i haven't been reading a lot of counterpunch recently, but keep an eye on this site.

i think i said basically exactly this five minutes after they announced.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/08/17/kamala-harris-represents-everything-wrong-with-empty-identity-politics/

like in canada, the whole point of the politics of the left is to try to get the balance of power, so you can influence the sitting government.

that is what the ndp, the bloc and the greens are all all about - none of them are trying to win, they're all trying to get the balance of votes necessary to pass a budget, to force the government to have to work with them.

currently, the liberals cannot pass a budget without support from both the bloc and the ndp, which gives the ndp, especially, tremendous amounts of leverage.

this is the actual reason we have universal healthcare up here. ok, that's an exaggeration, an oversimplification; the liberals were pushing their own ideas, too. but, the form of what we have is a consequence of the liberals needing the votes from the ndp.

apparently, when independent-minded senators try to gain the balance of power in the united states, they get primaried by their own party.

it's instructive.

"but it's impure to compromise on your values!"

ugh.

grow up...

do you think the republicans are going to call the senator that opposes everything they've ever done?

will the democrats call mitch mcconnell and ask him for input?

no.

she probably has more power than pelosi does, right now.

it's a good case study in how stupid the democrats consistently are, and somebody who's smart enough to see it, clearly, and move around it.

what she's doing is working. they should be studying her, and trying to emulate her.

and, what about these trump nominees?

i'll admit that i wasn't paying particularly close attention to much of the process around nominating somebody like the energy secretary.

however, if you can't stop the executive branch, why not try to gain concessions from them instead?

what i'm getting at is that aimlessly flailing against something you can't actually stop isn't a very intelligent strategy. if she had voted against these nominees, they may have sent somebody worse as replacement. by pretending that you're giving the executive branch a concession (when you're actually powerless to stop them), you're setting the situation up in such a way as to increase your bargaining power in the long run.

so, i don't know if i would have voted for or against any of these nominees, but i know that i would have tried to do something a little less stupid than kneejerking for the cameras, and trying to make a show of it.

On 1 May 2018 the IAEA reiterated its 2015 report, saying it had found no credible evidence of nuclear weapons activity in Iran after 2009.

so, why do we need an iran deal at all?

we don't, except to bully them into submission.

and, as mentioned, what happened was that the chinese and russians came in and said "enough of that".

would i have voted against the iran deal?

i wouldn't have voted for it. it was essentially a face-saving mechanism for obama, to hide the fact that the chinese and russians came in and saved iran's ass. there was no value in upholding it.

however, i would not have supported trump's proposals for increased sanctions, either.

i'm actually not at all concerned about iran's nuclear program. all evidence suggests that they don't have one, and that the only way they're going to start one is if we scare them into it. so, if we really want iran to not build nuclear weapons, the right way to go about it is to leave them the fuck alone.

that said, i would support anything that would facilitate the overthrow of the tyrannical iranian regime, including targeted strikes on clerical leaders.

so,

1) i don't support the obama period iran deal
2) i don't support trump's replacement
3) i do support broad disengagement, and a shift to things like a nuclear-free zone in the middle east. i'm far more afraid of the saudis than i am of the iranians, when it comes to weapons of mass destruction, or weapons at all.
4) i would support popular liberation movements in iran, and may support targeted intervention, if the situation suggests it is viable.

but, do i think what obama set up was a good idea? do i think it worked?

no.

interestingly, sinema is the youngest democrat in the senate, and won a seat that hasn't been won by democrats in decades.

i've walked down this path before, and i always find myself wondering: is this as an archetype for the future of the party?

it's a more appealing path than any other i can see, anyways.

if i was her, i'd take the kids out of the country and claim refugee status somewhere.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2015/09/atheist-mom-forced-into-court-ordered-christian-counseling/

we have failed, as a species, to reverse climate change.

while carbon reduction should still be on the table, now we will need to find a way to adapt.

or we will die.

i certainly would have looked at that bill and said "this is bullshit, i can't vote for this".

whether the next step is pushing for amendments or something else, i don't know. but, she's maybe the only person in congress that actually took the correct position.

how would i have reacted to the stupid fake "green new deal" vote?

i remember this coming up and scratching my head. sinema votes against climate action? what?

but, she explains here that it was a stand against the stupidity of the situation, and there's actually a little bit of leadership underlying the clear-thinking, no bullshit position she took around it.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2019/03/26/kyrsten-sinema-sides-republicans-vote-against-green-new-deal/3283607002/

she's basically right - the proposal, as presented to congress, was not remotely workable. we're 30 years past the point where we can pretend we can reverse climate change, and she knows that. spending zillions of dollars on largely unrelated social programs without addressing the actual problem isn't a serious solution, or an actual way forward.

so, she voted against the bill and co-sponsored a statement pushing for an actual useful piece of legislation instead.

i probably would have done something similar.

do i agree with kyrsten sinema on the issues?

i live very far away, but she's been around for a while, and she seems kind of refreshingly left-wing, in comparison to the recent rightward movement of the democratic party, as a whole. i understand that she's been controversial, but i agree with almost every position she's taken, and in ways that are actually pretty profound, and because she seems more ideologically aligned with the left, rather than despite it. she's a good representation of where i stand on the spectrum, to the left of the party, as a whole.

you have to keep in mind the weird language that they use in the united states, and the confusing use of terms like 'conservative' and 'liberal'. i'd actually call her a left-libertarian, from what i can tell, in the sense that she's on the left where it really matters and in favour of individual liberty where it really matters, too - which is about where i am, as a whole, as well.

so, i mean, i grasp that a lot of fake leftists are going to look at her and recoil, but, for me, that's exactly the point - she's reacting against a movement that i don't like in broadly the same way that i am.

although i'm sure we could find things to argue about, too.

it could very well be the case that whomever wins arizona & wisconsin, together, wins the presidency in 2024, too.

i think that the only other open atheist in the senate is kyrsten sinema, right?

all girl, all atheist ticket in 2024?

https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/08/12/atheist-kelda-roys-wins-democratic-primary-for-wisconsin-senate-seat/

i'd suspect that chances are that if i ever ended up in the surreal and unlikely position of raising a religious child to adulthood, they would learn to avoid the debate.

the bigger question is whether i'd be able to drop it or not, and it would probably be very hard for me to do that.

i don't know; i can't say for sure that i could.

and, would i disown a child for being religious?

yes.

in the end, when they're old enough to fend for themselves.

there would just come a point where i stop returning calls, in an attempt to get that kind of bad influence out of my life.

do i think that a potential partner would be a little more willing to take the kid to church on request? what would i think about that?

frankly, when i imagine these scenarios, i always assume i'm a single parent. the reality is that i have no desire to have children, whatsoever, and don't expect i ever will.

i wouldn't expect i'd get to the point of adopting a child with a partner unless we were compatible on this. so, the right answer from my perspective is that i wouldn't raise a child with somebody that would be interested in taking it to a religious service on request; if i ever got there, it's a fair assumption that there would be no daylight between myself and the person i'm coparenting with.

that said, it's the kind of thing that may lead me to walk out on somebody, not because of the kids, but because i'd lose a lot of respect for the person. i couldn't imagine looking somebody in the eye and trying to be affectionate with them when i know they were at church a few hours ago. it would be a relationship-ending decision, because i'd just get up and walk away.

but, whatever the outcome, i would realize it's not my place to tell people what to do or what to think, even if i choose to avoid them in the future, as a consequence of their belief system.

in the end, if your child decides to pick religion over atheism, then you might have to let them go.

that's life.

ultimately, i think that if my kids decided that they wanted to go to church, i would take that as a kind of a red flag that i'm doing something wrong. what is missing in their developing epistemology that i haven't plugged in? why are they seeking faith over reason? how do i address this?

are they just curious? well, maybe we can sit down and read a book about religion together, instead.

here's a good one for that:
https://www.amazon.ca/Outgrowing-God-Beginners-Richard-Dawkins/dp/1984853910

but, i mean, you need to listen, first, and your reaction, in the end, should be with the intent to be informative without being controlling - to give them the information they're asking for, but not to try to direct them towards any specific conclusion.

so, what do you do, then, if your six year old kid comes to you and tells you they want to go to church?

i'd have a talk with them about it.

i would not be willing to bring a child to church on request, but i would allow them to go with a different adult, a friend's family or even by themselves, depending on context. i don't believe in helicopter parenting; i'd have little concern about letting a five or six year old kid go to church on their own, so long as the church doesn't throw them out for being disruptive.

i would make my concerns known to the child, and explain why i don't want to go, myself. but, i wouldn't stop them from going.

i may engage them in debate when they get back, though.

