Should We Be Using GenAI?

Introduction

As you have likely worked out on your own already, Artificial Intelligence is not going away. It has gone from being a joke to a novelty to the bogeyman to a tool that many of us use all the time. And yet, there are still holdouts, perhaps you among them. In my workplace, it’s a mixed bag. As recently as 2024 I was forbidden to use ChatGPT or other AI platforms at work; now, my employer  is wheedling, exhorting, begging, and all but requiring my colleagues and me to adopt it. On the family front, one of my daughters uses it a fair bit (sometimes frivolously), the other not at all. My wife is wary of it.

So should you use AI? I consider myself fairly well qualified to answer this. I have been dabbling in AI for almost fourteen years; have devoted a fair amount of research to kicking its tires; and now use it extensively both at work and at home. I’ve blogged about it a bunch of times. I’m unbiased, since I don’t work for the AI Industrial Complex, but I also don’t have a knee-jerk fear of technology.

I’ve blogged before (here) about how we can use AI, describing two fundamental ways—operationally vs. creatively—that people do use it. Today’s post is more about whether we should use it, and how often, particularly in light of the resources (electricity and water) that it consumes. Is environmental responsibility a compelling reason to curb our use of GenAI?

Some housekeeping

As I’ve explained here, AI is much bigger than the Large Language Model (LLM) chatbots that we consciously use as the natural successor to Google. We generally speak of AI as a productivity tool, but a whole lot of AI is devoted to the invisible algorithms on social media, YouTube, etc. that grab and hold our attention, threatening to reduce our productivity. I think of this as secondhand AI (like smoke). Meanwhile, you’re surely hearing a lot of hype about “agentic AI,” which can supposedly act on its own volition to achieve a goal. At this point I’m scared of agentic AI and think you should be, too, but that’s another post. The AI I’m considering here is Generative AI (GenAI), which is the type of chatbot (e.g., ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Claude) that you feed a prompt to as a way to research something, or as a way to quickly compose an essay, letter, or picture. This is how I believe most people think of AI, which is why the terms “AI” and “GenAI” are so often used interchangeably.

(Note that if you are reading this post long after April of 2026, and there isn’t a single living human not using GenAI, and/or the robots have taken over and enslaved you, treat this post as a historical artifact. At least you’ll get a sense of how society initially approached this technology.)

GenAI at work

If you work for a corporation that is clearly embracing GenAI, providing you a commercial, “walled garden” version of it, and the training to go with that, adoption is a no-brainer: do as you’re told and embrace GenAI immediately. My employer is already monitoring my use of it (though they haven’t said exactly how), showing my compliance on a dashboard. (My “AI Tools Usage” is showing 87% and green.) I could bristle at this, but a) I have always know my use of company assets is monitored, and b) my employer’s expectation that GenAI will make me more productive is reasonable, as is their expectation that I will be as efficient as possible. 

It’s remarkable how quickly all this has changed. I have seen GenAI’s use go from something my colleagues formerly tried (in vain) to hide, to something that my manager will outright ask me about. When asked, “Did you use AI to help you with this?” I now assume that the correct answer is a version of “yes.” (This answer is necessarily nuanced. Both in terms of being honest and articulating my ongoing value as an employee, I am sure to explain both how it helped and how it fell short of doing the task for me.) This week my boss tasked me with figuring out how to create a NotebookLM chatbot specializing in expertly summarized minutes of every meeting anyone on our team attends (or previously attended), which updates its training data automatically. So if our colleague Joe is on vacation we can ask the chatbot, “Why did Joe Blow switch out the vPlan in Blascorp’s EZ-Pluck profile?” and hope to learn the history. I feel like this assignment would have been unheard of a year ago.

But what if you work for a small business, or have your own? This is a greyer area, of course. A member of my family is a sole proprietor, and so far has shied away from GenAI because she’s concerned about becoming too reliant on the technology. I get her point, and have blogged before (here and here) about how doing our own thinking and writing prevents us from falling into intellectual torpor. But isn’t a tool that legitimately improves efficiency something we ought to rely on? After all, we wouldn’t even think of trying to run a business without email, a laptop, a smartphone, in many cases videoconferencing capability, and (depending on the business) various types of specialized software. All of these tools were new once, and any small business owner still using a typewriter to generate invoices is surely a) in the minority, and b) wasting a lot of time. From that perspective, it’s all but inevitable that any small business owner will ultimately adopt GenAI for his or her business … so why wait?

GenAI at home

Using GenAI outside the workplace is a more complicated matter, since it’s not helping put food on the table. I mentioned earlier in this post that my older daughter has occasionally used it rather frivolously, such as to punk me. Consider this drawing she had ChatGPT create to memorialize an accident I had at a hotel pool back in 2024, when I got out of the hot tub too fast and fainted:

Her prompt for this was, “Can you create an image of a tall skinny white man feeling faint after leaving a hot tub?” As you can see, the man portrayed looks more hunky than skinny, and my daughter tried three more times to get the picture more accurate. Given that these were throwaway efforts (or would have been had I not used them in an early AI analysis here), this was devoting rather a lot of computing resources to a pretty trivial problem, or shall we say exercise. (Of course part of the point for my daughter was exploring the early technology; it’s not like she’s stuck with throwaway art as her primary use case for GenAI.)

On the flip side, her sister won’t use GenAI at all, somewhat on grounds of intellectual authenticity but mainly due to its environmental impact. The constant construction of ever-larger data centers is all over the news, with some shocking statistics thrown around about how much power and water a single GenAI prompt requires. Today I decided it’s time to vet this claim a bit, studying the available data and describing it in a context that could help guide our behavior appropriately.

How much electricity does GenAI use?

With the help of Claude, because it works better than a Google search, I did some light research and found some great analysis (here) on the website of Epoch AI, a nonprofit founded to “help people understand what is happening in AI from a neutral perspective and grounded in the best possible evidence.” Epoch AI partners with Stanford’s AI Index, which I’ve come across in my professional life and seems well respected, as well as the UK’s Department for Science, Innovation, & Technology, which I trust even more (since it doesn’t have ties to the tech industry like Stanford does). I must acknowledge that truly disinterested AI research is hard to come by, because almost every organization doing serious work in this realm has a business relationship with it. So to spread out the risk of misinformation I also put this query to ChatGPT, which came up with similar numbers but from other presumably trustworthy sources, including ScienceDirect  (which Gemini says “is considered one of the most reliable and authoritative sources for factual data in the world”) and Cornell University.

So: Epoch AI, in an article from about a year ago, examined a widespread previous claim that “an individual ChatGPT query requires around 3 watt-hours of electricity, or 10 times as much as a Google search.” Epoch AI, leveraging “more up-to-date facts and clearer assumptions,” arrived a the following conclusion:

We find that typical ChatGPT queries using GPT-4o likely consume roughly 0.3 watt-hours, which is ten times less than the older estimate. This difference comes from more efficient models and hardware compared to early 2023, and an overly pessimistic estimate of token counts in the original estimate. For context, 0.3 watt-hours is less than the amount of electricity that an LED lightbulb or a laptop consumes in a few minutes.

