(edit: this was written in the late 00s, and saved in this file to this date for unknown reasons. 27/08/2019)
there's a window company. and the window business is a little bit slow right now. so, they're trying to find ways to increase business.
they decide that the problem is that there are too many functional windows out there, and the only way to increase sales is to correct that problem. yet, that's sort of criminal. the government, with it's regulations....always getting in the way of business...
so, they needed to find a way to accomplish this without making it seem illegal. but, it turned out the window company was unpopular due to weak acknowledgement of the relevant environmental regulations. see, what you can do if you're a catastrophically polluting company is calculate whether the cost of modifying your business practices is more or less efficient than the government red tape. of course, if it costs less to destroy a community than it does to sustain it, it would be irresponsible to sustain it.
but, they have a common enemy with their detractors: government. well, sort of. it's not really possible to speak of a common entity in this context, but it's vague enough to be effective. this is how the people are assembled.
the next step in the scheme is to infiltrate the group with employees, union members, to get the idea of window smashing normalized, to implant a logical, causal connection between anger at systemic oppression and breaking somebody's window - solution obtained.
but, will it work? and what will become of the people living under the shadow of the reconstruction firms, whose anger only makes their oppressor stronger?
Sunday, October 6, 2013
platonic climate.doc
(edit: this was written in the late 00s, and saved in this file to this date for unknown reasons. 27/08/2019)
i've spent a lot of time online arguing about climate change over the years and i'm convinced that what we need is somebody to write a platonic dialogue on the topic, something that's easy to understand. something like this...
grasshopper: climate change is just natural variation. did you know it was warmer on the earth millions of years ago?
socrates: yes, i'm aware that the global mean temperature of the earth has been much higher in the distant past. so, yes the earth was warmer in the past. do you know *why*?
grasshopper: no.
socrates: it was because the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide was higher back then.
grasshopper: oh. well, what happened to all of that carbon?
socrates: over time, it became trapped within the earth due to various processes. one of the larger was the means of it being trapped by organisms, who slowly turn into oil over millions of years when they die. when the carbon became trapped in the earth, the climate got cooler.
grasshopper: so, when we burn the oil, we're releasing the carbon back into the atmosphere and recreating the conditions from millions of years ago.
socrates: i think that is correct.
grasshopper: you are wise.
socrates: if i actually thought i was wise, i'd be a fucking idiot you bloody noob.
i've spent a lot of time online arguing about climate change over the years and i'm convinced that what we need is somebody to write a platonic dialogue on the topic, something that's easy to understand. something like this...
grasshopper: climate change is just natural variation. did you know it was warmer on the earth millions of years ago?
socrates: yes, i'm aware that the global mean temperature of the earth has been much higher in the distant past. so, yes the earth was warmer in the past. do you know *why*?
grasshopper: no.
socrates: it was because the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide was higher back then.
grasshopper: oh. well, what happened to all of that carbon?
socrates: over time, it became trapped within the earth due to various processes. one of the larger was the means of it being trapped by organisms, who slowly turn into oil over millions of years when they die. when the carbon became trapped in the earth, the climate got cooler.
grasshopper: so, when we burn the oil, we're releasing the carbon back into the atmosphere and recreating the conditions from millions of years ago.
socrates: i think that is correct.
grasshopper: you are wise.
socrates: if i actually thought i was wise, i'd be a fucking idiot you bloody noob.
at
06:22
Location:
Windsor, ON, Canada
boxer.doc
(edit: this was written in the late 00s, and saved in this file to this date for unknown reasons. 27/08/2019)
so, there's this random person just somewhere out in the world that is heard to mutter the phrase "i'm more liberal than barbara boxer.". somebody thinks it's humorous, so they repeat it to somebody else, and before long it's blown up in the media and everybody in the world knows that this little pleb that nobody had ever heard of before had the gall to claim that they could possibly be more liberal than barbara boxer.
at first, barbara boxer was coy. they hoped everybody would forget and it would just blow over. eventually, they were issuing "no comment.". barbara was said to be "on vacation" and unable to respond to these claims for nearly a week thereafter, once it was clear that she had a challenger and was going to have to respond.
the decision was made that barbara was to take the news light-heartedly. she would approach the situation with the feel of a game of croquet, with a gentlewomanly attitude of fair sport.
the pleb, meanwhile, didn't expect this to happen. it was just a casual remark made with no desire to upset anyone and no thought of any consequences. there was no desire on the plebs part to compete with anybody and there never had been, but there was a sense of mischief, a sense of enjoying the role of the troublemaker and a bit of a twisted amount of joy in watching events turn out as planned. i guess it's almost like treating reality with the same detachment you would have to a video game.
when the video game turned real there was nothing but a sense of fear. wait a second.....this.....can't....happen....it's.....not....real...! the, the tyrannosaurus rex is coming out of the...the..tv....
nonetheless, here is what was happening, barbara boxer was issuing that she was willing to meet all challengers in terms of liberalness and has devised a set of tests that can be used as metrics of liberalness between the two participants.
the pleb had no idea. nobody really knew the pleb all that well or even where the pleb lived, nobody knew how to get in contact and inform the pleb that there had been a response. the pleb didn't pay attention to the media enough to recognize what was occurring. eventually, the message was transported.
it wasn't until the decision had been made that the epiphany occurred and the monster jumped out of the screen, initiating a survivalist response.