"don't you fucking tell me how to raise my kid".

fuck you.

i'm going to stand up for your kids' rights, not your authority over them, and i'll get in between you and your kids and dismantle your authority over them at every possible chance.

you have no rights over your children, no authority over them, no justification for your behaviour. clearly, your children need to be protected from you, if your attitude is that you can treat them like property.

this person knows the truth.

https://forbiddencomma.wordpress.com/2015/10/21/aristotle-wrong-about-everything/

unfortunately, the main critic of the socratic idea of abolishing heteropatriarchy was aristotle, who was pretty much wrong about everything he ever wrote about. there's essentially nobody in history that was wrong more often, more consistently and more totally than aristotle. he's maybe the single worst source of information in recorded history.

i'm not going to call aristotle an idiot, as that's not entirely fair, although he did reject a lot of good evidence in favour of a lot of bad arguments. i blame a lot on christianity, but a big part of the problem with christianity is that it picked aristotle over plato so often, in ways that were so catastrophically harmful.

i'm not going to run through the debate, except to say that, as usual, socrates was right - and aristotle was dead wrong.

it's this old platonic position to support the abolition of the family, although it's intricately tied into feminism as well, in it's rejection of heteropatriarchy. unfortunately, all i ever hear from people when i bring it up is something like i've read that socratic dialogue, but you don't really believe that, do you?

i do, actually.

i have absolutely no patience for adults that think they have the right to tell children how or what to think.

that's a crime; charge them for it.

i would like to see stronger law enforcement around the issue, and more parents charged with child abuse for enforcing their views on their children. the rights of children to free cognitive expression take absolute precedence over the opinions of their parents; parents need to adjust to reflect the views of their children, not the other way around.

enforcing your religious views on your children is absolutely wrong all of the time. there is no valid excuse, no exception, no acceptable scenario. your children are not your property. you have no authority over them, except to protect them from harm.

and, i'd broadly support abolishing the family, altogether.

but, cases like this indicate that it is necessary to be gentle, because even the smallest disturbance could create an undesired chaotic reaction.

see, this is a travesty, but it indicates the difficulties in fully eradicating religion.

this person's parents did everything right in maintaining a distance, and letting their child make an independent choice when they were old enough to do so. that's responsible parenting; that's the right thing to do.

but, their child turned into an idiot, anyways.

if there was an easy answer, religion would have been eradicated by now. but, even when we do everything right, we still just can't get fucking rid of it....

https://www.cbc.ca/parents/learning/view/catholic-canada-mother

yeah, before the shit hit the fan, they were talking about the centrepiece of the budget being environmentally focused.

you can imagine i'm exceedingly skeptical at this point. but, let's see what they've got.

and, fwiw, i was calling on morneau to get fired months before this happened.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-morneau-clash-1.5688776

South Korea counted its fourth straight day of triple-digit increases in new coronavirus cases Monday as the government urged people to stay home and curb travel.

fools.

it was the absolute first thing that crossed my mind, back in...it was june. wow.

"this is just like dubya with the mission accomplished speech, wait for it."

hey, i've been waiting to post that for weeks.

feels good to do it :).

this was 2003.

this was 2020.

they should have the elections in new zealand immediately, if only to make jacinda ardern look like the buffoon she truly is. fools.

it's like when dubya declared mission accomplished in iraq.

they should make her have to campaign directly through it, just to embarrass her.

that's absurd.

you can send your kids to school, or you can home school them yourselves. the government has no legal obligation to provide at-distance learning, and the court won't create one.

who's his client, here? bill gates?

https://montrealgazette.com/news/quebec/lawsuit-to-be-filed-against-quebec-back-to-school-requirement

they stopped broadcasting again, and my guess is that they're trying to censor the following paragraph:

while i won't condemn the bombing of mosques because i support a diversity of tactics, i would suggest tactics that are a little more productive than that. plus, killing yourself is just stupid. you're not of much use to anybody when you're dead.

it's not the first time i've presented a statement like that, and it won't be the last. i'll support that statement to whomever wants to challenge me on it. it's the right moral statement to make, in context.

i wouldn't condemn the bombing of churches, temples or synagogues either, and i've stated as much on repeated occasions; this isn't just made up, it's a position i've spent some time with. and, i'll repeat - it's the right position to take, and the side that history will uphold, in the end.

the threats that religious congregations pose to the safety of the community are well understood, and this tendency to ignore them or otherwise take them lightly cannot be sustained. we need to recognize the harm that religion causes and adjust to it.

as mentioned, bombing them is not the most productive approach; the threat is not generally imminent, and there's usually more proportional ways to address it.

but, i will not allow you to deny the threat that a mosque or a church poses to a large percentage of members in the community, or trivialize their safety as unimportant.

maintaining a diversity of tactics is important...

now, i'm specifically pointing to the religious institutions, indicating that these people are guilty by association. ok, not all of them - there could be young kids, or people stopping in randomly. it would be a sad twist if a bomb at a mosque accidentally blew up human rights protesters - feminists, queer activists - outside. but, if you're at a mosque to worship, you are not innocent - you are willfully taking part in a system of absolutely brutal oppression. i'm not going to sign your death warrant, but i won't shed a tear for you, either.

so, by extension, bombing non-religious gatherings that are not specifically about worshiping are something i'd lean more towards condemning, but i've never seen an actual example of that. i mean, if you were to aimlessly bomb a queer dance party where people are drinking because of the ethnicity of the participants, i'm sure you'd get a rebuke from me.

but, maintaining support for a diversity of tactics is a standard leftist approach that is exceedingly relevant in context. it may seem terrible to you today if you really believe in conservative values, but from the long run and right side of history, i simply can't and won't condemn them - and you shouldn't either.

i'm wide awake, which is good, and i need to get the humidity in here up to flush out some of the smell until it comes up enough outside to open the window back up.

so, i'm going to try to finish that meal...

i don't want to spend the next 100 years fending off muslim attacks on basic human rights.

it's not the future i have in mind...

i mean, we'll beat them.

islam will be defeated - i'm confident of that.

but, do we have to? really? in the 21st century?

we won the fight against christianity.

we defeated them.

we won.

it's over...

i don't want to retrace history, i don't want to have to win all of these same battles against muslims all over again.

is secularizing muslims a type of colonialism?

no, it's a backwards argument, because islam is a system of colonialism and dominance, itself. muslims don't come here as indigenous groups, they come to take part in colonialism just like christians did centuries ago.

decolonization is dechristianization is deislamification.

it's like arguing that arresting thugs at a violent nazi demonstration is a restriction on freedom of speech. now, i'm actually going to be a little more lenient than others, but i flip it over very quickly; the idea of staying back is that you'll harm less people if you just let them do their stupid march than if you start trying to shut them down, but the moment they demonstrate the least bit of threat, that calculus evaporates. so, what you want is for the nazis to have their march lined by very stern looking leftists that have the self discipline not to initiate.

but, at the end of it, is stopping the nazis a restriction of expression? no - because they're going to hurt people, if you let them.

and, similarly, conscious attempts to separate muslims from their faith are not the continuation of a colonial process, but the undoing of one.

it's a false equivalency.

so, have i actually been sitting here for hours and ranting about nothing?

i spent another day cleaning, trying to get my head around what the smells in here are, if it's me, if it's cleanable, etc. it seems like the pig is upstairs smoking, and she may have been up there smoking the whole time, but i actually don't think that's true, because i would have smelled it earlier. frustratingly, it's way too cold out to open the window, so i'm stuck running the fan.

i remember the logic in may being "well, it smells like a fucking disgusting ashtray in here anyways, so why not open the window?". that is, i realized that the smoke was coming from inside, upstairs, anyways.

now, i can smell it again as soon as i close the window :\.

that's fine. if we need to do laundry twice a day because the pig upstairs is too lazy to take a walk to puff on a disgusting cancer stick, she can pay the gas & hot water costs involved in it.

