moving on, but i'll just remind you of this one more time for now: do you know what happens when i climax/orgasm?

nothing.

because i'm incapable of ejaculating.

this process is called chemical castration and involves taking drugs that prevent the production of testosterone. when you don't produce testosterone, your testes don't work and you can neither produce sperm, nor ejaculate.

i didn't mark it on the calendar, but i haven't been able to ejaculate in well over ten years.

i've been trying to get my testes removed for years now, but cannot find a doctor willing to perform the procedure, voluntarily. i have been given funding by the ministry (finally.), and will probably need to spend a weekend in toronto doing it, despite the fact that there's probably 100 people between here and there that are qualified to do it but refuse to.

so, it's a very slow process.

if i'm lucky, i might get all of the is dotted to get me to srs by the time i'm 70, but probably not.

i'm sorry to be crude, but i have to do this every once in a while to wake people up a little, as that naturalistic fallacy is pretty pervasive, and hard to shake.

like, you could maybe pin me down, or talk me into sitting still for a few minutes, if you like your cock soft and slimy and undersized from twenty years of testosterone blockers, but you'd might as well just buy a dildo; at the least, i promise you you'll get a harder and more dynamic fuck from a carrot than you ever will from me...

when you don't have the biology to carry out your fantasies, there's no use in pretending that you do.

everybody's left unsatisfied, and frustrated and sad.

i've made women cry by riding their legs....

so, i just don't.

i'm way too sub to even be gay.

any gay guy would throw me off of him, and say "i'm not straight. stop.". i'd be riding him like a dirty slut; it would just confuse him.

there's no use in pretending - it's just a waste of time.

intentionally or not, though, what i'm doing seems to be working.

if you don't want to be tracked, this would appear to be an effective algorithm:

1) don't buy cell access. at all.
2) don't carry a phone or other device with wireless access.
3) use google voice to call out, at least
4) i use a voip box for incoming calls

again: it's just because i don't want to spend the money. i'd rather go see concerts than talk on the phone.

however, i appear to be frustrating them very thoroughly....

it's all circumstantial and deductive, and i'm not getting into it, but i'm realizing this...

it's becoming increasingly clear to me that the cops are so reliant on tracking people with cell phones at this point that they don't know what to do when they find people without one.

they seem to think i'm lying, and are just trying to get my number from me using various shady tactics. they can't understand that i don't have one, and don't seem to be trained to deal with the possibility as real.

ok, so i'm going to post this again in this space, to make the point as clear as i can.

i live in windsor, ontario. i am a male-to-female transgendered person that is functionally celibate. while i wonder if i may have been raped a few times, i have not intentionally had sex in upwards of 15 years and don't really see the point in identifying as anything beyond "asexual" at this point. i use female pronouns and refer to myself as 'jessica'.

while i did eventually buy a chinese cell phone a few years ago that i've turned on something like twice before i decided it was boring, i do not have cell service, and do not carry a cell phone. it's not turned off, it's not hidden, it's not encrypted - it doesn't exist.

i am currently typing from a chromebook, which i also use as a phone. i call out using google voice. i don't know if or how such a thing can be tracked and, frankly, it's not my problem, if it can't be. i don't have any reason to care if i'm trackable or not, although if i had a choice i'd choose not to be.

as it is, the reason i don't pay for a cell service is that it costs a lot of money. my income is $1230/month ($1170 from odsp & $60 from a tax credit run by the province), and my rent is $750. my only bill is internet, which i pay $35/month for. i budget for $200 for food, and it's variable - sometimes more, sometimes less.

1230 - 750 - 200 - 35 = 245

i don't even know what it costs to connect to the cell towers anymore, but i know it's expensive. as buying cell phone access to the tower would take up 30-50% of my remaining income, i decided a very long time ago that it was a waste of money, and that is the reason that i do not have cell service - if i spent all my money on a cell phone that i don't really need or want, i wouldn't have any money to spend on anything else. it's a bonus that i can't be tracked, but that's not the intent - i just can't afford a cell phone, or, i guess more accurately, i've decided that i'd rather spend limited resources on things i care about.

i do not have a driver's license, and have never driven a car. that is another way i avoid wasting money. it's a bonus that it is good for the climate, but i wouldn't want to waste money on a car, regardless.

so, i'm very, very cheap, and that's the reason you can't track me.

i'm not avoiding anything, i just don't have the money to utilize the tracking devices that law enforcement are so heavily reliant on.

i'm harmless, and the decision to spy on me is based on ignorance and stupidity. however, this is something to think about: given the cost of technology, if the police become reliant on it to track threatening individuals, they may find themselves in this problem more often. if you're going to create a society rooted in absurd amounts of inequality, this is the outcome - the criminals can't afford the technology you want to use to spy on them with.

trying to coerce me into giving you a number, or communicating over a phone i don't have and can't afford and don't want, isn't going to lead to anything but frustration by everybody.

i use voip for incoming calls, and i don't know or care if that's trackable, either. i would get a free google voice number, but it's not available in canada.

if you were to cancel google voice in canada, i would use a pay phone to call out, as the primary determinant is cost and that's by far the cheapest option.

poor people are hard to trace with technology because they can't afford it.

deal with it.

as much as i don't like doug ford, i like the city council in windsor even less, and would actually like to see the conservatives get pretty tough on it, in an attempt to clear it out.

i'm not a fiscal conservative - i want to see them spend the money, but they continually waste millions on these stupid projects that nobody gives a fuck about.

we've got homeless people all over the city...

and, i'd rather see them fix the damned roads.

https://windsor.ctvnews.ca/windsor-council-to-mull-550k-commitment-to-kickstart-civic-plaza-project-1.5074391

if you ask them, they say absolutely vacuous things like "i don't want to spend the money in the community, because somebody will think we're favouring their region".

well, then spend money all over the city.

i would consequently support the province more or less cutting them off, until they provide less stupid ways to spend money.

and, then they told us it was "temporary".

the story around the anti ep is maybe a more useful model, in terms of finding creative ways to protest authoritarian restrictions on freedom of association and expression.

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/78ab5d/warp-25-autechre-anti-ep

and, yes - it's becoming increasingly clear that a protest movement against these restrictions is going to be necessary, once what they're actually doing crystallizes in front of us.

once we all understand what they're doing, we will stand up and fight back.

again: i don't think this kind of thing is particularly useful, so long as the pigs are keeping it in their pants.

https://windsor.ctvnews.ca/maskless-shopping-trip-goes-ahead-with-low-turnout-1.5075346

they used to run this on tv as a propaganda nag, for all the couch potato parents that had to answer...

"no, actually, i don't."

what is this song actually about? who gets it and who doesn't?

it's really neither about being pro-partying or anti-partying, so much as it is about mocking crusty conservative portrayals of the corruption of the youth. the video really represents what some reagan conservative might have imagined a party of young people was like, but hardly actually existed in real life.

this is a problem i've run into with the songs i wrote when i was young, as well - sometimes you intend to get across an idea, and don't get it across the way you want to, leading to confusion or ambiguity. it seems to be common for people to accuse each other of misunderstanding the song; i'm going to place the blame on the band. it's legitimately not clear what they're trying to get across, as they were certainly neither advocates of absurd behaviour as portrayed in the video, nor of the kind of conservative value systems that would shut it down. the subtlety has maybe been lost in time.

so, it's absurdist humour, but it's making a serious point, too. the mockery is more reflective of perceptions people had in the 80s surrounding the difference between "good" and "bad" people; while such parties probably existed nowhere on the actual planet, it's a reasonable reflection of how you would hear older people talk about younger people, and the corruption of the youth and whatnot. you do need to fight for your rights to free expression, or you will lose them, as much fun as it is to be silly about conservative portrayals of the lifestyles of the young.

