dr. howard is the second of two candidates that are entering this race with clear qualifications to a lead a federal party, and, in my opinion, is the obvious runner-up, that only being because there is another candidate with more experience in politics, specifically. courtney's experience is of a slightly different nature, which is a bit of a judgement call - is a political background more preferable, or is a medical/scientific background more preferable? the party really needs both things to function. dr. howard also presents the members with a real option to pick a younger woman to jump the queue, if you will, if that is of great importance to you. while i would be comfortable in voting for her expertise and wisdom, and think she's an ideal middle candidate that is both useful for the present and the future, i will not be participating in the contest.

my impression of meryam is that she would be an interesting choice primarily for people that are looking to build a more general left-wing party and are focusing strictly on the long term, and that she's approaching the greens as a kind of vehicle for the construction of a new party of the left; that is, she strikes me as somebody that's basically just fed up with the ndp and looking to move past it. the greens exist, therefore she is here. but, if her argument is rooted in the superiority of an electoral strategy that pushes the idea that the greens can win seats tomorrow by convincing more young people to vote by running a young person, i may suggest that the members look at the evidence of how successful such a strategy has been recently - but to do so across the board. compare and contrast the very large increases in turnout that the liberals managed under trudeau in 2015 (and disappeared last year) to the anemic turnout in the united states amongst young people, and try to figure out what you think a meryam-led party would more resemble, and truly be able to accomplish. do you think you can win seats by convincing young people to vote? then, perhaps you could see a good reason to support meryam. if you're a little skeptical about that, based on the evidence from recent elections, then maybe a different candidate may be preferable.

david is a likeable enough guy that seems to be committed to the climate and he seems to be successfully avoiding the issue that i'm most concerned about with him, which is the potential of the ndp going after him for being too right-wing. whether that's true or not (and i think the evidence is mixed....it's both fair and unfair), we've already seen what kind of effect that can have on elections in bc. so, david presents a kind of another choice for the members: do they want to dig in and kind of let the ndp attack them in this way, and try and carve out some support in reaction to that, or do they want to step away from that as a potential liability? i'd be a little apprehensive, myself. regardless of where you stand on the spectrum, the greens are in direct competition with the ndp in much of the country, and i'd be worried that he might be a factor in losing some seats, even if he succeeds in winning his own.

glen has an establishment background, but the truth is that he's also the most left-wing candidate in the pile. if you're a pragmatic, left-leaning environmentalist then there's a lot of reasons why he should be the front-runner, but i don't get the impression that he actually is. i will not be voting in this contest, but if the party membership wants to pick a leader that is able to present the party as a serious choice that wants to actually get something done then i would suggest you make a serious effort to look beyond his history as a high-ranking liberal and listen to what he's actually saying. and, let's remember that elizabeth came out of mulroney's office. glen has consistently come off as the most informed and most focused candidate on these panels, even when he's being consistently cut off for running over time. as such, the party has a kind of acid test here; does it want to take itself seriously now and try to take a run at the balance of power in the imminent upcoming election, or is it looking to build, longterm? if it wants to get in tomorrow, glen is the leadership candidate that can step in and make a difference right away. if it wants to look long term (and how much time do we have?), then it's going to pick somebody else that is going to take a longer view. i don't think we have much time, and would lean towards a candidate that can have an immediate impact. but, we will see if the members are thinking the same way as i am or not.

as per usual, the headache went away with a long, hot shower. further, the air seems to have moistened up nicely, to the point that i'm no longer coughing. migraine averted? let's hope so.

so, i'm very confident that i understand the causes, and i know how to react.

i just wish i didn't have to; i wish the air would just stay moist enough that it's not triggering me.

i got another clean of the fan in, and i just have to hope it turns back on once it's dried out. it's one of those grey ge/honeywell type affairs that you can clean via water pressure in the tub. they're constructed well, but they have proprietary screws, so they're hard to clean. if i can't get this to work and have to buy another, i'm going to make sure i get something i can take apart to clean.

i keep saying i'm going to clean this space up, then rant all night. but, if i can avoid the headache, that's the plan.

