i'm just thinking back, and i don't think i've ever bought potatoes at a grocery store.

i don't think i've bought a package of pre-cut french fries in upwards of fifteen years.

on the rare occasions that i'll buy a burger at a restaurant, i essentially never get fries.

i'd guess i might buy at most a poutine once a year, and over the last ten or so it's certainly been less frequent than that.

i'm more likely to get hash browns with a breakfast special. and, i guess i might get a small fry from time to time if i'm waiting somewhere.

but, in sum, i've probably had less than a bag of potatoes, in total, over the last 20 years.

listen: i'm sure we can find something to do with the excess product. there's lots of hungry people out there.

but, i can't think of a more high impact collective health decision than cutting potato consumption to almost nothing, permanently. it would be a godsend, for public health.

the demise of the potato industry would be an excellent opportunity to reclaim the growing space for a more useful produce.

potatoes really aren't very good for you.

so, i don't really have a lot of sympathy, here. we'd be better off if the demand for this product crashed permanently.

why don't they shift to growing more nutritious fruit and vegetables, instead?

https://globalnews.ca/news/6870689/coronavirus-canada-food-supply/

what this means is that standing two metres from each other at the grocery store is completely pointless.

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0764_article

google,

there is absolutely no possibility at all whatsoever that i'm ever going to pay the slightest bit of attention to your stupid, worthless advertising.

deal with it.

was the file malicious?

maybe if you work for adsense, it was.

it's a video codec for remote viewing through smplayer.

what you want to do is turn this off.

i'm going to shiver for an hour in anger and outrage over this.

google chrome just blocked a download because it was "malicious".

and, i'm about to throw this piece of trash in the fucking garbage.

listen, google. you don't fucking decide that. i decide that.

fuck off.

so, smplayer seems to run fine on xp, but in order to stream from youtube, i'd need to replace mplayer with mpv, and the latter will no longer work with xp.

so, i'm basically doing the same thing with this that i was with chrome, except that i'm less confident in this working, because i suspect youtube has already banned it.

ugh.

i'm going to try it, at least...

i'm not going to adjudicate this decision from a distance without the facts.

but, i will point out that approaching the issue case-by-case is far preferable in a free society - and that a few bad apples shouldn't be allowed to ruin the situation for everybody.

i would suspect that this is probably symbolic. i don't know...

i know i'd prefer to have not seen it happen, but i don't know the facts.

https://www.france24.com/en/20200426-sweden-cracks-down-on-bars-as-crowds-flout-corona-rules

this appears to be happening in new york as well, where herd immunity in new york city is being offset (or distorted) by a rising problem in buffalo. i pointed this out looking at the italian numbers - you need to be sure that you're looking at the data in a granular enough manner, to ensure you're not misinterpreting the interference patterns.

this is going to be an expected feature of this, as things develop - very localized waves, at the city or even neighbourhood level, rather than broad waves at the state, provincial or national level.

https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-health-watch/coronavirus-surges-grand-rapids-area-bucking-trends-rest-michigan

and, i will refuse vaccination out of spite.

i'll take a jail sentence, in protest.

i'll go underground.

you won't get that needle in my arm without a fight.

if you're a capitalist piece of shit, go find the right companies to invest in...

but, again - if your body doesn't remember the antibodies when you meet this thing in the wild, it won't remember them when you get a vaccine, either.

i keep asking the question: what's really going on?

and, the incredible levels of stupidity and ignorance coming from these bodies is strongly suggestive of what was an early hypothesis: man made or not, it seems like big pharma is driving the response to this.

you're going to be immunized at great profit margins, whether you need it or not.

the choice that we have is between dragging the process out and maximizing exposure to the weak or hurrying it up and minimizing exposure to them.

i don't need to be an epidemiologist to tell you that there's a 100% chance that we'll get to widespread immunity before a commercially available vaccine is ready, regardless of what we do.

we don't have a choice between getting to immunity and waiting for a vaccine - you can't stop an airborne virus with a half-ass quarantine.

we're already most of the way there, despite our best efforts.

https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-04-25/could-a-controlled-avalanche-stop-the-coronavirus-faster-and-with-fewer-death

it'll be a sad day in canada when we deduce the liberals are just as fucking retarded as the conservatives are.

but, that day of reckoning may be nigh.

you can, in theory, at least teach the ignorant.

but eventually, after so much failure, there does come a time when you have to deduce that those who you initially thought were only ignorant are, in truth, surely stupid, as well.

liberal ignorance or conservative stupidity.

pick your poison.

i'm just going to undo anything you do, so don't waste your time.

so, it seems like this post:

when is the ndp going to get rid of jagmeet singh and put a serious leadership candidate in place, already?

(https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2020/04/blog-post_13.html)

disappeared.

and then reappeared inside of the previous post:

as horribly ignorant as justin trudeau is, we don't need a return to conservative stupidity in this country.

what the fuck?

i've been clear with you, google - i do not tolerate deleted posts. and, i don't want you fucking with my writing.

so, fuck off.

the ndp should have won the last election, and would have if they had a serious leader.

when is the ndp going to finally get rid of jagmeet singh and put a serious leadership candidate in place, already?

as horribly ignorant as justin trudeau is, we don't need a return to conservative stupidity in this country.

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22pierre+poutine%22&rlz=1CALEAA_enCA898&oq=%22pierre+poutine%22

so, his concern is that it's disincentivizing people from working.

why is pierre poutine even being interpreted as a serious candidate?

the guy should be in jail.

lock him the fuck up.

https://globalnews.ca/news/6870332/coronavirus-freakonomics-conservative/

vlc is kind of bloated, by design.

i need something sleeker than that.

my 2009 version of vlc is clearly not cutting it.

i'm trying smplayer, first. i think it's most likely to work...

and, regarding the ads on this chromebook.

i don't watch them. if i can't skip them, i press the mute tab and multitask until they're done.

trying to force ads on people isn't going to make them more willing to engage with them.

i would imagine that youtube doesn't want you doing this.

but, this is likely to become more widespread than less so, so long as google insists on blocking such a wide variety of devices from the site.

it would be a lot easier if i could use a browser - but they won't let me.

i don't even run adblock on that machine because 99% of the videos i watch don't even monetize.

iirc, the problem i was having was with playlists, specifically. at the time, i had this giant playlist i was running through, and it just wouldn't stream right.

i'm not actually doing that, anymore; what i was doing when i switched over was watching all of the stanford videos since the beginning, in order.

so, for now, at least, i wonder if i could just try it again in the version of vlc in the image from 2009...

i want to find workarounds to make this old equipment work for as long as it can.

again: my primary concern is the environmental footprint.

i don't want to throw out good equipment that works and ruin the planet to buy more in order to make it easier to spy on me.

i had something called a tv card for a while in the 90s, which literally let me watch tv on my computer. this wasn't streaming internet - i plugged the cable line into my video card.

it worked flawlessly for years on a pIII with windows 98 and 64 mb of ram, which was a high-end machine at the time.

but, i can't event connect to youtube with a laptop that has a processor that is twice as fast and 4x as much ram?

it's ridiculous...

i think i'd rather get cable than buy netflix, frankly.

i mean, can you stream the news over netflix?

and, why don't i use netflix?

i wouldn't even want to watch anything on netflix. that's not about technology, and it's not about price, it's actually about what i'd want to watch vs what i wouldn't.

youtube has university lectures and independent documentaries and whatnot, and that's far more interesting to me than movies or tv shows. the fact that it's free is a bonus, sure, but the reality is that if you gave me an unlimited netflix account for free then i'd probably never use it - i'd rather watch youtube, anyways.

one of the things i was playing with a while back was the idea of using something like smplayer to access youtube instead of using a browser, but it wasn't there yet.

maybe it is now.

the actual problem is the ad servers. that is why you need ridiculous specs to do something you should be able to do effortlessly on a thirty year old pc, and just can't.

