27-04-2016: ada - ?? (detroit)

their music:
https://adamaine.bandcamp.com

review:
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2016/04/27.html

vlog for the day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPVoDwebhUk

the furnace is leaking again...

while i think it needs to be caulked down here, i do suspect that something is loose upstairs.

i've found myself very sleepy this week due to a variety of things, including going cold turkey on coffee for a bit. i want to get my fluids up before i go back on it. it's working, too. see, i have a problem with not drinking enough water. i think it will resolve itself once i can turn the heat off in here (this has been a slow spring, here).

so, it took me a week to do a day's worth of spring cleaning. but it is now actually done. finally. i'll have to do laundry this afternoon, and then some filing tomorrow.

so, will i have anything up by the end of the month? no. but, i should be back on track by the start of may.

i've managed to just lose a whole year. it sucks. but, it's the way it had to be.

j reacts to the cruz-kasich agreement (it's idiotic, tactically)

also: i think that, in indiana, kasich voters are going to be more likely to back trump than cruz. the reason is that it's a socially conservative state anyways, so cruz has kasich dominated. if you're voting for kasich, it's because you consider yourself a moderate. trump is more moderate than cruz, so you'd think they'd rank him as their second choice.

it's kind of the flip of the northeast overall, but the same logic as it applies to kasich voters. cruz finished in third place in four out of five states tonight. kasich voters clearly didn't see the prospect of rallying behind cruz to be very appealing. and, it's not some collapse in logic - it's simply that they (broadly) ranked cruz behind trump in terms of preference. so, they're not going to vote for cruz to stop trump if they prefer trump to cruz. they're just going to shrug and vote for kasich.

in indiana, cruz should probably want kasich to pull those voters away from trump. so, removing kasich is actually probably going to hurt him. if they were going to vote for cruz (to stop trump or some other reason), they would have voted for him in the first place.

it's just more evidence that cruz and his team are just absolute fucking idiots. it's this ultra-competitive mindset that blinds them to any kind of co-operative strategy. they're utility monsters. it's the consequence of unrestrained egoism, selfishness as a virtue - predictable, really. yes: he should have pulled back in the northeast to give kasich a better chance [and don't say that was unpredictable. it was absolutely obvious, from weeks out.]. but, he doesn't want kasich to drop out of the midwest, as he's splitting the "moderates" and actually helping him.

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-04-28/in-indiana-the-deal-to-stop-trump-may-be-backfiring

ok, so is voting for cruz the smarter choice? see, that's my analysis - trump got the gift of ted cruz. even this late, i still think the major reason that people are holding to trump is that anything at all is better than ted cruz.

j reacts to the illegitimate primaries and sanders' politicking around them

no surprises tonight, although the closed primaries are not somehow more legitimate tonight than they were last week. it's still a flawed process, and the outcome is still not very convincing. and, hillary's reaction, through surrogates, is strongly suggesting the need for an independent run.

yes, sanders knows he won't be the democratic party nominee, and it's hard to believe he ever really thought he would be. but, he's also been clear that his endorsement of hillary clinton is not a sure thing - and it shouldn't be. don't expect the media to be able to understand this, because it can't think outside of binary, two-party politics.

see, hillary is not very good at working with others. she's an effective autocrat, but she's not good at making concessions. and, frankly, i don't think she feels she needs to - i think she thinks she won a mandate. but, she's only won a mandate with democrats, and sanders is not really a democrat.

the way that this process is supposed to work in the mind of the party establishment (and probably in the mind of most liberals) is that they have the primary, the candidate with the best ideas wins and the candidates that lose rally around the winner. that, in their minds, is "democracy".

but, leftists have never believed that democracy is reduced to a voting decision, nor have we ever believed that a majority mandate negates the views of the minority. we believe in tough negotiations through civil disobedience and spoiled ballots, if necessary. and, we're not going to support the hillary that we see in front of us. we're just not.

the reality is that sanders is making demands that he cannot truly believe that clinton will accept - and is, in the process, preparing himself for a re-exit of the party he was never really a member of.

i mean, do you think hillary clinton is going to support tuition-free public colleges and universities? or that she'll ban fracking? really?

and, see, this is the irony of the way the media works - it functions so strongly on branding that it even confuses itself. bernie is supposed to be the honest one. so, he couldn't possibly be engaging in politics, could he?

he is. and, the reason he's giving her conditions she'll never accept is that he has no intentions of supporting her.

shit hillary said vol 42

"Research shows that the primary reason that teenage girls abstain is because of their religious and moral values. We should embrace this--and support programs that reinforce the idea that abstinence at a young age is not just the smart thing to do, it is the right thing to do"

shit hillary said vol 41

"And that's why last week I called on our president to decide he would not attend the opening ceremonies of the Olympics because that is a public and very obvious ratification of our government's approval of the Beijing government's actions.

Unless the Chinese began to take very visible steps to begin to end the suppression of the Tibetans and undermining their culture and religious beliefs, and if we could get more cooperation out of the Chinese government with respect to Sudan.

And, of course, I would welcome even more action on behalf of human rights. But the challenge is, how do we try to influence the Chinese government? And I believe we have missed many opportunities during the Bush administration to do so.

In fact, I think it's fair to say our policy toward China is incoherent and that has not been in the best interest of our values or our strategic interest. So I would urge the president at least to consider and, therefore, publicly say that he will not be attending the opening ceremonies.

And let's see whether the Chinese government begins to respond because that for them would be a great loss of face and perhaps we would get more cooperation."

shit hillary said vol 40

"I am surprised and offended by the decision of the Appeals Court of the 9th Circuit and hope that it will be promptly appealed and overturned. I believe that the Court has misinterpreted the intent of the framers of the Constitution and has sought to undermine one of the bedrock values of our democracy -- that we are indeed "one nation under God," as embodied in the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

While our men and women in uniform are battling overseas and defending us here at home to preserve the freedom that we all cherish for our country and its citizens, we should never forget the blessings of Divine Providence that undergird our nation. That includes the freedom to recite the pledge of allegiance in our nation's schools. I can only imagine how they will feel about this decision as they risk their lives for our values.

And the children of America, who share a bond with each other and with our nation by reciting the pledge each day -- what effect will a decision like this have on them? It will cause them to wonder about the ways in which our beliefs can be stretched, our heritage can be assaulted. It is the wrong decision, and it is an unfair decision -- especially unfair to those who defend our nation, and to the young people who will inherit our nation's future.

Ours is a nation founded by people of faith. People of faith have helped lead some of the most significant movements of social justice throughout our history -- to end slavery, to win civil rights for all Americans. No one is required to have faith, and our government does not impose faith on its citizens. But ours is the most faith-filled nation on Earth, and there is no moral or Constitutional argument why our pledge of allegiance cannot acknowledge our commonly held belief that ours is one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

I am honored to support S. 292, the Pledge of Allegiance resolution, and I hope that the rule of law will be upheld by an ultimate rejection of this wrongheaded decision of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals."

