he's rightfully pissed off, in his usual indignant liberal kind of way.

but, he was being naive to think he was anything but a lure for dissenters, essentially a useful idiot, like assange was. it's anything but surprising that the intelligence agencies got a hold of the intercept, and that was no doubt the point of the thing, from the start.

worse, he doesn't seem to realize that he's playing into a parallel narrative.

my analysis is mostly posted here if you go back a few years, but maybe i should summarize.

- trump was not working against the deep state, but was a puppet of it. he was essentially sent to defeat clinton, who was seen as the real threat to state power.

- it may never be entirely clear why the deep state felt such a need to stop clinton like this. i've wondered, in the past, if it may have even triggered a contingency plan, due to fears of her being for sale. like, trump may have been the front for a temporary military takeover; it's never been clear if he's a hapless dunce being used or a talented actor playing a role. and, i've wondered if bernie might be in on it, too.

- bernie's line about the goldman sachs speech is essentially what i'm getting at, but the details are blurry and hard to put together. was the deep state concerned that clinton represented the interests of a specific foreign actor, or were they concerned that she was for sale to any actor? i don't know. what seems to be apparent - and this is a deduction drawn from watching media and reading between the lines, i have no secret stash of documents or anything - is that they felt she was a serious national security threat and stepped in to stop her.

- so, yes - the 2016 election was rigged in favour of trump.....by the cia.

- then, in order to distract from it, they blamed it on the russians. classic projection. and, if you want to understand how they did it, just take everything rachel maddow said and replace "russia" with "cia".

- and, then, the final step of the operation was that they tore trump down - whether he was in on it or not. but, this was a clean-up operation: the real contingency was about removing clinton's political ambitions and ending her career. to do that, they built trump up and then tore him down.

- it seemed like they intended to replace trump with pence all along, but then they didn't in the end. is it because biden stepped in, instead?

- the media in 2016 was actually extremely pro-trump. kellyanne conway was constantly on tv. while the anchors may have made certain arguments, everything was framed in a way that put trump in a positive light, albeit in a sneaky one. take the "grab them by the pussy" line, for example - this seemed designed to maximize trump's appeal to men by advertising a kind of machismo, and it probably worked. but, that flipped in 2020. it was really the media analysis that had me predict a trump win in 2016 and a biden win in 2020.

so, we're back where we started in 2012 - biden is back in the white house with deep state support, even if it's fleeting. we'll have to see if the contingency plan has run through, and things are back to normal again - or if this is a new normal, and we essentially watched a coup take place in slow motion. that part of this seems to be accurate.

but, trump was either a pawn or an active participant in it, and that's where i break with the right-wing narrative, and where glenn should really be more clear.

but, what glenn got sucked into was probably not that different than the kind of psy-ops underlying these franchised activist movements. we know that the black panthers were deeply infiltrated by the cia because enough time has elapsed to uncover it; we will no doubt learn that the same thing is true of all of these other movements, like occupy or black lives matter. my own experience in occupy had me walking away from it convinced that more than half of the participants were cops, and it was essentially a sting operation to build datasets on dissidents - like right out of 1984. 

if glenn has been chewed up and spat out, it's because he's served his purpose and is no longer useful.

but, as stated, i wish him luck and hope he finds some model to take the fuckers on with.

i'd say it's a rather curious decision by the intercept to refuse to publish this, but this kind of party-line journalism has become the norm on the fake left.

greenwald often pisses me off, but i wish him the best of luck in the future. the corporate censorship model needs an axe smashed through it. hopefully, he figures something out and leads the way.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/article-on-joe-and-hunter-biden-censored

this is an interesting site, and i'll say clearly that i like the idea of organizing content around writers better than i like the idea of organizing content around newspapers. but, i fear that, in the end, it gets taken over by twitter-style right-wing censorship, and i'd consequently seek to avoid it. besides - i actually like this blogging interface.

if you want to send me cash, send it. i could use it; i'm disabled, and my other income is almost nil.

but, i'd rather fight for a gai than start charging people for access to read my thoughts; i think this should be free to read, not put behind a paywall.

https://substack.com/

our greatest leader, wilfrid laurier, is spinning in his grave.

again: i expect this kind of stupid, right-wing rhetoric from the conservatives. it's enraging to hear it, but it's expected - they're conservatives, they're about war and veterans and guns and bibles and etc.

but, to hear it from the liberals, let alone the ndp, is truly heartbreaking and saddening. 

this country has lost it's way, and there's not much left here that's worth saving.

whole foods was right and they should stand their ground in the face of a government interfering where they have no place interfering.

it's really the perfect example of the kind of stupid capitalist practice that needs to be outright abolished.

we needlessly create tonnes of plastic waste to fund social systems for seniors that should just be directed from the public purse because we think it's important to rouse nationalist fervour and militarism on a year by year basis.

20 million of these things a year end up in landfills.

and, that's just in canada.

and, this government just announced a ban on single-use plastics, too.

i guess that grocery bags aren't sufficiently nationalist enough. maybe if they said bombardier on them, eh?

so, if you have to wear the white ones, try to find ones that aren't plastic, too.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/plastic-poppy-alternatives-1.5349304

maybe they can do the charleston for ya?

maybe that'll get 'em a nice shiny dollar?

huh?

i support taxpayer-funded healthcare, not throwing quarters at seniors on the street.

no, stop.

why are veterans - who are just a subgroup of seniors, really. i don't care that they're veterans, specifically - having to resort to raising money by selling plastic flowers?

why don't we have taxpayer-funded social systems that are sufficient to cover their needs?

then, the government attacks people for refusing to throw change at them, as they wrap themselves in the flag and yell nationalist slogans.

it's a sad parade, indeed.

so, i watched the speech.

a lot of silly yankee nonsense...

but, there were a lot of people on that stage, there.

i hope he doesn't come down with anything.

but, i mean, the first thing he's going to do is hand out a trillion dollars to wall street under the guise of a "stimulus bill".

that's fine - hold your vomit. he's gotta pay his benefactors, first...that's how this works....

listen - don't get me wrong, here. i want substantive, meaningful policy decisions. if we get anything at all out of this, let's hope it's at least a refocus on actual policy, and less focus on meaningless stories and empty narratives.

but, i am not a person that dwells on gestures or symbols and this is not a space that will allow this guy to rest on his laurels. my criticism may present a viewpoint that is very different from the mainstream consensus, and it will be vicious and without remorse, but it will be fair and fact-based.

so, if he wants to go out there and cancel keystone xl to start, great. get to it...

i'm not holding my breath - my expectations are rock bottom, and i won't give him an inch.

arizona is still in play, btw.

trump could very well pick up 15-20K votes in pinal county, and the big democratic counties seem to be just about done.

the recount margin in arizona is very strict, but that could work either way, in the end.

again: i am acknowledging that i overshot the correction. but, that's not a done deal, even if pennsylvania is.

well, we used to let rats run around all over the place, until we realized how dangerous it was.

squirrels have moved in to replace them - but they are potentially every bit as dangerous.

it might not be this virus, but it's a matter of time. they're a ticking time bomb.

i'm worried about squirrels.

i've been saying for years that the squirrels will kill us all...

but, this is likely futile, in the long run. are we going to kill all the animals? this is just going to keep happening, until we run out of reservoirs to eliminate - or we develop immunity, naturally, via the difficult evolutionary process of trial and error....and natural selection.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54842643

the map has been tilted this way since the democrats peeled off virginia & colorado. even this election was closer than it needed to be, because the candidate was weaker than he should have been. but, all the democrats need to do is run somebody halfways respectable and they will win for the foreseeable future. if arizona eventually swings, that just cements the map - even if georgia flips back.

trump shouldn't have had a chance in 2016 and only did due to how horrible the democratic candidate was, and he didn't have a chance this year, either.

the republicans need some kind of serious way to smash the map open or they're going to need to get used to losing, and it's not at all clear how they're going to do it.

