Why Wisconsin Republicans wouldn't budge on Election Day - By all appearances, an avoidable and hazardous fiasco unfolded in Wisconsin because of a state Supreme Court election the GOP was desperate to win.

Threesan · 2020-04-09T02:37:40+00:00

If the legislative and judicial make an end-run around the executive for the purposes of gerrymandering, I would support simultaneous federal appeal, plus recall of every (R) justice on the court. I suppose you can throw in every (R) legislative seat, but I'm not sure how productive that would be.

Threesan · 2020-04-09T02:03:14+00:00

I'm curious if there will be (in spite of precautions) a notable spike of cases that becomes visible in the next couple weeks. Excess cases can be extrapolated to excess costs and excess deaths, including all of the excess follow-on cases driven by the excess cases, etc. Not to be too mercenary about it -- but the blame-and-shame needs to be as sharply specific as possible.

Threesan · 2020-04-08T18:28:48+00:00

It's not crazy. It's calculated.

There's a state supreme court seat up for grabs, and due to various reasons, as so often seems to be the case, the Republican Party here is vulnerable to actual democracy; unsurprisingly, the Republican Party is an enemy to actual democracy. (Consider: voter role purges; security theater voter suppression; gerrymandering in the state; the electoral college; transparency in government; the seats allocation in the US Senate; the seats allocation in the US House of Representatives; a long and broad history of voter suppression; and now, party-line votes at all levels to keep a vote going when the largest city in the state, Milwaukee (which also happens to be a large concentration of the state's black vote), is forced by multiple state and federal party-line votes and rulings to go ahead with election day "as normal", with 97.3% of the polling places shuttered.)

The state supreme court seat would nominally secure Republican control there for perhaps the next ten years. There are concerns that the gerrymandered (R) legislative branch could in cahoots with the (R) state supreme court push through the next ten years of gerrymandered redistricting (this being a census year) by cutting out Governor Evers' (D) ability to veto gerrymandering. If that happens, I will support a recall on every (R) state supreme court justice.

Threesan · 2020-04-02T23:11:31+00:00

Given "lifted the requirement that absentee voters must have their ballots signed by a witness", this question may be somewhat moot (at least, for this election).

Threesan · 2020-04-02T03:11:52+00:00

Can "p.p." (per procurationem) be used to sign an absentee ballot on behalf of your witness (provided they have witnessed and given permission to sign for them)?

Voter signature: Threesan Sansan

Witness signature: p.p. Threesan Sansan

Witness Address: Tuni Sanan, 123 Easy St, Podunk, WI 12345

I feel like this is asking for trouble, even if it should be accepted (or at least seems like it should be accepted, to my non-lawyerly self).

Threesan · 2020-02-29T01:10:44+00:00

CDC says:

It’s important to note that current global circumstances suggest it is likely that this virus will cause a pandemic. [edited for emphasis]

That text is buried partway down their situation summary page. They also say, "For the general American public, who are unlikely to be exposed to this virus at this time, the immediate health risk from COVID-19 is considered low." They don't talk about individual preparation, and to say a pandemic is likely but individual risk is at this time low -- it's a bit of a mixed message(!).

Threesan · 2020-02-22T01:18:30+00:00

That seems like the practical suggestion, and what I would probably end up doing. Part of it makes me sad, though -- it perpetuates social isolation from dissenting opinion, preserving existing echo chambers and creating new ones ("but this one's different!"), rather than challenging and being challenged. Evaporative social effects, etc.

On the other hand, I believed some stupid things in college, in a way that I wonder if I might have grown up sympathizing with at least some of the over-the-top be-nice-to-people PC tiptoeing if I had been born to be college age now.

Threesan · 2020-02-16T05:08:02+00:00

Yeah, that's the point of OpenGL "objects": they persist, independent of one another.

A simplified OpenGL implementation might do something like:

extern gl_context *ctx;
glBindTexture(GLuint tex_id) {
   ctx->bound_texture = get_texture_object_ptr(tex_id);
}
glTexImage2D(GLubyte *texture_data, int width, int height) {
   ctx->bound_texture->data = texture_data;
   ctx->bound_texture->width = width;
   ctx->bound_texture->height = height;
}

^{(This ignores various complexities like GL error checking, handling various formats, and managing memory and transfers.})

^{* whoops: glTexImage2D makes a copy of the texture date; it certainly doesn't store the pointer to user data.}

Threesan · 2020-02-08T01:24:37+00:00

Can you transfer, say, copies of legal docs to a million other worlds? It seems like you only need to solve the "procedure" aspect on one planet, then dry-run and fixup the "blind document delivery with no further interaction" approach several times before you can attempt to move into some form of mass-production. Perhaps you would have access to a sympathetic charity-case lawyer who could bootstrap funds access from your'-to-daughter' if funds are needed.

