i'm detouring on the cds because i wanted to listen to a few cds while i was putting the aluminum up. i need to reclean the space, but it is finally in order, up to the need to tidy it up. i will have the aluminum up very soon.

i had a lot of ms systems a few years ago and was very worried but in hindsight it seems to have been a b vitamin deficiency from an absorption issue. i resolved the issue by adding fortified nutritional yeast to my diet, and have since shifted to cutting a powerful b-complex vitamin into four and taking it every six hours. the symptoms are completely gone.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/oct/20/christina-applegate-ms-misdiagnosed

just googling this and to stress the point...

- for the jobim, the complaint about the 1990 digital remaster is it's "too bright". that's because the original analog vinyl master was low passed and the digital remaster is reintroducing the cut highs, which were still on the tape. you don't have to low pass the digital master at 17 khz for mass production. it sounds like somebody increased the treble, but what they really did was undo the treble cut on the vinyl master. this confused consumers familiar with the original mix, who demanded they re-release the cd with the low pass, and they did. but it's the remaster that should exist in the label's archives, as it's the more correct mix. the nerds that understood shook their heads.

- for the cobham, the complaint about the 1992 digital remaster is it uses a "smiley face" eq in comparison to the vinyl master. but this is a misunderstanding of the fact that the analog vinyl master has a low pass and a high pass (this record has prominent bass) for mass market consumption to prevent the analog tape mix from damaging record players. when the record was digitized, there was no reason to run the low and high pass. so, the ignorant consumer listens to it and says "somebody ran it through a smiley face eq", but that's not true. what's true is that the digital master undid the low and high passes because it was no longer necessary, allowing for more detailed reproduction. this was not reversed in subsequent reissues, but the record was remixed a third time for dvd audio and the filters were finally brought back. so, the cd quality master is consequently higher quality than the dvd audio master, which reintroduced the spectrum restrictions intended for the analog master. ugh.

- the debussy record was actually recorded digitally in 1982. classical orchestras were quick to embrace digital technology and these discussions happen less amongst classical music fans because they tend to have a better grasp of why digital is superior to analog than jazz, rock or pop music fans. that makes sense, as classical music listeners would also have higher levels of education, more generally.

- the do make say think record was recorded digitally in 2003. the post-production is obviously digital. they are known for recording themselves live in large, open spaces, which is a decision intended to minimize low frequency dominance in small rooms. their recordings utilize the full frequency spectrum, with prominent and deep bass parts and sparkly synth and effects work, as well as retained high frequency airiness on the horns and cymbals.

- the holst/williams record was transferred from analog to digital some time after 1976 (maybe in 1983). the tallis fantasia is the rare type of piece that can benefit from tape saturation, as the composition makes use of natural reverb coming from an orchestra playing in a church. that is, the composition explicitly calls for a string orchestra to play in a church to generate natural reverb, and it was consequently recorded live in a church. the extra harmonic distortion from the analog process adds to the dreaminess. ok. it has been noticeably low passed, and that makes some sense as the reverb from the church may have created some feedback in the highest registers (overtone reflections). the holst symphony has a mid-heavy analog footprint as well and it doesn't sound to me like it was meaningfully adjusted, although i should note that there was a digital master of this recording released on vinyl in 1983. is it the same master? that might be why this sounds like it was dumped to cd from the analog master and would consequently have a reduced frequency range on reproduction from the intentional high and low pass filtering in the vinyl master. while this works with the tallis piece, it's an example of what not to do, with the holst piece. i can't find a confirmation, but none of the liner notes credit a remaster engineer. the tallis piece may have benefited from a proper remaster on the bottom end, even if it had to low pass to remove feedback in the high end. the holst piece should have been remastered from scratch. this recording of the planets was eventually (in 2011) remastered using dsd sampling for release on sacd without the williams pieces. i have not heard the outcome but it would in theory expand the frequency response over the one in the vinyl master in both directions. i'm going to move this dsd remaster to my discogs wantlist. the rca cd doesn't sound bad on my system, but if i can get a digital master, it's a clear upgrade.

this is an interesting test.

i'm almost 46 and i can hear 20 khz but not 21 khz. however, i have to put headphones on to hear from 17-20 khz. i can only hear up to 16 khz through my laptop speakers. i don't currently have a computer connected to my kefs and the laptop speakers are suspect for reproduction (they might not reproduce higher than 16 khz). there is also background noise in my room.

the test tones themselves are not a good metric, though. the issue is not sound playing at this frequency (there is almost nothing) but the overtones coming from sound reproduced at lower frequencies. sound waves from a speaker in a room will bounce around and interfere with themselves. sound at frequencies you can't hear will interfere with sound at frequencies you can and change the waveform you can hear. so, cutting the frequency spectrum above 17 khz on reproduction will affect the output, even if you can't hear the test signal at all.

audible sound waves from instruments in real life will have complex interference patterns creating the sound you can hear lower in the spectrum. you want to maintain as much of this as possible to maximize reproduction at the lower frequencies, even if you can't hear any of it at all.

this alone is a slam dunk argument for cds and for remastering old recordings from source whenever possible.

there are apparently vinyl cartridges that can reproduce up to 20 khz and cost ~$20,000. i'm skeptical of the claim but you can buy one and test if you'd like. 

https://www.youtube.com/@testtones8564

if you want a concrete example of something that was recorded in analog and sounds way better on a digital remaster than the original analog mix, do an a/b of this track (and the whole record):

one of the misleading marketing arguments made by vinyl-driven capitalists was that vinyl could reproduce frequencies over 50 khz - well outside what you can hear and twice the frequency of a cd. if it were true, there's an argument that, with sufficient playback equipment, it could reconstruct overtones and make a difference on playback. but, it's not true. 

what is true is that you can manufacture a record that has data higher than 50 khz on it. however, if you ever tried to get that data off of the vinyl disc, you couldn't. the arm can't do it. maximum reproduction on vinyl is lower than cd or digital audio, at 13-17 khz, depending on the quality of the turntable. 

for that reason, vinyl mixes used to be lowpassed around 15 khz or lower. nowadays, the standard is 17 khz. but note that your grandfather's turntable probably can't even reproduce at 17 khz, let alone 22 khz or 50 khz.

that's why vinyl masters sound "less tinny" - they remove all the data in the higher frequencies because the technology can't reproduce it without generating noise or even breaking the physical mechanism on playback.

this is a good example of the kind of snake oil that these used car salespeople have been pushing in selling vinyl, and which these dumb kids bought into.

i want to post a link to this here because it explains some further misunderstandings about vinyl v cd audio. one of the arguments you hear fro vinyl advocates is that cd mixes during the loudness wars are too aggressive in their limiting, and that's a valid debate that's specific to a genre of music that i basically don't listen to at all and consequently is of minimal relevance to me, but the argument continues that vinyl masters have less limiting due to playback issues and are a way to avoid the loudness wars. first, there's likely limited truth to this, as most vinyl masters are just digital masters with extra processing, namely more aggressive high and low pass filters. the vinyl mix of your favourite emo record probably isn't less compressed than the cd mix, but it does have a lower frequency range because vinyl cannot reproduce audio at the top or bottom of the audible frequency spectrum without damaging the equipment. that emo record was probably put through low and high pass filters that just cut large amounts of the frequency range out. this is worse than the compression of the loudness wars, but you notice it less because your amp has a bass boost and a treble boost. vinyl mastering is actually consequently a lot like mp3 compression and vinyl reproduction suffers from a lot of the same playback issues that mp3s do. the industry managed to confuse people by talking about sample rates instead, as though your brain isn't a quantum computer. guess what? your brain quantizes sound. yeah. it quantizes light, too. the key is to beat your brain at quantizing sound, and that's a trivial task with modern recording equipment. 24 bit/48khz is more than good enough to beat your brain at quantizing sound.

with newer masters, the issue is dumping digital masters to vinyl, which requires the mp3-style compression and mp3-style reproduction at the amplifier. not only is it not some approximation of audio in the natural world, or something, but it's really a lossy audio format, by today's digital audio standards. however, a lot of consumers prefer the compression because it sounds dull (like you're listening to a cd playing in the other room with the door closed, or with a blanket or wet towel over your head) and they don't like listening to higher frequencies, which is like too much information or something. maybe there's some evolutionary explanation around the aversion to the tmi in cd audio. maybe it's familiarity and a fear of change. maybe they're parroting others with little independent thought. the surveys of consumer preference for vinyl are real, if the science and the argumentation supporting the survey responses is not.

but for old audio (jazz and classical recorded before 1990), you have the opposite problem - the masters are filtered to cut out large parts of the frequency range in the original recording because the amplifier is supposed to have things like bass boosts and dolby noise reduction to reproduce the cut ranges. with bass, it's often just oomph and it doesn't work that badly. for the high range, the low pass on the old masters cut out substantive amounts of the overtones on the melodic instruments and detail in the percussion and you can't bring it back without going back to the masters. that's why it's so important to look for some indication that the digital remaster was from source tapes, as was the case with the contemporary jazz masters remaster series, which exclusively remastered old jazz recordings from source to bring back the frequency range that got cut out with the low pass on the analog masters.

