i've been saying for years that squirrels will eventually become the new rats - they will transport a disease that will cut us down by half, and we'll be almost powerless to stop it. eradicating squirrels is a hard job.
what if coronavirus gets into the squirrels?
it's effortlessly passing between mammals, right now.
yeah.
this is a feisty little piece of rna, alright. wow.
that's four species jumps, we think - from the bat to the civet cat to the human to the tiger.
they may not have measured it repeatedly yet, but this thing is reactive enough that i'd be concerned about your pets, if they're mammals. your iguana is probably fine, although wouldn't it be remarkable if it did hit a reptile? it's reactive! so, i wouldn't want to get nonchalant with mammalian livestock, either - i'd be taking some precautions around that. we have no evidence for birds, but again....it's reactive.
this thing is evolving rapidly; waiting for it to strike before you react is foolhardy. they should be assuming it's potentially transmissible to really any mammal at all, at this point, and maybe even to birds, too.
i agree that it's not a great idea to retaliate in terms of cutting off the supply of pulp; that's easily recoupable, and largely pointless. but, i'm sure there are some items that we export to the united states that could be rationed for internal use.
i think the more pressing concern is trying to find a way to manufacture the damned masks.
why is trump doing this? because he needs a bad guy, and canada's an easy bad guy. i think he may have been insulted by the request for a border closure, as that's when he started acting erratically; regardless, we're just a pinata, an illusion, something to kick around. it's enraging, but there's no strategic logic in it, it's just lashing out. so, escalating directly isn't a rational choice, when faced with that kind of psychology, which is just looking for easy meat. it's better, perhaps, to respect the assertion of sovereignty and plan around it, as is necessary.
perhaps we could eventually find ourselves in need of the currently exported pulp for use in a domestic factory, and see fit to redirect it there.
it's one thing to point out that it only affects people under 60 with underlying conditions.
it's another thing to point out that 70% of your population under 60 has the underlying condition of being obese or overweight.
higher in some cities.
it's the middle of the country that's going to get hit the hardest.
if new york city is over 3,000 deaths, now, you're potentially looking at over 3,000,000 actual cases, which is over a third of the population.
if you're over the age of 60, going outside in new york right now is a dangerous, risky task.
P(x1 or x2 or x3 or x4 or x5) =
P(x1) + p(x2 or x3 or x4 or x5) - p(x1)*p(x2 or x3 or x4 or x5) =
.33 + 0.67[p(x2 or x3 or x4 or x5)] =
.33 + 0.67[0.33 + 0.67(p(x3 + x4 + x5)] =
.33 + .2211 + .67^2[0.33 + .67[p(x4 + x5)]] =
.33 + .2211 + 0.148137 + .67^3[0.33 + .33 - .33^2] =
.33 + .2211 + 0.148137 + 0.1657504893=
0.8649874893
so, if you interact with five people every time you go out in new york city right now, you will come into infectious contact with the virus four out of every five times you go out.
mortality rates over the age of 60, and certainly over the age of 70, are consistently higher than 10%, pushing 20% in people over 80.
that means that your elderly relative has a roughly 10% chance of dying just by going to the grocery store in new york, right now. if they're really old, it's pushing 1 in 5. how many times will they go shopping this month?
please do everything you can to keep them inside.
the rest of the city needs to wait it out. it won't be long before it burns through the population, which will end the rapid spread, but then you need to stop the lingering cases from getting into these homes, potentially for months.
as for long island, note that it has a large percentage of elderly people, so a higher percentage of contracted cases will need to seek treatment. so, cases may be growing faster there, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the virus is spreading faster there, it just means that a higher percentage of the population there is more vulnerable.
that seems to also be the case in new orleans and also in detroit, where serious underlying conditions like obesity and diabetes are actually quite prevalent in the general population.
so, i was just thinking about the last time i got sick (i'm actually feeling just fine right now), and i referenced the giant joint handed to me at the party where i got attacked by a vcr. it took a few days to feel it, but i picked up something fairly virulent that night.
and, then i remembered back to the write-up i did about the seven seals, and joked about the oncoming apocalypse.
i also recently posted something about locusts in africa, suggesting that they just eat the damned things.
well, maybe i did get the seventh seal, which means what, exactly?
i was never particularly religious, but in my pre-teens found myself with the conundrum of all of a sudden having a born-again christian (ex-alcoholic) stepfather who dragged everybody to church with him, so i took the step of sitting down and actually reading the bible, top to bottom, at around the age of 10 or so.
even then, i was actually approaching the thing as an anthropologist. when i was very little, i had a fascination with dinosaurs, as so many young people do. that managed to develop itself into an interest in ancient civilizations, i guess you could say the humanities, well before i turned ten years old. this was still before the internet, so i took advantage of the tools i had before me, which was mostly an encyclopedia set. i would read through the articles on the romans and greeks and follow the footnotes out to the carthiginians and scythians; i especially enjoyed reading about the punic wars, or that's something that i have a clear memory of, at least. when i got a little older, i could take books out of the library, and these compendiums of ancient cultures were the thing i tended to head for.
so, the jews were an ancient civilization, and the bible was their book. to me, it was just like reading any other history book.
i think this also fed into my interest in the game civilization, which i first played on my stepfathers old computer, in the middle of the night, as it was stashed away in the corner of the basement, just outside my bedroom.
i did actually read the thing, though, and it is what it is - a genealogical saga adopted from a variety of sources. but, i didn't actually believe any of it, not any more than i believed in romulus & remus, or in any other origin myth. i've often remarked that i dispensed with christianity fairly promptly by simply reading the source material; it was just impossible to take seriously, even down to the vicious portrayal of god, which was just nefarious.
despite my rationalist tendencies, though, i have to say that it was immediately clear to me that the revelation is an eschatological text; that is, that it is intended to be a description of the end times, however inappropriately, and not a prophecy that has already happened. i would have to assume that any theologian that is attempting to assign the revelation to an already existing historical event, as realized prophecy, has a strange interpretation of the apocalypse, relative to accepted pan-christian dogma.
that said, if this is an end times prophecy, then it leaves it's exact meaning open to interpretation, especially considering how many times it's been retranslated.
so, i'm going to just be literal about this - the seventh seal is when the eighth angel comes in and destroys, or at least severely damages, the earth with a sceptre full of fire, which is so very pagan, isn't it? these trumpets appear to me to be part of this angelic ritual sacrifice of the earth, rather than any message of any sort. really. what the passage describes is a ritual destruction of the earth by the gods, articulated here as angels. see, and i'll let you bring in the neoplatonism here, even if i won't let you assign the events to the neoplatonic period.
if that's my seal, i can work with that.
