This is a copy of the Searls of Wisdom newsletter delivered to subscribers on December 20, 2025.

Hey everybody, we've almost survived another year! Just ten days to go—I hope we all make it!

Looking back on the home stretch of 2025, this is all I have to report since our last issue:

• I built a sexy new gaming PC over 3 days, 120 teeny-tiny M3 screws, and at least ten cups of coffee
• I got my first nose job. I've always had a huge fucking nose, and I'm relieved to finally be able to breathe out of it
• I talked about both of the above on my podcast
• I'm so sick of bracing for the AI bubble to pop, that I've decided to look forward to it instead. Buy popcorn futures, everyone 🍿
• I released POSSE Party, which I'll talk a bit more about later. Also these bits:
  • I spent a couple days documenting the hell that is other people's API keys.
  • I recorded a tutorial video in 1, 5, 10, 15, and 20 minute variations. It's a Choose-your-own-attention-span adventure.
  • The first stop on my promotional tour was Aaron's livestream for a tour of the codebase, which you can peruse on GitHub

The day of my surgery, Becky insisted on taking a picture of me after I was told to put on a hairnet but before the drugs kicked in. I was very anxious going into the operation and she was very supportive throughout.

As 2025 winds down, the Searls of Wisdom LT (which stands for "Leadership Team", an acronym I'll be using from now on to amortize the time it took to write this parenthetical) has decided to evolve how it approaches our monthly newsletter operations. Change is hard for many of us, so in lieu of a normal essay about how my feelings inspired certain thoughts that led to valuable insights, I'm just going to explain what you can expect from this newsletter going forward before wishing you better luck next year and sending you on your way.

Merry Divestmas

Some time in June, my brother called me from the U.S. while I was riding a Shinkansen bullet train, at which point I realized I'd never actually taken a call while moving faster than 150 mph before. I remember a certain unease—unsure what the proper etiquette was—so I stepped into the hall between train cars to take it.

Spoiler alert: there's more to this…

Mike McQuaid recently blogged that he's joined the POSSE Party. He reached out a couple times to say he was scraping my own site to figure out how I accomplished certain things (like the iMessage previews for my takes section, but in general it must have been straightforward enough, because he didn't need me at all to get up and running. Kind of cool to see that he can teach his 20 year old blog new tricks.

In his LinkedIn post sharing it:

In practice, this looks like building your own version of a single-serving social network on your own site and exposing RSS/Atom feeds to other services to consume. Justin recently released POSSE Party which makes this easier by cross-posting to various social networks. I've complained for a while about (anti)social networking so I'm always up for new ways to use social networking less.

Naturally, he does a better job than me summarizing what the hell POSSE Party is for. When I'm too close to a project, it's hard to zoom out and talk about it like a normal fucking person.

If you don't count Halo LAN parties, I probably sank more time into Knights of the Old Republic on the original Xbox than any other game. By taking the classic tabletop mechanics they were known for and theming it with a setting that didn't bore me to tears, Bioware really hooked me. I even played through every campaign quest of the middling The Old Republic MMO, which are hundreds of hours I'll never get back.

Last night, this announcement just dropped, as reported by Jordan Miller at VGC:

Announced at The Game Awards, the game is being directed by Casey Hudson, the director of the original Knights of the Old Republic game.

"Developed by Arcanaut Studios in collaboration with Lucasfilm Games, Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic is a new single-player narrative-driven action RPG and spiritual successor to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic," according to a press release.

"Led by Casey Hudson, Game director of the original Star Wars: Knight of the Old Republic and the Mass Effect trilogy, the team of veteran game developers and storytellers at Arcanaut Studios is crafting an epic interactive adventure across a galaxy on the brink of rebirth, where every decision shapes your path towards light or darkness."

And with this teaser:

To learn that the director of both KOTOR and Mass Effect is coming out with a new game in a similar setting is really exciting. Hudson took some well-deserved shit for Mass Effect 3's ending, but he's spent enough time in the wilderness at this point to earn another shot.