Monthly Archives: July 2021

In January of 2018 I noted reports of China implementing a facial recognition system as a surveillance system in support of social credit. Now, it’s changing a bit:

Now, China is putting its freewheeling facial recognition industry on notice. Citing Guo’s case, China’s top court announced this week that consumers’ privacy must be protected from unwarranted face tracking.

“The public is increasingly worried about the abuse of facial recognition technology,” Yang Wanming, vice president of the Supreme People’s Court, said in a news conference on Wednesday. “The calls for strengthening protection of facial information are increasing.” [WaPo]

The trick here is to realize this is a change to the how, not the what:

That’s not too suggestive, is it?

Tower of Evil (1972) features T&A, slaughter of the promiscuous, and is a run of the mill example of the horror fare of the 1970s.

In other words, it’s quite exploitative.

Is it worth summarizing? The parents of a young woman accused of killing three of her companions during a visit to Snape Island, a barren bit of Scottish – I’m guessing – rock, are trying to clear her of the crimes. They hire a private investigator to this end, who teams up with a group who wants to search the island for archaeological remains. Between flashbacks, current character friction, and a lusty seaman, we get plenty of sex and distrust.

If you were permanently stuck down in some Scottish island cavern, you’d be giving everyone the finger as well. While you shivered. From the cold. Ba’al is a tropical denizen, after all. He felt cold and lonely, lording it over that God-forsaken rock and some maniacs. That’s merely an imaginative epithet, of course, the “God–forsaken” bit, Ba’al being a God and all that. Or at least a demon, which is, oh, God-like in its way – abrupt tempers, cruelty to strangers, not too nice to worshipful followers sometimes, disrespectful of rival supernatural divinities, it’s really just a matter of semantics. But, still, one must strongly believe that mere epithets don’t define reality, as I’d really hate to have Ba’al disappear in a puff of existential logic, because that would positively ruin this picture and therefore this Ph. D. thesis on 1970s horror movies.

Add in a couple of deranged inhabitants who are under the influence of a standard issue idol of Ba’al, the ancient and cruel God of Canaan – it’s not entirely clear if their relative has been bringing them groceries or if they’re eating kelp when they’re not brooding over dead Mama – and it turns into a rough ride for the group.

For the curious who have actually read this far, and I must say shame on you, the tower, besides an overt symbol of the real purpose of the movie – selling sex – is a lighthouse, long inactive.

Failing to build empathy for the victims or motivations for the nutters, we only watched out of morbid curiosity. But if you want to watch it – perhaps for your thesis on horror flicks of the seventies – here it is.

Oh, and, yes, this is the movie review to which this whale was referring.

Which sort of goes with an upcoming movie review.

Photographer Eric J. Smith captured a whale sneaking up on oblivious whale watchers. pic.twitter.com/0w7X8hGVuS

— All Things Interesting (@mrstrangefact) July 30, 2021

How many of my readers were subjected to the “scare the new drivers” film when they took Driver Ed? Maybe they don’t do that any more? Here, let me describe:

They show scenes of accidents. Here’s the dude who fell asleep while piloting a rig full of sewer pipes. When he hit the tree, the rig folded up, but the pipe just speared him in the head. Yeah, quite a mess. Too bad, he was only twenty-one.

Or this one, where someone was chatting too much and ran a stop sign. Hit by the SUV, both vehicles burst into flames and, hey, here’s the roasty-toasty corpses! Man, that’s gross.

Followed by an interview with a state trooper, sobbing over the baby he found in the water-filled ditch next to the wrecked station wagon. The baby was dead, of course.

Horrific. I’m not sure if they were effective, but then I can’t imagine they’d run an active study on that sort of thing.

So?

Consider this:

… in many regions of the country, including the Southeast where I live, up to two-thirds of the population chose not to protect themselves. I’ve heard all the reasons: “The vaccines are experimental.” “I am young and healthy; I don’t need the vaccine.” “So what if I get covid?” “The epidemic is over.” “The vaccine will destroy my fertility.” “The vaccine is a government plot.” “I have the freedom to choose.” “Nobody can tell me what to do.” “The doctors are lying to me.”