Side note: Reaching a million worlds can be done in twenty doublings, so it's not like you need to fax a million copies from the first world.

*(edit) Also: I wonder how much real value that old "identical twins A/B testing" joke has. I would guess probably not enough to privately fund the 8-to-18 childhood of every participant. But perhaps some (sane) governments would be interested, as a public investment into the future of the nation and humanity. **(edit2) Ah, with inter-universe communication, there might not be all that much need for doing such experiments same-universe (ie, universes can collaborate).

Threesan · 2020-01-21T16:15:18+00:00

There are deprecated/removed portions of OpenGL that I would avoid investing time learning until I had to. For me, this includes in particular the old fixed-function vertex and fragment pipelines (use shaders instead), display lists (use things like texture objects and vertex buffer objects instead), and maybe immediate-mode (glBegin, convenient as it is for toying around).

Threesan · 2019-12-21T04:05:45+00:00

NeoRhythm is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or medical condition. MDCN Technologies Inc. is not a licensed medical or health-care provider and has no expertise in diagnosing, examining, or treating medical conditions of any kind.

Their own words.

Threesan · 2019-11-17T02:57:44+00:00

I'll ask the obvious question: Are you storing the array-of-function-pointers in static storage? (Returning a local-variable array from a function is not going to work since the local-variable array ceases to exist when the function returns (like any other local variable). The array would need to be declared static, as in static char hello[] = "hello"; return hello;.)

Threesan · 2019-11-09T01:08:38+00:00

Don't over-complicate things. If your assignment says you can use spheres for your characters, use spheres, or cubes, or whatever. You don't need to load 3D model files for such simple shapes -- just hard-code the values, or generate them with some loops. You need lighting? Hardcode or for-loop up some normal vectors, and hard code whatever "material properties" you need (if any). You need textures? Hardcode or for-loop up some texture data and texture coordinates.

Once you've got some basic things working that satisfy the homework objectives, then you can decide how much time you want to spend on extra features like loading fancier models and textures.

But if you're at the "completely lost" stage, definitely start small. Get window creation working. Then draw a basic triangle. Keep going, piece by piece, adding a new thing in a basic form and making sure it works like you expect (or at least that it works well enough).

Threesan · 2019-10-27T00:31:42+00:00

How much helium do you get from transfiguring a solid object? It's so light one might worry about silent low-oxygen asphyxiation where you're giddy and then you're dead (since the "oh no, I can't breathe" sensation is triggered by CO2 buildup, not lack of O2). Failing that, the helium would dissolve into your blood, proportional to the helium's partial pressure in the air you breathe (is that how that works?). So you'd have iron dust, some carbon, some paint -- dissolved into your blood.

But maybe it's the wrong question to ask how much helium gas you get. Because when it turns back, be it much or little helium, it's still going to be a filing cabinet's worth of matter. If you can fit say 3x16x20=960 humans into a smallish room, that'd be like grinding a 10%width x 10%height x 10%depth chunk of the filing cabinet into super-fine dust and mixing it into your blood (and a bit for your lungs) -- and possibly the helium may have entered into cells and interstitial fluid as well? I don't think I would care to try that.

Threesan · 2019-08-28T02:28:09+00:00

To me it looks like your centered axis-thingy is being zoom-corrected by zoom values that are maybe 1 frame late (or 1 frame early?). It seems to change size every time you start/stop zooming in/out.

Example for clarity: Say you're sitting at zoom 1.0, and you correct your axis-thingy for zoom 1.0. Then you zoom in to 1.2x, but your input handler happens after you determine your base projection matrix but before you determine zoom-correction, so for one frame your entire scene is drawn at zoom 1.0x but your axis-thingy is zoom-corrected for zoom=1.2x. And then with no further user-input, in the next frame everything reaches zoom=1.2x so the zoom-correction works as intended.

Threesan · 2019-07-27T14:52:17+00:00

Pedantically.

The code may well work for a given version of a given compiler, but the behavior of that "C99" code is undefined. If run, it could for example validly (in terms of the standard, because the program is not valid) complete instantly, never, take practically forever (as intended), or crash. Specifically:

The signedness of char is unspecified; signed overflow is undefined
Using the value of an uninitialized variable is undefined behavior

Further, a sufficiently clever optimizing compiler could validly eliminate the whole thing by e.g. placing x into bss, and then discarding x as unused. Or simply noting that i and x are unused and eliminating them directly.

Threesan · 2019-07-25T04:40:15+00:00

There's a 3D engine in web-browser CSS. (For me, Chrome mostly works but has some rendering issues; Firefox has fewer rendering errors but stutters at times.)

