so, i think this summarizes where actual, really existing science is right now with the whole mask thing:
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/06/controversy-covid-19-mask-study-spotlights-messiness-science-during
what the article says is that we don't really have any useful science that demonstrates the effectiveness of mask wearing, but it seems like it makes sense (hrmmn.), so we should probably all do it, under the assumption that eventually the science will work itself out.
see, i'm not even going to really argue with my own summary of the article; i may have been a little snide, but i don't think i've constructed a strawman or otherwise misattributed, and it's almost tautological in terms of presentation - who is going to argue that mask use doesn't make sense in principle, if everybody does it right?
but, that's a suggestion. it's a hunch. it's the articulation of an idea that seems reasonable - but also a mea culpa that we don't actually know if it's actually true or not. it's certainly not a law, or an order, or a decree.
hey, let's be current and trendy in our thinking, in a way that is unusually substantive. this is a scenario where policymakers should be carefully seeking out the intersection of science and law, which i'm actually unusually qualified to talk about. seeking out true intersectionality here requires the ability to interpret the evidence from both components of the intersection, and erect them in a way that is unique to the intersection area.
understanding the legal area means realizing that science needs to be understood in terms of uncertainty, that sometimes scientists will tell you something is certainly true (such as evolution, or anthropogenically induced climate change) and sometimes scientists will tell you something is probably true (like genetic determinants for sexual identity, or the masslessness of specific particles) and sometimes scientists will tell you that they just imagine that something is true without having any evidence to back it up (like the existence of life outside of the solar system, or the idea that mask use stops the spread of viruses in a pandemic). the legal side of the equation needs to understand where the science is on any specific point before legislating, if it seeks to consult it properly. if something is certainly true, specific legal legislation is absolutely required to address it, and so forth, whereas if something really only exists in the mind of the imaginer then the issue is generally best left to whatever research departments, and the legal question reduces to what kind of funding seems reasonable, relative to the magnitude of any social or capital accruement that may come from the thought developing itself into actual science.
understanding the science area means realizing the need to be clear to policy makers about the nature of the reports being presented, under the realization that the issue is going to policy makers that ought to judge it as previously stated. it means being able to understand the science well enough to make that determination, and understanding what that determination actually means, in terms of what kind of funding or specific action is required.
so, then what to say about the quebec mask law and the backlash to it?
https://globalnews.ca/news/7178624/quebec-ombudsman-masks-coronavirus/
i don't have a general concern with the ombudsman, or any other government official, articulating a suggestion to wear masks. that is indeed in line with the science, which is currently at exactly that point, of suggesting that it is probably a good idea.
but, as the science is nether at the probably stage nor the certainty stage, there would not appear to be a sufficient scientific justification at this point for the mandating of masks, and the government of quebec is consequently jumping ahead of itself in implementation. this law is not informed by the science, as it exists, and should be overturned for that reason. there must be clear evidence to infringe on an individual's right to the "security of the person" in such an invasive manner, and the current evidence simply doesn't fit the bar to do so.
that said, i think that most people are interpreting the law as a suggestion. i live in a mask-mandated region, and mask use is not at all widespread, here. i highly doubt that the police are enforcing the law, or doing much of anything at all to uphold it. if you pass a law and the only people that follow it would have followed it without the law existing, and don't enforce it, then it's not really a law, is it? it's just a suggestion...
so, i'm going to wait until they start dragging people away before i get particularly concerned.
Wednesday, July 15, 2020
science, in general, is the opposite of what conservatives call "common sense".
i will usually strenuously oppose "common sense" policies because i'm in solidarity with science.
and, these trumpist border closures - which make intuitive sense to the uneducated, but are not backed by science - are a perfect example of this.
again: i would expect this kind of stupidity from a conservative government, but the liberals are supposed to argue that science > "common science". and, they're not.
there's some things that a government can do that are disappointing, and there are others that indicate a fundamental shift in governing philosophy. this is the latter.
i don't think there's any other liberal government in canadian history that would have tossed the science in the trash and caved into populist ignorance, like this. it's in line with my analysis over many years now, but it's really historic - this is an ideological shift in the ruling party, and one that is going to dramatically alter my view of the liberals as a science-based party for many years into the future.
and, they can't win without people like me, even if i'm currently in a dead riding.
https://theconversation.com/we-cant-trust-common-sense-but-we-can-trust-science-53042
i will usually strenuously oppose "common sense" policies because i'm in solidarity with science.
and, these trumpist border closures - which make intuitive sense to the uneducated, but are not backed by science - are a perfect example of this.
again: i would expect this kind of stupidity from a conservative government, but the liberals are supposed to argue that science > "common science". and, they're not.
there's some things that a government can do that are disappointing, and there are others that indicate a fundamental shift in governing philosophy. this is the latter.
i don't think there's any other liberal government in canadian history that would have tossed the science in the trash and caved into populist ignorance, like this. it's in line with my analysis over many years now, but it's really historic - this is an ideological shift in the ruling party, and one that is going to dramatically alter my view of the liberals as a science-based party for many years into the future.
and, they can't win without people like me, even if i'm currently in a dead riding.
https://theconversation.com/we-cant-trust-common-sense-but-we-can-trust-science-53042
so, that's what i did yesterday. the map cuts off, but the town i ended up in was tilbury....for a few minutes, anyways - enough to buy the pills and smoke a joint in a farmer's field and get out.
while it's about the same distance to leamington as it is to tilbury (my route is about 5 km's shorter than google's in either direction), this was a slightly longer ride, because a large part of it was through a residential area, and there were a lot more lights. i left at about 13:00, i got to the store about 17:30, i left about 18:30 and i was home before 23:00. so, i got the space covered in around 4.5 hours in either direction. considering that i stopped for at least five smoke & mt dew breaks in both directions, 3-3.5 hours of actual biking is about right. hey, if you can do that without stopping, then sign up for the olympics; in reality, you actually take the car to the corner store to get milk, don't you? ugh.
i got home, took a shower and slept for quite a while. i haven't even eaten yet...
how big is windsor, really? it's a weird layout for a city, and i suspect it's the same thing all around the peninsula - i don't feel like i left fully urban civilization until i got out of saint joachim., but it's only because i took the lakeshore drive, and i got some pictures of lac st clair (something i hadn't seen before). it's probably the same thing around the detroit river into lake erie, but i haven't done the trek, yet.
i'm not exaggerating - it's just a string of houses up the road along the lake for miles, of varying composition. some of these houses i drove by were legit 30 room mansions, while there was one section of particularly old and dilapidated housing that seemed like it might have been a small indigenous reserve (i don't know if that's true). i'm sure that the wealth disparity has a lot to do with which areas are more flood prone, but for the purposes of biking, that's not all that important. i'm just pointing out the long string of housing up the coast of the lake that makes it seem like you're still in the city, after you've left it behind miles and miles ago. there's small communities on the main road, county road 2, but if i had taken that route, i'd have been taking an old highway with no shoulders through much of it, and often driving through fields, making it seem more like a ride through the country. indeed, you'll note that i ended up back on a road that runs directly from windsor (where it is called cabana road) to tilbury (where it is called mill street) and that i may have saved some time by just staying on it, but the trade-off is that cabana switches to rural almost right off the 401, so almost the entire road would have been through farmland and old roads. they actually announced a project to uplift the road recently, and if i could put in a request to mayor dilbert to just extend the bike line all the way to tilbury...
i got 40 days worth, though!
how much further can i go than tilbury? i felt this ride, near the end, more than i felt the last one, even if the distance was about the same. so, i don't know. i know that if i have to go to chatham-kent, or to some other small town on the way to london and/or hamilton (and/or niagara) then i'm going to need to leave earlier.
keeping the windows closed overnight actually seems to have resolved the issue i was dealing with yesterday, but only because i've got some latent heat built up in the floors, now, i think. it's about time to open them for the day...
this border closure is not a way to stick-it to the americans. it hurts us far more than it hurts them.
and, the liberals right now are run by sophomoric idiots that should go back to school, so nobody should be surprised that they threw away what will probably be their best, last chance at a majority, before justin trudeau ends up in the dung-heap of history, where he belongs.
no.
the closed border is a symbol of the triumph of trumpism. you're all trumpists, now.
and, you're all too stupid to understand it.
and, the liberals right now are run by sophomoric idiots that should go back to school, so nobody should be surprised that they threw away what will probably be their best, last chance at a majority, before justin trudeau ends up in the dung-heap of history, where he belongs.
no.
the closed border is a symbol of the triumph of trumpism. you're all trumpists, now.
and, you're all too stupid to understand it.
stop.
do you think this is the only example in history where border closures actually worked?
that it's the one, magical counter-example to the mountains of peer-reviewed science that reject border closures as pseudo-science?
grow up. we need real world solutions to real world problems, not magical thinking based on pseudo-science.
do you think this is the only example in history where border closures actually worked?
that it's the one, magical counter-example to the mountains of peer-reviewed science that reject border closures as pseudo-science?
grow up. we need real world solutions to real world problems, not magical thinking based on pseudo-science.
i repeat: closing the border is not about science. the science is crystal clear: closing borders does nothing to stop the spread of diseases, at all. no, it is not working. we're just behind them on the curve.
what closing borders as a result of this is about is the government pushing a xenophobic, populist agenda to try to create enough of a distraction for them to avoid an election that they are unlikely to do well in.
and, here's the sneaky part: they'd actually be better off to dissolve parliament, while the opposition is in disarray. if you had an election tomorrow, the liberals might win back a majority. their chances of such a thing will decrease daily, as we continue to catch up to the americans on the curve.
what closing borders as a result of this is about is the government pushing a xenophobic, populist agenda to try to create enough of a distraction for them to avoid an election that they are unlikely to do well in.
and, here's the sneaky part: they'd actually be better off to dissolve parliament, while the opposition is in disarray. if you had an election tomorrow, the liberals might win back a majority. their chances of such a thing will decrease daily, as we continue to catch up to the americans on the curve.
...and, as much as i'm frustrated by the government's unscientific handling of the situation, if we go through all of this twitter-feed pseudo-science and come off no better than the united states in the end, except now with a 90% debt-to-gdp ratio, which we could have avoided by following the science, will that lead to some clearer thinking in the population about putting people with guns on the streets and telling people where they can or can't go?
so, with the most recent border extension, i'm now in the awkward position of actively cheering on the spread of this virus in canada....
there is no science underlying the border "closures", which are truly no such thing, and no meaningful reason at all (except the logical fallacy of "common sense", which almost always leads to faulty deductions) to think they're having any effect whatsoever on the spread of the virus in canada. there is no reason, at all, right now, to expect that canada will not follow the united states into a major outbreak within the next two-three months, as it has had roughly similar infection rates, relative to population numbers, once you control for the fact that we are about 2-3 months behind the united states on the pandemic curve.
so, i don't think the canadian response to this virus has been very impressive, at all, actually.
i don't think we're doing a better job in containing the virus than they are - the data doesn't support that deduction, remotely.
i don't think that the border closures will stop the upcoming outbreak, which is likely currently in a process of development. wait for it.
and, i don't expect that the outbreak will be any different here when it happens, after you've given it some time to build roots in various communities and maybe even get into some local animals as reservoirs. i saw a shallow grave on somebody's lawn yesterday, and it got me to thinking about this thing getting into the raccoon or fox population, in which case we should expect periodic zoonotic transmission effects, like rabies.
so, what is this utter stupidity that we continue to be subjected to by this backwards, hard-right, populist-nationalist (the word for this is fascist) government?
well, i just described it didn't i?
the border is not closed because of the virus, the border is closed because a very weak liberal minority government is attempting to co-opt a trumpist foreign policy to maintain it's hold on power. not only have they managed to avoid elections (it's very likely that this government would have fallen this month, otherwise), but they haven't even passed a budget. it's a godsend for them, really.
all i can do is request that you don't fall for it.
but, you probably will.
because you're not very smart.
there is no science underlying the border "closures", which are truly no such thing, and no meaningful reason at all (except the logical fallacy of "common sense", which almost always leads to faulty deductions) to think they're having any effect whatsoever on the spread of the virus in canada. there is no reason, at all, right now, to expect that canada will not follow the united states into a major outbreak within the next two-three months, as it has had roughly similar infection rates, relative to population numbers, once you control for the fact that we are about 2-3 months behind the united states on the pandemic curve.
so, i don't think the canadian response to this virus has been very impressive, at all, actually.
i don't think we're doing a better job in containing the virus than they are - the data doesn't support that deduction, remotely.
i don't think that the border closures will stop the upcoming outbreak, which is likely currently in a process of development. wait for it.
and, i don't expect that the outbreak will be any different here when it happens, after you've given it some time to build roots in various communities and maybe even get into some local animals as reservoirs. i saw a shallow grave on somebody's lawn yesterday, and it got me to thinking about this thing getting into the raccoon or fox population, in which case we should expect periodic zoonotic transmission effects, like rabies.
so, what is this utter stupidity that we continue to be subjected to by this backwards, hard-right, populist-nationalist (the word for this is fascist) government?
well, i just described it didn't i?
the border is not closed because of the virus, the border is closed because a very weak liberal minority government is attempting to co-opt a trumpist foreign policy to maintain it's hold on power. not only have they managed to avoid elections (it's very likely that this government would have fallen this month, otherwise), but they haven't even passed a budget. it's a godsend for them, really.
all i can do is request that you don't fall for it.
but, you probably will.
because you're not very smart.
