actually, i think he's missed the boat on this. this was true in the 70s, nobody listened, and now we have a mess. moving forward, college degrees are the next thing to become useless, as industry after industry becomes integrated with advanced automation.

rather than bite and claw around ways to find new types of jobs, i think we need to come face-to-face with the so-called luddite fallacy and realize that the technology is getting to the post-marxist reality of superproduction, taking us off these so-called infinite growth curves. this is actually progress, in terms of maximizing individual human freedom. but it's going to require a paradigm shift in economics, which of course won't happen.

in the meantime, you're looking at an economy run by robots and endemic structural employment, driving political unrest that's going to lead to some hard choices. the teleology be damned, but i think the dude got it right.

nowadays, unless you have a passion for academia, you're really better off just trying to get in somewhere when you're 17 and focusing on climbing the ladder.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/cut-university-enrolment-by-30-expand-colleges-ceo-commissioned-report-urges-1.3014893

i just saw the animal i've been seeing traces of around here for the last few months, but i neither had my glasses nor a camera. it looked like a large black felid, which is confusing me in how i ought to react.

see, there aren't supposed to be large, black felids anywhere around here. it's established that there are cougars in the region, but melanistic cougars aren't supposed to exist; rather, a large, black felid would probably be a jaguar, and this is nowhere near it's historical range. the thing is, though, that people keep seeing them, all over the eastern side of the continent.

it was standing in a back alley, beside a garbage can, about 20 m away and just looking at me. my eyesight is not terrible, but it's not good enough to tell the difference between a large cat, a large dog and a coywolf at 20 m. i just backed away slowly, ensuring i didn't turn my back, like one is supposed to in such an encounter.

given the combination of evidence i have (including it's interest in the garbage can) it seems far more likely that it's a coywolf. if so, i'm not really worried. they sound scary, and everything, but they don't see us a prey source. in fact, they help in the pest control (rats, birds, and especially canada geese) that the city won't carry out anymore.

but i can't shake the fact that it *looked* like a cat. and if it is a cat, it's an obligate carnivore - unlike the coywolves. canids can eat fruit and whatever else is left out. cats need fresh meat, and if that's a cat, it's a big one.

again: the reality is that i have no convincing evidence. the idea of a jaguar hanging out in downtown windsor is patently absurd; if i were on the other side of the phone, i would laugh at anybody calling that in. but i remain concerned about the possible consequences (children being eaten) of ignoring this.

i need to make sure i have my phone on me when i go out...

i mean, if i was confident it was just passing through, then whatever. but it seems to be making a home here.

something i've been thinking about is whether this might be a good "safe place" for a species like this, specifically to raise cubs. big cats like this can move a good distance, and it's really not that far out to areas where there's large amounts of deer. an abandoned house in the city is probably a safer place to leave the cubs.

i know - they'd be detected by now. but they're pretty sneaky, actually.

wow, rt. i don't expect your media major anchors to have masters degrees in law, but this is painful to watch.

the division of powers is a jurisdictional issue, and it's crystal clear within constitutions. even the most corrupt judge can't really fuck these kinds of cases up. there's very little room for interpretation. in fact, it's surprising it even went to court - especially if the argument was some kind of incoherent "exception". no. no exceptions to division of powers...

this could turn itself on it's head, though. if the rule is that it's in the city's jurisdiction, that means that local law trumps state law, absolutely. which means that all the companies need to do is bribe their way into city council to get a specific ban overturned.

it actually renders cuomo's decision irrelevant.

it's also the reason why city council votes on decriminalizing marijuana are useless; the division of powers places this (criminal law) in state and ultimately federal jurisdiction, so the city has no control over it.

he more i look at the reaction to this, the more i think it will backfire.

"mike pence is a leader.
mike pence turned indiana into the new west virginia.
vote mike pence, 2016."

on the bright side, it should be good for west virginia.

this would have been assumed unconstitutional before the hobby lobby case last year. i know it looks like a local legislative issue, but it's really a federal judicial issue.

a lot of companies have come out against this as unworkable, including a lot of what's left of the manufacturing sector there. what they need to do is focus on changing the judicial precedent, by orchestrating a case that forces the court to deal with a contradiction they can't square. it should have to do with workplaces restricting christianity, somehow. that will force the court to reverse itself, which will allow a judicial challenge of this law.

that could take 20 years.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LH2FVxrj4k

my guess is that the second car was following the first, the driver got scared about getting lost and made a stupid choice as a consequence of it. the truck has too much inertia to stop that quickly.

you know who is likely to argue against intelligent extra-terrestrial life?

lizard people.

think about it.

i agree that intelligence seems to be lethal, here, on this planet. i even wrote a symphony about it in the late 90s.

but we really can't even talk about the chemistry of possible extra-terrestrial life, really. there's just far too many variables to be able to get a handle on this...

for example, look at the way that plants or mushrooms work, with these elaborate root structures. if a species like that evolved intelligence, it might be collective, and then the game changes. or, look at ants. smart ants would be a frightening proposition.

i want to argue the bigger issue is distance, but it's only meaningful relative to our short lives. maybe some other species has a lifespan of 10,000 years. then, these distances are manageable.

but i do think that, if there was anything close enough to contact, we'd already know about it. either there's nothing in this area of the universe or the information is being suppressed (i don't think that's so crazy....) or they were here before, and are avoiding us....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ccNt4Dzyfg

it seems like a lot of the people in the united states want a king, not a president.

he's kind of half making a valid point. it's one thing to point out that the lack of local activism is responsible for the lack of movement - and he's technically correct in doing so. it's another to look at the viability of local activism, combined with the broad intentions of the american public. it's not clear that americans ever wanted a republic. it's pretty clear at this point, however, that they don't, right now. maybe they will one day...

putting obama's soft right leanings aside, historians looking back are going to see a blown opportunity. he walked into this with a congressional majority, and sat on his hands until it disappeared. now, he complains he can't get anything through congress. oops.

a kid doesn't like tests.

shocking.

"i propose less tests and more recess."

i think she's half right, but she's got it backwards. people who have attended university have been through these courses where you take a final exam that's worth 60-75% of your grade. they're often multiple choice, and focus on irrelevant details. they're worded in tricky, confusing ways. as metrics, they're useless in determining anything other than whether the student can memorize large amounts of mostly useless information - information that can be googled in 20 seconds in the modern real world. many large employers also use similar tests for screening purposes.

like it or not, and criticize it's value, but it's what job applicants have to deal with in the real world.

walking into that reality, i wish i'd been prepped for it a bit more. i never took tests like that in high school and never really adjusted properly.

it's got to be one way or the other - either we need to prepare our kids better for what's going to happen when they get older, or we need to revamp everything. as it is, as long as the universities and employers continue to use these kinds of tests, it's important to get the kids ready. this idea of marching kids along naively and shrugging when they don't adjust to the things you never taught them is really shitty.

she denies that the results of the test are meaningful. whomever told her this is wrong. her ability to pass tests of this sort will have long term implications, when she starts writing them as a young adult.

the mirror-test as a metric for innate self-awareness seems to have some problems. these kids react exactly the same way an iguana would.

28-03-2015: screaming females - ripe (ferndale)

their music:
http://screamingfemales.com/

review:
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2015/03/28.html

banging upstairs literally damaged light fixtures

hi.

i don't know what you're doing up there this morning, but i'm pretty sure i heard some wood snap and the light fixture in the other bedroom was literally knocked out of it's frame as the result of the banging. it sounds like a lot of heavy things have been dropped on to old wood that shouldn't have heavy things dropped on it.

i think i should be able to rescrew the fixture in. but the fixtures belong to you, and i'm supposed to inform you of issues involving them.

but i mean...this is pretty extreme. and the snap was loud; it seems like the joists in the room were damaged, so i'd advise coming down to see the damage - and maybe being a little more careful with these old, rotting floors. between the water damage and the crumbling plaster and everything else, the floors are really taking a lot of stress.

