the shift they're proposing, which would have the earliest sunset at 19:00, is bizarre and the worst possible option. i like the dark evenings at 16:00 or 17:00 and i hate the late sunrises after 6:30.
Sunday, November 1, 2026
i would rather have the sun come up very early and go down very early than have it come up very late and go down later, which is what happens when you shift to permanent dst. in detroit, the sun won't come up until like 9:00 am and go down until 19:00 in the dead of the winter. that's awful. so, i would not like to see permanent dst. i'd like to adjust it in the opposite direction, so that the sun comes up an hour earlier than standard time rather than the opposite. that would lead to a shortest day from 7:00-17:00 rather than from 9:00-19:00, and reassert more normal daytime hours through the rest of the year (sunrise before 7:00 am, sunset after 17:00 pm).
i have now finally cut all of the wood for the various floating shelves in the kitchen and bedroom, put everything away in the kitchen (that is going away), have set up some extra temporary shelving for temporary items and have gotten every single box up off the floor in the front, the studio and the bedroom.
i have one more major run over the floors to do (which requires scrubbing on my knees with lysol and doesn't lend itself well to showers in between scrubbing) and then the great wash-up continues, after a mild pause for the last few weeks to get all the floors cleaned up.
i very seriously expect to actually finally be done by sunrise, and then finally get my sheets in the laundry this afternoon, and finally get in the shower over night tonight.
there's still no sign of a weather crash here. we're still consistently 15+. the temperatures this week are forecast in the 18-22 degree range, which is getting close to ten degrees above normal.
Saturday, October 31, 2026
the idea that us aid to israel is inflationary is certainly specious, stupid, offensive and anti-semitic. further, it has nothing to do with the election. this is odd, given that an actual cause of inflation - trump's tariffs on canada - is so readily available in michigan. you'd have to want to really go out of your way to blame the jews for being money grubbing to run an ad like that in the existing context.
further, tucker carlson is certainly a strange ally for somebody that has been, in my opinion incorrectly, marketing himself as a leftist.
next five cds are...
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) <---- current start point
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) <---current end point
pink floyd - atom heart mother (1970)
pink floyd - meddle (1972)
plateau - iceolator (2002)
======
sister machine gun - metropolis (1997)
skinny puppy - cleanse, fold and manipulate (1987)
sonic youth - sister (1987)
spiral beach - ball (2007)
ssris - effeminate godzilla-sized windchimes (2010)
============
swans - omniscience (1992)
talking heads - remain in light (1980)
the black heart procession - 2 (1999)
the chicago underground - flamethrower (2000)
the cure - disintegration (1989)
=========================
the grassy knoll - III (1998)
the mars volta - tremulant (2002)
the mars volta - deloused in the comatorium (2003)
the mars volta - frances the mute (2005)
the mars volta - amputechture (2006)
those are just the first ten 15 20 25 30 cds out of the boxes. i'll be updating in groups of five as they come out and onto the shelves (i have a five disc cd/dvd player in the listening room).
(skipping for now, will come back)
blogger music lists for existing cds (rebuilds):
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
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.
But the English middle-class – good men of business as they are – saw farther than the German professors. They had shared their powers but reluctantly with the working-class. They had learnt, during the Chartist years, what that puer robustus sed malitiosus, the people, is capable of. And since that time, they had been compelled to incorporate the better part of the People's Charter in the Statutes of the United Kingdom. Now, if ever, the people must be kept in order by moral means, and the first and foremost of all moral means of action upon the masses is and remains – religion. Hence the parsons' majorities on the School Boards, hence the increasing selftaxation of the bourgeoisie for the support of all sorts of revivalism, from ritualism to the Salvation Army.
And now came the triumph of British respectability over the free thought and religious laxity of the Continental bourgeois. The workmen of France and Germany had become rebellious. They were thoroughly infected with Socialism, and, for very good reasons, were not at all particular as to the legality of the means by which to secure their own ascendancy. The puer robustus, here, turned from day-today more malitiosus. Nothing remained to the French and German bourgeoisie as a last resource but to silently drop their free thought, as a youngster, when sea-sickness creeps upon him, quietly drops the burning cigar he brought swaggeringly on board; one-by-one, the scoffers turned pious in outward behavior, spoke with respect of the Church, its dogmas and rites, and even conformed with the latter as far as could not be helped. French bourgeois dined maigre on Fridays, and German ones say out long Protestant sermons in their pews on Sundays. They had come to grief with materialism. "Die Religion muss dem Volk erhalten werden" – religion must be kept alive for the people – that was the only and the last means to save society from utter ruin. Unfortunately for themselves, they did not find this out until they had done their level best to break up religion for ever. And now it was the turn of the British bourgeoisie to sneer and to say: "Why, you fools, I could have told you that 200 years ago!"
when you get unrest like you're seeing in france, whether it's justified and political, or real and opportunistic, there has historically always been a clamp down afterwards. sometimes, it's a counter-revolution, which could not describe any reaction to a situation in france that is not revolutionary. in the 70s, that clamp down was called neoliberalism.
if you read the capitalist press, they're already talking about austerity in france due to some contrived debt. it's nonsense, certainly. but, the french are clearly too free and need a little more slavery, and they should expect that.
capitalism likes to market itself as benevolent but it's pretty brutal, in truth, and the white kids never see it coming.
white people don't believe in god. it's not a new thing; it's been a problem in europe for centuries. as they don't believe in god, they're really hard to control. so, the roman elite tried to convert them to christianity, and it didn't work - they overthrew them instead. they want free speech and social services and all this shit that black people don't care about. you can't even enslave the half-black irish, you have to import good slaves from africa. they go to church, and they do what they're told. much better.
i'm making a caricature out of something that is very real. the engels text shows a deep depth of insight. read it, please.
there's going to be a group of bankers that are going to look at the situation and argue that the undisciplined children need more structure and control. they need more god, more religion, to keep them in line. they don't riot in saudi arabia, do they? look how well behaved the children are.
bring back corporal punishment.
for the sake of the children!
won't anybody think of the children?
that's what chomsky said happened in the 70s after the marches in the 60s, which were nothing like this. this is not 1968. it's not 1848. it's not 1796. it's more like the algerians managed to invade france before france got a chance to organize an expedition.
the marxist economist richard wolff has also written about and lectured about this. he's all over the internet.
i think that the fake leftists upset about the "great replacement theory" should read or reread this short text by engels.
the idea that the elite wants to re-import religion to save the godless white masses is not right-wing. it's literally in the appendix of the most basic socialist text ever written.
