yes, i can present an obvious source of the error in the modeling, otoh, and that's actually with black voters.

now, i'm just hypothesizing this; i'll leave it to somebody else to look it up. but, black turnout in 2008 was through the roof, and he got more than 99% of it. i can't imagine any modelling that would have given any candidate 99% of anything, or at least not anywhere west of moscow.

and, that might be an ironic part of the answer - it could be that a part of the reason the wilder effect didn't show up with obama is because he overpowered it with exceedingly strong black support.

you'd have to look at the old models and crunch the numbers and figure it out, but i'd guess you can get a substantive amount of the discrepancy that way, without even looking at whether white voters lied to pollsters or not.

if obama was whatever you wanted him to be, and black voters wanted him to be black, and conservatives wanted him to be a conservative, and anti-war activists wanted him to be anti-war and ....

....then why wouldn't white liberals want him to be one of their own, and see him that way, as well?

i'm sure that the internet just imploded.

listen - he's the only blackish looking candidate i know of, ever, that made sure to tell everybody he was half white, every time he spoke. generally, black politicians run as being black, and embrace their blackness, and make it a part of their campaign. obama didn't do that - he ran as biracial, and put it at the very front of his messaging.

so, at the least, it's an apples and oranges comparison, because he really wasn't like somebody like jesse jackson, who was 130% black and wouldn't go five minutes without asserting it.

a lot was written about obama being a blank slate - voters projected what they wanted on to him. so, he was a socialist, if you wanted him to be, and a conservative if you wanted that, too - or he was what you most feared, if you leaned towards the opposing team.

i don't think it's such a stretch to think that a substantive number of white voters took his arguments for post-racialism, and his biography as growing up the son of a white woman from kansas, the way they wanted to, and projected an essentially white image of him.

you can agree with me or not, but i think it should be acknowledged, at least, that obama was different than virtually any other black politician in terms of his identity, and it makes a great deal of sense to tie things like an absence of the bradley effect to that rather clear matter-of-fact.

and, what kind of bradley effect can we expect with kamala harris, an indian-jamaican-american female?

you'd be the worst bigot in the world if you didn't vote for her!

why didn't the bradley effect apply to obama?

i don't know.

one hypothesis is that, at least in the primary, clinton's own bradley effect (as a woman) was actually more powerful, and that the sexism overpowered the racism. that might actually be true, but you're stacking hypotheticals. who knows, really.

another thing to point out is that the nature of obama's coalition was hard to poll, in the first place. my memory of 2008 was that obama's vote was incredibly efficient, so you just might end up accidentally undoing a bradley effect by weighting the polls badly, in trying to peg his support, which was very intensely concentrated in urban regions.

a third suggestion is that he was just an enigma; every rule has exceptions.

but, i'm actually going to throw this out there: barack obama is actually white. well, it's true - he's white in almost every way. you have to bring in jim crow laws to decide he's black. i know a lot of people won't really like this analysis, but the fact is that he massively played up his kansas roots & his white mother, and while he can "pass as black" when he has to, he's more comfortable in an essentially culturally white exterior.

so, it could be that the bradley effect didn't apply to obama because voters didn't really interpret him as black.

"western capitalism is almost a better product than heroin." - the now late genesis p'orridge

i might alter that somewhat - western capitalism is almost the same product as heroin.

"before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.”

it's a cliche, and one of the first memes i saw back in the day.

but, it's true.

and, i'm pretty sure my problem is the latter, not the former.

so, i don't need drugs; i need a safe place to exist, where i never have to deal with other people ever again...

i should post the record.

and, maybe it'll chill me out a little.

this is kind of a lost classic. somebody might correct me, but i believe this is the first thing that the singer from skinny puppy did after the band imploded c. 1995. there was a slew of key/goettel releases directly after goettel died....of a heroin overdose....but ogre was quiet for a while. he may have been on tour with ministry and/or pigface...kmfdm, even?

this was with martin atkins, mostly, although mark walk was also involved.

it's a concept record that is critical of ritalin use in children.

and, then, when you have kids that act like kids, they'll push crack on them, to turn them into zombies - until they can get hooked on heroin, too!

heroin for all!

we need to tell people to shut up and suffer, sometimes.

and, we need to get people conditioned to the necessity of suffering in existence, if anything to prove that we're real.

we live in a very, very, very sick world.

the doctors are all drug pushers and heroin dealers.

and, the political system wants to facilitate it.

i could have walked out of there with an rx for vicodin or oxycontin, virtually on demand.

they would have been happy to give it to me.

we should probably actually be making it harder for low-life doctors to prescribe this stuff, not easier to find it.

take a walk through downtown windsor some time and put 2 & 2 together.