For further perspective: according to this article, “Google says that its median text query uses around 0.24 Wh of electricity. That’s a tiny amount: equivalent to microwaving for one second, or running a fridge for 6 seconds.”

But that’s just text queries. Creating a picture uses a lot more resources. According to this article by the University of Southern California, using GenAI to create a picture uses 2.9 Wh—over ten times as much as a text query. I had Gemini come up with some household use equivalents to give this number some context, and here’s what it came up with:

• Phone: charges your battery about 19%
• LED bulb: about 19 minutes of light
• Dishwasher: about 14 seconds of a cycle
• Clothes dryer: about 2.6 seconds of a cycle

These seem pretty trivial, but if you consider all the millions of people using GenAI, it can add up, especially if people get it the habit of iterating a dozen or so times to get the image just right. (For what it’s worth, I got the cover art for this post in two tries.)

How much water does GenAI use?

Water is another matter, and very difficult to quantify because the location of a data center has a lot to do with how efficiently it can cool all its servers. This“ Washington Post” article documented a study, involving research from the University of California at Riverside, that found that using ChatGPT to write a 100-word email consumed 519 milliliters of water, which is a little more than a standard bottle. Obviously that is really high, especially considering how many people use GenAI and how much that’s growing.

At the same time, as pointed out by this article, many other industries also use a ton of water, and people don’t seem up in arms about it: “A single burger takes more than 400 gallons of water to produce; a humble cotton T-shirt takes more than 700. The United States’ 16,000 golf courses, meanwhile, each have the potential to use on average between 100,000 to 2 million gallons of water per day. (For comparison, Google says its thirstiest data center in Iowa consumed about 2.7 million gallons per day in 2024; most of the company’s data centers used substantially less.)”

A less abstract comparison

To be fair, it’s not like we all sit around eating burgers all the time; for most of us, that’s a treat. Meanwhile, I would hope most albertnet readers are enlightened enough to hold out for grass-fed beef, which uses a lot less water to produce. And if you’re like me, you buy a lot of clothing secondhand, which helps mitigate the resources required for your wardrobe. So what’s a better comparison that can help us frame the environmental cost of using GenAI? I propose: beer. (I know what you’re thinking: that’s my answer to everything.” Well, okay … guilty as charged.)

So here is my thought exercise: how does using GenAI compare to cracking open a beer? And what is the value of the former vs. the latter? Obviously this is a wide-open scenario so I’ll narrow it down to how I most often use GenAI: when researching a blog post.

Here’s what Claude had to say about the electricity required for a 30-minute research session:

Based on current estimates, a substantive text exchange with an AI like this one — say 20–30 back-and-forth exchanges — is probably in the neighborhood of 5–10 watt-hours of electricity. Google has reported that after major efficiency gains, the median Gemini prompt consumed about 0.24 watt-hours, representing a 33× reduction in energy per prompt compared to a year earlier. At that figure, 30 prompts would use about 7 Wh — roughly equivalent to running a phone for 20 minutes or leaving an LED bulb on for half an hour.

Regarding water use, a Mistral AI lifecycle analysis citied by the Brookings Institution found that a typical 400-token exchange consumes about 45 milliliters of water—about three tablespoons. Multiply by 30 exchanges and you’re somewhere around 1.5 liters of water—very roughly two or three bottles’ worth attributable to the 30-minute research session. (This varies enormously by data center location and cooling method, so we should treat it as an order-of-magnitude estimate.)

To compare the electricity cost of the GenAI session vs. the can of beer, I downloaded a spreadsheet-based waste reduction calculator directly from the EPA’s website. It is designed to help consumers like me understand the value of recycling something vs. tossing it. It calculated that recycling a 12-ounce aluminum can saves 0.3 kWh—which is roughly 40 times more energy than what’s consumed by an entire 30-minute GenAI research session. Granted, I often generate a picture to go with my post, but even if we assume it takes five tries to get it right, the energy cost of those five images is still only about one-twentieth of the energy wasted by tossing a single beer can in the trash. And since this is only the energy cost of recycling, which is less than producing a can from scratch, these numbers are highly conservative. (Meanwhile, I haven’t even factored in the energy required for brewing and transporting the beer itself.)

Meanwhile, the Water Footprint Network, as described here, estimates a total water footprint of 298 liters per liter of beer—so a standard 12-oz can of domestic beer takes over 100 liters of water to produce. More than 90% of that water comes from the agricultural supply chain (e.g., growing the barley) while the brewery uses about 6–8 liters per liter of beer (though a large facility may achieve a 3-to-1 ratio). So my 30-minute research session uses something like 1–2% of the water embodied in the can of beer I might have next to my keyboard. (Full disclosure: there’s a now-empty pint glass on the arm of the sofa as I type this. Yes, drinking while blogging: a rhetorically risky and planet-impacting combination. So sue me.)

Factoring in value

So that covers the environmental cost of researching a blog vs. drinking a beer. But what about the value of each? Discounting pub crawls with my friends—which occur far more seldom than I would like, to the point that they’re a rounding error—I’m really talking about unwinding with a solitary beer at the end of the workday. So in general the value of that beer accrues solely to me.

So does my blog-related GenAI research create any value to justify its water and electricity use? In the interest of humility I won’t merely assume this, and will instead dive into the data. Pageview stats across my blog wouldn’t be very representative, as at least half my posts don’t require any research at all. So for lack of a better idea, I’ve decided to analyze the pageview count for each of the albertnet posts that are about AI. After all, those have to be among the most GenAI-intensive of all, because in writing them I was test driving the various platforms. Here’s a brief summary of how these posts have performed:

• Total pageviews across nineteen AI posts: 15,578 (so far)
• Average pageviews per AI post: 819.9
• Average pageviews per AI post per month: 35.5

I could conclude that, from a somewhat abstract viewpoint, each post is seen by a person a day. But averages aren’t very reliable, and greater specificity is more revealing. Lurking in that “average pageviews per AI post per month” is a bit of (GenAI-performed) number crunching, accounting for the fact that the posts that I published years ago have had a lot more time to accrue pageviews. Ranking my AI posts by pageviews per month shows that they are gaining in popularity, with the more recent ones averaging two to three views per day. Here’s the ranking of all these AI posts over time, so you can see the momentum:

№	Views/Mo	Total Views	Title
1	102.5	1,742	Tech Check-In – How Good is the Latest A.I.? – Part II
2	85.7	257	New Year's Resolutions — AI Edition
3	82.8	1,077	What Is ChatGPT Great At (and Not)?
4	69.9	1,189	Tech Check-In – How Good is the Latest A.I.? – Part I
5	62.4	312	AI Smackdown – ChatGPT vs. Copilot vs. Gemini
6	58.0	290	More AI Smackdown – ChatGPT, Copilot, & Gemini Write Poetry
7	51.2	256	Tech Reflection – Two Sides of AI
8	27.4	1,040	A.I. Smackdown – English Major vs. ChatGPT – Part 2
9	27.1	1,031	A.I. Smackdown – English Major vs. ChatGPT – Part 1
10	23.0	597	Will A.I. Steal Our Jobs?
11	20.0	739	Schooling ChatGPT
12	11.1	719	Could Artificial Intelligence Replace Writers? – Part 1
13	10.6	680	Could Artificial Intelligence Replace Writers? – Part 3
14	10.0	1,230	A.I. Smackdown – Moto vs. Cortana vs. Siri
15	8.8	563	Could Artificial Intelligence Replace Writers? – Part 2
16	7.3	1,201	Almost Intelligent – Part I
17	6.3	838	Smartphones & Artificial Stupidity
18	6.2	1,016	I, Chatbot
19	4.9	801	Almost Intelligent – Part II

