I’m sitting quite comfortably in the clean, well lit and airy DMV of Redwood City, California. The agents are well dressed and smiling at the patrons. I look forward to getting my license renewed. It seems the DMV has gone through several leadership changes, and I applaud these changes. (DMV third director in 32 days) I even got to go get coffee after a smiling receptionist told me the estimated wait time and assurance that I can be paged by text closer to my appointment time!

I’ve never experienced such a pleasant DMV in the past decade or so, Jean Shiomoto since 2013, and I can’t even find the director before her. When my wife arrived in California seven years ago, her 8-letter Chinese name was misspelled on the license twice, once, and then again when she went to correct it, third time was the charm. And honestly when I visited here in 2018 to replace a lost license, I do not remember such a clean and cheery place.

Good stuff! Great to see my tax money finally at work!

Oops, gotta run, my number coming up now.

…and it’s done, in under 30 seconds. Only thing it could improve is faster change for cash… he has to get change for $100 dollar bill, giving me time to finish this post. Man! That makes me feel good paying all that tax! I feel like going back to work again to pay more state taxes!

Hmm,…

You must have read my older posts about how one wrong doesn’t make another wrong more wrong when comparing the conservatives and liberals in America. Or the one about it being fair for feminism to have to battle for survival–civilly. Or the one about …, it’s a miracle you’re still reading this.

One thought does occur though–individual liberties are great thing to have. While I still convulsively object to radical liberalism like those who insist, on the basis of human rights, that prepubescent kids must be exposed, daily, to sexuality, reproductive or otherwise, forcibly, by changing bathroom policies at public schools, and although I also do not trust pubescent kids in bathroom with physically opposite sexed peers, I have come to appreciate the fruit of their liberal predecessors’ labor. (Oh, well, that’s still radical to me in 2019, maybe not so radical to many before then. Politicians are still apologizing for having had feelings about their children’s sexuality in news papers in this age in time) (ahh, and if the liberal politicians are thinking it will be solved with technologies like individually lockable privacy stalls, or a pill I can take so I don’t have to visit the bathroom, I am all for a technical solution too… But you should communicate that political agenda) I mean, literally, this is Thanos v. Avengers here trying to create universal harmony…

Modern parenting thought seem to suggest that we shouldn’t pigeonhole a child into any specific role in society. This is a far kinder approach than atrocities like foot binding that Chinese parents put on their daughters–a physical mutilation to make them more suitable wives. That biased child rearing is of course not just in the physical, daughters also tend not to receive very good education, and maybe some daughters are singly chosen at early age to be conditioned to serve, etc. “Equal Opportunity” and “equality of sex” is unthought of.

Breaking with traditional mores is hard. All of us have thousands… tens of thousands of years of built-in habits and biases in our culture. It’s not just those who claim to have thousands of years of cultural tradition that actually have cultural traditions. Everyone has culture in them. All of us are raised in society of people, even parentless people are social creatures of our time. Our ancestors killed each other for food or sports, they ate raw meat and maybe even cats, dogs and babies. We all come from the same evolutionary savagery.

But it is important to be liberal. It frees humanity in unimagined ways.

But it is important to sustain our cultures, they survive because they helped humanity survive. They knows more than any single person or even a group of smart people gathered in a room.

It is possible that no one really thought everything through. If this was the case, then we are back at one wrong is no more wrong another wrong.

I hope politicians can improve their communication, perhaps through use of technology, and really tell us if they’ve thought it through or if they are winging it based on their cultural knowledge, or if they’re just winging it on their faith, or if they’re just winging it not believing their work will work.

I like talking to Chinese friends about how my mom and I, while enroute to America, arrived in Beijing of 1989 China–on June 4th. On the final approach, the train rolled into the capital station over a bridge. We saw the streets below have been flipped, exposing red bricks that lay at its foundation. At the next intersection, a military Jeep was burning in the middle of the streets. You cannot imagine the excitement this is for a 11 year-old boy, seeing machine guns and flying helicopters for the first time in his life.

