google has only ever notified me of it's intent to censor a single post in this space, and it reversed it's decision upon review. so, i have to think it's not deleting posts, randomly.

my bigger concern is that some vigilante group, which includes an intelligence agency,  is doing it...

but, there's thousands and thousand and thousands of posts here. trying to find something is always going to be challenging, if i can't remember the exact term.

i should have everything backed up in a few different places, and i can never find any evidence of anything being missing when i look. but, i have good reason to think that some of these spaces were hacked, and somebody's been in my room.

as mentioned repeatedly, they don't go after the posts you'd imagine they would. when it seemed like somebody was slaving my machine, the thing they seemed to want to do was disable adblock, first and foremost. i've noticed that music review posts frequently evaporate. and, the issues that always seem blurry are issues to do with trudeau, or some obscure leftist political issue, or issues to do with muslims, making me think it's a canadian intelligence agency - and that they're being absurdly thorough.

or, maybe i'm imagining it.

or, maybe the point is to make me think i'm imagining it.

somebody seems to be watching me - but i always say that you'd never actually know that orwell was right, if he was. you'd just have to guess it...

again, there's this constant feeling as though posts are missing, ad though i'm reacting to thoughts that have disappeared - but if somebody is doing this purposefully then all i can conclude is that they're being exceedingly thorough, because i can't find a damned bit of evidence for any of it.

if i didn't know any better, i might wonder if the colonoscopy industry successfully lobbied the government to set restrictions on fit accessibility.

....which isn't supposed to happen, here.

this article at harvard (which is available in google's cache) is an exact summary of everything i've posted so far.

- fit tests should be available on demand

- colonoscopies should not be done randomly or routinely

of course i'm right - that should surprise nobody. what's frustrating is how...

...is how behind the system is. that's the truth of it - everything in canada seems to be ten-twenty years behind. we get everything last. it's like a cultural stunt, and that's frustrating in what is supposed to be a global economy, given how far we went to embrace it.

the bottom line is that i don't understand why my doctor can't order me a fit test, based on my age. that's ridiculous, as an absolute metric.

they can't screen you over 85 either, which is just as baffling.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/cancer/dont-wait-until-you-turn-50-to-screen-for-colon-cancer

the age of 50 is really legitimately arbitrary, it seems.

people 40-49 are apparently at higher statistical risk than people aged 50-59.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26905605/

that wasn't how i planned to spend the afternoon, but so be it.

i need to stop to eat.

$60 just seems exorbitant. the internet suggests something in the $8 range is more reasonable, and the at-home kits are in the $25 range.

it could ultimately be a good excuse to take a bike ride. and, any excuse for a day on the bike is worth it.

they're extending the lockdown to june...and i don't expect it to lift until late summer, at the earliest.

so, i'll need to call around in the morning, but it seems like there's probably only really one option in windsor.

i should call around for the lowest price.

i may have found something in windsor, on second thought.

so, they want to charge me $59 and are suggesting i don't use the mail.

the at home kits are cheaper.

so, i called the cancer check program and, after giving them shit, they gave me a number in brampton to call...

i might have to pay for it. that's fine.

it is far more important for me to get my iron stores up to correct for the obvious absorption problem than it is to check for the infinitesimal probability that i may be bleeding somewhere.

and, that is exactly what i will do, if forced to choose.

but, i shouldn't be forced to choose - i should have access to this test.

all the literature just instructs me to do the other fecal test.

but, i can't do the other fecal test until i go off iron, and i'm not going to go off iron for another 2-3 months, potentially - meaning i won't have an answer for the fecal test for another 3-4 months.

yet, the purpose of denying me access to the test is supposed to be to prevent delays in diagnosis. but, that's exactly what they're going to get - a huge delay. because the colonoscopy is simply irrational, without some evidence that it's actually required, of which there currently isn't any.

why are medical professionals so fucking irrational? like, this is consistent, it's endemic. they may have large knowledge bases, but they can't solve simple fucking problems. they're all fucking idiots.