It would be reasonable to conclude that the more recent posts, which leverage more GenAI research, are reaching more readers, thus providing a better ROI. Of course I can’t account for all the possible reasons these posts are more popular, but I reckon that to some degree it’s because of the better use of GenAI. Using this tool won’t make be a better writer, but I’ve always been pretty lazy about research and there’s no doubt GenAI helps there. And whether or not this ROI calculation is completely airtight, I hope this helps you at least appreciate my effort to weigh my GenAI “footprint” against its value.

The bigger point here is that the can of beer is consumed once, quickly, leaving nothing behind (except maybe a nice belch). In contrast, the energy that goes into researching a blog post has an effective cost-per-view that keeps dropping every month it’s up, in perpetuity. If you use GenAI to draft an email, how many people will it reach, and low long is its tail? Could you have drafted it on your own—thus exercising your brain—or did you really need GenAI?

I’m not trying to imply that only bloggers should use GenAI; this is just one illustration of a cost/benefit analysis of the use of this tool. If you are doing something useful and an AI chatbot is helping you do it better or more efficiently, then it’s arguably worth the energy and water—or, at least, is a more worthy use of it than shopping for a bunch of clothes, going out for a burger, and then having a few beers.

The point is to be aware of the environmental cost of this technology, the same way so many of us do when we decide among driving, biking, walking, or taking mass transit  somewhere. Just because GenAI takes less water than beef or cotton doesn’t mean we should ignore its environmental cost, since it’s a whole new way people are consuming energy and water. As recently as three years ago, almost nobody was using GenAI in their daily lives; now, it’s an increasingly entrenched behavior, data centers are expanding rapidly, and in some regions power grids are struggling to keep up with demand.

This being said, I truly don’t believe opting out of GenAI is the solution; just reflecting on how much it helped me write this post, I can’t imagine not taking advantage of it. Instead, I’d like to see the millions of people already using it stop acting like it comes without a cost. It’s the same as driving: did I really need to surround myself with two tons of steel and burn a cup of gasoline just to travel a mile to the gym and back? (That was a rhetorical question. I always bike to the gym.)

Speaking of cost: one way to keep yourself honest with GenAI is to not pay for it. If you are on an unpaid account and use up your tokens, so that your chatbot cuts you off for some number of hours, maybe that should be your indication that you’ve gone overboard. Come to think of it, video games, YouTube, and social media should have that “feature.”

A final note on GenAI at work

Now that I’ve examined the environmental cost of GenAI, it’s worth pointing out a final wrinkle: using it in the workplace is actually much more efficient than using it at home. Corporations get the most benefit out of GenAI through Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), which is where, instead of asking a large language model to answer from its entire trove of training data, the GenAI retrieves relevant documents from a corporate knowledge base (contracts, manuals, research reports, emails, whatever the organization has indexed), then passes those retrieved chunks to the model as context for its answer. Tools like NotebookLM, most enterprise Copilot implementations, and corporate deployments of models like Gemini or Claude typically work this way.

This is much more efficient than “raw” GenAI like consumers use. The retrieval step is computationally cheap—essentially a sophisticated search. The generation step is shorter because the model doesn't have to work as hard to “remember” or construct relevant context; it’s been handed it. And the answers tend to be more accurate and require fewer iterations, which means fewer wasted queries. For a user to opt out of using it on environmental grounds makes little sense, because the big resource expense has already been incurred. As Claude puts it:

The infrastructure cost of a corporate RAG deployment is largely fixed relative to usage. The vector database has to stay current whether 500 employees query it or 5,000. The embedding pipeline runs continuously. The API connections to the underlying model are on retainer. So each additional active user essentially dilutes the per-capita environmental and financial cost of that overhead. An employee who declines to use the tool isn’t reducing the infrastructure footprint; they’re just reducing the output derived from it. In accounting terms, they’re lowering the return on a sunk cost.

Synthesis

Wow, I just threw a ton of words at you, didn’t I? Maybe I’m the most verbose Large Language Model since, well, ChatGPT! Anyway, here’s my final conclusion: of course you should use GenAI. It’s an amazingly powerful tool, and it’s getting better all the time. Now that it’s here, declining to use it makes about as much sense as blending a smoothie with a knife and a whisk, or doing arithmetic with an abacus, or churning your own butter. But use GenAI judiciously. Ask yourself: is this improving the quality or efficiency of my output? Or am I just being lazy?

Other albertnet posts on A.I., in order of publication

• I, Chatbot
• Almost Intelligent – Part I
• Almost Intelligent – Part II
• Smartphones & Artificial Stupidity
• A.I. Smackdown – Moto vs. Cortana vs. Siri
• Could Artificial Intelligence Replace Writers? – Part 1
• Could Artificial Intelligence Replace Writers? – Part 2
• Could Artificial Intelligence Replace Writers? – Part 3
• A.I. Smackdown – English Major vs. ChatGPT – Part 1
• A.I. Smackdown – English Major vs. ChatGPT – Part 2
• Schooling ChatGPT
• Will A.I. Steal Our Jobs?
• Tech Check-In - How Good is the Latest A.I.? - Part I
• Tech Check-In - How Good is the Latest A.I.? - Part II
• What is ChatGPT Great At (and Not)?
• Tech Reflection – Two Sides of AI
• AI Smackdown – ChatGPT vs. Copilot vs. Gemini
• More AI Smackdown - ChatGPT, Copilot, & Gemini Write Poetry
• New Year’s Resolutions — AI Edition

—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—
Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Autocomplete Zeitgeist Revisited - 2026 - Part II

Introduction

Last week, in keeping with  my eight-year tradition, I examined Google’s Autocomplete suggestions—i.e., you start a query and have it suggest the rest—to learn about the American Zeitgeist in 2026. Part I focused on crime and punishment (i.e., what Americans fear getting in trouble for) and today I’ll cover everything else.

Who, what, where, when, why, how

Searching on “what is,” here are the top five suggestions Google offered for completing the query:

• What is my ip
• What is the 25th amendment
• What is easter monday
• What is vibe coding
• What is easter about

That first one, “what is my ip,” appeared eight years ago but not four years ago. It’s a pointless inquiry, as your IP address doesn’t actually say much about you or your device configuration ; these addresses are assigned dynamically and temporarily. Gamers and users of VPNs have reasons to want to know this, but they’ve surely bookmarked a website that can actually provide this info. So the popularity of this query is probably based on fear and ignorance: people watched some TikTok video about how “they” are going to “scam you through your IP address,” or they got a scam email saying, “we know your IP address is 192.168.128.230,” and these poor souls are just trying to determine if they’re really in danger. Could Americans really be that fearful and ignorant? Decide for yourself. Perhaps the rest of this post will help.

