somebody that does not live far from you will die at the hands of a drunk driver tonight.

everything else aside, i don't think i've left the house on any new year's since i moved to windsor.

it's the most dangerous night of the year to drive, and it's usually too cold to transit without transportation. i would usually prefer to stay in and eat nachos.

i'm most of the way through the emails for 2014, and am about to stop to eat. i've been clear that i want to detox right now, but the fact is that i wouldn't normally go anywhere on new year's anyways....

i guess the beer test is too edgy nowadays.

https://www.straight.com/news/1182011/poll-shows-canadians-would-prefer-justin-trudeau-their-kids-babysitter-over-andrew

"but, if you just rely on quantitative easing, wages will stay stagnant, and all the wealth will remain at the top."

right.

because wages have risen, historically, due to market forces - rather than union movements.

a strong economy is not a sufficient condition for distributive policies, but it is a necessary one. crashing the economy doesn't help anybody. but, we've lost the plot - which is that we need to fight for our wages and benefits, not leave it to the momentum of a regression analysis, which has been moving the other direction for far too long, anyways.

if we were to snap our fingers immediately, and democratize the workplace, and eliminate management, and redistribute the wealth, we would still need to keep creating very large amounts of money in order to keep pace with that redistribution, as well as compensate for population growth.

there's really no way out of this, and it's consequently a false choice.

and, i'm glad that trump is sticking to his word and continuing to facilitate the withdrawal of troops from syria.

what i will acknowledge is that the orac count is only one way to measure anti-oxidant levels in foods, and that the effects of digestion are an important consideration in determining whether a food has useful levels of anti-oxidants or not. i was initially going to post a frap assay, but it wasn't ordered. note that all of the assays have some criticism of them, and the results aren't better than each other - these are just different measures. if you can find an ordered list of some other count, i'd want to take it into consideration as well, but i'd expect substantive overlap.

so, the list i posted measured how many total anti-oxidants are in a food per 100 g, raw, using one specific method of measurement. you might not be able to digest all of those. they might be modified by heat. etc.

but, the list pointed these defects out. it's right there in the introduction - clearly.

see, and this is the valid criticism that you hear about the whole thing - that people are easily duped by fancy marketing, don't understand what they're reading, etc. but, that's true about anything, and the solution isn't to attack what is in fact good science but to try and focus on the scientific literacy of consumers; if a company can easily trick people into buying carcinogenic water as a health supplement, it's not the company's fault, it's the fault of the people that are easily tricked. and, likewise, if you think that pomegranate juice is going to cure your prostate cancer, that's your fault - not theirs.

exactly what you can get out of any specific food is going to be complicated, granted. but, what that means is just that you're better off playing the averages.

so, i mean, if you want to make the argument that the orac list wasn't beamed down from the temple mount then, sure, i guess. but, who said that in the first place?

"my friend ate berries every day and she got cancer, therefore it's all bullshit.

#yolo #noethicalconsumptionincapitalism"

note to neckbeards: you don't generally want to get your information from a youtube video called anti-oxidants debunked !!!!1!!!!

i just want to post something on the question of anti-oxidants, as there's as much nonsense "debunking" them as there is in support of them. and, i tend to find myself more pissed off by these "debunkers" than i do by the naive hippies, because at least the hippies don't pretend that they have some literacy in the topic. i recently went over this with the question of what effect tidal drag has on earthquakes - something the neckbeards will instantly write off as pseudoscience, without the slightest idea of what they're talking about. it just looks like astrology, right? but it's a research topic with a lot of potential. and, likewise, these same neckbeards are going to jump all over anti-oxidants as empty marketing hype, as though a few exaggerated claims are enough to throw the entire idea out of the window. like i say: it's the people that misuse science that piss me off more than the people that don't care about it.

the science underlying the issue is not controversial. free radicals are very strongly linked to cancer development, and the reaction involved is one of the most basic ideas in chemistry. i'm not aware of any research that suggests that attempting to maximize your anti-oxidant count is harmful, or even ineffective. the criticisms exist around the honesty of marketing claims, rather than the mechanism, and that is the responsibility of the consumer to work through.

but, you'll notice that i'm not advocating the use of supplements or trying to approach the situation as some kind of irradiation process. i am aware that attempts to protect against cancer growth by taking high doses of whatever vitamin cocktails have proven inconclusive - just as i am aware that tests on diets high in anti-oxidants have demonstrated themselves as having a lower cancer risk. and, there's no contradiction there, either.

the error that the neckbeards (who usually have little more than a high school education, if that) are making is in imagining that anti-oxiodants as some kind of magical potion, and then pointing out that they didn't ward off the evil spirits of cancer. "look", they'll claim, "not everybody who took these supplements of high concentrations of isolated anti-oxidants avoided getting cancer". well, ok. but, maybe that wasn't what anybody really thought in the first place.

we also know that diets that are high in anti-oxidants lead to lower risks of cancer.

i'm not telling anybody that drinking a glass of blueberry juice every day is necessarily going to ensure that they live to be 100 years old.

but, i am going to hold by the claim that there is good science that suggests that maximizing anti-oxidant counts in your diet is likely to lower your risks of cancer.

as of right now, i expect to remain straight edge through most of 2019.

and, what can i say about this year?

it has not been a good year at all, and i'm not sure i've found much of a solution. i've been optimistic about most years since 2013, at least. i'm rather pessimistic about 2019 - i don't expect it to be a good year, and i expect to waste a large amount of it on the trivialities of market capitalism.

i spent most of the last year trying to escape an uninhabitable scenario, only to end up in a place that is merely unhealthy. i don't have the same urgent need to immediately escape this place, but i'm nonetheless not planning my stay here to be lengthy, either.

i'm going to need to spend the next year continuing my attempt to find a healthier, more isolated living space, which is going to need to begin with finding some source of wealth. i'm going to need to look into my father's estate, with the intent of probably launching a lawsuit against my step-mother, and potentially also against my sister. i am going to need to sue the woman that put me in jail for discrimination in housing, and seek a settlement for trauma and emotional harm. and, i'm going to need to sue the police for false arrest. beside my continuing work on the aleph discs, these three lawsuits are going to be my primary focus, moving into 2019.

so, i think that the best i can hope out of 2019 is that it puts me in a better situation for 2020 - that it gives me an opportunity to move to somewhere that is less polluted, has less smokers and perhaps has less people, per capita. that will probably be away from windsor. and, how far away is going to be determined by how much money i can win in these lawsuits.

as such, i'm going to be focusing more on saving money than spending it, as i have been for much of 2018. my living arrangement is not stable; i don't have the luxury of being able to spend money, any more. i could lose my income source in the next 24 months, and if i can't find some way to cushion it immediately, i'm going to have to find some way to buffer it. i can currently put aside around $250-$300 a month if i stay in and don't do anything. if i can put the odsp renewal decision off until 2021, and hope that the conservatives are removed from power in 2022, i could maybe get back on disability for 2023 - and live off of savings in between. but, it's going to mean an extremely frugal lifestyle for the years in between - no partying, no concerts, no drugs or alcohol. just food & rent. that's fine; it's better than getting a job. and, if i find myself forced into working part time, i will at least have some savings to cushion it.

there's currently roughly $2000 left in there. if i can put aside $275/month for the next year, that will push it over $5000, which is enough to live on for around five months. and, the longer i can put the decision off, the more breathing room i end up with.

how about the music, which is supposed to be the point?

well, as mentioned, i'm circling around a pivot. i was hoping to be caught up by now, but have lacked energy recently. i've added 60 pages of emails to the liner notes over the last few days, which is a level of direct productivity that has been elusive of late. i should get most of that done by the end of the day, and potentially get through the filing push by the end of the week. i do expect more rapid movement forwards once i get to that hook up at the end of november, 2016 - meaning i should be able to get to actually closing discs in the alter-reality in early 2019.

but, the fact is that i have essentially nothing completed for the year. and, i can only present this journal as the explanation for it.

again: this year won't be much better, but, if i'm lucky, 2020 will be.

i'm not calling around on december 31st.

i'll wait until wednesday.

it's just how the days have fallen, this year.

all that's left to do in syria is sit there and pretend you haven't lost, and the longer you do it, the more likely you end up with a partition.

and, is that what the neo-cons want? a new south korea in syria, that's going to cost america billions of dollars, in a five hundred year occupation?

are they willing to lose the dardanelles over it?

it's just stubborn and stupid.

trump was right. and, lindsey graham should fuck off.

the best way to transition assad out was always to let him transition himself out, which is what he was trying to do in the first place; the thing that created this mess was an attempt at a syrian constitution, which was vehemently opposed by the saudis as an increase in democratization in the region.

that's right. that's the fucked up reality: this war was launched to prevent syria from transitioning to a democracy.

the russians don't want him there either, and will be helping him transition himself out as soon as the territorial integrity of the country is secure.

see, this is a good idea.

this is what we want.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/damascus-iraq-hit-isil-targets-syria-state-media-181230172409718.html

or, to put it another way: who the fuck cares what lindsay graham thinks, anyways?

the most important ally in the region is neither israel nor saudi arabia but turkey, and whatever delicate balance existed is now blown up - a flop would cement a turko-russian alliance.

and, the point was to prevent that.

you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.

at this point, if trump flops on syria, it's as good as losing the turks altogether.