again - universal healthcare sounds great, right?

i can't even buy it. it's not for sale. there's no way to do it. it's ridiculous.

the lab has the tests, they do them regularly, but there's an arbitrary age restriction on access, and nobody can get around it - you have to order it from another country, instead.

the official position from the ontario government appears to be that people under the age of 50 should get colonoscopies instead of fecal tests because fecal tests take too long to process, which makes no sense in context.

there's a higher chance of complications resulting from a colonoscopy than there is that i have fecal bleeding, and i'm going to play the probabilities and deny the scope.

so, i apparently can't order a fit test unless i'm 50 because it "may lead to delays in diagnosis".

but, there's a 0% chance that i'm going to get a colonoscopy without a fecal test to justify it.

so, we're going to have to wait to do the fobt test, and if i die of cancer in the mean time, however unlikely, we can all blame it on the government for being stupid in it's testing criteria.

the gastro-enterologist is only working thursdays and fridays. he might be able to get around it.

but, it looks like i'm going to have to order an at-home kit from somewhere in the states, instead.

i understand the need to test for this, truly.

but i'm in the lowest possible risk category for colon cancer that you could abstractly imagine. you couldn't produce a character in a fictional series with a lower risk. really.

i eat a fibre-dominant diet and almost no meat.

i couldn't be kinder to my colon, truly.

but i'll do the damned test.

poop update.

i skipped the salad for a few days and noticed the poop firm back up again. i had a giant salad last night for the first time in a few days, minus beets, and in two courses, and the result was a return to the mushy poop, but without the reddish hue.

i'm totally convinced.

but, i have a phone appointment very soon to talk to the gp about a fit test, to be sure.

the irony is that ford was elected on a sort of libertarian mandate pushing for small government, with all the typical arguments about how government interference just fucks everything up.

and, this is an example of where these arguments are actually useful - when the government is too incompetent to do anything right. but, it's a reflection of the quality of the ruling party, rather than the value of government.

so, you can understand why they'd make those arguments, when you see how they actually legislate, themselves; when you put that mirror up against their own (lack of) competency, it makes sense for them to think nothing can ever be done correctly via collective action.

and, that's the reverse irony of it - i'd certainly rather not let conservatives interfere with the market, at least. 

i need to be clear: what i'm saying is that you'd expect flu transmission to begin decreasing around this time of year in any other year. so, while it's very easy to jump to conclusions and declare that the lockdown is working, the reality is that doing so is completely specious and entirely unscientific.

in science, we don't deduce causal relations by observing correlations; rather, we produce hypotheses and test for them.

it's entirely reasonable to argue that transmission is falling along with rising temperatures, just like it does every other year.

now, try to make sense of a government policy that orders people to stay inside over april and may, given that context.

science is fun.

somebody tell that to the health authorities....

this is as rough and dirty as it gets because i decided many months ago that i don't have time to analyze poorly collected data, and nobody's listening anyways, but here you go.

this is 2018/2019:

the broad shape of the curve is that the flu peaked twice - in late january and again in april. there's two ways to think about this. you could argue it's the weather, and that the dip is due to decreased contact in the coldest months. conversely, you could point to christmas and easter as increased transmission events.

this is covid data:

while the peaks are exaggerated - which makes sense because healthy, young people are getting tested for covid and wouldn't bother in a normal flu season - the shape of the data is essentially the same.

so, here's your homework assignment - test significance against the null hypothesis and tell me what it says.

but, i can tell you what the answer is without doing the actual math.

in most of ontario, winter-like weather starts in mid-september and ends in mid-april.

the null hypothesis is that the curve documenting the temporal spread of the virus has more to do with the weather than with government actions intended to control it.

and, you should take that graph and compare it to yearly flu stats to check it against the null hypothesis, before you jump to unscientific conclusions.

april 20, 2020

the response in ontario has been bungled on purpose.