25/26-04-2016: repeatedly unable to get the day started (total caffeine crash)

chained vlog forward:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPVoDwebhUk

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

j reacts to the cruz-kasich co-operative agreement [too little, too late]

this would have mattered if it were applied to the primaries that are tomorrow. i've commented on this in depth - it was the smart strategy....last month. now, it's too late. in fairness, there are reports that kasich understood things as they are, but cruz wouldn't co-operate.

hindsight is 20/20, ted.

it's an adult thing to admit when you're wrong. but, he ought to have just lost the argument, for good.

presuming he sweeps tomorrow, he won't need any of these states outright, and the states that cruz is conceding are proportional (meaning it doesn't matter).

the reality is that trump has already won. and, it's 100% cruz' fault.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/25/ted-cruz-and-john-kasich-team-up-in-deal-to-stop-trump

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CpRCc4Jre8

23/24-04-2016: trying to start spring cleaning, pt 2 (+ quitting caffeine for a bit)

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

hrmmn. black people blamed for something due to questionable exit polling, despite the data ultimately showing that there wasn't really any meaningful skew. sounds familiar. wonder if there's a pattern....

j reacts to the growing implications of the race (or gender) v class debate

this race v class thing again. it's the issue of our time. it's not new; you can trace it back to the 60s. and, i've pointed out a few times that it's older than that - it's the very idea that the united states was founded on: get the slaves fighting over race so they forget about class and don't fight us (because then we're fucked). but the way it's begun to manifest itself over the last few years, one could posit since occupy, has exposed larger fracture points that the democratic primary seems to have taken to a boil: the debate is not really about 'race v class' anymore, if it ever was at all, it's now just really all about class. and, when i say that, what i mean is that it divides the left very cleanly into liberals and socialists.

if you think it's about race, what you're arguing for is equality of opportunity. so, is it any surprise that you're voting for clinton? you're not really that keen on the unrealistic ideas and lofty ideals on the left in the first place. what you want is a system that gives everybody a fair opportunity to climb up the hierarchy. so, is it about race? it's not - it's about class, and your insistence that it not be abolished, because you want to climb your way up a few rungs and be in a position of greater status and wealth. you have a fundamentally competitive, calvinist, market-oriented, capitalist outlook on society. you just want to make sure the rules are fair - that nobody is starting off from a privileged position. you're a liberal.

but, if you think it's all about class, you're focused more on equality of outcome. you're a sanders supporter. when you argue for equal opportunities to education, it's because education is a human right - not because you think everybody should have the same starting points. you think everybody should have equal access to healthcare, too. it's a right! it's not something you should have to earn, or something that hard work should provide you with advantages in. you don't assign much importance to climbing up any hierarchy, because you don't think there should even be a hierarchy to climb at all. or, you may be a little bit of an existential nihilist about it, too. you have a fundamentally co-operative, egalitarian, distributive justice based, communitarian outlook on society, which should be designed so that people can enjoy their lives from cradle to grave, not spend almost all of it fighting for position in a chart. you're a socialist.

i think you can connect these ideas to the different movements that have defined the last five years, too. occupy was all about class, and is pretty strongly behind sanders. black lives matter was all about race, and seems to be mostly supporting clinton. one is a fundamentally liberal movement with a fundamentally liberal outlook; the other is very much in the tradition of socialism.

i understand that there is a need on the left to build broader movements that integrate different racial organizations, so the idea of breaking movements apart like this may be kneejerked against by many. i'd probably make the same argument, myself. but, that is merely a restatement of my position: it's all about class. is what you're saying any different? and, the more push back i hear on the point, the more i realize that it's coming from viewpoints that are thoroughly liberal and genuinely do not wish to abolish class at all. does a common cause actually exist?

perhaps some sober reflection is in order.

shit hillary said vol 39

"Now we have to figure out how we can see through thick vegetation to find Joseph Kony.”

shit hillary said vol 38

"We do believe getting it (oil dispute with Sudan) resolved is very much in South Sudan's interests. Because a percentage of something is better than a percentage of nothing, especially in an interim agreement, while you explore other ways of getting your oil to market, which I strongly urge you to do."

22-04-2016: trying to start spring cleaning, pt 1 (and editing)

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

i don't think this is important enough to necessitate an overhaul of the nation's toilet infrastructure or anything, but, moving forward, what i'd actually like to see is not gender-neutral bathrooms but single occupant stalls. instead of two bathrooms with five or six stalls each, why not 10-12 single stalls? i think that deals with a wide variety of other issues, as well, like moms with young boys.

Maharshi Desai
It is biologically impossible to change ur chromosomes, which decide ur gender. Therefore, transgendered people don't exist.

jessica
this is actually scientifically wrong and just another stupid right-wing talking point to throw down beside climate change denial and intelligent design.

what your chromosomes code for is not your biological sex but your hormone configuration. it's your hormones that then actually determine your biological sex. so, the chromosomes determine your hormones, which determine your sex. it follows that you can actually change your sex by modifying your hormones.

now, you obviously can't undo the biological changes that happen during development - you can't suck your penis back in or blow your vagina out. well, not without surgery anyways. but, if you take a fetus that is at the stage before sexual differentiation then you can actually stimulate opposite reactions with hormonal flushes. that is, if you take an xy fetus and flush it in estrogen, then the testes will not descend - it will develop a vagina. and if you take an xx fetus and flush it in testosterone, then the testes will descend - it will develop a penis.

it's another take on the evangelical idea of life at conception, god's plan, etc. but it's wrong. sex = hormones. chromosomes just tell your body which hormones to make. and, if you flip the chemistry, you flip the outcome.

UTubeHobby
Isn't hormones the problem? I know a pregnant woman takes on more male hormones when she is pregnant, so she deals with facial hair, for example. Everything goes back to normal after she gives birth, so why wouldn't the people who 'feel' like a female or male just balance out their hormones?

jessica
well, that is what they're doing. but i don't think i'm really following the question.

Utubehobby
For those who feel like they are a woman let's say. Why don't they just take more male hormones? Isn't it an imbalance? Sorry, I don't mean to be rude or silly. I'm trying to understand.

jessica
gender is really just a way to arbitrarily categorize your personality and is mostly, if not entirely, learned behaviour. there's no such thing as brain sex, and no evidence that gender identity has anything to do with hormone imbalances. so, transsexuality is mostly not a genetic condition, but a consequence of environmental conditions. the short answer is that it consequently wouldn't actually address the issue at hand, it would just lead to stronger feelings of alienation.

but, the way that gender identity interacts with hormones is in truth not at all currently understood and is actually probably very complicated. as one random example, i can state that i've never grown any hair on my chest - which is strange, because all the men on both sides of my family are very hairy (my father is jewish, cree, french & italian and was the type that actually had his shirt puff out from hair growth kind of thing - a practical gorilla). it could be a coincidence, no doubt. but, it's certainly curious, anyways, that i've simply never grown any chest hair. there are a number of similar physical curiosities i could run off that strike me as likely genetic in origin.

so, if i were to take testosterone, it would no doubt put hair on my chest, sure. and, i'm open to the idea that the fact that i don't have any hair on my chest may have the same partial cause as the gender identity (even if i'll argue that it's mostly learned). but, that testosterone is not going to affect my personality, and consequently is not going to affect my gender, even as it exaggerates my physical sex in the other direction.

i'm just trying to avoid the typical "gender and sex are different things" response, because the terms you normally get it in are both insufficient and broadly wrong.

sf
They tried that, resulting in the individuals killing themselves. If you give a person the wrong hormones, they end up depressed, having dysphoria and kill themselves eventually if they aren't allowed to stop. So, giving a cis male, female hormones would result in them being depressed and killing themselves. Giving a trans woman female hormones does the opposite. It reduces dysphoria and depression and improving quality of life.

here a study about hormones in trans people and quality of life:
http://www.jsm.jsexmed.org/article/S1743-6095(15)33856-X/abstract 

jessica
i just want to point out that this is overly reductionist in thought. it's not just a chemical imbalance, and isn't magically fixed with a set of coloured pills. there's a lot more to it than that.

hormones can help in reducing depression, in certain circumstances - which include a positive, supportive environment. however, they can also lead to horrific outcomes in other circumstances. and, the reality is that the rate of reversion is actually quite high.

there's a big part of this that reduces to the idea of a life choice. there is a decision that is made to transition, and sometimes it turns out to be the wrong one. but, as liberals, that is something that should be embraced and celebrated, not something that should be explained away or swept aside with what is, in truth, largely pseudo-science.

i have no shame in standing up in an auditorium and saying this is my decision and i expect you to respect it.

conservatives have just never gotten over this idea that humans aren't property. your kids have rights, including the right to an education, and if you're going to warp that to the point that it's no longer recognizable then the government has a responsibility to step in and uphold the kids' right. this idea that you have the right to imprint your own beliefs in your kids is incoherent within any consistent rights theory. it's just a lingering remnant of chattel slavery.

i was saying something like this...

