Good morning! Today is Dec. 31, 2025, the last day of 2025. I, for one, am glad to see this year over with. For reasons I won’t get into here, it’s been a rough one for me, and I imagine for some of you as well.
Today in History:
1600: Elizabeth I charters the East India Company.
1744: Astronomer James Bradley discovers the Earth's rotational wobble.
1775: The American Army is defeated at Quebec City.
1879: Edison demonstrates his electric lamp
1921: The last fire horses are retired in San Francisco.
1945 The UN charter is established.
1946: Truman announces the end of WWII.
1958: The birth of the Goodbye Look; Fulgencio Batista tells his cabinet he’s fleeing the country.
1966: Neal Diamond’s “I’m a Believer,” recorded by the Monkees, hits #1 and stays there for seven weeks.
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Some of you already know this, but I’ve recently moved into a new place, and I’ve gone to some lengths to add Alexa to my home — TVs, speakers, lights, thermostat, and a lot more.
Is it useful? I’ll admit it was a borderline toy for a while. But as I grew to understand what it can do, I’ve come to lean on it for day-to-day things, and as even my Alexa system itself has remarked in conversation (yes, I have had actual conversations with it), it has grown quite a bit, both in size and usefulness.
Imagine, for example, setting up a shopping list by going through my kitchen cupboards and my fridge, listing off things I need to buy this week. Once I get to the store, I ask the app on my phone to show me the checklist that I’ve created at home. This doesn’t let me forget anything, and it limits impulse buys. Of course, I can just order from Amazon directly through the Alexa network, but I’ve not gotten deeply into that aspect as of yet. When I do use it, though, it keeps track of my deliveries and lets me know when the package has arrived. I know when to be home, to ward off the porch pirates.
Amazon’s recent move to what they label as Alexa+ has made it a far more useful tool and, from the standpoint of “feel,” a far more natural one. I already had a few older Alexa speakers stored away that I’d bought used at Hamfests and so on, and one from a Goodwill store. The most I’ve paid for the older, used ones was $20. The newer ones were $37 each and include motion and temp sensors. These allow me to turn the lights on when I enter a room and off when I leave. By adding a couple of speakers to what I already had in storage, I now have a speaker in every room except for the living room, where I have two for stereo music.
Speaking of that, I’ve also added Amazon Music, so now I have a very large and diverse music collection on tap. I can set my playlists to every speaker in the house, though usually just to the stereo pair I have set up in the living room. Since I cross-linked my Amazon to TuneIn, iHeartRadio, and similar accounts, I can also listen to just about any radio station in the country. Mostly, I find myself using it to listen to my Buffalo Bills games. I’ve had it read me Kindle books and Audible, as well.
As an amateur radio operator, I have a few older police scanners, which I use daily to monitor local agencies and the local Ham repeaters, as well. But if there’s one agency I want to listen to that’s outside of my scanners’ ability — say, for example, there’s an event I want to monitor somewhere else in the country — in comes Alexa, and boom, I have weather stations, police and fire from anywhere in the world, and of course, Ham radio repeaters. I’ve trained the system to do ham radio call sign lookups, too. If you’re a Ham, you understand how handy that can be.
I can see where some might consider a speaker in every room to be a bit of overkill, but as usual, I have a purpose in mind. I live alone, and as someone in my late 60s, I find Alexa’s ability to make phone calls by my voice command — for example, to 911 — is a real plus. I don’t need that tag thing hanging around my neck. For those proverbial “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up” type emergencies, all I need to do is ask Alexa to call the help I need. A real peace-of-mind thing.
A couple more peace-of-mind things: I’ve trained Alexa to listen for the smoke and CO2 alarms. It also listens for breaking glass and other loud sounds (like someone kicking a door in, for example). When any of those problems is detected, it not only announces the problem on all speakers, but it also sends an alert to my phone. The only problem with that so far is that occasionally, it gets confused with tones coming from the scanners generated by the local fire department. Since that mistake alerts me to a local fire call, I’m undecided whether it’s a problem or not. I plan eventually to install a couple of cameras, one at the front door and one inside, which I can use to look around inside the house from wherever.