consumers had a mixed response, unfortunately. many didn't understand why the new masters had more detail in the high ranges and complained of a "tinny" or "harsh" sound on the cd audio. that's an adjective to describe accurate sound reproduction, and an adverse reaction to it, out of a fear of the other. it's not what consumers were used to or expected and, broadly speaking, either nobody explained it to them or they failed to understand when it was explained. musicians and other people that understood what they were listening to reacted favourably, but they turned out to be the minority and, in the end, many of these classic recordings were re-remastered for cd to bring back the low pass, to cut out the increase in detail and to reproduce the dead sound of the vinyl master. this is a reflection of american dystopianism, of the idiocracy of late capitalism.

you do consequently need to be a little careful with these old recordings. the general rule is to look for the first remasters, if you want a full frequency response. if you do like the low pass, look for second or third remasters.

at this point, it might be too late to remaster a lot of these recordings from scratch, so an attempt should be made to identify what releases aren't degraded by the low passes and preserve them for future generations.

https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/p/columbia.html

as mentioned before, the first book in the book web list (coming up in the serious blog, not this one) is going to be adam smith's theory of moral sentiments,. i read through the introduction this morning and due to how this works it's looking like i'm going to need to start by buying up some aurelius and filling in the gaps on plato, which is in the disappeared books list. i thought i was going to start with locke, but i guess we're going down the aurelius and aristotle path first, and i might have to buy up some aquinas. i'm neutral on aurelius (i'm not trying to be funny) and very critical of aquinas and aristotle, so this could start off pretty brutally. is there a complete works of plato? that's a good library add, obviously.

these are the things that are coming, in addition to the resumption of the asimov project at the childhood journal and the completion of some pre-inri musical ideas (pre-1996), to start.

everybody wants to exploit the situation from every direction, but stealing tvs is not stealing bread. it's not the same economically. it's not the same morally. it's another false projection by the liberal media.

everybody has a projected narrative they want to enforce for individual gain.

yes, the role of recent immigrants in the violence is obvious and clear and it's not as easy as blaming it on class divisions. i mean, that's not what they're saying. they aren't quoting kropotkin or waving marxist flags. they're quoting islamist extremists and waving palestinian flags. 

it's important to be empirical and observe and analyze the actual facts, not to make them up to fit a projected narrative about what you want the protests to be about. yes, there is a subset that is creating it's own false narrative by reproducing the false media projection. there's a circular economy of circular reasoning at play.

but when the situation is sorted out and investigators are able to better understand what happened, i am convinced that they are going to learn that france has a serious and growing problem with organized crime.

i've been to a lot of protests, albeit in canada, and not for a while. i identify as an anarchist. i've marched with anarchists. i've identified agent provocateurs. i've avoided undercover police; i've egged on undercover police. i've called out nazis and black bloc provocateurs. for that reason, i've been careful not to analyze with too much detail from a distance but have sought left-wing sources closer to france. this is none of that.

this is not political. this is gang violence. this is organized crime. this is theft; this is capitalism, this is profit-seeking. 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/19/france-anti-narco-activist-amine-kessaci-defying-biggest-drug-cartel-murder-trial-brothers

alberta has voted to remain in canada. that's a shame.

when does the rest of canada get to vote on whether to kick alberta out of confederation or not?

no sign of rodents in here last night. i did hear some running around upstairs, which is a return to normality. obviously, i'd rather get them out of the house altogether, but there's too many people upstairs to keep it clean. they need to buy, prepare, eat and dispose remnants of too much food. there's going to be things to eat up there, which is why i've taken the approach i took.

the key thing i did over the summer was to get them out of the laundry and that worked extremely well. there's no rodents in the laundry, at all.

but i need to rebuild my defenses along the walls on the other side of the laundry because they seem to be getting in on this side instead, which is not exactly pyrrhic but is certainly not what my intent was. the good news is that they aren't staying in here because i'm scaring them off and there's nothing to eat, so let me make those adjustments and move on.

His preaching states that Jesus is the only means by which humanity can be reconciled with God and leaves open the possibility that individuals may be saved in extraordinary circumstances if they were not aware of him in invincible ignorance, such as those who died as infants, never heard the gospel, or had the doctrines of Christianity misrepresented to them, such as in cases of abuse. Those who reject it in knowledge of its validity are condemned

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Hamilton_(pastor)

do you want to vote for a person like that?

i would campaign against this person, and do so extremely aggressively. this person should not be elected to any office, anywhere. this person is unfit for office and unfit to be a senator.

some time ago, i was just trying to figure out how white liberals could essentially throw conservative christian black women out of the democratic party for being too conservative and still manage to beat the republicans. it's been a big problem for the democrats for a long time: you have to win a primary in the south, so you have to go associate with these nigger christians with these backwards beliefs and deplorable value systems. you have to go sing and dance like a monkey in their horrible churches. you can't avoid it, but it's got the democrats stuck in neutral or reverse. how does the american left break out of this holding pattern and starting moving forwards again?

the answer was the mid west. at the time, iowa still leaned democratic and the great lakes were not swing states. further, the memory of clinton dong well in this region still existed. i was looking at kansas, missouri and kentucky - with missouri as key - as the way to break the gridlock. 

in fact, claire mccaskill was still in office at the time.

i was looking at urban/rural demographics and projecting that these states were urbanizing at a high rate, which remains true. 

The proportion of Kansans living in urban counties increased 2.4 percentage points from 54.9 percent in 2010 to 57.3 percent in 2020.

regarding missouri, this reddit thread expresses my argument:

https://www.reddit.com/r/kansascity/comments/i43rnx/the_visual_representation_of_the_divide_between/

the idea is that if democrats can tip these white states that are seeing their populations shift to a more urban and less rural composition, they can reduce their reliance on right-wing black christians in the south. 

i was right in a way, but i picked the wrong region. what i was projecting for the midwest happened in the southeast, instead, in north carolina and virginia. missouri is taking longer for this shift to happen than i expected.

i am not convinced that kansas is in play this month, but the race is not what i wanted to see happen. the democratic candidate is probably worse than the republican candidate. this would shift the democrats right, not left. it would increase their reliance on the demographic i'm scheming to get rid of, namely conservative christians.

i would actually call on democrats in kansas to stay home this cycle. don't vote for this guy. you might never get rid of him, and he might cause problems in the country.

from what i can gather, what's going on in france is not political anymore, it's organized crime. the crime syndicates might spray paint a circle a here and there as a distraction but anarchists don't support the theft of bourgeois retail goods for profit. you don't eat cell phones. that's not any sort of socialism, it's the worst kind of pirate capitalism. it's as extreme right as you get. but it's not real. this looks more like the mafia than it does like some spontaneous uprising of the extreme right. i am not infinitely familiar with the types of organized crime currently operating in france, but marseilles is apparently both the mafia hot spot in france and the epicenter of the property damage.

there's a narrative on the left to blame this kind of thing on government agitators. the term for it, agent provocateur, est en francais. it actually traces to bismarck, and the french uprisings of the 19th century. i'm sure - certain - that the government had some spies working to cause unrest to justify the clampdown, but this doesn't match the fingerprint. people are talking about masked grown men smashing through windows with specialized tools and removing equipment and specialized goods onto waiting vehicles, not dumb kids throwing rocks at storefronts. this not a starving mass and they're not stealing bread. they're not focusing on revolutionary overthrow. they're stealing phones, electronics, running shoes and ram in order to resell it. to the extent that any young people are involved in this, these are entitled, middle class kids looking to make a quick buck, not a revolutionary left. the looting was planned and organized and intended as profit-seeking behaviour. these items are going to come up for sale on ebay, etc.

the left should be supporting proper policing to clamp down on the right wing extremism responsible for much of the chaos, but the difference of scale looks to me like basic property crime and should be treated like basic property crime.

has melania trump ever read lysistrata?

don't answer that.

talking about a thucydides trap. yikes.

my condolences certainly do go out to the people affected by the recent weather balloon malfunctioning at wainright cfb in manitoba. those pesky weather balloons are prone to random explosions.

the americans are continuing to aggressively make an argument about protecting american "cultural exports" on "digital services" and tying it to nafta talks. i neither support the american nor the canadian position on this. i think we walked right into it and it's our own fault.

i don't use "digital services" and i don't consider netflix to be "culture". so these definitions are not rooted in reality from the start. further, i'm not interested in nationalism and reject defining culture in terms of national origin. that's fascist, and it's ultra conservative. i support a single "global culture" in a post-national, post-cultural society. the sovereign individual has no nationality, no culture, no religion - these are collectivist ideologies, these are feudal concepts, these are fascist rules. individualism cannot exist within nationalism. culture, religion and nationality all must be abolished to build a new socialist, secular society of the individual in a post-national technological future, where nobody pays to access propaganda in the form of video advertising (which is what netflix is).

