i also watched evan solomon question trudeau before i left, and noticed the disconnect pretty staunchly.

trudeau has clearly been surrounding himself with supremely qualified people recently, and been fed a line that actually makes sense. evan solomon, less so.

i'm not trying to attack evan solomon's intelligence, exactly. i've sen enough of him to know that he's a moderately intelligent journalist that tries to follow the facts as best he can. he's not a demagogue; he's at least honest, whatever his defects. but, he probably never took a science course past grade 10, because the curriculum didn't force him to....and, he consequently has no ability to understand what he's talking about. like most people in his situation, he gets his information from cnn & cbc and takes it at face value. because what else do you do? you read what you understand.

so, he's legitimately concerned about the border, because he gets his information from shitty sources that tell him that you deal with this by shutting borders. why isn't canada shutting borders?

trudeau's response was surprisingly accurate, actually. we have to remember that trudeau, himself, isn't exactly a rhodes scholar....but he's got good people around him and it really does show. so, trudeau calmly explained that when the united states and italy clamped down on travel early (which is true.), it didn't work in stopping the spread. rather, people found ways around the barriers. in canada, we adopted a policy of accepting and documenting travel from hotspots, which allowed us to understand what was actually happening. as such, we think there's been much less random transmission.

so, the reason we're not shutting borders is that the science actually says that this makes things worse.

but, evan solomon kept pushing the point, because he didn't get it. and, trudeau started to get visibly frustrated - evan, why don't you fucking get it? it doesn't fucking work. lay the fuck off with the travel restrictions, k.

i just want to remind the government of something it knows - it has to stand firm on the science. it's going to run into a thousand evan solomons that want it to flex it's muscles and do something drastic, and they might even get a short term poll bounce if they give in, because people don't know, and don't care and don't want to learn - they want to follow their gut, they want to assert their male instincts to control, they want to take charge.

don't listen to them. hold your ground...

and, in the end, there will be data, and we can all hope the evan solomon's of the world learn the right lessons from it. most of them want to. really. they just don't have the tools to do it...

bernie seemed to be expecting an honest, gentlemanly debate on the issues.

it just demonstrates the point. 

bernie's platform slays. i've never denied that. but, he's a dope.

so, i got a pizza and tried to watch the debate, but cnn has made that somewhat difficult, unless you tuned in live (and i did not - i tuned in about 9:30).

i'm feeling fine.

the youtube streams were incomplete and shoddy, dropping audio, etc. but it's enough to get the point across.

it's virtually impossible for bernie to win a debate against somebody that successfully markets himself as a "decent guy" and yet is actually a pathological liar. biden would be absolutely devastated by a basic fact check, but the media won't bother with it.

so, biden's tactic is just to look you in the eye and lie his face off, which includes parroting certain positions that bernie has taken that he knows are popular. when trump & clinton did that, nobody believed them. biden seems to be more convincing for some reason. maybe it's because he's so "decent".

but, it's the same lies, and you're still stupid to fall for them.

bernie had to rip biden to shreds to have a chance. instead, he seemed perplexed by his dishonesty, and ultimately came off a little unprepared - he seems to have expected biden to show up and defend his record, rather than deflect or obfuscate it.

biden also seemed more in control of himself than we've generally seen recently.

i'm sorry, but i think joe won the match. and, bernie's about to get routed.

he'll probably win arizona, though.

actually, i'd like to see a random sample of people polled for testing for covid-19.

randomly generate 5000 numbers. make sure they haven't traveled. make sure they don't have symptoms, and make sure they don't have a history with the virus.

mail the tests out.

and crunch the numbers.

i'm curious.

i can't find an atheist urologist in southwestern ontario.

that's the sad reality of it.

the problem here isn't access in the universal system. this is covered, and there's plenty of doctors that can do it.

the problem is that the doctors won't do it, because they're all a bunch of fucking christians or muslims.

i should be able to walk into a urologist's office and have this dealt with in a couple of hours. it's a simple, routine practice - especially considering that i consider myself too old to see any purpose in final reassignment. i don't want to have sex, regardless.

but, they think it's "immoral". that's fucking bullshit...

what's immoral is to tell me i can't do this, or put me on a five year waiting list for something that's almost not going to matter anymore by the time i get off of it.

i have not had consensual sex since 2006ish and have no intent to ever have consensual sex ever again. 

i've been to specialists, regionally, that claim they have some kind of bullshit religious problem with it.

so, i had to put in an application for a centre in toronto, despite that centre pleading with doctors to handle it locally.

i've been trying to do this for years and i'm not getting any kind of useful response. worse, i think my doctor actually thinks i'm sexually active with women and am denying it, and is trying to avoid me from making a mistake.

the mistake i made was not getting this done with when i was young.

i hate sex. i want them out. and, i'm getting fed up with this.

i don't want them. i haven't wanted them for years. and, if i don't get a useful response when i see my doctor in may, i may have to consider finding some other means of chopping them out, myself.

i am taking the right kind of estrogen for what i want. i don't have any qualms about that.

but, i'd like to completely eliminate my ability to produce testosterone by surgically removing my testicles. this will allow me to reduce my reliance on anti-androgens, which should increase the effectiveness of the estrogen.

these trans people that you see on tv don't look the way they do due to hormones.

they've had millions of dollars worth of plastic surgery. that's why they look how they do.

i haven't had any. at all. and, i don't want any - except to cut my testicles out, which i'm still waiting for a response on.

i can't bring back the past, but i didn't go back into transition until i was a little older and there are consequences of that that i can't undo. 

they're claiming it's on "back order" and they'll have to call around.

i think they're lying and trying to avoid ordering it.

so, i'll need to get an answer tomorrow, and if it's not what i want then i'll need to switch pharmacies.

i do not want sharp spikes and mood swings.

i want stability and constancy.

and, i want to maximize the feminizing effects, which is done by maintaining consistently high levels in the bloodstream, which is achieved by allowing the liver to regulate it.

i'm 40 years old.

i looked better when i was 30, didn't i?

they're trying to push the generic estrogen on me at the pharmacy, again. i think they have some kind of deal with a distributor in india.

it's not the same drug.

the brand name estradiol attaches the active estrogen agent to a salt that gets metabolized by your liver, which results in stable levels of estrogen that get released through your endocrine system. this is the most natural way to do this, which isn't necessarily the best, but the stability ensures that the mood swings are kept to a minimum.

the generic estradiol encases the active estrogen agent to a water molecule that is meant to enter your blood stream directly (and should probably be taken on your tongue rather than swallowed), which produces immediate spikes and sharp trails. this is more akin to popping estrogen as a drug. while it will lead to mood swings, the feminizing effects will be less effective.

if they were the same thing, i'd take the generic. but, i actually think that the hemihydrate forms of this should be banned, along with injections.

only the companies that are running fully electric should be bailed out.

let the ones running diesel fail.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51896169

they should build a wall to keep americans out, and then make americans pay for it.

wait. that's....

do i have to find somebody with this and fuck them?

is that it?

do i have to reverse my no-sex policy to get infected with this?

i was totally reckless, too.

some things i did on thursday:

- smoked a pack of cigarettes

- bummed or purchased cigarettes from multiple people

- passed two joints, with two different groups of strangers.

