canada does not have the best health care system in the world. not anymore, anyways - not after decades of neo-liberalism.

but, we might have the most blatantly dishonest government in the oecd, right now.

we appear to be reopening slowly in ontario, but i don't think we're even closing to peaking here yet.

so, i will expect the numbers to climb rather dramatically, even if they end up distorted by bad reporting. it's not clear how it's going to get reported, and i think i've decided to largely just ignore the government rather than pretend i can analyze fraudulent data.

but, it's not going to climb because of reopening, even if the government tries to argue the point. we just haven't come close to peaking yet.

what that means is that if you were to decompose the canadian curve into different provinces, you'd see something more like the peaks and decays in the european countries.

and, likewise, if you were to decompose the american curve into different states, you'd see something more like the peaks and decays in the european countries, too.

if you want to test this question of the efficacy of social distancing, you need to look more locally. so, what's happening in georgia, specifically? but, be careful - did georgia peak before it reopened?

i got that picture from here:

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/05/coronavirus-growth-in-western-countries-may-14-update/

kevin drum is arguing there that he expects that the united states should see a peak and a rise due to the loosening of social distancing, and that if we don't see such a thing then the epidemiologists will have hell to answer to.

i've been arguing that social distancing is pseudo-science from the start. but, i actually don't expect the curve in the united states to fall off quickly - and don't expect the curve in canada to, either. the reason is that canada and the united states are both very big countries with several epidemics, whereas a country like sweden is really just one big city. you'd be better off being as specific as possible, but you could fudge a comparison of all of italy to new york city; comparing individual countries in europe to the entire united states is pointless.

rather, you'd want to compare canada or the united states to the european union, and it's easy to see intuitively that if you superimpose these graphs on top of each other then they will intersect to form a plateau.

so, i expect that the united states will, indeed, plateau, but it was has less to do with social distancing restrictions being lifted and more to do with the fact that you're dealing with 50 different curves pasted on top of each other, rather than just one.

for that reason, the flattening curve in canada is also probably predictive. it's not going to fall like it did in italy, it's going to take a while...

this graph kind of enforces what i've been saying about canada just being last to get hit....and i don't do this very often because i kind of don't need to. graphs are just tools, remember - they help you understand, but they're only as useful as they are necessary.

"do i need to draw you a picture?"

most of the time, i don't need to draw myself pictures, so i don't bother - i can get the point by looking at the information in the chart, and i'll just tell you about it. you can draw your own fucking picture, if you have to.

but, somebody drew this graph for me, and what does it say?

it says canada is peaking last - which has been obvious for a while.

and, why is it peaking last?

because it's furthest away.

that is all.

really.

it seems like the true mortality rate is around 0.2-0.3% - a little higher than my lowball of 0.1%.

is montreal peaking?

well, they're at a little below 2200 deaths, and there is some suggestion that it's a little undercounted.

this was my projection:

3) montreal: (2800, 8399, 13999) [projection: low end]

the first number is a low estimate, the second is a middle estimate and the third is a high estimate. these are dependent not on the efficacy of social distancing but on different estimates of the mortality rate.

if they're actually at 2500 or so, they should cross the minimum barrier within a few days, meaning the numbers should start to slow down quite a bit.

remember: i don't think that total excess mortality much of anywhere is going to have much to do with what the government has or hasn't ordered people to do. so, i don't think that the end results are very dependent on government policy.

my low numbers have been a little too low in most places, but almost nowhere has actually reached the middle number yet. the only exception is new york city, where the population density is so dramatic, and i appear to have underestimated the effects of diabetes.

so, a reasonable expectation in montreal in the end is somewhere around 4000, regardless of what the government does.

so, i got a first pass finished this morning, but it's so dry in here that i'm literally bleeding. i'm hoping the temperature outside has stabilized from that freak cold snap, so that i can begin the process of bringing the humidity levels inside up to something more normal. and, i think i'm feeling better already, but let's hope it's not fleeting.

so, i guess i blew the whole week, but let's hope that things renormalize themselves a bit better from here on in.

i'm going to stop to do some cleaning and just generally run the hot water for the next several hours.

i still need to rebuild the appspot portion of the site into the blogger front-end, because all of the files that i built up at the beginning of the month seem to have strangely disappeared. there's also going to be a cross-referencing phase.

but, the bulk of it is done, and i would expect to be able to publish it by monday.

i think there's a cop upstairs, but the property owner is technically not home and hasn't been for months. so, let's hope we can avoid the air conditioner for most of the year...

i'm definitely not entirely done yet, but i'm over a hump in rebuilding it in the blog, anyways.

another day or two. i made progress tonight, at least....

dark green snot, huh?

is that good or bad, in context?

i'm just tired, really. and, i'm honestly not particularly concerned about this; i shouldn't have much of a problem with it. i just want to be sure i'm not taking it too lightly.

i do want to beat this thing on my own; i won't accept a vaccine for a weak virus. so, if i finally picked it up last week, that's a good thing. i just want to be sure i'm being fully evidence-based.

i was only coughing for a few hours last week, and i'm sure i was reacting to pollution. i have had no vascular issues since.

i don't have any other symptoms; i'm just extraordinarily tired, and my head feels like it's going to explode, and has since the start of the month.

it feels more like an environmentally-induced migraine than a virus. but, if i start coughing again, i'll call somebody. promise.

i'm really hoping this lifts with the cold front.

and, i just slept all morning, again.

i don't feel better. my head still hurts. but, i'm going to try to wake up.

i'm really, really hoping that these short days and blurry realities are over after today.

i smelled something burning last night that...it smelled like chinese food, actually. egg rolls. is there a drug that smells like egg rolls? or did somebody just get chinese?

whatever it was, it gave me a headache, and i just can't stay awake. this sucks....

i'm very slowly moving through that introduction to quantum physics lecture series (which is really a course in applied linear algebra, as i learned it in first year), and it keeps reminding me of this old demo i did with sean - which was the one & only rabit is wolf track that i did not remaster, remix or otherwise play with. it's the one and only track i was actually happy with...

i've tended to resist commenting on sean's vocals, because i think i'm sort of out of line doing so. there really was a total division of labour; he may have asked for an extra bar or two to work out a lyrical idea here and there, but he really had absolutely no musical training whatsoever, and i really had no interest in interfering with his expression. but, i keep thinking about this...

the way this track worked was that sean came in with a vocal idea for a song he wanted to call "released with your sigh", and i built the song up after he left, sending him a demo over...i can't remember if it was icq or msn. but, he came back about a week later and did the vocals for it in one take, and that was really the extent of it.

after listening to it, though, i insisted on naming the track "psi" - as the howl at the end was essentially a wavefunction collapse. in fact, i initially stylized it with the greek letter itself, ψ, but that didn't survive in a pre-mathml browser reality; what i just did to get that psi was very simple, but would have actually been very frustrating back in 2002. so, i just started calling it psi and it stuck....

he asked a few times, and i just told him it was a greek letter. i'd known him since we were kids, and was aware that his scientific literacy was very low. i think he tended to think i was naming it after something jungian, perhaps from a tool influence. but, it was more of a bowie-esque play on words.

so, this tune keeps coming up in my head, when i'm eating.

i'm working through this slowly because......the concepts are not new to me, but i have never taken a formal course in quantum physics like this before, and some of these concepts are things i've barely looked at in 20 years. the math is...it's weird. it really is. i think the weirdness has more to do with the geometry being wrong, but i will have more to say in due course. for now, i'm making sure i'm going over it well enough to really properly grasp it.

i would expect that future lecture series will be a little faster.

this actually sounds like they're getting this right.

the reality is that you need to figure out jurisdiction before you can go signing contracts.

https://www.princegeorgecitizen.com/chiefs-governments-to-sign-rights-understanding-after-b-c-pipeline-protests-1.24134823

do i think that these republican byelection wins are reflective of growing outrage over the lockdowns in the united states?

i think that democrats should think very carefully about whether they want to hand this to the republicans as an issue, or not.

and, i think that the only thing separating us right now is the weather.

we've adopted a trumpian border policy.

are you dumb enough to be manipulated like this?

when trump needed to distract from his failures, he blamed it on mexicans.

when trudeau needs to distract from his failures, he blames it on americans.

it's fundamentally exactly the same thing.

they're essentially trying to manufacture the illusion of a division in political culture that doesn't exist, but the irony is that their claimed division is a reflection - it's just rebranded trumpism.

what the government is doing here, in fanning the flames of xenophobia and anti-americanism, is actually extremely dangerous; when trudeau blames the issue on americans, that's exactly the same thing as when trump blames it on mexicans - he's distracting from his own failure, his own mismanagement, and his own anti-science policies.

it's just a mirror reflection - the same backwardsness, the same racism, the same ignorance.