They had come to grief with materialism. "Die Religion muss dem Volk erhalten werden" — religion must be kept alive for the people — that was the only and the last means to save society from utter ruin. Unfortunately for themselves, they did not find this out until they had done their level best to break up religion for ever. And now it was the turn of the British bourgeoisie to sneer and to say: "Why, you fools, I could have told you that 200 years ago!"
this mouse is breaking my heart.
i continue to find minimal evidence of it in the apartment, but it is a mouse in here. i can hear it squeaking.
is it the same mouse that left me presents last year? i don't know.
it's making me sad that it keeps coming in here. frankly, if it stayed in the walls and ate the bugs, i would not care much. it must be eating the bugs; it's not eating my food. i am pretty clean, but i find crumbs a day or two later. i have seen little to no sign of roaches in here. so why does it come in here if there's no food for it to eat?
it must be coming in because it's warm, and as a result it seems to see me as a caretaker or a benevolent master, and i'm not. it seems to actually be following me around through the walls. i've started banging on the walls to scare it off and the squeak is shifting from a happy squeak to a sad squeak, as though it gets it and is sad at the rejection. i'm going to have to kill it if it keeps at it, even if i don't want to.
rodents are a difficult moral problem. these are smart animals that pose a threat to our health and need to be exterminated but they might be good pets or companions, otherwise.
it's not destructive and it leaves almost no feces. almost is not good enough. we've coexisted for centuries. i wish there was a better solution.
i've made it very hard to get in here and it's kept the rats out, which was the intent. but this very small mouse is something like 10% of the size of the large rats that were in the ceiling last year and the things i did to keep the rats out and worked have not been enough to keep the little mouse out. it can live in the walls; the rats couldn't. it's substantively harder to block any holes it might use to get in because it's so much smaller.
i'm figuring it out and i will but if it keeps finding alternative ways to get in after i block the existing entrance points then it will have to die.
i have supported regime change in iran for a long time and was happy to see the americans move to remove the fascists from power in tehran. i also support high oil prices and would encourage people upset about oil prices to seek ways to minimize their carbon footprint, in response.
i have been disappointed by the americans' tactics in carrying this regime change out. trump does not appear to want to implement regime change, he appears to want to force an agreement on the existing fascist state. this will not help the people of iran overthrow their fascist cult government. further, the many months that have been wasted on endless go-nowhere negotiations have simply made it more difficult to get to that end point.
trump appears to have given up on trying to convince the iranian dictatorship to sign an agreement. reports suggest that, rather than aggressively move to replace the dictatorship, he is planning to take out his frustration on iranian civilians by destroying civilian infrastructure. this is the opposite of what i tentatively supported.
the blockade, which i may have suggested, is likely to succeed in the long run but they need to put it in place for a long time and trump wants this done faster than that. they also need to actually blockade them.
i would still support a brutal operation to eliminate the iranian dictatorship by destroying it's infrastructure and eliminating it's leadership. that does not mean one or two people, it means wiping out the full theocracy - the judges, the police, the bureaucracy.
i am not interested in punishing the iranian people for the brutality of their dictatorship and don't understand the logic in it. if trump wants to aimlessly and illegally destroy iran for no reason and as a means to punish it's dictatorship for disobeying him, he should be removed from office by the people closest to him. that is not an acceptable policy.
this has to have an endpoint of regime change, and bounds for it need to be generated very soon.
Friday, October 30, 2026
i've made my point.
if we had decent poling with big sample sizes, we could make some better projections, but that rarely happens in senate races. when low quality polls with small sample sizes, bad methodologies and high margins appear to produce surprising outcomes, that may say more about the low quality of the polling than the likeliness of the result being projected.
if i did a poll of 500 people online that told me that piss tasted better than apple juice, i might question the accuracy of the poll before i changed my grocery list.
if these polls are completely wrong and trump wins kansas by 10 points, that should not surprise anybody. these polls suck.
what about michigan?
the only poll with a result that showed el sayed ahead and wasn't in the margin was conducted by a researcher at the university of michigan who claims to have "corrected the results for biases". right. i would describe that as rather open political manipulation.
the only poll with a result that showed el sayed ahead and wasn't in the margin was conducted by a researcher at the university of michigan who claims to have "corrected the results for biases". right. i would describe that as rather open political manipulation.
everything else is pretty weak, given that michigan is historically democratic.
in theory, el-sayed should benefit in michigan from the things republicans have going for them in texas and kansas. if the cultural inertia and ground game is stronger for the republicans in texas, it should be stronger for the democrats in michigan.
however, it's not clear he can rely on that. el-sayed has struggled to win over key components of the democratic coalition and he may struggle to get the vote out. the outgoing governor and his opponent in the primary have been silent or hostile.
you also have to take a bradley effect into account.
i consider michigan to be in play in ways that kansas and texas aren't. i will not claim the data supports a flip, but it certainly doesn't support a hold, either.
what about kansas?
less results, but they're better.
the washington post survey is notable but the analysis posted with the survey indicated that democrats in kansas were eager to talk about politics on the phone and republicans weren't. that makes sense to me. i did phone work as a kid. in kansas, democrats are far less numerous, and perhaps a little lonely.
these results are neither conclusive nor convincing. again, it's extremely unlikely that the democrats flip kansas, given the on the ground difficulties. the data does not support the idea that this is going to flip.
less results, but they're better.
| poll source | landline or internet | end date |
outcome | valid poll? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| https://afightworthhaving.com/polling/2026/kansas | landline | oct 23 | in the margin | yes |
| https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28856723-cnn-poll-conducted-by-ssrs-kansas-october/ | internet and landline |
oct 26 | in the margin | low quality mixed sampling |
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/10/30/we-polled-kansas-democrats-wanted-talk-republicans-not-so-much/ | landline | oct 26 | d+1 past margin* |
yes |
the washington post survey is notable but the analysis posted with the survey indicated that democrats in kansas were eager to talk about politics on the phone and republicans weren't. that makes sense to me. i did phone work as a kid. in kansas, democrats are far less numerous, and perhaps a little lonely.
these results are neither conclusive nor convincing. again, it's extremely unlikely that the democrats flip kansas, given the on the ground difficulties. the data does not support the idea that this is going to flip.
if i was to describe a "high quality poll", it would have random sampling and be conducted with phones. online sampling is not polling, it's political manipulation. averaging out 100 bad polls (which is what silver does) and trying to weight it by applying a pile of arbitrary personal biases is the worst approach possible. snapshot polling is preferable to aggregate analyses.
i guess i need to do this.
there's a list of recent polls at the texas senate wiki site. let's cut it off on oct 19th, the day before two weeks before the election. which polls are high quality and which aren't?
if there is further polling in texas, it's not at wikipedia.
all of the polling, both real and fake, is in the margin, and it is all mixed sample or worse and consequently of low quality. the only high quality poll was done for fox news two weeks ago and reported a result in the margin of error. the cnn poll intentionally generated a higher than normally acceptable margin of error by using weird methodology and then put the democrats on the outside fringe of that large margin, which inflated the spread through bad sampling practices, and is suspected political manipulation for that reason.
given the myriad of real world factors working against the democrats in texas on election day, it is highly unlikely that they will win this seat. that will not be a polling error. the polling is inconclusive.
