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You can replace any Confederate statue with one of Michael Flynn, trade one traitor for another. He only pleaded guilty, twice.

It is utterly amazing this man is still married to Kellyanne Conway.

No one is compelled to work for, speak for, defend, explain, rationalize, or excuse this president and his incompetence, derangement, and racism. Whether to do any of that, or not, is a choice. And it’s a moral choice, a crucial one, both for individuals and the nation.

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) June 24, 2020

South Dakota Gov. Noem vows to protect Mt. Rushmore: We won’t stand for ‘radical rewriting of history’

This isn’t directly related to this story, but more times than not, the folks worried about any rewriting of U.S. history have already fallen for some sort of biased rewrite or just want to protect a narrative. It’s happened to me many times and it takes a lot of work to figure out what may cloud your judgment and assessment. A lot of folks have no idea there are any clouds at all, and many prefer living in the clouds.

If President Trump loses the election, I can totally see him resigning and not completely finishing his term reasoning why do such a thing if everything is rigged anyway.

This is an interesting photo the First Lady tweeted yesterday.

I can only imagine what it would be like reading this article as a resident of Flint, Michigan, which isn’t even mentioned.

The Guardian – Revealed: millions of Americans can’t afford water as bills rise 80% in a decade

Exclusive analysis of 12 US cities shows the combined price of water and sewage increased by an average of 80% between 2010 and 2018, with more than two-fifths of residents in some cities living in neighbourhoods with unaffordable bills.

In the first nationwide research of its kind, our findings reveal the painful impact of America’s expanding water poverty crisis as aging infrastructure, environmental clean-ups, changing demographics and the climate emergency fuel exponential price hikes in almost every corner of the US.

Yesterday, the TICKET’s morning show fill-ins were wondering if music could be played as a baby is delivered. Heck, I had my entire U2 collection set to random when my kids were born because I wanted their first exposure to music be to the most significant band in my life. In case you were wondering, DaughterGeeding was born to Jesus Christ and BoyGeeding to Staring at the Son. Neither is a particular favorite (the songs, not the kids).

Here’s a headline no North Texan ever thought he or she would see – Addison’s Kaboom Town fireworks moved to an undisclosed location, to be live-streamed online

I can’t identify a single song from the Old 97’s, but there was a lot of buzz about their new album cover. Frankly, it brings back bad memories of the Quincy Carter years because a buddy and I used to make fun at all the jump-passes Carter would make.

Electrify America’s first cross-country EV charging route is complete

Taking a cross-country roadtrip in your electric vehicle is a little more feasible thanks to Electrify America. Its first coast to coast EV fast charging route is now complete, and the company plans to have another route finished by September. The routes provide high-powered chargers to all EV brands, and on average, the stations are spaced about 70 miles apart, so EV owners can travel beyond a single charge without being stranded.

Twitter posts reveal rapid politicization of COVID-19 issue in U.S. Congress. – Using AI, researchers could correctly classify the political party of the member who sent each COVID tweet 76 percent of the time, based only on the text of the tweet and the date it was sent.

A musing from a friend: If Hillary Clinton was president today would Jeffress and Fallwell claim that the Coronavirus was a plague sent by God to punish our country because of our transgressions?

Yes, definitely.

I think if you asked Americans should there be tributes to the person who was responsible for killing the most Americans in history, most would say certainly not. But if you revealed to them that person was Robert E. Lee, then some of them would instantly be okay with it.

Interesting line – “The idea was to create an enormous work of art to celebrate democracy and use America as an example to restore liberty in France.”

Random tidbit: When Ulysses S. Grant visited France after his presidency, he saw the Statue of Liberty being built.

Our most venerated monuments represent a mythology. While we may hope the statue represents our highest aspirations of what America can and should be. It also can be a reminder of where and how far we fall short.

I’ve been seeing Top Gun air a lot on television. I bet there was some contractual obligation due to the sequel which was supposed to come out this summer but has been pushed back to December.

