auspicacious

Starting with the obvious, I didn't write anything on this blog in 2025. Or in 2024¹, for that matter. There are articles that I very much want to write, but time and cognitive capacity are always in short supply.

This article, though, is really about choices: what I didn't do last year, what not doing it accomplished, and some goals for not doing things in 2026.

Not keeping our tools to ourselves

First, I have to talk about the open-source tools that I helped bring to the world this year:

• PnPQ: a Python library for controlling optomechanical devices often used in quantum networking and computing testbeds
• tdc_toolkit: a Rust library for controlling time-to-digital converters and time taggers, extremely high-precision timing devices such as the PicoQuant MultiHarp 160
• Open-source baseline and related engineering process documents: documentation (which is a tool, just like code!) to help produce better software

I have always wanted to release my work as open-source, but, like many people, I did not work in organizations that were friendly to sharing their work, and I am not the kind of person who has the innate capacity to write open-source software in my spare time.

I owe a lot of thanks to the many colleagues and students who helped create and improve these libraries to the point where we could open-source them; many of these people are contributing out of a sincere desire to learn how to become better programmers, and I have nothing but admiration for the way they drive themselves to keep going, no matter how many comments I leave during code review.

In other words, we didn't stop once we had done the minimum we needed for to build something useful for our own work. Open-sourcing things is hard. It's much easier to put something together that only you can use than it is to build something for the world.

There is more to come this year: in order to move quantum networking from small experiments to reliable systems, I strongly believe that we need to provide reusable tools written in reliable, performant languages like Rust, rather than the ad-hoc Python that dominates so much of the scientific world. With luck, we will be able to open-source more of those tools.

Not making Nerd Nite Tokyo more expensive

With the help of many others, another thing I didn't do this year was raise the price of Nerd Nite Tokyo, even as the costs of hosting have continued to go up. We have found ways to make it work and keep it an event that is accessible to everyone; I hope that we can continue to do so.

Not relying on the United States and the biggest cloud companies

I didn't actively encourage the dominance of hyperscale cloud companies, and I didn't put my website behind a CDN. Listening to the concerns of people like Bert Hubert about the future reliability of America as a safe place to host Internet services, I didn't keep all of my services homed in America.

This year I closed my personal AWS account. I moved my email from Purelymail, which runs on AWS in America, to Migadu, which runs on OVH in France. I moved my backups from the AWS-based Tarsnap to rsync.net's Switzerland location.

This website is still hosted in America, on NearlyFreeSpeech.net. They still manage my DNS as well. I would be hard pressed to find a better provider for my needs.

I am still more dependent on Google than I would like, and with Japan's My Number card system becoming increasingly essential for interaction with the government, it is unlikely that I will be able to move away from a mainline Android smartphone.

There are no perfect solutions here. The European Union increasingly looks like the most trusted location for a digital home, but I would very much like to see more competition in that space from Japan.

Not sharing this article on climate change

At the beginning of last year, I said that I wanted to share this Slate article on fighting climate change by doing nothing once a month to give it as more visibility. I didn't manage to do that. But it did inspire this blog post.

Not eating animal products (sometimes)

The list of things I avoid eating grows each year. It started years ago with cured and processed meats like bacon, then moved on to beef. In 2025, I worked on gradually making my home kitchen almost entirely vegan.

Each time I choose to avoid a food, it's like strengthening a muscle: I know that it's better for my health, it prevents animal suffering, and it is critical to fighting climate change, and I find it easier to choose to avoid that food the next time.

Food is also one of the easiest ways to expose people to new ways of thinking about their relationship to the world around them. I have found that in Japan, many people have little experience with the idea that other people might not eat exactly the same things that they do, or that there might be non-religious, ethical reasons for doing so.

Not consuming plastic packaging (as much)

Volunteering to help clean up Tokyo's rivers over the past few years has made me increasingly motivated to avoid Japan's ubiquitous plastic packaging. When I see vending machines or convenience store bento now, I see the piles of PET bottles we pull out of the river; I see the bento boxes' stryrofoam slowly breaking up into tinier and tinier pieces as it mixes with the riverbed, impossible to remove.

Avoiding plastic entirely would be an exercise in futility. But that experience motivates me to carry my own water bottle with me and go out of my way to avoid those plastic bento.