....and, the margin in pennsylvania is too big.

the outcome in georgia, specifically, won't be known for some time. but, the election is called. 

i actually agree with those pointing out that trump has the right to bring his issues to court. it's just that there's no serious chance of overturning these results, in the north.

it's done.

well, hey, you'd have to use a newton's method in a real world analysis, right?

the models went too far one way - i saw that, i called it, i was right. but, then i pulled back too far....

the next step is to pull it back the other way - and that's just how you do real world analysis.

so, i did about all i could do.

but, i'm learning, too - maybe i'll be a little more careful, next time.

so, what's my post-mortem on my analysis?

what i said was that the democrats would win back their states in the north (and they did, all three of them) and that they would be disappointed and lose in the south (and they lost texas, florida and north carolina). that said, i refrained from predicting outcomes in nevada (due to low hispanic turnout, and maybe even a swing in the hispanic vote to the republicans), iowa (it wasn't clear to me if iowa would act more like wisconsin or more like missouri) and north carolina (which is currently a real swing state) under the argument that it didn't matter. while the outcome will not be clear for some time still, and despite a disappointing night overall in the south, the democrats are currently holding to very small leads in both georgia and arizona.

the reason i argued that the polls were wrong in the south was due to over-estimating the swing to the democrats amongst educated voters. so, i made an explicit claim about a modeling error and made a prediction surrounding it.

while i insist my critique is both valid and upheld, i seem to have overshot the correction by the smallest of margins. if biden wins georgia and arizona by .01% each, which is looking to be about right, then all i had to do was overshoot the correction by a point. certainly, the models had biden doing better in both of those states, so he did underperform his predictions - it's a question of by how much, and those small differences might end up flipping both those states.

i'm posting now to move on, because it sort of doesn't matter. as i stated in my projection, the south doesn't matter because they won back the north. but, regardless of the outcome, i am right in pointing out that a polling bias existed - what i did wrong was overestimate the correction, and by what is going to end up being the very slightest amount possible.

should i have penciled in arizona and georgia as grey, then? well, i penciled in arizona as light red, indicating i was convinced that the counter-correction would still make it very close. arizona is being absorbed by california, and i actually agree that the trends are that it's becoming more democrat. but, i actually think the voter breakdown in the future will be liberal, white, wealthy democrats v. desperately poor socially conservative hispanic republicans. because abortion. georgia, i think is more of a fluke - i think biden got a helping hand from a lot of white evangelicals and that's not likely to last. so, the short answer is "no" because the modeling arguments being presented to me were not convincing. i made an explicit argument, and i think my position was grounded.

i'm not willing to concede either state, yet, and won't be until after recounts. but, it largely doesn't matter in terms of the post-mortem - regardless of the eventual winner, my counter-correction was correct, but i over-counter-corrected and it may leave me short by a hair.

and, my projection was more accurate, overall.

i rode most of the way up the main strip in town yesterday and the number of empty storefronts is starting to really pronounce itself. i don't know know how it is elsewhere, but i haven't seen it this bad since i first moved here. it's just blocks of dead space at a time...

we are, in truth, in an existential crisis as a result of this that will likely lead to massive deregulation, marketization and privatization.

so, just in case you weren't paying attention to canada's quixotic struggle against covid-19, our four biggest provinces - quebec, ontario, alberta & bc - are all reporting massive case spikes.

canada has almost ubiquitous mask use and fairly widespread mask laws. many jurisdictions have seen restrictions and lockdowns. the increase in spread is happening despite staunch measures to stop it.

...which is what the science always said was inevitable, short of chinese-style fascist tactics. so, if you want to live in a police state anyways, right? no thanks.

the reasons for the spread in canada seem to be the following:

- religion seems to be the primary non-essential culprit, and the thing that should be restricted the most, if you want to learn from our failings

- schools & workplaces are major vectors

- get togethers like thanksgiving (which aligns with colombus day in canada) are a major source of spread

- there was a very stupid election in bc two weeks ago that seems to have completely blown the situation up

bars, restaurants and night clubs do not seem to be a substantive source of transmission.

while it is clear that we are somewhat behind the united states in the epidemic curve, it is just as clear that nothing we've done has made any substantive difference at all.

the amount of debt we've taken on, however, is a potential serious threat to the longterm viability of our superior government-run social services.

so, stop pointing to canada as a success story - it's just not true, and it never was. it just took longer to get here because we're on the northern fringes of civilization.

rather, the lesson to learn from canada is that quixotic struggles against viruses are foolish.

we are an actual example of extreme mismanagement, and the very purpose of the country is under threat due to it.

in fact, i heard a rumour that they were thinking about lieberman as secretary of state.

it's weird how trump + biden looks like lieberman, isn't it?

i guess the jomentum worked out, after all.

and, that's probably not far from what we're actually going to get.

and, listen - i think warren is too right-wing, aoc is an empty slate and bernie is...bernie is playing footsie with the devil. bernie should retire....

don't smear me by associating me with them - i'm a real communist, not just a phony one.

listen

it's not complicated.

biden isn't clinton. qed.

odd that google won't give me this in it's results.

i'll update the banner soon.

"you have no respect!"

this guy sent his own son to die. 

he doesn't deserve any respect.

also, i'd like to see bookies place bets on how long it takes for biden to end up in a home and harris to take over.

six months? a year?

i doubt he lasts a year.

that said, biden is not a smart person, and he no doubt thinks he can declare a war on the common cold and win. so, we're all going to have to deal with that stupidity for who knows how long.

if he decides to push down fascist mask laws, i hope america flat out revolts.

so, i'm not going to push back against the idea that this colour system is incoherent.

but, mask mandates are incoherent, bar closures are incoherent, border closures are incoherent, etc - it's just more of the same.

and, right now, the right thing for the state to do is to pass token rules to pacify the weak (which is this government's base - the elderly and the religious), and let everybody else go about their lives.

at least they're retreating from the "blame the sinners" bullshit. that's really what i'm more concerned about than prolonging the lives of a few geriatrics.

and, let's be clear - the reason they put peel into the red is because the mayor was running his mouth off.

it's disingenuous at this point to continue to pretend that anything the government has done at any level from the start of this has had anything to do with the science. like, they're keeping the border closed. they're mandating masks. they closed bars. none of this has anything to do with science - it's all about identifying populations to blame, attacking opponents, etc.

if you were expecting a scientific response, you were being naive.

but, the science has been clear for some time - this is futile, and we need to give up and move on.

the fire is already out of control.

let it burn.

it's baffling to me that there are still some idiots out there that think this can be contained, or that it would be beneficial to do so.

now, can we get things back to normal, like, now, please?

https://www.cp24.com/news/epidemiologists-call-ontario-s-new-covid-19-restrictions-gibberish-and-scientifically-illiterate-1.5177630

The white poppy stands for three things. They represent remembrance for all victims of war, a commitment to peace and a challenge to attempts to glamorise or celebrate war.

https://www.ppu.org.uk/remembrance-white-poppies

i will refuse to wear a poppy, and that is the statement i intend to make - i reject the culture of war, and the romanticization of the ritual murder of our children along with it.

these people were not heroes - they were either victims, or they are criminals and should be prosecuted for it.

but, if you must wear one then consider wearing one of the white ones, as it sends a message that is more in line with the original meaning of the day, before it was corrupted by stephen harper.

https://peacepoppies.ca/

what they did was decidedly uncanadian and has no place in the politics of this country.

i will again state that i am embarrassed by the behaviour of the house of commons today and hope saner heads prevail in the end.

it's supposed to be one of the major defining differences between canada and the united states.

in america, they pretend that they send their children off to die for democracy and erect them as heroes in disturbing displays of delusion.

in canada, we mourn the unnecessary loss of life and condemn those responsible for it.

we should and must resist the americanization of remembrance day into a celebration of war; it should be anything but.

