j reacts to a comment by (thomas) friedman

an economics debate between friedman and i would likely quickly escalate into a shouting match, as i accuse him of dishonesty and he accuses me of utopianism. but, this is a valid criticism. and, if this whole thing falls apart in the end, it's going to be written into her gravestone.

here lies hillary rodham clinton,
who refused to run on the economy,
and hence was laid to rest in a dunce cap.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/03/opinion/how-clinton-could-knock-trump-out.html?_r=0

j reacts to the usefulness of fox polling

the fox poll....

clinton +10. fox?

fox is not like other major media outlets, because it's ideologically driven rather than market driven. cnn, msnbc, cbs, abc - they just want ratings and will bend over any which way to get them. fox has an agenda.

so, i'm always skeptical of anything from fox. i wouldn't trust them to report on the time of day.

but, the polling is reporting reliable methodology and the results are in line with the other reliable firms: clinton's up by around 10 points.

so, we have three media outlets using reliable polling firms that are worth consulting right now: cnn, cbs and fox. with some caveats with fox.

ignore the rest.

02-08-2016: ranting over a long overdue laundry day (a/c, politics, aliens, mri)

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

j reacts to a possible plot twist around the polling propaganda

just another twist on this idea of polling as a means to shape the media that generates popular opinion, though: we've never been in a situation where both of the candidates are so overwhelmingly unpopular, and this kind of standard approach could consequently fail.

so, let's say that hillary's ipsos propaganda panel manages to get an upper hand in the news cycle and we're stuck dealing with weeks of flawed polling that ends up convincing most people that hillary is going to win in a landslide. under normal circumstances, we would expect the projection to create a herd mentality: hillary will get a bump in the polling because people are fucking sheep and they want to vote for the winner. that's what the whole thing is trying to engineer, and that both sides are going to be pushing. but, in this particular circumstance, i'd be a lot more likely to vote for jill stein - especially in a swing state - if i thought clinton was comfortably ahead, and more likely to vote for clinton if it looked very close (and i was convinced she was a lesser evil). a lot of republicans will say the same thing. and, some will even argue that they'll vote for trump in a landslide to send a message.

the same logic applies on the other side, too.

so, this may end up backfiring this cycle, because everybody is so disliked.

j reacts to the surreal truth about the tpp, this election

both of them will fast-track the tpp, should they win.

j reacts to trump's flailing against the polls as demonstration of what i've said

see, this is the point - it's exactly what i'm talking about regarding:

(1) media institutions aligning behind trump (for ratings - so expect this. the rnc beat the dnc soundly.)
(2) "phony" polls being used to project reality and alter public opinion, rather than measure it.

i'll rant a little more about this in the vlogs/reactions that come up this week. but, the actual truth is that the cnn poll is the only poll (besides the cbs one...) released this week that isn't obviously phony.

this is the world we live in. if you haven't read 1984 in a while, go dust it off.

and, yes - she does it, too. there were some phony pro-democratic "polls" released, as well.

again: the cnn and cbs polls are reporting reliable methodologies. the other "polls" are not.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/08/02/trump_theres_something_phony_about_this_weeks_cnn_poll.html

i'm strongly considering setting up a system in the other room with speakers pointed at the ceiling and blaring this on repeat.

j reacts to the election as a choice between catastrophes

i was thinking about it as i was walking, and this is my perception of things.

1) trump is a near certain apocalyptic disaster on the economy. not on trade, but on taxes. it's less the problem of putting the country bankrupt (that can't happen...) and more the problem of defunding institutions. i don't think he understand the importance of government funding and interference in the economy, or what would happen if that were to stop. hillary is in theory a better pick on the economy.

2) hillary is a near certain apocalyptic disaster on foreign policy. she's going to bomb syria. she's going to start a war in eastern europe, and try and blame it on russia. she might start a war in korea, too. trump is in theory a better pick on foreign policy.

so, as a left-leaning voter (i'm not actually a voter....), i'm left with the following choice:

1) is trump such a potential economic catastrophe that it's worth voting for hillary and the escalation of world war three into a possibly nuclear hot conflict? or..

2) is hillary such a potential foreign policy catastrophe that it's worth voting for jill stein and gambling on the country collapsing into glasnost?

i'm currently leaning strongly towards the second option.

if trump wins, you're looking at serious long term economic consequences that are probably unavoidable.

if hillary wins, you're looking at world war three.

j reacts to helicopter surgeries on elephants as an allegory for alien contact

let's forget about whether alien abductions have any real evidence supporting them, or even whether it's plausible, and just think if we can find examples that we can observe that might help us crudely understand what it would be like.

i've seen a bunch of videos like this. this is one of the less intense ones. and, they seem a little bit more relevant when applied to elephants - who are extremely smart - rather than rhinos.

for example, i saw one video of a team of doctors swooping in on an elephant with a calf in a helicopter, shooting it with a tranquillizer gun from the helicopter, jumping out, separating the calf, performing beneficial surgery on it, sewing it up and flying off.

if you were an elephant, wouldn't that seem a lot like an alien abduction? would the other elephants believe you? would any of the elephants be able to realize that the aliens were actually humans?

we're not exactly sure where elephants are cognitively, but there's some thinking that they can differentiate between languages and even understand context syntax. as far as we know, humans are the only other animals that can understand context syntax. they appear to bury their dead, which suggests some beginning concept of religion. nor do we completely understand how they communicate, but we think they may have developed some kind of language through the emission of ground vibrations.

the point i'm trying to get at is that they may not be far from where we were when we first developed the sky-god religions. one attempt to try and rationalize these sky-god religions is to suggest that they may be a memory of contact.

go find some videos of humans interacting with wildlife in africa via helicopter and come back and tell me that's crazy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdP-m2h53G8

j reacts to some more polls with useless methodologies

the economist/yougov and nbc/sm polls are both trash. don't even aggregate them. both blacklisted. remember: i'm reacting solely to methodology, not their claims.

clinton is leading comfortable in national polls, right now - by a little less than ten points. but, of course it's the local polls that matter.