Friday, June 11, 2021

so, this is my new blood test short list...

these tests are pending at lifelabs:
- asca   <---crohn's
- mercury

these tests are pending from dynacare:
- pyruvate <----manganese
- gastrin  <---stomach ulcers
- copper serum

this test requires a 12 hour fast:
- amino acid fractionation   <-----total nitrogen
- gastrin (redo)

these tests can be done next time i go
- pth  
- calcitonin
- cortisol

i will need to pay for these tests out of pocket next weekish:
- celiac ($90 at dynacare)
- cea  ($36 at lifelabs)
- p-anca  + c-anca ($70 at lifelabs)
- psa: ($35 at lifelabs )
- another fit test ($59 at dynacare only)
- osteocalcin  ($65 at lifelabs)  <----double check, info from med labs
- igf-1 ($70 at dynacare) <-----double check, info from med labs

these tests need to be done at dynacare because only they offer them, although i'd rather they were done at lifelabs because they have a free reporting system:
- glutathione  <----- windsor site does not collect
- balp  (not yet ordered)

this test is covered by ohip but is not offered anywhere in the region:
- serum oxalate

this test is only available in a california lab:
-hepcidin

these tests were skipped, for now:
- vitamin e
- vitamin k
- selenium
- molybdenum
- manganese
- iodine

and, here's my list for absorption regarding my diet:

a - absorbing at high levels
b1 - next time
b2 - next time
b3 - next time
b5 - next time
b6 - next time
b7 - next time
b9 - absorbing at high levels
b12 - absorbing, and increasing stores
c - absorbing, at saturated levels
d - absorbing, but a tad low. i should check again soon.
e - pending  (paid)
cholesterol - perfect
k1 - pending (paid)  <----but ptt, inr, fibrinogen normal
fluoride?
sodium - absorbing & regulating
potassium - absorbing & regulating
magnesium - absorbing & regulating
phosphorus - absorbing & regulating
chlorine - absorbing & regulating
calcium - absorbing & regulating
chromium - next time
manganese - pending (paid) <----but,  pyruvate kinase is coming immediately
iron - not absorbing in food, but absorbing in pills
nickel - next time
copper - absorbing & regulating
zinc - absorbing & regulating
selenium - pending (paid) <----- need to find access to glutathione test, not priority right now
molybdenum - not available <---but pancreatic function is normal
iodine - pending (paid) <-----note that tsh is lowish. checking pth. no sign of goiter. dietary sodium is low...
mercury - pending
lead - low
why, exactly, did toronto city council vote to extend mask laws (the lack of live music in toronto in the near future is being pushed down from the province), given that over 70% of the population has received a first dose?

what is the logic, here?

is that proportional?

and, is anybody in toronto willing to launch legal action to determine if a judge thinks it is or not?

it seems a little over the top, if you ask me - even if the functional restrictions on a return to normal behaviour are coming directly from doug ford and are out of the city's jurisdiction.
i'm about 50% done what i was doing.

hopefully, it's just a few more hours.
i won't be assimilated to your herd mentality.

and, you're wasting your time trying.

ease the restrictions, already.
and, listen - the more you try to convince me to get vaccinated, the more likely i am to avoid doing it.

i don't have a religious reason. i don't have a health concern. i'm not afraid of the vaccine and, while i don't think it's going to be effective in the long run, i'm sure the probabilities being published are vaguely accurate. 

i don't think vaccines cause autism.

so, you can throw this list of things at me, and i'm just going to deny every one of them.

rather, i'm just making a principled point about self-autonomy - if you're going to try to force me to get vaccinated, i will resist simply because you're trying to tell me what to do.

so, fuck off.

that, and i don't think it's appropriate to mandate vaccination for a mild flu-like illness - i think that's an abuse of power, and i think it needs to be called out for what it is, and resisted on that basis alone.

this is not a game of chicken, either - the government needs to pick it's battles, here. 'cause i'm perfectly happy to cost it a lot of money and waste a lot of it's time, if it insists on being retarded.
TRUDEAU ARRESTS OPPOSITION LEADER MAXIME BERNIER

it doesn't matter if it's true or not - i mean, our side doesn't care if things are true or not, so why should yours?
hey vlad...