this shouldn't be this complicated, really.

my concern is not safety, or security - it's making the best use of perfectly good aging equipment, while minimizing the environmental effects of consumerism.

the laptop works perfectly fine. it's a pentium grade computer, with hundreds of megabytes of ram. compared to the devices that sent neil armstrong to the moon, this thing is a super computer.

but, i can't connect to youtube with it?

that's absurd.

i don't want a newer computer.

i want a lighter browser.

why don't i just use the chromebook?

the chromebook is in my bedroom, which is where it's going to need to be until i can build an image for the main laptop. i don't think there's anything wrong with the battery, but the operating system won't read it. so, the device is no longer mobile - it's in my bedroom, and it's plugged in.

i don't have any desire to buy a new battery, and i don't have time to learn how to reprogram the chip. buying laptop batteries is one of the worst things you can do for the environment. so, it's probably not going to have a battery for...for years, really. it may never get fixed...or, i may need to wait until google decides i can't use it anymore, and i have to flash the chip to turn it on, anyways.

this device was purchased for mobile use. i log in as a guest account, and i'll be turning it off as soon as everything else works properly, again.

i fundamentally dislike the chrome os, and i actually wish i'd have bought something else.

so, i've been eating in bed over the last few months as everything else has been broken or disabled, and am trying to stop doing it. that's the point of what i'm trying to do.

what i'd have to do is turn the machine off and move it into the kitchen every time i eat, which means i couldn't pause the lecture halfway through, which is what i'm trying to facilitate.

so, there's basically no way to use this device for that purpose at this time - and it's not what i want to use it for, anyways.

i don't even really understand why chrome would need to use encryption to go to youtube.

what is being encrypted, exactly?

i'm just watching lectures at stanford. i don't care if hackers steal the information, so long as they don't slow down the stream. but, i'd suggest that it would be faster if they'd just go there, themselves.

i'm going to end up moving to linux....

i have a stack of ancient pc ram, but nothing for the 90s laptop.

so, we're going to have to find a version of chrome that works, for now. youtube won't run with scripting off.

so, i woke up and googled coronavirus like i have every day for however long, now and realized something...

i don't even care anymore.

just let me know when it's over.

i started updating chrome sequentially from 4 upwards and ended up blocked from accessing youtube by the server. i'm not sure what to do next if that's not temporary.

but, i'm very close to refocusing and it's what i really want to be doing, right now.

i'm going to need to make some calls early in the morning. right now, i want to find an acceptable solution with the 90s laptop and get to work on finishing that master document for 01/14.

this really ought to be taxable, if the government is treating them as a business (which is what they actually are.)

https://globalnews.ca/news/6869703/coronavirus-wage-subsidy-parishes/

chrome 4 is fast, but it doesn't have the right encryption algorithm, it seems.

let's try a few, and work my way up.

let's hope there's a little less spyware, as well.

old versions has lots of old versions.

let's give this a try.

i mean, that's the reason that chrome is workable on this thing and firefox isn't - i can get to youtube on much older versions of chrome, and need relatively new versions of firefox.

maybe there's a plugin. but, i'm so low on ram...

it seem like chrome had h.264 support in 2009?

i wonder if i can find a version that old.

firefox 28 loads well on the 90s laptop, but youtube won't default to the webm codec, so the minimal version i have to run to get to youtube is firefox 46. with versions of 46 or higher, the html5 video works, but the javascript constantly hangs, which is probably a processor issue, rather than a ram issue.

it's still at 256 mb. i should look into ordering something from ebay, which is probably both my best and only option with a laptop that old. it's probably going to cost something like $20 for 1 gb of ram. but, i might also even have some of the right kind of ram, too. i don't even know...

the comodo fork seems to be trying to access a lot of system files that i've purposefully removed, which is worrying me a little. these look like ie files. so, i'm going to back away from this.

i'm going to try chrome again, after i check to optimize for the best version.

everybody thinks their situation is urgent.

whether it is or not needs to be up to us to determine.

when somebody shows up here and tries to cross in illegally, what they're saying to us is "i'm too important to wait in line. i'm more valuable than anybody else. i am entitled to immediate service.".

and, frankly, that's not very endearing.

i just want to address a point i'm making about forcing migrants to come in the front door.

am i not denying the hardships that they're going through? well, i'm directing them to the proper application process, i'm not denying them offhand. so, your argument essentially reduces to urgency, and, yes, i am going to push back against that, because everybody's situation is urgent in their own way, and to decide that your own situation is more urgent than everybody else's without consulting anybody or leaving it up to analysis is actually pretty selfish, isn't it?

we've got thousands of people sleeping on the streets here. are their situations not urgent?

so, what gives you the self-importance and flat out gall, really, to show up here uninvited and demand that your issues are prioritized?

queues suck, but they're real. i would support prioritization, at some level - but, as the sovereign nation, that decision needs to be in our own hands, and not decided by the people seeking refuge.

my understanding is that a lot of people get here and are shocked to come face to face with the homeless population; they don't expect that - they expect a disney reality, with gold-paved streets and free money raining down from the skies. and, that's partly our own fault for mismarketing ourselves, going back a very long time.

equality runs in every direction.

that was the last one.

but they came back for one more, roughly a year later.

well, kinda.

like?

elmocare will make you strong!

you want a few more?

trust me, i'm pulling out the best ones.

oh, you idealists.

if the stereotype is that americans are vain and self-absorbed and shallow....

you'd think it's obvious, right?

salons? it's practically the definition of unimportant labour....these are the least important workers on the planet...

but, no.

it's consistent - last thing to close, first thing to re-open.

it's just weird.

frankly, i wouldn't even want somebody doing half of these things for me; it would kind of gross me out.

why would they re-open the salons first, of all things?

this reliance on other people for basic hygiene seems to be strangely widespread in the united states.

i wonder if it's ultimately a legacy of slavery, because i don't think people anywhere else in the world put that kind of importance on paying other people to groom them.

whatever you think of all of this nonsense, you'd think that something as frivolous and intimate as a salon would be the first thing to close and the last thing to re-open - if not based on the science, then at least based on importance.

i really greatly prefer firefox. i'm sorry...

i think i should be able to take it down to 46, and maybe as far as 28, before i lose youtube support.

the comodo setup wouldn't load.

i was able to get the thing to run using an esr version of firefox 52, so i at least know i'm not missing files. but, even that is painfully slow....

i'm going to actually eat, because it's just been too long. but, i should be able to optimize it better than that afterwards.

so, comodo has a firefox fork, apparently?

hrmmn.

ok.

i'm caught up.

completely.

finally....

i need to reimage the 90s laptop again before i eat and shower, as i've been having difficulty finding the right combination of software. the reason i moved to the laptop in the first place was that the processor on the 90s pc (the one that shipped with windows 98....) couldn't load a modern browser, and thus couldn't get native html5 support. it consequently couldn't access youtube.

the workaround i found was with chrome & xp, but i thought i had saved the setup files for chrome, and apparently had not. i don't know what version it was. the versions i've tried haven't worked. worse, i don't remember what image i was using. i should have taken better notes.

what i want is just a front end for youtube; it really doesn't need to do anything else.

so, i should at least start with the most primitive versions of chrome, firefox and opera that will run html5 video natively.

i'd really rather find something even lighter, though. and, i'm toying with a minimal linux distro, if none of that works.

could the republicans win california?

how much longer does this go on for?

well, these people don't get out of the house much, do they?

their phones are the only reflection of reality that they have.

i bet the 0.5% of people that twitter represents will have some mean things to say about the beachgoers in california today, as well - who are vastly representative of the dominant majority.

and, our out of touch political leaders that pathetically live vicariously through their phones won't get the point. at all. they'll just snicker...

whatever.

can we have an election asap, please?

where? everywhere...