"but, the science says..."

no. stop. the science says that closing borders does nothing. at all.

this is just another racist policy, from the same guy that brought you aladdin-in-blackface and absolutely disgusting ironic facial hair.

you can't open the border a little bit - it is either open or it is closed, and right now it is actually open. despite attempts by the media to suggest otherwise, there is absolutely no science underlying these closures at all. and, this idea that canada is a more conservative country than the united states is both ridiculous and absolutely wrong; an article like this may not be reflective of reality, but it really reflects very strongly on the government, and it's existing delusions about popular opinion.

if the border remains closed, it will be due to a political calculation by the government, and not due to any actual science. but, this is a miscalculation.

once the weather turns away from this record cold, which is happening in the next few days, people here will begin to ignore the government, as well.

i hope that, in the end, the government falls over this.

https://globalnews.ca/news/6937528/coronavirus-canada-us-reopening-plans/

i was just about to get started and had to nap again...

i can't handle these shifts in pressure. i know that. and, this one was intense, and bizarre. the dry air in here isn't helping, but i'm going to blame everything on the polar vortex as the root cause - which means i have to go through it lifting, now. hopefully, it's not as bad as it was coming in...

if i can get through the next 12 hours or so, hopefully things start to normalize themselves tomorrow.

let's try to get most of this done overnight.

if we repeat, we're going to skip the farce and go right to tragedy.

but, this article is based on a fundamental misunderstanding; we know now that what actually happened in 1918 was not a "second wave" but a mutated virus. in fact, there was a third wave, with a third mutation, as well.

it is true that there are valuable lessons to learn, but this article is unfortunately somewhat farcical in it's refusal to do so; no amount of prudence or careful planning will help us with a mutated virus, which will be like starting all over again. and, if the virus does not mutate, extending the lockdown will be pointless.

i'll remind you that i don't think the lockdown is working, anyways.

the technology we have today is incomparable to what they had then. we can collect samples in real time and track how the virus is spreading; if there is a lesson, it is in the technological determinism of being able to react to a mutation before it explodes, and that lies in the importance of testing, not in conservative planning.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/1918-pandemic-flu-coronavirus-1.5566524

Strong Leadership was the last guy.

are we going to get an economic action plan next, or what? and will you finally answer this question for me - is it a four year plan or a five year plan?

the consensus at the end of the day is that he was usually the dumbest guy in the room. we don't need more of that....

this government was elected because we wanted a party that would do better than that. following the science was a key part of the mandate, after too many years of on time trains and Strong Men.

what they did was moronic and almost certainly made things worse.

what does the science actually say, here? the answer is threefold:

1) you need to be very careful that you're not too authoritarian, because authoritarianism always backfires. that's the key, central point that the science has always said, and that we completely ignored, because of evan "dumbass" solomon.

2) screening people is a good idea, but only to the extent that you don't scare them too much.

3) the focus at the border should be on monitoring the spread of the disease, not on preventing it from spreading. so, what you really want is to treat the border as a checkpoint.

there's still a lot of evan solomons out there, and they don't understand or care about science. they just want the trains to run on time. but, we need to move on...

https://globalnews.ca/news/6935268/coronavirus-us-canada-border-screening/

while i did get a little bit done yesterday, i actually got sort of distracted by the location entry, and the need to go back and ensure everything was properly lined up. it was also a fairly short day, in the end - barely 15 hours. and, i got a fair amount of sleep this morning. i guess i was tired....

let's hope i can get through a good chunk of this this afternoon. i'm feeling good about it.

"but, isn't democracy that idea that the majority rules? then, aren't markets literally democracy?"

no.

there are very limited scenarios where democracy reduces to majority rule, but this is the exception, and people trying to reduce democracy to plurality are really perverting the concept.

a better way to understand the term democracy is as freedom of association and freedom of expression, and when you approach it from that direction, markets are often the literal negation of democracy, as they upend freedom of association.

anarchists tend to envision a future of small, decentralized groups defined by common interests. we consider peaceful coexistence to be a necessary corollary of decentralization, but we don't generally see much value in romanticizing some kind of concept of multiculturalism or tolerance - these are bourgeois, liberal concepts that are historically actually rather alien to the left.

so, for example, i would choose to completely disassociate myself from anybody practicing any kind of abrahamic religion, if i could - and that would be seen as an ideal, in an anarchist framework.

sometimes, we'll need to deal with issues of collective security, and we'll need to take straight-up votes and enforce a concept of collective will. anarchists would hope this would be very rare...

i don't want rules that make it easier to climb up the ladder to the area above.

rather, i want to topple the structure and burn the ladder.

how should smoking be regulated in residential areas?

well, ideally, it would reduce to democracy, and you'd essentially see self-segregation. people that don't want to live amongst smokers would come together and ban smoking in their buildings, thereby evicting people that don't want to quit. and, people that don't want to be told they can't smoke in their homes would come together, to live in buildings that non-smokers would not want to go in.

this would also work at the community or neighbourhood level, with certain areas banning residential smoking and certain areas allowing it.

that is the ideal; it is how things would work in a utopia. in reality, two things rear themselves to interfere with utopian democracy: market theory and class relations, which both act to make it harder for a lot of people to get into the environment they want to get into. unfortunately, a non-smoking environment is currently a privilege for the upper middle class and the elite, not something people have a democratic right to choose to create; the less educated and the poor seem to see restrictions on their "right to smoke" as draconian, and the majority rules in working class neighbourhoods.

ideally, what we'd do is get rid of class and let democracy work, but the society is built around property and that would require a deep revolution. so, unfortunately, a more practical solution is that we need some kind of government to come in and distort the market, in order to undo the class relation and let democracy approximate itself.

frustratingly, the legal system seems intent on undoing this, as it interprets smoking & non-smoking residential buildings to be discriminatory, based on the division by class. the legal system is essentially trained to see the world from the top down. so, it is concerned about abolishing rules that keep rich smokers out of the wealthy apartments, rather than abolishing rules that lock poor people into environments where they are exposed to second-hand smoke. the non-smoking poor ends up locked in place, collaterally, due to rules designed to prevent discrimination in class mobility. this entire paradigm needs to be revisited, and to an extent already has, but the system is strongly lagging behind the shift.

so, we should just be able to leave it up to democracy and let the people decide, but we can't because of the prevalence of class - instead, we need some kind of special government program to help the poor avoid the smoke, if they want to.

i hope that's clear.