- took drinks from bar staff at two separate bars

- used several public washrooms

- close-talked with several different groups, without a passing thought to social distancing, including with several off-duty bar staff (who were concerned about their finances)

- ate a blt at a diner

- took the bus into detroit and then took it back out

what the fuck else can i do to catch this thing?

i got some sleep.

i've been tired recently anyways. i didn't get that hot shower yesterday, though. i think that's a good idea....after i eat my daily bowl of fruit.

i had a little bit of a sore throat this morning. it seems to have cleared up. something else though: the dry cough has loosened up.

a test would be necessary to figure this out for certain, of course. but my understanding of the disease is that a loosening cough suggests that i probably just caught a cold.

so, it seems like i'm going to have to risk exposure for a while longer, still. drats. foiled....

and, i'd like to hear the united states make a similar announcement.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/15/coronavirus-uk-over-70s-to-be-asked-to-self-isolate-within-weeks-hancock-says

good.

and, it's a potential export market.

this is a very intelligent response.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/mar/15/coronavirus-uk-manufacturers-urged-to-consider-switching-to-making-ventilators

this may all be a process of trying to set an example. and, i'm not one for leadership, and don't tend to do what i'm told. but, people are sheep, and this is probably useful.

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/covid-19-margaret-trudeau-self-isolates-1.4852633

i think this is the right request to make.

there was also a request by the prime minister's mother - who was married to the prime minister's father, who was also the prime minister from 1967-1984 - to be mindful of spending time with older relatives, and for older folks to be conscious of reality, which is very useful.

again: i've had little criticism of our government's response, here. i just hope the execution doesn't get botched by the provinces. 

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=1922208

well, i don't want to go drinking if i feel sick.

i might have just picked up a head cold, i don't even know. i know i don't feel sick enough to go to a clinic, whether it's the new virus or not. but, i hope it is. i want the antibodies...

i'm not going to go cough all over the retirement home. and, if i see an older person, i'll keep my distance - that's a fair request. but, if i need to go shopping, i'm going to go, as i would if i had a minor head cold. 

i'm just making the point that i don't feel i have the burden, here. i'm not disrupting my life over something that has almost no chance of even making me noticeably sick.

what's happening in japan seems to be about the same thing that's happening in the united states - they're not testing people, making it seem like the infection rate is lower than it is.

stop presenting japan as an ideal scenario. they're probably worse off than most places, and it's going to start adding up, soon.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Coronavirus/Coronavirus-Why-Japan-chose-to-test-fewer-people

they're not flattening it, they're shifting it.

people are delusional. you're going to get this. deal with it.

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20200315_06/

you can't.

https://www.macleans.ca/society/health/this-coronavirus-chart-shows-canada-is-not-flattening-the-curve-at-least-not-yet/

ok, let me get my laptop back up.

i'll be fine. i'm strong. the virus stands no chance against me. i have confidence in my phagocytes to win this battle and annihilate the invading proteins. 

vitamin c and water. and rest, if you feel the urge.

i'm not advocating denying service or anything. i'm an advocate of universality. the system should do everything it can.

i'm just pointing out that my empathy is somewhat reduced, and i'm perfectly content to shift responsibility to them to alter their behaviour, rather than place the onus on myself to alter mine.

it's really kind of not my problem. it's really kind of their problem...

who voted for trump?

so, they kind of made their own bed.

or, as it would be, reduced the number of them.

who voted to cut the health care system in countries like italy and canada?

the boomers did.

it's harsh. sure. but, if i woke up tomorrow and there were 15% less people over the age of 65, i would see the net social benefit in that pretty quickly. i'm not going to list the ways, but there's a lot of them.

we could, honestly, solve a multitude of social problems by thinning their ranks a little. we're sitting on a demographic bulge that's kind of a problem, and is kind of largely their fault.

i don't see any use in pretending otherwise.

but, honestly?

do i really care about old people?

i don't generally get the impression that they care much about me. this is the "me generation", we're talking about - the generation that shuffled their own parents into homes, and refused to share their wealth with their kids. in a way, they kind of deserve it. 

that's not fair. i'm not saying it is. not all old people are entitled, bourgeois pieces of shit.

but, enough of them are that i don't feel any particular impetus to protect them.

if you're old, adjust your lifestyle. i don't feel the urge to adjust mine...

ok, yeah - i've picked up a dry cough. good. let's hope it's covid-19 and i get the thing beat nice and quickly over what was a down period in the scheduling so i'm immune for the rest of the summer.

i'm going to need to go to the store this week, but i tend to spend these periods between shows inside anyways, and i actually wanted to get some work done. i can promise to avoid old folks, at least.

to be clear: i don't know whether it's coronavirus or not. but i'm not worried about it enough to get treatment. i'm hoping i just beat it easily and move on.

https://www-cdn.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/file_attachments/cs-true-cost-austerity-inequality-italy-120913-en_0.pdf

https://www.oecd.org/els/health-systems/Country-Note-ITALY-OECD-Health-Statistics-2015.pdf

there's all kinds of ominous articles like this that have been published over the last ten years.

The country's largest doctors' union in September said it was again considering a countrywide strike against the spending cuts, demanding a renewal of their contracts and the end of an eight-year hiring freeze in hospitals.

"I am extremely concerned by the extent of the crisis of our NHS," said Costantino Troise, the secretary-general of Italy's largest doctors' union ANAAO.

He blamed funding cuts and what he called a lack of respect for health professionals as major drivers of the current stand-off.

"Italy's health system will resemble ones like Poland and Slovenia rather than France and Germany" if the situation doesn't improve, he said.  The latter Western countries tend to be known for higher quality health care than their Eastern brethren.

https://www.politico.eu/article/troubled-italian-health-system-frustrates-doctors-drugmakers-2/

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-italy-health-awakenings-insight/indiscriminate-cuts-threaten-italys-healthcare-successes-idUSKBN0LZ0G320150303

it's a more cost-effective way to deliver health care, in aggregate.

but, it's an easy target for fiscal conservatives, and there's a perpetual struggle to keep the thing funded.

there have been major budget cuts in italy under the direction of right-wing governments in the neo-liberal period. 

https://www.cesr.org/death-million-cuts-what-future-right-health-italy

"it is better to burn out than to fade away"

this, i would propose, is a better way to understand the debate between herd immunity and "flattening the curve".

i hope that ends up big enough.

this isn't a prediction, it's a model. please realize that.

but, the argument is supposed to be that the same number of people will get the virus anyways, so you'd might as well slow it down. one of the key points i'm trying to get across here is that if you slow the virus down then you reduce the speed of immunity, thereby increasing transmission - and you actually get twice as many cases because it takes twice as long to get to herd immunity. that sounds like it doesn't make sense, but there's a difference between developing antibodies and getting sick.

you can tweak this. maybe it takes 1.5x as long. it's a model, it's not a prediction.

the other thing i'm doing here is arguing that you can't really flatten the curve, exactly, but can rather shift it. and, maybe that shift is valuable if it buys time for a vaccine. but, it's going to come with a slow increase in cases over time until immunity is reached.

don't get lost in this in nitpicking the numbers - it's a model, it's a conceptual thing, it's an idea. and, it's a valid critique.

i think boris johnson was (accidentally.) correct. you want to protect the old and weak, yes. but you want to let this thing run it's course quickly and burn out, rather than draw it out and pick people off over months.

so, i made a choice to wait until i got back from the concert on thursday night before i reimaged the machine, because i figured i'd have to do it again anyways.