(pause)

i was able to fix the fixture, and there's nothing to see except some chunks of plaster - although it seems like there's a lot of loose chunks of something in the ceiling. like, when you adjust the fixture, you can feel it rolling around in large, loose chunks of something broken.

so, on second thought, i'm not sure there's anything to see.

but it really sounded awful. it wasn't the creak of an old floor. it was more like a stick snapping in a fire.

i mean, these are old floors. if you abuse them enough, they'll give way.

"not the first time i lost to a black guy"

this makes no sense as a joke, unless it means to say that blacks are inferior, and it's some kind of shameful thing - in which case it's self-deprecating. and flatly racist. he deserves some pushback for that, it's not acceptable....

in all seriousness

1) dogs have very sensitive noses. some of that stuff - like the taco - was pretty heavy. it's like getting kicked in the groin.
2) i'd be worried about the dog choking on a few of the smaller items. i've seen dogs that can barely eat out of a bowl without coughing.
3) your dog sucks. i've never had to teach a dog - especially not a golden - how to catch. it's innate.

 
regarding the carbs...

dogs are not obligate carnivores like most cats are. wild canids actually tend to eat a lot of fruit. you can pretty much follow the same rules as you'd follow for people - keep the refined sugars down.

rachele.ls
You took it too far, it's not that serious. It's food, not bricks so his nose is probably fine.

deathtokoalas
no, i think you're underestimating how sensitive the nose is. that taco would have really stung, if she didn't move out of the way.

if you've seen those videos of lava flows moving at a crawl towards villages and everybody just standing around shrugging, it does bring up the question of trying to do something to stop it. of course, the problem is that just about anything you could think of putting in the way is just going to melt, so it seems pointless. and you'd imagine that the amount of ice necessary to even slow it down a little is going to create flooding issues as bad as the lava flow (once the bulk of it transfers to the atmosphere).

i guess this is maybe useful as something exploratory, to get a better understanding of it. but i wouldn't count on seeing helicopters dropping piles of ice on moving lava flows any time soon...

he's logically correct, but it's pulling a negative proof trick. it's not a fallacy, it's more of a refuge. it's like a theist pointing out that you can't disprove the existence of god. fair enough, but it doesn't really help. there really isn't any way to disprove free will, either. but i think the balance of evidence leads to a skeptical position.

i mean, it's pretty convincing, this idea that we're in control. and it may seem trivial to suggest that we're bound to trivial debates. but, it's not really an argument.

every human out there has their intellectual crutches. there's really good reasons why chomsky, as an individual, is going to fight against the rejection of free will. but he's really just twisting the question around.

dj cavi
+deathtokoalas free will does not need to be disproved. it is a meaningless term. our will directs our decisions. man that is not in a prison is free... from being in prison, and that is it

deathtokoalas 
+dj cavi  i think you're misunderstanding the concept of free will - it refers to whether we're in control of our decisions. you claim our will directs our decisions. but, that's exactly the question to be pondered - does it really, or are we in some way controlled by outside forces? not market forces, or biological forces. that's more the question of a hobson's choice. but a hobson's choice is only a false choice in the sense that taking the other option leads to negative consequences. in that sense we're not and probably never can be truly free. but we can always choose (or seem to choose) to starve ourselves, or get beaten or be homeless or whatever other thing comes from not taking the "only" choice. i mean, i don't want to come off as a randian or something, but if you're approaching the issue strictly logically, you can't just ignore this. we are seemingly free to do stupid things that will harm us in the short or long term.

that's not really getting at the issue of free will, though. that asks a question more subtle: if we seem to choose to starve or be beaten or be homeless, did we really make that decision?

personally, i'm somewhat of a verificationist. and, in that sense i do agree that the question is rather meaningless. but, i'd take a position of agnosticism on issues of the sort. i think that's the correctly rational perspective: the evidence may lean towards skepticism, but i'm not about to take a hard position either way. i couldn't imagine a theory on free will that could be falsifiable.

but, the "nice story" i like is sort of leaning towards a fatalist conception of the universe. this huge explosion happened some time in the distant past, and the entire universe is a complicated consequence of it - inalterable, and entirely determined. that actually abolishes free will. you choose to starve because of the big bang. modern physics would argue "but there's so many random things!". well, that's not entirely clear. we know there are some things we don't seem to be able to alter. that's as easily an argument for fatalism as it is for chaos - we lack the ability to affect outcomes, and have no concept of how we conceivably might, meaning, as far as we can tell, there's only one way it can conceivably happen. and, we simply can't argue we have "controlled conditions" when we don't understand the factors that could possibly alter the outcome, so the basis of the argument for "different outcomes from controlled experiments" collapses on the point of the experiment possibly not being controlled.

but, that's not falsifiable and is likely never going to be.

Wizardry
Time is modeled as a line. A line is formed of ∞ points. Points are zero-dimensional; i.e., they do not have volume, area, length, or any other higher-dimensional analogue. Is the line, used to represent time, so different from time itself? Or may the line represent time more accurately than you are presently aware? Only time will tell. Welcome to the Mysterium Tremendum. Please excuse the self-possessed numinosity and have a wonderful new day, my Shpongled friends!

ImprovisedSurvival
Not so sure. Even a period on a paper has a third dimension. From a far enough distance, the Earth will appear as a single point/ zero dimensional, as do the stars in space, or the cells in your body, or the galaxy above, or the grain of sand below, or the atom inside, or the solar system outside, the nucleus, the electron, the photon... universe.  

All is perspective

Wizardry
The period on a paper though, is not the same as a point as defined by Euclidean geometry:  "The description of a point, 'that which has no part,' indicates that Euclid will be treating a point as having no width, length, or breadth, but as an indivisible location."

That being said, I think you may have been making reference to the fractal nature of the universe (As above, so below) in which case I partially agree with your sentiment.

ImprovisedSurvival
Euclid is dead, the only thing that has no width, length and breadth is the space in between the lights

enleuk
A line is not made of points if a line has length but a point does not. Instead it becomes a line as soon as it is something more than a mere point, as soon as it has a length, however minuscule, i.e. even an infinitesimal line is a line and not a point as long as it retains any length at all. In other words, a line is not a row of non-dimensional dots, but a distance between two non-dimensional positions. In reality, there are neither straight lines nor points.

Time is motion, motion is a change in any direction, we can call this direction length. It's not a straight line though. If we assume that the Big Bang was the start of time, at least the start of motion in our universe, our bubble, regardless if other bubbles exist, then obviously time and motion is rather chaotic, spreading outwards from the centre and also clumping together and moving in fairly unpredictable directions at any given local point.

Wizardry
Theoretical science seems to have a way with creating something from nothing for no reason.  Lines arise from nothings in big fancy bangs and bring forth talking monkeys after aeons of "chaos."  I guess that's not as far fetched as an omnipotent creator designing a world intentionally...or is it?  I guess the big explosion at the start with all the chaos makes it more edgy and entertaining for the youth.

enleuk
Excuse me for explaining the errors of your description of Euclidian geometry, I'll never do it again.

deathtokoalas
euclidean geometry is either incomplete or inconsistent. i think that hilbert's approach of undefined terms is preferable. what is a point? what is a line? we can't express these things in language, but we know them when we see them.

that said, it's not really all that bad to think of an infinite number of points in a line segment. any continuous subset of the real line is uncountable.

time is often modeled as a line, but you're oversimplifying it. if you'd like to understand how time and space are connected, i would suggest investing some time into the theory of relativity. which, fwiw, requires very non-euclidean geometry.

yeah. i think he's a cia agent, basically.

i think it's actually occam's razor. the idea that he's really that brainwashed and self-righteous is hard to believe. and he really doesn't seem to be trolling.

it's just a step beyond apologism. it's active support. i know he denies it, but it's purely cognitive dissonance. he's gotta be working this...

give him another 5-10 years, and he'll miraculously "see the light" and starting writing books about "spirituality". that's the end game: hook then co-opt. wait for it....

you know, i'm always skeptical about these kinds of things. it's like.....nice speech, johnny, but then why don't you ratify the rome convention? the rules exist. they've been worked out. but your country won't adopt them. you can stand around and talk all you want, but you won't sign the critical documents. but, bringing angelina jolie in is simply good politics, if you're trying to shore up the vagina vote.