i consequently see no reason to expect this seat to flip.
| poll source | landline or internet | end date |
outcome | valid poll? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-poll-texas-senate-race-galloping-toward-photo-finish | landline | oct 19 | in the margin | yes |
| https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/election_2026/election_2026_texas_senate | internet and landline |
oct 21 | in the margin | low quality mixed sampling |
| https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/politics/elections/new-poll-talarico-abbott-lead-as-early-voting-in-texas-nears-close/287-7f4cca13-6e1d-433c-9041-727931b591cd | internet and landline |
oct 25 | in the margin | yes |
| https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28856724-cnn-poll-conducted-by-ssrs-texas-october/ | internet and landline |
oct 27 | in the margin | low quality mixed sampling |
| https://quantusinsights.org/polling/f/texas-survey-paxton-up-one-abbott-ahead-by-five | internet and landline |
oct 28 | in the margin | low quality mixed sampling |
if there is further polling in texas, it's not at wikipedia.
all of the polling, both real and fake, is in the margin, and it is all mixed sample or worse and consequently of low quality. the only high quality poll was done for fox news two weeks ago and reported a result in the margin of error. the cnn poll intentionally generated a higher than normally acceptable margin of error by using weird methodology and then put the democrats on the outside fringe of that large margin, which inflated the spread through bad sampling practices, and is suspected political manipulation for that reason.
given the myriad of real world factors working against the democrats in texas on election day, it is highly unlikely that they will win this seat. that will not be a polling error. the polling is inconclusive.
i consequently see no reason to expect this seat to flip.
we've been here before, as well. remember beto o'rourke?
i actually don't think that gay people should be allowed to get married, but i don't think that straight people should be allowed to get married, either. i support the total abolition of marriage as a secular concept. the state should tax people as individuals. (personal) property should be owned by individuals. things like health care coverage should apply to individuals. marriage, as a state-sanctioned idea, is a relic of feudalism and should cease to exist.
if people want to get married as a religious sacrament, i have no interest in this, and the state should have no interest in it, either. it should have no legal relevance. heterosexual religious marriage contracts should be null and void and irrelevant in a legal sense.
it would follow that if gay people can find a religion that supports their ideas about marriage, that's their prerogative, but the state should have no interaction with such things. religious gay marriage contracts should also be null and void and irrelevant in a legal sense.
i do not support allowing gay people to adopt children and think that when children that are born into heterosexual relationships find themselves with gay parents the court should award sole custody to the heterosexual partner explicitly on the basis of the gay parent being gay. i agree with arguments about homosexuality being a mental health issue and would support a limited reintroduction of homosexuality to the dsm.
while i support the state leaving the gays alone and not attacking or persecuting them, i have no interest in the politics of homosexual rights, and don't support initiatives to integrate the state with gay politics.
i am transgendered. i am not gay. i support maintaining heterosexual norms in society, broadly. subversion has a place in the underground, not in the mainstream. homosexuality belongs underground.
all that a poll that has the democrats ahead by +2 with a 4 point margin of error says is that the outcome is in the margin of error. if the republicans win, that is not a polling error. rather, thinking it is a polling error is an error in reading the polls.
if you have 20 polls that have the democrats ahead but in the margin of error in 20 states and they lose all of them, that is still not a polling error. it's arguably reflective of a slight polling bias, but the polls don't say the democrats are barely ahead. the polls says that the outcome is unclear.
then, when you pile on incumbency effects, get out the vote, voter turnout demographics (age, income) and cultural inertia, these in-the-margin polls in red states all tip back towards the republicans. every single one of these flips is independently extremely unlikely, except perhaps north carolina (where the democratic candidate is popular and has an edge for that reason. that's local, not national. it has nothing to do with trump). that's the right mathematical model - every senate race is an independent experiment and a weighted coin toss in the republicans' favour, and the likelihood that the democrats will win more than two seats becomes extremely remote.
i just want to summarize what the democrats are running on
- in texas, the democatic candidate has refused to criticize fossil fuel development or refuse money from oil companies. as a leftist, i would not vote for the democratic candidate if i lived in texas.
- in kansas, the democrats are running a bigoted christian pastor that thinks non-christians are all going to hell. as a leftist, i would not vote for the democratic candidate in kansas.
- in iowa, they democrats are actually running transphobic ads on tv and the republican candidate is clerly the less conservative option. if i was in iowa, i would vote for the republican candidate, because she's less conservative - because i'm a leftist.
- in michigan, they're running a muslim with a history of supporting right-wing social policies and extreme right, fascist groups in the middle east. if i was in michigan, i would not vote for the democratic candidate, as a leftist.
these aren't left-wing political candidates. they're on the moderate right to the far right.
i will reiterate that the data does not support the idea of a democratic "blue wave", which is an idea that is nonsensical in the american political system. the data says that a republican hold is overwhelmingly likely. an extremely good night for the democrats would be a two seat pickup.
however, if the democrats manage to win these seats - and you should not listen to nate silver. he's always wrong about everything. why does the media keep quoting this guy? he has the worst track record in polling that i've ever seen. his model sucks. you'd be better off asking a poli sci major. i've spent hours correcting him, debunking him and ripping him apart in this space - it's not reflective of some political shift to the left, it's because the democrats are moving hard to the right and picking up issues of concern to far right voters.
the senate election is not a single national election for one candidate. trump is almost irrelevant. the senate election is a series of independent experiments taking place in isolation of each other. the polling (which is low quality across the board. don't accept the label "high quality polling". that's right out of orwell.) does not support the projection that several unlikely to very unlikely events will happen at the same time.
when media messaging all focuses on a handful of talking points - which is what the democratic media s doing - it suggests an attempt to control a message and manufacture a narrative. that's actually a voter suppression tactic. what democratic media appears to be doing in projecting a landslide is attempting to suppress the vote. it's not based in reality, polling or science - it's nonsense, projection, faith and magical thinking.
