Witchcraft at the turn of the year

[Adam Carlton writes].

Amazon link

We know that witchcraft works in pre-capitalist societies. It sometimes works in contemporary societies too. The question is not whether but why and how.

The placebo effect.

The great benefits of magic, its real benefits: to decrease anxiety in the practitioner; to accentuate a sense of being in control; to modify the behaviours of those around you in a positive, beneficial way.

If someone is irking you, then casting a spell upon them will be efficacious to the extent that they - subconsciously - come to buy in to your prowess.

We are all superstitious, susceptible to the opinions of others.

So I would advise anyone who is in a bind, with no obviously-causal course of action to hand, to consider magic. It's like organised religion but works better.

Getting magic to work can be difficult. Spells do not always come off. This is usually because something about the casting was amiss: the timing, the ingredients, the utterance of the words. It can be a bit hit-and-miss at first, but the results will come - to the amazement of those around you. They will appreciate your true powers; and your powers will thenceforth commensurately increase.

I am not joking.

The book above is on order for me. I suspect the spells are a little on the simple side, simple hedge-magic. But it kick-starts the process. I expect to graduate to a fuller grimoire, with spells conjured in Latin and darker languages.

“Accerso alius sententia ut mihi, phasmatis de interregnum ego dico, solvo meus mens mei, ego dico phasmatis audite meus placitum meus mens quod iacio (person's name).”

 "I summon the other mind as my own, I call upon the spirit of the in-between, release that mind to me, hear me spirits, it pleases me to hear projected the thoughts of (person's name).”
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I had in mind to open a small office devoted to magic in a seedy area of the city, perhaps near Sacré-Cœur. My consultancy in wizardry would include psychometric and intelligence tests as well as a full history. Magic works better when it cleaves the personal along its natural joins.

It would not be cheap.

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Our new kittens

Three pix of our new kittens: Hillary (white male - likes to climb things) and Princess (smaller sister, cute) which we acquired a few weeks ago. Both high on the cuteness factor.

This is how to eat!

The window ledge here is above the radiator

Most of the time they are racing around like mad things, chasing each other

This last picture from our new catcam in the kitchen; the other two from my phone.

I would really like to fix this image!

Clare aged around 15

This is a blurred image. I would really like to unblur it.

What is blurring? It is an artefact of the imaging process. If the image is out of focus, each point in the original is replaced (in the image) by an average value of neighbouring points. This process is called convolution, and blurring is sometimes modelled by a Gaussian point-spread function (PSF).

Pixelation is also a convolutional process. Here there is a uniformity of image value across the pixel; the pixel is formed via a uniform PSF. Both effects are present on the the picture above of the young Clare.

The process of restoring the orginal image is called deconvolution. It's complicated by three problems: (i) we normally don't know the exact PSF; (ii) the image always has added noise; (iii) information is thrown away in the blurred-imaging process. Recovery is inevitably somewhat speculative.

If the PSF is not known, it can be estimated in a process known as blind convolution. If the nature of the image is known (Clare's face) then model-based recovery could be used, particularly if we have other images of the subject (we do!).

This is an area where deep learning is very, very applicable; a spin-off from facial recognition systems. There are a large number of papers on the topic but I have failed to find an online website where I can simply upload the picture (and maybe some unblurred pictures of the subject) and get a restored, sharp picture to download.

Perhaps an iteration of Google Photos at some point? Like this:

State of the art (PDF)

The above images are from a team including Beijing Institute of Technology, Nvidia and Google Cloud. When can I get to use it?

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Update: June 15th 2020: There's a system online and I've tried it.

What I'm reading

Amazon link

A recommendation from Michael Roberts. An excellent overview of Neoclassical, Keynesian and Marxist economic theories. The authors are very conceptual, analytic and clear in their thinking. Suitable for anyone who's taken a first course in microeconomics.

The book is expensive but there's a PDF here which is free.

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Amazon link

This is the first Hilary Mantel book I've read and I'm impressed. On TV she comes across as a typical luvvy, very free with her de haut en bas opinions, but this 800 page monster shows off her authorial strengths. She does superlatively well what writers are meant to do: immerse yourself in the inner lives and the times of your characters.

Her focus is on the main players: "Georges-Jacques Danton: zealous, energetic and debt-ridden. Maximilien Robespierre: small, diligent and terrified of violence. And Camille Desmoulins: a genius of rhetoric, charming and handsome, yet also erratic and untrustworthy." - as the Amazon description puts it.

My only criticism (I'm halfway through) is that she hasn't quite tied-in the real social dynamics with the detailed, diary-like events which afflict her characters. I've just got to the Champ de Mars massacre (17 July 1791 in Paris) but I had to go to the Wikipedia article to get the context and background.

Still, the French Revolution is a kind of pure laboratory of the dynamics, look and feel of a popular insurrection. Mantel's novel is like a virtual reality excursion into unfolding events. Brilliant. It occurs to me that it could easily be updated, reset in contemporary times and made into a TV series. A rather maxi-series. Could someone green-light this?