--

Make no mistake: I am not suggesting that liberals adopt a fuzzy, gentler version of their politics. I am not suggesting they compromise their issues for the sake of playing nice. What I am suggesting is that they consider how the issues they actually fight for have drifted away from their egalitarian intentions.

I am suggesting that they notice how hating and ridiculing the people they say they want to help has led them to stop helping those people, too.

http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalism

j reacts to the relevance of chris hedges in the current election cycle

i'm not exactly a fan of chris hedges. in fact, he tends to piss me off. he's a smart guy and everything, and his heart is often in the right place, but he carries around a lot of class supremacy with him. he tries to hide it, bit he's also a bit of a religious fundamentalist on certain issues. overall, he's legitimately a good spokesperson for the modern american pseudo-left - even if i constantly find these tendencies to be almost enraging.

i was just watching this as i was eating, and i think it's topical insofar as the current election is concerned, specifically regarding the "bernie or bust argument". he's essentially laying out the likely outcome of a trump presidency.

more broadly, and i hadn't thought of this until now, but if you're familiar with some of his recent writing, it really is fairly interesting in the context of a potential trump presidency.

so, there's plenty of people arguing that maybe we should just step back and let it happen - that it's a better alternative than just letting hillary drag this corpse of america around for another eight years. i think hedges is actually a good source to consult regarding what might actually happen, should this tactic be adopted. and, this is really just a tease of it.

if i'm selling books for hedges, i'll reiterate that he's a little bit unstable at times and his arrogance can tend to really piss me off. but, he's probably pretty close to right regarding this specific thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDSNqow4SwM

21-04-2016: floundering the day away while deciding to not go to defeater

defeater set from 2012:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOjshU_Gk2A

i am wearing the same outfit as in the thumbnail (hair was a little lighter, then).

--

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

j reacts to pre-polling for april 26th and what it says about the future

so, i suggested that either kasich would win every state on the 26th or trump would sweep the delegates. i don't think there's a state on tuesday that cruz can finish second in, but it doesn't look like anybody is taking a serious run for kasich, either.

the results on tuesday are going to be similar to the results from new york. it wasn't because cruz insulted new yorkers. it's because his policies are considered to be insane by northeasterners, and kasich is...in truth, it's probably just not enough time. if cruz had dropped out, kasich might have been able to take a run. even in a two person race, cruz never had a serious chance of getting to 30%, let alone winning.

the projections throw around the number of 100 delegates for trump on tuesday. i think it's going to be closer to 150. the hope was that kasich could keep trump under 50%, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

as for bernie? harsh reality at this point is: don't expect him to win any states at all on the 26th. i would expect him to do better than the polling in maryland due to bias (and that should hold, there, because the rules aren't as strict as new york - and, if you look it up, you'll see the predictions have consistently overestimated the effects of race), but it's not going to be enough. best case scenario is splits everywhere.

you'll note that my path called for near splits on the 26th. i suggested he should be aiming to pick up 50 delegates, mostly in pennsylvania, in order to close the distance to about 100. but, that was built on a win in new york taking him from 200 to 150, rather than a loss taking him from 200 to 250.

it's not a disaster, mathematically - there's enough delegates up on the 26th that he could, in theory, make up 150 and get back on track. but, the polling isn't projecting this.

realistically, he should be hoping to walk out of the 26th with the difference less than 300. and, he probably won't be able to keep it to that.

moving forward, i expect her to win indiana & west virginia by substantial margins - indiana will look like ohio, and west virginia will look like tennessee. the next state he'll have a real chance in will be oregon, but the difference will be nearly 400 delegates by the time he gets there.

i don't like it, either. sorry.

yeah. the media is out to lunch. the republican nomination is over. it's not even close.

trump currently has 847.

conn: 25 (take most)
del: 16 (take all)
mary: 38 (take all)
penn: 71 (take all)
ri: 10  (prop)

that's 160 on tuesday. let's round down to 153, so we can say he has around 1000 after tuesday.  that would mean he'd need around 250.

california: 172 (take all)
new jersey: 51 (take all)

that's 220. and, despite what media suggests, california is not in play.

oregon: 28 (prop)
wash: 44 (prop)
nm: 24 (prop)

so, that's 96 proportional. surely, he can average 30% in those states. so, there's your win.

not used:

indiana: 57 (take-all - this is unclear)
wv: 34 (probably trump, but weird rules)
nebraska: 36 (cruz)
montana: 24 (cruz)
south dakota: 29 (cruz)

if he wins indiana and gets 15-20 from wv, he's got more than 1300 delegates. and, that's a realistic target, too.

so, that's done.

j reacts to questions about whether bernie is angling for a run

see, i think he would have stopped already if he wasn't planning on it. but, i also think he's waiting to make the choice. if june comes around, and she's twenty points ahead nationally? well, no. if june comes around and he's beating her by ten points? probably, yeah. and, we know that growth is not infinite, but the direction of the curve suggests a run.

i do think he'll do everything he possibly can to win the nomination, though - and i he can, he'll take it. he'd legitimately rather run as a democrat. it makes everything easier.

but, i just have to think he knows his odds, and i couldn't imagine what else he's planning around. it depends on everything, of course. but the thinking has to be that he gets to the convention pretty close in delegates, and with all the momentum, and then marches the left out of the party once and for all.

i don't even think you need to pull out the indictment. what if he's beating her by 10% in national polls? consistently? right now, it's still ambiguous whether one candidate is polling stronger than the other. by june, it may not be.

j reacts to the cluelessness of voting for hillary explicitly to stop trump

but, i just want to remind you: over the next few months, you're going to hear all kinds of horrible things about donald trump. and, most of them will be true, on at least some level. but, what you're not going to hear - and are going to have to constantly remind yourself - is that almost all of it applies equally well to clinton.

so, for example, consider the border fence. terrible policy, sure. but, clinton's policy is, in fact, essentially identical. she's a lot less crude about it, but she favours continuing obama's mass deportation policies. one candidate is being sold to white xenophobes that blame minorities for class inequality, whereas the other is being sold to minority voters that blame white people for class inequality (see the trick, there?). but, the policies are not actually meaningfully different. if you're not fully expecting clinton to deport even more people than obama, you're not paying attention.

or, you could look at iran. hillary is, in fact, itching to bomb iran. she's entirely in line with john mccain and dick cheney. absolute neo-con. there is a difference in appearance: she knows a little about the situation, whereas trump is just trying to sound tough. there's no reason to expect any real substantive policy difference.

and you can go down this list for a while. you won't pull out much of a difference. the few things where there is a difference (trade, war) maybe ought to lean you towards trump - if you're an actual leftist, that is, and don't just like wearing the shirt and the hipster status attached to it.