"it's 11:00 pm. do you know where your children are?"

they're probably not quite doing what you see in the video, but maybe you imagine they are. that's the joke, here.

in context, the most facile interpretation is the most relevant one - they're coming for you, and you'd better stand up, or face the consequences for you and your children, and your children's children.

if you don't stand up for your rights, you will lose them.

further, i would launch a charter challenge against the police for infringing on freedom of assembly, amongst other things.

i would rip the ticket up, and refuse to even defend myself in court.

if you don't want to go to the party, don't.

only i have the right to decide how valuable my existence is to myself.

and, it's consequently my responsibility to avoid gatherings if it means something to me - and my right to participate in them, if it doesn't.

it's not up to some government bureaucrats to tell me what my life is worth to me.

are they going to criminalize suicide, next?

enough is enough - when's the election in bc?

https://vancouversun.com/news/covid-19-b-c-announces-fines-up-to-2000-for-those-who-disobey-public-he

based on this picture, mackay is far more attractive.

right?

right....

there's a joke in canadian politics that the best looking candidate always wins, and it's usually true.

if an election were held tomorrow, that is if trudeau can't find a razor soon, he's not going to be the best looking candidate on the ballot, anymore.

the liberals were always said to campaign on the left and govern on the right, so you did expect them to break some promises.

but, the gulf between what they said they would do in 2015 and where we are in 2020 is far, far greater than that produced by any other incarnation of the party.

and, they are running out of time to close it.

i liked chretien better.

by a large margin.

when we elected this incarnation of the liberals, there was some suggestion that they were learning from their recent electoral failures and listening to the voters in the country, but they quickly broke every promise they made, and positioned themselves on a trajectory to the very hard right.

the result is that this incarnation of the liberals is actually the least liberal incarnation that we've seen in decades, and needs to be punished the most.

trudeau's been looking pretty disgusting, lately.

he's gotta get a handle on that, too, or he's going to lose women.

peter mackay is justin trudeau with better hygiene, in a blue tie.

i'm just going to be clear about this mackay v trudeau thing.

mackay is a largely non-ideological old money aristocrat that in truth isn't very smart and is just going to do what the banks tell him.

that is, he's exactly the same thing as justin trudeau.

there was a time when the liberals were better than this, but we need to learn from reality as it happens, and one of his legacies is that they aren't, anymore. they were always a bankers' party, but they were a smart bankers' party; today, they're just the same neo-liberal front group as any other late capitalist institution is.

so, the reason mackay seems so much less scary than conservatives of past years has less to do with mackay being some kind of "moderate", and more to do with how far to the right that trudeau (and his cronies, apparently led mostly by freeland) has pulled the party.

it's very hard to argue that you need to vote for the liberals to keep the conservatives out when the conservatives and liberals are essentially the same thing. i'm consequently not particularly scared of voting for a third party to punish the liberals, under the understanding that the conservatives will probably win.

the other three candidates have ideologies, and the calculus is not the same, with them. o'toole is scheer part two (or day part three) and sloan scares the hell out of me. they will have their own agendas, and will need to be stopped.

but, mackay is just a mindless front, who doesn't have an original thought in his pretty little airhead to even mention.

we'll see how the pieces fall on the board, but i'm likely to be more aggressive about supporting a third party in the imminent election, because the differences between the two major parties are going to end up too minimal to really discern as meaningful.

and, the liberals do not have much time to reverse that perception - and even seem to be moving in the opposite direction, of trying to leap-frog the conservatives to the right.

i'm cleaning some things up, and to clarify a point....

the beaker folk, from what we understand, are thought to have been a kind of hybrid culture of indo-european & neolithic types. that is, they were the neolithic peoples of western europe undergoing their first contact point with the indo-european groups, rather than a new group of people moving in altogether. as we try to understand history via continuity more than migration nowadays (and it's easy to see by flipping through this that i'm ok with a pre-history full of violent dominance and overthrow), we tend to be careful and conservative in how we morph one population into another.

so, i referred to the beaker folk as descendants of the neolithic inhabitants of europe, thought to have ultimately been from ancient turkey & the caucusus (an area that was more phenotypically "white" then than it is now) - and that is true, genetically. but, archaeologists are likely to push back a little, because they know that this population, while genetically descendent from the neolithic peoples, also adopted cultural practices (which is what archaeologists can study and see) from the new indo-european migrants and invaders.

should i have been more careful? well, in context, i was talking about genetics. i used an archaeological term to refer to a genetic clade, which was maybe a bit sloppy, but i think it's common practice, isn't it? 

perhaps the more pertinent point is to remind the archaeologists that they aren't geneticists, and that while their work may be useful in determining the flow of pottery and burial practices, it doesn't help us understand the genetic history of the region, or what the people looked like.

so, were the beaker people of spain descendants of the neolithic inhabitants of the region? yes, absolutely - even if the pottery that gives them their name came in later, from the northeast.

there's actually a new gaytheist (a portmanteau of gay and atheist) record out, and i'm not going to post too deep a review because this is a silly punk band, but i'll draw your attention to it as worth checking out. he's got that creamy corgan distortion sound up front, which is fundamentally rooted in an old muff, and is nice to hear given that it's a little bit endangered nowadays. there's nothing profound here, but you don't expect it; you expect a good kick in the ass, and they're as good at that here as elsewhere.

  

this is the social democratic party in russia, that you would vote for and support if you were an actual liberal:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Just_Russia

they're usually the fourth party, in state elections.

let's try this.

navalny.

i want you to highlight that text and right-click it. i don't know what os or browser you are using, but virtually all of them nowdays should have an entry in the menu that says something like "search using google" or "search using duckduckgo" or whatever.

try it.

see what happens.

as a general rule, you want to look at multiple sources of information regarding anything you read on the internet, and be in the habit of doing thorough searches around anything you find the least bit confusing.

if something doesn't make sense to you, run a search and see what come up.

it really takes a lot of temerity, though, to publish lies on the internet under the understanding that most people are going to interact with them in the context of a search engine. you have to be exceedingly confident in the absolute incompetence of your audience...

well, except his job for the cia.

of course.

:).

it's just like this guy guaido in venezuela, who the msm likes to pretend is the president of venezuela.

juan guaido doesn't currently have a job, as far as i know.

how many opposition leaders in africa or the middle east have starved in prisons over the last fifty years, while america cashes arms sales cheques from the dictators that put them in there? hundreds? thousands?

they don't care about democracy.

he's being rescued because he belongs to us.

all your navalnies are belong to us.

i mean, is that much not obvious?

are we going to fly every dissident out of every country? that's laughable.

we're flying this guy out because he's on the payroll, he's an asset.

why are we going out of our way to save a nazi?

because he's our nazi!

you can still debunk most of this trash in thirty seconds with a knowledgeable google search.

we don't know how long that will remain true for, but i'll probably be removed from the internet before it isn't.

i'm not going to go through every article and rip them all apart, it's not worth my time.

but, the lies and disinformation from the msm around this are really pretty startling, and you should take the absurdity around it for what it is.

i hope he dies in transit....

so, the cia propaganda around navalny is ratcheting up...

this ridiculous gem comes from the washington post:

"navalny is russia's best known opposition leader"

in fact, his party currently has 0 seats in the duma.

the best known opposition leader in russia is likely gennady zyuganov, who is the leader of the communist party, which holds 42 seats in the duma, to united russia's 343. the third party is the ldpr (a very right-wing party), which holds 39 seats.

i know - you're going to tell me navalny was not allowed to run.

that's right, he wasn't - because he's a nazi. russia's rules may be a little more strict than i'd support, but there are quite a few countries in the world that bar nazis from seeking high office, that's not that odd.

why would they pass a law, if they're going to allow an exemption in the highest risk situation?

because it isn't about stopping the spread of a virus with an infinitesimal fatality rate, it's about getting in your head and telling you what to do.

https://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/mayor-refines-order-masks-not-required-during-religious-services/

am i more afraid of the cops than the virus?

yes.

you'd be daft, if you weren't, given the statistics.

the health unit here is getting more patriarchal, in barking orders that it expects people to just obey.

there were two cases in the county here, yesterday. it's not remotely proportional; it's panic, just complete absurdity.

i don't have any reason to go anywhere for quite a while, so i should be able to wait for a few days. but, if the reports are that the cops are coming in and beating people up, i'll have to order the plague mask....

if i give it a few days, and if the cops are keeping it in their pants, then whatever.

