Pictures for Siggraph

 How can you go to Siggraph without bringing pictures?  Well you can't.  Here are a few rendered pictures and maybe I will do a few Midjourney pictures as well.  Csn you get which one is which?

Suggestions for Kamala's Platform

In light of the threat to American Democracy posed by Trump and his fellow conspirators, we humbly present to you some ideas for your still-evolving position platform.  

Many people have noticed that many Democrats dont seem to want freedom as much as the Republicans want tyranny.  I hope that you, my fellow Democrats, will be serious and resolute in opposing Trump and all his works.

This is in no particular order.

- Encourage Justices Thomas, Alito and Roberts to resign in light of their outrageous behavior designed to delay any trial of former president Trump. This partisan political behavior is unworthy of the Supreme Court.

- Work with the Department of Justice to see that former president Trump receives a fair and timely trial for the criminal charges related to Jan 6 and for his apparent abuse of highly classified material.

- Encourage Justice Cannon to resign in light of her partisan behavior in the classified document case or face impeachment.

- Work with Congress to encourage other fascists put in place in our justice system by McConnell and other right wing nuts to resign or be impeached

- Work with Congress to see that important government activities such as the federal budget and the promotion of military officers not be held hostage ever again to the Republican right or any one member of Congress.

- Increase aid and support to Ukraine

- Trump-proof our foreign policy alliances so no one president can destroy our country’s alliances

- Sponsor and pass legislation to guarantee reproductive rights to women

- Sponsor and pass legislation to eliminate the so-called “right to work” states

- Sponsor and pass legislation to restore the Voting Rights Act

- Sponsor and pass legislation to eliminate “Citizens United”

- Sponsor and pass legislation to require some version of objective truth to the news media. End the Fox News and One America abominations. Free speech is not the same as actively lying, slandering and working to destroy democracy.  You know what I mean.  Its pretty crazy.

Picture of convention by Midjourney:

100th Anniversary of the Planetarium

 This week is the 100th Anniversary of the Planetarium.  The International Planetarium Society is meeting in Berlin.

Picture courtesy of Midjourney

As a friend points out, in two years in Japan.

https://www.ips-planetarium.org/events/EventDetails.aspx?id=1874313&group=

Anarchy, Oligarchy and Tyranny c/o The Financial Times

The Financial Times has a good article on the failure of the American Republic using analogies to the Greek political science terms of anarchy vs oligarchy vs tyranny.  You can read the entire article here (although it may be behind a paywall).

https://www.ft.com/content/a7eea0af-bf9f-4635-812b-271c30620e72

Here are two paragraphs that I thought were entertaining:

The anarchy can seem fun, at least for a while. With some luck, chaos can bring political fruit. At a convention, where one spectacle soon displaces the next, these different guises of democratic collapse can give one another cover. The strongman act of Trump and Vance distracts from their blatant dependence on the wealthy. Their threat to deport migrants shrouds the reality that none of the relevant oligarchs was born in the US, that Trump married two migrants and that Vance married the daughter of migrants.

In practice, though, the Republicans’ anti-republic is contradictory. The different variants of repression can be equally celebrated so long as they are all directed against an imagined enemy. But the plan to fire tens of thousands of civil servants (anarchy) would get in the way of deporting millions of people (tyranny). As the billionaires claim power ever more openly (oligarchy), they put pressure on the aspiring authoritarians who are supposed to be the strongmen (tyranny). The people who want a strongman don’t want him to be a puppet. Signs of strain were certainly evident at the convention. 

Image courtesy of MidJourney

Cost of Housing Notes 7/21/2024

As I was moving from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles, the issue of housing costs and options came up.  There are a number of reasons for this but it all comes down to money and how you want to live your life.  And I think there was a lot of wishful thinking going on about what kind of housing assistance exists, who is eligible for it, and so forth.  So, since I need to know this stuff here are my notes so far on this topic.  All useful information is in the next paragraph.

The executive summary is as follows.  Santa Barbara is expensive perhaps, but the quality of life is very high.  California overall is very expensive and SB rents are not worse than other parts of California on the coast.  One way to get housing costs down in these areas is to do something like rent a three bedroom house and have two roommates with all the inconvenience that implies.  The Housing Authority in SB is a resource to the community but demand far exceeds supply, the process is opaque, and it is not at all clear when or if housing will be provided.  It is not a viable solution to anyone who is on a deadline.  Finally, my research says that there is acceptable single room occupancy housing in other cities in places like Providence, RI or Pittsburgh, PA or parts of Western MA in the range of $1,500 / month or about 1/2 to 1/3 of what you have to pay in California.