Flash forward thirty years, in 2019, I read this story about Eleanor and Manuel Blum resigning from CMU SCS. Honestly, her story of how she was forced to leave the department is a terrible experience. Sexism in work place is like all other forms of discrimination and should be abolished at all cost.

I actually saw a little bit of professor Blum’s work women@scs in 2001 when I stayed an extra semester to complete my degrees. In 1996, when I was freshmen, there were 3 girls admitted to CS undergrad program out of 100 freshmen’s. This ratio improved to 50% girls in 2001. Her work continued strongly. In 2018, my alumni relations representative contacted me and talked to me a lot about how CMU can do better to place its graduates in Silicon Valley tech companies or to start one. He wondered if there were internship channel opportunities I can help to arrange. I mentioned to him that perhaps the best channel will be through the company’s diversity program.

This isn’t a reflection on the mystery that is the hiring process at my then employer. But to be sure, that felt like the most clearly defined entrance to tech at that company. If a minority–nay, if a economically disadvantaged minority, a girl, was interested and demonstrated motivation and could work hard, she is likely to be accepted through diversity program. This is not true for all similarly situated red or blue blooded Americans. (Imho, this is largely believed, considering Trump was voted into office by a large margin and managed to stay in office consoling these poor souls with America(ns) first and MAGA slogans for all four years. I cannot possibly be wrong about this. There are a lot of people who feel hopeless with no clear (and good) leadership for their advancement–presently addressed afflicted youths excluded of course, our affliction leads us…)

But shortly after those exchanges, things slowed down, and I now understand that professor Manuel has left the school.

Honestly, in 2001, I really did find the admittance of all those girls very annoying. Half of the free t-shirts are no longer my size. My 2001 self is your typical Asian nerd, showered once a week, glasses smeared beyond recognition, played games and read papers for fun, the rest of the time spent on meditation. The girls were your prototypical nerdy girl. So, in short, it was not an improvement on my social life at all.

But selfish reasons aside, there is this matter that men, too, need to feel the same kind of hope. Consider an aspiring male applicant to CMU in the fall of 2000. He had to compete against some number of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of applicants to gain admittance to CMU SCS. Now he has to beat out more applicants for half of the quota. This is a major shift in life for males of our affliction(addiction to computer stuff). It is for a just cause, just a little sudden for that male applicant. (It’s being pointed out that I did not mention Freshmen women adds and enhances the CS programs. That is definitely the case. What I say of the abruptly increased competition for academic opportunities for male applicant is still strictly correct. If there is an effective quota to fill 50% freshmen by gender, then the available opportunity is halved. And if those female 50% are more competitive than the other 50%, then that reinforces my point that the structure and dynamics of the admission competition is changed without thorough forethought for and communications to the impacted groups. But I admit that unfairness is life in this scope…))

What was described in the article seems like pretty normal office politics. Some people had an agenda for the project, she couldn’t get her self invited to her own project meetings, and it somehow materialized that perpetrator is an all male team. You should see, best as a spectator, the all female teams I had to work with. Not getting invited to meetings that one, who might be leading the project, and certainly should be invited to, is hardly an affront and oughtn’t be meaningfully deleterious. Isn’t that kind of par for the first hole for controversial leaders? There are of course a lot of really working organizations out there run by female majority executive teams. Gender of the team doesn’t matter: nonproductive, rude and noncooperative behavior abound., IMMHO. But sad, nonetheless, for everyone, enduring, surviving and otherwise.

New grad employment and freshmen admission fairness is important. The theory is that students and new recruits for a job are kind of new at it, they should not be expected to compete with older and more experienced people. Society gives them a chance to learn and grow into functioning organs. More full contact and strenuous competition begins after graduation.

To this end, I think schools should have some balancing affirmative action throughout the school. It cannot require a team to have any male or female participants–in the real world there isn’t any such rules. It should certainly strenuously encourage healthy culture and gender composition, but it should not force it. (It being CMU SCS, someone could probably come up with a taxonomy of minorities, and an algorithm for rewarding teams so as to produce some desired effects on the minorities. It seems pretty straight forward to do something better algorithmically than the affirmative actions we have right now. For example, three optimizing metrics are income of first job, career progress after 5-years(including academic careers), and successful entrepreneurship. So one idea is to target equal new-grad pay and achieve equal 5-year advancement(promotions) for all graduates. Entrepreneurship can be measured using funding or revenue and attributed to founders. Efforts (such as special scholarships and special attention by faculty) can be tracked over some decades to see what works and what doesn’t). The school can officially measure stuff that matter and make good stuff happen–for everyone.)