maybe i should order a costume, now.

i'm sure i could find some other scenario in which i could use it.

i'll even go to jail over this, for a day or two, if i have to.

but, when they start pulling guns out?

i'm not fucking around with armed people that have iqs < 100 and literally get off by acting like thugs.

i'm not joking.

if this ends with somebody pointing a gun at me, i am going to get a plague costume and wear it as a form of protest.

i admit i'd wear a mask list this, in the right scenario.

or, i guess, if coerced at gunpoint.

that is the only exception.

this picture is perfectly ironic.

do you understand why?

hey, joe. you know she's just as likely to kill you by shaking your hand as she is by breathing on you, right?

no? you don't?

if these superstitions and empty rituals mean something to you, do them at home; don't force your beliefs on me, as i'm not buying them.

gotta catch me first, motherfuckers.

no, i'm not going to sit and listen to biden speak and deconstruct it. ew. gross.

you'd have to tie me down, clockwork orange style...

thus...

http://www.zarathushtra.com/z/gatha/dji/gathtml.htm

“If there be light, then there is darkness; if cold, heat; if height, depth; if solid, fluid; if hard, soft; if rough, smooth; if calm, tempest; if prosperity, adversity; if life, death.”
― Pythagoras

From the Ionians, the Pythagoreans adopted the idea of cosmic opposites, which they—perhaps secondarily—applied to their number speculation. The principal pair of opposites is the limit and the unlimited; the limit (or limiting), represented by the odd (3,5,7,…), is an active force effecting order, harmony, and “cosmos” in the unlimited, represented by the even. All kinds of opposites somehow “fit together” within the cosmos, as they do, microcosmically, in an individual person and in the Pythagorean society. There was also a Pythagorean “table of ten opposites,” to which Aristotle has referred—limit-unlimited, odd-even, one-many, right-left, male-female, rest-motion, straight-curved, light-darkness, good-evil, and square-oblong. The arrangement of this table reflects a dualistic conception, which was apparently not original with the school, however, or accepted by all of its members.

https://www.britannica.com/science/Pythagoreanism/Metaphysics-and-number-theory

the early christians (who descended from pythagoreans on the greek side of the lineage) assigned many statements of the type to jesus, and they're all over the bible.

i can't find any direct quotes right now, but it's also the kind of thing that you would expect zoroaster to have said, specifically about duality.

as an aside, one may wonder if pushing duality may harm him with south indian voters.

if you want to accuse him of anything, it's of having the vocabulary of a child.

in fact, these words are largely vacuous pabulum, and they could be attributed just as easily to zoroaster, or perhaps pythagoras.

it's really such trite bullshit, that i'm just as happy to assume it's random coincidence.

"up, not down. near, not far. hot, not cold. just right!" - grover expanding upon goldilocks

but, i mean...if you heard a three-year old say it....

https://nationalpost.com/news/joe-biden-accused-of-plagiarizing-from-jack-laytons-final-letter-in-nomination-speech

the way that we actually do things in canada is that we throw the damned liberals out for long enough that they get scared, and then elect them to fix what got them thrown out in the first place.

while a small number of our most important accomplishments and legislations would not exist without the ndp....

the truth is that they were, broadly, horrible, the whole time.

....and are still broadly horrible, today.

there's a bit of a history of ei in canada here (from a "progressive" source) that explains that it was basically lifted from fdr by a conservative, and then fixed and expanded by the liberal oligarch mackenzie-king, the longest serving pm in the country's history, and also the country's first labour minister.

https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/employment-insurance/a-short-history-of-ei-and-a-look-at-the-road-ahead/

there was an actual labour party in canada, and it did get absorbed by the ndp, but it was relatively small in scope and function.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Labour_MPs_(Canada)

more generally speaking, it's important not to conflate populism or progressivism with socialism.

they're really fundamentally different ideas, but that's the argument underlying the association.

the major unions in canada have actually generally tended to support the liberals for the majority of the history of the country, and actually still do today.

the flirtation of unionism in canada with the ndp was, if anything, somewhat of a shift to the right, and appears to have been rather short-lived.

This brings us to the NDP, the only mass labour-based political party in North America.

this has always been a myth, at best.

the ndp were a labour-based party for maybe five years in the 80s, or something; it's more accurate to argue that broadbent inherited a very different type of party and tried to turn it into a labour party, but then the fuckers brought in nafta and pulled the rug out from under him.

the ndp were actually rooted in a christian religious movement, not in a labour movement. they come not from factories and cities, but from farms and rural regions; it's more puritan in origin, in truth, than it is derived from sinclair or dickens. these people were not fighting for the rights of wage workers to organize into industrial unions, but for the rights of farmers to control and manipulate the market. they didn't pass minimum wage laws, or regulations to improve working conditions and these sorts of things, so much as they fought to prevent anarchy in the production of corn, to set fixed prices for grain and things of the sort that are strictly important to rural farmers.

they were a party of the middle class, not of the proletariat, and they reflected the values of the middle class, in their embrace of the centrality of religion and the bigotry that follows from religion.

the healthcare system they brought in came from their history managing grain production and was really a form of supply management that was closer to obamacare than the single payer system that the liberals preferred, and brought in by modeling the system after the nhs; it was about leveraging insurance companies by pooling resources. tommy douglas was important in bringing this in, but he didn't design it and he never had the support to do it by himself. the liberals were always the senior partner, writer and organizer of the existing healthcare system, not douglas or the ndp, and for better or worse - douglas would not have supported single-payer on his own, but the liberals thought pharmacare was a step too far in distorting the market.

douglas, a clear social conservative, was eventually pushed out as old and out of touch with the boomers, who were....the boomers, i.e. not very socially conservative. it was only at this point that the ndp starts to look more like a workers party, and it was more successful for a short period, but then they brought in nafta...

so, let's stop pretending the ndp were ever a worker's party. they weren't, really. they were really a utopian christian party run by propertied farmers that were trying to avoid getting swallowed and eaten by another depression, and who applied some of the supply management techniques they were using to health care - an innovative solution that eventually transcended their other policies, and came to define them almost in total, despite being just a minimal example of a larger approach to farming, rather than to  proletariat workmanship.

ok.

so, i avoided a major migraine, at least. the fan is still broken, but i got a lot of hair out before the last power wash, so we'll see when it dries....

i have a mild headache that i'll want to keep an eye on, but i'm going to try to get some work done tonight.

but, the tl;dr is just simply that the ndp & liberals are truly indistinguishable, and that they have been for 30 years.

that's the other thing about hearing a candidate stand up in 2020 and argue they're going to sweep into power by organizing workers.

where?

mexico?

what happened, though?

it was nafta. first the '88 election, then the '93 election, then the collapse of the manufacturing sector. then layton came in and swung the party hard to the right because he had to because there weren't any workers left.

the ndp removed the word "socialist" from their platform some time in the 00s (i don't remember when).

then, they elected thomas mulcair, who was to the right of margaret thatcher, and followed it up by jagmeet singh, who still hasn't told us why he's running, yet.

but, it was nafta that killed them, and they haven't been the same since.

so, if you're in your late 70s and still think it is the late 70s, we need to insert a giant nope, here. the ndp bear essentially no resemblance to the parties of broadbent, lewis and douglas, sometimes for the better (they've dropped their bigoted opposition to queer rights, at least on the surface, although if you ask around it's not total) and sometimes for the worst (they're essentially a milquetoast neo-liberal party like the rest of them, and have been for decades, now).

and, no, the ndp couldn't merge with a new party of the left.

