Thanks to @jessekelber for sending me his spare mechanical keyboard after discussing it during Micro.blog Analog Tools meetup. My house better be prepared for some clickty-clack noises.
March 28, 2024
Great interview with Manton Reece by @cdevroe. This excerpt popped a thought into my head. What if Micro.blog simply hosted a Mastodon instance like OMG.LOL, does it instead of its own timeline? 🤔
Micro.blog can also work as a companion to other networks, so if someone wants those features they can can use Mastodon or Threads for the social aspect, and use Micro.blog more for traditional blogging, or for handling cross-posting.
I’m surprised how quickly they prosecuted and sentenced Sam Bankman-Fried after FTX collapsed in November 2022 whereas we have still not tried Trump for his crimes done in November 2020 - January 2021.
At least the trial for the crimes in October 2020 may start next month.
Yup, I, too, hopped on the Scribbles bandwagon - scribbles.pratikmhatre.com - and plan to use one of the five blogs to get my son to get started on writing on the web. Perhaps I should name his blog, Skibiddi. I plan to keep most of my blogging here, so I have not yet decided what I’ll write there.
March 26, 2024
“Hey Siri, play Cranberries”
“Now playing the Quran”
Wait, what? No. Sigh! I guess my probability of random checks by TSA just went up. To be fair, I stuttered on ‘Cranberries’.
Not Even Marginally R-evolved
I used to read Marginal Revolution in my early blogging days. But then I grew up. I still see it mentioned by people who clearly are not libertarians or at least social conservatives posing as such. So, I decided to hop over to see if I was missing anything and whether those bloggers had evolved. Or at least if Tyler Cowen had.
I only had to scroll to yesterday’s post to see his link to the study below. Only a moron would come to that conclusion if you read the study and its underlying reasons for the outcomes cited. But, I guess when your worldview is set, you look at everything through that lens.
Anyway, he’s a professor, so I checked out his Google Scholar profile to see his highly-cited works. Hmmm…not a bad h-index, but look a bit closer; nothing he’s written recently has been cited much. In the last ten years, the only work to crack his own top 20 was written in 2015 and that too makes it to the list at #19. Even that citation is for a book which, from the table of contents, looks like one of those pop-economics books in the vein of Freakonomics. They can be interesting to be described as “engaging and provocative writing” but not much substance that will get him the admiration of his peers.
But funnily enough, his top-cited work, ironically considering his link to that study, is an argument in favor of…wokeness. Even his third-highest cited work, In Praise of Commercial Culture, gets a blurb saying, “his philosophy stands in opposition to the cultural pessimism of conservatives.” I scroll down, looking for peer-reviewed journal articles, not just popular books, which appear down the list and are published mostly in the late 80s and early 90s. I guessed he got tenure and then decided to “pivot”. I wonder how he would stand up to the scrutiny of those professor-hunting rightwingers.
I recommend high-profile Apple Developers boycott WWDC 2024 if they want Apple to take their complaints seriously. Learning from political movements might be helpful sometimes even if you mute politics from your timelines.
📺 Constellation (2024) ★★★★☆ A mind-bender. You’re lost until you get it and even then you’re not sure you have got it. Down the rabbit hole we go, Alice.
Hopefully humans can answer this better than ChatGPT did - Why do some web apps open as a new tab in a mobile browser while other apps like Phanpy open in a dedicated browser each time? How do you make the former act like the latter?
March 25, 2024
Surfer dude
March 24, 2024
Last year, we made a conscious decision to up our charitable giving. I highly recommend Daffy, a donor-advised fund website. You can make monthly contributions to Daffy, which are immediately tax-deductible, and donate to charities whenever you like during that year or even later. If the stock market is doing well, you get more to donate.
ISIS claimed responsibility for Moscow massacre, but Putin points the finger at Ukraine.
Maybe ISIS should do a monthly attack until the Russian people do one of their famed revolutions to help Putin see the reality? Or is that history being forgotten?