the trudeau government, on the other hand, had this anachronistic idea that it could save "canadian culture" by enforcing digital content requirements created by just copying ideas from local broadcasting, as they were written in the 70s and 80s, and pasting them on to media companies that serve digital media, often from the other side of the world. it made no sense and exposed a deep ignorance of how these systems operate and who runs them. when challenged as to the importance of protecting "canadian culture", the trudeau government responded (formally or more often informally) that canada needed to be protected from america. but "canadian culture" wasn't in truth being threatened by out of control immigration. no no no. that's racist.

the americans rightfully have had some difficulties understanding this. it is incoherent. i can try, but i'll fail, because it's not consistent. i can try to point out the errors in logic. if "canadian culture" faces a threat, it's from too much immigration, not from the united states, which is culturally identical to us. yet, the government then hiked immigration, much of it from the third world, in an attempt to increase gdp by brute force rather than by innovation or technological growth. in the process, it demonstrated that it wasn't particularly interested in any kind of actual canadian identity, but was rather trying to protect third world cultural ideas from being assimilated by american cultural norms. well, that's what the policy says on it's face - come to canada and be a muslim extremist and we'll protect you from being americanized. i certainly don't support that, and very few canadians would, but it's essentially what the policy says. i would support americanization, in that context, not "multiculturalism". so, when pressed further on the point, canadians inevitably have no response but to say we don't want to be americans, and then be vague and unclear about what that means because the truth is that we do want to be americans, we just don't want to call ourselves americans. further, we certainly want to sell our own media in the united states, even as we place restrictions on americans operating media capitalism in canada, because the hypocrisy isn't intended to be consistent. we're not bothered by the contradiction. we don't care.

trudeau then told the americans he wanted to compete on digital media. oops.

trudeau was indeed a loser in a cultural sense, but that's not really my concern, here. i'm more interested in pointing out that he was a dumbass. i'm sure he's the source of trump's use of the term '51st state' and he didn't think it through, but thought it was 'ironic'. but he was also continuing a tradition of going to washington and engaging in friendly competition. this is our fault. we set this up.

donald trump doesn't engage in friendly competition. he competes to win. he seeks to bludgeon and destroy.

so, we asked for competition and we got it. then we didn't like it, because we're hypocrites. it turns out we don't want to compete after all. let's stick with that, it's more true.

there should be a total policy shift in ottawa on this. let's just throw the idea of canadian cultural identity in the trash heap. it's not real. to the extent that i may enjoy canadian bands, there's nothing inherently canadian about them (except increased state funding for the arts that got cut by harper and doesn't exist any more), and there is no dominant ethnic or national identity to generate a culture with. if the canadian state wants to incubate a concept of national identity, it should forget about netflix and focus more on immigration policy, like quebec is and has been doing and alberta and ontario are starting to do. maybe, one day in the future, canadians can have their own culture, after they've developed an immigration policy designed to inculcate it. today, we don't, and taxing american media companies doesn't create a national identity, it's just an excuse for a revenue stream, and it's pissing off the americans. drop this language. it's bullshit, and it's just creating needless conflict. the internet is post-cultural, post-national, post-ethnic. no piddling government tax will undo that, and no state should seek to undo that. the post-national character of the internet is an asset that should be what is incubated and grown. 

i don't think the government needs this excuse of protecting culture to tax netflix. it should just tax netflix and drop the bullshit. and i support taxing netflix.

right now, the americans are trying to turn the tables by aggressively supporting their own media companies. well, we told them we wanted to compete. we aggressively taxed them and told them this was why. we walked into this. the reality is that we don't actually want to compete at all and should walk that back. don't listen to what trudeau said; he was an idiot. we don't have a national identity to protect. we want the internet to remain a post-cultural space that is free of national character, not a testosterone driven sports league for dumb countries to compete in. we want the policies to enforce the international character of the internet, not react against that or try to undo it by enforcing some backwards concept of digital nationalism.

canada and the united states should be able to work together with other english speaking echelon-connected countries to go back to building a post-national internet with international rules and norms, and stop wasting cellular energy and stop wasting brain cells on competing with each other.

i'm not sure if i saw a mouse or a bat. the evidence arguably leans more towards a bat.

it was not a roach or a rat.

i still need to reclean the area and reinvestigate, either way.

i'm going to eat first, then put the aluminum up, then do the necessary cleaning.

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

am i sure a saw a mouse?

it was behind a book shelf. it was not a cockroach. it was too small to be a rat. the droppings i cleaned up after - around the windowsill, where i heard it rustling - were very small. it was a brownish, rather than the typical rat grey. therefore, it was a mouse.

what if it was actually a bat?

that might explain why it's around the window. it might explain why my food is not tampered with - at all. like, it doesn't even go into the kitchen. i'm pretty clean, but i'm not spotless, and nothing i drop on the floor ever gets eaten. i find things a day or two later. it's a pretty dumb mouse.

it didn't run when i found it. i heard something in here in the bedroom so i picked up a flashlight and started looking. a mouse would have recoiled from the light; this didn't. i had to spray it with lysol to get it to move.

there appear to be vents in the basement that go out to the roof because there used to be a working coal chimney down here. the chimney is still there. it has exhaust pipes from the furnace running into it and it's why i can't seal the furnace room other than to seal the door.

the droppings are very small - so small i thought they were roach droppings.

so what if the insect-eating, tiny shitter rodent is a bat and not a mouse? what next?

i'm going to add the next five now and then add the next five when i get to the end of the 10th so there's always five more ready to go.

antonio carlos jobim - stone flower (1970) 

billy cobham - spectrum (1973)

claude debussy - la mer / nocturnes (1905/1900)

do make say think - winter hymn secret hymn country hymn (2003)

gustav holst - the planets / ralph vaughn williams - tallis fantasia (1918/1919)

====

i mother earth - scenery and fish (1996)

man or astroman? - experiment zero (1996)

mike oldfield - ommadawn (1975)

ministry - the mind is a terrible thing to taste (1989)

my blood valentine - loveless (1991)

====

pelican - city of echoes (2007)

pink floyd - the piper at the gates of dawn (1967)

pink floyd - atom heart mother (1970)

pink floyd - meddle (1972)

plateau - iceolator (2002)

those are just the first ten 15 cds out of the boxes. i'll be updating in groups of five as they come out and onto the shelves

blogger music lists for existing cds (rebuilds):

chronological: https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/p/chronological-music-list.html

labels: https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/p/label-list.html

alphabetical: https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/p/music-list.html

discogs list (first 100 of many more to come): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nNhi2Z4vRr0hEP5OiK-6xxZP1G_b9OBW/view

librarything (first 15): https://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=dgdgkdhldfjlfdhla&collection=1082249&shelf=list&sort=authorunflip&sort=authorunflip

the music web - starting with miles davis - is going to have a new page at the deathtokoalas blog. the point is that i want to use the timeline feature so it's likely to lose the scrolling aspect. or i might design a new blog for it. 

yesterday was a bit of a detour. the specialized tape came in on saturday, and i was able to get the cardboard up on the ceiling and do some laundry and other things but not much else. i didn't realize my bedroom heater was clogged with dust, so cleaning that out helped get it working, which has been helpful overnight (with temperatures in here climbing back up to around 30 from the dip to 26/27 as a result of the colder overnight air the last few days). i am ready to get the aluminum up in the kitchen, but will need to buy more tape (multiple types) and also get more cardboard boxes for in the studio and the side entrance. i'm hoping that getting the aluminum up in the kitchen keeps the heat in down here as the temperature starts to come down outside. i'm not cold. for now. from what i can ascertain, the dirty upstairs tenants don't want the heat on because there's like 40 people up there, so i need to just generate my own heat and insulate it in here.

highs this week are still around 20 degrees celsius, with no end in sight. in canada, that's considered late summer. we've had a handful of cool days but fall has not really started here yet.

rather, i spent a long time yesterday typing, in a mild jump forwards to the next stage. first i bought some extenders for the potlights in the kitchen which were only $10 and gets the light out of the recess and into the space. i have made a huge attempt to increase the amount of light down here and it's just never enough. i have 1500 lumen bulbs spaced a metre from each other and it's still dingy and dim. i don't get it, and i don't like it. i like bright, powerful light fixtures. i know that led bulbs dim at a certain temperature, but it's not that hot in here. it seems like the power is wired badly and something upstairs is reducing the circuit, leading to a decrease in power. i don't know if i can even still buy tungsten bulbs in canada.

i re-entered items for the existing five disc cycle to the discogs and librarything sites, and cross-referenced to my web version of the music web (which is not the same as the music web i'm going to be building offline) and re-entered items for the next five discs, which i'll be cycling in and out.

antonio carlos jobim - stone flower (1970) 

billy cobham - spectrum (1973)

claude debussy - la mer / nocturnes (1905/1900)

do make say think - winter hymn secret hymn country hymn (2003)

gustav holst - the planets / ralph vaughn williams - tallis fantasia (1918/1919)