'cause they just ain't.

in my lifetime, the ndp have never been anything more interesting than a superfluous adjunct of the liberals, that just causes the country problems. i've argued vehemently against merger, but it's because i want to bring back a three-party system, not because i think they're worth supporting, as they are. if a new party arises on the left, i would strongly advise the ndp to merge with the liberals, rather than try and drag the process on.

clinton, gore, obama, biden, harris - these are all conservatives, in canada.

kerry was almost a liberal, maybe; lieberman certainly wasn't.

things may have been different before 1980 or so, but, in my lifetime, the democrats have basically always lined up best with the conservatives, not the liberals. meanwhile, the liberals have generally been closer to the greens than the democrats.

the reform movement in canada may have tried to align itself with republican insanity, but it never really took off, and there was never really a time in my life where there was a viable republican-like party in canada.

here's another legacy of jack layton.

https://socialistaction.ca/2011/04/03/the-tragedy-of-ndp-support-for-nato-bombing-of-libya/

people telling you the liberals don't support single-payer health care are either lying to you maliciously, or are so ignorant that they need to immediately shut the fuck up.

peter mackay may even have his own kamala harris.

biden, today, would very clearly and very unambiguously be most at home in the conservative party, not the ndp.

the liberals have never been very similar to what you may imagine as "centrist democrats" or something.

the chretien/martin government, a moderate government by canadian standards, made nader look fairly middle of the road. they were closer to bernie sanders than to al gore.

so, for example - the liberals in canada support universal health care, they voted against the war in iraq (and did not officially participate in it) and even for the correct reason that it was in contravention of international law, they were bringing in universal daycare and while they didn't support free tuition they did bring in large numbers of grants and bursaries that were targeted towards low income people. we could go down this road, but i'm making my point; what we called right-wing liberals in canada in 2005 were to the left of essentially all of the most left-wing members of the house of representatives in the united states. at the least, i can't think of anybody that's close.

dennis kucinich would have been a moderate in canada, at the time.

the democrats running at the time would have been more similar to the dying progressive-conservative party, led by joe clark and peter mackay (who appears ready to be the next prime minister, now).

and, dubya has always looked like nothing but a fascist, from canada.

fwiw, yes, there was a corruption scandal at the time, but i don't even remember what it was about, and i don't remember having any kind of conversation with anybody about it, or anybody mentioning it or thinking about or caring about it....

it was all over the national post.

nobody else seemed to care.

i'm not 23 years old; i remember 2004, and i remember 2006, and i remember interacting with people that were voting for the ndp.

not a single one of them could articulate why.

they were mostly aware that the policy platforms were largely interchangeable, with minor differences that put them both at about the same place in the spectrum. the only substantive difference is that the ndp wanted higher tax rates on corporations, and the liberals thought that was bad economics.

even layton argued - and, in hindsight, it's hard not to call him a liar - that you should vote ndp because the conservatives promised not to undo the proposed liberal programs, anyways (and, of course, they undid every one of them, and then some).

the actual reasons that people came up with were stupid, vacuous things like "we need a change of government" (for the sake of it.), or "i'm tired of the liberals". these weren't even fully formed thoughts, they were just kneejerk, mindless behaviours.

and, i yelled at a lot of people for it, at the time; i could handle it if there was some kind of reason, but they were all just following their gut.

yeah, they followed their gut - and they vomited in everybody's face.

i voted for paul dewar a few times in 2008 and 2011, when i was in a downtown riding. dewar was a promising mp, and his opponents were not the best the liberals had to offer. but, the conservatives were not competitive in these ridings.

it was the people in the south and west of ottawa that i found myself yelling and screaming at...

and, you know what?

they admitted it.

they apologized...

maybe, biden and his army of zombie idiots should follow.

and, every time biden opens his corrupt, senile, racist, ignorant, shithead of a mouth, he just gives howie hawkins an even better argument.

the difference between what jack layton did in 2006 and what nader did in 00 and 04, or what hawkins may do in '20, is that hawkins & nader have much, much better arguments.

so, i'm just wondering if biden and his dipshit progressive/conservative advisors also have kind words to say about the likes of ralph nader, or perhaps howie hawkins, or if they only have kind words to say about fake leftist right-wing enablers that exist in other countries?

we were closer to universal daycare in 2005 than we are today.

and, why didn't it happen?

because jack layton pulled the plug on it.

(block javascript in your browser to access the article)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/dryden-achieves-10-child-care-agreements/article990610/

this was the culmination of years worth of work; layton pulled the plug on it.

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

martin's budgets were actually exceedingly liberal, as well - it's not like layton had some horrible things in front of him that he couldn't support.

there was a universal daycare program, for example, that nobody talks about anymore.

there were major increases in health transfers to the provinces.

there were major commitments to indigenous groups.

and, there were even the last serious commitments to climate change seen at the federal level, in this country.

these were good budgets, and layton should have supported them (they were possibly better than his own would have been), but layton didn't care - he wanted a run at power, and he knew he'd have a better chance of winning if the conservative were in power.

so, he cynically collapsed the government in order to maximize his own chances - the country, be damned.

fuck daycare. fuck healthcare. fuck the aboriginal. fuck the climate. what's important is jack. right jack?

asshole, to his core.

the nine years of stephen harper that brought this country to the brink of collapse, and may still get us over the brink, are 100% at the foot of layton's grave.

jack layton has two legacies in canada:

1) the death of the ndp as a vehicle of the left
2) stephen harper

yeah, hard-right son-of-a-conservative minister jack, who ruined the party that gave us healthcare, by caving in to the conservatives.

the guy was a right-wing asshole.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/biden-speech-evokes-layton-s-message-of-hope-days-before-9th-anniversary-of-former-ndp-leader-s-death-1.5073905

ok, so the basement now smells disgusting and i need to figure out why.

yuck.

and, to answer the obvious question...

i don't want to be a teacher. at all. maybe i thought about it at some point as a way to sell my labour to exist, but i'd rather be a 40 year old in first year than a professor with tenure.

teaching is incredibly boring, as a job. you go over things you already know, to people you can't relate to. we all know the sad professor, and i would become that, i'm sure.

but, learning is always fun, so long as there's not too much pressure and, in the right scenario, i could see myself re-engaging.

i actually would go back to school, but only if:

(1) i complete my discography
(2) i can get something like this happening:
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/thoughts/trolls/floater.html

i skipped the last part.

i did too many mushrooms with some occupy activists in the spring of 2013 near a creek in orleans, and realized in the process that arguing about the foundations of law with stuck-up professors was a waste of existence, and i had to move on.

so, i hitchhiked to windsor, and here i am.

i did a learn a valuable lesson.

people are assholes, and you can't even trust the people you think care about you the most.

i wasn't a profitable enough investment to bother with.

nononononno.

imagine giving your landlord notice, moving out of the apartment and then showing up at the door with your stuff and being told "no. get lost.".

i probably could have figured something out if he hadn't lied to me, but it's the old work-or-die attitude; if i wasn't going to work a 9-5 job and put money away for his retirement, i could basically starve on the street and die.

maybe it's a good time to run through my education.

that picture on the side is from mid 2017, and i should really upload some new pics. that would make me 36 in the picture; i'm now 39. i know i look very young, and take pride in it.

1) i graduated from st. pius X high school in ottawa in 2000, with 8 oac credits in calculus, algebra, finite math, biology, chemistry, physics, computer science and english. i was lucky to go to a high school with a big music program, but you can only take so many courses. that was the last year for oac in ontario. sort of. i refused to enroll in grade 13 religion under the argument that it was a waste of time, and refused to complete the community service requirements in protest at the obligation to perform unpaid labour. so, i have a transcript (i got 99 in calculus and 97 in comp sci, and maybe should have picked something easier than gravity's rainbow for english), but i don't have a diploma. i'm not ashamed of this; i think my protests were grounded, and i'd do it again.

2) i went to ottawa u for a few weeks in a software engineering program, and switched into math-physics at carleton by early october. i switched into a four-year pure math program after first year, then into gender studies late in second year, and briefly enrolled in an english program in third year. so, i had no idea, really.

3) i dropped out a few weeks into third year to raise money for gender transition, and ended up hitching to bc with a friend, and coming back not much later. i was back in the math program at carleton after skipping a year.

4) i finished a four year b. mathematics (not a b. sc, not a ba. a b. math.) in 2006. i was frequently homeless, on drugs and generally kind of a messed up young person, and my marks reflect it - they're all over the place, and semester-dependent. it's the old oppressed queer kid sob story that is so normal to all of us. so, i got straight As some semesters when i was focused and straight Ds when i was sleeping on my ex-girlfriend's floor, and camping out in the loeb building. it worked out to a strong B+, which put me in a state of limbo for grad school.

