That set off a chain reaction of horrific explosions which rocked the entire line of ships. The noise was deafening, and could be heard clear across Oahu as far away as Haleiwa on the North Shore. The accompanying concussions were so massive that windows were shattered throughout the Pearl Harbor and Hickam AFB area, and human bodies were flung miles into the air, some subsequently landing in downtown Honolulu. By the time the smoke finally cleared the next morning, 166 sailors, soldiers and Marines had lost their lives, another 376 had been wounded, six ships had been sunk or destroyed and another 14 ships seriously damaged.

The West Loch Disaster, as it's known today, delayed the invasion of Saipan by eight to ten weeks. And due to strict military censor restrictions, all news of it was embargoed so effectively that to this day, very few people have ever heard of it, even though it represents -- after the Japanese attack on Oahu in Dec. 1941 -- the second biggest loss of life in a single event in the history of the Territory and State of Hawaii. The wreck of LST 480, one of the ships destroyed in that tragedy can still be seen at West Loch today.

As we approach Memorial Day, we ought to also take time to remember those members of our armed forces who lost their lives in service to their country in circumstances sometimes far less well known or compelling than active combat against an enemy, but no less tragic.

I note that because the U.S. military was still racially segregated in the Second World War, with African Americans were often relegated to menial labor or provision and supply duty. As a result, most of the 166 men who were killed that day at West Loch 75 years ago were black. And their sacrifice clearly deserves commemoration, just as much as that of the Marines and soldiers who would later storm ashore at Saipan in August 1944.

Cohen was a struggling poet when they first came together on the Greek island of Hydra in 1960. And Ihlen became his greatest muse, inspiring one of his emblematic songs, So Long, Marianne, and several others, including Bird on the Wire, while at the same time giving him the confidence to sing in public.

Shortly before she died at 81, he was still reaching out to her. He wrote to her on her deathbed in her native Norway in July 2016: "Well Marianne, it's come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine.

And you know that I've always loved you for your beauty and your wisdom, but I don't need to say anything more about that because you know all about that. But now, I just want to wish you a very good journey. Goodbye old friend. Endless love, see you down the road."

Recently in a conversation he asked me, sarcastically, if there was anything about the country I was not angry about.

I said absolutely, I am proud of the courts.  The response was laughably programmed.  "Oh, you mean the 9th Circuit ."  

No, I said, that really not how it works.  I went on to explain there were several things in the courts that Trump was going to lose.  Which got hearty guffaws.

Today, no guffaws.  He appeared a bit pale and looked like he had not been sleeping well.

He disappeared after a quick hello.

DAKHABRAKHA - Yanky (live on festival stage)

Monakh (live in studio)

So

You put the garlic in a baggie and you find something to smack it with I have an old heavy knife that works perfectly

you bash it After bashing it a bit you use the narrow edge to bash it more finely

You want to try to keep it away from the bad edges or it may burst an edge.  This is easy to do with the back of the knife. When you got it

you cut the bottom off the baggie and deposit the garlic where ever you want it

The line is now minutes away and the sun is shining brightly and it's very hot.  That not good.

Internal Draft of IRS Legal Memo Found Only One Legal Justification to Keep Trump's Taxes From Congress

This is why people race -- to feel the speed, the car and the control.

Only the kind in little mesh bundles.

"Julian Assange's Indictment Aims at the Heart of the First Amendment.

The Trump administration seeks to use the Espionage Act to redefine what journalists can and cannot publish."

I got a kick out of Shift saying releasing documents was part of a cover up.

"The coverup has entered a new and dangerous phase," Schiff said in a statement released late Thursday. "This is un-American."

Tough talk may hold many Democrats who believe the House needs to move to an impeachment inquiry at bay as well as ameliorate stalwart Congressional supporters, such as Jackie Speier (CA) and Jamie Raskin (MD).