More importantly, it's a reason to talk about these things: I have found that most people in Japan, as in many countries, seem to have never questioned the way things are, assuming that since they follow the rules and sort their garbage properly, everything must be fine.

(Even many of the other river cleanup volunteers bring PET bottles to drink from and distribute tiny, individually plastic-wrapped cookies at break time).

Not relying on streaming services

I dropped my Spotify subscription quite a while ago, but it was only this year that I started actively buying music again. I've bought digital downloads from indie labels, artist websites, and Bandcamp; despite wanting to avoid the overhead of physical purchases, I bought some CDs as well. One thing I learned is that there is an incredible amount of friction when buying digital downloads from anywhere but Bandcamp. I cannot recommend the experience to anyone who is not both highly technical and has time to spare.

And then the irony, of course, is that I discovered many of these artists through Spotify. Music streaming services are truly miraculous. But they could be so much better.

I also started buying DRM-free ebooks from ebooks.com when I could.

I didn't take the path of least resistance and found a way to send artists and small labels money, even when they tried really hard to make it difficult to do so.

(Favorite album of the year? Probably Deacon Blue's The Great Western Road).

Not accepting swag

It seems like there isn't a company or organization on the planet, regardless of their stated beliefs about the environment or climate change or waste or anything else, that doesn't want to give away junk to their employees and customers. T-shirts that don't fit and plastic nonces that no-one needed are just the tip of the iceberg, or, in this case, the peak of mountain of discarded clothing in Ghana.

In 2025, I continued to ask that I not be given swag. I continued to get the same confused reactions for doing so. I work with intelligent, numerate, well-read people. The environmental impact of manufacturing is well-documented, and I am myself confused as to why this idea remains so unfamiliar to so many.

Not owning a car

2025 was the fifteenth year I spent without a car. There is a much longer article I would like to write to reflect on how this has changed my life.

Not using generative AI

I used generative AI once in 2025: I asked ChatGPT to suggest improvements to something I needed to write in formal Japanese. While it was useful, it went far overboard on formality.

It's not generative AI's environmental impact that concerns me the most; in the short term, its impact on society and individuals seems to me to be worse. There is too much to say on this topic, and so I will not say any more here.

Not being quiet

All of these (in)actions have one thing in common: they move us towards goals that most people say they want.

Most people say they are concerned about climate change. Most people say that they want to support artists. Most people say that they want to be healthier. Most people say that they value privacy, trust, and safety. And many people take actions that they think will help, including me.

But there is often still a disconnect between those actions and reality. For example, if you envision what a carbon-neutral world would look like and take the time to look at the numbers, you will quickly realize that your lifestyle will probably have to change. This is what motivates me to avoid meat, to avoid driving, to avoid flying, to avoid AI. More than that, all of these things mean pushing against the tide of society -- not doing things that everyone else does. And it is only by practicing not doing things that you can push back harder and not do more things.

I would like to think that the people reading my blog are literate, numerate, and decent enough to understand this. I know that I have more freedom than the average person in the choices I can make, but everyone can choose to put aside something in their life -- not do something -- and find the time and effort to make a change.

Of course, it's just as important that society make it easy to do the things that will bring about the changes that people say they want. There has been a lot of valid criticism of campaigns that cast the fight against climate change as one of individual responsibility. It's hard to stop driving if you live in America. It's hard to eat vegan when you live in Japan. The whole of society is set up to make life hard for you.

More than that, we are constantly sold the idea that the solution lies in adding more things: carbon capture technologies without a clear path to scalability, electric cars that are just as hostile to pedestrians as gas-powered cars, magical bioplastics that disintegrate when they are no longer wanted, smart watches that tell you the obvious, hypothetical cows that fart less. And new technology is tremendously important!

But if you are the sort of person who is capable of reading a whole blog post like this, ask yourself: if this is the world you want, how do you expect to get there without having to not do a few things? What can you not do right now, in 2026?

Coda

How about some ordinary New Years resolutions?

After passing JLPT N2 in 2024, I failed to keep up with my Japanese studies in 2025. I need to do better. Oh, and I should exercise more, of course. And improve all sorts of other things in my personal life.

I hope that you will also find the time to satisfy both your conscience and your personal needs in 2026.

There are so many things to do in this world; by not doing some of them, I hope that you will find others that are better.