Like most of my fellow health-care workers, these comments stunned and stung me. We had spent a year fighting a raging pandemic. We suspended activities in our usual disciplines of medical care, rolled up our sleeves and provided care to the more than 30 million people who showed up in our ERs, clinics and hospitals. Covid was more than disruptive; it was exhausting. Most of us survived. But we were also fatigued and battle-worn. [Dr. Michael Saag in WaPo]

I think it’s time to use the tools of today to bring it all home.

Suspend patient privacy laws temporarily. Yeah, hard to do, but necessary.

Put webcams in the ERs and ICUs. Let them run 24/7. Feed the stream to a cable and/or broadcast channel. No censorship, , no blurring faces, no “this is too awful to show,” show it all. Show intubation, the frantic gasping for breath, the living, the dying. Show how the pressure is increasing on the hospitals.

Have a documentarian interview doctors, nurses, patients, and the relatives and friends of the deceased. Don’t hold back – sob over your lost wife, your sick child, your burned out colleagues. Don’t mince words. If you want to strangle the halfwits who think this is all a hoax, say it. This is not the time for diplomacy.

With today’s technology such interviews can be conducted and edited within hours by a dedicated team. Dump them on the feed.

Have local politicians visit the ICU. If you’re lucky, they’ll have a weak stomach and throw up on camera. For those who think this is all a hoax, the politician will change minds.

Some people – too many people – don’t trust government. Some remember Vietnam, others have been influenced by specious anti-government propaganda. This is the time when the medical profession, from doctors to medical systems, have to reach out and not politely ask people to take the vaccination, but yell as loudly as possible, You’re wrecking us by your intransigence, and if we’re wrecked, you will, in turn, be screwed. Knock it off and roll up your goddamn sleeves.

It may not work, but at least you’ll have tried using a different tool than before.

Note to former President Trump: Get out while the getting’s good:

President Donald J. Trump pressed top Justice Department officials late last year to declare that the election was corrupt even though they had found no instances of widespread fraud, so that he and his allies in Congress could use the assertion to try to overturn the results, according to new documents provided to lawmakers and obtained by The New York Times. The demands were an extraordinary instance of a president interfering with an agency that is typically more independent from the White House to advance his personal agenda. [The New York Times]

The Seychelles, Switzerland, any of those places that don’t engage in that dubious practice called extradition.

Quick, before the FBI arrives and hauls your sorry ass away.

For those readers who want to believe former President Trump is building a political movement, it worth examining his associates, including those he endorses. For example, Politico has showcased one of his latest and most full-throated endorsements, that of former aide and a candidate for the House, Max Miller:

Miller, 32, is the poster child of Trump’s post-impeachment retribution tour. In his mounting efforts to punish Republican apostates in next year’s midterms and to bolster his political sway for a potential run of his own in 2024, Trump has endorsed an array of supportive candidates in House, Senate and state-level races—but there’s nobody on the list like Miller. He’s not merely a loyalist—he’s a loyalist who worked on both Trump campaigns as well as in the White House and used proximity to the president to foster by all accounts an actual affinity and rapport. He’s not just one of Trump’s “Complete and Total” House endorsements—he was the first. And he’s pitted against one of the impeachment voters who galls Trump the most—in a state he won twice. While the statement that accompanied Trump’s late February endorsement called Miller “a wonderful person,” this rally on a sweltering summer Saturday marked a yet more full-throated and visual showing of his backing.

“An incredible patriot,” Trump said, “who I know very well.”

Maybe not well enough, according to police records, court records and interviews with more than 60 people. Ranging from people who grew up with Miller in the affluent Cleveland inner suburb of Shaker Heights to those he worked with and for in the White House and on Trump’s campaigns—some of whom were granted anonymity because they fear retaliation from Miller, Trump or both—these people told me Miller can be a cocky bully with a quick-trigger temper. He has a record of speeding, underage drinking and disorderly conduct—documented charges from multiple jurisdictions that include a previously unreported charge in 2011 for driving under the influence that he subsequently pleaded down to a more minor offense.