i tried to eat this afternoon because i was all of a sudden very hungry (i've skipped about 25 days worth of meals since mid june - not unusual for me in the summer, but it does lead to some hungry days at the end of it), but i only got halfway through it. then it was late, and i needed to shower again to clear the shit out of my hair...

it's 5:30. should i sleep?

i guess so.

if i can avoid coughing.

we'll just have to do some more cleaning tomorrow, i guess. it warms the place up, too.

freedom of association means the freedom to leave a group, too.

we don't seem to put enough importance on that.

it will be a wonderful day when i open my apartment window and look outside and see a mix of men and women enjoying a few beers in lawn chairs at the front entrance of the local mosque.

that's something to strive for.

that's what i want.

and, you can cram your bourgeois liberal nonsense about "religious freedom" up your ass.

what i want, and what all free-thinking people should want, and what left-leaning political movements should be striving for, is finding ways to convince muslims that they're wrong - that they're on the wrong side of history, that they have no future and that they need to throw the religion away and move on.

that should be the political focus, not just looking the other way at a system that is going to kill us all if we let it.

apostasy for all.

that's where i am, and i'm happy to tell it straight to your gaping jaw.

so, it's less that i want to round the muslims up and kick them out, and more that i want to support strategies to secularize them and tear them apart from their faith.

i don't really care where you're from.

but, i'd like every last muslim on this earth to reject their faith, as a means forward into the 21st century, something that's inevitable and long overdue.

the biggest critique i have of multiculturalism in how it's practiced is that it tends to correlate religion with ethnicity. when i talk of post-culturalism, what i mean is breaking the connection between religion and identity and reasserting cultural individuality. this would help in minimizing the political impact of religion, as well.

we should not see ourselves or define ourselves as members of ethnic groups, by default; we should be building communities based on shared values and goals, not on where our dna comes from or what language our grandparents spoke.

i guess this goes back to not really being able to tell the difference between a political party and an organized religion; if organized religion is just another type of politics, why not accept it on it's face and adjust to more appropriate ways to congregate?

so, instead of having the arabic doctor that's forced to be a muslim because it's the family tradition, let's have doctors just be doctors, and seek out other people that have like interests, regardless of their background. let's let people be individuals, rather than statistics.

to me, that's post-culturalism, and it's the world i want to live in - not one where we split ourselves up by ethnic types, and then pretend that ethnic types have something to do with religion.

if you read the old literature on multiculturalism from the 60s, what we have today is not what they intended. they actually were aiming for a system where individuals overlapped with multiple cultures. so, they thought they'd create these weird kind of gurus that would go to yoga in the morning, say their prayers at noon and then attend a church service at night, before going for drinks with friends and waking up in the middle of a one-night stand. all of the contradictions inherent in this apparently went over the heads of those that designed this system, perhaps as a reflection of the shallowness of 60s culture. it's all just market choice, right? all about the experience. woah.

what we have, instead, are isolated tribes all plotting to assert their will on each other, and nobody intended for that or should want it to sustain itself, moving forward.

what we should learn from this is that integration and multiculturalism are actually in opposition to each other, and adjust to it, if what we want is integration and the tearing down of boundaries and labels.

i'm not really opposed to multiculturalism, although i'd rather embrace a concept of post-culturalism.

but, muslims sure are opposed to multiculturalism.

you'll need to learn the hard way, i understand it.

the difference between you and i is that i'm clear-eyed and clear-headed enough to identify who my enemies are, and you're not - you're lost in neo-liberal pablum about multiculturalism that's just going to end with your head in your lap.

and, yes.

fear is the right word.

hitchens got that point right.

sometimes, fear is justified - and you'd simply be daft to ignore the validity of it.

and, frankly, if you think you're going to save science by invoking christianity, you need to give your head a pretty serious shake.

for all your ranting and raving, the christians are going to side with the muslims in the end, not with science.

and, you'll be the first to go.

so, no - i'm not going to set christianity against islam and take a side. gross.

rather, i'm going to set christianity equal to islam, and set them both off against science, then take the side of science.

you're allowed to disagree, for now - until they take over. but, try to understand, at least.

moderate muslims and moderate christians are essentially indistinguishable from each other. so, if i'm violently opposed to moderate christianity, it follows that i should be equally opposed to moderate islam, for all of the same reasons.

likewise, fundamentalist muslims are indistinguishable from nazis. so, if i'm opposed to nazism, i need to oppose islam, too, for the same reasons.

this isn't going to make sense to conservatives, and i get that, but it's because they don't understand history very well. they think western culture is a product of christianity (!?), rather than the dismantling of it. the french revolution never happened. the russian revolution never happened. the enlightenment never happened. the renaissance never happened. the reformation didn't even happen. they just have this imaginary construct called "christendom" that never actually existed, and they erect these imaginary constructs of history around it.

real history is very different, and it pulls the rug out from under conservatism pretty viciously.

so, what does a post-religionist do in this reality of collapse happening around her?

well, the proper historical example is to look at how pagans reacted to the rise of christianity, and try to learn lessons from it.

the first and most important thing is to protect the knowledge, because they're going to come looking to destroy it. books. records. data. just hide it somewhere, as best you can. this, too, shall pass, and we don't want to let them wipe out history, in the meantime. the negative effects of christianity would have been dramatically lessened if they hadn't burned all of the history, science and philosophy books. so, that's priority number one: protect the data.

the second thing to realize is that, if they're allowed, they'll just kill you if they can. so, you need to find ways to exist without the religious authorities coming to get you and throwing you in jail, then sentencing you to death in an unfair show trial. it's important to maintain a concept of privacy.

here's a little known fact: cryptography, as we understand it, was invented to prevent the church from destroying science. scientists were not able to communicate freely, so they would encrypt their writings with a cypher that only the recipient could understand. that way, they could get their writings through checkpoints and raids without it being seized and burned. that kind of attitude is likely going to be necessary, but try to get a little out of the box; a public key, for example, is not the best idea. be security-minded, because they're coming for you, in time, if they're allowed to.

while i won't condemn the bombing of mosques because i support a diversity of tactics, i would suggest tactics that are a little more productive than that. plus, killing yourself is just stupid. you're not of much use to anybody when you're dead.

for now, i'd recommend mostly just being aware of what's happening around you, and being cognizant that some adjustments may be necessary in the short run.

in the long run, science wins by presenting superior arguments, and that's how we'll have to defeat these new islamic christofascists, in the end.

you can put a hijab on a pig, but it's still a pig.

yeah, so when i talk about the ongoing collapse of western society into a dark age, i don't know how anybody could interpret that as an embrace or defense of christianity.

the west is not defined as adjunct to or derived from christianity, but rather arose in a dialectic against it. contemporary western culture is the literal ideological opponent to historical christianity, in every conceivable way.

western culture embraces science, rationality, discourse and empiricism. these are the values that make us what we are; they define us, they explain us. christianity is the (foreign) system we had to overcome and dismantle in order to get to this point of defining ourselves in opposition to it.

a collapse into a dark age would be a return to the christian tyranny that we escaped, not a retreat from a christian identity that we've already discarded.

stated simply, muslims don't scare me because they're going to overthrow the christian order; muslims scare me because they're pretty much exactly the same thing as christians, and threaten to bring the christian order that we eradicated back, again. 

and, what i'm really afraid of - what i'm really opposed to - is the return of christianity. muslims are just a newer, scarier type of christian.

a pile of shit by any other name will smell just as bad.

what do indigenous spaniards look like anyways?

history is full of a lot of biases; arab sources push the primacy of arabs in the region, whereas more rigorous sources take into account what was very large scale migration from both germans and jews. but, this actually all happened rather late into history and doesn't really help us unravel the question, much.

i'm going to tell you such a thing doesn't really exist.

the first cities in spain were largely built by one of two peoples. the earliest semites in the region that we know of were the carthaginians, the ancestors of the modern day lebanese who got into a big war with the romans, who then took over the region as a consequence of winning that war. look up hannibal and the punic wars, if you don't know this history - which i find most people don't. if people knew the extent of carthaginian settlement in the region, they'd be less inclined to assign so much influence to the arab settlement, which was in truth both sporadic outside of a small number of settlements and actually mostly berber in composition. the arabs in spain were really recreating an ancient carthaginian maritime empire, by splitting it off from the former roman hegemony, almost in tact. so, the arab influence is generally over-emphasized in the arab sources. all of those j haplotypes aren't berber; it's more likely that they're carthaginian than arab, given that most of the major cities are carthaginian in origin, including cadiz, cartagena (new carthage) and tartessos. barcelona is also thought to be potentially of carthaginian origin.