====

i mother earth - scenery and fish (1996)

man or astroman? - experiment zero (1996)

mike oldfield - ommadawn (1975)

ministry - the mind is a terrible thing to taste (1989)

my blood valentine - loveless (1991)

those are just the first ten cds out of the boxes. i'll be updating in groups of five as they come out and onto the shelves

blogger music lists for existing cds (rebuilds):

chronological: https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/p/chronological-music-list.html

labels: https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/p/label-list.html

alphabetical: https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/p/music-list.html

discogs list: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nNhi2Z4vRr0hEP5OiK-6xxZP1G_b9OBW/view

librarything: https://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=dgdgkdhldfjlfdhla&collection=1082249&shelf=list&sort=authorunflip&sort=authorunflip

the music web - starting with miles davis - is going to have a new page at the deathtokoalas blog. the point is that i want to use the timeline feature so it's likely to lose the scrolling aspect. or i might design a new blog for it. 

there is a small mouse in here, which i have been aware of since i moved in last year. it's not a roof rat from upstairs. i found one dead one in the furnace room when i had it open, and the droppings i found last week were roof rat, not mouse. i have not seen further rat droppings but i saw the mouse for the first time this evening. it seemed like it was trying to get out the windows. it might be trapped in here and trying to get out and i might have to kill it. or it might have been looking for water (window condensation. it's dry in here.). i think the mouse is coming in here periodically because it's eating the bugs, which is reason enough to kill it. there's been zero signs of food tampering or even activity in the kitchen. when i find these little mouse droppings, they're where bugs are, not where my food is. i wasn't even sure it was a mouse. it could have been from big roaches. but i saw it tonight. i don't want the mouse eating the centipedes, which are less damaging than mice for roach control. there are not many roaches down here that i can see, but there have been a lot of centipedes, and it's implied. so there's an ecosystem, with the mouse eating both the good and and bad bugs. it's the mouse i want dead. i think i've finally traced it to the upstairs bathroom and that it's coming in via the wall void separating the bedroom from the laundry area. i would be very surprised if there was more than one and it looked like an adult mouse. it's probably near end of life.

so i'm going to get the aluminum up first and then i'm going to have to pull everything out from the wall, see if i can find the hole, patch it and reclean all the floors. that's going to slow me down by a few more days, but it's actually progress because i have been aware of this for a while but the mouse was kind of a ghost. i think the presence of a mouse indicates the absence of the roof rats, which may have even come in here looking to kill the mouse.

as with the rat, if it can get out, that's the easiest answer. there is nothing for it to eat in here, except the bugs. i need to focus on keeping it out by resealing any holes that may have opened up.

five seconds of googling:

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3366192/china-singapore-security-team-claims-breakthrough-hacking-starlink-terminals

it's starting to look like the starlink systems in ukraine - which are very important to ukraine - got hacked.

the russians are technologically backwards. it's been a few years, so maybe they've finally completed the project of removing windows from sensitive russian computer systems. they had a backdoor to washington everywhere. the americans could practically write their policies remotely from the pentagon.

individual russian hackers are always a suspect.

but the russian government is actually not a likely suspect as they are not very good at hacking, despite the propaganda to the contrary in the west. the most likely suspect is in fact the chinese.

it was a mistake to isolate the russians, when they were leaning towards western integration. it pushed them towards the chinese, which is a harmful outcome for everybody, including them. we walked into a trap set by beijing in ukraine. it was not putin's preferred policy but we forced him into it.

the focus should be on reversing this mistake and realigning the russians towards the west.

the chinese are the adversary. they can't be invited.

the point of building a relationship with the russians is to isolate the chinese. otherwise, there's no value in doing so.

the americans should stress strictly bilateral discussions with moscow that explicitly exclude china.

if the russians will not agree to that, then the only possible outcome is continued war, one way or another. there should instead be an attempt to build relations with putin's likely successor. he's not getting younger.

it's the chinese sending weapons to iran.

it's the chinese sending weapons to the barbarians in yemen.

it's the chinese manipulating the situation in ukraine, and causing economic problems in the western hemisphere.

trump doesn't seem to understand that the enemy in these wars he's fighting is ultimately china. he doesn't seem to grasp the nature of the proxy wars he's fighting. he doesn't understand the board.

the chinese policy is to destabilize the region to increase exports to europe. 

it's not helpful to including the chinese, who are a belligerent and dominantly responsible for the situation. the chinese would be expected to intentionally derail and frustrate the talks in an attempt to prevent an outcome.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/19/putin-trump-xi-ukraine-war-energy.html

the reason we have a green party is to force the ndp to behave. they're not listening; they're misbehaving. punish them for it.

it's clear it doesn't matter much. you're going to get a right-wing government, regardless of who wins the election. but if you throw the ndp out, you force them to listen and rebuild.

no. 

throw them out for supporting exporting gas in 2026. that's unacceptable. make them learn. force them to change.

ndp supporters should vote green this cycle to get rid of this guy. tell him to run for the liberals.

https://www.castanet.net/news/Canada/634843/Eby-asking-Green-voters-to-support-B-C-NDP-to-defeat-Conservatives

in other news, the backstreet boys have been hired by an arab show promoter with ridiculously out of touch concepts about masculinity to play 14 shows in canada, the only country that would let them perform at all, to promote their new album: revoltingly disgusting gay old men are back.

if you have a perfect internet connection at all times and are willing to pay for unlimited bandwidth at high speeds then maybe streaming can be done at cd quality and you don't need cds.

otherwise, cds are still superior to streaming in terms of playback fidelity.

something i've also read in multiple articles is the claim that lossless audio is higher quality than cd. people seem to actually believe that that's true, which makes me want to break something.

i really strongly disagree with this pseudo-intellectual bullshit pop psychology argument that buying or listening to cds is about "nostalgia". i don't even know what that means. cds are the highest possible quality audio format on the market (with the exception of sacds, dvd audio or 24 bit streaming, all of which remain obscure, and only relevant for a select collection of recordings). of the thousands of cds in my music collection, i'm sure a numerical majority were released before i was born and the amount of music that i own that was released in the "nostalgia" period of my teens or early twenties is on the order of 15% of the total collection. even if i understood what that meant, it wouldn't be the period i'd want to remember. i spent those years listening to music because i was locked in dirty basements studying math and science. i listened to music instead of spending time with people - with the doors closed, through headphones. the age range i was more likely to go out somewhere was in my 30s, and i own almost no recorded music from that time frame because i spent the money on concert tickets instead. 

and beer.

i know it's hard for the stupid freudian idiots to understand, but when i put a cd on and listen to it through a good quality setup it's because i want to listen to music i like in high quality. really. that's it.

further, the music i listen to is detailed and complex enough to justify a good playback system, and the reason i like to listen to it is the detail and complexity in it, which requires a good system to properly enjoy.

i was born in 1981.

while it's a function of the fact that i'm setting my apartment up and taking cds out of boxes to put on shelves, my current 5 cd rotation (i don't listen to one cd at a time. i listen to five. i don't "slow down". it's not fundamentally different than how i consume digital audio, which is through full album playlists stacked together. i don't listen to one song at a time when i stream audio. nobody does. that's not real.) is

- antonio carlos jobim, stone flower, 1970

- billy cobham, spectrum, 1973 <---tommy bolin!

- claude debussy, la mer, 1905 and nocturnes, 1900

- do make say think, winter hymn country hymn secret hymn, 2003

- gustav holst, the planets, 1918 with the tallis fantasia by ralph vaughn williams after it (1567/1919)

this is a reasonably representative random sample in terms of genre and release date, with four out of 5 records being released before i was born. none of these records were my father's or were things my dad would have listened to (i do have some of his records, but it's because i enjoy listening to them, not for nostalgia). i'm not remembering anything. my collection is heavy on guitar-driven jazz and prog from the 60s and 70s and orchestral music from as far back as the 1500s. the tallis piece is maybe exceptional in terms of age, but i have cds from every time frame, in multiple abstract genres. the music i have from my youth is mostly experimental music on off labels, or punky grunge. i did like grunge. besides that, what i don't have is throwaway corporate pop from the 90 or 00s.

there may be some minimal subset of people that just want to remember being young, but that's not a reasonable analysis of why people that actually like music listen to music or why they buy music on high quality formats and the suggestion that it is is nothing better than moronically idiotic. it's just another example of how psychology is not a science and why freud makes everybody that reads him less intelligent than they were beforehand.

how do we honestly, realistically end this stupid war with the russians that just goes on and on and won't end? it's the energizer war. it just goes on and on and on and...

we thought it was over, but it came back. i grew up in a period where we defined ourselves by being post-war. i have no interest in this. i don't care about domestic issues or independence movements in historical russia. it's not my war. i want this to end.