Even without the cameras, from absolutely anywhere, I can drop in on any room in the house to listen to what’s happening, adjust the thermostat, turn lights on and off, and eventually, when I get the time to install the necessary hardware, I’ll be able to lock or unlock the doors. I also have Alexa trained to alter the lights it can control when I’m gone, to make it look like someone is home. It knows when I’m home or away and changes its lighting modes accordingly.
The system has access to my calendar and reminds me when I have things on the schedule — doctor appointments, take the trash out, pay the rent, and so on. Birthdays, too. It also monitors my usual news sources for breaking headlines, and announces them when they come in. A real help for me in my writing for PJ Media.
It has become my alarm clock. My actual alarm clock sits there keeping time, but I've not used the alarm function in months. Alexa wakes me up, reminds me of my schedule, gives me a news and weather update from sources I chose, a today in history, and upcoming birthdays. When I tell it good night, it reminds me of events the next day, turns off all the house lights, drops the thermostat a few degrees, and, since I tend to sleep better when it’s raining, it softly plays the sounds of a thunderstorm.
As you may imagine, my internet router is working much harder these days, and the traffic levels on my WiFi are quite high. Shrug. Well, that’s why I set it up the way I did. I grant you, it took a bit of effort to set up. I also admit I have a history in information tech, so I have a bit of an advantage in understanding how and why this stuff works, which sped the installation process.
The point I’m making is that AI, properly used, is a real help in everyday life, far as I’m concerned.
And now, for the upcoming issues. In the upcoming election cycle, you’re going to hear a fair amount of fearmongering. I’ve already seen more than one incident.
Democrats seem to be leading the charge on that effort, claiming privacy issues. Which is odd, given the way they’ve been using technology to spy on American citizens, particularly those with points of view that they don’t like. Some of you may recall a secret court order that empowered the U.S. government to collect the phone records of millions of users of Verizon, one of the most popular telephone providers — a massive domestic surveillance program and a shocking intrusion into the lives of others — back in 2013 under then-POTUS Obama. Now, Democrats, before you get your back up, that program actually had its origins back in 1978’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and then in Section 215 of the Patriot Act, backed by then-POTUS George W. Bush and passed by Congress after 9/11. There was plenty of outrage and plenty of lawsuits, but the National Security Agency has never confirmed to this day that the program had been shut down.
That said, I don’t particularly care. For one thing, Alexa+ is based on Claude, which is an AI system designed with AI safety in mind. Moreso than other systems, at least. So, the chances of someone gaining access to my money or my security systems are minimal. I’m not rich enough to be worried, either.
No system security is perfect. If someone really wants to break in and mess with the system, there's not much I can do about it. Look, gang, let's be real about this: This is the internet age. The train of individual privacy has long since left the station. I can see people getting into a lot of trouble with this tool, but like any tool, the trick is to be smarter than the tool. Put another way, artificial intelligence only works when the person running it has real intelligence.
The people having a cow about AI (you’ll see them spouting off soon if you haven't already) are modern-day Luddites in some cases, but for the most part, the ones screaming the loudest are the ones who will benefit most from people’s fearful reactions to new technology. Politicians, mostly. And ironically, they’re the ones that, given the chance, will be abusing it, using the weight of government to do so. Personally, I’m not worried about it.
Respect whatever AI systems you have running or want to build, but fear? Not needed.
If you’re interested in a deeper dive than I’ve offered here, I suggest you check out Jamie Wilson’s piece on AI.
Recommended: It Turns Out That the J6 Pipe Bomber May Have Been Correct
Here’s the thought for the day: Tonight is the night truck drivers try to stay off the road entirely. I call it amateur night. The problems with drunk drivers on New Year’s Eve have decreased somewhat over the last decade or so, but there’s still an issue you want to be aware of. So, here’s the thought: Don’t have one for the road; the road is already laid out.
I’ll see you next year.
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