Tuesday, July 14, 2020
i want to be clear, though.
i didn't spend the morning complaining that i'm cold.
i spent the morning - since i woke up not long after midnight - physically unable to do much of anything because i was too cold to actually function. i did the things i usually do when i'm cold - dishes in hot water, cooking pasta on the stove, two sweaters and a winter jacket at one point and then three hot showers, but they were fleeting and i just ended up in my blanket after each one.
i don't know what would have happened had i tried to shiver through it. what i know is that i was cold enough that i instinctively didn't do that, and i assume my instincts asserted themselves for good reason.
ok. one, two...go...
i didn't spend the morning complaining that i'm cold.
i spent the morning - since i woke up not long after midnight - physically unable to do much of anything because i was too cold to actually function. i did the things i usually do when i'm cold - dishes in hot water, cooking pasta on the stove, two sweaters and a winter jacket at one point and then three hot showers, but they were fleeting and i just ended up in my blanket after each one.
i don't know what would have happened had i tried to shiver through it. what i know is that i was cold enough that i instinctively didn't do that, and i assume my instincts asserted themselves for good reason.
ok. one, two...go...
in the short run, i'm realizing that i can't live with older white men that have recent genetic history in the northern parts of eurasia. we're just not evolved for the same environmental conditions - he likes it cool and dry, because he's adapted to it; i like it hot and humid, because that's my own adaptation.
even if the issue right now is more about outside than inside...
it's looking like it's popped up a little closer to 25, so i'm going to see if i can get out of bed and get dressed.
even if the issue right now is more about outside than inside...
it's looking like it's popped up a little closer to 25, so i'm going to see if i can get out of bed and get dressed.
should we do this?
should atheists get a bunch of guns and just show up somewhere near the equator and throw the muslims and/or catholics (or jews. whatever.) in the ocean and take it?
we don't have a homeland, and our aristocrats are afraid of us, and keep bringing the abrahamists here to overrun us. it's kind of like...
if you guys want canada, maybe we can trade, or something?
should atheists get a bunch of guns and just show up somewhere near the equator and throw the muslims and/or catholics (or jews. whatever.) in the ocean and take it?
we don't have a homeland, and our aristocrats are afraid of us, and keep bringing the abrahamists here to overrun us. it's kind of like...
if you guys want canada, maybe we can trade, or something?
so, do i want to go back to where i came from?
well, if i knew where i came from...
maybe.
the problem i have with warm climates is that they're full of muslims and felids. i think i can mostly avoid the crocs, but the leopards will come right in the house to get you, if you let them. muslims, too. if there was a forward thinking, atheistic-driven, anti-abrahamic society near the equator and the ocean somewhere...
there isn't.
i'd pick south america over the muslim countries in asia and africa, but they're all catholic, and consequently not very appealing as destinations to move to.
if i could design my own planet, right? i'd make all the muslims white and send them to the north pole, so that we could build atheistic utopias in the more appealing places. after we ban hurricanes by instituting daily pole reversals. or, maybe you just make the planet all land, except lakes, and put the fresh water underground. yeah...
well, if i knew where i came from...
maybe.
the problem i have with warm climates is that they're full of muslims and felids. i think i can mostly avoid the crocs, but the leopards will come right in the house to get you, if you let them. muslims, too. if there was a forward thinking, atheistic-driven, anti-abrahamic society near the equator and the ocean somewhere...
there isn't.
i'd pick south america over the muslim countries in asia and africa, but they're all catholic, and consequently not very appealing as destinations to move to.
if i could design my own planet, right? i'd make all the muslims white and send them to the north pole, so that we could build atheistic utopias in the more appealing places. after we ban hurricanes by instituting daily pole reversals. or, maybe you just make the planet all land, except lakes, and put the fresh water underground. yeah...
i get these nasty cases of the chills, from time to time, but they tend to pass after an hour or two. i've been shivering since i woke up around 3:00, unable to stop my teeth from chattering for hours at a time. why is this happening?
the air conditioner upstairs is no doubt a part of the problem, and i hate air conditioners and would disown my children for ever using them, but i think what actually happened is that the temperature caved in very far, very fast. so, it went from 35 degrees to 17 degrees in a few days. while 17 degrees is not particularly cold, the difference is quite massive. i've essentially been unable to adjust, and been unable to do anything until it passes.
i've taken three scalding hot showers this morning, each upwards of an hour in length, and i still just can't stop shivering. i can't escape this blanket, which is at least trapping my body heat from escaping.
still. it's reminding me that my genes are not from the north, and that whatever epigenetic reactions occurred in last week's blissfully beautiful heat wave don't exactly want to let go. it's like you let the cytosine loose in a candy shop, creating what may be referred to as a cytosine storm.
yeah. well, this whole migration thing is kind of undoing evolution in a way, isn't it? you're not supposed to dramatically change climates within a few generations. my dna was in warmer climates for thousands, if not millions, of years; i evolved to live in humid, hot places. that's what i am. and, i wonder if i shouldn't undo the mistake made in my genome's recent history, and get these genes back into the climate they were adapted to.
they're not proliferating up here, in this igloo carved out of the side of a glacier, that's for sure. i'm not evolved for it, and the other genomes seem to realize it.
it would help if i could figure out where the genome needs to go to get back home, to the adapted latitude.
for now, we should get some more summer-like temperatures this afternoon. as it is, i'm basically forced to put the day on hold and sit inside until i stop shivering. and, i'm feeling a tad better as i'm typing...
the air conditioner upstairs is no doubt a part of the problem, and i hate air conditioners and would disown my children for ever using them, but i think what actually happened is that the temperature caved in very far, very fast. so, it went from 35 degrees to 17 degrees in a few days. while 17 degrees is not particularly cold, the difference is quite massive. i've essentially been unable to adjust, and been unable to do anything until it passes.
i've taken three scalding hot showers this morning, each upwards of an hour in length, and i still just can't stop shivering. i can't escape this blanket, which is at least trapping my body heat from escaping.
still. it's reminding me that my genes are not from the north, and that whatever epigenetic reactions occurred in last week's blissfully beautiful heat wave don't exactly want to let go. it's like you let the cytosine loose in a candy shop, creating what may be referred to as a cytosine storm.
yeah. well, this whole migration thing is kind of undoing evolution in a way, isn't it? you're not supposed to dramatically change climates within a few generations. my dna was in warmer climates for thousands, if not millions, of years; i evolved to live in humid, hot places. that's what i am. and, i wonder if i shouldn't undo the mistake made in my genome's recent history, and get these genes back into the climate they were adapted to.
they're not proliferating up here, in this igloo carved out of the side of a glacier, that's for sure. i'm not evolved for it, and the other genomes seem to realize it.
it would help if i could figure out where the genome needs to go to get back home, to the adapted latitude.
for now, we should get some more summer-like temperatures this afternoon. as it is, i'm basically forced to put the day on hold and sit inside until i stop shivering. and, i'm feeling a tad better as i'm typing...
Monday, July 13, 2020
they have this fixation on carter.
listen. i'll be 40 in a few months, and jimmy carter had been removed from office before i was even born. it's a matter of days, but it's true. that means that nobody under 40 has the slightest recollection, and you'd really have to be pushing into your 60s...
is that the point, though? is this really about older voters? it's a playbook that's running thin, to say the least. they said clinton was just like carter, and to an extent he actually was, but it didn't help them win (ross perot, notwithstanding). they said obama was just like carter, and he won twice on the back of a youth vote that probably largely couldn't tell the difference between carter and clinton if you held up pictures of them - something that is only more true now. if this is the best they got...
it's not. it's a lazy article, and that in itself may be reflective of something.
honestly? if i was a hawk, i would pick biden. trump's decision to not bomb iran at the beginning of the year really turned him into a paper tiger. he's not remotely scary to anybody, because everybody knows that he bluffs 100% of the time, and folds 100% of the time. he's actually probably the most predictable commander-in-chief, ever - and the predictability is around the reality that he's both an isolationist and a pacifist.
biden, on the other hand, like clinton one may recall, is getting the endorsement of neo-cons and interventionists more or less across the board. he's not likely to base his foreign policy on bluffing, and he's far more likely to actually utilize the substantive hard power at his availability, to advance the interests of his clients (who is whose client, really, though?).
it's a very hard choice, if you're standing outside the country and primarily concerned about international issues, including global warming and foreign policy. nothing i said should be meant to even suggest that trump won't cave and do something stupid at the last minute. an invasion of the faulklands, or maybe grenada if they can't even figure out how to get by the argentinians, is increasingly seemingly less like satire - it's exactly the kind of surreal theatre that this administration would see the upside in.
but, despite being abominable on the climate, trump's track record and general demeanour seems like the less scary option, in the long run, if you're looking to seriously minimize war over the next 4-8 years. he's the isolationist, here; biden's the internationalist. and, i hope the country at least understands the decision it has in front of it, if this becomes a ballot issue, which it likely won't.
the election is probably going to mostly be about the virus, and in the end may largely reduce to a referendum on forced distancing measures and mandatory mask use. the talking heads may not even get a microphone, this time - americans are going to have more pressing details directly in front of them than trying to sort through an altruistic decision about empire-building.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/12/biden-is-wrong-choice-lead-west-through-cold-war-20/
listen. i'll be 40 in a few months, and jimmy carter had been removed from office before i was even born. it's a matter of days, but it's true. that means that nobody under 40 has the slightest recollection, and you'd really have to be pushing into your 60s...
is that the point, though? is this really about older voters? it's a playbook that's running thin, to say the least. they said clinton was just like carter, and to an extent he actually was, but it didn't help them win (ross perot, notwithstanding). they said obama was just like carter, and he won twice on the back of a youth vote that probably largely couldn't tell the difference between carter and clinton if you held up pictures of them - something that is only more true now. if this is the best they got...
it's not. it's a lazy article, and that in itself may be reflective of something.
honestly? if i was a hawk, i would pick biden. trump's decision to not bomb iran at the beginning of the year really turned him into a paper tiger. he's not remotely scary to anybody, because everybody knows that he bluffs 100% of the time, and folds 100% of the time. he's actually probably the most predictable commander-in-chief, ever - and the predictability is around the reality that he's both an isolationist and a pacifist.
biden, on the other hand, like clinton one may recall, is getting the endorsement of neo-cons and interventionists more or less across the board. he's not likely to base his foreign policy on bluffing, and he's far more likely to actually utilize the substantive hard power at his availability, to advance the interests of his clients (who is whose client, really, though?).
it's a very hard choice, if you're standing outside the country and primarily concerned about international issues, including global warming and foreign policy. nothing i said should be meant to even suggest that trump won't cave and do something stupid at the last minute. an invasion of the faulklands, or maybe grenada if they can't even figure out how to get by the argentinians, is increasingly seemingly less like satire - it's exactly the kind of surreal theatre that this administration would see the upside in.
but, despite being abominable on the climate, trump's track record and general demeanour seems like the less scary option, in the long run, if you're looking to seriously minimize war over the next 4-8 years. he's the isolationist, here; biden's the internationalist. and, i hope the country at least understands the decision it has in front of it, if this becomes a ballot issue, which it likely won't.
the election is probably going to mostly be about the virus, and in the end may largely reduce to a referendum on forced distancing measures and mandatory mask use. the talking heads may not even get a microphone, this time - americans are going to have more pressing details directly in front of them than trying to sort through an altruistic decision about empire-building.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/12/biden-is-wrong-choice-lead-west-through-cold-war-20/
the divisional court office is still not answering the phone, although they at least have a voice message set up, now
i'm getting the impression that this process may take a long time, but i have little choice but to wait. i'm not going to let the system just throw this case aside; this case will at least be heard, and we'll see what the next judge up the ladder says, in the end.
what i'm waiting for is the actual office to open, because they've told me that they can't really check anything until they're physically back in the office. so, i'll try again in a few days. i really don't have any other option.
i'm getting the impression that this process may take a long time, but i have little choice but to wait. i'm not going to let the system just throw this case aside; this case will at least be heard, and we'll see what the next judge up the ladder says, in the end.
what i'm waiting for is the actual office to open, because they've told me that they can't really check anything until they're physically back in the office. so, i'll try again in a few days. i really don't have any other option.
i got distracted this morning with...
this:
https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2017/02/zgoombah-lot-of-confused-soccer-moms.html
that's actually the end of the dtk sequence, meaning it's the last major thread that came up and continued, even as posts (obviously) continue forward.
but, i noticed some censorship, so i got it down asap.
this:
https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2017/02/zgoombah-lot-of-confused-soccer-moms.html
that's actually the end of the dtk sequence, meaning it's the last major thread that came up and continued, even as posts (obviously) continue forward.
but, i noticed some censorship, so i got it down asap.
unexpected crash, there. i don't think i lost anything.
what's going on with me?
1) this is the most current pertinent information involving the court case:
For cases that were scheduled prior to the suspension of normal court operations to dates after September 4, 2020, hearings will be proceed on the scheduled dates. The Divisional Court will provide further directions at a later date as to whether these matters will proceed in person or remotely, and whether documents are to be filed electronically in accordance with this Notice to the Profession.
All previously scheduled in-person matters that are now cancelled may be rescheduled for hearing by videoconference or other means directed by the court pursuant to this Notice to the Profession.
Any previously scheduled in-person matters that are now cancelled, and which are not rescheduled for hearing by videoconference, will not be scheduled for in-person hearings until further Notice to the Profession, and will be scheduled thereafter in accordance with a scheduling protocol that will be provided by way of Notice to the Profession at a future date.
so, first i'm going to need to wait until they allow in-person hearings and then i'll need to reschedule...
the office that i'm suing is probably closed for the summer, or at least the lawyers are probably at home. i guess there's not really anywhere else to go. there's an off chance they might be open because of that, actually.
so, i'll be lucky if i get this rescheduled by this time next year, frankly.
i actually think that this is more or less the worst way to digitize this. the serving and filing process is archaic, and for largely no obvious reason at this point, but there's a certain level of reality in having a judge in front of you that i find more comforting. for a case like this, where i'm suing the police and likely to keep going kind of thing, i know that the system is stacked against me. it would be convenient if i lost my connection, then, wouldn't it?
i'd have to go to the library or something because i don't want the pipe into my house to be very big. i've been over that. i want a skinny, stable line into the house in order to frustrate the intelligence agencies, and what i have actually doesn't fit zoom's minimum requirements (although i can stream over youtube just fine. i'm sure it would work...).
but, i don't want to mess with this in this way. if this was a divorce hearing or something, ok, fine. but, when i'm suing the police for brutality, i want my time directly in front of the judge, and i want to be able to get into a shouting match on the floor if i need to without being able to be muted or shut down. they can drag me out if they have to, but they're not just unplugging me, i won't let it be that easy to get rid of me.
i'm going to call in the morning, though, to see if they're open and if we can talk about all of these motions i've got running. will they be scheduling requests for written motions during this time? because maybe we might want to get this dealt with first, anyways.
