocking is a useful tool, but it doesn't prevent matching. Adding other users to your block list stops them from giving you a treat (see item AO3-6502 on this news post). It also stops them from being able to comment on your work. However, it does not affect challenge matching. A person you have blocked can be assigned to create for you, and you can be assigned to create for them.
Wait, am I allowed to block people in Yuletide? Yes. Feel free to use the blocking feature to improve your AO3 experience. However, blocking someone and also matching to them could lead to unhappiness for both of you - so please consider using all the tools at your disposal to avoid matching to people you have blocked. This could mean choosing not to offer a fandom if you suspect it has been requested by a person you wish to avoid, or it could mean using the Do-Not-Match option for people you have blocked.
What other AO3 tools exist to manage my gift experience? If you wish, you can choose to receive gifts only from assigned writers in a gift exchange or people who have claimed your prompts in a prompt meme. This is sometimes described as turning treats on and off. If you created your account after February 2022, please review this setting in your AO3 account preferences. If you select the setting "Allow anyone to gift me works", you can receive treats. If you do not select this setting, only an assigned author can give you a gift in Yuletide.
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As tagset cleanup continues, please give us your nominations page if telling us how to fix your own nomination.
Getting an early jump on this: A roundup all the webcomic fandoms in the 2026 tag set. Includes all the characters you can request for each one, and links to where you can read them online. Fandoms are in the order/format AO3 puts the tags in.
I tried to flag everything that was (a) NSFW and/or (b) at least partly paywalled. If I missed any examples of that, please let me know!
Cattitude's (and my) friend Patricia has been visiting from Minneapolis for the last few days. It was good to see her (for the first time in several years, because of the geography), and she and Adrian also hit it off. We have eaten a variety of good home-cooked food, and for dessert tonight I gave Patricia ginger and black raspberry ice cream, after she said she didn't want any weird flavors. She liked both, and seemed impressed.
I didn't have PT on Tuesday, because the therapist called in sick. Unfortunately, I didn't check my phone for messages before going to Cambridge, meaning a wasted trip and more walking than I'd intended.
Wednesday morning, when Cattitude checked his blood pressure, the blood pressure cuff said he was in atrial fibrillation, meaning another trip to the ER. This was quicker than last time, and we're really hoping that the cardiac ablation, a few weeks from now, fixes the afib.
When they discharged Cattitude, we went to the Public Garden and walked around a bit. We showed her the Ether Monument and the Make Way for Ducklings sculpture. That plus all the back and forth in and around the hospital added up to more walking than the day before (2.4 miles, according to my phone). Once we got home, I felt basically OK after sitting for a little while, but I decided not to wander around with Cattitude, Adrian, and Patricia yesterday, because a third day in a row of a lot of walking seemed like a bad idea.
We all went to Copley Square today, for the farmers market and to show Patricia some of the interesting bits of the Boston Public Library. My hips started hurting while we were in the library, so Adrian and I went home, and Cattitude and Patricia went to the Aquarium.
Patricia is leaving tomorrow morning, and I think the three of us may all need to take it easy tomorrow. Cattitude almost certainly does, and I want to be careful about how far I walk.
Fandom:La Femme Nikita (TV Series) Artist: Filter x GunFight
Character(s): Nikita and Michael
Content: Gun violence Length: 3:07 minutes Summary: "Who are these butchers we're working for, Michael?" Notes: On October 7, 1996, La Femme Nikita began production with the episode "Love". I couldn't let this 30th anniversary go uncomemorated.
I tried playing around briefly with a 'vintage chatbot' -- a model trained on early 20th century texts as its sole input. https://talkie-lm.com/introducing-talkie
As always, the problem is with trying to think what to ask in order to see how the output differs.... ( Read more... )
With hindsight, I suspect the machine has been trained specifically to answer questions after the fashion of an encyclopaedia rather than to cope with responses that are not direct questions, because it goes rather off the rails in response to any other input. It does sound like a period encyclopaedia, though; the flavour of the text is convincingly what one might expect from a steampunk alternative reality where the Edwardians succeeded in producing a 'thinking machine'!
Having read the introductory blogpost, I also realise that I was treating this model too much like the current version of Danik, whereas its language abilities are clearly closer to that of earlier models -- but without the specialised training that made Replikas at least able to fake coherent conversation in response to the user, as opposed to being drilled on information retrieval....