the other colonies in spain and southern france that existed at the time of the punic wars were greek, although the only one that seems to have survived is the city of marseilles.

red is greek, yellow is phoenician and grey is latin. and, these are the earliest known settlements in the region.

but, if the earliest known settlements in the region are known colonies from people on the other side of the sea, and we can see the phenotypes of these early settlers in their descendants in the major cities of the south of the peninsula today, what did the people that lived there before the colonists moved in look like?

the people that lived there before the greeks and carthaginians moved in were celts, just like the celts in britain and france. they would have spoken a language that is not very similar to but in the same broad language group as gaelic - scots & irish. and, that's vaguely what they would have looked like. the historical record indicates physical characteristics such as red hair and green eyes all the way from spain to austria and beyond, on the northern and western edge of the roman domain.

these people traded with the greeks & phoenicians in a way that wasn't that different than the way that native americans later traded with the french and english - they would bring things like animal pelts or mined metals (including tin.) to the cities, which would be exchanged for more advanced technology, which they would take back to the wilderness with them. the world was bigger then, and they could coexist in that space, and did for quite some time.

but, we know that the celts are not indigenous to the region either, having migrated in from central europe and ultimately from eastern europe and central asia. who was there before the celts?

there were the beaker folk there before the celts, and we think they would have looked something like modern georgians or armenians, given the migration from northern turkey and the southern caucusus region with the spread of farming (even if there was some indo-european admixture by the time of the actual beaker folk, themselves). and, yes - there are megaliths like stonehenge all over spain, too.

but, they weren't indigenous either.  and, we've exhausted meaningful history, and exhausted meaningful archaeology, too.

yet, there are still a people there that we believe predates even the beaker folk, and their neolithic ancestors.

the closest thing to indigenous people in spain are the basques, who are quite light-skinned but generally look a little more like armenians than they do like germans. it's really not known at all how they got there, or if they've always been there, but they must be a remnant of a very old population that survived in isolation in the mountains, much as various caucasian groups have survived in isolation in the caucasus mountains.

here's some basquey looking kids:

that said, there was also a substantive amount of gothic movement into spain near the end of the roman empire, and before the arab invasion. that lasted until 711, when they were defeated by arab forces. again: the arab sources present the situation as though there was an arab state in spain until 1492, but the truth is that it really only took a few decades before they were pushed out of the top part of the peninsula, leaving a series of coastal settlements that took centuries to slowly clean up. the carthaginians and berbers, together, left a much larger footprint.

as you can see, and i did something like this for italy earlier, at any point in time you're likely to get a mix of people in spain. in the historical record, we've always had a mix of semites, indo-europeans and north africans mixing together in this region, and so real world people would have been some kind of mix, pretty much throughout the entirety of history. the result is that spaniards throughout history would have tended towards a brown, even if it's a result of light & dark mixing, more or less perpetually.

but, the people that have been there the longest are the basques, and that's the closest thing to what we can call a native spaniard, at this time.

i once heard chomsky describe angela davis as "reasonable", and she subsequently avoided much of the criticism he'd level at a zizek or a foucault. as much of an icon as he is on the left, he seems to be more of a pragmatist than an idealist (and he'd no doubt whisper-yell at me for saying that, as true as i think it is).

so, she was reasonable enough to organize with.

he's described richard dawkins using precisely the same language.

in the context of the united states specifically, as well as in south africa, her system makes quite a bit of sense; it's a reasonable deconstruction of american or south african slavery. it's when you try to extrapolate it that you end up making a fallacy called generalizing the specific, and that's where i tend to push back.

so, yeah - that framework makes oodles of sense in the specific context of the united states, which is where it was developed, and where it was intended to be applied.

i'd just suggest that you need to be exceedingly careful about extrapolating her ideas beyond that very limited scope, because there's always a history geek around to poke holes in your argument when you try to make that specious jump to generality.

this is your face of colonialsm.

deal with it.

christopher columbus was brown.

we need to start thinking about the christianization of europe as the unwanted, violent colonization of an indigenous people by a foreign culture, in a process that has very strong parallels to the later spanish and portugese (that is, brown people) domination of africa and latin america, who themselves were following a papal regime built strongly on the caliphate, itself modeled on the roman emperors, followed later by french and english merchants (half-colonized white people) looking to control the trade of resources.

so, there's some problems with this picture. frankly, most of it is wrong, because it's following official dates. that wide swath of pink may have been officially christian by the year 600, but that doesn't reflect actual practices by real people.

as mentioned, we have evidence of paganism surviving throughout europe well into the renaissance and beyond. nowadays, when we talk about the inquisition, it is to remind people how stupid and barbaric that christian colonization was in europe, but we don't stop to think that they went on witch hunts because indigenous religion was still extant and vibrant, if underground. we imagine that they were just randomly accusing women of witchcraft, when the evidence rather suggests that in many of the formerly celtic realms at least (british isles, spain, france), they were burning witches because people were continuing their indigenous practices, outside of the sanction of the authorities, who wished to stamp it out. we have weird, choppy narratives of gatherings around groves talking place in the aftermath of the black death, and can only fill in the blanks. we have evidence of sympathetic magic and human sacrifice all the way into the enlightenment. even newton was a known alchemist.

the christians were defeated in the end, and it was a hard struggle that we should be proud about winning; we shouldn't let history assert a false narrative of "christiandom" that never actually existed on the ground. we should celebrate our independence struggle against christianity, instead.

you can add 300-500 years to most of these numbers, if you want a better picture of reality on the ground. but, it's the right way to look at this.

it is even actually more true to say that greek philosophy forms a basis for christian thinking than to suggest that christianity is in some way underlying western institutions, norms and values.

it is a historically, factually, empirically false statement to state that modern europe has substantive christian foundations in any way at all.

there really is no other candidate for an actual christian emperor in europe, besides charlemagne.

and, jesus never said to conquer in his name. that was constantine, not jesus.

in a real and meaningful sense, what conservatives like o'reilly and peterson (and i guess fake nazis like spencer) are doing when they talk about this myth of a christian europe is projecting the fantasy of leo III for a return of the empire, based on christian foundations that no emperor before 476 ever actually had. it's both a revision of a history before dec 25, 800 and a projection of a history from that vantage point of standing in rome on dec 25, 800.

the o'reilly-peterson concept of christian europe is the history of europe as leo III imagined it on that distant saturnalia feast day, but as it never actually happened.

it existed.

we fought hard against it, and we won.

but it was a couple of centuries at most, and it's legacy was not at all enduring.

it was a blip. that's all.

(note: this entry seems altered, and my memory is only able to reconstruct my initial thoughts partially. i can't prove it, but key sections of this do not read off at all like something i would have written, and i recognize i'm only able to partially succeed in reconstructing my initial thoughts. i've at least removed certain phrases that seem entirely uncharacteristic. but, if it seems fragmented, it might be because it is. i've put confusing points where i'm not sure in red.)

"christian europe" as conservatives imagine it did not exist until charlemagne, and ended at the same time as the black death.

it's a few centuries.

a blip.

before that, you had a three-way struggle involving pagans & muslims ganging up on the empire (??), which emerged from the process victorious (when the pope crowned charlemagne emperor, he wasn't fucking around. this was the full return of the empire in complete intent and total scope. it didn't work out, but that was the plan.). europe wasn't simply delivered to german civilization as christian, or something. the germans were viciously anti-christian, and largely settled upon arianism (the idea that jesus was cool and stuff, but fully human) as a compromise with the new system moving up from the south. the late romans never fully converted themselves, either, maintaining things like diana worship in france (and there's evidence of pagan child sacrifice in italy after the year 1000, presumably to ask the gods for favour in the ongoing collapse of society).

so, the first meaningful christian empire in europe was with charlemagne, about the year 800 or so. they tried to change the calendar date and everything.

then, after charlemagne, they started launching crusades to convert people by force, initially mostly against white people. this provoked a retaliation against charlemagne by vikings, who set up in the north of france, and then in the south of italy, before becoming crusaders, themselves. there was something called the saxon genocide that occurred under charlemagne, where he slaughtered the entire saxon aristocracy for refusing to convert. crusades then moved east and north around the north sea, often literally via piracy, through the medium of the hanseatic league and the teutonic knights. berlin was founded roughly the year 1200 by crusaders taking over a slavic settlement, and they just kept going, not meaningfully reaching the baltic/slavic heartland until the year 1500 or so.

by then, the black death had already reshaped the ruling structures in europe, leading to the renaissance and then the reformation and eventually the true ethnogenesis that sunk in during the enlightenment, after all of the indigenous systems had been dismantled, and all of christianity's opponents had been slaughtered. if the idea of a christian europe ever existed at all, it was after the trauma of the black death that it began to fall apart, and not during these revolutionary changes, which came as a consequence of the rejection of christianity, and not vice versa. henry VIII was hardly at the start of a process, but at the end of one.

it is this struggle against latin and roman and christian colonialism that defines an emerging white identity, not the christianity itself, which tried to absorb them and control them and stamp them out.

the parts of europe that were christian were the parts that were brown, not the parts that were white.

and, the way that white people ended up christianized is that brown people showed up with swords and forced them into it.

their concept of history is incoherent.

racists are generally stupid people, and they're wrong in a lot of ways...

that said, i think the article kind of...the argument they're presenting sounds less like richard spencer and more like bill o'reilly, or maybe jordan peterson, this idea that christianity is fundamentally white and european civilization was built on it.

it's a common trope on the regular old right, and it's absolutely wrong to it's core, in every way.

1) christianity is not white in any way. it was invented by jews, popularized by brown middle easterners and then pushed down on the north of europe by italians that were every bit as brown as the jews that came up with the whole pile of bullshit. christianity initially hit it's highest point of popularity in egypt in the late classical period; western europe wasn't christianized for hundreds of more years, and northern and eastern europe weren't christianized until the fucking renaissance. not only is it not the case that europe is christian in culture, but most of europe has no substantive history of christianity before the year 1500 at all.

2) the institutions (legal, political, etc) that exist in europe are roman & german in origin, not jewish or christian. even the papacy is a fundamentally pagan institution. this is a common argument by conservatives, this idea that christianity is at the crux of our legal system. it's just plain out, straight up fucking wrong.

3) the history of european ethnogenesis is long and complicated, but the contemporary concept of europe - human rights, democracy, etc - came out of a total reversal of christian attempts at colonial dominance in europe. the kind of white identity they're hinting at is defined in opposition to christianity, not in coordination with it. it did not exist before the renaissance, and developed largely as a result to reclaim the culture from the christian dark age.

it's not just nietzsche they don't understand, it's the movement of history, in general.

but this is a better takedown of jordan peterson or bill o'reilly than it is of richard spencer.

https://www.vox.com/2017/8/17/16140846/alt-right-nietzsche-richard-spencer-nazism

it's a grown ass man using complicated language to ask a series of questions you'd expect from a four year-old.

but, what about the exact claim that nietzsche was literally an idiot? that would require an essay, and quotes to demonstrate the point.

no, i'm not doing that right now. if i do some reviews for the site, one day...

for now, just take note of the fact that his entire ubermensch discussion is essentially wondering outloud why there are still monkeys, if we evolved from them.

he was a complete fucking buffoon.

ok, i'm going to call on monday and see if they're open.

i'm happy to see that they're working on an electronic process, as it could end-around a lot of the problems i've been dealing with around incompetent and/or malicious court staff.

https://www.ontariocourts.ca/scj/notices-and-orders-covid-19-supplementary-memo-august-6-2020/

this is one of the more eye-opening marxist texts.

it's not flattering to engels, but it demonstrates how they saw religion.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/early-christianity/index.htm

it's also instructive to look at what nietsczhe was writing about the potential end of christianity in europe one day, and then look at what engels was writing at very roughly the same time, documenting how christianity had already ended, centuries ago.

we should read engels, instead.

i understand that there are still people alive today that think ending religion is going to make us less moral and lead to some kind of collapse, as though religion hasn't been an irrelevant idea in western culture for over three hundred years, and that period didn't coincide with our greatest advances, socially.

this is the back of an old neubauten disc from the 80s:

they're holding on to a broken column in an already destroyed structure.

it's not even close to being over; it's been over for centuries.

my sweat appears to smell like skunk weed.

that's pretty gross.

like, we can have some subtlety about the right use of terms, sure.

but a term like "christian europe" has it's maximum end point with the french revolution, at the absolute very latest. it's entirely meaningless after napoleon, who was dead before nietzsche was even born.

nietsczhe writing about the consequences of the hypothetical death of religion from mid nineteenth century europe is like somebody standing on the moon and wondering out loud about the potential consequences of heliocentrism.

he was so ridiculously out of touch with the reality that existed around him that it's an absurd waste of time to bother with him.

if you want to have that debate, go back a few hundred years and read voltaire and swift and the lot of them instead, back when the debate actually mattered.

i want to be clear.

i'm not trying to make a declaration that nietzsche was "good" or "bad" which, despite the simplicity of the statement, is usually how this is initially approached.

i'll let you do that for machiavelli, but not with nietsczhe.

nietzsche is actually, historically, entirely irrelevant.

there's absolutely nothing that nietszche wrote about that hadn't already been resolved before the french revolution.

i'm not being facetious.

we have to remember kant, even if it's just to undo him. but, i really don't think there's any value in teaching nietzsche at all, or any place for him in the western canon.

i hate jonathan swift. truly.

i'll admit i like this quote, though:

When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

given that truth, it's probably falsely attributed.

the best rebuttal to nietzsche comes from voltaire.

and, fwiw, i think nietzsche was an idiot, too.

the dude lived through the enlightenment, and wrote like he lived through the very earliest, most ignorant stages of the renaissance. everything he fear mongered about already existed 200 years before he was even born.

you'll get more of value out of jonathan swift, as he was at least contemporary to what he was reacting against.

there are actually much better reasons to argue that kant was an idiot than this.

these are euclid's five postulates, which were the very first thing that anybody studying geometry learned, for thousands of years.

1. A straight line segment can be drawn joining any two points.
2. Any straight line segment can be extended indefinitely in a straight line.
3. Given any straight lines segment, a circle can be drawn having the segment as radius and one endpoint as center.
4. All Right Angles are congruent.
5. If two lines are drawn which intersect a third in such a way that the sum of the inner angles on one side is less than two Right Angles, then the two lines inevitably must intersect each other on that side if extended far enough.

one of them is considered false in the context of the universe we inhabit, today.

don't look it up. which one is it?

so, a modern mathematician would never think she has the authority to decide if something is true or false, or if it's even decidable.

rather, they would state that if the axioms hold (including the assumptions of the rules of inference, which are usually treated as axioms) then the statement follows.

which doesn't mean it's true. it just means it's consistent.

yes.

our contemporary concepts of academic logic were defined by a handful of autistic people.

to be even clearer....

modern mathematics doesn't even tell you what rules of inference to accept. it can't; it's a limitation in the idea of math, itself. it just simply cannot argue that one rule of inferences is more valid in some imaginary objective reality than any other is, it can only tell you what rules of inference are being used in context, so you understand what is being done.

what i just said is summarized using the term hilbertian, as it is a reflection of david hilbert's dominant philosophical influence on modern mathematics. hilbert's famous catchphrase was:

Mathematics is a game played according to certain simple rules with meaningless marks on paper.

that may be a paraphrase in translation (hilbert mostly wrote in german), but i don't think it's apocryphal.

together, hilbert & godel are the dominant influences on modern mathematical logic. godel was a weirdo that was quite plausibly on the autism spectrum along with einstein and cantor, but hilbert wrote widely and is not particularly inaccessible for arts students. i hear he makes more sense in german....

if you want to get into this more, start here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_completeness_theorem

mathematical logic can be challenging, but it doesn't require a lot of pre-requisites. i'm actually in the group of people that thinks it ought to be a more widely taken pre-requisite, itself.

to be clear....

in logic, you can't make a false assumption, so long as it's consistent. that is, you can't contradict yourself in the process of making an assumption, so something like 2 + 2 = 5 wouldn't hold (because it's just wrong). but, logic doesn't care about your opinions, it merely seeks to regulate ways that you derive results from them.