maybe, if you put just a pinch of bleach in your cocaine before you snort it?

see, there we are. that's how you do it.

bleach would be better than salt, though, clearly.

what if you use bleach, though?

the virus is said to live in your upper respiratory tract. so, supplementing your water with bleach is unlikely to be helpful, because it's unlikely to come into contact with it - you're just going to end up with bleach in your stomach, which might increase your likelihood of ulcers.

but, what if you could find a way to kind of gargle the bleach through your nose?

if you doused this contraption in a low-level bleach solution, it would probably be more useful than meditation, at least.

broadly speaking, the recommendation to put bleach in water is to protect against water-borne illnesses - parasites and bacteria, mostly. hepatitis and polio are also known to spread through water, although the water is just a medium for the real vector, which is......shit. well, we still dump it in the river in a lot of places...

if you think there's polio in your water, i'd say you should find a different source of water. if you can't? well, that's what the rec is for.

is there any reason to think that something like this would be useful for covid-19?

well, we've found it in feces, indicating it is potentially in the water supply in some places. but, you'd think that the things we're doing to get rid of other viruses would be largely useful for this one, too. and, what do we do to our water at the purification plant?

the answer is that we basically bleach it.

drinking bleach is actually recommended in some scenarios....

https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/pdf/emergency/09_202278-B_Make_Water_Safe_Flyer_508.pdf

should we all drink bleach to protect ourselves from the virus?

you realize this is the internet, right?

i'm going to email this to the pmo.

this virus is not unlike any other virus. it's feisty, sure, but it's a relatively weak virus...

naturally produced antibodies will be protective.

a vaccine will work.

and, the prime minister is an ignorant fucking idiot.

i repeat: if we discover that this virus is unlike any other virus and that natural immunity won't protect against it, then that actually proves that a vaccine is also impossible, because that's what a vaccine does - it stimulates your body into producing protective antibodies.

if that's actually true, then we're fucked and we'd might as well reopen tomorrow.

do you understand that?

i am not worried about this - i am confident in the effectiveness of natural immunity, and willing to blame these weird results out of asia on human error.

and, as i have done previously, i would call on the director of the who to resign for publishing what he must know is ridiculous nonsense.

you'd also want to note the following - while we have been unable to create vaccines for some viruses like aids/hiv, if natural immunity does not exist for this virus then we can't find a vaccine.

so, you have to understand that arguing that we need to wait for a vaccine because we can't rely on immunity is a distressingly ignorant and stupid position, despite being the one that the prime minister and his office appear to be taking.

if we can't build immunity, we can't get a vaccine either. it's the same fucking thing...

i'm going to flip the issue over.

if you could somehow demonstrate that antibodies don't produce immunity for this virus, you would be presenting exceedingly strong evidence that it's bioengineered - because every other virus, ever, leaves us with immunity in the presence of antibodies.

you'd probably have to stop calling it a virus - it would be something else, entirely.

alright, back to what i was doing.

the frustrating thing is that we had good planning documents here, and they were following them, initially.

but, at some point, twitter became a better source of information to the people that are making decisions than the existing white papers, based on peer-reviewed science.

now, we're all suffering for it.

that's what they're basing their concept of public opinion on: twitter feeds.

it's why we're in such a ridiculous situation, where we've lost every meaningful freedom we had in order to chase policies that no educated person thought would be effective, have utterly failed and are failing more and more every day.

justin trudeau is perhaps the first demonstration of the catastrophe that happens when you let government base policy on twitter.

it's just ignorant policy after ignorant policy - defined by hashtags and trending nonsense.

how long is this going to go on for?

we're going to have to get out on the streets, clearly.

right now, the government seems to think we want to stay inside.

we'll need to demonstrate otherwise with a show of force; otherwise, we're waiting two-three years for a vaccine. that's their messaging, right now - not weeks, not months but years.

so, why would he say something so ignorant?

he's no doubt calculated, correctly or not, that the public wants fascism, right now.

so, that is what we will get.

uber alles, canada. sieg heil, mr. trudeau. sieg heil...

again - this idiot will stand up on the podium day in and day out and pretend he's following the recommendations of experts and relying on the science.

he is not.

it's a smokescreen.

and, his response is entirely political.

testing to ensure that you can't get reinfected by a virus you have antibodies for is not "being cautious".

it is foolishly reinventing the wheel - and either driven by ignorance or stupidity.

perhaps it is true that we don't have studies to back the claim up directly, but this is a situation where this is such basic science that it isn't necessary. we know that. it's not a high risk deduction.

what we need to be concerned about is if the virus is mutating or not, not whether or not we can be "reinfected", which is an incoherent concept.

let's get doug ford real angry, ontario.

let's make him mad as hell.

it's too bad he didn't get so angry that he had a heart attack.

again: i'd rather see people just move on. stop protesting, and just do it...

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/a-bunch-of-yahoos-ford-says-of-people-protesting-covid-19-emergency-measures-1.4911861

“But it’s very clear that the science is not decided on whether or not having COVID once prevents you from getting it again… it is something that we need to get clearer answers to and until we have those clear answers, we have to err on the side of more caution.” - justin trudeau

ugh.

this guy is an ignorant fucking idiot....

see, i'm an anarchist - i like voluntarism.

but, it comes with a concept of personal responsibility, absolutely.

the fact that your health is your own individual responsibility means you also have an obligation to avoid the vulnerable if you're a potential carrier. it's actually the latter issue that we seem to be getting wrong here, but i wonder how much of it is due to widespread misplaced faith in authority.

if our governments had given us more personal responsibility in dealing with this, would we have risen to the challenge? as an anarchist, that's what i'd like to see - and it's encouraging to see the swedes deliver.

we always say this, right. the social revolution must come first. perhaps it's already begun in scandinavia....

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01098-x

this was entirely predictable, too.

hey - i'm consistent. i want to be more like sweden all of the time.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52395866

leftists are weird, huh?

lol.

you've probably never even had a conversation with an actual leftist in your life.

this society was built on the exploitation of slave labour, and the truth is that not much has changed, besides the justifications to continue to uphold it.

if you opposed slavery in the past, you should continue to oppose it, today. i don't want to hear justifications for it.

i'm a few days behind on eating now, so i need to get to it relatively soon.

but, i got about halfway done what i was doing this morning before my batteries went out on me.

let's hope that they've recharged enough now to get this finished.

at this stage in history, the proper evolution is from a prison-industrial complex to a system of mechanized labour. that's what abolition means, now - past the agrarian era of free markets, and past the industrial area of socialization in production.

we are post-industrial.

we should start acting like it.

i also want to clarify the realities in the united states around the issue, as the debate largely exists in the realm of fantasy. both sides of the debate in the united states are utterly delusional, with democrats pretending that they're dealing with people fleeing violence that need sanctuary, and republicans pretending that they're dealing with rapists and drug dealers.

what exists in the united states is a prison-industrial complex. chomsky has a daughter, and she wrote the book on this.

the jails acts as intake systems for influxes of cheap labour, which end up distributed to participating property owners. the state is a human resources department. and, the status quo continues because the system wants it to continue - because it benefits capital, at the expense of labour.

so, you end up with democrats that want to make the system a little more humane, and republicans that don't care - it's the choice between what is presented as the enlightened capitalists, and what is presented as the evil bastards.

but, i'm not in solidarity with capitalists that want to make the system a little bit better while essentially keeping it in place.

no.

i want to abolish this system altogether - and that means going after the real criminals, which are the corporations driving the abuses.

as mentioned, in the long-run, i would support essentially erasing the borders of the nafta states to start, and then gradually erasing more and more borders as the class relationships absolve.

but, i do see the world in terms of class, and i know which class i stand with. so long as the rules in this country are erected so that migrant labour benefits the middle class at the expense of the working class in a way that is strictly exploitative, the state should be implementing rules to prevent that exploitation from occurring - which means criminalizing illegal border crossings, however nominally.

there should also be a strict crackdown on people that "sponsor" these refugees in order to exploit them. let's drop the bullshit - these people are buying and importing slaves. that should be ended immediately, and they should face steep punishments for it. it's the unscrupulous employers that really deserve stiff and lengthy jail sentences, not the imported workers.

the point is to incentivize proper entry procedures, and if the policy is successful then it will lead to lower crossings, not more people in jail.

but, there is nothing left-wing about supporting systems that exploit migrant labour - that is support for modern day slavery.

if you can't work that out, or you're too selfish to care, you should be ashamed of yourself.

so, what is my proposal for dealing with illegal immigration?

