Rosco once again using the concrete as a pillow.

Why am I suddenly getting a whole bunch of likes from different OF bots named Julie? Do they not know there are other names they can use?

No thunder all afternoon, and then suddenly out of nowhere there's a huge crash directly over our house. Poor Rosco nearly ended up in my lap haha

1. Headlines everywhere today read "Grok apologizes." This is bullshit. A chatbot is not something that can apologize. Pretending otherwise is simple laundering these companies' bullshit about what AI is, while diffusing blame away from the human beings that developed and released this system.

Today in my garden: Dad watering the raised beds under the watchful eye of the gardenhound, and another harvest, containing my first tomato for this season.

No cheating, post the most recent picture of your pet. After a game of chase with Rosco’s green soccer ball toy, it’s time for a tummy rub from Dad.

“And this is why we don’t have nice things “ I feel sorta bad for the stick…. 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Just finished Chapter 9, and in doing so hit 70,000 words of my novel manuscript.

I haven't read anywhere near as many books as I'd like over the last few years, especially new ones (I've fallen into the habit of re-reading the same few 'comfort' series over and over because my brain doesn't need to be switched on as much as it does for a new story). Trying to fix that this year.

This dynamic is so common and Emma nails it. The pressure is on the non-assholes to stay quiet and keep the peace, and it often comes in the form of blame for reacting to the asshole & aggressively minimizing what you’re reacting to.

Trying to buy some new books and I've been stuck on a "processing" page for the last 20 minutes 😭

I'm re-re-posting this because it's such a good essay. "...writers should also never forget these two secrets of using LLMs to help your writing: - First drafts are where the thinking begins. - If you become dependent upon a tool, that tool can be taken away."

Bluesky desperately needs a “hide reposts from this account” option. Once again I’ve had to unfollow an artist whose work I liked because they keep reposting multiple of their own posts multiple times a day and it was effectively spamming my feed.

New year, new Pokemon! Two shinies I didn't have and a Galarian Articuno which is incredibly rare (this is only the fifth time I've seen a Galarian legendary bird in the two years or so since they've been out and they usually run away, so I caved and used my Master Ball on it).

Dad took Rosco for a walk to McDonalds today, as he does once every month or so, but when he tried to order Rosco's usual soft serve cone, discovered they'd run out of vanilla ice cream. Cue a sulking German Shepherd lol

Ended 2025 with 69,000 words of my novel manuscript written (nice). I expect the final word count will be around 100,000 words so let's see if I can finish it by 2027.

Final post on my writing blog for 2025: triumphs and tribulations. rebeccajfleming.wordpress.com/2025/12/31/r...

NYE plans.

Israel becomes the first country in the world to ban the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders. Let that sink in. File under "Things you do when you are committing genocide"...

Today in my garden: The woof machine guards me as I water the tomatoes, and our final harvest for 2025.

Final post on my writing blog for 2025: triumphs and tribulations. rebeccajfleming.wordpress.com/2025/12/31/r...

Apparently there was something very interesting in this shrub, because we had to stand here and sniff it for a good five minutes.

One thing I've noticed around here is that I'll see a stray cat wandering around the streets for 4-5 months, and then one day I'll see it inside somebody's house, looking out their front window. Cat distribution system working as intended.

I recently heard the period between Christmas and New Year described as "the perineum of time" and... yep, that's exactly what it feels like. There's no reason why I shouldn't be able to do something productive this week, but it feels like my brain is in some sort of limbo.

How I'm walking out of 2025

There's a key set of principles we use in the unit I teach. Students frequently use ChatGPT to do their assignments, but it: -omits some items from that set of principles -misnames some principles or explains them incorrectly -inserts guidelines that come from a different set of UX principles

This letter pretends it is reasonable and obvious but ultimately is an attempt to excuse a dozen or more ways of letting anti-human, pro-techlord, environment-destroying septic AI into our industry, organizations and processes. But there just isn’t an ethical use of generative AI, full stop.

David Attenborough [whispering]: “Like a grain of sand in a vast desert, the predator blends seamlessly into its environment, nearly imperceptible to the naked eye.”

I saw one of those meme videos where people were pretending to take a bite out of their dog to see their reactions. I pretended to bite Rosco's ear and he just looked over his shoulder at me like this Husky meme haha

Remember: When Tylenol was poisoned *by an outsider* and killed people, the company recalled all their products & redesigned them. When Intel’s Pentium had a bug so obscure it affected 1 in _9 billion_ long division calculations, they recalled their chips. ChatGPT was made deadly *by its team*.

Buttons are back. Knobs are back. Dumb devices are back. Own-it-forever software is back. Print is back. Personal websites and chronological feeds are back. Touching grass is back. People keep saying 2015, but it’s not far enough. The entire 2010s were a mistake. We must retvrn to… 2009.

I track my novel progress by checking the word count in MS Word for each individual chapter (as each chapter has its own document), but I also have a document that has all chapters combined into one file, along with a title page, table of contents etc...

Me: *walking through my garden* Why the hell are all my plant labels on the ground instead of in their pots? *carefully puts the labels back into their pots, ensuring each plant has the correct tag* Rosco: *runs through garden chasing his tail and knocking the labels out of the pots again* Me: 😑

Earlier today I was cleaning some stuff out and found a box for a camera from about 20 years ago, which I don't even have anymore, and it still had the cables in it. I went to throw them out and Dad snatched them from me and said "You should NEVER throw out cables! You might need them one day!"

In accordance with our Christmas Day tradition, Dad and I are watching a good old fashioned religious film.

Thanks for sharing this document, @rweingarten.bsky.social. I read it, and I believe it's inexcusably inadequate and will not prepare teachers or schools to confront the very real dangers of the "A.i." products pushed by your partners, including OpenAI. A few thoughts for your consideration...

I don't like eBooks because I can't lend them to other people like I can with printed books. I also don't lend my books to other people. I know this doesn't make sense, and yet...

Today in my garden: The Thai pink egg tomato plants I pulled out of my front flower garden and repotted are thriving, and I’ve transplanted my yellow pear, green zebra and pink tiger tomato plants out into their proper pots beside them. As always, Rosco and his trusty green ball supervised.

Every time I see a new trailer or marketing thing for Avengers: Doomsday I'm reminded why I basically stopped watching the MCU films after Endgame lol

Another post on my writing blog: When 'writing' doesn't involve writing. rebeccajfleming.wordpress.com/2025/12/23/w...

A little summer harvest with my woof machine: some silverbeet and snow peas that came up from the scraps of last season’s plants, and they first beans for this season.

On brand Christmas lights viewing

Rare footage of St Paul’s Cathedral testing its giant flamethrower

Generative AI is also causing me more work as a college professor, in teaching, research, and admin work.

THIS. *They stole your fellow writers' FUCKING HEARTS' BLOOD to power their fancy-ass text-based writer-imitation machine.* You wanna get all NUANCED about that? Your easygoing take on that issue will sooner or later (most likely sooner) be used to steal *your* stuff. Let's see how *you* like it. 🫤

I’m sorry, but it is disgraceful to be an academic who uses this technology to conduct research. It should be prohibited in all of our scholarly institutions, including universities and journals.

Today was spent doing 'writing' work that wasn't really writing: I realised the location of certain cities and landmarks in my novel (and in the map I had drawn for it) didn't work, because there were things happening in a certain region in two different chapters...

Majestic.

Sleepy loaf.

David Walliams' reputation was an open secret, junior staff were told to meet him in pairs & never visit his home, yet HarperCollins only dropped him when a Telegraph investigation came out. The problem is not just him. HarperCollins knowingly promoted & funded a guy sexually harassing junior staff.