so, what's the math on this?

harris, at least for now, is polling better amongst black voters. so, she might do a little better in michigan and certainly georgia. north carolina is probably a stretch.

however, she's doing much worse amongst white voters, which is going to hurt her not just in wisconsin, pennsylvania and probably minnesota, but apparently in oregon, in new hampshire, in new jersey and potentially in new york.

democrats are notoriously bad at math and they should have worked this out with a computer rather than trying to do it in their head. in fact, this outcome was obvious and predictable, but they are consistently terrible at this shit.

the media is going to keep throwing national polling at you, and harris might win the popular vote, but it is utterly meaningless.

in canada, it's hockey. i'm lucky i never went through that. but, they wake these kids up at 6 am and force them to spend hours skating around in circles, and tell them their future depends on it.

then they end up shoveling ditches because they never learned how to read.

we need to have a serious cultural discussion about getting competitive sports out of the class room and finding ways to generate young men that are more focused on their minds.

otherwise, the chinese are going to slowly beat the shit out of us and laugh at us as they do so.

today, i look at this guy tim walz, and i say to myself.

how many young men did this man remove from math and science class at a young age, and how many of them are infinitely worse off for it today?

if we're going to elect a teacher, why don't we elect a physics or math or economics or history teacher instead? why don't we elect a professor? there's one running, you know.

because we're idiots.

that's the simple truth.

yes, when i was in the ninth grade, i made the football team. but i would have never gone to tryouts if i thought i'd make the team and then i quit without playing a game. i was not in the starting lineup.

the problem is that i had a jock father. he played all of the sports in high school, so he naturally thought i'd want to. not so. at all. i thought sports were a stupid, boring waste of time and i hated competing and i hated competitive people. he also thought it would "boost my self esteem", which is what he thought was "wrong with me", rather than realizing i was just a girl and just wasn't interested in competition.

he basically ordered me to try out for the football team and when i told him i wasn't really interested in it he told me it was for my own good.

i took the path of least resistance. i reasoned there was no actual likelihood of making the team anyways, so it would be in my self-interest to get cut to prove the point. unfortunately, i kept going and i repeatedly didn't get cut. ottawa had a deficit of schools in the suburbs at the time, so they had to ship us into town, and he would consequently pick me up on his way home from work. i caught him talking to the coach once or twice when i was off elsewhere, and i think he actually talked him into it.

this was a frustrating situation for me. it mattered less when the tryouts and practices were after school and i was willing to humour him so long as it didn't affect my school work, and on the presumption that i'd get cut anyways. but, when i found myself on the team, i was all of a sudden expected to miss math and science classes (something important) to play football games (something stupid), which i didn't realize was going to be the case (i was in grade 9. i didn't care about football. i didn't know the games were during the school day. why do they do that? it's terrible.) and which i decided was idiotic. i wasn't going to be one of the dumb kids that skipped math class to play sports. i was embarrassed by the stupidity of the prospect of taking smart kids out of science class to tell them to run around on a field like retards. no fucking way.

so, i quit on the day of the first game, which was scheduled at the same time as math class, and went to math class instead.

i think it was unquestionably the smart thing to do, although it backfired slightly because my math teacher noticed and sent me to gifted classes for grade 10, which i did not want to do. however, it took my dad quite a while to get over the fact that his child was more interested in academics than sports.

this is why i don't breed:

i bring this up because this is the same kind of issue that's been annoying me for years. even after high school, i'd meet people that would remind me i was on the football team, "right?". no! i wish they didn't think that about me. that wasn't the reputation i wanted.

i wanted you to know i did well in math class; that was the reputation i wanted. but, nobody said that.

the government keeps promising to plant a lot of trees and never does, and that sounds like the best thing it can do both in response to this and due to the fact that we have such a vast surface area, but this is just one way that it's tricky.

there's a lot of methane released in those fires up north, too, which are partly being caused by increased temperatures. so, this is the start of those feedback cycles we were warned would start (checks freckle on back of wrist) right about now.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c703nzl25ypo

i just heard that taylor swift has prepared her endorsement for madonna's re-election bid as president* of italy with a prepared duet of the classic madonna track (don't ever ever) express yourself (in the new italy).

wait.

what?

listen, kids. taylor's fun. i get it. but you should decide who you want to vote for yourself. it's actually tricky because they're both terrible in different ways, so you need to sit down and figure out which one scares you the most (or the least) in which way. are taylor swift fans more concerned about owning their uterus or baby killing? i dunno. are they more concerned about nuclear war with russia or being soft on islamic extremism? i dunno. or you could just forget it and watch pinnochio and masturbate, instead. whatever.

i hope she does something bold like endorse jill stein, instead. that's my suggestion.