The rest of this post is just details.

I was looking for a single bedroom, arguably a studio with kitchen and bath. It is completely possible for this to be a shared space where each person has their own bedroom but the kitchen and bath is shared.  For me, it is better to be in a place where I can work all hours of the day and not bother other people.  It is better to be in a place where I am not constantly subjected to environmental insults (smog, car fumes, etc) and where crime is under control.  I hate to move, so some sort of stability is good.  It does not have to be a particularly big city, but it is useful to be within mass transit distance or driving distance of a fairly big city due to the need to work with specialist doctors.  

There is some belief that there are housing programs for "the poor".  My experience from Santa Barbara says that theoretically such housing exists, but in practice it does not. The SB housing authority does a terrible job of presenting a rational and responsive front to people in need, but the hard facts are that there is more demand for housing than there is supply. The housing that is available is preferentially given to certain demographics that I do not qualify for, such as being a single mother or a veteran.  The process is opaque.    There should be zero surprise that the SB Housing Authority efforts did not work out.   In fact, they would not even return my calls.  It is possible that if we had filed when I first arrived in SB that there would have been a different outcome but I am not sure.

Images courtesy of Midjourney

There is a belief that SB housing is unusually expensive.  My research says that this is not exactly true.  SB is expensive, but so is all of coastal California.  LA is very expensive and much less desirable than SB.   San Luis Obispo and San Clemente and Santa Cruz are also very expensive.  Santa Cruz may be more expensive than SB.  There are places in CA that are less expensive than SB but they are still not cheap and of course the quality of life goes down, often dramatically.  

I am surprised at how much I miss SB.  I would much rather live in SB and drive to LA to make use of its cultural resources, international airport and medical facilities.

There are cities where the rent is less than half of what it is in California.  So, one can probably rent a place for $1,300 to $1,500 in places like Providence, RI.  Multiply that out, your recommended net salary comes to $60K/year.

So what is the conclusion?  I would not expect to spend less than about $1,500 per month if you are a single person but only if you are not in California.  California is roughly 2 - 3x more expensive.  In SB, a small 1 bedroom starts at about $3,000 a month and goes up from there.  And it is not entirely clear who they will rent to if you do not have, and prove you have, a good job and excellent credit rating.  There are exceptions to this and I have benefitted from special deals more than just about anyone.  But when those special deals come to an end, and they always do, then you have to pay market rates.

Thats just the way it is.

Another image from Midjourney

Trump and Judge Cannon Celebrate Courtesy of MidJourney and AI

 
Trump & Judge Cannon celebrate their great victory over justice and the hoax they have played on the American Public.    So much of the detail here seems to be "out of nowhere". 

The prompt was probably something like: "A room of corrupt politicians and a woman judge celebrate their victory over justice at a dinner party where a pig has been slaughtered and roasted with an apple in its mouth.  The politicians are dressed as clowns.  --ar 16:9"

Alternates:

Scenario for Trump Judicial Coup d'Etat

draft draft draft

I propose in this post that Trump will seize power, legally or illegally, in November.  To show this, lets review the various election result scenarios.  Check my logic here.

As we all know, it does not matter if the Democrats win the popular vote at the national level.  It is only the electoral college that matters and that is normally decided by the popular vote at the state level.

In our first scenario, Trump legitimately wins the electoral college and therefore becomes the next POTUS.  He did this in 2016 and I think he has a good chance of doing it in 2024 based on where we are today.  But even if he does not win the electoral college he will still be awarded the Presidency as we will see.  The general strategy here will be "judicial challenge, appeal, delay and deny". 

1. The Republicans have stated that they plan to challenge any state results where they lose. This challenge will be in the form of a lawsuit and if they do not win the lawsuit they will appeal. 

2. Not all of the judges at the Federal level are Republican partisans but a substantial number of them are. At the state level, again its a mixed bag, but many of the judges from Red states are partisan Republicans. These justices have shown that they will rule in the Republican's favor no matter what the evidence or the law might call for.  This happened most recently when Judge Cannon of Florida stalled and then dismissed the case about the classified documents for the most disingenuous reasons.

3. Therefore a certain percentage of election results are likely to be overturned by Republican judges and awarded to Trump.  If a sufficient number of these exist, then the election is thrown to Trump and we are done.  This is the "local", e.g. by state, version of what the SCOTUS did in November 2000 to throw the election.