first, they don't do enough testing to pull out anything meaningful from the data. then, they put that fragmented data into the models, which just produces garbage results. then, they base their policies on the garbage they got out, by putting garbage in.

sadly, the sitting ontario government is so stupid that it seems to think the primary issue in front of it is limiting the number of cases that are reported, in order to skew the reporting - because they think you're too stupid to figure it out. and, if you voted for these fucking idiots, then maybe you are.

the data on cases is of limited value much of anywhere; it's absolutely worthless in a jurisdiction that refuses to do enough testing. if you can't see it, it's not there, right doug? you fucking idiot...

that said, given that the infectiousness of the disease was dramatically underestimated, and that it's mortality rate was dramatically overestimated, i don't think that shutting down society is helping minimize the spread of the disease at all. so, i don't oppose reopening.

but, has the data peaked?

the initial response from the federal government was the correct one, which limited spread in the community by encouraging openness. community spread does not appear to have sunk in here until they brought in counterproductive authoritarian measures to stop it. as such, we are months behind the curve in the united states.

in ontario, i don't think the epidemic has even started yet - all we've seen is background. those numbers are likely set to ramp up in a week or two.

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-begins-working-on-plan-to-reopen-as-modelling-data-suggests-cases-have-peaked-1.4904027

at 16:07  

ok, i'll bring out my crystal ball.

abracadabra! oopa loompa!

what's going to happen here is that they're going to reopen before the epidemic even starts. then, when the epidemic starts here on time, we'll blame it on reopening too early - when the reality is that we shut down too early, and then reopened before it even hit.

i don't think we should have shut anything down at all - i think we should have put the vulnerable in lockdown camps until it passed. but, if we were going to shut down, we should have shut down starting now, not starting last month.

it's a confusing mess, i get it. so, what should we do? we should reopen, yes. but, not only have we not peaked, we haven't even started. so, when we reopen, we should not get jittery about it.

but, we will.

hey, if their attempt to suppress the data just makes idiots out of them, i guess there's an upside of that.

but, it hasn't peaked. it hasn't started....

at 16:16 

doug ford is alpha idiot.

he's the counterexample.

and, ontario is going to come out of this as the perfect demonstration of how to do everything completely wrong.

let's hope it buries him.

at 16:21 

the ford government has refused to test, thereby limiting the number of known cases to a few thousand.

but, we've had almost 600 deaths, here. the observed mortality rate in ontario is over 5%, which is nowhere close to reality.

we know, now, that the actual mortality rate is under .1%.

that would suggest that there are more than 600,000 cases in ontario, already. but, that's not the end - that's just the start.

so, the ford government's focus has been to distort the numbers by refusing to test. it seems to be afraid that it's going to face bad media if too many cases are uncovered. then, they argue that the deficit of observed cases implies the epidemic has passed, when the truth is that they just haven't tested for it.

then, they put the bad data into the model, and conclude it's not happening.

no, you fucking idiots. you're not testing...

at 16:31 

if they were to run the models with a case count that was derived from the death toll, which is going to be a better metric than the testing anyways, then they'd get very different results.

guessing parameters is messy, and nobody is going to nail this. you need to expect large amounts of error.

but, this is certain: if you feed the model bad data by suppressing the testing, you're going to get the same garbage out that you put in.

and, it will not be the models that will be wrong. it will be the government that botched the response...

at 16:35 

if this is too much, just remember this: what's about to happen in ontario is not a "second wave".

the epidemic hasn't started yet.

at 16:36 

it's the perfect example of what happens when you elect a fucking moron.

at 16:37 

how many dead people should you expect in ontario when this is done?

well, there's about 15 million people here.

