Well, it’s almost mid 2021, Viacomm/CBS/Paramount seem to have suffered a small fiasco in the stock price. The symbol VIAC was worth around $15 mid March of 2020, shot up to almost $95 mid March 2021, and then crashed down to around the $40’s. I’m not sure why there is so much volatility in this company, but one wonders if it affects how they make shows?

In any case, so far it seems section 31 won’t be happening any time too soon. The replacement show is called Strange New worlds, featuring the once and always almighty Starship Enterprise, sexy number one, conflicted Spock, and always brave and fearless leader in the captain’s chair. Oh, hey cool, there’s even an Asian looking name for supporting actress role.

Let’s be honest. I cannot hide my disappointment that Trek couldn’t make it work with Michelle Yeoh. From the Ready Room chatter, it seemed that Yeoh had been a bit too snobbish for the crew, …, one can beat describe the challenge as a creative chasms. It’s bitter medicine to take hearing ensign Crusher lecture the Empress on her role as an actress, that she should obediently take directions from the action choreographer. Worse, she then tries to explain herself to him in awkward English… so many things needs to be worked out.

Former president Trump, who was elected president, publicly denigrate Chinese people—without making any exceptions for perfectly decent Chinese Americans —with almost zero political consequence. Americans feels and fears the threat of Chinese economy and Chinese culture, and it is amply manifested in politics, “diplomacy”, and entertainment. This, as the Empress eventually acquiesced to Ensign Crusher in her last interview with him, is very much the America of 2020’s.

It was fun while it lasted, as some Chinese people celebrated Trek fever briefly. those Chinese people including me blogging frantically about it, and later Yo-yo-ma playing Alexander Courage fanfare for Star Trek theme song right before Amazing Grace at President Biden’s inauguration. Clearly, there are more Chinese Trekkies than myself.

Let’s be fair to America. if you look at Dr. Who, another multi-generations made-for-tv science/fantasy show about how to be good and how to be better, there’s actually now a whole lot more Chinese and Asian presence on Trek than Dr. Who. What about other western fantasies? I guess there’re some Asians that can assist dr. strange in the whole of marvel-verse. Ahh, okay wait, there’s Minn-Erva, Quake, Melinda May,…, and the Empress, yah, we definitely should give cudos to America for being a very multi-cultural and Asian-American friendly… wow, some seriously hot babes too, oh wow (but my memory might be biased in its recollection…)… bravo!!! Bravo to America! What a wonderful home of multiculturalism ! Wonderful!

And, my faithful readers will also point out that I’m not exactly a big fan of Clandestine operations and organizations. Section 31 based on such clandestine (and morally amorous) organization will surely rub me in the worst ways. So maybe this is all for the best…

Now, if somebody could tell me what the heck is up with VIAC?

Wowah! did a Chinese American women really just won best director?! That’s pretty cool.

I don’t know how Hollywood works, in tech, IMHO, it will be very rare for you to find such a young director as Chloe Zhao directing such an old talent like McDermott… But they make it work. I can’t wait to actually see the pic.

Honestly, the Oscar is so political. Right after the winning announcement, the American news started reporting how People’s Republic of China blocked news of this event and may be suppressing viewing of this year’s Best Picture, the same Nomadland directed by Zhao. It’s unfortunate that this artist has garnered such honor at such a time when Chinese Americans live in fear of being targeted for beatings because of their faces or names. The encouragement to stand up to bullying and to be great Americans is empowering and does liberate as.

Her acceptance speech referencing 三字经, though translates to “3 letter classics” is actually a fairly modern, maybe at most a millennium old. The collection of Chinese wisdom in three-character triplets is written for childrens’ early childhood education. This document is surely controversial: “is that Confucian? ‘Cos we’ve been hearing that the Confucian Institute is a spy and propaganda agency of P.R. Of China, is she here to disseminate subliminal support for communism?” One might overhear… One could also question the provenance of various bits of this extremely abbreviated cliff notes. “Was it really at birth of human? Or was it at creation of human (like in the time of Eden) that humans were kind?” A more erudite person may be heard inquiring. (But for her, it was probably taught as she speaks it, at birth, because communists are not Christian, duh)

But above all those evil noises, she finishes her speech with flourish. What a wonderful award event!