March 23, 2024
The Saga of the Bank Locker in India
My mom passed away in September 2022. Aside from dealing with grief, you must simultaneously deal with other bureaucratic formalities that follow a person’s non-existence. Only the government can declare you dead with an official certificate after the doctor has declared you dead first, also by issuing a signed notification. Then the other wheels start turning - attorneys' offices, wills, estate records, investments, and bank records. These take time. As in many years time. It is March 2024, and I just sent off a document that is still trying to turn the page on her life.
It’s the damn bank locker in our hometown. My mom had a bright idea of opening a joint locker for each of her daughter-in-law’s names where she would place keepsakes for the two of them. So whenever she bought something valuable for them, it had to be the exact same thing1 and also small enough to fit in the locker. So basically, jewelry. Indians love gold, so any auspicious occasion is a reason to buy gold.
Each locker was in the name of my mom, my dad, and her daughters-in-law. It was opened shortly after our wedding. I remember this more vividly because of the awkward looks exchanged when my wife declared in the bank manager’s office that she wasn’t changing her last name, and I supported her. Yes, I had told my parents earlier that she wouldn’t, but basically, this was the time; it was set in stone…or rather, government legalese, which is as good as stone, I guess. I still remember my dad’s accountant, who manages their financial affairs, looking at my dad for approval and me saying, well, it’s her (my wife) name, so it’s choice.
Anyway, back to the locker. You needed all three people to open the locker account but after that, any of them could operate it. That is, add or remove things. So naturally, after my mom passed, I rather naively thought the bank would ask for her death certificate, remove her name, and operate the locker as usual under my dad’s and wife’s name. But of course, Indian banks love their paperwork, and they said it wouldn’t be that easy. Yes, you have to submit the death certificate and then re-sign all the agreements we signed when the locker account was created, along with a cover letter with literally a single-line reason explaining the following multi-page agreement (basically terms and agreement).
I thought fine, we will sign it. But nope, you have to sign it in person. But…we aren’t coming to India anytime soon. Sorry, we need a ‘wet’ signature, they claimed. Somehow, my dad’s accountant convinced the bank whose staff she had befriended, and so that they could wrap this up quickly, could they send me and my brother the documents by DHL? Thankfully, they agreed. Of course, my dad would have to pay the shipping charges. I was told to expect the documents in the mail.
Nothing happened for several weeks. Then I got a WhatsApp message that the documents had been sent and my wife should sign them and send them pronto. We received the envelope after a week, and I opened it to see that it contained papers for my sister-in-law although the bank’s envelope said my wife’s name on the front (actually my name is put ℅ under hers, which of course is belittling). I contacted my dad’s accountant, and she face-palms and then, after a couple of days, confirmed that the “courier” messed it up. Actually, the bank did since the wrong papers were inside the right sealed envelope, but I let it slide. She asked me to coordinate with my brother and exchange our papers because his wife may have been sent my wife’s papers. I wonder if the bank confused the two wives' names because my sister-in-law and my name start with the same letter, and likewise for my brother and my wife. I know it sounds ridiculous, but more ridiculous things have happened in India.
In the meantime, my brother hasn’t yet gotten our envelope. Anyway, now I have to shell out money to send this envelope to him in Canada, which is technically a foreign country, so the postage is higher. I still opt for USPS Priority, which is still $30 and is the slowest option. After he gets our envelope, he does the same. This takes weeks, though, because, well, procrastination, vacations, life, etc.
Our dad’s accountant, in the meantime, is desperately trying to get us now not-that-much-in-touch brothers to communicate and coordinate, and she mentions that they should receive both sets of documents by the end of the tax year, which for India is March 31st. Why should the tax year matter for a bank locker rental? I have no idea, and I don’t ask.
