Lion ponderings

Lots of new bans & taxes today. Double digit sales tax is here to stay, after 40 years of steadily rising from 6%. On the 1 paw, Elon was right to use his flexibility as a CEO to move out. On the other paw, these are taxes on poor people rather than taxes on the rich. Someone who can afford an electric car doesn't care about whether the gas tax is $50 or $100 or whether sales tax is 5 or 10% . There was some intrigue about Calif*'s ban on official business with 17 other states on the basis of discriminatory laws. Most Amerikans support this ban yet oppose the wolf amendment, which bans use of NASA funds to collaborate with China, yet China famously doesn't allow women to have jobs after age 50. Well, maybe a ban on space program collaboration is a bigger scale than a ban on state funded travel & maybe gays are more important than women over 50, but Calif* is the world's largest economy. Anyone who needs a job has to live under Calif* rule for part of the...

 Worst zombie dream of them all.  They just kept coming.  Was in some kind of train station in a desert, being overrun by zombies.  Finally commandeered a semi truck.  Waking up didn't end it.  Falling asleep again always brought them back.

So after 45 days, the lion kingdom's account of 13 years was finally disabled. They still have the data & are making money on it, but you can't access it anymore. They had a 1 day warning for 15 days. So if the automated pattern matcher detects unsavory content & the phone number on file isn't current, there's no way to recover the account again. Most of the friends on it moved on or don't allow friend requests anymore, so they've gone back to what they were 20 years ago, long lost acquaintances rolling around another dimension, myspace, geocities, classmates.com or something. The lion kingdom has a more reliable water supply than its neighbors, but it's expensive. It was $50/month in 2020. The neighbors have draconian water restrictions, but pay less. There's always enough water, for a certain amount of money. Part of the $50/month was for a new pump to move water all the way from Sacramento to Camanche reservoir. For all the protesting ...

So Starblazers 2202 ended with a whimper.  The lion kingdom couldn't figure out if they ever won against Zordar.  In episode 25, Zordar's weapons had been written all the way up to the arc of destruction.  Yamato was going to blow itself up inside the arc of destruction to try to buy time.  The rest of the humans were going to follow the G plan & find another planet. In episode 26, we learn the arc of destruction was completely destroyed.  The  plan was shelved & they were cleaning up.  Kiwipedia had more information that wasn't visible in the show, manely that the arc of destruction was destroyed & the people of Earth voted unanimously to sacrifice the time fault to bring Wildstar back from another dimension.   Despite all that was written away with meaningless dialog, the lion kingdom could appreciate the way they depicted the Yamato popping into another dimension to pick up Wildstar.   There was a lot that could have ...

  By episode 19, it was reduced to another Robotech clone.  It shows how good Robotech was that its plot has formed the basis of every other show.  It was time to bring in the Minmei defense & wrap it up as we already knew it would end.  There were still original visuals.   Yamato was cloned.   New wave motion engine. Escalating weaponry leads to more escalating weaponry until the ships are the size of planets. It reminds lions of how money printing has begotten more money printing.  The cosmo reverse & the time fault it creates allow humans to print unlimited amounts of time the same way modern monetary theory & future production gains create unlimited amounts of money.  

 It's surprising how many people the news claims are still unvaccinated, despite the abundance of vaccines & the abundance of news coverage of deadly variants.  Of course, the news is never very accurate.   The lion kingdom dreamed the attic of its old day job was rented as a private work area, long ago.  After returning to it years later, the key still worked & it was still as the lion kingdom left it.  No-one had been there in that time.  All the lion stuff was still there & covered in dust.  The lion could have slept their during its intervening commuting years & saved a lot of time.   Over time, areas surrounding the attic area became more crowded.  Then, there was a scuffle next to the lion involving a swat team.   A homeless black guy had taken residence in another corner of the attic opposite of the lion.  A voice said they were kicking homeless people out from time to time as they snuck in....

  Rapidly moving through the later Starblazers 2202 episodes, it is different enough from the comet empire to be a completely new series. Yet they replicated many of the original animation sequences & sound effects.  The step up in detail possible with computer animation is noticeable.  50 years ago, the level of detail fluctuated based on how much money they had.  Every single shot now has the full detail of the ship. A 10 year old lion would have been impressed by the new series. The Andromeda was reimagined with a hammerhead of airplane runways.   Every ship has a different name animated on it except the Yamato.   There's no motion blur anywhere. By episode 11, Deslok is back, or as he's now called, Desler.  His voice has changed. Phone fends off landfill for a while longer.  Every phone should have the same solution when its battery puffs.   The morbid depression over the Scherzos might be because lions always played Ch...

 The lion kingdom won't be financially independent by age 50 like most of its classmates & coworkers.  1 problem is having over achieving classmates, coworkers, & pretty much everyone else.  It could be said that by age 50 you're supposed to have made all the right moves.  At most, lions could say they made all the wrong moves, leaving only the right moves to be made.   After many years of searching for the origin of odd animated clips of Starblazers which showed up at times & looked like vastly improved remakes of the original show, the lion kingdom was pleased to discover the original 2 seasons were actually remade.  The Iscandar series was remade in 2012 & called Starblazers 2199.  The comet series was remade in 2017 & called Starblazers 2202.  They're actually both in English.  The lion kingdom began with episode 1 of the comet empire. There were slight changes.  There are more ships with more detail.  T...

