yeah. the logic here is entirely backwards. it's precisely because the minimum wage jobs (retail, services) are immoveable that the government has a lot of flexibility to dictate minimum wages without affecting the economy. you can't pick the store up and move it, so you can poke the companies in the eye and fling rotten food at them and do whatever else you want with no consequence. the government has the leverage here, not the private sector.

in theory, you can pick the assembly line up and move it. but, they're already gone, anyways. assembly line jobs tend to be unionized, which puts most of them well above minimum wage to begin with.

the argument is really over the sanctity of the market. liberal market advocates will jump through all sorts of absurd hoops to try and convince you that it is "logical" to not interfere. but, virtually every one of their arguments is deconstructed quite easily. don't let them fool you...

regardless, what's happening with these increases is that they're moving with inflation. this consequently is NOT an increase in the real minimum wage, it's just a fair adjustment to reverse what would have otherwise been a loss due to inflation. it's an excellent policy that we're lucky to have here. it means we'll never lose income due to inflation.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-raises-minimum-wage-to-11-25-1.3001278

any tension relief from refraining from coffee is being reversed by struggling to stay awake more than 12 hours. i felt alert around noon, but now i'm a walking zombie. i'm going to let it sit for tonight nonetheless, and likely hit it pretty hard tomorrow.

now that the weather's cleared up, i want to get out to some more shows. part of the point of this was to force myself to hang out in the art spaces of detroit to meet people (which i'm very bad at), but it really seems to be a lot of terrible. i'm going to get out to see some rock shows, though: torche, screaming females, lightning bolt, loma prieta, la dispute...

one thing that became a little clearer as the tension came down a bit was that a part of what's happening is related to the bones. i think there's some chips in there, although it's hard to get to cause and effect. the earliest i remember this happening was after i got a tetanus shot after i smashed my face in when i fell of a bike, in 2005. i'm not pinning anything on the tetanus shot, but it seems that the bones never really healed properly. i don't know if all the tics are chipping it, or if the chips are causing the tic..

i'm glad that the blu-ray install was painless. the plug & play picked it up (never clear with this version of xp that i've hacked into pieces. i can't get it to read my sansa mp3 player consistently, for example. but it seems to be good with drives.), and imgburn knows what to do with a big iso. so, i didn't even have to install any new software. it's kind of like it just worked. how about that. must be a talented tech that set it up that way.

i'm trying to get rid of an expired bottle of peanut butter, but am going to crash shortly. it seemed promising this afternoon. it really did. but it's been a long time since i've been off coffee...

one more day for recovery/detox. i'm going to try to hit torche on friday.....

i literally slept all due tuesday (my legs were too sore for much of anything), and spent most of yesterday immobile but got my eating playlist padded for another few months. that's actually a time consuming process, the way the feeds are designed. it would be nice if you could jump to a specific point in the feed. alas...

my legs are back, at least.

i'm going to spend the next several hours getting information off my politics page. i'll likely only take a dent out of it, but this is a good time for it. i'm basically sick.

as for the effect? well, i'm feeling my perception of time slow down a little. a bit of tension has removed itself from my head and neck, but it still lingers - i think it's still releasing. and i'm more hydrated, which is an all around positive regarding skin and everything else. but the facial ticks have merely slowed down.

i'm sticking with the water. no doubt. but i think i've convinced myself the coffee is not the problem. and i'll consequently likely get back on it and back to work next week. i need a few more days though, to let the tension really wind down....

grandePaoloDiCanio
Living in Korea, I can tell you only 1% of women are naturally pretty, the rest is either average or did plastic surgery. About 40% of women over 18 did plastic surgery, especially eyes, nose and even jaws ... so repealing imo ....

deathtokoalas
actually, i believe this is accurate. there's a stigma in eastern asia right now regarding epicanthal folds, especially. facial surgery to "westernize" appearance is a near necessity for career advancement in a society dominated by a strange kind of inverted european supremacy and accompanying inferiority complex.

statistics regarding breast augmentation in certain parts of the united states are equally as alarming.

xxx
+deathtokoalas part right but part wrong. it's true that many koreans think western(caucasian) people are good looking but it's only about shape. not else. when humans are sexually attracted to opposite sex humans, it's not only about shape. the physical attraction of human appearance is about 4 senses. sight, touch, sound, smell. so the physical attraction is the shape, eyeballs, skin, body smell, voice. it's true than many koreans are attracted to caucasians' shape. but not their skin, not their eyeballs, not their voice, not their smell.