Btw, McDermott’s wolf howl and best actress speech was also very unique… People might interpret her “I like to work…” spiel as meaning that she felt that she did the work to deserve the award of the Best. But from the trailer, it seems that this is a line from the movie, maybe she wasn’t being arrogant, there may be a real message here about nomads and other bigger social issues. I look forward to watching the movie to find out.

I’ve seen the documentary Q:Into the Storm on HBO. Wow that’s some serious allegations! The documentary claims to have filmed the creator of QAnon doing their work leading up to capital riot during the 2021 elections.

The story here is massively entertaining, with characters that are incredibly detailed with funny quirks that you cannot make up. For one example, there was for a brief moment one person who had trouble walking correctly. The right arm would swing forward with the right leg and then left side tries to do the same. The imbalance makes the walk extremely awkward, but once it starts, it takes a few steps to get out of, and in the mean time you’re walking like a badly programmed robot. I’m not sure what kind of brain damage is required for this to happen, but I’ve seen it happen to real nerds. (Probably from sitting around too much or otherwise due to unfamiliarity with walking next other people) It kinda fits with the character having the trouble.

I won’t write too much about the content, leaving that for viewers to experience. But this is some very nice journalism, and honestly, even better entertainment. If the stories and theories are true, it would mean that a lot of politically active Americans, including former President Trump, were all fans of an anti-liberal political persona, who are most likely are organic-food-eating/serving, severely deformed or Asian, manipulates its radicalized American disciples from Japan or the Philippines.

If this story is true, and the perpetrators were found to have broken some law, I hope vigilantes here in America do not take violence to Asian Americans more than Americans have been before we watched the documentary in 2021. Both QAnon supporters and normal people were severely affected by the polarization induced by QAnon orgs, and both side may decide to take it out on Asians living here. Rule of law should follow due process, no wonton assaults, please!

On the one hand, one’s mind wants the stories to be true. They fit the facts they present, and they help to make sense of these things in the news. On the other hand, the stories are so well produced, so rich in details, that one cannot help but wonder if things really happened exactly as described. Most of our lives are filled with events that do not come together and make sense from so many perspectives and with so much detail. The documented events are displayed with so much detailed, that it is like watching 4K Nature show at 2160P—your eyes cannot find visual problems despite objections of your brain that something is very unnatural about what is shown. And all that time, your mind also knows, symbolically—in this usage in the sense of Boolean typed knowledge, that most of what is shown with most likelihood was recorded from something real.

The show reminds me of the time I watched Kingdom of Silence, another documentary on HBO. It shows spy agency media recording of disassembly of Jamal Khashoggi’s corpse after his murder inside an embassy in which he went to to get married. Again, a tragic fairy tale that grips you from start to finish and shoves the brunt of a reality into your every orifices and just explodes it right there and then. Sure makes me feel dumb about guestithizing that this murder was created by Ivy League schools to drown out news reporting of discrimination law suit against Harvard University. But, alas, I was not privy to this kind of information with the kind of clarity and certainty required to launched simultaneous media blasts and company policy changes seeming unrelated to some of America’s, and the world’s, biggest businesses…

In my mind, at that time, the country and its royals had not being investigated, analyzed, prosecuted and convicted. If anyone has the duty to take proper action, sanctioned and mandated by rule of law, that would have been the US Federal government whose resources produced the intelligence that was ultimately exposed in that documentary, and whose leader was popularly elected, in part, to make these types of decisions. To rebel against that seems somewhat un-American!

American self-righteousness is what makes us great. We believe in our convictions and we make others believe it too in the name of justice, humanity and God. However, America is not just hot blooded vigilantism. America as a whole, including the hot hooded self-righteousness, and also including principles, structures, and processes. I do not see these business leaders lead us in anything other than hot-blooded vigilantism. I do not see them personally explaining to the American masses when they reacted quickly and pulled triggers that only they had access to. Years later, watching the documentary of the atrocity, something fishy lingers in my mind about the whole thing: the sequence of events, the flow of information and decision making… it doesn’t all add up. This isn’t an America that I am comfortable with. What ?! Some big guys, maybe a secret Ivy society, have some secret channels of information with American secret police and snoops and spooks, can make these big decisions, informed and on the spot? And, what?! Later, they pay for a documentary to justify their actions to the masses, “look, how great we are, we did something rapidly against injustice,” right ?