1) try them for it.
2) send them to jail for a few months for breaking the law. these should not be lengthy sentences, and in most cases will reduce to time already served.
3) give them a criminal record for entering the country illegally.
4) release them, without deporting them.

they will leave on their own relatively quickly, when they realize they can't get jobs with a criminal record. and, this should incentivize refugees to go through the process properly.

i actually don't expect that the science would uphold the premise that being held in a jail increases the risk of contracting the disease if the alternative is living in a shelter. if anything, you're at least sitting in one place, so your access to random people is restricted.

rather, i would expect that they would have better access to health care inside of the facilities than outside of it, as canada's coverage for refugees is patchy and uneven (and, i think should be). some of these people may end up denied access to health care altogether, as soon as they end up released. but, anybody that is incarcerated in this country should (at least in theory) get proper health care on demand.

i don't tend to support deporting people, but i would argue that crossing borders illegally should result in a criminal record and a period of detention, because it is in fact a crime in this country to do so. it's a kind of compromise that i think addresses the issue properly - if you can find a way in, then you can stay, but you should have a criminal record for breaking the rules in doing so.

refugee applicants that wish to avoid criminal records should enter the country through official ports of entry, as is directed by international law. or, those would be the rules under my direction, anyways...

arguments to look the other way at illegal labour stand in solidarity with the middle class that benefits from the exploitation of refugee labour and not with the working class, which ends up harmed by it.

so, again - say what you will of this, but this isn't evidence-based. and, it will no doubt just increase strains on the social system, potentially making the problem worse in the shelters, where the chances of spread are likely far higher than they are in jails.

https://globalnews.ca/news/6861756/canada-releasing-immigration-detainees-coronavirus-covid-19/

https://www.vox.com/2020/1/23/21078325/wuhan-china-coronavirus-travel-ban

and, this is a subsequent survey on the efficacy of travel restrictions after covid-19 began spreading, which upholds the point made by the earlier epistemological modeling.

again: this is not controversial research.

https://www.cato.org/blog/travel-restrictions-spread-covid-19-what-does-research-say

the border is not closed to stop the spread of the virus.

the border is closed because our politicians have decided that closing the border is popular, and leaving it open would create uprisings, or otherwise open up an electoral vulnerability.

it's a political decision, it's not a public health policy.

it's not often that i'll post a link to an article at the cato institute without ripping it apart. this is a survey of the existing literature, and is worth sorting through to realize just how stupid we're being right now.

they are mostly echoing points i've been making for weeks.

the fact that i am able to do this right now demonstrates how uncontroversial the point is. if there was any controversy around the topic at all, there's little question that i'd come down on the other side of the debate. but, there's certain things - like gravity - that i can agree with the cato institute on.

note that i said gravity and not something that has even the slightest bit of controversy, rightly or not. they wouldn't a post an article like this about climate change. and, i'm not sure you'd even get something from them upholding evolution.

why are our governments being so retarded about this?

because you're retarded, and they caved into your demands - it's a reflection of our own collective stupidity, our own mass ignorance.

the science was clear from the start: these borders should have stayed open through this entire process. but, you can't deal with that, and the government caved to your ignorance.

https://www.cato.org/blog/research-provides-no-basis-pandemic-travel-bans

so, these graphs where they normalize different cities or countries based on a number of days since the first known case, or since the first known death...

i wouldn't take them very seriously, in terms of actually comparing outcomes in different regions.

1) the decision to plot these graphs was taken back when we thought r-not was much smaller than we know it is now. we also thought the virus was much more deadly than we know it is now.
2) we now know that the virus was circulating in highly connected regions months before we really detected it, so the starting dates are very hard to pin with any accuracy.
3) as we've received more data about who the disease affects, the disparities have just become greater.

so, in city a, the first person that caught the disease might have come in contact with an elderly person within hours, and that elderly person may have died a fast and miserable death. if the first person is quickly isolated, that might be the end of that vector altogether.

on the other hand, the first person that caught the disease in city b may have flown in to the city to see a concert populated by teenagers, who then infected their relatively young and healthy parents. it could in theory take weeks or months for any sort of mortality to develop, and in the process you could see thousands or tens of thousands of cases.

these are extreme opposite scenarios, but it gets the point across - the metric is actually really not very standardized at all, and lining these curves up on top of each other based on it could very well lead to some very wrong conclusions about how the disease is spreading in any particular place.

you might be able to salvage the concept if you shift the alignment to a more advanced point in the curve, but it seems to me that this would mostly undo what people want to see, which is what's happening in early stages of transmission. really, this is a tool of analysis that should only be employed after the fact, and by lining the different cities up at their respective peaks. that would help us understand what already happened, but wouldn't help us predict the future.

a better idea to understand how the curve is growing is to dispense with the visual comparison and just rely on some basic calculus. after fitting the data to an equation, what is the derivative of that equation? how is the instantaneous rate of change evolving over time?

i'd suspect that los angeles is likely on the brink, as well.

i understand that the graph isn't perfect.

but, the up and down nature of it (no plateau of sustained levels) is pretty strongly suggestive of the lockdown having almost no effect.

this is just one city, and i must concede that new york was often presented in the modeling as the worst case scenario, as what happens when you do nothing at all - despite the fact that they did in fact do quite a bit. so, if it turns out that the actions taken by statist authorities had little to no effect on the outcome in new york, that may actually have minimal forecasting effects for other cities, for the reason that they acted too late; we don't yet know whether the numbers we're seeing in new york are proof of the futility of acting against the virus, or just evidence that they were too slow to act. we'll need to see the numbers in other cities, first.

but, they're saying now that there were thousand of cases in new york as early as january, meaning it took months to actually ramp up like this. what that means is if you're a city like toronto which we think is weeks behind new york, and you're watching your numbers tick up from 30ish to 50ish, this graph should scare the hell out of you.

one thing that we appear to have learned from this week is that immunity was high enough in new york to prevent an easter spike, but wasn't in detroit. it seems like toronto isn't far enough along the curve to be able to even detect an easter spike, yet.

this could be a vicious week here, in eastern canada. and, i suspect it will be. so, despite confusing messages, it's more important to be careful in ontario if you're at high risk than ever before.

whatever the effects of the quarantine end up being here in the end, i hope that locking down too early doesn't have the effect of creating lockdown fatigue. but, if people don't understand the risk this causes the elderly at this point, will they ever?

right now, convincing examples of bent curves are almost non-existent - almost everywhere, we're seeing peaks and falls or slower ramp ups than initially thought. but, it will be this week and the next that the regions that locked down as early as possible will get to the point in the curve where you can start to really make more serious deductions.

i hope that the loss of life is minimal.

but, eastern canada should brace for the worst.

thankfully, it seems clear that we have.

i just want to tersely comment on the falling new york death toll.

i think everybody would like to see these numbers fall faster than they are, but this is a fairly rapid and steady decline that we're seeing. it's certainly not a sustained death toll. or, not yet, anyways.

again: there should be some background level, in the end, so don't expect it to fall to zero.

the term i used, crash, may have been somewhat unfortunate. but, the question is whether it's falling steadily or levelling off, and it's the former that is clearly more true.

one more update...

and, i had to sort through this, but this month was far less eventful than the second half of last month, and the update will reflect that.

i'm very, very close to getting back to work, for the first time since february. finally...