2) i've now made it through four quarters of legal marijuana, which adds up to an ounce, since the second week of june when i kind of gave up on detroit for the year. what's the report on this?
i last complained about a solei brand that had much less thc in it than advertised, and didn't really succeed in actually getting me high, it just made me very tired. i could have smoked more of it, i suppose, but that's not what i want to do - i want to smoke pinners for about a week, and get consistently stoned due to low tolerance, and note that this was always successful with black market bud - i could roll up an 1/8th in a cigarette and feel it for four hours, so long as it was the first couple of rolls on the quarter, and i hadn't been smoking much or at all in a while. while i was not at all impressed, the border closure put me in a bit of a fit; i decided that i could either sit inside and bitch at the neighbours all summer or just adjust for a bit, and i chose the latter. so, i bought something else...
the store had a deal on something called raider kush, which was coming in around 21% thc, so i took a run at it. again: i ended up spending less than $65 for a quarter, after taxes. i can't complain about this on a price level, it's not that bad, so long as the product is acceptable.
i found this brand acceptable, if not outstanding. the first batch produced me 40 joints and lasted ten days, which is about in line with what i noticed previously, but the pot was a little bit stronger. i started picking up a bit of tolerance near the end of the second quarter, but i still managed 38 joints out of it. that is suggesting to me that i'm going to need to get through at least a half an ounce before i start building tolerance, for future head caves. but, i'm also thinking about ways to adjust consumption.
what's going on with me?
1) this is the most current pertinent information involving the court case:
For cases that were scheduled prior to the suspension of normal court operations to dates after September 4, 2020, hearings will be proceed on the scheduled dates. The Divisional Court will provide further directions at a later date as to whether these matters will proceed in person or remotely, and whether documents are to be filed electronically in accordance with this Notice to the Profession.
All previously scheduled in-person matters that are now cancelled may be rescheduled for hearing by videoconference or other means directed by the court pursuant to this Notice to the Profession.
Any previously scheduled in-person matters that are now cancelled, and which are not rescheduled for hearing by videoconference, will not be scheduled for in-person hearings until further Notice to the Profession, and will be scheduled thereafter in accordance with a scheduling protocol that will be provided by way of Notice to the Profession at a future date.
so, first i'm going to need to wait until they allow in-person hearings and then i'll need to reschedule...
the office that i'm suing is probably closed for the summer, or at least the lawyers are probably at home. i guess there's not really anywhere else to go. there's an off chance they might be open because of that, actually.
so, i'll be lucky if i get this rescheduled by this time next year, frankly.
i actually think that this is more or less the worst way to digitize this. the serving and filing process is archaic, and for largely no obvious reason at this point, but there's a certain level of reality in having a judge in front of you that i find more comforting. for a case like this, where i'm suing the police and likely to keep going kind of thing, i know that the system is stacked against me. it would be convenient if i lost my connection, then, wouldn't it?
i'd have to go to the library or something because i don't want the pipe into my house to be very big. i've been over that. i want a skinny, stable line into the house in order to frustrate the intelligence agencies, and what i have actually doesn't fit zoom's minimum requirements (although i can stream over youtube just fine. i'm sure it would work...).
but, i don't want to mess with this in this way. if this was a divorce hearing or something, ok, fine. but, when i'm suing the police for brutality, i want my time directly in front of the judge, and i want to be able to get into a shouting match on the floor if i need to without being able to be muted or shut down. they can drag me out if they have to, but they're not just unplugging me, i won't let it be that easy to get rid of me.
i'm going to call in the morning, though, to see if they're open and if we can talk about all of these motions i've got running. will they be scheduling requests for written motions during this time? because maybe we might want to get this dealt with first, anyways.
2) i've now made it through four quarters of legal marijuana, which adds up to an ounce, since the second week of june when i kind of gave up on detroit for the year. what's the report on this?
i last complained about a solei brand that had much less thc in it than advertised, and didn't really succeed in actually getting me high, it just made me very tired. i could have smoked more of it, i suppose, but that's not what i want to do - i want to smoke pinners for about a week, and get consistently stoned due to low tolerance, and note that this was always successful with black market bud - i could roll up an 1/8th in a cigarette and feel it for four hours, so long as it was the first couple of rolls on the quarter, and i hadn't been smoking much or at all in a while. while i was not at all impressed, the border closure put me in a bit of a fit; i decided that i could either sit inside and bitch at the neighbours all summer or just adjust for a bit, and i chose the latter. so, i bought something else...
the store had a deal on something called raider kush, which was coming in around 21% thc, so i took a run at it. again: i ended up spending less than $65 for a quarter, after taxes. i can't complain about this on a price level, it's not that bad, so long as the product is acceptable.
i found this brand acceptable, if not outstanding. the first batch produced me 40 joints and lasted ten days, which is about in line with what i noticed previously, but the pot was a little bit stronger. i started picking up a bit of tolerance near the end of the second quarter, but i still managed 38 joints out of it. that is suggesting to me that i'm going to need to get through at least a half an ounce before i start building tolerance, for future head caves. but, i'm also thinking about ways to adjust consumption.
i mentioned this. i suggested i might binge when it's legalized if i can find something i like (a process that took a while), but, in the long run, legalization is likely to dramatically cut my usage down. see, the reason i smoked everything when i bought it is that i didn't want it in the house! so, for example, i'd buy a quarter around dec 17th or so and essentially smoke through saturnalia, usually stopping in the first week of january (supply depending) but leaving a nice spliff for my birthday on the 13th. i might keep doing something like that, even if i lose my july headcave, in the end (although i'm enjoying the heat, that's the real reason i've kept going). but, the reason i started doing it is that i didn't want there to randomly be drugs in the house, in case any of these cops that likes to follow me around ever decided to come in...it really developed out of a habit of buying too much to make sure i had enough and then smoking it really fast to get rid of it...
these concerns are, of course, no longer very pressing. so, i don't need to binge smoke - i can leave some in the cupboard, for later. ok. but, how do i get used to that? that's a huge change, after 25 years of treating it as this reactive thing that needs to be consumed as fast as possible.
first, i need to switch to rolling tobacco as filler rather than cigarettes, a switch i made on the first quarter but couldn't entirely extricate myself from, as having a pack means having a smoke as a chaser on the way back. but, i can't be doing that, as a habit. so, i actually spent the first three quarters psyching myself up about trying to smoke pot without a cigarette chaser, and finally got to it on the fourth. having rolling tobacco in the house means exactly that, and as a former smoker i'm apprehensive about it. but, i at least got through most of the fourth quarter without the chaser. that's a start in normalizing myself to this new reality.
after the second quarter, i guesstimated i'd have about 20 joints left in the 50 g pack of rolling tobacco i bought, so i bought a third quarter, and i actually only got 27 joints of it. as i was noticing some tolerance at the end, and a more potent brand had come on to the market, i tried the more potent brand, instead. why did i get so few joints? what i'll say is this - i noticed almost no stems in the first two, and probably close to a gram worth of stems in the third. i may have been rolling slightly bigger joints, but there's no question that this was a shitty count. the offender here was wappa by redecan, who probably sold me a gram worth of stems.
in the olden days, when a scammer sold you stems, you reacted firmly: you didn't buy from that guy anymore. that was unforgiveable. so, i went back to the raider kush for quarter #4.
the smaller number of joints produced meant that the baggie of tobacco mostly got me through the third quarter, and i had to get another for the fourth, with the intent to slowly normalize - even if i wasn't sure entirely how. i got 32 joints out of the fourth, which confirms the wappa as being a variety with a low count, and is reflective of slightly larger joints being rolled; i'm moving from 1/5th-1/6th down to 1/4th-1/5th. that's fine, for now.
i'm probably going to smoke through a fifth quarter, with two aims in mind: (1) to further cement the non-chaser habit to ensure i'm more used to it as normal and (2) so that i'm able to put a sixth quarter in the cupboard along with the remaining tobacco in the pouch for more targeted use, which means for use whenever i finish a project or otherwise want to celebrate something. "normal" is going to be more like four joints/month than four joints/day.
3) for now, the last few days have been a little unproductive, as i've struggled with my sleeping patterns. i hate sleeping, especially when i'm stoned. so, i want to get a few things in order before i get that fifth quarter, like finishing up to the end of 2014, finally. that is something i want to do before i get back into it, and after that i just need to devise some rules for myself and put them in place, so i'm changing my habits around using this stuff. i like to smoke a joint once in a while, but i don't want to be stoned all of the time. balancing that is something i have to learn how to do, and i will, when i actually do it...
Sunday, July 12, 2020
did i break the we corporation scandal?
well, did i break snc-lavelin?
listen: i don't care about who in the corporation did favours for who on behalf of whatever member of the governing clique. we live in a system called capitalism, and everything i've seen described about the situation is just a function of the way that this economic system functions - when you get elected, you do favours for your friends. i'm in favour of abolishing the entire society from the bottom up, it is true, but some crony capitalism at a corporate charity is hardly the thing that's going to get me out there, ripping up parliament.
rather, my concern is about the class war ramifications of the government coming in and offering students work at two-thirds of the minimum wage. the prime minister should resign immediately, but due to his skirting of minimum wage laws and how it affects the labour force in this sector, and not do to some funny accounting that, ultimately, nobody actually cares about.
and, the corollary of that position is that the government owes students a substantive work program at a living wage, as well.
well, did i break snc-lavelin?
listen: i don't care about who in the corporation did favours for who on behalf of whatever member of the governing clique. we live in a system called capitalism, and everything i've seen described about the situation is just a function of the way that this economic system functions - when you get elected, you do favours for your friends. i'm in favour of abolishing the entire society from the bottom up, it is true, but some crony capitalism at a corporate charity is hardly the thing that's going to get me out there, ripping up parliament.
rather, my concern is about the class war ramifications of the government coming in and offering students work at two-thirds of the minimum wage. the prime minister should resign immediately, but due to his skirting of minimum wage laws and how it affects the labour force in this sector, and not do to some funny accounting that, ultimately, nobody actually cares about.
and, the corollary of that position is that the government owes students a substantive work program at a living wage, as well.
listen.
i don't exactly want to claim the ideas in john bolton's book are false. how the fuck would i know?
but, this is john bolton - a man who is a professional liar, and appears to have been thrown out of the white house for trying to lie his way into starting another war.
so, you need to consider the source, here, before you jump to too many conclusions.
i don't know. i really don't. but, i'd probably be more likely to trust the word of a small, hyperactive child than the word of john bolton, who has about as much credibility as a walrus denying getting into the fish pen.
a walrus would probably sound like scooby doo.
"i didn't eat the fish."
sure you didn't....
it's really a measure of the sad decline of any kind of liberal-left, though, when the contemporary fake left is built on the twin pillars of anti-russian conspiracy theories and tell-alls by disgusting neo-cons that have the gall to call other people liars.
this is rock bottom, for the american left. it really is.
i don't exactly want to claim the ideas in john bolton's book are false. how the fuck would i know?
but, this is john bolton - a man who is a professional liar, and appears to have been thrown out of the white house for trying to lie his way into starting another war.
so, you need to consider the source, here, before you jump to too many conclusions.
i don't know. i really don't. but, i'd probably be more likely to trust the word of a small, hyperactive child than the word of john bolton, who has about as much credibility as a walrus denying getting into the fish pen.
a walrus would probably sound like scooby doo.
"i didn't eat the fish."
sure you didn't....
it's really a measure of the sad decline of any kind of liberal-left, though, when the contemporary fake left is built on the twin pillars of anti-russian conspiracy theories and tell-alls by disgusting neo-cons that have the gall to call other people liars.
this is rock bottom, for the american left. it really is.
what does it mean to say that herd immunity will save us from the pandemic? as though it is some kind of "strategy" to get 70% of the population sick to prevent, what? 70% of the population from getting sick? what? this is an absurd narrative, built on a strawman that nobody ever presented.
so, again: we don't have a choice to choose herd immunity as a way out of anything. it's not a way out. rather, suggesting that public policy be based around the inevitability of herd immunity is coming to terms with accepting the reality that there isn't a way out, that this mess doesn't end until we all get the damn virus, and it just more or less burns itself out. we're then left with ways to try to shape the path to this endpoint, rather than deny it's inevitability.
so, if you want to talk about a strategy, that strategy would be trying to prevent the most vulnerable of people from getting the virus, as it inevitably spreads. but, that strategy does not involve the utilization of herd immunity as something that can be deployed, but rather seeks to adjust to it as reality as it presents itself. it would follow that restrictions on the vulnerable could lessen once the population reaches a substantive level of immunity. it's meant as an algorithm for least mortality.
and, if you realize that the algorithm for least mortality necessarily requires sheltering a substantive number of the population, it makes sense to actually bring in policies that would speed up the process.
but, this isn't a decision that we can make, and to suggest that reaching some place of herd immunity will stop an outbreak is asinine; herd immunity is the consequence of the outbreak, and a place we can get to quickly or slowly. that's the policy decisions...
now, what we've learned is that an immunity level of over 20% would appear to be enough to substantively slow the spread of the virus, even if we're only starting just right now to see very high levels of immunity in the hardest hit areas, like new york city.
now, that doesn't mean that every area that got hit hard will develop widespread immunity. it seems to be a developing sad reality that the vectors of spread in some regions were restricted almost entirely to medical facilities; that is, it doesn't seem like there was much spread outside of the actual hospitals, in some regions. that may mean that these regions are still vulnerable to the virus and may see another round of it, but it just brings up the point - this won't end until we get immunity up, one way or the other.
there have been some studies that suggest that asymptomatic carriers may not develop substantive antibodies. but, understand that what this is essentially saying is that the body wiped it out with something else - like t-cells - before the immune system could produce a response. so, it may be the case that people that catch the virus and eliminate it before getting sick don't produce antibodies for it, but that's not a reason to overturn the field of immunology and declare this virus to be unlike any other that we've ever seen. if the virus makes you sick, you will develop immunity to it, even if some people may be able to clear it without invoking an immune response...because it's so weak, in fact.
or, at least, you'd better hope that's true, or you're never going to get a vaccine to work.
all of these things may, indeed, slow down the process of developing mass immunity to this virus, but it doesn't change the inevitable outcome - we will be dealing with this in one way or another until we get to mass immunity, whether we like it or not.
and, it may change in the process, too, forcing us to start all over again. repeatedly...