"oh, the earth? it will be gone, soon."
metaphorically, is that what i'm actually doing, though, in my analysis of the situation?
actually, this would be an excellent time to conduct telephone polling.
everybody's bored at home.
i just checked my usage stats, and it's the same thing - the dates may be out of sync, but the usage is back to normal.
what's my take on the issue in china?
my immediate analysis of the data was that there must be many more cases than were documented, and that if that were the case then it would be hard to believe that the situation was really under control. it seemed to me that the tactic they were following was to declare a kind of false victory, then blame any second wave on contact with the outside world, as they slowly released more accurate numbers. so, i realized and stated that the truth was probably that there were many, many undocumented cases, due to the high published mortality rate. i don't recall taking a position on whether there were also undocumented deaths.
the story about the urns is plausible on it's face, but it has a kind of familiar feel to it, and could be outright disinformation. i would like to see some independent reporting on this before i jump to believing it. but, note that my disbelief is not strong - i would just like to see the case made a little bit better. for now, some skepticism is really required.
what i do think is clear is that it will not be long before china begins releasing numbers documenting further spread in the country. whether those numbers should be taken at face value or interpreted as a creative narrative for their own domestic audience is going to be an empirical question, in the end.
at some point, they will need to make the numbers add up properly, even if they're creative in how they do it, in order to fit the politburo's nationalist messaging.
it's a constant: marxists think facts are pliable, that truth is meaningless, that maintaining actual knowledge in the public sphere is secondary to maintaining worker morale, in the face of whatever delusion or absurdity. it simply doesn't matter what is true.
but, expect the numbers to add up, eventually. somehow.
i can't stop reading these poorly written covid-19 articles.
i get some useful information out of them, i guess. numbers, mostly.
but, it's really most comparable to the kind of reaction you'd associate with slowing down at a car crash to observe the wreckage - this is a catastrophe in every way, and i'm not sure people really realize it, yet. there's been a flurry of propaganda recently to insist that the measures are working and the authorities are in control, but it's obviously a gloss over the reality that the measures aren't working and they got caught flat-footed, due to putting too much faith in an unrealistic model (the idea that social distancing would effectively slow the spread of the disease) that utterly failed.
we're going to have a longterm mess to deal with, now - a mess in social services, a mess in housing, a mess in employment, and it's going to get worse the longer this continues on for, with little evidence that it is working - despite loud declarations to the contrary by politicians at all levels, which seem to be operating under some kind of centralized plan.
people right now are probably preoccupied with their day-to-day concerns, and that's reasonable. i'm broadly taken care of, so i'm not blinded by this.
right now, it's the people that are sick that are the priority. but, the near future is going to be very difficult for a much larger number of people that didn't actually get sick. and, i don't think we've collectively clicked into this, yet - i don't think we've fully fathomed what has just happened.
so, i'm sorting through these articles, trying to get a handle on the spin, on the official story. it's proving hard to let go of.
if i'm up, as i hope i am, i should get to writing that sunsquabi review fairly soon.
i've been quiet.
i've been tired....
at the end of the second day of shopping, which was the 1st, i took a walk downtown in search of soy milk and found two cartons (fwiw, the repackaged organic vanilla soy good has the same stats on the side, but has lost it's distinctive vanilla hue. i initially avoided the rebranding because it looked like they weren't fortifying it as well, but they seem to have fixed that. first, we lose strawberry, now we lose vanilla.....ugh.....and, this stuff was truly the most deliciously healthy elixir you could imagine, too. you should be forced to drink three glasses of this stuff, daily, by law. instead, there's no market for it. because we're collectively a bunch of fucking idiots.). while i was there, i picked up a gram of marijuana at the new store that was downtown, and a small pre-roll for the walk. this was actually mostly medicinal - i know from experience that walking substantive distances with a limp is a lot easier when you're a little bit stoned. so, i smoked through the rest of that on friday, but the combination of things - the panic attack, the overexhaustion and then the marijuana - meant i was mostly using it as a sleep aid. i'd go for a walk, and be out for three or four hours within minutes after coming back in.
on the one hand, i think that i clearly needed some sleep and rest in general, and if it helped with that then great. on the other hand, the day felt sort of wasted overall - i wasted the time, i wasted the pot.
so, i went back on saturday and got myself my biyearly quarter, a ritual i haven't observed since the beginning of 2018. there was no head cave over the summer of 2018, as i was in a straight edge phase, as i sought smoke-free housing. there was no head cave over the winter, as i was still living straight edge. by the summer of 2019, i found myself more interested in partying in detroit than hermiting with a head cave. and, we skipped that this most recent winter solstice as well - partly because i was sick, but mostly because i was laser-focused on trying to get a lot of work done.
i was very sick with a weird pneumonia in october after beethoven's 5th (something i attributed to smoking cigarettes the wrong way due to being handed a 40 of vodka earlier in the night) and again after the plaid/armed weekend in december (something i attributed to a massive joint that was handed to me). i was around a lot of people that had recently traveled, on both weekends. who knows; what i want is an antibody test. it could be a while before we figure out where this thing really came from.
i was planning on getting a small amount for 4/20 and maybe headcaving in july. but, on friday, they announced plans to close the stores indefinitely, so i got my quarter in while i could. it cost me $65 cdn for a quarter of 15% thc marijuana, which is a little on the high side, but not terrible. i'm used to paying $55-60 for a quarter. in fact, it was $59 + tax.
after getting a lot of rest on friday night, i got some cleaning done in here early on saturday morning before i headed out to the store to get the quarter. my knee is better, but it's still bugging me, and it's developed a lot of bruising around it. i don't explicitly remember anything happening, but i must have smashed it into a shopping cart or something. my feet are getting better, but the walk was still a little bit challenging.
and, i was able to locate four more cartons of soy as well, bringing me up to 8, meaning i probably have enough until mid-may. a carton lasts me about 5 days, on average. so, i go through around 6 a month.
i guess i was still exhausted, because i didn't last very long after my first roll on the quarter, and slept more or less the entire afternoon.
what about internet usage?
when i checked yesterday morning, it was the second that had no stats, not the first. oddly. reasonably low stats came in for the 3rd, but they seemed to be offset by a time frame at the server, as it logged 0 hours in off peak (and i know i was online in the morning). so, the numbers have gone down to something more reasonable and expected, but the server and modem also seem to be out of sync. i'll have to check again soon.
am i awake now? let's hope so. but, i may need to sleep this off a bit more, too.
Saturday, April 4, 2020
the reality is that canada has a lot of empty auto factories, and those jobs aren't coming back.
there's no reason that the state couldn't seize these factories and get them running to produce medical supplies, perhaps even for a while after this over.
Friday, April 3, 2020
so, what's happened over the last few days?
after realizing that the unauthorized traffic on my network was now using my router as a relay, i decided that right then was as good a time as any to go and get groceries for the month, so i completely dismantled everything in the apartment and was out to get some groceries by 7:00 in the morning, with the intent to get everything done with by sunset.
it was on my fourth trip out, around 13:00, that i ended up moving towards the far store, on dougall. i only intended to get some wholesale salami at the deli and then come back, but the deli was closed indefinitely, so i decided to just keep walking, in order to get a specific brand of soy milk. by this time, i'd been on my feet, often lugging bags full of food, for more or less six hours straight, and my feet were incredibly sore. i'd also picked up a slight sprain in my left knee that was giving me a mild limp.
i'd been to the two closer stores earlier in the day, and they were regulating the number of people in the store, but they allowed for more or less free movement within it. the far store, though, was like entering a compound. you begin your entry procedure by lining up around the corner, separated from each other by increments of ground that are defined by tape on the ground, two meters apart, no doubt with substantive error if actually measured, before being given hand sanitizer and then handed a sterilized cart on the way in and slowly making your way into the store, where these restrictions are suddenly lifted almost entirely, until you get into the checkout line.
something unexpected happened as i was in line to enter the store; i felt very faint, and had to sit down for a good twenty minutes or so, where i shivered in a cold sweat. observers no doubt interpreted me as symptomatic; that would be false, as i actually haven't experienced any symptoms at all. i'd been inside for two weeks, solid, remember. rather, it became clear to me right away that i was experiencing an anxiety attack from the lockdown measures put in place, and i was having trouble dealing with it due to overexertion.
this attack hit me a second time, when going through the checkout line, but i was able to shake it off until i got out of the store, and sat down there.
worse, they didn't even have my brand of soy milk.
anxiety attacks are not merely psychological trauma, they are a physical event. the nausea, weakness and sweating i was experiencing took a strong physical toll on me, leaving me exasperatingly exhausted; i did manage to drag myself home, but then i needed to sleep it off, immediately - and, i did. for roughly 12 hours...