so, i mean, if you don't like trump that's fine. i don't like him either. i couldn't imagine voting for him. just make sure you know where hillary stands before you vote for her, against trump - because you might be disappointed when you get exactly what you voted against.

but, maybe you still think obama is a peace candidate, too? you should have never thought that. he couldn't have been more clear.

so, you know that i frequent message boards. and i know that it's 90% people doing their jobs. but, you have to give trump's pr team some credit, even if you don't like his policies.

these are real-life talking point by paid trump hacks, who (like most of the country) are simply not taking ted cruz seriously anymore:

1) Ted Cruz has a pay as you go flip phone.
2) Ted Cruz wears Donald Trump Pajamas.
3) Ted Cruz keeps his khakis on during sex.
4) When at a steakhouse, Ted Cruz orders salmon.
5) Ted Cruz has every episode of Murder She Wrote on his DVR.
6) Ted Cruz’s default search engine is Bing.
7) Ted Cruz orders off of the kids’ menu.
8) Ted Cruz kisses his dad on the mouth.
9) Ted Cruz is no longer allowed to cut his own bangs.

shit hillary said vol 37

"I am very grateful that I had a grounding in faith that gave me the courage and the strength to do what I thought was right, regardless of what the world thought."

shit hillary said vol 36

"One of the major accomplishments in the execution of this responsibility occurred in 1998 when the Congress passed and my husband signed into law the International Religious Freedom Act. That Act incorporated, as a foundational element of United States foreign policy, the ideals of religious freedom on which our own nation was founded. And it required our government to designate a nation as a Country of Particular Concern if that nation's government had either engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom defined as systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of freedom of religion as outlined in international human rights documents. That helped to put the spotlight on countries that were not living up to the ideals or even their stated commitment in their own documents to religious freedom."

A total of 17,465 people died from overdosing on illicit drugs like heroin and cocaine in 2014, while 25,760 people died from overdosing on prescription drugs, including painkillers and tranquilizers like Valium, according to CDC figures.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/marijuana-overdose-deaths_us_5716468ee4b0060ccda452ad

this is such an absurd strawman - to the point that i see no particular reason to debate it. i'll even concede the point: so long as we have gendered bathrooms, obvious cis gendered dudes in bad wigs shouldn't use the one designated for women.

20-04-2016: 4/20 in detroit (imperial death march: melt banana, melvins, napalm death)

concert footage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rYXwTfmJiI

review:
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2016/04/20.html

previous vlog:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZhDGD6OoJI

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

20-04-2016: melt banana - infection defective (detroit)

their music:
http://www.melt-banana.net/

review:
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2016/04/20.html

vlog for the day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPd2kz0SUg8

my music:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com

05. distracted by the democratic primary (trying to finish archiving) (dvd 5)

19-04-2016: winter archiving is over; hello to spring cockroaches (& new york primary)

chained vlog forward:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPd2kz0SUg8

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

it took me a while to figure out what was going on here. the doctor was kind of vague. we agreed i should be checked for stroke symptoms, and there weren't any. he told me it was probably a migraine, and i agreed, but it just struck me as a little extreme. so i've been worried about tumours, degenerative diseases...

in fact, i think what happened was a condition called transient aphasia (explained: https://migraine.com/blog/migraine-symptoms-transient-aphasia/) that is associated with severe migraines. i actually mention in the video that i'm experiencing "tracers", which is usually referred to as an "aura" in the migraine literature. but i actually manage to get myself in aphasia a little after 40:00.

j reacts to the inherently anti-democratic nature of two-party political systems

i think this is half-right. but, it is stuck in two-party politics.

i've lived my whole life in a three-party system. we have a conservative party that is roughly equivalent to the american democrats [in the late 70s, when it was morning in america for the conservative movement, the canadian conservative party was campaigning on legalizing marijuana]. clinton & obama would both be tories in canada. we have a liberal party that is historically more equivalent to the american green party - but would also be the party of your elizabeth warrens. and, we have an ndp that has historically been a socialist party and advocated for things like state-controlled industry. in fact, they succeeded in nationalizing the oil industry for a while. sanders would be a member of the ndp in canada.

your republican party would be a fringe movement in canada. the closest thing would be the social credit party, but it's a bad comparison, over all.

now, the spectrum may be skewed left up here. but, that's not really the point i'm getting at. the point is that we have three parties, not two, and so we have three orientations: right, left and center. in practice, it's neither the left nor the right that run the country - it's the liberal party in the center.

we could do this a few different ways. i like to bring in the idea of dialectics. because, if you look at the old literature, democracy has something to do with dialectics. the thing is that america has never really understood this, though. there's this idea in the american political philosophy that if you get right and left at each other's throat, you end up with synthesis in the form of bipartisanship. so, you hear this all over the spectrum. working together across the aisle. it's scary language, on some level - reflective of a one-party state. but, if you know where it comes from, you get that what it's really about is synthesis.

except that has never been what has happened. in a two-party system, you never get any kind of real synthesis. what you get are tugs and pulls on the center. you get pendulums sweeping back and forth. the right hand erases the left hand, and then the left hand erases the right - in the long run, it is the opposite of synthesis.

the reagan era undid the fdr era. and, the next generation will return the favour and throw reagan in the dustbin, as it resurrects fdr. will this go on forever? will the pendulum swing into perpetuity?

if so, the founders will have failed - they intended for synthesis. the two party system was about dialectics, not pendulums.

and, what of canada, then? well, the three-party system actually presents a functional dialectic by sending thesis and anti-thesis to the partisan extremes, and letting serious policy happen in the centre. so, it happens to be that the same party that brought us single-payer health care in the 60s also brought us balanced budgets in the 90s. by existing in the center, and synthesizing ideas from the parties on the left and right, the liberals are able to govern broadly empirically - and not ideologically.

i've been saying this for months, actually. matthew is absolutely right to point out that the democrats are not a party of the left, and at all. but, the solution is not for the left to take over the democrats. matthew also correctly points out that this will help the right more than it will help the left. the solution is for the left to stop co-operating with the democrats, to spin itself off and let the democrats sit in the middle. to me, the great excitement surrounding sanders is that he might be the catalyst to construct this three-party system, and finally let the dialectic work.

remember: conservatives are only wrong about 85% of the time.

http://www.vox.com/2016/4/20/11466376/bernie-sanders-future-democrats

spring bug update

i've caught two in the last twelve hours (one around midnight, the other around 8:00 am) near the front door, which is a little different. essentially every roach i've ever seen in here has been near the plumbing on the far side - in the kitchen usually, or maybe in the bathroom or sometimes in the closet in the bedroom. but always clearly near the plumbing as a water source. so, to see two of them come in from the other side like this is a little different.

so, i did some liberal spraying along each of the four doorways around the two entrances. i suppose we'll find out how many get trapped in it over the next few days. but, it seems to suggest there's been a population increase in the back area. it's generally stated that seeing roaches in the day is a bad sign.

i haven't seen any on the plumbing side yet this year, but i will be doing spring cleaning over the weekend - which means spraying behind the appliances and replacing the steel wool.

the headaches have subsided. and i want to be clear that i wasn't trying to be accusatory. i was just trying to figure out if the unit was sprayed when i wasn't here, as that struck me as a likely explanation for what was happening. pure intuition. and, obviously, i would like to be informed when the unit is going to be sprayed, if the unit is going to be sprayed. but i wouldn't have raised the issue if i wasn't getting dramatic symptoms coming from the air - not just headaches, actually, but visual hallucinations (tracers) and at one point an inability to speak. i mean, i spent a day in the hospital. they told me i had a migraine, and maybe that was it, but it kind of seems like i was poisoned. again: i'm not making accusations, exactly, i'm more just contemplating possibilities. however, because i've sprayed down here this morning, i've now contaminated myself regarding any testing. i wouldn't have sprayed if i didn't think it was gone, anyways. at the very least, realize this: if there was spraying down here this month, i got some pretty nasty side effects from it. so, that shouldn't happen again without telling me what's happening so i can adjust...