I know in many Asian cultures, wearing white clothing is a sign of morning and you’ll see it at a lot of funerals. I’ve noticed a lot of white clothing being worn in the black community, but I’m unaware of it’s always been a part of their culture or something recently adopted.

We watched the fifth episode of season one of Ozark and I felt like it “jumped the shark”, but I’m still gonna stick with it.  First, the closeted homosexuality was a stretch. Second, I don’t believe a pastor would accept a strip club owner’s money to build a church. I know I live in Texas and not the Ozarks, but a lot of my pastoral friends have bluntly told me they could not accept a lottery winner’s tithing because the money came from sin.

AI researchers discover inherent resolution limit to “upsampling” of pixelated faces

Duke University researchers have created an AI algorithm (“PULSE”) that pixelates an uploaded picture of a human face and then explores the range of possible (computer-generated) human faces that could produce that pixelated face.

For starters, Rudin said, “We kind of proved that you can’t do facial recognition from blurry images because there are so many possibilities. So zoom and enhance, beyond a certain threshold level, cannot possibly exist.”

“A lot of algorithms in the past have tried to recover the high-resolution image from the low-res/high-res pair,” Rudin said. But according to her, that’s probably the wrong approach. Most real-world applications of this upsampling problem would involve having access to only the low-res original image. That would be the starting point from which one would try to recreate the high-resolution equivalent of that low-res original.

“When we finally abandoned trying to come up with the ground truth, we then were able to take the low-res [picture] and try to construct many very good high-res images,” Rudin said.

So while PULSE looks beyond the failure point of facial recognition applications, she said, it may still find applications in fields that grapple with their own blurry images–among them, astronomy, medicine, microscopy, and satellite imagery.

Vice-President Pence had a reverse Gerald Ford moment.

https://twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1275500260618575872?s=09

My Photo Shoot with Mike Tyson

Every so often a photo shoot comes along that both excites you and terrifies you at the same time. Today’s article is about one such experience.

When I was in college—more specifically in Russian History 401 at ASU—I got a phone call and had to leave class, much to my teachers chagrin. It was Getty Images (my rep at the time) with a request for me to photograph the one and only Mike Tyson. To add a little stress to the mix, I had less than two days to prepare for the shoot.

This whole struggling to breathe thing is not fun. I’d like to lay down, but it just makes it harder to breathe, so I try to sleep in an elevated position, but that hurts my back. Right now I have to inhale albuterol through a nebulizer about every six hours. But hey, it could certainly be worst, much worst, and I’m thankful I only have to deal with this much and that I can afford and have access to medical care. The doc at the ER seemed to think my allergies flared up really bad, despite me not really having a case of breathing problems before. The COVID test was more of a precaution, I think. However, CBS11 did have a segment in which a doctor was seeing a lot of patients who came in for what they thought was allergy symptoms but tuned out they were COVID-19 positive.

Michael Keaton in Talks to Play Bruce Wayne in ‘The Flash’ Movie

After nearly 30 years, Michael Keaton is in talks to return to the role of Batman, to appear alongside Ezra Miller in Warner Bros.’ upcoming movie “The Flash,” TheWrap has learned exclusively. Talks with Keaton are in the very early stages, it is far from a sure thing, and can go either way. No details are currently available about how big or small Keaton’s role is.

That plot will introduce general audiences to the idea of the multiverse, one of the of core concepts underpinning DC Comics. For the non fanboy set, the multiverse refers to a shifting number of alternate universes that coexist within the larger reality depicted in DC comics. Originally created to explain various contradictory changes the company’s characters experienced over decades, it allows several different versions of the same characters to simultaneously exist and, occasionally, interact.

For my fellow fans of Hamilton who are eagerly awaiting next Friday, July 3rd, this is good news from which I acquired from several Lin-Manuel Miranda tweets.