My experience at CMU is certainly that it is a utopia of academics. Work, study, projects, everything is well thought through by a lot of smart people and everything just works. But this resignation certainly is a dose of reality for students–we live in the real world and it takes a lot to survive, and even more to prosper, no matter gender, race, mission or afflictions.

Trying to write something down because there’s a time warp in my living room and I went through that episode so fast, it’s like I didn’t watch it.

I wonder if the drama in the show might have desensitized me somewhat to drama. Pike’s flash forward is horrifying, and rarely do they show hero’s fear, working up and pumping himself up to face certain tragedy. Maybe the way they expressed these are more subtle, a hero’s internal struggles are not projected into first person visions. And then camera jumps out of that first person to see his struggles. Its… definitely new way to do it… maybe the fear that this actor portraits is more real than past acting that it is too real for comfort? The hero’s hesitation, palpable, and lingers like an onion from lunch.

Anyways, is this a thing that movies do that they make actors say lines that has meaning in the context of their acting in the show? Pike says something about “nice to know that we all still have a part to play” when the internet says he’s gone after s2.

Let’s see, the action scene involving the nanobots are less than thrilling, in this respect the show kind of lost some steam.

I think the most well delivered and most understandable and touching scene was Tig trying to give doc some advise on relationship… I don’t know what it is about this actress or her role in the story, but it all kind of seem to make sense. It’s like what ever she says it kind of sounds real and the speech kind of lingers and makes sense after she says it. Why is it that the same is not true for most things pike or Spock says? Like when Picard said something, or when Janeway, or even 7-9 says something, that all has similar weight, like that time thing, the delivery kind of pulls you back in time to re-experience it over and over, as needed.

Idk, maybe I’m in a strange place in my own life. My brain maybe does not want to spare the cycles to entertain the show prioritizing other thoughts.

The Trek theme does not carry the show imho. Which is fine, personal struggles and uncertainties, dangers of technology, dangers of space travel, conflict of culture, these other things are fine too.

Think back to when the borg is bearing down on sector 0-0-1… it was clearly a truly menacing danger. But there’s something about the way it’s done that enables me to savored that excitement…. trumpets blasting… timpani bumping… staccatisimo couplets Or triplets followed by a long held blaring brass note. Idk, maybe I’m just more used to these styling use to produce these effects in the 90’s. But meanwhile the world has moved on to hypnotic lights flaring at cameras, as a new way to convey the same effect? It might still be an age thing. My body and brain is really not able to keep up with the yanks and jerks of the show. My adrenaline isn’t pumping fast enough to reach my brain, when the scene moves on.

But honestly, this may be a generational thing too. I still find TOS Trek to be incredibly slow… they move so slowly that Kirk can spend a good 500ms swaggering before sitting down at his chair. Picard is probably down to 200ms-ish, and pike? I’m not sure. In the TOS days…. maybe photography was still new, the show spends a lot of time admiring faces and body postures. A scene of one person looking at another, can flash back and forth between the looker and subject quite a few times. One example, a scene that Discovery does draw me back to, number one eating her burger. Like, there’s genuine admiration for a happy number one at her meal table having satiated her Captain and found her hot sauce. Like, when I see that, I felt that happy upbeat humanity will workout Trek theme. Idky, it just does, and it bothers me a little why idky. But anyways, these moments of optimism in discovery are rare and far in between like class-m planets.

… eager to see how they wrap up this big mess. The endeavor is noble and necessary, even if I dislike the presentation.

