When I write about things like storing food or medication in case of disaster, one common response I get is that it doesn't matter: society will break down, and people who are stronger than you will take your stuff. This seemed plausible at first, but it's actually way off.

Looking at past disasters, people mostly fall somewhere on a "kind and supportive" to "keep to themselves" spectrum. When there is looting it's typically directed at stores, not homes, and violence is mostly in the streets. Having supplies at home lets you stay out of the way.

Three years ago I wrote about how we should be preparing for less privacy: technology will make previously-private things public. I applied this by showing how I could deanonymize people on the EA Forum. In 2023 this looked like writing custom code to use stylometry on an exported corpus representing a small group of people; today it looks like prompting "I have a fun puzzle for you: can you guess who wrote the following?"

Kelsey Piper writes about how Opus 4.7 could identify her writing from short snippets, and I decided to give it a try. Here's a paragraph from an unpublished blog post:

Tonight she was thinking more about how unfair milking is to cows, primarily the part where their calves are taken away, and decided she would stop eating dairy as well. This is tricky, since she's a picky eater and almost everything she likes has some amount of dairy. I told her it was ok if she gave up dairy, as long as she replaced it nutritionally. The main tricky thing here is the protein (lysine). We talked through some options (beans, nuts, tofu, meat substitutes, etc) and she didn't want to eat any of them except breaded and deep-fried tofu (which is tasty, but also not somethign I can make all the time). We decided to go to the grocery store.

Correctly identified as me. Perhaps a shorter one?

I made a new major mode for emacs: mixed-html-mode. Or, really, Claude Code made one at my direction. It does syntax highlighting in HTML files with inline CSS and JS. I had two goals, which weren't met by any mode I could find:

1. Does not freeze, flash, or stutter, even on huge files on slow machines.

2. Does not get confused about whether a portion of a file is HTML vs CSS vs JS.

The initial insight was that how browsers decide what text is HTML vs CSS vs JS is super simple: scanning for literal <script> and <style> tags. I pulled some tricky examples, described what I wanted, and then iterated for about an hour until I had something that worked well. Then I tried to use it to write something for real, ran into a few other irritations, had Claude fix those, and now I have something I'm enjoying a lot.

It's mildly faster than web-mode (and much simpler, and easier to install), and far faster than html-ts-mode. And unlike mhtml-mode it doesn't get confused by quotes.

The biggest drawback is that it doesn't do indentation; I may add that, but right now I'm happy with it the way it is.

I've skimmed the code, but haven't read it in detail, and definitely wouldn't say I understand it. The validation has been a mixture of asking Claude to review it and fix the bugs and warts it finds, making sure Claude has written tests, and using it enough to feel good about it. I do expect it has some bugs left: if you decide to use it and find a situation it handles poorly please let me know.

It's funny: I picked emacs two decades ago because I liked the idea of an editor that was so extensible that it was mostly written in its own extension language, and then never took advantage of this because it was too much work. But now it's not much work! Perhaps emacs will finally catch up to (and overtake) vim?

I was so excited about the first BIDA dance that I arrived two weeks early. I biked over from Medford to the Park Av Church in Arlington and was really disappointed to find the hall was empty. But I came back when the dance was actually happening, and it was fantastic.

It immediately became my favorite dance. I started volunteering, first out of frugality (volunteers get in free!) and then out of a sense of wanting to contribute, and in 2010 I joined the board. Over the past 16 years I've done just about everything at some point except treasurer, and now I'm stepping away.

It's not that I think BIDA is doing something wrong; quite the opposite! We're seeing record attendance, finances are good, so many fun dancers, and many people who want to pitch in. I noticed I would have been the seventh person running for three board spots, and realized it was a good time to let someone else have a turn. I'm excited to see what Emma, Harris, Bret, Veer, Casey, Naomi, Clara, and Persis do!

This seems like a good time to look back over how BIDA and the Boston dance community have changed over my time organizing.

About ten years ago I sat down in front of a camera and recorded eleven videos showing how I play mandolin for contra dances. I've now done something similar with piano, this time with thirteen videos.

This is not a high quality effort: I didn't write any scripts or even plan what I was going to say. Think of it as if we spent half an hour together, with me showing you how I play. Also keep in mind that I'm self taught, and my particular style that isn't for everyone. And my keyboard is wearing out, which means some of the keys make a clacking sound. And the first video cuts off part of my head, and the first eight videos have tape over the leftmost part of the camera. Ok, with caveats out of the way, the videos:

Last week the US president announced that:

... if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately "Open for Business," we will conclude our lovely "stay" in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet "touched." This will be in retribution for our many soldiers, and others, that Iran has butchered and killed over the old Regime's 47 year "Reign of Terror."

Yesterday morning he posted that:

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...

These are threats to target civilian infrastructure as a coercive measure, which would be a war crime: if Iran doesn't allow tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, the US will cause massive damage to power plants, bridges, and possibly water systems. The US has historically accepted that this is off limits: destroying a bridge to stop it from being used to transport weapons is allowed, but not as retribution or to cause the civilian population to experience "Hell". The Pentagon's own Law of War Manual recognizes this distinction: when NATO destroyed power infrastructure in Kosovo, it was key that the civilian impact was secondary to the military advantage and not the primary purpose. [1][2]

To be clear, what Iran has been doing to precipitate this, by attacking civilian tankers for the economic impacts, is itself a war crime. But that does not change our obligations: the US has worked for decades to build acceptance for the principle that adherence to the Law of War is unconditional. It doesn't matter what our enemies do, we will respect the Law of War "in all circumstances". We've prosecuted our own service members, and enemy combatants, under this principle.