“Every missile or shell we fired was at a valuable target, at underground targets,” Eisenkot said in March “We have developed a capability that allows us to strike them.”

you know that's what this is really about, right?

gaza isn't just an open-air prison. it's a model of a city in revolt. such technology can ultimately be exported to countries like the united states, in the event of the outbreak of armed civil unrest.

the talk of colonialism is weird. it's maybe true from a certain perspective, but it's an effect rather than a cause, and the historical underpinnings of it are somewhat spurious. at best, these are two opposing colonial cultures. but, it really has nothing to do with the actual reality of why israel exists.

israel is an american military outpost in the middle east, necessary as a counter-balance against a tense alliance with the oil-producing arab countries. it's primary function is as a testing facility.

so, finkelstein claims there weren't any rockets being sent from gaza. maybe he means a statistical zero, because the system was ultimately designed to test the rockets that were sent at it for it to shoot down. so, of course it shot down some rockets. it's a test simulation to shoot them down.

comparisons to the holocaust are not exaggerated, and that's why i tend to avoid the term apartheid. apartheid is an economic idea - it's a slave class that existed, for the benefit of the rich members of society. and, so, what they did in south africa was allow a select group of blacks to enter the ruling class, while keeping the apartheid system mostly in place. that cannot happen in palestine, where the people are not being utilized as a slave class, but merely tossed aside as useless eaters.

the united states actually presented an apartheid system as a solution to the actual genocide that's taking place, which is how i prefer to describe it. john kerry wanted to build call centres in the west bank, and convert the palestinians into a pool of cheap labour for multinational corporations. that would have resulted in an apartheid, where palestinians are kept occupied with labour for the dominant israeli group, while being denied basic liberties and civil rights. but, israel wouldn't allow for this. they just want the land they're standing on.

so, referring to the situation as an apartheid actually deflects from the deeper reality, that israel is carrying out a genocide in slow motion, with the ultimate aim of complete expulsion - or annihilation.

but, to america, it's just a war game. and, americans ought to understand that, for what it is.

notwithstanding pull from outside forces, this geo-strategic position is necessary for as long as america relies upon oil as a dominant input into it's economy.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

this article also explains why he has long odds to win in 2019, at all. and, then what?

the ndp have found themselves in a position that i last remember seeing in canadian politics with the old progressive conservatives, when joe clark had to ask somebody to step aside to give them his seat. the party only managed to recover to the point that they could organize a merger with the reform party. whatever happens to the ndp, the canadian left needs some kind of serious renewal, likely in a new party.

what can they do in this mess?

well, there's two choices, really, within our parliamentarian tradition, and they rely on the strength of the leadership. grenier doesn't think that singh will ask masse or hardcastle to step down. what that means is that grenier doesn't think that singh is powerful enough in his own party to take a seat away from an incumbent. yet, that is, in fact, the parliamentarian tradition in this circumstance, where the leadership is powerful enough - and clark is one example of that happening. if grenier is right, and singh is not able to command a seat from a backbencher, then the party must pass a vote of non-confidence, and have singh removed as leader.

what's happening right now, where there are two entities moving in different directions, is not within the parliamentary tradition of canada. there's no way to describe this than watching the party implode and collapse.

somebody needs to take charge. either singh has control of the party and can get a seat from a backbencher, or he does not have the confidence of the party, and should be removed from the leadership.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/grenier-singh-seats-1.4477621

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

ah, good old ralph.

ralph's a good guy. that good old ralph. there should have been a good guy ralph meme, really.

if it's all up to ralph, it'll probably turn out ok - eventually, after he steers it through a dozen obstacles. but, i don't know how much of this is actually up to ralph. if it's up to anybody, i guess it's up to ralph.

this is the kind of thing that the old liberal party, of which ralph is a fading representative, would actually do right. these are the people that wrote our constitution, remember - and our constitution is what got this legalized in the first place. they're actually pretty good at writing laws. this is why i'm able to stand so far on the left and still retain a confidence in the liberal party: they really are good at writing fair laws.

so, when he tells you to be patient, maybe you actually should be. not idle, but patient.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberal-marijuana-pardon-legal-1.4484496

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

back in 2001, and bleeding into about 2003, i wrote a number of tracks into a scorewriter with the explicit intent of eventually having them performed by live ensembles. at the beginning of 2014, i decided that this wasn't likely to ever actually happen and went about completing the tracks in finalized forms - which happened over 2014 and 2015.

my initial plan for this compilation was to produce a record of midi compositions mapped to modern vst instruments as a "chiptune" (not literally) project, and have it double a record of fully realized versions of the tracks. as i went about completing the project, i began to realize that these vst versions were not sufficiently different enough from the finalized versions to justify a separate album and consequently aborted the project.

however, something that's happened since 2001 is that a more mature market has developed for midi-generated music, largely on the back of the success of the gaming industry. people have nostalgia for the sounds that their childhood gaming consoles made and an interest in listening to original music in the style of the soundtracks to those games.

i need to be clear that these are not gaming soundtracks - they're a mix of various types of classical and jazz, taking in influences from across the musical spectrum but essentially none from gaming. gaming isn't a thing i've ever really done, and the little bit i've done has tended to act as an excuse for listening to music (i had a mild civ2 obsession in early high school).

however, i feel that compiling a record of soundblaster mixes is something that could appeal to a specialized, niche audience and am going to put this record together for those people. i also feel it captures the headspace that i was in at the time. i've decided to mirror this soundblaster disc with the vst disc i was initially contemplating, to demonstrate where the technology has arrived at.

all of these tracks also appear on a set of cross-listed singles, and most of them are sequenced into a record at some point. there's more info on the track pages.

i've included the raw midi files in the download for further listening and modification.

these tracks were written from 2001 to 2003 and in some cases rearranged over the course of 2014 and 2015. all disc 1 tracks rendered through a soundblaster live! device that was manufactured c.1999. all disc 2 tracks created in cubase with vst software synthesizer technology. the compilation date is may 14, 2015. disc finalized as lp019 on jan 13, 2018. as always, please use headphones.

his release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (2001, 2002, 2003, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018). 

credits

released April 29, 2003

j - controller inputs, programming, composition, digital wave editing, effects processing, production

the various rendered electronic orchestras include acoustic bass, synth bass, electric bass, flute, clarinet, brass, trumpet, trombone, tuba, soprano saxophone, orchestra hit, violin, cello, string section (tremolo), drum machine, electronic drum kit, hand drums, finger snaps, nylon guitar, electric guitar (distorted, clean), steel string acoustic guitar, fret noise, sitar, banjo, pc card clavinet, music box, piano, organ, bells, synthesizers, mellotron and choir. 

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

i'm actually not sure how i find myself in this position, here, at 2:00 in the morning.

i needed to detox today, but it manifested itself as typing in bed. i slept most of the day, not up until the afternoon. i wanted to clean, but cleaning means vacuuming and i don't know my neighbours well enough to hate them enough to vacuum at 2:00 am on a saturday morning. no, i'd rather at least wake them up at 8:00.

but, i'm not even convinced i can do that. i kind of feel like all i should be doing right now is sweating and typing, until i'm able to finish the plate of spaghetti i've been working on for four days, now.

what's the probability that i can get done through to inri074 tonight? well, let me give it a shot, right? it's just typing....

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

how old am i today?

i don't even plan to put on underwear at any point in the next 24 hours.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

ok: i might change my mind, one day. but, if i ever do, i won't publish anywhere but online, because i don't want to get out of bed to do it.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

i like analyzing things, but i have absolutely no interest in writing papers for publication, whatsoever. it would probably involve putting on clothes and meeting with people, and that's the part i don't like about it. so, i'll do this: somebody should, somebody should...

why don't i do it?

because i'm a musician. that's what i publish. that's my legacy. some other people can be mathematicians, if they want to be. i don't want to be....

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

this isn't really news, it's just "doing the math" on something understood, with one exception: these timescales point to natural factors underlying these wide fluctuations, and demonstrate that the fluctuations we're experiencing right now are not in any way unprecedented.

that upholds lockwood over francis. but, that was already clear.

is there a dialectic in francis v lockwood? there might be. except that the reason she's getting so much push back from the academic world is that the physics underlying the idea is very strange. what she wants you to believe is that the heat propagates from the ocean into the upper atmosphere in the form of a wave, and then falls off somewhere else, in tact. that's really the perfect example of something that you can demonstrate the math of, but that is in the realm of imaginary physics. most of what she's demonstrated or suggested using these mathematical models has not been detected by actual experiments, and most physicists are beyond skeptical of the claims.

but, this isn't new. it's been happening for centuries. and, so one needs a more naturalistic explanation than climate change to explain it in it's entirety, going back to the maunder minimum.

(edit: actually, i need to be a little bit more careful about this. what i said ought to be correct, except that she very conveniently cut the tree ring dates off around 1725. saying there is increased fluctuations in the latter half of the twentieth century does not imply warming as the mechanism, as that is the same period that the sun decreased in output - that is why we needed a theory of global warming in the first place: we had global warming and decreasing solar activity, requiring us to look for an alternate cause of the warming. so, in order for this research to have any meaningful input into the lockwood v francis debate, she'd have had to construct the records back before 1725, to include the last period of low sunspot activity. that should have been the actual point of this. but, the truth is that comparable records already exist, so this convenient oversight is of little consequence - we should expect somebody or other to reconstruct the same wavy jetstream over the 1600s that we're seeing today, because we've already done that research, and we already know that that was the case.

i don't know why she picked 1725. she might not be aware of lockwood's work, as lockwood is a solar scientist. so, she might not have realized the importance of presenting the data from the 17th century. she may have consequently misinterpreted the importance of doing this work as a distraction, and avoided it.

somebody should fill in the holes rather quickly and demonstrate the point: not only is the waviness not unprecedented, but it was even more intense during the maunder minimum, demonstrating the (already well known, amongst solar scientists) correlation between solar intensity and jet stream waviness.)

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02699-3

jagmeet singh must cut his beard