(sorry for the multiple attempts, i'm pre-coffee this morning)

i'm going to be sitting inside, straight edge, all summer.

and i like the humidex at 40+ degrees celsius.

after looking into this housing benefit a little bit more closely...

it seems like it's only going to a handful of applicants. so, i may have misunderstood the breadth of it's application.

there's thousands of people on the wait list; it's only going to take a few hundred off.

it seems more like a political stunt than anything else, really. that money would be better spent on actual housing.

looks like this is the last cold night here, and the heat should finally largely turn off in the next couple of days.

i'm feeling better, but i'm still wavy, and while it does still seem like somebody is smoking upstairs, my bigger concern is the dry air from the heaters.

once the heaters turn off, i should be able to fight the desiccation and smoke more effectively with steam and humidity.

if they don't get this horrible pig out of here, it's going to be a long summer for everybody.

we're last to get hit because we're furthest away from the centre.

that is all.

the government seems to want to just blame everything on trump.

and, we may be collectively dumb enough to fall for it....for a while, at least.

i'm not going to be gloating about my predictions in ontario and quebec actually happening.

most of the rest of canada is in truth very sparsely populated and very isolated, so you wouldn't expect a lot of through traffic, and you wouldn't expect a lot of spread. that is, in fact, what is happening. cities like halifax and winnipeg are unlikely to get hit hard until the waning stages of this, when the big cities have already reopened and there's basically nothing they can do to stop it further.

there is also vancouver, which has a lucky geography and which seems to be fluking out, somehow. but, the actual major counter-example to this in canada is alberta, who probably thinks they're getting off easy on this.

rather, i would expect calgary to peak some time after toronto - july, maybe august. and, they'll probably find a way to blame it on quebec, when it happens, but it's just the nature of how this thing seems to want to move in less densely populated regions, which is fairly slowly.

that doesn't mean i think they should stay locked down for the next year, it just means this thing is just getting started, here.

yesterday was not productive, but i do think i'm feeling better.

let's try this again.

distorted viewpoint.

it's a known unknown. you don't know; don't pretend you do.

this wasn't that long ago, really.

that's one way to do it.

let's hope they do antibody testing while they're at it, and actually publish it. that's what i want to know...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-11/china-s-wuhan-sees-first-new-virus-cases-since-lockdown-lifted

it does not seem as though we've seen a decrease in rent in windsor, yet.

i'm best to wait this out, regardless, i think.

obviously, i'd rather sign up and take the cash and stay where i am while i wait for access to subsidized housing. but, that's not an option, unfortunately - i have to pick.

and, if i have to choose between taking the cash and losing access to smoke-free housing and kind of waiting it out with less cash for a while, the latter makes more sense to me - even if it costs me $3000/yr, which is 20% of my existing income.

that's not an easy choice; that's a lot of money for me! but, if i just end up spending it to move sideways, while eliminating my ability to get into a long-term housing solution, i'm not accomplishing anything. it's tempting, but it looks like it would be foolish.

the thing is, though....what if it takes 10 years? what if they pull the plug altogether next year, and i've just blown time? that's the gamble i'm making - i'm hoping that this clears the backlog a little, and makes it easier to get into subsidized housing. if i'm wrong, i'm screwed regardless, and am going to find myself back in conflict with welfare case drug addicts, either way.

i sent an email to the subsidized housing people already; maybe they can give me more information. they don't answer the phone. and, let's see what i can get from the landlord...

so, what i want is a way out of the market, but the government wants to force us all into market relations, whether we like it or not. i'm worried that the new policy is a signal that they're shutting things down regarding subsidized housing, and then what?

frankly, despite my complaining, where i am is probably better than almost anywhere. i have to be crystal clear: i'm not going to find an apartment building in this city that enforces any kind of non-smoking rule, outside of the city-owned buildings. it's really the only answer...

but, how much cash do i actually have to play with, and maintain something roughly the same?

the language is a little blurry, but i'm good at math, and if i understand correctly then i can tap the system out at about $800. however, it would be very useful if they would publish "average rent" and it would be equally foolish for me to make any kind of choice until i see it.

but, if i have the data right, i can claim up to $800, which would give me $680 a month left after rent. i currently have $419 left after rent. so, that's an extra $261.

in fact, if i could spend the money on anything, i'd spend it on rent! so, that would have the functional effect of boosting my maximum rent amount from $750 to $1000.

i know, you're thinking - this is supposed to put more money in my pocket, to buy more things. but, what i want to buy, first and foremost, is smoke-free housing, and i can't do that with $750 on the free market. i would need a government to come in and set the rules. sorry.

and, what are people most likely to spend that $250 on? the reality is that they're going to spend it on cigarettes and marijuana, thereby making the second-hand smoke problem in market housing even worse.

with an extra $250, though, i could potentially put myself in a better situation to find something that's.....well, something that's very similar to what i have right now. except maybe better?

i'm going to send something to my landlord.

i wish they weren't going to force me off the list for subsidized housing...

i've already learned that there is no market for smoke-free housing in this city, that the only way to find a smoke-free unit is to move into housing where non-smoking is enforced by bylaw. i've moved twice, now, to avoid second-hand smoke. there's no real solution besides moving somewhere where there's a bylaw, and repeatedly complaining.

so, i'd certainly take the extra $260/month (which is what it works out to for me) and say thank you, but it's not worth it to me if it means i have to take my name off the wait for smoke-free housing.

do i need the cash? i kind of don't....

i'm going to keep an eye on this, maybe they'll change it.

but, it's more important to me to get into smoke-free housing than it is to get the extra $260/month.

https://windsor.ctvnews.ca/housing-benefit-to-help-low-income-households-in-windsor-essex-1.4934323

meanwhile, in canada...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/2016-census-age-gender-1.4095360

it's another subplot, here - it initially looked like this was going to be brutal in iran, and then sweep through the middle east. concerns about the reliability of the data out of iran aside (and that's not an accusation, exactly), we haven't really seen that happen.

well...

i know that there's some reasons that syria, yemen and iraq are a little lower.

but, the point is what it is.

in order to see substantive mortality for a disease that mostly affects old people, you have to have high enough life expectancy for people to get old, first.

less than 2% of the population is over 80.

if you have less vulnerable people, you'll have less death.

it could very well be rampant, but they're too young, on average, to notice...

13% is actually higher than i thought. but, that number has been rising very quickly, too. it was 9% five years ago, which can give you a rough bound for the population over 70. and it was barely 5% fifteen years ago, which gives you a rough bound for the population over 80.

i know that movies like the old asian ku fung guy as a stereotype, but the reality is that there would be almost nobody in china over the age of 90. life expectancy was under fifty a mere few decades ago.

so, i keep saying this - china has made a lot of progress, but it's still china. and, you have to understand what that means, just how far they had to come to get to where they are.

apparently, only 6% of the population in india today is over 65, meaning the number of very old people is very, very small. again - i know that hollywood likes the old yogi stereotype. it's not real.....life there is nasty, brutish and short, still. and, it'll be quite a while before that changes.

these are numbers for european countries:

i've made my point, i think.

i don't want you to misunderstand what i'm going to say, here.

some of the countries in this list have had some of the smallest outbreaks, so pointing to life expectancy doesn't reflect on mitigation efficacy, or lack thereof. further, it's worth noting that neither the united states (which has had a lot of dead people) nor china (which hasn't, or at least hasn't officially) are in this list because they both have relatively low life expectancy; china's is under 77, and the united states' is under 78, and apparently declining. i've pointed out a few times that the united states also has a very serious problem with diabetes and obesity.

however, it is to be expected that the size of an outbreak should be proportional to the size of the very elderly population, something that was sort of hinted at when the numbers started coming out of italy, and is kind of being confirmed as they come out of other places.

it's just one factor. but, realize this: there simply aren't as many very old people in china as there are elsewhere, and there are a lot of old people in most of europe. it's not the only thing, but it's probably going to turn out to actually be a pretty big thing.

ideally, a country would be able to keep it out of the geriatric facilities.

but, if they can't, it causes havoc....and the more old people there are to start, the more dead people there are in the end.

so, when you see numbers like this from sweden:

....you shouldn't be that surprised.

sweden is much larger but otherwise not very different from norway. however, it has substantively higher life expectancy than denmark (which is 31 in the list) and is even a good distance from finland, statistically. iceland is an island, and should be treated as an outlier.

certainly, sweden is doing very well, in comparison to italy, spain and france.

and, has it peaked? the update is that it's looking more and more like it has, yes.

it's a little surreal to notice how similar his speaking expressions and mannerisms are to my nana's.

i understand that a lot of people are likely to react rather negatively to his general approach, but that's a cultural thing, and i'm really on the other side of that - i'm identifying more strongly with his mindframe and finding it refreshing.