=====

- spent morning of 31st shopping
- had panic attack at far store, after experiencing some sore legs from walking.
- made it home, slept for 12 hours.
- back up early on 1st without turning modem back on, ate a big meal, was back out for more shopping. out all day, again. leg still sore...
- got soy milk last, and picked up some pot at store downtown to deal with sore leg. crashed when i got home.
- up early on the 2nd, and finally turned modem back on after roughly 48 hours, but just briefly. there was serious traffic logged for the 31st (and should have been almost none), with minimal traffic on the 1st (should have been exactly none.)
- went for long walk to get soy (using pot as aid), finally found it at closest store, on way back. crashed all day, up late in the evening.
- checked usage stats early on the 3rd and saw no traffic for the 2nd, which should have been for the first. odd, but the server seems to have reset.
- was there entry when i was gone? hard to say. some weak evidence. more importantly, server reset...because they came in and reset it?
- finished smoking the pot and kind of relaxed for the day. read the news. slept some more.
- usage stats on the 4th were in my normal range, if offset. this repeats itself from here on in.

- went out on saturday morning (4th) to get more soy milk + a quarter of marijuana at the store, as they were closing indefinitely (past 4/20). crashed when i got back...

- still sleepy on the 5th, but starting to refocus. smoking through quarter.

(so, week was spent shopping. internet issue resolved itself.)

- finally finished very long sunsquabi/beethoven review on 6th.

- finished control top review on 8th. 

- back to blog cleaning until the 11th

- realized on the 10th that the court was open this week. sort of. for virtual sittings, not filings...

- concert list on 11th, formatted laptop hard drive, then reviews over the 11th/12th, ending in list

- created bounds for vlogging cleanup on the 13th

- finished quarter on 13th

 - not great pot, didn't have intended effect

(so, week was spent smoking pot and cleaning up blog & ranting about virus)

- slept for a few days...

- made multiple calls on 14th, 

such as calling court to ask if hearing has been cancelled, and if there's a process to reschedule. sent email instead. (answer: day-today, not clear yet).  

called cra. 

called human rights tribunal, sent email for clarification.  (answer: everything on hold, will pick up when feasible)

- finally woke up on the 15th

- called pharmacy, still pushing generic estrogen. got pushy. so, switched to other pharmacy instead.

- grocery shopping on afternoon of 15th (needed salami.), then picked up pills very late on 15th.

- after analyzing different delivery systems, decided to experiment with sublingual application on a weekly basis

- prometrium switch?

- much ranting on 16th/17th + eating & get smart. cleaning. laundry. shower.

- 18th: finished laundry, reimaged laptop, ate, etc 

- 19th: back to vlogging, but not really. first entry, then concert lookahead, actually.

- 20th: sat down to switchover, got most of the vlogging updates done. 

(so, week was spent cleaning in various ways & ranting heavily)

- 21st/22nd: built notes for long vlog update, ranted

- 23rd: notes posted, vlog updated over morning of 23rd. 

- 23rd/24th/25th: finished these notes, last vlog updates before return

to be clear, i'm not a doctor. but, my analysis here is not medical.

i've certainly studied a wider range of science at a higher level than even the general educated public, so i will sometimes take the initiative to clarify or correct the mass ignorance in the media reports. i don't even look at social media any more; the lack of scientific literacy just makes me sad. but, making corrections to the science is not the focus, here.

so, i have heightened scientific literacy, but i'm not a scientist. but, that's not the focus of the analysis, so pointing it out is what's called a red herring.

rather, my degrees are in mathematics, computer science and law. what you should cite me as is an independent mathematician. and, that's what my analysis here is about.

but, my education aside, my passion is my art, and that is where i would prefer to focus my labour, my life and my mind.

i'm really providing this as a public service out of a sense of altruism. like, there's not even ads on the blog. i gain nothing from this besides clarity gained from the process of typing, and there's certainly some stress release in it.

so, take it for what it is - and take it or leave it. but, don't misconstrue it. i'm neither a doctor, nor pretending i am one. but, this isn't a problem for a doctor, it's a problem for a mathematician - and i am qualified to speak from that perspective.

again: the president gets the biggest, greatest, bestest briefings in the whole world.

i don't know why he insists on speaking like a character in a lewis carroll novel. but, he certainly doesn't have a deficit of information available to him. and, like the most allegorical texts, he shouldn't be discarded offhand - as absurd as he so frequently sounds, his statements need to be analyzed carefully.

no. that's what we learned. and, unlike you, i'm not a slow learner.

this says the same thing i just said, using language that you may find difficult to follow.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/oby.22838

so, what i've learned at this point is that trump is talking in riddles that he thinks his supporters are more likely to understand, rather than deferring to technical language that he likely has problems with, himself.

these statements appear at first glance to be delving into schizophrenia, or dementia. they simply come off as insane.

but, there have been reports about vitamin d deficiency being a risk factor not just for covid-19 but for a variety of health concerns. vitamins don't cure diseases on their own, but your body is essentially a factory that produces chemicals that control your body's operation, and deficiencies of raw materials will make it difficult for your body to function properly. vitamin deficiency is widely understood as a major underlying problem in the general health of americans. the culture is practically defined by it's romanticization of eating what most of the rest of the world would consider poison or garbage.

is he trying to get people to get outside to synthesize enough d?

and is that a general point we should all be reminded of, as we spend weeks inside, with no sun?

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/24/health/sunlight-coronavirus-trump.html

so, i've got notes up until a few days ago done up and should finish the vlogging update today, for real.

but, i need to take a nap, first.

now, this....

is this permanent?

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/canada-post-warns-of-delays-as-it-handles-christmas-level-volume-of-parcels-1.4908484

might they consider extending the school year to make up the lost time?

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/gradual-return-to-school-isn-t-just-welcome-it-s-necessary-quebec-pediatricians-association-says-1.4908988

i posted this two weeks ago, and we seem to be falling more in the middle range in new york city (which is past it's peak), whereas the other three cities are very far behind new york on the curve and can't really be analyzed the same way.

if detroit got an easter spike, it would indicate it has a long way to go, still.

and, my official analysis is that montreal & toronto are both still on the very low end of the curve, and essentially recording background deaths. i wouldn't expect either city to peak until mid-may at the earliest.

the low range was .1%, the middle range was .3% and the high range was .5%.

https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2020/04/so-it-looks-like-some-places-are.html

michigan might be getting an easter spike, indicating there's still a lot of uninfected people.

new york doesn't seem to be seeing that. but, it's too early to rule it out.

https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/michigan/2020/04/22/coronavirus-in-michigan-heres-where-we-stand-as-of-tuesday-night/

i did finish the long vlog update this morning before crashing, in three installments. it's roughly an hour.

i don't know when i'll upload it...it could be years....

i have one more to do, and let's hope it doesn't take several days. then, i'm finally over this brutal hump and back to work...

listen, i told you i was an anarchist.

don't feign shock and surprise, here.

maybe you didn't listen, but i've been absolutely transparent.

productive sobriety is the key to happiness, it really is.

now, if we could just all stop wasting our lives at work...

moderation.

it's key to longevity.