the russians don't trust the west and they have very good reasons not to trust the west. napoleon. hitler. then the cold war. the americans didn't trust the russians either, although they had less justification for it. the russians never invaded western europe; western europe invaded russia several times.

it's no mystery how to end this. the suspicion and distrust has to end. there needs to be a focus on rebuilding trust. 

the russians need to trust us before the war can end. and we need to trust them to trust us. we will need to make concessions to do that.

this strongman language of strength and weakness and power and dominance will just perpetuate a conflict that should no longer exist. it's an anachronism. the basic point brought up in russian media is true; western governments banned the tv station and the youtube sites because what the russian media said is true - nato weapons in ukraine seriously threaten russian security. there's no way to get around this. it's true. there's no value in putting those weapons there. withdrawing them from ukraine back to poland is a reasonable concession for the purpose of building trust with the russians.

only mutual trust ends this.

not power. not dominance. not strategy. trust.

i don't want to suggest i agree with trump too much. i've posted before that i support high diesel prices.

but i agree that blockading iran is more valuable than harming russia. if i wanted to reduce energy prices by increasing supply, i would also choose to offset iranian oil with russian oil.

however.

these sanctions are not in effect. blocking them is not likely to make much of a difference. 

it's a step in a better direction, away from the last generation's war again russia and towards this generation's war against religious extremism.

i've been talking mostly about byzantine barbarian management, but the west has a history of barbarian management, too. biden understood this but wasn't very good at it. obama excelled at barbarian management, and even got me to support attacking isis.

barbarian management from rome rather than constantinople - which means washington rather than moscow - means a devastating, long war between the arabs and iranians sounds like a good idea and something you should get out of the way of. let them kill each other off. great news.

i expect my weight to fall pretty quickly after eating. i have generally had a fast metabolism through my life and it tends to just go in one end and out the other. the fact that my weight was getting stuck over the last weeks (along with sore legs and other things) was evidence that i was recently drugged, for the reason that muscle is heavier than other sorts of tissues. when i did the bloodwork last summer, the elevated creatinine was suggestive of steroid use. i have never done steroids before in my life. 

i am convinced of this truth and will need to react by finding ways to prove it.

however, i have learned over the last few years that i'm not going to convince a judge in ontario with a grade 9 science education about what's going on. the legal system uses an inferior and less rigorous basis of proof than scientists or mathematicians use. i find it frustrating that an argument that would be slam dunk in a science paper would not be taken seriously by a judge in this province, which would want a type of argument that wouldn't pass peer review in a scientific journal. they're incompatible bases of proof; contradictory epistemologies. it's not news to me. i knew this. i saw this when i was working on my law degree, but what i did at the time was write essays ripping the legal industry's basis of proof (which often looks to me like dark age reasoning because it's philosophical or ecclesiastical. it's based on aquinas. or aristotle.) apart and presenting superior types of argumentation rooted in logic and the scientific method, instead. my essays were all dismissive and critical and often threw out the judge's ruling in replace of my own, which was often quite different and frequently the opposite of what the precedent was. the fact that i got high grades doing this misled me into thinking i could walk into a court room and berate the judge for being illogical, unscientific and ignorant and that they'd be instantly enlightened by my superior intellect and quickly be able to see the way to a more scientifically based worldview. then, when i won a few cases, i decided it should be easy to get the judges to collectively pull their heads out of their asses. instead, and this was in hindsight predictable, the judges have reacted by aggressively upholding their own ignorance, and by rejecting things like implicit reasoning in favour of what are often easily dismantled logical fallacies that they legitimately aren't smart enough to be able to deconstruct. these people couldn't reason their way out of a paper bag, but they make the laws in this society. it's a serious crisis of intellectual legitimacy. while i was forced to defend myself in a fight i didn't choose and would have preferred to not have, i also walked right into it.

i do remain confident that the supreme court will get this right in the end and am hoping to file in the spring. there's a long string of cases in canada where the supreme court overturns the lower courts on cases like this. it fits into a pattern. the supreme court will focus on getting the basic facts right and the rest of it should follow quickly from that point. currently, none of the lower courts consider fact checking to even be in their jurisdiction, which is outrageously absurd. you can't get the superior court to do any sort of fact checking and if they won't do fact checks they can't get to correct rulings, they just uphold the mistakes made by the politically appointed adjudicators (who require no serious credentials and are often not just blatantly incompetent but obviously stupid people) in the tribunal systems.

there's a monty python skit where the local religious scholar explains how you can tell if a woman is a witch or not. it's an extremely effective satire of the local judicial process in ontario.

that's what going to a court in this society is very often like. you need to work your way through that somehow if you want to win cases here. it's not worth it, which is why i didn't go to law school - i walked away, and focused on my art, instead. that's what i learned by going to school - the court system is a waste of time. it's almost always wrong. the outcomes are almost always wrong. the judges are almost always stupid or corrupt or both, it's not worth engaging in.

that said, i had no intention of ever being a lawyer. i finished the requirements for the law degree and moved to windsor without graduating because i had no interest in continuing, but that wasn't my intent, anyways. i did not go to law school and had no intention of ever writing a bar exam. i was never intending to represent clients in a court room. i was initially interested in using the legal system to enact social change via political processes (not via running for elected office) and gave up before starting when i realized that wasn't going to actually get me anywhere. i wanted to go after fossil fuel companies, advance indigenous rights, etc. then, after walking away disillusioned by what i learned from studying how it works, i got thrust into it after all via circumstances out of my control and what happened was what i expected to happen and why i disengaged - i showed up to court with great arguments that should have changed the law or adjusted precedent to better follow the existing law and got confronted by ignorance, laziness, arrogance, hierarchy, power, competition, conservative attitudes, capitalism, greed, class, incompetence, corruption and, at times, just blatant stupidity.

never think you can change society through the courts. it has been done, but it was lucky. it's the exception, not the rule. the courts exist to protect the wealthy and to uphold the status quo. the system is designed to prevent change.

if the stubborn weight was suggestive of food converting to muscle because i was drugged with steroids, the return to a more normal metabolism (for me.) and faster weight reduction after eating is suggestive that the steroids have been cleared because the steroid-induced muscle has now been pissed out, which is good. it's what i want. 

and it's clear - it's what is true.

i need to secure the premises and i need to get cameras set up in here. you will get nowhere in a court in this country with reasoned debate, deductive reasoning, applied science or logical analysis. you need video. or it didn't happen. 

i'm getting close to this point, and carefully learning where the cameras need to be to be effective.

there's some good news with my weight coming back down over the last few days, after a clear drugging in september.

this is from the meal journal:

====

- oct 15-16 cycle 11 salsa 2 & cycle 12 salasa 1-2 with doubled key ingredients, added chick peas and other nacho ingredients (no doritos, no bacon). need to eat this up. shift weight targets up. t=130.x but ate at 131.8. maxxed at 138.

- oct 16th (0:00): 137.2

- oct 16th (11:00): 136.4

- oct 16th (15:00): 135.8

- groceries with trillum & remaining from gst money  ($85+):

- use $85 from nov's trillium to buy groceries for november early.

 & $85 from december trillium for staples and toiletries. 

- 85*3 = 255

- total spent: $207

- oct 16th (18:00): 134.4. eating cycle 6 1 & 2 strawberry component (1 kg of strawberries, 1 L of soy milk, 3 tbsp chia, 3 tbsp hemp) now because two containers of strawberries require immediate consumption. holding at weight=130 until end of fruit, reevaluate for broccoli soup phase in december. strawberries were half price. therefore, will have sufficient cash to make a second pot of broccoli soup before jan normalization, if required. may buy glue for shelving early. weight after strawberries: 139.4

oct 16th flax (skipped, just finished eating, spilled bowl of strawberries, needed to clean t up) (21:00): 139.4

oct 17th (00:00): 138.0

oct 17th (3:00): 135.4<---- weight gain was from water in soy milk. urinated it out instantly. good sign. 