there's some code words in this speech that have made me look at it a little differently, though. population control code words. eugenics code words.

i mean, the bottom line is that we can't have a reasonable discussion about this, so it's just kept out of public debate. we're going to start calling each other nazis and stuff. that doesn't mean there aren't valid policy objectives underlying family planning or abortion planning. i mean, we breed like rodents. we've been lucky that the technology has continually put malthus off to the next decade. but that carrying capacity is an unavoidable, finite limit. it's an eventual inevitability.

let's be clear: rape continues as a military tactic because it is successful in asserting dominance over conquered populations. it's the most successful intimidation tactic out there. the american army used it in iraq. so long as it continues to be effective, it's going to be continued to be used, by militias and major armies, alike.

but, let's consider the ramifications of mass rape in a society with little to no access to contraception, and essentially no access to abortion. these are children born to displaced mothers into violent circumstances. they have little future but to become a "security concern", as angelina put it.

i remain skeptical that this is really possible, except on paper. it's too powerful a tactic. and i'd again point to those unratified statutes. but what's driving this is not what's apparent, and it may be wielding a higher level of influence than is obvious.

in order to maintain a healthy species, women need to be able to make free and uncoerced decisions about who they allow to impregnate them. i'm not sure this history has been written. and, if it were, it would likely be rejected as racist. but, take a look at the areas of the world that were mass raped by the mongol armies for centuries and think it through.

but, how do you convince your boss to pay you in bitcoins, when he works for the bank?

i remain skeptical about this stuff. but, it might make some sense on the other side of automation, which is the actual revolution we're on the brink of.

retail is now the largest part of the economy, and it's on the brink of being replaced by robots. when that happens, we're looking at a highly productive and almost jobless economy.

where bitcoin makes some sense, in this context, is as a rationing tool to ensure roughly equal access to goods.

but, if you're putting your faith in the future of a currency, you're really just daydreaming as the car heads towards the cliff. the trends are pointing to a distributive system where currency, as a medium of exchange, is largely obsolete.

neither are really wrong. but you need to back 'er up a bit.

crt is a subset of a broader critical legal theory. the idea of critical legal theory is that the law is just a tool to push through political opinions, so all this idea of reasonable people and objective rational logic is just a lot of bullshit - smoke and mirrors to cover the state's application of it's ideological aims. it applies to all kinds of things. crt is a racial application of the broader theory to the remnants of apartheid in the american south.

the way i'd explain it quickly in a youtube comment is just that the official approach to legal theory has it backwards. the basis of our legal system is that the judge is supposed to look at the evidence and draw a rational, logical conclusion of how the law applies to it, in a way that is consistent with existing legal precedents. what the critical theorists says is that this is, in practice, almost always just a utopian abstraction. what judges actually do is form an opinion, then go looking for a precedent that backs up the opinion. there are so many legal cases to draw upon that this is more or less a worthless formality, especially at the higher levels. the court system consequently reduces to a person in a robe enforcing a subjective and personal opinion, not an objective system of impartial justice. justice is not blind, but merely the personal opinion of the judge.

i wouldn't consider this to be radical. it's pretty apparent, actually, if you take a look through some case law. and the applications are very, very wide.

now, a lot of things are going to affect those personal opinions. crt is just the idea that racism is going to be one of them, if the society is rooted in racist institutions. and, through large swaths of the southern united states, this is pretty apparently true.

now, soledad is right in pointing out that you're going to read this at any school. not just harvard. it's in the spectrum. it can't be ignored. teaching it doesn't imply any partiality towards it. it's just barack doing his job.

but, suggesting that it has nothing to do with white supremacy is disingenuous. it is the basic premise. but, it's not particularly radical to acknowledge that it's an accurate premise - so long as you're careful about your application of it.

i noticed a little while back that something in commercially available white flour was messing with my intestines something nasty. i switched to whole wheat and the problem completely resolved itself. now, here's the thing - white flour really is a pretty horrific thing to consume, when you look at what you're eating. it's consequently not that whack to think people are really noticing a difference when they switch their bread, even if the gluten issue, itself, is being over self-diagnosed something ridiculously.

yeah. the logic here is entirely backwards. it's precisely because the minimum wage jobs (retail, services) are immoveable that the government has a lot of flexibility to dictate minimum wages without affecting the economy. you can't pick the store up and move it, so you can poke the companies in the eye and fling rotten food at them and do whatever else you want with no consequence. the government has the leverage here, not the private sector.

in theory, you can pick the assembly line up and move it. but, they're already gone, anyways. assembly line jobs tend to be unionized, which puts most of them well above minimum wage to begin with.

the argument is really over the sanctity of the market. liberal market advocates will jump through all sorts of absurd hoops to try and convince you that it is "logical" to not interfere. but, virtually every one of their arguments is deconstructed quite easily. don't let them fool you...

regardless, what's happening with these increases is that they're moving with inflation. this consequently is NOT an increase in the real minimum wage, it's just a fair adjustment to reverse what would have otherwise been a loss due to inflation. it's an excellent policy that we're lucky to have here. it means we'll never lose income due to inflation.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-raises-minimum-wage-to-11-25-1.3001278

any tension relief from refraining from coffee is being reversed by struggling to stay awake more than 12 hours. i felt alert around noon, but now i'm a walking zombie. i'm going to let it sit for tonight nonetheless, and likely hit it pretty hard tomorrow.

now that the weather's cleared up, i want to get out to some more shows. part of the point of this was to force myself to hang out in the art spaces of detroit to meet people (which i'm very bad at), but it really seems to be a lot of terrible. i'm going to get out to see some rock shows, though: torche, screaming females, lightning bolt, loma prieta, la dispute...

one thing that became a little clearer as the tension came down a bit was that a part of what's happening is related to the bones. i think there's some chips in there, although it's hard to get to cause and effect. the earliest i remember this happening was after i got a tetanus shot after i smashed my face in when i fell of a bike, in 2005. i'm not pinning anything on the tetanus shot, but it seems that the bones never really healed properly. i don't know if all the tics are chipping it, or if the chips are causing the tic..

i'm glad that the blu-ray install was painless. the plug & play picked it up (never clear with this version of xp that i've hacked into pieces. i can't get it to read my sansa mp3 player consistently, for example. but it seems to be good with drives.), and imgburn knows what to do with a big iso. so, i didn't even have to install any new software. it's kind of like it just worked. how about that. must be a talented tech that set it up that way.

i'm trying to get rid of an expired bottle of peanut butter, but am going to crash shortly. it seemed promising this afternoon. it really did. but it's been a long time since i've been off coffee...

one more day for recovery/detox. i'm going to try to hit torche on friday.....

i literally slept all due tuesday (my legs were too sore for much of anything), and spent most of yesterday immobile but got my eating playlist padded for another few months. that's actually a time consuming process, the way the feeds are designed. it would be nice if you could jump to a specific point in the feed. alas...

my legs are back, at least.

i'm going to spend the next several hours getting information off my politics page. i'll likely only take a dent out of it, but this is a good time for it. i'm basically sick.

as for the effect? well, i'm feeling my perception of time slow down a little. a bit of tension has removed itself from my head and neck, but it still lingers - i think it's still releasing. and i'm more hydrated, which is an all around positive regarding skin and everything else. but the facial ticks have merely slowed down.

i'm sticking with the water. no doubt. but i think i've convinced myself the coffee is not the problem. and i'll consequently likely get back on it and back to work next week. i need a few more days though, to let the tension really wind down....

grandePaoloDiCanio
Living in Korea, I can tell you only 1% of women are naturally pretty, the rest is either average or did plastic surgery. About 40% of women over 18 did plastic surgery, especially eyes, nose and even jaws ... so repealing imo ....

deathtokoalas
actually, i believe this is accurate. there's a stigma in eastern asia right now regarding epicanthal folds, especially. facial surgery to "westernize" appearance is a near necessity for career advancement in a society dominated by a strange kind of inverted european supremacy and accompanying inferiority complex.

statistics regarding breast augmentation in certain parts of the united states are equally as alarming.