Thursday, October 29, 2026
the liberal media is continuing to falsely insinuate that the rioting had anything to do with the protests.
the idea of forcing vandals to pay for the mess they created is not new and not regressive. a polluter pays principle, applied to rioters, is actually quite progressive and enlightened. that's not characteristic of the sitting french government, but this is a forward-thinking policy that should be adopted by more jurisdictions, as technology brings us closer to communism, and this kind of thing has no political purpose, but is just primitive barbarism by vandals, thieves and backwards-thinking reactionary type people.
i have learned the hard way the last few years that arts majors in general can't do simple arithmetic. they are not just hopelessly bad with data and math; they have the cognitive capacities of young children, when it comes to analyzing data. arguing with an arts major is like arguing with a ten year old.
i'm telling you the blunt reality about the midterms. this is not a general election. this is a series of completely unrelated experiments that are happening. further, there is no existing system in canada or the uk that has any passing resemblance to congressional elections in the united states - no senate and no comparable house. voters in kansas are being asked to pick a democrat as the more godly candidate. voters in maine are being asked to vote with their guts instead of their brains. there's cultural reasons they keep electing a republican. these hyperlocal races about specific issues on the ground cannot be measured with national polling, which includes states like california and new york that aren't even having elections. it's a completely fucking wrong way to look at solving this problem.
of the roughly 10 independent experiments that will be performed on tuesday, none of them have an obvious outcome. these are all very uncertain experiments. even the races that are being presented as having more certain results, like georgia, are not clear. 60% is not very good odds when there's only two outcomes. that means that the opposite thing happens four times every time you run ten experiments.
the mathematical theory - and it has a lot of empirical support - is that you just multiply the probabilities together. probability theory is an analytical theory with empirical support. it works, but it's axiomatic. it's actually more of an art than a science. probability theory is not objectively true, it's a way to approximate an idea that isn't entirely quantifiable. but empirical tests show it's roughly accurate.
the theory makes a pretty clear prediction - as no single one of these events is very likely, multiplying them together very quickly decreases the likelihood that several of them will happen simultaneously. that's not a "political analysis" and it's not my opinion (these are two different ways to describe the same thing). it's just a simple application of high school mathematics. it is the correct way to look at solving this problem.
that being said, i could give you my gut feeling, too. it's not worth much. opinions are like assholes, right? i'm used to being an asshole, here. if you want my opinion, instead, here you go.
my gut tells me that the democrats will win north carolina and the republicans will win michigan. nothing else will change.
the result is no shift in power, except in states like texas and kentucky (and south carolina), where trump replaces a critic with a crony.
that's my gut.
but the math says we have a number of independent experiments being conducted and that the democrats are not very likely to succeed at any one of those experiments. that makes it exceedingly unlikely that they will succeed at many or all of those experiments and overwhelmingly likely that the republicans hold the senate. that's the math.
you can listen to the math or you can listen to the arts majors with their opinions, or you can do both, and weight them according to their relative value. the opinions presented by the poli sci majors should not be considered very valuable, in this hierarchy. but it's up to you. the math doesn't care, in the end.
the original weather network post seems to have been mostly plagiarized from this site:
i have made many arguments in this space rejecting the theory that ssws are caused by "planetary waves" moving upwards. this theory is not permitted by thermodynamics. energy should only move downwards. for that reason, i hold to an alternate cause for ssws, namely solar effects in conjunction with the greenhouse effect. this isn't completely relevant, immediately speaking. i'm just being transparent - i don't accept the theory, here, i think it's wrong.
i do accept the data and i have been to his site many times. he puts a lot of effort into what he does. i want to focus my critique on generating bounds around his modelling, and reinterpreting it.
his models are actually projecting no polar vortex formation this year and he's having difficulty working that out, conceptually, or articulating it. that's what i see in his presentation - 2026/2027 is the first year with no polar vortex on record. it could come back next year. maybe. he's connected the yearly break up of the polar vortex to bursts of cold air but what he's describing is that not happening.
the temperature in banff right now is not polar vortex cold, not at that latitude or that altitude. polar vortex cold in banff is much, much colder than that. it's a little cooler than seasonal, but if that's the coldest we've got for the year, and there's not going to be a strengthening, or a subsequent collapse, it could mean we could get through the year without substantive bursts of cold air at all.
this would not be caused by el nino. at all. this would be 100% greenhouse gasses and an apparent tipping point sneaking up on us.
it could come back next year but it will still be quite concerning if the polar vortex is unable to organize this polar night. i think that would be a first that we know of.
this guy's a dipshit. he's smashing his rattle and stomping his feet. baah. baaaah.
there seems to be a dip in cold air resulting from yearly decreases in sunlight in the north. it happened to hit bc. it might have gone in any direction depending on localized effects.
that has nothing to do with el nino. it's not an el nino forecast at all. it's a typical polar autumn effect, heading into polar night.
however, the fact that it did dip in bc is curious because the pacific is in fact quite warm. in an exceptional el nino year, you would expect the warmer air to at least slow the cold air down. the cold air ran right over it like it wasn't there at all. so much for el nino, huh?
his explanation, which is an attempt to explain away the mistake he made earlier, is just digging himself deeper into a hole. he should just backtrack and admit it but dipshits tend to be arrogant. he doesn't explain why el nino causes the jet stream to dip, or does he even try. he just admits that el nino wasn't powerful enough to block the spillage and suggests it might be later in the year.
well, ok. but it looks to me like it's probably already peaked. i wouldn't count on that.
it looks to me like the super el nino is just a fucking bust.
again, the issue is temperature differences, not absolute temperatures. a lot of people are missing this, not just this guy. the "super el nino" is a degree or two higher than normal. arctic amplification is running over 10 degrees. that means the change is running in the opposite direction and, despite the super el nino, the pacific is colder than average, in relative terms. did you understand that?
this is going to disrupt and overturn historical weather patterns so that you can no longer predict the weather by relying on old patterns. we call that climate change.
for now, he was right in the first place to point out that the lack of organization in the north is concerning. it suggests that the polar vortex is slowing down and may have difficulty forming, which is an expected eventual outcome of global warming.
first frost events in southern ontario usually happen around oct 15th and one should have happened by now, but it hasn't. there were a few lows around 5 degrees but that isn't there yet.
the forecasts for the next 10-15 days have lows around 10 degrees, which is closer to a historical high than a historical low.
something i'm hearing and seeing from denialists is a denial of the idea that climate feedbacks are going to end winter. it would depend on where you live, but that is in fact a projected outcome of long term climate change over the next several decades. do not listen to denialists refusing to accept the models. you might not live long enough to see it, but winter is on it's way to an end in southern ontario, certainly. the absence of a polar vortex, in the long run, will be a tipping point into a winterless climate in this region, but it's not imminent.
for now, i'll keep an eye on those frost dates.
if we can get to december without a frost, that is pretty exceptional. it's not currently in the long range.
the jewish yellow star of david badge is one of the most identifiable symbols of the holocaust.
in fact, the idea originated was practiced in muslim spain, where christians also had to wear a blue cross. it originated in the heart of the so-called golden age, in syria, and as early as the 8th century. it's just one of the many examples of nazism drawing from islamic practices.
what of "islamic tolerance"?
no.
the myth of islamic tolerance is about a tax. muslims would allow a minimal set of non-muslims called "people of the book" to exist if they paid the tax. they would be persecuted if they refused the tax. this meant jews, christians and a couple of syncretic religious ideas that come from jewish scripture but are none of the most populous three judaic offshoots. it didn't apply to hindus, zoroastrians, european pagans, central asian animists, buddhists or african religions - they were infidels that would need to be converted or enslaved.
how much "islamic tolerance" ever existed in one place at one time was variable and in constant flux. it was always a tentative, delicate idea.
in fact, muslim rulers from spain to baghdad had a tendency to enjoy crucifying christians. they seem to have thought it was funny or something.
there were a few muslim rulers that were relatively tolerant and a few that were bloodthirsty assyrians in character. it was generally somewhere in between, but it ran the spectrum.
i also want to clarify a few points about the translation movement.
the translation movement is often presented as a great, benevolent thing. we're told that stupid white people forgot how to read, and the arabs saved our ass by translating everything, which saved roman civilization from collapse. then, we got it all back from arabic spain.
each of these points is a half-truth at best.
it is true that there was a massive movement to translate greek and persian sources into arabic, but the traditionalist narrative never asks two key questions:
(1) why did the muslims want to translate everything - everything - into arabic?
