It *is* helpful. First because the first person who's initiating the communication has actually to figure out whether we want to be heard / helped / held; and then because it makes clear what the second person can do to respond to the first person's distress. That first step is just as critical as the communication/ response piece. We didn't make it up; it came from an ages-ago therapist. By now it's, like, automatic marital code LOL.

To me, there is a LOT of space between not-texting back on a given wrong number (which, reasons) vs not-texting-back AND screenshotting AND posting to social media AND adding sardonic commentary AND doing it repeatedly for six years. (which.... reasons???!) To text-back or not does not, to me, seem to be the real question in this particular case. It seems to have become an annual ritual of amplifying and mocking someone else's apparently kind, well-intentioned, honest mistake. Who does that? It is... extremely petty.

re difficulty in finding "compelling evidence of innocence" The thing is, finding "compelling evidence of innocence" amounts to proving a negative, KWIM? To demand "proof" that something didn't happen is often impossible, and is not the standard that is supposed to underlie how criminal cases are supposed to work. In our system, the burden of beyond-reasonable-doubt proof **of guilt** is supposed to lie on the **prosecution** side; and if the defense is able to introduce a degree of doubt (on the sturdiness of the evidence or its chain of custody or etc) with the jury (not the TV audience), then they are, in our system, supposed to be Presumed Innocent. It doesn't always work that way obviously but that is what is supposed to happen. I have two close relatives who've done Innocence Project type work, and both of them concur with @maize 's observation above that if we really value not-imprisoning and not-executing the innocent, we have to be willing to live with the possibility that sometimes, guilty folks walk. The system is created and sustained by mortal people, who will err, sometimes unintentionally and sometimes out of malice. Either we live with convicting some % of the innocent, or we live with acquitting some % of the guilty and letting them go. The Innocent Project and other groups like it have chosen the latter value. When 25+ years ago I asked my then-just-out-of-law-school cousin, who was doing capital punishment appellate cases, don't you sometimes wonder if your clients really are guilty? he answered matter of factly something along the lines of At the time I was ethically troubled by this answer. Today I think it's the ethically responsible answer. None of this is about Scott Peterson specifically.

spectrum of responses Ah. In that case, I see a sort of spectrum of possible responses: Do nothing (beyond maybe inward eyerolling). Ethically defensible; we are not obliged to rectify other people's errors; text phishing is a thing (though it seems unlikely by the sixth year around). Respond "wrong number" to sender. Ethically defensible; doing it just once is sufficient (and would presumably stop further texts in subsequent years). Laugh at the hapless sender, screenshot and post to social media. This strikes me as mean spirited. I don't think recipient is obliged to respond at all. But the recipient absolutely IS responding (just not to the sender); and the amplification, mockery and publicity of what looks to be a well intentioned error does seem a bit OTT. I mean, what's the point?

text phishing is a thing, so I don't **ordinarily** respond to wrong numbers if I don't recognize the sender. (I have a busy & somewhat nearsighted cousin with two Pams with the same last initial as mine in her contact list and I CONSTANTLY get texts aimed at the other Pam... as does the other Pam... and those, I definitely acknowledge! I look forward to one day meeting the other Pam.) But just clarifying -- in this particular case the recipient knows who the sender is? And knows the sender is, even if a not-close relationship, just trying to reach out with a small kind act? If that's the case, I would respond. It's not an OBLIGATION to rectify someone else's errors, but if that's the case not-responding seems a bit churlish.

That is really great. Thanks for coming back to update.

re older travelers Oh there is NO WAY my 85 year old mother is EVER going to consent to a boarding pass on a PHONE. The very idea is hilarious. Not.going.to.happen. (She HAS a smart phone, but its primary purpose is so she can text us pictures of her dangling camera strap, thumb, shoe, etc.) So when she's traveling with us, I 100% print out paper boarding passes.

re DIY paper boarding passes If it's crazy-making for you, I'd do this. Just give him the locator number of his ticket -- send a text, give him a wadded up piece of paper with it handwritten with a ball point pen, write in on his inner arm with a sharpie, whatever. And he get his own paper boarding pass at the kiosk. It's **particularly** easy-peasy if you're not checking bags, and easy enough even if you do have bags. I have no problem with tickets / car rentals / electronic hotel keys etc on the phone, but as it **can** happen that phones run out of battery or otherwise fail us, I do always have a 1 page printed schedule with with all the confirmation numbers and addresses of all the places. That might be the way to meet him halfway?

