j reacts to the corrosive effects of advertising on human individuality

it's really funny how people define things in terms of advertisements, rather in terms of what they actually are. remember: i haven't had meaningful access to a tv in nearly twenty years, and i use ad blocking software online. so, i don't have to suppress ads for things like soda: i've honestly never seen them.

the last time i saw an ad for pepsi, the spokesperson was britney spears. i have literally not seen an ad for pepsi since then. i don't know when that was. 1998? 1999? this was a period when ads for soft drinks like dr. pepper and mountain dew were virtually non-existent. i don't think i've ever even seen an ad for either of them.

well, unless you count whatever website i went to (wiki?) to determine which soft drinks had the highest caffeine contents. that's why i settled on those two, specifically.

i've had conversations with people, though, that want to interpret you that way - that think that the soft drink that you choose must reduce to branding. and, i've noticed glances, too, that i understand in those terms. it's kind of sad, really.

http://www.math.utah.edu/~yplee/fun/caffeine.html

i stayed with my parents for about a year in the mid 00s and found myself with their backup tv parked in front of my bed. i actually didn't want it in there, but they claimed there was nowhere else to put it.

i wasn't home often: for the first six months, i was finishing my first degree and spent most of my time at school and for the second six months i was doing the night shift at microsoft and transiting two hours a day by bicycle. further, i had internet access and much preferred it over television.

i mean, you put a tv and a computer in the same room and give me a choice and i'm going to basically always pick the computer.

about the only thing i ever watched was the odd stewart/colbert run and sporadic re-runs of south park.

besides that, i really have not turned on a tv since the 90s.

even in the 90s, the only things i ever really watched were the x-files, seinfeld and the simpsons. well, and the news. i initially picked up my habit of eating & watching some time in the 90s by watching cnn while eating. and, the exact reason was that i was told not to eat in the basement, where my room and computer were - i had to eat upstairs. i would have rather eaten & usenetted.

and, fwiw - i do not recall ever seeing any sort of tv show that featured donald trump in any kind of capacity.

j reacts to the reality that canada is a colonial state

this isn't surprising; the problem is systemic. it doesn't really matter what the people in government say, and it doesn't really matter what the opposition says either, they'd in the end do the same thing. the logic of colonialism is not overturned with pleasant language or appeals to moral superiority.

i actually support hydro as a means of clean energy generation. they should be investing in solar and building dams. further, the effects to wildlife in the region can, and in fact no doubt will be addressed. just as an example: where i grew up in ottawa, they spent billions rerouting a creek so they could put in a mall. a mall is less important than a generating station, granted. the other side of that argument is that the mall was on the edge of a city, not somewhere deep in the forest. but, the species that they were trying to protect have actually thrived in the enclosures that were built. if you walk around windsor, where i live now, you can see several examples of something similar.

i'm not a primitivist. i won't take the side of de-development or de-industrialization. rather, what i'm describing is the model that we need to embrace: symbiosis. and, who are our biggest influences (as colonizers) in realizing that?

to me, the issue is more about building trust and respecting the rights of local populations to have some say over the things that happen around them. it's not about property rights, or indigenous rights (explicitly) or about ethnic rights of any sort. i don't believe in grouping people together by ethnicity. it's just about democracy at the local level.

i'd rather have seen them slow down and take the time to convince the locals that this can be done sustainably, so they are working with the project rather than against it. now, the locals are going to spend a lot of time fighting something that they won't be able to stop instead of providing positive ideas towards realizing a symbiotic means of modernization. their ideas are important. they understand the land the best. i want them working with us, not against us.

this area is under treaty, which means that the crown has allodial title, eminent domain rights and all of the other powers of control. they really do just need to click a box for consultation. if it was in a different part of bc, or a couple of places out east, it would be different. the law here is not uniform, but broken down into complicated geographical subsets. further, none of the kinds of geopolitical pressures around the pipelines exist for the hydro dams - and for good reasons. worse, there's widespread misunderstanding about "indigenous title" in the activist community. there was a treaty signed, and under the colonial system that treaty is paramount. working within the legal systems of colonialism means understanding their rules. under the state monopoly of force, they own the land - and the "rule of law" upholds their use of force. you can fight that with force, but you're bound to lose.

i'm not blaming the local groups - the state should have waited until it could get enthusiastic consent. that kind of relationship is necessary, more broadly. the more the state ignores it, the longer the process towards integration becomes. yes, it's going to be slow. no, it will probably not happen in the life time of the existing government. but, in the long run, it's all for nought, otherwise.

http://www.desmog.ca/2016/07/29/trudeau-just-broke-his-promise-canada-s-first-nations

j reacts to clinton as a "product of her era"

remember when the clinton campaign accused sanders of hacking their servers, and we later learned it never happened?

fool me once...

like i say, i really think she's following the neo-con playbook, here, and just doesn't realize that all it really does is make her look weak on national security.

remember: clinton's logic around this is likely "this worked in the primary, so let's do it again.". it's pure pragmatism. while people were calling them out on their dirty tricks, the campaign turned around and promoted the people responsible, because the conclusion was that they were successful.

the people that will tell you that she is the embodiment of wall street corruption are not just throwing rhetoric at you. it's maybe unfair to blame the whole thing on one person: the united states is a culture of randian objectivism. it's not just her. she's a "product of her era".

and it's not like the other guy is any better.

i'm just pointing out that:

(1) even on something like this, you can't trust her.
(2) i don't think the strategy of working voters up against russia - a paper threat, at best - is going to be successful.

it's not just that what's in the emails is being ignored. you'd think somebody would get fired. but, the people responsible are getting promoted. it's almost like it was an excuse for dws to resign so she could move to the campaign. and, it seems more like they're bragging about how corrupt they are than that they're doing anything to address it.

so, there's something else going on here.

29-07-2016: groceries in the rain, resting tired boot feet & officially closing inri013

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/on-sexual-confusion-in-adolescence-2
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1