"ok, barbara boxer, i know that i've taken you on in this fictitious challenge to the title of High Liberal. but, my creation of the system of competition was produced as a means of ridiculing that system, certainly the prospect of the idea of barbara boxer taking on a pleb for the title of "most liberal" is sufficiently comical, and hence did so in the defense of a future attack on liberalism that has yet to come. your response of actually choosing to actively compete against me indicates an actual attachment to competition, which makes you much less liberal than me. of course, that makes me guilty of setting a trap, which would be unfair. but, your response of condemnation would be the last straw. my choice to be free thinking and make my own decisions makes me the more liberal in the face of your attempt to condemn me. this is a more sufficient metric than the tests you have devised and i would prefer to leave it at that and walk away."
it was deemed by the judges (comedy central) that this response undoubtedly crowned the pleb as most liberal and he was abducted from his home, drugged, and forced to parade before the cameras. he became a huge star.
barbara's career was over, as she was pushed out of the house and onto a cushy, seven figure job on the board of the parent company. she wrote two books and had a wonderful harem.
so, there's this random person just somewhere out in the world that is heard to mutter the phrase "i'm more liberal than barbara boxer.". somebody thinks it's humorous, so they repeat it to somebody else, and before long it's blown up in the media and everybody in the world knows that this little pleb that nobody had ever heard of before had the gall to claim that they could possibly be more liberal than barbara boxer.
at first, barbara boxer was coy. they hoped everybody would forget and it would just blow over. eventually, they were issuing "no comment.". barbara was said to be "on vacation" and unable to respond to these claims for nearly a week thereafter, once it was clear that she had a challenger and was going to have to respond.
the decision was made that barbara was to take the news light-heartedly. she would approach the situation with the feel of a game of croquet, with a gentlewomanly attitude of fair sport.
the pleb, meanwhile, didn't expect this to happen. it was just a casual remark made with no desire to upset anyone and no thought of any consequences. there was no desire on the plebs part to compete with anybody and there never had been, but there was a sense of mischief, a sense of enjoying the role of the troublemaker and a bit of a twisted amount of joy in watching events turn out as planned. i guess it's almost like treating reality with the same detachment you would have to a video game.
when the video game turned real there was nothing but a sense of fear. wait a second.....this.....can't....happen....it's.....not....real...! the, the tyrannosaurus rex is coming out of the...the..tv....
nonetheless, here is what was happening, barbara boxer was issuing that she was willing to meet all challengers in terms of liberalness and has devised a set of tests that can be used as metrics of liberalness between the two participants.
the pleb had no idea. nobody really knew the pleb all that well or even where the pleb lived, nobody knew how to get in contact and inform the pleb that there had been a response. the pleb didn't pay attention to the media enough to recognize what was occurring. eventually, the message was transported.
it wasn't until the decision had been made that the epiphany occurred and the monster jumped out of the screen, initiating a survivalist response.
"ok, barbara boxer, i know that i've taken you on in this fictitious challenge to the title of High Liberal. but, my creation of the system of competition was produced as a means of ridiculing that system, certainly the prospect of the idea of barbara boxer taking on a pleb for the title of "most liberal" is sufficiently comical, and hence did so in the defense of a future attack on liberalism that has yet to come. your response of actually choosing to actively compete against me indicates an actual attachment to competition, which makes you much less liberal than me. of course, that makes me guilty of setting a trap, which would be unfair. but, your response of condemnation would be the last straw. my choice to be free thinking and make my own decisions makes me the more liberal in the face of your attempt to condemn me. this is a more sufficient metric than the tests you have devised and i would prefer to leave it at that and walk away."
it was deemed by the judges (comedy central) that this response undoubtedly crowned the pleb as most liberal and he was abducted from his home, drugged, and forced to parade before the cameras. he became a huge star.
barbara's career was over, as she was pushed out of the house and onto a cushy, seven figure job on the board of the parent company. she wrote two books and had a wonderful harem.
at
06:20
Location:
Windsor, ON, Canada
http://www.nature.com/news/african-genes-tracked-back-1.13607?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews
i've shared this five or six times. the idea really fascinates me, when taken to more extreme levels, as an explanation for some really twisted shit. and, is the government working on it's own parasite?