"[Poppies are] to show respect for people who stood in danger for our freedom and democracy around the world."

that's a heaping pile of jingoist bullshit and mcauley should be ashamed of himself for peddling it. you are a liar, sir. you have no decency,

what the poppies are supposed to represent is the fields of children we sent to die, aimlessly, in a war that served no purpose but the geopolitical whims of the elite - as we vow to never again let them do that to us. it was a war by and for corruption, and by and for nothing else. to this day, historians can't really get their story straight about it, although everybody knows it was about resources, like oil.

it is supposed to be about mourning the loss of people that died needlessly, not about rallying around the flag. worse, this corruption of the meaning of the day is actually fairly recent, in that it is a creation of stephen harper's broadly revisionist worldview.

these people that want to turn this day into a celebration of war are traitors to the proletariat of this country and should be hoisted up on flagpoles like the fascist scum that they are.

mcauley's statements are uncanadian, and i am embarrassed by the behaviour of the house today. shame.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/whole-foods-reverses-ban-on-staff-wearing-poppies-after-outcry-1.5177730

so, i went out today in the unusual warmth and found a store that sells the soy milk i want. bizarrely, i had called that exact store last week and they told me they don't carry it. it's a little out of the way, but it's doable on a monthly basis. there's also some chance that they might sell it at the mall, which is a little closer (and a lot more convenient). i don't mind getting the exercise.

it's not clear how long they'll sell it for...

i crashed when i got back, so i'm up and i really want to focus and finalizing this fruit bowl.

ok, so her name is ronna mcdaniel.

but, that's not what it sounded like.

wait.

so, the chair of the rnc is ronald mcdonald?

why was i not informed?

just a reality check: as a voter, i don't want to "bank my vote".

i want to wait as long as i can before i make a choice.

further, campaigns that try to coerce me into voting too early are likely to come into some serious resistance.

while allowing people to vote early may make the process more efficient for undecided voters, that doesn't mean the schedule needs to change - if you're voting two months early, you weren't in play, anyways.

so, what just happened in the united states? what are the americans saying? is this a shift left? a shift right? a rebuke of trump? what's the message in the medium?

the medium is the message, isn't it?

it's a statement about democracy, more than anything else.

but, the winner here is neither the republican party nor the democratic party but the conservative movement, as a whole - they, and only they, got what they wanted.

1) they kept the senate.

2) they functionally split the house.

3) they got the president they wanted - the more conservative option, of the two.

and, so, you'll hear all kinds of bloviated nonsense from the usual suspects about socialists taking over government. further, the fake left will take this as a fake mandate and just repeat what they say.

but, it's all bullshit.

this is a major, resounding victory for the traditional right and that is what you're going to get for the next two years, at least - and it may, in truth, be surprisingly functional, if in ways that enrage many of the people that just put mr. biden in power.

biden, pelosi and mcconnell may not find themselves disagreeing about much.

you got fooled.

again.

november 11th is no day to be proud.

it is a day to be deeply ashamed.

when you take that moment of silence on nov 11, it should be to remember this country's culpability in one of the greatest war crimes in the history of the world and all of the innocents we murdered in the process of it.

...which means, yes - many of the children we sent to early graves from 1914-1918 could not participate in this country's democracy at all.

ironically.

or enragingly.

neither women nor men who did not own property could vote in canada until 1919.

what we need to remember, regarding the first world war, was that we lived in a society where people could be conscripted by a foreign monarch, rounded up at gunpoint and sent to die for the banks.

don't let them tell you they died for democracy - they did not, that is a lie and the people telling you as much should be called liars to their face.

so, i'll clarify - i will stand with those children who were given weapons and marched to their death, in a crime of such great enormity that we should never alleviate ourselves of our guilt. what we did to our own people in the first world war is on the same level of moral monstrosity as the slave trade or the genocide of indigenous people, and those responsible for this crime should be held in an equal amount of contempt.

i will stand with these innocent victims.

i will not stand with those who volunteered - i will condemn them for perpetuity, and curse the ground they are buried in.

i would, broadly, oppose wearing poppies as an act of militaristic, jingoist garbage.

it is important that we never let the elite kill us the way they did in the first world war ever again, fair enough. but, i stand with those that opposed that war, and not with those that fought in it.

i would support this policy.

keep your politics, beliefs, values and feelings at home and away from work, school and other broad social functions. they don't belong there - as a customer, i don't want to see it or have to interact with it.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/whole-foods-bans-poppies-1.5791551

so, the pasta water just waters it down.

i think the vanilla flavour in the soy milk is enough to avoid the need for further sugar. i eat a lot of fruit, but i tend to avoid the refined stuff. i'll try it with (expired) mustard next time....

the surprise in pennsylvania is how long this is taking and how close it is. again - a lot of democratic votes are no doubt being thrown away because the signatures don't match or the stamp is in the wrong place or whatever else, and this is no doubt the reason it's so unexpectedly close.

i still think trump has the upper hand in georgia and arizona, and biden still has to concern himself with avoiding a recount in pennsylvania, which i think is unlikely. so, biden should still be officially worried about pennsylvania.

but, it's about time that it flipped, and that is probably the deciding event, in the end.

the next update took some time to take shape due to the reproportioning, so it's going to need to be a quadruple check as much as anything else. i now have 12 components rather than 11, there's a cost row added, etc. the data is going to be dramatically different, so it's going to be another day or two still, probably. but when it's done, i believe it will be the final update for the breakfast component, except to add further items for further nutrients (like seaweed, potentially).

i'm just starting to readd the vitamins, starting with a.

by my estimate, biden needs 57% of the remaining less than 13000 non-military votes to get 1 more vote than trump and will need much higher than that to avoid a recount - especially considering that the 8000 military ballots coming in afterwards are far less likely to swing overwhelmingly to biden.

again: georgia is much closer than i expected. but, i still think trump has the edge.

why is it closer than expected? i know the narrative is about black and latino voters, but if you check the data you'll no doubt see that these demographics decreased their support for biden overall, not increased it. that's a longstanding trend. my analysis was that the polling error was a systemic bias that overestimated the effect of educated voters swinging away from trump in the south, and that seems to be broadly correct. i expect it to hold in arizona, in the end, too. so, why was georgia different enough that it almost swung?

when you're talking about small margins like this, you can essentially pick and choose. if trump wins by 800 votes in the end, you could assign that to anything - there may be 800 transgender voters in georgia, for all i know. there may be 800 executives for companies making steroids that compete directly with hydroxychloroquine. there may be 800 people in the georgia chapter of the ivana trump fan club. and, if anybody is going to defeat donald trump, it really ought to be fans of ivana trump.

and, i'm sure there would certainly be 800 white evangelical christian seniors that turned on him as a phony christofascist.

so, we can play this game in multiple different ways, but if we're to ask "what changed the most?", i suspect the right answer in the end will be that biden pulled enough christians to give trump a run, even if he didn't actually win. that doesn't make it a better or worse tactic than trying to win black voters if both tactics fail, in the end. however, it's worth pointing out which tactic involves swinging voters and which doesn't.

but, i'm surprised that it almost worked, if my intuition works out to be correct.

so, if biden pulls ahead by a few hundred votes, don't get too excited. you still have to wait until they're done.