The second Autocomplete suggestion is surely the result of Americans reading about this or that lawmaker saying it’s time to invoke Section 4 of the 25th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which allows removal of the president if he’s deemed “unable to discharge his duties.”  The trigger for this saber-rattling was a post from the Donald on Truth Media on Easter Sunday, alluding to the military offensive against Iran: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.” Yes, he really said this. The president.

So … does this Autocomplete suggestion support the notion that Americans are fearful and ignorant? Well, I wouldn’t blame anybody for being fearful (either that Trump will be removed or that he’s unhinged, depending on your political bent), and I do not considerate it ignorant to not know what the 25th amendment is. I’d never heard of it either until sometime in the past six months when some other Trump outburst led to the same Quixotic call for removing him.

Moving on to the Easter thing, perhaps Americans are thinking more globally in general, because this didn’t come up four or eight years ago. Obviously Easter Monday is simply the day after Easter (today, in fact) and Americans are probably feeling a bit chapped we don’t get it as a holiday like so much of Europe does. Fair enough.

On to vibe coding: needless to say this query didn’t exist four years ago. Vibe coding is the method of programming where you tell AI what you want, essentially, without caring about how the resulting code works (which makes many in the industry nervous). A coder friend of mine likened it to pulling the handle on a slot machine. I think a lot more Americans are aware of vibe coding than would actually engage in it. I doubt it’d be as popular if it weren’t such an inspired, buzz-y term; if we called it “natural language-directed code generation with deferred comprehension” I doubt anybody would care. But since “vibe coding” sounds so cool, it’s making the rounds, and people don’t want to feel out of touch when it comes up. So it’s not fear or ignorance per se; it’s fear of ignorance.

The popularity of “What is Easter about” suggests to me that a growing number of Americans never went to church, or more specifically to a Christian one. It’s tempting to flag this as ignorance, but then who establishes how knowledgeable an American (especially an immigrant) should be about this (or any) religion?

Okay, let’s move on to “why.” The top five Autocomplete suggestions are:

• Why is the market down today
• Why berkeley
• Why california
• Why is easter called easter
• Why was jesus crucified

Those last two I’ll just lump under the same category as “What is Easter about,” but the other three didn’t show up in either of my last two investigations so let’s have a look. “Why is the market down today” would seem to be a perennial question, other than right now. I mean, why do you think, ya bozos? Could it be related to the world experiencing the largest oil crisis in history? If Americans can’t equate the price of gas to the stock market, I’m sorry—that’s just ignorant. But getting back to fearful, perhaps in this realm they’re not fearful enough.

The “why Berkeley” and “why California” suggestions are a real mystery to me, since the correct answer to both is “duh!” The Google Gemini AI overview responses are, respectively, “UC Berkeley is consistently ranked as the world’s top public research university, offering an elite, rigorous education, top-tier faculty, and massive research opportunities,” and “California is a global hub for innovation, entertainment, and economic power, boasting the largest state economy in the U.S. (4th largest globally).” (As for why these questions seem to have gotten so much search traction, I really have no idea, though my IP address—yes, we’ve come full circle on that—does tell Google my approximate whereabouts, and in fact I live in Albany which is right next door to Berkeley.)

Now we’ll look at “who.” Four years ago people were googling Julia Fox (whoever that is or was); Will Smith’s wife; Moon Knight;  the Super Bowl teams; and Joe Rogan. Here are the top five today:

• Who won march madness
• Who is nancy guthrie
• Who is this
• Who is steve hilton
• Who is this meme

March Madness is obviously some sports tournament that ended less than a week ago so who cares—it probably says nothing about the zeitgeist. Nancy Guthrie is a missing person, the mother of some news personality, who is in the current news because there’s a ransom note now, and a sheriff with an undeclared loaded gun, and surely other bits of lurid intrigue, none of which I care about, because this person is a complete stranger. As she surely is to all these people googling her just because it’s exciting. Seriously, people, go read a crime novel. On to Steve Hilton: he is running for public office and that’s timely, blah blah blah.

Now, “who is this” is a fascinating suggestion. At first I took it to be a sign that somebody forgot he was only using a search engine, and assumed he was in conversation with an AI chatbot, and forgot which one it was. (I myself jump from bot to bot whenever they freeze my session due to lack of paid subscription.) But I went ahead and searched on it, and Google says it’s either the name of a song (it names four candidates) or “a phrase used to ask for the identity of a person, often used over the phone.” On this basis, I’m either going to finally become a rapper and write a song called “What Is My IP,” or I’m going to start asking people, especially over the phone, “Who is this?” Since random telemarketers are bound to volunteer this information anyway, I’ll stick to using it with people I know, whose voice I recognize, and who are in my contacts. Should shake things up a bit.

But “who is this meme” is a real mystery. Perhaps it’s just that “meme” is such a common noun, and the phrase “who is this” is just yearning for a predicate, so Google took a wild guess. Who knows? Who is this knows?

Let’s move on to “where.” The first carryover from previous years is, predictably enough, “where’s my refund”  which suggests I shouldn’t do this report so close to Tax Day. That query came in at #2. The most popular is “where is artemis 2 now,” pertaining to the spacecraft that is heading for the moon (and once again, the popularity of this query says basically nothing about the zeitgeist). Next was “where is the super bowl 2026” which came up last time as well, and I just absolutely cannot fathom the popularity of this query because the Super Bowl happened already, all the way back in February, and if even I know that, despite being totally uninterested, how can so many people not? Next was “where to watch heated rivalry,” another broadcast sporting event; that this suggestion came under “where” is a random artifact of video websites being thought of as places. Ditto “where to watch uconn vs Michigan.” So much for where.

The next query ought to be more interesting: how. What are Americans trying to learn? The only carryover from previous surveys was “how to screenshot on mac,” which at first blush begs the question: haven’t people figured this out by now? But actually this makes sense: it’s because Gen-Z, having been weaned on smartphones, not laptops, is exploring this for the first time, and/or the Mac users have forgotten since they’re mostly phone-addicted as well, and/or entering their demented years. “How to screenshot on windows” was right behind this, in #2. Next was “how to file a tax extension,” making its first appearance though procrastination is obviously as old as time. Fourth place went to “how many ounces in a gallon,” which shows that Americans are apparently no better at math than they were four years ago, but at least they’re thinking bigger, because last time we saw “how many ounces in a cup.” Fifth place went to “how far is the moon from earth,” which again is merely timely, not illuminating.