again - he's coming to the same deductions that i did through other means.

i'm actually glad i saved this, as it really is it's own thing.

it's no longer an official release, though, so it's going to mostly get passed over. well, i guess i'll have to update the notes for inrijected.

my lungs feel way, way better.

i'm pretty sure it was air pollution, not the virus.

the only drug i take habitually or want to take habitually is caffeine.

so, i seem to have finally gotten some sleep, at least. that was more than i usually get at one time, including an unheard of unbroken six hours.

i don't understand what's going on with me, right now....

i wanted to be productive this weekend, but the fucking pig upstairs was smoking all weekend, which just made me unfocused and unproductive. i was neither able to work, nor to sleep - i just found myself staring at the wall.

the migraine never triggered fully, but it's still there, ready to kick back in.

and, i still don't know if i actually got the virus or i'm just suffering through the second-hand smoke.

what next, then? i wanted to get done most of the rebuild over the weekend, and then do some court stuff early this week. i only got through six days of january, 2014.

i'm going to push through for another day or two, but i may have to stop mid-week.

i moved here to avoid this. it's very frustrating and very depressing :(.

i'm in the category of people that would find constant inebriation to be a cause of depression, rather than a solution to it, and i don't have any ambiguity or confusion around the point - i am fully cognizant of the fact that i don't like it, and don't want to be around it on a habitual basis. i don't need to experiment. i know...

i've generally been a city person for the amenities, but it relies on a certain level of autonomy being attainable within the city, and a certain lifestyle being accessible within it.

if that is about to evaporate, i'd rather try to find some kind of vacant land to squat...

i'm not there yet. to begin with, i have a discography to finish, first. but, i'm really not a tolerant person, and don't want to be - i want to be left to myself, and if that means seeking isolation somehow then so be it.

this country's future is very bleak...

it's not entirely the fault of the political leadership, but the absolute failure of the political system over the course of my life time (something that seemingly gets worse, year over year) is certainly compounding it.

the environment. the economy. the social fabric. and, now, an apparent move towards authoritarianism...

it's just not where i want to exist, not who i want to exist with and not what i want to exist within.

i dunno yet. but, i think i've made a choice to leave, when it becomes feasible, whatever that means.

it took years from the time i decided to leave ottawa until i actually did. it's not imminent. but, i don't tend to change my mind very often, once i've made it up.

i want to move to a more secularly driven society with a less invasive government and if i can't find one then maybe i just need to get out to rural quebec.

i'm not trying to express anger or frustration.

i want a concrete plan; i want to understand how to react, how to get out.

it's just hopeless stupidity at every level.

and, it's at a breaking point.

our political leaders are complete retards, and we're all going to suffer badly for it.

we're aligning with the inevitable losers in this upcoming conflict.

and, it might not be reversible; we might not have the numbers to reverse it.

the smart choice is probably to seek a means of escape.

but, you can't flee without some sort of reserve of some sort of currency. i'm chained to the wall...

i think the upcoming question is this: is it better to try and retreat to the canadian wilderness, or to try to get out of here altogether?

canada may not survive the next world war.

we may be a major target...

it's becoming more and more clear to me that canada is increasingly aligning on the wrong side of history.

i want to get out of this country.

it's easier said than done.

this is kind of brutal.

i'm neither asleep nor awake.

i can't figure out if i'm sick or reacting badly to air pollution.

and i want to get this done, but keep sputtering out; i keep getting overwhelmingly tired, but merely for minutes, until i'm back at it, without actually sleeping. ugh.

let's try this again.

he's saying a lot of the same things that i am re:immunity and the question of what success is, in context. but, he's not being given the opportunity to formalize it.

i know it's going to sound harsh to a religious person, but this is homo mathematicus - it's numbers, it's data, and it's how it is.

so, we're often presented with the illusion that protective immunity is a choice. of course, it is not - not with the time frames in front of us. rather, the choice in front of us is whether we are to get to protective immunity quickly or whether we are to get to protective immunity slowly. we will not be able to withstand our innocence for the next two-three years, while a vaccine is readied.

the formalization of this realization occurs in the vector of an optimization problem, and when you work it out you realize the true futility of an abstinence-first approach, because you're running up against the mutation rate. any coherent analysis of this is going to put us a few months behind it, just like we are with the flu. i see little reason to think we won't get a vaccine, but we'll probably never stay on top of it.

so, if you let it loose too fast, you're not just overwhelming the system, but also maximizing the likelihood of mutation; if you slow it down too much, you're putting selective pressure on it to evolve, while maximizing the damage. what's the right middle point?

it's a calculus problem.

this man won a nobel prize, recently. so, i'm in good company in my analysis, apparently.

"that's.....that's socialism!"

yup.

we should nationalize the churches and mosques, kick the priests and imams out on the street and convert them into homeless shelters where salaried social workers with sociology degrees go to work.

awww.

when are we going to finally be allowed to tax them like the businesses that they are?

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/covid-19-shutdown-an-added-burden-for-quebec-s-struggling-catholic-churches-1.4932855

the next great war will be fought to exterminate islam.

and, in the future, we will celebrate our triumph over it's depravity and backwardsness.

75 years on, we're unable to celebrate the end of fascism because our governments have ordered us to stay inside.

was the second world war caused by the same factors as the first? absolutely, yes. but, where the first world war was an aimless slaughter for the capitalist elite, and revolution was justified across the board, nazism presented itself as an evil that was greater than capitalism.

it's legitimately hard to read some of the leftist writing from the period, from people that weren't able to see nazism for the singular threat that it was.

decades later, we have a similar problem on the left, with it's inability to see the nature of the threat posed by radical islam. and, it's just a matter of time before we need to repeat history.

for now, i guess we're all stuck inside, celebrating the world's greatest triumph, in the greatest of irony.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/08/pers-m08.html

so, that was more sleeping....

i don't feel sick. but, i'm still extremely dehydrated.

i think it's lingering effects of the migraine, and i think the root cause is the dry air.

at least the smoke seems to be gone for the night. hopefully.

still no shower. but, i'm going to try to get some work done and go from there.

i can smell & taste.

i'm not, otherwise, sore.

no gastric issues.

really, i'm just dehydrated....

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/record-low-temperatures-windsor-1.5563289

we're used to swings in temperature at this time of the year in this part of the world, but this is a little much, even for here:

the dashes are average highs and lows.

that might be a record low for that date on the 11th if it happens.

but, let's hope that's the end of not just this season but the ass end of this cycle.

i just slept some more....

do i think i finally picked this thing up?

well, i get tired when i have migraines, so it's not clear which is the culprit. some other signs...

- i don't have a thermometer i can use for a fever, but i am feeling a little warm. i've checked the thermometer i bought last year, though, and guess what? it's actually unusually warm in here.
- i started coughing last night and it's lingering, but i was reacting to second hand smoke (since passed, apparently) and it feels like a smokers' cough.
- the headache is getting better, but it is also triggered by dry air and smoke.

there's a very weird cold snap going through here right now that should lift in a day or two.

in the meantime, i didn't get that shower yet and am looking forward to it.

i dunno. i know i feel dehydrated...

another way to look at montreal is like this: staying closed may not save many or even any lives, but, at this point, you almost want to question whether it is better to stay closed to respect the dead.

if they're going to peak in a week or two, is it worth reopening now?

there's maybe a place for business owners to make that choice. it's not so clear from a distance.

i stopped to eat some fruit, and i had to pause halfway through the broader meal, but i'm feeling a lot better.

the air has cleared out in here, thankfully.

so, i'm going to get some spaghetti in me, take a shower and hopefully get back to it before sunset...

there is of course a caveat to apocalyptic scenarios in any city - eventually, you run out of vulnerable people to kill.

these were my projections at the beginning of april, and these numbers are simply based on protective immunity:

what are my number of projected deaths in....

