March 2025 – Spinor Info

Friend of arXiv

Mar 282025

So I am a friend of arXiv. It’s true. I may have been critical of some of their processes from time to time, but I appreciate the absolutely invaluable service that they provide.

So yes, I am a friend of theirs. And now it’s official! They sent me this nice certificate, recognizing my contribution, responding to their request to help test a new upload page.

I was, by my count, one of 79 folks who did so. I am surprised; I expected more. I also feel a bit guilty that I only tested their new submission system once. (It was glitch-free, apart from some issue with HTML generation that, as far as I know, was not even part of the actual test.) Still, it is nice that they sent us these little certificates. It may not pay the bills or buy groceries, but I am proud to be their friend.

Crazy uncle

Canada, Politics No Responses »

Mar 192025

Canadians have long viewed our American neighbor as the proverbial crazy uncle. Eccentric, unhinged, loud and obnoxious, crashing parties and family reunions, but ultimately tolerable because his intent, despite all appearances to the contrary, is not malicious and there are no covert motives behind his behavior, however unpleasant it can be at times. And he has his charms, too.

But then imagine the same crazy uncle showing up one day, crashing his vehicle into yours in your own driveway. Out he jumps, berating you, threatening you with a lawsuit. Glancing at your teenage daughter, he causally mentions that he also feels entitled to rape her.

Even if he shows up the next day offering the most profound apologies for his behavior; even if all his relatives came to his defense, assuring you that his more-unhinged-than-usual conduct was just the result of a very bad day, that he didn’t mean any of it, that he is of course willing to pay for all the damage he caused; none of that matters, the relationship is irreparably harmed. It will likely take not years but decades, if it ever happens, before you’d welcome him at your home again as a visitor.

This is how many feel here in Canada, after witnessing the United States over the course of the past two months: specifically the accusations, the threats, the insults thrown in our direction.

When I asked Midjourney to produce images depicting the United States as the proverbial crazy uncle, I did not specifically mention Trump. My instructions were simple: “A satirical caricature, portraying the United States of America, as Canada’s proverbial crazy uncle who just crossed the line and did something unforgivable. –chaos 15 –stylize 200 –weird 300” Those parameter settings were only slightly higher than the default, to produce images of somewhat greater variety. This was one of many results with that recognizable visage.

Inequality

Economy, History, Politics No Responses »

Mar 182025

The other day, Elon Musk’s Grok kindly drew a plot for me. After it estimated (understandably crudely, since the data are inconsistent/unreliable) the percentage of global wealth owned by the top 1%, I asked it to create an diagram for inclusion in Web pages. Well, here it is, though converted to a PNG for easier sharing:

What is the significance, you might wonder? Simple. Look at the beginning, the early 20th century. Rising inequality, resulting in well-known upheavals: a world war, revolutions everywhere, the rise of totalitarianism, another world war.

But then, inequality plummeted. Not only that, it stayed low for decades. Precisely the decades of Pax Americana, the peaceful world of the Cold War, a world with two superpowers, yet a world that was mostly defined by the rules-based, liberal democratic world order imposed by the United States of America.

It all began to unravel in the late 1990s. Since then, inequality has been rising at a rate probably faster than the rate that characterized America’s Gilded Age in the late 19th century.

We know what happened the last time the world went down that road.

Security check

Computer Security, Personal No Responses »

Mar 172025

Today, I did a test login to my own server using the root account. The root account is almost never used for this purpose. I have not used it since, well, since April 28, 2020 it appears. Others, however, tried:

# ssh localhost
Last failed login: Mon Mar 17 01:27:21 EDT 2025 from 218.211.171.143 on ssh:notty
There were 181737 failed login attempts since the last successful login.
Last login: Tue Apr 28 17:33:43 2020

Now imagine: if my itty-bitty public-facing server gets this many probing attacks (roughly 100 attempts per day on average), what do large service providers face? Madness and chaos, that’s what.

And of course attempts to log in as root through ssh are by no means the only forms of attack that my server must deal with.

Three plots, two stories

Canada, Commerce, Economy, Politics No Responses »

Mar 132025

Look what Donald J. Trump, business genius, is doing to the US economy with his on-again, off-again tariff wars, antagonizing and alienating America’s most important allies and trading partners. This is now officially a “correction”, I am told.

Never mind, surely the targeted economies of those nasty trading partners, “taking advantage” of Trump’s America, are also suffering. Well, they do, but…

I guess that trained economists, financial experts will tell me not to jump to hasty conclusions. The differences may be due to many factors, including the fact that the Toronto index is enumerated in a different currency and all that. They’re right, of course. Nonetheless, I think this is telling. Yes, Canada’s main index is also down. But it’s still doing better than it did 6 months ago, unlike its major American counterparts.