15000000*.666*.001 = 9990.

that's an exceedingly crude calculation, but i'd argue it's better than the ones the state is producing.

we're a long ways from getting there.

at 16:46  

"but, social distancing is working."

even if it was working, that wouldn't suggest a lower total death count, in the end, unless we stay locked down until (if.) we get a vaccine.

remember, there's only two ways to stop this: mass vaccination or herd immunity.

and, there's no way to get to herd immunity without experiencing a lot of death, because it's going to work via trial and error.

so, even if social distancing was working, that wouldn't imply that you could cut the death rate to a tenth of what it would be, otherwise. it would just mean you could slow it down....

at 16:49 

we should not be talking about peaking in ontario until we get a minimum of 5000 deaths.

and, i'm sorry if the government confused you, but maybe they were right to talk down to you, at least.

at 16:50 

"we can't stay locked down until we get a vaccine."

you're right, we can't.

that's what i told you in the fucking first place.

at 16:53 

why did we do this?

was it to reduce the total death count?

no. that's wrong....

the reason we did this was to slow down the hospitalization rate. you've forgotten already, haven't you?

remember all those charts you saw on twitter?

remember?

no?

at 16:55 

the initial modelling had a death rate around 1% of those infected. we know now that that's about ten to twenty times too high.

it also had r-not values around 1 or 2. we know now that that's 2-3 times too low.

those are the sources of error in the models, and we can fix that to come up with better projections.

but, the focus of these policies was never to burn the virus out, it was only to slow it down.

we were never going to save anybody, we were only going to prolong their death by weeks or months.

at 16:59 

so, how will we know if this is done before we get a vaccine?

we're getting decent bounds on the mortality rate, now. 

we'll need to calculate herd immunity based on mortality - that's how we'll know it's done.

and, we'll measure the body count in ontario by thousands, not hundreds, when it is.

unless you want to live like this until we get a vaccine, that is.

at 17:05 

i'd like to call for doug ford's immediate resignation.

he's not intellectually capable of dealing with this, and should realize it and step away.

at 18:21  

what the ford government is claiming is that social distancing rules had the effect of accelerating the peak.

this is perhaps the single most ignorant statement i've yet to hear in regards to the situation.

i'll repeat my own position, which i think is the consensus position - community spread in ontario doesn't appear to have started until march, weeks after italy or new york. if we are ~6 weeks behind new york, we shouldn't expect to see death tolls in toronto that are comparable to the peak in new york, which happened at the beginning of april, until the middle of may or the beginning of june.

you should expect toronto to peak at the end of may or the start of june.

but, what if social distancing is working? would you expect it to accelerate the peak?

no. the purpose of social distancing was to slow down the peak, in order to protect health care resources.

if you wanted to accelerate the peak, you should have increased transmission rates.

it's just a constant stream of anti-science bullshit from queen's park. and, this man needs to go. now.

at 19:55  

if toronto were actually at a peak - and they are not. - then the proper conclusion would be that social distancing had no effect at all, and the virus has a mortality rate that's drastically lower than 0.1%,.

we can calculate that.

if we're at peak, that means we're at herd immunity. no, that's what the peak is - there's no other way to peak.

if we have 600 deaths with .666 infection, what is the mortality rate?

let x be the mortality rate.

15 million*.666*x = 600 <----> x= 600/(.666*15 million) <---> x= 0.00006006006

so, if we're at a peak than the mortality rate is .0006%.

that's comparable to what? the common cold?

we're not at peak, and the mortality rate is not that low. the premier is just an ignorant buffoon.

at 20:01 

to be clear...

if what we've done is working after all, then the intent of the policy was to push the peak forward along the axes of the graph, meaning we'll need to wait even longer to peak.

so, i'm suggesting that toronto will peak at the end of may, because i don't think these policies are working. but, if they are working then that means that we'll be pushing the peak to a later point in time - july or perhaps august.

does those make sense to you?

do you understand?

do you understand why what the premier said today is complete rubbish?

at 20:08 

ok.

it would be impossible to find stats on deaths due to the "common cold" because there's no such thing as the common cold - that's a term we use to describe dozens of disparate viruses that create similar symptoms.

but, any of these viruses might kill you if you're 110 years old, or if you have aids.