this beauty thing is totally subjective thing. it's not objective thing at all. most koreans prefer korean food than western food. not because korean food is better. it's just because of subjective preference. i'm a korean guy and most koreans guys i know prefer asian porn than caucasian porn. i'm not trying to be rude. i'm simply saying the reality. sorry for my bad english.

deathtokoalas
+xxx my understanding is that the drive behind the plastic surgery is not a desire to maximize sexual attraction but career ambition. it's apparently hard for a female to get a job in large parts of east asia without conforming to a westernized, hypersexualized norm.

oguns iron
+deathtokoalas not sure this is about white supremacy. If it's about typically european features, why aren't they all trying to have huge noses ? why aren't they all wearing clear contacts ? Round eyes exist among east-asians. They're just not that common.

I think people often misinterpret beauty trends in peoples from outside the european world. People will often say that the preference for light skinned women in africa is due to a desire for european looks. Is it ? Then why aren't african men clamoring for european style butts too ? lol

deathtokoalas
+oguns iron the answer is that they only know "white" through what's been sold to them. much as we only know "asian" through what's been sold to us. whites are presented to them in media as these perfect, aryan superpeople. a master race. and, it comes out rather starkly in the media they create for themselves, which consistently pushes this almost nazi mythology.

but, i mean, i don't think it's conscious white dominance. it's more of an inferiority issue than a dominance issue (although where there is one, there is the other). most westerners simply don't know that south korea spent decades after the armistice (1953) as an authoritarian american-controlled military dictatorship. this video itself glosses over that. south korea really wasn't organized very differently than north korea, it just had the typical western-backed nationalist/fascist dictator in place - like in egypt, or taiwan, or, previously, iraq. there was no freedom of expression in south korea between 1953 and 1988. as an occupying power, the united states did what occupying powers do, which was often (and sometimes still is) rather brutal. as the culture reconstructed itself after the lingering destruction of world war two into the korean war, it did so in an atmosphere where whites were everywhere dominant - in media, on the street, in the economy, etc. and, when you combine that reality with an inherently hierarchical culture, you get this weird inferiority complex.

i'm not making this stuff up, it's out there in print.

oguns iron
what i notice often around the world is that peoples will often want to imitate characteristics of other people who are closely related, but whose appearance is considered ideal. It doesnt always have to do with dominance, btw. The romans considered the germans savages but they did like the looks of their women. The indians have always praised white skin very very much, but you don't see them praising blond hair and blue eyes. If Indian beauty standards were all about trying to look at British as possible, they would be all about blond hair and other nordic looks but they aren't. Instead, north-ndian beauty standards are basically Iranian standards and north-india can be argue to belong to the wider persian civilization in significant ways.

A lot of very poorly educated people want to reduce everything to european influence. Yes it certainly had some influence but non-europeans weren't blank slates before a few centuries ago.

deathtokoalas
+oguns iron i don't think that you're understanding what white supremacy is. white supremacy is not about skin tone, it's about culture. speaking of white supremacy in east asia is consequently not a question of being victims of history, or denying agency. what we see in east asia is east asians going out of their way to participate in what they see as a superior culture. they want to join the master race, to discard what they've been taught to see as an inferior culture and become the superior, dominant one. it's more like a successful colonizing process.

Philip
only 1% of women are natural beauty? do not exaggerate or lie stupid. do you think any country or group like that exists in the world? i'll say more than 80% of women in Korea are 100% natural. Of course Korea has high rate of plastic surgery rate but most of them are actually not 'plastic' surgery because most of the surgery are just making double eyelids. very simple surgery. it is still true that there are relatively bit more women who get real 'plastic' surgery compared to United States or Japan, because of relatively cheap price but high level of medical&surgery skills.

deathtokoalas
the statistics (including the removal of epicanthal folds) are indeed somewhere around 40%, which is quite a bit higher than the still alarming statistics for breast augmentation in the united states (which is the proper comparison, taking cross-cultural concerns into consideration).

(deleted response)

deathtokoalas
+Hwan Hong Lee listen, i don't have any nationalistic sympathies, here. i'm a canadian of mixed caucasian and native american descent. i'm just stating the facts. and the numbers really are that high, if you'd care to look into it.