1) new york city: (5799, 17398, 28997)  [projection: low end]
2) gta:  (4133, 12399, 20665)   [projection: low end]
3) montreal: (2800, 8399, 13999) [projection: low end]
4) detroit (metro area): (2866, 8599, 14332) [projection: expect something more like the middle number, due to higher comorbidity]

new york city and the detroit metro area have both passed the lower numbers, but neither have hit the middle numbers. i think i may have underestimated the effects of diabetes in new york city.

montreal is at about half the lower number and starting to ramp up. and, this hasn't even started in the gta, yet.

the point i'm making is that there are upper bounds, here, and while they may look gruesome, you have to continually remember that this is really very much an old person and already-very-sick person thing - which isn't to trivialize it, so much as to reinforce the point that the vulnerable need to stay inside.

we've all known old people. they don't fucking listen. and, at some point, we just have to accept the reality - it doesn't matter what rules we pass, and it doesn't matter how much we all "sacrifice", if they're just going to waltz around like it's their day of reckoning, anyways.

it doesn't matter what else we do if they don't stay inside - and if they do stay inside, it doesn't matter what else we do, either. we're focusing on the wrong concern....

if montreal peaks mid-may, that means toronto is a little further behind than we thought, too - it might not peak until early june or even a little later.

so, this is my advice to montreal - reopen or don't reopen, it doesn't really matter.

what's more important is that the vulnerable remain isolated.

i would take this with a grain of salt, and the reason is that there really isn't any convincing evidence that the reproduction number is decreasing or is likely to decrease any time soon.

the argument is essentially "if you loosen restrictions, the reproduction number will go back over 1".

but, it seems to me that it's already over 1, that it's been over 1 for a long time and that it doesn't seem likely that much of anything besides literal martial law is going to take it under it. they're going to have to let it run it's course.

my position has been consistent from the start: if i thought these hare-brained schemes were likely to work, i'd be likely to support them. like everybody else, i want to minimize unnecessary death. but, i don't think they're going to work, so what's the point?

it's probably too late to even have this discussion, in montreal. you should be having this discussion in toronto, where you might still be able to salvage it if you overreact in the most extreme way imaginable.

i think this took longer than anybody expected, but montreal needs to brace for impact.

and, it's not the last city in line, either.

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/loosening-restrictions-could-mean-huge-increase-in-montreal-covid-19-deaths-report-1.4932199

i have never been diagnosed with clinical depression, and i've never claimed i suffer from it, ever.

i do not self-medicate.

i'm not even depressed.

i'm just frustrated that i can't focus.

i don't write folk music or hip-hop or techno. i make very technical, complicated progressive rock.

that means that i need to be able to think clearly - to work out time signatures, to do math on the fly.

being stoned just doesn't work for me.

i'm sorry - i'm not that person, i never was and i never will be. i don't want to be.

i do not smoke drugs or drink alcohol when i'm creative. ever.

it makes me stupid and unproductive.

what i want right now, and will want for the near future, is total sobriety so i can work on my art.

i can't work when i'm stoned.

ok?

the legal pot in this province is terrible. it's not worth buying.

i have no intention on being inebriated for months, and i'm going to get fucking livid if i'm forced to get stoned against my will.

it's absolutely revolting and disgusting in every conceivable way.

i should not be forced to deal with this.

why do i have to say this every fucking time?

why don't you just get this worthless, piece of shit out of here?

again -

can you get this disgusting pig upstairs out of here, please? there's a respiratory virus going around, i don't want to be breathing in second-hand smoke.

it tends to be ok in here until i go for groceries, at which point the fucking idiots seem to think that observing me bum a cigarette at the grocery store means i must not care if they smoke in the house, which is wrong in every way.

as has been the case now for nearly five years, i do not smoke habitually. the fact that i might bum a smoke when i'm out does not mean it's ok to smoke in the house. and, while this is not hypocrisy, it wouldn't matter if it is - what matters is that i've signed a non-smoking lease, and i expect it to be upheld.

so, if you're going to put a fucking pig upstairs to do what, i don't know, can you get one that doesn't smoke, please?

thank you.

they should have sent the military into the geriatric facilities immediately, and let everybody else carry on.

and, don't blame it on science, either - the science never supported any of this.

blame it on twitter, and blame it on politicians that valued twitter over science.

"so, why did we do this, then? was it for nothing?"

yes. we were stupid...

we did something that didn't work, and we need to come to terms with it and cut our losses and move on.

yeah, here comes the migraine....

i'm going to have to go in the other room and sit over the sink and let the humidity come back up.

the feds may be frustrated, but they need to look in the mirror - it's their own policy that failed.

has montreal peaked? it's closer than everywhere else, but not yet, i don't think.

did closing businesses stop the spread of the virus? clearly not.

is the virus going to burn out? obviously not.

so, that means they will get to protective immunity first, and will consequently be able to reopen first, while everybody else is waiting for immunity to build.

the cop should be banned from the force and charged with assault, and the worker should receive a hefty payout from the city.

https://nationalpost.com/news/outside-police-agency-to-review-how-officers-handled-run-in-with-costumed-worker

Does someone, somewhere (in the federal government) understand why Quebec, that has more than half of the COVID-19 deaths in the country, is the first to reopen? 

you would in fact expect the hardest hit areas to be the first to reopen, yes. that's how this will work, generally.

well, the shut down didn't work in slowing the spread, so why would you hold to a failed policy, expecting it to magically start working, all of a sudden?

https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/why-would-he-pick-a-fight-with-us-covid-19-raises-tensions-between-trudeau-government-and-quebec

if people want to gamble, they will gamble.

that is all.

"15% unemployment?. meh. pass the caviar."

so, they released the worst jobs report in decades and the stock market rallied. record unemployment? pop the champagne...

it's a casino.

i may have avoided the migraine by sleeping it off.

it doesn't usually work like that, though.

so, i feel like i'm on borrowed time this morning. but, let's try this anyways...

it's the dry air and the smoke....and, here it comes again....

ugh.

the pollution in here is triggering another migraine.

fuck.

why do i have to do this every time i leave the house?

dear pig upstairs,

yes, i am a non-smoker, still.

please stop smoking near the house. it's making me sick.

thanks,
jessica

no...

there is no convincing evidence that he is, in truth, the lesser creep at all, is there?

.....at least we think he's the lesser creep?

so, i don't want to hear people defend joe biden on a sexual assault accusation. you can't; he's indefensible.

i want to hear people be honest and work their way through it rationally.

yes - he's a creep.

but, he's the lesser creep.

but, it's just one instantiation of a general farcical reality.

you couldn't vote for him if you were a pacifist, either. or an environmentalist. or even much of a garden variety liberal.

i'd suspect that biden assaults some kind of mammal at least once on your average day before he gets his morning coffee.

listen - it's not a question of believing tara reade, it's a question of realizing that the accused is joe biden.

even if he didn't do it, he'd might as well have.

but, what are you going to do? vote for trump?

well, we seem to have jumped about ten years, now, from the flq crisis to 13% unemployment - and passed over joe clark, altogether. i guess progress in this century is living up to it's hype, as being exponential.

i'm going to kill myself if we end up with another fucking mulroney after this.

where was i?

i got a brutal migraine early on monday morning, right as i was finishing the master document, and had to put aside grocery shopping until tuesday. it took me until wednesday morning before i was finally in for good, showered and ready to....sleep. a lot...

yesterday never really got started, and i ended up crashing before the sun came down, for a good 12 hours or so. i've just been exhausted - both mentally and physically.

it's now friday afternoon, and i've decided that i'm going to get started on the rebuild, with the intent of finishing it up over the weekend, before moving on. a number of other things have popped up, but i want to get this done first before i pivot.

so, let's hope the weekend is productive.

the news reports are suggesting this is going to kill 200,000 africans.

i'd suggest more like 5 million.

i've been totally scatter-brained today....

let me do the things i was doing, first, before i start looking at launching another court case.

i don't have a choice. i'm not going to waste my time fucking around with a judge that won't look at evidence, so he's tied my hands. i have no choice but to aggressively try to get him fired.

he should have looked at the evidence...

so, to summarize.