"but they don't uphold human rights"

like america does, right? what is this, grade two?

if you want to talk about a victory for putin, the dardanelles would be pretty swank. they've had their eye on that one for a while.

there is a deeper lesson here: we have an emperor with no clothes. but, whatever you think of the decision (and i've been clear that i support it.), you can't reverse this sort of thing.

i mean, what the fuck am i going to do in an office?

crunch numbers for the agriculture department? yeah. that sounds like it's not going to be horribly time-consuming, and numbingly boring.

solve equations for a bunch of fucking murderers at defense? yeah, that's not going to make me want to kill myself.

washing dishes is real, it's honest, it's something i can do without hating myself.

i know that people would kill to have the opportunities i've had, but it's not like i ever lied to anybody about it.

if you would have asked me at 17, i would have told you i'm never going to want to work full-time in an office, i'm never going to care about owning property, i'm never going to want a car, i'm never going to want a family - i'd rather work part-time as a dishwasher, and get more free time to work on art, or writing, or whatever my mind is interested in.

and, i heard the same stupid refrain, from everybody around me.

"but, you're young, you'll grow out of it."
"pretty sure i won't."
"you're throwing away opportunity, throwing away options."
"well, if somebody doesn't want something, and they throw that thing away, that means they're throwing away something that isn't of any value to them."

and, i'd get disappointed reactions, but what was the point of pretending otherwise? i'm not going to live somebody else's life, i'm going to live my own. and, it's up to others to move on if they don't like my choices.

but, i kept getting bribed - and i was given good offers, so i took them. and, i ended up with 13 years of schooling that i had almost no interest in.

now, here i am a few weeks shy of 38 and i'm still completely disinterested in working in an office, i still don't want to own property, i still don't want a car, and i still don't want a family; i'd still rather work part time as a dish-washer, and i'm not particularly interested in the opinions of any creditors that i never had any intention of gaining in the first place.

"but, it will hurt your credit rating."

yeah. pity. whatever.

i know - more disappointed looks. but, the root cause of the problem here is not my behaviour - i broadcast myself as clearly as a person can.

people made a choice not to listen, to project their own desires on to me rather than understand what mine were, and react.

if it comes down to it, i'm not going to end up in an office job - i'm going to end up washing dishes part-time.

if you don't fear islam, you're deeply ignorant of it - or just as scary as the religion, itself.

i have to post something like this every once in a while just to get the point across that the existing narrative is ridiculous. and, i was thinking about this the other day, when eating.

hitchens was wrong about iraq - because his assumptions were wrong. see, if saddam hussein were isis, though, he would have been right. so, the irony is that hitchens' argument for the 2003 invasion - while completely wrong, in context - is the perfect argument to use to justify the war against isis. and, it's even ironic that he didn't live to make the point. i'm sure he'd appreciate all of this.

what i'm getting at is that he didn't make an error in logic so much as he made an error in fact; if his perception of iraq under saddam hussein was rooted in reality, rather than american propaganda, he would have been absolutely correct. and, i can't know whether his arguments were just convenient or not, either - if he just thought it was a good excuse. if so, he should have known better, as it didn't take much foresight to realize that if you really did fear the rise of an isis-like group then keeping saddam in place was just about the best thing that could have been done to prevent it, and that creating all of that chaos in iraq was just about the worst thing you could imagine doing. this was certainly my argument in 2003 - that regime change via bliztkrieg from above in iraq was an insane idea. but, here is some more irony - the islamophobic and supposedly racist late hitchens may have simply given the arabs too much credit. once the bogeyman of saddam was removed, they would surely spontaneously generate into a secular pan-arabism, right? what leftist naivete is this, christopher?

in making his arguments, he often made a very salient point: that there is good reason to be afraid of islam. islam is of course a violent system of hetero-patriarchal domination, just like christianity. and, do we not all fear the christian right? so, what is islamophobia, then, if not a rational fear of totalitarianism? and, is it not every good leftist brit's responsibility to be in constant fear of a return to cromwellianism?

well?

see, and, for this reason i don't have any problem acknowledging that i am deeply fearful of islam, and would support just about anything to prevent it's continued growth. this is the fastest growing religion in the world, and thus is my most pertinent ideological foe, as a staunch atheist. it represents everything i am opposed to, and i seek to challenge it any way i possibly can. one must have a certain level of respect for their opponent, even if that respect is not particularly intellectual in nature, and with that respect is a healthy level of fear.

it would be daft to deny any of this.

but, it would be equally daft to deduce that a healthy fear of the continuing spread of islam as an ideological force implies some kind of racial bias against arabs, or turks, or iranians, or berbers, or pakistanis or any other group that professes this faith in statistically significant numbers, as bereft of any value as i claim that it is. there's simply no basis in the deduction; any such accusation is entirely baseless.

so, i will stand in support of islamophobia, even as i denounce racism against groups that statistically lean towards the religion of islam. i will stand in solidarity with the apostates, as i denounce the imams. there is no contradiction in this position - and it is even imperative that we recognize that there isn't, in order to inoculate ourselves from this religion's continuing influence and spread.

https://www.ranker.com/list/companies-in-the-united-states-that-use-prison-labor/genevieve-carlton

it's fitting enough, isn't it, as so many of the british forces killed in world war one to "save democracy" were legally unable to vote, due to not owning property.

https://corporatewatch.org/poppies-prison-labour-and-the-war-machine/

you realize that centipedes are carnivores, right?

so, if you have a population of centipedes in your basement, that means they have a food source. if there's no food, they'll die off or otherwise leave. and, they won't eat food scraps or toothpaste or bits of hair - centipedes need to have a population of live insects to feed on.

this is even the reason that centipedes are considered "beneficial" - they eat other insects.

and, one of their favourite foods is roaches.

so, it is true that you should not kill the centipedes - but it is also true that if you see centipedes frequently, then that means you probably have roaches, too, because that's what they're eating.

the basement i'm in now is actually surprisingly bug free. i saw one of those....i can't even remember what they're called. i'd never seen one before. maple bugs. boxelder, that's right. i've seen one centipede. i've seen a couple of spiders. no roaches, no ants, no earwigs, no termites.

the previous basement had just about everything - spiders, ants, centipedes, oriental roaches, earwigs and i even think i saw a scorpion, at one point.

i'm not an entomologist, but i did take biology through high school (and both the 101/102 in university), and i'd even say i have an interest in it, as demonstrated by the posts here. and, i don't you think you need a specialized degree to identify a roach.

some people are just really dirty liars, that's all.

i think i'm finally feeling a little better.

was that actually the quarterly stomach ache? is it now officially winter? i guess we'll find out.

it's not believable, though.

harper was a kind of ruthless nerd, a policy wonk that may have often been wrong but would be wrong with charts and figures; scheer is more of a return to the airheaded fundamentalism of a stockwell day, kind of a reform party throwback, and if you're going to rerun an election, it makes sense for that to be the one you try to rerun.

the problem is that the more you point out that andrew scheer is kind of like stockwell day, the more you draw attention to the reality that trudeau also has surface similarities. trudeau is not the right guy to run a campaign centred around the premise that the opposition is too intellectually feeble to govern.

but, scheer does not project the competence that harper did, and is consequently not scary in the same way. people don't seem to fear incompetence, so much as they fear competence - they seem to want to ridicule incompetence.

the truth is that this is a field of intellectual lightweights. i would not expect the same kind of modular, issues-driven campaign that you got out of a mulcair v harper; this is going to be an election about feelings, perceptions and other trivialities that mostly come out in the wash - and the dour leftists are going to be standing on the side, pointing out that they're basically the same.

i would like to see the liberals knocked down to a minority, which is what i wanted in the first place. so, they should be careful about my advice, this cycle. but, i'm not sure how well the ghost of harper is going to stick to scheer.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/trudeau-says-it-s-worth-pointing-out-similarities-between-scheer-and-harper-1.4233769

remember: what i'm doing is building liner notes for the period discs.

it'll make sense when it's done.

i'm still oozy and still hacking but i'm wide awake, so i can either stare at the ceiling or try and do something.

and, what have i been doing?

well, i got some emails posted - it's of varying relevance, and i may revisit some of it. it's about half done.