4. But if for any reason this is not sufficient to throw the election to Trump, in other words they can not get enough electoral votes, then the SCOTUS will step in and rule in Trump's favor and Trump will have won the election.

5. We know this will happen, if necessary, because the SCOTUS has already thrown one election to the Republicans in 2000 even though the Democrat, Al Gore, won the popular vote and was on his way to winning the electoral college when the SCOTUS intervened.

6. We also know the SCOTUS will intervene to put Trump in power because of how they handled the immunity matter.  In that situation they could have declined to hear the issue of presidential immunity because the Appeals court had already considered the issues and written what many people believe to be a reasonable opinion.  Not only did the SCOTUS insist on reconsidering the issue, they delayed doing so until the last possible minute, therefore making it impossible for Trump to be tried for his crimes before the election.  And then they ruled that Trump does have immunity for most crimes that he commits as president.  There is no justification for this ruling.  But there doesnt have to be.  Whatever the theoretical issues may be, practically Trump has been given blanket immunity because there is no time for a trial before the election.

7. Therefore the SCOTUS has proven that it will always intercede in the Republican's favor whenever it can get the opportunity.  And since any disagreeable result in the election will be appealed to the Supreme Court, they will certainly get the opportunity.

As a footnote, of course within moments of becoming nominal president he will instruct his Attorney General to dismiss the charges against him.

Whether or not this is what happens, I propose to you that what has been described here is reasonable given the people and institutions involved.

Therefore, I think it is fair to say that Trump becomes the next President of the United States and you should make your plans accordingly.

Emigration Notes

[I doubt the following post has much useful information.  I think that almost any country will accept someone and their family temporarily if they have money and is willing to work the system.  You may not be able to be a permanent resident, but the only permanent residents are the dead.  The more money you have the more you can work the system and achieve your will.  Therefore, if you want to live in another country or emigrate, I suggest you get as much money as possible and nothing will be refused you].

The following is a collection of notes I have put together on the topic of moving to another country.  It is sourced from experiences of people I know and things I have read, mostly on the Internet.   I know a few people who have been thinking about moving on.  I personally always romanticized the concept of an ex-patriot community, you know, like Paris Between the Wars.  

But on a less pleasant note, it may be that Trump will win a second term and call out the army if anyone dares to protest der Fuhrer's desires in any way.  If that happens, I really dont want to be here.

I need to emphasize that I am not writing from personal experience.  And I suspect from other things in life that until you do something like this you do not really know what is involved.  

I do have a few general suggestions though, that I hope are completely non-controversial.  First, if you have never lived in the target country,  consider visiting that country for 12 weeks or so on a tourist visa and see how you like it.  Second, be leery of things you read on the internet (like this post) because it is very likely you may be reading information that is incomplete or out-of-date.  Third, start the process now because if your experience is like many other people's experience, it will take a long time.

This is in no particular order.

First, archaeologists and prehistorians argue endlessly about how much migration has existed in human history.  Some say a lot, some say very little.  But what is undeniable is that migration has been a part of the known history of the world since we started keeping records and writing things down.  

Second, You will find Internet web sites that imply that it is easy to move to another country.  As far as I can tell, this is obvious nonsense (at least in the general case).  Alternatively, you will find other internet web sites (or friends in the target countries) who will tell you that it is impossible to move to their country, even though we all know people who have done it.  There is some weird psychology here.

A good example of a website with probably helpful information is: https://www.globalcitizensolutions.com/easiest-countries-to-immigrate-to/

You may choose to emigrate through the front door.  But many people I know have used one of the standard exceptions.  Although the rules will change per country, most countries do seem to have some sort of allowance for each of these.  There are three general classes of exception that I am aware of: the marriage exception, the employment exception, and the student/teacher exception.  First, it seems that if you marry a citizen of another country, in general that country will make allowances for you to move there to live with your spouse.  So there you are, no problem!  Just get married.

Second, if you can get a company in another country to want to hire you, and they can get the necessary paperwork done, then that other country will make allowances for you to move there to work.   This opportunity comes and goes, it is very situational, and there are always limits.  But there was a time when people with certain technical skills involving computers and visual effects were permitted to spend years in Canada, the UK, New Zealand and so forth working at very reasonable salaries.  Most of those countries will have a program where, after a certain number of years, you and your family can be naturalized as a citizen.  However, you have to act on this when it happens because this sort of situation and program comes and goes.  Finally, it seems that most countries will make provisions for people to come to study in their country if you can get accepted at an accredited institution.  A variation on that is to be a professor that a university wants to bring over to teach.  