you should make a big deal about bernier. not because it matters much, or will get you anywhere directly, but because the juxtaposition would be embarrassing to the pmo.

bernier isn't any more relevant in canada than alexei navalny is in russia (in fact, the comparison is pretty apt.), but that's just the point.
we're being converted by a prime minster that thinks he's a king and that thinks he has the right to make these decisions for "his people".

that's what's happening.

and, please, people - fight this in court. don't get stupid.
did you notice that all of the pro-maskers supposedly interviewed in that article were women?

that's the peer-pressure: women talking about how much they love wearing masks.

this was a start. this is how it starts...
so, here comes the propaganda.

i've just been telling people i have asthma when they ask why i'm not wearing a mask (which is true), but we're going to have to defeat this in court - and it's time we stop being naive about what just happened and how long it's going to take to undo it.

they have taken away every single one of your rights.

and, you're not going to get most of them back without a fight.

this struggle to restore our rights will define the rest of our lives - it's become the issue of our times.

maxime bernier is not somebody that i would normally stand up for or care much for at all, but his rights to freedom of association are paramount in a free society, and i would call on the rcmp to uphold the rule of law and release him immediately.
what do i think about these definitions?

well, i don't think the role of government is to keep people safe, and i'm going to unload on you as a fascist if you drop a line like that to my face. if that's what you think, you are my enemy and need to be destroyed.

do i think the role of government is to act as a layer for capital to buy legislation? well, there's ought to be and actually is, right? i don't think that ought to be true, but i realize it actually is in a capitalist state. and, because i'm a radical socialist and not a reformist, i don't actually think it's useful to try to regulate capitalism - and even largely agree with the libertarian right on a lot of points, in their arguments that trying to regulate capital just makes it worse (although they of course don't articulate it that way, we're basically making the same arguments about regulatory capture and inefficiency).

i'm an anarchist, so i don't want a totally planned economy. there's some role for worker communes, as well.

but, the role of government should be to centralize production in some abstraction - not to write laws that keep us safe (which is a mentality that needs to be eradicated) or to sell policy to the highest bidder (which is the status quo that needs to be overturned).

but, i'll usually align with realistic liberals over ideological conservatives, when they exist - which is scarce, nowadays. a lot of socialists won't...
if america had a functioning education system, it wouldn't need to concern itself with the premise that big donors might confuse stupid people into voting against their own interests by buying political ads - people would be able to figure it out.
in strict definitional terms, it is conservatives (tories/democrats) that should align with restrictions on campaign contributions and third-party advertising to protect the aristocracy and populace from corruption by capital (to "keep the people safe") and liberals (whigs/republicans) that should align with the bourgoisie in allowing for capital to buy legislation and advance it's own interests (due to free speech and private property rights).

and, then, socialists are supposed to be about nationalizing capital and putting it under the control of parliament (or otherwise democratizing it) so that the issue no longer exists at all.

i support the per-vote subsidy and would like to bring it back, but i don't have an opposition to liberalizing campaign finance laws and i don't oppose third-party advertising.

i do support a greater focus on critical thinking in public education. the cliche attributed to jefferson is what is really apt here:

a well-informed populace is a pre-requisite to a functioning democracy.

and, that is the problem, as it stands - not that third parties are allowed to advertise, but that americans are too stupid to figure out what is true and what isn't.
are you confused that ford wants to restrict campaign-advertising? you shouldn't be - i keep pointing out that canada, and ontario particularly, has something approaching a normal political spectrum, whereas the spectrum in the united states is bizarre and fucked...

most people in the world outside of the united states would associate draconian rules regarding advertising with the political right, and not with the political left. and, most of the world would associate free speech with the left, not the right.

unfortunately, the current pmo has been so americanized that it's trying to flip the spectrum over, and just getting confused stares from the conservative party - and the result is that we have a competition for who can be more conservative, under terms that americans would need somebody to explain to them.