I do declare that I very earnestly want justice to be done correctly and swiftly! And yet, under the weight of my increasing incredulity regarding my own past naïveté regarding world events and politics, something in my mind is not in complete harmony with this whole thing. Sorry, good guys, I’m with you, all the way, but you’ve gotta give me more and sooner.

(Ps, for comparison, look at the strong💪🏻arms of America in the contemporary case of Canada catching and prosecuting Chinese Huawei CFO on behalf of American. Look at that spectacle! Due process and all. You know, if you really want to get someone, get their daughter and make an international show of it. Show the world what happens to bad people when they do bad things! (In this case, based on very public bipartisan new reporting, Americans are informed that she is being detained, following rules of extradition treaty, on credible suspicion of aiding declared Enemies of America to build weapons that may hurt us.) And we all knew that right on the day it happened. This event, while it may rouse domestic anti-Asian behavior, does things by the book. No where does one individual go out of his way to make a big fuss about another country. No where are we inspired to act out at our place of work on conflict of principles and international politics.)

(Pps, I apologize for sounding like such a cynic. There is just a lot of physical beatings of Asian people in the news right now. I’ve been assaulted multiple times, in public, because I am America. Chinese. As an Asian American, I do very much wish there is less hot blooded vigilantism against innocent people here in America. I complain about the leadership because, maybe some part of me still believe they have some powers to influence Americans, especially for the better right now!)

(By work place vigilantism, I don’t just mean disparate treatment of coworkers by race and school. I mean actual disparate treatment of customers. For a small example, I took my daughter and mother to Whole Foods to buy a pizza for lunch. While baking a fresh pizza for another, non-Asian, customer the lady behind the counter decides to assemble a “pizza” out of cold slices that have been sitting there all day. The sad part is, we even explained to her that we’re having lunch right then and asked her where the salad is. But she saw fit to give us ice-cold dried-out 🍕. Okay, so she’s thrifty on behalf of Whole Foods, great, but would it not have been somewhat more decent and more professional if she at least heated up the cold slices in that big hot oven roasting her behind like she would for any other customer and like good servers have always done for me before recent anti-Asian violence? But nope, she can just hand me cold pizza with its young and old consumers right there in her plain view. This, if its true cause is anti-Asian vigilantism, is as un-American as not being able to get a hot slice of pizza for lunch! Literally! Life really sucks when people behave like this at their place of work.)

Oft heard muttered at Bay Area parks are parents griping:

I have never been richer in my life, and never have I felt poorer.

You know, there are times when you wish TV didn’t look so real. Now that I’m watching this episode, last of Philippe Georgeo on Discovery, I yearn, subconsciously of course, for the good old days of TNG. A time when the story was soft and smooth and there is a Federation blue halo around the corners of the TV. (Maybe it was just an old TV) But this Tera Forma business is… horrifying.

Consider just a few weeks ago, Burnham was giddy to a spin in the elevator for a new love eye candy.(OMG that slow spin into la-la-love-land, that’s so 1980 Asian rom-act kungfu shows…,) . and now I’m looking at her deranged quivering lips betraying and rebetraying poor old georgeo. I … my mind , I just can’t shift my brain quickly enough to handle this . That blue that you see… that blue is the new intro when DSC goes into mirror universe.

The mirror universe is so glamorous, the uniforms, the foes, the fights. But grinds very very hard on my mind. Georgeo, Emperor Georgeo’s mental changes, her view of how to make her empire work. But alas, too much has her old self done… This heart breaking story, of her killing her daughter a second time for self preservation. This is a poignant illustration to us to all start doing the right stuff… don’t wait a thousand years and come back in time and try to undo all the wrong you have caused. Because it can be too late.

The send off was terrible too. There are times when you just wish fiction weren’t so realistic… too real in too many ways… like a farewell to Yeow…

I have to honestly say, I am very afraid of section 31 series…. it could fail in so many ways. Scripts seem big problem, considering DSC didn’t know for half a season that “Number one” is a nickname and that they should be referred to as “first officer” in most formal settings, who knows what gaffe lie ahead. Ratings popularity is a big problem. I’d hate to see Yeow fail to woo American youths, but, that, as Saru would say rather sadly, seems like a very likely outcome. Another thing that one can’t help but notice, from Ready Room Side Trek, is that Yeow is quite a personality off screen as well. Several collaborators like actors, directors and choreographers mentioned that she gets her way. (And mind you, she is the only one such comments are made about. Are you really going to tell me that there are no “characters” in Trek actors? Seriously? Why single her out in public?)