after getting myself something to eat and taking another nap, it was all of a sudden 8:00 am all over again. i was absolutely still exhausted, but i wanted the shopping from the month done quickly, so i pulled myself out of bed and went out to finish the task.
the soreness of my feet took minutes to reassert itself, but i was actually able to walk off the limp after a few hours. after a few productive trips, i found myself in possession of everything i needed, except one thing - i couldn't find my brand of soy milk.
the soy i buy is a canadian brand called soy good that is fairly heavily fortified with vitamins. unfortunately, the silk brand seems to be taking over shelf space in most stores, and this brand has lower amounts of vitamins and nutrients than the soy good. i was considering compromising on chocolate soy good over vanilla silk.
i decided to try one more spot downtown - and was successful in locating two cartons. by the time i dragged myself home in the afternoon, i was so exhausted that i passed out yet again for another lengthy sleep. when i first woke up, around 3:00 am, i wasn't sure i'd be able to stand up for a day or two - it was hard to walk to the bathroom, even. but, after eating some food, i was alert and strong enough to get out one more time.
so, for a third day in a row, i found myself ready to get out of the house for groceries at 7:00 am.
at this point, i had everything i need, including soy milk. but, i drink 4-5 cartons of soy milk a month, so i needed more than the two i had been able to locate up to that point. where could i find some? i'd just checked the store downtown, i'd just checked the far store....
it made more sense to me to try the far store, first. did they have my brand? nope.
so, i took a walk south to the walmart. did they have it? nope.
so, i walked around to fred's. nope.
the last place i tried was the close store, where i was going to compromise on the chocolate, and they actually had what i was looking for. so, i grabbed four cartons and brought them to the cash...
"there's a limit of two items for soy milk."
in fact, there was no sign in the section. but, i didn't want to argue with them...
for a third day, i was so exhausted that i had no choice but to sleep - and, for the third day, i woke up feeling like a newborn fawn learning how to walk.
so, i finally turned my network back on on thursday night, after i'd slept the walking off a little, and checked my usage stats early on the 3rd...
i dismantled my network early on the 31st and had it off all day, so i should have had minimal traffic. teksavvy logged a large amount of traffic on this day.
there should have been exactly no traffic on the first. while teksavvy logged some traffic on this day, it was actually a recognizable amount of < 2 gb.
there should have been a small amount of traffic on the 2nd, about what teksavvy logged for the 1st. but, there was no traffic for the 2nd at all...
at that point, i realized what i'd done - i'd confused the server by keeping my modem off for so long, and it then logged me in under the wrong date. so, it logged my stats for the second and filed it under the first. in the process, it seems to have undone whatever was creating the problem.
while i initially was convinced of a police listener, and these outcomes are not mutually exclusive, the isp appears to increasingly be the culprit.
we'll see what happens in the morning.
i should be able to get back to writing that sunsquabi review very soon.
so, i watched this, and let's be clear about what this actually is, and you don't have to take my word for it, you can listen to the doctors state it clearly themselves, repeatedly; this is not a serious scientific briefing and shouldn't be analyzed disingenuously as though it is one, what this is is an attempt to sort of scare people into staying inside, a justification for the economic shutdown as it has already occurred and is likely to continue occurring for quite some time.
they don't show their work, so who knows how they decided that the situation would be so much worse without the steps that have been taken, or if the truth isn't even that it already is, due to an apparent lack of actual testing. but, i'd be missing the point if i were to take the calculation seriously - these are just big numbers designed to reassure you that the steps that they've already taken are working so well, and we need to carry on that much longer.
i don't particularly want to impugn these people, because they legitimately realize that they're going to have capacity issues very soon, and they think they need to drastically alter public behaviour very quickly in order to prevent the system from overflow; the question of exactness is perhaps unimportant when faced with the requirement of such drastic social conditioning. but, i'm supposed to soberly analyze the data, here, and i can't do that, if i can't take it seriously.
they may even fully realize that what they're doing is futile, but they don't have a better idea.
so, this is really a desperate plea: they really, really, really want you to stay inside now, please.
While aggressive measures (e.g., widespread antiviral use and restriction of movement) to attempt to contain or slow an emerging pandemic in its earliest stages were previously considered possible on the basis of modeling, experience from the 2009 pandemic has resulted in general agreement that such attempts are impractical, if not impossible.
if this was supposed to be the plan, it actually seems to me as though they only got through the first couple of pages of it, and kind of winged it from there.
in fact, most of the things i've been calling on them to do are explicitly mentioned in the guidance plan, it's just not being followed.
so, i've done a lot of rambling about this topic, and i just want to summarize and clarify my arguments and analysis and commentary, so that my position is clear enough.
1) the mortality rate of the coronavirus appears to be roughly comparable to, if not a little lower than, the spanish flu epidemic, which was a very bad flu year. i was always careful to qualify that i meant it was on par with a strong or novel flu strain, and i think the data has upheld the point. actually. however, it's important to point out that while the spanish flu had substantive mortality in young people, and was especially hard on children, almost everybody that dies from the coronavirus is over 60.
2) pandemics in and of themselves are not cause for particular alarm; we have pandemics all of the time. it's a scary word, maybe? it shouldn't be.
3) if you're a young and healthy person, the probability of contracting this disease and dying from it while you're out and about is in the same category of risk as getting in a car accident, which would be much less likely than getting eaten by a lion, back in the old days. we all have no choice but to take acceptable risks on a day-to-day basis in order to survive, or go crazy and lock ourselves inside.
4) given the truth of the above statement, my argument against social distancing was always related to the question of it's practicality, rather than it's theoretical efficacy. is it true that if we could imagine ourselves all just staying inside for the next 6-8 weeks then the virus would die? sure. but, how could you even imagine doing that? you need people to distribute food, you need people to deliver health care, etc; the virus isn't going to avoid these people just because they're labeled 'essential' or something. then, given that some spread is unavoidable without having everybody stay inside, what's the point of these partial restrictions? if a policy is likely to be ineffective, it should be abandoned.
5) if social distancing is in truth an unrealizable theoretical abstraction that can't exist in real life, then substantive spread is unavoidable, and measures need to be taken to adapt. these measures include ramping up the healthcare system to ensure it has enough equipment and taking special precautions to isolate the most vulnerable from the effects of rampant spread, most importantly lockdowns on long term care facilities. aggressive steps to adapt should have been adopted almost immediately.
6) as the virus cannot truly be stopped by statist tactics, we must instead wait for it to run it's course. only then will the number of cases come down.