but, our current campaign finance laws at the federal level were brought in by stephen harper and the conservatives, not by jean chretien and the liberals. chretien brought in a reasonable limit of $5000, but he replaced the lost income with a per-vote subsidy - which was actually an increase in funding, given that the liberals essentially always won the popular vote. when harper showed up, he got rid of the per-vote subsidy and slashed contributions to $1000.

well, conservatives are supposed to care about finances, and they're supposed to be concerned about corruption. i know that sounds strange to an american, but that's what being a conservative is supposed to be all about! it's liberals that are supposed to care a little less about strict budgeting, financial accountability and shady money - under the argument that restricting corruption just hurts the economy (which i agree with, mostly).

so, as a canadian, there's nothing confusing to me about this.

what i've always found so confusing is the american pseudo-left's pre-occupation with finance, as it's always made them sound very right-wing, to me. but, if you really study the history, it's a relic of the realignment process, and the fact that the democrats are, historically, the conservative party. american progressivism sounds strangely conservative a lot of the time because it is actually a historical conservative movement at it's core.
if the americans decide i need to get vaccinated to cross the border - despite statements by the white house that they wouldn't do that - is that an incentive to get vaccinated?

the answer right now is "not really". it's more along the lines of a disincentive to enter the united states.

i'm searching through listings right now, and while big venues may be filling up with corporate musicians, it may be a while before the kind of music i like starts back up again.

i mean, i'm not going to go see a concert in a hockey arena - i'm not interested in that. i like small scale venues, with obscure and independent artists. this appears to be a ways away from reopening.

we'll have to see. if something comes up and i can't miss it i'll have to make a decision: is it worth getting vaccinated for, or should i take the train to toronto instead?

chances are that i'll have plenty of time to make that decision.

but, for right now, i don't see any sort of incentive at all - i don't see anything worth crossing for. so, i'm going to continue to wait it out.
so, today's post is the 4 disc tetris compilation, which starts an idea rather than closes one.

there will be tetris releases starting around 2007.

======

the origins of the tetris project emerge in my records some time in mid-2006. i must have been filing some things on my hard drive, and wanting to put a bunch of the loose ends in the same folder, because what i remember is having a lot of loose tracks and trying to find a way to fit them together. the best commonality i could find in these tracks is that they all attempted to merge guitar music with electronic music, so i devised a project that would utilize these tracks by exploring this theme to it's fullest. 

tetris is the idea of combining guitar music with technology. it just sat that way, for years, as a folder on my hard drive, with little progress towards actual completion. 

when i set up the bandcamp site in 2010, i uploaded a number of these loose tracks under the album header 'tetris', with a promise to add tracks to it, slowly, until it completes. this was intended to be an eventual official record with an explicit techno flavour, and some tracks were, in fact, added to it. as of january, 2018, the majority of these tracks have been completed and re-released on my fifth or sixth records. so, this project has been dismantled, as it initially existed. 

upon initial completion of my second period in may of 2015, i sat down to create a guitar volume. some work was completed on a mix tape of solo parts, but this was ultimately where i left off to go back to complete period 1. before i put it aside, i had decided on a three-volume set: a mix tape and a 2xcd set, with one cd being a tetris volume 1 (converted to an end-of-period compilation) and the other cd being of atmospheric, political and noise sections. 

i didn't get back to this until late december, 2017 and sat down to create a tetris volume 1 as i had decided upon in 2015. but, what i started to realize as i was compiling it was that the reason that this connection presented itself amongst the scattered tracks i initially applied it to was that it is a fundamental aspect of my art - nearly every track i've written since 1998 takes the guitar through an exploration in the world of electronic music. i started to think more abstractly about it, this combination of technology with guitars, so that the definition fit across more genres than techno and idm. this wider interpretation of the project's mandate created a larger pool of tracks to choose from, and i eventually settled on two volumes for tetris: one with a faster tempo and more danceable tracks and one with a slower tempo and jazzier or more psychedelic tracks. some tracks that i identified as 'orchestral' were also put aside for future release on a later tetris volume. 