xxx
+deathtokoalas part right but part wrong. it's true that many koreans think western(caucasian) people are good looking but it's only about shape. not else. when humans are sexually attracted to opposite sex humans, it's not only about shape. the physical attraction of human appearance is about 4 senses. sight, touch, sound, smell. so the physical attraction is the shape, eyeballs, skin, body smell, voice. it's true than many koreans are attracted to caucasians' shape. but not their skin, not their eyeballs, not their voice, not their smell.

this beauty thing is totally subjective thing. it's not objective thing at all. most koreans prefer korean food than western food. not because korean food is better. it's just because of subjective preference. i'm a korean guy and most koreans guys i know prefer asian porn than caucasian porn. i'm not trying to be rude. i'm simply saying the reality. sorry for my bad english.

deathtokoalas
+xxx my understanding is that the drive behind the plastic surgery is not a desire to maximize sexual attraction but career ambition. it's apparently hard for a female to get a job in large parts of east asia without conforming to a westernized, hypersexualized norm.

oguns iron
+deathtokoalas not sure this is about white supremacy. If it's about typically european features, why aren't they all trying to have huge noses ? why aren't they all wearing clear contacts ? Round eyes exist among east-asians. They're just not that common.

I think people often misinterpret beauty trends in peoples from outside the european world. People will often say that the preference for light skinned women in africa is due to a desire for european looks. Is it ? Then why aren't african men clamoring for european style butts too ? lol

deathtokoalas
+oguns iron the answer is that they only know "white" through what's been sold to them. much as we only know "asian" through what's been sold to us. whites are presented to them in media as these perfect, aryan superpeople. a master race. and, it comes out rather starkly in the media they create for themselves, which consistently pushes this almost nazi mythology.

but, i mean, i don't think it's conscious white dominance. it's more of an inferiority issue than a dominance issue (although where there is one, there is the other). most westerners simply don't know that south korea spent decades after the armistice (1953) as an authoritarian american-controlled military dictatorship. this video itself glosses over that. south korea really wasn't organized very differently than north korea, it just had the typical western-backed nationalist/fascist dictator in place - like in egypt, or taiwan, or, previously, iraq. there was no freedom of expression in south korea between 1953 and 1988. as an occupying power, the united states did what occupying powers do, which was often (and sometimes still is) rather brutal. as the culture reconstructed itself after the lingering destruction of world war two into the korean war, it did so in an atmosphere where whites were everywhere dominant - in media, on the street, in the economy, etc. and, when you combine that reality with an inherently hierarchical culture, you get this weird inferiority complex.

i'm not making this stuff up, it's out there in print.

oguns iron
what i notice often around the world is that peoples will often want to imitate characteristics of other people who are closely related, but whose appearance is considered ideal. It doesnt always have to do with dominance, btw. The romans considered the germans savages but they did like the looks of their women. The indians have always praised white skin very very much, but you don't see them praising blond hair and blue eyes. If Indian beauty standards were all about trying to look at British as possible, they would be all about blond hair and other nordic looks but they aren't. Instead, north-ndian beauty standards are basically Iranian standards and north-india can be argue to belong to the wider persian civilization in significant ways.

A lot of very poorly educated people want to reduce everything to european influence. Yes it certainly had some influence but non-europeans weren't blank slates before a few centuries ago.

deathtokoalas
+oguns iron i don't think that you're understanding what white supremacy is. white supremacy is not about skin tone, it's about culture. speaking of white supremacy in east asia is consequently not a question of being victims of history, or denying agency. what we see in east asia is east asians going out of their way to participate in what they see as a superior culture. they want to join the master race, to discard what they've been taught to see as an inferior culture and become the superior, dominant one. it's more like a successful colonizing process.

Philip
only 1% of women are natural beauty? do not exaggerate or lie stupid. do you think any country or group like that exists in the world? i'll say more than 80% of women in Korea are 100% natural. Of course Korea has high rate of plastic surgery rate but most of them are actually not 'plastic' surgery because most of the surgery are just making double eyelids. very simple surgery. it is still true that there are relatively bit more women who get real 'plastic' surgery compared to United States or Japan, because of relatively cheap price but high level of medical&surgery skills.

deathtokoalas
the statistics (including the removal of epicanthal folds) are indeed somewhere around 40%, which is quite a bit higher than the still alarming statistics for breast augmentation in the united states (which is the proper comparison, taking cross-cultural concerns into consideration).

(deleted response)

deathtokoalas
+Hwan Hong Lee listen, i don't have any nationalistic sympathies, here. i'm a canadian of mixed caucasian and native american descent. i'm just stating the facts. and the numbers really are that high, if you'd care to look into it.

[the 1% part is a little more contentious]

imnotgaybut20is20
where did u pull thoses stats? from ur ass?

deathtokoalas
+imnotgaybut20is20 it's easily googleable. you'll get various numbers (1 in 5, 1 in 3, half), but 40% is in the range of published estimates.

(deleted response) 

deathtokoalas
+Cassey Belle my understanding is that it's pretty openly discussed in korea, actually. there's no shame attached to it at all. it's just a tool to use for social advancement. if anything, there may be a stigma attached to not having surgery, kind of like there's a stigma attached to being overweight. "too lazy to get surgery", "too poor to afford surgery", etc.....

you have to remember this is east asia, which is really on the bleeding edge of everything cybernetic and transhumanist. the stigmas against technology that we have here, that ultimately greek cult of natural beauty, is foreign to their culture, which is going to be in favour of anything that will give you a competitive advantage to get ahead. there's no concept of individual creation in god's image, either. it's a more collectivist society, rooted in deeper concepts of conformity. beauty is less in the eye of the beholder, and more defined by adherence to culturally enforced norms.

but, we're in an open economy now.

it's not that i'm debating the multiplier effect. that idea worked nicely when we were all in closed economies with these nice, hefty tariffs protecting us from the outside. but, that world is not with us anymore.

the construction worker might or might not buy a car, but let's look at more pressing targets of income. first, the construction worker is probably in a lot of debt. credit card debt. student loan debt. mortgage debt. before any new cars are purchased, all that debt needs to be addressed. and, then where does the construction worker go to spend what's left over?

the assumption justifying deficit-spending was that the money would go into local companies, which would invest in local manufacturing, which would create local jobs. the chain of logic is as valid as it's ever been. but, if the construction worker buys goods at walmart (likely, lowest cost) then the investment goes overseas and creates jobs in asia. it pulls the rug out from under the policy.

if we're smart reasonable people, we realize that jobs are created through increases in aggregate demand. but, when you apply that to the service sector it translates merely to urban sprawl. increased sales at walmart don't create jobs, they just make the workforce work harder.

it's in some senses an irrelevant concern in terms of half of the policy. somebody has to fix the infrastructure, and that somebody is invariably going to be the federal government. but, the reality is that free trade abolished keynesian deficit-spending as a coherent economic idea. the effects will multiply out into the global economy, sure. but, the only way that the government can create jobs is directly. deficit-spending just can't create jobs in a system of global free trade and offshored manufacturing.

this debate over whether the government ought to influence the economy is anachronistic. today, the government is unable to influence the economy. and that requires some serious adjustment on the pseudo-left.

in a world of absurdity and debt slavery, suicide is often the only rational option. it's just a question of coming to terms with it. the lucky ones are those that can put it off the longest, but in the end we're left with the rational choice of suicide or giving up and giving way to the delusional nature of the existence we inhabit.

but, we can't be allowed to understand this - not all of us, not all at the same time. the entire society would collapse. so, we're force fed these elaborate systems to trick us into meaning. we're taught to alienate the bright few that get the meaninglessness and hopelessness inherent in our economy. this appears to be ideological enforcement.

life has meaning, kids. only crazy people think otherwise. now put on your uniform and get to fucking work.

here's the thing: if we all understood this at the same time, if we let the whole thing collapse, we might actually emancipate our minds to the point where we could build a world worth living in.

but, see, that's why i'm crazy.

of course.

it's a good idea gone wrong.

