there is no reason to think that allowing private health insurance will reduce wait times. rather, most studies suggest the opposite.

http://www.rcinet.ca/en/2016/09/02/canadas-universal-health-care-system-in-court-and-at-risk/

why hasn't a new justice been appointed yet?

it's astounding.

again: the ibd poll is a reason to pause, although it currently remains an outlier. what the la times is doing is not polling, but active propaganda. it remains to be seen if it works, but it's not to be taken seriously as polling.

this is just like obamacare: it was the most obvious thing in the world that if you leave space exploration to the market, it's going to be a catastrophe. can we reverse this insanity soon, please?

http://www.wired.com/2016/09/spacex-explosion-need-know/

02-09-2016: knocked on my ass by a grocery run on an empty stomach

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

no. you're not entitled to a court date. they don't have to give you a trial. this is their private property. they host your videos at their leisure. they have every right to arbitrarily demonetize you all they want.

i think it says something broader about how young people see the internet. i'm just kind of cluing into this. the internet seems to have completely destroyed any concept of market exchange. and, they see the internet not as a collection of privately owned servers but as a publicly held good.

maybe i ought to be spinning this around. after all, there's a socialist idea about property at the core of this, right?

if you think that the internet should be a publicly owned good, let's have a revolution. i'm down with that. but, you can't have it both ways.

the way people are reacting, it's like they think google is the state.

-----

if you want to use the employment analogy, which is wrong, then think about your argument. you're suggesting that employees ought to have the right to talk to customers however the fuck they damned well please. can you imagine walking into a restaurant and having the server swear at you while taking your order, then arguing they can't get fired due to freedom of speech? that's your analogy. great analogy.

the server could and no doubt will get fired for swearing at somebody while taking their order. why is that allowed? because it damages the brand.

but, this isn't even right. uploading here is not an employment contract. ad revenue probably isn't even legally taxable income (that is legal advice, but note that you have to win the supreme court case, first, and it's going to cost you time and money). it's legally probably a gift, for the precise reason that the terms are so vague.

there's an exchange, but the terms aren't defined. and, as such, there isn't really a contract. what are you getting paid for? it's not hourly. it's not salary. it's not even commission, really - there's no defined percentages. this is not within the realm of employment law.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2010/9/28/women-men-ladies-nights/

i haven't dated for a while, but, last i checked, insisting on splitting the bills was actually considered feminist - and girls that insisted that they didn't have to pay their way were seen as out of touch. i don't know. maybe i'm stuck in the 90s. but this strikes me as an elaborate straw man.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29Qf42GrHlU

as a feminist, i would consider the premise that women should get free meals on dates to be backwards and patriarchal - and i'd consider dudes raging against the arrangement to be allies.

i don't know how or when expecting to be taken care of became a feminist position. frankly, i don't think it ever did. again: this is really a straw man.

it's the great irony: most mra's are really just male feminists, without realizing it. there's a few that are legit misogynists. but, most of them don't hate women, they hate patriarchy. they just can't realize it.

-----

(deleted)

jessica
no feminist would make any of these arguments. these arguments are not feminist at all. what these arguments are is patriarchal.

you wouldn't even get your average third waver in the door on a ladies night like that. they'd be the first to stand up and argue that ladies night is beyond-the-pale sexist.

the woman in this video is not a feminist.

so, the way that youtube works nowadays is that people upload idiocy in order to try to trick the site into showing advertisements that advertisers don't want shown and that everybody wants blocked. then, when the site steps in on behalf of advertisers (and viewers...), the uploaders that are just manipulating the situation for a quick dollar cry censorship. that sounds like a very successful, very sustainable business model to me.

i never vomit. i think that was the first time since moving to windsor. legit.

i bought a coffee a few hours ago, and there was a leak at the corner. i was about to walk into a grocery store when i noticed. i didn't want to trail coffee around the store, so i chugged it on a pretty empty stomach.

i'm guessing that's what came up. otherwise, i caught a bug somewhere. hope not.

extra large size.

no adult in the world watches porn. well, ok, there's a few - but they aren't mentally adults. it should be renamed to adolescent entertainment. "adult entertainment" should be synonymous with adult contemporary.

porn is for kids...

it's the same thing with strip clubs. i haven't seen statistics. but, i wouldn't be surprised to find out that upwards of 90% of people at strip clubs are there due to somebody coming of age (or are underage) or somebody getting married.

i'd actually guess at least 75% of people that have attended a strip club in the last year have done so because of somebody's 18th or 19th birthday.

it's just a disgusting transaction, all around.

to crave this and keep coming back implies some kind of psychosis....

psychotic people exist. sure. in small percentages.

no, you fucking...

i don't want socialism because i care about other people. i want socialism because i don't care about other people. explicitly. precisely.

i'm not a fucking christian.

i've been over this too often. it drives me nuts. it's just that it warps the conversation. if you could peel back the layers of brainwashing, you'd realize you're probably more of a socialist than you realize.

well, unless you're an asshole. don't get me wrong: there's lots of assholes out there that are all about dominance and competition and hierarchy. but, it's a minority.

trying to find a way to separate socialism from christianity really needs to be the primary goal of the left, at this point. it's not about christian aid work. it's not about charity. it's about positive freedom.

read this.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/wilde-oscar/soul-man/

01-09-2016: updating the alter-reality

tracks worked on in this vlog:
http://therealinri.blogspot.ca
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

alter-reality update

i have finished the listening through the sansa, as well as the first run through the laptop. i don't see any use in updating this here because it's monotonous. it's in the vlog.

but, i'm also pushing forward with the alter-reality for the day.

1) new blog post:

sept 1, 1996

there is no code to get into enriched classes, but i wish there was one....

happy new year!

well, it's not really the new year, i guess, but it kind of feels like it. the roman calendar is heliocentric and resets when the sun reverses course and starts coming back towards us. how did we escape the victorian era without reconfiguring the calendar to the start of the school year, anyways? there are new beginnings to be found in the innocence of youth. yet, maybe such a concept of yearly rebirth was a little too pagan.

it's labour day tomorrow, which means i go back to school on tuesday. i'll be starting grade ten. it's not just a new year, though: i'm also being sent to nerd school. yuck :(. this is not consensual!

it's a little bit of my own fault, though. i tend to fool around in class. a lot. while i get almost solid As, the kids i'm distracting are not doing nearly as well. one may kneejerk into blaming the kids with the lower marks, but i've actually been fingered repeatedly as the root cause of the distractions. so, i'm a kind of an enigma. they haven't been able to figure out what to do with me; while they ought to expel me based on my behaviour, they just can't justify it because i'm an A student. what happened around the end of last year was that a cabal of teachers conspired with my parents to take me out of advanced courses and put me into enriched classes. the argument is that i'll be less bored that way, but that, more importantly, i won't be so much of a distraction to the students around me. everybody should win out...