"but we need more studies to know if you end up dying by shitting out your liver or your pancreas."

*headdesk*

maybe this might help.

what would happen if you contracted the virus, and you weren't able to clear it with t-cells, and you didn't get sick?

you'd melt; you'd die by shitting out your liver.

it would just rampage through you, and you wouldn't even know what hit you.

is that making more sense?

let's take a step back here and explain why we don't need studies to know that humans are creating antibodies to eliminate the virus, and that there is no ambiguity surrounding the point, at all, whatsoever. and, i'm not going to cite studies, nor am i going to post links, but i'm just going to summarize a high school biology textbook, for the benefits of people that were apparently too lazy to bother.

and, i don't want to hear excuses - if you don't take bio in high school, you're just too lazy to do it. there's no other reason. i'll accept that physics and chemistry are a little esoteric if you're really intent on becoming a lawyer, but high school biology (including evolution) is really so rudimentary that it ought to be mandatory for all five years.

and, the immense ignorance we're seeing in front of us is evidence of the point.

so, how do we know that antibodies work without doing any studies?

the answer is that we get sick and clear the virus.

"but, what about t cells?"

if you clear the virus with t cells, you won't get sick. that's maybe the only thing i've seen come out of this that is mildly surprising; the apparently very high percentage of people that just clear this thing without even sneezing.

but, if you get any symptom at all - headaches, fever, coughs - then that is evidence that your body is producing antibodies.

and, when you defeat the virus, that's proof that it works.

well, unless you want to argue that it just gave up and left.

"meh. fuck this guy, anyways. i'm infecting somebody else."

no. stop. it is that easy.

it doesn't require a study.

when you get sick, you're producing antibodies; when you win, that means they cleared it.

and, when you die, that means they didn't.

source: any middle school science textbook.

this just in, we've got a response from biden regarding the news about the wheel...

i am remember this one time back in 1879, when we were talking about eels. they're odd creatures, the way they just clamp on to you. it's like the time when i was walking in the park and i saw a coyote, and jill looked at me and said "that's a dog", and i said "that's a coyote", and then i wondered why the coyote was letting somebody walk him in the park and jill said that it's a dog.

anyways, why did you ask me about eels?

i'm not exaggerating.

i really do like 45 degree humidity.

like, crave it....

something else i'll do when the humidity gets up over 35 is position the fan so it's blowing in moist air from outside.

yes - i sit in an apartment in the summer with two fans pointed away from me, because i need the circulation but i don't like the cooling effect.

i'm starting to get a dry air smell in here and my fan still isn't working :(

it smells more like the back of a radiator than an ashtray, so i think it's probably the dehumidifier rather than a smoker. but, removing humidity from the air is going to affect me the same way as smoking will.

i was on the brink of an aura when i fell asleep this morning, and woke up feeling better. however, i'm getting the very beginning start of round two, which is hitting me in the stomach first, and just starting to spread to my right side as i'm typing. let's hope i can avoid it, but i basically need the fan on immediately or i won't; round two is always the harder one to avoid.

it's a mild day out, but not warm enough to let the heat in. i also need to have the fan pointing towards the window to keep some of the smell out, or it's worse with it open than it closed. we should get something more closely approaching summer over the weekend, but i'm not interested in being stoned right now; i burned myself out nicely, and that should be it for a while.

so, i've got laundry running (again) to get the heat up, and i'm going to have to get back to trying to clean out the fan. i'm essentially going to be unable to do anything until the fan starts working again.

my little usb fan is probably not actually doing anything relative to the larger fan. right now, i have it an inch from my face to try to blow the dry air away from me, but that's not going to be effective for very long.

i may end up sitting in the shower all night.

we've also got some reaction from dr. fauci on the reinvention of the wheel, as well.

i must express cautious optimism around the wheel-reinvention candidates, as they have yet to pass randomized testing in sufficiently large trials. we are not yet clear if this particular approach to rewheeling will effectively eliminate friction, or if there may be unknown sources of friction coming from hidden variables, or perhaps even multiple dimensions. it is also not clear if the friction is being eliminated because of the rewheeling or due to some other effect, like sympathetic magic. i would cautiously avoid using this device to reduce friction for now, and continue to drag objects that need to be moved in sleds, as the egyptians did centuries ago. 