7) in the longrun, this virus is almost certainly a new fact of life. if we will not take aggressive steps to protect the vulnerable from it, we will need to accept what will happen to them.
my argument against these draconian laws has been, from the start, that they are not rooted in sound science and are unlikely to work. i suggested some alternative strategies that i felt would be more successful, instead.
we can't know if my suggestions would have been more effective.
but, we can be certain that social distancing has failed, as any sober analysis would have concluded it must. nobody should be surprised that this didn't work. the lockdowns of vulnerable populations are coming, but they are likely too late, and they are happening in parallel with more general restrictions on everyone's freedom, which will be increasingly ineffective.
rather, the more substantive effect of these restrictive laws will likely be to slow down widespread immunity, thereby prolonging the process, and also spurring the virus' evolution, and consequently infecting more vulnerable people as it happens.
they're probably pushing 20% contracted in new york city, now. expect it to burn out around five to six thousand.
we thought we could control the spread of a virus. lol.
let me ask you this - might social distancing measures actually spur the evolution of the virus? if it's harder to catch, only the mutations most susceptible to contagion will...i'm trying to avoid using terms relating to procreation, or generations, as that implies the virus is alive, and that's a touchy subject, but the virus is rna, which means it exists in an evolutionary context, and it will evolve, it will adapt, to the environment.
i do believe that there is historical data to suggest that a virus is it's most reactive, it's most adaptive, and it's most virulent, immediately after taking on a new host - this is a feisty little piece of rna, it just jumped hosts and it's no doubt got a lot more adapting to do; an anthropomorphized concept of rna mutation, but we do know that mutations do tend to be more plentiful around a speciation event, and in the populations most directly ancestral to that event.
i'm going to write a bit more about this soon.
we should have spent our resources on special precautions for those that most required them.
wan: 5637276 down / 1934306 up
lan: 3873317 down / 2636558 up
wireless: 0 down / 0 up
this works out to:
wan: 8.06 gb down / 2.77 gb up
lan: 5.54 gb down / 3.77 gb up
are those number correct?
no.
there was some low bandwidth streaming at youtube overnight, but it didn't add up to 5.5 gb. that's way, way too much bandwidth.
so, i'm going to reset everything again, powercycle, etc.
laws against commerce on the sabbath is the kind of fascist bullshit you'd expect in a country like iran, not something you'd expect to see in a free society.
that must be resisted and defeated.
Monday, March 30, 2020
this is a central component of our existing legal foundation.
alright, ontario. let's see a show of force against fascism, here.
this is not constitutional, and it's not evidence-based. it's just fascist bullshit.
ontarians rights are under attack?
what do we do? stand up, fight back!
let's overrun these barricades. let's march through the streets. let's make sure that the government knows that it can't do this kind of bullshit and get away with it, that it needs to be addressing the problem at it's source, and not passing laws that make everybody suffer, based on no evidence at all.
i'm not a park person myself, but i'd challenge you to present me any actual science that suggests this is in any way dangerous to anybody. not speculation, not hyperbole, not "expert advice" - actual peer-reviewed science.
*crickets*
so, i don't think they're being reckless at all, and i will stand in solidarity with people that are pushing back against unreasonable and evidence-free restrictions on personal freedom, of which i would agree this is defined as.
if we all simply avoid the elderly as much as possible, we should be able to get through this without the need for draconian rules.
and, i hope that people continue to prioritize their freedom, and continue to push back.
as mentioned, i don't think i need to go for groceries immediately on the 31st. if i can get the master document for january updated first, that would be preferable. and, i can perhaps avoid the rush of panicking nitwits.
this is a review of the bummer/buildings show at ufo on feb 24, 2020.
what do you do when you plan around going to two concerts within a few days, under the expectation that the weather won't be so bad for either, and then come up against the fact that the weather is actually going to be absolutely awful for the second, at the last minute?
you made sacrifices for the first show, so you don't want to cut your losses if you can avoid it. maybe you skipped a beer. maybe you came home an hour early. whatever it was, you want to tough it out, if you can, so that the sacrifices you made were not in vain.
i woke up on this day to a blizzard warning, which is not much of a challenge for an ottawan, with the important caveat that finding a way home at the end of the night was truly essential, and the border was consequently somewhat of an unwanted and annoying barrier. canadians don't fear the cold, but we do respect it; we know when to push it, but we also are very conscious of when not to, because we've all been in those situations, where we're teetering on the brink of hypothermia; unless, of course, that we were foolish enough to die of exposure, in which case we don't have to worry about making that mistake again. the benefit of hindsight is 20/20, right? glib humour aside, i would not have wanted to wander too far from the tunnel on this night and risk being found in a snow bank and, thankfully, i didn't need to - the venue is walking distance from the tunnel, something i wish i could take advantage of more often, nowadays. detroit isn't detroit anymore, everything has been exported to the suburbs....
that said, i realized pretty quickly that the weather was about as brutal as i could tolerate in the attire i left the house in. it's not like i was really a big fan of either of these acts, i really just wanted to get out of the house for a few beers and a loud, boneheaded rock show in what i thought would be acceptable weather after being couped up since december, but the wisdom of the excursion was admittedly somewhat questionable; in hindsight, though, given that the rest of 2020 is more or less cancelled, i'm actually glad that i managed to get out. it could be a while before i get another chance.....if i even survive the boredom...
it's not that the temperature, itself, was even that bad; in truth, it actually really wasn't. the issue on this night was more about the wind, and the brutality of walking through it. standing in one spot for a while actually really wasn't that bad. it was moving through the -20 windchills and the blowing, blinding snow....
there were no pancake breakfasts on this night, though, once i succeeded in trudging my way through the snow to the venue.
i was expecting a late show, so i didn't miss anything by showing up late, thankfully.
the first band was from kansas (why is kansas in missouri, anyways?), and i'm more or less just going to post the video. while they have a more melodic component to them, they fundamentally exist in the same space as a goofy, boneheaded band like the melvins, meaning i can only really truly enjoy this from a bit of a distance, but sometimes that's good enough for the night. sometimes that's all you want, and all you need to enjoy a few hours of escape....
the second act was called buildings, and are a little more elaborate, a little more developed in their sound, and a little less boneheaded, over all. i had not heard of this act before, but, looking into it, learned that they're on their fourth record, after some lengthy down periods. they're still fundamentally a northwestern punk band, but, and i suppose this was always true of the best northwestern punk bands, they're pulling in influences from a collection of related genres - shoegaze, no wave, noise rock and a little bit of psychedelic rock, or doom metal, as well. i wouldn't quite say it sounds contemporary, but it could be mistaken for it, if that makes sense.
as mentioned, i was kind of keen to get out of the house; this was my third trip out this year, but my first at a show like this, which is also in a genre that is demonstrating increasing scarcity amidst an aging core audience. i'm not giving up on new music any time soon, especially new electronic music, but you do have to expect me to act my age sometimes, too. this is the kind of music i grew up with....
a local act called teener closed the show, as they frequently do whenever bands of this style come through town. i guess they're just kind of the go-to to fill out the bill, for right now. i've consequently seen them a couple of times. on this night, they played as a three-piece because their singer had strep-throat.
this is marble bar in detroit, which is more often a dance club; i was catching fly pan am in windsor, on this night.
i was out in plenty of time to catch the bus, and eventually got home to canada after what was a somewhat lengthy wait at the bus stop with some very cold kids coming back from an edm party at the magic stick that cost them each $50 to get in. they had just missed the previous bus, and were consequently seriously considering calling a cab, somewhat naive at the cost - i had to talk them out of it, although there was almost enough of them there to justify the $60 fee up-front, if they hadn't already bought tickets.
it actually didn't feel that bad at this point, as the wind had died down. or, so i thought, anyways.
i did try villain's a second time, but i didn't recognize the bartender. somebody outside recognized me, though. i bummed a smoke, but i didn't stay; i was starting to feel the cold, and knew i had to get in. that respect for the cold became a dominant concern, and when that happens it is sudden and it is absolute - you get home, and you don't fuck around...
i need to reiterate that, if you were to check the forecast, you wouldn't be led to believe it was a particularly cold night. further, i had a toque and gloves, in addition to a sweater, with my overcoat. i was actually dressed relatively well. but, the fact that i had at that point been outside for well over an hour in subfreezing high humidity, coupled with the wind, which had picked back up again, was the kind of thing that can shut you down for good, as the icicles start building up on your hair, and the frost begins to claim you as it's own.
as i was walking, i suddenly started to become cognizant of the reality that i was in a dangerous place, temperature wise. my face was experiencing mild frostbite. worse, i found myself fighting a sudden urge to sit down, which is very bad news, in that situation.