...except that i know that the reality of it is that i'm actually going to be even more bored because i'm going to have to hang out with the nerds all of the time. the thing is that the nerds aren't really nerds. if they were legit nerds, i'd probably like them. the legit nerds are all in the advanced courses. what the enriched class "nerds" actually are are really the rich kids and they're actually mostly wannabe jocks. these are the kids that walk around in sports jerseys but can't make the school team. the only reason that most of them got separated out is because their parents demanded they get special treatment. there was no testing. there were no interviews. entry to enriched classes is dependent solely on maintaining an A average and being recommended by a teacher, which only happens with outside pressure. there are plenty of students in the advanced stream with higher grade averages.

how do i get out of this? well, i didn't have the choice. my parents would never do this to me under normal circumstances, but the cabal of teachers was absolutely insistent and they ultimately relented. the only way out of this next year is to get Bs this year. nobody's going to care, right? nobody's going to check my grade ten marks, right? i'm already thinking about a scorched earth policy...

what about the last week?

well, i picked up the new pearl jam record, no code. to be entirely honest, i'm kind of still processing it. i'm not too young to remember early pearl jam, but i'm pretty close; i was ten years old when ten was released (oddly enough...) and not really a fan of what i interacted with. i liked jeremy, but it was a distant appreciation rather than an active experience. i didn't like the other singles nearly as much. you have to understand that the headspace i was in at the time was not very open to anything that might be interpreted as "heavy metal". the reason is that i was growing up with a set of influences that saw metal as the refuge of violent drunks and uneducated losers. it took me a few years to realize that i was actually conflating an idea with it's anti-thesis and that my inability to differentiate between pearl jam and guns 'n' roses (and grunge and glam, more generally) was really just youthful ignorance on my behalf. in fact, pearl jam was exactly the kind of rock band i could get into, i just didn't realize it. i was eventually able to get into vs a little near the end of it's run, but it wasn't until vitalogy was released that i was actively converted into a fan. on some level, and notwithstanding my age, i may be a better actualization of what the band really desires as a fan. but, that itself - combined with my near violent aversion to 80s metal - makes me a very atypical listener. i actually tend to prefer their more experimental tendencies, as well as their punk sensibilities, over the cliches and muscular riffs. of their four released records, i like ten the least! but, the thing i like about pearl jam the most is actually the lyrics.

i'm finding this new record to really be pretty good on the few listens i've had over all night civ 2 sessions. it's kind of uneven, though, and i'm not sure how it's going to ultimately hold up as a result of it. vitalogy was also uneven, but it wasn't as pronounced. see, the flip of that is that some of the high points on no code are just that much stronger. the irony is that this exaggerates the weakness of the weaker tracks, which makes it less cohesive, overall. i'm still enjoying the record, mind you. i just wish they had cut a few of the slower tracks out. i don't mean the artsy ones, i mean the rural ones: off he goes & around the bend, specifically.

something, i did listen to a lot of in the early 90s, though, was REM, who were definitely my favourite band. so, i'm super hyped about the new REM album. i didn't like monster as much as their older stuff. it seemed kind of shallow, to me, in comparison. it didn't breathe or flow and kind of got boring under the monotony. but, i really really like the new single...

i don't know who the female singer is, though. is she actually singing or is she just an actress?

i've also been spending a lot of time in the recording studio in the basement. on the last update, i wondered out loud whether i should keep waiting for band members or just go ahead and start recording on my own. i've decided that i will be recording songs on my own with the intent of teaching them to other people when they're done. in fact, i have already finished my first song! in my next post, i will provide links to stream my very first song, recorded in my basement studio over the last week.

http://therealinri.blogspot.ca/1996/09/there-is-no-code-to-get-into-enriched_1.html

2) second part of the blog post:

sept 1, 1996

external links to recorded music

this is my very first recording!

i initially wrote this song in the wee hours of a morning in 1995, where it was recorded for future use by notating it on loose leaf (using a mix of tablature and chord blocks). it was slowly mutated into a final form over the next few years through solitary performance, and was eventually recorded in the summer of 1996.

the dream in the song is something that actually happened, although the concept was exaggerated for the track. there is a clear underlying misanthropy. but, it's more hands-off than the term usually implies. the song is not about starting fires, it's about not interfering in fires that are burning. all young people contemplate ways they can make a difference and "save the world" - literally or figuratively. but, is the world really worth saving?



i've also set up a youtube channel...
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXlH5Ds5mqClkdAUFJwQCNQ/

http://therealinri.blogspot.com/1996/09/external-links-to-recorded-music.html

3) the alter-reality bandcamp site is now up and running:
https://jnrj.bandcamp.com

4) the alter-reality youtube page will be up soon, too:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXlH5Ds5mqClkdAUFJwQCNQ/

i'll be back to listening soon, too.

jessica
even a two-year old can reason that maximizing utility with toys is not portable to moralizing questions about a train wreck in real life, which he likely can't even really fathom. the only teachable moment here is that he doesn't understand the question.

fwiw, the right answer is to try and pull the train off the tracks. and, i'm not missing the point.

sm901ftw
But what about the guys in the train you just derailed?

jessica
i don't think that derailing the train decreases their chances of surviving an impact.

sm901ftw
If you're saying the right answer to the trolley problem is to forcibly derail the train while it's in motion, then the train will probably crash hard. There's a good chance some people on the train are going to die or suffer serious injury in the crash.

This of course assumes we're considering an actual train with passengers to kill.

jessica
i realize that derailing the train is going to cause it to crash hard. but, it's going to crash hard, anyways. that is a constant through all scenarios.

sm901ftw
Maybe. I don't think hitting someone would cause the train to derail. Idk but I imagine suicide/murder by train would be much less common if it also frequently derailed the trains.

Even then it still doesn't change the moral question much. The only difference in the new scenario is now you have to chose between total inaction, actively minimising the number of deaths (changing to hit the 1 person) or actively trying to save everyone but by putting the most people at risk to do so (forced derailment).

jessica
no, you're not...

the train is going to crash under all circumstances. what happens after it runs over the one person? it crashes. it's out of control. it will crash. so, derailing the train minimizes the risk of harm to only those on board, which is the best possible outcome.

i would actually argue that it doesn't matter if you pull the switch or not, because i wouldn't value six lives as more important than one. in the typical formulation of the problem, i would argue you should do nothing, say something about how shit happens and go smoke a joint. there's simply no positive course of action and you shouldn't pretend that there is. that's not rare, either.

but, if you can get the train off the tracks before it hits anybody, you're accomplishing something.

sm901ftw
Is the train definitely out of control? I've heard so many versions of this problem I can't say for sure which is the original anymore.

If you know it's out of control then you have a good point, but unless you're on the train you have no idea whether it's a runaway or the driver just hasn't seen the people on the track. Also I wasn't making any judgement on which action is best. I was just saying you seemed to be treating causing a crash as an objectively better decision than letting it hit anyone. There're moral implications no matter what you do.

Plus I think the point of the problem is to discuss whether actively causing a little harm is acceptable when the alternative is passively allowing a lot of harm to occur. In that sense derailing the train can still be regarded as actively causing harm, just to different people. Whether they're at risk regardless isn't the point so much as whether you pull the trigger. Or at least that's how I interpret it.

jessica
well, if there's a way to stop the train then there's no dilemma: you stop the train. that you can't stop the train is the basis of the problem. it follows that the crash is unavoidable, and i'm not measuring outcomes so much as minimizing harm.

i want to be clear: i'm not saying the crash is morally preferable. i'm claiming it's unavoidable. it's consequently the only way to interfere that is objectively preferable.

what you're constructing is what i'm rejecting, and why i'm not missing the point. the answer is no: it is not acceptable to play god. you are neither causing nor preventing harm. you are redistributing it. you don't have the right to make the choice to kill somebody to prevent the deaths of others. it's not up to you to make that choice. you should walk away from the situation altogether.

what i'm saying is that if you can't stop the train, you should do nothing at all. but, you should also try to stop the train, somehow.

sm901ftw
I'm not trying to drag this out, but I genuinely don't see why the crash is confirmed as unavoidable. Unless you're in the drivers seat you can't be sure the train is out of control. I was always told the problem in the sense that the train won't stop in time, but is still functional and capable of stopping at some point i.e. the train is fine but the people are around a corner and not in sight.