[the 1% part is a little more contentious]

imnotgaybut20is20
where did u pull thoses stats? from ur ass?

deathtokoalas
+imnotgaybut20is20 it's easily googleable. you'll get various numbers (1 in 5, 1 in 3, half), but 40% is in the range of published estimates.

(deleted response) 

deathtokoalas
+Cassey Belle my understanding is that it's pretty openly discussed in korea, actually. there's no shame attached to it at all. it's just a tool to use for social advancement. if anything, there may be a stigma attached to not having surgery, kind of like there's a stigma attached to being overweight. "too lazy to get surgery", "too poor to afford surgery", etc.....

you have to remember this is east asia, which is really on the bleeding edge of everything cybernetic and transhumanist. the stigmas against technology that we have here, that ultimately greek cult of natural beauty, is foreign to their culture, which is going to be in favour of anything that will give you a competitive advantage to get ahead. there's no concept of individual creation in god's image, either. it's a more collectivist society, rooted in deeper concepts of conformity. beauty is less in the eye of the beholder, and more defined by adherence to culturally enforced norms.

but, we're in an open economy now.

it's not that i'm debating the multiplier effect. that idea worked nicely when we were all in closed economies with these nice, hefty tariffs protecting us from the outside. but, that world is not with us anymore.

the construction worker might or might not buy a car, but let's look at more pressing targets of income. first, the construction worker is probably in a lot of debt. credit card debt. student loan debt. mortgage debt. before any new cars are purchased, all that debt needs to be addressed. and, then where does the construction worker go to spend what's left over?

the assumption justifying deficit-spending was that the money would go into local companies, which would invest in local manufacturing, which would create local jobs. the chain of logic is as valid as it's ever been. but, if the construction worker buys goods at walmart (likely, lowest cost) then the investment goes overseas and creates jobs in asia. it pulls the rug out from under the policy.

if we're smart reasonable people, we realize that jobs are created through increases in aggregate demand. but, when you apply that to the service sector it translates merely to urban sprawl. increased sales at walmart don't create jobs, they just make the workforce work harder.

it's in some senses an irrelevant concern in terms of half of the policy. somebody has to fix the infrastructure, and that somebody is invariably going to be the federal government. but, the reality is that free trade abolished keynesian deficit-spending as a coherent economic idea. the effects will multiply out into the global economy, sure. but, the only way that the government can create jobs is directly. deficit-spending just can't create jobs in a system of global free trade and offshored manufacturing.

this debate over whether the government ought to influence the economy is anachronistic. today, the government is unable to influence the economy. and that requires some serious adjustment on the pseudo-left.

in a world of absurdity and debt slavery, suicide is often the only rational option. it's just a question of coming to terms with it. the lucky ones are those that can put it off the longest, but in the end we're left with the rational choice of suicide or giving up and giving way to the delusional nature of the existence we inhabit.

but, we can't be allowed to understand this - not all of us, not all at the same time. the entire society would collapse. so, we're force fed these elaborate systems to trick us into meaning. we're taught to alienate the bright few that get the meaninglessness and hopelessness inherent in our economy. this appears to be ideological enforcement.

life has meaning, kids. only crazy people think otherwise. now put on your uniform and get to fucking work.

here's the thing: if we all understood this at the same time, if we let the whole thing collapse, we might actually emancipate our minds to the point where we could build a world worth living in.

but, see, that's why i'm crazy.

of course.

it's a good idea gone wrong.

first of all, i'm going to state the obvious, which is eluding people: if the union movement was succeeding, this couldn't happen. it's a reflection of the failure of unions as a tactic. but this has been gone over repeatedly: it's the hierarchical nature of the union. the reduction of union to management. it defeats the point. now, workers are paying two management classes instead of one, and getting screwed over nearly as badly.

what they're describing here is a type of parasitism. it's ambulance chasing. they bargain the wages up 50%, then take half the increase. that's as capitalistic and thieving as any other management class. after a few years of inflation, they really are just stealing money from workers, and ought to be thrown off like any other management class.

unions need to be run by workers, or they're inevitably just reduced to co-opted shadow management pushing for the status quo. hopefully, this ruling will help light a fire under workers and resurrect the diy attitude they need to fight to abolish management altogether.