i went to an unusual elementary school on an army base that had a very small number of students and found myself in a split 5/6 class, twice - in grade 5 and then again in grade 6, and in fact with the same teacher both years. the instruction was often scattered, anachronistic or outright absent. as such, one thing that i found myself doing was watching a tv series called the voyage of the mimi, and doing what was essentially english-class style reading comprehension in place of actual science instruction.
in hindsight, i think some heavy criticism of the curriculum is well-warranted, but it did teach me valuable life lessons about hypothermia; you don't want to experience a sensation of warmth when you know you should be cold, and you don't want to sit down. so, i dragged myself, i pushed myself - i talked out loud, i counted, i did everything i could to make sure that i strenuously avoided any thoughts about stopping.
and, i did get home.
and, i warmed myself up in a warm blanket.
and, i ate some nachos.
and, i took a hot shower.
and, i watched the debates.
and i got some sleep...
this is a review of the man or astroman show at el club on feb 24, 2020.
this is another show that i instantly realized i had to get to, whether the weather was going to cooperate or not, and then almost missed, this time due to the need to sleep a little bit before the show.
i can't claim it was much of an exciting night outside of the show, though; there were no adventures to report, no conversations of particular interest. my attention was largely focused on trying to get to the venue before the rain started (which i failed at.), and then in getting myself home in the rain after the show. it was an early night, and i arrived late, missing both opening acts.
they did play some newer material, and i noted in a previous post that it's leaning towards a riffier, dirtier, almost grungier kind of sound that is maybe a little less campy and more evocative of the rougher edges of the american southwest. they also brought out a dot matrix printer and performed a reinterpreted piece from eeviac to give the guitarist time to change a string; it reminded me a little of autechre's gantz graf, but i doubt that meant much to the crowd. they were, overall, though, exactly what would be expected, and i think that's what most people wanted.
there was some talk about the venue in the smoking section, and i'm going to repost my initial analysis to that question. it's not that i'm unsympathetic to the concern, it's that i'm not sure how substantive it actually is.
i haven't turned the laptop back on yet. i've been dreading it. it should come up out of hibernation, but if it doesn't then i'll have to reimage. let's hope that i can get the clean-up finished before i crash for a few hours this morning. i am planning on hitting the grunge show tonight. the damage last night wasn't that bad, because i was able to use the balance on the debit card, and i just avoided buying beer. so, i didn't spend nearly what i said - it was $23 usd for the ticket, $10 usd at the 7/11 and $10 cdn for the bus. yes, it costs me $5 to cross the border and $5 to get back. and, yes, it adds up. it's still cheaper to live here, though. essentially, my choice to avoid buying expensive beer at el club last night means i'm good to go for cheap beer at ufo tonight. yeah, i didn't set the fucking prices, don't look at me. if it was reasonable, i would have bought at least one.. i'm waiting until i can order last sunday before i do these february reviews all at once. but, there is still a lot of lingering concern regarding the fiasco at el club, with people worrying about crossing boycott lines. personally? i'm a free thinker, i'm not interested in being told what to do by the central committee on ethical consumption in late capitalism, and they can rule on the issue all they want, i don't give a fuck. but, i have to be honest - i didn't find the arguments i heard to be convincing. and, you can browbeat me on it if you want, i don't really care. what i want is a convincing argument, not a demand that i follow your moral code, which i may or may not agree with. but, i'll be equally clear that i wouldn't go to a place that i thought was actually horribly sexist or horribly racist. for a bastion of white supremacism, the bar seems to have a lot of black employees (they always did. it's detroit.) and seems to cater disproportionately to the black community. if there was a problem, they made a legitimate attempt to adjust to it. that said, i don't go there on random nights, either, for the reason that they've largely exited my sphere of interest; this has largely not been much of an issue for me for the reason that the bar no longer caters to my tastes, anyways. so, i haven't been finding myself in this conflicted space, where i'm trying to figure out if i should go or not because i haven't had any interest in what they're booking, anyways. the bar has a great sound system. it's not likely that random touring acts have any idea what happened, so i'm not going to tar them by association for something they don't know about, whatever the merits of it. so, if a band i like does play the space, i don't see any logical reason why i wouldn't go. man or astroman formed in the early 90s and have been one of my favourite acts for a very long time. getting to see them was a kind of a bucket list thing. while the sound system at el club really is great, and the band does legitimately have substantive latin influences, i'll also acknowledge that it would have been a lot easier had they played the magic stick, or perhaps delux fluxx. but, for whatever reason, they didn't and i had to make a choice between missing out on a band i've been listening to for most of my life or an empty statement of solidarity with something that i'm not really convinced of the value of. that's not a hard choice, for me. i'm sorry if you find that upsetting, but i think you're wrong.
this is a more accurate representation of the set than the previous video i posted:
i walked right back to the tunnel after the show, took the bus back to canada and tried to stop to talk to somebody at villain's on the way home, but they were closed - as they always are on monday nights.
there were nachos, there was a shower & there was some sleep.
it's a good analogy.
deal with it.
flattening the curve, indeed.
no, listen.
if they're at 10%, it's unstoppable; you give into your arrogance, like you should have in the first place, you protect the weak and you get out of the fucking way as it falls.
the other option is to try to stop the piano with the umbrella.
but, you think you're smart.
nono, let's be rigorous about this.
i'm not claiming that it must be immunity. don't misrepresent me; i'm a clear writer, you'll lose in the end.
what i'm pointing out is that we have two equally valid hypotheses, and we can't know which is more correct until we do more targeted testing.
maybe i'm overshooting the number of cases, in which case the fascist tactics were likely effective, after all.
but, if my mortality rate is even close to correct, then there must be millions of undocumented cases, and they must be nearing a case load that should be bringing on natural immunity.
so, you could look at it either way - is this the inevitable reality? is the whole world chasing rainbows and unicorns in trying to "flatten the curve", as it caves into ignorance spread over social media? or is this really the absolute worst case scenario, and about as bad as it can get, if you miss your chance to keenly adopt fascist tactics with zeal?
we need more data.
but, i have my hunch as to which is more correct. you'll note that scientists prefer the term hypothesis to hunch, but some people might argue that's a big word, and fancy language that nobody understands.
with 2500 official deaths in the united states, the true number of cases is probably more like 2-3 million, and they're probably largely in new york. if this ends up regional like it is now, the right model might be to expect cases to rise and fall in specific hot spots, and you might end up near immunity before you even figure out what to do.
so, if there's already a million cases in new york city, you're already at 10% and you basically just need to tell old people to stay inside and let it burn out.
again: if there's 11,000 dead and the fatality rate is 0.001 then there's 11 million infected people.
ok, you want a fatality rate of 0.002? 5.5 million.
there's only 10 million people in the affected region.
so, i'm deeply skeptical about claims that fascist police state tactics have accomplished anything at all.
my hair is absolutely terrible from sitting inside for weeks. it's just so dry in here, and that's pretty much the worst possible thing for your hair. or your skin. it's frustrating. i'm going to look like these dying geriatrics soon, if i have to stay inside much longer. so, we're going to try this again in a few hours.
for now, let's hope i can get over this hump and finish up february.
it seems like the disgusting cop upstairs is smoking inside, again.
i hope she gets covid-19 and coughs to death.
what did i do today?
i was done eating around 13:00 and got a response from my isp, explaining that the extra bandwidth must be due to a virus, and i should change my wireless password.
i've told them at least five times that i don't have a wireless network, and have gone to great lengths to demonstrate that the data they're logging isn't entering my network. so, i sent them a series of snotty emails, and then took a nap, planning to shower a little later.