i have eaten well since i got back, in case i picked anything up. i'm mildly hungover, and have produced some watery bowel movements, but i'm willing to blame it on the alcohol; i don't feel sick.

i did communicate with the divisional court, and they've informed me that the motion has moved to an administrative judge due to my complaint. they didn't send me anything regarding this. but i was instructed to call back on monday.

i don't expect to leave the house at all for the next 6 or 7 days, so let's hope i can get some work done this week.

and, let's get started on the reimage.

my bios looks clean, at least.

i've said this before: if there's anything in this universe worth worshiping, if there's any approximation to a deity, it's the fucking sun.

i don't expect it to react to any sympathetic magic, mind you.

but, the ancients were right on that point, at least.

one of the previous links points out that one of the things that "st patrick" is known for, apocryphally or not, is putting the sun in the celtic cross.

if st patrick's day is essentially a glossed over spring equinox festival, it makes sense that they would have retained the symbolism of the sun.

what they would have been celebrating is the return of the sun for another year - the moment the days get longer again. 

we might not have the narrative, it may have been burned - unless it's hiding deep in one of those hibernian monasteries, waiting to be refound. or maybe buried somewhere deep in an icelandic glacier, waiting to be uncovered as the climate changes. it may even be in some underground tunnel under the vatican, hidden underground to be never found again.

but, i think we can figure this out, can't we?

it's the sun. it's back! hooray!

and, don't tell me that christianity is my history or i should embrace the identity of an irish catholic. that's a bunch of colonial bullshit.

it's not my history, and i will do no such thing.

and, you're an ignorant, colonized fool if you insist upon it - you don't know your own history, it's been stolen from you.

our history has been erased.

i was hoping to find some documentation of the obvious solstice festival that st. patrick's replaced. i'm not going to do the math or look up how close march 17th would have been to the solstice, through whatever gregorian/julian conversions, in the third or fourth century of the common era. it hardly seems worth the effort; the deduction is obvious.

the closest thing i could find was an association with a kind of fertility cult that comes off as something out of a gimbutas text. that kind of makes sense, at least, but if it's true then we've lost the narrative - all we have is some sculptures.

so, it appears that we don't even know what festival st. patrick's day replaced. that's how brutally colonized we are.

so, what's more offensive?

st patrick's day or thanksgiving?

and, do you see the parallel i'm trying to draw, why there's a natural historical alliance between northern europeans and indigenous americans?

https://www.learnreligions.com/st-patrick-and-the-snakes-2562487

https://metro.co.uk/2017/03/17/how-a-pagan-celebrates-st-patricks-day-6513439/

i'm going to start a petition to cancel 3/17 in favour of 3/14.

i suspect that most pi day events will attract at least 3 people.

but, due to the coronavirus, i'd expect there to be much less than 4, on average.

meaning you're looking at roughly 3.1415 people per event.

no, i'm not sorry. but, you're welcome.

and, i don't care about st. patrick's day. at all.

i'd still rather produce my own antibodies.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/biotech-quebec-city-coronavirus-1.5497043

this is a chart for the 1917 and 1918 (there were two viruses, not one) pandemics:

so, there's a lot of differences.

but, these pandemics are thought to have had a total mortality rate of ~0.6%, which is a strong flu.

the total mortality rate in south korea right now is 0.8%.

i think that, in the end, the numbers will prove the claim that it's on par with a strong flu correct. that's what i've said from the start.

and, it is very clear that you want to keep old people locked up right now, even if it's just as clear that it's more or less harmless for people under 50 - in contrast to the 1918 flu, which killed a lot of young people in the midst of world war one.

the numbers coming out of south korea are the ones you want to take more seriously, as they are an oecd country that has tested sufficiently well and has already been through the bulk of this.

this is probably mostly over in south korea. and, what are the mortality rates?

it's interesting to see these numbers pull themselves out, as 7% and 4.5% and 1.5% are numbers that i'm frequently pulling out of calculations - which, i'll be quick to catch myself, doesn't actually mean anything, but just is kind of consistent...

so, the reported death rate in italy right now is around 7%, and almost all of the cases are very old people.

the mortality rate in the united states was initially around 7%, and is still about that in washington state, where the deaths are largely linked to nursing homes.

and, the (published.) mortality rate in iran has fallen from 7% to 4.5% as the number of cases has increased, perhaps reflecting the fact that the average lifespan in iran is almost ten years less than that in italy - which makes sense.

on the other hand, the death rates in france and spain have hovered closer to 1.5%, making me wonder how old the people that are dying are.

you need more subtle ways to analyze this than just dividing the deaths by the number of cases. and, for now, south korea is the best place to get the data. in a month or two, you'll probably want to be looking at data for northern europe, but they're that much behind, for now.

7% is 1/15. roughly. are you going to give your grandparents such low odds? 

no, you can't get "reinfected" by a virus. this is basic science. 

a virus is a protein, an enzyme, which means it's a string of amino acids with a bunch of open electrons hanging off of it. the protein has a certain chemistry to it, and that chemistry creates a geometry. i did projects on viruses in grades 12 and 13 bio (i took bio 101 & 102 at carleton, but it didn't touch on this topic), but, like so many other things, this is actually fundamentally a math problem.

so, a virus is a protein with a specific geometry to it. what it does is it floats through your tissue like a spaceship and latch on to cells like a lander. once it's connected itself to the cell, it releases genetic material into it through the cell membrane (i almost said cell wall. it has been a while.). this genetic material then takes control of the nucleus of the cell, and turns the cell into a virus producing factory. once your cell is literally full of copies of the virus, it explodes like the obese man in se7ven, thereby releasing thousands of more copies of the virus, and then it all starts over again - thousands of times over. a powerful virus like ebola will turn you into mush, as your billions of cells explode one at a time.

the virus itself has no purpose other than to destroy.

how do you defeat that? what your immune system is going to do is produce something called antibodies that rely on finding the right chemical combination to create the right geometry to disassemble the virus in the intercellular spaces. and, in fact, it works by trial and error. but, once it gets the right geometry, it remembers it. forever.

forever.

so, why do you need flu shots, then? i guess some people deduce that you "lose immunity", but that is not true. what happens is that the virus changes it's geometry enough that your body no longer recognizes it, and needs to produce new antibodies for it.

so, nobody is getting "reinfected" with coronavirus. what is happening, then?

1) it might be that testing was incomplete and they weren't cured in the first place.

