and, i'm going to have to start here and reread forwards, for friday:

https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2021/02/ok_38.html

i mean, i initially couldn't do the time division thing because i had to file the computer, first. it was a huge bottleneck..

but, if i'm doing the diet before i rewind back to 2013, i can click into the schedule, immediately. 

i really want my quick edit links back, please.

my best guess is that the cops shut it off in an attempt to try to stop me from "altering evidence".

but, this is a living document, it's not intended to be static and it's not intended to be "evidence". i'm not interested in pissing matches about being right or wrong, either - that has nothing to do with why i'm backposting, and i don't care if end up being right or wrong in the long run. this is more about the enjoyment of speculating than it is about any kind of clairvoyance or superiority or any pretentious bullshit like that.

so, it's under constant revision and always will be. if you want to snapshot parts of it, that's your prerogative, but i'm not interested in their or your opinion on the matter - and i will continue to edit the posts the hard way, as the issue comes up, if i have to.

i mean, could you imagine trying to write a manuscript and having the editor tell you you can't edit it? it's ridiculous.

that said, the editing is mostly about fixing typological errors, correct mistyped words (i do that fairly often), fixing awkward sentences, etc. i have every right to edit my own writing as i see fit, and see nothing wrong with doing it.

but, i mean, i don't have a motive to just make things up...

regardless, let's say i did decide to just make things up and back post them. so what? i mean, i don't have a desire to do that, and i'm not, but what would the concern be if i did? again - it's a rooted in a misunderstanding of what a blog is. if i want to back date an entirely fictional narrative, there's no reason in the world that i couldn't, and i have no obligation to care whether anybody thinks that's dishonest or not.

so, i mean.....i don't have the motive to do that.....but i don't want to have the debate, anyways - i assert my right to post absolute bullshit backdated to wherever the fuck i want to backdate it, and you can waste your time fact checking it if you really give a fuck.

i sat down a few week ago to quickly add a few things to the chart because i was feeling a little tired, but i'm feeling a lot better now, and i'm going to get back to cleaning tonight, and then shift into working on the alter-reality tomorrow. i'm not going to get any actual recording done over the weekend, but i may get the pc cleaned out. i'll get back to the diet on monday, and it will be me focus until for the week, until i catch up.

this is the applicable law that must be followed:

http://www.sfu.ca/~aheard/partv.html

they're trying to cite s. 45, which is completely wrong.

Section 45 of the Constitution Act, 1982 allows each province to amend its own constitution. However, if the desired change would require an amendment to any documents that form part of the Constitution of Canada, it would require the consent of the federal government under section 43.

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

so, no - they can't insert a statement about quebec into the document, unilaterally. that's just wrong.

so, can quebec alter the constitution?

the premise is ridiculous (that's why we have a constitution), but you have to acknowledge a basic point - quebec never signed or ratified the constitution, and quebeckers really don't see it as their constitution.

previous courts...you know, i'm not even sure that the mclaughlin court would have even heard an argument that a province has a unilateral ability to modify the constitution. that's just utterly ridiculous. but, this guy they've got in there now is a loose cannon, and his rulings to this point have been atrocious. there's a good chance he might see the constitution as a liberal conspiracy to wipe out the right or something. and, he may be more likely to cite the nineteenth century version - which is essentially a relic of british colonialism, rather than an actual constitution.

so, the law says that there is a complicated legal process to open and amend the constitution and i would expect a functioning court system to uphold that, but i'm not sure the court system is currently functioning, so it gets blurry.

but, what quebec might do is ignore the constitution, as it has done before, and how it is that the rest of the country goes about enforcing rules on them is something we've largely avoided, to this point...

so, you'd imagine something like the following working itself out:

- quebec can certainly legislate rules for itself, as it sees fit. it can try to pass a rule that "alters the constitution" in quebec, but what it's actually legally doing is defying the constitution and challenging the legal system to stop it.

- it would then be up to some groups in quebec to launch a constitutional challenge. now, quebec may claim it is no longer subject to such a challenge, but that would be equivalent to a statement of sovereignty, and the courts couldn't take such a thing seriously.