it's easy to see why we have such a problem with opiates in this country: the doctors prescribe it like it's candy, even when people vehemently scream that they don't want it.

that wasn't the first time that er tried to give me opiates.

it wasn't even the second.

it was actually the third.

and, you'd have to tie me down and inject it, because that's one of the very few ways to generate violence in me; i'm a passive, non-violent person, but you put that shit near me, and you'd better be wearing head gear, cause i'm going to react like a hungry cougar and go for your eyes and your neck...

great health care system, huh?

even at the 50% dosage, i'd say there's a 75% chance i'm going to harm myself.

but, i have to do it before they'll react.

and they'll just give me heroin when they do.

i am not going to be a friendly person for the next little while, as i'm going to be dealing with hormonal changes that i don't want and don't expect i'll be able to process without fits of violence.

but, what the hospital is telling me is that i have to actually have a reaction before it will treat me, that it won't act preventatively.

...because they're a bunch of fucking idiots.

and, i hope every single one of them dies a horrible death. and soon.

the emergency supply of testosterone blockers was at half the dosage i've been taking since june. it's not going to be enough, and i'm going to need to act aggressively to get the surgery; in the meantime, i should expect severe levels of depression as a result of the rising t-levels that i've been trying to avoid.

and, i can only hope that it's enough to survive until i can chop them out and sacrifice them to demeter.

that ritual will happen, btw - i will get these horrible things in a jar, and take them to a field and burn them.

i don't want acceptance; i don't want to be let in.

i want an escape. i want a way out...

join the community. integrate. fit in.

no - it's your community that makes me want to hang myself.

again: i don't think i suffer from a physical form of depression.

but, people bum me out; i can't deal with the selfishness, the stupidity and the ignorance. it just makes me want to roll up in a ball and cry.

what i need is a way to avoid people, and all of the treatment options are built around trying to get me to interact with them.

i'm as happy as i can be when i don't have to deal with the consequences of other people's stupidity. so, if i could build an isolation chamber that was big enough to hold my things, and prevented me from interacting with everybody else in the world in any way, i'd be ecstatic, really.

it's not realistic, obviously.

all i can do is yell and scream and create conflict and piss people off enough that they do what i need; it's the only way to exist in a society like ours, where everybody's such a piece of shit.

i have a story to write...

so, i've got my head in too many places at once and trying to do everything and succeeding at nothing. i've been eating, typing and cleaning, without much of a clear plan; i do that when i'm in shock, or otherwise weirded out, and i think that's the right way to describe reality right now. i thought i had to get downtown to present myself for the ticket, but of course it's closed and operating over email instead, so i should be inside until i have to get more estrace mid-month.

i'll need to make some calls on monday regarding a number of things.

i want to do some major cleaning in here, but it's pointless if the pig is smoking. i'm not going to do laundry and scrub down the walls if it's just going to emit more pollution, what's the point? i'll be cleaning 20 hours a day, with no end. i'd might as well sit in my own filth, instead.

i at least got some fans set up in here, and it's making somewhat of a difference, but i'm going to need to wait until the temperature comes way, way down before i'm able to do a serious overturn. it was nice for a few weeks in the late spring but, as it is, opening the window in this neighbourhood just makes things worse.

so, i feel like i'm tied to my bedpost with no meaningful way out. it's deeply depressing.

i should try to get back to what i was doing and react to the pollution from upstairs as it presents itself. it may mean running the shower for long periods, but so be it.

once i've got that under control, i can make an analysis regarding what to do about cleaning in here, and whether i think it's a waste of time or not.

this article is overthinking it, i think.

i don't think anybody thinks biden is responsible for the looting, or that trump could do much to stop it, either. i mean, what could trump do? he could declare martial law, that's about it. i don't think wisconsites want that.

it's more of a question of how people organize and separate on the ground; you vote with or against your uncle, or your friends on facebook, and these sort of group mentalities take over, in absence of any really clear logical answer. i mean, what's the answer here? nobody's talking about that, they're just concerned about the fallout, and for good reason; it's not clear what you actually do about this. i'd like to get rid of the cops, but i know that's unlikely, and that trying is full of likely potential pitfalls that could make the issue far worse.

it consequently doesn't help for biden to distance himself from the situation if people are ultimately voting against that frenemy on facebook that, to them, represents biden, rather than against biden, himself.

and, like i say: you only need small numbers of defectors to be decisive in close races, especially given that what's happening is so unlikely to swing voters from trump to biden. like the bet soros made so many years ago, trump has nothing to lose and everything to gain.

i stated before that this isn't biden's fault, but i don't think what he's doing is going to help much.