Oh.my. That is too much. Holding you and yours in the light.

re explicit code we use: "do you want to be HELPED (=actually looking for solutions-oriented advice), do you want to be HEARD (= vent), or do you want to be HELD." Three totally distinct things. Clarity helps.

That is awesome. Sorry to learn about it just AFTER the extended family was all together!! LMK if you play it, how it goes. Just putting language to the roles and what their "moves" are is sort of clarifying. "conspiracy theorists" who "Build up communities, create buy-in from neighbours and control networks" "edgelords" who "Choose a community and cause chaos. Follow your plan to stir the pot and spread lies" "platform moderators" who "Flag content, train algorithms, and track down the culprits who are spreading lies" and "digital literacy educations" who "critique the chaos that comes across their front page"

re risk we become sanguine that COVID is no longer a big deal All true. Acute illness gets all the press; chronic illness and chronic ongoing effects not so much. Even if those effects are life-impairing or slow-mo fatal.

Husband, mother and I all got boosted before Thanksgiving and managed to avoid getting COVID, though plenty extended family members got it and we were definitely exposed. A BUNCH of the home-from-college kids were smitten and transmitted in various family branches (but not ours, though my college daughter hadn't gotten herself boosted). Thankfully, none of the (many) people I know in my family and across town who got it were seriously sick. Akin to Old Flu in the BeforeTimes, not the do-we-head-to-the-ER-agonistes of the Worst Times. So I'd add that observation to the anecdata.

This is the question that baffles me as well. And if so -- WHY. What about that ask-for, then-reject-out-of-hand, ask-for, reject-out-of-hand, rinse repeat (rinse repeat rinse repeat) cycle is so -- your word -- "addictive" for you?

AGAIN WITH THE LIKE BUTTON Texas, if you have an iPad with you, you can download audio books onto it, from your library and/or from Audible. But I'm pretty sure you know that.

OT but speaking of TheftWorthy Turns of Phrases, I share this one that came up in a, um, wearying meeting yesterday:

re don't carry other people's baggage #TotallyStealingThisLine

re "refugee" vs "asylum" routes The changing demographics of who is crossing our southern land border definitely speaks to much wider, global issues. Now as always, there are different factors motivating people to come to the US. Some are fleeing for their lives -- civil war, civil strife, targeted cartel or gang threats, lifethreatening DV. Depending on their origin, some such people are able to seek UN-coordinated "refugee" status, in which case their case is vetted and they attain status prior to arrival. But if they happen to have been born in a country that isn't on the "these are refugees" list, their ONLY legal option is to arrive in the US first, THEN request asylum. (A different system, from the 1880s when Jews fleeing the pogroms could just stay here, if they managed to get here.) Some are fleeing desperate, lifethreatening economic conditions -- famine, drought, climate change that burns out their livelihood from underneath their feet, systemic economic collapse like Venezuela's today. These people really don't have ANY legal means of settling here. (A different system, from the 1860s when Irish fleeing the potato famine could just stay here, if they managed to get here.) Some are not facing actual imminent DEATH in their country of origin, but want a better / freer life with more opportunity and ability to pursue "luxuries" like, for example, freedom to practice their religion openly. If these people are fortunate enough to have close family members already here, or the skills and credentials to obtain an employer here willing to sponsor them, they may be able to obtain a visa that may enable them to work over time towards permanent residency/ eventual citizenship. (A different system, from the early immigrants pursuing religious freedom or the later wave of northern European immigrants eager to avail of free federal land grants throughout the western expansion.)