oct 17th (6:00): 134.0

oct 17th (9:00): 133.6

oct 17th-18 (11:00): 132.6. i had a violent reaction to the last salsa meal and am quickly losing weight. that's a good sign. but i'm also sleeping a lot, which is bad. i need to eat this up so i can switch to the fruit in the fridge before it rots (i was supposed to be done the salsa in september) and it looks like i'm going to need to get in the shower tonight for a culmination of reasons (rather than finish the resulting setup first and then showering for several days in a row). it's all very annoying. these persistent, stupid people don't want to give up. i've heard them talk about spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on this and it getting them no footage they can use, like i'm supposed to give a fuck. it seems to be some kind of film project. i'm supposed to be detransitioned in order to film some type of pornography, but i'd rather kill these people than have any sort of sex with them and that's what is going to happen if they succeed in breaking their way in here. i'm going to slit their throats on camera if it comes to it. i don't care. waste all of your money, you fucking idiots. waste your lives, or i'll waste them for you. i care about my time, i don't care about their money or their gross porn or even if they survive this in the end. and i care about my web presence, which they're also apparently trying to steal (they want control over my vlog). i don't know who they are but they seem to have crawled out of some dirty, disgusting hole in the dark web and i just can't get them to fuck off. the more money they waste, the more determined they become. the weight loss and other signals indicate i have probably eaten through any unwanted androgens put in my food, but other signals (the diarrhea, the cold sweats) suggest i'm still sweating and shitting something out. it might just be withdrawal. or it might be some drug other than an androgen. i know gay men do weird drugs for gross reasons but i don't really know very much about it, what the drugs are or what the effects are. i am sure they're still here. i have been persistently concerned about film on my skin and hair that seem to be creams or sprays (perhaps applied through an open window) or aerosols that might have been sprayed or smoked through walls, windows or vents. right now i'm noticing something in my sweat while sleeping (i think) so i need to wash the sweat off with a long shower tonight. i'm also noticing a lingering headache. the infection on my face has almost entirely cleared up, which is consistent with the idea and itself strongly suggests that the androgens are entirely or mostly cleared. so i am going to eat early (at 132.6, at 11:00) and hope it continues to come down rapidly. i'm still holding at 130 for the rest of the fruit, but i might finish the salsa tomorrow, depending on how i'm feeling. if i'm able to clear my pores at 130, i might try to carefully let the weight come back up a little, to around 135. i intend to actually take the flax this afternoon. i still need to set the drums up and might be able to tonight before the shower but it's the last piece of furniture to place, and then it's just remnant cleaning and tidying and installing new things after i get the rdsp money transferred. i also have the special tape coming in today which will let me get the aluminum up on the kitchen ceiling, which is important given that it's now mid october. so, the persistent wastes of time and slow downs are continuing, but there's signals i'm on the cusp of turning back over and getting back to normal. i need to make sure they can't get in here when i'm in the unit and that i'm not giving them an opportunity to get in when i'm out of it. either i'm going to eat and fall asleep and get up in the evening to shower or i'm going to eat first, finish up in here and then get in the shower when the family upstairs goes to sleep, for an all night wash up. i'm eating early to organize my schedule around the shower and because i'm clearly metabolizing something that i want to flush out and the evidence over the last few days is that eating may facilitate rater than hinder flushing the garbage out. i'm going to need to spend the winter inside with doors locked to finalize a detox process to get any further unwanted androgens out of my system and return to estrogen dominance. cycle 12 salsa 1 with doubled key ingredients, added chick peas and other nacho ingredients (no doritos, no bacon) (t=130.x). actual weight: 132.6.

oct 17th flax  (15:00): 

we spend all of this time making robots out of steel, but we're not made out of steel for a reason. god didn't make a mistake, or something. god doesn't exist at all. rather, the universe and evolution teamed up to make us out of calcium, which is a different kind of metal with different properties than steel. steel would not be likely to form naturally on the earth's surface due to the temperature required, at least not since the earth's early phase, but a biological process to use steel in physical biological organisms might have developed via evolution closer to the earth's core. it never has.

likewise, if we want to create legitimate artificial intelligence, we need to get a better grasp of quantum physics, first. these absurdly large ai data centres are built on top of 100,000+ chips running in parallel. your brain is more powerful because it uses quantum physics to manipulate millions of hydrogen atoms in the space of your skull. we don't need to go down some pseudoscientific penrosian path of woo and metaphysics. that's not what i mean. quantum physics is clearly wrong in an absolute sense, but it's also the most accurately false model we currently have to describe how the world operates at a small scale. your brain uses quantum mechanics because everything uses quantum mechanics. quantum mechanics is not the exception; newtonian physics is the exception. however, our basic systems of electronics are still built on the exception, which we know is wrong more generally, and not on the general rule. there is no way to scale this for serious efficiency, it needs to be redesigned to better utilize physics, by using evolution as a model.

100,000 human brains running in parallel would be real intelligence with minimal energy costs.

i like the idea of harnessing anti-matter for energy from orbit. but you eventually even run out of space in orbit, even if you can get the energy.

ai as we understand it is a dead end and doomed to stagnate as a glorified clippy with the cognitive sense of forrest gump. it's really just a search engine. regulations should be focused on human behaviour. this is just another tool for bad actors; it's not fundamentally different than existing tools and it never will be.

after years of losing to vinyl, cds are making a comeback, apparently. the old men are arguing the young folk are just being cool and they're losing the game. vinyl's out of fashion; cds are back.

i want to provide a different argument.

let's reduce the debate. fundamentally, there's three format types - tape, vinyl and digital. each of them come in various quality levels, but i want to combine the various types of digital audio - from cds to 24 bit audio file - into a single audio type. this is key to my argument, and i'll make a scientific argument as to why you can't tell the difference between 16 bit and 24 bit audio in the end.

then, what sounds better - cds or vinyl? 

it's a complicated question because there's an objective answer and a subjective answer. usually, audio nerds will concede the objective point - that cds clearly sound better, technically - but defer to a subjective consideration, which is a personal preference for the sound of vinyl. the argument goes something along the lines that people that grew up listening to vinyl prefer it's "warmth" and can't adjust to the "crispness" of digital audio. these are adjectives to describe technical specs. what do they actually mean?

the "warmth" of vinyl records is a description of something called  harmonic distortion. digital audio lacks the "warmth" because it doesn't create distortion in key frequency ranges. instead, digital audio is "crisp" or "dry". what that means is that it produces accurate reproduction. you will get a similar effect from cassettes called tape saturation.

essentially, what baby boomers and some members of gen x have been saying since the 80s is that they prefer the inferior sound quality of analog reproduction - they like the harmonic distortion produced by the technology's inability to produce sound cleanly and get upset when you remove the noise from the end result. i guess that's their opinion, and it drove lingering vinyl sales in the 90s. then, records overtook vinyl. was that because millennials decided vinyl sounded better?

i think there's some complexity, here, but my understanding is that millennials were buying vinyl mostly for the cover art or to support their favourite artists as an act of charity. they were mostly actually listening to music on their phones. what happened is something more along the lines of that the collectors decided the vinyls were the more valuable commodity to put on a shelf. buying music as a commodity is not the same thing as listening to music; i do both, and i understand they're not the same thing. in fact, i'd guess that a huge percentage of the vinyl records manufactured and purchased new as commodities are still sitting in plastic because the owner didn't want to damage the commodity. instead, they downloaded 128 mbps mp3s or just streamed the music on their phone.

(https://consequence.net/2023/04/half-vinyl-buyers-record-player-study/

i do own a turntable and a handful of kept lps, after selling a pile of old lps at the height of their value, around ten years ago. i essentially never use it.)

...until their parents died. then, they inherited their audio systems. with cd players.

enter the younger generation, which neither grew up listening to cds nor to records but to digital audio, strictly, on digital devices. to most people under 30 today (in fact, to most people under 50 today), all music has always been digital. if you try to play a record to these people, and ask them what sounds better, even on your fanciful high quality system (which is mostly not upheld by science), it's not even a formed question. the record crackles and pops. it sounds warped and distorted and blurry. the difference is obvious and to them the truth is apparent: the analog source is not "warm" or "full", it's just distorted. because it is. that's objectively correct.

cds, on the other hand, sound like what they expect music to sound like, but better - especially on their parents' sound system, which is probably completely digital, and might even be high end.

there's some caveats to this. i have corellis as my main playback speakers. these are kefs from the late 70s. they're older than you or i are. they sound phenomenal from digital or analog sources (i feed them with cds coming from a dvd player) and i could never replace them with new speakers. they're analog speakers. i have celestions from the 80s in the other room, but i'm looking at finally buying digital studio monitors for the recording computers, where i mix in headphones anyways, because the gulf is too much. it's increasingly irrational to record in high end digital and play it back on 50 year old speakers. i need to modernize.

further, i'll concede that, sometimes, the distortion, the degradation, does sound good. it depends. the counter-example i usually provide is 70s kosmiche guitar/synthesizer music like mike oldfield, pink floyd or tangerine dream. one of these days does have a certain quirk on vinyl. hergest ridge sounds fantastic through a good vinyl setup. some subset of 90s alternative music - like siamese dream and loveless would maybe fit into that category. 

however, the arguments about digital sampling that vinyl supporters use are broadly wrong in respect to old recordings recorded on analog equipment and completely wrong in respect to new recordings recorded on digital equipment, which includes old recordings that have been transferred to digital to preserve them (which in 2026 means virtually everything ever recorded on analog equipment). for old recordings in 2026, the sampling process already happened at the remastering stage; for new recordings, it's a question of recording quality itself. the vinyl record is just being dumped to analog from digital. you're just introducing noise into the signal when you do that. it's utterly irrational and is being done to produce a commodity for an irrational market, not to adhere to sound quality.