there was a follow-up about potential hyperthermia due to exertion, and a query as to why our previous understanding of the wheel was not sufficient.

look, we just don't know yet. i'll be the first to support a proper wheel-reinvention candidate when it appears, but until then we need to keep dragging ourselves through the mud.

you'll realize i'm funny when this is over, and i was right and you were stupid.

we've got some reaction from bernie sanders on the reinvention of the wheel.

i'm in solidarity with the reinvention of the wheel, and glad to hear it. my own wheel was getting a little run down from running in spot on it for the last 50 years. it's still my wheel though, and stay the fuck out of it.

people don't seem to know what vaccines are.

they seem to think it's a magic potion that wards off bad demons, or something; i'm only mildly exaggerating.

no - i'm a bitch, sure, and i enjoy it, but this is serious; it's really exposing a very serious hole in our public education programs, when we have adults, many of them well meaningm that simply have no idea whatsoever what a vaccine is, whether they're opposed to it or not.

if you're going to send kids back to school in september, maybe a solid week of vaccine learning across the board for students of all ages would be appropriate, to start.

BREAKING NEWS

as of 15:14 est, there are reports out of new york that the wheel has been reinvented.

i repeat: the wheel has been reinvented.

while these reports are preliminary, and some caution is suggested, we will provide further updates after the run of pornographic infomercials disguised as after-school specials ends, at 18:00.

the argument that we're going to be hearing from all these ignorant arts majors on the fake left is something like this:

as antibodies don't provide immunity against the virus, the only effective way to mass immunity is via vaccination

they will stand up and state this into their microphones and their audiences will lap it up, because they don't have the base of knowledge to deconstruct it.

and, as hilarious as it is, it has to be stopped. we can't have people thinking they need to get vaccinated, because antibodies don't provide immunity. that's going to create all kinds of problems in the long run.

there's a phenomenon in psychology called the dunning-kruger effect that i'm...

you can't really measure things like this. if you thought i was critical of economics as a science, you should hear me lace into psychology.

but, that seems to be the idea that's at play, here.

we're all experts now, thanks to twitter. right?

this is something we're learning...

the most vocal proponents of widespread vaccination don't seem to understand how it works.

we really need to put a much greater focus on basic science in grade school.

ok?

people are idiots, and not only do they not know they're idiots, but they wouldn't understand it if you explained it to them.

worse, i bet that a majority of people don't even understand the joke.

i'd like to see a study on this....

what is the size of the intersection of people that hold the following views simultaneously:

1) antibodies don't create immunity to the virus
2) vaccination should be mandatory

i suspect that these views are actually highly correlated.

and, that's both frightening and hilarious at the same time.

in other news, scientists have recently found an unexpected link between eating food and alleviating hunger. these groundbreaking results are preliminary, however, and need to be verified with further testing.

that journalist needs to be reassigned to something else.

like, maybe covering school board council meetings.

the idea that antibodies are going to be protective is not controversial.

and, you need to take a course in grade eight science, if you think that it is.

we're doing phase III trials and global news thinks we need to prove that antibodies might protect against the disease.

the stupidity is just staggering.

how did this get published?

fire this journalist!

https://globalnews.ca/news/7288133/coronavirus-antibody-protection-science/

cases are clearly up in ontario.

that is all.

so, they're back to fucking with the data, if they ever stopped.

i don't know when we're going to get analyzable statistics from ontario. it could be years. or, it might never materialize.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/covid-19-coronavirus-ontario-august-20-emergency-orders-1.5693397

i think maybe a lot of us have been driven into unreason, and coerced into throwing away a lot of our principles over the last few weeks and months.

let's try to get our heads back.

my body, my choice is a slogan i'd support in many different contexts, including vaccinations, tested or untested.

regarding that russian vaccine again...

do you know who is the perfect example of somebody that is in a high enough risk category that they ought to be given the opportunity to make an autonomous choice about their body and their health?

donald trump.