i am now moving this laptop back into the bedroom, and getting ready to turn the pc back on. the last thing i have to do on the laptop is clean this page up, but it won't make sense to do that right away - i'll have to do it as i'm rebuilding the alter-reality (and the period disc) from 1996 on. and, in order to get there, i still have to sort through some things, to make sure i've found everything i can.

i don't know if there are still usenet or mailing list archives for me to access online, but it's secondary to finding what i can in squirelled away pst files first, anyways. iirc, it was about mid-1997 that i started rambling on the internet. the alter-reality starts in the summer of 1996, and will consequently kick back in around july. but, then i've got a year before i need to worry about it. and, i consequently may put it off for a little while, depending on how fast i find things.

i'm hitting a strange show tonight (melt banana / melvins...and i'll probably stay for napalm death, too, depending on set times), because it's 4/20. but, i think i should get through most of this scavenging by the end of the day, too. and, then i can get back to finishing what i started doing back in december.

almost there. seriously.

and what do i have to show for it? well, i've pulled down over a gb of text from the internet. 1.2 gb. of text. stored in word documents. i jest you not, this is the truth. message boards. youtube. email. facebook. it's 1.2 gb of text. since 2011. and understand this: i have many times more than this from before 2011. so, when i claim that i'm building an alter-reality with a lot of writing....

it'll be really obvious what i'm doing as soon as i start doing it. and i'm just about there.

and, did i mention that i quit smoking, too? that was really important. and, frankly, this was a pretty productive way to do that. time is a strange intangible and everything. i'd prefer it if we weren't stuck running out of it. and, i may be lucky enough to catch the cut-off point after all. i'm beginning to think i was too pessimistic. but, i don't regret this. and, if i can catch immortality after all, then i'm just setting myself up for it. hey, that cut-off point is coming soon, whether i catch it or not.

j reacts to sanders losing in new york (and what he should do next)

so, i got in before the results - it was clear this was going to happen within a few days of the vote, even if i didn't realize the consequences of a closed primary far ahead of the vote (as so few did, apparently).

but, i still don't think it really says anything about clinton's relationship to blacks, in general. it says a lot about clinton's relationship to older, wealthy blacks. but, that was never in question. she does well with older, wealthy whites, too.

it's true she did well in the less wealthy areas, too. but, i want you to realize how absurd this reaction is: the sample size was too small to draw any meaningful conclusions from. that is absolutely ridiculous, but it's also absolutely true. if you hit the new york times results precinct by precinct, you'll have a hard time finding a precinct with more than 400 cast ballots. the harsh reality is that you can't draw any meaningful conclusions from such a biased sample. the fact that they're mostly life-long democrats is probably more important than anything else.

the remaining states aren't going to be as bad in terms of voter suppression, and should provide a better sample. i really wanted new york to give us better data, but the arcane rules that are in place make it even less useful than the previous collections.

anybody that is attempting to use the new york results to demonstrate something that was predicted about demographics, or use it to predict something in the future about demographics, is being dishonest. the only thing of any real value that the data from new york tells us is that dyed-in-the-wool life-long partisan democrats are strongly supportive of the clinton dynasty. which is not news.

--

but, again - let me state this clearly.

sanders will almost certainly lose the democratic nomination. and the media is pushing hard for him to drop.

but, he should not drop. just because he's probably going to lose the nomination doesn't mean his campaign is done. i've laid out the reasons he should run as an independent, and why he could very well win. there will be much wrangling on the way there, but it's mostly just an elaborate set of excuses to drag the process on until he can go solo.

could he have won new york tonight if the primary was open? well, they didn't even cast two million votes. there's twenty million people in new york. it's well within the realm of possibility. and, it's consequently not a very strong argument.

shit hillary said vol 35

"It’s a phoney referendum and it is going to be used by Assad to justify what he’s doing to other Syrian citizens."

j reacts to trump winning new york (and how to beat him in the general)

"yes, we will".

so, ted cruz wants to be obama? what? you are no doubt confused by this turn of events. has he received the memo from the heritage institute on the mandate?

yet, you shouldn't be. see, this is actually one of those situations where the banks just let slip what you're not supposed to know: that ted cruz is, in fact, the continuity candidate. the bankers switch parties every eight years, remember. ted cruz is indeed brought to us by the same bankers that brought us barack obama. hillary's not even their second choice- not even their tenth choice, really. but, they seem to have lost their minds over the last four years. i've pointed this out a few times: it's probably his wife's fault. you lose objectivity when you're trying to get your spouse elected. and, this entire cycle - hillary, trump, sanders - is all essentially a consequence of this monumental fuck-up. the banks picked a limp horse and stuck with it.

yes - you will lose, ted. third place, tonight. get used to this....

now, note this: it seems like kasich won manhatten. an island of teal in a sea of red. the obvious choice there is actually cruz - because he's the banker candidate. but, the whole plan is in tatters. note that, despite of this, trump still loses manhatten. and, that is telling.

so, how do you beat trump, now? listen - i may be non-committal in terms of support. don't expect me to hit the boards arguing for hillary. i think she's a war criminal, and makes a better republican than trump does. if sanders doesn't run, i'm going to endorse stein. but, this is a math problem, so i seek a solution. how do you beat this guy?

well, i think enough time has gone on to make his base clear, right. he's not swinging conservatives. at all. i will state for at least the third time that i think hillary will run to his right, and beat him on it. she will swing evangelicals and all manners of "moderate conservatives" that think he's some kind of raving liberal. rather, i think the danger is that clinton tries to present him as an extreme right-winger. her better tactic is to run against him the same way she's been running against sanders, and try and paint him as an unrealistic leftist. the early indications suggest she's not doing that, and it's going to come out in the end as an error.

again: he's not swaying conservatives. conservatives are actually up for grabs, here. and, hillary is a conservative. so, it makes more sense for her to go after them than to alienate them. they're supposed to be all about rational choices. hillary is their rational choice. they will grudgingly accept this.

rather, what he's swaying are these authoritarian types that want a "strong leader" to save them from evil. bush voters. he fucked up himself in attacking bush' legacy. that's his base. and, what they want is....let's say they want bismarck. or, maybe stephen harper? see, i've got some recent experience with this.

now, has what we've seen over the last year or so suggested that donald trump is actually a leader? i don't think it has. i think he's been a follower of the most blatant sort. he's bleeting the republican line on point after point. he changed his position on abortion to win votes (and nobody believes that he believes what he said, so don't bother with that). he changed his position on health care. he's changed position after position. that's not strong leadership, that's just following the herd.

the whole debate may seem facile and childish. and i don't want to fall into this narrative that voters are stupid. but, this particular type of voter is not so bright. and, this is how you get in their head: donald trump is not a leader.

and, he isn't. on party orders, he has taken foolish positions that he doesn't believe in. the reality is that he's doing what he's told. so, why should you believe he'll pull out of these trade deals? or anything else he says...