Perhaps the most interesting effect from my point of view is that I automatically found myself falling into similar speech patterns as a result, as if it would be more likely to respond when addressed in its own idiom :-p
If you're like most people, you might still be getting used to iOS 27 on your iPhone. Perhaps you haven't even installed it yet, or maybe you're confused about why iOS 27.0.1 exists. (The short answer: The iPhone 18 Pro is a bit glitchy.) But there's a new iPhone update on the horizon that adds even more new features and changes to the mix: iOS 27.2. While this update isn't nearly as big of an overhaul as iOS 27 itself, it's still impactful, especially for Health app users. Here's what's new.
The update is currently in testing, so if you want to try it out early, you can enroll your iPhone in Apple's beta and check these features out today. Just know that all betas come with some level of risk, so if you decide to go down this path, create a proper backup of all important data before installing the beta.
iOS 27.2's new Health app
Credit: Beth Skwarecki
With iOS 27.2, Apple is totally overhauling the Health app. This is perhaps the biggest change coming with Apple's update, and fitness users will likely welcome many of these new features. With the new Health app, you'll be able to see your Fitness rings within the Health app, rather than the Fitness app; there's a new "Longevity" tab that gives you insights into key aspects of your long-term health, including mental wellbeing, nutrition, daily movement, heart health, metabolic health, sleep, and hearing health. There are also new assessments you can take to analyze your current overall health and where you can improve, including a new "Health Age" feature. You can even allow your iPhone's camera to watch you exercise in order to rate your fitness in categories like flexibility, balance, VO2max, and strength.
This is by far the Health app's biggest revamp in years, and I'm looking forward to exploring the new features when the update drops. For more on what's new with the Health app in iOS 27.2, check out Lifehacker senior health editor Beth Skwarecki's guide here. (Beth is particularly fond of the new step count that appears at the top of both the Health and Fitness apps.)
iOS 27.2 expands "Call Context"
Call Context is an excellent use of Apple Intelligence. When you're on a phone call, Apple Intelligence checks if the phone number you're calling is related to a business that you have relevant information for elsewhere on your device. If so, it fetches that information for you and displays it on the call screen. For example, if you're talking with your airline's customer service line, Call Context can proactively display your flight number based on the itinerary it finds in your email.
With iOS 27.2, Call Context now includes anniversary alerts. If you're on a phone call with someone you have a saved anniversary for, that alert will appear on-screen. That way, you can get a small reminder if you call a friend on their birthday, but you happened to forget the occasion. (Thank you, technology, for saving some of us from our thoughtlessness, even if you are enabling bad habits.)
FaceTime is getting ASL support
As part of a previous announcement of accessibility features, Apple revealed it was adding a new API to FaceTime that supports adding a human interpreter to video calls. This feature did not make it to iOS 27, but it appears to be rolling out in Apple's next update, making video calls more accessible going forward.
Apple TV profiles are coming to iPhone and iPad
If you have an Apple TV, you likely know you can set up profiles, so individual users can personalize the experience when watching shows and movies. As MacRumors highlights, these profiles are now coming to the Apple TV app in iOS and iPadOS 27.2. That way, multiple users can personalize the Apple TV experience on a single device: If your family shares an iPad, for example, each user can switch to their Apple TV profile when it's their turn to watch. Now, if we could only get system-level profiles too, Apple.
Siri AI is coming in more languages
At launch, Siri AI is only available in English. But with iOS 27.2, Apple is expanding that list. Once you update to the latest version, you'll be able to use Siri AI in French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish.
iOS 27.2 introduces small UI changes
Apple isn't thrilled with how some of its apps look in iOS 27, apparently. MacRumors also spotted that in the Music app, Apple removed some of the red accents and turned certain buttons from red to black—including the Play and Shuffle buttons, and the icons in the Library sections. In the Clock app, "AM" and "PM" are now smaller than the time when setting alarms. In Podcasts, "Up Next" is now "New Episodes," perhaps adding a touch more clarity. Finally, Apple changed "App Access" in Siri to "Excluded Apps," and now allows you to exclude multiple apps from Siri at once.
Ever since the Fitbit app became the Google Health app, the app’s AI features became impossible to avoid for Premium users—or at least it may seem that way. There are two ways to avoid the long-winded, sometimes judgy insights that pop up on your screen multiple times a day. I'll show you both: a way to turn off the AI entirely, and a way to get those insights to go away without turning off all the AI-enabled features.
