My SIGBOVIK 2020 papers, lovingly aged one month

Well, April felt simultaneously short and long! I should have just posted these at the beginning of the month, my SIGBOVIK papers from 2020:

Is this the longest chess game? is another needless chess paper, here trying to figure out the longest possible legal game. There are several rules that make sure games can't go on forever, and some surprisingly subtle details/ambiguity to those rules. The whole game is of course included in the paper (17697 moves), but I was far from being the largest waste of space in this year's proceedings, as one provocateur had a paper with 150 pages of citations. Mathieu made a 5-hour video of the chess game I computed for his companion blog post.

What is the best game console? A market-based approach is a silly idea taken too far. It was a year in the making (mostly waiting) and didn't quite turn out the way I was expecting due to world events, but that's part of the "fun" I guess!

Conditional Move For Shell Script Acceleration was another collaboration with Jim (mostly his doing, but I like to lather on an additional patina of absurdity).

This month I have mostly been trying to keep sane and healthy during the shelter-in-place order. It's been harder than usual to find the energy to be creative, but I have had some spurts. I basically only leave the house to run (not going anywhere near other people). But I have been doing that pretty regularly, so between that and the prohibition against going out to bars and ice cream, I'd say I'm currently in the best I have been in ~6 years. Yesterday I claimed some course records for some Strava segments in my neighborhood! I also finished up Doom: Eternal, which was good but you pretty much already know what it's like and I'm playing Animal Crossing and haven't yet gotten sick of that. The timing for the release of that latter game couldn't have been more perfect, huh? Sometimes I need something with a little challenge, so I just started Nuclear Throne. I'm liking it but not sure if I have decided whether it's good enough to invest the time in to win (I almost always play games to the end but these randomized roguelikes demand a certain kind of potentially infinite investment. Like I never did beat the last boss in Wizard of Legend, and even in Dead Cells, which I loved, I had to settle for some modest personal criteria for "winning.") Any other recs? Could use a good Metroidvania perhaps?

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My own trumpet

 A lovely thing happened to me this month. The Writer's Guild of Great Britain gave me their Outstanding Contribution to Writing Award.

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My First Day Curse??

     It looks as though my first 3 mile cycle came back with negative results!!  Picture this: 


     I'm deep in concentration, the sweat dripping from my brow; the race is on.  I don't know if I'll finish, thoughts are pouring over me like warm syrup, I'm near the home stretch : King Edward and Queen Elizabeth Riveres are being held captive while the fate of their English lands are in turmoil and being held captive by the evil Lord Warwick!
      All of a sudden, the concentration of my exercise, as opposed to the concentration on King Edward and his "golden body" stop. My foot slips off the pedal and all of Phillipa Gregory's glorious characters go tumbling down the cycle along with the rest of my Kindle. 
     I finish off my 3 mile cycle near tears! What will become of King Edward and his lands? Will Queen Elizabeth be able to survive after the loss of her mother? Will Henry Tudor (yes the cute Henry Tudor that is the star of the hit SHOW time series, The Tudors) obtain the crown (even though if you have read any of Phillipa Gregory's novels, or seen the movie The Other Boleyn Girl you know the answer to that question)?
    Lukily, I get to find out more on Tuesday when Amazon.Com sends me another kindle to replace the one that, malfunctioned. Hey, she asked me if I dropped it, not if it fell...
     On to exerceise news!  Currently weighing in at 245 LBS.  Thats 2 LBS less that I did when I started the blog, lord knows weight flucuation sucks.  I plan to never be 250 + again.  Hello world, don't hate me because I'm beautiful!!!!
    I'll be blogging my exercise routine for the next 8 months later on today. I welcome all comments!!

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You don't have to attend every fight you're invited to

My week has been stressful. They called Thursday and offered me the half-time job. They needed to know that day -- we haven't heard back on the lucrative job James has applied for, so I declined, citing the fact that I'm the only breadwinner and James hasn't heard back about the job he was waiting to hear from (I didn't mention to the HR person that it's a job at my same employer, because it's probably not her fault they're lagging on his job, and I'm not an asshole). She wanted to know when I'd know, and I said, "Well, I was supposed to know two weeks ago, so I mean, soon, I hope, but no guarantees."