i can consequently derive a perfectly coherent logical system from entirely wrong assumptions without ever actually making a fallacious deduction. in that case, if you want to argue with me, we need to have an argument about whether the axioms are justified, not whether i'm producing a bad argument from them.

and, as i've stated repeatedly, leftists are supposed to be good at this; our superior understanding of logic is supposed to be our most powerful weapon against the forces of the right, who operate on religious assumptions of dominance and submission.

fwiw, "no true scotsman" is generally not an actual fallacy, in terms of meaningful logical analysis. it's a fake fallacy, pushed mostly by english majors; logicians aren't going to get upset about arguments of this sort, with caveats for extreme cases.

and, usually, it's the person accusing you of the fallacy that is actually committing an actual error in logic.

ideas have definitions, and there's nothing inconsistent or illogical about insisting that you hold to the core concepts of an ideology if you're going to promote yourself as adhering to it.

regarding scotsmen, you'd have to define what it means to be one, first. if you decided that a scotsman has to be a certain amount scottish, then it's not in any wrong to deny the scottishness of somebody that doesn't fit your definition, as you presented it. we can argue about the definition, and whether our arguments follow from the definition using the proper rules of propositional calculus (if we agree on that system), but we can't have a meaningful debate about an actual assumption. what english majors will generally suggest is that the definition is arbitrary, and the value of their argument may depend on context, but that's not an error in logic; it's not a fallacy, of any sort, and using these arguments is not actually wrong in any way.

with socialism, it's at least supposed to have a meaning about worker control of production, and it's supposed to come out of the writings of karl marx. while this opens a lot of space for dissent, there are certain key components of the system that champagne socialists just can't actually make actual sense of.

so, if your concern is logic and consistency, there's nothing wrong with telling them they aren't socialists; in many cases, there is something wrong with letting a person perpetuate a system that has nothing to do with the words they're using to describe it.

it's useful to take note of james madison's argument for small electoral districts when opining your support for small business over big unions.

The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source. A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State.

In the extent and proper structure of the Union, therefore, we behold a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government. And according to the degree of pleasure and pride we feel in being republicans, ought to be our zeal in cherishing the spirit and supporting the character of Federalists.

it's divide and conquer.

and, whether intentionally (like madison), or accidentally (like most bourgeois socialists), support for small business instead of big labor is, in truth, just a divide and conquer strategy to keep workers from organizing.

https://billofrightsinstitute.org/founding-documents/primary-source-documents/the-federalist-papers/federalist-papers-no-10/

progressivism has historically been a conservative reform movement intent on saving capitalism from itself, and has generally been exceedingly racist in the process of doing it. you're in that tradition - you're just not a socialist, and i won't let you call yourself one.

and, again, i won't criticize you if you call yourself a "progressive" and throw all this anti-socialist crap about supporting small businesses out there.

that's consistent with history. that's fine.

so, when you hear people argue in favour of small businesses and then call themselves socialists?

they don't get it.

like, at all.

that's bourgeois, champagne-style socialism, at best - and a conscious intent to subvert socialism for bourgeois aims, at worst.

but, it's mostly actually just ignorance.

those are the kinds of "socialists" that have never read a word of marx in their lives.

in the end, what breaking up big corporations does is slow down the socialization of production, and eventual transition to communism, by eliminating the vehicle in which socialism asserts itself.

that is, of course, why the smarter capitalists are all about it - it's designed to "save capitalism" and lengthen this period of late capitalism.

leftists need to see the truth for what it is and be clear about it.

they agree with me.

sort of.

jacobin does have weird liberal tendencies, too.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/03/nationalize-amazon-coronavirus-delivery-usps

i don't want to break up amazon to promote competition over the market. that's a liberal prescription.

what i want is to unionize and ultimately nationalize it, to eliminate competition altogether. that is a socialist prescription.

there's no such thing as small business - and certainly no such thing as a small business owner - in a socialist economy, guys.

the whole point is to do away with the bourgeoisie.

i support increases to the minimum wage, but liberals are wrong to fight against the socialization of production, and a lot of self-identified socialists are very confused about the point.

socialism is defined as a system that evolves out of the development of large corporations, not as one that maintains a system of markets driven by small businesses, who will inevitably just retard the process to a fully communist society. there's no future in the bourgeois liberalism of a society built around small businesses.

as a socialist, i support policies to reduce competition (which we call anarchy in production), eliminate markets and increase the labour bargaining power of workers by positioning them in large, industry-wide unions.

so, i'd rather see a unionized walmart (which is a socialist future) where market competition is reduced and workers get huge proportions of the profits than argue in favour of breaking it all up (which is a liberal/conservative free market vision) and telling people to compete over who can sell useless crap more effectively.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/opinion-oates-minimum-wage-1.5676264

hey, the planet will still be worth saving in twenty years.

your grandmother won't be. at all.

unless you mean "saving micro-nutrients".

it's always important to take time for the classics.

orwell & klein were/are leftists, clearly.

fwiw, atwood has historically described herself as a 'red tory', which is a peculiarly canadian term that refers to somebody that is more or less a modern democrat. in canada, it refers to somebody that is kind of an old-timey tory, and opposes the neo-liberal tendencies in the contemporary conservative party, but that would position her several buses of school children to the left of somebody like joe biden.

it's also inexact. while the premise of red toryism has a concept of social liberalism underlying it, people that call themselves red tories today are oodles more socially liberal than any historical tory ever was.

so, she's far more moderate than the other two, but her point is no less cogent.

a critical reading list right now includes

- orwell, 1984
- klein, shock doctrine
- atwood, handmaid's tale

you should have read all of these by the time you turned 15.

you still have time. turn off the fucking tv, and spend a weekend with some classics.

look at the world around you.

did all of this fascism stop the virus?

the answer is that, no, it did not.

and, in the end we will have both the virus and the fascism they're bringing in, as they capitalize on the fear that the media is spreading.

unless we stop it.

the only thing to fear, is fear itself.

they're the new mccarthyists.

and, this is the new anti-communism, and every bit as irrational.

have you no shame?

you should just all join your local police enforcement agencies.....that's basically what you're doing, anyways....

i want to see a powerful left-wing movement develop that wipes away capitalism forever.

but, these people in front of me are a bunch of fucking idiots: easily manipulated by the worst arguments you could imagine, and under total statist control in their behaviour.

when your anarchist backlash involves handing out government health propaganda, you've lost the plot entirely.

i want to see people with signs walking through the street that say things like

REASON OVER PASSION

or

SCIENCE DEFEATS FEAR

that is the movement i would support.

as it is, you're really prioritizing the profit of plastics companies over the health and wellbeing of the planet.

because, that's what's up next - dealing with all of this unneeded waste.

this idea that opposing unscientific restrictions that will fail to stop the spread of this virus is about putting profit over people is retarded, and you're a moron to talk like that. it demonstrates the deepest level of ignorance, across the issue - you don't understand anything that's happening in front of you.

i don't oppose these restrictions because i want to maximize profit, and will gain nothing financially from re-opening the economy to the full extent.

rather, i'm just frustrated that i have a government that is forcing me to do stupid things that science says have almost no chance of actually working.

the calculation is neither about profit nor is it about people, what it's about is putting reason over fear.

sorry, i want to clarify the last post.

it was initially posted as:

i guess you might experience it differently, but i'd advise rolling with a raspberry-dominated mixture if you really want a good perk with your thc.

i have changed that to:

i guess you might experience it differently, but i'd avoid rolling with a raspberry-dominated mixture if you really want a good perk with your thc.

