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?

 

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.