The future

This brings us to the most exciting part of the post, where we stop living in the past and ask Google about what’s on the horizon. I started with “am I going…” Compared to last time, I see a whole lot of repeated queries:  am I going crazy, am I going to be okay, am I going to hell, am I going blind? There’s kind of a sadness, I think, about people googling these important and existential questions when they have to know Google won’t have the answers, at least not anything they can trust. I wonder if these people are like the speaker in Poe’s “The Raven,” who keeps asking this bird questions—“Is there balm in Gilead?” and (in essence) “will I get over my lost Lenore?”—because he knows the raven won’t answer, other than “Nevermore,” and he wants to torment himself, like some ritual act of self-flagellation. These first perennial Autocomplete queries were so sad, I was almost cheered up by the fifth one, the relatively harmless “am I going to owe taxes in 2025.” (Uh, ask your tax software, dude! Problem solved…)

And now we are on to our final Autocomplete query, “will I ever.” These are very similar to four and eight years ago, with repeat appearances of “will I ever find love,” “will I ever be able to afford a house,” “will I ever be happy,” and “will I ever find love again.” What’s instructive are the suggestions we no longer see: “will I ever get a ps5” and “will I ever get a job.” I guess four years ago it was hard to get a PS5 (don’t worry, Gemini says supply has largely caught up with demand!), but at least people had jobs. I feel bad that people are putting this lugubrious “will I ever get a job?” query to Google, knowing it’s probably as hopeless as asking “am I going to hell?” or “is there balm in Gilead?” All I can advise is a) try touching up your LinkedIn profile, and b) it’s not you … it’s them.

And now, following the tradition I established four and eight years ago, I’ll abandon Google and its Autocomplete and turn to the Magic 8-Ball at www.ask8ball.net. I asked it, “Will I ever be good enough?” It promptly replied, “Without a doubt.” Maybe too promptly … I mean, not even AI seems that fast! So just to make sure that this utterance wasn’t its only stock and store, I asked it, “Is there balm in Gilead?” It answered, “Reply hazy, try again.” I guess I’ll have to google it.

Previous Autocomplete Zeitgeist posts

• Autocomplete Zeitgeist Revisited - 2026 - Part I
• Autocomplete Zeitgeist Revisited
• The Autocomplete Zeitgeist

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Autocomplete Zeitgeist Revisited - 2026

Before we begin

In this post, which examines the American zeitgeist, I adopt a tone of playful criticism. Please don’t mistake me for one of those tedious killjoys who only finds fault. Believe me, I am grateful for my country and its people.

Introduction

As everybody knows, Google Autocomplete is a function of Google Search that starts providing feedback even before you’ve finished typing your query. The search engine predicts what you’re looking for based on others’ recent searches across the Internet. I find Autocomplete a good indicator of where people’s heads are, so in a long-ago post I asked Google a range of questions designed to examine the national zeitgeist as of March 31, 2018. Then, exactly four years later, I googled the same questions to see how things had changed and what people sought answers for in 2022. And now, another four years later (to the day), I peer back into Autocomplete suggestions to see where our heads are at in 2026.

(Note: to improve the accuracy of this experiment—that is, to make it more about the American people instead of about me—I turned off “Personal Results,” so my own previous searches won’t influence the suggestions.)

Persecution mania

Four years ago, the query “is it illegal to…” prompted Autocomplete suggestions that included burning money, hitting a girl, and working weekends in France. Today, this same short phrase produces these suggested queries as the top five:

• Is it illegal to write on US currency
• Is it illegal to talk to dolphins
• Is it illegal to drive barefoot
• Is it illegal to collect rainwater in California
• Is it illegal to drive without insurance

Driving barefoot has appeared in the top five for both my previous studies, suggesting that—even though Gen Z doesn’t seem very interested in driving—they’re still interested in this topic. Maybe they’re tired of their parents (or Uber drivers) going barefoot?

Now, this bit about writing on US currency I’ve never seen before, not even in the top ten—it’s completely new. So I asked myself, what’s changed that this is suddenly a #1 concern? The answer is simple: as described here, Donald Trump will soon be the first sitting president in history to have his signature adorn US currency, specifically the $1 bill. Now, I’m not here to take sides in matters of politics, but I think everyone can agree that this presents a tantalizing opportunity for the anti-Trump camp: they naturally want to write something like “sucks” right after his signature. Kind of a tit-for-tat: like, fine, you wanna write on my currency, I’m gonna write on it, too. But to consider actually indulging this temptation begs the question: will I get arrested for this?

If you think I’m being ridiculously paranoid, I’ll just say that a) it’s not necessarily the case that the typical American isn’t paranoid, and b) there is ample precedent to reasonably ask this question. The Donald saw to it that his face is prominently displayed right next to George Washington’s on US National Park season passes, and the backlash created a cottage industry of stickers designed specifically to obscure his picture.

The Department of the Interior reacted by prohibiting these stickers, claiming that they somehow bypass “security features,” and declared that affixing them can invalidate the $80 pass. As related here, this led to companies innovating again, this time with handy sleeves that cover up the picture until it’s time to present the pass to a park ranger. Given the history here, I can’t blame my fellow Americans for being careful.

Now let’s talk about the legality of talking to dolphins. As it turns out, the popularity of this search query is largely Google’s own fault because their AI summary indicates that it basically is illegal to talk to dolphins.

There’s not a direct link between this AI summary and the popularity of the Autocomplete text, but this kind of overstatement tends to get people up in arms, which is exactly what has happened. As described in a legal journal here, “A viral claim spread … suggesting that simply speaking to or near a dolphin is a federal crime.” So a paranoia has emerged about this activity, just like with defacing currency.

I’m going to skip over the rainwater thing for a moment and address “driving without insurance” next. (You’ll see why in a minute.) I am perplexed by these driving-related inquiries given how Gen Z isn’t much into cars. So I dug a little deeper into that, and surfaced this fascinating blog post challenging the popular theories about this generational change in driving behavior. The data do not show that this reluctance to learn to drive is due to the popularity of ride-sharing apps, or teens being too busy studying or doing extracurricular activities that improve their college applications, or because of our tough economic times, or because of increasing rates of depression. All of these explanations are refuted via data going back decades. The author argues, instead, that Gen-Z teens are just growing up more slowly—they’re “less likely to date, have a paid job, drink alcohol, and have sex than teens in previous generations” and that young adults “also take longer to get married, have children, and settle into careers.”

Worrying about having to get car insurance sounds like exactly the kind of grown-up task Gen-Z kids shrink from. I can just sense the eye-rolling and their thinking, “OMG, if I have to get actual insurance just to drive a car, forget about it!”

Could this delayed adulthood miraculously explain the rainwater gathering thing as well? Well, maybe. It could be Gen-Z, while afraid to drink tap water due to widespread mythology about it being unhealthy, also lacks both a car and the grown-up discipline of knocking out errands, and is thus too lazy to head to the grocery store for bottled. Or who knows, maybe young adults are so stunted they forget to pay their water bill. So they’re like, maybe we just put a bucket out back and drink from that … if we’re allowed.