"mom, why isn't there a vaccine for the common cold?"
so, again: we don't have a choice to choose herd immunity as a way out of anything. it's not a way out. rather, suggesting that public policy be based around the inevitability of herd immunity is coming to terms with accepting the reality that there isn't a way out, that this mess doesn't end until we all get the damn virus, and it just more or less burns itself out. we're then left with ways to try to shape the path to this endpoint, rather than deny it's inevitability.
so, if you want to talk about a strategy, that strategy would be trying to prevent the most vulnerable of people from getting the virus, as it inevitably spreads. but, that strategy does not involve the utilization of herd immunity as something that can be deployed, but rather seeks to adjust to it as reality as it presents itself. it would follow that restrictions on the vulnerable could lessen once the population reaches a substantive level of immunity. it's meant as an algorithm for least mortality.
and, if you realize that the algorithm for least mortality necessarily requires sheltering a substantive number of the population, it makes sense to actually bring in policies that would speed up the process.
but, this isn't a decision that we can make, and to suggest that reaching some place of herd immunity will stop an outbreak is asinine; herd immunity is the consequence of the outbreak, and a place we can get to quickly or slowly. that's the policy decisions...
now, what we've learned is that an immunity level of over 20% would appear to be enough to substantively slow the spread of the virus, even if we're only starting just right now to see very high levels of immunity in the hardest hit areas, like new york city.
now, that doesn't mean that every area that got hit hard will develop widespread immunity. it seems to be a developing sad reality that the vectors of spread in some regions were restricted almost entirely to medical facilities; that is, it doesn't seem like there was much spread outside of the actual hospitals, in some regions. that may mean that these regions are still vulnerable to the virus and may see another round of it, but it just brings up the point - this won't end until we get immunity up, one way or the other.
there have been some studies that suggest that asymptomatic carriers may not develop substantive antibodies. but, understand that what this is essentially saying is that the body wiped it out with something else - like t-cells - before the immune system could produce a response. so, it may be the case that people that catch the virus and eliminate it before getting sick don't produce antibodies for it, but that's not a reason to overturn the field of immunology and declare this virus to be unlike any other that we've ever seen. if the virus makes you sick, you will develop immunity to it, even if some people may be able to clear it without invoking an immune response...because it's so weak, in fact.
or, at least, you'd better hope that's true, or you're never going to get a vaccine to work.
all of these things may, indeed, slow down the process of developing mass immunity to this virus, but it doesn't change the inevitable outcome - we will be dealing with this in one way or another until we get to mass immunity, whether we like it or not.
and, it may change in the process, too, forcing us to start all over again. repeatedly...
"mom, why isn't there a vaccine for the common cold?"
what kind of a demographic effect is this virus having on the united states, in terms of who it is removing from the voter pool?
it seems to have killed off a lot of older new yorkers, most of whom were probably democrats. new york's voting outcomes seem unlikely to be affected much. but, if this case spike in the deep south leads to a lot of deaths amongst older republicans in states like florida and georgia and arizona, it could accelerate some of the demographic trends that democratic strategists have been pointing to for some time now, and i keep claiming are too far down the road to seriously consider.
in georgia, for example, the republicans won in 2016 by 250,000 votes. now, i think democrats have been hoping that the demographic trends in the region are on their side, and that the 2020 election will be a lot closer than that - maybe down to the 50,000 vote tally. to be clear, i think everybody still expects that donald trump is favoured in georgia, it's just that the democrats might be in a good position to give him a good run in 2020 - and could maybe more realistically take the state in 2024 or 2028.
so, if trump's voting pool decreases by upwards of 20,000 people by the time the election happens (an admittedly morbid projection, given that the number of deaths in georgia is currently around 3000, but the number of cases is skyrocketing...), it could give biden a razor thin win, if he's extremely lucky.
in florida, which is seeing very high case loads, the spread was less than 120,000 votes. can trump afford to lose 20-30,000 retiree votes in florida?
as mentioned, these are demographic changes that were occurring, anyways. it's frustrating that the face of generational renewal in the united states after covid-19 may end up being joe biden, but what we see could end up shaped by it in a real way.
and, that opens up the next question, and it's becoming a more serious question - what happens if biden and/or trump actually catch this virus? it'd be likely to make either of them extremely sick, at least.
i'm sorry, joe, but it would be a fitting way for the election to turn.
and, if the full effects of this change in the voting pool are not felt in the 2020 presidential election, or in 2020 congressional elections, they will be felt in the 2022 congressional elections; a substantial increase in the die-off rate of the older generation will shift a lot of urban races in republican states, and very quickly.
i'm not going to do a point by point so much as present a general perception of each candidate. this is the third of three debates, at this point.
https://www.facebook.com/GreenPartyofManitoba/videos/vb.43307539939/959665857837160/?type=2&theater
i'm going to ignore dylan percival-maxwell and courtney howard because one has been disqualified and the other doesn't show up. that leaves 8 candidates. which i'm going to order here in what i consider to be a ranked order.
candidates i might consider voting for:
1) glen murray. i stated previously that glen is the obvious front-runner on paper, and while he has certainly made that point obvious both in terms of his demonstration of wonkery and his general demeanour, he's also appeared frustrated at the kind of hokiness of the whole thing. he's giving off the impression that he thinks these are a bunch of amateurs, and he needs to be careful to avoid being arrogant; on the other hand, a little bit of critical self-analysis is also useful, and if the impression i'm getting is that he thinks this seems poorly run, he's probably right. he just ranted over his rebuttal time twice, and while that might be interpreted by some as not following the rules, what it really does is (accidentally, perhaps) succeed in drawing attention to the futility of the format. the weird thing is that, in addition to being the candidate that is most experienced and most connected, he's actually well to the left of most of the other candidates, even while demonstrating what might be called a set of more reasonable filters than much of the rest of the field. that is, there were certain issues that are currently associated with the contemporary non-populist left that murray had the political intuition to entirely avoid, and almost everybody else just delved into immediately, without any caveats. so, i'm going to state this as clearly as i can: murray is obviously the most qualified candidate here, by a long shot. that doesn't mean he's going to win, but it does mean that how well he does should be gauged as a measure of how serious the party is. it's going to be hard for me to take them seriously, moving forward, if they pick more or less anybody else over murray.
2) dimitri lascaris. i was a little skeptical, but i knew dimitri was well-spoken, at least. he has a strong camera presence, which is increasingly important. his tone of voice sometimes lapsed to a newscaster voice, which he needs to be cognizant of. i wouldn't claim i have a high total level of agreement with dimitri in terms of precise policy views, but he seems to operate in the same ideological space that i do, and in a weak field, that's something. but, this should be read less as an endorsement of lascaris and more as a level of disappointment in the rest of the field.
3) judy green - she comes off as a party-line rule pusher. we would hate each other, as she seems very strict and ordered, and i'm exactly the opposite of that. but, if she implements the platform word for word, as best she can, she's probably as close to the most base definition of an acceptable candidate as is possible.
4) amita kuttner - while she initially came off as somewhat of a space cadet, listening to her talk a little more has uncovered that it's more that she's not the best at communicating. i think that she's trying to articulate a vision of a society run from the top down by perfectly trained bureaucrats, who use their superior expertise and knowledge to save the world. in a sense, it's almost disappointing in it's caricature of the scientist that thinks the nerds will save the world (spoiler alert: they won't). she'd be acting at cross-purposes, then, to a leftist like lascaris, who wants to build a populist movement, and maybe more in conjunction with a technocrat like murray. but, the idea i'm getting across is that she seems to believe that the issue will resolve itself as soon as you get the right system of authority in place. this is worryingly misguided, and she might even deny it, but i can see through it. the question is where she ends up coming down on specific issues, and if this kind of misguided authoritarianism ends up being an asset for a party that seeks to be the country's social conscience, or not. that is, i might put that issue aside if i feel she's a legitimate vote of conscience against a government that needs one, even if i think it's misguided. but, i'd rather support a candidate that is more attached to building a bottom up process than a top down one, and i'm going to have fundamental disagreements with her worldview as a result of that.
candidates that i would never vote for:
5) miriam beddard - she comes off as an arrogant pseudo-intellectual that couldn't organize her way out of a toilet papering.
6) andrew west. andrew is clearly a fiscal conservative from a rural region, and while we know that the greens have these kinds of supporters (mike schreiner is one.), how well he does is going to be an interesting measure of where the green membership actually stands. they've seen an influx in membership, recently, and many of the candidates want to lean left, along with the party itself. where does that leave somebody like andrew west in the future of the green movement? i can tell you that if they pick him, i'll never even consider voting green, ever again, as it would indicate that the minds of the feet on the ground are in actuality too far way from me to treat as temporary allies.
7) david mercer. no right-wing liberals. a priori.
8) anamie paul - her literal flaunting of godwin's law means she automatically loses. that's the rules of the internet, kids. sorry.
https://www.facebook.com/GreenPartyofManitoba/videos/vb.43307539939/959665857837160/?type=2&theater
i'm going to ignore dylan percival-maxwell and courtney howard because one has been disqualified and the other doesn't show up. that leaves 8 candidates. which i'm going to order here in what i consider to be a ranked order.
candidates i might consider voting for:
1) glen murray. i stated previously that glen is the obvious front-runner on paper, and while he has certainly made that point obvious both in terms of his demonstration of wonkery and his general demeanour, he's also appeared frustrated at the kind of hokiness of the whole thing. he's giving off the impression that he thinks these are a bunch of amateurs, and he needs to be careful to avoid being arrogant; on the other hand, a little bit of critical self-analysis is also useful, and if the impression i'm getting is that he thinks this seems poorly run, he's probably right. he just ranted over his rebuttal time twice, and while that might be interpreted by some as not following the rules, what it really does is (accidentally, perhaps) succeed in drawing attention to the futility of the format. the weird thing is that, in addition to being the candidate that is most experienced and most connected, he's actually well to the left of most of the other candidates, even while demonstrating what might be called a set of more reasonable filters than much of the rest of the field. that is, there were certain issues that are currently associated with the contemporary non-populist left that murray had the political intuition to entirely avoid, and almost everybody else just delved into immediately, without any caveats. so, i'm going to state this as clearly as i can: murray is obviously the most qualified candidate here, by a long shot. that doesn't mean he's going to win, but it does mean that how well he does should be gauged as a measure of how serious the party is. it's going to be hard for me to take them seriously, moving forward, if they pick more or less anybody else over murray.
2) dimitri lascaris. i was a little skeptical, but i knew dimitri was well-spoken, at least. he has a strong camera presence, which is increasingly important. his tone of voice sometimes lapsed to a newscaster voice, which he needs to be cognizant of. i wouldn't claim i have a high total level of agreement with dimitri in terms of precise policy views, but he seems to operate in the same ideological space that i do, and in a weak field, that's something. but, this should be read less as an endorsement of lascaris and more as a level of disappointment in the rest of the field.
3) judy green - she comes off as a party-line rule pusher. we would hate each other, as she seems very strict and ordered, and i'm exactly the opposite of that. but, if she implements the platform word for word, as best she can, she's probably as close to the most base definition of an acceptable candidate as is possible.
candidates that i'm not sure if i'd vote for yet or not:
4) amita kuttner - while she initially came off as somewhat of a space cadet, listening to her talk a little more has uncovered that it's more that she's not the best at communicating. i think that she's trying to articulate a vision of a society run from the top down by perfectly trained bureaucrats, who use their superior expertise and knowledge to save the world. in a sense, it's almost disappointing in it's caricature of the scientist that thinks the nerds will save the world (spoiler alert: they won't). she'd be acting at cross-purposes, then, to a leftist like lascaris, who wants to build a populist movement, and maybe more in conjunction with a technocrat like murray. but, the idea i'm getting across is that she seems to believe that the issue will resolve itself as soon as you get the right system of authority in place. this is worryingly misguided, and she might even deny it, but i can see through it. the question is where she ends up coming down on specific issues, and if this kind of misguided authoritarianism ends up being an asset for a party that seeks to be the country's social conscience, or not. that is, i might put that issue aside if i feel she's a legitimate vote of conscience against a government that needs one, even if i think it's misguided. but, i'd rather support a candidate that is more attached to building a bottom up process than a top down one, and i'm going to have fundamental disagreements with her worldview as a result of that.
candidates that i would never vote for:
5) miriam beddard - she comes off as an arrogant pseudo-intellectual that couldn't organize her way out of a toilet papering.
6) andrew west. andrew is clearly a fiscal conservative from a rural region, and while we know that the greens have these kinds of supporters (mike schreiner is one.), how well he does is going to be an interesting measure of where the green membership actually stands. they've seen an influx in membership, recently, and many of the candidates want to lean left, along with the party itself. where does that leave somebody like andrew west in the future of the green movement? i can tell you that if they pick him, i'll never even consider voting green, ever again, as it would indicate that the minds of the feet on the ground are in actuality too far way from me to treat as temporary allies.
7) david mercer. no right-wing liberals. a priori.
8) anamie paul - her literal flaunting of godwin's law means she automatically loses. that's the rules of the internet, kids. sorry.