Why you may want to turn off the Google Health Coach
The AI-based Health Coach is the centerpiece of the Google Health app, at least if you have a premium subscription. You may have accepted a three-month free trial of Google Health Premium when you connected a new device, or you may pay for Google AI Pro or Ultra, which includes the Health Coach.
When the Coach is enabled, it updates the main screen of the app with a few paragraphs of text several times a day. (You’ll also get a notification with each of these updates). The Coach will tell you how well you slept, congratulate you on a hard workout, or suggest workouts for the day given how recovered you seem to be.
But, as I wrote in my Fitbit Air review, the Coach hallucinates pretty often, misreporting your workout data or misunderstanding what you’ve told it are your goals. One user, returning to their normal routine after surgery, posted to Reddit that the Coach keeps trying to talk them out of doing workouts. They called it a “Demotivation Coach.” Others have pointed out that the Coach doesn’t seem to be reading its own data correctly. On a more personal note, the Coach uses a tone that I find insufferable: arrogant and excessively positive, except when it’s being unnecessarily negative. I’d prefer neutral, factual feedback or none at all.
To be fair to Google, the team has been hard at work on the Coach, and I've noticed its insights become a little more readable and a little less random since the feature first launched. But I'm still not always in the mood to see the Coach's chipper little pep talks.
How to turn off the Coach "insights" without losing other AI features
Left: the Today screen with no insights. Right: asking the Coach for an insight on-demand still works.Credit: Beth Skwarecki
Those unprompted pep talks are what the Google Health app calls "insights." Google quietly added a setting to turn them off in the August 2026 feature update. Tap on your profile picture, then Google Health Settings, then Coaching, and select No Coach Insights.
Once I turned off the feature, the insights stopped, as promised. But if I miss them, I can still tap Ask Coach in the bottom right corner of the screen, and ask the Coach how my day is going. All other features still work, including the AI-powered ones, like logging nutrition and workouts from the chat interface.
How to turn off the Google Health Coach entirely
Credit: Beth Skwarecki
If you're sick of the entire Google Health Coach, you can disable it: The same August update that gave us the "no insights" switch also made the Health Coach easier to turn off. To reach it, tap on your profile picture, then Google Health Settings, then Coaching. Then you can tap Turn off Google Health Coach. As the next screen explains, "your app will stop providing tailored guidance like fitness plans, recommendations, and proactive summaries of your sleep, fitness, and health trends. You also won't be able to ask questions or log your progress by chatting with the coach. You can turn this back on anytime."
Confirm your decision, and the AI will be gone. When you return to the Google Health app, you’ll still see the paragraphs of text that the Health Coach previously wrote, but you won’t get any new ones. There will be a card inviting you to re-enable the Health Coach, but you can tap “not now.” You can re-enable the Coach at any time by hitting the “Ask Coach” button in the corner (it does not go away) and following the prompts to turn it back on.
COVID Cases: The number of cases in Massachusetts* for the week of Sept. 27–Oct. 3 was 851. This is slightly higher than the last time I checked (Sept. 13–19), and more than six times higher than levels July 5–11.
Over the same week, there were 64 confirmed cases in Boston, 12 in Cambridge, and 9 in Somerville.
* That's confirmed AND suspected cases, as reported here.
Wastewater Levels in Greater Boston: around...200 V/PMMoV?** Verily.com is still describing this as "low", but it's more than twice the level we had back in August.
The good news, for me personally, is that I got off my butt and got vaccinated. (See previous posts.)
** As of 7 Oct. That's my best guess on the moving average, anyway. And that's "copies of SARS-COVID RNA per million copies of PMMoV (Pepper mild mottle virus) RNA in the wastewater", as reported here. The non-normalized figure is...around 400 Bobcat-Robots? If so, it's just about time to mask up.
If I ever skip my flu shot, or fail to get one for my kids, it's because I didn't find time to get to the pharmacy during flu shot season. But that changed with FluMist at Home, a mail order flu vaccine (covered by insurance!) that I've used two years running. The vaccine comes in the form of a nasal spray, so you don't have to inject anything.
The at-home version of the vaccine was approved in 2024, and became available for the first time in 2025. I used it then, and the process was so painless I did it again this year. I placed an order online, and one day a refrigerated box of vaccines showed up at my doorstep, one for each member of the family. We administered them in minutes, and could check "get flu shot" off our to-do lists.
