Please help sustain my open-source projects like UnifiedML, Tributaries, and minihydra, and to build on future open-source releases.

Some info about me:

My family immigrated to America when I was 4. Our family included me, my mom and my sister, but we would meet my grandparents in Rochester, New York, who moved shortly before. We’d also meet my Uncle Slava and Uncle Sasha, both physicists, both recent immigrants as well. My Uncle Slava was the closest person to a father to me, second only to my grandfather, with whom together with my grandma we moved in in a shared apartment. My Uncle Sasha was a successful physicist and he’s the reason we were all allowed to immigrate from Samarkand, Uzbekistan when I was 4. You see, he had a contractual obligation with the Soviet Union as an aerospace engineer, requiring him to keep confidential information confidential. As soon as that contract expired, American businesses began sending him offers and he came here to teach as a mathematics professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Having a family member here increased our priority ranking for immigration, and second to our status as “Jewish refugees”, we were allowed to immigrate.

I come from a long line of Jews. My grandparents both Jewish on my mom’s side, my grandparents both Jewish on my dad’s side (though I didn’t personally know him). The name “Lerman” is Ashkenazi. It’s German/Yiddish for “teacher" and I stem from a long line of teachers. At the same time, “Simon” (pronounced, SIM-ohn or the Hebrew, “Shimon” as my Rabbi calls me) means “to hear”. In Kabballic teachings, “to hear” is the complement to “to see.” It is the second way of knowing. To hear is to understand, it is to fine out the meaning from the varied knowings, whereas “to see” is to know — it’s the sense or awareness of truth; no teaching needed. My mom being a music theory professor, I find it funny that this was my birth name, though really it had nothing to do with the Kabbalistic interpretation. My great-aunt’s late husband was named Siimón.

My great-aunt, my grandma’s sister, also moved to America of course.

They lived a hard life. Everyone in our family did, suffering through oppression, war, and great hard-to-express injustice. Their mother died during WWII. Their dad — a Rabinovich (“son of Rabbi”) — was a poor stone cobbler, not a Rabbi. Their deceased mother married him against all odds. Her dad, actually was a Rabbi.

On my dad’s side, my other grandpa, a professional poet. Engineers and teachers.

But my surname Lerman stems from my grandpa, who I grew up with, my mom’s dad. He was a chemical engineer and a brave man. He once chased his family in a train in Kazakhstan fleeing the Nazis. As the train was in motion, he had to jump from behind into the arms of his crying and screaming little sister who was already boarded.

These were hard times.

Our lives did not get much easier sadly. That is a story for another time.

Also, I go by Sam, due to how my name was translated when we immigrated.

If you’d like to support me, as I work to make open-source AI tools that I hope will empower the unheard, the suffering, and the oppressed across the world, and help the arms of nature, please contribute.

Thank you.