Saturday, July 11, 2020
how far would she have had to swim?
well, the scale here is just copy and pasted from the scale in the lower right-hand corner of the screen shot. i just opened it up in paste and copied it across.
it's roughly 1 km. if she was out a bit, it'd be less than that. that's a workout, no doubt, but it's not insurmountable, for somebody in athletic shape. i bicycled 110 km a few weeks ago, out of the blue.
the kid says he didn't see her leave the water, but what does that mean? are you going to rely on a child's ability to discern characters a km in the distance, over open water? i dunno.
hey, if they find her mutilated corpse, desecrated by a tree branch, snapped at the sternum three ways, the sanctity of her existence irrelevant to the forces of physics, then so be it.
but, if they don't?
if she vanishes without a trace?
that's a doable swim. certainly. does naya swim?
well, the scale here is just copy and pasted from the scale in the lower right-hand corner of the screen shot. i just opened it up in paste and copied it across.
it's roughly 1 km. if she was out a bit, it'd be less than that. that's a workout, no doubt, but it's not insurmountable, for somebody in athletic shape. i bicycled 110 km a few weeks ago, out of the blue.
the kid says he didn't see her leave the water, but what does that mean? are you going to rely on a child's ability to discern characters a km in the distance, over open water? i dunno.
hey, if they find her mutilated corpse, desecrated by a tree branch, snapped at the sternum three ways, the sanctity of her existence irrelevant to the forces of physics, then so be it.
but, if they don't?
if she vanishes without a trace?
that's a doable swim. certainly. does naya swim?
so, is it possible that naya rivera could have swam out to the other side of the lake and got out and taken off?
it's weird that her life jacket was left in the boat. if she was going for a leisurely swim, she surely would have worn it - she took it with her, and if not for that reason than for what reason? so, was she suicidal? then, why bring it at all? and why bring the kid?
it's almost like she left the life jacket there as evidence that she was last seen in the boat.
it's a very strange situation, all around. and, if they don't find her? well, maybe she's not there...
it's weird that her life jacket was left in the boat. if she was going for a leisurely swim, she surely would have worn it - she took it with her, and if not for that reason than for what reason? so, was she suicidal? then, why bring it at all? and why bring the kid?
it's almost like she left the life jacket there as evidence that she was last seen in the boat.
it's a very strange situation, all around. and, if they don't find her? well, maybe she's not there...
nobody gets a point for the question about facebook. the right answer is that we need to teach kids better critical thinking skills, so the disinformation stops working.
nobody gets a point for the question about rural v urban, which they all reduced to a question about internet access. there are deep changes coming to rural areas that are going to blur the difference between urban and rural, and fundamentally change the concept of a rural settlement. increasing internet access to these regions is going to a part of the changing infrastructure, but it's such a shallow point to hit on. the actual answer is that the growth of exurban regions is likely to blur the differences between rural and urban regions, as rural north america really goes through a sort of reformation.
nobody gets a point for the question about how to work with indigenous groups, as everybody just produced politically correct boilerplate.
there were apparently no questions about climate change policy, and almost no discussion of it at all.
nobody gets a point for the question about rural v urban, which they all reduced to a question about internet access. there are deep changes coming to rural areas that are going to blur the difference between urban and rural, and fundamentally change the concept of a rural settlement. increasing internet access to these regions is going to a part of the changing infrastructure, but it's such a shallow point to hit on. the actual answer is that the growth of exurban regions is likely to blur the differences between rural and urban regions, as rural north america really goes through a sort of reformation.
nobody gets a point for the question about how to work with indigenous groups, as everybody just produced politically correct boilerplate.
there were apparently no questions about climate change policy, and almost no discussion of it at all.
i believe in free voting, although it may be reasonable to bring up the issue with certain members that consistently vote against the party. nobody gets a point for that.
on the question of vote splitting with the ndp, i think the greens should actually be aggressively positioning themselves to replace the ndp. but, can you represent multiple parties in canada? that would be the answer, of course - have somebody run simultaneously for the greens and ndp and then run that one person for both parties. standing down is a goofy idea. but, this is something that a preferential ballot would address best...
nobody gets a point for the second thing, either.
on the question of vote splitting with the ndp, i think the greens should actually be aggressively positioning themselves to replace the ndp. but, can you represent multiple parties in canada? that would be the answer, of course - have somebody run simultaneously for the greens and ndp and then run that one person for both parties. standing down is a goofy idea. but, this is something that a preferential ballot would address best...
nobody gets a point for the second thing, either.
the second question actually seemed to be phishing for a discussion of the guaranteed income, but it got a mishmash of answers that i'm going to zero out across the board.
i would support redistricting to allow for a more equitable population distribution across ridings before i supported any kind of mmp or whatever hybrid system.
i would support redistricting to allow for a more equitable population distribution across ridings before i supported any kind of mmp or whatever hybrid system.
here's a question.
is proportional representation so unpopular in canada that the ndp might have gained more influence by dropping support for it than they would have gained by implementing it?
cause it's this albatross around the neck of the canadian left; support for pr has long been a massively unpopular major reason that the left can't break through here, but it sees it as it's only path to power...
maybe the apparatchiks are wrong. maybe the left would be better off leaving this idea behind and putting more focus back into more participatory forms of democracy...
is proportional representation so unpopular in canada that the ndp might have gained more influence by dropping support for it than they would have gained by implementing it?
cause it's this albatross around the neck of the canadian left; support for pr has long been a massively unpopular major reason that the left can't break through here, but it sees it as it's only path to power...
maybe the apparatchiks are wrong. maybe the left would be better off leaving this idea behind and putting more focus back into more participatory forms of democracy...
so, i'm sorting through this.
i don't consider the first question to be worth grading. the second question was about proportional representation.
again - i liked dimitri lascaris' answer on proportional representation the best, even though i don't actually support proportional representation. he's pushing the right strategy for aggressive, leftist reform, even if i think this particular reform is neither very left wing nor a very good idea (i would support ranked ballots to help prevent false majorities, but i want to maintain a strong traditional riding system and flat out reject party lists outright. no taxation without representation.). i don't consider my opposition to proportional representation to be a reason to vote against the greens or ndp, even if i actually agree more with the left side of the liberal party, as represented by a stephane dion, on this particular issue than i do with the protest parties. glenn murray was also thinking tactically instead of idealistically, which is good to see/hear. anamie paul was right to question merner & haddad for their horrifically anti-democratic responses, but she basically just reproduced the broken liberal plan.
judy green claims people keep voting against pr because they don't understand it, rather than that they don't support it. amita kuttner claims she'll figure it out when she forms government, suggesting she's maybe been spending too much time under the telescope, lately. these weren't serious answers and deserve particular ridicule.
so, these are the scores for the first question:
lascaris: +1
murray: +1
paul: 0
merner: -1
haddad: -1
kuttner: -2
green -2
i don't consider the first question to be worth grading. the second question was about proportional representation.
again - i liked dimitri lascaris' answer on proportional representation the best, even though i don't actually support proportional representation. he's pushing the right strategy for aggressive, leftist reform, even if i think this particular reform is neither very left wing nor a very good idea (i would support ranked ballots to help prevent false majorities, but i want to maintain a strong traditional riding system and flat out reject party lists outright. no taxation without representation.). i don't consider my opposition to proportional representation to be a reason to vote against the greens or ndp, even if i actually agree more with the left side of the liberal party, as represented by a stephane dion, on this particular issue than i do with the protest parties. glenn murray was also thinking tactically instead of idealistically, which is good to see/hear. anamie paul was right to question merner & haddad for their horrifically anti-democratic responses, but she basically just reproduced the broken liberal plan.
judy green claims people keep voting against pr because they don't understand it, rather than that they don't support it. amita kuttner claims she'll figure it out when she forms government, suggesting she's maybe been spending too much time under the telescope, lately. these weren't serious answers and deserve particular ridicule.
so, these are the scores for the first question:
lascaris: +1
murray: +1
paul: 0
merner: -1
haddad: -1
kuttner: -2
green -2
just as a reality check, i've carefully sorted through posts until the end of august, 2013 (a few days into september, actually) and found 16 posts to add to the travel blog and 0 to add to the others. so, it's clear enough what i'm going to need to do, just let me finish it up until the end of january.
ok, so we're starting to see the kinds of numbers, now, that we were hoping to see at the end of april, it's just taken a little longer.
new york was hit first, so you're looking at what? 5-6 months to get to herd immunity?
we also saw transmission flatten enough to allow for a manageable case load at around 20-30%, although my error analysis suggested the true prevalence of antibodies may have been much higher than reported. subsequent testing on these antibody tests have in fact indicated that they tend to produce more false negatives than false positives, so i had the right line of thinking. but, the point i'm making is that merely having a moderate level of immunity actually seems to have slowed this virus down a lot, meaning it's probably only that initial couple of weeks where immunity is at near zero that hospitals needs to seriously concern themselves about reaching capacity. distancing aside, 20% immunity seems to be putting enough of a dent in transmission to make it manageable...
so, that's just what's happening in the south right now - the virus is running through a population with almost no immunity. this is the first wave. it may take a long time to burn itself out, but it should slow down considerably when immunity gets to around 20%.
up here in canada, it's harder to tell if we've been slowly and quietly inching towards those initial ramp down numbers, or if we managed to actually stop it at a lower rate of precedence through public health measures. you know what i think, but we don't actually know. there's some randomized bloodbank tests underway that should give a better picture...and this will help us understand how vulnerable we remain...
you have to understand that my position from the start of this is that herd immunity isn't a policy decision, it's an inevitable reality. we can't decide to have herd immunity or not; we will have it, whether we like it or not. so, i'm quite adamantly avoiding this idea of needing to take this position that one thing is more important than the other; i'm rather arguing that the public health measures are only going to, at most, slow it down - at great cost.
is new york the first place to actually measure this? are they first to the end of this? they won't be the last - this is going to be reality in most places in the world, in a year, while the anti-immunity idiots sit around waiting for a vaccine.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/10/health/queens-antibody-testing-coronavirus/index.html
new york was hit first, so you're looking at what? 5-6 months to get to herd immunity?
we also saw transmission flatten enough to allow for a manageable case load at around 20-30%, although my error analysis suggested the true prevalence of antibodies may have been much higher than reported. subsequent testing on these antibody tests have in fact indicated that they tend to produce more false negatives than false positives, so i had the right line of thinking. but, the point i'm making is that merely having a moderate level of immunity actually seems to have slowed this virus down a lot, meaning it's probably only that initial couple of weeks where immunity is at near zero that hospitals needs to seriously concern themselves about reaching capacity. distancing aside, 20% immunity seems to be putting enough of a dent in transmission to make it manageable...
so, that's just what's happening in the south right now - the virus is running through a population with almost no immunity. this is the first wave. it may take a long time to burn itself out, but it should slow down considerably when immunity gets to around 20%.
up here in canada, it's harder to tell if we've been slowly and quietly inching towards those initial ramp down numbers, or if we managed to actually stop it at a lower rate of precedence through public health measures. you know what i think, but we don't actually know. there's some randomized bloodbank tests underway that should give a better picture...and this will help us understand how vulnerable we remain...
you have to understand that my position from the start of this is that herd immunity isn't a policy decision, it's an inevitable reality. we can't decide to have herd immunity or not; we will have it, whether we like it or not. so, i'm quite adamantly avoiding this idea of needing to take this position that one thing is more important than the other; i'm rather arguing that the public health measures are only going to, at most, slow it down - at great cost.
is new york the first place to actually measure this? are they first to the end of this? they won't be the last - this is going to be reality in most places in the world, in a year, while the anti-immunity idiots sit around waiting for a vaccine.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/10/health/queens-antibody-testing-coronavirus/index.html
Friday, July 10, 2020
back when i was doing my human origins projects, i needed to create this evasive placeholder group called northeast asians that brought genetic continuity with the west to northern asia. it was a necessity, but largely ignored by the specialist literature because there wasn't any useful evidence of migration, or even a worthwhile mechanism. but the genes say it happened, so i erected it. i then derived a sino-tibetan clade as a hybrid population of "southeast asians", who otherwise became austronesians, and a siberian-like group that became native americans. so, this phantom population (which remains extant in siberia) actually got up and went to america, which is why nobody has traced it, only stopping in china on the way there, and being subsumed by the chinese population - but altering it dramatically. what that means is that the modern northern chinese population, as well as korean and japanese population, would actually have substantive northwest asian ancestry. well, that's what we know; what i'm doing in erecting this phantom population is provide a hypothesis for the movement.
i just came across some pictures of the offspring of a melanesian man and a white woman, and they do not look like either of their parents. they could both pass as chinese. i won't post them here.
while hardly any kind of evidence, it is at least consistent with the theory i developed, which is that the ethnogenesis of the modern chinese actually lies in this somewhat unique process of hybridization between west asian and southeast asian subtypes in multiple layers, but most prominently over a siberian-austronesian mix that was left as collateral in the movement of siberian peoples to the new world.
i'm going to focus, now. i've been sleeping all day...
i just came across some pictures of the offspring of a melanesian man and a white woman, and they do not look like either of their parents. they could both pass as chinese. i won't post them here.
while hardly any kind of evidence, it is at least consistent with the theory i developed, which is that the ethnogenesis of the modern chinese actually lies in this somewhat unique process of hybridization between west asian and southeast asian subtypes in multiple layers, but most prominently over a siberian-austronesian mix that was left as collateral in the movement of siberian peoples to the new world.
i'm going to focus, now. i've been sleeping all day...
it's not in our collective self-interest to taunt the american military personnel we have stationed here. i mean, we do want them here.
listen, the canadian government is trying to build up this anti-american narrative to distract from it's own middling handling of the problem. it's true that the case rates in the united states seem to have diverged from those in canada recently, but we've always been a few months behind them, and if you divide out statistics related to population with that time lag in mind you'll see that canada is doing a little bit better - but not substantively better.