All you have control of at the switch is which way the train goes and supposedly a way to derail it. You have to work on the assumption that the train won't stop in time to prevent someone being run over. You aren't in a position to know whether the train is a runaway and can't be saved after it's hit someone.

jessica
you're not changing the logic of the situation. for the sake of argument, if i concede the point, even though i don't think it makes any sense, then the correct answer remains non-interference.

i've never heard a drake song, and i just learned he's an actor roughly four seconds ago. #notamillennial.

#extremelywhite

the new youtube rules are not going to bother me, because i don't upload for the cash, anyways.

but i think, in the end, that youtube may find that the family-friendly market is less lucrative than it thinks.

this is an error. it could produce a set of serious competitors.

i don't have a problem with it. people just don't get the business model.

youtube is selling advertising space, not acting as a speech platform. they give you a cut of their revenue, but they don't even have to, really. it's just an incentive for you to upload. in the end, you're just being used as a conduit.

the actual financial transaction that occurs is that youtube sells space in your videos to advertisers. it's consequently entirely up to the advertisers as to whether they want to be associated with your videos or not. i think that's in their rights. and, if the advertisers don't want to be associated with you? that's their choice.

imagine your girlfriend breaking up with you because she doesn't like your politics. is that censorship? no. you have every right to keep talking. she just doesn't want to hang out with you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gbph5or0NuM

this playlist may increase in size.

no biggie.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrHImg7oLm2aP4aFlcpTsPI6eSTBAlPyf

j reacts to the elite's misunderstood plan for climate change

nononono, you don't under...

the elite does have a plan to deal with the trillions of dollars required to adjust to climate change. that plan is to profit from the trillions of dollars required to adjust to climate change.

when the floods come in, that's pay day!

j reacts to bernie sanders being a dirty, rotten sellout (or not...)

see, here's the thing: i was never actually opposed to money in politics in the first place. money changing hands doesn't bother me. what bothers me is not knowing who is giving money to who.

canada has much stricter laws. i've posted here about some of the ways that you can get around those laws. i don't think writing more laws is the answer in either country.

what i'd like to see is transparency, and a culture that upholds it. so, if a candidate wants to take money from wall street or the oil industry or the weapons industry, then that's ok - so long as they tell me so i can look it up. i would be highly unlikely to vote for such a candidate on the basis of them having a conflict of interest. that's what we need, here: a culture that rejects conflicts of interest as unacceptable, not more laws to be dodged while an apathetic voting base shrugs. jefferson articulated this position by calling for an educated populace.

so, when sanders says he wants to take money, it doesn't bother me a priori. but, i would push him to ban anonymous contributions and to lead the way in transparently publishing the source of every dime that comes in. i want who, how much and (where possible) why. that way, the media and the public can see for themselves where the money is coming from and decide whether a conflict of interest exists. it would be in the organization's interest, then, to be careful about who it accepts money from. but, that's a part of building trust in good governance.

"the cornerstone of democracy rests on the foundation of an educated electorate." - thomas jefferson

j reacts to how bad polling is a compounded, escalating problem

the polls out this week are mostly trash. the best of the bunch is actually the fox poll, although you'd have to expect some bias from fox. the monmouth poll is good, too. even the ppp is trash, methodologically (due to the inclusion of an opt-in internet panel). if you go back through my vlogs, i predicted that this would happen. you're supposed to conclude that they can't all be wrong and then be affected by them. this is the error of aggregate polling: averaging out a lot of trash doesn't give you a better result. it's still trash. garbage in, garbage out. they can all be wrong, and no doubt are.

if we get some better polls in and they show a tightening race, so be it. but, i'm not going to speculate on garbage. i'm just going to throw it in the trash.

can we? really?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/let-talk-infrastructure-since-clinton-000000340.html

j reacts to the media's baffling refusal to understand hegemony

author does not understand hegemony.

"the policeman is there to preserve disorder."

http://www.alternet.org/world/us-policy-killing-kurds

if the kurds are getting too much influence, that must be countered because the goal is not to end the conflict but to continue it. any time anybody gets an advantage, america will step in to reverse it. this is the american goal, here - to ensure that the region is in a state of constant stalemate and perpetual warfare that nobody can possibly break out of.

once the turks have taken the kurds down a notch, the amercans will need to pull the turks back and help the kurds regain the ground that was just lost.

they don't want peace. they want an unending war.

j reacts to the bipartisan demagoguery on mexicans (the deportation force is called ICE)

again: it's hard to see a reason to get involved in the immigration discussion when it's easy to see that they actually basically have the same policy of continuing to provide cheap slave labour to corporate interests while deporting those who escape the plantations, while distracting from the static policy with demagogic rhetoric designed to appeal to different bases.

so, trump uses this wacky right-wing rhetoric to appeal to the xenophobes that want insularity and purity, whereas clinton uses more inclusive rhetoric to appeal to multicultural liberals and the relatives of the migrants, themselves. you can decide which rhetoric you like better if you'd like. but, the rhetoric is designed in both cases to distract from the actual policy, which is basically the same.

trying to erect some kind of meaningful discussion when both sides are blatantly lying is entirely pointless. the discourse just has no connection to the reality.

....which is that the united states already has a deportation police force (called ice) and that neither of them will do anything besides continue the status quo put in place by the 'deporter in chief'.

so, yeah: i may like what clinton says better, but i don't expect that i'll like what she does.

i at least believe her when she says she wants to increase resources to the border. that means hiring more cops, building more detention facilities and hiring more judges. i don't doubt that she agrees that the system is overloaded. i don't doubt that she'll try and make it more efficient.

30/31-08-2016: listening phase completed (mp3--laptop-speakers) and looking ahead for sept shows

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

that's right, leafy. gay people exist. you seem a little curious about it. that's ok.

there's actually no reason that you couldn't have a 20th note, you just couldn't express it in terms of quarter notes because you get an infinite series. it's convergent. but it doesn't help the notation.

you couldn't count it, but you could feel it.

i flipped my fraction over and thought i had an answer (i do this, flip the fraction over, to myself all the time), because i'm actually used to dealing with these kinds of weird conversions as a relic of writing drum sequences in a scorewriter. there's lots of ways to convert weird signatures. the series just has to terminate. it doesn't here, but that's just bad luck.

if you split the bar into five equal temporal spaces, each one will be four fifths of a quarter note. .8/4 = 0.2. so, a 20th note would be 20% of a quarter note - which is 40% of an eighth note and 80% of a sixteenth note. indeed, .8*(1/16) = 1/20. you can't notate this using western music theory (because the series happens not to terminate....), but that doesn't mean it's undefined or unplayable

80%(1/16th) =
160% (1/32nd) =
1/32nd + 60%(32nd) =
1/32nd + 1.2(64th) =
1/32nd + 1/64th + .2(64th) =
1/32nd + 1/64th + .4(128th) =
1/32nd + 1/64th + .8(256th) =
1/32nd + 1/64th + epsilon =
3/64th + epsilon

you simply couldn't hear 80% of a 256th note. that's indistiguishable from human error.

so, a 20th note would be indistinguishable from a triplet of 64th notes. that means that 4/20 would be four triplets of 64th notes.

....which is a blast beat.

http://thehardtimes.net/2016/08/29/stoner-tech-metal-band-trying-really-hard-write-song-420-time/?fb_comment_id=1161463340592034_1163796750358693

you know, i walk around with headphones on all of the time and it doesn't mean "leave me alone" so much as it means "i like to listen to music when i'm transiting by myself.". the idea that my headphones may or may not act as a disincentive to approach me has truly never even crossed my mind. not everything i do is meant to be interpreted in the filter of whether it is or is not ok to hit on me. i mean, does it logically imply that if i'm not wearing headphones then i'm inviting a conversation? this is a stupid discussion all around....

http://www.upworthy.com/advice-for-talking-to-women-wearing-headphones-ignores-why-women-wear-headphones

j reacts to clinton criticizing trump for not accepting manifest destiny

this is the moderate candidate, folks.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/293964-clinton-trump-doesnt-believe-in-american-exceptionalism

j reacts to how interpolating undecideds for '16 leads to a choice between '92 and '96

i'm going to do something i consistently criticize people for. but, we do not currently have data that contradicts it.

in the last election in canada, we had consistent polling that undecideds were substantial and they would not pick stephen harper. this created polls that exaggerated his position through most of the race, until the undecideds came down. i don't see any polling like that right now - both candidates are very unpopular.

you can read that two ways.

1) all of the undecideds will vote for johnson. it's a lot harder to assign all of the undecideds to a third party candidate in a two-party system than it is to assign them to the natural governing party (the liberals) in a multi-party system. it could happen. bad assumption.

2) the undecideds might distribute.

now, i hate this. you do this when you don't have any other data. it's a vanilla assumption - usually wrong. i'm going to do it anyways...

the rcp average is pinning 9% undecided. distributing...

clinton: 42.2/91 = 46.3. 
trump: 37.8/91 = 41.5
johnson: 7.9/91 = 8.6
stein: 3.1/91 = 3.4

this most closely matches the 1996 results for johnson/perot...

clinton - 49.2
dole - 40.7
perot - 8.4

so, if you assume that the undecideds will distribute then the wild card in using 1996 to predict 2016 is stein. if you deliver stein to clinton, it's very close to 1992. if you don't, it could hinder her in close races.

but, what if they all go third party? then the adjusted rcp average is:

clinton: 42.2
trump: 37.8
other: 20

look at 1992:

clinton: 43.0
bush: 37.4
perot + other: 18.9 + .7 = 19.6

whether you're looking at '92 or '96 as the better predictor is going to depend on how you interpolate undecideds. so, go get me more data on undecideds.

this is not yet predictive though, either. there's too much volatility, which is very different than the last election in canada, where the conservatives had flatlined for months and nothing moved them. clinton's graph could still careen out of control, producing a landslide.

but, it's what we've got right now.

as mentioned previously, you also have to make some smart adjustments. these are national polls. so you have to distribute them, too.

but it should give an idea about which states are in play and which aren't.

1996..

States where the margin of victory was under 7% :

Kentucky, 0.96%
Nevada, 1.02%
Georgia, 1.17%
Arizona, 2.22%
Tennessee, 2.41%
Montana, 2.88%
South Dakota, 3.46%
North Carolina, 4.69%
Texas, 4.93%
Mississippi, 5.13%
Indiana, 5.58%
Florida, 5.70%
South Carolina, 6.04%
Missouri, 6.30%
Ohio, 6.36%
North Dakota, 6.81%
Alabama, 6.96%

1992...

States with margin of victory less than 7%

Georgia – 0.59%
North Carolina – 0.79%
Ohio – 1.83%
Florida – 1.89%
Arizona – 1.95%
Montana – 2.51%
Nevada – 2.63%
Kentucky – 3.21%
Texas – 3.48%
South Dakota – 3.52%
Louisiana – 4.61%
Tennessee – 4.65%
Kansas – 5.14%
Iowa – 6.02%
Indiana – 6.12%
Alabama – 6.77%

if you want to watch or take part in pornography, go ahead. what do i care? and, you don't need my permission, either. just don't insult my intelligence by referring to your pornography as 'art'.

if you want to go to a strip club, go ahead. just don't pretend that you're going to a 'concert'.

...and if you want to let your kids watch strippers on tv, that's your choice. well, at least it is in the sense that you own the tv. your kids aren't your property. just, stop fooling yourself into thinking it's a 'music video'. it's not. they're strippers. and it's porn.

if you could fake your own death, how would you do it?

if you're curious, i think tattoos are gross. nothing moralizing about it. it's your body; i don't care. i just find them very unattractive. small piercings can range from meh to hot, but they have to be very subtle to accomplish that. i don't like implants, either. or even make-up, really. i'm just really not into body modification at all. i'm kind of more into naturalism. and, as such, i kind of more have a thing for stuff like body odour and body hair...

except pits. i don't care what your gender is. shave your pits.

i have zero tattoos, and i don't want any.

i had a belly button ring for a while, but it's been out for around ten years, now.

no plastic surgery...

canada needs to strike a balance in terms of it's relationships with china and the united states. this is a very dangerous game that all of the recent prime ministers have had to play. i'm going to shut up about this for now, until he gets back. but the game is about playing them off against each other and winning concessions.

harper tried to use oil exports as leverage and got burned by it. he lacked the subtlety required to play this game at this level. the dauphin, here, had better rely on his advisers in order to avoid something worse.

the premise here is absurd. but, joining that bank is curious. we haven't heard anything about the tpp in a while, either.

the liberal party will not automatically fall in line with the washington consensus. it will seek compromise and concessions. but it won't take orders.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-china-day-1-1.3741070

my view on this is that the opposition to the changes merely demonstrate their necessity. we need to be teaching these kids secular values over the opposition of their parents - and the more the parents yell that it offends their religious values, the more necessary it is to teach their kids secular values. this should really be made clear in the immigration process, so that people are not settling here under false pretenses.

tripartisan consensus on the topic is appropriate.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/patrick-brown-sex-ed-mistake-1.3740877

the real power was always in the hands of the eunuchs.

growing up in a niners fan household, i actually know a thing or two about jerry rice. confused by what he said? don't be. over on the left, we've been telling you this all along. it's not about race. it's about class.

and, of course that's the left. it's the definition of the left: the world is defined by perpetual class warfare. no leftist would argue otherwise. they couldn't possibly be a leftist.

the perspective on the left about race is that it's an imaginary construct invented by the ruling class to keep the proletariat in conflict with itself and distract from revolutionary politics.

this is the left, kids. notice the focus on class? that's what the left is about.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/21/the-invention-of-the-white-race/

my view on this is that the opposition to the changes merely demonstrate their necessity. we need to be teaching these kids secular values over the opposition of their parents - and the more the parents yell that it offends their religious values, the more necessary it is to teach their kids secular values. this should really be made clear in the immigration process, so that people are not settling here under false pretenses.

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/patrick-brown-sex-ed-mistake-1.3740877

29-08-2016: some listening done between rants & raves (mp3--laptop--speakers)

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

j reacts to trump getting desperate about the black vote

it's not wrong.

...and i said they had to get creative...

....but this will backfire. that clinton landslide is getting clearer and clearer.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CrC2_dLWYAEuAvg.jpg

j reacts to the contradiction between trust and self-interest

you can't trust anybody in a capitalist society. it's not "human nature", but it's an unavoidable consequence of the economy we live in. to trust somebody is, by definition, to ask them to act against their self-interest. this is only feasible in a union of fools.

the only way that a relationship can function in a market economy is through the certainty of mutually assured destruction upon dissolution.

any imbalance is exploitation. and, hence any weakness is prostitution.

love is impossible in the presence of currency.

<----single.

but, this is the best reason to abolish capitalism: to reclaim the possibility of love.

j reacts to the internet's perversion of the protestant work ethic into pure narcissism

i think we're starting to see the development of a new phenomenon: people that are actually convinced that their appearance entitles them to wealth. all you have to do is get beautiful, and the dollars will start rolling in.

where to start? i don't know, i need some more mental ordering. yoga. hip-hop culture. instagram. fucking evangelical christianity. it's all swirling together into this mess of hyper-capitalist narcissism.

this may be a developing theme here, as i encounter further examples and can unravel it in more detail.

but, expect to encounter this, i think: a hierarchy based on appearance (instagram followers?), and people that expect to be treated preferentially based solely on their looks.

i don't want to say it's a rejection of merit altogether, so much as it's a perversion of it. in their minds, looking good is hard work. that's really the basis of their thinking. they worked hard at the gym and expect some kind of reward.

it's more of a rejection of market exchange in favour of...god? i mean, who or what is doling out the rewards, here? the universe?

the actual truth is that i'm not sure you'd get a coherent answer if you tried. all you're going to get is the idea that hard work should be rewarded.

it doesn't matter if that work has any social purpose or greater good.

so, it's also a perversion of calvinism.

it's almost more like the idea of sacrificing something to the gods. the gym (or the yoga studio) is the new temple. the workout bench is the new altar. in return for hard work in the gym, they expect the gods to look favourably upon them.

like sacrificing a fucking goat...

i'm an atheist. don't misunderstand me, this isn't a moralistic rant - it's a sociological observation. i'm just describing shit. i'm not judging. if i am judging a little (we can't help it...), it's from a communist slant. but i just for the first time understood the social utility of monotheistic attacks upon paganism. this behaviour is anti-social.

like i say: expect this to probably develop more over time.

j reacts (dvd 3)

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrHImg7oLm2aK2IMzRtrt0cXO_jk4tTvF

j reacts to the benefits of a clinton landslide for the real left

i want to push my point.

liberal democrats are not going to be granted an audience in a clinton administration. the bigger the majority, the more room the party has to fracture.

the best scenario here in this very dour circumstance is to try and work towards a situation where clinton's opposition is on the left. that can happen if the caucus grows large enough that the size of the progressive wing challenges what's left of the republicans in congress.

it's a hard, long slog one way or another. and, trump is a historically bad candidate that could destroy the party's future. so, i really think the left is better off taking the opportunity to try and get rid of the republicans once and for all than pouting about the lack of options.

the best way to help the greens this election is to get the biggest democratic party majority possible, then try and splinter the party once it's in place.

go for the kill.

they would show no mercy to you.

but, it's still early, bob. if the groupthink sets in strong enough (like it did in '08), that supermajority is possible. the house is possible. and, i think the mississippi delta (possibly including texas) is possible, too.

i'm wearing my poli sci hat right now, not my data analyst hat. granted. and i'm talking in possibilities, rather than certainties. but, if those fluctuations you see on those graphs spin out...

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/08/29/if-you-want-celebrate-landslide-clinton-victory-dont-call-me

you want to tell me there's a trend line there?

what you have to do is focus solely on the last two days of the polling, ignore everything else and then project that into the future. it's preposterous.

rather, if i were to guess, i'd suggest that the end result will be closer to the numbers you saw in april. so long as we're cherry picking...

http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/57bf1c8ab996ebef008b479e-850/screenshot%202016-08-25%2012.27.33.png

when i talk about the republicans being wiped out, of course i don't mean that literally. but if the democrats play this right, they could be pushed down into the twenties and then the teens and then slowly fade away...

the spectrum is fucked. there's nothing resembling a left. that needs to be corrected.

http://time.com/4466108/donald-trump-democracy/

28-08-2016: another sleepy day (broken in half by groceries, couldn't get started)

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

j reacts to the error of using a regression analysis to try and predict elections

1) the polls he's using are garbage. garbage in, garbage out.
2) you just simply don't model elections using regression analysis and a line of best fit. elections are not natural phenomena. a trendline in a graph is absolutely meaningless. smoothing things out is backwards. you want to amplify the noise, not quiet it down.

one should expect that election polling will fly around all over the place, not follow a defined curve. it may be true that a constant rate of change from now into infinity will give trump 100% of the vote. it's ridiculous to apply it as predictive at all. even over a few months.

but, that's my point. you can't do elections like you do physics. it's just wrong.

that said, i agree that he's right in pointing out that there's a lot of volatility right now. i'd just be more likely to argue that this volatility is careening towards a possible clinton landslide...

as to the point: is it too early to run out the clock? broadly, yes. on the emails, specifically (the point of the article)? no. there's lots of outreach she can continue to do, but i agree that she's better off keeping her mouth shut about that specific topic.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-its-too-soon-for-clinton-to-run-out-the-clock/

j reacts to the social value of yoga as just another excuse for capitalist assholery

yoga is a cult, and it turns people into shallow, mindless idiots.

the aerobics may be healthy. so, drop the bullshit and go to aerobics class.

i've never stated, in public or private, anything other than that my only regret was that i put my transition on hold way back when. i don't regret anything else that happened. and, i wouldn't do anything else differently. but i do very, very much wish that i would have dealt with this properly back in 2002.

the intent was to stop for a few months. that turned into a few years. and, it became financially difficult to pick up where i was.

it was a huge mistake....

....but i mean the choice to suspend was a mistake. x > y. sure. but, it's only that part that i'd reverse, if i could. then, we'd have to see what would happen from there....

yes: a lot of the things that happened would not have happened had i not paused. that is true. but, given that i did pause, i don't regret what i did. what i regret is only that i paused.

i simply can't know what the alternate path would have been, or how similar it would be to what actually happened. so, i can't say anything else. i can only look at the choices i actually made. and, there's really only one i'd reverse.

i'm sorry if that's not what you think, but i need to reiterate: i've never stated anything else. anything else is just in your head.

j reacts to the mississippi floods and ignoring first nations regarding how to live here

that's one way to do it.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjTXGrMuJ078ocxiknyxZiCjFgR89cKFUICd2MXluT0Dt2zlECBJp2d4yHJ7g9Zx7hR0RTG_TMC6o_xi_LgNKkOXOe5LSHTdxElBUxBdeyEhjYIzbI16-7JV3CV-qa3XB5DsScJRlwSTfP/?imgmax=800

kind of makes this seem more obvious, though, doesn't it?

https://news.illinois.edu/blog/files/6367/205015/40716.jpg

americans living around the mississippi get up and evacuate every couple of years due to the flood waters, but they wait until it floods until they do it. the previous inhabitants of the region got out of the way every year, expecting the worse and no doubt preventing a lot of destruction in the process. that migration is ongoing. people just don't realize it.

less false dichotomies and more synthesis, please.