However, assertions of a "cover-up" are more than tough talk---it is an assertion of a misdeed, a breach of trust, or a crime. A possible article of impeachment admitted the Speaker which does not seem in correspondence with the need to "follow the facts" before we have an impeachment inquiry. The Mueller Report, redacted, has pages of factual material ready for their close-up.

The strategy is bolstered by recent favorable Court rulings. However, risks cannot be ignored---rulings yield wins and losses. Readings of the law may seem clear-cut, but the law is what the Courts say it is.

The strategy is to investigate all the same, just without any impeachment labeling. Patience is called for, but the acme of resources are needed to effectively address the clear and present dangers.

It is understandable, too, that impeachment, just in the name of the inquiry, may freak out a portion of the electorate and office holders---dooming prospects for 2020.  But, the past is not always prologue.  It is claimed that the 2018 Democratic victory in 2018 was not about Trump.  It was about health care.  

The fake videos of Pelosi posted by Trump in the last 24 hours looking drunk or crazy (I won't link to them but they are everywhere) are really nothing compared to this.

Deepfaking Mona Lisa

You really should watch this video.

Several recent works have shown how highly realistic human head images can be obtained by training convolutional neural networks to generate them. In order to create a personalized talking head model, these works require training on a large dataset of images of a single person. However, in many practical scenarios, such personalized talking head models need to be learned from a few image views of a person, potentially even a single image. Here, we present a system with such few-shot capability. It performs lengthy meta-learning on a large dataset of videos, and after that is able to frame few- and one-shot learning of neural talking head models of previously unseen people as adversarial training problems with high capacity generators and discriminators. Crucially, the system is able to initialize the parameters of both the generator and the discriminator in a person-specific way, so that training can be based on just a few images and done quickly, despite the need to tune tens of millions of parameters. We show that such an approach is able to learn highly realistic and personalized talking head models of new people and even portrait paintings.

The far-right gathered in Spokane Valley to push for the creation of Liberty State, a 51st US state that is intended to be something of a wildlife sanctuary for Christian conservatives, the Spokesman-Review reported Friday.

I only have one question.  Why Julia Roberts.  It's not that her performance was not good.   It was.  But at the risk of sounding ageist her age kept pulling me out of the story.  First we have the budding romance between her and the main soldier character who was (I checked) literally less than half her age.  Then we have her mother being played by (amazingly) by Sissy Spacek who (again, I checked) is technically old enough to BE her mother, barely, but they really look quite close to the same age in the show.  Finally we have the position he holds.  Which is sold in the script as them wanting someone not with experience but a young go getter. She is 51.

I just don't get it.  It's not like there are not thousands of actors who would have fit the character better.  Even some big names I'm sure.  There were some very serious names associated with this.

And don't get me wrong I'm all for aging actors being given roles that stretch their abilities to sell it.  And she really did sell it, more or less.

Wow, A Lot Of People Googled How To 'Cancel HBO' After Game Of Thrones Finale
 4 HOURS AGO  MICK JOEST

"After battling the disease of Lewy Body Dementia, Bill Buckner passed away early the morning of May 27th surrounded by his family," Buckner's wife, Jody, said in a statement to ESPN's Jeremy Schaap. "Bill fought with courage and grit as he did all things in life.

It haven't been easy.  It's incredibly well made.  You will definitely be hearing about it at awards time.  But not easy to watch.  A real true life horror story.

The odd thing is I watched week after week all the human suffering but this week it followed an "animal control" unit.  Who's job it was to go from village to village and kill all the pets, load them on trucks and dump them in big holes to be sealed in concrete.

This week was without question the most disturbing and difficult to take.  I can't even say why.

Many recent reports reflect April data, "which means it weakened before the re-escalation of trade tensions," Wilson continued. "In addition, numerous leading companies may be starting to throw in the towel on the second half rebound--something we have been expecting but we believe many investors are not."

Wilson was one of the most bearish stock strategists last year, defending his initial S&P 500 call of 2,750 for year-end 2018 without adjusting it throughout the year. By the end of the year, his call was the most accurate of any strategist tracked by CNBC.