your vinyl setup only makes sense in 2026 if you're playing old records manufactured before the year 2000, which are going to sound bad today because old vinyl doesn't retain it's quality. it degrades. cd does rot, but it doesn't warp or crackle or pop. young people want the digital remaster to cut the noise out (those old beatles records are in fucking mono, which is insane to a young person) and they don't want to pay for something that is going to degrade and sound worse in 30 years, because it will. that's rational. that's correct. that makes sense.

if you're listening to anything at all recorded in the last 30 years, transferring it from digital to analog can only make it sound worse. to a young person, 30 years is a long time. it's still a minority of the total recorded output available, but it's the vast majority of music that's relevant.

so, to a young person buying music today, a cd is of better audio quality than a vinyl record and it's not even a debate worth having. it's unquestionable. it's obvious.

i would, however, suspect that the uptick in physical cd sales is likely connected to digital focused stereo systems, some high end, being inherited. the millennials and gen z kids may have spent most of their lives to the point of inheriting these systems without much of a playback system at all, excepting their phones and any pcs they may have had. 

but dad had a system. dad listened to cds. now, dad is dead, and i have his system and his cds. and, hey, it sounds pretty good. it sounds clean, like the digital audio i'm used to, but bigger and louder and fuller and less compressed than my phone. wow. maybe i could get some more of these shiny discs. i kind of remember them, but not really.

is it a downgrade from 24 bit audio?

not if you stream at 128 mbps or worse on your phone. it's certainly an upgrade to that. but not generally, either.

you can't upsample to higher digital audio. again, the question is what commodity consumers want to buy, not what sounds better. people are recording in at 16 bit and selling it at 24 bit. that adds nothing but zeroes and there is no difference in sound. 

there should be a law that says you can't sell or market audio at a higher quality than you recorded it as. that should be banned as a deceptive business practice.

but you're probably not benefiting from 24 bit audio anyways unless you're recording with specialized software on specific hardware and you're recording very complex music, like symphonies. yes, a symphony will sound more full in 24 bit audio, specifically the quieter parts. an example of a popular musician that would actually benefit from using 24 bit audio would be peter gabriel, specifically his soundtrack work (rabbit proof fences or passion), and maybe some very select recordings by son lux or trent reznor. a day in the life might in theory have sounded better in 24 bit if it wasn't initially recorded on today's equivalent of a handheld recorder. almost nothing recorded for a pop music audience is going to benefit from being recorded in 24 bit.

worse, the daw you're using was probably not written for 24 bit audio. the plugins you're using were not written for 24 bit audio. in 2026, your sound card might not have to downsample anymore (that's recent), but your operating system probably does.

functionally, then, what recording in 24 bit audio actually means - still - is constantly resampling up and down. the plugin downsamples from 24 bit to 16 bit, applies the transform, and upsamples back to 24 bit. the daw mixes it down to 16 bit and upsamples to 24 bit. then your soundcard downsamples to 16 bit to play it.

which means what?

it means adding and removing piles of zeroes. it might create clicks, like a bad mp3, because you're basically doing the same thing you'd be doing when you're compressing mp3s, and then playing them back.

again, there's caveats, but they're still very expensive and apply to very limited circumstances. if you legitimately have the equipment to record in 24-bit - the hardware, the daw, the plugins - and complex enough compositions to justify it then do it. you probably don't. you should probably stick with 16 bit to avoid the constant resampling.

and that's what a cd is - it's the highest quality, cleanest quality audio realistically available to most people. it's the standard. 

it makes sense that it's what the kids want.

it didn't make sense for vinyl to outsell cds and that should be seen as a weird blip that happened as a result of weird circumstances. the return of cds is a renormalization of the music market. it's good news for the music industry.

the americans can take on the burden of patrolling the arctic, too, if they insist. i don't want it. i don't care. it's just a massive financial drain.

it's clearly not in alberta's self-interest to try to be independent, and that wouldn't appear to be a serious proposal. rather, "albertan independence" is really about becoming the 51st, or maybe 51st and 52nd, state. the americans would need to also absorb british columbia and at least a part of yukon for that to make any sense.

while alberta would be worse off, i would not be sorry to see them go. the country would instantly shit ten degrees to the left. we might not have to worry about conservatives winning office in canada for a generation or more, which would let more people vote for the ndp and greens. certain ideas - like recriminalizing abortion - would shift from third rail to nonexistent. 

we would have a little less revenue in the short term, but our carbon emissions would go way down. we'd have to refocus on different energy strategies. it could result in a return to hydro generation. they won't sell the rest of canada the oil, anyways.

it might hurt a little financially in the short run but we would be better off without alberta in the medium to long term and while i would rather keep bc than lose it, we would be better off losing bc if it means losing alberta than having to keep alberta to hold bc.

it seems very unlikely, based on the polling.

never forget that we are in the era of orwell, of doublethink, of newspeak. we had the renaissance, the enlightenment, the industrial revolution and then the orwellian age. it's not a cliche; it's a phase of history.

hitler would love 2026's version of "liberal democracy"; it hates israel, is embarked on a war to destroy russia and sees the united states as it's greatest threat and rival.

i have a legitimate question. i honestly don't know. 

when right-wing neo-con stooges like thomas friedman argue that ukraine is a democracy and russia isn't, are they doing so out of ignorance or dishonesty?

ukraine and russia both had elections scheduled for 2024. russia carried out it's elections. ukraine did not. putin was recently reelected. zelensky refuses to hold elections. 

you can criticize the russians over state repression, and i won't argue with you. it's true. but ukraine has exactly the same political system and exactly the same culture and the repression in ukraine is equivalent or worse.

so, which is it?

is friedman ignorant about the political realities in ukraine or is he aware of them and being dishonest when he calls ukraine democratic?

maybe you support ukraine for other reasons. russophobia - a fear of russian expansion - is a real thing. maybe you're still fighting the last war, against the communists. maybe you're racist against russians. the mainstream press has done everything but explicitly call them non-europoid mongoloids in their racist attacks on russia (and has come pretty close to being explicit about it), which forms one of the arguments russia has presented for why it's doing this - there is a latent nazism barely concealed under the surface of western culture that threatens russia directly. you see this latent nazism in the recent liberal support for "palestine", as well.

but the idea of ukraine protecting democracy is farcical. it is specious. it is counter-factual and irrational. it is not upheld but firmly torn down by the most cursory analysis. it requires immense ignorance or immense dishonesty to write an article like this, and i just don't know what the truth is.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/15/opinion/trump-russia-oil-putin.html

the truth is that this is a bait and switch.

none of this will generate demand for more steel. therefore, none of this will result in job retention. jobs = demand. no demand = no jobs.

however, the state appears to have a right-wing, nationalist agenda to maintain canadian control over particular industries, including environmentally damaging industries like steel that should be offshored to the united states to minimize the health and safety harms that steel manufacturing inflicts on canadian citizens. this owner is a trump supporter, so the government is targeting and scapegoating him in essentially trying to steal the private property that he recently bought in canada, due to his political affiliations being aligned with forces opposed to the government's political priorities. don't be fooled into thinking this government cares about private property; it doesn't, it just cares about implementing class war and it's facade of support for property rights in attacks on poor canadians is only as deep as the omnipresent class war necessitates it to be. he's being attacked as a political opponent, and the minister is using the court system to go after him. this reflects extremely poorly on the canadian government's neutrality, on it's tendency to try to use the courts to implement political priorities and attack political opponents and on our own free trade obligations. it's something you expect in a corrupt third world country....because canada is a corrupt state that is increasingly becoming a third world country. this kind of corruption is becoming rampant here and the commonality is that it as almost all being driven by intellectually vapid ciswomen with weak resumes and low levels of ability that came out of the trudeau government, and who are interested in asserting control and power rather than upholding democratic or legal norms. the tendency to seek dominance and control and power is a characteristic of low intelligence, but it comes paired with a dunning-kruger effect, and the misperception of competence. the kind of woman that trudeau put into power is a cut throat type that wants to dominate and control their enemies; it's a type of aggressive female masculinity that amounts to women playing exaggerated male performative stereotypes in ways men could not get away with anymore, in full nazi corporate garb. they universally suffer from mental health problems, short tempers, substance abuse problems (often prescription meds, like anti-depressants) and a tendency towards emotional decision making, paired with a fundamental incapacity to think logically. it's an algorithm for fascism.

foreign investors should take note that if you invest in canada and the state doesn't like your politics then it might try to nationalize your private property.

there's increasingly a role reversal underway between canada and mexico, where mexico is demonstrating stable governance and becoming america's best friend and wealthy partner while canada is becoming the impoverished third world society on it's borders with an unpredictable government led by mentally unstable leaders and beset by mass corruption.

stelco should launch a counter-suit against the canadian government at the wto (through the us government) and/or through the nafta courts for government interference and for using the courts to attack their political opponents.

but this has nothing to do with jobs and selling the company to a canadian owner won't somehow reverse layoffs that are happening due to low demand in the midst of an economic recession caused by the reduction of exports resulting from an import tax levied by the united states. if the canadian government was legitimately concerned about steel jobs in canada, it would be focusing on a jobs bill to generate more demand for steel and it is not only not doing that but is actually going out of it's way to explicitly not do that by focusing on trying to stimulate foreign investment, which may or may not buy canadian steel for projects it does in canada, and by distracting from the layoffs through using the courts to attack it's political opponents, instead.