Other than the marriage exception, none of these other approaches guarantee you the right to be a resident or citizen in the long run.  There may be a path to citizenship but there may not be and it always involves work.

Fourth, there are a number of special exceptions to the front door on a country by country basis.  Italy will make allowances for a certain subset of descendants of those who left Italy to apply for and get Italian citizenship.  I know someone who has done this and it wasnt easy and it took him years.  The country of Israel will make allowances for a Jew to return to Israel.  The issue of how a Jew is defined is non trivial in some cases but in most cases it is straightforward.   There are some European countries that have made allowances for Jews who survived the Holocaust to apply for and get citizen ship.  Again, it isnt easy.  Other countries will "do it for the money".  They will let you move there if you make a 500K or whatever investment and there are probably some other rules.  Recently there has been a special "entrepreneurial exception" in some countries, such as the Netherlands.  In this situation, if you are willing to come to the Netherlands and start a new company in a trendy area, they will provide the visas for you to do so.

Another approach which is straightforward and often used is to simply go to that country as a tourist, and return to this country when the time limit is reached.  There are lots of variations on this approach but I have had friends who have lived in Mexico for years on a tourist visa who every six months or so have to come back to the USA to get their visa renewed.  The European Union will let you do this, but you can only spend 3 months out of every year in any EU country but these rules change and need to be verified.

But if you do not qualify for an exception, and do not want to try anything temporary, then you may want to try the front door.  Those countries are looking for people who are going to bring something to their country and not be a burden on their system.  It will be helpful to speak the language. It will be helpful if you are not there to take a job from another person, but bring some unique skills.  An advanced degree is often helpful as is a specific, desirable skill, such as being a medical doctor.  You should not have a criminal record, obviously.  And people do this kind of immigration every day of the week.  But it will probably take a long time, you may very well need an immigration specialist (aka attorney) in the destination country.  It would be helpful to have a high tolerance for bureaucracy.

You should not be surprised if what you read on the internet turns out not to be true, or is incomplete, or was true once, but not really anymore.  That said, I know people who are not particularly rich who have emigrated to a country that is supposed to be difficult to go to, like New Zealand, and boom.  There they are.  Done.  

Remember, the rules matter, they are country specific, they will change over time, and you will probably need a specialist who will need to get paid to help you.  You must have a high tolerance for bureaucracies because you are very likely to need to deal with one in the target country to do this.

One final thing.  If you are thinking of doing this, dont wait for Trump to be president and call out the army.  First come will be first served, avoid the rush.  In these situations, as in so many others in our world, money and knowing people helps.

Addendum 7/15/2024

-- It seems to take 5 years for someone to get a residency visa for the USA to come here to work.  There are some out of pocket costs as well, they are not zero nor are they huge.   

-- It seems that many countries will now permit a visa for a year or so, maybe longer, based on the individual of another country wanting to do remote work.  This is new, it may not turn into permanent residency, but if you have work you can do remotely, it might enable you to spend a year or more in Spain or Croatia or Malta.

Is the NY Times is a Right Wing Front Organization?

The NY Times is running a partisan campaign to attack Joe Biden and destroy the Democrats by creating the fiction that Joe Biden is too old to run.  Aside from being ageist, who gave the NY Times the right to decide who the Democrats will nominate to run for election?  They run their front page articles every damn day, an editorial masquerading as a news article.   

They run this same article, with small variations, every day.  

And of course the NY Times could not care less about reporting on Trump's 34 felony convictions, about how he is unqualified and dangerous as president, about how he will murder Ukraine, about how he has always been corrupt all these years in NY, about his racism, his sexism, his abuse of women.  No.  None of these things matter to the NY Times.  Nor does the NY Times care to report on the illegitimacy of the legal system which is failing to try Donald Trump for his crimes during the January 6 attack on our government.  Nor does the NY Times care one bit about the delays of the case in Florida.  Nor does the NY Times care about women bleeding out from miscarriages that the doctors and hospitals will not treat in a Red State.

I remember when SCOTUS threw the 2000 election to their right wing nut, W. Bush, which caused a trillion dollar war in Iraq and put Alito and Roberts on the Supreme Court.   Not one word of protest from this right-wing rag.  From the day the SCOTUS pissed on the constitution in public, not one word was said about the illegitimacy of the W. Bush administration, its wars, or its judiciary.