Moving on to a slightly different search, “is it against the law to…” I get mostly the same results, but with these two additions appearing in the top five:

• Is it against the law to burn an American flag
• Is it against the law to not file taxes

Interestingly, flag burning was the very first Autocomplete suggestion eight years ago, but four years ago it didn’t appear at all. So why has this one returned? Well, it may well be a political matter, so let’s look at who was president when I did my two previous studies. My first Autocomplete post was halfway through Trump’s first term, which is when we first saw this burning question (pun intended, couldn’t resist); my second post was halfway through Biden’s term (when this suggestion disappeared); and now, halfway through Trump’s second term, it’s back. I’m not suggesting that Americans are more interested in burning flags during conservative reigns. It could be that the American flag simply figures more prominently in the national dialogue when we have a polarizing, populist president whose followers seem to believe they own this national icon.

In case you think that’s just a pet theory of mine, I did a little light research, and this article describes a 2025 poll of 2,404 U.S. adults on the topic of flags vs. party. (The sample was “weighted to be representative of adults nationwide according to gender, age, race, and education, based on the U.S. Census.”) The poll found, among other things, that forty-two percent of respondents assume a person flying the flag is conservative, whereas only ten percent assume a person displaying the flag is liberal.

I’m not suggesting that liberals want to burn our flag and are making sure this is allowed. I’m also not insinuating that conservatives, fearing that liberals are going to start burning flags, are seeing whether or not they can call the cops. Probably more to the point, when people are politically agitated in general, as they are now, the flag itself and notions of waving vs. desecrating it are more top-of-mind.

Moving on to our next query, “can you be arrested for…,” the top five include “a misdemeanor,” “speeding,” and “driving without a license,” all of which I saw last time. “Driving without insurance” shows up here, too. But I also see a newcomer to the suggestions, which is “can you be arrested for littering in Texas.”

I know my point with this post is to determine what can be inferred about the American zeitgeist from Autocomplete suggestions, but these highly local issues make it tricky. The question is, what happened recently in Texas that would drive this kind of query? I’m generally the wrong guy to ask because I keep my finger as far from the pulse of my fellow man as possible, eschewing all social media and most news sources. Whereas many people have FOMO (fear of missing out), I’m more plagued by “FONMO” (fear of not missing out)—that is, fear of being dragged into pointless gossipy discussions about this or that viral inflammation. But it’s really easy to research such stuff now, thanks (?) to AI chatbots. Claude drew my attention to this article about a cop beating up a woman for littering. Obviously this is a travesty, but worrying whether or not it’s illegal to litter seems to be missing the point. If this is how people fact-check before joining an online dialogue, I doubt they’re really in a position to fix the problem. It’s likely just more performative outrage.

Mercifully, since I have a lot to cover here, suggestions to complete the query “can you be arrested for…” haven’t changed since four years ago so I can skip them. No such luck with “can a police officer…” but that does turn up some very interesting results:

• Can a police officer arrest an ice agent
• Can a police officer search your car
• Can a police officer serve a restraining order
• Can a police officer arrest a federal agent
• Can a police officer date a felon

The first one naturally reflects current events, which have little to do—I suspect—with the American zeitgeist and more to do with remarkable changes in federal law enforcement. I mean, if Mount St. Helens erupted again with widespread atmospheric effects, it would certainly influence search suggestions, even though nothing about Americans would have changed.

But it’s an interesting scenario. I suppose the gist of this inquiry is whether a cop could arrest an ICE agent just for doing his or her job (and I’m going to guess the answer is “no” but I’m not performing that query because I don’t actually care). But what if people are just wondering if ICE agents can do as they please? Hold up a liquor store and the cops turn a blind eye?

The second query is pretty dumb, obviously. If a cop can punch you in the face for dropping litter from your car, he can certainly search it. So make sure you never have a taillight out, if you don’t want a cop finding that exploded can of Spam in the storage area where the spare tire used to be. (True story! My wife had stashed foodstuffs in case of, like, a zombie apocalypse. Turns out tinned meat can expire, big time.)

I have to confess, the popularity of the restraining order inquiry threw me. (Fortunately, my experience around this is nil.) The law is somewhat complicated around serving restraining orders and sometimes it’s the sheriff, not a patrol officer, who does it. So the question becomes, why now, when this question wasn’t popular four or eight years ago? Domestic violence hasn’t obviously increased, but light research indicates that there have been important legal updates lately, including explicit coverage of cyberstalking, GPS tracking, and smart home device manipulation. I find all of this kind of depressing so let’s move on to the final suggestion: can a police officer date a felon?

This one is kind of fascinating. Is it police officers asking this, because they think felons are kind of hot? Or is it felons (convicted or not) who are kind of turned on by cops? I have to think there’s some frisson there; I mean, it’s not like anyone is asking if urban planners can date botanists. Specifically, this query puts me in mind of Lil Wayne’s song “Mrs. Officer,” which includes the passage, “Yeah, doing a buck in the latest drop /  Got stopped by a lady cop, haha / She got me thinking I can date a cop, haha / ‘Cause her uniform fit her so tight / She read me my rights / She put me in her car, she cut off all the lights…”

(If you’re puzzled by that first line, “doing a buck” is driving at 100 mph, and “latest drop” means a recently released luxury car model. So Lil Wayne goes from being the man, all cocky driving at insane speed in his high-status car, to suddenly being chastised by a cop, but without the terror that would normally accompany that … all in the span of a few short lines. It’s really very clever.)

Now, four years ago I’d have simply shrugged at the popularity of this Autocomplete suggestion because honestly, how could I really learn the reason without a whole lot of work? But now, of course, we have AI, and I asked Claude for some perspective. It replied, “The broader cultural backdrop is probably the explosive growth of true crime, prison content, and ‘felon influencer’ culture on social media over the past few years. People with criminal records have become a significant content demographic on TikTok, sharing their experiences openly in a way that simply wasn’t happening in 2018.” Who knew? I questioned Claude further about this trend, and it explained that “lot of felon-related content isn’t really ‘influencer’ content in the glamorous sense — it’s practical. ‘Can I get this job with a felony?’ ‘Can I rent an apartment?’ ‘Can a cop date me?’ These are real pressing questions for millions of Americans — there are roughly 19 million people in the U.S. with felony convictions — and TikTok became a place where people with lived experience answer those questions in a way that law-related websites don’t.”

And here’s where things get really strange: one of the search results Claude cited included “a “caption/hashtag description from a TikTok video: ‘I got stopped by a lady cop… she got me thinking i can date a cop #texas #fyp #viralvideo #texasstatetroopers.’” Remarkably, Claude surfaced this without the context of the Lil Wayne song I mentioned above. Whether this caption was a deliberate reference to the song or just an independent expression of the same widespread fantasy, we can only guess.

Wrapping up with our final query for today, we’ll see what Autocomplete suggests for “are you allowed to.” Here are the top five:

• Are you allowed to fight in hockey
• Are you allowed to be gay in the military
• Are you allowed to carry a gun in California
• Are you allowed to bring food on a plane
• Are you allowed to go to Antarctica

The only suggestion that’s same as four years ago is fighting in hockey, which moved up from fourth place. I examined this topic at length in my previous post so if you’re interested, click here.