As Mackenzy Bezos continues to divest most of her husband's fortune in charities, it shows the level of disagreement they had about the fate of his stonk.  It definitely wasn't an amicable divorce.  Instead of leaving it to their heirs or reinvesting it, she's choosing the least efficient use.   Anyways, lions continue to develop the playbook for the next stonk sale.  The media had an interesting story about small cap stonks continuing to have a hangover from last year because the newly printed money all went to large companies.  When lions review their small cap mutual fund plays, they're all much higher than they were before 2020.   The lion kingdom once had a theory that with more high frequency trading, stonk prices would oscillate more dramatically & frequently until the stonk market swung between 0 & 100% on a daily basis.  A lot of new rules were created since then to slow down the stonk market, but it's still prone to rapid sw...

 The lion kingdom was pleased that median rent crossed  $1,527.  As difficult as the last 20 years have been, lions have historically paid roughly the same as the nationwide rent.  Nationwide rent is now far higher than it was in Calif* 10 years ago & nationwide houses are higher than Calif* 20 years ago.  There was never a decline of Calif* prices, but there was an increase everywhere else. There's no deal to be had by moving out of Calif* like there might have been 10 years ago.  The gap has been narrowing, despite jobs being persistently concentrated in just Calif*.  You have to own a house to preserve any wealth. On the 6th day after the fed tantrum, the talking heads headed out in force & the stonk market finally bounced.  "Still have a long way to go on recovery" "inflation is temporary" "Economic conditions have not progressed enough"  Damage controlled. Watching the Goo tubes nowadays either makes you want to spend a lot of mo...

 The lion kingdom missed the part about stonks continuing to decline 3 days after the fed announcement & preprogrammed selloff, but it only means the bounce will be later.  The fed balance sheet continues to march up, despite the talking heads.  Janet spent years jawboning the stonk market while doing nothing material, as a means of soft monetary policy.  Jawboning the stonk market is how they do it, nowadays.  Lions see the reported inflation dropping like a rock. The lion kingdom is pleased to have made it 8 miles in 104F heat.  Lions are not going to be able to retire in a temperate climate.  It's going to be either blizzards or extreme heat.  So being able to do it if only slowly is better than nothing.  It is believed lion tolerance of extreme heat has improved since they were last in Fl*rida. Feeling exhausted after the 1st 2 days of the year of the indoor temperataure hitting 96F & 98F, the lion kingdom reviewed last year's dat...

 Everyone is a competitor for venture capital & buyout offers.  The differing customer base of a food delivery startup & a spaceship startup is window dressing. The 1st thing lions noticed after being sold dividend stonks was how the higher the dividend, the worse the stonk performed.  They were divesting value to pay the dividend.  Dividends for lions are a scam.  A stock that declines to pay a dividend is worth the same as a stock which rises by not paying a dividend. Their mane use is getting cash from stonks without selling any shares.  Without a dividend, you would have to sell whole numbers of shares to get cash until all the shares were gone.  With a dividend, the position can be manetained while still getting cash.  If you don't need cash, there's no reason to collect a dividend.  The value should be automatically reinvested in the shares so it can "compound". Of course, dividend cash can be used to buy a different stonk, but ...

  So the Bide man printed $2 trillion & the stonk market fell over when inflation spiked & the Pow said interest rates would now have to rise some time earlier than hell freezing over.  When do economic stimulus packages cease to be stimulus packages because of the inflation they cause? To be sure, most accounts were preprogrammed to sell off after the latest fed announcement, whatever it was.  The actual reaction will happen tomorrow & will be a big buyback on the reality that hell won't freeze over & talking heads proclaiming the inflation is a sign of growth more than inflation. The other reality is economic stimulus packages don't have to simulate the economy or the stonk market.  Most people work for the government, have their retirements covered, & could care less about the stonk market.  If an economic stimulus package sends the stonk market to 0, it'll be considered a stimulus by the majority. Dave Ramsey definitely flip flopped on hi...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lViJ1ejCfc  Listening to Dave Ramsey protest remote work the same way The Donald did, the lion kingdom noted it's consistently people in the business of office real estate who do it.  As usual, he credits "surveys" & says it's the 3rd time remote work has been tried.  It really depends on the kind of job. As expected, the easiest job leads today have all returned to requiring commuting again.  It's only the toughest leads, the top 1% who are getting remote work, as it was before.  They're not continuing the perks they did a year ago if it's not a national emergency. There were a lot of millennials complaining about the loss of their urban culture & office rituals, complaining about having to be home with their kids.  At the same time, they left the cities in droves, became extremely wealthy by not paying rent, bought houses at record young ages.  Do as they say, not as they do.  Generation X couldn't have i...