the next step - and i didn't initially want to do this, but i'm not making much progress anyways so i'd might as well - is to sort through and organize my hard drive. i've had a brand new hard drive to install in this thing since the summer of 2017, i've just been putting it off until i get through what i'm doing. i think it's close enough to at least start preparing.

the drive i'm using in what was my backup laptop was initially in what was my main laptop; so, i took the drive from the newer laptop and put it into the older one. i did that when the newer laptop stopped booting (processor-related beeps, still not dealt with). i think that was in october of 2017? i can't remember. what happened is that i got a big order in, and had to put off the rebuild until i finished remastering everything. then, the rebuild got slowed down due to the marijuana, and now i'm behind an extra year.

i think i had decided that i would swap the new drive into the newer laptop when i had it ready to convert into a vlog editing machine, partly because i was intending to use the old recording pc as the new access point. that's right. and, this older laptop that i'm using now was going to be an effects processor, once i got a little recording interface for it. but, then the screen on this laptop collapsed, and i went from having three rooms to two, so i didn't need a third system, and the logic around the whole thing completely shifted - i decided i would use this laptop as an access point (until it dies.) because the lack of a screen makes t useless for anything else, and i'd set up the three pcs in the other room, all for recording - which i haven't done yet, at all.

and, i was just waiting for the rebuild to finish until i did...

i'm in mid-september. the hook-up is the end of november. so, i'm pretty close. and, i think it's getting close to time.

this is not a fast machine by modern standards - it takes a max of 4 gb of ram, with a weak dual core. it was a 2006 model that i got for cheap in 2010 on a refurbish. but, swapping the drive out will probably...

actually, you know what?

why don't i just reinstall?

yeah.

i'm just thinking...why waste the drive, really? the new drive is faster on paper, but if i think the machine is a little laggy, a reinstall could very well be just as good as a new drive. i mean, i guess we'll find out.

there's two of them sitting, that are much faster drives. but, what exactly does that mean on an older machine like this? i'm not sure it means much.

ok.

so, i'm going to file this information with the intent to push through the whole thing on final time. that's right - back to 2013 one last time. what's going to be coming up this time is stiff like pictures, word documents, etc that is dated from after july, 2013. and, in the process, i'll be able to file the information i need to get back to the alter-realty, from 1997-1999.

e-mail first.

and, when does this get done?

i don't know. i know i have to do it, and that when it's done, it's done.

i was experiencing nausea more or less all day yesterday, but it got really bad in the evening, and i ended up falling asleep. i've been in bed more or less ever since.

nausea could be caused by anything, but what i'm experiencing is consistent with the effects of second-hand smoke, as i've experienced them in the past.

i thought it was better, but it's not, and it seems like i'm going back to sleep.

there really is a lot of confidence in the market, and i've been pointing it out for months - people want to believe that the economy can ride without training wheels, that a free market economy is more than a naive abstraction, that government intervention is at the root of all problems, etc. and, of course, they want to believe that they can put money into a market and profit from it, regardless of what the fed is doing.

and, yes - democracy is a powerful force. if people could vote their portfolios up, you can be sure they would.

so, how do you explain to people that have shown up, cash in hand, that this is simply a bad time to invest? they want to invest, dammit!

they should invest in a local charity, instead - if they're insistent on throwing their money away.

these swings are happening because the bubble is so deep that there's no concept of reality in sight. you can throw an anchor out from this market, and you won't hit anything. there's no reference point. it's lost in space.

and, i'm as interested as anybody else in the question of how long the power of delusional thinking can offset the empirical and quantitative reality of a shrinking money supply.

it might not be harmful, but i don't think that earth metals deserve the presumption of innocence. sorry.

it's better to err on the side of caution. and, what we know at this stage is that the assumption that your liver would be able to deal with it is wrong - you can't eject this, it builds up...

that said, the issue needs to be about harm reduction, not ban hammering. if you think or know you have a serious tumour, you need to weigh the risks - the tumour will almost certainly kill you, whereas the gadolinium is just an unknown. you're weighing a known known v a known unknown. i had the presence of mind to realize what was happening and stop and question it; what i found disturbing was the lack of interest in providing enough information to me to allow me to make a choice.

for me, i had little reason to think i had cancer, and consequently avoided a cat scan. what i was looking for was signs of broken or demented bones, not signs of tumour growth. the injection struck me as insane and irresponsible.

i haven't called a dentist yet, but that was the end conclusion, after seeing a neurologist in mid 2017.

i'm not saying you should reject this, necessarily. i'm saying you should think carefully about what you're doing before you do it.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28361260

this is the ideal first step - the russians and turks need to talk this out without the americans wasting their time and interrupting them.

for all of the propaganda about putin & erdogan, the reality is that they are both rational actors and should be able to work out a compromise that does the following things:

1. recreates the internationally recognized syrian borders, which is what the russians want - a return to normalcy.
2. find some way to do something with what are, in fact, kurdish militant groups camped on the turkish border and that will certainly eventually threaten the turks if left to incubate. these groups are going to need to be given safe passage somewhere: to iraq, to iran or to...russia.

i'll throw a wild card out there: the jews never warmed to the idea of a homeland in russia, but they've long been convinced they're semitic and belong in the middle east (whether it's really true or not). the kurds are a caucasian-iranian group that has lived in the zagros mountains as refugees for centuries, with meaningful ethno-linguistic roots in largely uninhabited areas of russia. at some point in the distant past, the kurds migrated in from the steppes, and then, centuries later, found themselves in perpetual isolation when the iranians were expelled from mesopotamia by the arabs, eventually adopting their religion but never being fully accepted into the new culture. this area is historically not iranian, but where armenians and semites, and then great empires, fought wars against each other; it follows that the best that the kurds can really hope for is to be a part of an iranian province, as an independent kurdistan could never be more than a minor iran - a "west iran", if you will, but the arabs in iraq aren't inviting the ayatollah in, either, nor are the turks looking for partition. i don't think i've ever heard anybody say it, but it's not a crazy idea; an autonomous oblast in the urals is more sovereignty than they're ever likely to get in an area of the world that they're really not indigenous to.

so, as an independent kurdistan isn't a sustainable idea in the long run (it would just be a temporarily existent "west iran" - even if it lasted 100 years), there's really two serious outcomes here: a reconstruction of greater iran (including northern iraq and eastern turkey) or for the kurds to accept minority status within the countries of the region. neither option is anything close to kurdish sovereignty, which is really geopolitically impossible in this exact location.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-to-dispatch-high-level-team-to-russia-for-syria-talks-140046

the next couple of days are actually going to be the warmest weather we've had in windsor since mid-october, but it's also going to be raining, so i'm stuck in the house until monday at the earliest.

i'm going to put everything off until monday morning.

it's really amazing how people won't get their head around it - total denial, but it's really because we're so hopelessly colonized by christianity.

"santa isn't a german god. no. it's saint nicolaus."

right.

listen - you don't need to get into this argument about whether it's saturnalia or yule, because they're actually the same thing. the romans are thought to have separated from the celts around the la tene period, and moved south from switzerland into italy. that's right - the romans had a german ancestry, and were ultimately created in the same way they were destroyed. like a snake swallowing itself whole? i dunno. but, i know that it's very well understood that the indo-european religions were all essentially the same, so when we see romans and germans doing essentially the same ritual at essentially the same astrological event, deep into antiquity, the conclusion one ought to draw is that the traditions had a common origin.

and, this tradition is not historically related to christianity, to judaism or islam - but it is related to the eastern religions, one example being hinduism. and, to understand santa claus, this is the tradition we need to look most directly at - not christianity, but hinduism.

for, everybody knows that shiva enjoys a nice glass of milk, when presented.

think about what your kids are doing for a second when they leave out milk and cookies for santa. what they are doing is offering a gift to the german god odin at the solstice, in hopes of receiving something in return. and, it wasn't that long ago that this was done by adults, who took the whole thing very seriously - as hundreds of millions of hindus in india do, still, today.

a christian holiday? hardly. that's as pagan as pagan gets.

so, how did we get from a sombre gemanic ritual, which certainly included blood sacrifices, to an infantilized, benign action involving flying reindeer and cookies?

the christian colonization of northern europe.

i just want to address what might be a misperception about the amount of time i spend by myself. some people may point out that i don't have a family or friends to spend time with, and argue that this is some kind of bad thing. but, as is the case with most components of the society we live in, i'm actually largely in disagreement with the premise.

but, it's not just my politics, it's my personality, although the politics no doubt derive from the personality. introverts are not figments of the psychologist's imagination; we do exist. i will remind you that the reason i live on disability is due to social anxiety, meaning i'm even clinically diagnosed with preferring to avoid people, to the point that i'm being excused from having to work (for the time being). so, how would one really expect a heavily introverted anarchist with extreme social anxiety to spend the holidays?