but, i was flummoxed, so i was up again in a few hours, and got a response from a manager at the isp, who offered to send me a test modem to verify that my mac address had been cloned. i told him i'd take the test modem, but i wasn't going to purchase it, at which point it became clear that he was just trying to sell me the modem. fucking capitalists.
in fact, i've been through something like this with teksavvy before, and i'm starting to wonder. are they basically just sending me bullshit stats to try to coerce me into upgrading, or to give me bullshit overage charges, like a bank charges user fees? is that what's really going on?
after napping again for a few hours (so that's two three hour naps), i got into a technical back and forth with the supervisor in the evening regarding the question of changing the mac address, threatening to hack my modem with a bus pirate and change it myself if they won't do it via server-side scripting (which they can do). and, i seem to have gotten through, finally.
we're in disagreement over the likelihood of a split in the line, if we take the situation at face value. they're saying that they don't want to send a tech because a cloned mac address could log in from any live cable. i'm pointing out that if my landlord cloned my mac address, he'd need to find a live cable, and the most obvious way to do it is to split my line. the point of testing with the test modem would be to prove the line was split; that wasn't registering with him, as he continued to insist that he could be logging in from saskatchewan, or something. ridiculous, of course, but the downside of cheap internet is that it's very hard to get a tech out, because the resellers have to rent them from the isps; teksavvy would have to order a tech from cogeco, and it's pricey. but, i'm not buying a new modem, and had to be really aggressive about the point to get it across.
we settled on a compromise solution - they will contact cogeco and ask how many ips are connected to the mac address, where the ips are, etc. and, if they can demonstrate to themselves that there are two users on the mac address, they will react accordingly.
that's fine.
and, then i napped for a few more hours, before getting up a little after 23:00. so, i got a full day's sleep in three installments.
in the mean time, what are my stats for the day?
wan: 3.73 gb down / 1.16 gb up
lan: 2.33 gb down / 1.59 gb up
wireless: no traffic
again: this suggests some concerns on my local network. 2.33 down is believable; 1.59 up doesn't make much sense, that's 3-5x too much. but, let's get the ridiculous stats on the sever dealt with, first.
my workaround is going to mean that i'm really only going to be connecting via the chromebook for a good, long while, and i can frequently powerwash it to try to frustrate an attacker. i'm clearly getting a lot of dropped packets on the way in, indicating somebody (probably the person that cloned the mac address.) is keying in on something. as i have completely reformatted my 90s laptop, if it is the cause of that upload spike then the pathogen is on the network. i haven't connected with my windows 7 laptop in some time, now, and my pc has the nic disabled in the bios - it stays off the internet. permanently. so, i suspect that fixing this is the same thing as changing my mac address, and perhaps the same thing as changing it frequently.
the smell in here has been getting worse all day. so, now it's time to take that shower.
i've been online since the mid 90s, and i've never really experienced it without an adblocker. over the last few months, i've been forced to bareback, to go online without a condom, and i've developed the same kind of general mental block on ads that i do everywhere else in society.
i'm very much post-paradoxical, when it comes to my reaction to ads - i don't even notice they're there, broadly, unless they get to me at the worst point, in which i'm likely to never interact with the manufacturer of the product, if not the product itself, ever again. i really hate them.
but, i've noticed this walking down the street, and i do a lot of walking because i don't have a driver's license; i've never driven a car before, for environmental reasons. it sort of hit me one day, walking home - i know there's a giant billboard over there, and i know there's another one down the street, etc. i recognize the existence of the ads. i don't know what the ads actually say.
so, i'll walk by the same billboard every day for weeks, months or even years and recognize it's there, without remembering what it actually says - because i filter it out of my conscious existence. i've learned to ignore it at a subconscious level, the way i'd ignore everything else that happens around me that isn't important to me, or doesn't affect my life.
we only process about 1% of what we actually experience, or so they say. most of what we see & hear just goes in one orifice and out the other. we hear a dog barking down the street, but it doesn't register. we see a forest, but we don't isolate the trees. i'm very much that way with advertising - it's just background noise, something that i know exists, but that my subconscious brain processes identify as irrelevant to my conscious, waking self.
i've more or less built up the same kind of immunity to ads on the internet over the last little while. i know they're there, so i know i'll need to hit x five or six times when i open a web page. i don't stop to learn what they are; what i've learned is to hit the mute button before i open a news site. so, i know i'm deleting dozens of ads a day, but i don't know or care what the ads are for.
if nothing else, i'll go back to windows to bring back adblock.
and, if i've been grouchier than usual lately, that's probably a big part of it - the fact that i'm dealing with all of these fucking ads, all of a sudden.
this is the grim reality that's playing out across the continent, as governments chase foolish strategies to collectivize the suffering, rather than target those who truly need protection.
to each according to their needs.
that's what the state should be developing policy around, right now.
if you weren't an anarchist before, the state's baffling response to this situation should turn you into one, now.
stay away from old people. please. for fuck's sake.
i will be getting some more ram for the 90s laptop.
but, for now, it's just too slow to be functional, even as a split gateway.
so, i'm going to need to work from the pc.
so, i've found a work around to this that should increase my productivity dramatically.
i did a last run through february, and found some more typos. yeah, i know. i'm ready to write that review, now.
and, once i get caught up, this time, i should be able to stay caught up.
the 90s laptop is locked down, but the restrictions on it are also apparent.
so, am i giving up on this horribly busted 7 install? i want a clean machine. maybe i can move it into a virtual machine, although....it's 64 bit, and that's a problem for me.
keeping in mind that i know the bios is probably infected, if i just completely format the boot partition and then mash a bunch of buttons, i should get the thing to boot from disc, if it can, right?
hrmmn.
let's finish what i'm doing first.
it's just that the next step is going to be very, very difficult to carry out on a machine with 256 mb of ram. i guess i get paid on tuesday. is the easiest thing to do to try to find some more ram? i've got the other machine running at 2, remember. but, i might be able to resolve that with a fresh install.
i never really got to reassembling it.
ugh.
so, that means i'm inside for another day.
i think i have enough food to last another week, if it has to.
i really don't want to leave my computers unattended until i'm done what i'm doing and can easily reinstall if i have to.
so, i finally got the isp to escalate.
and, that means i'm going to give them a few more hours to figure it out before i rip the lines apart.
this could conceivably actually be a major breakthrough, if i can physically locate and dismantle a splitter in the line.
i've been complaining about crippling surveillance, now, since 2015 or so. before that, really. in hindsight, i was attacked almost as soon as i moved to windsor, i just didn't recognize it as such.
i've lost two laptops to what, in hindsight, seem like malicious attacks, already.
and i don't understand why this is happening.
"you only get 700 kb/s download speed?"
i don't download anything!
i'm 39 years old, and i look like i'm 23, but i think and act like i'm 84.
well, why else would the cops come in here when i'm gone and mess with my internet?
they installed something. the data suggests that whatever they installed is now producing an almost nonstop stream near the maximum data rate.
i don't have a fast internet connection. 35 gb is a lot relative to the infrastructure in place - nearing the maximum amount possible.
i have a 6 mbit/s maximum limit, which is about 750 kb/sec. in practice, i get something more like 700 on average.
the data from 2:00-8:00 is measured separately. let's say that i downloaded nonstop at 700 kb/s from 8:01 to 11:59.
then, i could have at most downloaded (700 kb/s)*(60 s/min)*(60min/hr)*16 hr = 40320000 kb.
converting this to gb means dividing by 1024^2.
that is roughly 38.5 gb.
as noted, the website claims i downloaded 35 gb. this would only be possible if somebody was streaming something almost constantly, all day.
....like a webcam, perhaps?
do you know what the usage stats are on the teksavvy website for the 28th?