the atmospheric disc wasn't initially contemplated of as a tetris release, it was rather meant to make the release an inclusive guitar works, as that is also a major component of my guitar presentation. but, my wider interpretation of the mandate allowed me to see that the tracks i had put aside for this compilation were also an exploration of guitars and technology. so, i created this disc as a tetris volume. a strategic decision was made to not include tracks on the first ambient works, but rather to defer to it as the ambient component of my second period guitar work. 

i had also decided in late 2017 that i would create a compilation of guitar-only mixes for the lp sequence to close period 2, to draw special attention to the primary focus of my creations, which is the guitar work. i strongly contemplated releasing only disc 4 in this space of inri069, and leaving the other three for a later release, as a coherent multi-disc part tetris. however, the need to include inri071a in the tetris sequence necessitated releasing these tetris volumes in this space. further, a standalone release of disc 4 would also require a tetris number - it is certainly an integration of technology and guitars. 

that makes inri071a tetris V. i've also decided that inri072, the orchestral works, should be tetris VI. 

as a six volume set, this compilation touches upon nearly every track that was written between 1998-2003 and has guitars in it by placing it into one or more of these six slightly overlapping categories. as such, this is a comprehensive introduction to my first two periods, from the perspective of my work as a guitarist. 

initially written and recorded between 1997-2003. this compilation idea was developed and expanded upon as an intended full record release between 2006 and 2011. reinterpreted, reconstructed and remixed between 2014-2018. sequenced over december, 2017 and january, 2018. disc released & finalized as lp018 and tetris I-IV on jan 7, 2018. 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 (2015, 2017-2018). 

released april 26, 2003 

j - guitars (electric, acoustic, nylon), digital & analog effects processing, ebow, mandolin, bass, bass synth, drum programming, analog & electronic drum kits, drum sampling, drum manipulations, vocals, vocal noises, sampling, orchestral & other sequencing, soundscaping, sound design, synthesizers, electric & grand pianos, electric reed organ, found sounds, octavers, noise generators, cool edit synthesis, granular synthesis, generative synthesis, loops, flute, coughs, digital wave editing, production 

sean - harmonica (track 19), ring modulator (track 36) 
greg - drum performance sample source (track 21) 

the rendered electronic orchestra includes acoustic bass, synth bass, electric bass, brass, french horn, trombone, trumpet, tuba, english horn, saxophone, flute, bamboo flute, oboe, piccolo, clarinet, bassoon, orchestra hit, drum machine, electronic drum kit, agogo, tubular bells, glockenspiel, clavinet, kalimba, piano, melodic toms, hand drums, timpani, orchestral drum set, koto, nylon guitar, distorted & clean electric guitars, guitar effects, guitar noises, synthesizers, synthesizer effects, music box, piano, bells, organ, sitar, violin, viola, cello, contrabass, full string sections and mellotron. it also includes choir.

i have to keep reminding myself that my appetite is good and i'm gaining weight, which is not consistent with cancer of any sort.

but, the other option is that the osteopenia is a result of cancer spreading to the bone.

and, that's consistent with the anemia.

i'm probably not going to get out today, but i should get out soon.
by the time that you, as a consumer, get this wav file on your computer, it's been so badly degraded, anyways...

but, that's not true if you're listening to music that doesn't go through this destructive process by major label production teams.
i mean, that's what i'm trying to get across here - that the compression done by the producer is 100x worse than anything the mp3 algorithm could do, in the first place.
and, yes - i know that they record at 48 khz or higher,

it doesn't matter, if they sculpt 50% of the frequency range out and then compress the shit out of it, in the end.
they're selling you cds at 44.1/16, so you think it's actually pretty good, right?

see, that's where you go wrong with this...

if it's radio music, the sad and pathetic reality is that it's more like they're functionally upsampling a master done at 22 khz, 8 bit - so your mp3 compression isn't degrading the sound nearly as much as you imagine that it is.

any artist that's actually taking advantage of cd quality audio isn't going to compress to mp3 well at all...
it is true that some of the more sound-conscious artists out there at least used to do things like create mixes for radio and mixes for cd/lp. you'll also find tv mixes back in the mtv/muchmusic days, and i've heard of corporate rock musicians mixing for mp3 (that was even really what the loudness wars were actually about). so, don't take my statements too broadly....