first of all, i'm going to state the obvious, which is eluding people: if the union movement was succeeding, this couldn't happen. it's a reflection of the failure of unions as a tactic. but this has been gone over repeatedly: it's the hierarchical nature of the union. the reduction of union to management. it defeats the point. now, workers are paying two management classes instead of one, and getting screwed over nearly as badly.

what they're describing here is a type of parasitism. it's ambulance chasing. they bargain the wages up 50%, then take half the increase. that's as capitalistic and thieving as any other management class. after a few years of inflation, they really are just stealing money from workers, and ought to be thrown off like any other management class.

unions need to be run by workers, or they're inevitably just reduced to co-opted shadow management pushing for the status quo. hopefully, this ruling will help light a fire under workers and resurrect the diy attitude they need to fight to abolish management altogether.

i think it's rather naive to think that the majority of american pop music isn't government propaganda.

the truth is that it's been that way for as long as there's been pop music. everybody goes servin'. servin' usa....

this is a good example of russian propaganda, which appears to be more about stirring the pot than pushing any kind of organized revolt.

jfk was, of course, the head spokesperson for the pro-militarist eastern banking elite. it's the idea that he was anything less than a war criminal that is historical revisionism.

there's nothing particularly inconsistent about a group like this taking the initiative in defining his legacy. in fact, it's fairly fitting.

it's a nice day, taking advantage of it. got some compost dropped off this morning...

the city doesn't accept compost, and i hate throwing it out. what a waste of nutrients. so, i leave it in the freezer until it builds up (it's just fruit cores, egg shells and coffee grinds, split into those three components) and drop it off at this local muslim community group that uses it to grow tomatoes to give to homeless people. that's a useful recycling of material. but fucking capitalism, right? i mean, i'd rather see the city do something like this than a religious group, but it doesn't. you work with what's available.

it means a lengthy walk with a knapsack full of decomposing organic matter every few months, but it's worth it. it's actually good exercise, and gets me some vitamin d.

i picked up a brita on the way back, as well as a drill set for the shelves i want to build. i was expecting drill sets to be like $150 and that i'd have to improvise to get the shelves in. but it turns out that there are much cheaper options. the drill was $30, and the bits were $10. it's bare bones, but i would have spent that much for a falling apart "fancy" drill at a pawn shop. what i need is stability, not power. just shelves...

the brita is important for the neck experiments i'm doing. i needed coffee for the walk. but i may just be dehydrated. i know - i'm grasping. but, i don't drink *any* water, and i've noticed that increasing my water intake has had positive impacts in the past. i mean, i drink tons of coffee, tons of juice, tons of soy....but no water. the reason is that i'm perpetually iffy about the water out of the tap. so, when i get that set up i expect to notice a positive difference one way or the other. at the least, i can say i've controlled for it when i get to the doctors.

as it's so nice out, i'm going to get a few other things done today. i've got a blu-ray burner waiting for me at the best buy, which i'll need to bus to. i've been waiting for them to come down under $100. this one is $99.99, so, hey. that's my grandmother's christmas present for me, i guess. the track i'm currently working on would require 4 dvds to back up, and that's going to be the norm moving forward into the trivial group material and beyond, so it's time to move to blu-ray for back up.

i'm also going to stop at long & mcquade with my fake strat and see what they're going to charge to resolder it. i took a closer look at it, and it seems like the previous owner mangled the insides up altogether. the switches are not stock. i can follow a diagram and get the logic down and stuff, but i don't want to fuck around with something that's already been fucked with. i only need to fuck up once to fry myself. i doubt many guitarists really realize the kind of current they're dealing with it. playing the electric guitar is actually pretty dangerous. there's some spots in the track i'm working on that would benefit from the skinnier pickups, which was the point in picking up the fake strat. so, it's time to get that fixed...

so, lots of exciting things for the day, for me. even if the rest of the week ends up spent as a zombie...

see, i don't see anything particularly infeasible about early civilizations being flooded, but it's not necessary to go as far back as the ice age to get a flood scenario. the neolithic revolution, itself, would have lead to circumstances similar to what we're seeing today as "global warming". you just need to take your timeline forward a few thousand years to make it consistent with everything else. then, you'd have early neolithic sites being drowned as a consequence of the neolithic revolution itself.

the thing is that it's going to be difficult to separate the anthropogenic aspect from the natural one because they would have happened in quick sequence. but note that oceans continued to rise until ~6000 bce - well after the technical end of the last ice age. if you take it up to that point, it's no longer an outlandish date for early advanced settlements.

of course, the creepy thing about this is that all your data is centralized on google's servers, for surveillance and algorithmic analysis to create "personalized advertisements". it's total spyware. that is why google is making these things. apple seems to be moving to a similar data collection model, with it's new portless devices. the goal here is to push personal storage to obsolescence, and make cloud storage the default.

it's a win-win for the intelligence-industrial complex. who needs warrants in a driveless future, where everything is stored in the cloud with not-so-secret backdoors? and, imagine the possibilities of forced ad consumption when google controls your actual internet access.

"error. you have not watched the ad. please watch the ad and then continue."

actually, we need an orwellian term for ad.

"informational video". yeah...

"error. you have not watched the informational video. please watch the informational video and then continue."

it's remarkable how many people think the issue here is technology, as though people treated each other more respectfully before computers were widespread. the reality is that people have always spoken to and about each other like this. it's not "human nature", it's a function of social interaction. a corollary of existing in advanced societies.

so, yes, bullying can have some positive social aspects. some of those kids need to lose weight. i'd rather talk about the growing obesity epidemic. the peer pressure is an effective means of coercing kids that are raised poorly into better diet and exercise routines. obviously, gym class isn't working. in canada, especially, health is a public concern. i have no problem with this. in fact, i think it should be encouraged.

we can't be drawing equivalences between that kind of positive peer pressure and ignorant, racist stupidity. being fat is not the same thing as being black. accepting unhealthy lifestyles as "normal" is not the same thing as abolishing racism.

at the end of the day, people need to react. they can choose to ignore it and find a way to escape it, they can submit and change themselves or they can find something in between. but, this nonsense idea of total acceptance of everybody regardless of anything is neither realistic nor desirable.

the literature refers to peer pressure as an "informal social control". it's the kind of thing that requires development and fine-tuning in order to make the abolition of the state a feasible goal. and, so it's no coincidence that you get liberals and statists pushing the point of abolishing peer pressure so strongly - it cements their own place in society. it enforces the idea that we can't police ourselves, that we need a government to do it for us.

abolishing peer pressure would cut the bottom out of society. it's increasing atomization. right in line with the neo-liberal drive towards the cult of the self.

go ahead, eat yourself to a quick death. consume eight times as much food as you need. bog down health care resources. fuck your neighbours! and fuck anybody that wants to hold you to account for it!

you're an isolated individual with no connection to the world around you. it's your personal choice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f_kavukuKI

i couldn't live without the ports. i need a mouse, to begin with, and i tend to quarantine my different data types by drive. so, i've got an external drive for mp3s, a usb key for web design, etc. and i'm paranoid about wireless technology. everything in my house is wired. my desktop was built to not have wireless (i paid extra for a board without an integrated chip), i've got it disabled in the bios on my laptop and i actually physically damaged the receiver in my router...

so, i would find this useless.

but, in the end, might they actually be right, regarding the general market? do most people really want more than a glorified netbook?

i don't really know why people think this idea of a "slim laptop" is in any way meaningful in the first place. this ideal is just taken for granted. nobody explains the reasoning underlying it. it's suggested that having less ports is a valid trade-off for a slimmer size [and i don't think this is true - if you make the thing thick enough for one port, it's already thick enough for three], but i see no reason why a slimmer size has any value. i'll take a fat laptop with higher functionality, please.

but, again...i'm not the market. if the market wants a device to stream shit over netflix and access data from the cloud, the peripherals are increasingly useless.

Adam Shay
The reason why sheep's fall for it is because of the marketing strategy look at the introduction video they spend millions on it if they could at least spend that much on the hardware (I would personally pay any price they mention for it)

Zac Spurgeon
Although if the market wants a device to stream shit over Netflix and access data from the cloud, I still think that it's unethical to charge them for a fully-featured machine when they're basically getting a mid-level tablet with a keyboard.

deathtokoalas
dude thinks corporations care about what's ethical. ahahahahaha. do you realize who makes these things?