"you smoked 60 joints in 10 days and then just quit?"

i had to sleep it off a little - and probably the nicotine, mostly.

but, marijuana isn't addictive.

your rights end where mine start.

and, i think that you're overstepping your bounds, right now.

i've been inside for a solid week.

i intend to be inside for two more.

i don't want to have to deal with second-hand smoke while i'm in here.

at all.

again: you don't get an early sentence from a pandemic for good behaviour. the more you comply, the worse off you are.

it's the areas that ignored social distancing that are going to be back to normal sooner, not the ones that did what they were told.

well?

stop interpreting yourself as a child.

and stop interpreting the state as your parents.

when i was smoking last week, i went to the park to smoke. every single time, which was 60 some odd joints off the quarter.

i don't want it near the house. at all.

and, if i figure out that somebody is smoking inside, there's going to be hell to pay for it.

just don't do it. go for a walk....

i want to reverse a misperception i'm seeing show up, though.

as talk of reopening is increasing, there's this implication in the media coverage over the last couple of days, never stated explicitly but always easily inferred from the writing, that you want to open the areas with the lowest infection rates first, and the highest infection rates last.

this is perfectly representative of the ignorance in the media around the topic.

it's the areas with the lowest infection rates that are the most vulnerable to a higher level of spread, and the areas with the highest infection rates that are least vulnerable.

it would follow that you want to open the areas with the highest infection rates first - and the areas that are the least infected last.

i know this is counter-intuitive, if you're a calvinist. but, you'd think the media would have a higher level of scientific literacy, and it's increasingly clear that they just don't.

you know, i could tolerate a little bit of second-hand smoke on 4/20, but the problem seems to be getting worse, again, after having largely lifted over the last few days.

again: can you get this disgusting pig out of here, please?

it's not my responsibility to stay inside so you don't get sick.

it's your responsibility to stay inside so you don't get sick.

yes - i would support aid packages to keep people inside, when it's unsafe for them to venture out.

but, at the end of the day, we all need to take responsibility for our own health, and any decisions we do or don't make to further it.

i want to see the experiment done.

but, i want to be clear on a point: there's little reason to expect that georgia has the kind of widespread immunity appearing in new york. that means that opening the economy needs to be done in a way that protects the vulnerable, as the virus is going to spread through the state very quickly, once it opens.

but, the fact is that the mortality rate of this disease is very low.

i think this can be done safely without locking everybody up for the whole summer, if there is a proper focus on keeping the disease out of long-term care homes and people with high co-morbidity are cognizant that they are at higher risk, and take steps to protect themselves.

there are lots of ifs, there.

but, somebody has to take the risk, and i actually applaud the georgian governor for having the courage to be the one to do it.

and, i think that shifting the responsibility to those that are at risk to protect themselves, rather than collectivizing the responsibility indefinitely, is actually the correct moral decision, as well.

there's only one way to find out what's going to happen.

but, i would call on the state of georgia to take particular care to protect those that require it.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/23/doug-collins-slams-georgia-brian-kemp-state-reopening-203389

Though surveying shoppers at grocery stores may be more randomized than recruiting through social media ads

no, it's the opposite - you'd get a more random sample over the internet, given the reality of widespread quarantine.

so, if we have an upper bound around 25% from the actual data, and i suggest the sick are being undersampled due to being in quarantine, how high can you guesstimate it is actually?

35%? 45%?

and, could we get herd immunity with numbers around or less than 40%?

if the reproductive number is low, perhaps.

but, that would contradict the basic deduction that it's actually higher than expected.

again: the key takeaway is that it is currently more widespread than previously modeled. more precise bounds are forthcoming.

my guess is that it is much higher in new york city, specifically.

see, given that the epidemic has burned itself out and new york city seems to be approaching herd immunity, i'd guess that it seems far too low.

the media has made real idiots of themselves out of this, and has a lot of face-saving to do. you're probably not going to get a full mea culpa from anybody - nobody is going to go on tv and say "we were wrong.". these people rely on their perceived credibility, which should and hopefully will take a major drubbing. likewise, you're likely to get a lot of obfuscation from governments, and social media will just amplify the ignorance.

the data is preliminary, and while i can point to problems in the study that suggest that it undersampled sick people in quarantine, i can't make numbers up. the upper bound right now from these numbers is 25%. other studies suggest it may be higher, but we'll need to wait for more data to come out of new york to corroborate them.

i would expect that the incidence level will be revised upwards as more data is released, not be revised downwards.

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/what-we-can-can-t-take-away-new-york-s-n1191106

i don't want to fit in.

i want to be correct.

that's an asset in coming to the right answers, in context.

i've been clear for years that i'm a self-identified nerd; i've never suggested otherwise, and i don't have any desire to identify otherwise.

rather, i'm more likely to viciously attack anything that is popular, trendy or mainstream. so, that's my own bias - if something is trending or seen as 'cool', i'm more likely to stand up against it than go along with it.

but, that doesn't change the reality that we should have waited for better data before making all of these mistakes.

so far, as i've gone through the divisional court process, i've come face-to-face with an administrator that has falsified documents and have had to launch a complaint with the judicial council against the chief justice of the superior court.

i just hope it gets better as i pull the process up the ladder, on my way to the supreme court.

nononono.

i realized what was happening, that the court-appointed legal people were working closely with the prosecution, and got up and yelled over them.

if i had not done that, the collusion would have resulted in the obvious outcome.

if you're ever in the situation of being arrested on bullshit charges, don't delude yourself - they don't work for you, and they don't care about you. 

then, they tried to set me up with legal aid.

lol.

no thanks...

yes: i had to shout down my own lawyer, who probably went for drinks with the prosecutor at the end of the day.

and i fully realized the reality of the scenario, and who duty counsel was actually working for.

if you haven't been following this space, i was arrested and charged with harassment for repeatedly applying for an apartment. the charges were eventually dropped. i have since launched a human rights complaint against the property owner for discrimination, which i expect to win. and, i'm suing the police for arresting me without a warrant, a process currently in divisional court.

what did i do differently than joe?

i actually stood up and yelled over my court-appointed lawyer as she was speaking. i could have been cited for contempt, but i didn't really have another choice.

if i had not done that, the situation could have very well ended rather differently.

i'm not brilliant.

you're retarded.

you think this is fantasy?

it feels startlingly similar to what i'm going through right now.

so, i got an email out.

based solely on the population, 1300 people sampled in a population of nine million should create a margin of error of 2-4%, depending on the preferred confidence interval, if the sampling is truly random. so, if they pull 21% out of the numbers then the upper bound is around 25%.

but, i'm making a lot of assumptions that would be clarified in a typical report.

and, don't ask noam. or, ask him, but with great caution.

he's 90+ years old and out in nowhere, arizona - he gets his news from msnbc nowadays, like everybody else. and, you can tell.

remember: the value of an educated opinion is not in the educated authority of the opiner, but in the ability of the educated individual to present a detailed argument. you don't want to reduce educated opinion to the fallacy of an appeal to authority. that would be very unfortunate.

so, i want to refer you to my own posts in this space to clarify that i'm not trying to argue against the science. my point here has never been to impugn or attack anybody working in the field. at all. rather, what i've been trying to do is to point out that these government bodies are often not following the evidence, but rather caving into public pressure (as sometimes articulated by social media) or "common sense" fallacies, and this is being reinforced by the media, which is generally not capable of producing an educated analysis, in a cyclical process of mutual reinforcement. so, you end up with these three sources of ignorance - media, government, the public (as articulated through social media) - feeding off of each other to produce popular but irrational policy.

so, i'm not playing the role of a copernicus or a newton (or a lord monckton.) here, in trying to overturn the established wisdom. rather, i'm playing the role of a joe bauers here in trying to draw attention to what the established wisdom and developing science actually is in the face of staggering mass ignorance from every direction. no, we're obviously not actually that far gone. but, the future is going to look back and laugh at us - if it doesn't end up in worse shape than we're in, or doesn't end up flooded by melting polar ice caps.

if the educated opinion that you're relying on can't present a convincing argument to you, then you should question it, not obey it. as chomsky is famous for stating in his arguments against post-modernism, and i paraphrase, if you have a cogent point and understand it properly and are convinced that it's valid then the best way to prove as much is to condense it into language that a child is capable of understanding. if you can't do that, then you don't have a valid point, or you don't understand it, or it isn't cogent.

ok.

so....i guess the data was published at the briefing?

these are very specific numbers with no error bars. generally a study with 1300 people would have a margin of error of a couple of points, at least.

i'm going to send them an email.

but, if that's all there is, i don't have much further analysis, other than to remind you to mentally draw the error bars in.

the headlines should say something like "20% of asymptomatic new yorkers have antibodies", or "20% of new yorkers that didn't think they got sick actually did".

what did i say to end the last several posts?

sorry.

that's hundreds of thousands in state-ordered quarantines due to having tested positive. these people should all be inside.