he's over almost 75, he has to exist in public and he lives with a young person likely to spread the virus (i mean barron, not melania).

i'm not saying he should take the russian vaccine, although i'd love to see the media coverage around it. but, i would suggest that it's probably a better idea, as a prophylactic, than hydroxycholoroquine.

it would be hilarious if trump took the russian version, but there are non-russian vaccine candidates that are ready for or already in phase III trials.

is there some chance he could get sick and die from the untested vaccine? sure. 2%. 5%. those numbers are in the "easy to trick yourself" range, as they look small but really aren't. complication numbers for tested vaccines are going to be <<1%.

but, if he gets it, he has close to a 10% chance of dying.

he should have the right to weigh that risk himself, not be told what to do by the state. or fauci, as it may be.

i don't want to skip anybody, but my politics are not, personally, very aligned with mr. west's, and i'll just leave it at that.

judy strikes me as the kind of candidate that would emerge as a good consensus choice, in the middle of a vicious primary, which is not the scenario that is currently playing out. her most likely path to victory would be to take a kind of high road and walk up the middle, while two other candidates bludgeon each other, which is something that this process seems designed to avoid. while there are some tactical considerations to focusing on atlantic canada, i would recommend some caution amongst greens about putting too much emphasis on a region that may have been voting via the process of elimination. that is, if the sole intent is to build a regional base, i would recommend some caution before proceeding. that said, while her most likely path to victory in the leadership contest would be to avoid the trenches, the evidence i've seen in canada about leaders that come out of processes such as that would lead me to a little bit of caution in recommending her, as the end efficacy of that type of leader is generally minimal, as they will need to start fighting immediately on day one and often are not able to do so in an effective manner. while the party may be wise not to stray too far from elizabeth may as an archetype, we must not forget that ms. may's effectiveness is rooted in her assertiveness and feistiness, qualities i must presume she gained as a lawyer. i wonder if judy has enough fight in her to get her voice heard. i will not be voting in this contest, but i do wish her luck.

dr. kuttner is clearly a very bright, focused individual, and i have to say i like the attitude being projected the best of all of the candidates. we used to talk of the ndp as the moral conscience of the nation, but really haven't heard talk of that since the day that jack layton pulled the plug on paul martin. i am interpreting dr. kuttner as a good candidate to take on that role, from a more rigorous perspective than they ever really did. yet, that would be a role for a leader of a party with a more substantive presence than the greens currently have, and it would consequently appear as though dr. kuttner is maybe converting too much potential energy into kinetic energy. i will not be voting in this contest, but i would suggest that dr. kuttner's talents are currently better served in a support role to a leader with a more dynamic and populist style that is better able to work up a groundswell of support.

so, i had to take a nap, but i seem to have avoided the migraine, for now.

i'm very thirsty, which is consistent with my analysis.

let's hope that fan starts working again before the next wave hits.

i'm just trying to find a good way to get this across so it's written down somewhere in understandable terms for leftists to reference, because it's a big problem on the ground - the left is absolutely clueless about race, right now.

we are taught to see race. it's true; when i say it's a social construct, that's not a facetious claim - we see it everywhere, because we're taught to, forced to, brainwashed to...

but let's forget about skin colour for a moment and talk about eye colour, instead. this is easily measurable, and we have a good idea of the genetics behind it.

so, let's suppose that we decide we're going to categorize people by eye colour. i'm not even going to walk you through that; i'll let you imagine how you'd do that...

the absurdity of the process should be apparent to most, immediately. do we suppose that eye colour has some effect on who these people are? that blue-eyed people are a certain way, and green-eyed people are another way?

would we wonder if the bmi of redheads should be measured differently than the bmi of brunettes?

no - we would laugh at this.

so, why do we still take skin colour seriously? why don't we see it as as much of a triviality as eye colour or hair colour is?

the answer is because we've erected a social construct around it!

but, if we were thinking more carefully, and actually looking at the science, we would realize that the amount of our genome that codes for skin colour is not much greater than the amount that codes for eye colour or hair colour or nose shape or breast size. and, we would see the idea of categorizing people by skin colour as as absurd and full of contradictions as the idea of categorizing people by any other meaningless physical characteristic.