i'm not interested in having a family, and i've never enjoyed spending time with friends. but, isn't that just something that losers say as an excuse? it really isn't.

of course, i grew up in a family, and it is true that my father is now dead, but everybody else is still alive - if hundreds of kilometres away. what you might not realize is that i wouldn't have spent the holidays with my family even when my father was alive, and they were right in front of me. when i lived on my own, i would routinely reject family get-togethers, because i didn't want to spend my leisure time with my family - i'd rather spend it reading, or listening to and/or writing music. there were some years where i was working 50 hour weeks, or deeply invested in school. to me, the holidays were a way to immerse myself in my own interests, not a way to get to know my family. i needed the alone time. my dad could get usually get me out for a few hours on one day, but i made sure they knew that was going to be the extent of it; i would be completely absent from any family life for 20 out of 21 days, and fully on my own prerogative. even when i lived at home, i was the kind of teenager and twenty-something that spent the holidays in my room with the door closed. parades of family members and family friends would come through without me opening the door for more than a few seconds to acknowledge them. or, often, i would come out of the bedroom only to eat, and go back in the moment my last bite was finished, probably even taking coffee or even dessert with me. in some cases, i may not have liked the specific individuals involved, but i was broadly simply more interested in pursuing my own individualistic interests than taking part in a family.

today, i look at the idea of starting my own family as a danger to avoid, rather than a future to plan for. even if i were to accidentally find a partner, i wouldn't want to be around their family. and, i have simply never enjoyed being around children. i would be as terribly disinterested as i've always been - i may even find myself needing to get out of the house to relieve the stress from dealing with so many people at once. it's not outside of the realm of possibility to imagine me taking off to go for a bike ride, or even have a beer, while my partner is stuck preparing food and dealing with kids that i don't have any interest in. the simple reality is that i'm honestly much happier reading by myself.

but, what about friends? if you hate family, don't you at least want friends?

you should probably think that through, as it doesn't make as much sense as you think it does, but, sure - i've had friends. i've been to christmas parties. and, it's actually always been the same thing - people bunched together talking about video games or tv shows that i don't know anything about, leaving me horribly bored and nursing my beer. so, you go through the motions of going to the party because you're supposed to, but you don't enjoy it, and you really wish you were somewhere else. i would often find myself drunk at christmas parties, simply because i didn't have any way to relate to the people that were supposed to be my friends. i know: find new friends, right? except that when you put a group of introverted nerds in a room together, they all ignore each other and read by themselves.

i don't think friendship is possible in a capitalist society, but i'll spare you that rant for now. the point i'm making is just that this idea that "friends and family are what's important" is not a universal value, and there are some people that would argue that individual pursuits are the highest pinnacle of achievement, rather than identifying as a part of a group.

i don't want to share these days with other people; i prefer and even need the time alone, to myself.

so, i guess that was a different type of head clear.

i'm trying to detox, and it's being obfuscated by whomever is upstairs smoking. what can i say? i can't sleep forever.

i forced myself to suffer through it today and got most of the email over 2016 pulled down this afternoon, so that will be my next posting update.

for right now, i'm very tired. unfortunately.

and, i'll need to make some calls tomorrow; whomever the drug addict upstairs is is just incentivizing me to sue.

seems like the market had a little too much kool aid.

it'll regret that in the morning.

silly season.

the israeli attacks on damascus are clearly an election ploy.

the russians are right to denounce them for it, but they should be more explicit about it.

and they shouldn't over react.

yet.

i've been clear repeatedly: i think the focus should be to go after businesses that use illegal labour, not to go after the labourers, themselves. the longstanding republican approach, which trump is just amplifying, is a type of supply-side economics: they argue that by controlling the supply of labour, they can reduce the demand for it. this is incoherent everywhere it is applied, but they do it all of the time...

what the policy should be focused on is reducing demand, not controlling the supply. what you need to do with this is to make sure that the laws that exist are enforced and that companies that hire illegal workers are severely prosecuted for it.

if the demand for cheap labour were to dry up, the movement across the border would stop, too.

that said, you can't expect a government to do that on it's own, because a government always operates in the interests of capital - unless a popular uprising exists. the pre-requisite to shutting down businesses that hire illegal workers is a strong workers movement. but, the unions have all been brought along side the interests of capital, so you don't get any meaningful action. and, sadly, the hierarchy is designed so that even unionized workers can take advantage of cheap strawberries.

so, instead of the necessary worker movement, you just get right-wing politicians taking advantage of the situation to gain votes to get into power.

the failure is at the worker level - workers need to organize to ensure that the standards they've fought for are actually being observed for everybody.

in the short term, forcing people to go through a checkpoint at least ensures we know they're here, which makes it easier to track employers that want to exploit them - and everybody else.

it's just another example of how the parties are realigning, though.

the republicans are in support of a wall to nowhere; it's the democrats that are rejecting the stimulus, by referring to a conservative fiscal ideology.

fwiw, i actually don't have an opinion on a border fence.

democrats are bizarrely fixated on the price. but, it's an infrastructure project, so it should pay for itself via multiplier effects; it should also create some long term employment around the administration of it. so, if you want to tell me that the reason you oppose the wall is because you're opposed to deficit spending, i'm not on your side on that at all - and every time i hear a democrat say something about how america can't afford the wall, i write them off as a conservative. on purely economic terms, it's a great idea, and i'm all for it.

now, if you want to talk about the humanitarian basis of it, that's something else. a "great wall of texas", if effective, would cut off legitimate refugee claims, even as it cuts down on economic migrants. and, yes - i would support a schengen agreement with the nafta partners in principle, but only on the premise that mexico can secure it's southern borders. once labour mobility is established across the trade zone, and the border is properly secured, then you can talk about extending it to the next leg, subject to the central american countries meeting certain conditions about labour standards. for right now, i would support attempts to limit the movement of economic migrants; the focus should be on helping them improve the conditions in their home countries.

everybody knows they're being used as ways to avoid obeying labour laws, which both exploits them and undercuts legal workers. there's nothing left-wing about housing them in a church for a few weeks, and then helping them get a job for half of the minimum wage, and no benefits - and if you think there is, you're just a useful idiot for capital. this doesn't improve working conditions, it doesn't build revolutionary potential, it doesn't do anything of value to the left at all - it just cements the existing system in place buy buying into calvinist ideas about work ethic, and perpetuating the lie that we call the "american dream". wide open borders don't help anybody except the bourgeois class.

it is for this reason that i remain skeptical that any meaningful barrier will be built - it is not in the interests of capital to erect a border barrier. the local food industries would have to pay people, all of a sudden. and, the elite couldn't buy their guatemalan house slaves any more. it would be a catastrophe.

but, the thing is that i'm not sure the narrative around the wall is realistic. putting aside the realities of the interests of capital, if we are to oppose the wall because it would prevent refugee claims, well, ok, but would a wall really do that? or would it act as a check point, thereby merely slowing down the process of admittance?

i think trump is imagining that the wall is just going to have a couple of soldiers patrolling it, as a complete separation between the two countries - that the wall will cut migration down to zero by making it impossible to get through. but, of course, this is delusional. these people will just appear at the border and make their claims, anyways. the difference is in increasing the ability to manage existing migration, rather than altering it, and is that particularly awful?

see, and this is really the crux of it - i've said before that i would oppose the wall on humanitarian grounds (rather than economic grounds. i would support it on economic grounds.), but the more i've thought it through, the less i think it really matters. so, i find myself without much of an opinion, because i don't imagine it would really make a lot of difference.

of course, i live in canada. the shut down affects me more than the wall does.

....but when you strip away all of the alarmism and reactionary propaganda from both sides, the most substantive analysis is probably simply that "it would be good for the economy".

i actually agree that seven is way too old for santa, and if your kids are still talking about santa at seven you should be ashamed of yourself, as a parent.

my parents tried to pull that shit on me too, but i didn't fall for it for a second. i was the kid that pointed out that we don't have a chimney, and the story doesn't even add up. flying reindeer? what?

but, what i'm more interested in here is this thing we say to kids.

"do you believe in santa?"

