so, anarchists on the ground have long suspected that the 'black bloc' protesters are what you call agents provocateur.

this isn't exactly a conspiracy theory. it seems like it is in each instance, but it's more of a question of trying to identify a known phenomenon. this is something that was invented by bismarck and has been utilized by police forces in north america for a very long time. the black bloc in the quebec city ftaa protests was actually 'doxxed', although you wouldn't have used that term at the time - but it is a factual statement to state that there were black bloc agents working for the state at those protests.

so, we know that there are going to be agents at protests, the hard part is identifying them. but, it's not actually hard to identify them, if you've been to a few protests - especially if you're the meek tranny that they want to move out of the way. when a cop grabs you by the arm, you know it.

it's tempting to say something about how this is the stupidity i warned you against. but, this is clearly the work of a provocateur. and, the more important thing to draw attention to is the threat that the government may use the situation to roll back even more civil liberties, because that is probably the reason that this happened in the first place.

http://globalnews.ca/news/3683586/counter-protesters-clash-with-police-in-quebec-city/?utm_source=GlobalToronto&utm_medium=Facebook

fwiw, i think that the stories of bannon's influence were greatly exaggerated: trump only ever saw him as a pragmatic and cynical means to win and hold power, and now that this is crumbling, he's served his purpose and is out the door.

the idea that bannon had any real influence is not upheld by any evidence; it seems to me like it was less about bannon controlling trump, and more about the banking wing of the republican party using bannon as a useful idiot.

"you'll be the first to go..."

i actually remember the first day i walked into classes pretty well. my first class was calculus 102, which was a full year credit long course for honours math students. i was walking into a math/physics double major. there were a couple of pure math students, but it was just the general elite math course, meaning there were other double majors: math/economics, math/chemistry, math/comp. sci. i think there was even a math/psych student. there were no engineers, except the ones at the butt of the jokes.

it was a small first year class by university standards - maybe 40 students. the small class size was a consequence of the course being set aside specifically for honours math students, that is students that were expected to carry forward in honours math courses. i ended up switching, but a lot of these students had obscure degree requirements and would have ended up graduating alone in their classes.

it was in a room that wasn't any larger than a high school classroom.

i was expecting a room full of absolute nerds. what that meant, to me, was an abstraction of the berkeley stereotype; not pocket protectors, but pink floyd shirts. more broadly, i was expecting to meet a bunch of kids that didn't care about social expectations and didn't adhere to norms and had spent most of their lives as outcasts as a consequence of it.

i wore a pair of disshelved jeans and a loose-fitting plain white t-shirt with a faint mustard stain on it. i didn't bother showering or shaving.

i was kind of mortified when i walked in and instead found a bunch of extremely rich kids wearing exceedingly expensive clothes and talking about network television.

if that day had turned out differently, if i had met the nerds i was hoping for, i might have engaged. but, the fact is that i should have turned around right then and there - because i knew it, in my gut.

i've said this before - if i could go back in time, i wouldn't study an academic subject, at all. rather, i'd take the money and invest it and live off the dividends.

my school years were really spent mostly focused on music production. second year was particularly bad; i rarely went to class, and didn't bother studying until the day before the exam. i say i didn't get along with anybody in the class, but i didn't really try very hard - i just didn't have any interest. i'd say i spent maybe 5 hours a week on my school work through second year, and 100 hours a week working on music. it was abundantly clear where my interests were, but i had to make counter-intuitive choices to maximize my ability to explore those interests - i didn't have the freedom to just sit and create, i had to either go to school or get a job. getting a job would have been far more time consuming than going to school, so i "went to school" out of necessity (but didn't actually go to school).  i didn't even want to be there at all. there was actually one surreal period where i spent more time helping my dad with his homework (he was taking a business management course through correspondence) than i did doing my own.