1) the federal court has given itself jurisdiction to hear reviews of cjc rulings.
2) this has been upheld by the federal court of appeal.
3) the supreme court has refused to interfere.

there has since been a supreme court ruling that i think has been widely misunderstood, in the sense that it doesn't give councils greater deference but rather subsumes the concept of correctness into the concept of reasonableness - a step backwards in my view, to be sure, but not one that is likely to make a substantive difference, in context.

i should be able to file this, but i can't access the site...

"you think you're god because you have a robe and you can put people up the god damn river for 20 years? well you're not."

let's take this fucker down a notch.

that's right, "justice" corbett - you're getting dragged to federal court by a self-represented litigant that you decided you didn't want to take seriously.

i'll see you there.

good.

oversight is the right approach; at the end of the day, the cjc is just another tribunal, and shouldn't have super powers.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/supreme-court-won-t-hear-dispute-over-discipline-of-federally-appointed-judges-1.4727121

actually, the federal court seems to have an efiling system, meaning i might not have to wait.

let me do some reading tonight.

it seems like i'll need to file it in federal court, rather than divisional court.

i don't like being talked down to, and am not going to tolerate it.

more:
https://cjc-ccm.ca/sites/default/files/documents/2019/2018-08-29%20Girouard%20Order%20and%20Reasons.pdf

so, i'm going to have to appeal the judicial council's ruling on the judge's conduct, which is...

a jury of your peers, right? it's a farce - this jury is full of judges. but, i'm trying to make a point, here, about fair judicial conduct for self-represented litigants, and i'm going to have to follow through with it.

so, how do i file a judicial review against the judicial council? by filing with the court that i made the complaint in!

it's going to be a while, one way or another. but, let's put this aside for later....

https://www.thelawyersdaily.ca/articles/7270

close your windows - there's some bad air moving in.

it's thought that the plague went air-borne a few times, and there's been this persistent fear about ebola getting into the wind, which would be a bloodbath. thankfully, the corona virus itself is relatively weak - or at least is for now. but, this is about the worst transmission vector you could imagine.

in the middle ages, you were dealing with soot from burning wood at relatively low concentrations. nowadays, air pollution is everywhere.

https://cleantechnica.com/2020/05/04/airborne-coronavirus-scientists-in-italy-find-coronavirus-on-air-pollution-particles/

maybe i really did catch this thing last year...

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/05/coronavirus-spread-around-world-2019-study

so, i watched the planet of the humans this morning...

i didn't find this "documentary", if you want to even call it that, it was really more of a mash-up, to be particularly controversial, but i didn't find it very enlightening, either. it's really just the kind of empty trash you expect from the genre. while people like al gore and bill mckibben are really not defamable at this point, so this was relatively mild as far as these things go, i was also expecting it to focus more on a degrowth or depopulation agenda based on the reviews, and it really didn't; it made the classic discursive error of articulating a problem relatively well, without even really trying to present a solution. so, now what? and, if you just have crickets, then what was the point?

the film's thesis is something like this: the narrator was some kind of hippie from michigan that went up into the upper peninsula to live a thoreauvian existence, then, like thoreau, got jaded at the hypocrisy and ignorance underlying the movement defining what he did. so, now, he's lashing out at the ideology that led him astray, and the people he holds responsible for misleading him. also, we're all going to die if we don't smarten up. in the process, he ducks and weaves through all kinds of strawmen, some of which are more worthwhile to disassemble than others, without ever conceding the obvious point - sustainability implies moderation, by definition.

so, yes - if you had this idea that all we had to do was build millions of wind turbines and we'd be able to fly to the cottage on the weekends as offsets, then you weren't thinking clearly, but that has more to do with the underlying critique of capitalism than it does with anything about the environmental movement; he's certainly right to point out that there have been unrealistic expectations attached to green technology, but he's declining to point out that these critiques have been there all along, and that not many people bought into this as deeply as he seems to have.

i remember back in 2011, i met some kids at the occupy protest that wanted to go live in the woods, and were insistent on living "off the grid". they seemed to honestly think that burning wood was more sustainable, and wanted me to come with them. i couldn't believe what i was hearing; wood? no - that would be terrible. mass protest is about converting the grid, not avoiding it. but, all i got were blank stares, and i do believe they went out into the woods to live like nineteenth century colonists. let's hope they didn't shoot any indians.

as a lifelong environmentalist, myself, i've never had any desire to turn back the clocks, so i don't feel betrayed by the realization that it was a lie - i would have told you that in the first place. rather, we need to reduce energy by altering our lifestyle decisions, which means doing things like getting rid of family cars, and abolishing suburbs. i've never bought into the fantasy the narrator did; for as long as i can actually remember, i've been arguing that we need to change all of the things that the narrator thought we could keep. i'm consequently in broad agreement with the crux of the thing, even if it didn't provide me with any compelling insights.

the strawmans are consequently on both sides - he is presenting the environmental movement as promising things it has never promised, and he is presenting environmentalists as buying into promises that we've never really bought into. the critique may be valid if applied to himself, but that's just it - he should speak for himself, not pretend he's speaking for others. i know few activists that were as naive as he appears to have been.

so, yes - the future is going to need to be more efficient, but it's also going to need to utilize renewables as best as we can, and he shouldn't be suggesting otherwise. if all he really means to say is that solar panels are not a panacea and that wind turbines are not a magic bullet, then i'm hardly in disagreement with the basic point, even if i didn't feel it needed to be said. if all he meant to say was something like "there will be some place in the future for electric vehicles, but what we really need to do is get used to taking the subway" then that's a perfectly valid and reasonable position, even if he appears to be coming at it from a place of rather bizarre privilege that i'm having trouble relating to. but, we shouldn't move and shift in extremes - recognizing that solar panels are not a panacea does not rob them of all utility, and that's an error he seems to be leaning towards. he seems to want absolutes, extremes, certainties - and i guess maybe the section with the psychologist is him realizing that. he thinks like a fundamentalist; he's an extremist. we're not all like that, most of us can think dialectically, and will support moderate and pragmatic policy options.

the last thing i want to draw some attention to is degrowth, because we're kind of stuck in this; the film avoids the topic, but it leans there, so it's the inevitable next point, and i suspect there's been plenty of googling done...

if the argument is something like "we'd better drastically change our way of existing, or we're all going to die", where does degrowth leave us? these proposals would cut our population down to a few million. and, what happens to all these billons of people?

well, they die. which is what you were trying to prevent....? no?

i'm all for condoms and abortion on demand and all the other things we can do to try to reduce the growth rate, but be careful with these macabre degrowth types, who flirt with nazi implementation schemes that would wipe out 90% of us. you surely don't think you'd be chosen do you?

the reality is that growth rates in the advanced nations are slowing, or declining. the pen, here, is mightier than the sword; the best way to reduce the population is to eradicate poverty.

obviously, you should not drop your kids off with your parents right now.

so, he thinks you should drop your kids off with their grandparents.

can somebody fire this fucking idiot for me?

thanks.

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/quebec-s-family-minister-says-parents-should-keep-children-at-home-if-possible-1.4927608

time is such a weird thing. you can really throw yourself off if you're not paying attention.

i got out of the shower this morning around 10:00ish and found myself asleep rather quickly. i only got a few hours last night, so that's not particularly odd. after a nap, i turned the chromebook on to check the time, thinking it was mid-afternoon.

"11:57. odd."

so, i diddled online a little, somewhat thrown off by how untired i was, given how little i had slept, and how much walking i did. i called a doctor and left a message (odd. why were they closed at 2:00?) and was back asleep around 2:30, thinking i need to catch-up before i moved into the next segment of consciousness.

i wake up next and it's already dark out. did i sleep all afternoon? so, i check the chromebook and it's after 10:00, meaning i did indeed get the sleep i wanted. but, now it's cold in here and i'm having trouble waking up....i'm exhausted....

i post to the blog and hit refresh. it's after 1:00 on may 7th.

i instantly realized that my chromebook had been set to pacific time since this morning. so, i had slept a good five hours this morning, and another eight this evening.

i need to drag myself into the kitchen to eat, but i should be back to work soon.

ugh.

pseudo-science about cbd aside, this is a respiratory disease. don't smoke drugs as a prophylactic - unless you've already smoked yourself retarded.

https://calgaryherald.com/cannabis/cannabis-shows-promise-blocking-coronavirus-infection-alberta-researcher/

wow.

https://globalnews.ca/news/6912844/shopify-rbc-canada-company-coronavirus/

has the governor been to a grocery store recently?

