and, likewise, i'm going to ignore the framing around this recent polling and just look at the data, however scant it may be. here's our trend line from campaign research, which is conducting "online research" around voting intentions in the next election:

the immediate response would be "not much movement outside the margin". however, as this "online research" does not utilize random sampling, there is no margin of error to consult.

how have the conservatives changed? well, they're down a point since february, but really pretty much flat since december - and no doubt for months before that. i'm not even sure that the second coming of christ would move the conservative numbers, at this point. their base is rock solid, entirely unreachable, but they're continuing to fail at generating interest outside of it. the data really perfectly represents the stereotype of the conservative supporter as an ideologue that you simply can't argue with it, and the party as having little appeal to much of anybody else in the 21st century.

the ndp are similarly flat. but, the liberals are trending mildly downwards.

so, if the ndp and conservatives are flat and the liberals are trending down, where are the votes going?

to their discredit, campaign did not post a trend line for the other parties, but you can at least find a snapshot of the recent "online research".

looking at this, we don't know if the undecided or the greens or the bloc went up, but the greens are performing fairly well in this poll, and the undecideds are actually fairly low compared to where they were at this point last time around.

it's easy to make a conclusion then - if this "online research" is uncovering anything, it is that people are a little bit cynical about the liberals right now, but don't like the other options. you really didn't need to conduct online research to figure that out....

comparing this to the ridiculous media framing is instructive, as it demonstrates the purpose of what the firm is doing. the headline is that the liberals are in trouble; the data suggests no such thing. but, who reads the data? people read the headline. this "online research" is not meant to measure public opinion, but to create it. so, there is a gramscian caveat to my analysis: while the issue doesn't appear to have harmed the liberals at this point, if the media continues to push the point that it has then it very well may in the end.

the liberals should be more concerned about the companies doing the research than they are in the results of the research.

the substantive point that policy makers should take away from my posts on this topic is that global governing institutions are necessarily going to have a different analysis than local governments, on this topic - which isn't to suggest that self-interest should be dominant, but to necessitate that the issue has to be framed in both contexts to understand it properly, and weigh it out.

so, the ipcc might say something like "the effects of a solar minimum will not alter the trend towards increasing average temperatures, because the effects will be localized in the northern hemisphere". and, if you live in india or something, you might have little reason to think that's important.

but, if you live in the regions that are to be most affected - namely canada and northern europe - then that caveat about the northern hemisphere is not just an unimportant addendum to the global trend, but the actual primary point of concern. in canada, we might say "the continuing trend towards global warming will not overpower the localized effect of solar minima".

but, northerners should neither get disinterested or complacent, because there's no certainty here. a strong cycle 25 or 26 would completely turn the issue on it's head, and lead us to a discussion about how the two factors are all of a sudden amplifying each other. we could easily get fed up by the cold winters and decide this doesn't matter, only to wake up to an irreversible tipping point, and all kinds of feedbacks, within a year or two.

i seek only to balance the narrative. empiricism can never be overruled by ideology, and we must fight teleology and fantasy at every turn. science must remain science; we must always seek the truth, as best we can, however convenient or inconvenient it may be.

but, listen: i don't really care if you understand what i'm saying or not. and, chances are, you probably never will, because you don't have the education to do so - you just want to buy into political narratives around science that are pushed by the fake liberal press, to push an agenda, to fight the bad guys. whatever.

but, at some point you have to look at the actual data, and my analysis - as though it's my analysis, rather than a careful survey of the existing literature - has been accurate up to this point.

to begin with, don't believe people that are trying to predict the upcoming cycle. there is currently absolutely no predictive science around the strength of sunspot cycles whatsoever. the "experts", in context, are little more than clairvoyants, trying to crudely extrapolate a pattern and move it forwards on a whim. and, you can make arguments either way.

so, some people will look at it and say "the cycle has been getting weaker for decades, so we should expect it to continue to get weaker". i've challenged this by pointing out that we have no reason to assume linear dependence, and if the output is actually random (as good a guess as any other at this point), the fact that we have a long streak of decreasing outputs means we're due for a shift - a probabilistically tricky argument that many will reject when articulated that way, but which is correct nonetheless, given that we can't actually count to infinity. it would be more correct to state that the output will eventually reverse, given infinitely many experiments. i'm impatient; sorry. and, while you can't quantify randomness, we're due nonetheless.

which argument is better? that there's a trend, or that the streak is due to break? absent a mechanism, they're both shit shots. the truth is that we have no fucking idea, and don't believe anybody that tells you we do.

so, given that we don't know what the upcoming cycle is going to be like, it would be foolish to try and make a prediction around it's effects on the climate.

what we can say is that we're exiting a local minima, so we should expect some kind of local warming trend - in the northern hemisphere - within a couple of years.

this article is responding to the strawman argument that the clear historical correlation between solar output and temperature - which is extremely robust, and has nothing to do with the maunder minimum - is a consequence of tsi, which is something that no solar scientist has ever suggested. and, in fact, the science around climate change takes this as a given; the purpose of the ipcc reports is to separate anthropogenic signals from the sun, and the ultimate argument in the end is that the warming can't be caused by the sun because it is dimming.

rather, it is well understood - and i've posted dozens of articles to this site - that the mechanism underlying the correlation has to do with ultraviolet radiation, not with tsi. it is essentially a magnetic phenomenon that alters the jet stream by messing with the atmosphere.

