this is really what we need, here.

we could stop giving it away to new york...and potentially drop generators altogether...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5wqzsg1bQY

i'm going to take a different view on this.

"restricted mode" basically means "religious right mode". it's a service that is explicitly designed for a combination of ultra-conservative parents and grouchy old people. this is what they want, and i'm not exactly of the view that i need to cram myself down their throats.

but, conversely, why can't i get an anti-religion filter? and, don't think this isn't an issue.

i've actually installed a plugin called "hide unwanted results" because i got pissed off about "answers from genesis" showing up when i searched for evolution information, or climate denial bullshit clogging my results when i search for climate change info. and, searching for lesser known band names can produce horrific results. the plugin lets me block entire websites altogether, and it's truly a godsend.

i'm sorry, but there is simply no scenario at all when i want answers from genesis in my search results. never. ever. it's not in my hosts file or anything, i can access the site. but, i don't want the christian bullshit. ever....

so, i kind of see where they're coming from. there's shit i just don't want to see, too; i just wish they'd let me block the religious bullshit, which is what really pisses me off the worst. perhaps they could open up the filter to something user-customizable...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/20/lgbt-community-anger-over-youtube-restrictions-which-make-their-videos-invisible

sanger is right. but they should do it anyways.

i just don't find this idea of paying into things to be scary, but i guess i'm leaning more towards a revolutionary left. sanger is basically looking at the situation and saying "this is just corporate welfare". it's not that he's wrong, so much as that i'm willing to support capital investments in the short run, and then argue for nationalizing in the long run.

and, there's not a lot of ways out of this, either. if they gauge badly enough, we seize the assets. there's not another possibility, here - it's an inevitability.

yes: it would be better if we just nationalized it from the start. but, the focus needs to be on building at any cost. we can seize it later.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/federal-budget-expected-to-flesh-out-infrastructure-bank-plans/article34345704/

my actual opinion is that you should let them die.

i mean, there should be treatment centres. this is a health issue, not a legal issue. i support the clean injection sites because it reduces the cost of health care by giving addicts clean needles. if they get aids from sharing needles, it costs for more to treat them in the end, and they become that much more of a burden on the system.

but, this idea that we need to go out of our way to save drug addicts is, i think, wrong. let them overdose....

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/funding-opioid-substitution-1.4032400

"he was a stupid, disgusting, awful human being" - a friend and collaborator of lou reed's, describing him, post-mortem.

i'll show in numbers how truly stupid this is and why it's worth resisting.

suppose that this is the course marking breakdown:

final: 50%.
midterm: 20%
assignments: 10%
participation: 20%

if my marks are as follows:

final: 90%
midterm: 90%
assignments: 99% [for me, this is realistic]
participation: 0%

....then my grade is:

.5*.9 + .2*.9 + .1*.99 + .2*0=
.45 + .18 + .099 =
 0.729

so, you can get an A on the exam, an A on the midterm and ace the assignments....

...and end up with 73% in the class.

does that make sense to you?

it happened. over and over and over...

but, i'm still not going to participate. i'm just going to stand in the back and snicker at how stupid you all are.

a responsible professor would look at this outcome and change their grading strategy. they might think it's impossible, or something. when they see it in front of them, they should abandon it.

participation marks are often attacked as ways to inflate grades, but i don't think that's actually the intent. the intent is to punish students that are independent-minded. it's meant to push out those that are disagreeable more than it is to reward those that are malleable.

i'm introverted, sure. and i have been diagnosed with social anxiety, but modern psychiatry is just a lot of pseudo-science and bullshit - you can't define what it means, to begin with, and there's no objective test to determine it. it doesn't mean a fucking thing to say i have social anxiety. when different "doctors" will tell you different things based on their intuitive perception of you, you're not dealing with science. so, i'm not even going to say i don't have it - i'm going to deny that it's even a real thing (despite actually relying on the diagnosis for my income).

i wasn't afraid to speak in class. i just couldn't be bothered to go there and be forced to talk to the fucking idiots around me. there wasn't any psychological break that was preventing me from going to class and spending the whole time arguing with students - and with profs if they insisted. it just wasn't my idea of a good time. i preferred to avoid the conflict by just not bothering to show up.

and, i would have argued. vehemently. brutally. violently. i was hardly just going to sit there and nod in order to get along with everyone.

it wasn't a psychological difficulty in expressing myself, it was a refusal to sit there and suffer their idiocy. and, i got nailed for it - and i took it out of legitimate protest. you want to knock down a smart kid because she doesn't want to sit around and have tea with you and pretend she agrees with you? do it. i dare you.

they did it....

the system isn't designed to push along the mindless, so much as it's designed to knock people like me down a notch. it's designed to punish those that are disagreeable, that have independent thoughts, that will stand up against what the teacher is pushing.

i preferred to be confrontational in writing. my essays were always combative.

but, i'm not joking or exaggerating when i point out that my gpa was knocked down by at least a point by a conscious refusal to kowtow to the insistence on participation marks.

see, i've build my entire life around avoiding participating in markets. i maybe wasn't cognizant of it until my late 20s, but it was nonetheless the driving force from the start.

at school, i'd avoid participating, even to my own detriment. there were classes that i aced and yet ended up with Bs in because i blew off the 10% participation mark. and, i always felt it was a just protest, and the school could fuck off for trying to force me to participate against my will.

i've spent my whole life trying to avoid labour. i remember going to a job interview, once, where i told the hiring manager that i wasn't there to make friends, and she practically started crying, as though rejecting participation was some kind of crime against humanity. i've always chosen the path of least participation.

and, i've been single most of my life because it's just another game that i don't want to participate in.

so, if the tendency to uphold participation as paramount defines this generation, you really don't want to look to me as a representative. i'm the exact opposite of that. i'd sell my soul to never have to participate in society ever again.

it's really astounding how young people view relationships.

it's, like, the more relationships they have, the more successful they are.

so, the more often they fail, the higher up some stupid hierarchy, they climb.

....as though they think they should be validated on whether they participated in meaningless sex, rather than whether they actually succeeded in relationship-building.