5) i ended up working very entry level positions in the tech industry for a couple of big companies like microsoft from 2007-2008, when the tech jobs started disappearing after the crash. i didn't want any more debt, but my dad tricked me into going back to school by promising to pay for it, then bailed at the last minute.

6) so, i was admitted into a qualifying year for a master's program in math in 2008; i was admitted by carleton, but the masters in math (at least at the time) was jointly administered by both ottawa and carleton, together.

7) after my dad bailed on me, i switched into a b. sc. for computer science. my argument was that a masters degree in mathematics is not worth the paper it's printed on, but he insisted on it, and suckered me into it; as soon as i realized i'd have to pay for this myself, and had no ability to pull out (without defaulting on my apartment), i decided to switch into something i thought would be more marketable, in the long run.

8) somebody with a math degree is already mostly done a comp. sci.  degree, so i was able to get to 19.5/20 credits in two years (including the summer). my average over these two years was in the high 90s.

9) but, i had a moment of reflection in 2010 and decided i didn't want to live that way, which led me into a narcotics-fueled mental breakdown, and eventually landed me back in transition. i did not finish this second degree; i'm a half credit short, specifically the honours thesis.

10) despite high grades, i was ineligible for further student loan funding over 2011 because i dropped out in 2010 and got evicted at the end of the year after being unable to find a full time job. i blame this eviction on my then wealthy father deciding to be an asshole and "teach me a lesson" (what a dimwit.), and had to move in with my grandmother as a last resort, after he tricked me, again; he told me i could move home, then refused to let me actually move home, after i'd loaded the truck up with my stuff. i did not speak to my father much after that; he died of brain cancer in 2013. he was diagnosed the same day i was evicted, after suffering his first seizure while i was yelling at him for tricking me into getting evicted.

11) i was eligible for osap again in 2012 and very quickly completed the equivalent of three years of a sociology of law degree (1 first year course over the summer of 2012, the 2nd year requirements in late 2012 and the third year requirements in early 2013). osap is better than welfare, basically. i did not formally switch into a law program.

12) i got into odsp (ontario disability) late in 2012 due to post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from my father purposefully tricking me into getting evicted from my apartment in order to "teach me a lesson". i remain on odsp.

13) from 2008-2013, i quietly completed the requirements of a masters degree in math by completing more than 4.0 credits at the graduate level. i did not formally apply, or even enroll.

so, i have a lot of credits in a lot of different subjects and it adds up to:

0) a high school equivalency, without diploma, because fuck unpaid labour and fuck religion class
1) one official b. math degree in mathematics, with diploma
2) 19.5/20 credits of a b.sc in computer science, without diploma
3) the full requirements of a three year sociology of law degree (a b.a.), without diploma
4) the course requirements of a masters in mathematics, without diploma
5) undeclared minors in physics, economics and music

i'm happy on odsp and would like to stay here, or otherwise move to a gai.

i just don't like people. that's the reality. give me an apartment to read and rant and create in.

am i not entertaining?

the ruling was just shit-disturbing activism, and they really had no choice but to appeal it. but, the other side would have appealed the ruling, too.

so, sometimes, when you have judges that know that a case is going up, they will try to frame it in a specific way. and, that's what the ruling was, in truth, about.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/trudeau-government-appeals-federal-court-ruling-on-canada-u-s-refugee-pact-1.5074058

this law was written for people like navalny; he's the perfect example of somebody who should be prosecuted under the legislation.

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

if you know activists in germany, get them on this.

seriously...

germany has very strict anti-hate laws.

let's lock this fucker up while we can.

the only good nazi is a dead one.

they should have let him rot.

first kasich, now navalny.

who's next on the list of biden's mumbling expression of support for the extreme right?

there's really a consistent stream of evidence that biden is a closet nazi, isn't there?

https://www.ft.com/content/3a2e0e89-cff9-4fe5-aac8-a72a8b8022ee

"that's just russian propaganda"

ok, goebbels.

he's a nazi.

and, we always support nazis in eastern europe - this isn't an exception, it's the norm.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/01/09/nava-j09.html

they should charge him with promoting and distributing hate speech when he gets there.

this guy is a fascist thug and he actually does belong in a jail cell.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/21/alexei-navalny-to-be-flown-to-germany-for-suspected-poisoning-treatment

why don't i join ______ party?

i will never join a political party; i'm an anarchist, it's ideological.

i don't want to be in your party, and i don't care what the members of your party think of me.

and you can denounce me all you want, i'll still endorse you and vote for you if i think you're the best candidate - because i vote for you, you don't vote for me.

i understand why a bunch of people in their 70s might think gays and atheists are obscure fringe groups that everybody hates, but the fact is that they're not just wrong but ridiculously wrong.

besides white evangelicals, a dying breed, and hispanics, an in truth evasive and poorly defined group, the 10% of the population that are gay and the 25% of the population that are atheist are pretty much the single largest voting blocks in the country (along with the 50% that are women). they're also both popular groups that evoke large amounts of sympathy when they run for office.

they want to vote democrat, too.

and they gave us john kasich, instead,

so, the 70+ year olds are in truth just completely out of touch. sadly. and to their own detriment.

after trump wins re-election as a consequence of clueless tactical work by biden and his backers, the party has to make generational renewal an immediate necessity.

this has to be the last time that the democrats try to put together this incoherent coalition that doesn't make any sense.

the left needs to make a very specific attempt to install a gay governor in texas.

it should be a priority, as a symbolic victory.

parizeau had his money & the ethnic vote.

bernie has his gays.

same thing.

(parizeau was more right)

you could hear it come out of sanders' campaign near the end, this completely data-ignorant perception that he got sunk by the gays.

if there was any truth to it, it was that he didn't do any outreach, and threw one of ten voters away because of it.

but, the more realistic reaction is that his campaign was just run by a lot of bigots that swallowed a lot of republican talking points from the 1970s, and refused to do proper research into actual, real demographics. if the campaign had actually understood the demographics, and actually resourced itself properly, it might have at least given biden a better run...

but, it was easier to blame it on the gays. it always is.

gaytheism is the future of this continent.

but, they're stupid.

and bigoted.

and very, very old.

how about the united states?

i really wish the democrats would look at the data more clearly.

mormons: 1.9%
jews: 1.6%

muslims: 1.1%
buddhists: 1%

hindus: 0.9%

sikhs: 0.2%
===============
6.7%

gays: 10%
atheists: 25%
women: 50%

so, if i was trying to get elected, i think i'd be focusing mostly on gays, women and atheists, not on fragmented religious groups.

i'm going to presume that a third under-represented group would be disabled canadians, but i don't actually have rigorous data regarding the number of disabled mps in the house of commons.

there are two visually impaired members of congress, one liberal and one conservative. they both have prominent positions in their respective parties. that's 0.6% of the members of parliament.

while over 20% of the population self-identifies as having a disability, the definitions here are not consistent, and i know that they're not comparable.

but, these are the three groups that political parties in canada should be seeking to increase representation for: women, queers and the disabled.

they are also the three most oppressed groups in our society, by a substantive margin.

"if there's so many gay people, then why do the parties..."

because they're stupid.

and bigoted.

actually, i can think of two groups that are clearly under-represented.

1) women. under 30% of the parliament is female, who make up a bit more than 50% of the population. that greatly exceeds any concept of error.