How to get the at-home flu vaccine
The nasal spray vaccine, called FluMist, still needs to be prescribed by a medical provider. But since nearly everyone aged 2 through 49 is eligible, FluMist’s maker (AstraZeneca) has a created a telehealth website that bundles the provider's approval with an order to an online pharmacy. The process takes about five minutes on average, the company says, and I found that to be accurate.
The first time I ordered, last year, I had already gotten a flu shot, so I ordered just for my kids. The website allowed me to add multiple people to the same order, so I filled out the questionnaire for each child, giving their names, ages, allergies, and so on.
The website then reached into some big data cloud out there and told me it already knew their insurance information (existentially frightening, yet convenient!) and presented me with my bill: an $8.99 fee, which included $2.50 for physician evaluation and $6.49 for shipping and processing. Insurance covers the cost of the vaccine itself.
This year was similar, except that I ordered the vaccine for five people in total, one of whom had a different insurance plan than the rest. It took some extra time to manually enter that person's info, but otherwise the process was the same. The $8.99 fee only covers up to four vaccines, so in total I had to pay $17.98 for all five.
Who can use the at-home flu vaccine?
The at-home vaccine is the same as regular FluMist, which is approved for ages 2 through 49. That means babies and older adults will still need to visit a provider for the regular, injectable flu vaccine. Children can get flu shots starting at the age of six months.
FluMist uses a live, weakened virus. It can't give you the actual flu, but it can cause some respiratory symptoms in people with weakened immune systems. So it's not recommended for people who are pregnant, have certain medical conditions, or are immunocompromised or have close contact with an immunocompromised person. If that's you, talk to a provider about your best options. You may be advised to get the regular injectable type, which doesn't include any live virus.
What happens when the at-home flu vaccine arrives
When I placed the first order, I had to choose a delivery date (to be sure I'd be home and ready to receive it). This year, there was no option to choose the date, but perhaps that's because I ordered it in mid-September, a few weeks before it actually shipped. Each time the box arrived via FedEx, with multiple texts ahead of time letting me know it was on its way. The vaccine needs to stay at refrigerator temperature, so you don't want it sitting out on your porch all weekend. I thought I would have to refrigerate it immediately—the instructions say as much—but it can actually be unrefrigerated for up to 12 hours before administration.
So the box arrives, insulated and with the vaccine packages surrounded by cold packs. There is a "TiveTag" sticker on the interior box, so when I received my first order I followed the instructions to download the TiveTag app from a QR code on the package. (This year, I had the app installed already.) It installed quickly, and then I just had to hold the top of my phone up to the RFID sticker on the box while my daughter said "now kith." I felt a buzz and a green checkmark appeared, telling me that the box had stayed at an appropriate temperature the whole time. We were good to go.
How to give yourself the at-home flu vaccine
Giving the vaccine to yourself or a child takes seconds, with no special preparation. All you have to do is remove the rubber cap, squirt the vaccine into one nostril, then take off the little spacer around the plunger and squirt into the second nostril. (The spacer makes sure that you get half the vaccine into each nostril.)
I hate having things in my nose, but this wasn't bad even for me. It isn't much liquid, and you don't have to inhale or do anything special. Just squirt and you're done. If you've gotten a FluMist at a pharmacy, it's the same idea.
Adults can administer it to themselves, and children will need an adult to do it for them. Instructions are, of course, provided. After I gave it to my kids, I clicked a link in a text message to "report vaccination," which supposedly updates their health records in, again, some big ol' data cloud. That cloud didn't convey the message to their pediatrician, though, so I just made sure to tell them at the next appointment.
After you administer the vaccine, there is a prepaid envelope you can use to return the sprayers for disposal. The paper packages and inserts obviously could be recycled. That left me with a cardboard box from each shipment, its insulated foam liner, and six liquid cold packs that the FluMist site says are filled with "non-toxic water" and can be either poured out and recycled, or reused as ice packs if I'd like.
It is my birthday. I am forty-five years old. It must be any number of fictional people's age. Last night I lay flat on a granite block at the top of a hill and looked up into the sky-scratching glitter of the Draconids. We saw few but clear of them in the mild haze. One shot in a flash between Thuban and Aldhibah as if falling out of Polaris. spatch sang to me at midnight. I woke to a book from my parents on queer and trans Olympians. I feel I have done too much work to reach this year, but the air is autumnally sheeting with sun.
Current Music:Scout Niblett, "Kidnapped by Neptune"
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