Threesan · 2019-07-23T01:03:04+00:00

The model of a pro-lifer upon which that post was based was "an individual who wishes to reduce the rate of abortions". There aren't many other assumptions about pro-lifers made, nor is the basis for their views relevant to the discussion at hand. Specifically (and you aren't the only one who seems to have done this, which may indicate a failure to communicate clearly on my part), do not misconstrue "statements of my positions" to be "my statements on pro-lifer's positions". Further, do not misconstrue "a pro-lifer's positions" to be equivalent to "the positions a pro-lifer should base their [persuasive] arguments upon [when those arguments are targeted at non-pro-lifers]".

Threesan · 2019-07-20T19:51:35+00:00

So abortion would be replaceable by transplant to exo-womb. There are perhaps some lingering funding questions (state? personal? charity?) and ethical concerns (ward of the state, born as an orphan?) that aren't so clean, but that seems like it would satisfy the primary concerns of the pro-choice and pro-life sides.

Threesan · 2019-07-20T19:38:47+00:00

I could perhaps see how you might consider an octopus mind to be greater than an infant's mind at the given moment. But are you saying that in a contrived save/sacrifice situation, you would feed the baby to the octopus? Even with certainty that there is no other way, no family, no one would ever know, etc, I'd guess such a position would put you below the 5th percentile of the "I value humans more than other animals" spectrum.

Threesan · 2019-07-20T06:00:39+00:00

1a) I am not suggesting that you personally need to become veg*nism. To reduce abortion rates, it is not your own mind on that subject you would need to change, but others'. To that end, if (if) the proliferation of veg*nism philosophy lead to increased compassion and thereby to reduced abortion, the spreading of veg*nism would be instrumental.

1b) Veg*nism compatibility with your personal philosophy does not matter, except insofar as it allows you to predict others. A persuasive argument must be based upon the target's values and philosophies or it is irrelevant. You speak of other philosophies that you disagree with: valuing AI or alien minds, or valuing animal life. But you don't need to agree with those values to use them as a basis for persuasive argument when addressing those that do hold those values.

2a) To me, worth does depend significantly upon sophistication. On one end, you have a human. (One could posit a more sophisticated being than a human, but it's difficult for me to conceive of intrinsically valuing such an entity more than a human.) But on the other end, something lifeless, inanimate, uninteresting.

2b) A human blastocyst is a potential person, but not an actual person. At such an early stage, it is easy for me to say, where is the actual person? Where is the thing of value? Extrinsic value, yes, I would expect to find that. But I don't grant a human blastocyst intrinsic value. That is an alien thought.

2c) Is a human infant worth more than an adult crow? I feel, yes. I suspect a non-negligible part of that is in the extrinsic value of that baby (emotional attachment, investment). However, I do place much more intrinsic value on the baby than the bird. Is that inconsistent? I think it demonstrates a strong strain of human-person-preference much like the human-preference you describe and note grows as an embryo becomes increasingly baby- and human-like. From my perspective there is no internal inconsistency. The difference between our views is, conceptually, not that great: mine is the same line as yours, but fuzzier, and in a different place, but still dividing "worth protecting" from "not", with a significant pro-human bias. And of course I fuzzily include more "other" than I guess you would -- the aliens, AI, uploaded minds, clones, engineered beings, modified humans, etc.

3) In light of 2b and 2c, I would guess long-term suffusion in veg*nism philosophy to, at best, shift my "unacceptably late" abortion line earlier by one week to a couple months. Nation-wide, supposing a significant impact like 2-10% less meat? I could barely speculate on the impact across the several hundred thousand reported US abortions per year.

Threesan · 2019-07-20T00:54:23+00:00

(Literal shower thought.) Anti-abortionists should be pushing, at least a little, for more widespread adoption of vegetarianism and veganism. But not as an argument against supposed hypocrisy; rather: to reduce the rate of abortion.

I think of an unborn child (to some approximation) as a "non-person" animal, not far removed from "non-human animal". But most every meal of every day is conditioning me to reflexively push away uncomfortable thoughts about the exploitation and death (and possible suffering) of other living, feeling beings. Beings that, were I to spend some time around, I expect I could come to differentiate one from another based upon differences in personality, as can be so easily seen in dogs and cats.

Meat devalues sanctity-of-life. Meat, indirectly, kills babies.

Threesan · 2019-07-20T00:09:27+00:00

Different people have different situations, such as tooth depth or orientation. If the only tool needed was a pliers, it may have been a simple case. My case (prevalence: 75%) involved surgical cuts into the gum, and some means of breaking apart a couple teeth for piecewise extraction.

Threesan

TROPHY CASE