....plus hundreds of thousands or potentially millions more in self-imposed quarantine because they're experiencing mild symptoms.

so, setting up at a grocery store among people that feel well enough to not quarantine is excluding all of the people that are quarantining.

i'm more awake now, let me see if i can find the actual study.

stop.

there's hundreds of thousands of new yorkers in quarantine right now.

they've been ordered to stay inside.

if there's a bias...

but, this debate just demonstrates the importance of ensuring random sampling.

a quick, dirty test gets the point across, and i'm glad they did it.

so, there's preliminary results from new york.

media reports are...i want to see the studies, and i'm kind of sleepy right now. soon.

for now, i just want to point out that the very high numbers i was throwing around had to do with the city itself, where the media reports suggest the number is higher. i wouldn't have expected those numbers to hold upstate. so, the media suggests around a 20% infection rate in the city, with a mortality rate around 1%, give or take. that's spanish flu territory, still much stronger than a seasonal flu - and 10x higher than my own bounds.

sampling at a grocery store is not truly random. you can present arguments about bias in either direction - maybe people that went to the store are more likely to come into contact with the virus because they're out, and people that stay in are less likely to come into contact. or, maybe people that stay in are in because they're sick, and the bias is the other way, in the waning stages of the pandemic. these are hypotheses, and they are useful as caveats before you take the information as truth. but, you need to do random sampling to really know.

the value of a test like this to guide public policy is to help political leaders understand where we are, and the conclusion to draw is that the virus is indeed quite widespread.....in new york city.

does that mean that 20% of people in toronto have it? the precision of the numbers and the efficacy of social distancing aside, toronto is weeks behind new york. whatever the true value is in new york, you should expect lower values in toronto, at this time.

i'll look at the actual data and provide further analysis when i'm more alert.

(Pavel) Bure was usually seen by North Americans as a riddle wrapped inside a mystery inside an enigma, a brilliantly talented athlete who, in the course of his career, seemingly became less of a team player and more focused on contracts than scoring goals.

maybe this is a particularly canadian application of the churchill quote, but it's how i first interacted with it.

i'm sure you can google this all night if you insist.

when i was a kid, my dad used to drag me to hockey pools with him, and i'd end up reading through the draft magazines, because it was the only thing around to read.

and, there was this phrase that was often reserved for highly talented but under-performing russian prodigies, who had a margin of error in projection of roughly 50 points per year:

a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside of an enigma.

that's donald trump, for you.

and, the smart analysts should not forget that, as i did.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ARiddleWrappedInAMysteryInsideAnEnigma

"use of aspirin is strongly associated with headaches."

you get the point.

and, my point is about honesty in media.

here's an article that repeats what i said using words that you probably don't understand.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7161506/

we all knew this, right - trump can rarely be taken at face value. he has no interest in truth; he will routinely lie his face off as a means to an end, whatever that end actually is. you consequently can't believe anything he says, and you're insane to think otherwise.

but, it's easy to forget that he's just a front, too - that there's an entire bureaucracy writing his lies for him, and there are subtle and complex motives underlying the dishonesty.

i initially couldn't figure it out. was he invested in this drug? what the fuck?

but, i dug around a little (something journalists are supposed to do.) and figured it out, and realized that there was some kind of method underlying this particular madness. it didn't have much to do with what he said, but he had reasons to secure a supply of this drug, nonetheless.

i still don't understand why he wasn't forthright.

but, it's a reminder that this president is very complicated.

lupus is a disease that causes cytokine storms.

cytokine storms lead to organ failure.

hydroxycholoroquine is a drug that reduces those cytokine storms. for that reason, it is given to lupus patients to try to prevent organ failure.

covid-19 can also cause cytokine storms, in it's final stages before death - of organ failure.

the hope has been that hydroxycholoroquine may therefore be useful in stopping cytokine storms in covid-19 patients in the same way that it does in lupus patients.

this is still experimental. and, it may be the case that other immunosuppressants may be better suited for the task.

again: i don't know why trump did what he did. it certainly wasn't the most rational way to secure a supply of the drug. and, as the drug is an immunosuppressant, it is a bad idea to take it as a prophylactic.

but, there is a valid use of this drug as a last resort, for people that are already on the brink of dying of organ failure, as a complication of the disease caused by the novel virus - and articles or media reports citing studies correlating use of the drug with organ failure as a reason to avoid it's use are misunderstanding what it's use is, and consequently losing the plot.

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/could-curbing-runaway-immune-responses-treat-covid-19--67450

i'm not interested in defending the use of hydroxycholoroquine as a prophylactic (i've been pretty critical of that.), and i don't imagine that the associated antibiotic would be useful at all, except perhaps to fight off infections picked up in the hospital, but i do have to comment on the results of some tests, which are being rather badly reported. the focus of this space is to act as a fact-checker and ensure honesty in media, so i need to be consistent on the point, even if i backtrack or contradict myself.

i'm not going to embarrass anybody directly on this, because the misreporting is total, and this is a subject that is beyond the (limited) intellectual capabilities of most journalists, let alone most readers.

as mentioned previously, this drug is an immunosuppressant, which means it should only be prescribed to patients that are going through the complication of sepsis. as sepsis is pretty much game over when it clicks in, it should also only be being prescribed as an absolute last resort. two things follow from this:

1) if the drug is being prescribed properly (and, despite unreliable media reports to the contrary, i'd have to assume that it actually is.), you would expect higher than average mortality rates to be associated with it's use, because it's essentially a last resort.
2) the end result of sepsis is organ failure, including heart failure. as most cases of the disease do not lead to organ failure, you would also expect use of the drug to be highly correlated with organ failure in a way that separates from non-use rather clearly.

stated simply, you wouldn't prescribe this drug unless you were concerned that the patient was going to die of heart failure in the first place. as such, even a very low success rate would be better than nothing.

so, a statement like "trials of the drug were correlated with higher levels of organ failure" is starkly misleading. the old cliche here is exceedingly relevant - correlation and causation are not the same thing.

it would be sort of like saying "80% of patients treated with ventilators end up dying". while a true statement, if used to imply that ventilators were the cause of these deaths, that would be deeply unfortunate, as 100% of the patients put on ventilators were in extremely bad shape. the ventilators were their last chance. such is also true of hydroxycholoroquine.

i don't fully understand why trump did what he did. was it some kind of performance art? was he trying to justify buying up so much for use in patients that are experiencing sepsis, as a last stage of the disease? or was he just trying to one-up boris johnson?

but, the gotcha journalists should pick a different target, because they sound absurdly ignorant in keying on this one.

you shouldn't take the drug unless you're exceedingly sick, and a doctor gives it to you as an absolute last resort. but, if a doctor does give it to you, you should realize what it's being used for, which is to stop your immune system from attacking itself.

these are my notes for the long vlog update.

i'm going to eat, first, before i do it.

====

- 11th - first response

- sent email requesting denial of consent

- received consent over the 12th

- on 13th, was told coordinator is not available

(spent weekend ranting and sleeping, got pizza & watched debate on sunday)

- checked email on 16th, got pdf with second judicial response

- file complaint against judge

- tried to file consent motion at night, realized i can't. asked instead to file without notice.