the comparison is not that bad, actually. but, nobody thinks the numbers are that low. or, not yet, anyways.

we don't have flu-like coronaviruses, though; coronaviruses are the common cold, and that's the best comparison we have to this one, as well, even if it's in it's beginning stages. a number that low might be realistic in a few years, once it's really run it's course.

for now, the correct answer is "no".

at 20:24 

i don't suffer idiots very well. you might have noticed that.

but, we'd better at least learn from this, because if you think i'm being intolerant now....

at 20:29 

you are not a child, and the government is not your guardian. you will not be rewarded for good behaviour, and if that's what you're thinking then you need to snap out of it.

if social distancing is working, it means that the more you comply, the longer you will need to comply for.

you won't get a reduced sentence for good behaviour, here; it's the opposite - if we all comply perfectly, we'll be stuck with this for the next two years.

if you want to speed this up, you should be supporting policies that increase social interaction, not those that reduce it.

do you understand that?

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2020/03/30/should-governments-give-an-end-date-for-social-distancing-covid-19-study-says-theres-a-catch.html

at 20:55  

is social distancing actually a cult?

i'm for real eating, now.

think about it.

at 21:05  

https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2020_04_20_archive.html

as i'm working through this, what are the results of my dietary shift?

- the number of migraines i've had recently is greatly reduced. in fact, i haven't had one all year, i don't think, and have only had a few since last fall. i've tied this mostly to a b5 deficiency, but i may have also been having some issues with b12 absorption that may have been resolved with the nutritional yeast. that said, i've also taken great steps to keep the smoke out of the space, and the air quality in here has improved rather dramatically.

- i'm not less tired, at least not yet. if anything, i wonder if the more balanced diet is actually making me more tired. that said, as my diet has been in flux, i've been drinking a lot less coffee in an attempt to prevent it from interfering with absorption, to the point that i've started to recently notice something i haven't experienced in many years: coffee buzzes.

as i stated previously on several occasions, i'm at an age where i need to make sure i'm eating well, regardless. even if i end up having to take other approaches to staying awake for longer periods, and even if the lack of tiredness was actually a consequence of malnutrition, this is long overdue and necessary, regardless.

today's post is the proto-symphonic piece (it's more like a chamber work) initially known as symphony #0 and currently referred to as "the intersection of two identical particles moving in complete opposite directions", which is a concept i applied to the piece as i morphed it from one thing to another. this single documents true evolution of the piece over a long period of time, from 1998-2017. and, this is inri047.

=====

ok... 

so, to understand this piece, it's necessary to go back to 1998. 

i was working out primitive sequencer parts for the first inri demo and it just sort of crossed my mind that there was really nothing stopping me from composing symphonies except for a lot of music theory. well, if i could write electronic music without training, why couldn't i write symphonies without training? i mean, the score writing program exists in front of me. it was just a question of experimenting with it. i could do it myself... 

...but i actually already had a pretty hefty disdain for music theory by the age of 17. i'd managed to come across a music history textbook that traced the deconstruction of western theory from beethoven through to schoenberg and this, combined with my experiences as a guitarist, was enough to prevent me from taking it seriously. the perception i had was of modern composers viewing music theory sort of like how biologists viewed creationism. i use that analogy fairly frequently. it just didn't strike me as relevant. 

now, i've softened a bit over time to a view that music theory is best understood in terms of the underlying physics. this renders the theory useless, but upholds the basic relationships between tones as physical, mathematical realities. the thing is the next step of abstraction is understanding that these mathematical objects can be arranged and analyzed in any arbitrary way, and the conventional theory really *is* a fallacy akin to creationism. so, i still hold to the general thesis. this is actually the first serious example of me putting that disdain for the idea that music should have a theory into real action. i remain adamantly of the view that art is not a realm where theories should exist or be viewed with anything other than scorn. theories are rigid, formal things; art is informal, chaotic. 

so, it's 1998. i have a scorewriter and a very basic soundcard and i want to bullshit a symphony out of it. i did this by composing a single brief melody by randomly mashing notes into a scorewriter. i then took that melody and pasted it over top of itself at differing speeds (64th, 32nd, 16th, 8th, quarter, half, whole notes). i then took that, cut it off near the end of the half notes and pasted it over itself, backwards. 

that might sound like it's going to sound awful, but it actually sounds quite lovely. one could analyze it quite easily, but it's creation is beyond the realm of any rules of construction. 

which is where art belongs. 