2) the virus might be evolving very quickly; these people would have been infected by two different coronaviruses, rather than the same one.

british press: 60% of britons will need to be infected to allow for herd immunity? this is irresponsible!

british scientists: 70% of british people will become infected. deal with it.

people just don't listen to science. they insist on magical thinking. it's distressing.

it looks like i spoke too soon, and the british tories are going to overreact like everybody else. but, i'll post my graphic anyways. soon.

i actually agree with the british tories. that's pretty rare....

the error that's being made in the underlying discussion around this is that we have a choice, and that choosing herd immunity is irresponsible when they could be taking more proactive measures to stop the spread of the disease. but, the empirical evidence makes it abundantly clear that there is, in fact, absolutely nothing at all that can be done to stop the spread of this disease.

i mean, if you can figure out how to stop this, then you'll have figured out how to stop the flu and the common cold, as well. i applaud you on your upcoming nobel prize. congratulations to you.

that boris johnson of all people is getting this right is no doubt an accident of history; the truth is probably closer to the reality that he's just lazy, and this is the easiest possible choice. but, sometimes fate can be cruel - and in this scenario, the easiest choice is the most correct one. 

i need to repeat the importance of getting it into the heads of old people that this virus might kill them. and, it's important to keep gathering data, even if there's not much of an effort to contain. but, outside of those very targeted actions, attempting to stop the spread of this could actually backfire, if it just results in slowing down the rate of natural immunity and allows for carriers to linger on for months to come.

i'm going to post a slightly different graph. just let me get my laptop back up, first.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/13/herd-immunity-will-the-uks-coronavirus-strategy-work

one of the best things you can do for your kids right now is exposing them to this, so they can beat it young.

i mean, we could carry out mass immunizations once we get a vaccine. but, if the mortality rate is less than 1%, it seems unnecessary.

so, i know this seems counter-intuitive and contrary to all the fear the media is pushing down, but one of the best public health measures we can take, long term, is actually to spread this around as much as possible in the younger population.

if you avoid this now, and it happens again, it could kill you when you're older; if you catch it now, you're immune, if it does.

that's why i'm hoping i do catch it.

the thing we want to avoid, specifically, is situations where older people are in contact with younger people.

we actually probably want younger people to build immunity, in case this happens again when they're older.

does it make sense to close schools?

you're probably worried about the kids. but, a large percentage of teachers and profs are older people.

i'm going to label that as a justified reaction.

thank you for making the point that the focus should be on buying gear, not on "flattening the curve".

single payer health care does have a fatal flaw - it can put the system at the whim of fiscally conservative governments, who can devastate it in the form of budget cuts. if you want this system to work, you have to fund it, and the onset of neo-liberalism has led to massive cuts in much of the developed world. i don't know exactly what silvio berlusconi or his successors did to the italian health care system, but i doubt it was beneficial. 

it seems like they got swamped. i'm not denying that, and it could happen anywhere.

but, it's also exposing the consequences of a lack of funding, and what happens when you slash health care to balance budgets.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-hospital-bed-shortages-amid-covid-19-expose-the-deadly-cost-of-a-lack/

yeah. i know.

the only thing to fear, is fear itself.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/covid19-travel-bans-1.5495919

science is an authority, and i will listen to science.

but, the only authority that the state has over me is the threat of violence.

it follows that statist dictates that are not backed by science are invalid and should be ignored.

this puny, weakling virus will be annihilated by my superior immune system!

ahahahahaha!

i'm an anarchist. you're probably not. but, you need to know when to step away from your need to control things, and this is one of those situations.

the science does not support bans on travel, or bans on large gatherings, right now. i will not be heeding these restrictions, myself - and i fully expect to get this virus, and defeat it. i don't want to cower in fear of one another, i want to take this on headfirst, and develop the antibodies. bring it on! 

i hope that i can lead by example.

but, i will strenuously avoid old people, and i will state this clearly - if you are in an at-risk category, you need to take responsibility for your own safety, which means staying inside, even if you're not sick. if you're going to ban anything, it should be the movement of retired people. stay home, granny.

i know you want to help, and that's natural, but if you want to help then you should follow the science.

the only worthwhile thing you can do is avoid old people.

this is completely, utterly irrational.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/military-travel-halted-covid-19-1.5496537

https://www.vox.com/2020/3/12/21176669/travel-ban-trump-coronavirus-china-italy-europe

Canada's Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam confirmed that Canada is now advising against all international travel to limit the spread of the virus. She warned that travellers could be subject to another country's travel or quarantine restrictions, and if they become sick, they could find themselves in a health care system inferior to Canada's system.

this is admittedly worth considering carefully; that's a good point, and something to think about.

i am opposed to any bans on international travel coming in and out of canada. this is the first overreaction i've seen from this government, and you have to wonder if it's a function of his wife getting sick.

there is simply no reason to think that taking a flight to a different country is any more dangerous than going to the grocery store around the corner. i know you want to imagine that there is, but there isn't.

it's circulating, and you're going to need to learn to deal with it. you can't control this. stop pretending you can....

in the place of a pointless travel ban, i would support a statement by the federal government that at risk groups - old people especially - avoid human interaction as much as possible until the virus runs it's course. 

if you're over 60, stay inside; if you're under 60, avoid people over 60, but otherwise carry on your day-to-day lives.

so, why are they doing this? they're feeding into public perception for the need for Strong Leadership and State Control. it's a pr thing. and, this is dangerous.

i wonder if the white house is ultimately behind this, though. we can't be letting those idiots make bad decisions and force them into canada. we're a sovereign country. 

we need to continue to follow the science, and not give into the panic. this is a step backwards, and i'd call for it's reversal.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-covid-19-1.5496367

you guys ever read the stand?

that was a perplexing night in detroit.

the show was good. but, people are...confused. and don't want to listen.

they're going to have to wait for investors to redevelop some confidence in the market.

there's lots of money out there, and, as i said, the real economy may benefit from some more real spending. you want to make sure there's lots of money....

...but you can't force people to buy when they're too scared to. you have to wait.

looking forward, it might help to avoid announcing ridiculous blockades against europe.

stimulus isn't going to overpower fear.

the experiment was interesting, but the outcome was obvious.

i haven't said much about the stock market recently.

my arguments were always a little different. the way i see it, and this is broadly a type of mmt, is that the stock market is essentially a casino, and that the amount of inflation that occurs depends on how much money exists in the economy. so, when obama went through all this easing, the money trickled up to the top in the form of corporate profits and eventually ended up in the market.

when trump first took over, his new fed chair almost instantly reversed that under whatever kind of bullshit austerity argument and we started to see all of these jolts in the market because the money was starting to dry up. but, investor confidence remained exceedingly high - even as the money was drying up, these people wanted to keep gambling, so they did. i insisted that it was just a matter of time...

but, then the feds seemed to realize what they did, and went back to easing, and the jitters stopped. so, i stopped talking about it.

if you want to talk about the stock market in terms of what it's supposed to be, there's no doubt that it was in need of a ridiculous correction. stocks across the board were just absurdly inflated.

but, the stock market isn't what it's supposed to be today, and maybe never really was - it's a casino, and trump is really the right kind of personality to look over it. so, you can pump as much money into this thing as you want, and the stocks will inflate as much as you let them. you want the average to keep rising? just keep printing money.

investors are no doubt scared that they're going to run out of caviar and are pulling their money out to spend it. that could actually be great news for the real economy!

and, this is going to be a double hit for seniors which are taking it on the chin right now.....although you shouldn't cry too hard, because they're pretty rich, nowadays.

but, if you're into this shit, you're being presented with a helluva buying opportunity, because these numbers will rise quickly, so long as they keep printing money.

it's hysteria. but, it's a casino.....

sarah was (i guess still is.) about a half an inch taller than me, and she used to complain that she wanted me to be taller than her - although, i'd take the opposite position, in that i'd want to be about equidistant from the ground with any potential partner. i want equality; i liked being able to see eye-to-eye, and certainly didn't want to look down on anybody - i'd consider that weird and unsettling. and, i told her that. but, she wanted to look up to me and actually considered it a sort of pre-requisite.

so, she liked me in heels, on the very few occasions that i wore them. i noticed that. it was one of the few feminizing decisions that she reacted well to, because it gave her the opportunity to look up at me. oddly.

anyways.

the point is that i'm not tall, and my life experiences have not been as somebody that is tall. i'm short for a white dude, and about average for a white woman.

i am a short 5' 8". so, it's closer to 5' 7".

my father was a hair taller than me, and my mother is a hair shorter than me. my full sister is a good inch taller than me - she's a convincing 5' 9". and, i have an aunt that is 5' 11".

we know that height is primarily a function of nutrition and diet during childhood, and it is not clear whether the differences we see in gender across most cultures (although not all cultures.) are due primarily to genetic sexual dimorphism or to cultural differences in how men and women are nourished in childhood. in rural india, where poverty is endemic across both genders, the average height of men and women are both around 5' 4". on the other hand, the average height of women has been increasing dramatically over the last century inside of oecd nations, where gender equality is on the rise. women in northern europe are taller than men in much of the world, nowadays.