She called me back an hour later and offered to give me a week to decide (because they actually don't want the other two people who interviewed, is my surmise), so yeah, rollercoaster day on Thursday.

And then a student's mom called and cussed me out for like half an hour. I don't take that stuff personally, but it does wear on me. My co-workers marvelled over and over about how calm I stayed, and I said (and I meant it), "She was frustrated. That's understandable. And I don't have to attend every fight I'm invited to," which became a theme for the week.

My mom got in a fracas with another member of her senior center, and I shared my week's theme with her. I think she felt a little chastised, but she also seemed to latch onto the theme as a potential sanity saver.

And then today at the donut shop, I accidentally passed up another person who was waiting to pay (because I followed the person who gave me our donuts to the register and didn't notice the other person who was standing away from the registers at the window. She berated me for many minutes about how rude I was, and how I should give a bitch some space, and how in America, we call this White Privilege, and and and... I just apologized, didn't engage beyond that, (felt frankly detached and mildly amused -- not sure what that says about me) and then once she'd left, the cashier apologized to me for the customer.

Me: "Nah, she's not wrong. I didn't see her, but I did cut in front of her."

I mean, I don't like being yelled at, or having people behave in ways that I perceive as rude towards me, but I'm not gonna fault someone for standing up for their space when I've violated it, so long as they're not hitting me or something. Not a fight I need to get into; not a hill I'm gonna die on.

So yeah, stressful week for many reasons, but not something that's gonna ruin my Saturday, which will now be completed by spending many many many hours writing and catching up on webcomics.

And how are YOU, dear ones?

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John A. Sawyer, R.I.P.

My father, John A. Sawyer, Ph.D., passed away at the age of 94 on Monday, December 17, 2018, at his retirement residence in North York, Ontario, Canada. The following death notice / obituary appeared in The Globe and Mail and The Toronto Star:Sawyer, John A. (Jack) Died December 17, 2018 Professor Emeritus (Economics), University of […]

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Mathematics Seminars List

My student, Jaume de Dios, has set up a web site to collect upcoming mathematics seminars from any institution that are open online.  (For instance, it has a talk that I will be giving in an hour.)   There is a form for adding further talks to the site; please feel free to contribute (or make […]

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Mystery Shots! Booth in Sacramento

Last year I had an incredible night with the Rocky Challenge table in Sacramento. I offered people an opportunity to try something weird (drinking raw eggs) and it was a big hit! Since then, I've set up the Compliment Exchange table a few times, but I always had my mind on creating some kind of physical or psychological challenge. In August, I came up with a plan: Mystery Shots.

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Buried Treasure. A Backyard Treasure Hunt for Kids

My kids have solved some easy treasure hunts, but when my oldest daughter turned eleven, I figured she was ready for something a bit more challenging.

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Followup… System Focused Root Cause Analysis of Complexity

My previous post about root causes in complex systems, in retrospect, looks a little bit like a rant. That doesn't bother me too much, really... but I wish I had included the following info: it is one way to go about resolving the mess that complex systems can make of your root cause analysis. Basically, when […]

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New (old) title for my figure skating romance

My figure skating romance has a new (old) title! Misha and Dev’s story was originally two novellas published through Loose Id called Cold War and Holding the Edge. I later combined them into one volume to give you more bang for your buck. To avoid confusion, I called the book The Winning Edge. However, Cold War is frankly just a much better […]

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My 3 favorite books about Japan

