Ken’s Blog

Our Vice President visited L.A., and of course immediately blamed the Democrats for his own administration’s attempts to turn peaceful protests into a clash with the military. He made sure to place special blame on “Jose Padilla” — which was apparently his name for U.S. Senator Alex Padilla — who was met with violence for having dared to ask a reasonable question of Kristi Noem.

Peter Thiel must feel bad about the millions of dollars he has spent propping up Vance’s political career. All that money cannot, in fact, give the Veepacheep more functional brain cells.

I suggest that from now on we simply refer to Thing 2 in the White House as “Jose Vance”. That will help remind us of our V.P.’s weirdly fractured relationship to reality.

Today, June 20, is an interesting day in history, from the perspective of technological innovation.

For example, on June 20 in 1840, Samuel Morse received a patent for the telegraph. Just a few decades later, on June 20 in 1877, Alexander Graham Bell installed the world’s first commercial telephone service. His bold move helped end the use of telegraphs.

On June 20 in 1944, a German V-2 rocket became the first ever human-made object to reach outer space. This despite the fact that the director of the project, Wernher Von Braun, was imprisoned by his government just a few months before the launch, apparently on suspicion of thinking too much. It would seem that his government and our current government have a lot in common.

Now one of my favorites. On June 20 in 1990 the Asteroid Eureka was discovered. At which point it became the world’s first perfectly tautological celestial object.

Happy Juneteenth everyone. One of only 11 U.S. Federal Holidays, it celebrates one the occasions in history when America did something truly positive.

Notably, the current inhabitant of the White House did not mention it at all, even though in the last week he took time out to acknowledge Flag Day, which is not a federal holiday. What could be the reason for this?

One explanation is that he is a dyed in the wool racist who thinks the U.S. made a mistake in abolishing slavery. Another explanation is that he is just an idiot.

I would go with the explanation that best fits the facts. Unfortunately, they both do.

Today’s post is in honor of my fellow U.S. citizen Javier Ramirez:

First they came for the transgendered
And I did not speak out
Because I was not transgender
Then they came for the Haitians
And I did not speak out
Because I was not Haitian
Then they came for the students
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a student
Then they came for the Hispanics
And I did not speak out
Because I was not Hispanic
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

— after Martin Niemöller

I feel bad for the children of the people who are currently enabling the criminal (quite literally) who is sitting in the White House. His “rule by Mafia” seems to be powered only by ostentatious corruption, overt racism, contempt for our country and its people, and the creation of an atmosphere of fear, all topped off by a very mean sort of score settling.

When these bums are finally thrown out, and many of them start their prison sentences, their children will live with the stigma of being associated with monsters and traitors. That isn’t fair to those children.

After WWII, the innocent children of members of the Nazi party must have had a similar difficult time. By letting themselves be part of this authoritarian hate mongering, I wonder whether these assholes understand how deeply they are harming their own children.

I was in a research meeting this morning where we discussing what is often known as extended reality or mixed reality. Sometimes it is also called blended reality or augmented reality.

When we really went through how it is likely to be used in practice, we agreed that not one of those terms is quite right. In most cases, people won’t use such technologies to replace the reality around them, but rather to provide information about it.

We agreed that a more apt term would be annotated reality. I wonder whether that will catch on.

Millions of Americans all around our nation showed up for peaceful No Kings Day protests. Meanwhile, a small scraggly crowd turned up in Washington D.C. for the president’s gaudy military parade, a not so thinly disguised (and very expensive, my fellow taxpayers) birthday present to himself. Most of those that did show up in D.C. left at the first sign of rain.

Unfortunately, the day was marked by tragedy, as the consequence of pardoning violent January 6 anarchists seems to have encouraged more violent anarchy, when Vance Boelter assassinated former Minnesota House speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband.

Maybe he thinks he will get a presidential pardon. Given that this administration enjoys rewriting American history, perhaps the history of this weekend will get rewritten too, and then Boelter will get that pardon after all.

Today, June 14, some notable people have birthdays. First there is Harriet Beecher-Stowe.

Born on this day in 1811, Beecher-Stowe probably did more than any other individual, via her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, to make people aware of the horrors of slavery. The runaway popularity of that book helped lead to the abolition of that monstrous institution in the United States.

Alas, Stowe eventually succumbed to what is now believe to have been Alzheimer’s disease, which was not diagnosed until around 1906 by Alois Alzheimer, who was also born on this day, June 14, in 1864.

The tragedy of Alzheimer’s disease strikes millions of people. From all evidence, a certain highly placed U.S. official seems to be increasingly in its grip.

Wait … I know I’m forgetting somebody. What other famous person, worthy of our collective appreciation, was born on June 14?

Aha, I’ve got it. Happy Birthday Boy George!!!

In anticipation of No Kings Day tomorrow, here are some thoughts:

Based on its recent statements and actions, the current administration of the United States is not edging toward authoritarianism. Rather, it truly believes that it has already achieved authoritarianism.

The First Amendment (the right to speech and public assembly) is there in the U.S. Constitution, as plain as day. But that right (or any right, for that matter) is only meaningful if it can be safely asserted.

This administration has made it very clear that it will mis-label any peaceful assembly for the purposes of political speech as public violence, as impeding government function, as rioting, as destruction of property, or as whatever label is required to discredit the U.S. citizens involved.

No matter how peaceful the reality on the ground, tomorrow’s nationwide protests will be shown on Fox News and on right wing social media as violent affairs, and as attempts to overthrow the government.

If this administration needs to hire thugs to create that illusion, it will do so. We know this because we have already seen that this administration has never shown any ethical restraints in its efforts to mold public perceptions.

Which leads to another point. After the administration has created the false sense that tomorrow’s peaceful protests are some sort of rebellion, it will use that as a pretext to justify ignoring any relevant rulings by our Judiciary, all in the name of “national security”.

I would love to be wrong about any or all of this!

I always thought it was a shame that the metric system for length (millimeters, meters, etc.), and the English system (inches, feet, etc.) seem so unrelated. For one thing, the number ten shows up everywhere in the metric system, but it’s hard to find in the English system.

Sure, in 1959 a standards committee set the ratio of an inch to a centimeter to be 2.54, but that always seemed weird and arbitrary to me. I always thought that it would be great to find some poetry between the two measurement systems.

Then I started a project a few days ago in which I needed to compactly represent some 3D curves in virtual reality, measured in meters. My approach was to store first the starting point of the curve, and then the difference in millimeters from each point to the next, because smaller numbers require fewer bits of storage.

I use a single signed byte to represent each difference, which means those differences go from -127mm to +127mm^†. The range between the smallest and largest possible value is therefore 254mm.

Which turns out to equal exactly ten inches. Poetry found!

† Because this is an encoding to compress a data string, I need to reserve -128 (binary 10000000) as a flag to embed any mode switches. That leaves only 254 actual values to work with. [footnote added]