Not all of Trump’s endorsements are of dubious personalities, but it’s worth noting his associations with Paul Manafort, Roger “ratfucker” Stone, Ray Cohn, and many others who have had charges brought against them, convictions, and pardons.

And even when the endorsee appears to be clean, they may be vulnerable in other ways. Susan Wright, recently running to replace her late husband Ron Wright in a special election, had little exposure to the electorate, and while she was initially the favorite, polls eventually showed her behind. Trump endorsed her and bought advertising in the sum of $100,000 for her at the end.

The point is that she was vulnerable, and if she wins, Trump would claimed the credit and then expect her to be loyal – or else. Similarly, Trump associates with those with a dubious pasts. Not that reformation or redemption is impossible for them, but the fact that he is drawn to them as a group suggests not that he’s redeeming them, but that he’s building a group that isn’t a movement so much as collection of dependents. He knows the accusations and convictions against them, and these constitute a fulcrum with which he can leverage support.

Such an approach doesn’t lead to an ideologically coherent political movement; it’s reminiscent of a mob boss and his fellow criminals.

So for those looking forward to a renaissance in American politics deriving from Trump, forget it. This is all about ego, enrichment and building power.

And Wright lost her special election, and by quite a bit, to fellow Republican Jake Elzey. So much for the power of the Trump endorsement. Long time readers may remember other Trump endorsees who’ve lost. There’s no magic touch in Trump; indeed, it may be a noir moment for a candidate to receive a Trump endorsement.

Which makes Steve Benen’s comment today interesting:

* In Pennsylvania’s open U.S. Senate race, most Republicans are desperate to curry favor with Donald Trump, but political consultant Craig Snyder (R) kicked off his candidacy this week, running as an anti-Trump Republican. Snyder, among other things, created a political action committee in 2016 to support Hillary Clinton.

Will the currying continue? What happens if this Snyder wins the Republican nomination?

Utterly charming. Too bad about the resolution.

Quite lovely.

Pandiculation:

One thing is for sure: stretching feels good, particularly after a long spell of being still. We aren’t the only species to have worked this out. As anyone with a dog or cat will know, many animals take a deep stretch after lying around. This kind of stretching, called pandiculation, is so common in nature that some have suggested it evolved as a reflex to wake up the muscles after a spell of stillness. [“The lowdown on stretching: How flexible do you actually need to be?” Caroline Williams, NewScientist (17 July 2021, paywall)]

Decorpestration:

Well, maybe it’s made up. Noted in this video on art restoration.

A Heady Proposition – Part 1

From earlier this spring, a couple of lupine:

A day lily after a rain, but before blooming:

One hellacious weed, since pulled when it was up to my chin:

And literally right next to the weed – but out of frame above – are these, spurge and lungwort:

A nice break.

Businessman Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) won the GOP nomination for the governor’s race in Virginia this year. Given the mania for gun rights that pervades the GOP, this caught me by surprise:

The National Rifle Association [NRA] on Thursday declined to endorse Republican Glenn Youngkin in the Virginia governor’s race, even as it endorsed the two other candidates on the party’s statewide ticket.

The NRA issued endorsements for Winsome Sears, the GOP’s nominee for lieutenant governor, and Del. Jason Miyares of Virginia Beach, the party’s nominee for attorney general, both of whom had received top ratings from the gun lobbying group. The group was mum on Youngkin.

“On behalf of NRA members across the Commonwealth, @NRAPVF is proud to endorse @JasonMiyaresVA for attorney general and @WinsomeSears for lieutenant governor of Virginia,” the gun rights group said in a tweet Thursday afternoon, referring to the NRA Political Victory Fund.

Youngkin has so far declined to complete a candidate questionnaire issued by the advocacy group, which asks candidates questions on topics like banning assault weapons and limiting handgun purchases. Traditionally, the survey has been considered part of the NRA’s endorsement process, which, among other things, includes promotion among its grassroots network.