Ps ahh, so number one is happy and content. I guess that is a very indicative feature of human triumph, is that they are happy. But that’s okay too. People in TNG are happier than those in TOS or DSC because they’ve had another century and half to work out the kinks of life and technologies–the same way we are happier than our ancestors living in 1919…

P.ps the son of none has a headwear like Those work by Minbari on Babylon 5. Also the personal suffering of flesh and spirit reminds me of Dr. Who’s adventures. Personal hatred or love is often stretched to previously unimagined heights in that universe–things like Rory guarding over Amy’s body for two centuries, or the doctor materializing, surviving and dying to the thought of Clara for billions of years… Trek, however, obviously, does not dwell on these excesses of emotion–There is more Vulcan in Trek than we’d like to believe. The hero is not in the individual characters but more about the collective characters of this humanity inoculated Petri dish known as a starship, where the good of many outweigh the good of the few…

P.p.p.s there is but one wish, that there might be a little bit more people like me, and by that I mean it would be great to see more displays of success by people who look like Asian-Americans of the 21st century Earth, prime universe and timeline.

I wonder what the world would be like with out any pervs looking at your every move, be it on your own computer screen or in a stall of a bathroom.

I had a very tall black man look over the stall of a Palo Alto library bathroom today. I was of course secretly doing something the details of which I wished no other would know. I asked him if he could respect my privacy, and he just giggled. I followed him to the parking lot and watch him drive away, not sure why I did that.

I wonder what the cost to normal citizens if all of these pervs who intrude on our privacy do not do that? Like would the world really fall apart?

Well, yes, all pervs includes foreign and commercially and differently aligned pervs too, if all of them just stopped.

Aside from the energy savings, what downside would there be? Can I get a tax cut? Will the labor force expand? Can we take all that intelligence and all those talents and try to cure cancer or go to space?

Just an idle thought after a very annoying encounter.

—–

He drove away and then back. He’s now sitting in the library parking lot, in his green Rav Four with California plate 3TGT33I. Definitely smoking marijuana. Do secret police use marijuana while on the job? Like this dude should really be fired if he’s law enforcement! I guess this could be a garden variety perv, huh? Nobody would ever know under so much secrecy and disguises.

So, now, am I a snoop now typing this stuff down? I hope not because I’m publishing the information, right? But wait, he can become non-secretive by publishing the details of my activity on the toilet at the public bathroom. It seems my conundrum requires some formalization of information, actions and efforts, definition of considerations, and unified cost structure to continue a reasonable discussion of this matter.

Wowah, did anybody experience a Star Wars flashback when Michaels mother came out of a mighty powerful masked suit just as Michael is near death? Like, “Luke, I am your father” moment?

(S2E10)

I’m really glad they dumbed the show down a little bit and let us realize section 31 ship was an AI… so let’s see, the AI probably put Michael’s bio marker into that file, so that they would capture the red angel in the past, so that future AI can prevail.

Thinking a bit more, this Control AI suffer from some problems of today’s AI systems. It’s objective to control terror in the world, to analyze risk, is probably overly greedy and it failed to take into account all of our values, like existence, life, liberty, happiness, freedom from secretive manipulations of events of our lives, in its pursuit of control of interstellar power.

The way it happens is if one subscribe to extreme dogma, such as the fictional logic extremest. But the real sad part is that really, the problem is that politics, the political system, of this future, allowed this travesty to take place. I wonder what humans have thought about the power to manage entire populations. It’s kind of hard to see the where Trek is going with this? Do we expect some kind of revelation about how to fix this?

Anyways, did anybody notice that Saru welcomed Admiral Cornwell onboard? Seems this is usually reserved for the Capital or the most senior officer admitting the new arrival?! Man, Pike’s like, gotta be feeling the balls crushed here… admiral onboard running the mission, Saru, Burnham, Spock!, man… these are not a easy combination for a leader… like I wonder what kind of conversation Pike would have with Saru about this? “Oh, btw, usually the real captain welcomes esteemed guests, not the former acting captain.” Or “Saru, I’d like to be the one giving permission to come aboard and welcoming guests.” “But I’d just assumed the Admiral had permission to come aboard…” he’d answer defiantly.. post-evolution.

….

Yay for minority engineers!!! Inventor of the transporter, inventor of the red angel, all African Americans! This is heartwarming diversity for me to see in the 2010’s.