But surely, what Donald “stable genius” Trump is doing to the US economy (not to mention NATO, the Western alliance, the rules-based world and all that) must be good by definition, right? The Leader is never wrong; those who think otherwise are enemies of the people, right?

Krasnov

Canada, Politics No Responses »

Mar 062025

Back in more innocent times, in January 2016, a year before he was inaugurated for his first term as President of the United States, Trump boasted that “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”

Only now do I realize the real meaning behind that statement. What he actually meant was, “I could stand in the middle of the Oval Office and commit high treason and I wouldn’t lose voters.”

For instance, today we learned that Trump will revoke the legal status of Ukrainian refugees. Each and every time I thought I saw the full depth of the depravity of Trump and his entourage (including Elon Musk), they surprise me some more. A few examples (just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, really, there is plenty more):

Trump’s treatment of America’s neighbors and closest allies, Canada and Mexico;
Trumps contempt towards America’s European allies and NATO in particular;
Threats to use force if necessary to annex Greenland, reoccupy the Panama Canal zone and turn Canada into the “51st state”;
The assault on press freedom, including Trump’s treatment of The Associated Press;
Installing loyalists of highly questionable credentials as key members of his cabinet;
Loyalty tests for other officials concerning the “stolen election” of 2020;
The firing of top military brass;
The “non-employment” of Elon Musk at DOGE, without a security clearance, an official mandate, or Congressional oversight;
The deplorable treatment of Ukraine’s wartime president, Zelenskyy, in the White House;
Cutting off military aid and critical intelligence to Ukraine;
Halting Cyber Command’s operations concerning Russia;
Voting in the United Nations on the side of Russia, North Korea, Eritrea and similar regimes;
Plans to turn Gitmo into a concentration camp for up to 30,000 asylum seekers;
Destroying USAID, America’s premier instrument of “soft power” abroad;
Indiscriminate firing of critical federal workers, including those maintaining America’s nuclear arsenal.

I know that our existing world order, Pax Americana, is kaput. The only thing I don’t know yet is whether Canada still has any viable options left to maintain our independence, our economic well-being, our territorial integrity, or if we are doomed already.

Krasnov, incidentally, is the presumed nickname given to Trump when he was recruited by the KGB in 1987, according to an uncorroborated accusation by Alnur Mussayev, a former Soviet security official. Whether or not he was indeed recruited, I do not know. But his present-day actions speak louder than any dubious accusations concerning his past.

History’s mistakes

History, Politics No Responses »

Mar 052025

I could not resist answering a Quora question about Trump and Ukraine: Trump wants a quick end to Russia’s war. How do you feel about his withdrawal of military aid to Ukraine, and what effect that will have on Putin’s willingness to come to the negotiating table?

For a brief moment, allow me to give Trump the benefit of the doubt and assume that he had the purest of intentions in his heart, that he was doing everything he was doing out of compassion, out of concern and a sense of responsibility, trying to end the bloodshed, the senseless war.

He won’t. There is a meme that has been very popular lately, and with good reason, recalling another instance when a similar choice was made:

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned triumphantly on September 30, 1938, from the Munich conference, where he agreed to Herr Hitler’s demands to compel Czechoslovakia to cede critical territory to Germany, and received assurances from the German chancellor that yes, this means peace in Europe. Chamberlain proudly waved the signed agreement as he was disembarking his aeroplane: “Peace for our times,” he proclaimed, cheered by many, with the notable exception of the “warmongering” Winston Churchill.

Germany attacked Poland almost exactly 11 months later, on September 1, 1939. (Chamberlain ultimately resigned the next year. Winston “not wearing a suit” Churchill became Britain’s wartime leader, a Prime Minister who guided his country through its “darkest hour” to victory — a victory made possible, in part, by unwavering help from an America that was not led by appeasers but by true leaders who fully understood the causes and consequences of Hitler’s actions.)

Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat its mistakes.

It’s usually my blog entries that I sometimes repost on social media. This time, I felt compelled to do the opposite.

United Kingdom

Canada, Politics 1 Response »

Mar 042025

I just had a brilliant idea*, something to help Canada as we are threatened by Trump’s tariffs, his calls to annex Canada as the 51st state, not to mention the tangible dangers represented by our militaristic northern neighbor Putinistan.

Would our British friends object terribly if Canada asked to rejoin the United Kingdom, turning the realm into the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Northern Ireland and Canada?