(2) what happened to the texts after they translated them?
the answer to the first question was to censor them and in that sense they didn't just not save greek civilization from self-ruin but came close to erasing it. when we find pre-islamic texts by key authors like euclid or plato and compare them to post-translation texts, we learn that the translation process deleted or altered large sections of the classic texts. a good portion of the classical literature that we have today comes to us in the form of vandalized translations, that were severely altered to be in line with muslim theology. if aristotle said something in the original source that the muslim clerics didn't agree with, it was deleted or even reversed in the translation.
the answer to the second question is that they burned them after they translated then because (1) the original versions were no longer to be read (the idea was to force you to read the arabic and not the greek, latin or persian) and (2) the original versions were not consistent with sunni orthodoxy. in some cases, texts were not translated at all, they were just burned.
this narrative about the muslims saving the books is consequently very misplaced. and how bad was it?
well, compare the states of classical greek, latin and persian literature in post-renaissance space. constantinople was eventually conquered by the turks, but the arabs could not get through the theodosian walls and never did. they got to sicily but never to rome and never to paris or london. however, they completely wiped out the persians.
today, we do have a concept of latin and greek classical texts that were preserved in the byzantine empire and to a lesser extent in the rump papal states that followed after 476. further, the romans were able to get out of constantinople alive. there were massive waves of refugees from greece to rome after 1452 and they brought a lot of books with them to italy. this was the true cause of the renaissance - roman back-migration to italy after the turkish conquest. it is for that reason that we do still have original copies of the texts that continued to be read in greece, absent the arabic vandalism and censorship to remove anything offensive to islam. greek sources of latin texts are always better than arabic sources when they can be found for that reason and the amount of information back translated from spanish arabic sources was consequently far less than the amount back translated from greek sources. of course, they then had the pope to deal with, too.
we have no extent classical persian writings. none. not a sentence. we have the behistun inscriptions carved into the rockface in the desert. everything else got burned. we have no trace of it anywhere, except in difficult to trace lineages from extent arabic sources. the romans did something similar when they wiped out carthage. we're told the phoenicians gave us the alphabet (and that might be somewhat untrue. it might have come from ancient greece first.), but we don't have a sentence of surviving phoenician writing. the romans destroyed everything. the only trace of it is in the form of texts translated to latin, and difficult to trace source lineages.
if the arabs had sacked constantinople would they have wiped greek literature out entirely rather than supposedly have saved it? the persian evidence suggests they likely would have.
as mentioned before, this is a consequence of a fluke of geography. the libraries of the ancient world were in hot dry places, deserts, because the texts keep longer. so, the libraries were in carthage, alexandria, damascus and babylon and not in rome or athens or paris, where they have more humid air and experience winters. rome woke up with it's libraries in the hands of foreigners who were hostile to them and aggressively vandalizing them and no way to stop it. persia never woke up at all.
there was a lesser known library in the medieval period in a distant saharan checkpoint called timbuktu. the romans explored a lot of africa but didn't move out of the desert. there's evidence of the romans settling far down the atlantic coast and romans placing military checkpoints in chad and in tanzania. there were expeditions to the african great lakes. they lost a war against nubia (modern day sudan) and didn't go further. the ancient literature talks of the italians disliking the african climate and preferring to trade with the locals. it was outside the roman sphere of influence, but they were there.
there are vague descriptions of roman scholars escaping into the desert and finding refuge in timbuktu. there's good evidence that there was a large italian population in the city.
it was destroyed like the other libraries were.
if you want a concrete takeaway from this - you are probably not an encyclopedic nerd with a photographic memory like i am - it's to be careful with authoritarian sources. history has biases. it is not always written by victors anymore, but it always seeks to play favourites. always be skeptical. always read dissenting views and take differing arguments into consideration. always be prepared to alter your perception of what is true and to expand your concept of what you were told is true.
the islamic golden age narrative is a conservative mythology about past greatness and simpler times. it's a common mechanism on the right that the left has picked up in the west out of base ignorance about islamic history.
other examples of this type of mythology include:
- the romanticization of the 1950s (before brown v board had an effect)
- more recently, the romanticization of the late 19th century post-reconstruction era (before wilson)
- the idea of the united states being founded on christian values
- "christian europe"
- nostalgia over the british empire
- nostalgia for the roman empire
it's at best a half-truth and in reality totally mythical.
this page goes over most of what the video posted goes over but more aggressively, and concludes by articulating most of the points i made in my commentary.
i would like to live in a world where all societies are at a similar level of not just economic but intellectual and artistic development. that would be a lofty and worthwhile goal. but i am a realist and i know we're not there.
it's important to understand - and this is my point - that these arguments do not come from "white supremacists". to begin with, muslims are mostly white, and white supremacists (including the nazis) actually have a history of admiring muslims, not attacking them. there's not even a coherent argument underlying the ignorance.
these arguments are empirical in nature and while you do hear them from secularists like the aging richard dawkins, they ultimately come from secular arab, iranian or turkish scholarship. this is their own narrative.
i have long articulated support for secular groups in the region seeking to overthrow the theocratic and authoritarian governments that keep them culturally stagnant. i would characterize that as a pro-arab and pro-iranian position, and simultaneously as a contemptuous and dismissive position on not just islam but all religion.