- early on 17th, asked respondents for consent to file reference to s. 38.0.6 in writing

- slept until around noon

- left messages in afternoon

- went out on evening of 17th for pills, came back and realized door was unlocked

- it seemed like somebody was going through my stuff

- was missing court documents, some vodka

- decided that enough was enough (after weird stains on sheet, etc)

- sent email to landlord, who claimed to check camera

- landlord said he didn't see anything; clearly lying

- more evidence that landlord is a cop and i have to stay inside as much as possible to prevent further entry

- court shut down for three weeks on the 17th, when i was focusing on other things

- notice indicated court would continue filing documents and timelines are being respected,

- got response back on morning of 18th indicating that i can file reply factum when court reopens

- also got back response from oiprd indicating it wouldn't allow me to file a reference request without a consent motion

- after back and forth, sent request to acknowledge disability on afternoon of 19th

- received response on morning of 20th indicating they insist on a formal motion request

- sent motion request early on 21st.

- after reimaging several times, spent weekend cleaning up february blog posts up to debussy show on the 16th

- debussy review late on the 22nd & early on the 23rd

(so, the week was spent on court stuff & ranting about the virus while cleaning up the blog)

- realize internet usage spike early on the 23rd. 1000% usage increase.

- noticed electrical spike on morning of 13th when i was in detroit.

- turned computer off all day

- response from court early on the 23rd indicating everything is shut down indefinitely, even filing

- i responded in the evening informing them that the directive from the court indicated filing was continuing
- finished blog clean-up until the man or astroman show on feb 24th

- turned modem & all computers off all day on the 24th

- they responded on the 24th that the directive was written on the 15th, and that filing ended on the 17th. nobody is in the office.

- turned modem back on early on the 25th and found 9 gb of traffic on a day with modem physically unplugged

- sent email to landlord, who claimed he has a fibre optic connection (i know this is false because i've received his cable bills in my box). more evidence that he's a cop...

- spent 25th reimaging laptop and looking for backdoors, then lost it all due to an error that forced an unwanted reboot. decided that this image was unworkable, moving forward.

- realized early on 26th that some extra traffic was going through router - dropped packets were 50% of total traffic.

- tried to move to 90s laptop to try to hack into router to get logs

- contacted teksavvy about new ip address. had to argue with them to take it seriously, they insisted it was a virus despite no logic, and won't send tech due to covid-19.

- turned modem off around 14:00 on 26th, didn't turn it back on until 13:00 on the 27th. finally got new ip address in afternoon. 

- traffic logging still wrong on morning of 28th. slept most of the day.

- tried to move to 90s laptop on 29th, decided it was too slow to be workable

- found workaround instead

- teksavvy tried to sell me a modem, had to push back against it

(so, week was spent fighting with unknown internet traffic while slowly cleaning blog at end)

- finished reviews for man or astroman & grunge shows on morning of 30th

- awake late on 30th, check local traffic stats early on 31st and conclude that my network is compromised. 

- completely disable network, get ready for grocery shopping

next segment is next.

the most important lesson here is not to listen to me - i'll be the first to tell you to be skeptical of what i tell you.

the most important lesson is to never, ever, ever listen to evan solomon ever again.

can i point something out, though?

the president might come off as kind of a moron sometimes. most of the time. ok, all of the time.

but, i promise you that he has better intelligence reports than you do, even if he has lower than average actual intelligence.

maybe the numbers he was citing early on were better informed than he let on?

south korea remains weird.

we got the delayed spikes in the other east asian countries that the science predicts. i've been over this, so i'll be terse: when you react to a pandemic with authoritarian tactics, what you do is scare the population into avoiding medical care. the result is that the curve stays flat for a while due to under-reporting and then explodes upwards once it can't be ignored any further. that is what the science actually "predicted" would happen, and what has actually happened.

.....except in korea. why is that?

well, either the koreans are doing some specific thing in an absolutely flawless way, or the data is stunningly flawed.

there are some reasons to think the data is funny. for example, people are testing negative, and then testing positive. we don't have to jump to conspiracy theories. are they testing properly? it would seem as though they aren't.

but, you don't get false negatives when you test for death, or at least you don't get them in a sustained manner.

so, i don't know. not yet...

if they're doing something spectacularly well, it would have to have something to do with keeping it away from the vulnerable. i can draw whatever conclusions i want about underreporting, but if people aren't dying it means that the weak are being protected. it would follow that if you want to learn something worthwhile about what they're doing differently, you should look at how they're protecting the elderly and other high risk groups.

it could very well be that the virus is actually running rampant in the general population, but has been effectively kept out of nursing homes. that would be the best-case scenario, anywhere, as you get immunity without killing people. but, they're not even logging the unlucky deaths. like, even in the absolute best case scenario, there should be a kind of background death rate of a few dozen people a day, and they're not even seeing that.

so, i don't know. not yet...

could you even imagine this nowadays?

it seems like it already killed all of the old people.

so, if you're fat, stay inside for the remainder of the pandemic.

you can still get takeout.

i'm not gloating.

i'm just pointing out that the data to deduce this was there from the start.

the more important point to get across is not that i was right, it's to be skeptical of corporate media. you shouldn't listen to every math nerd with a blog. but, you should consult a variety of sources with contradictory perspectives in analyzing the data for yourself.

all authority is flawed.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/health/coronavirus-antibodies-california.html

we might not get another opportunity like this to overthrow capitalism for another hundred years.

will you be able to look your grandchildren in the eyes and tell them you squandered it?

there is serious revolutionary potential in realizations like this.

that's critical mass, and then some.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/4/22/21231152/pew-economy-coronavirus-pandemic

we need an anti-authoritarian left to emerge out of this, one that points to real science to undo the statist response, and one that takes back these slogans that the right has appropriated.

if we just quietly sit inside through this, we're essentially conceding to capitalism.

this is the time to revolt. let's get a move on it.

the people out on the street are the soldiers we need for a socialist revolution.

don't look at me - i'd just yell at them and call them names. i don't have any people skills.

i'm sorry.

i don't organize, i type.

if you're good with people, if that's your skillset, then get out there and do it. so long as you're not fat or old...

we're in a very confusing time on this continent right now.

not just this virus, but in general.

these are left-wing ideas, and leftists are right to feel a twinge of support for people they wouldn't normally associate with. but, this is a condition that has been building for some time, now; the novelty and shock should have largely worn off.

i want to actually make the opposite argument to the one that the fake left media has been so keen on pushing: it's important that the left doesn't let this get away from us. there is no revolutionary potential in the obeisant middle class reaction of cowardly sitting at home, and doing what we're told.

our people are out on the streets, holding up republican placards yearning for freedom.

it's bizarre, but it's real - and we need to get our people back.

there's no way forward in building alliances with people that slavishly do what they're told.

this is the time for direct action, not the time for protest.

if enough people just defy the orders, the cops will be helpless in stopping them.

while i do have some solidarity with the anti-lockdown protesters, i don't think their tactics are very useful.

if they are business owners, they should just open and dare the cops to shut them down.

and, if they are workers, and their bosses won't open, then they should take advantage of the situation to seize the means of production and open without management's blessing.

going to the state capitol and yelling is just pointless.

remember...

christianity is stupid, communism is good.

the ancient pagans were at least empirical; even if they didn't fully understand what they were observing, they at least gave it a go. it was the right approach, even if they didn't really get it.

the abrahamic faiths have no such redeeming values - it's just a bunch of stupid rules designed to make you more pliable slaves.

listen, i'll say this again: worshipping the sun at least makes a little bit of sense. it's the source of all energy, all life.

arguing that god was incarnated as a human and died for our sins is, comparably speaking, actually a pretty fucking stupid idea. it's a step backwards in terms of complexity, and in terms of usefulness in understanding the world.

i don't really expect the sun to react to any kind of magic verses, or anything. but, i'd be far more likely to participate in a solar ritual than a christian one, as it would make far more sense to me.

ok, ok, i'm focusing, now.

don't be a colonized slave.

learn your own history!