take a deep breath, this update from arizona is going to be painful.

there's something like 2-3x as many votes left in arizona, and the spread is smaller than it is in pennsylvania.

if arizona, pennsylvania and georgia all end up in recounts - an increasingly likely truth - then this is going to drag on for weeks.

and, biden should now officially be worried about pennsylvania - because it looks like it's going to a recount, too.

you're waiting for biden to catch trump in georgia.

but, georgia is going to a recount - the closer they get, the further a decision gets.

sometimes, trump is dishonest.

more often, he's just wrong.

i suspect this is more the latter than the former.

my point is simply that if you want to understand who is going to win the election and make accurate predictions with your models then you need to pull your head out of your ass, recognize the ubiquity of corruption in the system and adjust for that absolutely clear reality in your projections.

otherwise, you're just producing nonsense that has no existence outside of a fantasy reality and are just wasting everybody's time doing it.

it's a part of the game....

and, i apologize if you misinterpreted my tone.

in politics, cheating is a part of the game; i'm not here to preach to you about morality, i'm here to analyze things as they are. if you're too aloof or morally pristine to get your hands dirty, you're going to lose and might as well stay home. a prince needs to manipulate situations to his or her advantage as opportunities arise, not sit around and worry about what's right and what's wrong.

biden outcheated bernie in the first place, as hillary did four years earlier. as an advocate of universal health care, amongst other things, i don't want to "clean up the system"; what i want is a candidate that knows how to win. as a climate activist, i'm not concerned about counting every vote; what i want is a candidate that will ram through systemic change, without bothering to gather opinions.

so, it seems like trump got outmanoeuvred and lost to a more corrupt foe.

sad.

i mean, the difference in wisconsin is twice as wide as the difference in nevada, right now.

percentages can be deceiving.

wait.

12,000 votes is never callable. 

wait.

so, these guava seeds are just...

i don't want to waste the nectar in the middle, so what i'm going to do is throw the seeds with the nectar into the freezer and wait until they build up enough that i can't grind them all up.

....and, i would suggest that a serious model should attempt to compensate for corruption.

nonononono.

when i make a forecast, efficiency at cheating is a part of the process - i explicitly, purposefully, soberly weigh how i think the cheating will happen, and what will work itself out in the end.

and, a big part of the reason i gave the south to trump and the north to biden was a perception on how the cheating will work itself out. 

so, were the polls wrong? no - the polls weren't wrong. but, not every vote gets counted. so, when the polling suggests that biden is ahead by a certain amount, you have to balance that out with the amount of cheating that's going to happen on the ground - is that enough to act as a buffer for all the democrats that will try to vote by mail and just have their ballots thrown out? well, that's the question i'm asking - that's what my projection is about.

i decided that biden was far ahead enough in the north that the cheating couldn't undo it, but he wasn't in the south, that the republican advantage on the ground (meaning: republican corruption) would be decisive, in the end.

and, right now, it looks like i nailed it - but the margins are very small.

we can ask more specific questions and get more precise answers.

do i believe that joe biden got more votes than any other candidate in history, except donald trump? well, population growth is a thing - those numbers are going to come up. but, flatly - no, i don't believe that at all. 

they're saying it's the highest turnout in over a hundred years...

...or maybe they both stuffed a lot of ballot boxes, in places where the authorities can and have and will cook the books.

and, maybe biden cheated more effectively than trump in the end - and trump needs to deal with it.

but, we're not there, yet.

fwiw, do i think that the democrats cheated?

i think it's fairly uncontroversial to point out that they unquestionably both cheated. and, i'm not in the camp that argues it tends to balance out.

you may claim there's no evidence, and while that evidence may be useful in prosecuting a case or getting a judge to agree with you (but might not be, depending on the judge), it doesn't really answer the question. these guys are pros - they're very good at cheating. they do it all of the time. they don't just leave incriminating evidence lying around. so, arguing that you can't find any evidence isn't really much of an argument for anything except the talent of the cheaters.

but, we tend to look the other way, and what trump is really up against here is a precedent - if trump decides he's going to go after the democrats for any cheating that they no doubt did, he's opening the floodgates for the democrats to go after him and his own party for their own no good behaviour. and, it's for that reason that this is unlikely to go much of anywhere beyond the lowest hanging fruit available.

what bush did to gore was just too easy to not do it, but gore dared not escalate. call him up and have a talk to him about that.

likewise, if giuliani sees an easy kill...

i don't see that happening, though - trump's comments should be interpreted politically, rather than legally.

but, are they all a bunch of liars and cheaters and thieves? 

yeah. they are.

so, i've put some hot sauce in the pasta bowl, and i'm almost satisfied with it just like that.

what is casear dressing?

wiki provides the following list of ingredients:

olive oil fortified soy milk

lemon juice fresh lime

crushed garlic, salt, Worcestershire sauce frank's red hot sauce

grated Parmesan cheese cheddar cheese (for retinol)

raw or coddled eggs yogurt

that leaves:

Dijon mustard yellow mustard

black pepper ground pepper

anchovies eww. 

my old dressing had the following ingredients:

water, soybean oil (contains citric acid) soy milk

parmesan & romano cheeses cheddar cheese

white vinegar, salt, garlic red hot sauce

frozen egg yolk yogurt

lemon juice lime

that leaves

sugar, corn starch pasta water

mustard

anchovy paste

i guess one could sub mayo instead of yogurt, but that would be daft. you'll get far more vitamins from good yogurt. i just wish i had a more fortified choice.

so, here's my caesar recipe:

200 ml of highly fortified soy milk

1 chopped fresh lime (with pith)

60 g of chopped medium cheddar cheese

65-70 ml (2 tbsp) of astro biobest yogurt (amidst pleas to refortify)

+

1-2 tbsp of yellow mustard [experiment]

25-30 ml of frank's red hot sauce (original) [experiment]

some pasta water (1/4 cup?)

a dash of celery salt [experiment]

a healthy amount of black pepper [experiment]

anchovy paste for omega-3

and, here's my total bowl:

- red peppers (200 g) 

- carrots (110 g)  

- beets (82 g)  

- pasta (55 g, dry)

- nutritional yeast (1 heaping tsp)

- sunflower seeds (raw, hulled) (1 tbsp) <---for b5, mostly, but other things too

- hemp seeds (raw, hulled) (1 tbsp)

- cheddar cheese (60 g)

- pro-biotic yogurt (2 tbsp)   <------b5, mostly

- full fatted soy milk (200 ml)    <-----d, b12, b7, b16

- lime  (1, ~37 g)

+

- 1-2 tbsp of yellow mustard [experiment]

- 25-30 ml of frank's red hot sauce (original) [experiment]

- some pasta water (1/4 cup?)

- a dash of celery salt [experiment]

- a healthy amount of black pepper [experiment]

- anchovy paste for omega-3

georgia has admittedly ended up closer than i thought. it will be interesting to see what the factor there is.

but, biden needs to get over 70% of the remaining vote, and it still seems like too much.

i still think arizona might flip, though - there's still a lot of votes, there.

and, at some point, biden needs to get worried about pennsylvania, too.

the numbers still look ok for biden, but my gut is telling me we're heading into a crises.