Zac Spurgeon
I didn't say they care about what's ethical, but normally they keep their unethical practices behind closed sweatshop doors, instead of just being blatantly dishonest to their consumer base.

deathtokoalas
i don't find apple tends to go out of it's way much, really. they just gloss over it with slick advertising. i mean, their operating system is just a tweaked bsd, which is open-source software. a lot of people put a lot of work into that, and didn't get a cut out of it when apple privatized it. everything they've done has been overpriced forever. it at least made some sense when they were selling power pcs, but since they switched to intel they're literally selling dells with freeware for three times the price. so, this is absolutely consistent with everything they've been doing for years.

Zac Spurgeon
True, but I think this is also the worst they've gotten so far. Whenever I've looked it up, you're paying a little less than twice as much for the same specs on a machine that's more difficult to service and overheats more easily. This is just a whole other level of ripoff. To be clear I'm not shocked or surprised, just increasingly annoyed.

Philip Kwok
Most people can't live without it. I can see people who buy this new MacBook and find no problem of is are those who don't really use computer more than a few hours a day, only surf webs, email, youtube and such. For anyone who even want to do lite office things will not even consider this piece of expensive paper weight. Yea. 1 to 2mm thinner and I don't have a USB port.... sorry, I don't really mind that extra 100g or 1 mm. I rather get 2 USB ports. Do they really think that matters more than versatility? Yes, people want thinner laptop but nobody told them they want to trade off usb ports and other ports for the extra 1 to 2 mm reduction. Who cares about that 1 to 2mm seriously?

so, i quit smoking for most of february and noticed the dysphagia improved but didn't disappear. i also noticed i was less alert and less productive. as the smoking does not seem to be the cause of the dysphagia, and i wanted to increase my alertness and productivity, i picked smoking back up for the first week of march. while my alertness and productivity did increase, the dysphagia quickly became unbearable. i'm at a breaking point and will stop. i need to eat. but it means i need to deal with the effects of withdrawal this week, which is extreme sleepiness. again. grargh.

i have enough evidence at this point to conclude that i either have ms or cancer. i'm going to have to go to the clinic and have this sorted out, as i know the dysphagia is not going to go away by not smoking. i just want to finish this song first...

there's really only one "easy way out", and it's that i have a massive ear infection. but, i'm grasping at straws.

my perspective about ms is that i can't do anything about it, so why waste the time in a doctor's office? but, it's starting to affect my arm, which affects my playing. if i can get some drugs for that, i'll take them.

cougars in downtown windsor

hi...

i saw your name in a newspaper report on cougar sightings in the region.

here's the thing: i don't have enough evidence to bring this to a police department or animal control or something. but, the mere premise of a cougar setting up in the middle of a city would be remarkable from a behavioural perspective. and, it's obviously of safety concerns, nonetheless.

i've been seeing various signs for months. large tracks through the snow (i didn't take pictures), glimpses out of the side of my eye, apparent movement in bushes, etc. it's easy to write these things off as mind tricks. and i do in fact have a history of mental illness.

but, i think i may have spotted some cubs this morning around marion street, just south of wyandotte. certainly, i've never heard a house cat make the "raaaaawr" sound i heard out of a small cat that reacted as soon as it saw me. feral cats don't generally react to people at all, in my experience. to get "raaaaawr"-ed at like that by a small cat was something i've never experienced before.

now, i didn't stick around to get a good look - i know i don't want to get between a cougar and it's cubs. and i wasn't wearing my glasses. but (from a distance, with weak vision) they looked like small, muscular, cream coloured house cats. maybe they were just that. but it's the behaviour that was unnerving to me, combined with other weak evidence.

cubs in the city? i know it's remarkable, but we know coyotes are doing this. and i know there's been an increase in sightings in the region lately.

however, i haven't seen a decrease in feral cats in the region lately. that's really what i've been looking for before i decided to make a call to an enforcement agency.

it's one thing to think you thought you saw a mountain lion. it's another to think you thought you see mountain lion cubs. i can't bring this to animal control, but i'd never forgive myself if i sat on this, wrote it off as mind tricks and then learned some kid down the street got taken. so, i think bringing it to the attention of somebody that can make a better scientific assessment is the best idea....

jessica

just actually watched this...

with the increase in tensions between russia and america, it's natural to want to turn to cold war experts for guidance. but, this is an error. there's two ways to look at why it's an error, but they break down to the same basic misunderstanding of western goals.

either the rise of neo-conservatism has changed american attitudes to one of aggressive domination, or the idea of building "trust" was never more than a trojan horse in the first place.

either way, what's clear is that this rhetoric is lost in the past. it has no lingering relevance. america is out to destroy, and russia has naively refused to accept it.

why has the united nations failed? because america does not want peace.

russia can submit or react.

mutual understanding is not on the table.

anonymous continues to demonstrate that it's a mouthpiece for the radical right, and quite plausibly shadow government propaganda.

what i'm getting from this video is that the establishment sees kanye as an uppity black man that needs to be taken down a notch.

kanye may not be the sharpest pencil in the box, and he may have some undiagnosed psychological issues, but there's generally a set of valid points underneath what is often his over the top rhetoric. the reason he's being targeted has to do with the attention he's drawing to those underlying points. they're topics that aren't supposed to be talked about openly, or expressed to a large audience.

expect the number of serial killers to skyrocket over the next twenty years.

and people snicker when i suggest gaming is phallic...

heads up on a flood starting next week.

i want to finish this track, first. but, soon, i'm going to be hitting my youtube feed back to july, 2014. it's finally run out for the first half of '14. the aim will be to put the longer videos in the watch later list, and watch the shorter ones. i've just not kept up to date since then.

this should take about a week. you can imagine there'll be lots of comments, many months out of date. get out now if you need to...

that was actually a perfect shot. can't fault federer. beat cleanly.

so, as we can see, lake huron is a pristine piece of untouched natural beauty. you could probably drink the water. look how clear it is!

meanwhile, in sudbury....

i've been thinking about what the doctor told me the last time i was in, though, and i think it's both correct and sort of reflective of the reality of the situation, which is that a psychological disability is really defined by whether you decide to have one or not. it's kind of justifying my tactics, actually. i'm not talking about physical limiting factors or something like down's syndrome, i'm talking about depression or personality disorders...

it's been remarked more than once that the society we live in is a psychopathic society, defined by antisocial social relations. you really can't get ahead unless you *do* have a personality disorder.

but what he told me was that it's pretty rare to see a psychiatrist for more than a few minutes, and most of them provide instant diagnosis. which produced ridicule from me. if you know me, you can imagine my response. are they magicians? medicine men? healers? what the fuck?

here's a good example of this. i'm looking through the review i picked up last week. it indicated i wasn't experiencing a loss of appetite, which implicitly suggested that i'm not all that depressed. but, that's such a hokey analysis. i'm actually the kind of person that assigns a lot of value to being thin (i don't tend to judge others by their weight, but it's important to me that i don't gain weight) and is fairly careful about how much i eat in order to ensure that i don't gain weight. i'm not like on a regimented diet or anything, and i don't tend to starve myself, but i'll routinely skip a day if i have a big meal. i consequently wouldn't associate a loss of appetite with depression, i'd associate it with forward-thinking - it would mean i'm looking forward to something. i'd actually associate over-eating with depression. stuffing my face would be not giving a fuck; eating less would be altering my figure for a future purpose.

the point i'm getting at isn't that one analysis is inherently superior to the other. certainly, a loss of appetite is going to be a negative indicator for some people. what i'm getting at is that it's not the kind of thing you can arrive at through talking to somebody for an hour. and, what's worse is that i wouldn't even expect an uneducated fool to be confused on this point. it's in the realm of common sense. how we can have doctors that are willing to jump to such specious deductions with such a deficit of evidence is befuddling to me.