Wednesday, October 28, 2026
what kind of writing is this?
i dunno.
i got picked up at a bar once by a woman that said she knew who i was and instructed me to wear hunter s thompson glasses for the rest of the night. i wasn't so into the hot tub. not my thing. she was insistent, though, so i put the glasses on and wore them all night. harmless, right? i ended up hanging out in a tree fort drinking wine and talking about music with a different group of people and left in the morning.
so is this gonzo journalism? maybe it was close to it at one point. i've been locked inside a long time, now.
i don't know what this is, really.
it's something a little idiosyncratic, a little unique, a little unusual.
it's predictable that people will do drugs in the shelters. it's going to turn into a death trap. you're going to be pulling bodies out of there on a daily basis.
the shelter system is restrictive, and i went out of my way to avoid it when i got evicted because it's also dangerous, but it has to be that way to prevent overdoses.
the arena is unused and there's a large homeless population in the park directly outside of it. the idea is to get them out of the park. this seems a little bit bourgeois, for that goal.
they could just turn the arena into a shelter, instead, and focus on building actual housing to meet rising demand for it.
i would support allowing the tent cities to exist near the city dump, moving specific services they rely on to that industrial zoned area and just forgetting about it. these people need to have resources available to them, in the sense of offices being available to walk into. but they shouldn't be coerced or warehoused. that doesn't work.
the fact is that if they want to live in a tent and do drugs then they're going to live in a tent and do drugs. find them a place where nobody lives, on land that has no other potential use, and wash your hands of them.
i do acknowledge i'm losing a little bit of the sample space by essentially assigning kansas and texas to 0% but the outcome would not be substantively different if i worked it out fully. it's obviously a rough estimate. i'm just trying to get a point across.
the point is that it is very unlikely for many unlikely events to happen at the same time and none of these states are likely to swing. i think north carolina is actually going to be pretty close. this isn't an election where people are fed up and looking for a hard swing, it's one where trump is losing support at the margins, and the democrats are clawing and scratching to win unlikely demographics, like evangelical christians, market conservatives, gun nuts and steel workers that actually benefit from the tariffs. it's a harsh dog fight. it's not a "change election". if the democrats win a seat or two, it's going to be through grueling door knocking and effective get the vote out campaigns (like transportation to polls), not via some kind of mass anti-maga backlash. it's just not there. it's just not real.
the democrats should be happy if they pick up two seats.
but are these events independent?
yes.
i have been arguing for years that statewide elections should always be modeled as independent from each other and that the current status quo - to model them as dependent events and use conditional probabilities - is a massive error. i have also identified this error as a major cause of polling misses.
somebody might come by here and think i made a mistake. i would aggressively argue otherwise - i think the consensus position is a mistake.
i have a pretty good track record. i make some mistakes. we'll see if i'm right (again) or not soon enough.
if the democrats win in michigan, that's a hold, not a pickup.
the best chance the democrats have of flipping a seat is north carolina.
i would not consider iowa, kansas, texas or alaska to be seriously in play.
ohio and maine both remain distant longshots for the democrats.
so even if they somehow get north carolina, ohio and maine, they still are in the minority. the republicans still control the senate.
let's say north carolina is about 55%, ohio is about 45% and maine is about 40%. those are probably overestimates.
.55*.45*.4 = 0.099, to start.
then, they'd also have to hold michigan and georgia. let's peg that at 55% and 65% respectively.
.099*.55*.65 = 0.0353925
then, let's say alaska is 30% and iowa is 25%.
.0353925*.3 = 0.01061775
0.01061775*.25 = 0.0026544375
giving the democrats a 4% chance that they can get within striking distance to start is a fair analysis.
the chance that they're going to actually win is practically zero.
are the democrats actually going to stop being wretched for ten minutes and manage to win a congressional election?
in a word: no.
the best argument i've seen is that trump is scared because he's doing rallies in safe seats, which suggests internal polling is bad, but a better explanation is that trump just likes doing rallies. it's his idea of a good time and he'd rather do a rally with a big crowd, meaning he'd rather do it in a safe seat. he's not concerned about saving resources. he's not focusing on seats he wants to flip. he's just going out and having a good time and wants to surround himself with people that like him when he does. that's donald trump.
rallies don't convince voters in local elections. you have to go out and knock on doors and talk to people. the issues are very local. trump is not doing that in having these rallies where he talks about federal issues outside of the scope of local or congressional elections.
we have been here before with the media making very bad projections based on a poor understanding of polling math.
the math on the democrats flipping the senate is magical thinking. it is far more likely that trump will get a functional boost in power as some critics are pushed out and replaced by loyalists. the republicans mght even win some seats and increase their majority. it might essentially wash out and the democrats might peel a seat or something. for the democrats to actually flip the senate would require several independent low probabilty events happening at the same time. .3^5 = 0.00243.
that is 0.243%. not 24.3%. not 2.43%.
0.243%.
it's extremely unlikely.
the house is a tossup because it's extremely complicated. you cannot apply national polls to the house. don't even pretend. don't imagine it. don't delude yourself.
the body is also brutally gerrymandered.
the democrats ought to have a higher likelihood of winning the house but they don't.
so, my official projection is:
senate:
- republican hold or low pick up is most likely
- minimal democratic swing without a flip is less likely
- democrat flip is not likely
house:
- flip a coin
i strongly support the cbam and have argued for years (for decades) that canada should adopt a similar border mechanism on imports, especially on imports from the united states, as well as from china. canadian companies that are unable or unwilling to upgrade their equipment and remain competitive in a global market by holding to dirty production practices should fail and die, and be killed with fire, and have a stake put through their face to make sure they can't come back.
this machine has got to be destroyed.
just call her melanie duplessis.
perhaps she should focus on her own constituents and go after bombardier or alcan for offshoring jobs instead.
it's just an opportunistic political attack for personal gain. it has no economic or legal basis. that type of behaviour bothers me. canada needs to uphold it's principles, or it has nothing. we are nothing - nobody - without our values.
it's relatively clear that mark carney is a full-throated supporter of canadian colonialism and the colonial state. he sees indigenous rights as an annoyance standing in the way of capital. he does not respect the land agreements, but seeks to find ways to maximize resource extraction and the continued exploitation of the land. doing away with the treaties, with the case law, with the constitution, with international legal obligations and with the indian act altogether would suit him just fine. the indians can just go get a fucking job in extractive industry. that would be good for investors, who are the people that matter.
reading some introductory texts by marx and engels would help understand how carney sees the process. the natives should not just be forced to drop their opposition to extractive industry, but should become the workers/slaves in the extractive process. when their land is taken from them, and they can no longer support themselves from it, they will be forced to sell their labour to survive and become slaves in the capitalist system. it's basic capitalist development. the indian act gives them a way out of being enslaved by canadian colonialism.
to mark carney, freedom and democracy only apply to white settlers of european and christian or islamic origin. it doesn't extend to indigenous peoples.
the canadian government has been trying to abolish the indian act for decades, which would do away with indigenous status. broadly speaking, indigenous people consider this to be an attack on their status rights and don't support it.
i have some indigenous ancestry but i prefer to identify as scandinavian. i do not speak for indigenous peoples or want to identify as metis. i don't support a one drop rule.
i do support the rights of indigenous people to struggle against statism, but it's because i'm an anarchist, not because i'm indigenous. there's a long tradition on the libertarian left to look at indigenous culture as a model to build on, rather than an anachronism to do away with. i strongly disagree with all statist models on this point.
that said, no law can or should be trapped in time. laws have to be amended and changed to reflect changing realities.
i would support a consultative process to amend the indian act (including updating it's name) to take the concerns of indigenous communities into account. i would not support abolishing it.
i do not believe that a referendum proposing abolishing the indian act would pass, or even get close to passing, if response was restricted to status indians. it is a policy crafted by the colonial state to do away with the indian, not an idea that indigenous people are asking the government to enforce. rather, indigenous groups are seeking a stronger codification of indigenous rights. while they do have some constitutional protection in canada, abolishing the indian act would make that codification process harder.
