Notices by Iris Young (he/they/she) (PhD) (iris@neuromatch.social)

For whoever out there needs to report "five things I got done this week," I offer a tech-bro-speak writeup of the activities of a small child:

1. Resolved an apparent paradox in knot theory, resulting in substantially improved system security (tied my shoes).

2. Isolated the root cause of a blocking problem and removed the barrier, retaining relevant evidence for post-mortem analysis (sneezed and wiped snot on my sleeve).

3. Stress-tested a rapid response system, demonstrating successful mobilization of key individuals with extremely low latency (screamed).

4. Discovered an important resource unavailability and implemented an alternative last-mile delivery protocol in order to meet a time-critical need (peed myself).

5. Completed scheduled downtime in response to substantially degraded system performance and restored operating efficiency to full (took a nap).

@danielgibert this is great and I appreciate it for both its informational and its entertainment value.

@ascentale @gcvsa @bikenite #BikeNite A7. Under 24 hours if it's at work (widely perceived as a safer place to leave a bike, and semi-restricted access), for my nice folding ebike. Anywhere else I would not leave it after dark out of sight, even though Hamburg seems to have much lower bike theft than anywhere I've lived before.

In Eugene, Oregon, I would not leave *any* bike outside and visible, but out of my sight, for more than a few hours and I'd be very particular about where I locked up. I'd lock the frame and both wheels (this took two locks) to something embedded in concrete. My sister has had a bike stolen in a ten minute window in the middle of the day (on campus) and at least three bikes stolen overall, plus at least one seat. My bike there was a very standard, heavy steel commuter, tagged with bike registry stickers and registered with campus police.

In ths SF Bay Area I relaxed my standards slightly to locking frame and one wheel with a single lock, and keeping it in the most well-lit and well-traveled place I could find. I'd still never leave it overnight anywhere but work or home, and never on campus after dark. I still had lights stolen repeatedly, whenever I forgot to take them with me.

The great advantage of bike lockers is no one can even tell they're occupied without breaking in! In Eugene you could rent one long term some places and on an hourly basis in several locations around campus. Absolutely my preferred solution, and I'll park further from my destination to use a bike locker if it's available.

"it looks like nature preserved the yeti in a perfect state"

"and then we s'moresd him"

#monsterdon

It's a depressing day to be an American.

Currently questioning whether I have missed a step in the paperwork marathon and mildly panicking. If the DESY international office doesn't get back to me tomorrow I'm just going to show up to their office and stay there until someone gives me a clear answer. Because otherwise my panic will exceed mild.

For context, there have been three separate delays of >1 month in formally hiring me as a postdoc due to error and/or inaction on the part of an admin here. I've been on short-term contracts and officially self-employed through December, and straight up unemployed since January. I've had my paperwork in order, including visa, since November. I don't know what I'm going to do if there's another major delay. The uncertainty has been incredibly stressful.

There is a massive push for US dominance in AI. This involves revoking and rewriting policies to favor AI across multiple sectors.

Only days after (if I have my timeline right), a Chinese AI company DeepSeek released a model trained with vastly fewer resources than US competitors and performing as well. OpenAI feels very threatened and NVIDIA stocks lost $600 billion (although they've partly recovered).

The president fired the current heads of the coast guard and TSA and all members of an aviation security committee (while leaving the committee technically still in existence) as part of a broader purge addressing "misuse of resources." We've also sworn in a new transportation secretary who promises to reduce regulations on self-driving cars and "restore confidence" in Boeing.

About an hour ago, a passenger plane landing at Ronald Regan nat'l airport (that's near Washington DC, not Washington state, for anyone confused by the headlines) collided with a military helicopter.

[update] 67 crew and passengers killed (no survivors). The president has blamed the crash on the dwarfism of the air traffic control operator, who seems to have not made any error -- the helicopter was higher than it was supposed to be and was possibly watching and avoiding the wrong passenger jet.

The president wants to "clear out" remaining Palestinians from Gaza and move them to Jordan or Egypt. Pretty much everyone is angry about this.

An Anglican priest gave a Nazi salute as well (apparently this is our thing now, my god). The church revoked his license as soon as they heard about it though.

The president caught his own top level staff by surprise calling for mass detainment of immigrants at Guantánamo Bay. That's a concentration camp, folks. We already have them at the southern border (have for years) and they're inhumane as fuck. Those typically hold people attempting to cross the border (including those seeking asylum). This escalation means rounding up people already living in the country and packing them in an external high security location. It can't get any plainer.

New acting chair appointed to the equal employment opportunity commission set a top priority of rolling back rights for trans and nonbinary people. (This role covers what's legal in the private sector.) This conflicts with a recent supreme court case but they are newspeaking their way around that.

Multiple top ranking people fired from the equal employment opportunity commission and the national labor relations board.

that's the word I was looking for the other day: retaliation. Musk has got all of his people to lock gov't employees out of their own systems and is collecting hard drives full of database info, mainly on anyone involved in investigating Jan 6th. They've got sensitive personal information on every one of them.

Also trying to get access to the treasury and all the database info there (unclear if successful) including for the social security, medicare, and similar programs nationwide.

pocket people, I have realized that writing these things out ONCE, as concisely as possible, serves the purpose of purging them from my brain, so I may be adding to this thread indefinitely.

various news orgs are being evicted from their locations at the pentagon and been replaced by far-right news orgs.

this thread interrupted to bring you an important message:

When in doubt, make art.

or build something, or fix something. Anything constructive to counter the destruction. Keep your spirit alive.

The white house website has finished purging all mention of trans and nonbinary people (aside from the EOs themselves), e.g. from the travel guidance page, which now warns LGB travelers that some other countries don't recognize same-sex marriage.

They've moved on to NIH, CDC and similar. The entire CDC database of 1.4k datasets is temporarily offline while they "bring it into compliance" with the EO declaring trans people aren't real.

Funding freeze was extended to ... I can't even track down what all. All evidence points to them not knowing either when the order was issued. They've since clarified (decided?) that social security, food stamps, and student loans are not affected.

The memo initiating the freeze was rescinded in a separate 2-sentence memo, but further clarification was released that it rescinds instructions for how to implement the freeze, and not the freeze itself. In other words, further chaos.

A bunch of states intervened to block implementation of the freeze. This will obviously be a developing situation. Some non-jargon sum-up here (https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/funding-freeze-drama-not-over/) and more comprehensive sum-up here (https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-pause-federal-grants-aid-f9948b9996c0ca971f0065fac85737ce).

EOs targeting immigrants: mostly I've gathered that there are massively increased ICE raids and people are being detained whether they're documented or not, including some citizens. Deportees have been sent on flights in handcuffs and ankle chains. The threat of deportation or long-term detainment is driving immigrant families to avoid public services including medical care.

Some organizations are stepping up ways they're refusing to comply. I would particularly like to gather references of how these efforts have been implemented, and any links to shareable resources.

Alright folks, I would like to make sure I'm up to date on the last [checks notes] 9 days of US history, as I am deliberately not consuming it in a constant stream. I'm gonna start a thread separated by topic and am requeting comments filling in what I've missed. CWs by topic as well so y'all can chime in where you like.