...because that is the same thing as asking "do you believe in odin?".

despite christian attempts at burying it, santa claus as we understand it is actually an example of how chistianity tended to absorb local elements everywhere it went. christianity is not only deeply syncretic at it's core, a stew of mystery religions and socratic philosophy, but was constantly changing as it colonized new areas. nothern europe (including england, the netherlands, scandinavia, northern france and germany) had a shared pantheon of indo-european gods that we refer to as 'germanic', with odin at the top of it. odin was not exactly zeus, and not exactly hermes (the etymology of the latin term german), and not exactly mercury, although he was certainly mercurial, taking the shape of talking birds, amongst other things. but, he was the main god.

if the germans were to sacrifice a prisoner of war, they would sacrifice him to odin.

so, does your child believe in odin? well, that's perhaps less the point. what i'm trying to point out is that the question of belief in the indigenous religions of northern europe is being infantilized by the ritual, in favour of the invading jewish doctrine.

odin is for kids - and they'll grow out of it.

and, what that really is is colonization.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/south-carolina-girl-7-who-spoke-to-trump-about-santa-says-she-still-believes

so, it's not just the fact that smoke is toxic that's a piss-off, it's the fact that it's so horribly desiccating.

i'm not interested in being mummified.

hot & humid > cold & dry > cold & humid > hot & dry.

so, i would prefer a climate like malaysia or brazil to a climate like california, or israel.

i keep pointing out that i would NOT like the weather in california, or the culture, or the people, or the constant threat of natural disaster. it is NOT in a list of places i'd consider moving to, or even visiting. sorry.

florida would be a lot better, if it weren't for the hurricanes and floods.

but, i'd be happier in denmark. or italy.

i'll write the letter for him.

mr assad,

as you know, the french have been occupying syria intermittently since 1099, with varying levels of competency and barbarity. you will recall that syria was a part of the roman empire, having passed into it as a part of the conquests and cessions of the former hellenic kingdoms. while we are well aware that we are not actually romans, we do speak a perverted form of latin, and we have long felt that is close enough to claim the legacy of the roman occupation. we thus feel entitled to this land.

yet, as it is no longer 1099, and international law has changed quite a bit since then, we do understand the necessity to request your permission to continue to occupy your country. we hope that you acknowledge our supremacy immediately.

thank you,
emmanuel macron

i mean, i don't know who let the french back into syria in the first place, but they're going to have to ask permission if they want to stay. the russians threw them out once, and they can throw them out again.

also, maybe macron can ride into syria on a white horse, right?

what a doofus.

we don't need to spend the next hundred years debating whether there was a kurdish genocide, do we?

this is, in truth, a good opportunity for erdogan to prove to the west that the turks are something more than illegitimate barbarians, that they are not merely an accident of history, sitting on a conquered european metropolis.

i know erdogan is saying a lot of mean things about the kurds, and it's not like he doesn't mean it.

but, i expect that he has some concept of his responsibilities, here.

some kind of order must be restored. but, he cannot give up on european integration entirely; if there is a slaughter in the region, he will pay for it. dearly.

i would expect all kinds of quasi-fascist headlines about turkish power stamping out the terrorists, and he may even get a bump in the polls from it. but, he will stop short of a massacre. as he must.

sorghum pasta, at least, seems to be available at bulk barn, and there's one around the corner from here.

there is some economy around sorghum breads, as a consequence of the gluten-free trend; sorghum appears to be the default grain used to avoid gluten. i have no reason to think i have an intolerance to gluten, but if these are the products i need to look into in order to dry and take advantage of the anti-oxidant properties of sorghum then so be it.

they appear to mostly be selling sorghum as a flat bread, though - and, ironically, i may have some difficulty digesting it, as a westerner. let's see what i can even find...

something else that isn't talked about is plums.

it makes sense - it's the dark colour.

the problem with blueberries is that they're expensive; adding a plum to the daily smoothie may be more economically feasible than anything else.

i should also see if i can switch to sorghum bagels and pasta.

so, yeah - if you're 45 years old and have already had three heart attacks, you should consider switching to nuts.

but, if you're 45 and in great health then you want to treat them as a rarity.

you have to understand that the literature around diet in the united states is largely about harm reduction; it assumes that you're hopelessly overweight and dangerously inactive, then tries to give you tips on how to adjust to it.

and, regarding the nuts.

yeah, it's true that eating a plate of nuts is better than eating a plate of cow. so, if the choice is between eating cow and eating nuts, you should pick nuts. it may follow that if you're starting from a point of terrible health, switching from cow to nuts might improve your health - and thereby lower your bad cholesterol. but, you don't want to extrapolate that into a claim that nuts are good for you, or lower cholesterol, in general - they're still high in fat, and somebody that is in good health to start with still wants to be careful with their consumption.

so, what i do right now is that i chop up tomatoes & peppers on the plate first, then put the pasta on top (followed by microwaved salami, caesar salad dressing, cheese, hot sauce, salt + pepper).

pepper itself is fairly powerful, apparently.

but, what i could be doing is putting some spices down with the tomatoes - basil, oregano & potentially parsley.

the nuts are another thing that looks good, but you'd be....nuts....to eat that much cholesterol. i've got my cholesterol very well under control; i don't want to be introducing something like that into my diet.

so, there's some tweaks for the next grocery run.

- blueberry juice instead of orange juice (if feasible). you can never get too much of it, but i think i get a lot of C from other sources - kiwis, strawberries, tomatoes.
- oregano, basil & parsley for pasta.

seems too easy...

still - it demonstrates that casual use of oregano is as worthwhile as a small glass of blueberry juice.

so, i should probably look into that.

see, how much oregano can you put on a plate of spaghetti?

does oregano actually weigh the same amount as marijuana? no, really - does it? because i know how much a gram of pot is. i don't know how much 100 grams of pot is...

could you put a half a gram of pot on your spaghetti? probably more like a quarter, right?

so, if the orac count of 100 g is 200,000, that's about 2000/g - which is an orac count of 500 in a meaningful serving.

on the other hand, a glass of blueberry juice is going to be about 400 g - which scales up to 1200 as an orac number.

so, that number seems impressive, but the actual reality is that you'd need to get used to using a lot of oregano to even compete with a glass of blueberry juice.

as an aside, one wonders what kind of orac count marijuana might have - so long as you're eating it, not smoking it.

it's kind of frustrating that so little of this is really edible, though.

i could potentially make some room for oregano on my pasta, as i grew up eating a lot of it.

pure blueberry juice is in the list. i don't see any other juice in it.

https://modernsurvivalblog.com/health/high-orac-value-antioxidant-foods-top-100/

just a pro-tip, though - if you're a spy, you shouldn't smoke.

it's kind of a dead giveaway.

the thing is that, as far as i can tell, it's not coming in through the windows.

so, who is up there? a cop?

as mentioned, i'm more interested in suing the cops for harassment and false arrest - and if it turns out they're spying on me, too, that's just another reason to sue them. unfortunately, as i can't secure the air quality in the unit, i don't expect to be here, long term - which is a shame, because i otherwise like the place. but, i learned that there's not really a solution in going after the owner, because the city doesn't offer much of a way out.

if it was as easy as suing the owner and then moving, i wouldn't have ended up here.

it's way better than before, but it's still not good enough.

i have a lot of work to do on this, and will have to get back to it on thursday.

and, how is the air quality in here?

the family that lives upstairs is apparently gone, but i'm convinced that there's somebody smoking upstairs, which is kind of giving me pause.

i dunno who's up there. but, it would be nice if they'd smoke somewhere else.

like hell, for example.

i also need to clarify something.

you shouldn't drink your smoothie down in a single gulp, you should slowly nurture it, like a glass of wine. the blender doesn't really destroy or modify much, but it does concentrate it, which can put some strain on your organs in terms of overloading.

so, people will tell you that you're better off eating an apple than slurping apple sauce, but that's only actually the case if you're eating the apple sauce too fast. if you eat the apple sauce at the same rate, it's not any worse.

one way to slow yourself down if you tend to eat too quickly is to make the smoothie a little thicker, so you can't really drink it. i use ice cream. yogurt might be effective - but don't trick yourself into thinking yogurt is better than ice cream.

it usually takes me 20-30 minutes to finish the smoothie, which is about the same amount of time that it would take to eat each component separately. that is what you want.

wait. didn't i write this article a few hours ago?

fuckers.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-unexpected-pagan-origins-of-popular-christmas-traditions/

actually, i think that this might be a smart tactic.

they should drop thousands off at city hall, and see how the public reacts...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ice-unexpectedly-drops-off-hundreds-of-migrants-at-el-paso-bus-station-beto-orourke-veronica-escobar/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab4i

so, i've had some trouble finding two staples in my diet recently - fresh strawberries for my daily smoothies and orange juice, which i drink one tall glass of on most days - and it's led me to a little bit of tweaking.

there are several videos on my diet at my vlog site, which i suppose are now mostly here, too. and, i'll remind you that i look half of my age and have dangerously low cholesterol; i'm doing something right.