5' 8" would be relatively short for a woman in scandinavia, which is where my mother's ancestors are from, and which is the part of my ancestry that i most readily identify with, culturally. while it is a little taller than the global average for women, it is also shorter than the global average for men. i would be considered very short for a male in northern europe.

so, i don't consider myself particularly tall.

i meet women that are taller than me all of the time.

i just want to clear up a kind of a nasty misperception about the voting shifts in michigan that's been floating around through the msm for a long time, and was probably ultimately seeded by the clinton campaign - that large amounts of bernie voters switched to trump in the general.

the data really suggests something very different.

it's been stated everywhere, repeatedly, over the last few days that democratic turnout was way down in the 2016 primary, which is something i pulled out in my 2016 analysis of michigan's 2016 primary. there were more republicans than democrats that year, oddly enough - enough that the independents were actually decisive in the outcome.

what i pointed out at the time was that trump was pulling in a lot of democrats, and that was actually a media narrative at the time, one that was very quickly forgotten. but, this time four years ago, what people were talking about was how trump was swinging clinton supporters, which was allowing bernie to win.

then, the general happened and people blamed the low turnout on bernie supporters switching parties, when the data had been there for months - trump was swinging disaffected, long term democrats who couldn't fucking stand hillary clinton, and had been since the start of the year. what took everybody a little off guard was the extent of it.....

and, who were these people? they were mostly older white voters.

now, here we are in 2020 and turnout is being driven higher on this stampede of middle aged white people, who are breaking hard for biden. but, who are these people? they were the democrats who switched to trump because they couldn't imagine voting for hillary.

i hope that this clarifies this point - and perhaps lays to rest this nasty myth about bernie voters swinging the election for trump.

well, i would hardly consider two imported cases of a mild virus to be an emergency. this, like it is elsewhere, is an abuse of power. and, i will stand with those who end up victimized by any rights abuses.

i hope this doesn't result in hassles at the border....

https://www.wxyz.com/news/read-gov-whitmers-state-of-emergency-declaration-amid-first-coronavirus-cases

but, the capitalist narrative is...

according to capitalists, europe is struggling to contain the disease because they have thousands of cases. meanwhile, america is containing the disease effectively because it only has 1000 cases.

it's perfect ostrich logic.

in reality, europe (with the exception of italy.) is testing people at 100x the rate that america is, so it's finding a much higher percentage of the weaker cases. 

but, in america, if you can't see something then it's not there.

even in italy, what they're saying is that the system is overwhelmed, and there aren't enough resources to test everybody. so, we know there's a high number of unreported cases - just like in the united states.

there's 12,000 cases and 800 deaths. but, what we know about the mortality rate suggests that if there's 800 deaths then there must be closer to a million cases - and the data coming out of northern europe is proving that point.

again, we don't yet know exactly what they did wrong, but it's probably some combination of the way italians live, with a confusion of symptoms for the flu and a higher than average lifespan.

see, this is a crass and stupid political response intended to deflect attention from america's failing capitalist catastrophe. 

the europeans are the ones doing this right by actually carrying out a sufficient number of tests. that's why the mortality rate in germany is actually at the 0.1% threshold that so many experts want to put it at - they've done enough testing to actually catch enough of it. germany has proven that if you do this right, it really is about the same mortality rate as the flu. and, it's why norway and denmark have hundreds of cases and no deaths.....they're testing people at high enough levels to find cases.

on the other hand, there are tens of thousands of undocumented cases in the united states, and officials don't have the slightest concept of where they are, how they're spreading or how the virus is evolving along with them.

it's a startlingly terrible response.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/11/politics/donald-trump-coronavirus-statement/index.html

or, don't cancel church?

no. you know what i always say about religious folks, but i'm just being an ass. you cancel church....

they're cancelling concerts here. it's hysteria.

if you're going to cancel events, they should be events with lots of old people, not events where essentially everybody is under 35. so, church services should definitely be cancelled. i'd probably accept them cancelling events at the dso without much pushback.

but, i'd rather see venues put out warnings that tell concert-goers to enter at their own risk.

i'm willing to avoid old folks for a while, but i'd rather catch this thing and beat it than try and hide from it. i'm not afraid of this...

the coordinator at the divisional court has fabricated a motion, by excluding the affidavit i sent her and the documents attached to it.

wow.

i faxed them a harshly worded statement, and may have to launch a complaint against the coordinator. 

i'll have to call in the morning. 

fwiw.

my opinion is that sanders is done.

but, i think he should give the debate on sunday a serious go, and see what happens next tuesday.

he should sit down on wednesday and plot his strategy for maximizing concessions out, from there.

we can control how much equipment we have. we'll have to act quickly, granted. and, the provinces have to fucking do it. but that's a budget choice. we control that.

we cannot control the spread of this virus.

we don't know how many cases there are. we don't know where they are. and, we have a massive economic relationship with a country we're in close proximity with, and that we know these unknowns are exponentially worse in. 

policy should be based around what we know we can control, not what we know we can't.

yeah, i'm a downer. but, i'm right.

our hospitals need to update their gear anyways, right?

if you put a large amount of resources into "flattening the curve", and you fail, as all evidence suggests you will, then you're just caught in a worse situation when the cases spike.

which, i believe, is actually the mistake they made in italy.

if we buy more gear, we can use it later; buying gear is never wasteful.

"If you can slow it down enough and flatten the curve, so the same number of people get infected, but over a much longer period of time, then ... what you're allowing is that the capacity will not be exceeded," said Dr. Anand Kumar, a critical care physician at Winnipeg's Health Science Centre.

yeah. and, if you can splice narwal dna with pony dna you can genetically engineer unicorns.

we need funding announcements, not delusional appeals to positive thinking.

we got some today.

i haven't been very critical of what the government has been doing here in canada, because there hasn't been much to criticize. but, let's keep the debate evidence based. let's avoid the magical thinking.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/canada-covid-19-coronavirus-spread-hospital-surge-capacity-ventilators-1.5493178

you know what?

i think i can look away from climate change for a while, for days, for weeks, and that it's still going to be there when i look back at it, again. there's no colloquial-misunderstanding-of-the-observer-effect at play, here. this is objective. it'll still be there.

i'm pretty confident of that.

you don't really think i forgot about climate change because i'm posting about other things right now, do you?

do you think i'm going to base my next vote on what's happening in the democratic primary?

that's facile. but, it exposes the sad truth - the federal liberals are basically unruly children, and you have to watch them every second to stop them from misbehaving, even after you scold them into line.

