Nominate Merrick Garland For the Supreme Court?

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Dear REDACTED,

I have a possibly interesting idea for who Biden should nominate for the Supreme Court.  I realize that Joe Biden promised a black woman for the Supreme Court but then he hasn't kept any of his other promises so why should he keep this one? Also we know that he wants to propose some horrible limp failure who will not defend Americans and who will not in any serious way work to counteract the hideous partisans of Gorsuch etc.  So why not propose Merrick Garland? Garland is obviously a failure at the Department of Justice, so everyone can be confident he won't do anything interesting on the so-called Supreme Court. Then maybe Biden could propose someone who could think about enforcing the law instead of that usual Obama-like policy of letting the most guilty off.   One of the side effects of Garland and the Department of Justice failing to minimally enforce the law is that Trump can promise his followers that if they murder people and destroy American democracy that he will pardon them. Yes that's what the Democrats stand for. I think that Biden is well on track to destroy the Democratic party. Certainly there's no reason for anyone even slightly progressive to vote for Democrats since they are such failures.  I think this is a great idea and I hope that you will call your congressman and your senator and support this idea. They need to hear from us. They need our guidance because obviously they don't have a clue what to do on their own. 

 

Sincerely.

Why Does Our Media Keep Calling Manchin/Sinema Moderates?

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Dear REDACTED,

The press keeps calling Manchin and Sinema "moderate". Am I supposed to believe that our press is so stupid as to believe that? Or are they being paid to be stupid? I dont understand what is going on here. Manchin is a right wing Republican who for historical reasons (coal mining?) is in the Democratic party and Sinema is just a REDACTED who pulled the wool over the Democrats eyes, got elected, and serves her Republican masters who pay her well.  Our press is clearly useless, but are they really that stupid?

 

Sincerely.

Biden and the Supreme Court Kerfluffle

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I predict that the Democrats will prove to be inept on the supreme court nomination, with huge infighting, and that Biden will either not achieve his goal of a black woman, or will do so only with immense effort. This is because of the inability of the Democratic party to actually elect people loyal to the party or the nation. With Manchin and Sinema on board, the Democrats only won the Senate in a very perfunctory way, we needed to have a minimum of two more senators before they claimed a victory. But that is what I expect from the Democrats and my fellow liberals: wishful thinking to avoid having to deal with the failures of their model to result in anything effective on any topic of interest to me. Infrastructure, yeah sure, but how about voting rights and getting the right wing nuts off the supreme court and the appeals courts, and prosecuting the real criminals of the Trump assault on democracy? How about ending institutional racism? Biden is similar to Obama, and Obama was a nearly complete failure although he was good for annoying some Republicans because of his race.

And of course the Republicans are racist and sexist and will go nuts about a black woman on the court to arouse the anger of their equally racist and sexist base. You know, "the Democrats want Communism and to destroy Christmas!"

One thing is clear, voting for the Democrats is not in any way a useful thing to do except in that you might annoy a Republican. My prediction that the Democrats would self destruct whether or not they "won" congress is coming right along. They are failing and will continue to fail. At least Trump achieved his goals, or some of them.

Using the Web Audio API in 2022

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The good news is that there is a pretty interesting Javascript interface to audio inside HTML 5 that is supported by most browsers.  The bad news is that the documentation is not perfect, it rarely is.  Here is a list of some of the things I learned implementing a web browser based "typewriter"-like interface.

 

1. The abbreviation "mdn" stands for Mozilla Developer Network and is the best place that I have found for documentation on HTML and the Javascript API. So by prefacing any search for information with the letters "mdn" I eliminate most of the extraneous trash.

 

2. Most browsers seem to support the Web Audio API just fine, but you will discover that the browser web page will start muted, with audio disabled. Therefore, you need something like a button the user has to hit to enable audio and you need to check the state of your audio context and possibly "resume" it.

 

3. Not all nodes support start() and stop().

4. Nodes that do support start() and stop() can only be used once.  Therefore you will need to recreate any node for each time you plan to start/stop it.

5. The good news is that this node recreation can be fast, particularly if you are just reusing an audio buffer having previously created it.