with the orange juice, it's actually a packaging thing. i'm used to buying tetrapacks, which are easy to transport in a school bag and fit compactly inside of a smallish fridge (and my fridges have been getting smaller since i moved from the first basement). there's been some kind of mass decision to switch to these awkward plastic bottles that don't stack well in a bag and don't fit well in a fridge. my initial workaround was to switch to apple juice, and if the intent of the oj is mostly to get a ton of C (and, i'm not anti-sugar. sugar is good for you.) it's not awful, but i was missing out on some fortified vitamins. as it happened to be, i couldn't find any apple juice, either, so i had to shop around, and ended up overpaying for some tropicana tetrapacks on sale. in the long run, i'm not going to be interested in paying for expensive tropicana orange juice, so i'm kind of in need of a shift if the manufacturers hold steady on their shift to these awkward containers. i don't know what they're thinking.

with the berries, they're just out of season, so i ended up getting some frozen strawberries instead, but i supplemented with some fresh blueberries, just because i wanted something fresh. so, my smoothies this month are going to be made of fresh bananas, fresh kiwis, frozen strawberries, fresh blueberries, cherry ice cream and vanilla soy. it was kind of a snap decision, based on some uneasiness around the frozen strawberries. my thinking was that the frozen strawberries are probably only half as good as the fresh ones, so i should get some fresh blueberries to compensate. was that clear thinking?

it seems to depend, and, in my case, probably not. my instincts were correct - fresh fruit is always preferable. but, given that i live in canada, and so much of the fruit gets shipped in from mexico or california, i'm not actually buying fresh fruit. the ideal would be to buy fruit made in local greenhouses, which is already rare, and i'm going to guess that the few greenhouses that do exist around here are mostly going to end up wasted on marijuana :(. you'd have to test to find out, but because i'm dealing with so much travel, there's some chance that the frozen fruit may actually be less bad.

that's less of a praise for frozen fruit and more of an indictment of our economy. what i'm actually thinking is that i'd rather move to a warmer climate in order to get fresher fruit.

but, i ended up doing some cursory research on blueberries and decided i should really make a place for them. it's not like i didn't know about blueberries - i knew. trust me; i knew. it's just that they're not the easiest thing to work in to a diet. i've avoided both blueberries and raspberries in smoothies because they kind of don't blend well - the blueberries are too fibrous, and the raspberries get those little seeds stuck in the blend. i decided some time ago that sticking with strawberries (and tomatoes. i eat a lot of tomatoes.) was good enough, and i think the results speak for themselves. but, i'm revisiting that - i want a place for the blueberry in my life. i want daily intake.

what i'm thinking is that i might want to look at some blueberry juice as a replacement for some orange juice, if i can find it in a pure blend - not concentrate, not flavoured, but 100% actual juice. that could be the way around the packaging problem.

as mentioned, i'm not anti-sugar, but i do kind of wish that orange juice was more than just C, too. so, this kind of solves two problems.

and, will there still be a place for orange juice? oj is something i've been keen on since i was a kid. but, i dunno. if blueberry juice is superior - and it is - why would i stick with the inferior choice? shouldn't i always choose blueberry over orange?

i don't know if this is available or economical, but i'm going to look.

for now, the blueberries are just adding a little tart to the smoothie. i wouldn't say it's enough of a taste difference to make a decision around, although it's hard to downplay the health benefits.

just one more thing.

christmas actually isn't about jesus. i've been beating around the manger, but haven't come out and said it.

the puritans completely rejected christmas as a pagan holiday, and the earliest christians didn't celebrate it at all. it's really not a christian holiday, it's an appropriated solar feast.

so, it's less that the "christmas is about jesus" types are annoying, although they are, and more that they're actually wrong.

but, christians are usually wrong, aren't they?

we're also in an extreme solar minimum, remember.

i understand that this is a lot of 'splainin' for one volcano. i'm not trying to explain this specific volcano, so much as i'm trying to present it as representative of a broader pattern.

so, maybe it's evil republicans killing heathens at christmas. or, maybe it's the sun. i dunno.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2003ESASP.535..393S

i can't shake this grogginess, but i'm not suffering through it, i'm going back to sleep.

the calendar was a little off, granted.

but, yes - we've made it through another revolution.

that's as worth celebrating as anything else. so, enjoy your mead.

just don't waste my time with bullshit.

so, i mean...

it makes some good amount of sense to worship the sun, in an abstract manner, even as you realize that you're better off trying to understand it using science than influence it using chants. the sun created us, and will ultimately destroy us. it is the source of all life on the planet. if there's something in our experience that is like a god, it is not an ethereal force or something we've projected as a reflection of our own existence, but the star right in front of us.

the ancients were primitive, but not irrational.

rather, it is the child-like anti-intellectualism that we've inherited from dark age religions like christianity and islam that doesn't make any sense.

there's these people that will tell you that the perfection of the universe is a strong argument for creation, and the general approach has usually been to concede the point and argue for incremental change as an equally valid - but superior - naturalistic explanation.

i'm not on board with that. i'm willing to challenge the premise. most people have terrible eyesight, we've got spiders eating their mates before they can reproduce, and we've got an earth wobbling around that demonstrates no understanding of aerodynamics at all. it's a circular argument, rooted in classical assumptions, producing a kind of conformation bias on observation. a closer examination demonstrates that there are contradictions everywhere in nature.

and, one may even point out that there's a full moon and the solstice happening at the same time, which is just producing that much more stress....

remember: gravity destroys everything in the end.

resistance is futile.

"The more destructive earthquakes of magnitude 5.0–6.0 appear to be significantly impacted by solar activity. The phase of the seismic frequency enhancement is concentrated on or near the winter solstice,"

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11589-013-0023-2

you have to remember that the earth never knows where the turn is - it thinks it's moving in a straight line. well, relative to the curvature in space, of course. i know i shouldn't anthropomorphize celestial bodies, especially not on christmas, but the point is that the rotation isn't graceful, or planned out like you would imagine if you were running a race track - the earth is passed out at the wheel. it's nothing like the perfect circle you see in these newtonian diagrams, it's an elongated oval.

so, it's more like that all of the momentum of the earth is pushing directly forward, as though the earth is falling away from the sun (even as it is being propelled forward by it), until it gets to the point where it nearly escapes, and then gets thrown back the other way, like a boomerang.

a boomerang. imagine a boomerang returning back whence it came. that's the earth at the solstice...

so, it's not hard to imagine how these fractures in the crust may end up dealing with stress from that, especially near the equator.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-astronomical-tidal-forces-trigger-earthquakes/

that tsunami in bangladesh happened around christmas too, didn't it?

there are going to be conspiracy theories. i just want to get in before them...

it is not completely outside of the realm of possibility that some evil coalition of republicans in the pentagon is getting off on beating down the heathens at the solstice; earthquake technology would be about the same thing as volcano technology, it is not hard to imagine how it might function and it would need to be tested. i neither offer any proof of this, nor do i think it particularly likely, but it cannot be ruled out a priori - this is a perfectly reasonable hypothesis, that ought to be explored.

i more just want to point out that there's actually a naturalistic explanation, surrounding the solstice, as the gravitational forces on the earth are experiencing a kind of whiplash around this date. yearly. hey, it's not that different than the milankovitch theory. and, while tidal drag is not the mainstream consensus as the mechanism of tectonic activity, people tend not to realize that we actually don't have a good mechanistic theory at all (what we know about subduction is mostly observational, not causal - we don't have anything close to a predictive model on tectonic activity), and that tidal drag was actually the mechanism initially proposed by alfred wegener. i have to have this argument once in a while with these neckbeards that think they're debunking astrology; tidal drag is actually an existing research question, and it does have some promising potential.

the idea would be that the reason this happened in about the same place at about the same time of year is that the earth went through about the same fluctuations in the gravitational field, leading to about the same fracture in the crust.

and, i think it's important to recognize on christmas just how dangerously in motion we really are, being flung around this star, wobbling, in constant threat of being pulled apart and flung out into the galaxy....

you could do a calculation and try and determine how likely it is that it's a coincidence; i won't bother.  i might say something about how the universe doesn't give a fuck about your ratios - as evidenced by the inevitable contradiction, and then use that to undermine the model. but, perhaps the more cogent observation is that it isn't a coincidence at all - that there's physics here to unravel.

fuck your god.

but happy solstice.

yeah.

the problem is you told them to stop printing money, donald.

i don't own any stocks. but, if you want to reverse this, a return to quantitative easing is required.