i'm still going to vote entirely on climate change, guys.

if you refuse to test people, you can manufacture what looks like a slower transmission rate. sure. and then you can tell people that your policy was successful, by cutting out proper measurements of the data.

i would hope that would fail a peer review because you're not actually flattening the curve, you're just sticking your head in the sand, in ignoring what's actually happening.

but, none of the policies they've tried have been effective in slowing the spread; they've probably just increased transmission rates. it's nice to talk about flattening the curve, but can you give me concrete suggestions as to how you plan to do it, that will actually work?

so, one of these options exists in reality; the other doesn't. and, these finite resources should not be squandered chasing fantasy realities that don't exist, they should deployed in the most efficient way possible to deal with what is real on the ground.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/science/coronavirus-curve-mitigation-infection.html

i self-identify as a nerd. i'm proud of it.

but, i didn't sit at the nerd table. well, i'd drop by to say hi sometimes, but i found the nerds boring. they just wanted to play cards. they were so quiet, and well-behaved.

i was an outcast, a punk, more than a nerd, and i actually ate outside of the caf, in the stairs, with a small group of other outcasts. we'd then go around and vandalize the school at recess.

there were months-long stretches where i refused to set foot in the caf at all....

so, when i found myself back at work, i would repeatedly either skip lunch, or eat it off site. i'd walk down to the tim's and get some coffee, or go to the gas station to get smokes.

biden isn't winning because his policies are popular, and sanders is not going to turn this around with middle-aged whites by appealing to policies. most of them won't watch the debate. he has to change the cultural messaging.

and, gramsci would tell you that that's really hard to do at all, let alone in six days.

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/office-popularity-like-high-school_n_5a3030c3e4b07ff75afe2f48

the media is not afraid to be racist; the media thrives on racism. it divides people, as it manufactures consent for the ruling elite. that, as gramsci understood, is it's fundamental purpose in a capitalist oligarchy.

it is because the media is racist that it is trying very hard to obscure the data that's coming out of this primary, and it's happening with a lot of signals from the party itself. this is an old divide that we've really seen the media clampdown on this cycle.

they want there to be a black party and a white party, and they want voting decisions to be based on tribal allegiances instead of policy differences. this is the ideal world for the neo-liberal establishment that runs both parties; you float democratic candidates that are virtually identical to republican candidates, then you herd people into fighting with each other over race, instead of aligning based on class.

in fact, it's the oldest trick in the book in the united states. there's neither anything new about this, nor is there anything liberal about it. it's the same trick that got white servants and black slaves fighting against each other, instead of working together to overthrow their common enemy. it really goes all the way back to the roman policy of bread and circuses; there it was greens and blues, here it is blacks and whites.

but there were populists back then, too.

in order to understand the trends coming out of the cycle, you have to all but ignore what the media has said.

so, what are the actual trends?

fishiness in the data aside, this is what it says, whether you think it's trustworthy or not:

1) bernie is winning huge majorities of young people, but youth vote is way down. bernie has failed to excite young people enough to win.

2) biden is winning huge majorities of black people, but the black vote is way down, too. if your argument was that clinton didn't get enough blacks out, and that's why trump won, biden is getting less blacks out than clinton did. so, he hasn't been winning using that tactic, and he won't win the general with that tactic.

3) however, turnout is up. a lot.

so, if youth turnout is down, and black turnout is down, who is driving turnout up?

the answer is older white voters, who are showing up in unexpectedly huge numbers across the country and voting for biden.

that is the movement that's underway, here - middle aged white people flocking to the democrats. stampeding, even. like a herd of obese elephants looking to consume. more. more...

why is this happening, exactly?

i'd have to assume that not many watched the debates, as they wouldn't, that they couldn't, vote for biden if they did. a lot of these people are quite educated. what is going on here?

if you believe it, if you take it at face value, it must be cultural. it's rachel maddow. it's saturday night live. it's a broad idea that it's not socially acceptable to be a republican, right now - that the cool middle aged kids vote for the democrats.

i remember leaving university and going to work and feeling like i'd gone back to high school, in terms of how people interacted with each other. i felt like i'd grown down, that i'd reverted to life as a teenager, not like i'd grown up and become an adult.

if that's true, bernie has roughly 6 days to destroy biden's popularity amongst middle-aged voters. 

and, he just wants to be a nerd and talk about policies.

so, your average boomer appears to essentially be thinking something like this: biden's cool, like me; bernie's a nerd, like my kid, who has to use their phone to google how to brush their teeth every morning and can't be trusted to bring back the groceries without fucking it up. 

there's an old cliche.

"those who would exchange liberty for security will receive neither".

the direct quote from franklin is:

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

this is a little taste of the wisdom that is so lacking around us right now.

these quarantines are not preventing the spread of the disease, they are making the situation worse, and they need to be stopped.

https://jacobinmag.com/2020/03/joe-biden-gaffes-democratic-presidential-campaign-trump

https://theintercept.com/2020/03/09/it-was-democrats-and-their-media-allies-who-impugned-bidens-cognitive-fitness-yet-now-feign-outrage/

bernie shouldn't blame anybody but himself; he picked a foolish strategy to play, and it predictably failed. i saw this coming from months away, and he just doubled down when i called him out. it's his own damned fault.

but, he has one last chance - the debate on sunday.

this is the first and potentially the last one-on-one debate. if he can completely embarrass joe biden, he could turn it around. 

he needs to be vicious....he has nothing to lose.

something that has been obvious to observers throughout this process is the juxtaposition of bernie sanders, who is still very sharp, with joe biden, who very much isn't. bernie needs to draw that contrast.

and, he has one chance to do it.

seems like this guy has a hunch, too.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-strictly-by-the-numbers-the-coronavirus-does-not-register-as-a-dire/

listen.

i didn't like the hillary clinton that emerged after her stint as secretary of state. i was particularly concerned about her foreign policy; she was a war monger, and the mess she created is only being cleaned up, now. she scared me. really...

but, i didn't question her capacity to serve. and, in the end, i gave her the weakest endorsement of all time - which i'm not sure i don't regret. i'm sure i would have voted for jill stein when i got in the booth...

we'll see how bad biden gets, but what i've seen of him legitimately upholds the narrative that he's senile and incapable of doing the job. i'm not just saying that, and i think this is going to get worse.

i fully expect to sit here in november and tell you i cannot, in good conscience, endorse a man with his mental health to have his fingers on the button. i expect to tell you that this is irresponsible...

the people in iowa and new hampshire got a really good look at all of the candidates, and i think they made the right choice. it's unfortunate that the rest of the country didn't follow their lead, but so be it.

and, we're stuck with a choice between two senile buffoons that i don't want to make. 

again: clinton was a bad choice because she was evil. biden is a different problem. and, i simply don't expect to be able to endorse a man with such low intellectual capabilities, and such degraded mental capacities.

it's an important job...

i would expect bernie to stay in to try to influence the events at the convention, just like in 2016.

regarding michigan.

