Pence is Not an Existential Threat

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I have friends so terrified of a potential President Pence, that they are perfectly OK with Trump continuing in office and murdering women and children.  Thats how much they fear Pence.  I think they are out of their mind and need to get a grip.

Short of starting a nuclear war in order to encourage the end of the world and the return of Jesus the Christ child, there is nothing too bad that is likely to happen that could be any worse than Trump.  He cant get legislation passed.  He can put right wing nutty boys in the judicial system the way Trump does, but that is no worse.  Any executive order he signs that is egregious will be reviewed by non-Trump justices and can be overturned by the next administration.

And there is nearly zero chance that he can be elected president in 2020.  He has the charisma of an uninteresting rock.  He probably would not even be able to get the Republican nomination.

So yes, Pence for 1.5 years would be an embarrassment and a humiliation, but he does not represent an existential threat.

Running a More Controlled Test with Tensorflow/Keras

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After many interesting tests with Tensorflow/Keras, I am convinced I have no idea what is really going on.  So, I am doing what I should have done to begin with, which is to generate some test data and see how well the script i have written to implement a GAN works with known data.

I finally broke down and learned enough Nuke to be able to generate one of my standard test sequences.  512, 1K frames with two levels of noise and a 12 field chart.  

All the frames look like the one below, except of course that it animates, slowly.

Without Use, Knowledge Decays

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As part of the process of cleaning data for use in machine learning, I finally broke down and I am learning Nuke, that being the preferred compositing program after the predecessors (Shake & Chalice) were destroyed by Apple out of greed. 

But the point is that with the passage of a few years, all kinds of skills and knowledge go away and I am stuck with the frustrating process of trying to remember what used to be second nature.

Let this be a warning to youth out there.  This can and will happen to you.

Why Impeachment is Not About Removing Trump (at least not exactly)

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This one of those essays that require at least a day to write, and probably several days to write, assuming one wants to do it well.  But I dont have that time so I will just have to sketch out the ideas here and hope you will be indulgent.

The question is as follows.  Is it necessary or desirable to impeach Donald Trump even if it is impossible to convict him because Republicans control the Senate and Republicans are traitors?

Some would say it is not desirable because it would piss off many good Americans who will think that the Democrats are being vindicative.  Others would say it is not desirable because it probably wont remove Trump from office, but it *might* and then we have Pence to deal with.  Still others would say it is not desirable because as far as they can tell Trump has not been "proven" to have committed a crime.

I think it is desirable, even required, and for the following reasons.

First, there are no good Americans who would be pissed off.  The only Americans who support Trump at this point (maybe not initially) are traitors who want to destroy this country, put rapists on the supreme court, etc.

Second, the only mechanisms we have to remove a madman like Trump is impeachment (or article 4 of the 25th Amendment).  If that means Pence, that means Pence.  Pence is a religious nut will try to put gay people in extermination camps, but he will fail.

Third, it is not necessary to prove Trump committed a crime to impeach him.

But the most important reason is this.

The Republicans have tried to destroy this country and we have to fight back.  Now, and forever, now or not at all.

Machine Learning and Nebulae

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Damn this machine learning can be fun! The images are definitely getting better and I think it would be petty to complain that the "generated" images dont look much like the input "real/training" images. That would be the concern of small minded people and everyone here I am sure operates on a higher level. Oh yes, also, the "metric" of good vs bad (error, incorrectness, what have you) also seems to have no relationship whatsoever to the images being "judged". 

Again, we must rise above such nonsense!

Nebulae, who needs nebulae?

Noteworthy Brief from the FBI about Cohen

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I have not read the brief that Mueller has filed but I have read about it and seen a few excerpts that seemed so noteworthy as to bring it to the attention of my friends.  In this paragraph, the Special Council's office makes the following point about Michael Cohen, esq.

While many Americans who desired a particular outcome to the election knocked on doors, toiled at phone banks, or found any number of other legal ways to make their voices heard, Cohen sought to influence the election from the shadows. He did so by orchestrating secret and illegal payments to silence two women who otherwise would have made public their alleged extramarital affairs with Individual-1. In the process, Cohen deceived the voting public by hiding alleged facts that he believed would have had a substantial effect on the election.

Mercury is so retrograde

I am writing this blog post from my smartphone. Retrograde is what Mercury is, like I have never seen. I am so pissed off I'm ready just to give up on the whole damn thing.

Notes to Reviewers I (Schools)

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These are the schools I plan to apply to so far.

I recognize that there is work associated with each additional school (even if you are just cutting and pasting which is what I would do).  So I have tried to minimize the list and I am also completely cool with the idea that if you consent to do any of these, that you may prefer to do one or two rather than the whole list.  You will let me know, etc. 

Additional notes:  1. The goal is to get a PhD but it really doesnt bother me to get a masters first because I have a lot to catch up on and because I think it lets people get a look at me first (which may help and it may hurt).  2. There is at least one foreign school on the list, I would like others, too.  Maybe Canada?  Maybe Europe?

Computer science: Stanford (because of Pat Hanrahan), Columbia (excellent computational biology), something in Israel (TBD).

CMU?  MIT?  Illinois?  Berkeley? You tell me.  NYU is too close to home.  It would be fine otherwise.

Public Policy: Rand Graduate Institute, something at Georgetown.

How you know things are really bad

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When you invest vast time in describing how much someone's feelings concern you and suggest some ways to change the relationship to better take into account their feelings and they respond "YOU DONT CARE ABOUT MY FEELINGS".  

Right or wrong, this is a subtle sign of a serious disconnect.

Helped A Homeless Person (maybe) Destroyed Two Relationships (maybe)

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I may have helped a homeless person today.  Maybe.  It was so clear that her current dilemma / nightmare was something she had caused.  She was totally able to get that and I think it makes things worse.   I think she will face a week of very challenging adversity and then be OK.  She needs an address to get her disability card, then get an ID and then find a place to live with her disability.  Its all doable, but its all challenging when you are homeless.

But this can be hard to do even when you are not homeless.  

And two other friends may have disavowed me.  This always makes me sad.  What is funny sad is that a friend thinks that I am all rage, and he cant take that.  I try to explain to him that rage and anger is my personality (along with a few other emotions) and he should just adjust to it, but he hates me for saying this because he thinks I dont acknowledge his feelings.  

What surprises me, and which I dont know how to process, is that this is something new?  Weird.  I have been like this for two decades.

There is also some interesting, insulting material about my medical issues, but its not something that can be discussed here.  I am such an idiot sometimes.