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/trump-fed-only-problem-our-economy-has-2018-12-1027831518

it's the time of the year to enjoy some of the classics.

so, i forgot that most bourgeois and government things are closed this week.

i don't have any problems with acknowledging the solstice, but aren't we all a little too old for christmas? isn't the society too old for christmas? the culture? aren't we beyond this? can't we all grow up a little?

we have this weird holiday in canada called "boxing day", so i won't be able to make any calls until thursday. but, i'm planning on kind of pivoting on thursday morning, too.

i've been sleeping for the better part of the last week; outside of a grocery run on saturday morning, i've barely been awake since wednesday, except to eat. i kind of want to get back to rebuilding, but i'm still having a hard time staying awake.

i want to be clear on the point about my father's estate. i was offered the role of executor, but turned it down, as i expected to be on long term disability. in ontario, the government either seizes assets or throws you off disability, and on a certain level i actually agree - if you can effectively execute an estate, you're not very disabled. i don't know exactly what the will says. but, the agreement we came to was not designed to exclude me, but rather to get around the government in a way that would ensure i wasn't excluded, because he couldn't leave me money directly.

my father didn't like my politics, but he's one of the few people that understood them, because he had so much exposure, and such an opportunity to do so - and you can imagine that a moderately conservative parent would have these kinds of arguments about finances and employment with their anarchist child, so long as the level of discourse can remain respectful, and it usually did. he wanted me to embrace a normal life of capitalist excess, and found it frustrating that i refused to, but i think i got through to him well enough that he understood that i wanted a way out of all of that, rather than the thing itself...

and, i would still rather get a disability check than go after my step-mother or sister regarding mismanagement or broken promises. i don't want my dead father's money. i want a guaranteed income. but, i have to adjust to what the state is doing, whether i like it or not.

he didn't have millions of dollars to leave me; i'm sure he would have, if he did. what he could do is what he did - he sat me down with my stepmother and had her agree to wire me "gifts" on a regular basis. it's a henson trust in theory, without the actual trust. and, maybe i was naive to believe her, and maybe he was naive to suggest it, but there wasn't another reasonable option - i was not able to work, and am still not able to work, and could consequently not accept the magnitude of funds on offer without losing access to required long term benefits.

as mentioned: i don't expect anything has been probated, yet. i'll find out near the end of the week.

see, the american media calls these people "political prisoners", but the truth is that they're mostly fundamentalist jihadist extremists that would shoot you on the street for belonging to the wrong cult, or eating the wrong thing, or having sex with the wrong person.

to be clear: this is a sensationalist report that may very well essentially be bullshit designed to influence donald trump. as journalism, it's pretty lacking. it's not unbelievable, though.

but, had the outcome been the other way, there'd be just as many - probably many more - dead secularists executed in poorly run jails for breaking sharia law, and some of these people would be the executioners.

it's the nature of this kind of a war - a lot of people are going to die. you need to look at it like this: at the end day, there's little comparison in terms of death counts, when you compare the secular and religious regimes. if what the post is saying is even true, this is a brutal means to an end, but the end is worth striving for.

you can't stamp out religion with force. but, sometimes, there's little option but to try....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/world/syria-bodies/

something else i may be able to try is to sue the estate to pay down my student loan, as i have plenty of evidence, in form of emails, of promises to do so. i would essentially be setting myself up as a creditor, which gets around any technical issues of inheritance. and, that may mean suing somebody directly.

as mentioned: my understanding is that everything was in her name anyways, so there wasn't even much of anything to transfer. i have not been informed of any kind of probate process, nor have i been informed of the opening of any kind of estate, leading me to believe that the will was joint, and won't execute until she dies.

but, it's long past due that i actually see it.

see, i think i'm dealing with something like this:

https://www.alllaw.com/articles/nolo/wills-trusts/joint-wills-married-couples.html

i don't know for sure.

i need to see it...

frankly, i'd be better off waiting 20 years, anyways. and, i'm still not certain that i can't argue my way into another disability term....

"you don't call your family on christmas?"

no.

they're horrible assholes.

what i am is a white sheep in a very dirty family...

but, let's...

i wasn't, like, disinherited, or cut out, or anything - it was just not the right way to support me. and, that created a fiduciary responsibility to the people involved, which has been horribly broken.

if i have to go down that path, it's going to really harm their financial standing. but, i can hardly be faulted for not caring. at all.

i mean, it's kind of the explanation to this, right?

who makes a promise to their dying husband to be a fiduciary to his disabled child, only to break it five days later, besides a psychopath on the autism spectrum?

and, it's kind of a constant in her behaviour. for years, i thought she was horribly immoral; in hindsight, she might actually just not be fully capable of really understanding what she's even doing. it's this inability to give a fuck; it's clinical, clearly, but it seems like something is missing rather than that something is off balance.

if we're going to go through this, it would be better for her to give me the rest of the $500/month up front. as i say - that $50,000 number has been bandied around. maybe, we cut it off there. i dunno.

i would imagine the joint estate was probably worth around $500,000, and that she probably contributed at least 60% of it. i know that most of their wealth was tied into property, but i don't know how much debt they had. they lived above their means.

i wouldn't expect that he got any insurance money for brain cancer beyond what could be claimed directly.

i don't know exactly how old she is, but she's actually a few years older than he would have been. by now, she's in her mid to late 60s.

a complicating factor is that i believe she was placed on leave and forced into early retirement due to a mental illness. i kind of deduced she was probably bipolar, but it was never clearly explained to me. when i was younger, i was told she has an "imbalance"; the last couple of years of his life, he just called her retarded. he was constantly apologizing for her...

"i'm sorry that she smashed your guitar. what do you want me to tell you? she's retarded."

and, frankly, i think it might have been closest to the truth - she may be on the autism spectrum. so, what do you do when you have an autistic person with a fiduciary duty over somebody with a stress disorder, who refuses to carry it out?

it's a messy situation. clearly. so, it would be easier if i could just get the odsp check. sadly, that's closing down as a reality....

but, i don't know what kind of retirement income she gets, or how much of that money she can claim as necessary for her own retirement.

i may end up suing my sister, instead.

we'll see what i'm able to learn - i'll need to call the lawyer first, and then the court house.

but, via the agreement, and as of right now, my step-mother owes me $32500 + interest, and counting - and if i have to, i'll sue her for it.

time's up.

i'm also going to need to look into my father's will, or lack thereof.

i was supposed to get a $500/month check for the foreseeable future, which would give me $6000/year in gifts, which is the maximum amount under the law to maintain benefits. that was the plan, here. we set up an agreement days before he died....and then she just didn't follow through with it.

iirc, she said it wasn't binding because he was half-retarded. the second part was true (after three invasive brain surgeries), but the first part wasn't, as what was set up was a fiduciary duty - it was her agreement that was important, not his.

i probably should have asked for a copy; it didn't cross my mind that she'd bail. i was planning a move, dealing with my father's death...it was just something that didn't cross my mind. but, in hindsight, it should have crossed my mind....

i haven't pursued anything because i don't expect that the dollar figures are worth pursuing. i was told for years that everything would be left in her name, with the assumption that she would fairly distribute it - up to her discretion. and, the same thing was true the other way, although she doesn't have any children. but, how much money is available here, given that she could have another 20-30 years ahead of her?

the number $50,000 has been thrown around a little, and the fact is that that's not a lot of cash.

if i had 50 years left in 2013, i'd have needed to be looking at dollar figures around $1000000 to make any kind of action worthwhile, and that didn't strike me as likely at all. $50,000 is only going to buy me 4 or 5 years. i'd be better off staying on odsp, and biding my time to make a legal case when i'm 55.

but, the situation has now changed - it now makes sense to figure out what i should have got, and sue for it. and, given that i'm not aware of any probate process, and was not informed if one did exist, i may have an argument to reopen it - or at least to sue for unjust enrichment.

i'll repeat: my understanding is that the entire estate went to my step-mother. a $500/month check for an unlimited period is basically exactly what i wanted, and i wouldn't have had much use for a lump sum much less than $1000000, which is probably completely unrealistic. so, it seemed like a waste of time.

but, i don't know, really - i need to see what the will actually says, and what my options are around it.

and, is assad a war criminal?

well, i think it's not really his fault - he was fighting a war thrust upon him by outside forces, using obsolete technology as a result of decades of sanctions. we wouldn't sell him modern weapons, then we condemned him for defending himself using what he had.

he's done some awful things, but the responsibility for it is largely with the saudis.

self-defence is a strong legal argument. you could get him for manslaughter, perhaps. but, it would be hard to convict him of war crimes, i think.

that said, i do agree that he needs to be phased out - not because of what he did but because of what is inevitable. i've made this argument here, repeatedly: if you leave the regime in place (and assad himself is of least concern, it's the generals that need to be removed) then there is no future but retaliation - the syrians will go after the saudis as soon as they can, to avenge what has been done to them. and, who can blame them for that?

and, yes - i'm in favour of regime change in saudi arabia, but not at the hands of bashar al-assad, or his generals.

this conflict is so complex and confusing that it has got everybody spun around and supporting things they normally wouldn't, in terms of hard to work out lesser evils. everything is a least-harm calculation. there's no right answer.

but, an imperialist occupation that is illegal under international law is not much of a way forward to building an autonomous worker-run society, and any thinking that it ever was was delusional on it's face to begin with.