https://globalnews.ca/news/12101944/stelco-federal-government-legal-action/

it's not how i had initially intended it, or how i more recently had revisited it, but i do have the shape of the studio in place and i think it's a solid, stable setup. this is a much bigger apartment than the last one, so i don't need everything crammed on top of itself, i can open up the room a little by pushing things up to the walls and create a bit more open space between instrument placements. it's still a one person space, but there's maybe space to jam in the studio for the first time in several years. that's basically it for inside, except to get some more things into the garage after i clean a second time in there, and install the bicycle rack. 

there will be some pictures of the entire remaining space, soon.

and then i hit the showers.

the forecast continues to suggest temperatures in the high teens through october, here. no crash forecast yet. it's still 20+ in the garage so it should be safe to the move the bikes in.

i'm going to predict that greta thunberg will die of a heroin overdose in the next five years, max, and probably much sooner.

the full name of the school is the lyin' brian school of corruption for impressionable young people.

they will sing "irish eyes are smiling" every morning, along with o canada.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/article/ottawa-school-becomes-first-in-canada-named-after-former-pm-brian-mulroney/

what have i been doing?

i lost track of time a little this week because i got sidetracked by something.

as i indicated i was doing, i spent the middle of last week sealing the furnace room, and cleaning the bottom of the carpeted side entrance and the tiled hallway between it and the kitchen, with the intent of moving some small furniture items in place in that part of the apartment. once the hallway had been vacuumed, scrubbed, vacuumed again, steam mopped and vacuumed one more time, i put the furniture in place, moved the items that belong on the shelf on to the shelf and started focusing on clearing things off and around the couch, in order to pull it away from the wall. i was about ready to take some pictures.

i think that what happened is that a small rat escaped from the furnace room when i had the door open and was in there cleaning. as mentioned, i cannot seal that space. i had been hearing something try to get in from upstairs for a few weeks, but there was no sign of entry anywhere, and no sign of activity anywhere, after i sealed up the cardboard the last time a few weeks ago and i after i cleaned up the little bit of activity in the laundry. it was only after i opened the door that i noticed anything. unfortunately, when i moved the couch out from the wall, it became clear that there was something under it and had been for a few days at most. there were only a small number of droppings, but they were fresh.

i reacted by doing two things:

1. setting up baitless traps against the wall. rodents are nearly blind. i don't want to feed it, i'm hoping it just trips on it.

2. dumping powdered bleach everywhere near the couch so that it would necessarily track through it

the idea with the bleach is that i'm hoping the rat will walk through it and get it on it's feet and legs or on it's body. rats spend a lot of time grooming. a rat with powdered bleach on it's body is likely to remove it by licking it off. it would not take much bleach to kill a juvenile rat, the hard part is getting it to eat the bleach.

i then let it sit and instead spent a few days in the bathroom cleaning myself while i waited.

over the next few days, i checked everywhere in the apartment several times and i found nothing - no droppings, no rat. i have not heard anything, either. it disappeared without a trace and without a sound. i don't know how it might have got out and suspect it didn't but i haven't found it yet. my best guess is it's under the pile of boxes blocking the side door and is probably dead in there. at the least, it's no longer running around in here and no longer leaving droppings but i'll have to keep looking for it.

what i've done since i got back to working on the space is

- removed everything on the stairwell to the side entrance (but not on the top landing in front of the door yet)

- vacuumed, scrubbed with carpet cleaner, vacuumed, scrubbed with cleaner again and then again vacuumed the carpeted steps. it's looking pretty clean.

- sealed the stairwell and the baseboards at the bottom of the landing

- installed two lights in the area, one 800 lumen and one 1500 lumen, and upgraded the pot light to 1500 lumen.

- sealed the window, including putting a blackout curtain in place

- revacuumed, rescrubbed with lysol, revacuumed, re steam mopped and revacuumed the hallway 

- washed all of my winter jackets, rain jackets, hooded sweaters, toques, face masks, scarves, gloves, etc and put them on the coat rack or the hat and glove holder. it's ready for the winter, or for the rainy season.

- set up a shoe rack and put all of the shoes that don't need to be fixed on it. the rest are in the garage.

- put all of my various bags up on the racks or on the wall

- placed some art on the wall

- further sealed up the ceiling under the stairs (on top of the carpet) to address some water leaks from upstairs

- further sealed the furnace room door

- moved the old tv stand in front of the furnace room door and put boxes for kitchen items on it (for now)

- moved the coffee table that's too big for the listening room in the hallway and put sealed containers of spices, a bag of plastic bags and a number of reusable containers, some with bottle caps, on it

- moved the three tier console table back into the hallway, but on the other side of the hall. put an electrical splitter behind it. will move further small appliances (pop machine, etc) to top of console table. unused kitchen items and old appliances on bottom of console table.

- sealed up pot lights to keep flies from upstairs out. step one. step two to come.

- vacuumed, scrubbed with lysol, vacuumed, steam mopped, vacuumed tile under couch

- moved couch back to where it belongs. vacuumed couch.

- sealed up cold air returns to keep vermin out and to block draft.

- put up floating shelf for networking devices on wall (modem, firewall, several daisy chained wired and wireless routers, switches) near cable in. moved devices to shelf.

- put legs on remaining studio tables (big keyboard table, small antique table)

- caulked remaining wall behind computer desk (for 3 studio pcs, studio chromebook, potential studio mac, etc)

- vacuumed, scrubbed with lysol, vacuumed, steam mopped, vacuumed tile under computer desk

- picked all boxes and pcs in studio up off the floor and put on table or desk

- picked all boxes in bedroom up off floor

- started putting cardboard up on ceiling in kitchen. ordered more sealing tape (oddly slow to come in).

- moved smelly old couch out of garage and outside to the curb.

- set up steel mesh over vent into furnace room (from outside, where i built the brick wall a few months ago)

i started again on saturday and stopped on monday afternoon to let the floor behind the desk dry, slept in the evening and then spent most of tuesday (which was warm here) in the bathroom, before getting the couch out in the afternoon. 

what's left to do before i shift back to the great cleanup and then to typing in the bedroom?

- i have enough cardboard broken down and ready to go to finish the bottom layer in the kitchen as soon as the tape gets here, so i should get the aluminum up by the end of the week. that was a primary goal.

- i have a very small amount of caulking left to do on the stairway down from the side entrance and i'd like to do another vacuum run of the carpet and floors there before i move on. 

-  once i get the cardboard up, i have a two-tired coffee table to move to beside the couch (parallel to the console table) that will be a side coffee table for the couch. i'll need to vacuum that space and it will probably be rescrubbed and relysoled.

- i want to finally finish installing the shelving in the kitchen and get the items that belong on the shelves on to the shelves.

- there's a small number of amazon haul items to finish with, but i mostly did that the previous week (all of my pots and pans are finally up on the wall)

- i need to move the rest of the furniture in the studio out to in front of the stereo before i can clean the rest of the floors and then move it back

- while the studio will remain uninstalled for a while, i can take things out of boxes and clean them and generally tidy the space up to prevent anything from living in there

- i am going to set up the drum kit because i need to in order to understand the best way to use the space

- finish cleaning around the removed couch in the garage

- set up the bike rack

- move the three bicycles currently in the unit into the garage and lock them to the rack

- tidy up further in the garage (tools, shoes, fans, electronics that need to be fixed, etc)

- a second waterproofing run over the brick wall and around the bottom of the wall

- another concrete run

- clean floors in front entrance

- clean floors between stereo and couch

- clean floors in kitchen and bathroom

- clean bedroom floors

- clean sheets

some items i'm looking to purchase in different areas - 

side entrance: 

- couch at bottom of stairs with computer system

- second video doorbell

- standalone mailbox

kitchen:

- small appliances

- step two for pot lights (extenders, reseal)

- needs more caulking and sealing (need a little bit more caulk)

- install light over stove

- update youtube laptop (needs new os and battery, update account access from koc)

listening room:

- small coffee table

- shelf for pi

- wall mounted monitor for pi

- wireless mouse and keyboard

- small ups or battery backup

- mini standalone exercise bike (not stationary)

library: 

- set up shelves (need glue, masking tape)

- get tall, skinny shelf

- security pc setup peripherals

studio:

- update further items as per use and journal. need old guitar analogs. set up mini tele (hannah montana guitar), find solution for ibanez replacement.

- may need to replace some electronics due to previous damage

- 486 pc is initial project (may go in garage)

- update shelving to get lingering items out of boxes.

- need to update power bars (need to get a ups for studio, long overdue)

bedroom:

- new filing cabinet

- fix celestions

- bluray for digital media

- tablet for sleeping

- peripherals for tying pc (offline multimedia presentation)