There is a little bit of a cultural skirmish, as Yeow is older and Star of many non-trek shows, with her fans,…, that she has a less geeky take on Trekverse. She’d rather say Trek things in people words than to say people things in Trek words. Which is fine… but when you see her talk about fight scenes, the geek in her really comes out. It’s kind of a different kind of geekiness. Hard to explain, but anyways, it’s there for the world to see. Honestly, her presence makes me feel her character from Crazy Rich Asian. She is a movie star, in all the ways we mean it in America, but she is a star to other people not American. Now she happen upon this land where her kind(old, female, Asian accented, new to the genre, take your pick),…, is not normally big stars, and people just can’t stand her strutting her stuff around like she’s quite something. She is, just not to these people. And this time, is there a family lawyer or hubby she can call to buy the hotel? IDK.

Having her own show hopefully will also mean some more well deserved creative control. It will be challenging for other producers as well to make it all work—their creativity will surely be properly challenged to make this all work. Asian standards of civility and modernity are going to be a little bit different from Trek’s. Recall China was the federation of its days, it was the one brining medicine and technologies to lesser people. It was the one introducing workable social order to the wild people. There is a certain amount of that pride still ingrained in the cultures of Asia. These Asians, they take pride in being more noble and the bigger person and peace and all that, too. Maybe we can find miraculous synergy yet when you bring in an Asian.

And yes, we still want to keep trek trek and that’s a sure thing no matter what. Somehow, Trek has done it again. It is a microcosm of a macrocosm of our current time world. Here comes a talented and experienced foreign actor, her contributions are greatly appreciable, but we, in America, struggle a little to maintain our cultural identity (the Trekieness of Trek)… this Ready Room action is so meta-meta-meta for me, I am drunk on this reality of reality right now.

But sentimentality aside, we should applaud the Trek overlords that is pushing to make this happen. Hard, impossible, never done before, that is the homeland of Star Trek. We laugh in face of certain death and we cheer for the underdog that has with all certainty of science furious death, we fight monsters a bijillion times more powerful, we reconnect nerves in the CNS with our bare hands by doing it very fast, we entertain extinction as a footnote in our history, we enter radioactive reaction chambers… to save our forever-friends… we must forge ahead, whatever the future, we must keep going, quite boldly, to where no one has gone before!

Let’s go!

(I will appreciate up votes for Saru to make that his action word.)

It’s blaspheme, but so you think to younger kids watching trek that the Burnham-Georgeo farewell in DAC s3e10 is more poignant than the Kirk-Spock farewell in the Wrarh of Kahn)

P.s. I went back to tos and watched the City on the Edge of Forever. It seems that Yeow’s shocking-as-heck-to-me comment about the “goodie two shoes” of Federation characters on DSC s3e10 ready room was a reference. That observation actually also came from Edith Keeler about the Federation officers. Edith Keeler was the girl that Kirk must let die to preserve history. In that tos episode. Wow, people used to fall in love so much faster. Kirk declared he’s in love after very short exposure to this women. But in DSC, Burnham falls in love with book until after a year-long friendship. My, my, how times have changed…

I’ve been reading articles about California wealth tax being proposed presently Assembly Bill 2088. At first reading this tax is ludicrous. Anybody who spends 60 days in any calendar year is liable to pay 40‱ annually for the following 10 years! (So without wealth change, compounding and inflation it’s 4% of your money for a 60 day stay.

Preposterous! What insane mania has driven our politicians to do such a thing?

Well, actually, it kind of fits the zeitgeist of liberal politics. It is very extreme by all standards. But the believe is that wealth inequality fundamentally destabilizes our economic future and kills the environment. So we need to take organized and radical action to overcome this thing that no one poor individual can overcome.

I think nobody can deny that there is great benefit to having smart and rich people around. Even if they’re just here to spread their genes, it’s good for humanity. But wealth inequality could potentially impede spread of others genes that may in the future be of great benefit to us. And plus, in addition to humanity’s prosperity, we do kind of want people at the present to be happy and healthy, and last but certainly not more and less important than all a priori, creatively productive.