we'll see if the kind of infection rates we're seeing in the deep south make their way to canada in august or september or not. based on any evidence i've seen, that's a reasonable projection - that we will continue to follow them, at levels more proportional to our population levels.
so, the reality is that the contrast is fairly muted, which is why the government is fomenting this anti-american distraction and exaggerating the differences in the process.
i'm not interested in this. from a public health standpoint, the border has been open the whole time, we've just restricted americans coming over by car. the effects of this policy are merely assumed; there's never been any attempt to actually measure what kind of effect this might actually have on reducing transmission. nor is there reason to be optimistic about it; in the abstract, virtually all of the studies ever done on the topic indicate that border closures have almost no efficacy in slowing the spread of pathogens.
so, this is all just empty political rhetoric; the government sought the easiest way out, by fomenting anti-americanism, and it seems to have worked, to some degree, whatever the consequences. opening the border is therefore now a political question, not a public health question. and, my pleas to look at the science are likely to fall to the wayside, as evan solomon takes centre stage over the summer.
i'm not flailing against unwinnable battles. but, i'm profoundly disappointed by the stupidity of all of this, and i can only hope it lifts relatively soon.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/american-military-airforce-members-harassed-winnipeg-1.5644364
listen, the canadian government is trying to build up this anti-american narrative to distract from it's own middling handling of the problem. it's true that the case rates in the united states seem to have diverged from those in canada recently, but we've always been a few months behind them, and if you divide out statistics related to population with that time lag in mind you'll see that canada is doing a little bit better - but not substantively better.
we'll see if the kind of infection rates we're seeing in the deep south make their way to canada in august or september or not. based on any evidence i've seen, that's a reasonable projection - that we will continue to follow them, at levels more proportional to our population levels.
so, the reality is that the contrast is fairly muted, which is why the government is fomenting this anti-american distraction and exaggerating the differences in the process.
i'm not interested in this. from a public health standpoint, the border has been open the whole time, we've just restricted americans coming over by car. the effects of this policy are merely assumed; there's never been any attempt to actually measure what kind of effect this might actually have on reducing transmission. nor is there reason to be optimistic about it; in the abstract, virtually all of the studies ever done on the topic indicate that border closures have almost no efficacy in slowing the spread of pathogens.
so, this is all just empty political rhetoric; the government sought the easiest way out, by fomenting anti-americanism, and it seems to have worked, to some degree, whatever the consequences. opening the border is therefore now a political question, not a public health question. and, my pleas to look at the science are likely to fall to the wayside, as evan solomon takes centre stage over the summer.
i'm not flailing against unwinnable battles. but, i'm profoundly disappointed by the stupidity of all of this, and i can only hope it lifts relatively soon.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/american-military-airforce-members-harassed-winnipeg-1.5644364
ok.
so, what i'm going to do is rewind and make a comprehensive list of all posts that i might any to any other blog. right now, the only thing i've found has to do with the travel blog, but if i rewind i might find something else.
then, i'll decide what to do after.
i expect a list of upwards of 50 posts to add to the travel blog in the end, and little else. i will probably go ahead and add them in bulk, then update everything. that's fine; it's really only stored in monthly journals at bandcamp. that is, updating the travel blog once would actually be pretty painless.
so, what i'm going to do is rewind and make a comprehensive list of all posts that i might any to any other blog. right now, the only thing i've found has to do with the travel blog, but if i rewind i might find something else.
then, i'll decide what to do after.
i expect a list of upwards of 50 posts to add to the travel blog in the end, and little else. i will probably go ahead and add them in bulk, then update everything. that's fine; it's really only stored in monthly journals at bandcamp. that is, updating the travel blog once would actually be pretty painless.
see, this is...
the purpose of the travel blog has shifted somewhat dramatically over time. it was initially set up as a fake account so that if i were to log in to the internet from a coffee shop i wouldn't be exposing my main passwords on the unsecure network. that way, i could still blog safely, remotely.
but, over time, it's expanded to any recollection of an event that occurred when i was out. as such, the early travel blog really needs to be overhauled.
the other three are holding up fairly well, right now.
the thing is that i don't want to do that, so i'm coming up with excuses, and sort of hitting a brick wall with it.
it's two months. let me get the list of changes and see.
the purpose of the travel blog has shifted somewhat dramatically over time. it was initially set up as a fake account so that if i were to log in to the internet from a coffee shop i wouldn't be exposing my main passwords on the unsecure network. that way, i could still blog safely, remotely.
but, over time, it's expanded to any recollection of an event that occurred when i was out. as such, the early travel blog really needs to be overhauled.
the other three are holding up fairly well, right now.
the thing is that i don't want to do that, so i'm coming up with excuses, and sort of hitting a brick wall with it.
it's two months. let me get the list of changes and see.
Thursday, July 9, 2020
so, here's my last december update, subject to that pruning process which will begin very shortly.
1) https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014/12/
2) https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/12/
3) https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2014/12/
4) https://jessicamurraytravelblog.blogspot.com/2014/12/
i want to say those are done for a while, but what am i doing in the pruning process?
i'm going back to the very start, and trying to build consistency around a number of major threads in the blogs, including the following:
1) how much fluff will appear at the politics blog?
2) is the real life narrative in sync with itself? that is, are the narratives complete and self-contained? this applies less to the travel blog.
3) cross-posting from deathtokoalas to the other two blogs, mostly.
the end result will probably be a more focused political side and a more whimsical deathtkoalas side, which is more most of the shuffling around will occur.
i don't know how long this will take, but let's hope it's relatively quick.
2015 will be a slower rebuild, as the smaller blogs haven't had a pass from the politics blog yet. i'm going to do it all at once, though, so it should be faster, in total.
also, what's the posting damage on the deathtokoalas blog? that's 1067 posts for 2014, with monthly posting amounts ranging from 57 (january) to 143 (october). it's looking like a real blog, almost. let me just get these mental lines in order...
1) https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014/12/
2) https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/12/
3) https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2014/12/
4) https://jessicamurraytravelblog.blogspot.com/2014/12/
i want to say those are done for a while, but what am i doing in the pruning process?
i'm going back to the very start, and trying to build consistency around a number of major threads in the blogs, including the following:
1) how much fluff will appear at the politics blog?
2) is the real life narrative in sync with itself? that is, are the narratives complete and self-contained? this applies less to the travel blog.
3) cross-posting from deathtokoalas to the other two blogs, mostly.
the end result will probably be a more focused political side and a more whimsical deathtkoalas side, which is more most of the shuffling around will occur.
i don't know how long this will take, but let's hope it's relatively quick.
2015 will be a slower rebuild, as the smaller blogs haven't had a pass from the politics blog yet. i'm going to do it all at once, though, so it should be faster, in total.
also, what's the posting damage on the deathtokoalas blog? that's 1067 posts for 2014, with monthly posting amounts ranging from 57 (january) to 143 (october). it's looking like a real blog, almost. let me just get these mental lines in order...
this disability benefit thing has become a political issue, despite the reality that almost nobody was eligible for it.
if the canadian government wanted to quickly pass something that would send money to as many of the low income canadians that have not seen extra income from the crisis as is possible, it would send out a large gst rebate. that would be the high impact, quick policy.
if the canadian government wanted to quickly pass something that would send money to as many of the low income canadians that have not seen extra income from the crisis as is possible, it would send out a large gst rebate. that would be the high impact, quick policy.
this is google ad spam, and i had to click on it. had researchers found noah's ark?
https://mydailymagazine.com/could-these-be-the-remains-of/
well, they found some wood in the mountains that was treated by humans, but there's lots of wood in those mountains (and all over the world) that's been treated by humans, and you'd really need a pretty high bar of evidence to demonstrate that the ark belonged to the actual character noah (and i guess you'd by proxy prove the historicity of noah. who lived to be how old? i can't remember. it was measured in centuries though, right?). i don't even know what that high bar of evidence would even be. maybe noah might have carved "noah was here" on the deck; maybe the ark had a nice paint job noah's ark. maybe they could find fossilized remains of all of the animals, lined up by twos.
that would mean that if they were to finally find a fossilized unicorn, it would falsify the theory. it is falsifiable, at least.
i'm being facetious, to dance around the point that this isn't science. maybe the wood they found is actually interesting, but there's no way to prove or disprove it has anything to do with the flood myth; like, you can't even reasonably articulate the claim.
but, the persistent existence of these flood myths does suggest that something happened deep in our history, and there is actual science that backs up the point. we should be talking about something like the great anthropocene-induced flood, because the factors that created the flooding are related to our colonization of the planet. we have enough archaeology and enough of a climate record to back this up - there were floods to close the neolithic period, as a consequence of the neolithic period, itself.
see, we built our settlements on the beaches. we still do, and we did it back then, and we did it everywhere. we cut down the inland forests to clear space for agriculture and to build structures just around the beaches that we built our settlements around. and, then we bred heavily, as we had more than enough to eat. these three changes - forest clearing, the growth of agriculture, a spike in human population - led to increased concentrations of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, which led to ice cap melting.
and, there were floods, as the oceans rose - which wiped out our idyllic beach settlements. the stories remember this catastrophic event that we created, via anthropogenic climate change, as a consequence of the neolithic revolution.
in the the judaic version of the myth, god promises never to send another flood, and gives us a rainbow as a covenant for it. i have this sneaking suspicion that this is the actual real reason that americans are so skeptical about climate change; god promised he wouldn't do that again. but, of course, this is just a story, and the myth is just a hope - although one wonders how badly damaged judaism may have been in the long run had there, indeed, been another flood in the region.
in time, the atmosphere stabilized, but then we discovered oil. and coal. and here we go again - although this time it may be too much.
so, i wouldn't expect to find substantive evidence of noah's ark out there any time soon. but, seeking it out is really missing the point of the story, which is a memory of a time where we flooded ourselves due to the consequences of technological advancement - and then lacked the understanding to put it in the proper context. this story is actually a vital part of our history, and it is important that we reclaim it from the peddlers of myth and prophesy and understand it and it's lessons correctly.
but, note that google gave me the link through an ad. that's as scary as anything else.
https://mydailymagazine.com/could-these-be-the-remains-of/
well, they found some wood in the mountains that was treated by humans, but there's lots of wood in those mountains (and all over the world) that's been treated by humans, and you'd really need a pretty high bar of evidence to demonstrate that the ark belonged to the actual character noah (and i guess you'd by proxy prove the historicity of noah. who lived to be how old? i can't remember. it was measured in centuries though, right?). i don't even know what that high bar of evidence would even be. maybe noah might have carved "noah was here" on the deck; maybe the ark had a nice paint job noah's ark. maybe they could find fossilized remains of all of the animals, lined up by twos.
that would mean that if they were to finally find a fossilized unicorn, it would falsify the theory. it is falsifiable, at least.
i'm being facetious, to dance around the point that this isn't science. maybe the wood they found is actually interesting, but there's no way to prove or disprove it has anything to do with the flood myth; like, you can't even reasonably articulate the claim.
but, the persistent existence of these flood myths does suggest that something happened deep in our history, and there is actual science that backs up the point. we should be talking about something like the great anthropocene-induced flood, because the factors that created the flooding are related to our colonization of the planet. we have enough archaeology and enough of a climate record to back this up - there were floods to close the neolithic period, as a consequence of the neolithic period, itself.
see, we built our settlements on the beaches. we still do, and we did it back then, and we did it everywhere. we cut down the inland forests to clear space for agriculture and to build structures just around the beaches that we built our settlements around. and, then we bred heavily, as we had more than enough to eat. these three changes - forest clearing, the growth of agriculture, a spike in human population - led to increased concentrations of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, which led to ice cap melting.
and, there were floods, as the oceans rose - which wiped out our idyllic beach settlements. the stories remember this catastrophic event that we created, via anthropogenic climate change, as a consequence of the neolithic revolution.
in the the judaic version of the myth, god promises never to send another flood, and gives us a rainbow as a covenant for it. i have this sneaking suspicion that this is the actual real reason that americans are so skeptical about climate change; god promised he wouldn't do that again. but, of course, this is just a story, and the myth is just a hope - although one wonders how badly damaged judaism may have been in the long run had there, indeed, been another flood in the region.
in time, the atmosphere stabilized, but then we discovered oil. and coal. and here we go again - although this time it may be too much.
so, i wouldn't expect to find substantive evidence of noah's ark out there any time soon. but, seeking it out is really missing the point of the story, which is a memory of a time where we flooded ourselves due to the consequences of technological advancement - and then lacked the understanding to put it in the proper context. this story is actually a vital part of our history, and it is important that we reclaim it from the peddlers of myth and prophesy and understand it and it's lessons correctly.
but, note that google gave me the link through an ad. that's as scary as anything else.
ok.
so, this is the bill that extends the emergency act, with the sunset clause - which i don't like, but i'll deal with.
https://www.ola.org/en/legislative-business/bills/parliament-42/session-1/bill-195
this is the omnibus bill that the media is portraying as a power grab:
https://www.ola.org/en/legislative-business/bills/parliament-42/session-1/bill-197
it does seem as though a large percentage of the second bill is random and frivolous. but, my previous comments were about the first bill.
so, this is the bill that extends the emergency act, with the sunset clause - which i don't like, but i'll deal with.
https://www.ola.org/en/legislative-business/bills/parliament-42/session-1/bill-195
this is the omnibus bill that the media is portraying as a power grab:
https://www.ola.org/en/legislative-business/bills/parliament-42/session-1/bill-197
it does seem as though a large percentage of the second bill is random and frivolous. but, my previous comments were about the first bill.
so, wait. when i first read about this law that the tories want to pass, it was suggested that they wanted to download portions of the emergency powers act to normal legislation, subject to a sunset clause. so, they were essentially taking the parts of the emergency act they need out for a while, relegislating them out of the emergency act and then pretending we weren't in a state of emergency anymore; i didn't like this one bit, but i decided that as long as the sunset clause was held to, it made little functional difference which option they decided upon.
but, talk of this sunset clause has disappeared from the coverage.
there is no way for me to rationalize my way through simple power grab legislation. if there was a sunset, i could put dissent aside until later; without one, the dissent must occur immediately.
but, talk of this sunset clause has disappeared from the coverage.
there is no way for me to rationalize my way through simple power grab legislation. if there was a sunset, i could put dissent aside until later; without one, the dissent must occur immediately.
so, the scientists are debating whether the virus is airborne, and doug ford wants to mandate air conditioners in geriatric facilities. brilliant.
if i make it that long, i'm going to end up in one of those homes, and i'd want to request a room without air conditioning. i wouldn't want a clunky window machine ruining my window, either - i'd want it taken right out of there.
the focus by these facilities at this point in time should be to restrict the amount of shared air, not increase it. as such, i might call on people that have family in care to check on them and ask them if they'd like help installing a window unit, and for the owners of the facilities to ensure this is feasible.
if i make it that long, i'm going to end up in one of those homes, and i'd want to request a room without air conditioning. i wouldn't want a clunky window machine ruining my window, either - i'd want it taken right out of there.
the focus by these facilities at this point in time should be to restrict the amount of shared air, not increase it. as such, i might call on people that have family in care to check on them and ask them if they'd like help installing a window unit, and for the owners of the facilities to ensure this is feasible.
so, here is the final update for november, 2014, subject to some pruning i'm going to do after i get through december. i just want to do it at once so i maintain consistency.