so, you don't want to think about it like you're turning the heat down or something. rather, you want to think about it like you're moving magnets around on a sphere, with iron filings inside of it. as you change the way the magnets are oriented, you change the way the filings are arranged, and this is what we're seeing with the jet steam in the northern latitudes. but, this is something that you need a basic understanding in physics to understand - it is not intuitive and not easily explained to scientific illiterates.

as i've stated here repeatedly, this will probably not change the overall average warming trend. we can't really state for sure, but it's a question of rates - we don't think the sun is slowing down fast enough to overturn the accelerating rates of global warming. it could, though. science operates in a realm of probability and uncertainty, not in a realm of absolute knowledge or dominant fact.

but, if the sun maintains it's current trajectory, and you live in the northern hemisphere, what is being called "global warming" could turn out to be rather disappointing, as we enter a period of extended minima that frequently pushes the jet stream to the south.

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/news/article/the-sun-is-quieter-than-normal-but-dont-panic

that's absolutely outrageous.

she should at least be refunded for the cost of the flight.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2019/03/13/she-wore-crop-top-her-flight-islands-airline-told-her-cover-up-or-get-off/

so, i've carefully filed this properly, backwards, to may, 2003, which is the point where things get messy, as everything for the two-three years previously dates to those burns from before i left. i will need to go through the may folder - which includes thousands of genealogical records - and pull out as much stuff from before it as possible.

i stopped to run a scandisk on the drive, just in case. it's a 2 tb drive; that's going to take the rest of the night.

i've also decided that i'm going to create that music blog after all. i think i really don't have another option at this point, as i'm going to need to cross-reference too much data, and it's the only remaining piece.

in terms of how to do this, i'm also going to move in terms of semesters, anchored by the alter-reality. if i try to do this day-by-day or even week-by-week, it will get impossible. so, i'll start with the second half of 2013, then go back and do the second half of 1993. that just extends the journal launch date that much more, but not by much - this is already done, i'm really just double-checking it. with the music blog - reviews, comments - it should become comprehensive. and, i know that's what people actually want...

my robot book should be here in the morning.

still 403s on the tripod site :(

and, i'm otherwise going to nap.

sending trudeau home from spring break is suggestive of something pretty intense.

even an announcement could have waited; a resignation, an early election....all of it could have waited until monday...

the one thing i can think of it that would require immediate attention is a revolt.

i've been clear that i think the issue driving this is trivial. i've also been clear that i'd like to see him hit the slopes, and fade in with the locals. so, i'm neither going to go along, nor push back.

and, i'm a little concerned that the medicine might be worse than the disease.

i guess that if he storms in with the grenadiers then we'll never know what happened. but, if he's too late, an announcement is likely in short order.

and, again: i am neither a jew nor a catholic. the only time in my life that i've attended services on a regular basis was in early grade school - grades 4-5 - and it was actually as a methodist, with my step-father, who was raised as a lebanese maronite. i have been strictly atheist since about the age of 10.

my mother was raised as an anglican, but never expressed any sort of religious conviction to me, and i don't think she ever had any. in the years i knew her - and i'll point out that we've barely spoke in 25 years - i don't think she attended a church service on her own initiative even once.

my father had near eastern ancestry, and i've been told it was hebrew in origin. however, both he and his father were raised as francophone roman catholics. my father would sometimes make vague references to a kind of vague deism, but i think the actual truth is that he never really thought about religion much. religion is an abstract thing; he was very concrete, very practical. i remember his third marriage, which was a civil ceremony in a community centre...so i was going to say he only went to church for weddings and funerals, but even that much isn't true. i was much closer to my father, and i never saw him go to church even once in the thirty odd years that i knew him.

i have never been to a synagogue or been through any jewish rituals. i was not even aware of any jewish ancestry until my 30s; the first story about the family's tanned skin was that we were part native american.

i was not baptized as an infant. so, i was not christened. my mom's side is very anti-catholic, and she vetoed it. however, i was baptized as a toddler, when i was 3.5. i was baptized solely in order to send me to a catholic school, not out of any actual religious conviction, and in fact only due to the differences in the catholic and public school systems. the catholic school system started kids off at the age of 4, whereas the public school system started kids off at the age of 5. by baptizing me, i was able to go to kindergarten a year earlier. i actually vaguely remember it still; i remember being afraid of the priest, and i remember my mom's cynicism around it.

i attended a catholic school until the end of grade 13, but i did not participate in the other rituals. i did not receive the second or third sacraments. as such, the catholic church would not recognize me as one of their own; the disinterest would be mutual.

atheism is a perfectly satisfying world view; it is the way of the future, and i would recommend it to all.

hey, muslims and catholics have a lot in common.

hating the jews is just the tip of it...

airhead, bernie. get rid of her.

https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/sanders-2020-aide-apologizes-for-suggesting-u-s-jews-have-dual-allegiance-1.7019052

american jews are something like 90% secular, and 75% left-of-centre.

as i stated before, the problem with this isn't that it's offensive, it's that it's bluntly stupid. and, what i'm getting from this isn't "this woman is a dangerous nazi" so much as that it is "this woman is clearly incompetent, and shouldn't be involved in a national campaign".