2016 results:

21% black turnout - 68% clinton, 28% sanders

70% white turnout - 56% sanders, 42% clinton

2020 results:

18% black turnout - 66% biden, 29% sanders

72% white turnout - 51% biden, 45% sanders

when you're talking about 3-4 points, that's the margin. so, maybe black turnout was down a little, and maybe white turnout was up a bit.....but it's too close to really state as much.

and, the percentage of black voters is almost identical.

but, the white vote flipped over. that's what happened.

i'm watching the nbc stream, and it's like soviet propaganda - they're looking right in the screen and saying the exact negation of what's true, even as they put stats on the screen that contradict it.

missouri is a place where the young people are leaving because there's no future there. there's no jobs. there's no opportunities...

so, it would make sense that the voting population is aging, because the state is aging, because the young people are leaving.

and, that is true throughout the rust belt.

(i remember the berlin wall falling, fwiw. i was eight. but i remember it.)

back in 2016, i keyed in a lot on missouri as an important swing state, and i did this for the very specific reason that the democrats had to find more urban areas to win over, and i knew the midwest was urbanizing very quickly.

the thing about missouri that i didn't realize then was that it's actually deurbanizing. and, in fact, so is wisconsin. and ohio. and iowa. and michigan....

the states that are urbanizing quickly are just a little to the west of the mississippi river: oklahoma, kansas, nebraska. and, if you look at the 2018 midterms, the democrats made some seriously surprising upset gains in that area - which was something i predicted, once i corrected my understanding of how the area was urbanizing, and how it was deurbanizing. 

does that mean kansas is in play? not yet. but, it might not be very long before kansas is more competitive than iowa.

several decades ago, now, missouri used to be what was called a "bellweather" state, and the reason it was seen as that was that it had demographics that were roughly a microcosm of the country. due to the onset of deurbanization, that is not true, anymore.

i look at missouri on a map, and i see a lot of potential in it. but, i'm not surprised by the results. i've learned to be disappointed by them.

ok.

so, it's taken some time, but the press is cluing in.

how many cases are there down there?

thousands. tens of thousands...

and, then, what's the mortality rate? pretty small.

but, i said this to the border people weeks ago: it's easy for me to shrug it off. i'm young and healthy. if i was 85, i'd have a different perspective.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-testing-numbers/607714/

so many of us want the authorities to take control, and think they can defeat complicated problems by writing and enforcing the right rules. but, it doesn't work.

it doesn't help us understand physics, even if we used to think it did. it doesn't help us solve social problems, even if we wish it did.

and, it won't help us contain an epidemic, either.

if there is one thing i am sure of in this world, it is that authoritarianism is always the wrong approach - that we can't control anything, no matter how hard we try. we are at the perpetual whim of uncertainty and chaos, and we need to start to understand that and act like we do. 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-03-09/how-coronavirus-spread-from-patient-zero-in-seattle

these researchers had a hunch that the number of cases in iran was dramatically underreported and did some math to deduce more convincing numbers, which is around 20,000 cases.

that would put the death toll in iran around 1%.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.24.20027375v1.full.pdf

access to care is only useful if the doctors take the issue seriously.

the story is still being written, but it seems like the system didn't take the issue seriously enough.

but, i still need to repeat the point that italians like to touch each other. it's crude, but it's true.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/10/from-confidence-to-quarantine-how-coronavirus-swept-italy

i got my motions scheduled.

good...

thank you to popular science for writing the article for me.

https://www.popsci.com/story/science/healthcare-paid-sick-leave-coronavirus/

so, we should expect cheap tp for a while, then, as demand falls to nothing, once supply recovers.

i'd wait.

https://globalnews.ca/news/6654420/toilet-paper-fight-coronavirus/

the cause of the crisis in alberta is poor planning by decades of conservative governance.

what's happening in alberta is not an unexpected crisis, or an act of god - they were told this would happen, and they didn't listen.

i guess they should have listened when the smart kids predicted this twenty years ago, huh?

they've made their bed.

https://www.macleans.ca/economy/the-coronavirus-market-crash-leaves-alberta-running-on-fumes/

again: this is a catalyst, not a cause.

it should be allowed to run it's course. 

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/10/delivery-and-digital-services-thrive-on-coronavirus-outbreak

https://www.retaildive.com/news/the-impact-of-the-coronavirus-on-retail/573522/

i'm going to throw an argument out there about the fears of this hurting the economy, because it's 20th century thinking that isn't taking recent changes in consumer habits into consideration.

the concern is that people will be afraid to go shopping, which will put the economy into a recession. ok. and, that would have been an entirely reasonable concern, even ten years ago.

but, something that's happened over the last ten years is that people have stopped going to malls, anyways - they do almost all of their shopping on the internet, with the glaring exception of groceries.

now, i'm not saying that the kind of effect this will have on businesses is obvious, but i can make a few suggestions:

1) if a longterm fear of going outside kicks in, it could be the final end for certain businesses that have seen their profits come down in the internet era. these would be stores in malls that sell goods that can be easily purchased online. this should be seen as a natural die-off, and nothing should be done to help these businesses. in the end, we may look back and see this as a major catalyst to end certain retail sectors, but we shouldn't delude ourselves - the virus is not the cause of these failures, and this was happening anyways.

2) the corollary of this fear of going outside hurting brick & mortar stores would be that the business would be shifted to online stores, who could see a major uptick in sales. 

so, is stimulus pointless? no. it just needs to be understood where it's going.

and, is recession inevitable? not in totality. certain sectors may get hit, but it's likely to be more of a shift in gdp than a decline in it, because it's increasingly the case that most people do most of their shopping at home, anyways.

as was the case in 2008, we may see a restructuring kick in that signals a final nail in the coffin of these brick & mortar businesses that were dying anyways. and, as was the case in 2008, this restructuring will probably be permanent.

so, that's my read on what the smart kids do about this - they realize the shift in technology that's happening, and they adjust.

so, i would support stimulus, but i would oppose bailouts to brick & mortar stores. this shift needs to be embraced. and, that may be the longer term consequence of this.

it's a good excuse to ram through funding on carbon transition.

https://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/canada-needs-a-coronavirus-stimulus-plan-heres-what-it-should-look-like/

it's hard to criticize it, considering that they're right. this was predictable, and it's obvious where they're going with it. when trump gets a chance to rip him in person, it's going to be devastating.

there's an article up at the guardian comparing biden to brezhnev. it may have reached a little. but, what we're seeing happen in the united states is eerily similar to the gerontocracy that took hold in the soviet union near the end of it's collapse.

the next generation of leadership is going to need to institute a lot of put off reforms. let's hope that the better comparison is to an upcoming perestroika, and a newfound imminent glasnost.

for now, i'd get ready for an awful election.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/10/trump-biden-clinton-age-senile-124797

i'm advocating finding ways around them. 

but, if you want to go right through them, if you want to be a socialist and win south carolina at the same time, you have to hold that mirror up - you have to get them out of their clutches.

and, that is going to be a vicious, nasty fight that will take decades and might even lead to violence.

there's a white king and a black king, isn't there?

everything that bernie sanders says about him reflects an understanding of the white king, when he talks to black voters about him. and, i'm not sure he even realizes it.

biden is probably worse, but he doesn't hit those nasty trigger points in those obvious ways.

sometimes, the more you talk about something, the deeper you dig yourself in - and, sometimes, you don't know it.

was jesus a socialist revolutionary?

i dunno. kind of. a bit.

but, i know you're going to lose a lot of white people if you set up a political rally outside of a church and you start talking like that.

it's a bunch of white people coming in from new york and trying to redefine their history in terns they don't recognize, or reject.