it is impossible to miss the suggestion that the intent of abolishing the indian act is to undermine the ongoing codification process and return to a policy of official or unofficial assimilation, which was never fully abandoned.
i would again call on canadian doctors to ignore the legislation and facilitate canadian individuals in asserting their constitutional right to self-ownership, as upheld in multiple court decisions, in requesting suicide on demand, for any reason, whatsoever.
it doesn't matter why. this is a wrong-headed approach to the issue.
the state has no right to generate bounds or otherwise interfere in a decision that is made between an individual and their care provider. s. 7 self-ownership rights take these decisions out of the hands of the state and put them in the hands of the individual, instead.
the bill is an abuse of power and an overreach of state oversight on individual sovereignty.
there is no economic theory that argues that hiking interest rates will reduce energy costs. this will have no effect on inflation, but it will lead to increases in economic rents.
the reason we're supposed to have a central bank that takes these decisions out of the hands of governments is to tie interest rates to monetary policy and prevent decisions like this one. the policy of central bank independence has failed.
i would support abolishing legislation that removes democratic control over rate decisions and returning it to the control of the legislature.
the government is addressing the recession with a spending bill.
this woman is incompetent and she should not be in an important role. she's trying to approach an economic issue as though it's a political issue, because that's what she's capable of understanding - gotcha-type politics. this is an inappropriate discourse in a democracy.
she needs to be thrown out of cabinet, immediately. she's in way over her head and she suffers from a fallacy of arrogance. she's not mentally able to do her job.
this is an utterly stupid political attack that makes her look like a retard when what the situation calls for is increased government spending. she's embarrassing herself and the country in the process and should be shut down.
whatever problems of factual accuracy that the maga idiots might have in their arguments, the fact that contemporary liberalism has become openly apologetic for the worst kinds of fascism is probably worse.
it's hard to decide.
but rfk is basically right, even if he gets every single detail wrong, while the liberals are wrong in every way in their response - factually, historically, morally.
this is a dissenting view of the video i posted, in that it pinpoints different causes for the decline of science in islam, which started around the year 1000, and was long over by the fall of baghdad in 1258.
the reaction from bourgeois liberals is predictable and as bad if not worse. kennedy and trump are morons and their comments reflect it, but the basic point (which is most often attributed to dawkins in popular media) is unquestionably based in objective, demonstrable historical and contemporary fact, it's not some kind of white supremacist talking point. that liberal argument is sheer and utter idiocy; it is based in contemptible ignorance and overwhelming stupidity.
i would counter that the opposite idea - that insisting that the muslim world is not currently lost in a dark age that it needs some serious help getting out of - is fascist apologia based in a concept of alternative facts.
next five cds are...
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) <---- current start point
====
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) <---current end point
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)
======
sister machine gun - metropolis (1997)
skinny puppy - cleanse, fold and manipulate (1987)
sonic youth - sister (1987)
spiral beach - ball (2007)
ssris - effeminate godzilla-sized windchimes (2010)
============
swans - omniscience (1992)
talking heads - remain in light (1980)
the black heart procession - 2 (1999)
the chicago underground - flamethrower (2000)
the cure - disintegration (1989)
those are just the first ten 15 20 25 cds out of the boxes. i'll be updating in groups of five as they come out and onto the shelves
(skipping for now, will come back)
blogger music lists for existing cds (rebuilds):
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
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.
i'm no advocate of the muslim brotherhood, but islam's problems started long, long before 1928. they were already in irreversible decline at the sack of baghdad in 1258. the false narrative of a "golden age" is just typical conservative revisionism. it has about as much value in terms of actual history as "christian europe" does.
the video explains that the collapse of science in islamic societies (not just amongst arabs, but also in iran, the levant and north africa, and whilst taking note that the "arab scientists" are almost always actually ethnic kurds writing in the arabic script and almost never ethnic arabs) is due to a fundamentalist movement that is almost as old as islam itself to reject reason in favour of revelation. this was a movement to reject greece, reject rome and most importantly reject babylon. if the golden age narrative has any value, it's to describe a babylonian renaissance. during the period that muslim revisionism calls a golden age, this fundamentalist movement was enforced with violence by the muslim pope, the caliph, in ways that were similar to papal fundamentalism in the european dark ages. the difference in development was in truth not so great, with the caveat that the arabs inherited all of the books when the empires fell, and the europeans inherited none of them. they had to go to egypt to read a book because the italians stupidly exported everything to africa. then, they forgot how to read, and how to build. the arabs still had the books, so it wasn't quite as bad, but the region was still in decline, and for all of the same reasons. so-called golden age arabia was a massive decline in everything describable from the far better days of byzantine rome.
the correct argument is that muslim society, unlike european society, never emerged from the dark ages, but rather wants to remarket the dark ages as a golden age. it's actually highly trumpian! there was no muslim renaissance, and the fascist governments in place in the middle east, who have been supported by anglo-american militaries, almost all of whom have banned the muslim brotherhood, have continued to do everything they can to prevent the renaissance from happening and keep the islamic world locked in the dark ages.
the islamic world needs a mass revolution, and while the muslim brotherhood is not the type of revolution i would support, they are at least fighting the fascist governments that are preventing the society from evolving. to blame islamic stagnation on the muslim brotherhood is laughably wrong, to the point of being borderline statist propaganda from the fascists running riyadh or cairo.
that's right. this is a climate change driven forecast. it is not an el nino driven forecast.
an el nino forecast would have higher temperatures in the west. the forecast is calling for higher temperatures in the north and east. that is most likely to be caused by solar effects and greenhouse gasses, not by el nino.
the el nino is itself a localized effect of global warming, which produces local and not global side effects.
you can do the math, it's simple enough - unless you're a judge in ontario's court system. then it's too complicated for you to understand.
el nino is + 4, at sea surface level. it's not that much around it. the atlantic is also warmer than normal.
but it's +10 degrees in the north.
that means that the difference in temperatures went from y-x to (y+4 - (x+10)) = y-x + 4 -10 = y-x-6. that makes it harder for a polar vortex to develop. as that +10 inches up even further, the difference comes down even more, and the polar vortex goes away.
it's a very simple argument but it's the basic point that the models forecast - the faster increase in temperatures in the arctic stops the polar vortex from forming. instead, then, what you get is cold air that flops around and incrementally gets eaten by the warmer air. temperature always flows from hot to cold.
when entropy wins, winter loses.
here in southern canada, you still get shorter days (which max out in december, not february) and some amount of cold air will sink but it will have decreasing effects.
meanwhile, in texas, where the effects of the seasons are less, and trump just idiotically cancelled methane restrictions, they will increasingly get no reprieve from the humidity at all. if the polar vortex gets shut down, there's nothing preventing the heat from building. if there is no cold air sinking from canada, the changes in daylight are not enough for it to get cold. you could see cat 5 hurricanes and 100 degree weather in january.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
it's possible that the indigenous algerian berbers had a story about their aristocracy arising from the ocean. it's a common meme in history that may have an ancient origin in the pre-neolithic danubian culture. other places it shows up in are
- the merovingian franks believed they were cimmerians. they also believed their aristocracy were fishmen that crawled out from the ocean. there is evidence of substantive western iranian migration into france in the migration period. the french name alain, and a spate of place names derived from it, is iranian in origin and the result of iranian migration into france.