35 gb downloaded.
who downloads 35 gb in 24 hours? i would need two or three months for that.
so, i'm going to have to find the splitter and dismantle it. that's ridiculous. what the hell are they even doing?
so, i'm on the 90s laptop, running firefox 24 on windows xp with 256 mb of ram. i wonder if that's upgradeable...
yes. i can take this up to 1 gb of ram, if i can find the right kind. well, why not? it'll probably be around $5/stick at this point, if they don't pay me to take it.
hey - how much ram does your phone have?
i was able to transfer over my tabs from the 7 machine, although i can't pretend that i'll be able to stream anything on this, or really even do basic google searches. i'm really restricted to doing the precise task at hand, which is getting the blog cleaned up.
i can do basic internet tasks on the chromebook, for now.
and, i'm going to need to work out the last month by booting into the pc.
*sigh*.
they're going to get bored and leave me alone eventually, right?
to be clear: i am not uploading files anywhere right now. if i was uploading music or books anywhere, i would post the links. the only thing i'm "uploading" right now are posts to this blog.
there's no torrents or file-sharing apps running.
there's really no apparent explanation for this that i can see, right now, besides somebody fucking with my network, and no doubt from close quarters.
my landlord claims he's out of town, but i can hear and smell somebody upstairs. i think it's the stinky female, again, who i am fully aware is a police officer.
she's probably watching netflix and smoking drugs, because i'm so boring, and then uploading reports about how boring i am. like, fuck off then...
i had this on all day today, and you can see the dramatic difference in what is being sent to me v. what i'm requesting:
wan: 3076719 / 897149
lan: 1798325 / 1360694
wireless: 0/0
converting,
wan: 4.4 gb down / 1.28 gb up
lan: 2.57 gb down / 1.95 gb up
wireless: no traffic
did i download 2.57 gb? did i upload 1.95 gb? that seems way too high, but by a smaller margin than i'm no doubt going to see in the official metrics. that tells me that i should be concerned about a hacker or virus, but i know that already. based on previous stats, if i downloaded 2.57, i would only expect to have uploaded around 0.5 or so. so, there is definitely some unexplained traffic on my router. i'm going to have to look at this when the rain clears up in the afternoon.
note, again, that 42% of the traffic directed to me was blocked or otherwise redirected by my router. that's indicative of some serious problems.
let me do some typing this morning and go from there.
so, i napped this evening. i guess i needed some rest.
i'm going to try to get to work, now. for a bit, anyways. let's check my usage for the day, first.
this is an example of mutual aid - you help somebody when they need it, and they help you in return.
michigan has a population of roughly 10 million, and 110 deaths last i checked.
canada has a population approaching 40 million, more comparable to california (although less.), and roughly 60 deaths.
in fact, the number of cases in california and canada are roughly the same, but the death rate in california, which is much warmer than canada this time of year, is almost twice as high.
california has been under a state of emergency with strict lockdown rules for weeks. canada only recently introduced basic travel restrictions, in a fit of stupidity, to appease the scientifically ignorant, the evan solomons. no, he's the perfect example of somebody to not listen to.
how long will this go on for?
i have a feeling it's going to be a long time.
is social distancing working in bc?
well, i don't see anything flattening.
but, all the reports i've seen out of bc are about how everybody's ignoring it.
this seems to be some kind of "alternative fact", perhaps intended to increase confidence in the system. but, this isn't a market; the virus won't react to confidence.
the most pessimistic analysis is that they're trying to distract because they know this is going to get bad.
but, i actually think the issue in bc seems to mostly be about retirement homes. as elsewhere, lax restrictions on entering these facilities is likely to have created some serious issues, and the government should be held responsible for this. but, that doesn't translate into an issue with the general population.
but, is this working? is it proof that the sacrifices people are making are demonstrating results?
i'd challenge the premise....
what do i do?
everything's closed.
and, if i march down the street, they're just going to put me in jail.
this is the best i can do, for now: i can raise awareness and wait for critical mass.
they could theoretically overrule section 2.
but, i've been clear to point out that i oppose these policies because they aren't evidence-based. and, i consequently would argue that these restrictions would fail the oakes test.
i was hoping that i could get out around the side of the house to find the splitter or transformer this morning, but then i noticed it was raining - in fact thunderstorming - out. the forecast suggested it would break up around 15:00. so, i took a nap, and planned to get out in the afternoon.
while it's broken a little, everything is no doubt very wet, and it's going to start back up again in a few hours. i'll need to wait until tomorrow, i guess.
there's a high tomorrow of 17 degrees, but there's nowhere to go, and nothing to do.
so, let me get back to cleaning before i get to work, like i keep planning i will.
i have a lot of posts to clean up, now.
for those of you that cannot project images from data on your own, and i know it's most of you, and i'm not trying to be smug, this is the graph you need to see for south korea:
"we need strict rules to keep us safe from the virus"
yeah, that's what hitler and every other fascist, ever, said - just replace virus with whatever other excuse. jews. communism. etc.
don't fall for it.
fight for your freedom. fight for your rights.
and, who enforces it?
a team of brownshirts?
do you get the conductor or driver to beat the passenger up if they argue?
it's the worst kind of panic-driven policy that you could imagine, the most blatant abrogation of a dedication to evidence, to reason and to science.
we can't be letting the government pass laws supporting this kind of mindless vigilantism without pushing back against it.
i sneeze a lot; i tell people i'm allergic to nitrogen, and nobody ever gets the joke. although, somebody once asked me before i took a hit of nitrous - hey, aren't you allergic to nitrogen.
it was a good joke before the hit.
are you going to leave it up to the bus driver to figure out if i'm suffering from allergies, have the common cold or have covid-19, based on nothing but his or her own intuition?
i couldn't imagine a policy that is less rooted in evidence or science.
what absurdity.
what nonsense.
these 1000 year floods are becoming yearly events up the st lawerence, and the ottawa, as well.
floods. diseases. authoritarian governments. it's almost like we're a third world country, or something.
the science has never upheld banning international travel, and i've demonstrated this point repeatedly - people just avoid the checkpoints on their journey from a to b. this is well researched and well understood. but, the logic only ever applied at the very beginning, before the onset of community spread, which was weeks ago. if you know the virus is circulating, banning international travel is just erecting a scapegoat, as you're just as likely to spread it via domestic travel.
so, it is at least consistent.
but, it's a consistency of failure - if you do something wrong in a way that affects a small number of people, expanding it to a greater number of people is just being more wrong.
why is our government looking towards fascist states to model a solution to this? does it not expose an alarming tendency to embrace authoritarian models? is this the worst kind of pragmatism, or is it just an excuse to carry through with long held aspirations towards fascism?
if you tell me i can't take a train or a plane, then i'll take the bus instead. this is a slower means of travel and will consequently infect more people. and, if you tell me i can't take a bus, i'll hitchhike at the truck stop. are you going to put me in jail? i'll sue you for infringing on my constitutional rights, as soon as you reopen the courthouses.
again: we need to stop trying to control the spread of this. this is basically the common cold on steroids. have we ever been able to contain the common cold? would we ever be so arrogant as to try?
this virus is a new fact of life, and something we're going to have to learn to adapt to. we need rules restricting access to the vulnerable, not rules restricting the flow of people.
and, those that refuse to adapt, including those named trudeau, will die off in time.
he was doing well at first, really. but, he caved to public opinion, to appease the scientifically illiterate, the evan solomons of the world, rather than follow the science, as harsh as it sometimes is. and, i hope that the thuggish, hamfisted approach he's adopted is his undoing, in the end.
i'm convinced of the nature of the problem, and i'm convinced that the isp isn't taking it seriously, so i'm going to have to dismantle the lines myself.
when the sun comes up.
and before i take that overdue shower.
the isp has me logged at 14gb total usage yesterday, including 1.61 down/.19 up when i had the modem disconnected overnight.
my exact total usage according to my router was 2.35 gb downloaded & 1.06 gb uploaded, between 13:00 and 23:59.
i can't jump to the spoofed address yet, but we're another day from disproving the ddos attack as the cause of this. see, i don't know when that 14 gb is being logged.