1) https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014/11/
2) https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/11/
3) https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2014/11/
4) https://jessicamurraytravelblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/
1) https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014/11/
2) https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/11/
3) https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2014/11/
4) https://jessicamurraytravelblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/
Wednesday, July 8, 2020
what does a tabula rasa mean in the context of modern science?
we are not literally born with empty brains, but what role genetics plays on our cognitive development is still a pretty open question, and there really isn't any evidence to actually support the premise that it plays a great role. i think it's important to kind of take a step back and ask the question what is a gene, actually and the answer is that it's an instruction set to code for the production of hormones. it's not some magical thing; it's something very concrete. it follows that what genetics can do is really limited to the production of hormones, and that the role that genetics may play in more complicated development questions is really limited to the role that the hormones may play. while hormones do inform questions of sexual identity, as well as perhaps of sexual orientation in some contexts, it's harder to understand how hormones might potentially alter cognitive development, except in terms of perhaps providing for a greater opportunity to build capacity (that is physically store learning opportunities) under the presence of certain nutritional pre-requisites. that is, maybe some people may be born genetically configured with more brain-building hormones. but, you still need to allow for experience to actually allow for those learning opportunities - it is still a tabula rasa, in the sense of knowledge that exists, even if there are genetic factors underlying how efficiently what exists can be stored.
the idea that you're born more intelligent than other people is consequently probably absolute nonsense, even if the idea that some people are born with a larger cognitive potential is not. that is properly understanding the role of genetics in the tabula rasa question, which is restricting the role of genetics to a set of questions that don't directly address it, but rather set up the necessity of actual learning for the implied system to function, anyways.
what about these ideas that language and whatnot are in-born? well, again, that doesn't actually address the question of tabula rasa. humans may have a region in their brain that deals specifically with language, but it needs to be input a language in order to function. so, pointing to the brain as possessing language processing capabilities does nothing to address the tabula rasa hypothesis.
rather, consider an infant raised alone, without the use of language. that would be cruel, and i doubt it's been done, but would that infant spontaneously learn the language of it's parents, with no contact to it? no. like all advanced mammals, the human needs to be taught the language. we don't need to do that experiment to know it's true, but we know that adopted children will learn the language they are taught, rather than spontaneously start speaking the language of their parents.
there is still no hard-wired language, then, even if there are hard-wired language abilities. but, it is the former question that informs the question of a tabula rasa, not the latter.
then, what is this language processing ability in that region in your brain? well, it's just an organ in your body like any other. your stomach seems to know what it's doing, but it's just operating on chemical instructions. ultimately, it's processing information from outside of the body in the way it was programmed to do. it's just the same thing for that part of your brain.
so, i want to separate between the realization that there are certain mechanical functions in your brain and the question of whether the mind is a blank slate, or not. one does not disprove the other, it merely puts bounds around how such a blank slate would operate.
we are not literally born with empty brains, but what role genetics plays on our cognitive development is still a pretty open question, and there really isn't any evidence to actually support the premise that it plays a great role. i think it's important to kind of take a step back and ask the question what is a gene, actually and the answer is that it's an instruction set to code for the production of hormones. it's not some magical thing; it's something very concrete. it follows that what genetics can do is really limited to the production of hormones, and that the role that genetics may play in more complicated development questions is really limited to the role that the hormones may play. while hormones do inform questions of sexual identity, as well as perhaps of sexual orientation in some contexts, it's harder to understand how hormones might potentially alter cognitive development, except in terms of perhaps providing for a greater opportunity to build capacity (that is physically store learning opportunities) under the presence of certain nutritional pre-requisites. that is, maybe some people may be born genetically configured with more brain-building hormones. but, you still need to allow for experience to actually allow for those learning opportunities - it is still a tabula rasa, in the sense of knowledge that exists, even if there are genetic factors underlying how efficiently what exists can be stored.
the idea that you're born more intelligent than other people is consequently probably absolute nonsense, even if the idea that some people are born with a larger cognitive potential is not. that is properly understanding the role of genetics in the tabula rasa question, which is restricting the role of genetics to a set of questions that don't directly address it, but rather set up the necessity of actual learning for the implied system to function, anyways.
what about these ideas that language and whatnot are in-born? well, again, that doesn't actually address the question of tabula rasa. humans may have a region in their brain that deals specifically with language, but it needs to be input a language in order to function. so, pointing to the brain as possessing language processing capabilities does nothing to address the tabula rasa hypothesis.
rather, consider an infant raised alone, without the use of language. that would be cruel, and i doubt it's been done, but would that infant spontaneously learn the language of it's parents, with no contact to it? no. like all advanced mammals, the human needs to be taught the language. we don't need to do that experiment to know it's true, but we know that adopted children will learn the language they are taught, rather than spontaneously start speaking the language of their parents.
there is still no hard-wired language, then, even if there are hard-wired language abilities. but, it is the former question that informs the question of a tabula rasa, not the latter.
then, what is this language processing ability in that region in your brain? well, it's just an organ in your body like any other. your stomach seems to know what it's doing, but it's just operating on chemical instructions. ultimately, it's processing information from outside of the body in the way it was programmed to do. it's just the same thing for that part of your brain.
so, i want to separate between the realization that there are certain mechanical functions in your brain and the question of whether the mind is a blank slate, or not. one does not disprove the other, it merely puts bounds around how such a blank slate would operate.
there's a fiscal update today and it's going to be very scary and everything, but something that hasn't been reported on is that the government created this debt by printing money through the bank of canada rather than by borrowing it on the market from private banks. in printing this money interest-free, the government did the right thing in picking the more responsible way for governments to pump money into the economy; the result is internal national debt and not private or external debt, so the primary longterm issue surrounding this debt, namely interest payments, is of a very different nature than the type of debt we're used to talking about.
normally, when the government borrows money, it does so by taking a private loan out from a private bank, which many people (myself included.) think is sort of insane. they just borrow money on the market like everybody else, and then have to pay interest on the amount borrowed from the bank to the bank. there is some shoddily written theory underlying this to poorly justify it, but it's obvious that the truth is just that the bankers run the world and have designed the system so that they can get their pound of flesh.
that's not what this debt is. instead, the government printed bonds and then printed money at the central bank, interest free, to buy those bonds. in a modern economy, buying up bonds with printed money is what the government does when it seeks to expand the money supply, not what it does when it seeks to go into debt; this would have been less unusual before the nixon shock, but this is an unusual step to take in the post bretton woods system, where debt is supposed to be privately held. what it indicates is the severity of the situation, and how the pandemic is different than a budget deficit.
the bank of canada is in complete control of this debt, because it’s entirely of it’s own creation; they're in debt to themselves. they could, in the end, just destroy the bonds, which would undo the expansion of the money supply. more likely is that the bonds will be sold to mutual funds, meaning that this is likely to work out to a strict expansion of the money supply, as the assets just get shifted to the markets, albeit in slow motion. the bank of canada will then recover the debt it incurred to buy the bonds when it sells the bonds, and we just end up with more money in circulation, in the long run. money creation of this sort is broadly inconsequential, and largely good for the economy, as it’s just fiscal stimulus.
as mentioned, taking on this kind of debt is unusual in the really existing system of global capitalism, for shaky economic reasons that have really just been speciously upheld by the media-academic complex to ensure that the bankers get their cut. frankly, in terms of actual economic outcomes, the most lasting effect is likely to be a decreased level of competitiveness for the canadian dollar; actual inflation in the price of goods doesn't seem to ever happen from macreoeconomic effects. that’s an entirely debunked pseudo-academic non-theory with absolutely no empirical and absolutely no theoretical basis. it’s a total mythology derived from absolutely nothing.
yes, these numbers are going to be scary and, in response, you're going to see certain segments of the elite attempt to exploit and capitalize off of the crisis as they argue for the need to implement budget austerity and sell-off publicly owned resources to the private sector in order to implement a shock doctrine of structural readjustment programs, like the imf just woke up from a wet dream. this is coming. it’s the reason why i was so apprehensive about creating so much debt, as i didn’t want it to lead to a backdoor for the imf into the country.
however, the government actually created this debt responsibly. this debt is not real, it's just a slow motion expansion of the money supply. there is no justification for the imf to stomp it’s way in here and start smashing skulls and bludgeoning everything.
that said, certain metrics do need to be kept within certain limits in order to keep the imf away and it is imperative that everybody realizes that and seeks to hold the government to reasonable budget restraints that mostly have to do with debt-gdp ratios. this doesn’t apply to the united states, but canada has bondholders out there, and those bankers need their flesh.
Tuesday, July 7, 2020
so, october, 2014 is now permanently put aside for a long time.
i'm actually going to do a final run through over 2014 to ensure consistency across various threads (what i'm doing right now is uploading all of the posts, and i lost consistency at some point), so duplicate posts may be deleted from one or more blogs, and some posts may be move around.
but, i need to get through november & december, first.
for now, here are the updated blogs for october, 2014
1) https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014/10/
2) https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/10/
3) https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2014/10/
4) https://jessicamurraytravelblog.blogspot.com/2014/10/
i'm actually going to do a final run through over 2014 to ensure consistency across various threads (what i'm doing right now is uploading all of the posts, and i lost consistency at some point), so duplicate posts may be deleted from one or more blogs, and some posts may be move around.
but, i need to get through november & december, first.
for now, here are the updated blogs for october, 2014
1) https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014/10/
2) https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/10/
3) https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2014/10/
4) https://jessicamurraytravelblog.blogspot.com/2014/10/
so, they want to legislate the powers granted under the declaration of a state of emergency...
obviously, i'm a little apprehensive about that.
listen - if the options are that you stay in a state of emergency for the next year, or you pass a law that grants you emergency powers for the next year with specific oversight committees, then the second option is even arguably allowing for more oversight, even if it runs the dangers of normalizing these powers. but, staying in a state of emergency indefinitely is going to do that, anyways. it seems largely trivial, in the short run.
if they decide to try to normalize this through legislation any further, it just signals that they weren't going to ease up on the state of emergency, and we would have had to fight that, anyways.
for now, it's concerning, if trivial.
but, let's be ready to keep them at their word when these terms expire.
https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-set-to-extend-some-emergency-orders-until-next-year-1.5013598
obviously, i'm a little apprehensive about that.
listen - if the options are that you stay in a state of emergency for the next year, or you pass a law that grants you emergency powers for the next year with specific oversight committees, then the second option is even arguably allowing for more oversight, even if it runs the dangers of normalizing these powers. but, staying in a state of emergency indefinitely is going to do that, anyways. it seems largely trivial, in the short run.
if they decide to try to normalize this through legislation any further, it just signals that they weren't going to ease up on the state of emergency, and we would have had to fight that, anyways.
for now, it's concerning, if trivial.
but, let's be ready to keep them at their word when these terms expire.
https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-set-to-extend-some-emergency-orders-until-next-year-1.5013598
Monday, July 6, 2020
and, september is now updated. for a long time.
1) https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014/09/
2) https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/09/
3) https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2014/09/
4) https://jessicamurraytravelblog.blogspot.com/2014/09/
september was again lengthy due to a lot of posts, and the document i'm generating them from is now far more than 75% done so this should pick up soon. i hope.