of course they don't like it.

trying to present dr. king as a socialist rather than a reverend is the kind of thing that's going to confuse them and scare them off, as though you're an agent of satan or something.

he's basically revered and seen as a saint or a prophet, not as a socialist revolutionary. contradicting or muddying that means you're trying to undo things without even realizing what you're trying to undo.

martin luther king may have had socialist sympathies, and he may have been surrounded by socialists, as well.

but, he attracted people because he was a church leader, not because he was a socialist.

and, when the movement tried to move more towards socialism, wihout the explicit religious foundation, it faltered.

socialists used to understand the retarding effect of religion, and the necessity of breaking the power of the church.

there's really no better example than amongst black voters in the south. 

the real reason that they won't vote for socialists is that they've been brainwashed by christianity. and, this is the oldest problem on the left - how do you get them away from the church without triggering them and pushing them in further? 

the best answer anybody has been able to come up with is to lure them out of the grips of the church by sending them to school. but, it means you need to get into power first.

so long as the church remains the dominant force in southern society, these voters are lost to the socialist cause.

i would guess that a part of the reason that sanders does so poorly with black voters is that he reminds them of the activists in the 60s that they were taught to reject, and ultimately did, under the guidance of the religious authorities.

what happened to this movement? it was suppressed, but it ultimately got abandoned and rejected. and, by who? the people that sanders is trying to get to vote for him.

so, invoking this stuff is probably hurting him more than it's helping him.

this is a ridiculous article, as though citing a couple of people can be extrapolated to an entire subculture.

it is true that these radical black movements were shut down by force, with prominent leaders being assassinated or jailed. but, it's also true that they were broadly unsuccessful in generating any sort of critical mass.

 

the reality is that black voters looked at the black panthers, and looked at the church, and picked the church over the black panthers.

sanders does get a few black people to vote for him - about 10-15%, in most places. further, they skew younger, which would help him in the 2032 election cycle - and while nobody should be surprised if he at least tries this again in 2024, we can rule out 2032 pretty effectively. 

the reality is that that 10-15% is just about the maximum reach you're going to get from this black left today, and was about the maximum reach you were going to get from it in the 60s. it's never been more than that, and fantasies to the contrary are just a type of historical revisionism.

activists can often shout louder than silent majorities. but, the data has never upheld the urban legend of the black left. it's just another 60s counterculture myth erected by revisionists in the 90s.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/10/us/black-socialists-bernie-sanders-blake/index.html

yeah - whoever was in here and jerked off on my bed also dismantled my firewall, and fucked with my system services.

i'm going to have to reimage this this morning.

this one, too.

i apologize. i suggested that it would be a clean split, and she would barely win, not that he would win.

he won by 1.5%. so, that's correct up to reasonable error - and certainly closer than anybody else.

the last video points out that the error that the msm made was that it looked at aggregate polling over weeks, instead of recent snapshots, which had sanders gaining very quickly.

but, the signals i got in 2016 are not present right now and i'm not repeating my analysis - it looks like biden will win big.

there are writeups for each of these videos.

in european history, there is a broad dividing line between the romans and the germans, going back thousands of years, with the celts lining up in between.

the romans, drawing from the greeks, are a people that believe in order and empire. they believe in a society rooted in law, and in later years they became dominated by an expression of greek philosophy called christianity.

the germans, on the other hand, were anarchists. they believed that rules should be malleable and adjustable, they believed in grassroots democracy and they rejected dominance and empire. 

i'm oversimplifying this because i don't want to write this essay right now, i just want to get the point across - i don't want to be an imperialist italian, i want to be an anarchist german. so, i will align with my mother's heritage rather than my father's.

but, i know i am both - and i know i have ancestry outside of europe, as well.

my mother only ever spoke english. i'd guess her father ever only spoke english; his ancestry is scottish/welsh all the way back. her mother only ever spoke english, but my mother's mother's mother's side was norwegian, and her father was irish. so, that's how far back you have to go on that side to get a culture that is not anglicized canadian.

my father spoke french, and i should probably speak better french, too. he did not speak italian. both of his parents spoke french and english, and i don't think they spoke anything else. you'd have to go back to my grandmother's parents or great grandparents before you got to any italian or jewish or native, and while i've seen pictures of my grandfather's mother (who was french canadian), his father's ancestry remains a serious mystery, and is likely some combination of jewish, eastern african and native american. 

i'm simply too far removed from an ancestry outside of this province to have any attachment to it.

but, culturally, i'd rather be norwegian than italian.

fwiw, i have no particular attachment to italy. i know i have italian ancestry, but i'd never identify myself as italian.

i was not raised with any italian heritage; i wasn't even aware of it until i was in my mid-teens. you know how i learned this? i invited a zito over to my house for a school project in the 8th grade, and my dad told him that his mother's name was zito. i had no idea up until that point; i would have told people he was french. 

i don't speak italian. i wasn't raised religiously. 

the most italian thing about me is that i eat a lot of pasta. really.

i'd identify more readily as norwegian, from my mother's side, which is a culture i feel a stronger affinity with.

but, i'm a canadian. my ancestors come from 20 different countries, and i'm not really strongly connected to any of them. the only language i speak is english, but i actually have no english heritage. i probably look more jewish than anything else...

but, i like the culture of the northern european barbarian more than i like the settled culture of southern europe or the middle east, and would prefer to identify with the later rather than the former.

why is italy getting hit with mortality rates more similar to china and the united states than mortality rates comparable to other oecd countries?

that's a complicated question that i'm not ready to take a guess at, and that is no doubt not particularly pressing to the people on the ground. but, i can point a few things out about italy.

italy actually has an unusually high poverty rate for a western europe country; it's poverty rate is actually comparable to that in the united states, which is unusual for western europe. it's a country with a lot of open markets and public functions, which is different from much of northern europe - but so is spain. 

this article suggests that italy just has an unusually high number of very old people, so, oddly, it's high mortality rate is a consequence of it's longer average lifespan:

https://inews.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-italy-why-so-bad-cases-deaths-lockdown-northern-areas-explained-2444517

these are things that will need to be worked out over time.

for right now, it is an outlier on the continent, and i suspect that this isn't all that surprising to most europeans.

if you remove italy from the dataset, the mortality rate in europe remains under 1%. 

they've done studies and concluded that people watching fox are actually less informed than people that don't watch the news at all. 

i'd like to see these studies replicated for msnbc and cnn. it's no doubt just as true, and maybe even worse. 

just turn your tv off. it's fucking trash. all of it.

so, you'll note that as more testing has been done in the united states, they've found hundreds of more cases and the mortality rate has gone from ~7% to ~3.5-4%, which is about on par with that in china.

the people arguing for hundreds of unreported cases have been proven right, and the smug idiots in the culturally liberal msm have been proven wrong. again.

will it come down more than that? i don't know. i just knew that the mortality rate in the united states was higher than logic would suggest that it should be, and something wasn't adding up. there had to be more cases than that.

but, the numbers are making more sense, now. what's next is an open question - can the united states bring it's numbers down to the levels in western europe? or are the results of it's health care system fundamentally more in line with china's?

the experiment is playing out, and we'll find out.

ok.

maybe it was foundation. when i got home on friday morning, i didn't shower until after i'd slept. so, that is a possibility.

it doesn't explain the splotch on the bed sheet, though. hrmmn...