deathmtn

Gum graft wasn’t too painful! Very surreal seeing the bloody flap being put in my mouth.

Welp, the numbing gel has been applied to my palate and gums. So it begins.

Whoa, you can cut an equilateral triangle into four pieces that will for a square, and it’s just been proven that that’s the best you can do.

Russian researcher who fled dictatorship and got a job at Harvard Medical School now in Louisiana gulag pending possible deportation back to Russia

I really don’t think it’s going to be much of a stretch for them to detain citizens at all.

Well, I went to a protest, and I don’t want to discourage anyone, but I have to say it felt bad. There were about twenty people, plus four counter protestors.

The organizers did their best, but they gave off fringe vibes via decisions like having flyers that said “Mein Trump.” Yes, he is a fascist, but man, that’s just not working. Then, the guy with the megaphone tried to get everyone to repeat a really long pledge about not repeating fascism.

I think there’s a really basic issue to rally around: Trump defying court orders in order to abduct people. But that message was lost among the “Fuck Trump” chants, that like five people did.

Meanwhile this guy from a pro-Israel group went around taking pictures of everyone, probably so he could upload it to Canary Mission, a pro-Israel doxing site, so everyone can get ICE visits later. I was wearing a mask, HTH.

Some other idiot was yelling about how Biden is just as bad as Trump, and I just couldn’t take it. You know there are millions of liars like this, and that’s why Trump has a base. I told her no, that is a lie, he did not defy court orders to abduct people. She, of course said, yes he did. 70/30 on whether or not she really believed this.

I worked out before this so I would be chill, but I found myself really wanting to stick it to her and her husband, even though my friend tried to get me to back off. He was right, and I did disengage, but I absolutely hate these people for literally ruining the country.

Finally, twenty people protesting this in Harvard Square? Everyone should be out there when a president ignores court orders. That’s the end of this as a country in which you can make predictions that will allow you to live safely.

I probably could have avoided this by checking who the organizers were. And I do think you should go to a protest. Just make sure they share your focus before you go. Because there really isn’t much else to do, other than calling your congressman. We have very few levers at this point.

Back workout, 2x5 slow deadlifts, 18-minute run. I think my level is up. Of course, after my gum graft, I have to not work out for two weeks and wither a bit.

Actually, Jeffrey Percival's index is back up!

I finished the Haitian Revolution season of the Revolutions podcast. I think it's the best factual podcast I've ever listened to. It's surprisingly hard to like to a specific season, so I've put up lightly-edited version of Jeffrey Percival's index, which appears to no longer be up. Or, you can search for Revolutions episodes starting with "4." in your podcast app.

I know nothing about the Haitian Revolution beforehand, and you don't have to either. It's quite the ride and both amazing and sad.

For the slaves to be able to organize while slaves and eventually take the nation was incredible. And the nature of humans to pull the ladder up once they themselves is fascinating and devastating to see in this history.

To have a healthy country, you have to get yourselves non-enslaved to even start. And that's huge feat accomplished by no one but the Haitians. But after that, you need equality, both materially and opportunity-wise. Haiti started with a military-first government and didn't get out a privileged-warrior-class situation until the 2000s.

Having a sustainable government vision and escaping from slavery is a lot to ask. Here in the US, we're seeing that sustaining equality and the educated populace needed to sustain a democracy is maybe too hard for us. (Incidentally, pretty much every time the US appears in the history of Haiti, it's bad.)

Anyway, you should give it a listen!

Looks like Marty Friedman has been making stuff that sounds sort of like Megadeth and Eric Johnson playing some anime end credits. I don't think I would have liked it, but I kinda do!

Ubuntu is a lot more usable than most people think, but yeah, you can still run into a situation in which you just say OK to a minor OS update and suddenly, your sound isn’t working. That just happened my media computer, going from 22.04.4 to 22.04.5.

