my annual welfare check on Keith Lynch

[the presumptive mister RASFF 2021]

ever since I was involved in cryonics circles on the web back in the 1990s, I have found keith lynch fascinating and inspirational. So therefore I check in on him regularly.

Like you I am fat (you being a former fatty, I believe), into computer science at one time in the past, and into cryonics...you apparently left cryonics because of the 2000 tech bust....I am still signed up...

You got out of computer programming and started doing physician transcriptions....ironically, I got out of writing software patents and got a govt job that involving reading a lot of medical records.

You apparently retired recently. So did I.

You are apparently still living in the washington metro area near where you grew up. I am now living in phoenix so as to be close to alcor.

You love science fiction. When I was young, I also loved it. But I stopped reading books when the internet came along.

How are you doing, Keith? I am fine, although my wife is going through menopause and is crazy as fk lately...

[Keith F. Lynch]

the presumptive mister RASFF 2021 <randys...@gmail.com> wrote:
> ever since I was involved in cryonics circles on the web back in the
> 1990s, I have found keith lynch fascinating and inspirational.

Thank you. I hope you find me fascinating and inspirational for
more than just cryonics.

> Like you I am fat (you being a former fatty, I believe),

Right. From adolescence until my early 30s, I weighed over 300
pounds. But for the past 1/3 of a century, i.e. more than half my
life, I've weighed well under 200 pounds. By weight charts I'm still
overweight, but I certainly don't look it, even when naked. I don't
think the charts take account of muscle mass.

> into computer science at one time in the past, and into
> cryonics...you apparently left cryonics because of the 2000 tech
> bust....I am still signed up...

I left cryonics mostly because the local cryonics group fell apart.
I believe it fell apart because:

* We weren't close to critical mass of people willing to work, even
after we got excellent free publicity (a front page article in
The Washington Post).

* We weren't able to make cooperative arrangements with any national
cryonics group.

* We weren't able to make cooperative arrangements with any national
local funeral directors.

* The lack of cryonics-relevant technological progress. Indeed, it
seems to me that, other than in computer hardware, technological
progress has come to an almost complete stop. 2022 is much more
like 1972 than 1972 was like 1922, or than 1922 was like 1872, or
then 1872 was like 1822. Medical care, for instance, keeps getting
slightly better but enormously more expensive. US life expectancies
have been dropping since the turn of the century.

* Most of us, like most Americans, gradually became less and less
wealthy, making cryonics less affordable. (This is not a new trend.
In the 1930s, my grandfather bought a house free and clear while
supporting five non-working dependents and earning a three-digit (!)
annual salary as a meat cutter. Today even most two-income no-kids
families can't hope to afford a house even with a 30-year mortgage.)
Many of the local cryonics organization's members, including me,
didn't even have medical insurance.

(There has been a recent attempt to restart the local organization.
We met two months ago in a member's home in DC, but I've heard nothing
since.)

> You got out of computer programming and started doing physician
> transcriptions....

My job was proofreading transcripts of all kinds at a court reporting
firm. Mostly depositions and business meetings. Some of the
depositions did involve medical issues. Fortunately, I have an
excellent vocabulary. The transcripts, mostly made in India, were
so bad that I often had to discard them and start over, typing them
myself, working lots of unpaid overtime. That job ended when the
firm went out of business.

I never got out of computer programming. I write programs for my own
purposes almost every day. Mostly either recreational math or physics
simulations.

> ironically, I got out of writing software patents and got a govt job
> that involving reading a lot of medical records.

I've never had a government job, unless you count one year working as
a slave on a plantation called Bland Correctional Farm. That ended 43
years ago. I've had a perfectly clean record since before most people
alive today were born, but am still officially a convicted felon.

I have mixed feelings about software patents.

> You apparently retired recently. So did I.

I was forced into retirement by the slow, but by now near total,
collapse of the local mass transit system, which began nearly 20
years ago, and is continuing. Seldom has more money been spent to
accomplish less. Their "rebuilding" has cost more (not accounting
for inflation) than the Marshall Plan, Manhattan Project, and Apollo
program put together, taken longer than all three put together, and
apparently accomplished nothing whatsoever except to make assorted
grifters wealthy. It included shutting down the Silver Line for a
whole summer for alleged rebuilding just six years after it was first
opened. See https://twitter.com/unsuckdcmetro

The upside of this is that I get plenty of exercise, as I walk almost
everywhere. Also, I spend most working hours doing yard work at my
brother's house, all without power tools.

I'm still open to programming jobs remotely or within walking
distance. But almost every job that can be done remotely is being
done from overseas. I'm a very skilled programmer, but there are
programmers just as skilled in countries where wages are less than
US minimum wage.

> You are apparently still living in the washington metro area near
> where you grew up.

Yes, still in Northern Virginia. (I've never lived in DC or
Maryland.) I lived in the same apartment for 35 years, during which
time my rent more than doubled, then more than doubled again, while
the place became increasingly run down. Eight years ago I moved about
two miles, and am renting a room from a friend. He also gives me the
whole basement for my library in return for him being allowed to use
it too. (Meanwhile, I see that the advertised rent for my old
apartment has almost doubled yet again.)

> I am now living in phoenix so as to be close to alcor.

I'm not going to make major life changes in service of present-day
cryonics. I've always considered it to be a long shot, like mind
uploading.

> You love science fiction. When I was young, I also loved it.
> But I stopped reading books when the internet came along.

