‘ve begun doing a series about how Richard Stallman (RMS) came back to American campuses earlier this year. GNU/Linux turns 43 next month. RMS started it.

“If you have any questions at all,” one organiser told me ahead of the first such talk since 2018. “please don’t hesitate to reach out. We have several questions prepared for RMS during the Q&A, and if there’s anything you’d like us to raise as well, I’d be more than happy to include it!”

At the time I was too busy dealing with bullies.

To the host, Georgia Tech, there was a political burden. Quoting the organiser (definitely not a Cheeto fan): “P.S. I also really love that y’all hate on our Grand Cheeto Master. I know you’ve mentioned not being fond of air travel on your blog, which I completely understand – but if you ever find yourselves visiting the South, we would be more than happy to host you here at Georgia Tech for a session! Until then, we look forward to continued collaboration with y’all remotely – and, of course, welcoming the “devil” down to Georgia soon…”

“Thank you again for your time and support.”

I was not too far from Georgia on my last trip to the US, but that was 20 years ago and I don’t plan to come to the US again (not any time soon).

I hope RMS will visit the UK some time soon and preferably not too far from here (he was in Oxford).

consider Richard Stallman to be a sort of friend. It’s not like some person who lives next door and I play Chess with (or against). It’s someone with whom I share understanding and despite meeting him several times (in person, for chats and recording videos) I mostly converse with him over E-mail.

Richard Stallman has a behaviour many rightly regard as “different”. This is something that he openly acknowledges and deems to be involuntary.

History shows that some of the most brilliant people were “eccentric”, but their peers didn’t mind that and in some ways their eccentricity worked to their benefit.

People who blast Stallman over minor cues and micro’aggression’ are themselves a-holes. They say a lot about themselves, not about Stallman.

still remember finishing my thesis about two decades ago and working on experiments that compared my algorithms to those of Bill Crum. We used different approaches and compared them.

Bill was always nice to me and today I discovered that he has medical problems and he wrote a book about it. In a way, we sort of coauthored works (or collaborated with his division down in London). I hope he will find a way to cope with health perils.

T may seem repetitive, but this is still important. It’s also more relevant than ever, even if the media chooses to brush it under the rug.

New ONS data came out this morning (in Microsoft’s proprietary format, as usual). 9,867 England and Wales deaths in Week 13 of 2019 compared to 11,241 in the same week this year.

It’s like this almost every week, including the prior week (12). I check this every Wednesday (for years already).

Is it OK to ask my government what has caused this very sharp increase?

Does it make one a “crank” for asking?

KEPT refreshing this page and a minute ago the data was finally released, at 9:30, as usual for Wednesdays. Before COVID-19 the average number of deaths in Week 7 was 11,301 (England and Wales). Now it’s 12,366. That’s an increase of more than 1,000 (deaths) for this week alone.

Last week: In First 5 Weeks of 2025 67,630 People Died in England and Wales Compared to 58,461 in the Same Period in 2019

HIS morning’s new numbers look like this:

It may not seem like that says very much until one checks pre-COVID-19 numbers for the same timespan. It was 11,660 in 2019 and about the same for prior years (average of 2014-2019).

New data out today.

2019

2025

Almost 10,000 more deaths in about a month.