This second one might be a case of faulty memory. I mean, it’s such old news that “don’t ask, don’t tell” was repealed (this was in 2011, for crying out loud) that I have to suppose people have just forgotten. Either that, or people far below military age back then just weren’t paying attention. (In fairness, an 18-year-old now would have been just three then.) Or who knows, maybe people who were gainfully employed adults in 2011 ignored the issue then but are suddenly considering joining the military since corporate America laid them off. (On a related note, a popular query both four and eight years ago, “are you allowed to retire at age 50,” no longer appears in Autocomplete suggestions, surely because in modern times it’s beside the point: anyone approaching 50 can expect to be laid off at any time, so why not wait for the severance package?)

As for carrying a gun in California, four years ago we had a similarly popular query, “are you allowed to carry a knife in California.” I guess things are even scarier here now, but at least people have wised up a bit. I mean, illegal to carry a knife? Seriously? I carry a pocketknife on bike rides!

Now, the next one, “bring food on a plane,” is just ridiculous and reinforces the notion that Gen-Z is just slow to enter adulthood. Anyone asking this clearly hasn’t been to an airport and watched—and smelled—people bringing their takeout food with them to the plane. And it’s not like airport personnel are going to bother differentiating between airport food and “outside” food. What, they’re gonna be like, “Sir, that looks like a Ziploc bag. You didn’t make that sandwich at home, did you?” (And by the way, I’m pretty sure I’ve brought a burrito from home wrapped in foil, no less. Just don’t bring a beverage or a Go-gurt.)

Which brings us to the final Autocomplete suggestion, “are you allowed to go to Antarctica.” As with so many of these inquiries, I’m reminded of the question, “Which is a bigger problem—ignorance or apathy?” and its answer, “I don’t know and I don’t care.” That is, I’m tempted to conclude that people are strange, and not give the matter another thought. But it’s now too easy to chase this kind of thing down, and I’ve discovered that there was a famous Internet influencer (over a million followers) who last year, at age 19, landed a little plane illegally in Antarctica and was detained there for two months while they performed various experiments on him and eventually stole his kidneys. Okay, I drifted off into fantasy for  a moment there but most of the story is true and—should you care—you can read it here. But actually, what does this have to do with the legality of traveling to Antarctica (which has been serviced by tour groups for sixty years)? Is anybody actually thinking of going? Why aren’t people googling “are you allowed to plagiarize albertnet”? (By the way, you’re not.)

Tune in next week…

As you have doubtless noticed, this post went on a bit longer than I expected, so I’ll cut it off here for now and post Part II next week. Check back because I’ll be covering a number of other Autocomplete categories: Who, what, where, why, how, and the future.

Other Autocomplete Zeitgeist posts

• Autocomplete Zeitgeist Revisited - 2026 - Part II
• Autocomplete Zeitgeist Revisited - Part II
• Autocomplete Zeitgeist Revisited
• The Autocomplete Zeitgeist

—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—~—
Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Old Yarn - The Police Raid

Vlog

I gather people prefer videos and podcasts to reading these days, and several readers (or would-be readers) have suggested a vlog format. They usually say it should be massively abridged, maybe even refashioned as a TikTok dance video featuring somebody far more attractive than I. As compelling as that idea may be, honestly I prefer to stay as far from TikTok as possible. In terms of a more straightforward vlog version, in the past I’ve recorded myself reading a blog post, but I’m not sure how entertaining that really is. And so, as an experiment, today I used AI to create a voiceover version of this story, with some pictures, kind of like a slide show. This video runs about 11 minutes. Give it a try if you like, and let me know what you think. (And if you’re an old-school reader, scroll down as the text version awaits.)

Introduction

This is the eighth “old yarn” on albertnet (following in the footsteps of “The Cinelli Jumpsuit,” “Bike Crash on Golden Gate Bridge,” “The Enemy Coach,” “The Brash Newb,” “The Day I Learned Bicycle Gear Shifting,”, “The In-Flight Voyeur,” and most recently “The Dark Alley Incident”). This is the kind of true story that would normally be a “From the Archives” item, except I’ve never before written it down.

The Drug Bust – early 1994

I was living in an apartment on Webster Street in San Francisco’s Western Addition, aka Lower Haight. At the time I felt like it was a fairly safe neighborhood, but (as detailed here) I’ve discovered more recently that, at that time, it was actually pretty rough. I’d found the place through A—, a buddy at the Berkeley bike shop where I’d worked until I graduated from college. Our other roommate, R—, was the one who had the lease, and I didn’t know much about him except that he was about ten years older than us, and made his living buying broken down cars from the police auction and then fixing and selling them. He had a lot of spare time, which he spent entertaining friends, cooking, watching TV, and smoking weed.

I wasn’t too wild about R—’s lifestyle, especially the weed part, but he was a nice guy. Noting my predilection for making burritos, he’d buy chips and really good salsa from some local taqueria or Mexican grocery and exhort me to help myself to them. He was generally in pretty good spirits, laughing at all kinds of stuff. He had a great tabby cat whose official name was Pogo but whom A— and I called Toonces. Toonces took a shine to me and would sleep in my bed, a queen-size futon that took up almost my entire bedroom. My racing bike hung right above the futon, and I hung my dress shirts and neckties from its front wheel.

R—’s main visitors, for most of the time I lived there, were his girlfriend, his mistress, and another female friend who was a stripper. I don’t even remember his girlfriend’s name and other than her looks, I don’t know what R— saw in her. She had this dog named Dakota she’d always bring with her and about 90% of her verbal output was bawling out the dog—“Dakota, no!” 

The mistress, M—, wasn’t nearly as pretty but was a totally cool chick, we all liked her a lot. I don’t remember the stripper’s name either. She was nice, but pretty quiet and mostly just watched TV. I think R— only had her over to give her a place to relax and recharge; I gather she had a hard life.

Over time things started to go downhill. A— moved out, and R— rented the room out to some random guy who was stressed out all the time because he managed a restaurant. This guy had a female cat, Chloe, who was in heat and always coming on to Toonces, apparently unaware that she was also female.  Chloe would always stick her hind end in Toonces’ face and Toonces would stalk away, disgusted. Eventually Chloe got herself knocked up from some offscreen neighborhood tomcat, and had a litter of kittens that our roommate couldn’t manage to unload on anyone so they just pissed everywhere until it became untenable and R— kicked the guy out, kittens and all. Then we got some freshly minted journalism grad from Oklahoma who didn’t seem to have a job and just hung around, mainly watching R—’s giant TV, always with this kind of awkward trying-to-be-friendly smile plastered to his face. Meanwhile, R—’s weed use appeared to go from a special treat to a routine indulgence to a lifestyle. M— started to get a bit grumpy, chafing at her ongoing role of mistress vs. her hope of pushing out the girlfriend. Worst of all, R— got in the habit of having friends over and smoking them out, and this collection of friends seemed to grow over time to where there always seemed to be some stranger in my living room. It became kind of a menagerie of dirtbags.