....and, yes, i'm going to have to weigh the ice cream.

i'm pleasantly surprised that the tub is exactly 1100 g, because i had previously calculated that 200 ml would weigh 110 g. then, 110*3/4 = 82.5, and that's how much ice cream is going in there.

gah...

i was sloppy in taking the vector out. there were initially four issues: a, b5, b7, b15. i boosted the all bran for the b15 and calculated the a as the new bottleneck. so, i needed enough vector to get 4% of the rdi for retinol - because that would mean i'd also have enough b5 and b7. then, i subbed in the yogurt to replace the a, without adjusting for the b5 or b7. it wasn't that i miscalculated or something, i just overlooked it.

b5 is not listed on the label for the yogurt, but it should be substantive, due to the milk. that should be ok.

the vector, however, was quite highly fortified with biotin, and while i actually can find some yogurt that has some biotin, it doesn't have any a or d or b12 (and, i am making use of that d3 after all, even if it's secondary), thereby eliminating the point. so, where else can i got biotin?

one answer is seaweed, which i was looking at anyways for the epa and dha and may very well bring in. 

but, the vector is simply a better source of vitamins at a lower cost, especially if i cut it down to a very small amount. if i go back to 15 g/day, i can get 55 days out of a box of the stuff. that's only $0.15/day, and it's only 60 calories - about the same as a cup of law fat soy milk. it's also still over 23% of the rdi for biotin. 

i can get the same amount of retinol from 67 g of yogurt, which would only be 23 calories, but would cost $0.30. i'd get more vitamins i don't need, but i'd lose out on the ones i do. bad idea, after all.

so, replacing the vector with yogurt may perhaps reduce the number of calories, but it's neither cost effective nor particularly vitamin efficient. and, it does matter, after all. i'm needing to pull back on that. so long as i keep it down, the vector is not so bad. 

instead, then, could i sub the yogurt to cut into the ice cream for the a? i do want to hold on to some ice cream for the saturated fat, but that seems like the better trade-off, calorie-wise.

for 100 ml of ice cream, there's 8*100/125 = 6.4% of the rdi for retinol - a roughly equivalent amount as for 100 ml of yogurt. 100 ml of ice cream is 1/20th of the tub, which is 6.00/20 = $.30. so, i'm currently spending $.60 on ice cream a day. the same amount of yogurt is $3.00/6.50 = $0.46. so, if i subbed the yogurt in, i'd be spending $0.76 instead of $0.60. if i put in 150/50, it's going to end up .45 + .23 = .68. and, 175/25 is .60*175/200 + .46/4 = $0.64.

calorie wise, 175/25 is 224*175/200 + 35/4 = 204.75; 150/50 is 224*150/200 + 35/2 = 185.5. 

in total, the second option would be:

avocado - 240 

ice cream - 168  <----decreased to 150 ml

all bran - 125  <----increased to 45 g

banana - 121  

soy milk - 96  <----increased to 400 ml

vector - 60

kiwi - 45   

flax - 37.4

strawberry - 32  <----decreased to 100 g

guava - 20.4   <----two, not one

yogurt - 17.5 <----- decreased to 50 ml/g

yeast - 11.25 

=================

973.55

that leaves space open for seaweed, and i expect it is otherwise the final tweak.

it's not like i've been disagreeing with the narrative. i expected biden to win pennsylvania and am not pushing back on the point. but, the reality is that trump has been ahead for 24 hours, now. solid. it's hard to look you in the eye and say "biden will win, for sure" when the fact of the matter is that trump's been ahead from the start, however tentatively.

but, the margin is actually coming down, now.

that said, if you agree that pennsylvania is likely to flip, how can you be so sure about arizona?

you can't.

unless you're not so sure about pennsylvania, after all.

the fact that this is still dragging is a huge problem, regardless of the projections - it's going to be close, and it wasn't supposed to be. it's when these things get very close that issues arise.

fwiw, it looks like trump will win georgia and north carolina.

i looks like biden has michigan.

arizona, nevada and pennsylvania are not clear, yet - and the election outcome is consequently not yet clear.

so, i would call on mr. biden to immediately resign.

if mr biden has a mandate, it is to vanquish mr trump.

done - mandate complete.

and, the faster he moves on, the better.

so, does biden have a mandate?

well, to do what? 

to shovel money into wall street? 

to start a war in the middle east?

to start a trade war with china?

before you go arguing that joe biden has a mandate, let's try to understand what that means.

and, if we think it through, we might actually conclude that we might rather that he not have much of a mandate, at all - that we might rather he be a caretaker, and perhaps not even for very long.

the republicans spent the last six months pleading with their base to show up to vote on election day.

the democrats spent the last six months assuring everybody that voting by mail was safe and it didn't matter.

the republicans were right.

and, the #1 thing that a post-mortem needs to do, whether biden wins in the end or not, is go after these idiots that tried to assure everybody that mail-in votes were going to count. were they wrong or corrupt?

so, did i get this right?

i think i got the idea when everybody else didn't, although the northern states are surprisingly close and arizona is still up in the air. there's a good chance i could get everything except arizona right, but i could still get arizona right, too 

i didn't "follow my intuition" or "express my gut" - i pointed out a clearly incorrect systemic polling bias in adjusting for education in the south, i predicted that that would be in error and i was shown to be correct.

what's happened in the north seems to be more like what happened in 2016, except that it looks like biden is going to squeak it out, when clinton couldn't. those small margins appear like they're going to flip over.

and, we'll see in the end if greg palast's analysis about democratic mail-in ballots being disqualified at higher percentages was correct or not (it seems on first glance that it was). 

you should have voted in person, america - and you should have known to, too. if trump does win in the end because you foolishly trusted your system, you only have yourself to blame for it. such is the folly of faith.

arizona will tighten up.

a lot.

i don't think the polling error is specific to the southeast, but i do think it will only hold across the south.

i'll admit i may have gotten ohio wrong, but i'm not conceding yet - but that's the narrative, tonight. trump will hold on in the south, and lose badly in the north.

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

so, what directions are key swing demographics likely to move in this election?

i'm going to create a collection of partial orderings. if obama > clinton, that means obama did better with that demographic than clinton. an equal means they should be about the same.

blacks, north & south:

obama > clinton > biden. so, expect biden to continue, and perhaps even accelerate, the bleed of blacks out of the party. they probably won't vote republican, they'll probably stay home, thereby skewing the numbers to make it look like they shifted right.

latinos, north & south:

obama > clinton > biden. likewise, biden should accelerate the movement of latinos out of the party that started with clinton (with obama, really; why does everybody ignore the deporter-in-chief thing?). some of them might swing republican, on social issues. sadly.

northern white liberals:

(obama = biden) > clinton. biden appears to be likely to regain much of the ground with northern white liberals that clinton lost. this doesn't appear to be rational, but it's happening, nonetheless. and, he needs to be careful he doesn't fuck it up.

southern white conservatives:

(obama = biden) < clinton. biden appears likely to lose the increase in support amongst southern white voters that clinton generated and that made states like texas a little closer than they had been in some time. biden wouldn't be expected to outperform clinton in this region, given her history there. clinton should have won missouri.

white moderates, north & south:

(obama = biden) > clinton. biden, however, appears likely to regain obama's stronger support amongst white moderates.

why is my analysis so drastically different?

because i'm looking at the actual data, not projecting my feelings about race on to it, as appears to be common in "progressive" circles that want the democrats to be the "black party", and overthrow republican white supremacy, or some silly thing such as that. as facile as that narrative is on it's face, the numbers just don't exist to support it...

clinton probably would have been more likely to win in the south than in the north, and i may be the person that suggested that, but it would have been on the back of white conservatives, who would have repelled young liberals. that makes that strategy very hard for the democrats - if you're trying to win the south by running on the right, like clinton & biden have been, you have to throw away the young voters that were supposed to be the reason you're targeting the region in the first place. and, then you're outrepublicaning the republicans, which is exactly what's happening.

if they were to run a liberal in the south, they'd have to rely entirely on young people, who vote in lower numbers - a strategy we saw bernie fail at (but that may work better in like 20 years, if the often more market-oriented asians don't walk in and blow the whole thing up). but, if they just ran a damned liberal, they'd sweep the north, and wouldn't need to worry about winning in the south.

i hope i'm clarifying this a little.

but, my main point is this: please, people....call a statistician. don't wing it. polls are tricky.

at 14:54

https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2020/09/so-what-directions-are-key-swing_8.html

what?

the idiot walked right into it.