re the "tell" that this is a problem no one has any REAL interest in solving Exactly. The Stop sign in one hand, the furtive hand gesturing come in in the other. Our cheap food prices (yes, even now, compared to the rest of the world), our large houses (compared to the rest of the world), our Individual-centered sense of identity has always rested on very-cheap labor who have always been legally and structurally unable to advocate, either as individuals or collectively, for better wages / conditions / lives. Who have always lacked the freedom of movement and choice to pick up and move elsewhere within the country to find a better live. The *particulars* of how this no-rights no-recourse very-low-wage labor segment has subsisted has evolved (slavery, sharecropping bound by debt to the landowner, convict leasing fused with loitering laws, etc. Now, migrant workers without "permission" to work... though they do, obviously, work). But the American economy has *always* rested upon such a segment, even as our peer nations have (slowly, painfully, with fits and starts) have evolved toward a notion of work and safety nets that looks different from ours. A functionalist anthropologist would describe as, The more rights and freedoms and mobility the OLD subsistence labor class achieved, the more essential it became for the maintenance of the system to find a new no-rights no-recourse segment. That is the **function** of our current immigration system. It evolved so that the crops could be picked and the chickens could be slaughtered, at less than $60 a day. Same can be said of prison labor, also increasingly popular in the US.

re inability to work while "case is pending," which takes YEARS This. People who come into the US fleeing violence / civil strife / personal threat and immediately request asylum are not "illegals" -- they have initiated through the proper channels the only process available to them. But they are unable to work while their case is pending. And if they DO work -- as seasonal agricultural workers, as day workers in construction or landscaping, as domestic workers, in scores of companies that understand full well, and appreciate, the advantages of a workforce who **cannot complain** about wages or work conditions -- then they are at real risk that by working without permission they will become ineligible for asylum when their case is finally heard. Fixing this one central crucially important catch-22 would go a LONG way to enabling asylees to stabler and more productive lives. And staffing up judicial and case management resources would shorten the CRAZY timeframes that folks wait before their case is heard. Those two things would go a LONG way. you have to understand, no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land.

re mixed messaging of US immigration policy We do, however, want a steady flow of very-cheap labor to pick our crops, process our chickens, lay our concrete, maintain our landscaping, clean our office buildings and hotel rooms. For SURE we don't want to raise wages sufficiently that Real Americans would do such work, the way "free markets" are putatively supposed to work. Our actual immigration policy is one hand brandishing a Stop! sign and the other furtively gesturing to come in. Our lifestyle depends on the cheap labor of folks with no rights or recourse. It always has. The form evolves, but the principle has never budged.

All lives matter, but some lives matter more than others

Our library and post office both do have the paper forms, and many (all? definitely most) of the libraries in my area offer hours with quasi-vetted volunteers helping ( seniors, English language learners, first-timers, otherwise perplexed ) filers with the forms. (That said, we just did/do our kids' for them through college. Eldest managed the transition to doing her own without incident; middle was scrambling on 4/14 to get his employer to reissue his lost W2 (sigh) and was calling us at 10p to talk him through the online submission.)

We got great volumes of rain atop finally-frozen ground, so had a lot of flooding; but we're on the Sound, so don't get those surges. Gracious. Stay inland.

Basically I walked and biked a lot **as transportation ** and did very little else. We lived on a private road the bus didn't come onto, so it was nearly a mile to the stop. My father organized his morning so he could drop me off on his way out, but on the days I took the bus home I walked it. I stayed after school and just... sort of hung out, in the art room or with my homeroom teacher whom I worshipped, at least one day a week and my mom picked my up at ~4:30 after she was done at the other school. We had gym a couple times a week but I don't remember a great deal of true exercise there. Outdoor recess every day but again, mostly social. Somewhere in 6th or 7th grade I started going to the orthodontist once or twice a month -- I'd walk ~1 mile from school and then my mom would pick me up at ~4:30 or 5. I regularly rode my bike to one friend's house which was probably 3 miles away. Most of that route was on an old train route so no traffic, though it was shoulderless sidewalkless roads on both ends. I spent EVERY DAY all summer long at the town pool, but again, more lounging about / frolicking doing backflips in the water than real exercise. My parents really enjoyed hiking/ canoeing / kayaking / cross country skiing, so we did a lot of that sort of thing on the weekends. At home, my main strategy was to get babysitting gigs during daylight hours in order to avoid my father's propensity to enlist us on yardwork chores.