http://www.nature.com/news/parasite-makes-mice-lose-fear-of-cats-permanently-1.13777
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/i-had-five-sons-now-i-have-four-syrias-senior-cleric-pardons-the-rebels-who-killed-his-son-8835441.html
i've shared this five or six times. the idea really fascinates me, when taken to more extreme levels, as an explanation for some really twisted shit. and, is the government working on it's own parasite?
http://www.nature.com/news/parasite-makes-mice-lose-fear-of-cats-permanently-1.13777
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/i-had-five-sons-now-i-have-four-syrias-senior-cleric-pardons-the-rebels-who-killed-his-son-8835441.html
at
04:12
Location:
Windsor, ON, Canada
so, umm, it seems like fisk has it figured out.
the sarin attack seems to have been launched by qatar-linked rebels, by way of libya. makes sense.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/gas-missiles-were-not-sold-to-syria-8831792.html
the regime's response has been rather befuddled from the beginning, as though they can't believe anybody thinks they'd be so reckless and stupid. basically, the syrian government finds the accusation insulting.
the sarin attack seems to have been launched by qatar-linked rebels, by way of libya. makes sense.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/gas-missiles-were-not-sold-to-syria-8831792.html
the regime's response has been rather befuddled from the beginning, as though they can't believe anybody thinks they'd be so reckless and stupid. basically, the syrian government finds the accusation insulting.
at
02:01
Location:
Windsor, ON, Canada
i'm really taken aback by the nature of the idlenomore event tomorrow, and am not really sure how to interpret it. should i be finding it hard to *believe* that the organizers are uncritically repeating a colonial history of their own oppression? the correct information is not obscure, at this point. when i was researching this, i was able to easily find critical, anti-colonial histories in the library - at carleton, which isn't exactly the best library. in fact, the fucking wikipedia page is enough to tear down the statist propaganda underlying the action. so, it's really hard to *believe* that they're "too colonized to know their own history".
is it a conscious attempt to reclaim history? well, i can get behind that in theory, but the way to do that is to point out the actual motives of the colonial regime, not to naively play into their tricks. this strikes me as more likely, but it's entirely disingenuous. it relies on the ignorance of the audience, and i find that both disturbing and insulting. i can get behind a correction of history, but i can't get behind a process of rewriting it to suit the current needs of a dominant or marginalized group. that's scary, orwellian shit is what that is.
so, i'm just going to suggest that you take the time to read up on what the proclamation actually was. later court documents have used the proclamation as an excuse to award land claims, but it was actually the exact opposite of a recognition of sovereignty - it was a unilateral declaration by the british crown that all the areas that the french had claimed exclusive trade rights to would come under the ownership of the british king, and that all the people that lived in those areas (indigenous, french or otherwise) would become british subjects. a large area was split off as "indian hunting grounds", but this was not a recognition of sovereignty so much as it was a tactic to avoid land speculators from selling the land to other european powers. the arrangement the french had was a trade arrangement. so, conquering the french wouldn't automatically give britain control of the land outside of the garrisons. there was nothing preventing indigenous groups from selling their land to the french or the spanish, or to american settlers. that's what the proclamation meant to address. what it did was declare that indigenous land could only be sold to the king. what kind of sovereignty is that? it's not sovereignty, it's a type of feudal claim of lordship over the area.
so, i don't know what this is really about underneath the banners, but do please educate yourself before you go out there and celebrate the day that indigenous people lost their land to a unilateral declaration by the british monarch.
is it a conscious attempt to reclaim history? well, i can get behind that in theory, but the way to do that is to point out the actual motives of the colonial regime, not to naively play into their tricks. this strikes me as more likely, but it's entirely disingenuous. it relies on the ignorance of the audience, and i find that both disturbing and insulting. i can get behind a correction of history, but i can't get behind a process of rewriting it to suit the current needs of a dominant or marginalized group. that's scary, orwellian shit is what that is.
so, i'm just going to suggest that you take the time to read up on what the proclamation actually was. later court documents have used the proclamation as an excuse to award land claims, but it was actually the exact opposite of a recognition of sovereignty - it was a unilateral declaration by the british crown that all the areas that the french had claimed exclusive trade rights to would come under the ownership of the british king, and that all the people that lived in those areas (indigenous, french or otherwise) would become british subjects. a large area was split off as "indian hunting grounds", but this was not a recognition of sovereignty so much as it was a tactic to avoid land speculators from selling the land to other european powers. the arrangement the french had was a trade arrangement. so, conquering the french wouldn't automatically give britain control of the land outside of the garrisons. there was nothing preventing indigenous groups from selling their land to the french or the spanish, or to american settlers. that's what the proclamation meant to address. what it did was declare that indigenous land could only be sold to the king. what kind of sovereignty is that? it's not sovereignty, it's a type of feudal claim of lordship over the area.
so, i don't know what this is really about underneath the banners, but do please educate yourself before you go out there and celebrate the day that indigenous people lost their land to a unilateral declaration by the british monarch.
at
01:14
Location:
Windsor, ON, Canada
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