...says the guy who hasn't shaved in ten years.

i mean, sometimes memes just make themselves.

internet - ridicule this man, mercilessly.

when ms. tam points out that the recommendations around mask use are evolving with the science, it's important that you realize that what she's really saying is "hey, i read the papers just like you do.".

and, what do you want? a crystal ball?

she didn't take covid-501 at med school; she doesn't have a base of knowledge to draw on, and she's not even out there working in the field. she really is just reading the papers and following along, even if she has access to better data than you do.

if you really want an expert opinion, go to a field hospital, or interview somebody that is uploading papers to medrxiv. those are the people doing experimental work on the ground, that are really trying to figure this out and adjusting to things as they see it happen.

ms. tam is just a bureaucrat, and she doesn't have the answers you're expecting her to. nor is she ever going to get them...

the studies on mask use are clear enough: they don't work, except incidentally and as an absolute last line of defense. so, if you want to take every possible precaution because you're just like that then it makes sense to wear one. but, unless your mask use is accompanied by very specific behaviour, it will not substantively reduce your chances of infection - and if that very specific behaviour is adhered to, the extra protection provided by the mask is truly at best marginal.

the suggestion to utilize a filter is long overdue, but it's still hardly going to save you, if you're at risk. the bottom line is that humans need to exchange air particles with the atmosphere in order to undergo cellular respiration or they will overdose on carbon dioxide, and there's not a way to do that that eliminates the risk of viral transmission short of avoiding contact with other people altogether.

all solutions are false.

and, on the eve of a likely trump loss, let's stop for a moment and reflect on why this happened: because the elite could not allow a hillary presidency.

and, it wasn't because of her gender - it was because they knew she was for sale, in a way that even the deep state found threatening.

with all of the phony distractions about russian intrigue from cia talking heads like rachel maddow, we may never really know why they couldn't let her win. who were her benefactors that were so threatening that we had to endure four years of donald trump?

but, it is almost done.

so, meet the old boss. er, i mean. yeah...

beep 

beep 

beep 

beep

c'mon, doug. push! push!

"i hate you all right now!"

beep

beep

beep

beep

ok, you've got three inches on the right, there. easy....easy....

beep

beep

beep

beep

there's no guarantee that he won't just put it right back in, of course.

i've been saying this for years.

on a right-left scale, trudeau is decidedly right of centre, and has been the whole time. we're seeing it come out in the pandemic response, too, where the most left-wing leader in the country is probably, bafflingly, jason kenney - and doug ford seems to be the only one pulling his head out of his ass about it, however slowly (it's a great, big ass, after all, give him space to get it out of there). meanwhile, the most conservative responses are coming from ndp governments.

the dauphin seems to have picked up his concept of liberalism more from bill clinton than from his father, in truth.

there's a reason he got passed over, and if it wasn't clear then, it should be now.

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/kaveh-shahrooz-justin-trudeau-just-doesnt-get-liberalism

so, the barbarians are back at the gates of vienna. as though they ever left...

these people are delusional, and it's never really been clear how high up this stuff goes. sometimes, it's just a crazy person, and it's obvious. sometimes, you wonder if somebody quite powerful is legitimately trying to turn the clocks back, as though they think france and austria are front lines in a conquest they never completed. never mind the centuries of reversals, napoleon or the wars of independence in eastern europe - that never happened. let alone charles martel, or the reconquista. instead, they have their own manifest destiny to finish the conquest of rome and convert the infidels once and for all. it has no existence except in their warped minds, but they can't see beyond it, either.

they lose every war they start - in syria, in libya, in afghanistan, etc. but, they keep launching them because they have so much cash, and i guess that if they can't defeat syria then they'd might as well pick an easier target, like france. right?

regardless of whether this is organized or random, this is increasingly sustained, and some kind of regional response is increasingly necessitated.

the french once had to invade northern africa to stop the arabs from raiding the coast. one would think that sort of thing ought to be behind us, but...

gee.

i wonder if the unnecessary election had anything to do with it.

idiots.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/monday-covid-numbers-dix-1.5786155

the cheese grater thing didn't work like i hoped. maybe, if i get a hand strainer (i don't have one right now).

i could just suck the nectar up out of the seeds, but....can i even freeze it first, then try to pull them out?

so, i tried to let the guava sit and, while it got a little creamier, the seeds didn't soften up much.

i'm going to try one more out one more day to be sure.

but, this one came in at 20 g after deseeding, which is 45 g of vitamin c - more than the 25 i need to fill the hole. and, in fact, even that lowballed 12 g was enough to get over it.

so, i'm going to pencil it in for 15 and get on with it.

so, in looking through the polling for the 2020 election, i'm struck by how much it reflects what the pollsters wish it would look like. there's been quite a bit made about how the polls were wrong in 2016 (that is not my analysis), so what if what they've done has made the polling worse?

what if the appearance of competitive races in texas and arizona and georgia is the result of an overcompensation for a democratic electorate that was always there in the first place?

so, i'm beyond skeptical about the "correction" being made for education levels, and would like to "uncorrect it" by shifting it back. it's wrong-headed - one of the things we saw last time was that educated voters actually leaned republican in kind of shockingly high numbers. further, you shouldn't apply that to georgia or texas or florida even if you should apply it to wisconsin - and that could be at the crux of the overshooting of democratic support, there. educated southerners are still going to lean republican! so, this is a systemic shift of a few points, and tightens the race up immediately.

that being said, biden is doing well with two groups of voters that you wouldn't expect a democrat to do so well with - seniors and (religious) conservatives. they often toy with democrats; they didn't swing back, this time. and, 65+ in 2020 means you might be the first hint of gen x, too - don't forget that. biden is, overall, the more conservative candidate, and by a wide margin; aging gen xers that have been voting democrat most of their lives may not see a reason to get old and become republicans, but that might shift back in four years. old (white) conservatives have reason to vote for him and, if he pulls this off, they will be the reason why he does.

but, when all of these things balance out, i think the democrats will be disappointed in the sun belt, tomorrow. or this week. or this month, as it may be. i'm still not seeing numbers push up over 50 in these states - it's still too close to undo all of the advantages that the republicans have on the ground.

the thing is that i don't think it matters, because he's so clearly far ahead in the north that trump does not have the path he had before. whatever set of circumstances creeped up in 2016 are flipped over, now - union voters in the north are flopping back to biden. and, because of that, no republican has a chance in a fair election - the map is just permanently tilted.

so, what could go wrong, then?

could he lose pennsylvania? i thought that was crazy in 2016, and i called it out as much and suggested that if the tv tries to tell you that donald trump won pennsylvania then you know this is just a lot of bullshit. there was no way. and, then they did.

i'm simply not getting those kinds of signals from the media, this cycle. 

so, does that mean the media is just out, then? i mean, they don't need the media to rig it, right? well, i think donald trump needs the media onside - he can't do this by himself, he needs to have people in place that he thinks he's buying off but are really just putting him in place for later. a more talented despot could get around this kind of roadblock, but not trump. and, the clearest signal that trump was going to lose may have been the disappearance of his goebbels, kellyanne conway.

people might forget to vote, though - true. but i suspect somebody will remember to vote for them. yeah...

so, the details are a little unclear, and i'll accept i could be wrong.

but, all evidence is pointing to a biden victory, and if it doesn't happen then the riots that result from it will be happening with serious cause.