18-04-2016: thinking some more about new york & clearing out all gmail accounts via download

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

j reacts to sanders' use of voter apathy tactics for closed primaries in the northeast

so, the sanders campaign is pushing a last minute corruption scandal....

on the one hand, this is a safe tactic, because almost nobody supporting sanders is going to care one way or the other.

on the other hand, it's gutter politics - because it isn't designed to win votes so much as it's designed to suppress turnout. see, that's what he needs right now, though. he's not going to swing these wealthy new york minorities that came to america to break it big and don't want to pay taxes to fund health care for poor people. but, he could conceivably disgust them enough that they get disinterested and apathetic.

hey, if you want to play the game, you want to win it. and, he's literally got millions of people that can't vote for him. i'm more inclined to suggest it's too little, too late - but also that it's a valid tactic going into pennsylvania.

but, it's also another implication that sanders doesn't plan to concede any time soon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouveau_riche

shit hillary said vol 34

“I’m very supportive of the mayor’s proposal to tax soda."

shit hillary said vol 33

“So we now have a chance to set a new global standard for good governance and to strengthen a global ethos of transparency and accountability. And there is no better partner to have started this effort and to be leading it than Brazil, and in particular, President Rousseff. Her commitment to openness, transparency, her fight against corruption is setting a global standard.”

j reacts (dvd 1)

j reacts to the dynamics in a possible three-way sanders/trump/clinton race

woah woah woah. let's take a step back, here. let's look at some true statements.

1) bernie's chances of winning the democratic nomination will probably be all but decimated tomorrow. i think he can make up more than 100 delegates in california, in the best case.  i don't think he can make up more than 200. a split is not good enough. he has to win. he has to make up delegates.

2) that does not mean that bernie is obligated to suspend his campaign on the near inevitability of a loss. he has claimed that everybody should get the right to vote their conscience. who can truly argue with that?

3) the united states is not a two-party system by law. if you scroll through this page, i think you'll see more than enough of an argument that he should run outside the democratic party. some arguments:

a) closed primaries where he's probably actually winning, but where his supporters can't vote for him.
b) obvious signs of vote tampering (stuffed early ballots).
c) voter suppression tactics.
d) the distribution of the vote.

i mean, he signed this pledge. fine. has the party lived up to it's side of it? i think there's an argument that it hasn't.

4) therefore, tomorrow's vote is not necessarily definitive or final. i think he should have bailed on the democrats months ago. but, at this point, he'd might as well wait until june before he does.

tomorrow may technically close a door, but it was a trap door in the first place. i've stated repeatedly that he never really had a serious chance. so, the facade may end. but, the candidacy may not - and, i would argue, should not.

some polls would help. clinton/trump/sanders. but, i think he can split the field.

let's split the republicans into five parts:

1) evangelicals--->clinton/trump [trump is a nihilist, and clinton is an evangelical]
2) rich bastards > clinton  [i think she'll steal this group outright]
3) libertarians---> sanders [i think he'll steal this group outright]
4) white working class > sanders/trump  [probably a clean split]
5) fiscal conservatives > trump

it's a function of how poorly trump fits into the republican party, granted. but trump is probably looking at numbers in the 30s, regardless. in a three-way race, sanders will probably bleed enough from trump to pull him closer to 30 - and maybe even into the high 20s. i consequently think that a three-way race like this becomes sanders v clinton in most of the country, with trump falling to third place.

but, some polls would help.

--

see, this is why bernie does better than clinton against trump & cruz. & trump should be kicking himself, because he could have - and probably wanted to - try and get them. unfortunately, the party knocked him in line...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3HwaBWx2-0

17-04-2016: archiving old email (by hand...) & starting to think about new york

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

j reacts to the new york primary being closed

so, what is happening in new york?

well, first let us point out that the media has been horrible. sure. but, let us also point out that sanders is still drawing gigantic, multi-racial crowds. it is clear that you have an establishment buckling against a populist movement. that's clear as day to anybody that gets their news from a good source. there's consequently a conflict developing on the ground...

how can it be quantified? well, that's what the polls are for, right. now, i'm supposed to know how to read these things. but, what i've learned over the last few months is that the american polling firms do strange things with the data, and it's very difficult to know how to read into them as a result. i'm also not certain that they're honest, or that the results on the ground are fair [in fact, i'm pretty sure that some of the states were rigged]. so, instead of trying to make predictions in such a messy climate, i'm instead going to draw some attention to some possible points of error.

first, let's understand what the polls say. in most circumstances, i'll argue against taking a straight polling average. but, the race in new york is the rare circumstance where this actually works out. the reason is that it's a closed primary, and i'll come back to that. so, it kind of does approximate market research. and, rather than try and figure out which way the masses are careening, you want to balance the data out. so, yes - you'll get a few polls that are around a 10% spread +/- 4-5. then you'll get a few that suggest it's more like 15%. it balances out to around 12%. and, this is the right way to read it: the polling, right now, suggests that the race is stable and the spread is over 10%. that would imply a comfortable clinton win.

where could it go wrong? well, i've drawn heavy attention to the idea of racist modeling. when these polling companies put their numbers out, it's not a straight tally. it's adjusted to fit census results. if they bake a bias into their polling, it could come out in their projections. i've hinted at the idea that there's a strong reason to suspect this is happening. if so, the polling could be exaggerating clinton's lead with minority groups, and thereby exaggerating her lead altogether. so, there may be reason to expect a surprise.

except, not really, because it's a closed primary. now, closed primaries are not closed by some accident - they're designed to exclude the unwashed masses. which means they have a class bias baked into them. after you cancel everything out, the closed primary is actually likely to maintain clinton's lead with minorities - because it's likely to exclude less wealthy minorities, who didn't register in time. nobody will deny that clinton has a substantial lead with wealthy minorities, many of whom would probably vote republican if the party was more pluralist (because they are wealthy). we're careening towards a reality where you have a conservative party for whites (the republicans) and a conservative party for browns and blacks (the democrats). clinton is arguably an even better spokesperson for this group than obama. but, that is really about class, even if it is a consequence of racialized politics in the republican party. the rules in new york are designed so that these wealthy and usually very educated minorities get a say, because they knew to register ahead of time, while the poor minorities don't - because they didn't.

so, we need to ask the question: how many of the people at these impressively sized multi-racial rallies are going to be able to actually vote? and, i think the answer is going to be disappointingly few.

i suspect sanders may win an open primary, and that the correlations by race would break down in an open primary. but, it isn't an open primary.

and i again need to request that you stay safe on tuesday if you live in new york. there's going to be a lot of people that want to vote - for sanders - and can't. they're going to be understandably frustrated.

so, i again need to point out that the real story is the question of why new york has a closed primary. hopefully, that issue gets addressed.

clinton may not really win, or at least she might not win an open tally of the popular vote. but, you should expect her to win the official vote totals. and, probably convincingly.

season 5

16-04-2016: last editing catch-up day?