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/ny-gov-cuomo-says-its-shocking-most-new-coronavirus-hospitalizations-are-people-staying-home.html

this was obvious.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/05/the-coronavirus-mutated-and-appears-to-be-more-contagious-now-new-study-finds.html

the next thing for the swedes (who never developed widespread diagnostic testing, and are consequently very dramatically undercounting the number of cases) to do is some random antibody testing.

ok. i wanted to check my usage stats for yesterday before i put everything back together and it seems to be perfectly in order. great.

i've done laundry and showered and should be in and productive for the next two-three weeks.

the swedes will need to make sure they're keeping an eye on local outbreaks and keeping to contact tracing, moving forwards.

the most frustrating thing is that sweden just handed us our asses, and we're too stupid to even understand it.

we're going to need to wait for the numbers to come in.

but don't be surprised if canada ends up with many, many times more deaths per capita, in the end. 5x. 10x.

our authoritarian response may actually be having the effect of converting a flu-like illness into a serious pandemic, by maximizing the amount of damage it can do, by slowing it down.

as a result, the death rate in sweden may end up .05% or lower - and up to ten times that in places where the government is pushing down social distancing, which is 5x worse than my conceptual model.

https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2020/03/this-i-would-propose-is-better-way-to.html

how do you understand this apparent contradiction, where social distancing increases the number of deaths?

i posted this picture back on pi day:

if sweden followed the red curve, it saw an immediate spike, but should now see almost no deaths, as the virus is no longer being carried. that means there's still a lot of vulnerable people out there, but the virus is no longer finding their way to them.

everybody else followed the blue curve, which saw smaller number of deaths to start but, ultimately, higher levels of spread, due to lower immunity. this means that more vulnerable people - twice as many, according to the (conceptual) calculation of the area under the curve - are likely to end up sick and die.

i know this is counter-intuitive, but don't listen to me, look at the data.

so, are they peaking in sweden, then?

it looks like it...

and, that's what? around 3000 deaths? plus or minus?

if it burns out to a trickle over the next few days, there's not going to be any choice but to conclude they've reached something approaching functional immunity, at least in the active population, which could have the effect of largely burning it out, even if they still have to deal with small scale outbreaks for the next forever, like everybody else.

but, what is the damage?

if we calculate 3299 deaths in total out of a population of 10,501,043, that's .031415926% - which proves that this was the optimal strategy, after all.

at a herd immunity of 66.6%, which we have no idea is true or not, 10501043*.666*x = 3299 <---> x = .047%. so, that is your true death rate, which is equivalent to the flu.

no, stop - this is empirical. this is the best data we have. but, it does seem a little low....

the other hypothesis is that maybe herd immunity doesn't require two thirds of the population, but something less than that, and maybe the antibody data coming out of new york and elsewhere is grounds for that, as well.

so, what if herd immunity is actually achieved by this disease at 50% exposure? then the death rate becomes .063% - not a big jump.

what if it's 33%? then you're still barely getting at the .1% that i've been lowballing at.

but, let's get the point - the experiment in sweden seems to be winding down, and while the swedes themselves might be disappointed that it got into the old folks' homes (a problem that exists everywhere.), the data we're getting out of it is lowballing the lowballs.

you'd have to struggle to pull a .1% death rate out of these numbers.

well, what else can a kid do besides get you a beer, at least until they're old enough to learn how to read?

example...

"hey kid, get me a beer."

(pause)

"thanks, kid."

i'd just call the kid 'kid' until it figures it out.

don't do this.

the kid will hate you for it and just change it as soon as they can. i've seen it happen...

i have no intention to procreate, but, if i ever did, and i had anything to do with it, i'd insist on something like _____ as the official name. a placeholder.

that's essentially all they're really doing, anyways.

https://globalnews.ca/news/6905662/elon-musk-grimes-baby-name/

i was waiting for an update on this.

so, if all goes according to plan, i should have enough electricity credits saved up to get back to work very soonish.

https://news.ontario.ca/opo/en/2020/05/ontario-extends-electricity-rate-relief-during-covid-19.html

this is so far beneath any concept of contempt as to be impossible to actually believe.

jason kenney, you must resign immediately.

your reaction should be a difference of scale beyond outrage. and, if there was ever any doubt in your mind, there should not be - this perverse catastrophe must be permanently and thoroughly shut down.

https://thenarwhal.ca/alberta-suspends-19-oilsands-environmental-monitoring-requirements-coronavirus-concerns/

i can't even donate sperm, because i haven't been able to produce any for years.

you can have a hair follicle and take it to the lab. i don't care, just get them out of me...

"why don't you just stop taking them, then?"

because the amount of intellectual freedom that i've gained from emancipating myself from my sex drive is immeasurable. i don't want to go back to having this urge to masturbate all of the time, i hated it. my mind is now free for everything else that the world has to offer....

if the system is going to force me to choose, i'd rather live a short life in emancipation of sex than a long life in enslavement to it.

it would take minutes. it's not a strain on the system. they're not over-capacity. they are merely refusing service due to ideological reasons, and at the expense of their hippocratic oath - they are terrible doctors, and should be publicly berated for it.

but, what do i do?

i can't do anything...

an orchiectomy is a minor procedure that can be done within a few minutes in the office of the specialist. it requires arranging a trip home as walking may be difficult, but it doesn't require invasive surgery or a trip to the er.

costs are a few thousand dollars, which i'd rather spend on something i'm not covered for, but i need to get on with this and get off these pills.

i guess that, if the issue with the disease goes on long enough, i might in the end have the cash, and that might be what i have to do.

if i had the cash, i'd go to the states instead...

it's a perfect example of a backwards society, it really is - you go to see a doctor, and they talk to you about religion.

how did we get to this backwards place?

it's not frivolous, either.

1) given that i haven't used them in years and years, and i never want to use them again, they're really just a cancer risk. if i end up getting a tumour in there, can i hold them liable for refusing to treat me? it's just an empty, unused lump of tissue - it's a cancer risk.

2) the drugs that i take to reduce my testosterone levels to a functional near zero (which is on purpose. because i fucking hate testosterone.) are relatively hard on my liver. i've been on them for ten years, now, which is longer than anybody is supposed to be on them for. if i could get the testicles out, i could get off these drugs that are hard on my liver.

but, all that these fucking morons want to talk about is god.

fuck your stupid, imaginary, bullshit god....

how did they even become doctors?

it's one thing to say "you are 100% covered for this procedure".

it's another altogether to point out that 98% of the qualified doctors in a 500 km radius won't do it, all of them apparently citing religion as the reason they won't do it.

i don't understand why people second guess others on this.

if i go into a doctor's office and tell you point blank that i want you to take my testicles away, that's something i've thought about. frankly, i don't care about your opinion, and think you're a narcissistic asshole for even presenting one - i'm here to have them out, so just shut the fuck up and get rid of them.

this should be no hassle, no questions asked and more or less on demand.

it's baffling to me that i have to win an argument, first, and that the people i'm tasked with arguing with are largely disinterested in it.

it's not the system, here - this is covered.

but, the doctors here are all religious, and it's kind of putting me in a culture shock.

who'd have thought that the most substantive interaction with religion that i will ever have in my life comes in trying to convince a doctor to snip my testicles out? why do i have to lower myself to such stupidity?

let me try to get up to eat.

but, the other thing was with the doctor, today....

