Notes on the Academy Awards 2022

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For what it is worth, here are my impressions of the Academy Awards 2022.  I have no special insight but I have been around for a while.

People who dont know how this works should realize that the real test of skill is to be invited to, and be noticed at, one or more of the extremely glamourous parties after the awards ceremony itself.  Of course anyone holding an oscar from that year is automatically granted entry to any party (including the Governor's Ball).  Attending the awards itself is certainly a privilege and has a variety of entertaining aspects, but ultimately it is best to realize that it is "work" to the people who are there.  Most of them have to be there.

My observation is that in spite of all the complaints about the various versions of the Academy Awards ceremony, that the award itself retains both its glamour and its practical career benefits.  If you receive an Oscar then it is likely that your career will receive a boost and you will be more marketable.  This differs from branch to branch, I think, at least that would be logical.

The thing to keep in mind is that the Academy funds its entire operation for a year out of that one night.  They do a lot of good work from what I can tell.  Of course I presume there are always politics and some waste, how could there not be?  But they definitely spend their money on things that help us all.  Things like film restoration, for example.

The Will Smith incident is just unfortunate.  People are really highly stressed in these circumstances.  I dont know the man, but I know people who have worked with him on projects and no one has said he is a monster.  He probably just had a bad night which is a shame.

Our Flag Means Death and Non-binary Sex

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I watched the first 4 episodes of our flag means death. It has its pluses and minuses, but ultimately I grew bored. I am completely OK for people to use a broad topic such as the golden age of piracy to illuminate current hot button issues, like non-binary sexuality, if thats what they want to discuss. But if they do that I would like it to be a lot more, well, blush, explicit. I want to see them doing the deed if they are going to bore me with this shit. Jackie, that big black women who likes to fuck men, god knows where. I mean, its all OK with me as long as they take a shower afterwards and as long as we get to exploit them for prurient interest.

The SDNY Did Not Fail to Indict Trump

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When the SDNY did not indict Donald Trump and his obviously corrupt Trump Organization, it was not a failure of "justice".  This is the way our system is intended to work.

 

Its not that the justice system failed, its that the American people, by which I mean progressives (possibly progressive democrats), are stupid and unrealistic to believe that it ever would happen based on what they should have learned about our system by now. A few of these "lessons" include, the SDNY is no more capable of taking on a corrupt crime organization like Trump than they are to take on the Genovese family. The job of the SDNY is to get convictions based on the laws that the corrupt legislature has put in place to victimize the small fish and protect their friends. Also, the job of the SDNY is not to take any risks involving high profile cases and by definition all high profile cases are therefore excluded.  The Department of Justice is no more about "justice" than the Department of Defense is about "defense" or Homeland Security is about "security". There is no justice in the USA except more or less by accident. 

 

It is well understood by political scientists (or at least some political scientists) that when a political system fails to provide such "public goods" as a functioning and legitimate justice system, a practical way to change the constitution, and a peaceful and legitimate way to choose one's representatives, that the system is very likely to experience a revolution and that assassination is seen as a legitimate tool of political change.  But America has always used assassination for political purposes. See, for example, Huey Long, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, JFK and RFK.  Under the circumstances, some would say that the only way to achieve minimum justice and the will of the majority in this country would be to assassinate Trump.

 

This is the lesson of history.  This is the American Way.

 

 

 

 

https://www.nysd.uscourts.gov/

Piddles The Squirrel Returns

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Against all expectations, Piddles the Squirrel has emerged from the forest to bless us with her presence on the archery range.  With Piddles still with us, how can we lose hope?

Ukraine! Well I am Certainly Surprised

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Of all things, I really did not expect Vladimir the Great to actually recreate Munich before Europe's horrified eyes.  And Vlad knows that whatever Biden does, he can use the Republicans to destroy him and the Democrats and put their stooge in power, just like they did in 2016.

 

 

Surprise! Limp Democrats Fail to Uphold Justice

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The statute of limitations on obstruction of justice by the Trump administration is now passing.  These crimes were documented in the Mueller report. The Department of Justice has failed to bring suits against Trump and his cronies for gross violation of the law.  Oh please, Merrick, is it really necessary to dodge doing your job, and to vindicate Trump's crimes?  I am sure you and Biden decided to do this (let the clock run out) rather than be "divisive". 

 

Why, therefore, should I ever vote for the Democrats again except to annoy the Republicans?

 

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: