deathtokoalas

the idea here is real, but what you're doing is some kind of inverted conservative confirmation bias: you're affirming the effects of the tory media, which claims it is effective, but which all evidence suggests otherwise.

the fact is that the conservative base in ontario has been eroding for decades and there is no sign that this is reversing. they've tried everything. the right is so dead in ontario, that they've actually spent large amounts of time in the recent past trying to get ethnic minorities to vote for them. it's a movement in irreversible decline that is tied almost entirely to the older generation. and, they've just given up on even being conservatives; the most recent incarnation of the conservative party in ontario is really further left than the democratic party, because it's realizing that it has to be in order to be competitive.

the conservatives might win the next election. but, if they do, the popular vote is going to look something like:

conservatives - 35%

liberals - 33%

ndp - 30%

the reason for this is that the only actual swing demographic in ontario is between the liberals and the ndp. there used to be a larger swing between the liberals and the old pcs, but that has been slowly collapsing since the mid 90s, to the point that it's negligible. what's left of the conservative base just simply does not vote liberal, ever - and would vote for hitler if he wore a blue sweater-vest.

i mean, you could look at the data in the end and find evidence that the there was a 3% swing from the liberals to the conservatives and say "see!". but, if you do that, i'll show you that there was also a 3% swing from the conservatives to the liberals. you could make the argument, sure. but, what you're missing is the 10% swing from the liberals to the ndp that actually decided the election.

the people that are being "tricked" by the media are really the same people that always vote conservative, and they're just looking for an excuse to be a conservative. it's the party faithful. they're not in play.

personally, i think the liberals have a pretty good chance of surviving because i don't see that swing to the ndp materializing at this time - but that if that happens then wynne needs to be putting her successor in motion, immediately.

----

jim

To counter your argument, I'm pretty sure there is data that shows that when minimum wage is increased, number of hours worked decreases. Maybe the total job number doesn't go down or actually goes up, but the hours worked per person usually goes down. Maybe it's just in the short term, though, idk.

deathtokoalas

the number of hours that a manager needs to staff is determined by demand, not by costs. 

here's the thing: if you're working minimum wage then your boss is already minimizing your hours because they only want you there when they need you there, in the first place. if they were to lay you off, they'd be short-staffed, and if they could deal with being short-staffed, they would be. the reason that the minimum wage worker is working in the first place is that the employer needs them there.

if minimum wage increases are going to have any effect at all, they should be to increase demand, which would, if anything, increase the number of staff that is required to meet the demand. 

since reagan, conservative economics have been nothing short of incoherent; david is being empirical here, and that's good, but the idea that a tactic designed to increase demand will lead to job losses doesn't actually make any sense.

if there are any counter-examples, they would have to be very industry-specific. really, any job losses from minimum wage hikes would have to be ultimately tied to automation, and in the rare situations where production is so ramped up that costs are not determined by demand. these are going to be mostly unionized, require some skill and probably not be at the minimum wage to begin with.

one of the things that david points out here is that, as it is, more than 50% of workers are working less than 40 hours. these missing hours are the hours that an employer might cut due to a wage increase, but they can't be cut, because they've already been cut as a process of profit maximization. trust me: companies like mcdonalds and walmart are already doing everything they can to minimize labour costs. there's nothing left to cut. and, if some brilliant accountant could find something to cut without affecting profitability, it would be cut, regardless.

jim

That's a pretty good point. I guess just so long as the increase in cost of living lags behind your increase in minimum wage, the lowest earners should be fine.

deathtokoalas

actually, it's tied to inflation, too. yearly. so, if we get 20% inflation as a result of this, they'll have to boost the wages by another 20%, next year. some businesses might get away with this, if they're not contributing to the cpi. but, the cpi is constructed to focus on the things that real people have to actually deal with...

social assistance is also tied to inflation. so, if the grocery store, for example, reacts to this by inflating prices, the people that really need it will get increases, too. and, if rentiers want to raise the rent, everybody gets paid more, too.

so, if there's going to be an issue with this in ontario, it's going to be this: when wages and inflation get caught in this upwards spiral. and that is what i like about this policy: we've found a way to convert the race to the bottom into a race to the top.

i wouldn't expect this to actually play out. there's little appetite for it, from what i can see. most businesses will probably realize the benefit of the policy to increase demand, in the end. the real potential problem is from rentiers, and that tactic would be ultimately self-defeating for them - they're better off lobbying.

supernuts060

"Minimum wage" was used to keep black people out of the of the job market after slavery, because they would do the same work for a lower wage. 

Now it will be used against people with no experience (teens), old people, disabled people and new immigrants who don't yet speak fluent English. 

For $15/h employers will expect the a VERY productive worker.

deathtokoalas

i would like to counter your point, but what you just typed makes absolutely no sense at all.

supernuts060

Minimum wage laws effects low skill workers. Employers simply scrape off the top. If they have to pay $14 or $15.. They will only hire the most productive workers. Which will likely exclude people without experience.

deathtokoalas

well, that depends on the demand for workers, doesn't it?

if these managers had the choice, everybody on the floor would have experience, as it is. but, sometimes you get short-staffed and have to hire somebody else, or risk losing business because you can't find enough qualified staff.

this has nothing to do with the cost of labour, and the cost of labour has no effect on decisions being made in this regard, either.

i mean, what are you suggesting here? that you think employers are more likely to hire unqualified workers over qualified ones, if both are available?

they cost the same price. so, why would a manager hire an inexperienced worker if an experienced one exists to hire, instead?

when inexperienced workers are hired, and nepotism is not the reason, there is only ever one explanation, and that is that experienced workers are not available in some way - perhaps at all, or perhaps in the precise capacity that is needed.

if an experienced worker exists and applies, they will get that job 100% of the time, anyways.

supernuts060

Well if workers could negotiate their own contract that would best, for example.

"Hello Ms. Jessica, I am a high school student looking for experience, I understand you pay your experienced workers $15. I am more interested in earning work experience can we make a deal for $7.50/h?"

 

Now you as the business owner can still pay your more valuable employees $15/h but you can also have 2 inexperienced workers for the price of 1. The employees should be able to prove their value to the employer. Some businesses have tasks which are not deserving of $15/h, and low skill employees should be allowed to work for any amount of money they choose.

I think it is better than that a motivated high school student can work for $5/h and get some experience, rather than not get a job at all, because an employers cannot legally pay them less than $15.

deathtokoalas

ahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

*breath*.

AHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

ok.

so, to begin with, student wages are actually a little lower, here. that is, kids under 18, which you don't want to give any kind of responsibility at all and only want to hire at part time hours, anyways. you can't run a business this way....

but i am adamantly opposed to any suggestion that children should try to undercut their parents for lower wages, and you should really be ashamed of yourself for promoting that kind of anti-social behaviour.

to put it another way: i don't care if teenagers have a harder time finding a job as a consequence of this policy.

...but your argument is ridiculously weak, to begin with. it's not likely to have any substantive or measurable change in teen employment.

workers are not in competition with each other for jobs or lower wages, they are in solidarity with each other against the upper class. and, in my mind, such a kid should be taken behind the shed, in the first place.

supernuts060

Not ashamed, if right out of high school you are competing for your parents minimum wage job, your parents obviously have no skills and should not have had kids. NOBODY is supposed to have a family on minimum wage. Trying to support a family on minimum wage is antisocial, and disrespectful to your children, shame on you.

I have been in competition with other workers, and so is my wife. We are compensated for our efforts to grow the employers business, we are not in solidarity with anyone but our own family. I respect people enough to allow them to make their own decisions, if they don't want to compete with me for a job, they do not have to. However i feel that not competing will have negative consequences on their life. The people who compete will not be making minimum wage for their entire life. The people who don't compete, will probably try to get the government to force their employer to artificially give them wages that they did not earn.

deathtokoalas

see, this is a very strange change in the mindset of conservatives, who have historically argued that the lower classes need to have many, many children in order to ensure that there is a sufficiently large enough pool of slave labour, including military labour, for them to draw upon. can you imagine the catholic church arguing in favour of contraception? but, perhaps you've just been caught in your own circular logic.

but, i'm not about to listen to a lecture in morality from what appears to be a scab. and, i'll reiterate what ought to be done to scabs when they're identified: picked off and thrown away.

supernuts060

I am not a conservative, I do not believe there is anything about our society worth conserving. I am simply Pro-Freedom, and government legislation on wages and business is oppressive and anti-freedom. 

Singapore has the second highest millionaires per capita (%17.1) in the world, no minimum wage, little regulation.

Qatar also has little regulation and the most millionaires per capita(%17.5) and minimum wage is $200 per month (very low).

I am simply advocating that we follow countries who are boosting the most people into the wealthiest categories possible. 

Canada only has 1.14 million total millionaires. 

You are actually the Conservative one here, i do not want to conserve anything that Canada is doing.

deathtokoalas

see, again, the way you use language is entirely incoherent. you claim you are 'pro-freedom', and yet you are arguing for the abolition of collective bargaining rights, by pointing to policies that exist in deeply unfree countries. they'll kill you in qatar for being gay, but you think that they're more free because they have more millionaires? 

what is the size of the middle class in qatar or singapore?

you should be arguing that you're in favour of slavery, not that you're in favour of freedom, because that is the result of your proposals: a return to slavery.

and, that is what you are trying to conserve, as all conservatives are: the hierarchical class divisions that exist in contemporary society. which is what i'm trying to abolish...

but, would you prefer the term 'neo-liberal', supernuts?

i can be politically correct, if you'd like.

supernuts060

It isn't "bargaining" if the government says "you have to pay minimum $15/h".

You should look it up yourself the economic opportunity there is superior to Canada.

But here is singapore.

Unemployment rate %2.2.. less than half of Canada's

Average wage $4795.00 Singapore dollars a month (1 Sinapore dollar = $0.96 Canadian dollars) AND THEY PAY ALMOST NO TAX.

People in Singapore retire at 62. Many people in Canada cannot retire. 

Yes people in Singapore are very "enslaved".. LOL you are so silly. 

I don't care about Qatar's opinion on peoples sexuality, i am only interested in their economic approach.

Gay people can make a lot of money in Qatar, and then immigrate somewhere else. 

I actually don't have a label, because i choose to take the parts of groups that have demonstrated to work the best for the most of their citizens, and dispose of the ideas that bring people down. Not all ideas i agree with come from 1 specific group (liberal, conservative, ect.) or countries.

deathtokoalas

the collective bargaining agreement underlying the minimum wage is an abstraction of the social contract between governments and voters. and, averaging wages in a brutally stratified society is a stupid way to calculate the existence of a middle class - which does not exist in these countries.

supernuts060

"Collective"- does not represent voters, just loud activists. Only half of Canadians have full time jobs, now the cost of creating jobs is higher in a highly indebted economy.

You talk about "slavery". Most of Canada is already economically enslaved, whether its jobs, housing, education ect. 

Those "enslaved" countries Qatar and Singapore you have a %17 chance of becoming very wealthy. In Canada it's a %50 chance you will be lucky to even have a full time job. 

No where is perfect, its better to be able to make $70 a day than $0 day. 

Minimum wage means you make $15/h or nothing. I am not as cruel as you, and i say the poor people of this country should be allowed to make a little something rather than nothing.

deathtokoalas

well, voters have a responsibility to speak up if they want to be heard, as well. that is also a part of the social contract. but, the changes are more popular than you're suggesting - it's not as though a small percentage of people rammed through unpopular changes. these came out of a popular struggle. conversely, it actually was a small number of people that pushed through the reversal of collective bargaining in places like wisconsin, against popular support for it.

you have a tendency to type nonsense that requires a lot of words to unravel. but, it's ultimately nonsense. and, i'm not interested in continuing this conversation, as a result of it.

 

isailwind

Raising minimum wage to 15 is moronic. Bottom line is if it goes up $4 then everyone else is going to want a $4 raise plain and simple.  Goods and services will cost more, there will be no gain.

supernuts060

isailwind,  Yea, sadly, we have elected leaders who dont know anything about how a bussiness works. Soon we will have 10$ cups of coffee because the person pouring it demands $20\H.

deathtokoalas

again: ontario's minimum wage is set to inflation. so, if you increase the cost of items, what happens is that you contribute to a ratio we call the inflation rate. normal inflation is around 2%, so minimum wage earners receive around a 2% raise every year. if inflation goes up to 5% or 6% or higher due to price increases from the wage increases, businesses will merely have to raise wages by 5% or 6% again the next year. this is a very strong disincentive for owners to raise prices.

supernuts060

NO, you really don't know what you are talking about. Businesses are not going to take the hit. They operate to make a profit, if workers don't give them a profit they close up shop and go to a place where it is more profitable to operate. Simple as that. The thing about rich people is that they create jobs, if we charge them more to operate, they take their business elsewhere, because they can afford it. The poor Canadians who need those jobs can't afford to just pack up and leave. Which is exactly why Singapore is getting a lot of business investment and jobs, they make it profitable to operate. 

Business owners will take the path of least resistance, $14/15 minimum wage is a big hurdle.

California raised minimum wage as well and lost alot of jobs.  Im glad i dont live in Ontario. Nobody with money will invest there because the people there will use the government to steal from them, instead of providing value to an employer for a fair price.

isailwind

If you're going from 11 to 15 a typical mc donalds will have to come up with another 250,000 a year, just to cover wages. It's ridiculous.

deathtokoalas

it's a significant redistribution of wealth. but, the laws are designed to force the business owners to absorb the costs, one way or the other. and the thing is that this approach was chosen because studies done on the way the economy is structured right now indicate that the vast majority of these low wage jobs are not in small businesses, but either in large conglomerates or in franchised outlets - the businesses can afford to restructure this way, which is why they're being forced to.

capitalism is, indeed, about profit generation, and profit maximization. businesses don't operate for the benefit of their employees. so, when the statistics come back at us and say that a disproportionate amount of profits are going to business owners, rather than to workers, we should not be surprised - that is the inevitable direction of unregulated capitalism. but, this cannot sustain itself, as the tendency to push the working poor into poverty is a primary cause of the cyclical downturns in capitalism; when workers don't have money to spend, the economy goes into recession. so, in order to stop capitalism from collapsing in on itself, it itself requires a system of regulation to ensure that incomes do not fall too low. self-regulation, in this instance, is contradictory to short term profits, and because the firm is a psychopath, it cannot operate under a long term strategy - it must be ordered to redistribute, when the statistics deem it necessary to do so.

some businesses will not be able to adapt and will close. they will be replaced by competitors with better business models that will absorb what demand exists for their products, and those competitors will create jobs to replace the ones that are lost. i have little empathy for business owners that want to blame the unsustainability of their poor management practices on government interference.

supernuts060

Why would companies want to compete in an area where self entitled people will get the government to force a minimum wage, "I have a million dollars to invest in a community, i am going to invest in a place where my investment will grow the least" said NOBODY EVER. Do you have empathy for workers who lose their job and no new companies fill in the lost positions?  Which is exactly what happened in California, nobody want to invest there.

I understand you think redistribution of wealth make the poor richer.. But China was cracking down on wealth, and now look and our housing market, it is full of chinese money, BECAUSE PEOPLE WITH MONEY LEAVE WHEN THE GOVERNMENT TRIES TO TAKE IT FROM THEM. The only people who get screwed are the poor Chinese who's economy just had billions of dollars leave.

deathtokoalas

jobs are not created by investment from rich people, they're created by demand from poor people.

supernuts060

LMAO!! If that was at all true, why would there be such thing as an "unemployment rate"???? 

You make no sense. Why is it that poor countries with the least wealth have the least amount of people working??? These countries have a huge demand of poor people, but no jobs.

deathtokoalas

the reason that the captured state, and america is an example of this, would seek to decrease employment levels is to reduce wages. the higher the unemployment rate, the lower wages can be depressed. and, they don't care about the longer term implications, because they're fundamentally sociopathic in nature. you are correct in a certain sense - capitalism is a fundamentally irrational system.

but, to be clear, when i stated that jobs are created by demand, what i meant was in countries that are in the advanced stages of late capitalism, as that was the context. that includes the united states and canada, but wouldn't include a country like india or china, where the unemployment is a combination of poor infrastructure and overpopulation (and, in the case of china, employment is very controlled by the state). these comparisons across states are dubious, in much of any way. when you get to the kind of overpopulation you see in asia,  there's just not enough work to be done. and, that is a problem because, unlike in advanced countries, the infrastructure doesn't yet exist to compensate for it. we'll see what china ultimately does about this, as it continues to move towards a more advanced stage of capitalism.

but, it doesn't matter what you're investing in, ultimately somebody needs to buy it in order for jobs to exist. spending billions on solar cars is just a waste of money if the demand for them fails to materialize. and, in order for the system to be sustainable, that demand needs to come from the lower segments of society. america used to understand this quite well, back when it was actually in a more advanced stage of capitalism than it is now (america has gone backwards since the 80s....), called fordism.

so, i think i need to clarify my point a little, because i know i'm confusing people, who are not used to dialectical reasoning and just see me as supporting the "enemy" in my position. i'm really not.

what i'm doing is looking at as much of the science that i can and trying to come to a balanced deduction. it's not really dialectical, but it seems that way because the narrative has been set up as opposing viewpoints, when it shouldn't be - it should be set up as collaborative understanding. this is what happens when you politicize science, you break it. by asserting a dialectic, i'm trying to break through the ideology and get back to the science of the thing. and, i don't actually feel that i'm explaining myself to scientists, who understand this, but to non-scientists who have politicized the situation and identified an enemy to attack.

scientists make shitty political activists.

so, there's a 97%, 98%, 99% - an overwhelming - majority consensus amongst climate scientists on the reality of climate change. i'm not a climate scientist, i'm just a nerd with a math degree, but i do share in that consensus for two reasons: (1) deferring to experts and (2) based on my less than limited ability to understand the science, it seems to add up in my mind. but, what does that mean?

the consensus on climate change has two components:

(1) the cause of the warming experienced in the past was created by human activity,
(2) notwithstanding some alteration in the system, current trends suggest the warming will continue. that implies "if action is not taken". it also implies "if external factors do not change". it even implies "if internal factors are not changed".

now, external factors are always changing, because we live on a rock that is affected by everything else in the universe. we can't build a model with infinite inputs. we're going to have to discard things in the model. but, the model of the universe is not the universe itself (sorry, positivists). so, there are going to be factors we overlook. and, that's ok, it's always a work in progress.

now, if a gnome coughs in the alpha centauri system, we're justified in ignoring that in the model. but, if the sun decreases it's output by a factor that we can measure, we're not. we're really not. we have to understand this. and, this is most definitely an external factor that can change and alter the outcome.

the consensus on global warming is not a fatalist death sentence, it's an extrapolation of the data, followed by a predictive model. the point is that we have to stop it, right? it's alterable. but, the earth is not a closed system. and, there's lots of things on the earth, even, that could have an effect, as well. some plate could fall off, and produce enough volcanic ash to fuck the whole thing up. we could go into nuclear winter. even the dirty coal being burned in asia is measurable.

so, by suggesting that external factors may have the ability to offset global warming - even if it's only in the northern hemisphere, near the jet stream - i'm not contradicting any kind of consensus. i agree that human activity caused the warming we've already experienced and that, notwithstanding some alteration in the system, things are going to heat up. what i'm saying is that something is changing in the system, and understanding what's going to happen relies on a better understanding of that change - and of any other changes we can uncover, moving forwards.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard

as another aside, the fact that climate scientists use averages at all is kind of...it's not mathematically sound.

averages are good when there's a fixed variable of some sort. you can take an individual's average over a fixed task (exam scores, track times, etc), or you can take a fixed task like exam scores and then average it out over various individuals (joe, sally, etc). what you're really doing with an average is repeating trials over and over, and trying to get a guess on a "test statistic" that exists in some platonic reality - the idea is that the average exists in some cloud somewhere, and if you repeat the trial often enough then you'll reveal it. i'm actually not a platonist at all, but you'd be surprised by the things you hear from grown men with math degrees, behind closed doors.

what the hell are you even trying to do by averaging out temperatures over the entire earth, in the first place? there's no test statistic to arrive at. you're not finding some ideal concept of earthly temperature readings. once you get a sequence of ratios in place, you can find the test statistic for the average of that sequence, but what does that mean if the "average temperature of the earth" is a wonky concept in the first place?  it's not devoid of meaning at all, but it's more of a contrived ratio to determine policy (like the cpi, or the unemployment rate) than it is any kind of reflection of anything meaningful. it only make any sense in the context of itself.

consider the following ten data points...

toronto: -25
moscow: -20
stockholm: -15
london: -10 
paris: -8
riyadh: 45
singapore: 46
calcultta: 47
cairo: 51
tehran: 52

my understanding of things suggests that that could very well be a typical january, mid-century.

average temperature: 16.3 degrees. of course, this is a crappy data set, i'm just making a point. but, that's completely fucking worthless as any descriptive measure - it's only useful in comparison to the next data point.

now, suppose that the readings for these cities in 1975 was as follows:

toronto: -13
moscow: -8
stockholm: -5
london: -2 
paris: 0
riyadh: 35
singapore: 36
calcultta: 37
cairo: 41
tehran:42

that's reasonable for 1975, huh? i'm not looking it up, i'm making a point; i should have looked this one up. and bullshitted the other. whatever. the average temperature of this data set is also 16.3 degrees

therefore, there was no climate change over these years? eh...

i should be offering a mathematical solution right now, but i'm not entirely convinced that the idea of modelling the earth in this way makes sense at all.

you hear this push-back: weather is not the same as climate, weather is not the same as climate. i end up doing it myself sometimes. it's an easy way to explain away the fluctuations.

i'm not really convinced that you can talk about a planet's climate at all. i mean, the ratio has a purpose, but it doesn't actually physically mean anything. there is no "earth's climate", there is a collection of overlapping systems, and really several different climates that develop where these systems intersect.

and, right now, it looks like the north and south are moving in opposite directions, as a consequence of opposite causes.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

i'm not at all interested in a red team / blue team approach to climate change; i won't support a political movement that i think is being dishonest in order to generate a narrative, i will call you out and tear you down with as much vehement scorn as the next liar.

in science, truth is not an abstraction, it's fact. scientists cannot tolerate this sort of post-modern, pragmatic bullshit. and, it won't work; there is no actual end point to this approach besides greed.

sorry.

there's two approaches to this: honestly convince enough people to make it a political issue and then push hard for it (it's the second part that failed under obama), or get lucky in stumbling upon a despot that understands the urgency of the situation and doesn't fucking care what the masses think, anyways.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

so, why do we have winter, anyways?

no, if you don't know look it up. if you think you know, prove yourself right. do this. this isn't phd-level stuff; you should have learned about it in grade school. maybe you did, and just forgot.

but, it's because the amount of sunlight hitting the earth fluctuates, causing changes in the upper atmosphere that allow cold air to move from the polar regions into the habitable regions. this 'polar vortex' is called winter.

so, realizing that, what would you predict is the result of the sun hitting historical lows in output? more winter, right? and, the correlation is there, if you go to look for it - as it was from antiquity until 1980, when it split due to increased carbon concentrations.

you won't find a scientist that contradicts the obvious. this isn't specialist knowledge, it's grade school science. what you'll find instead is a lot of talking around the basic point, because it's been so obfuscated by deniers. what you're doing to these scientists when you bring up the sun in a non-academic context is triggering them into bad memories that they've had of dumb arguments with scientific illiterates trying to pass themselves off as educated. you're forcing them to relive traumatic experiences, and not getting good answers out of them, because of it. they're more focused on not letting bad ideas perpetuate (and there are a lot of them...) than actually getting the right ideas out. so, when you actually bring up good points about the sun's effect on the climate, it gets ignored because they just don't want to talk about it. and, that's a failure that the talking heads need to address, because the sun is actually going through a phase right now where it's output is low enough that it will (regionally) offset the effects of global warming, at least for a while. if legitimate climate scientists don't take steps to address the point clearly and honestly, climate change is going to be seen as a theory that fails to make accurate predictions, and we're going to lose the argument - only to get roasted when or if the sun turns itself up. science cannot operate at a propaganda level if it wants to win public support. it has to be honest, and it has to win people over due to it's honest attempts to understand things as they actually are.

here's the thing: this is not as dire as people are likely to intuitively think. it's a modelling issue. it doesn't require a rethink to solve, it requires a tweak. the reality is that we don't understand the sun all that well, so we mostly model it as constant. we even have a term called the solar constant. but, the sun's output is not constant, and nobody is going to argue that it is.

what legitimate climate scientists need to do is put more effort into modelling the sun and then work those fluctuations into the models. remember: small changes in solar output can make big differences in the upper atmosphere. think of the way the sun hits the earth as a lightning strike on a lake - it ripples. and, that's where the "amplification" actually happens. in this case, what we're talking about is a decrease in total energy entering the system - and we understand how this works fairly well, with the oscillations taking repetitive shapes that are predictable functions of the solar output.

unlike the deniers, i would not expect that a better modelling of the sun would create a substantially different understanding of climate change. it's theoretically plausible, i suppose - only way to find out is to do it - but we understand the greenhouse effect, too, and the solar output would probably have to decrease by a larger proportion than is being contemplated in order to offset the effect. the point is that we don't have this model. because we don't understand the sun. the deniers, however, insist that the models can be improved - and that is tautological. they should be met halfway on this point, to prove them wrong, and to better understand the thing, as a whole. what better models - and this is a complexity issue, not a computing issue - would really help us with is in understanding the weather quite a bit better.

this article is an example of how to misunderstand the point:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/jan/09/the-imminent-mini-ice-age-myth-is-back-and-its-still-wrong

i don't really have any corrections to make on the article. but, the scientific claim here, and mike lockwood, who is cited here in an equally poor but oppositely poor context than he is in the right-wing media, has volunteered to be spokesperson for it, is not that the decrease in solar activity will offset global warming but that it will lead to the kind of regional variations that were seen in seventeenth century england. the article is really an elaborate strawman fallacy, rushing to debunk a claim that no scientist has ever made.

it's all very nice and everything to point out that a regional decrease in northern temperatures is likely to be offset by an accompanying increase in southern ones. why do we have winter, again? but, tell it to the guy that's playing hockey on the thames in april, as india suffers through 55 degree heat.

it balances out, so there's nothing to worry about, right? eh....

jagmeet singh must cut his beard

deathtokoalas

this research was trendy in the mainstream media a few years ago, but it's actually been thoroughly debunked. and, this insistence that all weather is created by the same factors is actually conspiratorial thinking; what's presented here isn't a counter to denial type thinking, but it's parallel and analogue on the left.

carbon concentrations are not the cause of all weather.

and, the polar vortex is quite well understood as a function of sunlight.

deathtokoalas

the very quick response is this: we don't need to cite carbon concentrations to explain the cold we're seeing. we already have a standard, widely understood model. it's the same model that we use to understand seasons. so, this is a solution for a problem that doesn't exist. and, it happens to be that it isn't consistent with the laws of thermodynamics.

i think maybe the conceptual problem people are having is that they conceive of the earth like the ancient greeks did: as though it's in a glass ball, free from the influence of outside forces. the universe is newtonian - predictable - and only gets chaotic when humans alter the natural equilibrium. in fact, the reality is that we're a jagged lump of molten rock, not spherical but only even roughly elliptical, and we're hurdling towards nowhere through an orbit full of bumps. we go through ice ages when we hit very rough patches - that is the theory of ice ages, converted into an analogy about bad roads. and, it's the basic theory of weather, too.

the reason we needed a theory of global warming in the first place was that the movement of temperatures decoupled from the sun. if the weather we were experiencing was caused mostly or solely by the sun, it should have been getting colder, not warmer. yet, it was getting warmer. contradiction. so, the weather could not have been caused solely by the sun....

as it stands, the recent exaggerated expansion of the polar vortex - which most people call winter - is happening in perfect correlation with the sun, which is entering a minimum during one of it's weakest cycles on record. if our science of seasons and ice ages is correct, our recent observations of the sun are predictive; the actual predictive science here is that this should, in fact, make things colder - regionally. and temporarily. and, this is exactly what is happening. there's no reason for what she's doing.

what jennifer francis is doing is really something along the lines of throwing an apple into the air, and trying to explain why it falls using magnetism. it's a nice story, jenn. but we already understand gravity pretty well - or, at least, we do observationally.

mike lockwood. look him up. he did the studies.

jessman9000

Deleting peoples comments only destroyed your own narrative.

deathtokoalas

i'm not interested in acting as a medium for the dissemination of false information, or outright stupidity; your comment is not correct. what deleting stupid comments does is sharpen the narrative, by eliminating the irrelevant, the superfluous and/or the incorrect. it removes misleading or useless information from the discourse.

i don't want to get into a huxley v. orwell debate, but that's where i'm going with this. when we're bombarded with false information, it's much harder to find the actual truth.

that said, i wish i still had the ability to remove stupid comments, but google has removed this under apparent pressure from right-wing extremists.

pk

FYI:   BBC Horizon 2005 Global Dimming

deathtokoalas

it is consistent with what i'm saying to suggest that coal particulates - and other pollutants - should be a measurable aspect of climate modelling. but, this isn't the same kind of long term problem, because the particles don't build up in the same way. it's more of a localized short term thing. but, if i was more interested in southern china than i am in the great lakes, i'd be arguing the point for a short term effect, absolutely.

grindupBaker

Earth surface is smooth, not a jagged lump. You referred to yourself and one or more unspecified persons as "a jagged lump". This seems quite likely but we are not sufficiently familiar with you to have high certainty of your similarity to a jagged lump.

deathtokoalas

apparently, this person is from saskatchewan, because they've clearly never seen a mountain before.

grindupBaker

you say "the reason we needed a theory of global warming in the first place was that the movement of temperatures decoupled from the sun". Correct but also note that the hypothesis of "global warming" was derived by Fourier more than a century before the experiment with coal had been conducted for long enough and measurements had been sufficient for long enough to confirm the hypothesis and make it a theory.

deathtokoalas

google is very bad at notifications. but, fwiw, i believe that what fourier demonstrated was merely the mechanism of the greenhouse effect, rather than any specific warming trends.

charles

Just another Russian troll calling him/herself Jessica. Yawn!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIUN5ziSfNc

deathtokoalas

well, i'm not a russian troll. but, you sure sound like a democratic party stooge.

my arguments do not challenge the climate consensus; francis' theory is not in it, and never will be.

charles

"democratic party stooge" LOL, Jess. I'm not from the US and A, not even from that continent.

deathtokoalas

i have no reason to believe you when you say that, stooge.

charles

I couldn't care less, Jessica. Nice name BTW. You transgender?

deathtokoalas

see, this is when the democratic party stooge reflexively retreats to identity politics to attempt to prove their faux liberalism.

charles

At least we know now what you're after

deathtokoalas

you'll have to fill me in on the conspiracy, stooge.

=====

wonderpope

This professor couldn't have explained the physics of how AGW affects the jet streams, and by that causes the local weather anomalies we are experiencing, any easier and clearer. She's not talking about carbon tax or one world government. She's basically saying "we're fucked" even if we would restore the carbon cycle to pre-industrial, because the surplus of CO2 we've been putting into the cycle in the past, let's say, 100 years will continue affecting the climate for 100 years more. And yet I read some cringe worthy comments on here, that show that some people have not listened to this video and aren't even attempting to dispute the data presented, but want to present the expert as a shill for some government entity. Don't get me wrong, skepticism is a good thing. But there's a reason why experts in a field understand things better than the average person...it's because they've spent all their life studying it.

We're driving this car called "human civilization" towards a wall at 200 mph...and instead of facing the problem and finding a way to reduce the speed, people seem to just try to turn their seats in the opposite direction to not see the wall coming towards them at a rapid speed.

deathtokoalas

in fact, this particular scientist's research is not accepted by mainstream academics.

you should look that up, rather than rely on youtube videos for information.

wonderpope

Please tell me exactly how mainstream contradict her claims. What, in your opinion, does mainstream science claim? what is the counter claim I need to look for? I can´t just google "debunking Jennifer A. Francis" and hope to find easily what you claim.

deathtokoalas

you have to realize, wonderpope, that most ideas that are not well accepted do not generate a large amount of literature debunking them. they're just ignored and forgotten. with francis' theory, because it was picked up by the msm without vetting it, what you're going to find is a lot of debunking of various validity from what are mostly very poor sources. actual scientists working in the field have largely just ignored it. i mean, these people don't have time for it.

as a consequence, it's easier to direct you to the actual mainstream theory.

you can easily find articles discussing lockwood's work on mainstream sites, like the bbc. he's actually received scientific awards for his work, along with promotions and the kind of titles that scientists covet, like a place in the royal society. this is the existing consensus: while climate is complicated, weather (and the jet stream is weather.) is caused almost entirely by fluctuations in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth. and, he's rather convincingly demonstrated the point that the existing slow down in solar activity will cause the kind of fluctuations we're seeing in the jet stream - thereby producing a predictive theory of more cold winters in the northern hemisphere, around the jet stream, during the existing minimum.

as mentioned, the most obvious problem with francis' theory is that it has heat and cold moving in directions that are not consistent with the theory of thermodynamics.

---

i googled a bit more. i'm kind of bed-ridden by choice, right now.

jennifer francis has, herself, done her opponents the courtesy of compiling a list of studies that contradict her own research (i do not know how many of them addressed her research directly, but probably very few did.), and then attempts to hand wave it away by claiming bad methodology - which is what scientists do when they can't admit they're wrong.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318287618_Why_Are_Arctic_Linkages_to_Extreme_Weather_Still_Up_in_the_Air

dan

I watched a video called "Jet Streams, more Jet Streams, and even more Jet Streams: AGU Science" In that clip he talks about a paper by Mann. When I heard that my BS detector turned up its sensitivity because Mann is the infamous author of the fake hockey stick graph.

To be honest what he says is mostly beyond me even though I understand standing wave theory and resonance quite well. God help those that are completely ignorant of such theory.  He appears to be talking about how modeling of the jet stream works. But the models don't actually emulate reality well and have demonstrated zero predictive capability.

No one argues that the jet streams play an important part in weather events and more study as to how they operate is welcomed.

But the jet stream performs much more like a meandering river than a simple wave function. It is a chaotic structure, not a pure sine wave function. Its path change is caused by minor and chaotic deviations to its flow path restrictions, its width,  and its inertia all interacting simultaneously.

So its apparent "frequency" and "amplitude" can never be more than a very rough approximation. Applying "quasi resonant effects". resonance, amplitude, Q, and R etc. apply only to sine functions. So I conclude wave theory models that use such simulations will never be able to adequately explain or predict chaotic jet stream behavior. 

He goes on to claim that aerosols contribute "hugely" to radiative forcing. If you look at IPCC reports you will see that a) the supposed effects due to aerosols have large error bars and b) as the reports become more refined their effects are being reduced. This fact has introduced a conundrum for alarmists because large aerosol effects have been used to tune models (to provide cooling to force them to agree with observed data) that contain high climate sensitivity values (predict more warming than happened). i.e. they appear to be incorrectly tuned to cancel predicted warming. Even at that, the models all quickly diverge from observed climate, predicting warming that does not occur. That would indicate that their sensitivity values are too high. Yet the IPCC averages 102 knowingly incorrect models and runs with a 3C sensitivity value!

He then goes on to talk about the paleo record reconstruction of the jet stream from ice cores. At best this is a poor proxy of snowfall location that eludes to a possible jet stream waveform. But the observation concludes that warmer periods had larger stream amplitude so he runs with it. To his credit, he admits "it's very difficult to determine what configuration jet streams had based on  (these records)".

The rest of the video sites other possible inferences and he points out that we need more research. I agree.

deathtokoalas

you might want to check your understanding of waves, dan. 

there is a basic theory in algebra that says that all continuous functions, no matter how complicated,  can be decomposed into a series of sine waves, called a fourier series. and, the fourier transform (not the same as the series) has widespread applications across the sciences. there is also a fourier theory, but that is pure math stuff. the question isn't really whether the math is reasonable, it's whether the theory is predictive, and the answer is that it only works when you cherry pick the data. this shouldn't actually be particularly surprising, though, because it's quite physically counter-intuitive.

the empirical question is really whether these waves remain in tact or not, that is the physics being challenged, and the evidence appears to be that they don't. the model then collapses as a result of bad physics, not bad math.

further, we don't try to understand the jet stream in terms of ocean currents, anyways. we try and understand the jet stream in terms of factors in the upper atmosphere. i mean, this is the theory: that the energy from the oceans is elevating itself into the atmosphere, and then wreaking havoc - which is a difficult idea on it's face and requires this clumsy mechanism to take seriously.

the biggest factor in the upper atmosphere, and especially around the earth's tilt, is the way the sun hits it. and, there is actually good science that makes predictive theories about jet streams based on solar fluctuations.

======

deathtokoalas

somebody ought to tell paul that if he wants to focus on climate change, he should hire a science journalist. i can't blame greg for this. and i don't claim anything malicious. it's just that it's wrong.

sertaki

Are you saying that a climate journalist would bring more credible facts to the table than an actual climate scientist who has worked on important studies herself?

deathtokoalas

what i'm saying is that a broader science journalist should have pointed out that this particular scientist is actually not well regarded in her field, and that her ideas are really distorting the narrative. not in those terms, exactly, perhaps, but through a probing analysis. see, aaron is a actually a good example, in the sense that he challenges people, albeit not when it comes to science, because he's not a science journalist, even when he plays devil's advocate. an interview with a very controversial researcher like jennifer francis should be presented as what it is, and should ultimately be about challenging the mechanism she's providing. this is rather presented as a science lesson, but what it's "teaching" is something that is at best extremely obscure - and probably just flat out wrong.

what you're doing is appealing to authority. and, she might be an authority on her own research. but, she's not a good authority on the broader topic.

you could throw a dart in a climate conference and find somebody who both accepts the climate consensus and is willing to challenge this theory on air.

and, it's kind of pernicious. because the reason this theory is getting more attention than it deserve is that it was run by the corporate left media. the guardian. the atlantic. now, the so-called independent media is running with it, because it appeared in the mainstream press, not because of it's actual value. that's not how this ought to work.

grindupBaker

I made an effort and spent some time with searches like "controversial research jennifer francis" and I've come up with nothing after reading NAS & all sorts of sites. So give a couple of links, just so we can confirm that you aren't just a coal/oil shill-fuckwit wasting our time. Just a couple of relevant links.

deathtokoalas

the reason i'm being obscure is that the arguments are technical.

http://www.sciencemagazinedigital.org/sciencemagazine/14_february_2014?pg=29#pg29

did the holocaust actually happen?

well, i might be a product of it. my paternal grandmother just kind of shows up as an orphan in the 30s, without much of any documented history. she was raised in an italian family, and one would no doubt make many errors if forced to differentiate between italians and jews out of a line-up, but i think most people would assume she looks pretty jewish. there's pictures of my dad from the 70s, full bearded, where he actually looks flat out arab, although he aged in a way that made him look not dissimilar to chomsky, in that eastern european jew kind of way - although he aged terribly. his physical appearance was described almost perfectly in the term 'italian jew'. although, when i say he aged in a way that made him look not dissimilar to chomsky, what i mean is that, at 50, he looked not dissimilar to chomsky at 70. i got my mom's genes, on that one; i remember bringing her to a field trip in the fourth grade, when she was almost 30. and having the entire school think she was my teenaged sister. this deduction, though, is ultimately not phenotypical - the two rumours on that side of the family are that she is in some unknown way a product of the holocaust (smuggled in, maybe?) and that she's the product of a mob hit, and sometimes these stories intersect in a tale of starcrossed lovers and racist slaughter by catholic mob bosses that couldn't deal with the interracial, and interreligious, eloping. my grandmother is a catholic. my aunt claims she found them in a newspaper clipping of young lovers tied to railroad tracks (and subsequently annihilated) in ottawa in the 30s, but the evidence is circumstantial, at best. my grandmother doesn't know.

between the time of her adoption and the time she was married, my paternal grandmother's last name was zito. and, ottawa was known to have an international mob presence, at the time. you can find pictures of the big bosses, i think including capone, existing in ottawa. it actually does add up. the fact that she seems to have no known history has led to the speculation that her adopted parents probably knew what happened - perhaps even knew the killers - and just didn't tell her. there is literally no trail. her adopted mother could have been her mother's sister, or something.

or maybe her parents managed to get her out, despite the attempts of north american governments to prevent jews from arriving. certainly, if you wanted to get your jewish infant or toddler child out of germany in 1937, you'd have had to have done something like smuggle it out. and, you wouldn't want a paper trail, because if it's found then the kid will get sent back.

maybe i'll look into it one day...

anyways, whether i'm the result of it or not, did the holocaust actually happen?

i run across this question from time-to-time, and i'm going to provide somewhat of a dodgy response: the holocaust is as well, or better, documented and convincingly demonstrated as any other event in accepted mainstream history. so, i can be as sure that the holocaust happened as i can be about any other event in history.

but, look at the words i'm using, the language, the context: event in history. history.

that is not the argument that my grandparents would provide. they may have been born as it was happening, and not remember it, but it was a part of their lives. this is not even the argument that my parents would provide, as they lived with people that lived it. three of my grandparents are even still alive, and all three of them could very well outlive my mother, between the heroin and the alcohol and the cigarettes, not to mention the half of a dozen duis.

but, the boomers are passing, and this is going to be the new reality around the holocaust: we are approaching the point where no living people have any connection to this any more, and it exists purely as history.

this is the situation that the holocaust memorial people have been preparing us for for the last 60 years, the point where the question is no longer about forgetting, because we don't have memories to forget. you can't forget what you never knew. instead, you need to ask the question: can you trust history?

well, can you?

punk?

it's exceedingly well documented. i understand this. but, so is the life of jesus.

a part of the problem is how central the holocaust story is to the western founding myth, at this point. it's intrinsically interconnected with the ascent of american hegemony, so it is consistently intertwined with narratives that are otherwise blatantly false. turning on cnn, you could very well have a holocaust memorial set sandwiched between a fraudulent expose on the syrian government gassing children and a jaw-droppingly bad interview with kellyanne conway that goes on for twenty minutes without managing to say a single true statement at all. association doesn't produce guilt, but it's a little unsatisfying to come to the conclusion that the only accurate information provided by the media is related to a historical event, even as they misrepresent every other kind of history on a hourly basis. the importance that the media places around it really does make the whole thing seem kind of fishy.

it's exceedingly well documented. i understand this. but, i think there will come a time when nobody really thinks this happened - or that the scale was exaggerated.

"6 million is an exaggeration. maybe it's an error by a scribe. i mean, look at the way that herodotus exaggerated the size of the persian army, for example. they probably added a few zeroes."

so, it's as well documented, or better documented, as any other event in history, sure.

but, analysing history is fundamentally different than analysing the present. this is something that's changing.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

well, this is curious.

i got my first electrical bill today, and this is what it says:

$30 - set-up fee
$7.40 - delivery charge
$5.12 - tax
$1.84 - electricity

i didn't get my $68 credit on this bill, but i got the 8% rebate. it comes up to $43.78, so if i did have my rebate, i'd actually have the balance applied towards the next bill. even if you remove the set-up fee, i'm still paying $13.78 for $1.84 worth of electricity. that's 23.41 kwh used, fwiw - 72% off peak, 14% mid peak and 14% on peak..

yes, very low electrical usage - but it's also only from the 1st to the 12th. i was in and out on these days, but i also left a lot of lights on. i can maybe use this to calculate a base rate for lights, the fridge, battery charges & cooking, which would be about $5/month. but, i don't even think i had even turned a computer on. i had the laptop on during the week to listen to music, actually.  i was expecting december to be of minimal value; this is not of much use at all, other than to double check rates when i get an actual bill.

the delivery charge is the flat rate i was talking about, which is actually lower than i thought. on a normal month, it would be a fixed charge of  $18.78 + $0.0237/kwh when you add up the charges.

if i'm able to guess that my base electrical usage is (23.41/12)*30 = 58.525 ~ 60 kwh, my delivery charge is going to be around $20.20 for base usage. if i double that in actual usage, i'm looking at less than $25, anyways. and, if i repeat the usage statistics, that works out to:

25 + .095*120*.14 + .132*120*.14 + .065*120*.72 =
25 + 9.4296 < 35 < 68

let's say i'm equally likely to us electricity at any given time. then, my off rate usage should be 50% while my mid rate and off peak usage should each be 25% . then, at 120 kwh, the electrical component would be $10.71, rather than $9.43. but, i think i can probably to a bit better than that, in terms off minimizing use in peak periods.

flipping it around, (68/1.13)-18.78 = $41.40. so, i need to solve for

.095*x*.25 + .132*x*.25 + .065*x*(.25*2) + 0.0237*x =
.25*x (.095 + .132 + .065*2 + 0.0237/.25) =
.11295x = $35.18 ====> x =312kwh.

my accounting suggested to me that a more likely range for me, on an average month, is around 150 kwh. and, i haven't calculated for the hst rebate.

in short, i don't expect to pay electricity, here. it should balance out under the rebate. after a few months, i should have enough of a balance to plug in the heftier gear without paying for it, too. but, i'll need to call to make sure, tomorrow.

christmas ended for me this morning, so i'm going to lose the rest of the day to things i need to do, like laundry and budgeting. i'll be back at inri070 probably tomorrow.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

you don't exactly want to put an autistic child in jail.

as an anarchist, this is a question i've grappled a lot with: what about crazy people? there is no 'after the revolution', but suppose there's some success in building an egalitarian society that abolishes concepts of hierarchy, and that it fixes the distribution issue in society so that want is largely abolished, as well. being an anarchist means that you think that this reorganization of society would eliminate virtually all crime, as crime is largely a consequence of under-resourced agents making rational decisions in the unfair economic system that exists, or of power imbalances in the unwritten system of social hierarchy that governs our daily behaviours. the only crime that could exist in an anarchist society would be that carried out by the mentally ill, running the full range of development disorders (like autism or fetal alcohol syndrome) to personality disorders (like narcissism). and, the importance of this needs to be stressed, because a legal system in an anarchist or socialist society would focus solely on the question of mental illness, for two reasons: (1) it would be atheistic and pro-science and (2) there would be no reason to focus on economic issues that no longer exist. this would be the remaining explanation; trials would therefore become medical tribunals, with doctors determining the cause of the behaviour, and prescribing a cause of action - which may range from medication to, in some cases, incarceration.

but anarchists want to get rid of jails. absolutely. i don't want jails. but i don't think we can avoid institutions. because, when we've come to the point where everything else is ideal, this will still exist. people will still be born with disorders, and they will still try and harm people. we will still need to deal with this.

but, an institution is not a jail, or at least it's not supposed to be. maybe, the last bunch of institutions that we built turned into jails. but, this is inevitable under capitalism. and, perhaps, so long as we have a capitalist system, the idea of institutions should be approached exceedingly cautiously.

but, this kid ought to be in a medicalized environment. he's probably never going to get much better. and, he's a danger to everybody in the mean time.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/mom-who-quit-job-to-care-for-son-with-autism-questions-trudeau-about-national-crisis-1.3752767

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

if german becomes a dead language, for example, we're going to lose incredible amounts of our scientific and broadly intellectual history, reliant on summaries in english and translations into russian. that is inevitable, though. we will forget this. we eventually won't be able to read it.

your precious hegel will eventually be illegible to even the most sophisticated idle bourgeoisie in berlin. perhaps this is when history implodes upon itself - it just swallows itself whole, and disappears into a wormhole, yelling taunts at humanity as it flees.

it reminds me a little of my argument that all history becomes poetry in the end, and that this relationship is determined by the co-efficient of poeticity, which is naturally pi. i'm not sure i've explored this here. that is for another time.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

is human progress, civilization, inherently forgetful?

well, certainly a lot of humans are inherently forgetful. we forget to do things, and forget lessons taught to us, all of the time. maybe the idea that i'm really expressing is that many of us are stupid, but the way this manifests itself is largely as forgetfulness.

now, the individualist will point out that while many, perhaps most, people are forgetful, there are some people that are not and these people will carry on the thrust of human progress, no matter how forgetful we may collectively be. but, their argument relies on the ideological construct of independence, and this is an empirical question with little evidence supporting it. individualism, at best, seems to be rare. so, these individuals are really left with a curatorial task to remind people of what they've forgotten - they're really just the cleared registers in the collective, trying to avoid the garbage collection from clearing them away, urging for a second chance to exist in memory - and failing. it's like a broken system of error-correction; we can remember and forget at the same time. so, this question of the inherent forgetfulness of human progress does not reduce to a question around independent variables.

it's just a different intellectual conception of progress - not as a linear curve tilting off towards some windmill at infinity, but as this messy, chaotic step-function, full of unpredictable fragments.

there is, of course, a hierarchy of seriousness attached to the consequences of forgetting what is being forgotten. geography can be found easily. a lesson can be relearned. but, forgetting science can be devastating.

this is a potentially unrealized consequence of globalization - when the global culture falls, there will be nobody left to remember what was forgotten.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

purchasing this release does not come with a download.

inri053: written late 2001 and early 2002. this file is ripped from a cd-r that was burnt around 2002, as that was the option that would produce the most accurate reproduction of the original composition. published without modification on oct 6, 2014. expanded, re-released and finalized as symph006 and lp012 on oct 23, 2017.

inri057: written and recorded in late 2001 and early 2002. initially sequenced in may, 2002. re-sequenced and first released in june, 2002. re-released in slightly different forms from 2002-2014. resequenced to mimic the original sequencing and re-released on november 8, 2014. except to sequence the record, these files have not been altered since 2002. disc finalized as lp013 on nov 3, 2017.

inri063: these tracks are all based on existing demos from 2001-2002 that were initially intended to be completed with vocal parts and were remixed from july, 2014 to may, 2015 as purely instrumental recordings. released may 2, 2015. disc finalized as lp014 on nov 21, 2017. this is my sixth official record.

inri066: originally written, programmed and recorded from 1996-2002. reclaimed & remixed from june to december of 2015. initial completion date was december 31, 2015. disc finally released, closed and finalized on nov 26, 2017. lp015.

inri067: written and recorded between dec, 1999 and july, 2002, except the hidden track (which was created in the summer of 1998). none of these tracks were remastered or otherwise modified after 2002. disc simultaneously created and finalized as lp016 on nov 26, 2017.

inri068: originally written, programmed and recorded in varying states of finality over 2001 and 2002, except the hidden track (which was programmed in 1997). the associated tracks were completed between february, 2014 and may, 2015; these mixes, however, were spun off as late as nov, 2017. released as lp017 on nov 27, 2017. expanded and finalized on jan 1, 2018.

inri069: 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.

originally created from 1997-2003. this compilation is dated to april 28, 2003. slowly remastered, reconstituted, compiled, reconstructed, released and finalized from 2013-2018. compilation finalized on jan 9, 2018. as always, please use headphones. 

credits

released April 28, 2003

j - guitars (electric, acoustic, classical), digital & analog effest processing, bass, bass synth, synthesizers, electric & grand pianos, electric air reed organ, digital piano, flute, mandolin, voice, vocal noises & relics, electronic & analog drum kits, drum programming, drum manipulations, drum sampling, vocal manipulations, loops, orchestral & other sequencing, sampling, equalization, sound raider, found sounds, octavers, noise generators, cool edit synthesis, granular synthesis, generative synthesis, coughs, digital wave editing, production, composition, cover art.

sean - vocals, lyrics (inri053, inri057), harmonica (inri057, inri063, inri069), ring modulator (inri057, inri067, inri069).
greg - drum performance sample source (inri057, inri063, inri067-inri069)
jon - guitar performance (inri057)

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

 

 https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/lps-only-volume-2

 

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

inri063: these tracks are all based on existing demos from 2001-2002 that were initially intended to be completed with vocal parts and were remixed from july, 2014 to may, 2015 as purely instrumental recordings. released may 2, 2015. disc finalized as lp014 on nov 21, 2017. this is my sixth official record.

inri064: these tracks were written and recorded over november and december of 2002 and uploaded, unmodified, in may of 2015. released on may 2, 2015. re-released on physical media and finalized on nov 24, 2017.

inri065: written and recorded in early 2003. transcribed, slightly rearranged, remixed repeatedly and re-rendered repeatedly over may, 2015. released on may 16, 2015. expanded & finalized on nov 25, 2017.

inri066: originally written, programmed and recorded from 1996-2002. reclaimed & remixed from june to december of 2015. initial completion date was december 31, 2015. disc finally released, closed and finalized on nov 26, 2017. lp015.

inri067: written and recorded between dec, 1999 and july, 2002, except the hidden track (which was created in the summer of 1998). none of these tracks were remastered or otherwise modified after 2002. disc simultaneously created and finalized as lp016 on nov 26, 2017.

inri068: originally written, programmed and recorded in varying states of finality over 2001 and 2002, except the hidden track (which was programmed in 1997). the associated tracks were completed between february, 2014 and may, 2015; these mixes, however, were spun off as late as nov, 2017. released as lp017 on nov 27, 2017. expanded and finalized on jan 1, 2018.

inri069: 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.

originally created from 1997-2003. this compilation is dated to april 26, 2003. slowly remastered, reconstituted, compiled, reconstructed, released and finalized from 2014-2017. compilation finalized on jan 9, 2018. as always, please use headphones. 

credits

released April 26, 2003

j - electric & acoustic & classical guitars, electric bass guitar, bass synth, digital & analog effects processing, synthesizers, electric air reed organ, electric & grand pianos, flute, voice, vocal noises & relics, analog & electronic drum kits, drum programming, drum manipulations, drum sampling, bowls, claps, tables, ebow, mandolin, orchestral & other sequencing, sampling, loops, equalization, light-sound synthesis, generative programming, granular synthesis, sound raider, noise generators, cool edit sequencing, found sounds, octavers, coughs, digital wave editing, sound design, production, composition.

sean - harmonica (inri063, inri069), ring modulator (inri067, inri069)
greg - drum performance sample source (inri063, inri067-inri069)

the various rendered electronic orchestras include tuba, french horn, trombone, trumpet, english horn, saxophone, brass section, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, flute, bamboo flute, piccolo, orchestra hit, melodic toms, hand drums, timpani, orchestral drum set, piano, agogo, celesta, xylophone, marimba, clavinet, kalimba, vibraphone, glockenspiel, tubular & other bells, music box, woodblock, mallet, electronic drum kit, drum machine, jazz drum kit, koto, synth pad, synth bass, synthesizer, synthesizer effects, mellotron, organ, sitar, acoustic bass, synth bass, electric bass, fingered bass guitar, picked electric guitar, nylon guitar, distorted & clean electric guitars, guitar effects, bowed electric guitar, guitar noises (fret noises, knocks, pick scrapes), violin, viola, cello, contrabass and various full string sections. it also includes choir. 

 

 https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/flac-dvd-disc-volume-6

 

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

i spent the day creating purchase options on the bandcamp site - another thing that is kind of boring but need to be done.

i should be back to inri070, soon.

but, the update is that i added a lot of physical bundles around the alephs and the now four sequences i'm running: symph, lp, ambient and tetris. there's also some new bundles, so that most lps now have a pairing in a rational potential double record. i always intended to do this eventually, and here it is.

it's a big step in closing down period 2.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/merch

jagmeet singh must cut his beard

so, it seems like the way this is going to work is that kushner will take cash from israeli real estate developers in exchange for a green light to build in the west bank.

the palestinians need some civil rights.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/07/business/jared-kushner-israel.html

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

publishing inri069

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 5. i've also decided that inri072, the orchestral works, should be tetris 6.

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 off 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 1-4 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). 

credits

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.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

if you read the classical literature, it is full of harsh criticism against 'trousers'. in much of the classical world, the nefarious act of trouser-wearing was a deeply frowned upon sign of utter barbarism. a civilized person would not be caught dead in trousers.

we're all barbarians, now - the barbarians won, in the end. so, that may seem curious to us. but, it's an absolutely accurate depiction of classical views against trouser-wearing. it was entirely taboo.

but, the greeks had a lot of trouble expanding into russia, didn't they? you try living on the russian steppes, or even the german forests, in january, in that dinky little robe of yours, socrates. without a pair of trousers, a man will freeze his balls off in these climates. it was just an adaptation to the weather, these horrific trousers. but, yet, the greeks laid the wide russian rivers to waste as outside of civilization, holding to a no-pantsed principle over making the obvious adjustment to explore these rich lands. it was almost like the act of pulling the trousers on was one of defeat to barbarian forces - that to conquer this land, one must become a barbarian, by putting on those trousers, and it can therefore never be won to civilization. the greeks stayed to the milder coasts, in their robes.

this clothing thing - it's irrational, but it's well-attested, isn't it?

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

canadians, especially, really shouldn't feel all that upset about the muslim headdress thing, they just have to understand it properly as an adaptation of the weather. canadians are certainly used to wearing obtuse articles of clothing to deal with extreme weather, it's just of a different kind here, it's extreme cold. we wear ski masks and scarves to protect from the cold, just as arab peoples wear scarves to protect from the flying sand, at speeds that make it seem like gravel. we have snow storms and dress appropriately for them; they have sandstorms, and do so accordingly as well.

despite concerns to the contrary, this is something that the descendants of recent migrants should adapt to. perhaps there are other, ideological concerns, that are more pressing. but, the question of weather-focused attire in second or third generation immigrants is something that should conform to majority trends. we don't have sandstorms, here. people will adjust.

i know that there are other myths attached to these articles of clothing, but they're just that - myths. it's easy to uphold a myth around wearing scarves outside when that scarf protects you from the elements. when it no longer does so, that myth breaks down from one generation to the next. give it time, and you'll see.

the difference is really just that they don't realize, yet, that it's safe to take their scarves off in the summer. i vote for making them feel safe enough to do so, not in making an example out of them and isolating them in hopes that it coerces different behaviour.

even the iranian mullahs just lifted their restrictions on female clothing.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

tetris 1-4 (inri069) is now completed.

tetris 5 will be the ambient works, vol 1 (inri071a). tetris 6 will be the orchestral works (inri072). there's no use in recreating these as tetris volumes, but they are developed guitar ideas in my discography that ought to be catalogued. further tetris volumes will follow at the ends of periods 3 (2003-2007) and 4 (2007-2011).

to recap, tetris is the idea of fusing guitar music with technology. it is also one of the central themes of my work, as a composer. the tetris series catalogues my various approaches towards this theme.

tetris 1: guitar-driven dance music.
tetris 2: guitar driven electro-psych.
tetris 3: guitar driven noise collages.
tetris 4: guitar-only mixes of selected period 2 tracks
tetris 5: guitar driven ambient music
tetris 6: guitar driven orchestral music

tetris 7: guitar driven 'epic rock' - extended pieces.
the ideas in volumes 1-3, 5-6 may be reprised for further volumes.

formal close to follow.



jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

the compilation is done.

it's five and a half hours, and touches on pretty much every major track in the first two periods of my discography.

it will take some time to upload.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

so, where am i with things?

i've finished up the fourth tetris disc, and have a rough listing for the third. the last mix had to be reconstructed to finish it...

the third disc is going to be a compilation of tracks where the guitar is used to create a wash of noise, or something otherwise atmospheric.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard

israel is really behaving foolishly in reaction to this jerusalem recognition thing. i cautiously supported the declaration because it's just a recognition of reality - it doesn't actually mean anything for the united states to present it's opinion about sovereignty to the united nations if the united nations doesn't want to hear it, and it's doubly irrelevant if the united nations doesn't want to look at the reality on the ground and just insists on passing fantasy legislation, instead. i mean, the other option is to be dishonest. it really is. and, i guess i realized that it would embolden the israelis somewhat, but i didn't expect them to go full retard.

israel is constantly failing to live up to the basic expectations of a modern, civilized country. perhaps it's worth questioning if they actually are one.

an obvious corollary of official israeli control over jerusalem would need to be full citizenship rights for all of the arabs that live there, including religious rights and mobility rights. it's such an obvious corollary that it defies imagination that the israelis might reject it - and yet they are even acting pro-actively to prevent the necessity of it by removing these residents from their homes. a presidential statement of official recognition is not a get-out-of-international-law-free card. this is all absurdly illegal.

when i said i accepted the reality of israeli control over jerusalem, it certainly came with this obvious corollary, and others - that any recognition of israeli control over the west bank comes with the obvious corollary of full citizenship, as well, for example.

the best hope for the palestinians right now is the israeli courts. there should be international pressure put on israel to accept this citizenship.

and, those cuts to unrwa might be the proper incentive.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

i had to replace this track.



the deleted mix was actually intended to be temporary; it was done a few days before i finished the main track, and i was going to then go back and re-render it when i finished it. this didn't happen. so, the mix ended up with some synthesizers in it that had to be taken out. it's now also an accurate "guitar only mix" for the final version of the track.

this mix will also appear on tetris. the discarded mix will be moved to the alephs.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

are countries like the united states and canada simply too big to administrate properly? i previously suggested that america's stagnation is causally linked to the rate at which it expanded westward, that it tried to absorb too much wilderness too fast and was ultimately overcome by it. but, what would a more successful rate have been?

well, the geographic middle of the country is still largely closed to civilization. in order for america to have walked down a path that could have avoided collapse, it would probably still have unorganized territories, right now.

if quebec succeeds in annexing new france, that is going to split the united states down the middle, but it might be better off that way.

canada expanded quickly as well, but it created much larger administrative divisions, which allows for more truly regional control. i don't know if the size of the provinces was explicitly constructed as a reaction to madisonian democracy the way that the division of powers was in canada, but it's the same kind of difference: madison's evil plan all along was to create small administrative divisions to prevent regional co-operation, in order to prevent the spread of political ideas that would help the working classes. what america ought to be doing is reorganizing itself in regional divisions that allow for more co-operation between neighbouring states. the country is too big for federal administration, but the administrative divisions are too small for effective oversight, as well. so, this might be best accomplished at this stage by a new level of government that splits the country into 5 or 6 divisions, and three rough categories: urban, rural and mixed. allowing the eastern seaboard to regain some concept of local sovereignty, and setting up the infrastructure to allow for something similar on the west coast, might help america recapture that sense of progress that it lost in the 50s, even as it strands the geographic middle of the country. but, future expansion out of the megalopolises will simply need to occur at a sustainable rate.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

republishing inri058

there are a few ideas in my discography that i've explored from multiple angles, but nothing else at all like this track, which has been through multiple complete rethinks involving multiple people over the course of sixteen years. as the revisions are so diverse, i think that a comprehensive collection of interpretations is a proper entry within my discography.

in the end, this emerges as my seventh symphony.

the collection is to be arranged chronologically in four discs consisting of two 2xcd sets, with the first two discs consisting of mixes that were meant for inclusion in band projects and the third and fourth consisting of mixes that were created after the track was moved into my own various one-person projects. further discussions of the various incarnations of the tracks appear on the track pages.

written over 2001 and 2002 and rethought repeatedly between 2002-2014, with no clear resolution in a final mix. reconstructed from source in late 2014 and then rendered at multiple stages to create a series of snapshots. final mixes were completed over the last week of november and the first week of december. released as a two-volume set on dec 7, 2014. the concept was rethought on nov 3, 2017, which led to the inclusion of five more mixes and an expansion to four cds. re-released in four volumes & finalized as symph007 on nov 12, 2017. the raw guitar mix was corrected on jan 6, 2018. as always, please use headphones.

credits

j - electric & acoustic & classical guitars, analog & digital effects & processing, electric bass guitar, synthesizers, drum programming, orchestral sequencing (12), drum manipulation, vocal manipulation, voice (9), digital wave editing, loops, equalizers, soundscaping, sampling, composition, production, cover art

sean - vocals/lyrics (2,5,7), ring modulator (7-9, 11, 13-14, 16)

greg - drum performance sample source (4, 6-9, 11, 13)

bob - hammering (3)

the rendered electronic orchestra on track 12 includes tuba, saxophone, flute, clarinet, orchestra hit, piano, violin, viola, cello, contrabass and various full string sections.

released july 4, 2002

would an independent quebec have designs on new france? well, it's not so crazy to think that this society could produce a napoleon.

if it's going to claim quebec on some claim of ethnic identity to the land, why not claim new france? detroit. st louis. new orleans. these are all of french heritage, are they not?

one wonders how much separatist sentiment already exists in new france. nobody talks openly about it in detroit. but, i have reason to think it's there, if you could just scratch the surface. they all know, deep down, that they would join the movement to unite quebec with new france.

but, it is the region that i think the united states needs to be most concerned about actual revolt in. they just might be more interested in joining canada than joining quebec.

still. i would advise all american intelligence agencies to be on the look out for quebcois intelligence agents, trying to sow separatist fervour in new france. it's an inevitability.

you're welcome for the tip.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

you know, canada is pretty geologically stable in most places.

i suppose the difficulties in maintaining permanent settlements in canada were always related to the climate; at most historical levels of human development, the cold here would have required migration. the romans couldn't have built cities here. if the germans lived here, they would have fled to mexico. even the norse could only really live on the coast. if the remnants of roman civilization had found america two hundred years sooner, it wouldn't have been able to colonize it. that is the answer as to why the indigenous people did not build cities here: the terrain is uninhabitable for a quarter of the year.

it's really only with the development of technology that inhabited cities in this region of the globe is a real possibility. but, now that this technology is real, i think these cities have a potentially very long life span, given that they're built in such a geologically stable area. large proportions of america's most populated regions are about to be swallowed by the sea, one way or another. but, canada is built on solid rock - the shield - and protected by glacial lakes.

it's funny how what's left of america may end up being basically new france. vive le quebec libre!

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

see, the trump people might think that faking payouts for workers to gloss over the tax cut is a good pr strategy, but let's see them run with that.

"yo, i heard on the news that you're supposed to be being paying out on that tax cut. where's my cut?"

hey, anything to raise workers' consciousnesses has to be viewed as in some ways useful, even as the designs around it seem so perilous. those are arguments that the good guys have to win, in the end.

but, i think a worker revival in the republican party was actually inevitable. the historical roots were too deep. the real tragedy is how liberals let the republican party get so far away from them.

maybe the real lesson to be learned from the uselessness of the democratic party is that the left ought to be trying to take over the republican party.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

another decision: i had included a few 'orchestral' works in the epic rock compilation, because it sort of fit, but i've taken them out. the way i'm going to do this is that the guitar disc for the orchestral pieces will be the orchestral works, and i'll add the slow version of the time machine as a bonus track.

there will be material from the orchestral works in the tetris compilation, but where it fits.

i just felt forced to include the guitar concerto on a guitar works, but it doesn't really fit the description of tetris well - it's an overture and concerto and should be catalogued accordingly.

and, so, i should be explicit, and rename the release to tetris, 1-4.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

on second thought, now that i've put the third disc aside as two further potential volumes, i can release a four volume set, if i include the guitar mixes, and why not, it fits the theme.

four is just permanent.

i still need to determine what i actually am going to create and then order it afterwards...

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

the most recent update is that the second tetris disc is sequenced, but the third has been put aside; it may end up as two discs. there is at least one more tetris disc to sequence, but i won't be releasing any of them in the inri069 space. as of now. i think. they will likely have a release date of something like 2011, in something like a 6 disc set. but, i could still decide that it's worthwhile to release a double in this space.

right now, what i'm wanting to do is sequence the guitar collage disc, as it kind of has to be sequenced before the next tetris disc. and, i'm realizing that one of my guitar mixes isn't a guitar mix at all.

so, i'm going to have to update inri058. i wish i would have caught this in november, but so be it.

it looks like this guitar collage disc will be what is published in inri069, unless i get a good 4 disc tetris set, in which case i can release the remaining volumes later.

jameet singh must cut his beard.

so, where am i with things?

i've got the second and third tetris discs created, i just have to sequence them. but, i'm leaning towards not releasing this for a while, perhaps positioning it as late as 2013 in a 5 or 6 volume set.

tetris is the idea of mixing technology with guitar music. the three compiled expressions of this are in the form of a dance music setlist, a psychedelic music setlist and an epic rock setlist. a fourth expression of this in the form of atmospheric guitar music may follow shortly.

the only thing i've put aside for definite release in the inri069 space is the disc of guitar mixes - that is, songs stripped down only to the guitar parts. i'm also going to be getting a head start on a number of mix tapes, with the possibility of a release, but the likelihood of half-releases, to be put aside for later.

what i'm doing right now is sequencing these two discs and taking a look at the fourth volume.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard

did phillippe couilliard even fall into a separatist trap, however accidental?

i wouldn't assign that level of foresight to the sovereigntist movement in quebec. sorry.

but, consider the oft-maligned line about "money and the ethnic vote.". there was always a certain amount of truth underlying the calculation that federalist support in quebec was dominant amongst recent immigrants, and that they had a tipping effect over the inclinations of the old stock pure-laine population. in the sense that federalist support was always tied to liberal support, you could argue that both the liberals (and the federalist cause) relied on the support of recent immigrants, and their recent descendants. so, what to make of the liberal party's adoption of the charter - which is adopted by the image of federalism, by proxy? they're attacking their key support base.

if i was a montrealer of recent arrival, and i was looking at the political spectrum, it would seem to me like the only provincial party that is of any interest to me is the quebec solidaire. by extension, this is going to make sovereignty more attractive to the "ethnic vote" than federalism, producing a sovereigntist movement that is more reflective of quebec's existing demographics - and therefore more likely to succeed.

i suspect that remaining support for the pq right now is very soft, and especially very soft around this issue. if the vote is framed as a referendum over the charter, that is if the voting decision (where it exists) between the pq and the qs is framed this way, i would expect the pq to crumble. the truth is that the pq has become a provincial voice for old bigots.

i don't expect this rearrangement to be complete by the next election, but rather that the results of the next election will produce it. the liberals may win their fight against caq, as the left splits and crashes. but, the inevitable result of this realignment is a powerful sovereigntist bloc on the left, in time for 2022.

if that happens, this purportedly tactical move by the liberals is going to appear most pyrrhic. and, it may spill over to the federal election, once these voters are released from brand liberal.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

i was talking about how there was some uncertainty around whether the hot air in the atlantic may have something to say about the polar vortex.

that storm on the east coast right now is that hot air in the atlantic getting pulverized by the polar vortex, which is clearly demonstrating itself as the more powerful force. but, this is actually the kind of storm that people around the jet stream, wherever it is in thirty years, are going to have to get more used to during winter, as increasingly concentrated pools of warmth near the equator smash more frequently into these polar air masses.

the latitudes of these storms may push north, or may not. the polar sea may not end up so navigable in the winter, after all. it depends on the sun. right now, the cold is holding it's own at fairly temperate latitudes. but, the onslaught has just begun.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.