There are several mysteries here.  Why do people continue to think and to say that the NY Times is in some way a bastion of progressive thought, the primary outlet for the so called "liberal media"?  That is as obviously false as saying that the Jews control the media, a joke if I ever heard one.  The second mystery is why are they doing this?  Who is telling them to do this?  Well one obvious suspect is that it is the elites of Wall Street and possibly just the elites who run our government, or think they do.  I have heard that Wall Street is all in support of Trump, just like Silicon Valley hates Biden for daring to talk about regulating AI.  

I dont think I know why the NY Times wants to destroy Biden.  I am certainly cancelling my subscription and I am sure the NY Times will not care that I do so, not even a little bit.

A Midjourney impression of unused newspaper printing machinery

The Sh*t is Getting Worse

At least one good friend thinks I am being too harsh on our elected representatives.  We will never agree on this.  The time for the Democrats to stand up for our rights was November 2000, yet I had many Democratic friends at the time who thought I was overdramatizing the problem.  I didnt think so then, I dont think so now.  

Dear Representative

After two decades or more of going along with the Democrats weak support of democracy, we reach a crisis.   This has been coming for a long time, at least since November 2000 when the Democrats permitted George Bush to steal the election, thus putting Roberts & Alito on the supreme court.  That was a critical mistake, but it was not the only one.  You had opportunity after opportunity to fix the supreme court, to make a stand, to get Merrick Garland on the court, for example, but you failed.  And so as the Republicans merrily put their right wing nuts throughout the judiciary, you continued to play golf or whatever it is you do.  As globalization and elite immigration destroyed employment for people like me, you just laughed.  And the supreme court destroyed the voting rights act.  And the supreme court put Citizens United in place.  And so forth and so on.  You ignored the traditional working class of the Democratic party, you did nothing for the "flyover states".  Nothing.  As far as I can tell you guys are a total failure.

So here we are, and now what do we do.

The only input we are permitted to have is through our "elected" representatives, who may or may not actually be elected (see voting rights act comment above and dont forget the November 2000 coup d'etat).  But our representatives have not done their job, nor do they particularly care to do their job, and issues and problems that might have been solved when they were small have now become very large and very difficult. In fact it is unlikely that they can be solved with the normal tools at hand.   That is too bad for all of us.

Therefore it is up to us to make our opinions known to our representatives even if it makes their lives just a little bit uncomfortable.  We tried it the other way.   All we can do is call you and be as insistent as possible until you do what you should have done already or we vote you out of office.

I am sure that the following demands will be difficult, maybe impossible. But failure will mean that we dont vote for you, and maybe vote for your opponent.  Then when he or she also fails, we vote for their opponent.  And so on and so forth.  At some point people will lose patience and civil society will be at an end.  That time may have already come to pass.  Again, too bad you guys screwed up.

This is a pretty strong set of opinions I am presenting here.  We do have a right to our opinion, dont we?  Maybe? 

So here is what we require from our so-called elected representatives.

1. Donald Trump is tried for his crimes before the election.  That means the Jan 6 events and the theft and handling of classified materials.  Given how close it is to the election, that means the trials start now.  At the very least, Judge Cannon needs to be removed.

2. The Supreme Court must reverse its ludicrous decisions or some workaround needs to be found.

3. The Supreme Court needs to be fixed.  That may mean term limits, it may mean impeachment, it may mean increasing the size of the court, it may mean something else.

4. The other courts need to be fixed.  Trump and others have put right wing nuts into the judiciary at all levels, they have to be removed.  Right now.

5. The supreme court must be open to public opinion, unlike the way it is now.  

6. The Voting Rights Act needs to be restored.  Citizen's United needs to be removed.  

We need all of these and we need them now.  So sorry you screwed up, maybe you will do a better job going forward.  Or maybe your replacements will.  I am not sure what will happen when you fail as you almost certainly will.

Sincerely,

MW

Representatives Playing Golf

I have called my two representatives (current and former) and my two senators to express my opinion about the failure of my representatives to see that Donald Trump is tried before the election and to reverse the ridiculous decisions of our right wing nutty boy so called supreme court.   I have also asked them to see to it that we can express our opinion to the supreme court. 

 

Repesentative Cardenas

Representative Carbajal

Senator Laphonza Butler 310 914 7300

Senator Alex Padilla. 310 231 4494

The Supreme Court Doesnt Take Comments

You are not permitted to give comments to the supreme court of the united states.  They couldnt care less.  If you call them, they will tell you this once and then hang up.  If you try to call again you are blocked.  We live in a right wing dictatorship.

But my elected representative did give me a phone number where I could leave a message.  Maybe.  Try 202 479 3000 and 202 479-3060.