i initially assumed my initial diagnosis was haphazard. but, i'm starting to realize it's not the case. my initial diagnosis was no less rigorous than what i'm coming up against, and consequently no less valid. and, as a result, i don't see anything wrong with pushing buttons until i get what i want - because it's ultimately all just a lot of bullshit, anyways.

so, i don't want to use my phone as a shield if i ever get in a sword fight. i'll remember that.

you don't want to make toast in the shower, either. might get electrocuted.

i really think that what we're seeing with this - and the brief part about the fossils is instructive - ought to have a profound effect on how we rethink how we analyze the fossil record. what we think of as intermediate forms may often not be. and, conversely, we may require less intermediate forms to build a proper evolutionary picture than we currently realize.

it's not just the hybridization event, it's the whole scenario. there's an excellent model here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9-Q1eIFA_U

i don't see any evidence that the confrontation had to do with abuse or violence. it's simply a demand to not touch her, which could be referring to anything. he's also using very strong racial language. note that the woman in the corner is white. without context, it strikes me as equally likely that the confrontation was entirely race driven. it's revealing that the premise has not been challenged, that everybody is willing to sentence the accused without any context or evidence. and, this is likely not independent of his skin colour.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtyNUf_5iok

(deleted)

there's more blacks in prison because it's where the system wants them. it's a continuation of the jim crow laws, a lot of it through the drug war. a large percentage are there on marijuana possession.

(deleted)

it's not, actually. assault is assault. some people are just too dipshit macho to press charges.

(deleted)

you'll tend to find that the types of men that see physical violence towards women as some kind of uncrossable red line are exceedingly patriarchal, almost without exception. it comes out of this archaic idea of protecting one's property, and is really the mirror-reflection of using violence as a means of control. it's also rooted in the idea that one sex is inherently weaker.

equality means beating the shit out of each other as much as it means not beating each other up at all. we'll know we've actually made some progress when this discourse evaporates entirely.

(deleted)

you may wish to cite nearly 100 year-old statistics if you'd like, but you have to understand that they speak in averages. they're of little value in day-to-day usage, where we see wide variability. further, things have changed dramatically since those statistics were tabulated. today, women tend to (on average) attach a certain value to physical strength. it's quite normal for women to participate in, and excel at, the same physical activities that made men stronger in the past.

on a random sample, in 2015, i wouldn't expect much of any kind of "measurable" difference to assert itself - except that the extreme ends of the spectrum are likely predictable.

subbing in the "protective nature of men" for patriarchal dominance is a type of mra political correctness.

(deleted)

lol. i see you live in canada, where the laws aren't enforced. they're enforced very violently in the united states, and disproportionately on blacks. the statistics may shock you. iirc, around 80% of blacks in jail are there on drug charges, and the vast majority is marijuana related. it's not because the society is anti-drug, exactly. it's just an excuse to continue slavery. the amendment that abolished slavery in the united states specifically states except for people in jail. fun fact: the united states prison system has a monopoly on paint products in the united states. if you buy paint in the us, it's made with prison labour.

there's a lot of scholarly literature on the topic. chomsky is a good source for this. but, i'd actually suggest dave chappelle to start off with.

(deleted)

i repeat: assault is assault. unfortunately, lingering dumb macho attitudes tend to convince people to "man up" rather than seek legal solutions.

(deleted)

the video itself provides absolutely no evidence that there was a violent exchange in the first place. the supposed victim simply appears to be embarrassed by the situation.

(deleted)

the difference is that we know the white guy attacked the black guy. we have no evidence that the black guy attacked the white woman.

(deleted)

it's not a question of whether we're identical. it's a question of whether we deserve equal treatment under the law.

(deleted)

scientifically speaking, race isn't even real. talking about race in a scientific context is like talking about unicorns. the raising part is more to the point than the genetics. but it's not an important factor in any kind of meaningful discussion.

almost all black people in the united states are more than 30% caucasian. and you're looking at around 30% of whites in america that are part african and don't even realize it. 
in such conditions, the genetics can't even be studied, let alone used to draw conclusions from.

(deleted)

it's one thing for white people to jump to all these conclusions without the slightest bit of evidence, it's another for blacks to mimic it without the slightest bit of critical thinking. it really shows how deep the institutional racism is in our society, when you can throw a youtube video up like this and have virtually everybody think it's obvious that he must be guilty, based on nothing but an accusation in the title.

(deleted)

in the end, we get the society we want. and, if we want vigilante mob justice based on spurious accusations, then that's what we'll get. just don't blame me when i don't want to leave my basement and deal with all the fucking brownshirts.

(deleted)

the link pulls up a 404, but the statistic cited is correct and can be found using google. it also states that people in prison for violent offenses are most likely to be white (which is stated carefully to deny a causal inference from skin colour to violent behaviour), which is the well known reality that dina is attempting to defend.

however, stats like that are of limited value. it's the old stats lie story.

to begin with, there's little consistency in determining who is "white" and "black". the 13% number rises to as high as 35% when you include "interracial" people, which are more likely to be categorized as "black" than "white" in a prison survey. if you find the original document, it doesn't include "interracial", while the census you're getting "13%" from does. when you adjust for this, you're looking at something more like "40% of domestic violence, 30-35% of the population". the remaining 5-10% is then no longer so glaring, and explained by a combination of factors, including randomness. the point is the imprecision in these categories.

second, other factors are glaringly apparent. when you have a society that is racially tilted like america's is, you get results like that. the basis of the statistic is that equality exists under the law. but, equality does not exist under the law. it's consequently unrealistic to expect anything different.

third, humans are individuals. the idea that skin colour has any causal effect on individual, violent behaviour is bluntly comically absurd. it's not even generalizing the specific. it's just a category error. and a pretty dumb one, at that.

(deleted)

believe it or not, it was largely about the triviality of greek v roman forms of christianity. they're both slavs. racism isn't the right term; it was religious intolerance.

yeah, i don't know about this. i'm not upset about messing with the cabbies. but suicide is a complicated thing. it can be something that's impulsive and not thought through, but it can also be something that's entirely rational. none of us have the right to enforce our opinions on anybody else when it comes to this.

it's one thing to get out of the cab and talk it through with the guy to challenge him on whether it's been thought through carefully, but physically preventing somebody from jumping is, to me, crossing a line of personal autonomy. i don't think there's any justification for that. a lot of theorists on the topic would disagree with me - mills famously argued that the only justification for the use of force is to prevent harm - but self-harm is, to me, in a different category than pushing somebody out of the way of a moving car, for example.

at the end of the day, we're each in charge of what we do with our bodies. there's no other way to build a truly free society. and that necessarily includes whether we choose to continue living or not.

untitled (originally intended mix)

this is the mix that i intended to complete when i sat down to reinterpret the piece at the end of last year (2014), and will form the basis of the final guitar concerto. mix finalized march 9, 2015.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/untitled-originally-intended-mix

a few years ago, the new york giants defeated the new england patriots in the super bowl in what was a tremendous upset. it was the only game that the patriots lost all year.

i don't want to say that i predicted it, although some people gave me credit for doing so. i didn't and don't claim any special football knowledge. i just happened to have a math degree and was able to realize that the intuition people have about streaks is usually false. it can be true under certain factors that are not truly probabilistic, but when you do the math in a situation where uncertainty is involved it generally works out the exact opposite way.

the simple way to state it is that the longer the streak is, the more likely it is to break. so, a team that walks into a championship game after winning the last eighteen games (or whatever it was) is actually at a hefty disadvantage. they are bound to lose eventually - by skill or by luck.

i think people get confused because they want to apply this idea of inertia. the intuition is that if something has happened repeatedly, then it is more likely to continue happening than stop happening. but, that is just wrong.

i'm looking at the sunspot cycle. the best scientists don't really have much of a grasp regarding how this really works. there's a few guesses. the overriding mentality seems to be that, because the cycles have been decreasing over the last several cycles, it follows that they should continue to decrease. this is the same probabilistic fallacy that declared the patriots' superbowl win to be an inevitability, and the game a formality.

