april 28, 2014

ffs....

http://www.cnet.com/news/bitcoin-mining-malware-reportedly-discovered-at-google-play/

now, every cpu is a possible drone to generate currency from. not only do we have people wasting resources on nothing of any value, we have computers doing the same thing.

i'm not really surprised, although i'll say that i looked at this as a harmless ponzi scheme up to this point, rather than anything legitimately threatening to the real economy. this is providing for a different perspective...

could we just get the point that the problem is exchange value itself and abolish currency already?

a: i think there's this huge problem in the world.
b: really? what's that?
a: well, money is just made out of thin air, like it's some kind of meaningless abstraction, or something.
b: isn't it a meaningless abstraction, though?
a: never mind that.

b: well, what's your solution?
a: i think we should make money out of processor cycles.
b: isn't that out of thin air?
a: never mind that.

a: when it's just made out of thin air like this, it lets banks create these imaginary bubbles that they can get rich off of.
b: but aren't they going to do the equivalent thing, regardless?
a: what do you mean? what is equivalent to making pretend money, stealing it and then charging for it?
b: well, isn't that just a function of their unlimited power? if you were to modify the system and leave them with comparative levels of power, wouldn't they figure something else out? isn't the problem the lack of accountability, rather than the (more or less entirely arbitrary) way the money is created?
a: you surely don't suggest that we should regulate bankers, do you? what are you, some kind of commie nazi globalist fascist?
b: do you even realize that you're completely contradicting yourself?
a: never mind that.

b: have you considered just abolishing money?
a: pft. how do you suppose i exploit people without currency? dumb communists...

who are they appealing to? the left doesn't want it. the right doesn't want it.

it's a compromise that nobody wants.

they should be focusing on a replacement. it will be an issue in the next cycle. and, they will get annihilated if they campaign on a return to the existing status quo - which nobody wants.

call their bluff. and raise. steeply.

i'm just going to say this once, and then i'll be quiet on the topic: a long, protracted fight to save obamacare will do serious long-term damage to the democrats.

i, for one, will not take their side on this. i'm not going to be coerced into defending the heritage institute's free market health care plan. i agree that it's a bad system and that it should be replaced; my point of disagreement is in what they should replace it with.

they should cut their losses and move on as quickly as possible.

every article produced about the democrats defending obamacare is another nail in their coffin.

but, let's be clear here: the reason obamacare sucks is not in spite of the market but because of it. that's what obamacare is: a free market healthcare system. and, that's why it sucks: because it's a free market healthcare system. threats from republicans to "create a free market heath care system" are actually incoherent - the whole point of obamacare was to use competition over the market to drive down premiums. but, a competitive market will never drive down premiums. that's a preposterous premise, based on the religion of free markets. and the failure of obamacare is nothing more or less complicated than a classic market failure.

there's only two possible approaches, here. you can acknowledge the market failure and move to a single payer system, or you can rebrand obamacare as donaldcare and pretend it's a different system. what they're going to do is the latter.

and, democrats should get out of the way and let them do it, then fight them over it to get to the right answer.

there isn't currently an illegal market in fetal body parts, because the system is regulated.

but, if you pull funding for planned parenthood then abortions will go underground and one will develop, because it will no longer be regulated. the price will go up, as well, making the trade more lucrative. and, that's when organized crime gets involved.

can you imagine going to an abortion clinic run by the mafia? that's what's going to happen...

are they actually going to do this, though? sort of.

in canada, we call this process "downloading". the states will step in. or, at least the progressive ones will.

it's at least a real threat. you should take it more seriously.

after reading the grapes of wrath, and in sorting through my writing, i'm realizing that steinbeck's writing style kind of rubbed off on me a bit.

that's not something i've ever noticed before. well, i guess it was so long ago, right? i'm primarily aware of the overwhelming effect of pynchon on my writing style, and i'm not shy about referencing orwell or kafka. but steinbeck? that's a mirror i wasn't expecting.

i actually remember explicitly thinking that he wanted to privatize social security. i think you guys probably dodged a bullet, there.

