j reacts to "delete your account"

listen.

i know clinton has trouble with young voters. but, she's dipping into the barely legal area with "delete your account".

twelve year olds can't vote, hill. they're actually widely ridiculed online, too. oops? yeah.

this hip grandma thing is a dead end of possibly catastrophic proportions. that's not to say she shouldn't be trying to spin a few memes out, but it's going to work better if it's authentic.

that is, after all, the actual problem, right? she's widely seen as a big faker. hiring a staff of....is that the new scandal? clinton uses child labour for her twitter account?

but, that's just obviously fraudulent. all you're going to get out of kids from that is an awkward laugh and some eyeball rolling. i actually don't think there's anything particularly uncool about grandma memes. it would actually even be sort of pioneering. digital natives are a lot less cognizant of the technological divide than older people are; they don't really see the screen the same way. what i mean is that older people tend to look at the internet as some alternate reality that you have to move into, while digital natives just see it as an extension of reality. so, there is not real-life hillary and internet hillary. there's just hillary. that means that you want to use their tools, sure, but you want to look and sound your age, too - because they won't separate the digital from the physical the way that older people will. you are your twitter account.

if trump wasn't such a loud-mouthed buffoon, he'd have a natural advantage because he's actually writing the stuff himself. that's what the kids want, they just don't want what trump is saying.

she shouldn't delete her account. but, she might want to get more involved with it.

i was a canadian before it was cool.

this is a bit of a classic piece of canadiana; some people may even argue that this was the best canadian band of all time, although it was very short-lived - we only got two records out of the original line-up.

they're doing a twenty year anniversary set with the original line-up at the windsor bluesfest (and they managed to get jeff martin, singer/guitarist of another obscure-outside-of-canada canadian act called the tea party, to open).

the fact is that i saw this concert once before. it was called edgefest, and it happened in 1997.

to get an idea of the popularity of these bands in canada, note that the opening bands were collective soul, green day and the foofighters. the headliners were the tea party, i mother earth & our lady peace.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNhGGdfqFME&list=PL919D15E55E8F8498

this is a couple of cuts from the tea party's opus, the edges of twilight.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7pg4ndDy_gaVTV_e6gcFigsqAuTvt7Bo

note to self: don't consume five grams of mushrooms this time.

Tippi
Or he could just become a Democrat - an actual one, not just someone who thought running as an independent wouldn't him get enough attention.

deathtokoalas
i'd rather see him split the democrats in half. two-party spectrums are really one-party oligarchies. a third party is necessary to save the country's democratic institutions from lapsing into a nepotistic cesspool, to be sold to the highest bidder.

ipolitics.ca/2016/06/11/clinton-owes-sanders-a-dignified-exit/

j reacts to clinton v sanders being more like luke v vader than clinton v obama

so, it's been clear for a while now that people are not entirely cognizant of the severity of the divide in policy. what's not so clear to me is if sanders is seen as less progressive than he is, if clinton is seen as more progressive than she is or if it's somewhere in between.

it's also no doubt a little bit of a reflection of familiarity. the united states is a two-party system.

it's the old kodos line.

"go ahead, waste your vote."

the only way that most people can really conceive of a role for sanders at all is in the democratic party. so, of course they throw out ideas like a vp run.

remember: clinton's view is they ran the race and she beat him and he therefore loses and his ideas should go away.

i've been clear that i don't think that a meaningful collaboration is possible. it's like telling skywalker and vader to put aside their differences and get along. the fact that people can't see, or won't see, or can't process, the difference is kind of disappointing.

there's still a long time before the convention.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-poll-sanders-idUSKCN0YY0F9
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlcngdW2Ju4

"bernie. i am your master."

"join the dark side, bernie."

noooooo!!!!!

don't do, it bernie! don't join the dark side!

that's right. don't join the dark side. heed your own advice, sir.


listen.

bernie's been shuffled home. the stage is set for episode VI. but, that means that this shit ain't over until i see some happy ewoks dancing in the forest. which means we have until burning man to set this right.

no, really.

there's an important part in return of the jedi where luke tries to convince vader to turn away from the dark side. that's what's up next. but, it will fail. and, we will have to blow up the party.

somebody call chomsky, make sure he's ok.

--

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/another-neocon-endorses-clinton

j reacts to orlando (trigger warning?) pt 1

i guess that the right thing to say is that i've become entirely desensitized to mass shootings. i guess the way i react is something like this:

1) there's a lot of problems with mental illness, poverty, inequality and the correlated collection of issues in the united states.
2) therefore, they need more money for services, more wealth redistribution, more resources for integration, more attention on changing social attitudes, etc.
3) however, the deeply anti-intellectual culture in the country (fostered by elites through media and by politicians) rejects this in favour of militarization.
4) therefore, they're fucked until they change their attitude.

hey, look. a cloud.

the way i see it is that mass shootings are an expected result of american culture, and no sane person could look at the culture and expect anything different. so, i'm really not shocked. it's just expected. it would be shocking if americans just randomly stopped shooting each other for no good reason.

they don't need more gun control. they don't need more cops. they need a collective slap upside the head and a collective attitude adjustment.

it's a social issue, and they need a social revolution to address it. there's currently almost no understanding of this, and no reason to expect it to stop.

i'm not trolling. really. i don't want to hear about immigration reform. i don't want to hear about hiring more cops. i don't want to hear about gun control, either.

laws don't solve problems. jails don't solve problems. cops don't solve problems. what solves problems is people listening to each other.

so, that's what i want to hear about.

http://blogs.plos.org/publichealth/2013/07/25/the-gun-violence-epidemic/

but, you won't hear about a sane approach. you'll just hear bloviating nonsense back and forth.
there's nothing left-wing about gun control. it's harshly statist and deeply authoritarian.

a real leftist would approach the issue with a root-cause analysis and argue for more funding for mental health services.

but, there is no left in the united states.

11-06-2016: shifting gears back to final archiving steps (with rants in between)

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

a presidential endorsement from the koala central command

sssshhhhhh.

history is clear - the american left gets nowhere by caving in. so, turn your scare tactics around and throw them at hillary - she'd better make some concessions, or she's going to lose the election. it will make little difference to anybody at all - to her donors, to her would-be supporters - if trump beats her. well, except to her. she's the only person that should be frightened of anything, and it's up to us to making sure she's shaking in her pants.

let's march, march, march until she begs us to stop.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelle-manning-barish/how-bernie-sanders-can-st_b_10385408.html

ok. so...

the russians hate hillary. this might be true. it might not be. but whether it's true or not has nothing to do with it. the more important thing to think about is how much the russians hate hillary, it's one of those deep gut hates, and whether you really think this whole electing her thing is a good idea or not. not because the russians should tell america what to do, but because it's kind of actually sort of a red line for them.

i know. usa! usa! ugh. well, at least stock up on some canned soup, k?