So, why don’t we have both. Let’s have our wealth tax. But let’s also create an open forum, the Pnyx of silicone valley. We shall invite all that are willing to abide by the rules of the venue to come and pitch in public. No streaming allowed. You must be present here to present, learn and understand and invest. The state shall invest from wealth tax into these ventures in addition tom private investors. The venue is to be fixed and the conventions take place in the open, regularly, rain or shine. (A great benefit of California location is climate will allow us this latitude of venue year round.) This will be the Globe Theatre of next millennium, always imitated but never fully replicable.

Such a proposal seems silly in the day and age of traveling conferences like TechCrunch disrupt and a myriad of crowdfunding services. But if we want to have a wealth tax, and we don’t want to legalize prostitution (I’m not firmly against it), gambling (again, not voting against it), dangerous drugs (against), polygamy (mu?), and the likes, the only way is to emphasize physical proximate and in-person intimate presentations. It isn’t especially bad considering we are in danger of losing touch with real human to human interactions.

Anyone who follow the rules can come onto the stage physically at their allotted time and make a pitch and ask for money or other forms of support in this public forum. Spectators may cheer or jeer or throw cash at presenters. They may even join presenters on stage in support. We can build the greatest physical venture society on the planet.

We can make California greater by innovating in synchrony in our society, climate and economy.

Disclaimer: yes I own real estate in California. No I will not be affected by wealth tax if it comes to pass this moment.

An extension of permission function from action space is the decision theoretic preference function. The preference function maps one of each prospects (in our case an action from an action subspace) into a preference value that come from a totally ordered set of possible preference values. In the case of action space, it would appear that each preference function must be invoked with two parameters. v is the value function, is the action and gives us a context of all actions being compared(the action subspace of consideration). This will make it easier to define the value function so that it can calibrate its outputs to give meaningful values that are ordered correctly according to true preference.

It is somewhat difficult to come up with an instantaneous decision that alters ordinal utility due to availability of another prospect, with everything else held equal. However one can certainly construct a situation where sequential decision making is available:

1. Dig for gold
2. Buy a shovel
3. Buy a sandwich

If contained only choices 2 and 3, one is hard pressed to chose 2 over 3. However when contain all three available actions (for the foreseeable future), suddenly 2 is preferred over 3, and over 1. One would certainly rather buy the shovel, then dig for gold over digging for gold rather than doing so barehand before or after eating a sandwich.

Holding all else equal is important. Some purported change in ordinal preference due to addition of choice is hidden behind other information changes

1. Eat apple
2. Don’t eat apple
3. Eat just worm in the apple

Clearly if contains all three possibilities, . But without option 3, . The truth is that 3 should not affect the ordinal preference between 1 and 2. The knowledge of whether there is a worm in the apple or not is part of all else that we hold equal. Erroneous addition of 3 not only added an action prospect, but also added the knowledge that there is a worm in the apple. So when all else is really held equal, an addition of an action prospect should not affect ordinal preference between existing actions.

Cardinal preference is a different matter. A simple requirement we may impose is: utility value function always return non-negative reals and that sum of value among all choices add to 1. In this case additional prospect changes cardinal value of all actions due to the requirement that values sum to 1.

One of my child appeared lethargic, has runny nose and cough one fine mid-Q1 2021 Saturday morning. I felt chest pains at about the same time. These are not a happy sensation to have as we near the wider distribution of a vaccine for this pandemic that has killed half a million people in the United States of America so far. So I made appointments to get tested.

Before going, my child asked me if it was painful. I told her I think it is. This assessment is based on every single image of a nasal swap I have seen on TV evening news. Every reporting of this shows the insertion of a swab up into a person’s nose until only a small length of it, long enough for the administrator of the test to hold between their thumb and index finger, remain outside. A particularly alarming observation from the perspective of an Asian man, is that this happens even on very large white noses. I say that with no intention of offense at people with large, or white, nose. It’s just that what seems uncomfortable to insert into the nostrils of a large nose must be horrifically painful for our smaller Asian noses.