After we returned from Hawai’i, my brother’s envelope was waiting. My wife signed it, including a “stamp paper” for ₹ 100, before I schelped to FedEx to send the infernal documents. What’s a stamp paper, you ask? Well, nothing but a piece of paper you must buy from a government office with a pretty picture of the currency note of the value. This is basically the government extending its hands out to ask for a transaction fee for something as routine as dropping my dead mother’s name from a locker she co-rents with my dad and my wife. Gah! At least we didn’t have to spend any more money notarizing these documents to prove that, yes, my wife, indeed, was the one who was signing it.
What? $119 just for sending a 3 oz pile of documents to India? FedEx be crazy but since there’s a deadline looming, I swipe my card and take the hit.
So much time, money, and resources spent on something as routine as taking a clearly dead person’s name off a bank locker rental agreement! And yes, by the way, the lockers are empty since we had brought back all the stuff she had saved up for them, but we couldn’t close the account because some other paperwork wouldn’t be ready before we left. So, have we closed the locker now? Nope, the bank wants all joint account holders to be present in person to do that, just as we did when we opened the locker. So now I know at least one place (yay! an Indian bank) we will visit when we are in India next. Let’s hope my dad stays alive until then. I guess the bank will keep him alive to make sure he pays the multiple thousands of rupees in locker rent.
Sigh! And here I was thinking of options involving DocuSign or Zoom to confirm identities, but even in the land of IT Support, things are done old-school.
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To avoid any comparisons that may potentially lead to family drama. As if family drama wouldn’t happen anyway. ↩︎
Imagine if Biden releases an ad signing this bill at 3 am.
Contrasting Party Priorities
If you want to know what a party stands for, see what they claim credit for in a large spending bill. Sure, you may think the Democratic Party is the spending party and the Republican Party is for cutting spending but always look at what they spend on and what they cut back on.
The policy wins highlighted by Democrats included 12,000 new green cards for Afghans who worked alongside the U.S. military during its 20-year campaign in Afghanistan and $8.7 billion for humanitarian assistance to help people affected by foreign conflicts, a $336.4 million increase above last year’s funding.
House Republicans, meanwhile, highlighted a 20% cut in government funding to nonprofit organizations that assist migrants in the bill that funds the Department of Homeland Security. They have advocated cutting off all funding to organizations that help migrants seeking asylum reach their final destinations in the U.S. after they are released by the Border Patrol.
If you still think, both parties are the same, I’ve no respect for your political opinions.
FBAR portion on our taxes (for India) done. We’re dragging it out because we owe taxes and not getting a refund.
Dune: Part Two, 2024 - ★★★★½
Watched on Saturday March 23, 2024.
I used the RunPee app for the first time (for Dune Part 2). It worked quite well for timing the break for a long movie.
March 22, 2024
It’s a beautiful day in Austin and a perfect one to work from outside a coffee shop ☕️🌤️🍃Too bad I can’t venture out to one of those central Austin coffee shops lest I get stuck in traffic before dinner time.
Wishing again we had a train/subway.
Anatomy of a Fall, 2023 - ★★★★½
★★★★½ The dog was like, WTF dude! 🎥
March 21, 2024
The magic of Glass is the community, but some folks need more than a two-week trial to make a decision. At the beginning of this year, we quietly rolled out Viewer Accounts — a free Glass account that allows someone to explore the Community without starting their free trial or a membership.
Reintroducing Glass — Glass. If you were Glass-curious or want to browse nice photos, you can create an account.
Do you want to create a Super App™ on a Performance Smartphone™? Look no further, switch now, and save 15% or more.
March 20, 2024
One criticism about the app store’s policies I’ve never understood is the complaints regarding the 30% cut that Apple charges. This is akin to a tax or tariff. In other businesses, such costs are transferred to the consumer if the product is in demand. Price your app accordingly, no?
People who are using Micro.blog’s blogroll feature, are you also listing all people you follow on Micro.blog or just a subset? If it’s the latter, how do you and how many do you select?
March 19, 2024
Walking into the sunset 🌅
Walking into the sunset 🌅