1) https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014/09/
2) https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/09/
3) https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2014/09/
4) https://jessicamurraytravelblog.blogspot.com/2014/09/
september was again lengthy due to a lot of posts, and the document i'm generating them from is now far more than 75% done so this should pick up soon. i hope.
bob rae is a liberal party insider of the highest level, with all kinds of personal ties to the shady desmarais clan, which seems to be the high priesthood of canadian colonialism. he's been deployed in recent decades as a soft face for hard power, being used to negotiate with the native americans, or to document human rights abuses in bangladesh (no doubt while carrying out some corporate espionage for power corp). i've generally advised not to trust bob rae; he will appear to you in an appealing manner, and he will talk your ear off about whatever it is that you want to hear, but he firmly represents the deepest bowels of canadian colonialism, which is the petro-state.
that said, he's a smart and capable policy wonk and sending him to the united nations is consequently a fairly good position for him. this is perhaps a surprisingly appropriate appointment.
that said, he's a smart and capable policy wonk and sending him to the united nations is consequently a fairly good position for him. this is perhaps a surprisingly appropriate appointment.
is the coronavirus airborne?
i think that depends on your definition of 'airborne', and that trying to work these questions out in the popular press risks losing the important subtleties associated with them.
the virus appears to be more contagious than was previously thought at this point, and that may be due to a mutation that happened in europe a few months ago. if that strain has been further selected for over the last few months, perhaps even aided artificially by human behaviour like social distancing, then the increased contagiousness of the virus may be a characteristic of an upcoming second wave.
but, does that meet the scientific definition of "airborne"? that is a more difficult question and one that wonks are going to probably spend quite a time working out, in reverse.
so, i wouldn't expect a firm answer on that question for quite a while, actually.
but, it may be prudent to adjust to the reality of a more contagious virus than we saw previously.
i think that depends on your definition of 'airborne', and that trying to work these questions out in the popular press risks losing the important subtleties associated with them.
the virus appears to be more contagious than was previously thought at this point, and that may be due to a mutation that happened in europe a few months ago. if that strain has been further selected for over the last few months, perhaps even aided artificially by human behaviour like social distancing, then the increased contagiousness of the virus may be a characteristic of an upcoming second wave.
but, does that meet the scientific definition of "airborne"? that is a more difficult question and one that wonks are going to probably spend quite a time working out, in reverse.
so, i wouldn't expect a firm answer on that question for quite a while, actually.
but, it may be prudent to adjust to the reality of a more contagious virus than we saw previously.
listen, i don't doubt that masks, if worn sensibly by a substantive amount of the population, would reduce the spread of the disease. i would argue that, unless we want to commit to wearing masks all of the time, it's just a stop-gap measure. but, i don't doubt the abstract premise.
like it was with social distancing, though, the way we're doing the mask thing actually has the potential to make it worse.
i was handed masks by two different store attendants on friday, a gift i refused on both occasions. i'm asthmatic, you see. but, the way the masks were handed out seemed to me more likely to spread the disease than prevent it's spread, given that these attendants were in high traffic areas and the masks were just handed to me loosely, after the actual masks had been pawed all over by these employees. so, i'm in essence being asked to put this device on my face that's been grab-handed all over by somebody at a heightened risk. no thank you.
i'm seeing reports about handing out masks at drive thrus. well, the whole fucking point of the drive thru is that people are isolated in their cars; if you send a guy around with masks, you're just creating a transmission vector.
and, of course, people are going to, in truth, do things like reuse masks and put them in their pockets and stuff, which is just going to make things worse, as their masks act like a wet mop in pulling virus particles out of the air.
i don't really see the utility of mask-wearing at this time. transmission rates in this community seem to be low to non-existent, and i've been self-isolating for months. i would consider that to be a drastic step, and i'm not nearly concerned enough to take it.
but, is a push to use masks in this way likely to be effective? i worry that the pro-active approach mandated in the public health law may have the effect of increasing spread, even if the voluntary recommendation, itself, is reasonable for those that are responsible about it.
like it was with social distancing, though, the way we're doing the mask thing actually has the potential to make it worse.
i was handed masks by two different store attendants on friday, a gift i refused on both occasions. i'm asthmatic, you see. but, the way the masks were handed out seemed to me more likely to spread the disease than prevent it's spread, given that these attendants were in high traffic areas and the masks were just handed to me loosely, after the actual masks had been pawed all over by these employees. so, i'm in essence being asked to put this device on my face that's been grab-handed all over by somebody at a heightened risk. no thank you.
i'm seeing reports about handing out masks at drive thrus. well, the whole fucking point of the drive thru is that people are isolated in their cars; if you send a guy around with masks, you're just creating a transmission vector.
and, of course, people are going to, in truth, do things like reuse masks and put them in their pockets and stuff, which is just going to make things worse, as their masks act like a wet mop in pulling virus particles out of the air.
i don't really see the utility of mask-wearing at this time. transmission rates in this community seem to be low to non-existent, and i've been self-isolating for months. i would consider that to be a drastic step, and i'm not nearly concerned enough to take it.
but, is a push to use masks in this way likely to be effective? i worry that the pro-active approach mandated in the public health law may have the effect of increasing spread, even if the voluntary recommendation, itself, is reasonable for those that are responsible about it.
Sunday, July 5, 2020
so, here are the not-so-final, but final for a long time, updates for august, 2014.
1) https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014/08/
2) https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/08/
3) https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2014/08/
4) https://jessicamurraytravelblog.blogspot.com/2014/08/
that's done now, for a long time.
i hope that september is a little faster.
1) https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014/08/
2) https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/08/
3) https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2014/08/
4) https://jessicamurraytravelblog.blogspot.com/2014/08/
that's done now, for a long time.
i hope that september is a little faster.
who biden picks for vp is going to be substantive, because the ominous reality underlying a second trump presidency is that he, himself, is likely to succumb to some form of mental decline, if he hasn't already. so, it seems likely that a vice president is going to end up president within the next four years or so. all bets are off as soon as pence assumes power - he is not likely to carry through with any of the foreign policy shifts that have been defined by this administration, and that i'm not that critical of, except the ones in israel, which i am critical of. pence is going to line up unfavourably against just about any vp candidate.
that is another possible developing ballot question - which vp is preferable? is the democratic vp substantively preferable, enough to generate a vote over pence for? this is a lower bar, but it does still have to be demonstrated. it is possible that biden could screw that up, but i couldn't imagine how.
again: we'll see how my thinking develops on the topic.
but, even if i decide that i must vote green to stop biden from letting the neo-cons takeover, if the vp looks decisively not neo-con, then i may prioritize voting for the vp to stop pence as being a goal of greater value.
that is another possible developing ballot question - which vp is preferable? is the democratic vp substantively preferable, enough to generate a vote over pence for? this is a lower bar, but it does still have to be demonstrated. it is possible that biden could screw that up, but i couldn't imagine how.
again: we'll see how my thinking develops on the topic.
but, even if i decide that i must vote green to stop biden from letting the neo-cons takeover, if the vp looks decisively not neo-con, then i may prioritize voting for the vp to stop pence as being a goal of greater value.
i may, in the end, decide that voting for the greens is the best passive way to try to keep the neo-cons out of the white house. i may decide that this is the most pressing concern at hand, out of all of the pressing concerns. it may be the ballot question for me.
i wish there was a better climate option, but i have to be realistic, and i have absolutely no faith in biden advancing any kind of serious climate legislation. that is going to have to come from congress.
as it is, that is one major upside to trump - he's not listening to the neo-cons.
there's going to be all kinds of other narratives, and i may explain why i don't find them compelling, as they present themselves. i'm going to be more interested in the nature of the commander in chief for the course of this election.
the united states may be at a critical juncture, in it's ability to project it's power. a trump presidency would likely continue to erode that ability, something that is not so terrible, whereas a biden presidency may feel the need to take drastic steps to reassert it, if it is helmed by neo-cons. i'm not convinced i want to see the latter happen, even if the alternative leads to a less policed and more unstable world.
these regions are fracturing around fracture points that were designed to fracture; the maps were all drawn to throw the people into disarray, so they couldn't organize against an empire that's long withdrawn, leaving it's system of control in place over a populace that is now hamstrung by it. so, in order to have stability in the long run, the maps need to be redrawn, and all over asia, to eliminate these designed fracture points. stepping back and letting the people redraw these borders as they see fit on their own is necessary, even if it gets messy. the best we can do is help try to talk them down, and figure out ways to share and shit.
so, yes - the empire is collapsing under trump. do you really want to watch biden try to bring it back? what's that going to require?
if that is the serious choice at hand, i'll gladly advocate voting green to keep the neo-cons out.
we'll see how things unfold.
i wish there was a better climate option, but i have to be realistic, and i have absolutely no faith in biden advancing any kind of serious climate legislation. that is going to have to come from congress.
as it is, that is one major upside to trump - he's not listening to the neo-cons.
there's going to be all kinds of other narratives, and i may explain why i don't find them compelling, as they present themselves. i'm going to be more interested in the nature of the commander in chief for the course of this election.
the united states may be at a critical juncture, in it's ability to project it's power. a trump presidency would likely continue to erode that ability, something that is not so terrible, whereas a biden presidency may feel the need to take drastic steps to reassert it, if it is helmed by neo-cons. i'm not convinced i want to see the latter happen, even if the alternative leads to a less policed and more unstable world.
these regions are fracturing around fracture points that were designed to fracture; the maps were all drawn to throw the people into disarray, so they couldn't organize against an empire that's long withdrawn, leaving it's system of control in place over a populace that is now hamstrung by it. so, in order to have stability in the long run, the maps need to be redrawn, and all over asia, to eliminate these designed fracture points. stepping back and letting the people redraw these borders as they see fit on their own is necessary, even if it gets messy. the best we can do is help try to talk them down, and figure out ways to share and shit.
so, yes - the empire is collapsing under trump. do you really want to watch biden try to bring it back? what's that going to require?
if that is the serious choice at hand, i'll gladly advocate voting green to keep the neo-cons out.
we'll see how things unfold.
so, the neo-con intelligentsia behind the bush presidency is endorsing joe biden over donald trump.
that's reassuring.
i will never advocate voting for donald trump. but, i may make a principled point about supporting the greens (have they got their shit worked out yet?) in the face of such a terrible choice. which is truly worse here?
on issues of militarism, trump may be terrible. but, biden seems to actually be even worse. so, do you vote for biden, hoping he'll be better for the climate? well, according to what evidence? i don't see any. his eventually no doubt heavily promoted, but in effect piddling, changes are unlikely to even slow it down, at this point. it's the difference between somebody that does nothing and is honest about it, and somebody that pays lip service to the dangers surrounding the upcoming changes, without doing anything substantive about it.
i want to hear somebody articulate plans for adaptation. we have to face the facts, here. and, industry will be more likely to respond to a request to build shit than to a demand to shut down - there's big contracts involved with adaptation measures, which are inevitable. it's time to get a handle on what needs to be done.
so, if there's no substantive difference on climate change, and biden is the more militaristic of the two, which is the lesser evil?
i know that there are domestic issues surrounding trump, but i need you to cautiously weigh the evidence around biden's past support for various things and do a stark comparison between where the two stand on a host of issues. you may find yourself severely disappointed by the amount of actual change you can expect from a biden presidency.
he's said it himself, to specific wall street audiences.
"if i'm elected president, nothing will change." - joe biden
that is a very close paraphrase; you'll excuse me for not looking it up, exactly.
so, you will tell me that if i advocate voting green then i'm just helping trump win. that may not land as hard with me as you're expecting; i may see the upside to it.
it's a terrible set of options, and i'm just trying to give it a fair analysis. i've still got time to come to a firm decision on my advocacy, this time around. but, expect passivity - expect me to go at this one from afar.
that's reassuring.
i will never advocate voting for donald trump. but, i may make a principled point about supporting the greens (have they got their shit worked out yet?) in the face of such a terrible choice. which is truly worse here?
on issues of militarism, trump may be terrible. but, biden seems to actually be even worse. so, do you vote for biden, hoping he'll be better for the climate? well, according to what evidence? i don't see any. his eventually no doubt heavily promoted, but in effect piddling, changes are unlikely to even slow it down, at this point. it's the difference between somebody that does nothing and is honest about it, and somebody that pays lip service to the dangers surrounding the upcoming changes, without doing anything substantive about it.
i want to hear somebody articulate plans for adaptation. we have to face the facts, here. and, industry will be more likely to respond to a request to build shit than to a demand to shut down - there's big contracts involved with adaptation measures, which are inevitable. it's time to get a handle on what needs to be done.
so, if there's no substantive difference on climate change, and biden is the more militaristic of the two, which is the lesser evil?
i know that there are domestic issues surrounding trump, but i need you to cautiously weigh the evidence around biden's past support for various things and do a stark comparison between where the two stand on a host of issues. you may find yourself severely disappointed by the amount of actual change you can expect from a biden presidency.
he's said it himself, to specific wall street audiences.
"if i'm elected president, nothing will change." - joe biden
that is a very close paraphrase; you'll excuse me for not looking it up, exactly.
so, you will tell me that if i advocate voting green then i'm just helping trump win. that may not land as hard with me as you're expecting; i may see the upside to it.
it's a terrible set of options, and i'm just trying to give it a fair analysis. i've still got time to come to a firm decision on my advocacy, this time around. but, expect passivity - expect me to go at this one from afar.
it's absolutely surreal how american political strategy is developing around this nexus of black identity politics.
while the death of george floyd was clearly unnecessary, and outrage about it is justified, it's not hard to see the hand of the democratic party machinery in the unfolding of the narrative around the events. the party has fully embraced a strategy that is heavily reliant on high levels of african-american turnout in key urban areas, to offset an increasingly wandering union vote. so, it wants the election to have a specifically black narrative, to maximize black voter turnout. it's clearly taken advantage of the opportunity to do this, and no doubt intends to ride support for that specifically black narrative to the high levels of turnout it wants to drive in the black community in november.
so, if you want to try to mute or overturn that momentum, you throw a wrench in it by introducing a third candidate to entice those black identity politics voters. in a crazy scenario, that third party candidate could even capture that building momentum, and go on to win a surprise upset.
is kanye west signing up for this type of stalking horse candidacy?
while the death of george floyd was clearly unnecessary, and outrage about it is justified, it's not hard to see the hand of the democratic party machinery in the unfolding of the narrative around the events. the party has fully embraced a strategy that is heavily reliant on high levels of african-american turnout in key urban areas, to offset an increasingly wandering union vote. so, it wants the election to have a specifically black narrative, to maximize black voter turnout. it's clearly taken advantage of the opportunity to do this, and no doubt intends to ride support for that specifically black narrative to the high levels of turnout it wants to drive in the black community in november.
so, if you want to try to mute or overturn that momentum, you throw a wrench in it by introducing a third candidate to entice those black identity politics voters. in a crazy scenario, that third party candidate could even capture that building momentum, and go on to win a surprise upset.
is kanye west signing up for this type of stalking horse candidacy?
you know that if he wins, they're going to have to run taylor swift against him.
this was supposed to be a joke, dammit.
*sigh*
https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/kanye-west-twitter-us-president-trump-1.5638157
this was supposed to be a joke, dammit.
*sigh*
https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/kanye-west-twitter-us-president-trump-1.5638157
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