I read more books than ever, albeit mostly non-fiction, and mostly
used, not new. As for SF, I prefer the hard stuff, e.g. Greg Egan and
Hal Clement. Something that makes me reach for my calculator and my
CRC handbook. I also attend science fiction conventions, 110 of them
in the past 42 years. I attended last year's Worldcon in DC, and plan
to attend this year's Worldcon in Chicago. (I will definitely not
attend next year's Worldcon in China.)

> How are you doing, Keith? I am fine, although my wife is going
> through menopause and is crazy as fk lately...

I'm fine too, despite almost everyone in this area pretending the
pandemic is over. To be fair, I don't bother to spend money to get
tested for anything I couldn't afford to have treated, so I may have
any number of serious undiagnosed symptomless conditions.

In 2019 I had a presumptive skin cancer surgically removed from my
forehead. I paid out of pocket. It cost less than one month's
Obamacare premium would have, and Obamacare wouldn't have covered
it anyway as it cost less than the deductible. Also in 2019, I
sprained my ankle, but I didn't seek treatment for it; I recovered
fine despite ignoring the standard medical advice for sprains.

Getting back to covid, I make myself unpopular by pointing out that
far more children in the US are killed by cops than by school mass
shooters. And more kids are killed by covid than by cops and mass
shooters put together. (Also, more cops are killed by covid in a
day than by shooters in a year.) But my modest proposal that school
children should have weekly killer-cop drills has gone nowhere. What
with the current world situation, maybe they should also bring back
the atom-bomb drills of my childhood. Such fond memories.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.

[the presumptive mister RASFF 2021]

regarding skin cancer, there is a theory going around that I find valid: the more skin cancers you have, the better your health. Now, melanoma is dangerous, but is relatively rare (and only mildly associated with sun exposure), but as far as squamous cell carcinoma and basal cell carcinoma (SCC & BCC) are concerned, the more, the better. And they are definitely caused by sun exposure.

I saw an article that interviewed a doctor who said that whenever he gets a new patient, he checks the medical records for SCC & BCC, and the more they have, the healthier they are....I have personally reviewed hundreds of medical records in the course of my employment, and I have never seen one case of SCC or BCC that caused much problem. Now of course some do, and funny it is that those are the ones that make it to the media...what a coincidence...

anyway, the sun is something we need, and for reasons we do not even fully understand yet. So, don't worry about skin cancer.

As for cryonics, I am certain it will work. Personal circumstances are of death of course a potential obstacle. But the general trend is for man to become ever and ever more in control of the universe. Therefore it is reasonable to assume that some day in the future man will control the entire universe or almost all of it. Therefore it is also reasonable to assume that at some point in the distant future, the information in preserved brains will be recovered and I will live again, in what form I do not know.

Keith, oregon cryonics will store your brain in aldehyde for only 1000 dollars. Make arrangements with a funeral home to have them remove your brain and ship it to oregon cryonics.

I would love to continue writing programs (I have a BS in compsci), but I write and make videos that I hope will someday reconcile cryonics/brain preservation with christian beliefs, and I think that activism is more important....

[Keith F. Lynch]

the presumptive mister RASFF 2021 <randys...@gmail.com> wrote:
> regarding skin cancer, there is a theory going around that I find
> valid: the more skin cancers you have, the better your health.

That seems unlikely. Has anyone accounted for race? Blacks are less
likely to get skin cancer, and are less healthy on average. Also, it
accounts only for *diagnosed* skin cancer. People who never go to
doctors don't get diagnosed and may also die of that or some other
undiagnosed condition.

I'm reminded of the study that showed that people who go to church
tend to live longer. An atheist group then found that people who go
to whorehouses also tend to live longer. The reason being, in both
cases, that sickly people don't get out much.

> I have personally reviewed hundreds of medical records in the course
> of my employment, and I have never seen one case of SCC or BCC that
> caused much problem. Now of course some do, and funny it is that
> those are the ones that make it to the media...what a coincidence...

Unusual things are newsworthy. From coverage in the Washington Post,
you'd never guess that cars kill more Americans than guns do even
though there are more guns than cars in the US.

> anyway, the sun is something we need, and for reasons we do not even
> fully understand yet.

I think we have a pretty good understanding of why we need the sun,
starting with not freezing to death. Also not starving to death
because plants won't grow in the cold and dark.

> As for cryonics, I am certain it will work.

Why are you certain of that?

> But the general trend is for man to become ever and ever more in
> control of the universe.

As I said, technological progress, except in computer hardware, seems
to have almost totally ceased.

> Therefore it is reasonable to assume that some day in the future man
> will control the entire universe or almost all of it.

It's just as well that we don't. Imagine the stars in the sky being
rearranged to spell out advertising slogans.

> Therefore it is also reasonable to assume that at some point in
> the distant future, the information in preserved brains will be
> recovered and I will live again, in what form I do not know.

Would this be before or after the heat death of the universe?

> Keith, oregon cryonics will store your brain in aldehyde for only
> 1000 dollars.

Undertakers have been using formaldehyde for centuries. So maybe
corpses in graves can be brought back to life.

> I would love to continue writing programs (I have a BS in compsci),
> but I write and make videos that I hope will someday reconcile
> cryonics/brain preservation with christian beliefs, and I think
> that activism is more important....

Maybe. Much of my programming is completely useless, albeit fun.
Yesterday I solved the problem of finding a non-integer that, after
the first few digits, has the exact same infinite expansion in binary
and ternary. Actually, I've found five such numbers, all between 0
and 1, so far.