I tried a jillion things, and now I’m just copying all the data off of it and hoping that a fresh install of Ubuntu will take care of it. This is a Bad Security Practice, but I’m just going to turn updates off on that computer once the OS is reinstalled. There’s not going to be anything important on it; nor will it be exposed to the internet.

BTW, at some point in the future, I may take this blog down. Like, I won't delete it; I'll just move the files so nginx can't serve them.

But I'll probably do it temporarily if I need to and just put the files back afterward. So, if it is gone at some point, just check back again in a few days.

I've been trying to get the MBTA to respond about their honking, which happens if there is a construction project going on, even if no construction is happening. I have this really humble request, which is to just tell us in advance what the dates of this project are.

They wouldn't answer me directly, so I asked the mayor, and her assistant was able to get an occasional response from them.

So, I made a FOIA request in hopes getting the information that way. After a lot of back and forth with their records officer, they sent a spreadsheet filled with cryptic abbreviations.

When I asked what those meant, after almost a month, they gave me an email address and told me to ask there.

Whoever was behind that email address knew that I lived in Medford in a quiet zone. So, I guess both the requests from the mayor and the FOIA eventually funneled down to the same team or person.

The actual response was, of course, still bullshit — they said, yeah, they'll be doing construction again "in a few months" with no other specifics.

It's amazing that it takes this much work just to get incredibly basic information from (what I think is) a somewhat non-corrupt, non-violent part of the government.

Imagine dealing with ICE to find out where your spouse is.

ICE disappears a Tufts graduate student in Somerville

I hope people that thought the Republicans were sincere about the advocacy of any version of free speech now see what’s up, but I’m not holding my breath waiting for Joe Rogan to call this out.

A couple hours after I posted about the Boston Dynamics demo, I talked to a dad at judo that works at Boston Dynamics. He said me that their deal with the military ended a while ago, which I remember hearing about, but forgot. Maybe the robot will put factory workers out of a job (if they somehow get costs way down), but at least it won't be killing people. I think.

A game about finding an apartment. I tried a few minutes of this. It is Too Real.

Another Boston Dynamics demo. Again, impressive and scary. The only thing that's comforting is that I don't think they have any idea how to make this not ridiculously expensive yet.

Letter from Ranjani Srinivasan

On Wednesday night (March 5), my visa was revoked by the Department of State.

…

On Friday, (March 7), while on a Zoom call with an ISSO advisor who continues to reassure me that I was in legal status, ICE came knocking at my door without a warrant. If I had been alone I would have opened the door. My roommate, an American citizen, recognized the knock as that of law enforcement. Given the lack of warrant she refused to let them in and repeatedly asked them to identify themselves; something they refused to do.
Scared and anxious, I told the advisor, who was still on Zoom, that ICE was at my door. Initially she seemed frantic, calling upper administrators but in the end she seemed amused.

…

At this point I was quite sure the University was working closely with law enforcement. And I suspected the private survey I had been administered had been ICE trying to confirm my address.
Yet, ICE still had not realized I had vacated my home and left the country. On Thursday (March 13) my home was raided by DHS. The agents were surprised to find my empty room.

…

The reason why I am laying out this sequence of events is that it demonstrates not only the absolute power the Department of State has over F-1 visa holders and the few legal options before us, but also the extent to which Columbia has been cooperating with ICE, instead of protecting its students.

If you don’t know, college administrators are absolutely immoral. The idea of colleges standing up to the administration is laughable.

Ms. Srinivasan was smart about this, and I’m glad she escaped ICE detention.

I think something to look out for next is ICE detaining US citizens.

We took the guy in for a passport appointment today. I was wary that it was going to be a Trump-ized process, but it was normal. The lady at the post office was nice, but at one point she tried to convince us to not try to renew the passport because there was more than one year left on the old one.

There’s nothing on the state department’s site that says you can’t renew early, but she warned that it could get rejected. I tried my best to say we want to try anyway without saying that I think it’s possible that the State Department may have half its people gone by next year and/or severe restrictions on passport renewal. I think I said “I just want to get it done in case the State Department changes,” and she let it go.