Youngkin’s campaign, reached for comment, did not directly address the NRA’s endorsement but said Youngkin “will work to make it harder for criminals to get guns.” [Richmond Times-Dispatch]

This goes along with Youngkin attempting to play the abortion issue very close to his vest; observers believe he’s trying to not alienate independent voters by displaying an extremist view he’s rumored – but not proven – to have.

Is this the same deal?

Or does the NRA have such strict requirements that Youngkin cannot meet them? He wants some common-sense rules that the NRA rejects?

I don’t think the Republicans are thought to have much of a chance at winning the Virginia governorship, but it’s still an interesting question. Could Youngkin lose – even lose big – without an NRA endorsement? What does it say if he keeps it respectable without the help of the NRA?

Does the NRA begin to fade into irrelevance, a victim of its own extreme positions?

A rare opportunity or perhaps just a joke:

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A post shared by Dan Bailey (@danbaileymt)

George P. Bush is son of former Governor Jeb Bush (R-FL) and nephew to President Bush (R). He’s running for Texas Attorney General, and, after Trump basically spat on his family, his campaign, in seeking former President Trump’s blessing, issued this back in early June, which I regret missing:

I missed out on the @georgepbush swag yesterday: The koozie says "this is the only Bush that likes me. This is the Bush that got it right. I like him" – Donald Trump #txlege pic.twitter.com/pFTzQCmoRG

— Scott Braddock (@scottbraddock) June 3, 2021

And did it work?

No.

Former President Donald Trump on Monday threw his support behind Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, who is being challenged for re-election in a primary by George P. Bush, the son of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. [NBC News]

Paxton, the author of the lawsuit Texas v Pennsylvania, which SCOTUS refused to even consider, also happens to be under multiple indictments for various bits of alleged corruption. So Bush is the bride left at the altar in favor of the alleged criminal who sucked up to Trump more than Bush did.

Or was at least considered more corrupt and, therefore, malleable.

I fear it makes me laugh, but in a cringey way, knowing that some people are so desperate for power they’ll risk all their self-respect for it.

Sort of like my favorite lickspittle.

Josh Marshall on TPM comments on former President Trump’s demand that the infrastructure deal being negotiated in the US Senate be scrapped:

Blah blah blah. Whatever. I don’t know how much impact this will have on [the] infrastructure deal. As I’ve argued earlier, the Dems approach to this seems, rightly, that they want Republicans to join but will move along without them. What this signals more is Trump’s role in the 2022 midterm.

Trump will not only intervene to push his issues to the forefront and maintain his own dominance of the GOP. He’ll also intervene just to undermine any potential rival power centers in the party.

Right. And it’s important to note that this is a form of exclusionary intolerance – My way or the highway, as a slogan from Trump’s era said.

His base will stick with him. At this point, the serious politicians, which is to say those that understand that governance is a serious business, have mostly leaked away, as has that part of the base with a conscience. This includes people such as former Representatives Amash and Walsh, who are themselves notably far-right conservatives, but NeverTrumpers as well. There are, of course, a few NeverTrumpers, like Representatives Cheney and Kinzinger, still in the ranks – but the state-level GOP parties seem intent on liquidating them as well.

So the Republican Party’s adherence to Trump will continue at eye-popping levels.

But the independents will continue move away from the Republican Party. The right-of-center members will vote, when possible, for former moderate Republicans who have turned independent, or centrist Democrats who decry, for better or worse, certain left-wing Democrat policies. Or they may not vote at all.

But the narcissism of Trump will damage, and possibly even destroy, the Republican Party as a national force. That selfish urge to control everything alienates voters who might otherwise agree with his policies, so long as announcements such as yesterday’s become public. Why? Because it becomes apparent that the policies they agree with are merely accidents of Trump’s selfish needs of the moment. They are not the children of rational approaches to the difficult questions of governance, but rather the foul brood of Trump’s narcissistic urges.

And the latter can change on a moment’s notice for reasons unintelligible.