so, please, people - stop talking about race in biological terms.

the bbc should retract that article and apologize for publishing it.

and, no you can't use y-dna haplotypes to determine race, either.

not rigorously.

consider the curious example of the black r1b populations in africa. we don't care how that got there right now, i'm just drawing your attention to the fact that there is, in fact, a black population with overwhelming r1b y-dna, which we usually think of as the "white gene".

https://haplomaps.com/the-euro-african-or-the-story-of-the-haplogroup-r1b/

clearly, that gene ain't so white, is it?

it's also true that some indigenous groups in canada have upwards of 80% r1* ancestry. we can talk about how that happened some other time. right now, simply note that it's true, and it doesn't affect the phenotypes (or not as much as you'd imagine it does).

it's an absolutely negligible component of your genome...

it's one of my biggest peeves.

the smart post-modernist thinkers know that race is a construct, but there's still so many ignorant people out there that take these post-modernist ideas and try to erect them into race as an identity.

it's the worst pseudo-science imaginable, and it drives me fucking nuts.

listen.

people can get pissy, but they're wrong. so i don't care.

i wouldn't care, anyways; when somebody's upset because they're wrong, i'm in negative territory in terms of caring.

you'd have to actually donate me fucks to give.

the problem scientists have with race is that they can't define it.

we can't figure out who belongs to which group - who is black, who is white, who is asian, etc.

it's just incoherent, as a tool of categorization.

tautologically true statement: you have black relatives.

what does it mean, though?

you've probably heard these statements, no doubt tersely.

"race has no scientific basis", "race is not a biological concept", "there is no scientific meaning to race", etc.

what?

what it means is that your ancestors aren't as homogeneous as you probably think they are; what it means is that we migrate widely and always have, that we all fuck each other and always have and that any one of us, as individuals, has ancestry all over the world, regardless of our phenotypic expressions.

what it means is that, because genetic diversity is highest in east africa due to it being our ancestral homeland, two black women from africa are likely to have more genetic differences between each other than either are likely to have with any random white people.

what it means is that you can't build generalized genetic relationships based on observing how people look, that phylogenetic relationships are not strongly correlated with phenotypes.

what it means is that you don't just have ancestors that look differently than you, but you have ancestors that look any way imaginable.

but, mostly, what it means is that it is impossible to build rigorous, data-based categorizations of humans based on their appearance; all you get is noise and contradictions.

it's not like they didn't try to do it, but they failed.

as a scientific concept, race is just wrong.

we can talk about race in a sociology classroom.

but, we dare not speak of it in a biology course - not any more, anyways.

race is not a biological concept, it's a social construct.

there's nothing to study.

people that talk about race using biological terms are operating in the realm of pseudoscience.

the idea that bmi should be calculated differently for black people is racist.

and, if you're a black person convinced of that, you've internalized your racism.

this is completely retarded.

bmi is not a racialized concept, but poverty is. the reason these numbers are different across these ethnic groups is a reflection of systemic racism, not a question of biology.

so, i would support programs to help poor people eat better diets, regardless of their ethnicity.

but, i don't think it's worthwhile to waste time and research dollars on determining whether bmi is different for different racial types; it's a laughable suggestion, frankly.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/49f398eb-5546-4d68-8d07-4b74e35b1df8

"Based on everything we know... this has not been sufficiently tested," he added. "It's not about being first somehow - it's about having a safe vaccine."

well, tell that to the clear-minded 85 year-old diabetic that just inherited her only daughter's grandkids, as she succumbed to it herself in her 60s.

that's a little over the top....

but, you get the point. there's lots and lots of people that will very rationally choose an experimental vaccine, after a cost-benefit analysis.

this is the real world, where people have no choice but to live in risk.

i think that if people are willing to take the risk, they should be allowed to assume it; it's their body, so it's their choice.

the reality is that there's probably something like a 95% chance that the vaccine out of russia is fine. for me, a 5% chance of complications is many orders of magnitude higher than the likelihood that the virus harms me in any way. so, i'll wait.