"the rhetoric of competition just deflates" - me reacting to obama, in 2008.

i'm just trying to get across the point that i'm not in the "disappointed by obama" pile. i never supported him. i actively fought against him in the primary, and i never came around to him in the general. i did not see him as a lesser evil in 2008. and i still can't find any policy differences between romney and obama....

i think that what we got from obama is pretty much what i expected we would get from him back in '08. if anything, he was maybe a little less fiscally conservative than i expected.

i've been over this before, but the only democratic candidate in my lifetime that i've ever felt comfortable voting for was john kerry. he's the only candidate that i'd call an actual "liberal". i think i probably would have voted against trump - and i'm not just saying that, i think i would have. for months, i claimed i couldn't vote for her. it took me until the very end of the cycle before i felt the urgency to. and i'm still not 100% certain that i could have, but i think i would have forced myself to. i would not have voted for obama, and i would not have voted for gore, either - they were both too right-wing to be acceptable.

also, fwiw: the primary reason that i supported clinton over obama in 2008 [yes. i did.] was that obama campaigned against single-payer, whereas hrc was presumed to be in favour of it. i'll find posts from the period, eventually. i was explicit about this. and, i've been consistent in my opposition to obamacare for the whole 8+ years.

i've been explicit about this in the past: i think the democrats should call them on their bluff and encourage them to repeal. at some point, they're going to have to call obama out on this.

if i was a democratic representative, i would actually vote in favour of the repeal and immediately get to work in building support for single payer to replace it. if enough democrats stand up and call the republicans on their bluff, the republicans will be forced to retreat on it, because the whole point was to avoid single payer.

obamacare was a great victory for the right, and a terrible defeat for the left.

obama handed the republicans the issue.

he caved on every single point.

the opposition and the media presented the issue the way it did for a reason, and look: it worked. but, the task for the republicans, now, is to squirm out of it, and tweak the system to consolidate their victory.

meanwhile, the task for the left is to understand the situation and continue to agitate for single payer.

repeal makes no sense. it's not happening.

just to be clear: i would be in favour of repealing obamacare, too.

.....and replacing it with single payer.

but, the purpose of obamacare was to destroy the movement for single payer.

the repeal makes no sense. not from the republicans. it might make sense for democrats to repeal it, but it's exactly what the republicans want.

put another way: obamacare may very well be the single greatest victory of the american right since the end of communism.

in repealing it, they'd be handing the issue back to the democrats and blowing a hole in their feet. because let me tell you this much: democrats will not fall for the mandate a second time. next time, it's single-payer or bust.

i'm actually glad that it's rand paul that's voting against the repeal, because it's his constituents that will be hit the worst.

but, listen: i don't think that rand paul is breaking ranks. i think this is orchestrated.

once again, let us all recall that obamacare was the republican party's preferred health care plan. they don't want to get rid of it. they wrote it. it's their baby. they've just trapped themselves in a corner.

they're only going to need a second defector. who's taking bets on this? they got one guy to cite the deficit, now they need to find a "compassionate conservative" worried about people losing insurance. i don't think it will be mccain. orrin hatch, maybe?

should i finally get a smart phone?

i've never had one. well, i've never needed one. especially not at the costs they run at...

this is the kind of store i've been waiting for:
http://wirelesswarehouse.ca/specials/

the prices are still too high, though. i decided a long time ago that i would wait until they came down to under $50. that's what i'm willing to pay for a smart phone: $50. canadian. max. well, plus tax.

i'll have to do some research, still, but i know that what i want is an unlocked android phone. and, i'm not planning on buying service with it - no contracts, no pay-as-you-go, nothing. i'm going to rely on public wifi and use voip....

i'll revisit in the spring. next compost run; it's on the way. it could really finally happen, though - i've got some cash put aside. but i'm thinking i'll probably need to wait until next year for the prices to come down that much more.

for me, it's become a matter of principle: i won't pay more than $50 for it.

April 26, 2014

we're entering an era where remarkably fast computers are basically worthless. there's capitalism going and making no sense again. the kind of stuff you could pick up on the curb (awaiting garbage pickup) could run a space station as a screensaver, but it's last year's model so who wants it?

somebody does.

how much is a brand new ibm with a dual core processor, 200 gb of space and 4 gb of ram worth to you? this is pushing the brink of 32-bit technology. couldn't upgrade it further, without jumping to 64.

how about $50? well, it's only 32 bits, after all! that's soooooo 2000s.......

you'll see 'em on the curb if you look for 'em, no doubt. along with perfectly working televisions that have gone out of fashion due to some kind of geometric obsolescence.

what i'm getting at, though, is that there's a real social revolution underlying this, as the technology works it's way out and into the hands of creative people that can do something unusual and perhaps unexpected with it.

wait for it.

april 23, 2014

sort of head-scratching. there will always be morons, but the russians can't honestly be so cynical that they think westerners will take their propaganda in uncritically or otherwise entirely ignore western media. conversely, he's actually been doing a good job of softening the western rhetoric. if i was the kremlin, i'd let him be. he's actually giving them quite a bit of credibility.

there's three caveats to this.