Wise voters don’t vote for such people or their entourage, by whom I mean such names as Gohmert, Gaetz, Greene, and oh so many more. Yes men people are merely enablers of deeply untrustworthy leaders, and should be distrusted by voters.

And so Trump’s frantic need for control will result in so much squeezing of Jello. He may gain complete control of the Republican Party, but it’ll be a Party which has lessened in real influence. Only its voter suppression strategies may keep it relevant in some states.

Even Gyaos was embarrassed to be seen in this movie. Later, he went to a therapist, but twenty years of therapy did nothing to salve his conscience.

When the eponymous monster Gyaos appears in the third Gamera franchise installment, Gamera vs Gyaos (1967), my Arts Editor hooted with laughter. True, the scientists hypothesized it has two throats and thus can’t turn its head, but it was really just a cover for the inferiority of the story-tellers’ guest monster, which appears to be Rodan-like, but way too stiff. Add in a laser coming from its mouth and lavender blood, and this was one unbelievable monster.

And one really dull plot. Why Gyaos? Errrr, why not? So we can spin him ’round and ’round before letting the rays of the sun kill him? He does seem to be just a giant vampire.

And, as my Arts Editor comments, “Oh, it’s that annoying kid!” You can guess what the target of her venom might be.

Yeccccccccch.

I have no experience with neural networks, but I found this fascinating:

Neural networks could be the next frontier for malware campaigns as they become more widely used, according to a new study.

According to the study, which was posted to the arXiv preprint server on Monday, malware can be embedded directly into the artificial neurons that make up machine learning models in a way that keeps them from being detected. The neural network would even be able to continue performing its set tasks normally.

“As neural networks become more widely used, this method will be universal in delivering malware in the future,” the authors, from the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, write.

Using real malware samples, their experiments found that replacing up to around 50 percent of the neurons in the AlexNet model⁠—a benchmark-setting classic in the AI field⁠—with malware still kept the model’s accuracy rate above 93.1 percent. The authors concluded that a 178MB AlexNet model can have up to 36.9MB of malware embedded into its structure without being detected using a technique called steganography. Some of the models were tested against 58 common antivirus systems and the malware was not detected. [Vice]

There’s a lot of questions that could be asked here, but one I don’t see in the article is this: just how efficient are neural networks if you can replace half the ‘neurons’ and still have it work?

Are there ‘pruning algorithms’ to recover those neurons that are presumably doing little to nothing to advance toward the goal?

Long time readers will have noticed my entrancement with Professor Peter Turchin’s Secular Cycles^[1], a description of social demographic trends over the centuries. Very briefly, he and his coauthor, Sergey A. Nefedov, describe how and why empty farmlands fill and empty of human inhabitants as the years pass, and empires disintegrate. A key concept is that of asabiya, the “capacity of a social group for concerted collective action,” and a key motivator of asabiya is existential threat, a threat, usually human, that can destroy a society. For example, for centuries the great Roman Empire was under grave threat from the Gauls, and it was during this time the Empire was built and wisely managed. Eventually, the Gauls were defeated and destroyed, and that roughly marks the time the Roman Empire began descending into decay, deadly infighting within the elite, even madness, and eventual destruction.

I’ve come to recognize that the United States, having lost the existential threat of the Soviet Union some thirty years ago, and with no country openly threatening us with destruction, is almost certainly in a disintegrative phase. The supposed conservatives have retreated into an extremist position of refusing to compromise, a reluctance to accept the advice of experts, and religious fanaticism of various sorts, such as pastors proclaiming that a belief in God will prohibit infection by Covid, followed by the infection and, sometimes, deaths of both congregants and their leaders. They are but one part of an anti-vaccination, or anti-vaxx, movement that rejects the vaccination campaign for reasons ranging from concerns about adequate testing to reasons so fantastic that their adherents might be considered delusional, if not for their religious motivations. Our political elites are not compromising with each other as they should, despite the efforts of the moderate left. Land prices are rising as the growing population makes it more and more valuable, and has become the target for acquisition by wealthy entities. And fertility is down, for reasons that I expect have to do with the cost of raising children and their prospects at adulthood. These are all congruent with the observations set forth in Secular Cycles. These observations correlate an abeyance of asabiya with societies disintegrating from infighting, from an inability to work together, as Turchin and Nefedov suggest.

