quotable

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it”. 

~ Henry David Thoreau

quotable

 “There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”

~ Ernest Hemingway

happy 2024!

I am grateful for our family's health and for amazing sunsets and sunrises in our new home. I'm thrilled that Seba and Lulu are both crushing it in middle school, that Lulu has gained confidence and skill on the stage, and that Seba is a leader on the pitch and that he still loves the game. I'm also really proud of Lulu for earning her Girl Scout Bronze Award this year.

I'm also grateful that we had the time and money to really enjoy 2023. Some highlights...

Travel: Australia, New Zealand, New York, Connecticut, Vegas, LA

Bucket list:
✅Great Barrier Reef, Queensland, Australia
✅The Shire in Hobbiton, Matamata, New Zealand
✅Spellbound glowworms, Waitomo Caves, New Zealand
✅Seeing my first Broadway shows with Lulu
✅Watching the Women's World Cup live, especially Rapinoe, Morgan, Lavelle on the pitch together for the last time

Concerts: Duran Duran, Nile Rodgers and Chic, Bastille, Barenaked Ladies, Del Amitri, Semisonic, and Michael Franti and Spearhead, with Leo and the kids; Brandi Carlile and Pink with Lulu; Sting, Coldplay, New Order, B52s, OMD, Psychedelic Furs, Tears for Fears, Soft Cell, the Violent Femmes, Devo, Katy Perry, Wilco, the Cardigans, the English Beat with Dana, Music, Cass, Nolan, and Leigh. 

Shows (with Lulu in the audience or on stage): Matilda, Wicked, YAT Gala, & Juliet, Moulin Rouge, SIX, Come Fall in Love, Mean Girls, Waitress, The Sound of Music, Bring it On, Nunsense, Popstars, Grace for President, The Addams Family, Camp Rock, Tuck Everlasting, Grease, Newsies, Edgar Allan Poe’s Gruesome Gallery of Grotesquerie, Chronicles of Kalki.

quotable

I loved Kenneth Branagh's "Belfast." The story, the acting, the cinematography were all on point. Branagh's love letter to his youth brought the Troubles to life and had me riveted.

Buddy:"Daddy, do you think me and that wee girl have a future?

Dad: And why the heck not?

Buddy: Did you know that she's a Catholic?

Dad: Buddy, that wee girl can be a practicing Hindu, or a Southern Baptist, or a vegetarian antichrist. If she is kind, she's fair, and you two respect one another, she and her people are welcome in our house any day of the week."

quotable

“Losing a parent is something like driving through a plateglass window. You didn’t know it was there until it shattered, and then for years to come you’re picking up the pieces.” - Saul Bellow

quotable

"We live our lives forward and understand them backward.” Kierkegaard

quotable

“What is the body? Endurance. What is love? Gratitude. What is hidden in our chests? Laughter. What else? Compassion.” -Rumi

quotable

"There's something about not playing small in a world that always makes you feel that way that is an act of bravery and beauty like no other." - Stacy London https://www.tiktok.com/@stylelikeu/video/7051678786324303151

quotable

"One of the greatest gifts that the Museum has given to me is boredom. Because if you're really bored, then you find things to learn. My imagination is being engaged with all this amazing artwork around. And you can go anywhere in your head. You can be anywhere." - Emilia Fox-Lemock, "Worn Stories" (Netflix), Uniforms episode

quotable

Growing up is about surviving long enough so that you can find the person you were always meant to be. - Matt, in "Worn Stories," "Growing up"

quotable

For better, for worse but never for granted.

quotable

"So this is where the dead go in our imaginations: They continue to live with us in the moments when we are sad and terrified. They cheer for us. They give us unbelievable strength and the courage we lack to carry on in situations. They coax us through. They lead us where we need to be, to experience the joy and capability that was them. They who have been with us in life manage to teach us how and where in death we can listen for them and find their voices and essence again."

quotable

“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.” ― Jamie Anderson

better things are on the way

A year into this pandemic, I feel like we are about to round a corner. Vaccines are giving me hope for better days for all of us. Thank you, scientists!

I've said before that science will save us but artists will keep our humanity alive. Thank god for Ray Davies. He and his mates nail it here.

I'm a blubbering mess thinking about the past year, mindful of the lessons it has taught me and how we all have learned to find joy in the beauty of simple things. I'm also smiling through the tears because I know that better things are on the way...

Here's wishing you the bluest sky,

And hoping something better comes tomorrow.

Hoping all the verses rhyme,

And the very best of choruses too

Follow all the doubt and sadness.

I know that better things are on the way.

Here's hoping all the days ahead

Won't be as bitter as the ones behind you.

Be an optimist instead,

And somehow happiness will find you.

Forget what happened yesterday,

I know that better things are on the way.

It's really good to see you rocking out

And having fun,

Living like you just begun.

Accept your life and what it brings.

I hope tomorrow you'll find better things.

I know tomorrow you'll find better things.

Here's wishing you the bluest sky,

And hoping something better comes tomorrow.

Hoping all the verses rhyme,

And the very best of choruses too

Follow all the doubt and sadness.

I know that better things are on their way.

I know you've got a lot of good things happening up ahead.

The past is gone it's all been said.

So here's to what the future brings,

I know tomorrow you'll find better things.

I know tomorrow you'll find better things.

epitaph

 The poem below, Epitaph, was written by Merrit Malloy and as one of those poems, has become a staple of funeral and memorial services…for good reason.”

Epitaph - By Merrit Malloy

When I die
Give what’s left of me away
To children
And old men that wait to die.

And if you need to cry,
Cry for your brother
Walking the street beside you.
And when you need me,
Put your arms
Around anyone
And give them
What you need to give to me.

I want to leave you something,
Something better
Than words
Or sounds.

Look for me
In the people I’ve known
Or loved,
And if you cannot give me away,
At least let me live on in your eyes
And not your mind.

You can love me most
By letting
Hands touch hands,
By letting bodies touch bodies,
And by letting go
Of children
That need to be free.

Love doesn’t die,
People do.
So, when all that’s left of me
Is love,
Give me away.

 
--Merrit Malloy

autism

 "Max’s autism diagnosis three years ago gave me an unspeakable sense of relief. When a friend asked me later that day how I was feeling, I could only describe it in this way: “I feel empty and full at the same time.”

After years of being dismissed as hysterical and overprotective, I welcomed the diagnosis as overdue validation. To be seen and heard is always humanizing, and as a woman in the world, I have confronted my own invisibility more times than I wish to recall. The diagnosis, in my mind, represented progress.

...

Immense and intense, the range of emotions we experience on any one day is vast. From paralyzing anxiety to unbridled joy. From anger that fuels my advocacy to grief that stuns me into silence. From panic to presence, terror to trust, this experience of love is like none I could have ever imagined.

Empty and full at the same time, in the most meaningful ways."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/10/style/modern-love-glimpse-into-autistic-sons-magnificent-mind.html

MODERN LOVE

A Glimpse Into My Son’s Magnificent Mind

Our house is a mess of misplaced possessions. I’m grateful for what this — and my son’s autism — has taught me.

By Paige Martin Reynolds

July 10, 2020

A tiny white heart marks a five-second video on my phone as beloved, one in which my boy (age 6 at the time) proudly displays a pale pink cross-body purse. He twists his torso as he flirts with the camera, asking, “Hey girl, do you like my new purrrrrrse?”

When I get a new purse, I know it will be the first thing my son notices when he sees me. His congratulatory enthusiasm (“Mama, your new purse is so pretty!”) is followed by a dimply smile and a smooth inquiry about the previous handbag (“So, can I have your old purse?”). And it’s not just about purses but bags of all sorts: Max follows this same script whenever his father upgrades his briefcase or his sister brings home a new backpack.

One day the movie “Inside Out” was on as he played, and he paused to watch the moment when the main character secretly takes money from her mother’s purse so she can run away.

“If I was in that movie,” he said, “I would take the whole purse.”

Yes, you would, buddy. This has been predictable since the little charmer was 3, when he began proclaiming his passion for baggage with an almost regal splendor and sovereignty.

His Majesty required bags, and bags he would have — diaper bags, suitcases, reusable grocery bags and more — which are packed, unpacked, repacked and toted from one location to another each day. Max’s bags have lived all over our house, in our cars, offices and every other space the boy occupies. Even now, at 9, Max often lets out a panicked, “Hold on just a minute!” when it’s time to leave so he can frantically pack a bag.

Max’s autism diagnosis three years ago gave me an unspeakable sense of relief. When a friend asked me later that day how I was feeling, I could only describe it in this way: “I feel empty and full at the same time.”

Refer someone to The Times.

They’ll enjoy our special rate of $1 a week.

After years of being dismissed as hysterical and overprotective, I welcomed the diagnosis as overdue validation. To be seen and heard is always humanizing, and as a woman in the world, I have confronted my own invisibility more times than I wish to recall. The diagnosis, in my mind, represented progress.

It’s a strange kind of answer that promises only more questions. But my love for my boy has never been in question — that day I felt as full as ever of gratitude for this child, even as I felt emotionally emptied out on his behalf. This is a paradox that continues. I empty myself for him and love fills me back up in overwhelming waves.

Though Max’s bag-stuffing frenzy has slowed (and we understand his neurology better than before), the state of my home, especially during his peak packing years, has reflected the state of my emotional life. The chaos was hard to accept and even harder to explain. Things were never where they belonged, which made the simplest tasks complicated. And no matter how early I tried to get us ready to leave when we had to be somewhere, we seemed destined to be late.

The moment of departure has always elicited the same desperate plea from Max — “Hold on just a minute!” — despite the savviest of strategies (and we’ve tried a lot of them). I spent years feeling frustrated and ashamed, though I knew the domestic disorder wasn’t entirely my fault.

And I knew it wasn’t Max’s fault, even with his aggressive bag-packing agenda. He would pick up a utensil here and a knickknack there until he had gathered an impressive collection of items (which would then be missing for as long as it took us to find them). Watching him pack was like seeing an artist in the magical moment of inspiration, rapturous in his focus, relentless in his resolve.

We lived among bags filled with random contents — from paperwork to produce, jewelry to juice boxes, coasters to coins — stashed around the house like little loads of hidden treasure. Max’s bags ingested the bits of our daily lives, shook them up, then spat them back out in the inevitable mess I was forever failing to clean up.

After he suffered a prolonged seizure at age 5 — he was unresponsive for almost an hour and ended up in ICU — the neurologist, MRI results in hand, told us about Max’s “migration abnormalities.” To paraphrase the doctor’s explanation, when our boy was just a wee one in my womb and his brain began forming, some neuro-stuff didn’t make it to its intended home.

As I understand it, when a brain develops, neurons are meant to travel from where they start to where they should stay. This great migration is chemically complex, and sometimes neurons don’t follow it. When neurons don’t migrate to the place in the brain where they were meant to, the result is “migration abnormalities.”

This is what’s been happening all over my house: migration abnormalities. I still encounter things daily that don’t end up where they were meant to be. In part, this is mundane and ordinary. After all, nobody lives in a space that is perpetually clean.

But there is a kind of wildness and whimsy to our home’s untidiness, an unpredictability that mirrors the neurological difference produced by Max’s migration abnormalities. Spatula in the bathroom? Bewildering. Four backpacks, two shoe boxes and an old purse stacked in my study, full of toys and trifles and important documents? Overwhelming.

Last autumn when my best friend visited, she looked at me endearingly and said, “Why are there pennies everywhere?”

I don’t know why, my friend, but I do know who.

Pennies by the pound: atop shelves, between cushions, inside containers, beneath furniture. It’s strange but delightfully so.

One of Max’s great gifts to us is this insight. To have our house mirror his mind. Although I will never be able to see the world through his eyes, I feel like our home’s “migration abnormalities” give me a glimpse into my boy’s brain. And with that glimpse comes the glimmer of understanding.

When Max was a few days old, he had jaundice. The doctor told me to breastfeed every two hours while drinking as much water as possible. Already disoriented from having given birth, I felt exhilarated and exhausted, delighted and depleted — that is, empty and full at the same time.

And now my purpose was to empty myself further to fill this new human. From the outside, I imagine my assignment looked pretty cushy. I lounged around in my softest pajamas, nursing, hydrating and watching TV. Switch breasts, switch drinks, switch shows, stifle sobs, repeat.

No doubt I appeared to be soaking up some rest and relaxation with my precious newborn, when in truth, the breastfeeding marathon was one of the most physically demanding things I have ever done.

At the follow-up appointment, when I learned that my baby had gained weight as needed, I broke down in quiet tears.

“Oh, honey,” the nurse said. “Those hormones!”

Yes, those hormones. Heaven help us, those hormones. But also, something big had happened. Max and I had survived a tough trial together. And that seemed worth a few joyful, tired tears — hormones or not. That was the beginning of a series of battles my body (and soul) would go through for this boy — battles that would be invisible from the outside but traumatic and transformative for me on the inside.

Max and I did it together. We continue to. Every time we leave a restaurant, make it to the end of a movie or leave Target without a meltdown is a mutual triumph.

Perhaps a life-or-death situation sometimes looks like lounging, or heroic success looks like hormonal instability. And maybe my boy’s magnificent mind resembles a messy house. Feats have become commonplace to my family, and despite the misunderstandings they may provoke, we know they are monumental — whether or not anyone else can see or appreciate it.