....although, i suppose it's hard to cram 12 gb into the 6 or 7 hours that happened before i renewed, given that bandwidth from 2:00-8:00 is counted separately.
it's pretty clear that i got cloned. but, i need to be rigorous.
you're going to see a lot of dying elderly people in michigan in the next few weeks, and they're going to blame it on everything and everybody they can find - kids at parties, restaurant goers, drug users, sinners, whatever the reverend says...
the actual reason that these people are going to die is that the governor refused to order the care facilities closed to the public.
she's responsible. don't let her blame it on trump.
but, the president needs to be sending supplies, anyways. if he can...
stop.
were gretchen whitmer's policies effective in slowing the spread of the virus?
no, they weren't, were they.
did i tell you that they would be ineffective?
yes, i did.
so, clearly i was correct to criticize her policies as being driven by politics, rather than science, and being doomed to failure - because that's what was true, and that's what actually happened.
over here on the left, we've been pointing out for decades that, as bad as the republicans are, the democrats are often even worse. and, what's been happening over the last few years is that the democrats are getting worse and worse with each passing year, while the republicans are - very - slowly getting better.
right now, they're both terrible.
send her the supplies - her policies have created a mess, and she needs them. then, make a big deal out of how incompetent her handling of the situation was, and how she needed to come begging to washington for help, because she couldn't figure it out on her own. i'd support that; that's reflective of reality.
but, don't make old people suffer for the mistake of the governor. that's not fair...it's not their fault....
and, there's no such thing as "central europe".
are the czechs eastern or western?
well, it's the sudetenland. obviously.
sarcasm aside, hitler was actually making sort of a valid point - while the area may have been cut out of the austro-hungarian empire, it really was a historically german region called bohemia within the second reich, named after a celtic tribe called the boii, like bavaria. while it was just over the danube, and technically outside of the general boundaries of the first empire, it was also a border region that was deeply dependent on roman hegemony, like the regions around the black sea, or the regions up and down the red sea; these people were barbarians, but only just barely, and they formed a core of the people that crossed the river, at the last end of history.
one could make the same argument about germany, of course - it was technically outside of the empire. but, it was the centre of charlemagne's reich, and the new focal point of western culture in the middle ages. the right argument is that germany became roman, and what i want to do is absorb bohemia along with them (this isn't necessary for the austrians, who were south of the danube, and in the empire the whole time), which is easy to do because they are in the second reich.
in fact, the same argument applies to the slovenians, who i maybe should have included, but didn't because i didn't want to open a can of worms. but, slovenia has a small enough population that you can throw it in there without messing around with it very much - it's 2 million people, and you're looking at another 632 cases and another 9 deaths.
the reason the czechs are considered eastern europe is that they were behind the iron curtain in czechoslavakia, but so were the east germans and nobody considers brandenburg or saxony to be part of a panslavic state. nowadays, the area is primarily slavic speaking, but it's also dominantly r1b, which throws kind of a wrench into it. but, if your argument is that it must be eastern because of the cold war, that's not taking a long enough view of history.
but, i'll acknowledge some ambiguity.
you might disagree. and that's ok.
i'm just closing down tabs.
in all fairness, the united states is not the size of any country in europe. italy, the uk and france each have around 60 million people, which is about the size of the great lakes megaregion, at it's broadest extent (including the gta). spain has about 50 million people, which is roughly equivalent to the bos-wash corridor, and germany has about 80 million which is more than any megaregion in the country, except for the entire eastern seaboard.
but, the european union as a whole has twice the population of the united states, almost. so, getting a good comparison means cutting a piece out of it.
this is essentially the western empire, and excludes the british isles & scandinavia, which kind of make up their own region, as distinct from the area governed by western emperors, popes, carolingians and napoleonic pretenders. together, the brits & swedes have historically represented the opposition to roman hegemony in the west, wherever it's been localized (more frequently in paris than rome, over the last several millennia).
the population of the british isles & scandinavia, together, make up about 93 million people. there are parts of eastern europe that could historically be considered a part of scandinavia, but are better understood as satellite states of russia, in a pan-slavic kind of union, as a successor to the eastern empire. the baltic states are the ones in between.
but, what are the stats in this block of continental western europe that really is it's own thing?
(numbers from the wiki page, as of the date of this post - this is never up to date, take it as a snapshot, i'm trying to make a point)
so, the united states has a ways to go before it catches up, still.
the 90s laptop is functioning. it's slow, and i might uninstall some plugins, but it works.
there is no wireless in this device, so i should be able to catch them, at least. there's no backdoor. and, the image is exceedingly minimal; i winlited it years ago to essentially only be able to stream. most cli tools are missing, outright. and, i can reinstall it quickly when i have to.
the windows 7 machine was not winlited; that might be a required step, moving forward.
after scripts, which includes dropping sysinternals exes in, the system32 directory is only 300+ items and 150 mb. the entire iso is 200 mb. it loads with about 40 mb of ram in system processes (and then has to load firefox...). so, this is a winlited xp that has the same resource footprint as a minimal linux distro, which is what i was going for when i built it - and what i'm going to default to if i can't get it to stay stable.
the internet is full of resource-greedy ad servers, but if i just stick to my blogspot site, i should be able to avoid them bogging the machine down.
installing this image on my other laptop is going to be a problem because it needs sata drivers, and i can't see the install screen. i'd need to find a way to send the setup disc out through the projector out. i'm going to have to try, soon. i'm going to need to flash the bios, though, too. i want to get what i'm doing done, first.
so, i'm going to do some dishes, take a long overdue shower and then sit down and hopefully get some work done this weekend. maybe i can get out for some groceries some time mid week.
i just downloaded my router's log of my usage today, which is since 13:00 and is 1.5 gb lan traffic (downloaded) and 2.4 gb wan traffic, also downloaded.
is it accurate? it seems like a lot of extra traffic on the wan, but 1.5 gb isn't that outrageous for me (2.4 would be a heavier day than today, i would think). that extra gb from the wan is probably all dropped packets. let's see how close it is to what they tell me.
i'm more concerned about the supposed 800 mb of upload traffic. i don't understand that. that doesn't seem right.
so, i'm going to powerwash this again and i'll be back in a few hours...
my off the cuff calculation suggests there's probably closer to 100,000 cases in michigan right now.
again: this is what you have to do, however slowly it's actually getting across.
the president should allow the declaration, send the money and point fingers afterwards - being incompetent in her response to the crisis is not a reason for michiganders to die due to a lack of resources.
but, i've been starkly critical of what i've seen, and have to point to the facts of the matter, which are that the governor's reaction was not science-based.
the first thing she did was close bars & restaurants, while allowing hair salons, markets, places of worship, factories and, most crucially, retirement homes to stay open, as though this was being spread through extra-marital sex, or something. it was a bizarrely political reaction, designed to scapegoat a category of people; worse, it left open the most vulnerable groups to transmit the disease over the most obvious vectors of transmission - work, church and contact with seniors.
so, yes - whitmer botched this terribly, and she should be held accountable for it. but, that's not a reason to withhold supplies when she asks for them. it's not the sick peoples' fault that the governor is an idiot....