2) queer people only make up about 1% of the parliament, but make up roughly 10% of the population - a number greater than the number of blacks, indo-canadians and muslims, combined. this would be the single biggest under-represented group in parliament that i know of.

it's actually gotten a lot better in the house though - it's 12% in the house v 13% in the population. that's within error....

conversely, there are currently three black us senators (if that is right, i think - kamala harris, cory booker and tim scott), out of 100 seats.

that's 3%, out of 13% of the population - a gap that is greater than any reasonable error.

to finish the thought: there are 10 indigenous members, and would be 17 if it were proportional. that's actually within error, too - it's about a 2% difference. so, i do apologize for being misleading; even indigenous groups are within a reasonable error of a proportional representation, which i'm surprising myself by.

if there is some other group of under-represented canadians in parliament, i am not aware of them.

like i say, it's a subtle debate.

even if i conceded that a problem existed, it's not as easy as just running more candidates. there's racism in the society, and running more minority candidates doesn't resolve it, it just makes it harder to get elected.

it's a discussion that needs a careful analysis around the reality of racism in the country, and the role that political parties can play in addressing it.

so, what happens when you start pushing for over-representation of minority groups in parliament?

you get a backlash from the majority, is what you get.

a party like the greens needs to be careful that it doesn't do that.

i mean, if you had party lists and stuff, you might make a different argument.

but, when you're dealing with random sampling, a margin of error under 3% is pretty close - as close as you're going to get, without rigging the outcome.

and, how many black canadians are there in parliament?

there are 5. that's 1.5%.

the population is around 3%, a little higher.

so, that's a reasonable margin of error, too - <2%.

there were 12 muslims elected to parliament in canada in 2019, out of 338 seats.

a proportional amount would have been 10. so, that's within error; the difference is around 0.5%.

there are some minority groups - like indo-canadians and muslims today, and jews in the past - that are actually starkly noticeably over-represented.

there were 19 indo-canadians elected in 2015, when a proportional amount would have been more like 10. that's a 2.7% difference, which is pushing towards significance.

i'm not complaining about that. as far as i know, they won their seats fairly.

but, it's important to point to actual, real data when making political decisions in an actual party, as bad assumptions could lead to poor outcomes.

indigenous groups in canada are starkly certainly noticeably under-represented in parliament. i would assume it's worse than any reasonable error, but i should look that up before i post it.

everybody else is roughly proportional, if you accept a reasonable margin of error.

that's not an opinion. that's data.

annamie is very purposefully and consciously positioning herself as a candidate that is interested in increasing the "diversity" of the democratic representation in canada, which opens up the obvious question as to whether we're experiencing a deficit of representation in the country when it comes to...."diversity" is a liberal party code word that racist white liberals use to refer to black and brown people, so i'm going to kind of drop it, but it's kind of getting me to the point of my concern, here. does canada have an issue with the proportionality of it's democratic representation? when i look at the elections i've experienced, what i notice is that all of the major parties consistently run a very wide selection of candidates that are often consciously chosen to reflect the demographics in their ridings, but that the most "diverse" of these candidates very often fail to win their seats. and, thus, i think the question is a little more subtle, when being approached from a leadership perspective. if we decide that the existing representation is not proportional, is it because parties are not doing enough outreach to present a representative slate or is it because voters are making different choices than parties are? and, if it's the latter, what are the reasons for that? annamie also demonstrated a tendency to use the race card in cynical ways that were intended to tar her opponents, and i worry if that might backfire with the broader canadian population, which may be sympathetic to legitimate demonstrations of racism and quick to bolt on a candidate that tries to play the race card in disingenuous ways. the members will need to weigh all of these issues, if they decide to walk down this path, and weight the relative importance of focusing on increasing "diversity" in parliament in the context of tackling the climate crisis.

as a long time viewer of the real news during the now apparently over paul jay period, i am much more familiar with dmitri than i am with any of the other candidates and it is actually for this reason that i'm a little apprehensive about voting for him as a leader, despite the fact that i think he'd make an excellent and very responsible member of parliament, much in the same way that elizabeth may is. dmitri is exceedingly strident in his opinions, and very much convinced of the correctness of them, in ways that may make it difficult for him to organize a political party. a dmitri lascaris led green party may be fun for a few years, but i would be concerned about his electoral viability, due to his tendency to take controversial positions and refuse to compromise on them. those supporting his candidacy should be aware that they are getting somebody with very strongly held opinions that holds to those opinions because he is certain he is right. that said, he's probably the best attorney general that the country will never actually have.

regarding bds....

the switch to the ndp was a little curious to me, given what happened to libby davies all those years ago. i'm, personally, a little bit apprehensive about bds as a tactic, for the reason that it seems likely to me to make things worse rather than better, which is a position i've adopted from listening to chomsky. but, i am exceedingly confident that dmitri is coming from a place of support for human rights, and not a place of support for something else.

dr. howard is the second of two candidates that are entering this race with clear qualifications to a lead a federal party, and, in my opinion, is the obvious runner-up, that only being because there is another candidate with more experience in politics, specifically. courtney's experience is of a slightly different nature, which is a bit of a judgement call - is a political background more preferable, or is a medical/scientific background more preferable? the party really needs both things to function. dr. howard also presents the members with a real option to pick a younger woman to jump the queue, if you will, if that is of great importance to you. while i would be comfortable in voting for her expertise and wisdom, and think she's an ideal middle candidate that is both useful for the present and the future, i will not be participating in the contest.

my impression of meryam is that she would be an interesting choice primarily for people that are looking to build a more general left-wing party and are focusing strictly on the long term, and that she's approaching the greens as a kind of vehicle for the construction of a new party of the left; that is, she strikes me as somebody that's basically just fed up with the ndp and looking to move past it. the greens exist, therefore she is here. but, if her argument is rooted in the superiority of an electoral strategy that pushes the idea that the greens can win seats tomorrow by convincing more young people to vote by running a young person, i may suggest that the members look at the evidence of how successful such a strategy has been recently - but to do so across the board. compare and contrast the very large increases in turnout that the liberals managed under trudeau in 2015 (and disappeared last year) to the anemic turnout in the united states amongst young people, and try to figure out what you think a meryam-led party would more resemble, and truly be able to accomplish. do you think you can win seats by convincing young people to vote? then, perhaps you could see a good reason to support meryam. if you're a little skeptical about that, based on the evidence from recent elections, then maybe a different candidate may be preferable.

david is a likeable enough guy that seems to be committed to the climate and he seems to be successfully avoiding the issue that i'm most concerned about with him, which is the potential of the ndp going after him for being too right-wing. whether that's true or not (and i think the evidence is mixed....it's both fair and unfair), we've already seen what kind of effect that can have on elections in bc. so, david presents a kind of another choice for the members: do they want to dig in and kind of let the ndp attack them in this way, and try and carve out some support in reaction to that, or do they want to step away from that as a potential liability? i'd be a little apprehensive, myself. regardless of where you stand on the spectrum, the greens are in direct competition with the ndp in much of the country, and i'd be worried that he might be a factor in losing some seats, even if he succeeds in winning his own.

glen has an establishment background, but the truth is that he's also the most left-wing candidate in the pile. if you're a pragmatic, left-leaning environmentalist then there's a lot of reasons why he should be the front-runner, but i don't get the impression that he actually is. i will not be voting in this contest, but if the party membership wants to pick a leader that is able to present the party as a serious choice that wants to actually get something done then i would suggest you make a serious effort to look beyond his history as a high-ranking liberal and listen to what he's actually saying. and, let's remember that elizabeth came out of mulroney's office. glen has consistently come off as the most informed and most focused candidate on these panels, even when he's being consistently cut off for running over time. as such, the party has a kind of acid test here; does it want to take itself seriously now and try to take a run at the balance of power in the imminent upcoming election, or is it looking to build, longterm? if it wants to get in tomorrow, glen is the leadership candidate that can step in and make a difference right away. if it wants to look long term (and how much time do we have?), then it's going to pick somebody else that is going to take a longer view. i don't think we have much time, and would lean towards a candidate that can have an immediate impact. but, we will see if the members are thinking the same way as i am or not.

as per usual, the headache went away with a long, hot shower. further, the air seems to have moistened up nicely, to the point that i'm no longer coughing. migraine averted? let's hope so.

so, i'm very confident that i understand the causes, and i know how to react.

i just wish i didn't have to; i wish the air would just stay moist enough that it's not triggering me.

i got another clean of the fan in, and i just have to hope it turns back on once it's dried out. it's one of those grey ge/honeywell type affairs that you can clean via water pressure in the tub. they're constructed well, but they have proprietary screws, so they're hard to clean. if i can't get this to work and have to buy another, i'm going to make sure i get something i can take apart to clean.

i keep saying i'm going to clean this space up, then rant all night. but, if i can avoid the headache, that's the plan.