…

After watching the show for a third time, I finally caught the other theme of Federation versus section 31. It seems the show espouses two very very polar believes. Those that believe in the principals of Federation and those who believe in keeping Federation around by all means necessary.

The argument made most by the Federation people is that section 31 should not exist… because of small violations it takes liberties on: espionage, murder, sabotage, genocide, etc. for the purpose of keeping Federation alive.

The argument made by section 31 is that without it the Federation does not exist, and plus it’s kind of fun and sometimes advances Federation agendas too.

Personally, I think the good guys are fighting a losing battle. I mean section 31 has time traveling technology. Power struggles against section 31 have never and will never succeed. The failure, however, of personal persuasion to convert one person from section 31 adherent to Federation torch bearer is very concerning. Both in that Federation has nothing noteworthy to offer said person and that section 31 does have something to offer said person. It troubles me to see that even in our imagination of the achievable future utopia, we believe that there will just be those that do not fit in the whole society that they have to be in their own secret society. This idea disturbed me a lot.

Now, suppose you have two taxing bodies, how would you set tax for a system where income going into tax should be tax-free? is nominal federal tax, is the nominal state tax, and is the proportion of income paid to either taxes and is the income pretax. Let be proportion paid to federal government, and be amount paid to state.

If both governments refuse to tax money going towards government, then the effective tax rate as a function of the two taxes using the formula from the tax-free-tax system would be:

Let’s consider a bullying federal government that stipulates that California cannot tax its residents unless United States exists, therefore the federal tax takes priority. California still refuses to tax income paid to any government as tax. We apply the formula in the tax-free-tax system twice.

Producing this expression:

Finally, what happens when California retaliates by taxing the money paid into federal tax, but maintains that it does not tax income used to pay Californian income tax?

So the effective tax rate under inconsiderate governments will be:

Understandably, the effective rate increases as the government ignore each other’s taxes.

There are, of course many other ways to skin this cat. We can consider one simplest one. Suppose California and USA disagree very strongly that California says it must have of the incomes of individuals of the state. (The state income , If we were doing VAT, in which case we tax the gdp) and the federal government demands of that income. The argument proceeds until California decides that it is give me fair taxes or death and begins its secession from the union.

President Trump calculates that USA will save annually from not patrolling California coast, etc. Governor Newsom stipulate that California contributes to non-California USA income (again, easier if talking about GDP) by some . Trump then retorts, yeah but you spend of your state tax money on interstate commerce that you will not be spending. (This is arguable post facto assertion will stick, since all calculations are made not only to secess from union but also to dissolve California. In this case, there will be no or )

The loss USA stands to experience is and the loss California stands to experience is . So, dividing the saved loss in half, both side may agree to share loss of the tax money. This means

And federal government gives California of the taxes it collects from other states in addition to providing the existing services. But in reality, this type of analysis is complicated by the fact that the state and federal budget may both exceed tax revenue! And of course we’d never agree on what and are.

Wow!

Jonathan Frakes directs.

Wow

Did they just like step this TV show up by three notches or what? Wow the music, the conversation, the fight scene. Everything I complained about is like… really good now.

I have never ducked while watching a fight scene in any Star Trek Series until this one.

Pike looks real now. Spock’s sharp wit… the realistic groans from heavy punches… the tasteful use of wire-fu… Admiral Cornwell, the dialog flows so naturally and so believable. Like, I don’t know what effects director has, but it’s like they changed out all the actors for better ones, or something. Even Martin-Greene’s Burnham, already top-botch acting, now seem to blend in to the other great acting, accentuating it, feelings ebbing and flowing,

Airiam, dead… that longing music followed by silence, and no preview for next week… the end… the end to a sad series of unfortunate events… the tragedy of a lifetime wrapped up in a few supporting role scenes, but so central and so powerfully done.

Wow, what did just happen here. This is like really high quality Trek. Damn! It’s like, really high quality drama. Do they give oscars for tv series? I’m not too ashamed to nominate this show now, if only for this episode. Wow!

Now let’s see what they do with AI. As I always have, I doubt it will end well. I’ll end up hating Trek more for poor treatment of AI.