For months now, as the pandemic has raged, we’ve been cooped up at home, with Max’s routines (that he so relies on) blown to smithereens. Once he begged to drive by his school “to make sure it’s doing OK all alone.” He packs bags that, like us, never seem to go anywhere. Yet we are also all together, and he finds comfort in that.

Immense and intense, the range of emotions we experience on any one day is vast. From paralyzing anxiety to unbridled joy. From anger that fuels my advocacy to grief that stuns me into silence. From panic to presence, terror to trust, this experience of love is like none I could have ever imagined.

Empty and full at the same time, in the most meaningful ways.

silver linings

Like the rest of the world, we're on lockdown, living the new 'normal' while quarantined.  We're grateful to be healthy and to all those on the front line -- essential workers like medical professionals, grocery workers, delivery drivers, janitors, and everyone else keeping society healthy and fed, and keeping this disease at bay.

We've had to find ways to remain positive in a scary time, grieving the loss of our regular lives even as we create a sense of normalcy for our children, who are now 8 and 9 years old and desperately wishing they could go back to school and hug their teachers and friends. We've also stood in bread lines to get into supermarkets, where the shelves look like what we've read about in Soviet Russia. Like many people, Leo and I are grateful to still have our jobs as we juggle how to work from home while also running a homeschool, and how to keep ourselves stocked with food and household goods. We're spending time in our back yard playing soccer and tending our garden, savoring the sunshine and hoping for a good harvest of summer veggies.

But there are also silver linings and beautiful things, like weekends where we have the time to make homemade pasta from scratch, snuggle and read a book with each other, sit down and play guitar with the kids, and not hurry to do anything. All of this is a massive contrast to our previously overscheduled FOMO-driven lives. I've really enjoyed time to appreciate beauty in so many forms, especially in writing, film, and music.

I'm not sure about you, but there's even more music in my life these days. I'm thoroughly enjoying the thoughtful, gorgeous covers put out by Stories Acoustic. Thank you, artists, for helping us find and remain connected to ourselves during this most isolated time.  Scientists will save us. But artists keep our humanity alive.

Anyhow, here's a song that really hit me last night -- the phrasing is so perfect that the heartbreak cuts through the creepy.

Meanwhile, I'm thinking about those on the edge and those whose talent we've already lost: Adam Schlesinger, John Prine, Ellis Marsalis.

my renewed pledge on national coming out day

On National Coming Out Day, I renew my pledge to teach my son and daughter  what I didn’t learn at home:

• That the greatest family value is valuing all families.
• That home is a safe place to be yourself.
• To embrace your identity and the identities of others.
• That there is no normal ... there’s who you are and that is wonderfully unique.
• To speak up for those who are afraid to use their voices.
• To stand up for those who feel powerless.
• To be a friend to those who feel alone and are most at-risk for checking out of this world.
• To fight for a world where there is no need for closets because there is no longer any reason to hide.
• That love is love, and that loving families come in many shapes and sizes.
• That they are loved by me and by their father, no matter what.

quotable

Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear. — George Addair

so that explains it

This. A thousand times, this.

This post nails what it's like to be an adult who was raised by a mentally unstable parent:

A habit of abused kids, especially kids with unstable parents, is the tendency to notice every detail. We magnify small nuances into major things, largely because the small nuances quickly became breaking points for parents. Managing moods, reading the room, perceiving danger in the order of words, the shift of body weight ... it's all a natural outgrowth of trying to manage unstable parents from a young age. 

 This is why I ask for frank communication and have no patience for guilt trips, the silent treatment, ghosting, people who use information as a weapon, people who slam doors/ punch walls, bullies, people who live for drama and/or excluding others, people who tear down others to feel better about themselves, and other passive aggressive bullshit.

While I'm in my mid-40s, it turns out somewhere inside, I'm still the anxious little girl watching and waiting for her NPD mother to explode.

how to talk to your daughter about her body

How to talk to your daughter about her body, step one: Don't talk to your daughter about her body, except to teach her how it works.

 Don't say anything if she's lost weight. Don't say anything if she's gained weight.

 If you think your daughter's body looks amazing, don't say that.

Here are some things you can say instead:
 "You look so healthy!" is a great one.
 Or how about, "You're looking so strong."
 "I can see how happy you are -- you're glowing."

 Better yet, compliment her on something that has nothing to do with her body. Don't comment on other women's bodies either. Nope. Not a single comment, not a nice one or a mean one. Teach her about kindness towards others, but also kindness towards yourself.

 Don't you dare talk about how much you hate your body in front of your daughter, or talk about your new diet. In fact, don't go on a diet in front of your daughter.