i went in today to rebook an appointment, because the line just rings when i call. i was told they're not booking until after covid-19 and i should come back later, which struck me as being runaround. i was told i could book by phone, but i can't reach them by phone, and, besides - the appointment is for a physical, which cannot and should not be done over the phone. anybody billing ohip for a "virtual physical" should be charged with fraud.

i offered to just rebook next year, and that was not met well. they told me to come back in a few weeks...

what i was concerned with was ensuring that i didn't lose my status as a patient, but that concern didn't seem to register with staff in a way that really rubbed me the wrong way.

so, am i potentially dealing with transphobic staff at the windsor family health centre? i don't know.

what i know is this: i deal with transphobia by rubbing my tits in your face. so, if they want to be stupid about it, i'll be happy to make a scene about it.

right now, i've decided to play stupid for a little while. i am awaiting results from this doctor on reassignment concerns (i am trying to get my testicles removed, and nobody seems to want to do it...), and i want to consider changing my hormones to prometrium.

i'm going to send them a fax about the issue...

the fact is that montreal did everything right. it was maybe slower than it should have been to crack down on the religious minorities, but that's not something unique to it.

expect toronto to be next - i said mid-to-late-may, and it seems like it may be in the latter category.

https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/swamped-montreal-hospitals-told-to-send-covid-19-patients-to-off-island-centres/

if i could only find a way to exist as an honest statistician, right?

you know what they say...

this is better than the vox article, which says something about the vox article given the place that maclean's holds in canadian journalism, but even normalizing at 50 is pretty sketchy.

canada is the biggest country in the world. germany is roughly the size of one of the atlantic provinces. so, just in terms of the probability of getting from zero to fifty without it taking off, you could have all the way up to fifty different isolated deaths in canada before you get to an epidemic in germany.

i know you have to do the graph somehow, and this is purposefully extreme, but it gets the idea across.

to start with, if you're going to compare small countries to canada, you should begin by looking at provinces, or even regions, rather than the whole country - but that's just a start. while germany isn't much bigger than new brunswick, the population density is also astronomically higher - another incredibly important factor.

it's going to be hard to do this right until this is done, and until then the data is going to reflect the biases of the person that plotted it.

https://www.macleans.ca/society/health/coronavirus-deaths-these-charts-show-how-canada-compares-with-the-world/

so, i got the things i need done for the next roughly two weeks. i can now gorge myself and rest my weary body, after nine hours of walking and hauling around groceries.

i didn't go out on day one and buy out the store, but i've been slowly building up supplies of things over what is now two months of hermitting. yes, there's the four packages of toilet paper, but i actually would normally have two-three on hand anyways. i'm actually lower on pasta than usual; under normal circumstances, i like to have about 36 days worth in tupperware.

hey, i've been in the situation of it being the first of the month and trying to figure something out. it's easier if there's already food, so i don't fuck around when it comes to that - there's certain things i keep a surplus of, and some of it is dwindling more than i'd like. i should be ok for the rest of the month at least, before i crack and have to buy some of that cracked-out pasta, you know the kind with the weird swirls and shit, like it's trying to find an algebraic solution to your mother in law's nasty cooking, but is instead just spiraling out on means that it thought were golden, but are merely just pasty brown.

anyways.

i've now slowly squirreled away oddities such as four tubes of toothpaste, an entire fridge door worth of block cheese, three red hot sauces, three cans of coffee and who knows what else shuffled away on to the side. let us hope that this is the last nine hour day; let's hope i can just sneak out for some tomatoes, moving forward. my legs can only handle so much...

these days, though, are such total body exercises, they really are - you're walking, you're lifting, you're hauling for miles. you feel it in your calves, but this has to be hitting you everywhere. which is fine - i don't want to build muscle, but i'm happy to tone what i've got.

i need, however, to inform you that this whole "social distancing" thing is a charade. it is - it's absurd. whatever the merits of it's intentions were, what actually exists, what is really existing social distancing, is just nonsense, unfit to even display the label of whatever delusion, whatever pseudo-science, that may have birthed it.

you will begin this charade outside of the store, where people will smoke various things, while talking loudly to themselves, rarely more than a few inches from each other. if you have the audacity to inch ahead of them, they will take it as an invitation to move ahead in line, entirely oblivious as to why they're outside in the fucking first place. and, who are these people, exactly? my experience today was to be stuck in line between two absolutely hideously disgusting bearded men who were essentially transiting toilets on their faces not once but twice, none of whom seemed to understand basic personal space by somebody that was visibly disgusted by them, let alone what social distancing was or why they were outside. one of them repeatedly spat through his beard while standing in line.

under normal circumstances, i would not have gone within ten feet of these people, let alone six. but, because of the rules, i was forced against my will to stand in line with them for a period of time i would generally not have tolerated. i repeatedly felt more in danger of getting sick standing in line than i did once i was in the store, in addition to needing to suppress the need to vomit for being forced to tolerate them. yuck.

then, once you're in the store, nobody even cares anymore. people walk by each other, cough all over each other, make like bad zeppelin records and go down the wrong aisle, etc. you think you're in line for a real tight-ass establishment, but you get inside and it's like an insane class posse show.

they've got these plexi-glass windows installed to try to create a spit barrier, and it's maybe the most grounded idea i've seen yet, but it's like the cone of silence - the cashiers can't hear anything behind them, so they just poke their heads over to talk to you, as you're keying in your atm number on the device that thousands of people had already used just that day.

and, then, you're off to leave your cart with the attendant, who touches every single one of them when he sanitizes them entirely haphazardly, between smoke breaks.

a charade.

it's all it is.

get ready for this thing, canada. your puny social distancing does nothing.

don't be confused - this is what they want.

https://globalnews.ca/news/6905295/coronavirus-china-hostility-report/

you need to be looking at death rates, not case counts.

the case counts are completely worthless.

the reason that canada has fewer cases is that we're undertesting - particularly in ontario.

this is absolute nonsense.

we're about a month behind the united states in terms of the epidemic curve, and we have roughly 10% of the population. so, if we were exactly on par with the united states, we'd have something less than 7,000 deaths. there's currently around 4,000.

i would expect 20,000 deaths in canada minimum by the time this is done.

https://www.vox.com/2020/5/4/21242750/coronavirus-covid-19-united-states-canada-trump-trudeau

in the end, we might learn this is a counter-intuitive consequence of something called sudden stratospheric warming, which is at least consistent, even if the outcome is confusing.

that would be the case where it's essentially bad luck, and it may be good news in the long run.

it could be that what is happening with the polar vortex is some ramification of a changed climate interacting with an increased level of sunlight. it is possible that it's actually breaking up and we're essentially seeing chunks of it fall off.

or, this might be less unusual than we think it is.

what's clear is that it isn't entirely clear, and that there isn't any reason to think it's permanent.

so, why are we dealing with record-breaking cold in canada, when the rest of the world is dealing with extreme heat, and the hottest year on record?

it's not cold in sweden or russia. it's only cold here.

we were at the bottom of the solar cycle, which was skewing the weather. anthropogenic climate change doesn't change the solar cycle - that still happens, for better or worse. as we are getting out of that funk, we should expect these extremes to reverse and the warming to reassert itself, but this is the worst spring yet, and nobody saw that coming.

i kept saying that it looked good but it was too early and may have, in the end, jumped the gun a little.

still - why is it twenty-thirty degrees below normal here? is the pole wandering, or what?

when the solar cycle picks up, you should expect a more intense polar vortex; let's remember that the cause of the polar vortex expanding is an absence of sunlight, so it does follow that when you bring in more sunlight you should bottle it back up, which is what it looked like was happening for most of the winter. but, then, it just kind of imploded...

it's not expanding - it's even warm in nunavut. it's only cold right here.

so, did the culmination of factors kind of break it, then? like if you spin a top too fast and it runs off the axis?

if so, is that the end of our polar vortex? hmm. stay tuned...

note: it could just be bad luck.

this is weird, no doubt. everything right now is kind of weird. but, my analysis has not changed - you should continue to expect an acceleration of warming in this region as the sun comes back, even if it takes a while to kick in.