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

j reacts to the idea that meeting the pope during eastern primaries is not campaigning

i don't mean in any way to question the ingenuousness of the gesture, but it strikes me as rather daft to argue that meeting the pope the day before the new york primary for the democratic party is in some way not campaigning.

there's lots of catholics in new york. 33%, apparently.

shit hillary said vol 32

"the fact is, i've always been a yankees fan"

need to know about spraying down here

jessica
hi.

i've been dealing with some pretty severe headaches for the last few weeks, and i'm kind of putting together a hypothesis. now, i think it goes without saying that the most important thing is everybody's health....

i went to a concert on the evening of monday the 4th. the first headache hit me on the afternoon of wednesday the 6th. i became aware of the bed bug concern on thursday the 7th. i was nursing one when you came down on the evening of the 8th. what i've noticed since then is that the headaches have something to do with the air quality in the basement, and that i'm going to need to air the basement out (probably tomorrow and monday). in the mean time, i have the fan running nonstop. i've tried to turn it off a few times, and the headache always comes on very strong. so, i'm pretty sure about cause and effect with something in the air in the basement.

now, who knows, right. it could be anything at all, really. but, i'm just having a hard time shaking the possibility that there may have been some spraying done in the basement when i was gone. i mean, it all adds up. while it's true that the basement is overdue for an airing out, and i could just be reacting to stale air. why did it just start to affect me a few weeks ago?

if there is something to the hypothesis, and i'm *still* reacting to the pesticide, there must have been an awful lot of pesticide sprayed down here. and, i think i ought to be concerned about long term effects, at this point, due to continued exposure.

either way, the reality is that i've had almost two weeks worth of migraines, now. i'm going to need to seek medical attention one way or the other. that's going to involve taking blood tests and other things - if i'm dealing with chemical exposure, i'm going to figure that out. so, if you can help me figure out of there was spraying down here, it's just saving me some time, really.

i've been thinking about it a long while and trying to get my head around it. how could anybody spray a unit and not tell the person?

that seems insane. so, i've been putting this email off, maybe to the detriment of my own health. but, i've clued in that there's a kind of child-like concept of punitive effects at play. i could imagine that he might have been afraid that he'd be "caught" with bed bugs, and so wanted to spray to make sure nobody found out.
and, then he couldn't tell me, of course. it sounds inconceivable. but, to a child, the possibility of not getting caught with bed bugs would outweigh everything else. or, at least that's the best i can make sense of it.

it's all horribly negligent and everything, but i'm really more concerned about my health, right now. if there was something sprayed down here, figuring out what it was will help me in determining what kind of exposure i've had, how much i've got in me, how to clear it out, etc. and, i'm going to get to the point through testing, eventually, anyways.

i trust you'd tell me, if you knew, because you're a responsible adult and everything. i'm more presenting arguments for you to throw at paul to get an honest response out of him. i really don't think i'd get one out of him, myself.

even if i can air the place out tomorrow and it works in eliminating the headaches, i think i need to know if i'm possibly reacting to something or not.

i need to be clear that i'm not exactly making any accusations. as mentioned, it could be anything. but, i can't shake the suspicion - and i'm consequently going to end up testing for it. if i can get some confirmation, it's just going to allow me to reduce exposure faster and reduce risk factors quicker.

the landlord
Jessica, I have asked repeatedly that My brother and niece catch one bug or bugs so that I could verify there are bed bugs. my niece started this scare originally with what she thought were bites on the back of her hand. That turned out to be Xema. She had recently visited her Doctor and was told she had XEMA on her hand and not bites. Up to this point they have not caught one bug to show me that Bed bugs are identified as a problem. At this point I am convinced there are no bed bugs at all. If there were bed bugs they would have multiplied and there would be evidence of many bugs and actual bites. I have not seen one bed bug to this day.  I know you research things quite well and I have done my share of reading and researching!        bed bugs spread and multiple quickly. I have not seen any evidence that there are bed bugs in my niece's place or any other place. ..... I was told that my niece's boyfriend, killed a bug crawling up the wall and which they determined it to be a bed bug. Still they did not keep it to identify it as a bed bug.. The other point I want to make is that the thought of bed bugs does make people panic and do not want to be associated with this problem. SO, people to panic and react without verifying. So please be empathetic to this reality.

SPRAYING. I do know that they did spray in my niece's place about a week ago which was about 1/4 to less of a spray can; my brother did the spraying, one time along the bed boards and baseboard in one room. This was isolated to their apartment only. I do not believe this product could have migrated to your apartment, since they followed the instructions to keep all their doors closed while this product settled.  Please keep in mind each units ventilation system does not mix their air to the rest of the air in the building. All exhaust fans purge air outside the building. Please, also keep in mind anything is possible when door s open and close, but I would say that any migration of the product would have been minimal to the existing hallway and they did keep doors shut for the appropriate time. The other point that I must make is that I cannot stop any tenant from spraying in their apartment. I cannot even stop you from buying a can of spray and you spraying your apartment.  All I can do is educate everyone to be mindful of any bug situations, think clearly of what they should or should not do and that they must contact me before they act.    Additionally, I have been specific with my niece and my brother, there will be no further spraying in the building for bed bugs, since we have no proof of bed bugs. They must have my permission to spray anywhere in the common hallways and basement!!!!!.   ....

jessica
yeah. and, i've done a little more research and it does turn out that the symptoms i was experiencing - aphasia (difficulty speaking) and auras - are actually common symptoms of severe migraines. the thing is they're *also* symptoms of pesticide poisoning. i mean, i initially thought i was having a stroke. there was a point where i couldn't speak. so....it's more like i wanted to rule it out.

consider this: i suppose you could imagine how a fumigation in here might have also created those symptoms. that's what i wanted to be sure hadn't happened.

i really don't have a history of migraines either, so it's not like i could say i was expecting something from a trigger. but lots of things cause migraines. it turns out the number one trigger is in fact environmental conditions. so maybe i just had a bad reaction to the stale air, after all.

i know it's a crazy thing, but thank you for determining whether there was spraying down here or not, just so i know what had happened.

in case you're curious, this describes the attack:
https://migraine.com/blog/migraine-symptoms-transient-aphasia/

it's maybe easier to see why poisoning is something that's in the distinct realm of possibility. and, so, given the circumstances...

j reacts to sanders outperforming clinton against republicans

so, why does sanders consistently beat clinton when matched up against republicans, but at best ties her head-to-head?

well, it suggests that there are some republicans that would prefer sanders to the candidates in their own field. yet, sanders is - by anybody's admission - the most liberal person in washington. wtf?

well, that's just it. you can partition the republican party into a few different components. you've got the religious right that's socially conservative. you've got the upper crust that's concerned about low taxes. these are what people think of as republicans, and compose the bulk of the republican base. but, you've also got a more than measurable, in fact sizable, minority of right-libertarians that prefer the republican party because they see it as being less invasive on civil liberties. the language is confusing and contentious, but these people are ideological liberals.

so, it's because he's so liberal, rather than despite it. and, this is upending all the conventional wisdom of the reagan era, which clinton is so intrinsically woven into. she's spent her whole life trying to appeal to the silent majority of reagan democrats - what the spectrum delusionally calls "moderates". but, they're all dead now. and, what's coming up in their place is a really starkly libertarian electorate, attached to both parties.

if we get nothing else from sanders, take heed of the following lesson: you're going to have to be liberal and proud of it to win an election in a predominantly x/y voting reality. and, sanders may consequently be simultaneously ahead of his time and stuck in the past. unstuck in time, maybe, even.

it's as simple as that right-libertarians prefer him over cruz or trump. and, it's easy to see why, if you think about it for a second.

15-04-2016: all comments from the 2015 canadian election (that i can find) are now archived

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

the answer is that we need to use more electricity. the policy assumed we'd be driving electric cars and running high speed rails up and down the detroit-quebec city corridor, by now.

our electricity is clean. you're not helping the environment by using less of it. rather, you'd be helping the environment by using more of it - and less fossil fuels.

i would support a renationalizing of the grid, and a system run at cost.

but it's backwards logic to blame the problem on the green energy act. the green energy act was massively successful - it created a large surplus of clean energy, which was going to be required to help us get off of carbon. this exists. it's in place. what has failed has been the slow adoption of electric vehicles.

...and that's been a failure, largely, at the federal level.

wynne needs to call trudeau up and get him to push some serious tax cuts for electric cars. that's the piece of policy that has been a failure. and, for obvious reasons - we just got out of ten years of petrostate politics.