let me be a little presumptuous in suggesting that whatever is rebuilt in the region will be flooded again within a few years. you sure that's the best idea?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNaXdLWt17A

the mounds are a good idea. really.

j reacts to the importance of the historic opportunity to permanently annihilate the gop

when this election cycle started, a lot of people were talking about how trump was a clown but he could maybe break open the two-party system. then, you had the bernie or bust types that argued that a trump presidency may be preferable because it will create a bigger backlash, and a part of me agrees, but then what? another democrat?

how do we break this cycle?

the way the election has unfolded suggests that this may be the last election with a serious republican candidate. clinton is poaching the brains out of the republicans. all that's left is koch money, and it will be gone in eight years due to natural causes. the next election could feature the democrats as the conservative party on the right, with a sanders-inspired liberal party challenger. greens? somebody else? i don't know.

i think the tactic ought to be to worry less about who is the lesser of two evils (they're both flat out satanic) and focus more on taking the opportunity to help destroy the republican party.

if the democrats can pull off a full sweep in addition to their poaching of the intelligentsia, the republican party will be left without any hope of a future and the left can transcend the fear-mongering.

that's going to require a bit of a social movement. the seeds of this exist. you don't have to support clinton to attack trump.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSDm62Hmbf4

if they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.

j reacts to the looming canada post strike

i'm actually really not that concerned about the mail and whether it exists or not. i get two kinds of mail: stuff from the government, and fliers. almost everything i get from the government could be digitized, and i don't care at all about fliers.

the mail system absolutely needs to adjust to the digital world. what these people do is an anachronism. my criticism of the previous government on the mail issue was that they weren't going far enough, and they were botching the implementation. i don't even need to look at the accounting to know ahead of time that building community mailboxes is actually just going to increase costs.

so, i'm not going to get upset if this shuts down. rather, i'd request that they hurry up in digitizing. lots of people don't recycle.

i'd also support bylaws that outlaw flyering.

again: quality v quantity misunderstands what i'm doing. the question is whether i'm being thorough in documentation, or haphazard about it. this is not a film production, it's a vlog. how detailed am i being?

another way to put it is that i don't really have control over the viewing quality of my life, nor am i particularly concerned by it. what i have control over is how meticulous i am in building a historical document.

i went from not being able to sleep to crashing really, really hard. we had some rain move in. it does that to me. i haven't been able to stay awake for more than a few hours at a time the last few days. i feel awake, but we'll see.

27-08-2016: overslept & then passed out a second time in the rain (day lost...)

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

j reacts to a dream about genetic factors in gender identity

i've been over this a few times: i really don't think that gender is genetic in the sense that there's a gene for liking skirts or a gene for liking cars. rather, i think it's partly hormonal and partly experiential. the only serious genetic determinant going into somebody's gender identity is consequently the way that their bodies regulate hormones.

that means that there actually might be an observable physical trait that i demonstrate that has something to do with things, which is the fact that i've never grown a single hair on my chest in my life. this is actually very rare. the categorization of "apilose" means "less than 6%".

...and i'm not exaggerating. nary a hair. ever. in my entire life.

(i'll remind you that i'm nearly 36. it's never going to happen.)

how does that happen? well, here's the truth: this is androgenic hair. that is, it's presence is triggered by the release of testosterone during puberty. humans demonstrate lots of variation, as a species. so, some dudes release huge amounts of testosterone and end up looking like hairy man-apes. others release a lot less and just end up with a little baby fuzz. and, yes: some women release enough testosterone to end up with hair on their chests and faces, too.

the fact that i've never grown any chest on my hair at all ever means that i didn't go through that testosterone flush. i can't tell you why not with any real certainty, but it's almost certainly genetic. note that my dad was a typical hairy italian jew.

and, hence this is where one needs to look at the genetic basis of things, for me. as mentioned: i think this is overly facile. it's not that easy. it's at most one of multiple factors. but, if i was a geneticist, that's where i'd be looking: the genes that regulate hormone release during puberty.

as an aside, that makes the issue reducible to a "hormonal imbalance" and the treatment of hormone therapy rational. but, it also means that the ultimate truth here is that i very much had a choice in correcting the imbalance: that i could have equally well chosen to pop testosterone pills. the ultimate choice here, at the end, has to be experiential, when seen that way.

Connor_Phillipz
love how he completely forgets to discuss the libertarian platform of fiscal issues... why? because that's where the progressive agenda is weak. Libertarians are okay with welfare if the government can pay for it without going into debt. In a progressive society, the government would go bankrupt because the government would spend without limits.

jessica
if the government can spend without limits, what does it mean to go bankrupt?

robert h
if the gov is small and there is less corruption, the rich will pay more equal percent! witch should make billions of tax revenue! BUT at this point only the middle class pay for the poor and then pay to bail out the rich!!

jessica
what does the size of government have to do with tax fairness?

robert h
have you went to a forest but couldn`t  see it `cuz all the other trees were in the way?

That is how our government is now!

For get just politicians , think of everyone who is part of the system, from the cops to the welfare people, everyone is part of government, so it will  protecting its self...

~see Nazi Germany , not everyone agreed with the idea of Hitler, but then you can't bite the hand that feeds you, if you did you could be killed or made you into a known spy/terrorist, & all your family... 

jessica
??

robert h
? that is mostly it, it is only part of a idea, not written in stone, I think it needs a little dash of communism...

Right now the Middle class pays for the poor and the rich!?(government protects its sefl)

We middle class, could pay for the poor for ever, but we can not  bail out the rich & pay for the poor too?

Why & how did the middle class get the chance to protect the rich, it should never happen!!

Now the governments only chance is to import cheaper workers that will vote, to support...

jessica
if i'm able to piece together your thinking, what you appear to be suggesting is that reducing the size of government will reduce the amount of revenue required for government to operate, which will increase the percentage of expenditure attributed to the wealthy because the net expenditure will decrease. but, this is not a reduction of inequality, it's the institutionalization of it.

there's no causal relationship between tax fairness and the size of government.

why don't we just tax the rich?

robert h
google it!

jessica
i really think that google is more likely to provide me with reasons why we should tax the rich.

more broadly speaking - and language of trees and forests is truly ironic, here - this is a good example of the kind of demagogic argument that frequently pops up on the libertarian right. they consistently twist around concepts into these incoherent messes. i'm a message board veteran - i've been doing this for very close to twenty years, now. more than 19. i started on usenet. i can disassemble this nonsense pretty quickly. a lot of people can't.

casual observers/readers just need to know to be very, very wary of their arguments. most of what they throw at you is disingenuous at the source - worse is that a good percentage of them don't realize it, themselves.

there's a kind of honest conservative that i enjoy debating with. but, right libertarians are more often than not of the same mindset regarding the truth as the hosts on fox news.

they just don't care. they'll twist anything and everything in any and every direction....

robert h
I`m not sure if you are doing any good, after 19 +years?  you are to confusing to read!

then you ask silly questions, that you already have the answer too, and like!... that is not debating, that is playing with people!?

No wonder you have to try so hard for so long...

on a side note~  Use caution with google that is the place to get the same answers everyone else got!

google ~ Mediocrity & equality @ its best...soon everyone will have the same FREEDUMB!

jessica
well, no - that's my point. i'm not intending to debate with you. i know better than to debate with people that are dishonest.

robert h
feeding off of others is why we are here, greed and personal power...

feed away if you are that hungry!

jessica
it's not a waste of time to debunk you. i'm simply clarifying the difference between debating and debunking. hey, man, you tied your own rope, i just gave it to you.

