Update from 2021
Sorry, got busy and didn't update for 14.5 years. In the intervening time I met my life partner, got married, moved to Thailand, researched a mass protest movement there, became semi-fluent in Thai, returned to New York, had two wonderful children, got a job as a professor in New York, bought a home in Queens, published a book, and am overall reasonably OK.
In 2008 the United States elected its first Black president for two terms, although after that the country was overtaken by neo-fascists, led by elderly television clod Donald Trump. Much of the already-thin system of social protections and civil rights that had one existed were gutted by the Supreme Court and state legislatures, and the country descended into a right wing techno-dystopic surveillance state, where it remains. You can get good legal weed now, which is cool, but on the other hand you have to smoke it in a right wing techno-dystopic surveillance state. We finally wrapped up most of the wars that we started back in 2001, just the other day actually. Spoiler alert: we lost them all! The weather is appreciably hotter and more chaotic, a change to which we've all generally responded with what can only be described as panicked inaction. Oh, and the entire world has been shut down for almost two years by a killer virus that keeps mutating and getting deadlier. There's a vaccine but some people have figured out how to make money by selling videos that claim it doesn't work, so the virus is still circulating and evolving, as far as anyone can judge forever.
What else? I got a Prince tattoo. But also, Prince died.
Anyway, I'll try to update again without so long of a gap!!