...excepting the algorithm i used, of course. i suppose it's more reich than schoenberg, but kind of more xenakis than either. 

the initial version ended up subsumed underneath a messy noise collage that i created independently and have lost the source material for. that messy noise collage was eliminated from the track for the 1999 version, which was reconstructed by reproducing the algorithm. these are tracks 19 and 20 on this systematic exploration of the theme. 

in 2001, i ran the midi file through my soundblaster live!, which as primitive as it is, has a much nicer wavetable in it than the primitive soundcard i used in 1998 and 1999 (i don't remember what it was). this is track 21. i also slowed it down by about 20 bpm and allowed the full file to "intersect", which let it breathe more; this is track 22. i've previously not done anything with this mix other than append it to some mix cds. the guitars on the soundblaster are notoriously bad, so there wasn't a lot to do with it.... 

why? well, i was writing a lot with scorewriters at the time and was just experimenting with the old file, really. but i was also finishing up what would be the only year i would spend in the math-physics department, and thought it sounded like i would imagine intersecting particles *should* sound like. i was generally interested in finding ways to combine science with music then - an interest that is present in older tracks as well and that has stuck with me. i may explore these themes further in time. one of the ideas i really wanted to accomplish was a physical modelling of the universe, to actually simulate the music of the spheres, as pythagoras imagined it. i think i underestimated the complexity of such a task.... 

of course, i never expected the music of the spheres to be tonal. and i wouldn't expect the sound of particles intersecting to be musical, either. but, we can take some artistic license. if intersecting particles are to make a sound, it OUGHT to be something like this! 

now, the place to work out the actual intersection is rather arbitrary. i had initially cut off the entire section of pure whole notes, back in '98. what i wanted to do in '01 was create a sequence where it's cut off incrementally, creating shorter and shorter pieces. i didn't actually do that then, but i did do it in july of 2014. 

as for the piece, i haven't changed it much for the 2014 reconstruction. i've doubled the guitar with a pizzicato string section, and put it through a better guitar synthesizer (and amp simulator, and effects). the sound fonts are otherwise identical, just updated mildly to a better synthesizer. 

a string orchestra mix was added at the end of may, 2015. a new album mix for my first record was created at the beginning of jan, 2016, but not added until october of 2017, along with the failed 2013 remaster and solitary forwards and backwards versions built on the 2016 mix. the release was also split into two discs at this point, with the first disc containing only the process piece. 

i've included the midi files of the original composition, if you'd like to mess with it on your own. 

written one day in june, 1998. re-created on another day in june, 1999. reimagined on yet another day in june, 2001. a failed remaster occurred at the end of 2013. slightly rearranged and re-rendered at the end of july, 2014. released in a single volume on july 25, 2014. re-released in a single volume with a new string orchestra mix on may 30, 2015. this release was split into two cds on oct 15, 2017, with the first disc being composed solely of the process piece. four new tracks were added to the second disc. re-released in two volumes and finalized on oct 16, 2017. as always, please use headphones. 

the 2014 version appears on my fifth record, jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj (inri052): jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 

the 2016 version appears on the final remaster of my first record, inri (inri015): jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-3 

this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (1998, 1999, 2001, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017). 

released june 18, 2001 

j - programming, digital effects & treatments, digital wave editing, composition. 

the rendered electronic orchestras variously include piano, electric guitar, orchestra hit, synth pads, pizzicato strings, violin, viola, cello, contrabass and pc card.