I tolerated all of this because the rent was dirt cheap and I was saving up as much money as possible for a 9-month bicycle tour I was planning with my then-girlfriend, E—. I was spending a lot of my time at E—’s place anyway, and as our story begins I was in my last week living at the Webster place and had already started moving my stuff into storage.

On the night in question my dad was in town with his then-wife, and had offered to take E— and me out to dinner. I got home a bit early from work, just after sunset, so I’d have time to change out of my suit and tie and shake off the workday before my dad picked me up. The apartment was an upstairs unit, so just past the front door was a steep flight of stairs. As I came through the door, R— stuck his head out over the stairwell and yelled, “Don’t come in!”

I was gobsmacked. On what grounds could or would my roommate say this? I mean, I live here! I pay rent! As I stood there paralyzed with confusion, another head popped out, that of a complete stranger, who yelled, “Freeze! Police! Are you armed?!”

I guess you could say I’d lived a charmed life up to that moment, because it didn’t occur to me that this could actually be a cop. I mean, it didn’t even cross my mind. It felt like these two must have been having me on. So I replied, “Are you kidding?!” At this the cop—for it was in fact a plainclothes cop—came running down the stairs toward me. And yes, he was packing heat—but at least it was holstered. I put my hands up and said something like, “I’m really sorry, officer—but can you tell me what’s going on?” He didn’t answer but gestured up the steps. “Get up there,” he commanded.

I was marched up to the living room. R— was sitting on one end of the sofa, looking really pissed off and a bit freaked out. Our Okie roommate was seated at the other end of the sofa looking absolutely petrified. There were five plainclothes cops tearing the place apart. I gathered this was a drug bust—I mean, what else could it be? Dumb luck that I happened to come home that evening. The energy off these cops was intense and kind of terrifying. They were dressed to blend in with the urban environment—jeans and dark windbreakers—and they were moving at a speed that didn’t seem necessary, shoving things off bookcases, turning things over, yanking open drawers. They seemed pissed, like whatever they were looking for they weren’t coming up with. The first cop demanded some ID. I very slowly drew my driver’s license from my wallet and handed it over. He gave it to someone to run it.

“What room is yours?” another cop asked. I pointed down the hall. He said, “Show me.” I led him down there. When carrying my futon frame out a few days before, I’d lost my grip and it busted the light switch so I couldn’t turn on the light. For that reason, I still had my big Maglite in there. It was the big 4-D-cell version I’d bought for the upcoming bike tour and I suddenly realized it wasn’t where I’d left it. In fact, the cop at my shoulder was wielding a Maglite and I reckoned it was probably mine, like in all the excitement he didn’t realize this wasn’t his cop-issued one. I decided not to bring it up. “Where’s all your stuff?!” the guy demanded. I told him, “I’m moving out.” He asked, “Why?!”

This was a bit of a tough one to answer. I’m sure he didn’t want to hear a Doogie Howser response like, “I’m putting all my things in storage because I’m going to do a cross-country bike tour! It’s going to be so much fun!” But I also didn’t want to sound like a smartass. I decided to take the risk and said, with a head-nod toward my roommate in the living room, “Why do you think?” He asked why the light switch was broken. I explained. He marched me back into the living room.

Just as I got there, the phone in the kitchen rang. I was like, oh crap, that’s probably my dad. I turned to the guy who’d come down the stairs for me, whom I took to be the head cop, and said, “Hey, that’s probably my dad calling. He’s supposed to come over. Can I please answer, just to tell him not to come?” The cop stared at me for a couple seconds, as the phone continued to ring, and finally said, “Okay … but no funny stuff.”

I almost burst out laughing. Where did this guy get his script? From watching cop shows on TV? “No funny stuff,” seriously? What was I gonna say … “The bird has flown – execute Plan Bravo”? But I kept a straight face and picked up the phone. It was E— asking, “Hey, are we still on for tonight?” I paused. What counted as funny stuff? Does mentioning the police raid violate some law enforcement taboo? I decided to be as vague as possible. “I’m not sure,” I said carefully. “Things have gotten a bit complicated. Just stay put and … I’ll be in touch.” I rang off and the cop seemed okay with what I’d said. Handing me back my driver’s license, he sent me back into the living room where a cop had finally found something at the back of a bookcase: a little baggie of mushrooms. R— said, “Oh my god, there those are, I wondered where I’d stashed them!” The head cop wheeled around to face him and yelled, “Oh, you think this is funny?!” Now R— looked properly terrified. I guess he’d been shooting for levity but obviously that didn’t work out.

All this time, Toonces was sitting up on top of the giant TV, looking down across the scene. This was her favorite perch, since TVs still had tubes back then so it was always nice and warm. One of the cops must have followed my gaze because he yelled at me, “What’s the cat doing up there?!” I couldn’t believe he’d actually asked that. I mean, what a pointless question, right? I guess he was so hopped up on adrenaline he just needed to yell something. I meekly replied, “Um … she likes it up there.” He fired back, “ Does she always sit up there?!” The very first thing that popped into my head as a response was, “No, only when she’s stoned!” But obviously after R—’s experiment I didn’t even consider it. I just said, “Uh, yeah … most of the time.”

The doorbell rang. Oh crap … my dad. Before I could do anything the head cop ran down the stairs and threw open the door: “Freeze, police! Are you armed?!”

I peered down the stairs to see my dad standing in the doorway, looking dumbfounded. At least he didn’t look threatening, with his tidy grey beard, ‘90s-era Bill Gates eyeglasses, and tweed blazer. But he also didn’t answer right away. He just stood there, and I could sense the cop’s blood starting to boil. Finally my dad said, in a very quiet, timid voice, “Is Dana here?”

“I said, are you armed?!” the cop yelled. My dad assured him he was not. I took a gamble and came down the stairs. “This is my dad,” I told the cop. “And here’s the thing: you’ve run my license already and you can see I have zero criminal record. I have nothing to do with any of this and my roommate probably already told you that. You guys have been through my room and there’s nothing there. Can I please, please just leave with my dad?” The cop thought it over and decided to let me go. (This was a very lucky break. I found out later my two roommates spent the night  on that sofa, handcuffed together while the cops finished tearing the place apart.) 

Before I left, I approached the cop who’d been in my room and politely asked if that was my Maglite he was carrying. He acknowledged that it was. “Would you be willing to leave it in my room before you go?” I timidly asked. Looking back, this was probably pushing my luck.

For some reason, my stepmother had parked a block or two away. As my dad and I walked to the car, I pondered what he must be thinking. This was not a “cool dad” with a wild past who had ever encountered anything like a drug bust. I mean, he was such a goody-two-shoes, he didn’t even touch alcohol or use swear words. As for firearms, he’d never even let my brothers and me have toy guns. Famously, when he found a toy gun in our house, belonging to one of our friends, he snatched it up, took it out to the street in front of our house, and ran it over with his VW bus. My dad was a principled man, a gentleman, a gentle man, and a prig. Plainclothes cops were not part of his world.

Not sure what to say, I remained quiet as we strolled down the sidewalk toward the car. My dad finally broke the silence. “Well,” he said, “that was interesting.”

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