1) an escalation is being planned, and they want him out of the region before it happens.
2) there's some thought that they may be able to convince him to change sides, as well.
3) things aren't quite as they seem.

i couldn't imagine his life is in danger.

jessica 
specifically, i think it's important for the russians to realize that nobody with critical thinking skills is going to be surprised by any kind of smoking gun regarding russian troops in the region. it is blatantly obvious that there are special forces operating in the region. no amount of propaganda is going to reverse this obvious truth. nor were these images necessary to demonstrate as much. you're not hiding anything. we already know.

jessica 
+deathtokoalas nor would confirmation of such an obvious truth change anybody's opinion on the situation, if our opinion is meaningful in the first place. nobody in the west sees russia as an uncorrupted good guy. at best, russia is a lesser evil with a huge array of substantial corruption problems.

jessica 
+deathtokoalas westerners that will intellectually argue in favour of russia's position will rarely be taking an actively pro-russian position, and more often taking an actively anti-american position. the propaganda has some value in seeding that resentment. yet, conflating that with legitimately pro-russian opinions is a gigantic error.

jessica 
+deathtokoalas there's consequently really nothing to lose by letting the footage out, and much to lose by holding the journalist.

gk 
Are you calling Vice a pro-Russian propaganda? That's just..funny.

jessica 
+gk no, that's not what i'm suggesting.

jessica 
+deathtokoalas i am, however, suggesting that perhaps what vice was looking for was not a proper reflection of what was occurring on the ground, and that the act of merely sending back images of what was actually happening was helping to counteract the narrative from washington. he may have been sent as a pro-american propagandist, but he wasn't able to find evidence to back up that perspective; instead, he often sent back evidence that countered it.

it may not have upheld the russian narrative, either. but that's a non-starter to begin with.

i mean, he was sent to send back images of russian troops invading the region and terrorizing the population. instead, we're getting pictures of ukrainian soldiers being disarmed by civilians. he can try and talk around that, but it's precisely the opposite of what he was sent there to send back.

jessica 
+deathtokoalas that being said, i must once again point out that it is blatantly obvious that russian forces are orchestrating the situation, and evidence demonstrating it (if it does exist, and he has captured some of it) would be akin to evidence demonstrating that water is wet. the idea that a substantial number of ukrainians would spontaneously organize to join russia out of fear of ukrainian nazis is itself rather comical.

jessica
+deathtokoalas i point this out in relation to american propaganda all the time: if you want people to believe it, make it credible. these cartoon narratives don't really sway people, they just foster cynicism.

rr0b0 
wow finally there's someone with a weighted opinion here

holyteejful
I agree with your opinion that he is actually really unbiased and has just been digging for the truth. Sad that the Russians see him as interfering, clearly not provoking anything, just asking questions-- being a reporter and all; you're right when you say that he has actually been way more lenient towards Russia than, say, FOX news LOL...  I sincerely hope he is not in any danger, they are probably just trying to intimidate him and throw some false agendas at him to mislead him.

jessica
+holyteejful i'm not suggesting he showed up without a bias, but his perception does seem to have softened over time as the evidence unraveled in front of him. he may not have been able to confirm his bias. importantly, he doesn't seem to have allowed his bias to prevent him from sending back images that contradicted it. evidence-based reasoning is hard to find in the modern press.

...and that might have actually pissed his boss off.

holyteejful 
+deathtokoalas After watching all the "dispatches" evidence does point to heavy "covert" Russian operations and that the surges of violence is propagated by extremists on both sides of the political spectrum ... That makes it so much easier for undercover "Spetznaz" (call them what you will)to do their job; I almost guarantee they pose as regular people, Ukrainian soldiers AND "regular" Russian troops as well. Nothing he has reported has really contradicted the rhetoric being spewed by Washington, although I am not much of an avid listener to the mainstream media myself.. He is probably one of the few reporters from the USA who speaks Slavic, so Vice sent him over there (or he volunteered). I personally think that he has been doing a good job. I have watched several other Vice reports and his boss, Shane Smith, seems like a fairly overall truly liberal guy with a sense of ethics that wouldn't allow strong bias on the part of being Pro-American everything. I mean, most mainstream media has almost nothing negative to say about Israel, but Vice has a report from the Palestinian perspective that is almost anti-Israel. I always love to hear both sides of every story to get the full context; I feel it is very important for making informed decisions in future conversations and possibly for elections.... also not sure if anyone knows, but Simon, the reporter,was released from detention in Slovyansk today after being held for a couple of days.

jessica 
i guess you're not aware that the funding for vice's recent delve into news reporting has been coming from no less a source than rupert murdoch, himself.

jessica
nice to hear he's safe.