(deleted)

jessica
well, no. i don't accept any concept of property rights, so the term "take something away from others" is incoherent to me. rather, i would reject the idea of hoarding things from the common good. taxation is not theft. property is theft.

no, i'm a fan of drama.

i don't watch films, like, ever. but, when i did i always went right to the drama section.

the best are the hybrid comedy-drama films. jim carrey was always the best at that. robin williams. bill murray. steve martin. that's the good shit....

coen brothers.

tarantino, to an extent.

spacey...

i used to watch a lot of films with my dad & step-mother & sister. it was kind of a weekly thing. and, i'm not at all exaggerating when i say i always went right to the drama section. then, i'd more often than not end up watching the films by myself.

the other three would always go for action films. sci fi. military. murder/mystery. blockbuster type films. the only way i could get them to watch something at a slower pace was if it had certain actors in it. so, my step-mother liked nicholas cage. and my dad like kevin spacey. otherwise, the same thing would always happen - they'd watch the first twenty minutes, decide the film was boring and walk out.

i saw some classic films under those conditions. pi was one that i specifically remember everybody walking out on. pleasantville was another that nobody could get through. even my dad couldn't get through american beauty, despite the spacey...

by the time i got to my late teens, it was pretty much a routine. they'd watch their boring shoot 'em up thing, while i sat in my bedroom recording. when they were done, dad would (sometimes) come in and say he picked something up that he thought i'd like and try to get through it with me. they were actually often good films. he rarely made it through half. he tried, though :)

but, yeah. drama? i'm not opposed to it. i'm all about it.

j reacts to trump's obvious turn on immigration being obvious

i said from the start that trump seemed to be unaware that the major benefactor of the current immigration status quo in the southern part of the united states is the corporate interests that control the american right, and he'd have no choice but to modify his stance once he won the nomination. if he were to actually follow through on his proposals, you'd end up with hyperinflation in the price of food. this immigration rhetoric is a useful control mechanism, sure. but, don't be confused by it. the republican party will never do anything to restrict the flow of cheap labour into the united states. ann coulter knows that, too. she's just a troll.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvMA0r3esw8&lc=z12synpzoqffwrvfm23zstup5ye3gtsyy04

you mean, leafy is older than 18?

the idea is correct. it's just that the number is arbitrary. those kids look old enough to stand trial, to me.

actually, i think that proper polling would uphold the hypothesis that trump's supporters are people that have never heard of brexit, think angela merkel is the lady from murder, she wrote and answer "american" when asked what language they speak. the association between clinton and merkel is just based on gender. it's that crude.

ppp could have some fun with these questions. you could probably get a sizeable number to answer murder she wrote. and, a vast majority would not be able to name who the chancellor is...

26-08-2016: listening progress, but short day (mp3--sansa--440-IIs & mp3--laptop--speakers)

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

i don't have any patience for this kind of thing. if she wins, i hope she gets boycotted. you want a market? there you go.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/maple-syrup-goes-to-supreme-court-1.3736127

j reacts to the cult of success

those who seek "success" are merely slaves to the banking class. true emancipation from capital only lies in the glorification of failure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJQK6DExtIg

this century has been full of firsts.

clinton - first female president
obama - first black president [probably not actually true]
bush - first retarded president

what's next?

j reacts to canada's anachronistic, but encouraging, return to peacekeeping

in theory, i would prefer to be involved in international peacekeeping than nato interventionism. but, this is complicated.

this is largely pr for the pmo. but, it's international pr with a functional purpose. i don't want to pretend that there's a monolithic canadian, but our general perspective for decades has been that we'd rather create goodwill than build a military. you often hear americans ask the question: why do they hate us? canadians tend to take it a step further in advocating a foreign policy that ensures they have no reason to hate us. we legitimately want mutual respect. the thinking is that we don't need a conventional force, that way - and that we can utilize our allies for nuclear deterrence.

on first glance, this is even more rational in a world where war is defined by terrorism than it was in the cold war. but, the only reason it was really possible in the first place was due to the alliances within the cold war. america may have been content to allow canada to kind of drag our feet on nato, so long as we were a useful diplomatic ally. that's not the way things are anymore.

so, what trudeau is no doubt thinking is that we can squirm out of these onerous demands to buy american weapons that they expect us to use to bomb syria by sending peacekeeping troops to africa, instead. he thinks that because it worked in the 60s and 70s. it kept us out of vietnam. it's just that it's not the 70s anymore.

i'm honestly not sure how the americans are going to react to this.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-peacekeeping-announcement-1.3736593

canada always has and always will contribute to legitimate defensive war efforts. but, as a people, we're just not committed to the idea of empire.

we want real multipolarity, not unilateralism and hegemony.

there have been times when we've even described ourselves as 'non-aligned'.

this is longstanding liberal party policy, and widely populist, here. i'm just not sure how to make sense of it in 2016. post-history. post 9/11.

i guess we'll have to check the details.

i mean, this was one of the big questions in the last election: what is the party going to do to adjust it's peacekeeping policies to make sense in today's world, where the president doesn't even consult congress anymore, let alone care about international law?

we never really got a good answer. i guess we'll see how it unfolds.

just to be clear...

canada contributed to the mission in afghanistan, but not the invasion of iraq. it wasn't arbitrary. it was just a question of international law.

chretien was widely quoted at the time explaining that canada would have gladly taken part in iraq if it wasn't illegal. more or less verbatim. that's been the liberal party's policy forever.

but, how do you put the wars that exist today in that kind of context? iraq blew the whole system up. the americans don't care about the un anymore. yet, we remain aligned with them. that's a huge problem for the party, which is up against a glaring contradiction.

if this is a way out, great. let's hope it works. but, i....

...i don't know how the americans are going to react because it's a decision that's made with flawed information. all of the models and simulations that the americans use are based on rational people. i would expect that they don't have a plan for this, because no foreign policy expert would consider it coherent. like i say - it's the return to canada's "way to escape the cold war" policy without any rational, meaningful context.

first, it's going to confuse the fuck out of them. then, they're going to have to figure out what to do. it could be anything from shrugging it off to taking him out.

like i say: if you're a canadian, this is highly populist. it's been liberal party policy since wwII. it's a part of our national identity. but, if you're an american foreign policy analyst operating in the context of contemporary conflicts in the middle east? it's just coming from absolutely nowhere, and is no doubt going to be hard to make sense of. so, it's hard to predict that response.

i really expected that the policy would need to be tweaked, rather than taken off the shelf and dusted off. we'll see what happens.

24/25-08-2016: good progress in listening (mp3--sansa--440-IIs)

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

j reacts to clinton and trump calling each other racists

both of the major candidates are racists.

clinton's rhetoric is over the top, but i'm not going to deny the crux of her claim. it's just that it's a little rich to hear it from her.

i mean, his history of racism is rhetorical. her history of racism is at the center of her policies.

in the end, clinton will be able to get away with more than trump will - both in her racism towards latinos and in her racism towards blacks.

nobody cares about $500. please report on substantive issues.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberal-caucus-fall-session-1.3735744

j reacts to the idea that ethnic diversity trumps regional representation

there's some people arguing that regional representation is a relic of the past, and ethnic diversity is the wave of the future. but, that itself is an argument that elevates the primarily urban provinces (bc & ontario especially) over the primarily rural ones. so, the argument against regional representation as a relic is actually a demonstration of it's necessity.

i slept through the rain - you could tell it was coming down, certainly. and, i'm a bit north of it's path. enough that i don't expect to see any damage.

it's a little unnerving, though.