The last mask day finally ended.  It was utter torture to go through an entire summer putting on a mask after running in the highest temperatures ever recorded.  Lions never bothered trying to eat anywhere.  Fortunately, it wasn't to be a 2nd time.  There were actually rumors months ago that masks would be necessary until 2022, but fortunately they didn't come true.  When studies showed vaccinated people didn't spread the virus, the democratic party struggled for months to accept reality.  

 Another go with 2 pass edge detected motion tracking revealed it can use different tracks as a reference & target.  The problem is the reference & target need to have the same zoom & the same track size.  It might even support cascaded motion effects if everything is matched.  The lion kingdom did what it could with tweeking the spherical lens correction while it played a loop, but it was nowhere close to a modern 360 cam. The Taylor of 12 years finally died.  It's turned on by 2 tact buttons in its feet.  The tact buttons bear the full weight of whatever animal is on it.  Eventually, the tact buttons perished so it wouldn't turn on anymore.  The easiest solution was to replace the tact buttons with an external switch.  It's actually easier to use when turned on by the external switch.  The lion can get seated properly before beginning the measurement. The max gross weight of a lion after running 12 miles, taking huge amount...

 Continuing experiments with motion tracking have yielded promising results.  It's been 25 years.  For the 1st time, it's actually tracking long form videos with no need for a lion to edit out glitches. The big wins are applying edge detection before motion tracking & doing 2 passes of motion tracking.  The 1st pass is a rough pass with rotation tracking.  The 2nd pass is a fine pass without rotation tracking.  The settling speed has to be faster when there are very large motion offsets, in order to keep it from hugging the limits, but this leaves a jerky result.  Only in a 2nd pass with smaller motion offsets does the settling algorithm generate smooth output.  It might benefit from a better settling algorithm. Sadly, both edge detection & 2 pass motion tracking require rendering to intermediates.  The motion tracker fails to use different tracks as a reference & target frames & it fails to use the output of a previous motion...

 Reading about 30 year old MBA's on linkedin who never knew a time when they didn't own a single family home in the most expensive real estate market in the world, never knew a job search after graduating business school, were millionaires by age 30.  The John Hughes mansions are still out there.  They're just owned by a different generation with a lot more 0's. After 12 years in the battle of the HSA, free alternatives finally started appearing which offer investment options.  For a long time, HSA's originally were rare things which all had fees & no investment options.  The lion kingdom looked, to be sure.  The HSA presented a dilemma for lions who never had any health problems. Guys were selling lasik as way for people to utilize their HSA's.  That might have changed with tax reforms.  After years of wondering what to do with the HSA, the answer was not to spend it on anything unless it was absolutely necessary & not to cash it all out....

 Dreamed about living in a room that jutted out high up from the side of a highrise into a giant indoor square lined with other such rooms.  Every night, there were parties on balconies jutting out from the sides of the other highrises, filled with beautiful 20 year old women.  It felt extremely lucky to have rented such a room in the middle of everything, even though it was noisy.  No-one foresaw the room would be in the middle of all these parties, so it was very cheap. Dreamed about heroine college again.  Some crazy guy was causing roots to grow out of rocks with his mind & eating them which gave him heroine college superpowers.

 The lion kingdom had a dream about a Tesla Cybertruck, but when faced with the prospect of actually paying for it, the pendulum tends to swing to the cheapest truck available.  There's always a chance the Cybertruck will be close enough in price. Anyways, after viewing some more barndominium videos, lion mansion ideas have tended to shift towards a single roof height down the entire length.  It also appears to be cheaper to build a square than a hall.  Barndominiums are only long enough to separate a garage area from a living area, but are never halls.

 Lions never did figure out how freeways divide communities the way the media has always publicized.  When the cypress structure was torn down, the media cheered about unity between west & east Oakland but West Oakland is still a shithole.   The lion kingdom lives in a valley divided by a freeway but has never seen a significant division.  The west side of the freeway could be considered wealthier in parts, but these parts are also newer.  The east side is subjectively poorer.  Most any house on either side is over $2 million.  It's hard to blame the freeway for any difference.   The problem is no-one but lions get around by paw.  When driving, it doesn't matter how infrequent the overpasses are.   1 by 1, the top tier companies are making everyone commute again, starting with 3 commutes/week, with Apple joining Uber & the Goog in requiring partial commuting.  The news focused on the top tier companies, but li...

The yew tree ball is 1 of those dry factoids which bored lions to tears in history classes & might come up on game shows.  Apparently, it was rare for the palace of Versailles to host any celebrations like that.  The yew ball might have been the only one which started at 11pm.   What they did have were coronation balls, the same way US has inauguration balls.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdYeG4eZNpQ Someone brought in a Nikon D850 & brushless gimbal.  Despite the water mark taking 1/4 of the screen, it could be the best documentation of the place. The practical fixtures in the rooms look like paintings. It is believed Mozart played in this room. View from the hall of mirrors. CU of the mirrors. Where Bang Bang had his wedding. Anyways, the gootubes reveal the private lives of millennials we never saw before from generation X & 1 thing lions have noticed is the immigrants are always working their asses off & hussling while the nativ...