Alas, at least they’re getting humans and aliens right…

S2E4. I’m trying to dissect the #1 and pike scene. I just don’t get it… the conversation is a little off, like literally one actor waits for the other holding breadth and the responses come maybe 50-200ms too soon. Maybe they think and speak faster in a few centuries, but it feels wrong. Probably the most smoothly flowing dialog is Reno with Stamets and Tilly. And seriously, Stamets has the right swagger, confident, knowledgeable, collaborative, Tilly is very convincing, not that nervousness is hard, but her whole role, for some reason feel more realistic and she seem one of the most real person on the show. Reno, seem to be most experienced in delivery. Her lines are delivered without those odd synchronization problems. Phillipa, and her empress anti-self both are dutifully performed with the right swagger. Dignity, power, respect, Picard-like, comes to mind, ignoring her speech. You feel her expectation when she gives an order. Not so with pike.

Burnham and Saru are of course very convincing characters and their powerful scenes in this episode is very good. I wish the episode could have highlighted this aspect… some how with more plot…. I’m watching this scene for the third time and seeing their emotions more. (Also, kind of mumbling “eat it” when it fell off) but there are so much going on… btw, did the makeup for Saru change to make him look more muscular? He looks so much tougher after the ganglia are offed. Hear that biting speech, “knowing that my people were lied to…” the anger is so real, man, so good. Deliberate generational deceptions !! Wow! That’s awful!! And it all came through through a completely covered faces and hands.

Even data had swagger. Press of a button is accompanied with bodily followthrough sufficient to suggest the sheer massiveness in computation or energy transfer it caused. The actors eyes focuses on their screens and it takes time to look back and Picard. And all that human subtleties seem amiss in this episode.

The ensigns of Discovery doesn’t respond to orders firmly enough, with the military style–like they are usually akin to bark, “ayae, sir!” as if it is required to save their lives.

And at conclusion, one feel the need for euphoric “set the course for,…, engage” and even though they engage in warp… I mean c’mon, give us the warp-shot, and fade in music. The slow stretch, and let us stare at the star field, to wonder a bit… all these things, seem amiss. Do they know this series is really different from TNG and TOS?

But admittedly though, applause must be given for the giant leap in story telling. The intimate relationships of future human and aliens, and I don’t mean just physical intimacy, the personal growths, discovery of historical cultural fabrications that inhibited the growth of a whole civilization, techology, rules of law, diplomacy and espionage… These are powerful stuff, all packed in one hour. I mean, this story feels like The way I would write it. (Or I wish I could come up with all this really great plot) But, as I would have it, they packed everything in and demand viewer to be smart enough to keep up. And I kind of did, but my emotions are not agile enough to flip through the scenes and context switch to produce a good feeling at the end of the episode.

It sucks! Tilly is abducted. Like all that goodness, first/last contact, Saru, Spoke, #1, and I’m left concerned for Tully’s suffering. This sucks!

Michaels smile is very pleasant to see. This is a great addition to her character. Her pronounced frown, which still happens a lot, but it does not become her as smiles do. The smile after the sneeze, the smile when she sees her father. Nice!

Sarek, perhaps the make up or natural aging has drastically improved this character. His head doesn’t bobble in that very unvulcan way any more…

There’s something off about Pike. He’s got swagger as we expect, but there’s some strange delay between his dialog and other folks. There are a few successful interactions, but overall it feels so disconnected.

Anyways, I guess the lack of focus is most painfully highlighted when it is regained. “We got him, right？ladies?” And the ladies responds, affirmatively.

Maybe it’s because the bridge crew doesn’t look at Pike. Recalling chekov and sulu days, they turn their whole body towards the captain, full eye contact… Locked gaze till dismissal. Data, Troy, no other their fancy sofa chairs, Riker with his tilted head but all the faces till pointed at the Captain. Man, Gene Rodenberry’s indelible mark on star trek is fading away…

I don’t know, they may all have looked, but it just doesn’t feel the same. Pikes speeches. What’s wrong with them? They sound great. But I don’t get it. The words don’t sink in like other speeches do…