Buy healthy food. Cook healthy meals. But don't say, "I'm not eating carbs right now." Your daughter should never think that carbs are evil, because shame over what you eat only leads to shame about yourself.

 Encourage your daughter to run because it makes her feel less stressed.

Encourage your daughter to climb mountains because there is nowhere better to explore your spirituality than the peak of the universe.

Encourage your daughter to surf, or rock climb, or mountain bike because it scares her and that's a good thing sometimes.

 Help your daughter love soccer or rowing or hockey because sports make her a better leader and a more confident woman. Explain that no matter how old you get, you'll never stop needing good teamwork. Never make her play a sport she isn't absolutely in love with.

Prove to your daughter that women don't need men to move their furniture.

 Teach your daughter how to cook kale. Teach your daughter how to bake chocolate cake made with six sticks of butter. Pass on your own mom's recipe for Christmas morning coffee cake.

Pass on your love of being outside.

 Maybe you and your daughter both have thick thighs or wide ribcages. It's easy to hate these non-size zero body parts. Don't. Tell your daughter that with her legs she can run a marathon if she wants to, and her ribcage is nothing but a carrying case for strong lungs. She can scream and she can sing and she can lift up the world, if she wants. Remind your daughter that the best thing she can do with her body is to use it to mobilize her beautiful soul. - Sarah Koppelkam

katie bouman's algorithm, black holes, and incels

There's a lot of news going on about the "black hole girl" right now, and how she's being given too much credit for her role in the historic first image of a black hole. Because this is too important, I want to set the record straight.

Once Katie Bouman became the "face" of the black hole photo, and articles began to call her "the woman behind the black hole photo", an assortment of people that I'm strongly inclined to call incels but won't decided to figure out just how much of a role she had in it. Why? You'd have to ask them. Something about her attractiveness, youthfulness, and femaleness disturbed them to the point where they had to go digging.

And after digging, they found Andrew Chael, who wrote an algorithm, and put his algorithm online. Andrew Chael worked on the black hole photo as well. And because people kept saying that Katie Bouman wrote "the algorithm", these people decided that "the algorithm" in question must be Chael's.

So they looked at Chael's GitHub repository and checked the history. The history showed that Andrew Chael's commits totaled more than 850,000 lines, while Katie Bouman contributed only 2,400.

"Oh my god!" they all said. "He did almost all of the work on the algorithm and yet she's the one getting all of the credit!"

They dug a little deeper - but not much - and discovered that the algorithm that "ultimately" generated the world-famous photo was created a different man, named Mareki Honma.

"She's taken the credit from two men!" they gasped. "Feminism and the PC media is destroying everything!"

There were, of course, those who tried to be kind. "She's always said that this was a team effort," they said. "We don't blame her, we blame the media. She didn't ask to become the poster girl of a team project she barely contributed to."

Meanwhile, Andrew Chael - a gay man - tweeted in defense of her. He thanked people for congratulating him on the work he'd spent years on but clarified that if they were doing so as a part of a sexist attack on Katie Bouman, they should go away and reconsider their lives. He said that his work couldn't have happened without Katie.

And it turns out that he was the one who took the viral photo of Bouman, specifically because he didn't want her contributions to be lost to history

So I decided to find out for myself what Katie Bouman's actual contributions were. As a programmer, I'm well aware that the number of GitHub commits means nothing without context. And Chael himself clarified that the lines being counted in the commits were from automatic commits of large data files. The actual software was made up of 68,000 lines, and though he didn't count how many he did personally (having said he doesn't actually care how much of it he personally authored), someone else assessed that he wrote about 24,000 of those.

Whether 68,000 or 24,000-- it's more than 2,400 right? Why call it "her" algorithm, then?

Because there's more than one algorithm being referenced here. These people just don't realize it.

I'll work my way backward because it's easier to explain that way.

The photo that everyone is looking at, the world famous black hole photo? It's actually a composite photo. It was generated by an algorithm credited to Mareki Honma. Honma's algorithm, based on MRI technology, is used to "stitch together" photos and fill in the missing pixels by analyzing the surrounding pixels.

But where did the photos come from that are composited into this photo?

The photos making up the composite were generated by 4 separate teams, led by Katie Bouman and Andrew Chael, Kazu Akiyama and Sara Issaoun, Shoko Koyama, Jose L. Gomez, and Michael Johnson. Each team was given a copy of the black hole data and isolated from each other. Between the four of them, they used two techniques - an older, traditional one called CLEAN, and a newer one called RML - to generate an image.