So, after much deliberation, we went and got swabbed. Perhaps it is due to the media reporting, but the parking lot where we got our swab test in Stanford, CA was nearly empty. The single patron driving up behind us was very impatient and honked for no obvious reasons. Other than that, the swab test was very very easy. There is no pain. My child, who has even smaller and smaller nose than I, for now knock on wood, enjoyed it more than I. I think adult nose hairs make the swabbing very very itchy where as children who do not have nose hair experience less tickling. The depth of insertion into my nose was at most an inch and half. There was ample length of swab’s stick outside. My experience of the swab test definitely differ from those shown in TV reporting. IMHO, what’s seen outside on TV is what I got on the inside.

And we’re negative.

Honestly though, living in California is a little nerve racking during the pandemic. We have been blasted with daily news report of physical attacks and robbery of Asian people by attackers of a variety of non-Asian profiles. Older victims may die. Businesses may close down after an attack. Police chiefs or mayors may make a speech.

But recently, a new trend has emerged. Immediately after multiple reportings of different race and country-of-ancestral origin based attacks in several locales (SF/Oakland/LA/other cities), the news will then proceed to announce the opening of a mass vaccination site. On two separate occasions, I built up a determination to brave the crowds and bring my older parents to these vaccination sites for the shot. On both occasions I ultimately decided not to take them there fearing physical assult in the cities where violent crimes against Asians were just reported. (Side note: my parents are over 65 but their insurance Kaiser Permanente does not have sufficient supply of vaccines to administer to patients over 65 as the state of California recommends. This is why we have to resort to mass vaccination sites. They are eager to get the vaccine because they enjoy their health, and they help out at home shopping and caring for younger children.)

I do not want to disparage news reporters and their teams for making the news during this harrowing time. They brave the onslaught of covid viruses to bring us informative news. I live in San Mateo county, and have personally experienced physical attack by a vagrant in a public library in the center of a city here. I was holding my young child and she swung bags of stuff at my head. She yelled that refrain “go back to where you came from!” common in our culture prior to Biden administration. Above all else, her attacking me was in genuine anger. I do not see many situations where the person is that angry. I was able to deflect the blows with my forearm and back up away from her. The librarian helped me to hail the police who walked over from their HQ next door to arrest her. The police officer noted that I might have rammed my child into the wall as I backed away from her while charging her. I still had a foot or so of room, but I did not notice this danger until it was pointed out to me. Thankfully, we were not reported in the news as we were not severely injured like those Asians in the more recent news reports.

Sadly, the reality of our lives is that, well into the Biden administration taking power, we are still afraid to access these public healthcare resources due to the abundant manifestations of physical violence against Asians in the cities where mass vaccination sites are opening.

The good new is, after several months of living in fear of the virus, and in fear of the process of vaccination, living with all these uncertainties, we did manage to get them their first shot with San Mateo County based mass vaccination site mid-Q1 2021. We did make the appointment at 4:30am in the morning for the first slot of that day, but we did not hesitate in fear of physical violence.

Today, I am thankful for things to be going well near me. I am thankful that the wider rollout of vaccination growing the community immunity. I am thankful that we are headed towards a safer and more cohesive society. I hope we can quickly make this a better world where people do not need to fear illness and physical violence.

Just saw a rumor about Star Wars building a film about ancient stories in its universe. The rumor hinted “like Ben-Hur”

This is a very strategic move. Trek verse has experienced resurgence in blockbuster movies and many TV series. But the one thing that Trek really can’t do is to go back to pre-technology pre-space-faring ages. The stories would simply not work for a sci-fi show.

But if Disney-Marvel move is directed at Trek, then one would have to also think that maybe Star Wars, mythology and all, is not able to match the story telling of modern sci-fi franchise.

I certainly feel that way, and I’m not biased at all. Mandolorian is all thrill with droplets of Disney year-jerkers. I feel an innate connection to the stories, but I don’t feel any serious innovation. Not really new stories, not really new myths and nothing really anything absolute. It’s just another small story buried inside big stories, like Star Wars Rogue One. Touching to an end.

Trek is on shaky grounds… But the recent jump to future in Discovery, and the jump to artificial substrate in Picard, these explore new topics that people have not really seriously thought about.

But Trek can never go back to ancient times and tell a serious story without being elements of future to that past. Star War is uniquely positioned to tell stories like that. I guess the pre crawl “a long long time ago…” should have given this development away a long long time ago.😎