but, if i was a little older, or diabetic, i'd jump at it.

technically, it's untested and comes with some risk, but this isn't as reckless as it's being portrayed as, and things will probably work out fine.

and, i won't even take aspirin.

i don't want the dependency. i don't want the habit.

it's not a "headache".

it's not a "bad headache".

it's a full blown, clinical, vicious migraine.

i'll run the shower for days to push it off if i have to....

but, hopefully, the fan is back working again soon.

we're talking difficulties typing, difficulties reading, confusion, blurry vision....these are the absolute worst types of migraines that you can imagine....

the last few migraines have just been vicious, too, so i don't have any apprehension in doing everything i can to stop it. i'm about 30% into it, and i think i can pull it back still.

we're talking auras, with hemiplegic weakness, on one side and then the other, like i'm having a stroke on both sides, one after the other.

i have an appointment on the 24th with a neurologist. i know that these aren't actually dangerous, i just want to know if he has ideas on how to deal with them.

the heaters make me sick.

the a/c makes me sick.

the dehumidifier makes me sick...

so, i keep the fan on 24/7, and the windows open as much as possible.

but, even that doesn't always work - i'll even get sick when the atmospheric pressure outside changes.

i'd legitimately probably be happiest living outside in a tree hut in a rainforest, i just need a tiger shield and somebody to build me a treetop studio that's hurricane proof.

for now, if i could just find somewhere to live where nobody is trying to fuck with the air in any way - where i can just enjoy the natural atmosphere, whatever that means - then that's the preferred solution.

i'm just very, very, very sensitive to anything that alters the atmosphere, almost like i'm actually from a different planet or something.

the other reason i know it's the humidity is that taking a hot shower almost always works to fix it.

and, yes - i can smell. and taste. it doesn't seem to be that.

i just had a yummy bite of strawberry. mmmm.

i just can't smell any smoke, or any of the disgusting smells i was dealing with last year. so, what i'm getting at is that it seems unlikely to be related to gasses coming up from under the floor. that issue does seem to have been fixed.

i've been through this before enough times that i know that it's the dry & stagnant air causing both the bleeds and the migraines. he doesn't seem to have his a/c on, but he may be running a dehumidifier up there, and that may be the root cause.

the fan fixes it. i just need to fix the fan.

and hope it doesn't get too bad in the mean time.

i'm not straight edge.

but, i don't like the idea of "painkillers". ever. at all. for any reason.

self-medicating, as in the case of a headache, is pretty much the only time i won't smoke pot, as a principle.

i want to use the drug in a purely recreational way, sporadically - very infrequently. i don't want to get into the habit of using anything as a sleep aid, or anything to deal with headaches or muscle pains.

i'm an advocate of suffering through it.

i mean, if i won't take aspirin, generally, because i feel uncomfortable with the premise of taking drugs for pain relief, i'm not going to smoke drugs, either.

i would rather be warm with a headache than cold without one, so there's little chance i'm going to open that window.

i'm going to run the shower, though, to get the humidity up.

maybe all night.

the cause and effect is as clear as day, too.

i haven't had a headache in months; it started to come back in within minutes as soon as the fan turned off.

am i going to take thc for migraines?

no. i won't allow myself to do that, that's an abuse of the chemical, imo.

the temperature might come up enough to open the window late tomorrow afternoon.

that's too far from now.

that's a week cold turkey for the nicotine, and i'm confident that's done with. i don't want to have to start popping aspirin down here....

so, my fan went out this afternoon and i'm predictably getting another migraine, along with nose bleeds. it doesn't smell like anything in here, though. this might be a difficult few days, coming up.

it's the same thing that happened last year - it just stopped. i'm more convinced that it's full of hair this year, though, because it's more obvious. but i don't know...

what i know is that if i don't get the fan back on soon, i'm going to potentially be writhing in pain for days, as i fight off migraines and nosebleeds.

i was dealing with something similar in the previous basement, so it doesn't seem to be unique to this space. and, i've had periodic migraines and seizure-like events going back years.

so, i don't think it's anything particularly local, i think i just need better air circulation.