- the sumerians, which probably spoke a pre-proto-indoeuropean dialect and may have origins in the black sea or danube river area, also believed their aristocracy came from the oceans.
this sumerian theory of fishman origin has been presented as a crude evolutionary theory, which is a bit of a stretch.
i have no supporting evidence, but it's possible that a similar theory was co-opted by muslim colonists in north africa and converted into a story about a syrian swimming across the sea. it's the same kind of syncretism that defines european christianity, but we've mostly figured it out through critical analysis, and they've mostly been ordered to submit and obey and not think it through. in fact, there's a convincing argument that the holy grail myth is based on a christianization of the merovingian mythology, to the idea of jesus' bloodline landing in marseilles (an ancient greek port built to export celtic goods, like salt and tin, back to greece).
do arabs do science?
well, there's a lot of arabs out there. there's a number of concepts of what an arab is out there; genetic, cultural, linguistic, imperial, colonial. there's a lot of science out there. there's been a lot of time passed since the plague ravaged the levant, a major war between rome and persia concluded and, when the dust settled, and in the absence of reliable historical narratives, the region emerges with an arab identity. the reality is we're not entirely sure what happened. the objective facts are the plague and the war, the rest is really in the realm of mythology. the muslim texts don't show up for a few hundred years after the roman nakbah in the region. the gap makes building history impossible. there's an extremely convincing argument that the new emperors in syria basically made the whole thing up c. 950 ish and that the historiography is 100% fictional up to the point, to the point of mohammed being effectively a plagiarized theft of jesus, who never even existed at all.
they call it a golden age, but it's a myth. the arab world emerged from it's own dark age with a series of mythological narratives after the collapse of charlemagne's empire. the mythology says they had a good time, and maybe they did - baths, book burnings, polygamy, even open homosexuality. hey. but it's all fictional.
if you don't believe me, go swim from syria to algeria. go do it. i'll bring the stop clock. that was probably a joke! it probably got lost as a joke and converted to history. the things like that - the white horse to heaven, which was stolen from the story of elijah in the book of kings, the swimming across the mediterranean, which is obviously ported greek or carthaginian mythology, etc - are so silly that they expose themselves as myth immediately. but the reality, which is less accepted or discussed, is that there's not a word in the historiography that's any better than this, and this situation of unreliable history in the muslim world persists until el cid. none of it is reliable. the byzantines were not better, either. there are lengthy periods of byzantine history where the official history states the history was rewritten. like, it's a historical fact that the historical record was erased and reconstructed.
the egyptians would erase people from their hieroglyphs. it wasn't rare.
so, it's an open question how seriously the history is intended to be taken in the first place and whether the religious lost the plot somewhere. if you go way back, people were certainly superstitious, but did anybody believe the story of elijah or of going to heaven on a horse? did anybody believe that god spoke to moses and gave him the ten commandments, that god spoke to mohammad and gave him the koran or that god spoke to joseph smith? the greek mythology is fun! it was supposed to be fun, and we didn't lose the plot. we read it as fun, today. did we lose the plot somewhere along the way with the judaic faiths?
is this actually kant's fucking fault? did they get it before kant decided history was perfect truth?
it's just another reason to prefer indo-european religion over judeo-christian-muslim religion.
so we don't know how it happened - not truly, not honestly - but the map just changed a bit before the year 1000. we woke up in a roman nightmare. the crusades start about the same time.
in that 1000 years, have there been some arab scientists? have there been kurdish scientists in baghdad that spoke and wrote in arabic? or spanish scholars, many carthaginian-jewish? i mean, sure.
the culture, however, was and remains brutally, brutally repressive.
so, do arabs do science? it's a big target. it's hard to miss, in absolute terms.
i get the impression that somebody is trying to quote dawkins, and that wasn't dawkins' argument. dawkins, who i would describe as a liberal in a hurry, and certainly not as a maga conservative, was drawing attention to the statistics. do arabs do science in aggregate? when they do do science, are they fighting against cultural norms? are they fighting against government censorship? are they putting their lives at risk?
there's no genetic reason why arabs ought to be disinterested in science. arabs ought to be as capable and interested in science as any other group, if raised in comparable environments.
however, there's a few reasons why they are culturally less inclined to science and why the religion makes them less likely to succeed as scientists. this has led to a statistically lower percentage of arabs winning nobel prizes and other awards than other groups. that's empirically true. it's simple math built on a basic observation. that was dawkins' point.
it may be difficult to tell from looking at his unkempt appearance and his visibly poor personal hygiene, which has him transporting bacteria across michigan on his face, call it the el sayad e coli express, but the democratic candidate in michgan was at one point a doctor. i don't question his credentials. i may point out that doctors are not empirical scientists. but i would expect that a doctor is less likely to fall into these traps than a general member of the arab population. to the extent that critiques of islam and science have merit, this guy might not be the best data point. there's consequently a valid concern about the application of stereotypes and discrimination. individual members of a population don't necessarily display the characteristics of those populations that exist in majority proportions.
the following are reasons why arab culture and the religion of islam make arabs less likely to become scientists:
- the authoritarianism
- the rejection of dissent and critical thought
- the philosophical preference for analytic philosophy, and a continuing aristotlian rut, over empirical observation, and the subsequent minimization of the scientific method
as many have pointed out, these issues can be addressed. we got over them in the west; or we thought we did. creeping catholicism, which trump has aligned himself with, is threatening to topple the enlightenment. we might be competing for most ignorant monkey with the arabs before too long, while the chinese finish what they started with genghis khan.
i'm hoping for communism instead but i'm no fucking clairvoyant. i'm not fooling anyone with no cosmic debris.
i'd call on dawkins to speak for himself. he's still alive. he is capable of articulating himself.
the comments are clearly racist and he shouldn't be taken out of context. to the extent that they are statistically valid, this individual might not be an appropriately representative sample. stereotypes can be silly and fun, but they can also be damaging and hateful.
to defend myself, this is what i was getting at when i argued that michigan will never elect an arab. trump might repulse a fair number of people with these comments, but michigan is actually a very segregated and very racist state. there's a lot of people in michigan that aren't going to find his comments revolting at all.
this isn't my fight and i'm not interested in it. i would have rather seen the democrats run a different candidate than have to go through this. i don't want to defend this guy against racist attacks. i don't like his culture much, either.
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