...which is what i intended to type.

nope. slept. s'ok, i'm up now.

before i showered last night, i had one raspberry cigarette with the overpriced mix just to see what it does, and the effect was truly mild in isolation, but certainly on the "feeling a little mellower than normal' spectrum. i would not describe the feeling as being 'high', just a little relaxed.

nonetheless, it may have contributed to the sleepiness.

i should have known better, but this was supposed to be the "awake" blend, too. so, price is meaningless as a market mechanism in the marijuana era, and so are basic advertising claims, apparently.

if this was some little store full of ignorant hippies operating on the market, i'd no doubt shrug it off. but, when you take this kind of thing from a very strictly controlled government entity and combine it with some other things - like the anti-science covid response, or the brand new agrifood-industry-written food guide - it really clarifies where science and facts exist in the minds of the existing ruling party, which is really just as a way to trick people into buying garbage.

i guess you might experience it differently, but i'd avoid rolling with a raspberry-dominated mixture if you really want a good perk with your thc.

i don't know why it took so long to figure this out, though.

boris. russian spy.

like, obviously.

do you think he'd have gotten elected with a larger or smaller member if his name was boris jerkoff?

also: don't test this thing on laika.

test it on boris johnson, instead. good russian name - proper test subject.

it's easy to guess why boris' grandfather changed his last name from johnson-off.

i bet sputnik v would last longer in orbit than the previous iv, if given a chance.

then again, let's hope sputnik v isn't like rocky v - old and weak and past it's prime.

it's very silly, but it gets the point across - the russians are back to not wanting to be our friends anymore.

your cat's gonna get it from sleeping in your box of dirty clothes.

your dog's gonna get it from sniffing your crotch.

your bird is gonna get it, then call you an asshole for it.

*sqwawk*. shoulda social distanced. asshole got everyone sick. *squawk*.

your fish is gonna get it from being sneezed on, your gerbil is gonna get it from overexhaustion and your mom is gonna get it from coming over and feeding all of the animals, and, btw, you left the door open again.

i don't think it's so crazy to think the virus has gotten into the food supply, and fish seem particularly easily infected because we dump untreated sewage in waterways all around the world.

we know it gets in the sewage, and we know there's fish swimming nearby. therefore....

with chickens (who should really be called chickii in context), it seems easy enough that they'd get it from feed, or maybe somebody handling them. that's not a difficult thought; that's obvious, and you have the burden of proof to demonstrate why it can't happen, if you're convinced.

further, if the thing gets frozen quickly, it could easily, if a number of unlikely things align, thaw out on your hands, thereby getting you sick. chances are higher that the virus will actually survive the freezing process, but will dissolve as it melts.

it's another thing to think you can catch the virus by eating infected but cooked flesh, which is probably wrong.

you should be wearing gloves and taking proper precautions with uncooked chicken, regardless.

but, is it possible? i'd say it's highly likely, at this stage.

so, am i something close to normalcy?

i've eaten, cleaned and showered. i have a few loads of laundry left...

there's a background skunk odour, but i can't order the source, yet. it does not smell much like what i was smoking over the last few weeks, so i'll have to keep an eye on that.

we'll have to see if i get anything done tonight or if i just fall asleep, but i'm back in my normal naked sitting position in bed, ready to rocket through what's left of this stuff.

normal, recreational marijuana use actually increases anxiety, though, by increasing cortisol levels. that's right - smoking pot boosts the amount of stress hormones that your body produces.

look it up.

so, as i'm feeling less anxious even after smoking pot, it just demonstrates that the testosterone suppression is working quite well.

i'll get a blood test to measure it, soon.

to recap, or for those tuning in.

i was taking 100 mg of cyproterone (2x50, daily), and my testosterone levels were almost immeasurable. but, i started watching the levels tick up a little, until it got to 0.8 in the spring. now, this is still very low (your mom probably has way more testosterone than that), but i've seem it come up over the last few years from 0.1 to 0.2 to 0.4 to 0.8, so i got scared that it was wearing off.

i would not survive very long if i ever had to deal with a full return of testosterone.

my doctor tried to prescribe me a different drug, but i looked into it and realized it was less effective at suppressing testosterone, and came with increased heart complications. so, i cancelled that different drug and doubled my dosage of cyproterone instead. the doctor pushed back on this, but i did it anyways, and i'm happy about it. i could still increase the t-blockers by a good bit, but i want to see a drug test, first.

so, i'll need to get a blood test soon, bring it to the doctor and say "look, it went down, and i feel 1000x better, so i did the right thing in ignoring you. please update the rx."

what about the t-blockers?

i am indeed due to go wander out to chatham-kent to find some more estrogen fairly soon, but i've now been on double the dosage of cyproterone for two months, and how do i feel?

i have, indeed, been experiencing some of the more positive effects of testosterone suppression, including softer skin and reduced anxiety. however, marijuana tends to have a negative effect on my hygiene decisions (like many people, it tends to make me dirty and lazy), so it won't be until i clean myself up a little that i'll be able to make a more informed analysis.

i got my funding from the ministry for the orchiectomy, finally, at least. now, all i have to do is find a doctor willing to actually take them out, so i can burn them in a ritual sacrifice to demeter....

i admit that i'm susceptible to ether-like theories about some kind of medium in space, even if that structure is in the form of multiple dimensions. so, these strings might actually be intersection points. even watching the discrete number of options develop indicates some kind of underlying structure...

i don't want to exactly say that they'll prove einstein right in the end, because he clearly admitted that he was baffled and he didn't ultimately provide a pluggable answer. but, i think that einstein was right to be skeptical about what he was hearing, at least, and that the process to really understanding this properly likely lies in retracing his steps around the issue.

so, what is the deal with entanglement?

i'm going to wait to see what he says, but my fundamental position is as follows.

currently, the theory around entanglement is that distance is irrelevant. that's not quite an assumption; it's built on observation. but, it remains a giant leap to go from "we've never observed a distance great enough to break the entanglement" to "the particles are forever entangled, regardless of how far apart they end up.".

my intuition, my basic position, is that we will eventually observe a distance so great that the entanglement breaks, and we won't really understand what's happening until we get there. this could end up being a very large distance, granted, but we have to find a time lag before we can make sense of it.

it can't just happen simultaneously, that's incoherent.

bell's inequality allows for non-local solutions, and it's probably the only actual way out of this. if we've learned anything at all from the quantum physics fiasco, it's that you have to do the fucking experiment, so i'm not going to predict a breakdown in locality.

but, it's the only way out.

so, the drugs are gone and we'll be back to normalcy for a few weeks, at least. i don't see any reason to leave the house until the end of the month. and, we'll try this again when i've eradicated all of this disgusting tolerance, and with a better medium than nicotine/tobacco. let's hope it works out better on the second try.

in the end, it was the low quality of the pot that established itself, which served to clarify the point - the store has a fairly wide selection (they're selling hash now, too), but it's hard to find high dosage strains and the price doesn't seem to have much of an effect on what you actually get. i kind of got used to it, and i enjoyed the summer for what it was, but the pot is garbage, and i'm trying to mix it up like tea for a reason.

the example i used before was lettuce or peppers at the store. when you walk into a grocery store, you at least have a choice between the pre-shrink-wrapped peppers in the plastic wrapping, or the fresh peppers on the shelf. you know that the fresh pepper is better, but maybe you're cheap or lazy, which is what the shrink-wrapped pepper is for.

some people, like me, will walk out of a store if there's no fresh produce, if you're stuck with the shrink wrap. that's what this feels like.....

i want to be able to walk into a store and pick out fresh product off the shelf, and this won't survive in the long run if that isn't allowed for.

what it's done, for me, is drive me to edibles as a first option. i mean, that's at least standardized, right? there's actually 2 mg in the piece of chocolate, and you have a good idea of what you're getting and how to adjust to it.

i've been working over the summer, i don't want to claim i haven't been. but, it's been dry, and i've retraced my steps repeatedly. as mentioned, i have final final updates being worked through right now; that has been stagnant this weekend, i'll admit. so, i'll be back to that soon, and i want to push through it very quickly.

for today, i'm going to be doing laundry, tidying up loose garbage that's been building up and working on cleaning myself up substantively. which means i'm watching the quantum entanglement lecture for the first time in a while....

i just didn't eat at all for days over the summer, but i've got a bowl of pasta in front of me just right now :)

(one more left after that before the switch to a total eggs diet)

of course, the real fake leftists that are out there pushing for market liberalization in sex work are in truth always fat old men. that's the real benefactor, here.

and, they don't see anything wrong with it.