the kurds should really be grateful that the americans aren't actively trying to destroy them, which is what they normally do in this scenario.

whatever one thinks of rojava, they should have seen an american withdrawal coming. lessons for the revolution; it's cliched, but it's the blunt truth. it's not like they had much of a choice, but they should have known from the start that they were eventually going to need to defend themselves.

there's not a contradiction in supporting some kind of kurdish self-determination inside syria, and supporting an american withdrawal - for the same reason that there's not a contradiction in supporting the withdrawal, and leaving the remaining fighting up to the russians.

the bottom line is that i don't think it's reasonable to call for american imperialism to protect anarchists in a fictional kurdistan. it's a nice idea; it's not very rooted in reality.

yeah. i'm detoxing and everything, sure. but, i'm exceedingly uneasy about using a mail order service to buy marijuana, as there is still a good chance that this is an elaborate sting operation.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/privacy-commissioner-cannabis-sales-1.4952025

despite all this attempted do-gooding by these liberal/christian activist groups, the fact of the matter is that they don't understand us any better than we understand them.

and, something else - i think if you talk to syrians, they're going to tell you that they don't want to be refugees, and they don't want to come to america, and deal with a massive culture shock.

they want to go home, and live in their own culture, amongst their own people.

syria is a russian satellite.

so, does pulling out help the russians? well, it should help the russians reassert order in their satellite state, if that's what you mean to say, sure.

i'm hardly on the side of some military plan that wants to destabilize the russians. i want peace and stability, and the russians are a better ally than america is, right now, to that end.

it has been the case for some time now that the russians are the grown-ups in the room.

trump is saving face, and that's fine.

it is true that isis is degraded. yes. and, it is worth celebrating. these were bad guys, and they're gone.

but, the point was not to take out isis - it was to take out assad....

the thing is that this wasn't a noble goal, and nobody should be upset that it didn't work. it was foolish, and smart people knew from the start that this was the inevitable end point.

i can't know whether trump understands what he's doing, but he's doing the right thing, regardless.

and, i really need to be clear about this - i'm not taking a pro-trump position. i'm actually taking a pro-putin position. the russians are the force of stability, here. they're the ones articulating the side i'm on, here.

woahwoahwoahwoahwoah.

ok.

so, is isis completely destroyed? i don't think anybody said that. so, is there going to be further fighting? i would count on it. but, that's not the point.

the left side of the news media is making it seem like it's just a few hundred advisors leaving, and it's not such a big change. but, they're missing the context on the board. the united states is currently involved in an illegal occupation of northeastern syria. the fact that the americans are sitting there on this territory is placing the situation in a kind of suspended animation, because nobody wants to attack the americans - even if the turks using scary words, and the russians like to play chicken.

you'd be fucking retarded to start a war with the united states, and that is not a statement that requires an argument.

so, when the americans abandon this illegal occupation, it will allow the various actors - mostly the turks and russians - to come in and try and re-establish a concept of syrian sovereignty. and, of course the americans want to see the turks and russians get into a fight about this, and they very well might, but the basic point is that the strategy failed, so what's the point in continuing on with it?

so, sure, there's going to be some more insurgencies. but, shouldn't that be up to syria and iraq to deal with, with the help of their allies and protectors - the russians, the iranians? why is it america's responsibility to beat down militants in countries it has hostile relationships with? wasn't the whole point of this supposed to be to build the iraqi security forces up?

might america have to come back? sure. but, that's not a reason to stay. and, i do agree with the basic assessment that you can't stamp this out with force - but i need to add that you can't stamp it out with a set of social programs, either. this idea that this is about inequality is absolute rubbish. what you need to do is resolve the various proxy conflicts, which is probably impossible. but, the major proxy wars are all being fought against the saudis. so, realizing that as long as the saudis remain this basket case dictatorship that wants to re-establish a caliphate, the wars will continue means that taking out the saudis is a necessity for any meaningful peace in the region.

so, yes - there's still going to be an isis, but the idea is that the forces in the region should be able to contain it, from here. american policy in syria has now officially failed. and, the strategy consequently needs to shift.

i'll have to call about the motion on monday.

i have no idea when this specific justice sits again.

so, that was not what i intended or expected to happen - i just slept for 20 hours straight, and i'm still not sure that i'm awake, yet.

i feel hungover. it's unpleasant.

i dunno.

i'll remind you that i haven't touched any kind of intoxicant since the end of may. i want to be "detoxing" right now after all the second-hand marijuana smoke from the summer - and, maybe i am. but, i'm having a really hard time staying awake, and i don't actually know why.

so, i had a few hours to blow this morning, and i used it to file about 100 posts in the fall of 2016 that had already been timestamped. that was just mindless data entry.

i'm not filing today, but i AM going to call and get the information i need.

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/11/j-reacts-to-pipeline-approvals-in-canada.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/11/j-reacts-to-republican-plan-to-convert.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/11/j-reacts-to-ubiquity-of-junk-economics.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/11/j-reacts-to-idea-that-pipelines-can-be.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/11/j-reacts-to-possibility-of-toll-booths.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/11/j-reacts-to-reports-of-demise-of-nafta.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/11/j-reacts-to-death-of-fidel-castro.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/11/j-reacts-to-recounts-in-wisconsin.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/11/whenever-i-hear-somebody-call-somebody.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/11/j-reacts-tactically-to-need-to-save.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/11/j-reacts-to-supreme-congressional.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/11/j-reacts-to-trumps-obvious-eventual.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/11/j-reacts-to-request-to-suspend-critical.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/11/j-reacts-to-krugmans-take-on-supposed.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-primary-reason-that-i-endorsed.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/09/j-reacts-to-right-libertarian-fantasy.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/09/j-reacts-to-push-back-on-requirement.html

there's another anniversary coming up for me.

it's been three years since i quit smoking.

it's been harder than i expected, because the society hasn't allowed me to really live smoke-free. i've moved twice, and i'm not sill not sure that i've found an acceptable living situation. do i want to spend the rest of my life trying to avoid second-hand smoke? is it even worth it?

what i can say about that is that you get to a point where you just don't want to be around it any more. at first, it's a process of self-control; eventually, you become utterly revolted by it. as difficult as quitting has been, relapsing is simply not an appealing option to me. i can't even sit in the same room as a smoker, any more. i'm just utterly disgusted by it.

as mentioned: the caulking made a large difference, and i still don't know if second-hand smoke from upstairs or outside is a partial cause of the lingering congestion i'm experiencing. i should make some progress on better understanding that this upcoming week. but, a big motive in the litigation i'm launching is in trying to generate enough income to move into a non-smoking building.

it's weird. i've spent the vast majority of my life very poor, and this is really the first push factor i've ever had to get out of poverty. i don't care about sex or status or wealth and never did, but i just can't handle living in close proximity to heavy smokers any more.

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/09/j-reacts-to-polling-situation-going.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/09/j-reacts-to-idea-that-clinton-is-lock.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/09/j-reacts-to-estate-tax-hike-as-bad.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-state-department-is-clueless-united.html

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2018/04/pulling-out-of-syria-is-right-thing-to.html

i actually think trump had a mandate to withdraw from syria, and look forward to an isolationist defense minister.

isis were bad guys and needed to die. but, this is otherwise really long overdue.

and, i'm again left asking the democrats: are you really going to oppose a troop withdrawal, just because trump proposed it? really? after everything that happened since 2003?

are we really that easily manipulated?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/20/jim-mattis-defense-secretary-retires-trump

"i turned on the news and they were talking about bear markets, and so i said to myself - the russians know no bounds in their hacking, do they?"

bear market?

fuck, the russians have even hacked the nasdaq.

when will it end?

i don't have a lot of interest in the saga of that cfo we arrested, but we can't be treating this like it's a hostage stand-off. the woman is being detained legally as a part of an extradition request.

trudeau should respond with a travel warning, not with concessions.

i'm not ready to make these calls yet, today.

i'm making a very serious accusation, and i have to do it, but i'm not ready to do it, today. this is going to be painful, and i realize it.

tomorrow, maybe.

i'm still sleeping...maybe not really wanting to get up...

how far can it go, then?

well, it was at something like 10,000 when obama started printing money.

but, it depends on what policy exists. if money continues to be destroyed, it will keep falling.

it would be better to abolish capitalism altogether, and eliminate debt along with currency.

but, so long as we have currency and capitalism, we should seek to maximize indebtedness in order to redistribute wealth. eliminating debt just means trickling the wealth up, and making the poor poorer.

call it a contradiction if you want, but it's really in your head; it's not a contradiction, at all, it's just a recognition that the economy is a creation of human hands, and not something that exists out there, somewhere, in the wild.

money is debt. so, sharing wealth means creating debt, and eliminating debt means destroying wealth. that's reality. deal with it.