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?

 

Happy New Year! Too Bad About Our Decline Into Neo-Fascism, Though

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Dear REDACTED

Well happy new year. 

 

I doubt most americans realize that their country is in a serious decline, essentially a dive, but I think the rest of the world understands that we live in a failing democracy. I dont know if this ever could have been avoided after the double fuck that the supreme court threw at their country, first by overthrowing the election of 2000, and second by destroying the key clause of the voting rights act. The electoral college and the supreme court were obviously illegitimate after 2000 but the dumb bunnies, the democrats, refused to face reality and do anything. Of course Obama and Biden were failures but it isnt all their fault. We are all of us responsible. I have no doubt that when our generation is judged we will be found to be not up to the challenges we faced. We were not the worst generation, but can not compare to the people who faced the depression and world war 2. I am exhausted by the stupidity and that is what the movie Dont Look Up (2021) was about. The stupidity of social media, our government, our failure to face reality and take action. That is why its an important movie and there is no other movie I am aware of that begins to address the issues. The fact that this movie is goofy in many ways is irrelevant. Many people are going to get hurt but its too late now. And I can prove it to you by pointing out that no one is proposing a plan that can avert this well-deserved disaster. Its all just wishful thinking as usual. As you well know, the Nile is not a river in Egypt. I wish I had the money so I could go on a world tour for 20 years and not have to worry about it. But to be fair, we deserve this. We asked for it. 

 

Have a wonderful new year! 

 

 

Will California Protect Us?

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A friend asked if California would be able to protect its citizens from a fascist federal government.  Well, probably not, but its not black and white.

1. Any proactive blue state that can control their republican nuts in their state legislature should be able to pass laws that protect people, or their state attorney general can declare that they will not enforce a law, and the state police forces technically work for the governor. Then the DOJ can sue the state and tie things up in court.

2. But who controls the National Guard and can they be called out in spite of the Governor of the state saying no? Yes, they can. The president can declare that there is an insurrection and send in guard units from any state, not just the state with the insurrection, so called. Now when you have a shit-for-brains fascist like Trump, why would he ever be limited by the law or the constitution?

3. The FBI works for the DOJ and COINTELPRO and other history proves that under the right circumstances they will violate any law, any constitutional right, and not be punished for it. We dont know how many people the internal security forces framed and sometimes killed during the 1960s.

4. The judiciary has been stuffed with right wing nuts who will do whatever the right wants, no matter how egregious. See for example Kavanaugh and Barrett but at the appeals court level as well as the Supreme Court. Do you trust Kavanaugh or Barrett to protect your rights?

5. Fascists do not recognize any law that interferes with their power. The standard play is to call their supporters to "protect the country", see Jan 6. Why not send the various right wing militia groups into california to "restore order"?

So, IMHO, if we lose congress or the presidency, I am very skeptical that our institutions will protect us. I looked in vain as the country failed to protect us during the Trump administration.

A friend explained it to me, please excuse the semi-sexist language. "The Constitution is a gentlemen's agreement", my friend said. The whole thing fails when you have low class shits like Trump, Barr, Kavanaugh, etc.

Where is Wilford Brimley When We Need Him?

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Dear REDACTED,

How did we get here? That you would suggest that I was overly simplistic about matters of principle? Me? I merely want to remind my friends what is at stake here. This is not your everyday serial rape of children by rich people in public flying their powerful friends, like Trump or Clinton, around to do so, and then making a deal with the Florida DA to avoid any semblance of justice or compensation for the victims. As if the law were a joke to be flouted unless you were black or poor. This is nothing trivial like that. This is a series of crimes against the republic, not one crime (and I mean that in some sort of literal, legalistic sense) but a whole series of them. You say its more complicated than I realize, but I am trying to communicate, and failing, that I think that I know very well what a clusterfuck this is, even if I may indeed be ignorant of the details of what the SDNY or the DOJ may face. My response is that this is why they get paid the big bucks. And now, having been paid, many of us wish them to do their goddamn job. I am certainly not right about everything. I never thought in a million years that Trump would, again in plain sight, try to overturn the election in which Gore, excuse me, I meant to say Biden, obviously won. That he would on network television incite his followers to overthrow the constitution, attack the Congress and attempt to murder the leading Democrats in the House, defecate in the halls of congress, both literally and figuratively, and then people would say, "we must not overreact". You have got to be kidding me. I want my money back.

At the end of "No Sudden Moves" by Soderbergh, the Aldrick character says "They have eyes but they just cant see".

Hollywood is at fault. Yes, the glamourous and rewarding motion picture industry lied to me. Well, some of them did. I guess we all see what we want to see. I am a goofy idealist who ignored Hammett and Chandler and without realizing it, believed that it wasnt that bleak, that justice would be done. I am a fool. A naive idiot. Instead I believed Brimley in that fabulous courtroom drama, Absence of Malice (1981), that completely goofy Paul Newman and Sally Fields melodrama nominally about the freedom of the press in the form of Sally Fields as she attempts to increase newspaper readership and bring down Paul Newman with the help of an ambitious "jew lawyer" from the DOJ.   Then in a nearly perfect justice ex machina, Wilford Brimley, cast as the aw shucks US assistant attorney general, sweeps in like an "Old Testament" Angel of the LORD and smites the wicked.  

 

Brimley in Absence of Malice (1981)

Brimley starts off the show here (in low quality youtube video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btqBJJF2yvE

And Newman and Brimley finish it off here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMj3uqFKG84

What a fool I have been. There is no Brimley and there is no Justice. I have been lied to and those of us who pinned our hopes on elections and the justice system have been betrayed. 

Vector and Matrix Math for OpenGL

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If you are trying to use OpenGL from C, you might want a vector and matrix math package so you dont have to write your own.  Here is one that looks pretty good to me.

https://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~barnes/treecode/vectmath.h.html

And the internet being the way it is, I include the source code here: 

/****************************************************************************/
/* VECTMATH.H: include file for vector/matrix operations.                   */
/* Copyright (c) 1999 by Joshua E. Barnes, Tokyo, JAPAN.                    */
/****************************************************************************/

#ifndef _vectmath_h
#define _vectmath_h

#include "vectdefs.h"

/*
 * Vector operations.
 */

#define CLRV(v)                 /* CLeaR Vector */                      \
{                                                                       \
    int _i;                                                             \
    for (_i = 0; _i < NDIM; _i++)                                       \
        (v)[_i] = 0.0;                                                  \
}

Democrats Have Eyes But They Just Can't See

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The mainstream Democrats, as represented by Joe Biden, have learned nothing from the Trump disaster.  They long for an America that hasnt existed for two decades and so they fail and fail and we are cursed to suffer and to suffer because they refuse to open their eyes.  They want those good old days of bipartisan gentleman behavior to return.  They dont understand that it is dead.

 

As Aldrick says at the end of No Sudden Moves (2021):

"Motherfucker's got eyes, they just can't see."