April 23, 2014

it's funny.

i've basically arrived where i have in life by convincing myself of the single axiom that existence is meaningless, and this makes conventionally interacting in society entirely worthless. centering your life around anything related to property, status or wealth is just throwing your life away to utilitarian/capitalist excesses. yet, even this is not rational: if the aim is maximizing pleasure in the short amount of time we have to do it, doing loads of drugs makes more sense than working in an office. rejecting hedonistic capitalism within the context of this futility of breathing leaves only the individual's whimsical fancies as remotely meaningful goals (i skipped some steps there). art for art's sake (or knowledge for knowledge's sake) is consequently the only worthwhile pursuit (any other existence would and should rationally end up with a quick suicide, as it would be the fastest way to lessen the amount of existential torture brought on equally by slavery and boredom), and capitalist society is merely an obstacle to avoid.

if mortality could be abolished (and i'm ok with existing in software), the entire calculus would change. this ought to present the individual with a hobson's choice to pursue immortality at all costs, as the worst thing that could happen would be to die trying to abolish death. unless failure is certain, of course, in which case why waste the time? unfortunately, i'm convinced that this isn't feasible in my lifetime. death remains the only concrete reality worth planning around.

so, faced with the certainty of all of this meaninglessness, the only thing that can actually motivate me to get out of bed and pursue these goals is the certainty that i have a finite amount of time to complete them in, bringing me back around again to where i began.

yet, you say...

"yeah, well, i'm 30% of the way into paying off a high interest loan to get a piece of paper to allow me to pay property taxes, and that requires me to spend 75% of my time living for somebody else (and maybe more if i'm married). so, you lose at life."

it's actually not so bad for me if people actually continue to think that. i mean, there's two ways forward from where we are: full communism or state-driven social darwinism (popularly, if somewhat incorrectly, referred to as 'fascism'). we've been leaning towards the latter for decades. and, if that's the unalterable future, i can't benefit from winning the argument.

i can snicker about it on my facebook page, though.

April 23, 2014

from western governments, criticisms about "freedom of the press" are almost always veiled attempts to restrict press freedom for sources they do not like, which is often community or government based media.

this idea of calling private media "free" is itself very much a type of newspeak. private media is not freer than community media in any way. it's often the other way around! what private media is is corporate media, and hence driven by profit. that doesn't make it less controlled; again, that can and often does imply greater control and more censorship.

who has a bigger reach in america: pbs or fox news? yet, in canada and britain it's more subtle. it's clearly more complex than whether it's owned by government or by cartels.

in the end, if you're a journalist on the front lines it doesn't matter if the ceo is threatening to fire you or if the government is threatening to silence you. it doesn't matter if you're reading a script by the ministry or the oil/weapons cartel.

so, freedom of the press is and always has meant freedom for corporations to suppress the press.

and it's always been up to people to organize around the press.

april 18, 2014

it's always startling to me just how badly scientists have a grasp on public policy and economics. i think it's easy to trace it to this self-perception of themselves as bearing this kind of burden of being the world's real thinkers, although people looking in on the outside realize how laughable that perception of themselves really is. yet, if you're operating under this bizarre perception (enforced by a lot of things: plato, asimov, star trek, hollywood) that government's role is to carry out the dreams of the intelligentsia...

maybe a little marx might help? there's so many methodological flaws, i can see the push back. but, it could pull their head out of the clouds.

the united states didn't spend trillions in iraq to build a better society. they spent trillions in iraq because it was profitable. they wouldn't spend a dime on bettering the planet...

....and, so the crux of this debate needs to change drastically. we live in a society where governments are controlled by banks. public policy is collective action that maximizes profits for shareholders and investors. if you want them to listen, you need to speak their language.

that's probably not going to happen. yet, as i've mentioned a few times before, it probably won't be particularly hard to get a construction firm to pick up a trillion dollar project building floodwalls across the eastern seaboard.

yeah, well, join the revolution then. that's how shit works...

 in the economic reality we live in, flashing around estimates that suggest a higher financial cost of not acting is actually an argument for not acting.

if it's expensive for the state, somebody in the private sector profits. that's why the private sector controls the state...

austerity is just cutting out state investments that have demonstrated low returns and have poor forecasts.

the function of the state has always been and remains to transfer tax money into private hands.

so, adaptation is big business and we'll see movement on that. prevention doesn't present any revenue streams, so we won't.