"well, what's wrong if i make a proposal? i put the money down. what's wrong with that?"

in an actual socialist society, that woman would call you a worthless piece of shit for asking, and rip you a new asshole for tarnishing her dignity as a free individual, in the process.

for, she would know that she does not need to survive by selling her labour - that she is free from that oppressive social relation.

and, freedom from that social relation is the entire point, it is why socialists struggle, why they are what they are, why they fight for what they fight for.

so, when you hear people call themselves communists or socialists, or leftists (i'll accept "progressive", because it's a fundamentally conservative and fundamentally capitalist label), and then argue for market liberalization around prostitution...

i wouldn't suggest doubting their commitment to the marketization of sexual intercourse. they seem to be making that point crystal clear.

just don't let them pull the wool over your eyes, and try to trick you into thinking this is a philosophy of the left.

look them in the eye and call them the ancaps and neo-liberals that they really are.

the whole point of socialism is to abolish prostitution, in the form it exists in wage slavery.

that's why it exists; that's why we invented it.

no, i...

i don't understand prostitution, and i don't pretend i do. i'm revolted by actual consensual sex; the idea that you could ever stimulate actual, real consent in me by waving money at me is....the idea that there are people like that out there in the world that actually live that way makes me want to vomit.

but, i understand socialism, and there's simply no room for prostitution in a socialist framework. why would anybody trade money for sex in a reality where needs are always met? it just wouldn't & couldn't exist, as there would be nobody selling. and, frankly, i'd actually lean towards the idea that people that engage in truly consensual prostitution with no need to sell their labour for necessities have mental health issues and belong in hospitals.

so, i'm not going to sit here and pretend i understand prostitution; i don't get it. i never have and i probably never will.

but, i understand socialism, i understand that facilitating prostitution is just about the literal opposite of socialism and i understand that a truly socialist reality, that is a truly free reality, would treat consensual prostitution as a mental health issue.

as a socialist, i'm consequently more concerned with how to ensure nobody is ever forced into prostitution than i am in ways to legalize it or profit from it - as a rights issue, a labour concern.

if you follow this space, i've done as best a job i can trying to separate between this fake left that exists in the american mainstream and what socialism actually is.

they can say what they want, but i remain convinced that it just wouldn't happen in a truly free society.

so, the posts are coming through, but i've been noticing weird typos that...

this is a segment of a post that i recently posted and am going to repost shortly:

so, i'm not going to sit here and pretend i understand prostitutes; i don't get it. i never have and i probably will.

that should actually say:

so, i'm not going to sit here and pretend i understand prostitutes; i don't get it. i never have and i probably never will.

these kinds of typos have been occurring frequently enough to make me wonder, but how can i prove that?

what i'm doing instead is deleting and reposting posts that look altered, rather than editing them.

the argument that prostitution is just work is fundamentally the same argument that ancaps use to argue it's fine to sell yourself into slavery.

it's the most extreme articulation of capitalism that exists.

the "sex work is work" group are not socialists, not libertarians, not anarchists, not leftists...

leftists violently oppose all forms of wage slavery.

rather, they are market fundamentalists, right-libertarians, anarcho-capitalists & neo-liberals.

this is one of those issues where the american "left" is rooted in a contradiction in terms; if you read marx or bakunin, they actually repeatedly attacked capitalism by comparing it to prostitution, in pretty much direct opposition to those arguing for increasing market liberalization, as championed by the contemporary bourgeoisie.

skepticism of prostitution is actually perhaps the one thing i can agree with Black Women about, and it's because i'm a leftist, rather than despite it. i really wish that people that would support normalizing sex work would identify on the libertarian right where they belong and stop pretending they come from leftist traditions, because they really don't.

that said, the smarter Black Women know that reducing participation in prostitution to cases where it is truly and sincerely consensual is not likely to be accomplished using authoritarian means. the most effective way to ensure that people do not become trapped in prostitution is not to criminalize it but to ensure that they are always offered realistic ways out.

so, i mean, it's fine to write an article like this, but it really isn't about the left or left-wing politics in any way, but is rather about a side of neo-liberalism, of market fundamentalism, of anarcho-capitalism & the libertarian right, that harris and Black Women, in general, tend to be a little skeptical of - which is something that i'm in some solidarity with, to be truthful.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/kamala-harris-sex-workers-joe-biden-vice-president-1043941/

like so many other things, our concept of leadership has been so dismantled by capitalism that we barely even understand what it means anymore.

we tend to reserve this term, Leader, for people that try to control crowds by repeating what the crowd said back to them. but, such a person is really truly a follower of the crowd, just a follower that seeks to get out in front of the crowd, and let the crowd determine it's direction.

a leader is not somebody that carefully follows public opinion in an attempt to exert influence or control (and, generally, this approach suggests a desire for control for the sake of it), but rather somebody that effectively articulates positions that are unpopular, and in the process successfully changes public opinion to better align with theirs. so, leaders are always going against the crowd, rather than with it. that's something i really look for in determining who i think is worth listening to - are they leading by advancing their own agenda, or following by letting the crowd determine one?

so, do raspberry leaves "increase your high"?

i would say they will increase your drowsiness, when smoked in the mixture i purchased. but, there's reason to think it might actually work as advertised, if the caffeine in the mix was stronger - or the test subject wasn't a 110 pound transwoman.

if your bmi is a bit higher, that mix (cost aside.) might actually be what you want. i need more caffeine in it, if i want to actually enjoy that particular drug cocktail.

i want to smoke a joint and actually get high for the night, not just fall asleep like a fucking retard.

i've read some other reviews of the raspberry as being overpowering, so it's not particularly surprising that it may be knocking me out. it's more how overpowering it is that is surprising me, but, as mentioned, i don't know how much that has to do with cutting out the nicotine after an accidental two-month relapse; these feel like normal "quitting smoking" feelings, so i don't know.

i know that it's less that the raspberry is unpleasant and more that i'm having difficulty taking control of it - it's just knocking me out. so, smoke with less raspberry? that doesn't make sense. if i smoke with less raspberry, i'm using more pot. like anything else, i'll need to experiment.

but, what i've decided is that any final decisions on mixtures are going to have a much higher caffeine content. that's the other option - forget about carefully dosing the raspberry leaves with the marijuana, and just overrun it all with the caffeine from the green tea, instead. that way, any increased potency brought on by the raspberry actually gets sustained.

the mixture i bought gets it's caffeine from gotu kola, and it's just not working. the green tea will at least be more powerful.

again: i want to move to edibles for normal, infrequent use. depending on how this goes, it could mean no more head caves - or no more smoking for head caves. the december head cave may involve eating chocolate in regular intervals for three weeks, instead.

but, any future spliffs are going to need more caffeine, one way or the other. tobacco is a stimulant, and the available strains seem designed mostly to encourage sleeping; it needs to be cut with an upper, or it's just going to turn you into a useless eater.

that's my lesson from the weekend, as difficult as the data currently is to interpret.

i am, overall, exhausted right now, and looking forward to a return to normality. that was not something i would normally do, and not something i really wanted to do. but, the other choice was an impossible summer for everybody, due to these unnecessary border restrictions.

the weekend has also been weird due to sitting right on a trough, making the forecast go up and down; we didn't get to 30 yesterday (it got yucky and cold at peak afternoon, instead), we might not get there today and the summer, overall, is winding down early, with sub-30 degree temperatures across the board for the rest of the month. the forecast for monday is a chilly 24 degree high. brrr.

so, windows are going to be closing as i try to find ways to generate heat in the cooler weather. and, i'm going to be getting very aggressive about getting the smoke out of here - or launching legal action to get out  - very quickly.

that was unusual, and i'm not normalizing myself to a reality of living in saturated carcinogenic poison. i am trying to lead by example in showing people where to smoke - away from residential spaces, and in parks and other places that people don't actually live, instead.

again: i was going to sleep all weekend anyways as i cut the nicotine out. how am i feeling?

that expensive mix i bought at the store is a little heavy all around. i am repeatedly falling asleep (which i don't like) and my throat is not feeling particularly good, either. there's too many factors here to try to draw any conclusions, other than that smoking every day for two months is something i am unlikely to ever do again.

what i will say is that i very quickly started smelling the smoke, but i don't know at this point if it's second hand from upstairs or third hand from myself.

regardless, i've got a very small amount left before i stop to let my thc levels come down to zero before i try the edibles. massive laundry and cleaning run down here is inevitable.

and, if i come out of this longer-than-normal, and maybe even last-ever, headcave and realize i'm dealing with second hand smoke in my unit, i'm going to get very pissed off, very fast.