"but we need more studies to know if you end up dying by shitting out your liver or your pancreas."

*headdesk*

maybe this might help.

what would happen if you contracted the virus, and you weren't able to clear it with t-cells, and you didn't get sick?

you'd melt; you'd die by shitting out your liver.

it would just rampage through you, and you wouldn't even know what hit you.

is that making more sense?

let's take a step back here and explain why we don't need studies to know that humans are creating antibodies to eliminate the virus, and that there is no ambiguity surrounding the point, at all, whatsoever. and, i'm not going to cite studies, nor am i going to post links, but i'm just going to summarize a high school biology textbook, for the benefits of people that were apparently too lazy to bother.

and, i don't want to hear excuses - if you don't take bio in high school, you're just too lazy to do it. there's no other reason. i'll accept that physics and chemistry are a little esoteric if you're really intent on becoming a lawyer, but high school biology (including evolution) is really so rudimentary that it ought to be mandatory for all five years.

and, the immense ignorance we're seeing in front of us is evidence of the point.

so, how do we know that antibodies work without doing any studies?

the answer is that we get sick and clear the virus.

"but, what about t cells?"

if you clear the virus with t cells, you won't get sick. that's maybe the only thing i've seen come out of this that is mildly surprising; the apparently very high percentage of people that just clear this thing without even sneezing.

but, if you get any symptom at all - headaches, fever, coughs - then that is evidence that your body is producing antibodies.

and, when you defeat the virus, that's proof that it works.

well, unless you want to argue that it just gave up and left.

"meh. fuck this guy, anyways. i'm infecting somebody else."

no. stop. it is that easy.

it doesn't require a study.

when you get sick, you're producing antibodies; when you win, that means they cleared it.

and, when you die, that means they didn't.

source: any middle school science textbook.

this just in, we've got a response from biden regarding the news about the wheel...

i am remember this one time back in 1879, when we were talking about eels. they're odd creatures, the way they just clamp on to you. it's like the time when i was walking in the park and i saw a coyote, and jill looked at me and said "that's a dog", and i said "that's a coyote", and then i wondered why the coyote was letting somebody walk him in the park and jill said that it's a dog.

anyways, why did you ask me about eels?

i'm not exaggerating.

i really do like 45 degree humidity.

like, crave it....

something else i'll do when the humidity gets up over 35 is position the fan so it's blowing in moist air from outside.

yes - i sit in an apartment in the summer with two fans pointed away from me, because i need the circulation but i don't like the cooling effect.

i'm starting to get a dry air smell in here and my fan still isn't working :(

it smells more like the back of a radiator than an ashtray, so i think it's probably the dehumidifier rather than a smoker. but, removing humidity from the air is going to affect me the same way as smoking will.

i was on the brink of an aura when i fell asleep this morning, and woke up feeling better. however, i'm getting the very beginning start of round two, which is hitting me in the stomach first, and just starting to spread to my right side as i'm typing. let's hope i can avoid it, but i basically need the fan on immediately or i won't; round two is always the harder one to avoid.

it's a mild day out, but not warm enough to let the heat in. i also need to have the fan pointing towards the window to keep some of the smell out, or it's worse with it open than it closed. we should get something more closely approaching summer over the weekend, but i'm not interested in being stoned right now; i burned myself out nicely, and that should be it for a while.

so, i've got laundry running (again) to get the heat up, and i'm going to have to get back to trying to clean out the fan. i'm essentially going to be unable to do anything until the fan starts working again.

my little usb fan is probably not actually doing anything relative to the larger fan. right now, i have it an inch from my face to try to blow the dry air away from me, but that's not going to be effective for very long.

i may end up sitting in the shower all night.

we've also got some reaction from dr. fauci on the reinvention of the wheel, as well.

i must express cautious optimism around the wheel-reinvention candidates, as they have yet to pass randomized testing in sufficiently large trials. we are not yet clear if this particular approach to rewheeling will effectively eliminate friction, or if there may be unknown sources of friction coming from hidden variables, or perhaps even multiple dimensions. it is also not clear if the friction is being eliminated because of the rewheeling or due to some other effect, like sympathetic magic. i would cautiously avoid using this device to reduce friction for now, and continue to drag objects that need to be moved in sleds, as the egyptians did centuries ago. 

there was a follow-up about potential hyperthermia due to exertion, and a query as to why our previous understanding of the wheel was not sufficient.

look, we just don't know yet. i'll be the first to support a proper wheel-reinvention candidate when it appears, but until then we need to keep dragging ourselves through the mud.

you'll realize i'm funny when this is over, and i was right and you were stupid.

we've got some reaction from bernie sanders on the reinvention of the wheel.

i'm in solidarity with the reinvention of the wheel, and glad to hear it. my own wheel was getting a little run down from running in spot on it for the last 50 years. it's still my wheel though, and stay the fuck out of it.

people don't seem to know what vaccines are.

they seem to think it's a magic potion that wards off bad demons, or something; i'm only mildly exaggerating.

no - i'm a bitch, sure, and i enjoy it, but this is serious; it's really exposing a very serious hole in our public education programs, when we have adults, many of them well meaningm that simply have no idea whatsoever what a vaccine is, whether they're opposed to it or not.

if you're going to send kids back to school in september, maybe a solid week of vaccine learning across the board for students of all ages would be appropriate, to start.

BREAKING NEWS

as of 15:14 est, there are reports out of new york that the wheel has been reinvented.

i repeat: the wheel has been reinvented.

while these reports are preliminary, and some caution is suggested, we will provide further updates after the run of pornographic infomercials disguised as after-school specials ends, at 18:00.

the argument that we're going to be hearing from all these ignorant arts majors on the fake left is something like this:

as antibodies don't provide immunity against the virus, the only effective way to mass immunity is via vaccination

they will stand up and state this into their microphones and their audiences will lap it up, because they don't have the base of knowledge to deconstruct it.

and, as hilarious as it is, it has to be stopped. we can't have people thinking they need to get vaccinated, because antibodies don't provide immunity. that's going to create all kinds of problems in the long run.

there's a phenomenon in psychology called the dunning-kruger effect that i'm...

you can't really measure things like this. if you thought i was critical of economics as a science, you should hear me lace into psychology.

but, that seems to be the idea that's at play, here.

we're all experts now, thanks to twitter. right?

this is something we're learning...

the most vocal proponents of widespread vaccination don't seem to understand how it works.

we really need to put a much greater focus on basic science in grade school.

ok?

people are idiots, and not only do they not know they're idiots, but they wouldn't understand it if you explained it to them.

worse, i bet that a majority of people don't even understand the joke.

i'd like to see a study on this....

what is the size of the intersection of people that hold the following views simultaneously:

1) antibodies don't create immunity to the virus
2) vaccination should be mandatory

i suspect that these views are actually highly correlated.

and, that's both frightening and hilarious at the same time.

in other news, scientists have recently found an unexpected link between eating food and alleviating hunger. these groundbreaking results are preliminary, however, and need to be verified with further testing.

that journalist needs to be reassigned to something else.

like, maybe covering school board council meetings.

the idea that antibodies are going to be protective is not controversial.

and, you need to take a course in grade eight science, if you think that it is.

we're doing phase III trials and global news thinks we need to prove that antibodies might protect against the disease.

the stupidity is just staggering.

how did this get published?

fire this journalist!

https://globalnews.ca/news/7288133/coronavirus-antibody-protection-science/

cases are clearly up in ontario.

that is all.

so, they're back to fucking with the data, if they ever stopped.

i don't know when we're going to get analyzable statistics from ontario. it could be years. or, it might never materialize.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/covid-19-coronavirus-ontario-august-20-emergency-orders-1.5693397

i think maybe a lot of us have been driven into unreason, and coerced into throwing away a lot of our principles over the last few weeks and months.

let's try to get our heads back.

my body, my choice is a slogan i'd support in many different contexts, including vaccinations, tested or untested.