Being back in a cold and rainy climate reminds me of Tokyo. No, seriously. Washington has four seasons, just like Tokyo did, and just like Hawaii didn’t. I suppose that’s what has been making me feel really nostalgic these days. I’m in a place with the weather of Japan, but way less awesome. I have seriously owned around seventeen kajillion books about Japan in my lifetime, and I’ve given away, donated, or sold back almost the same amount. Some of them I bought, some of them were given to me, and I even found one or two. But the thing is that I have moved so many times that the only ones I’ve kept are those that I absolutely, positively, do not want to live without. (Well, maybe I could live without them, but then would I really be living?) Anyays! Right now, I only own three books in English about Japan, and these are them, and here is why I really like them:   1. The Otaku Encyclopedia: An Insider’s Guide to the Subculture of Cool Japan Disclaimer: A friend of mine wrote this, but that’s not why I’m recommending it.  Pat has written a bunch of books and papers, and they’re all great, but this is the one that I wish that every single otaku in the world could have. What is it? It’s seriously a dictionary, but not the kind of dictionary that we used when I was a little kid to look up stuff for our school essays. I never had a dictionary like this. You probably know what Hatsune Miku is, but do you know what a Heta-uma is? How about a kuchi-paku? Guess where you can find all of that information that you didn’t know that you needed to have? In this freaking book. I know a fair amount about Otaku culture. I lived and breathed it in Japan for almost a whole decade. But I didn’t know half of the stuff that Patrick wrote about in his book, and that’s why you need it. Plus, it’s got a lot of color, a cute mascot, and some really cool exclusive interviews. You can even learn about Tenimyu!   2. Tokyo on Foot So. I saw this book in the book store in Japan, even though it’s written in English. Maybe that’s because although there is a story in it, it’s mostly drawings and you don’t need to be able to read to get the gist of it. It was written/drawn by an artist that came to stay in Tokyo while his girlfriend was there for an internship. He spent almost every day of his six months there wandering the city with colored pencils and a pad of paper and drawing what he saw. Not only are his drawings aces, I absolutely love his little comments about places and people and things. Right after I bought this book (years ago), I was so enamored that I tried emulating his style with less than stellar results. Me and colored pencils don’t mix, which kind of makes this book even more cool (somehow)! Part of the reason that I really enjoyed this book was because it made me nostalgic for my own first days in Tokyo. I remembered thinking a lot of the same things. I just wish that I’d been good with colored pencils (and had enough confidence to write a book). You can read about my first year here on my blog, though! Honestly, I don’t think that this book is as much a must-have for otaku as the other two, but if art and impressions of Japan is your thing, I think you will love it as much as I do. I seriously only brought two English-language books back with me when I moved out of Japan, and this was one. The other was an ancient copy of The Mysterious Island that my father got when he was a kid and passed on to me.   3. Tokyo Geek’s Guide Aaaaalright. I was really, really skeptical about this one. I’ve seen a hundred other “guides to Tokyo” for otaku, but I didn’t keep any of them. This one, though? I am not only keeping it forever, I am going to give a copy to any of my friends traveling to Japan on their own to go otaku-shopping. Holy cow, I wish this book had existed when I first moved to Japan, because it covers things that it took me years of living there to find on my own! It’s a bona-fide travel guide, minus all of the generic stuff that you can find in a normal travel guide. It doesn’t focus on hotels or nice restaurants. Instead, it lists maid cafes, anime shops, and AWESOME stuff like Swallowtail (don’t know what that is? You need to get this book and find out because it is awesome!). The book is split into districts of Tokyo, and lists otaku-related info about each area along with detailed maps and how to get to all of these places. It’s kind of big and heavy for a travel guide, but it’s seriously the only one that I’m interested in having with me next time that I travel to Tokyo. There are places in it that I haven’t even been to. Oh, and bonus? There is a whole section in the latter part of the book talking about Geeky festivals like Comicket and JUMP Festa. I REALLY, REALLY WISH THAT THIS HAD BEEN AROUND WHEN I MOVED TO JAPAN. It’s 14 years too late for that, but not too late for my next trip, and not too late for yours! It’s also in full color. If you’re reading this, I think that you will probably want this book. GO BUY IT.   This has absolutely NOT been a paid advertisement. I am just a geeky girl honestly recommending things that she likes to you that she thinks you need. :3 See you again soon la la la!