• The announcement of King George will be included.
• “…you’re getting the whole show, every note & scene, & a 1-minute countdown clock during intermission (bathroom!)“
• Since it’s rated PG-13 does that mean that some (iconic) lines have been cut? – “MPAA has a hard rule about language: more than 1 utterance of “Fuck” is an automatic R rating. We have 3 “Fucks” in our show. So…..I literally gave two fucks so the kids could see it:
  1. In Yorktown, there’s a mute over “I get the f___ back up again”
  2. “Southern *record scratch*kin’ Democratic Republicans.”
  You can sing whatEVER you like at home (even sync up the album)!
  Love you. Enjoy.”
• Other good news, it will be available for more than one day, and for a while.

What we’ll see was shot in a three-day shoot. The performance was shot during a Sunday matinee. When the audience left, they shot closeups, dolly shots, and crane shots. Then on Monday (their day off), they shot additional closeups and did steady-cam work and did additional shooting on the following Tuesday.

https://twitter.com/SandhuMMA/status/1273947799894228992?s=09

Edge of a rainstorm.

I spent the majority of my Father’s Day afternoon in an emergency room which included me taking a COVID-19 test. I was having breathing difficulties and after several breathing treatments and tests, was released. The COVID-19 test was exactly what I thought it would be, a nasal swab to each nostril which felt like it touched my brain. While it was uncomfortable, it wasn’t as painful as many have made it to be. I should know my results in five to seven days.

Yesterday was our 17-year wedding anniversary. We share that honor with Col. White and his bride. It’s also would have been the 18 year anniversary of my widower neighbor and his wife.

I wasn’t totally comfortable with WifeGeeding taking the kids and visiting her parent in East Texas last weekend. The rising COVID-19 numbers were and still are a concern, and her side of the family isn’t concerned or taking as many precautions as I would like. For instance, they are traveling to Shreveport for a baseball tournament and plan on traveling to Memphis and Corpus Christi for others. But while they were away, I decided to finally watch the 2009 film Watchmen and then start on the related HBO series by the same name. I believe the HBO series is set 30-years after the events of the graphic novel and/or film. Then, on Monday, I read LiberallyLean’s blog and saw that he also started to watch the HBO series. I have some funny timing and coincidences with him despite never meeting or talking to the man. One of the things I get a kick out is the movie and series alternative universe. For instance:

• One of the Watchmen prevented the death of Thomas and Martha Wayne. Since they never died, Bruce never was an orphan, and thus Batman never existed.
• Nixon is elected to six terms. As you would guess, the 22nd Amendment regarding term limits was repealed.
• Vietnam becomes the 51st state to join the United States.

WifeGeeding and I started Netflix’s Ozark. I think the first episode is better than the first episode of Breaking Bad. Jason Bateman is better in the lead role than I expected, it’s nice seeing him play a different character than what we’re all used to seeing him. We’re only about for or five episodes in, and those following episodes don’t quite live up to the first episode, but I think that’s due to some character and plotline building.

Horses and dolphins.

Google’s new Chrome extension lets you link directly to specific text on a page

Link to Text Fragment is a new Chrome Extension from Google that lets you generate URLs to specific text on a webpage, regardless of the page’s formatting.

With the extension installed, simply highlight the text you want to link to, right click, and select “Copy Link to Selected Text.” This can then be shared and opened by anyone using a compatible browser.

A little over two months ago, the organization which runs the charter school our children attend and WifeGeeding teaches at sent out a survey about COVID-19 and the 2020-2021 school year. They recently shared the results of that survey and stated the school year would start on August 12, though they still aren’t sure what the school environment will look like. The survey responses surprised me, and I wonder what a more current survey would show.

• When provided the four options, 40% of parents favored starting school normally; 20% favored a return to school with additional safety and health measures in place; 19% were interested in a blended approach, and 16% favored remote learning.
• When provided with five different options, 40% of families expressed interest in following the district calendar as long as there would be an extended summer vacation; 30% of families said they were open to a year-long calendar if necessary; 14% said they preferred to follow the district independent of what they do, with 9% interested in a different start date.