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/tornado-windsor-lasalle-1.3734826

you guys are such fucking hosers. take off from the side of the window, eh?

i'll be damned. ..

http://www.faradaytents.com/

listening is moving slower than i'd like (as always....story of my life....), but i just want to update that i am 100% certain at this point about what is happening with the distorted audio. there's no longer any ambiguity at all whatsoever.

for some reason, the cord in this specific pair of headphones is picking up a charge. it's very easily grounded - all i have to do is touch the tips. but, it's audible, too. because i'm just that type of audio nerd...

the issue, of course, is not persistent. it will sometimes stop, which is why i had so many false positives. i'm still going to need to do a lot of testing to figure out exactly what it is that is creating the field and whether certain pieces of equipment are acting as catalysts or not.

but, the basic reality that i'm living in some kind of magnet is now beyond question. what i'm going to do about it is a little less clear.

i'm opting strongly for building a tent to place around the recording space.

j reacts to clinton's apparent rejection of the concept of a conflict of interest

so, apparently a conflict of interest is only an issue after proof of wrongdoing.

http://www.vox.com/2016/8/24/12630586/ap-response-clinton-foundation

i've never seen anybody make this argument that there's nothing wrong with having a conflict of interest, so long as you don't act on it. i don't really know how to react to it. i mean, it's obviously disingenuous. but, it's audacity is befuddling. this is trump level bullshit, really.

i guess what you have to take away from it is that she thinks she's above the law.

....and she thinks we should agree that the law doesn't apply to her.....?

it's just astounding to hear this from a serious candidate at this point in the cycle.

https://theintercept.com/2016/08/25/why-did-the-saudi-regime-and-other-gulf-tyrannies-donate-millions-to-the-clinton-foundation/

09. the summer of final reconstructions, pt 2 (inri012-inri013 + listening over distractions) (dvd 9)

23-08-2016: day lost troubleshooting, but are the annoyances finally done?

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

i just watched a credentialed press journalist ask the state department spokesperson if she was disappointed in switzerland's neutrality on ukraine.

i see a lot of stupid watching these things. but, that was something else. i'm truly astounded.

j reacts to 'stop white people'

"stop white people" is obviously completely moronic.

but, then you look at the racist reactions.

and, then you realize that that's the point: divide and conquer.

there's no use in bothering until people are cognizant of how they're being manipulated. so long as people continue to push back and forth with emotions driven entirely by identity, we will continue to get the conflict that's desired.

i'm just uneducated, i guess.

it's all that reading up on marxist histories. it's left me a hopelessly unread buffoon.

get this, guys: the second amendment. they wanted y'all to shoot each other. really. it's documented, even.

you can imagine these upper class land owners (farmers....slave owners....) trying to figure out how to stop the masses from realizing that - wait a second - there's this class of people that get everything and don't do anything...

"what if we convince them to quarrel amongst each other, instead of quarreling with us?"

"well, that's brilliant."

"it's the oldest trick in the book, actually. but how do we do it?"

"well, what if we gave them all guns? surely, they wouldn't be able to control their emotions. they would fight over their women, their horses - they'd never even get to thinking about us, they'd be so occupied."

"yes! yes! let's get this written into the document. this will be a system that will last into perpetuity, i can tell already!"

"oh, don't get too cocky, now."

and, as things developed, you start to see them using race as a dividing tactic, and then setting the fucking idiots off against each other. it develops very naturally out of the economic system: slavery, then abolition. there's two kinds of slaves: white ones and black ones. how to get them to fight each other, instead of the bourgeoisie? you divide them by race, of course!

there's a rich literature on the topic, actually. but, only the uneducated have read up on it.

so, when you see these minority groups on campus go after the white kids with a lot of overgeneralized nonsense, and the white kids reacting with flat out racist hyperbole, remember: there's a banker at the top of his tower counting his bills and thinking about a slave owner laughing in his grave.

i think there's a lot of confusion about cocaine. is it in the pile of drugs to try, or the pile to avoid?

it may be the only one in the "depends" pile. really. nothing else is "depends". everything else is binary.

marijuana: harmless
lsd: not harmless, but go ahead, if you're in a safe space.
e: make sure it's actually e. but it's just serotonin. it can't actually hurt you - if it's e.

heroin: evil.
meth: evil.
crack: evil.

cocaine: meh....?

see, and here's the reason why: it's the underlying conditions. you could use it socially for years and never have it hurt you, or you could destroy your whole life in the space of a week. what cocaine is is a catalyst, in ways that those other drugs aren't.

so, no - you can't really blame it on the drugs. you have to blame it on depression, or loneliness or some chemical imbalance. fucking your life up on a cocaine binge is always a symptom and never a cause. but, it's also a fucking violent catalyst under the right (wrong?) conditions. careful thinking aside, it doesn't make the outcome any less horrific.

i've avoided it. but i've seen it, too. i don't need to prove to anybody i can handle it. i'm comfortable in the realization that i probably couldn't.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJyQpAiMXkg

j reacts to obama's lack of any discernible legacy

so, what is barack obama's legacy? i might hazard a guess that he won't have one at all.

it's foolish to predict the future, but his foreign policy is likely to bleed in between the stasis constructed by bush and clinton. this is exaggerated by the reality that clinton was an active secretary of state. a good history will need to say a word about how john kerry tried (and failed) to change directions on a number of issues, but the consensus is likely going to see a broad continuum in policy from bush through to clinton and more or less ignore that a president named barack obama existed at all.

if the tpp passes, clinton will get credit for it as a part of her asia pivot. the narrative will be how she set this - as well as syria and libya - in motion and then followed through on it, perhaps overcoming dissent from kerry. so, where is obama? just a name on a list...

on domestic policy, his major initiative has been obamacare. does anybody think this will survive very long? the future may be single payer, or it may be a reversal to the previous state of affairs. but the system he set up is doomed to failure and likely prompt replacement. rather than being a good compromise, it's been a failure from all angles - people are losing coverage amidst falling revenues. worse, it's a simple market failure that anybody that isn't a market fundamentalist should have and in fact did see coming.

his attempt to push bipartisan legislation has led to six years of impossible gridlock. i say six, and not eight, because he had the opportunity to plow things through quickly - but he instead opted for compromise and consensus. some histories may say nothing at all about president obama besides the clear stupidity of this tactic.

so, what's left?

nothing.

just a name in a list...

j reacts to trump's appeal to inner city voters (he's half right...)

see, this is another issue where the reality is that trump is right in his analysis: decades of one-party rule has failed, in some cases disastrously. but, he doesn't have any good answers. does urban america need to ditch the democrats? sure. but, it needs to move left, and not right. it needs more socialism and less cronyism. in the sense that trump is right, he's also the exact embodiment of the problem.

i don't know. i haven't looked it up. but, has he ever built a subsidized rental unit to compensate for the low rent housing he's displaced with his casinos? i doubt it. has he ever put money into gambling addiction facilities that is more than a tax write-off? i doubt it.

he's right to point to the democrats as enablers. he's wrong to point to himself as the solution.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/08/22/trump_democrats_have_run_cities_for_decades_and_have_produced_only_poverty_failing_schools_and_broken_homes.html