- by definition, any attempt by quebec to alter the constitution would necessarily be unconstitutional, and necessarily be declared ultra vires - if the court is correctly functioning, which does not appear to be the case.

but, then what?

if the court declares the change unconstitutional, and quebec just ignores it...the next step is a civil war, which nobody wants. and, as mentioned, there are confusing questions about jurisdiction and democracy, given the linguistic and cultural differences. what right do we really have to enforce a constitution on a province that won't sign it, then demand they uphold the rules they won't agree to? 

so, to put it another way....

if quebec were to try to unilaterally alter the constitution, it would instantly throw the country into a potentially existential constitutional crisis that could lead to a partition of the country because, no, it can't actually do that. and, it's not clear that this federal government would choose to fight that battle - it may just concede the point without a fight. but, it would still be illegal, and we'd just be left with a pariah province that refuses to follow the rules.

historically, the main tool at the disposal of the federal government would be to threaten to withhold transfer payments - including health care payments. but, that would instantly destroy the liberals in quebec for a generation. 

the truth is that this is probably just cyber-rattling and empty electioneering by a provincial government that wants the tories back in power, but it's potentially an exceedingly messy situation, and the likelihood of violence is not trivial.

now, what would i do?

well, it depends. what is the change? and the answer is a triviality:

 “Quebecers form a nation” and “French shall be the only official language of Quebec. It is also the common language of the Quebec nation.”

those statements are not currently in the constitution, but would anybody care if they were? i mean, who cares, ultimately? see, and that's where the calculation that this is battle not worth fighting (likely, given that the pmo is currently staffed by slackers and potheads) comes in....

....but it's wrong because it would entirely dissolve the authority of the state, and undo the premise of federalism. you'd get alberta inserting language about oil revenues, bc inserting language about the environment and ontario inserting language about doug ford's god given right to eat barbeque, no mattter what, ever, always. you get the point - if the rational analysis is that this is trivial, what's stopping anybody else from trivial amendments? and, then the constitution no longer exists - it's death by a thousand amendments.

what trudeau should say is this:

i am not a lawyer, i am a politician, and this is not a political debate, this is a matter for the courts.

in time, perhaps it won't be. but, the court needs to shape the bounds of debate, for better or worse, and the feds should completely step away from it until it does.

if the court rules that the legislation is ultra vires - as it no doubt will - then the next step is to offer quebec a choice - if they feel that strongly about the situation, let us have a constitutional convention and amend the document in the legal manner set out within it. if they do not, let them drop their concern.

and, once the process has played itself out, quebec always has the right to hold another referendum.

but, two points are important here as major take-aways:

1) big cock authoritarian tactics (like withholding funding) should be a last resort. there is a lengthy legal process, here. allow that to work itself out, first.

2) because the process is so lengthy, very few of the people involved in the process when it launches will still be around to see it complete, and the logic of the situation may very well change.

there is no reason to create a crisis around something that may very well burn itself out with the next election in quebec.

so, that's my advice to trudeau - defer to the courts.

listen - i'm not a vaccine skeptic. go get vaccinated. i won't tell you otherwise.

i'm more of a vaccine existentialist, at least for the next few months, in the sense that i don't think the effects of the vaccine can be effectively separated from the noise of the weather and encroaching natural herd immunity due to widespread transmission. at the least, we can not just jump to that conclusion - that is an empirical question, and it requires a statistical test. if i'm skeptical about anything, what i'm skeptical about is the efficacy of all these measures, when compared against the effects of randomness and chaos. and, that's the question that statisticians face and resolve on a day-to-day basis.

so, that's the right way to interpret me, here - what i'm suggesting is that, for most people, the vaccine doesn't actually matter, that it's largely just meaningless theatre.

give us all your gas, vlad.

give us your oil and your gold and your diamonds, too!

stalin would have had the man executed for proposing the export of natural gas to germany.

the problem with trump is not that he was some kind of russian spy, which is a comical supposition. 

the problem with trump is that he was essentially retarded, when it came to understanding military tactics, and he consistently understood american strategic objectives so poorly that he supported ideas that would actually benefit america's opponents.

america wants to protect german industry from russian influence, and it wants to do that by positioning large amounts of troops there, and by bribing the german people to take the side of the west over the russian side. and, it certainly wants to ensure that it is germany that benefits from russian energy wealth, rather than russia itself.

and, putin is a fool for failing to understand that - but this is longstanding, and his strategic blunders are quite numerous.

to be clear: while it does certainly seem to be the case that trump thought that restricting russian exports to germany is in american interests, that "logic" is really exactly what it appears it is: this is trumpism, and it can only be comprehended, however incoherently, through a trumpist filter.

