> please buy bus tickets only with cash under a fake name This is because he's actively against surveillance. It's not a hard requirement, I've lent him an ano

> please buy bus tickets only with cash under a fake name This is because he's actively against surveillance. It's not a hard requirement, I've lent him an anonymous (i.e. pre-paid) public transport card before, and while he didn't like the requirement to both check on and check off, he did it anyway. > find me a parrot That's a misrepresentation. It's a "it'd be nice if" type thing. There's also the "don't buy one" comment, because you can be sure someone has done that. > go to the hotel and figure out if their phone jacks do dial-up because that's most likely the only thing that will work with my machine That might be really old, his machine definitely has wifi. And if the request is from the pre-wifi with free software drivers days, it's completely reasonable for someone who lives a chunk of their life on the internet to request internet access. It's much, much more reasonable than you're making out, especially if you consider it in the context of why you're probably asking him to speak at some event.