biden's best tactic here is neither to distance himself from nor align himself with these protests, but to try to change the topic to something he has an advantage in, like health care.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/09/what-biden-understands-left-does-not/616000/

hydro has some issues, but we can fix them, and it is legitimately clean & renewable when done well. it's also a major potential export. it's baffling that this resource has been left undeveloped for so long.

nuclear, oil, coal, etc have issues that can't be fixed.

and wind & solar are useful as supplementary, but not primary, sources.

if we get fusion or anti-matter one day, great; for now, hydro is the best thing we've got.

so, you wanna talk about a children's crusade?

fine.

let's add slaughter-house five to the pandemic reading list.

we need some indignant liberals this cycle, clearly.

it's actually a hitchensian argument.

what kind of cosmic despot is this? one that must be overthrown, and beheaded in the square.

let's send joe and the democrats a message: he may be willing to sacrifice his own son for this empire of greed and exploitation, but we're not willing to sacrifice ours.

it's an old story, told many times, in various different ways.

this interpretation seems to be most similar to kirkegaard's.

but maybe it's time for the left to chop off it's own hand - before we make a terrible mistake.

so, yeah.

if you want to sacrifice your kids at the altar of corporate greed, neo-liberalism and imperial domination, maybe joe's your boy. maybe you don't love them much, anyways.

if you'd rather they live, if you'd rather they have a future, maybe he's not.

he sent his own fucking son to die, and then claimed it was justified as some kind of "sacrifice".

if he'll ritually murder his own, he'll ritually murder yours, too.

but, think this through, carefully.

if biden was willing to send his own son to die, how likely do you think he is to send yours?

he died of cancer at an absurdly young age.

if the cause of his cancer was ultimately some kind of exposure in iraq - something that is noted by researchers but poorly understood - then that would make him about as stupid a person as has ever existed, given he had no reason to put himself at that kind of risk, as the son of a sitting senator and eventual vice-president.

i don't know if i'd call him a sucker..

i think i'd give him a darwin award, though.

and, yes - biden's son was a fucking dipshit, too, clearly.

i mean, what kind of senator raises his son to go fight in a war? what kind of absent parenting leads to that?

that's what poor kids are for...

if you judge a man by the company he keeps, biden's friendship with mccain is pretty devastating.

"john mccain was my friend" - joe biden

exactly.

they should dig up his corpse and send it to jail.

and, if you're too young to remember how much of a piece of shit john mccain really was, just look at his daughter.

that should be enough.

here's some takedowns of mccain from the left:

1) https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/08/john-mccain-was-not-hero-obituary-war-racism-sexism
2) https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:B0q8mquH_7YJ:https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/john-mccain-death-legacy-trump-us-senator-vietnam-war-a8511441.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca
3) https://www.commondreams.org/news/2008/10/07/mccain-linked-private-iran-contra-group

if you think i'm supposed to get teary-eyed about a viciously misogynistic, racist, lying, crooked, war mongering piece of shit like john mccain...

bomb-bomb-bomb...bomb-bomb-bomb his grave.....

this is what john mccain should really be remembered for:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keating_Five

john mccain was a loser, though.

he was a whiner, too.

and a crook, on top of it.

right.

so, we're all going to have to adapt, now.

you can't hide in your basement from the bogeyman, forever - you need to go out and face the world and take risks.

https://montrealgazette.com/news/quebec/quebec-provides-list-of-47-schools-with-covid-19-cases

algebra's just for the feeble-minded.

i don't need it - i can find the unknowns on my own.

calculus is just a bunch of hopey-changey nonsense, and you don't need it to understand physics.

you're better off using your intuition to work this out, like aristotle did.

game theory is how educated people study conflict in the modern world.

don't let a bunch of idiots and demagogues try to convince you otherwise.

conversely, approaching conflict without the language of game theory, by claiming life is more important than a game or some other stupid thing, is like trying to solving a physics problem while rejecting calculus as "hopey changey".

it's stupidity.

...simply stated.

game theory is a widely used branch of mathematics, like calculus or algebra.

and, rejecting or disparaging it in it's legitimate use is just anti-intellectualism, plain and simple.