regarding that russian vaccine again...

do you know who is the perfect example of somebody that is in a high enough risk category that they ought to be given the opportunity to make an autonomous choice about their body and their health?

donald trump.

he's over almost 75, he has to exist in public and he lives with a young person likely to spread the virus (i mean barron, not melania).

i'm not saying he should take the russian vaccine, although i'd love to see the media coverage around it. but, i would suggest that it's probably a better idea, as a prophylactic, than hydroxycholoroquine.

it would be hilarious if trump took the russian version, but there are non-russian vaccine candidates that are ready for or already in phase III trials.

is there some chance he could get sick and die from the untested vaccine? sure. 2%. 5%. those numbers are in the "easy to trick yourself" range, as they look small but really aren't. complication numbers for tested vaccines are going to be <<1%.

but, if he gets it, he has close to a 10% chance of dying.

he should have the right to weigh that risk himself, not be told what to do by the state. or fauci, as it may be.

i don't want to skip anybody, but my politics are not, personally, very aligned with mr. west's, and i'll just leave it at that.

judy strikes me as the kind of candidate that would emerge as a good consensus choice, in the middle of a vicious primary, which is not the scenario that is currently playing out. her most likely path to victory would be to take a kind of high road and walk up the middle, while two other candidates bludgeon each other, which is something that this process seems designed to avoid. while there are some tactical considerations to focusing on atlantic canada, i would recommend some caution amongst greens about putting too much emphasis on a region that may have been voting via the process of elimination. that is, if the sole intent is to build a regional base, i would recommend some caution before proceeding. that said, while her most likely path to victory in the leadership contest would be to avoid the trenches, the evidence i've seen in canada about leaders that come out of processes such as that would lead me to a little bit of caution in recommending her, as the end efficacy of that type of leader is generally minimal, as they will need to start fighting immediately on day one and often are not able to do so in an effective manner. while the party may be wise not to stray too far from elizabeth may as an archetype, we must not forget that ms. may's effectiveness is rooted in her assertiveness and feistiness, qualities i must presume she gained as a lawyer. i wonder if judy has enough fight in her to get her voice heard. i will not be voting in this contest, but i do wish her luck.

dr. kuttner is clearly a very bright, focused individual, and i have to say i like the attitude being projected the best of all of the candidates. we used to talk of the ndp as the moral conscience of the nation, but really haven't heard talk of that since the day that jack layton pulled the plug on paul martin. i am interpreting dr. kuttner as a good candidate to take on that role, from a more rigorous perspective than they ever really did. yet, that would be a role for a leader of a party with a more substantive presence than the greens currently have, and it would consequently appear as though dr. kuttner is maybe converting too much potential energy into kinetic energy. i will not be voting in this contest, but i would suggest that dr. kuttner's talents are currently better served in a support role to a leader with a more dynamic and populist style that is better able to work up a groundswell of support.

so, i had to take a nap, but i seem to have avoided the migraine, for now.

i'm very thirsty, which is consistent with my analysis.

let's hope that fan starts working again before the next wave hits.

i'm just trying to find a good way to get this across so it's written down somewhere in understandable terms for leftists to reference, because it's a big problem on the ground - the left is absolutely clueless about race, right now.

we are taught to see race. it's true; when i say it's a social construct, that's not a facetious claim - we see it everywhere, because we're taught to, forced to, brainwashed to...

but let's forget about skin colour for a moment and talk about eye colour, instead. this is easily measurable, and we have a good idea of the genetics behind it.

so, let's suppose that we decide we're going to categorize people by eye colour. i'm not even going to walk you through that; i'll let you imagine how you'd do that...

the absurdity of the process should be apparent to most, immediately. do we suppose that eye colour has some effect on who these people are? that blue-eyed people are a certain way, and green-eyed people are another way?

would we wonder if the bmi of redheads should be measured differently than the bmi of brunettes?

no - we would laugh at this.

so, why do we still take skin colour seriously? why don't we see it as as much of a triviality as eye colour or hair colour is?

the answer is because we've erected a social construct around it!

but, if we were thinking more carefully, and actually looking at the science, we would realize that the amount of our genome that codes for skin colour is not much greater than the amount that codes for eye colour or hair colour or nose shape or breast size. and, we would see the idea of categorizing people by skin colour as as absurd and full of contradictions as the idea of categorizing people by any other meaningless physical characteristic.

so, please, people - stop talking about race in biological terms.

the bbc should retract that article and apologize for publishing it.

and, no you can't use y-dna haplotypes to determine race, either.

not rigorously.

consider the curious example of the black r1b populations in africa. we don't care how that got there right now, i'm just drawing your attention to the fact that there is, in fact, a black population with overwhelming r1b y-dna, which we usually think of as the "white gene".

https://haplomaps.com/the-euro-african-or-the-story-of-the-haplogroup-r1b/

clearly, that gene ain't so white, is it?

it's also true that some indigenous groups in canada have upwards of 80% r1* ancestry. we can talk about how that happened some other time. right now, simply note that it's true, and it doesn't affect the phenotypes (or not as much as you'd imagine it does).

it's an absolutely negligible component of your genome...

it's one of my biggest peeves.

the smart post-modernist thinkers know that race is a construct, but there's still so many ignorant people out there that take these post-modernist ideas and try to erect them into race as an identity.

it's the worst pseudo-science imaginable, and it drives me fucking nuts.

listen.

people can get pissy, but they're wrong. so i don't care.

i wouldn't care, anyways; when somebody's upset because they're wrong, i'm in negative territory in terms of caring.

you'd have to actually donate me fucks to give.

the problem scientists have with race is that they can't define it.

we can't figure out who belongs to which group - who is black, who is white, who is asian, etc.

it's just incoherent, as a tool of categorization.

tautologically true statement: you have black relatives.

what does it mean, though?

you've probably heard these statements, no doubt tersely.

"race has no scientific basis", "race is not a biological concept", "there is no scientific meaning to race", etc.

what?

what it means is that your ancestors aren't as homogeneous as you probably think they are; what it means is that we migrate widely and always have, that we all fuck each other and always have and that any one of us, as individuals, has ancestry all over the world, regardless of our phenotypic expressions.

what it means is that, because genetic diversity is highest in east africa due to it being our ancestral homeland, two black women from africa are likely to have more genetic differences between each other than either are likely to have with any random white people.

what it means is that you can't build generalized genetic relationships based on observing how people look, that phylogenetic relationships are not strongly correlated with phenotypes.

what it means is that you don't just have ancestors that look differently than you, but you have ancestors that look any way imaginable.

but, mostly, what it means is that it is impossible to build rigorous, data-based categorizations of humans based on their appearance; all you get is noise and contradictions.

it's not like they didn't try to do it, but they failed.

as a scientific concept, race is just wrong.

we can talk about race in a sociology classroom.

but, we dare not speak of it in a biology course - not any more, anyways.

race is not a biological concept, it's a social construct.

there's nothing to study.

people that talk about race using biological terms are operating in the realm of pseudoscience.

the idea that bmi should be calculated differently for black people is racist.

and, if you're a black person convinced of that, you've internalized your racism.

this is completely retarded.

bmi is not a racialized concept, but poverty is. the reason these numbers are different across these ethnic groups is a reflection of systemic racism, not a question of biology.

so, i would support programs to help poor people eat better diets, regardless of their ethnicity.

but, i don't think it's worthwhile to waste time and research dollars on determining whether bmi is different for different racial types; it's a laughable suggestion, frankly.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/49f398eb-5546-4d68-8d07-4b74e35b1df8

"Based on everything we know... this has not been sufficiently tested," he added. "It's not about being first somehow - it's about having a safe vaccine."

well, tell that to the clear-minded 85 year-old diabetic that just inherited her only daughter's grandkids, as she succumbed to it herself in her 60s.

that's a little over the top....

but, you get the point. there's lots and lots of people that will very rationally choose an experimental vaccine, after a cost-benefit analysis.

this is the real world, where people have no choice but to live in risk.

i think that if people are willing to take the risk, they should be allowed to assume it; it's their body, so it's their choice.