The purpose of this division and isolation of teams was deliberately done to test the accuracy of the black hole data they were all using. If four isolated teams using different algorithms all got similar results, that would indicate that the data itself was accurate.

And lo, that's exactly what happened. The data wasn't just good, it's the most accurate of its kind. 5 petabytes (millions of billions of bytes) worth of accurate black hole data.

But where did the data come from?

Eight radio telescopes around the world trained their attention on the night sky in the direction of this black hole. The black hole is some ungodly distance away, a relative speck amidst billions of celestial bodies. And what the telescopes caught was not only the data of the black hole but the data of everything else as well.

Data that would need to be sorted.

Clearly, it's not the sort of thing you can sort by hand. To separate the wheat (one specific black hole's data) from the chaff (literally everything else around and between here and there) required an algorithm that could identify and single it out, calculations that were crunched across 800 CPUs on a 40Gbit/s network. And given that the resulting black hole-specific data was 5 petabytes (hundreds of pounds worth of hard drives!) you can imagine that the original data set was many times larger.

The algorithm that accomplished this feat was called CHIRP, short for "Continuous High-resolution Image Reconstruction using Patch priors".

CHIRP was created by Katie Bouman.

At the age of 23, she knew nothing about black holes. Her field is computer science and artificial intelligence, topics she'd been involved in since high school. She had a theory about the shadows of black holes, and her algorithm was designed to find those shadows. Katie Bouman used a variety of what MIT called "clever algebraic solutions" to overcome the obstacles involved in creating the CHIRP algorithm. And though she had a team working to help her, her name comes first on the peer-reviewed documentation.

It's called the CHIRP algorithm because that's what she named it. It's the only reason these images could be created, and it's responsible for creating some of the images that were incorporated into the final image. It's the algorithm that made the effort of collecting all that data worth it. Any data analyst can tell you that you can't analyze or visualize data until it's been prepared first. Cleaned up. Narrowed down to the important information.

That's what Katie Bouman did, and after working as a data analyst for two years with a focus on this exact thing - data transformation - I can tell you it's not easy. It's not easy on the small data sets I worked with, where I could wind up spending a week looking for the patterns in a 68K Excel spreadsheet containing only one month's worth of programming for a single TV station!

Katie Bouman's 2,400 line contribution to Andrew Chael's work is on top of all of her other work. She spent five years developing and refining the CHIRP algorithm before leading four teams in testing the data created. The data collection phase of this took 10 days in April 2017, when the eight telescopes simultaneously trained their gazes towards the black hole.

This photo was ultimately created as a way to test Katie Bouman's algorithm for accuracy. MIT says that it's frequently more accurate than similar predecessors. And it is the algorithm that gave us our first direct image of a black hole.

Around the internet, there are people who have the misperception that Katie Bouman is just the pretty face, a minor contributor to a project where men like Andrew Chael and Mareki Honma deserve the credit. There are people pushing memes and narratives that she's only being given such acclaim because of feminism. And because Katie Bouman refuses to say that this was anything other than a team effort, even the most flattering comments about her still place her contributions to the photo at less-than-equal contribution to others.

But I'm writing to set the story straight:

When it is written that Katie Bouman is the woman "behind the black hole photo", it is objectively true. She wasn't the only woman, but her work was crucial to making all of this happen.

When Andrew Chael says that his software could not have worked without her, he isn't just being a stand-up guy, he's being literal. And there are those who could just as easily say the same about his contribution, or the contributions of many others.

And while it's true that every one of the 200+ people involved played an important role, Katie Bouman deserves every ounce of superstardom she receives.

If there must be a face to this project - and there usually is - then why shouldn't it be her, her fingers twined across her lips, her gleeful eyes luminous and wide with awe and joy?

Edited:

Thinking on it a little further, I felt I should clarify that I'm not actually trying to downplay Andrew Chael. His imaging algorithm is actually the result of years of effort, a labor of love. Each image that could be composited into the final photo brought with it a unique take on the data, without which the final photo wouldn't have been complete.

So let's take a moment to celebrate the fact that two of the most integral contributors to the first direct photo of a black hole

were a woman

and a gay man.

===============================================
2nd Update (LONG!)

I went to bed at 19 shares on a post I wrote to vent to my FB friends, and now it's over 2K. I guess it's gone viral. That means I have some work to do.

I'm going to provide a list of the various articles I read to piece this together. When I wrote this, I wasn't trying to write an essay so I didn't put sources in and I didn't ensure that every detail is 100% accurate. So I'm doing that now.

Any edits I make are mentioned below (apart from spelling/grammar fixes). The resources that led me to write this are listed below. And because I value accuracy, I welcome people to point out mistakes of any kind. I'll make corrections and credit them here.