....and i'm going to try to separate the seeds out from the middle part with a cheese grater and see what happens, too.

i can't find anything better.

i'm going to use the usda data, but i'm going to use it with a grain of salt for everything except the c and insist i'm not relying on it for anything except the c until i get further clarification.

ok, let's just get back to it, then. i have a big update...

....and, on second thought, because the usda numbers have such high lycopene counts, i'm led to conclude that their "common guavas" must be a pink variety, like the hawaiian type.

but, that would just mean that my little white mexicans are higher in c. 

hrmmn.

should i use these numbers, then? well, where can i find better ones?

if i can find the pink ones - the ones i bought were white - then i could potentially also get a substantive dose of lycopene from guavas, as well - twice as much, per gram, as tomatoes.

the consensus actually seems to be that the asian guavas (which are cultivated mexican versions that were brought to asia, presumably by spaniards, and not endemic to asia) have less c per g, even if they have more in one of their larger fruits, over all.

see:

Although vitamin C contents were not measured in this work, previous studies where guava germplasm from Calvillo has been included show that Mexican germplasm has up to 520 mg/100 g of mesocarp, compared to 80 mg of vitamin C/100 g of mesocarp in foreign germplasm (Laksminarayana and Moreno, 1978). 

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sanjuana_Hernandez-Delgado/publication/231996696_Morphological_and_genetic_diversity_of_Mexican_guava_germplasm/links/0046353a0c34d20aef000000.pdf

& this study which lowballs the asian varieties:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318113147_Characterization_of_guava_Psidium_guajava_germplasm_based_on_leaf_and_fruit_parameters

this is leading me to conclude that the "common guava" is probably an american variety, after all, and that i'm not doing poorly by using it as a baseline, given that all fruit has some variation.

ok.

done.

and, let's be clear - it's the upper class that wants to bring all these people in, so it's the upper class that ought to be paying for it.

like, really paying for it.

and, maybe if you dropped the bill in the mail, so they really understood it, they might reconsider.

they don't care, they just want more people to squeeze more surplus value out of.

and, while all of the parties are basically the same on this point, the liberals are really probably the worst of the three.

"but, the population density in canada is so low, compared to the rest of the world!"

well, that's why the quality of life was so high compared to the rest of the world, too.

we're a long ways before we run out of space, or something. but, we're bringing people in at a rate that is much faster than we're adjusting to it, and that's not sustainable - that needs to change.

ok, great - this article suggests that the 228 mg/100g of pulp number at the usda may even be a lowball and these "mexican guavas" may have even higher levels of c than that. 

do i need strawberries, then? kiwis? let me work it out...

i'm going to use the usda numbers for "common guava" because it's at least standardized, but the thing is that i don't know what a "common guava" is. i'm led to believe that it's probably the more apple-like asian version, but it's not at all clear.

what is clear is that what i'm buying is the mexican variety and that they seem to have substantive amounts of c in them, after all. good.

the other thing is that i'm eating the skin because i can. i'm even toying with eating avocado skin, if it seems edible (and sometimes it does). i've got a big pile of avocado seeds in the freezer, too, that i'll need to figure out how to consume, in time. one thing at a time...

for now, i'm confident enough in the c content of these little guavas to move forward with them.

http://journals.fcla.edu/fshs/article/viewFile/96905/92911

we keep increasing immigration levels, but we don't build new housing and we don't build new hospitals (or new child care spaces, or new schools.....or new jails) at the level required to support it.

we bring them in to build a tax base, but it's broken math - they barely pay their own way.

we need to be taxing the wealthy to pay for the infrastructure, and it's just going to get worse until we figure it out.

and, it's not complicated, either - more people means more infrastructure. we only refuse to see it because we're not approaching it the right way - we just want more and more taxes to pay the investor class with. and, it's going to collapse if a change in mindset isn't embraced.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-hospital-occupancy-covid-19-hallway-healthcare-1.5784075

....but, the cream guavas are supposed to be.....creamy. the seeds aren't supposed to be crunchy, like that.

maybe they're not fully ripe, yet. they're the right colour and seem right, but...

i'm going to leave a few out and see what happens.

or, if i can find this, right?

there's tons of useless apples at the store, though. and pears. ugh. how'd i get stuck in this place?

https://specialtyproduce.com/produce/Seedless_Guavas_12835.php

i seem to have bough "mexican cream" guava, which is why they're so sweet. these seem to be mostly for desserts. they may not even be that good for you at all :(.

what i want is the vietnamese variety...

guavas are native to latin america, but are more popular in asia, for some reason. so, they probably should be in any grocery store that sells oranges, but you might need to check the asian aisle. the guava i bought was in the same section as the dragon fruit. it's quite weird - they picked up on something that we clearly ought to have been mass producing. they've been growing here, with rose hips, the whole time, just hidden in plain sight.

as such, there are varieties that have been manufactured to maximize the fruit content, but they may be harder to find here, where we're still buying the natural variety, and mostly for a market of asians that are no doubt as baffled as i am. that itself is unusual, and may be part of the reason they're so high in c; most of the fruit we eat has had the vitamins bred out in favour of bourgeois characteristics, like appearance and taste. but what it means is that we have the opportunity to modify this item responsibly, if we choose to, so that we don't lose the vitamins as we maximize the edible portions.

i have no idea what's really out there, here in windsor; i haven't looked that closely. i'll have to take a careful survey...

yeah, i'm concluding that these little bite size things are kind of just that and that i'm really supposed to throw away the middle part. i should consequently be weighing just the rind.

two mini-guavas is still probably more efficient than a big one, which i probably won't be able to find, anyways. a medium sized one would be even better.

so, i'm going to pencil these in and hope i can find what i want - about a 60 g guava that i can get about 30 g of actual fruit from.

so, i tried to deseed a guava and...

these guavas are very small. you basically can't - you're left with a rind that's about half the fruit's total weight. the rind is edible, but how much c is in it? 

what i ended up doing was separating the rind out and putting it in the bowl, and then sucking the sap off of the part in the middle, before spitting the seeds out. i don't know how worthwhile that was; i couldn't really taste the c, it just had this kind of gross sugary taste. i always like my fruit sour, and never like it sweet. and i don't know if that means that i'm only getting 12 g, or less, of usable fruit from a 25 g guava.

if i'm only supposed to take the part in between out, then these little guavas have almost no usable fruit, at all.

so, this may be a dead end, but i'm going to hope i can find them a tad bigger, next time.

for now, i'm going to double up and enter the data in at 25 g of rind to reflect it. but, i hope i'm underestimating.

i have to warn you - if you're going to eat red peppers, beets & carrots together in these sorts of quantities on a daily basis, you need to prepare yourself for the possibility of producing truly scary looking shit.

it's the scariest shit i've ever seen, i tell you.

i hope i'm ok. i feel ok...a little better once it's passed, even...

the thing that's unsettling me is not exactly the fear that i'm passing blood; all evidence is it's just what i ate, and i feel fine. the thing that's unsettling me is that i wouldn't know if i was. so, yeah - it's probably just the beta-carotene and betaine, together. but, what if it isn't? how am i supposed to know?

well?

if i'm really paranoid, i guess i can look for clots and clumps, right? i should actually be able to tell the difference between a tinted fecal matter and actual blood clots, right?

so, i dunno - am i going to get used to this? if i'm eating beets everyday, it would seem i'd need to.