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Myeloid-specific Asxl2 deletion limits diet-induced obesity by regulating energy expenditure

We previously established that global deletion of the enhancer of trithorax and polycomb (ETP) gene, Asxl2, prevents weight gain. Because proinflammatory macrophages recruited to adipose tissue are central to the metabolic complications of obesity, we explored the role of ASXL2 in myeloid lineage cells. Unexpectedly, mice without Asxl2 only in myeloid cells (Asxl2ΔLysM) were completely resistant to diet-induced weight gain and metabolically normal despite increased food intake, comparable activity, and equivalent fecal fat. Asxl2ΔLysM mice resisted HFD-induced adipose tissue macrophage infiltration and inflammatory cytokine gene expression. Energy expenditure and brown adipose tissue metabolism in Asxl2ΔLysM mice were protected from the suppressive effects of HFD, a phenomenon associated with relatively increased catecholamines likely due to their suppressed degradation by macrophages. White adipose tissue of HFD-fed Asxl2ΔLysM mice also exhibited none of the pathological remodeling extant in their control counterparts. Suppression of macrophage Asxl2 expression, via nanoparticle-based siRNA delivery, prevented HFD-induced obesity. Thus, ASXL2 controlled the response of macrophages to dietary factors to regulate metabolic homeostasis, suggesting modulation of the cells’ inflammatory phenotype may impact obesity and its complications.

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My CNN editorial, how it all came to be

  So I wrote an op-ed about the recent Macmillan/ebooks kerfuffle for CNN. Here’s how that all worked…. I got...

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Your Pet Tributes'Scamper'

My darling, all of Mama's love. You have gone leaving a void in my life. I still hear you sigh, and the patter of your feet up the steps, and the sound

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Real Life Rainbow Bridge Stories'Whenever I Ask for Comfort'

My 19 year old cat had to be euthanized a couple of days before Christmas. I must admit the guilt was horrible and all I could do is wonder where my dear

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My Pet Tributes'Khan-li'

Khan-li my darling boy you were and always will be the Apple of my Eye, The Love Of My Life My Heart and all that is wonderful. The memories I have of

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Your Pet Tributes'Toby Todd'

My Sweet Toby. You were only with us for a short time and was just 15 days shy of 5 months. Why the door had to open when it did, why you ran into the

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Your Pet Loss Stories'Unconditional Love'

My brother owned a Chinese Crested named Phantom for almost 15 years. Their relationship was far beyond owner and pet, it was 100% family. Old age left

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Your Pet Tributes'Reggie'

My dear, beloved friend, whom I loved more than life itself, is gone. My darling Reggie, the Plymouth Rock rooster, was snatched from my arms by a sudden

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Homework?

My therapist wants me to start blogging again. Which, okay. I’m a writer, and the way I used to work things out was to write about what was going on. But something happened to me a few years ago that made that outlet impossible to use properly for a few years; it basically broke my […]

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Myappsclub.net Redirect

Myappsclub[.]net redirect removal instructions

What is myappsclub[.]net?

Myappsclub.net is the address of a fake search engine. Such illegitimate web searching tools typically cannot generate search results and record information relating to browsing activity. Fake search engines are usually promoted by PUAs (Potentially Unwanted Applications), called browser hijackers. They do so by making modifications to browsers and often monitor users' browsing habits.

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Mythology/Religion – Troubles

Removed From Network (Open for application) Astrology: Gemini (Astrology and New Age); Witchcraft (Religion: Paganism)

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My Three Tips for Work, Life, School, and CPA Balance

Have you ever heard of that phrase, “work-life balance?” Well try “work, life, school, CPA balance” for a little extra challenge! The thought of achieving those three little letters every accountant dreams of- “CPA“- can be quite daunting, especially if you are trying to study while you are in school. But, I am here to … Continue reading "My Three Tips for Work, Life, School, and CPA Balance"

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Letters: My body, your choice? (5/3/20)

My body, your choice? Re: “Inside state’s growing anti-shutdown movement,” April 27 news story

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Myers v. Raley's

(California Court of Appeal) - Held that, in light of intervening decisional law, the trial court must reconsider its denial of class certification in a wage and hour lawsuit. Reversed and remanded, stating that the trial court must provide a more detailed explanation of its reasons for not certifying a class in this suit brought by employees of a grocery store chain.

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MySafeStreams.com Porn Spam - Hey! Can you text me please? Or hit me up on YH

Cleverly disguised WebCam Spam from MySafeStreams.com

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