but, generally speaking, if an artist is marketed for radio play then the product that you buy on a physical media in the store is mixed to play on am radio, and plugging it into an expensive sound system is pointless because the source is intentionally garbage.

then, when you compress it it doesn't matter - because it's shit to begin with.

that is why people can't tell the difference - because they're listening to trash.
well.

what kind of music do i make?

the answer is that it's electro-classical music with jazzy and bluesy flairs and only vague references to rock music instrumentation (i play electric guitar. that's not very "classical". but, besides that, i'm a composer.), and while i don't think i need the dynamic range of 24 bits to get those super quiet oboes and flutes, i do insist that you try not to butcher the frequency range too badly, please.
again, we did the ping-pong delay example, but this is another example of something that would never be released by a corporation, in terms of sound quality. this mix is so ridiculously full of data over the entire frequency range that when i tried to reduce the size of the file by running it through a flac algorithm (which works like a zip compressor in that it runs through the file looking for zeroes and replaces them with a variable to save space. so if your wav file has a sequence of 100 zeroes, the flac algorithm replaces those 100 zeroes with the number 100. the decoder will then need to reconvert that 100 into 100 zeroes before it sends it to your sound card.) it decreased by less than 2%.

(edit: it's the middle part that had the impossible compression ratio, not the whole file. but, the vst version, as a whole, compressed less than 25%. that is, the size of the flac is about 79% of the size of the wav)

a corporate music producer would take a major scalpel to this in cutting out 30% of the sound, which would just be butchering the reverb and a lot of the detail in the middle of the mix. and, you consequently can't hear a lot of it via the mp3 stream i'm posting here - you just need to get a lossless version, that's all there is to it.

i'd challenge anybody to find me another piece of music that compresses less than this over flac:

to put it another way, this is the actual pathetic truth - corporate music is so badly produced, in general, that you can run it through massive compression and not lose anything important.

but, what this really is about is garbage in / garbage out, and it's not an argument for the parity of the technology, in a broader sense.
the ranges of frequency that mp3 removes are not chosen at random - frequency bands that are ignored by your kind of standard or "normal" corporate pop/rock/rap producers are taken out rather consciously. mp3 programmers refer to this as "psycho-acoustics".

it's not just the high and low bands that are outside of your frequency range, it's also a fairly large amount of frequency bands that corporate pop producers cut out on purpose. so, it's actually very true that you can't tell the difference if you're listening to celine dion or taylor swift or something - because the production process intentionally cuts out the frequencies that the mp3 removes, which is why the mp3 removes it.

but, if you're listening to abstract techno that's mixed by non-professionals (or professionals that don't know better), anything labeled "classical" or "jazz" or even interesting psychedelic or progressive rock then things actually do exist in those frequency bands - and i demonstrated the point when i posted that ping-pong effect, which the compression algorithm just demolished. you will lose a lot of music with an mp3 if you're listening to these types of music because they weren't mixed with the corporate pop techniques that the mp3 compression is designed to take advantage of.

so, the process is like this:

1) corporate pop producers eliminate specific frequency bands, because they get in the way (and can't be produced on am radio, for example)
2) the designers of the mp3 algorithm realized that and took advantage of it. so, they cut out the same ranges that were cut out during the corporate pop production process. they call this "psycho-acoustics", which is just a pretentious term to describe what i'm describing.
3) creative musicians then come along and they don't cut those ranges out when they're producing their music.
4) somebody uses mp3 compression to compress these songs, unaware of what i'm trying to explain to you.
5) large amounts of the music disappears, and they don't understand why.

a good rule of thumb is this: if the music you like is released on a major record label, it probably doesn't matter if you use mp3 or flac. but, if you're listening to anything that is remotely interesting at all, you're really better off avoiding any kind of lossy compression - because the mp3 algorithm didn't intend for you to use it to compress the music you're listening to.

and, i'm an expert on this topic - you're not.

so, i hope that's clear.
if you can't tell the difference between mp3 and flac, it's because the music you're listening to is boring.

i listen to interesting music, and, to me, it's immediately obvious.