i'm going to take a dissenting view, and cite the exact same logic, but do it properly. if cycle 25 is a decrease, it will be the 4th decrease in a row. i do not believe we have ever seen four decreases in a row - meaning that that would be very unlikely. i consequently suggest that we're bound to see an increase....

it might not be a big increase, mind you. i'm just pointing out that a streak that long would be unlikely, given it's never happened before.

you know, a few months ago i was just kind of irritated by this channel's popularity, but i'm now starting to feel a twinge of empathy for the guy. now, let me tell you this: it's a feat for me to feel empathy for a guy with this kind of wealth. but i'm going to avoid the cliche about money not buying happiness. it's kind of not really the point. it's more like i'm starting to wonder if he fits the profile of every famous twenty-something that's killed themselves since 1970.

dude, listen: the key is to fake your death. then come back as the dread pirate roberts. your fan base is too young to get that.

but, seriously. ouch. there's some kind of hybrid experiment on cyber-bullying and reactionary anti-meanstream pretension going on here. and i don't think anybody deserves to be the target of it.

i think that the best way to attack something like this is to exploit it in ways that will force the court to react. we just need to find a company with a bit of a social conscience.

for example, you could set up a mock case where a company claims to refuse to allow an employee to display a cross at work due to it being a religious symbol that is at odds with the company's secularism. the court would have to strike that down, which would reestablish the proper precedent.

this approach doesn't work. when you convert these issues into media, it sets off partisan reactions that actually harden attitudes because contrarians interact with this sort of thing with the intent to get into a fight. the more you challenge them, the more they push back. it's a waste of time. but it's actually worse than a waste of time, too.

in the end, it doesn't matter. this is a rights issue. it's not up for plebiscite, and shouldn't be.

but, when you start pushing buttons like this, you increase the chance of hateful responses while doing nothing to increase understanding. it's preaching to the liberal choir, while riling up the socially conservative base.

which is just not smart politics.

nobody likes having things rubbed in their faces. it's confrontational. i don't want shit rubbed in my face, and am not going to be a hypocrite by rubbing shit into the face of others. i'd really rather that the queer community would just shut the fuck up and go about their lives as though it's not an issue. because, at this point, i feel we're the only people making it one, and it's to our eventual detriment.

i see that the australian government has heeded my warnings and declared a war against koalas.

we must expect retaliation. the koalas are a formidable enemy. but, with enough strength and resolve we can overcome their nefarious cuteness.

on a more serious note, the anti-vaxxers are actually a really eye-opening glimpse into the power of social media...

aaaand, the first doctor left me a voicemail indicating she's done the paperwork. that's no doubt a result of the threat, so it worked. i wish it didn't come to that, but so be it.

so.

that actually puts off the aspirin stunt for quite a while, at least until i get a response from the ministry.

if i get the extension as well, i can mix and match the two forms and see what is best.

but i have SOMETHING to submit, now. thankfully.

(i should rephrase that. i can't mix and match. but i can pick the best one.)

the doctor was not able to locate the forms, so i had to walk in empty-handed...

i got to the point of opening the aspirin bottle, which sent the nurse to the other room. they talked me down from it by promising to write me a letter for an extension, so i'll see where that goes.

end result: they're now aware that they're dealing with somebody that may act irrationally. i had to at least get that across. i'll have to phone the adjudication unit tomorrow to see what the result is.

if it gets denied, i'll have to pull off the stunt at the odsp office. i'm building the proper profile, at least.

i got some more forms sent, but i'd have to fax a request for an extension and i don't have time for that.

so, i'm going to go to the first doctor and ask for the original forms, which i will take to today's doctor. if i can't get the forms, it's clear what i'll have to do.

i wasn't able to get the forms, but the odsp office suggested i should get an extension if i cal to ask. so, i need to go call them right now. if i get the second extension, i'm obviously not going to send myself to the hospital...

the idea is that asking for forms is an excuse for extra extensions.

so i'm reposting this for the comments about the state i'll be in when i get there. the key point is that i will not take any aspirin until i enter the clinic. the truth is that i don't even have the energy to get drunk before i go in. it's just absolute meh.

chances of overdosing tomorrow are about 99.99999%. i don't think i'm even going to have the forms. so, it's not even going to be an option. if, by some fluke, i manage to get the forms and get him to fill them out then great, but i don't expect it.

that means there are only two options for tomorrow: i come home with the forms signed, or i overdose on aspirin at the windsor city health center on mar 3, 2015...

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.ca/2015/02/im-essentially-certain-at-this-point.html

i have no further appointments, and no way to put it off and hope i get the right answer. i need the papers signed tomorrow, or i will breakdown and begin to ruthlessly annoy, harass and bother whomever is around me until it happens.

annoyance: they claim you have to ask your worker for the medical forms. which strikes me as absurd.

so, i'll go in tomorrow and ask the worker...

i'm going to eat lunch first and then head out to the initial doctor to see if it's been filled out yet.

it's not like not having the papers is going to prevent me from od-ing tomorrow. it's more like walking in without the papers is a guarantee that i will.

i mean, if i can't get the papers then i can't fill them out. indicating there's no way to prevent the stunt.

an update...

this is on the path to being thoroughly debunked (the climate change models never supported this...), but there's too many things going on right now to get a clear signal, so it will hang around for a while. and, the media loves it because it creates a single cause for all weather. it makes it easier for end consumers to understand, even though it's wrong. from a legal perspective, trying to argue for global warming due to greenhouse gasses and solar cooling in the northern hemisphere at the same time appears to be a contradiction; it's too subtle for the masses, so the media will continue to push something like this instead.

but i think the weight of the evidence suggests that she's got this backwards. she's got the heat flowing in the wrong direction. i'm oversimplifying rather dramatically, but the second law pushes hot to cold. these dips in the jetstream should indicate decreasing entropy. the idea that this can result from increasing entropy is not really coherent. which is why it doesn't appear in any of the models.

and, in fact, we've recently had some studies come out that link the weakening vortex to a decrease in solar output and this idea of "heat burial" in the pacific. this makes far more sense.

i was referring primarily to the mann study released a few months ago on pacific heat burial and the relevant oscillation. this jet stream pattern seems to be tied to a "blob" of warm water in the pacific.

but, there's an increasing understanding that dips in solar output have a dramatic effect on the jetsream over the northern hemisphere, creating these break-ups in the vortex and streaks of cold air moving down. this isn't a climate denier argument; it operates independently and is more related to the mechanism underlying the milankovitch theory. it's very specific to the northern latitudes.

the idea is not new. i've found it in introductory textbooks on google books. but it's apparently been very speculative, because the mechanism has not been understood. i mean, they've got all this data and this strong correlation, but they couldn't really make sense of it.

when i said an "increasing understanding", what i meant was that researchers are watching this happen and beginning to understand it better.

i believe the best way into this is through mike lockwood.

climate science is something i need to rely on experts for (i'm trained in math, mostly), but the way i'd conceive of what they're saying is to think of the earth as a body of water being hit by electricity - it's maybe orders of magnitude off most of the time, but an aurora demonstrates that it's a roughly useful intuitive model.

so, this energy is hitting the earth and sending wave shocks in whatever direction. one of the consequences of this is that it keeps the polar vortex bottled up around the pole.

now, if you lessen that, the vortex can start to break apart - and if you do away with it all together, it takes over, setting off a snowball earth scenario. what we want is the right balance. but, of course, we can't control the sun.

the idea is that modulations in this stream of energy - even small ones, that are seemingly trivial - can have an effect on how the jetstream moves. increases would bottle it up further, whereas decreases would let it loose, creating these wavy patterns. that would be consistent with what we're seeing - very cold in eastern north america and very warm in western north america. and, in fact there's a historically discernible pattern that correlates well with this.

that doesn't really have anything to do with the concentration of greenhouse gasses, the greenhouse effect or the global mean temperature. it just has to do with how the energy is distributed and how it's affected by the weakening vortex. if you were to add it up, it would balance out. that balancing is going to uphold the increasing mean temperature, even as the eastern seaboard is having record cold winters - because the west is hogging all the heat. and, it's something that's been happening for basically ever, whenever we see solar minima.