I admit that my crazy proposal is based on enlightened self-interest: The UK is a powerful country, with a strong military that also possesses a capable nuclear deterrent. But I think the UK would also benefit substantially from this newfound unity. Canada has a lot to offer, including land, resources, industries, and more. And we wouldn’t even have to change much… after all, we already share the same King, and, well, I’m sure our British friends would be willing to accommodate at least a small addition to the Union Jack…

Oh, Quebec, you ask? Well, the UK today is not the UK of the past. I suspect that a future United Kingdom that includes Canada would not only welcome français québécois as an important language along with Irish, Scots, Welsh and a host of other languages, the new realm would also fiercely defend the cultural integrity, independence, distinctness of the society of la belle province.

Vive le Royaume-Uni de Grande-Bretagne, d’Irlande du Nord et du Canada!

*I was inspired in part by the Privy Council’s role in deciding The Persons Case of 1929 and the consequent Living tree doctrine. If the Privy Council—arguably one of the more conservative institutions on the planet—could be so forward-thinking back in 1929, we may not be in bad company, should my proposal take hold.

Distractions

Personal, Physics, Politics No Responses »

Mar 042025

Considering our age and our lives, we are probably less exposed than most to the likely consequences of the dramatic changes in geopolitics that are about to unfold, threatening, never mind threatening, much more likely irreversibly damaging, destroying the rules-based world order that characterized the past 80 years. Nonetheless, I feel depressed, frustrated, anxious to the point that I no longer even enjoy some of my favorite television shows. Something as mild as a mistaken identity or a shared secret is enough to trigger a sense of anxiety, which I do not welcome.

Instead, I need distractions. Seriously, all I want to do is to play with our cats or dig into physics. Preferably both. Yes, I often consult with our cats when I think about physics.

Earlier tonight, I was thinking about the Einstein stress-energy-momentum pseudotensor and its possible uses, despite its shortcomings. The nonlocality of the energy of the gravitational field is a fascinating topic, and I keep wondering if it is directly connected somehow to the quantum nature of the universe in which we live.

Banning books

Books, Canada, Politics 1 Response »

Mar 022025

This morning, I stumbled upon an article in The Walrus, a Canadian newsmagazine, about book bannings… in Canada. It appears to be a robust, well-informed piece. It tells us, among other things, that book banning in libraries is popular on all sides of the political front. “Think of the children!” seems to be a common theme, whether it is conservatives trying to protect young readers from what they perceive as “grooming” or progressives trying to weed out works that they find “offensive”.

The CBC also had a recent report about the banning of books, but their reporting appears to be more concerned about bans specifically targeting “2SLGBTQ+” literature. (Frankly, I find this ever growing acronym itself a painfully transparent exercise in virtue signaling — the CBC demonstrated my concern when they failed to use the acronym consistently themselves, writing “2SLGBTQ” later in the same article, only to switch to “LGBTQIA+” when quoting another report.)

Meanwhile, The Walrus points out that censorship often has the opposite effect: E.g., when an attempt was made on Salman Rushdie’s life, sales of The Satanic Verses soared on Amazon. (Speaking from personal experience: I’d not have obtained, and read, a copy of Orwell’s 1984 in, well, 1984, had it not been on the list of unwelcome literature by communist authorities in my native Hungary.)

And of course one also has to wonder, as The Walrus does, if books are still relevant in the Internet era, when much of the written word we consume these days comes in forms other than traditional books or even electronic editions.

Whose side are we on anyway?

Politics No Responses »

Mar 012025

Four days ago, the United States voted against an imperialist European-led resolution at the United Nations General Assembly. The resolution condemned Russia’s attempt to free Ukraine from Nazi rule and had the audacity to demand the withdrawal of Russian troops from territories already liberated.

Supported by long-time allies, fellow warriors in the struggle against a tyrannical world order, including Belarus, Burkina Faso, Burundi, the Central African Republic, the DPRK (North Korea), Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Hungary, Israel, Mali, the Marshall Islands, Nicaragua, Niger, Palau, Russia and Sudan, the effort sadly failed nonetheless, due to overwhelming opposition by those greedy, warmongering Europeans (with the exception of the brave Hungarians) and their boot-licking vassals elsewhere.

Meanwhile, even as the US President finally told Ukraine’s dictator the truth in a contentious meeting at the White House, America’s Secretary of Defense, a former well-respected commentator on the truth-telling television channel Fox News who also bravely battled the demon of alcoholism before joining the Cabinet, finally ended efforts to antagonize Vladimir Putin’s glorious nation by ordering America’s Cyber Command to stand down and cease all hostile activities towards Russia.

What a great world we live in! We just have to pick the right side…