Edit: I incorrectly wrote that Bouman worked on the algorithm for 6 years and spent 2 years refining it. This was an accidental mush of facts: She's been working on this project for a total of 6 years (ages 23 to 29). She spent 3 years building CHIRP and 2 years refining it. I've corrected that and included that she led the four teams, as two separate articles mention it.

Edit: One of the leads for the 4 team project was a man named Jose L Gomez. I added that to the above, after being sent a twitter thread from Xu S. Han. Thank you! Twitter thread here:
https://twitter.com/saraissaoun/status/1116304522660519936…

Edit: Thanks to Zoë Barraclough and someone who would prefer not to be named, for messaging me with another couple of edits. As confirmed on Kazu Akiyama's twitter, there were more than four leaders for the four imaging teams. As I find out the names of these co-leaders, I'll incorporate them into the post.

http://news.mit.edu/2016/method-image-black-holes-0606
This is a 2016 MIT article announcing CHIRP. It gives a pretty excellent idea about the magnitude of Bouman's contribution.

https://www.extremetech.com/…/229675-mit-researcher-develop…
This goes into detail about Katie Bouman's algorithm. It describes how her algorithm differs from normal/traditional interferometric algorithms. This article explains the difficulty she faced in how trying to capture a black hole is like trying to photograph "a grapefruit on the moon." This also explains how Bouman's algorithm made all of this work-- it combines all of the data from the participating telescopes into, in essence, one massive telescope.

https://youtu.be/BIvezCVcsYs
This is a 2016 TEDx talk from Bouman where she describes her work. Note: though I am intentionally focusing on her contributions specifically to defend the attention she's getting, she makes it clear that this was a team effort. She always gives credit to her teammates who work with her. She is full of humility and wonder.

http://people.csail.mit.edu/…/papers_an…/cvpr2016_bouman.pdf
This is the paper based on Bouman's work, where she's listed as first author. The position of her name is important. While the meaning of being first author can differ in certain fields, I'm basing the 'primary contributor' interpretation on the fact that multiple other articles say she was lead, MIT refers to the algorithm as hers, as well as the fact that she named CHIRP.

https://github.com/achael/eht-imaging
This is Andrew Chael's imaging library available on GitHub. It's where our original "sleuths" discovered that Bouman had contributed very little and assumed that she was stealing the glory from others. NOTE: Andrew Chael didn't make these claims or ask for this sort of attention!

https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.06156
This is a paper describing Chael's work, which is impressive. Bouman is in the position of last author. Again, the relevance of the author order can differ, but the common significance of 'last author' is either the supervisor or the relative least contribution. In Bouman's paper, the position of last author seemed to indicate supervisor(s) based on the organization hierarchy on the EHT website. In this instance, I interpret Bouman's name being last as her being a minor contributor to Chael's specific work.

https://eventhorizontelescope.org/
This is the official EHT telescope website. I can't remember what I looked at here, it's in my history. I think I was trying to find out who Bouman's project lead was.

https://twitter.com/thisgreyspir…/status/1116518544961830918
This is the twitter thread where Chael defends Katie. He explains that he didn't write 850K lines, defends Katie and says that his algorithm couldn't have worked without her, mentions his LGBTQ status, and more. He seems like a great guy.

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/…/10.1063/PT.6.1.2…/full/
This article speaks to some of the other people involved, including the project leader Sheperd Doeleman. This describes the process they went through in creating the black hole image and is where I got the information about how they split the teams into 4, and how the final image is a composite.

https://phys.org/…/2019-04-scientist-superstar-katie-bouman…
This is the article that talks about CHIRP sorting through a "true mountain" of data, and how that data was passed out to four teams to check for accuracy.

https://www.theguardian.com/…/black-hole-picture-captured-f…
This article talks about Bouman coming up with a new algorithm to "stitch data across the EHT network" of telescopes, and how she led an elaborate series of tests (splitting the data up across four teams, etc) to verify that the output wasn't the result of a glitch or fluke.

http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201904110037.html
This article explains Honma's significant role. It describes what Honma's algorithm does and how it was used in this project.

https://www.nao.ac.jp/en/news/science/2019/20190410-eht.html
Here is another article that goes into more detail about Honma and team. He does a great job of explaining how all of the algorithms in question were, in fact, capable of producing accurate images of the black hole, and a part of the task of his algorithm was to verify the accuracy of those generated photos.

The final link is the document by all 200+ participants. This document is important because it gives such a clear idea of the work that went into this, the fabric of which Bouman is an integral part. While I'm intentionally highlighting her contributions in defense of her, it should be understood that, like with most scientific breakthroughs, there were many unsung heroes:
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ab0ec7

wear sunscreen, people

My favorite quote is "If I can't be a good example, let me be a horrible warning."  It turns out that once again, I get to be the bearer of good news AND cautionary advice, simultaneously.

The good news: "the result of the biopsy was consistent with a benign mole. No sign of any skin cancer..."

The other news: Wear sunscreen, people.

. . .

Last Friday, I got a new scar. It's where a mole above my lips and to the right of my nose used to be. I say 'used to be' because there really isn't a tidy way to biopsy a beauty mark -- the whole thing was removed a week ago. My dad was in the back of my mind as I sat with the dermatologist. He had numerous small skin cancers excised from his face and ears after spending years in the sun without a thought of wearing a hat or anything with SPF in it.

. . .

It's interesting because I've considered my radical nephrectomy scar my 'beauty mark' for nearly sixteen years now. At 7 inches long, it is silvery white and runs from just above my right hip around my flank to my back, stopping a few inches before by spine. It is dotted with staple marks and is a reminder of when surgeons carved my diseased kidney out of my body to save my life. The scar has faded and is now also joined by more beauty marks: stretch marks from two pregnancies. The surgery that created the scar was a success, removing a few malignant tumors which would have killed me by now. Within my kidney were the slow-growing seeds of death -- the largest tumor was a scant 2.3 cm by 4 cm; the smallest was only 1.1 cm by 2.1 cm.  There was no metastasis and no lymph node involvement,  so my diagnosis was stage-1 clear cell renal cell carcinoma.

The 'typical' kidney cancer patient is male, of African American or Scandinavian American decent, has been a heavy smoker all his life, or worked in an industry with a high exposure to certain chemicals. He also is diagnosed at stage 3 or 4, when there's little to be done for him.  I met none of these criteria. I was (and still am) a medical outlier. Every healthcare professional who takes my medical history puts down her pen or pushes away from the keyboard and asks me how my cancer was found at age 28. They remind me that my diagnosis 'doesn't happen to 28-year-old women' and that I am lucky to be alive.  I nod and remind them that cancer can happen to anyone, that there is a lot science still doesn't understand about epigenetic changes and our environment, and that I was fortunate to have a physician who took me seriously when I said I had an odd, lower right quadrant nagging pain when doing yoga.

. . .

I'm not a terribly vain person (I wear makeup maybe a few times a year, mostly at important work meetings), but I was pretty upset about needing to remove a mole that is connected to my identity in a lot of ways.  My children were both fascinated by it and constantly reached for it as infants and toddlers, grabbing and pinching it until their curiosity was sated / they were old enough to understand what it was.  My daughter has the same mole, in the same spot (but mirror image and --like mine was at her age -- still only a pin point on her face).  She has often asked if her face will look like mine and if her mole will be like mine when she's an adult. I've told her the truth -- I'm not sure.

When I got home from the procedure, Leo and I explained to the kids why I was wearing a bandaid and couldn't smile or open my mouth very wide. We never said the word "cancer" to them.  Seba couldn't take his eyes off my stitches when I had the bandaid off. Lucia asked me hundred questions over the weekend about it, finally admitting that she had been scared that she might have to have her mole removed eventually, too. I promised her that I was doing everything I could to make sure it would not happen to her -- and that it why I insist on putting sunscreen on them before every soccer game and that she and her brother wear hats when feasible.

. . .

Tomorrow, I will return to the doctor's office and the last 3 stitches will come out. I'll ask him if he thinks the 1 cm scar will fade into my smile line or if he thinks I could tattoo a 'replacement' mole in its place. He's already told me to keep the scar well protected from the sun with sunscreen and a hat,  and that makeup will cover most of it. I'm sure about the sunscreen and hat but not sure if I'll start wearing makeup again. To be honest, I spent a lot of time looking in the mirror before I had kids; I often find that I've gone all day without looking in one only to discover eye crud off to the side behind my glasses hours after getting to the office. I've spent many hours looking in the mirror this week, getting used to my new face and trying not to think too much about what my biopsy results would be. I've over-thought the coincidence that my 1 cm scar is slightly smaller than my smallest malignant kidney tumor. But I've also remembered that while having kidney cancer was the Krakatoa of my life, that there's also been more joy, more adventures, and more passion in the last ~16 years than in the entire 28 years before. For now, I'm focusing on the joy -- and shopping for some more hats and sunscreen for everyone in the family.