so, this is where the breakfast bowl is in terms of calories, right now:

avocado - 240   (150 g)

ice cream - 224    (200 ml)

all bran - 125    (45 g)

banana - 121    (136 g)

soy milk - 96    (400 ml)

strawberry - 48    (150 g)

kiwi - 45       (75 g)

flax - 37.4    (1 tbsp / 7 g)

yogurt - 23    (2 tbsp / 67 g)

guava - 13.6  (20 g)

yeast - 11.25   (1 tsp / 3 g)

============

984.25 calories

i believe that is a complete breakfast.

we'll need to double check - and see if it can be maximized any further.

see, you can do these studies, and you should, but the outcomes are obvious.

again - if worn correctly, mask use may moderately reduce the risk of infection in scenarios where only moderate distancing is possible. but, in the real-world scenario of shopping at a store, where nobody wears them correctly and people are only distancing when they're yelled at, they're all but useless, and if you're in a high risk category then you should just not enter these stores at all.

so long as people are engaging in these types of activities, pretending that you're slowing the spread by shutting down bars is just empty theatre.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/researchers-show-extent-of-covid-19-spread-in-a-grocery-store-1.5169995

i hear fauci has been offered a job as a play-by-play announcer on monday night football if this head-doctor thing doesn't work out, in the end.

we know he can't throw a ball; we're not sure if he can catch one.

whole lotta hurt? c'mon. that's right out of chris berman's pile of cliches.

i don't have a file, i have a filing cabinet.

i'd love to be searchable in this sort of database - that would be the best way to ensure my own immortality that i could imagine.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/declassification-centre-historical-documents-1.5785571

and, if i can't smell does that mean....?

i don't feel sick, otherwise - this is all just entirely consistent with exposure to second hand smoke and generalized air pollution, and occam's razor tells me i don't need exotic covid-19 solutions to explain what i'm experiencing.

and, i just noticed some condensation on the window, as an apparent consequence of the heating turning down over the last few days, something i'm not sure i grasp the significance of. i wonder - did the smoking cop like warmer inside temperatures? is the decrease in temperature evidence that she's gone?

the flip side is that it demonstrates that i've created a barrier between in and outside, even if the barrier between up and downstairs isn't so good. if there was more airflow between in and out, the humidity wouldn't have built up on all of the windows.

if the issue upstairs is finally dealt with, that barrier should be a net positive. if it isn't, i might find myself needing to open the window frequently all winter.

unfortunately, the pollution outside this time of year is so bad that going grocery shopping knocks out my sense of smell for a day or two so i'm having a little difficulty sensing my surroundings. it's not all the cars, either - this street didn't seem that bad when i moved in, but, nowadays, this might be the only house for blocks with non-smokers, however tentative that claim actually is. with everybody home and chain smoking, you're talking about 100+ chain smokers in a space not much bigger than a city block. so, when you walk down the street, it's an overwhelming and oppressively strong stench - bad enough that it's doubled me over coughing. and, you can smell it, too, i'm not exaggerating.

so, i just bluntly don't know if things are better right now or if i just can't tell that they're still just as bad. i guess i'll find out in the next day or two, as my sense of smell recovers from massive over-exposure to the pollution outside.

so, i tried calling around and realized it was hopeless - nobody that works in these stores knows what they're doing, and there's no database to find excess stock, i just need to look around and get lucky.

the store i found a bunch at was particularly useful to me because they had an almost unopened carton on the top of the shelf. so, i just looked up and grabbed it.

i'm going to need to float around, there's no way around it.

we're going to get about a week or so of nicer weather starting midweek, so i'll wait it out a bit and just ride up tecumseh to the edge of town and then take wyandotte back if i haven't found any. that should cover 75% of the grocery stores in town, with the rest being somewhat south of here.

that means i can reasonably hope to get a substantive amount done over the next few days, as i've got this more or less worked out.

a large amount of the reaction to these kind of displays is just plain ignorance of the historical and cultural significance of samhain, and what these people ultimately need to stop their whining is a bit of a history lesson of the origins of western culture.

samhain is a celtic religious festival that is thought to be very ancient and has origins in the less colonized regions of the british isles, like ireland and the north of scotland. these displays are ultimately an offering to the spirit world, and deeply spiritual in nature, whether the owner of that house realizes it or not.

attempting to shut down a samhain display is quite truly an infringement of this person's personal belief system, even if it's been blurred and confused over time - like any other, really. the major religions are all syncretic. none of us really understand what we're doing, not really.

i would call on the whiners of maple ridge to make an attempt to understand the people around them, rather than condemn them, like ignorant savages.

and, that woman should resign from the liberal party and join the conservative party. i hope this is an issue in the riding, and i hope she loses because of it.

it's important that he not cave into this kind of right-wing zealotry and continues to stand his ground.

these whiners need to grow up and mind their own business.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/maple-ridge-halloween-display-1.5785333

...and if the greens are not on the ballot in your state, i would endorse spoiling your ballot.

so, what is my pasta bowl looking like now, then?

- red peppers (250 g) 

- carrots (110 g)  

- beets (82 g)  

- pasta (55 g, dry)

- nutritional yeast (1 heaping tsp)

- sunflower seeds (raw, hulled) (1 tbsp) <---for b5, mostly, but other things too

- hemp seeds (raw, hulled) (1 tbsp)

- cheddar cheese (60 g)

- pro-biotic yogurt (2 tbsp)   <------b5, mostly

- full fatted soy milk (200 ml)    <-----d, b12, b7, b16

- lime  (1, ~37 g)

i think that the only remaining consideration will be adding ingredients for the salad dressing.

and, maybe trying to find a way to get a bigger fridge.

so, who's going to win the election?

i may not have the insight that you'd have hoped for. but, i'm going to wait until tomorrow before i post a final analysis. i wouldn't expect much, though.

right now, i want to remind you of what i'm thinking about the situation.

i am a leftist, and donald trump is, by far, the most left-wing president we've seen in decades on virtually every issue that actually matters. when he upsets people, he does so by leaning left far more often than he does so by leaning right. but, he also represents a party that, with the confirmation of amy barrett, has reaffirmed itself as being so far right that it's outside of any reasonable discourse. this is a very strange juxtaposition - the most right-wing party in the history of democracy in an alliance, however uneasy, with the most left-wing president since the dawn of neo-liberalism.

if i could vote for trump without the republican party as backdrop, i might consider it. that's not possible.

his opponent, joesph biden, is just about the most textbook, run-of-the-mill, old-timey conservative that you could pull out of the bottom of the barrel. he's run that way, too - constantly positioning himself to the right of trump, and doing so in a way that is not at all unconvincing. he's managed to peel off a substantive chunk of the republican party, along with a substantive chunk of it's base, along with it.

so, what are we going to get if joe biden wins? i'm truly led to the conclusion that it's what the republican party actually wants, if it could just do a substitution, or perhaps make a trade. how many draft picks do they want for hunter? and, that's the literal exact opposite of what i want.

so, if trump wins, the republican party will remain in charge and have to deal with trump until they can fully neutralize or otherwise get rid of him; if biden wins, the republican party will remain in charge by taking over the democrats from the inside out. it's a win-win for the republicans, then.

...and a lose-lose for the left.

it is for that reason that i'd prefer to see donald trump win; at least there is some possibility of revolt, that way, even if the contemporary movements lack any meaningful revolutionary potential. at the end of four years, maybe we'll be back to talking about class again. and, what is the result of four more years of environmental activism? i'd have to think it will be more than biden will ever accomplish. after all, trump is right to point out that mr. biden has yet to accomplish much of anything he hasn't tried to evade and distance himself from.

so, my endorsement is not just for the green party and howard hawkins but for four years of protests and revolt. i've been toying with this since the start, but my mind is made up - we're better off revolting against trump than disappointing ourselves with biden.

but, that might just be the point. i'll get to that tomorrow.