trump's logic is something along the lines of that commerce should be restricted between germany and russia in order to maintain american influence over the region, and that germany should be punished for acting outside of american hegemony by seeking trade relations with outside actors. ok. but, you'd have to be an oligarch to think that actually makes sense.

if you're looking at the situation as a chess board, in a geostrategic manner, which trump was unable to do, your goal is not to prevent the russians from engaging in commercial activity with the actors around it, but rather to find ways to extract as much out of the country as is possible. it would follow that exporting resources from the former soviet union to the western satellites is in western interests because the west gets to use those resources rather than the russians. the russian self-interest here would actually be to hoard the resources - which is what the chinese are doing. it further follows that an american military presence is necessary in europe to protect those extracted resources, and ensure they are developed in the west, rather than in russia.

i've been over this more than a few times: i basically think that putin is a contemptible fool, with a very poor grasp of strategy, and this idea that he's some kind of strategic genius is essentially just western propaganda, designed to construct an enemy to justify military budgets.

so, if russia were acting in it's self-interest, it would act to prevent the export of these raw materials, and seek to develop the industry in russia, instead. but, it isn't. and, the properly rationalistic policy from the west is to take advantage of that by encouraging the russians to export as much as they can, for as cheap as they can, so that those resources belong to us, rather than them.

it follows that biden's policy of supporting german purchases of russian gas is a rational, pro-western policy, and the fake left media just exists in lalaland in suggesting otherwise - as always.

so, i actually designate today to be the first international insult a mac user day.

go find your favourite douche bag big mac user, and give them some special sauciness.

i need to spend a few days cleaning....

that was absurdly time consuming, but i got lost in it and it's updated, now.

fuck.

i'm going to consider it a learning curve...

so, here's the full 314 pages (so far) in a relatively readable presentation, including expansions to 11x11, up until the end of september.

it's not unreasonable to expect 200 pages a month in this up until the end of january.

 

today's post moves directly into the rabit is wolf period, which took up my time over the first half of 2002. this final presentation is a compromise, but i'm happy with how it ended up, in the end.

=======

this came out of a two-person psychedelic folk project i was working in over late 2001 and into mid 2002. we had brainstormed the idea of a piece that slowly built itself up, like a wave, and that had sporadic pieces of poetry interspersed as it did so. of the two of us, i was the musician, and he was the poet; i generally produced the music by myself. however, my vision of the track proved to be much larger than his, to the point that the two ideas could not be effectively reconciled given the deficit of technology available to us (i simply couldn't find a way to get enough resources to condense the track to under ten minutes). that left me with this seventy minute ambient piece that has mostly stayed hidden in my closet over the last twelve years. 

in 2014, i strongly contemplated reconstructing the short version out of existing material, but it would have required a rethink of the process that i felt would be invasive to the poet involved. the reality is that the music that i created was not well suited as accompaniment for the poem, and it should just be left at that. in oct of 2017, i added the poem to the disc, a capella, as an introduction to the track. 

this is very much process music. it's built on 36 distinct loops of identical length (just under 57 seconds) that assemble the collage up on a loop by loop basis, hitting it's full point only in the 35th loop. the 36th loop does not fit into any of the patterns that define the first 35, but is nonetheless the climax of the piece. this is followed by a disassembling process that is precisely the reverse of the assembling process. together, this produces the effect of a long wave of sound washing over the listener. 

aesthetically, it's likely clear that i had been listening to a lot of "kosmische" style synthesizer music of european origin. it's actually a key part of my musical style, so a bigger exploration of it's themes is not at all out of place. however, i generally prefer to take ideas from the genre and recontextualize them rather than delve into a full exploration. this is somewhat unique in my discography as being an album-length analog synthesizer work. 

either as ambient or kosmische or process music, this is mostly meant as background music. 

written late 2001 and early 2002. this file is ripped from a cd-r that was burnt around 2002, as that was the option that would produce the most accurate reproduction of the original composition. published without modification on oct 6, 2014. expanded, re-released and finalized as symph006 and lp012 on oct 23, 2017. as always, please use headphones. 

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 (2001, 2002, 2014, 2017). 

released january 15, 2002 

j - synthesizers, guitar, bass, digital wave editing, production, composition 

sean - vocals, lyrics

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/the-wave

if you really want to boycott something, boycott american oil companies.