"progressives" are so fucking ignorant....

game theory is not about "playing games". in fact, it's of almost no use, whatsoever, in trying to win things like poker, or do well with stocks. the right branch of mathematics to maximize your chances in competitive sports tournaments is probability theory.

what game theory does is mathematically model conflict between two or more actors, and it's mostly used in the fields of applied psychology, political science, economics and evolutionary biology.

all that a "progressive" is telling you when they say "they don't play games" when game theory is invoked to study any sort of conflict is "i'm too ignorant to follow the conversation, and i'm too uneducated to understand the language you're utilizing".

they literally don't understand the words being said to them, it's that simple.

but, when a trained economist reacts that way, they're merely being disingenuous, because they do understand the language, and so should be labeled dishonest rather than ignorant - and cast aside as a demagogue, trying to confuse you. that is, the economist knows full well why that kind of response is just base ignorance - but they think you don't, and are trying to confuse or mislead you with lies.

that said - and i've said this a few times - i understand that i'm arguing in favour of a strawman.

i'm still expecting an austerity budget at it's core, and that any attempts to address climate change will, while attacked vehemently by the right, ultimately be of minimal actual impact.

this government has been trying to walk a line on this, and ultimately has neither succeeded in assuaging conservatives nor in subduing environmentalists. they're just squeezing themselves out....

i'm open-minded, and i'd like to see what they say before i react. but, my expectations are startlingly low, and i don't expect to be able to support the budget at all.

ford did not win due to the electricity fiasco, although it didn't help. ford won by swinging muslim votes in key ridings, due to the sex ed curriculum.

but, there is indeed a stark warning, and that stark warning should be heeded: lies often win over truth.

don't expect truth to win by default - you have to fight the liars at every turn.

i've been clear that i support renationalizing the grid in ontario, and going back to selling it to us at cost.

the way forward in this province is properly designed hydro-electric power systems, that are created in a way that minimizes or eliminates concerns for wildlife in the surrounding areas. this is perfectly feasible, it just needs to be done correctly, in ensuring that the priorities of all species up and down stream are accounted for, at the expense of profiting from the system.

energy production in ontario should belong to ontarians and be produced for ontarians' use-value, not belong to corporations and be produced for surplus-value for elites and foreigners.

the idea that energy costs in ontario increased due to the embrace of windmills & solar panels as a source into the system is a lie pushed by the right.

the reason that prices have gone up is that the system was deregulated and privatized, and the villain is mike harris, not dalton mcguinty.

prices are set by the ontario energy board and not by the market, and ford himself has demonstrated as much by legislating stronger controls (something wynne should have done, but chose not to; she brought in rebate programs to target the most vulnerable and let the wealthy take it on the chin, instead).

prices have increased due to greed by the corporate sector, and they just blamed it on the environmentalists as an easy scapegoat.

it's just greed.

that is all.

however, there is a cautionary tale for the liberals, here, in how lies spread through media can become compelling, if they are not properly countered. and, that warning is indeed stark: if they allow the dirty-oil backed media to frame a false narrative, they could see history repeat itself.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7316275/justin-trudeau-spending-throne-speech/

small sample sizes.

poor sampling methods.

high margins of error (or no way to calculate one at all).

an obvious bradley effect.

wait before you react.

if you have a liberal arts degree, or lower, it's important to ensure that you get somebody that knows how to read the polls to read them for you.

don't just read the headlines in the paper - they're frequently misleading. and, don't think you can wing it. you can't.

if you failed grade 10 math and haven't tried since, even if you're a lawyer, then step back and defer.

remember the cliche: lies, damned lies....and statistics.

i'm offering this service for free because i'm an altruist, because i believe in general public education (maybe i've read too much dawkins.) and because i have nothing better to do.

listen: the only people supporting this shit are psychologically damaged people. this isn't black v white, or right v left; it's sane v crazy.

most of the activists on the ground don't even support what's happening.

and, as mentioned, you just need a very minor swing to be decisive - 1%. that's it.

so, if you're going to throw an internet poll at me that completely counter-intuitively has biden up by 6% (with an 8% margin of error) in the presence of an obvious bradley effect, i'm just going to shrug it off and tell you to wait for better data.

again: i'm going to point to the low quality of the polling right now, more than anything else.

but, when polling white liberals in states like wisconsin around things like race riots, you have to understand a concept called a bradley effect. that is, most white liberals are not as honest as i am - white liberals tend to tell white lies when confronted with issues around race.

this is a well established phenomenon, and one that is still very real. i suspect it's happening right in front of you with the polling you're seeing, but you need an actual ballot before you can diagnose it; otherwise, it's just an educated guess to try to make sense of numbers that don't really add up. this is really an obvious classic bradley effect! it's just that you have to do the experiment to be sure.

the most recent measurable bradley effect we saw was in the 2019 canadian election, where last minute polling registered a "surge" for the ndp that was completely absent on the actual ground. this led to poor modelling predictions that should have really been caught by a savvy analyst.

if biden's numbers have improved upon the democratic party's numbers in the region since 2016, it's because he walked into this more appealing to white liberals than clinton was. and, if he wants to flip these states, he needs to do so by holding on to that white liberal support.

anything that has the potentiality to erode that support is going to hurt him in these states - and this has a tremendous potential to, even if respondents have been conditioned by the media to feel ashamed about it, and lie when asked about it.