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

so, i don't know if my mail dude was trying to do me a favour or trying to piss me off and i'm consequently torn as to how to react. the package got here, but through a difficult route - and unsigned, when i was supposed to sign. that works out to my benefit, but it's more future packages i'm concerned about.

right now, i'm almost afraid to open it.

i'm going to probably walk down to the post office and ask them if they can automatically hold items to this address. there's no way anybody can contact me down here without prior consent, which is on purpose and not going to change. i'd rather they hold items there to begin with, and just send me an email to get me to pick it up. it removes a set of hands from the chain.

so, here's the story...

first, the crux of this is that i've made myself difficult to contact on purpose for many years - as long as i've lived on my own, basically. people coming to my old apartment would complain i was unlisted and they had to use their cell, but this was no accident. what a lot of them didn't realize was that i wasn't just unlisted; the buzzer actually wasn't set up. there was literally no way for anybody to contact me from the intercom.

and who uses the intercom? jehovah's witnesses. rogers. vacuum cleaner salespeople. mary kay. politicians. kids with fundraisers. people i don't want to talk to...

there's no intercom here. yet, when i moved down here, i took the doorbell out. it's for the same reasons: i do not want random people to be able to bother me.

you can agree with me by emulating me. it might get rid of some of the door-to-door type if more people adopted this method.

pretty much the one casualty of this is the mail dude, who drops off packages from time to time. yet, it's generally far too infrequently for it to justify being annoyed by children and religious idiots. i'm perfectly happy with going down to the post office and getting it myself. as mentioned, that prevents the unnecessary risk stemming from the mail dude handling it.

however, i happened to encounter him on my front step a few weeks ago and he wasn't very happy with my attitude. he asked if there was another bell to ring, because mine didn't work - i had to tell him i don't want it to work. so, he asked me for a phone number. right, like i want to give a random stranger my phone number (and i actually don't have one, anyways). i told him i'd rather he just leave the slip in the box. he was both confused and upset...

see, the mail people in canada are coming up against some possible extreme layoffs. looking at the government's plan, it almost seems like a scheme to make the mailboxes smaller and force more expensive courier options; what they're doing isn't going to eliminate carriers, it's just going to make the process more expensive. private carriers win, everybody else loses. no surprises, here - it's been the trajectory of government for decades.

however, i happen to be the type of ("real") anarchist that is opposed to frivolous work, and i'm not sure how anybody could argue that delivering mail is less frivolous than working a cash register. it's a job i don't think should exist; it squanders resources i think could be better applied elsewhere. if i can walk to the post office, why can't everybody else? so, i wouldn't be particularly upset about layoffs, and am not particularly empathetic to this guy's reaction to my request to leave it in the box.

the key question: did he pick up that i didn't care about his job?

i had a package arrive this morning that required a signature. strangely, it ended up down the street, left without a signature. i only know this because of the kindness of the neighbour who brought it to me, and was able to contact me by knocking on my landlord's door.

on first glance, it seems obvious that the mail dude is being an ass, here.

however, given that he knew i don't answer the door, he may have thought he was saving me a trip.

i actually don't appreciate that. but i'd rather talk it through than write him up. well, unless he's looking for severance, i guess. but i can't reasonably make any of these assumptions.

so, i think the best thing to do is determine if i can get the post office to hold items and email me for pickup when they come in.

the device is apparently undamaged. and, in truth, with the way it was packaged, it would have been hard to damage it.

oddly, the canada post tracking site continues to state that the item is "out for delivery". i'm going to let this run through the system and see what happens. if it works properly, i should get a refund. and maybe i deserve one. i'll give it a few days....

at 19:02

i just want to clarify, though, that if this is a psy-op then the underlying appeal to white racism is a means, rather than an end. what they want is unity. the point is to provide a disincentive against being a trump detractor; the groupthink implies that opposition to trump is equivalent to support for torture. that's meant to keep people in line. the fact that this is specious is actually an asset, because humans are broadly specious creatures.

if you can provide me with evidence otherwise, i'll adjust. but the first question you need to answer is why they decided to livestream the act of torturing somebody. that's obviously an act meant to have a media response. and, while i won't disagree that criminals are stupid, this doesn't fall into that category. you have to explain why they wanted a media reaction.

the simplest and most obvious explanation is that it's an intelligence operation, and that they want a media reaction in order to construct the narrative that good, white, trump supporters are under threat of being beaten by mobs of no-goodnik immigrants. and, i propose that this is what we need to present for hypothesis testing.

of course, i'm not supposed to think for myself. i'm not supposed to use critical thinking skills. i'm not suppose to present a hypothesis for testing. according to their theories, i shouldn't exist; i'm supposed to just listen and obey.

the cops do this kind of thing all of the fucking time. it's the null hypothesis, and the most rational explanation. it's occam's razor.

this is a psy-op. and people will believe it, because it's what they want to believe.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/04/facebook-live-stream-video-man-attacked-chicago-trump