6. To use sampled audio (e.g. not an oscillator or a constant), you will need to do the following or equivalent:

Joe Biden Probably Wasnt Serious

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Please reassure me that when Joe Biden said, recently, that he had not expected the obstructionism that he has seen from the Republicans that he was joking or perhaps being in some way trying to say that he screwed up but had an excuse.  The problem, of course, is that one would have to be completely unaware of the politics and methods of the right, who we sometimes call Republicans, although they do not have the values of the classic Republicans.  Biden would have to blind or stupid or both not to have realized this reality going in.  So I wonder what it is he was really trying to say.  

 

Of course if he was merely being honest then all those who said that Biden was completely the wrong person to lead the country were correct.

 

Will Tsar Vladimir Go To War in Ukraine?

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Somewhere in the first three episodes of HBO's Peacemaker, our hero, who has collapsed in stress earlier in the episode, regains his moral outrage and willingness to kill to keep the peace and says something like "Eat peace, motherfuckers!" before he blows the bad guy's head off.  The best way to do what Vladimir, the Keeper of Peace, is doing is to not let anyone, even your own side, know what you plan to do. 

But there is a list of things that people have learned to do before battle begins and one can observe these things and get a sense for what is about to happen.  Different sides do different things, but basic principles apply.  This is more about guidelines than it is about inflexible rules.  All of these are pretty logical in retrospect and will make sense to you as well. All of these have relevant historical precedent.  And it is because of these things that people after the war ask "how could you not have known?" Hindsight has perfect vision.

Here is a short list in the context of the Russian/Ukraine situation.  Russia pulls most of its personnel out of their embassies and consulates.  Citizens are warned to leave the country.  Classified papers and other material in these embassies are destroyed.  Someone sends special forces to the potential site of conflict to help get their diplomats and citizens out.  Live ammunition is released to the units.  Leaves are cancelled.  The logistics of war are completely over the top amazing and even if you are not sure war is happening, certain really big things have to be put into motion (e.g. Russian amphibious ships are sortied and people are not sure where they are going... maybe they are just going on vacation).  Various countries start running around the clock missions to provide critical munitions to their ally, munitions that they might have kept a very tight grip on previously, but not now.  "Here" they say, "Take these antitank weapons.  They are our very best and God Speed".  Border incursions by air and ground increase in tempo until they seem to be almost continuous.

Units start disappearing.  Brigades, Divisions, maybe Corps, go to radio and electronic silence and move and you dont know where they went.  Units show up where you didn't expect them.  People at the front start reporting noises of equipment that they had not heard before.  The listening posts report in, something is happening.  Airplanes and other assets are dispersed.  Your networks say that war begins in 3 days but you know they have been wrong before.  Warnings are issued.  Alert levels are raised.  People lose sleep and they are armed and nervous. Mistakes happen.

War is not inevitable, but at some point information entropy takes over and you either give the "go order" or you dont.  And if you say "go", at some point you may not be able to pull them back.

There is a lot of history here.  War is perfectly plausible in this part of the world.  You may not agree, but Russia has interests here.  Obviously so does Ukraine.  Personally I think they are going to do it.  God Speed.

 

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Academy Scitech Awards 2014

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The Academy Scitech Awards in 2014.   Two of these couples are sadly no longer together.  I am terrible at names, but of course this is Josh Pines, David Coons, Carlye, Nicky Kaiser and Rick Sayre.  I will get the names of the others and get back to you.

Inherent Vice (2014) Reference

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I speculate that I like this movie so much because I lived in LA at the beach during the period the movie describes.  I was reviewing the film to see if it would be appropriate for a friend and I noticed for the first time the following scene which ostensibly takes place during a party in Topanga Canyon in the early 1970s.  There is something about this picture that seemed familiar, perhaps.

No title 1

 

My attention span is the attention span of the fleas I am accused of having.

By the swine who live here.

I am alone in the pandemic because who would be with me?

The outsider, the flea borne.

The mysterious stranger has left for a competition and I miss her.

The parole officer has exposed herself to the death virus and I am alone.

The doctors are swine who want me to suffer.

Why then should I bother to live?