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/electricity-ontario-1.3538157

shit hillary said vol 31

“some critics of public schools urge greater competition among schools as a way of returning control from bureaucrats and politicians to parents and teachers. I find their arguments persuasive, and that’s why I strongly favor promoting choice among public schools.”

shit hillary said vol 30

"Schools may not provide religious instruction, but they may teach about the Bible, civic values and virtue, and moral codes, as long as they remain neutral with respect to the promotion of any particular religion.

This last point is particularly important, [because religious institutions, parents, & schools share] the responsibility of helping children to develop moral values and a social conscience."

j reacts to the electricity rate hike in ontario

before i start, let me say that i think the system should be publicly owned and run at cost.

but, there's a constant in people's reaction. they don't understand why the government would have a system that doesn't incentivize conservation.

the reason is that ontario has an almost entirely clean and fully renewable grid from a combination of hydro, solar & wind, mostly [we have something like 5% on natural gas, still - and absolutely no coal at all]. our government has already put the infrastructure in place. we could have transitioned quite some time ago, if people understood the facts on the ground.

but, instead, people want to conserve. because it's drilled into their heads. by american media.

but, the real way to break through this confusing set of contradictions is to come to the following conclusion: a market for electricity is impossible. that's the scam, here. it's the thing that needs to be abolished.

see, you can't turn the hydro off and you can't store the solar or the wind. so, generation costs are static. that is, they are not altered by demand. so, you literally can't conserve. and, you can't reduce demand, either. so, you can't adjust the supply. as costs are always the same, conserving energy just creates debt that needs to be recouped over the next season.

what, then, does it mean to say that there are market rates? it means to say that the producers can arbitrarily rip you off. there can't actually be a market - because there can't be any real adjustment.

if you live in ontario, and you're just cluing into this now, you should be absolutely livid - because they've been pushing this down on us for twenty years. they told us it would decrease costs. now, many people understood. many people tried to explain. but, the argument has constantly been lost...

the solution is that we need to cut our losses and renationalize the grid - and make sure we're not so foolish as to fall for these scam artists a second time.

in the mean time? waste as much electricity as you want. it's clean. it's renewable. and, we literally can't get rid of it fast enough. and, get an electric car, already! the system is there for it. you're supposed to be tapping into it.

short of nationalization, the only way that rates will stop hiking every few months is if the utility companies can actually sell enough electricity to generate a profit.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/hydro-rates-hike-ontario-energy-board-1.3536062

jessica
i have some advice for young women: i think they should go to parties where there's lots of alcohol and get shitfaced, then expect everybody else to take care of them until they sober up.

Joshua Arce
How about educating the dumb jock who thinks it's okay to abuse woman. Sexual or otherwise. He talked about things one does AFTER the fact. We need prevention.

jessica
do you really think the issue is a lack of education? dumb jocks are dumb. you'd have better luck teaching a lion to become a vegetarian.

world's a rough place. gotta deal with it, or you become a casualty.

You Don't Say?
problem is most people who are sexually abusing women don't view themselves as sexually abusing women, hence why you ought to not go to parties that involve a lot of alcohol, since it inhibits good judgement like that. sounds like some of the best prevention advice available to me.

jessica
that's absolute bullshit. they know exactly what they're doing.

---

Alison Lauren
Sure, its common sense that it's best to avoid being somewhere you may be vulnerable, but you can't blame a girl for wanting to go out??? Why is it that girls should stay home or avoid drinking because of what could happen to them at a party?? Isn't it time teach hormonal, imbecilic boys that it's aBSOLUTELY NOT OKAY to take advantage of girls or others??? Come oN, it's 2016 not 1016

Atler the Dark
They're trying to teach them. Rape has been illegal for a long time. But rape awareness has already grown into a borderline obsession.

Jesus
That's stupid, they're drunk, I would never put myself next to a drunk guy, and I'm a guy. Everybody is at danger when someone is drunk. A dudes just more likely to get his ass beat by a drunk guy than raped. Is that really worth going to a party and making a fool of yourself? A party Is a risky place when there's substances like that. You can't teach a drunk driver how to drive, so don't expect to teach a drunk man how not to rape.

jessica
do you honestly think they don't know better?

has it crossed your mind that they don't care, and they're never going to care?

does a lion shed a tear for an antelope?

world's a shitty place, kid.

Atler the Dark
Well that's a brutal way of putting it.

jessica
coming out of the 60s, there's been a lot of parents that haven't been teaching their kids about the way the world is, and it's going to require a correction in the other direction.

Theworldisbeautiful9
I honestly think he makes a good point. It's better to try to take steps to stay safe and prevent it from happening in the first place, but of course at the same time, people should be taught not to rape. No one is saying that we shouldn't.

jessica
see, you really shouldn't have to be taught not to rape, should you? that should be kind of obvious, you'd think - obvious enough that the benefit of the doubt is not worthwhile. and, it's ridiculous that there's even a discussion.

"well, nobody ever told him. how was he supposed to know?"

right.

but, that's not what makes me so angry about this. what makes me angry about this is the absolute default of parental responsibility that comes in telling your daughter that she has nothing to fear, because she has rights.

i'm not going to blame anybody for getting raped. the premise is preposterous. but, i'll absolutely point fingers at parents for failing at their responsibility to instill a concept of healthy fear in their daughters for a world full of dangerous predators.

you can't reverse negligence. but, you can take steps to stop it from perpetuating.

but, nobody is even trying to dispute the veracity of the claim. it might be offensive to some people. but, perhaps the truth hurts?

i should be back on track by monday at the latest.

but i need to answer a question: am i going to be doing anything new?

i've been clear for years that the answer is no. & absolutely not.

i'm 35 years old, now. when i started this phase of archival and completion, i was 33. i'm past my creative period. ask yourself this question: can you think of a single interesting record made by a 30 year-old?

but i've also grown up. and i'm past the age where i want to be making music, too. my contemporary interests are in politics and political philosophy. i will be spending the rest of my life writing.

but, i do not want to leave these ideas unfinished, either. so, i am focusing on completing unfinished works. and, then i am going to be doing something else with the rest of my life.

14-04-2016: distracted by current events while archiving, but nearing the end (archiving disqus)

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

j reacts to the new york democratic debate

i made it through most of the "debate". & the disqus run was the last serious archiving step. i should be able to do a quick clean up tomorrow and then get moving forwards.  i'm going to pencil myself in 4/22 as my restart date.

there's two ways to look at the debate.

if you're an informed, policy wonk type, what you'll likely walk away with, regardless of where you stand, is a clear difference in perceptions about honesty. clinton was a horrible demagogue tonight. on question after question, she distorted and deflected and misled. but, see, if you could catch her on this, you probably already had this perception of her. if you couldn't catch her in the lies? you probably fell for them.

see, i think that sanders is a very good debater. but i'm high information. and, even so, i realize that clinton is a better liar than sanders is a debater. i want to be clear about the language i'm using: i do not think that clinton is a good debater. i only concede that she is a good liar....

the dynamics of the race are such that clinton cannot gain anything from a debate. so, the question is whether bernie was able to gain anything. and, i think that, at this point, and with that performance, it's hard to see how he can break through anything. i think that he had likely already swayed everybody that he was going to sway.

there's also the issue of the closed new york primary. i do suspect that he won the votes of millions of people that are ineligible to vote. and that - supposing that the vote is fair - that may be the difference.

i don't expect to see any significant movement. but, i might suggest that you take precautions on voting day, as there's going to be a lot of very disappointed people.