But does the growth of asabiya require existential threats from human entities? The United States is facing two such threats at the moment.

First is the aforementioned Covid-19 pandemic. The early Republican response to the growing numbers of ill people was denial, and, for some on the right, primarily in the evangelical sects, this continues. The requirements of isolation devastated many sectors of the economy. We’ve impatiently “reopened” the economy, and now reports of the delta variant ripping through the ranks of the unvaccinated is not matched by advances in therapeutic response – people are dying because of their refusal to take a simple vaccination shot or two.

Second is anthropogenic climate change. The United States and Canada are enduring abnormally high heat and extreme drought, while a portion of China was recently hit by floods from a typhoon – as were other parts of the world:

¹ Secular, in this context, means Greater than 100 years. Turchin and Nefedov’s work is based on agrarian societies, a fact that I’ve conveniently ignored, except to wonder if technological urban societies have shorter social demographic cycles. And, yes, you should buy and read Secular Cycles. War and Peace and War is also very good.

Here in drought-stricken Minnesota we picked up about .25″ of rain in a five minute downpour at 3am . Here’s some pictures of the garden afterwards.

A happy little monster, yes!

Gamera vs. Barugon (1966), second in the Gamera franchise, is a clumsy, cautionary tale against the societal philosophy of individualism. In World War II, soldier Ichiro, stationed on a New Guinea island, discovered a giant opal and secreted it in a cave. It’s twenty years later, and Ichiro, now crippled, has arranged to send his younger brother, Keisuke, and Kawajiri and Onodera to fetch it. Only Onodera returns, carrying a tale of the deaths of the others from misfortune.

The real misfortune comes when Onodera permits the exposure of the opal to an ultraviolet ray meant to heal one of his wounds. Why?

It’s an egg, and it hates being sunny side up.

Meanwhile, supposedly dead Keisuke has allied with the island tribe, who sends him with a tribal woman and opal expert, Karen, to retrieve the opal. Making it back to Japan just in time to observe the birth of Barugon, they witness the first battle of Gamera vs Barugon, and how the latter’s mysterious rainbow ray drains whatever it hits of life – like Gamera. Taking advantage of Karen’t knowledge of myth, humanity uses an island diamond to attempt to lure Barugon to a watery grave, but Barugon, while tempted, fails to splash his way to his demise; a second attempt fails when Onodera, frantic for wealth, interferes. Indeed, Barugon makes a tasty lunch of Onodera and the diamond, leaving humanity despondent.

Special Guest Appearance in this Review: Medusa! She’s a trifle crabby today.

However, Keisuke has noted that mirrors reflects the rainbow ray, so they arrange to use a mirror to reflect the rainbow ray back upon Barugon; it’s almost Medusa-like. The ploy is partially successful, and Gamera reappears to finish the job.

It’s the excessive greed of Ichiro and his cohorts which leads to the disastrous birth of Barugon, and greed is the mark of individualism; only through the inadvertent teamwork of Gamera with humanity is Barugon persuaded to stop stomping Japanese cities.

And, yeah, it’s all fairly awful. Sure, we have a plot, and characters who are at least halfway drawn, but the special effects are rather awful. Barugon’s tongue, which shoots out some sort of deadly mist, might attract a cult following, but, unless you’re a fan of Gamera, “friend to all children,” this may not be for you.

I had never heard of mango leather:

Like a fish on the hook….

More here (NewScientist, paywall) or here (if you like reading science papers).

A night or two ago I did some photo shooting.

And just a few more.

I fear the focus was not as good on the second batch.

In general, I detest the concept of the one-issue voter. Hiding behind that issue are voters – all of them – too lazy to do the real work of voting, which is evaluating past performance and the candidates’ stands on various issues.

But there is one issue that would make me a single issue voter if it ever came up, and Jennifer Rubin touches on it: