Back to paper filing for US taxes

Filing taxes is on paper for me this year. After Mint Mobile ended their previous international roaming, I allowed my US cellphone plan to lapse. Although the IRS typically expects expats to file taxes, its services also generally require them to have a US telephone number. When they can make it easier for expats to actually deal with them then they won't have to process my paper mail any more. As it is, it helps to be able to attach a separate page anyway because Form 1116 Part II doesn't have enough space for reporting monthly salary deposits. If I end up working as a contractor later this year then I may also have to start attaching a form from the UK's Home Office showing that I am not liable for Self Employment tax.

A possibly good side of modern AI research

In writing here previously on generative AI I had wondered what happens to society when people can routinely lose themselves in artificial worlds of their own design. I had been thinking from the point of view of their being able to act out dark fantasies then adjusting to the real world where they don't make the rules and their actions affect others.

Anticipated by many works of fiction over the years, I was slow to consider what may be a good side of advancements in training inference models. There are many people who don't have enough contact with friends, perhaps especially the elderly. We may not be far from a point where they can have some artificial companion, patient and configurable, that offers interesting and helpful conversation on whatever topics the user wishes, even joining them actively in some pursuits, far beyond Alexa who can do little more than reading out the results from web searches.

Such companions may be considered a poor substitute for human contact but I suppose that there are probably funded startups chasing this very market.