any decisions i made about labour were always made to maximize the amount of time i could spend recording. so, the actual reason i went to university was that it meant i didn't have to go to work (and, i didn't have to go to work because i refused to go to school if i had to go to work, anyways). you could maybe feel badly for my father about the whole thing, as he was just constantly trying to coerce what he (mis)understood as reason out of me, and i just kept coming up with these responses that clearly broke his heart. but, i wasn't going to go be an engineer to make my dad proud, or something. i'd rather fucking kill myself.

i didn't really have a plan for the future. i mean, i guess i hoped the music would be successful; i think i knew it never would be. i didn't even want to be a superstar, i just wanted to be able to survive by doing what i actually cared about. but, my long term plans were always based on the assumption that it would eventually work out, and i'd be able to find ways to survive in the mean time.

i never had any intention of using my education to get a job; it was just a way to avoid going to work and maximize my time spent on art. so, the amount of time that i spent doing school work was in truth always quite minimal - and, my emotional and intellectual investment into it was in truth always quite scarce.

if you're going to meet me at a bar and talk about things i've put on the internet, i'd rather we talk about the music. it's the music that i've put my actual effort into. it's the music that i've tried to publish. it's the music that i actually care about. it's the music that i want you to interpret me through.

i have not published any math or science and do not expect that i ever will. i'm not upset about this. but, there is still a lot of discography to work through.

this paradox is particularly useful in demonstrating my argument that physics is essentially impossible to do until we understand space.

put simply, we need the following work flow:

1. understand the space we exist in (space in a kantian or descartian sense, not outer space).
2. start math over from scratch, with a proper understanding of space (in fact, we can find most of the work already done).
3. reconstruct the physics using the math that now exists, which properly understands space.

what we have right now is something more like:

1. do physics that needs complicated math to understand space.
2. ask the mathematicians for it.
3. rely on their expertise that it's "right".

meanwhile, the mathematicians are being perfectly open about the fact that the math they're doing makes no attempt to verify whether it's valid in the universe we inhabit or not. nor do the mathematicians care if the math they're doing is true in this universe or not, either. the circle completes: that's a physics problem.

there was this argument advanced by the likes of kant that math is the perfect representation of perfect knowledge, and philosophers actually ran pretty far with it, but, while kant was writing, gauss (a very competent and very famous mathematician) was actually in the process of disproving exactly what kant thought was perfect knowledge. oops. regardless, this kantian delusion has really set hold in the minds of physicists, for some reason. you'd think physicists would listen to gauss instead of kant! not so, though.

(of course, physicists listen to gauss instead of kant every time they do relativity. but, as they're doing relativity, they repeat the kantian lie that mathematics is some kind of language of nature. the problem is that nobody makes physicists study their own history, or take a credit worth of philosophy classes.)

the math itself is a model. that's what mathematicians will tell you: math is not a perfect description of space, and nature doesn't adhere to it as a script, but is merely a model to better understand it. but, it's a non-empirical model. and, we know from experience that non-empirical models always fail.

maybe you've heard of this, maybe you haven't. if the system of mathematics allows for this, that system is obviously not modeling our universe very well. we should consequently expect that any physics that relies on a flawed system of mathematics will also be flawed; that a system of physics based on a mathematical model that is full of contradictions and paradoxes will also be full of contradictions and paradoxes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach%E2%80%93Tarski_paradox

ok, this is my embed, i just have to wait for it to exist:

this might be a better workaround to youtube dropping flash, as it still seems to work for embeds.

let's see...

that one doesn't embed the playlist. let me try this:



it doesn't like the idea of embedding the watch later. this is just proof of concept:


the embed was wrong, this works:


maybe i should try again for the watch later..no...

what exactly are we importing via st. john's and why aren't we producing it in a way that requires less transportation?

the companies surely realize that this is just going to make them less competitive. but, we ought to be trying to reduce trans-oceanic imports, anyways. if it makes local goods more competitive, that's a good thing.

but, it's a really dark reflection on this company that they expect some kind of tax revolt over measures designed to save the lives of endangered whales. that's a very disturbing view of human priorities.

better yet: why don't we boycott oceanex?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/oceanex-right-whales-surcharge-1.4252721