*yeah, i know it's prime minister.

i would suppose that kamala harris probably actually is an atheist.

in terms of novelty, i would be more excited about voting for an atheist than a woman, and i think we'll see an open atheist as president before we see a cis-female.

the reality is that, in a society where people are increasingly individualistic, increasingly disinterested in family (not just having kids, but also having parents), increasingly disillusioned by labour and increasingly disinterested in religion, the style of politics presented by harris and waltz is increasingly alienating to wide, broad swaths of the voting population, which are in the very core of what democrats need to win. this was a bad tactic 20 years ago, a worse tactic 10 years ago and a dumb tactic today.

when harris loses, everybody should blame it on nancy pelosi, and the party should ask itself why it listened to an 84 year old when she insisted an 82 year-old was too old to make decisions.

it'll be better in the long run.

the democrats need to clean house from the top down. like, they need a figurative blood bath. a liquidation sale. a viking house burning (read the sagas. that's how they do it. every time.). everything must go.

wisconsin.

very concerning.

this is new jersey.

scary stuff.

oregon doesn't attract much polling, understandably.

these numbers are curious:

i watched the harris interview and i think she came off terribly. if the claim is that she's a cynical, flip-flopping opportunist with no clearly defined political views, she just absolutely proved it correct. i would not even consider voting for her.

but, i'm about five positions to the left of kamala harris on the spectrum and she is not trying to appeal to people like me. she is not trying to convince me to vote for her. i'm not in her potential voting demographic.

that's fine. really.

i just doubt she has the ability to generate enough conservative support and mainstream cultural excitement amongst people that are essentially apolitical in the regions that it matters, if she has no intention to generate enthusiasm on the political left, as she clearly doesn't. as mentioned previously, i think we're going to see some new swing states present themselves in this election, and that pelosi and others essentially misread bad numbers in these areas as being tied to biden when they're actually connected to a larger level of voter apathy within a system that doesn't effect any meaningful change.

if michigan - especially michigan. particularly michigan. - was a canary in 2016, the democrats didn't get it. i mean, they reacted, but they didn't understand.

expect some similar surprises, because we've seen this film before and we know how it ends.

suggesting that industrial music developed as "white techno" has some value to it, even if i've never heard anybody say it. it's basically correct.

i both listen to and compose primarily electronic music. that's not some kind of hidden truth or some kind of surprise.

industrial music comes out of the punk scene but it has major overlaps with the development of house music in both the uk and the us (particularly in chicago). by the early 90s, wax trax was releasing uk exports on warp and vice versa.

the "techno" i've been listening to over the last few weeks includes side projects by members of industrial bands like throbbing gristle (via coil, download), skinny puppy (cyberaktif, download, skinny puppy, plateau, the tear garden, doubting thomas and also download member dead voices on air), die warzau (die warzau, eco-hed) and frontline assembly (delerium, econoline crush). i was also listening to some cocteau twins a few weeks ago, which isn't quite industrial, but was listened to by the same people that listened to industrial. there was some cop shoot cop (including contributions by jim thirlwell) and david bowie (a pop artist all these people consider as influential and that worked in an industrial techno space in the 90s) in there, too. i'm currently listening to an industrial pop band called econoline crush. next in the list is einsturzende neubauten, the german industrial pioneers that survived on nick cave royalties.

it is techno; the observation is correct. in fact, it's some of the most creative and important techno ever released, and it comes directly out of important historical techno scenes in the uk, us and canada. however, it essentially all has the point in common that it is foundational techno made after 1985 by seminal industrial artists of the 70s and 80s.

however, i don't have any detroit techno in my cd collection for the reason that it didn't have an overlap with industrial scenes in cities like chicago, vancouver and london. there wasn't much of a creative industrial component of the detroit techno movement, and i'm not going to speculate on it, but i suspect that it had something to do with race. while i've been here, the industrial clubs are empty, while the techno clubs are overflowing. i have been to both, but i can see where the party is and isn't.

i've had most of these cds for over 25 years and have kept them because they're some of my favourite records.

i am sorry if you thought otherwise, but that's your misperception of me and not something else. anybody that actually knows me at all knows that 70% of my cd collection is electronic music. further, essentially all of my original music is electronic music. there's no surprise there, but i do realize that there is a misperception based on a false projection that is not of my own making.

i like some rock bands, too, albeit mostly older ones. sure. i also listen to a lot of jazz and a lot of classical music. however, i like more electronic music and i always have. further, i have never liked loud or angry heavy metal bands or stupid flashy hair metal and there is really nothing like that at all in my cd collection or in my own discography.

back when i was able to go out and have fun, i would often go see a rock band from 20:00-23:00 or something and then spend the rest of the night, say from 00:00-6:00, in an all night dance club. i did that like a hundred times or something. a couple of times, i was even able to get to the morning symphony afterwards and get blasted by beethoven or debussy or ravel or rachmaninov before it was time to go back home. people that saw me in the early show might not have realized how much time i spent out dancing and vice versa, but i'm not interested and don't care.

i mean, ask some of the people in the club scene if they thought i was into punk rock or heavy metal. they would laugh at you. i was just a hot blonde chick out dancing. the truth is i was both, but i was living two lives, and i really spent more time dancing than at rock concerts, partly because it's the 21st century and rock music has been dead for decades while electronic music is still thriving.