American voters should decide American elections — not Vladimir Putin.

as far as tautologies go, that's a grand one.

but, the discourse here is getting retarded. this is hilarious. really.

so, i'm going to throw down a final nevada projection before i hop in the shower and pivot for the night.

the last couple of polls i saw had sanders jumping to a commanding lead, and warren kind of falling back. see, this is sort of a reflection of part of my apprehension about the coalition of reactionary forces that sanders has been building. you'd have to think that warren would have at least held her ground, right? not when the underlying electorate is holding to a more traditional concept of gender roles than you see throughout much of the country. it's these conservative latinx groups that are making me squeamish, and they do appear to have broken hard for sanders.

what's perhaps more concerning for sanders is where the rest of the numbers are.

if he's running at 35%, and that's roughly the size of the latino population, and he's at 50% in the latino population, then he's running at roughly 25% in the non-latino population. and, if he's actually running closer to 70% in the latino population, then those numbers come down even further. the persistent concern has been his low ceiling, and dominating latinx groups - who are not a majority, anywhere - isn't going to get him out of that.

as it is, all evidence does suggest that sanders may actually get to 30% this time. is that a strong showing for a frontrunner in february? if it's by dominating a single ethnic group that does not command a majority, anywhere?

i've also seen some further corroborating evidence that buttigieg is indeed rising, and am now willing to firm that up with some confidence.

this is a caucus state, so expect it to be messy. local results could be weird, and minor candidates may get propped up.

but, here's my projection for the state on the first ballot:

sanders will do well in most districts, often getting close to or a little over 30%
buttigieg will be viable in most places, and will cross 20% in strong districts
biden & warren will mostly be unviable, but may get a small number of delegates
klobuchar & steyer will run flat, and below the threshold essentially everywhere

in the end, sanders will get most of the delegates.

we can phrase the question like this, and i think it's what you need to think through before you pick a side on this, and at least be able to articulate a reply to, whatever side that you pick: what is the greater threat to sex workers, predators on the street or the managerial class in a capitalist society?

i would lean towards the latter.

if they are not in fact the same thing.

the smell was so brutal yesterday that it never really cleared out, but it hasn't come back, yet, so i need to measure my response.

alright.

so, i didn't get anything done today. too much sleeping. & distracted by some censorship issues on facebook this afternoon.

i'm going to make some fruit, take a shower and get to it.

...you might get it.

"sex work is work."

"prostitution is a job like any other."

be careful what you wish for.

on the other side, i think i do agree that prostitutes ought to pay payroll and income taxes.

i know you're going to tell me that won't happen.

but, you need to read some marxist economic history. that's what always happens - that's capitalism. it's not preventable.

what's inevitably going to happen is that the capitalist managers in that escort agency are going to siphon out all of the profit, and the girls are going to get a check for their labour.

minimum wage here is currently $14/hr. canadian.

sex work is kind of the perfect example of what i'm talking about when i point to the ubiquity of neo-liberalism in the younger generation.

they call themselves socialists, and think this is a left-wing prerogative, but they all sound like milton friedman on this topic, and don't realize it.

the marketization of everything is the neo-liberal project! it's not some socialist fantasy.

socialists would broadly argue that prostitution is a measure of oppression and would cease to exist in a truly socialist society. i'm basically in agreement, i'd just adjust the argument to make space for the primacy of agency in the matter, even if i can't grasp it, or think it's irrational.

well, i guess the feds get the chance to get this right. let's hope they don't screw it up like....they've screwed everything else up.

i think that what everybody wants is for these women to have real agency, the ability to make real choices and the ability to be safe from harm. where the debate comes up is what that actually means, and i'm, personally, exceedingly skeptical that opening this up to the free market is going to do anything but turn people into sex slaves. i have absolutely no faith in the market to protect people's rights at all.

so, this kind of escort agency is actually exactly the kind of thing i'd worry about, as they would no doubt reduce their workers to salaried employees with poor benefits, if they could. that is a model that should be rejected. they need to find ways to avoid being reduced to wage slaves, which i fear is the inevitable result of a corporatization of the industry.

the other thing i'd point out is that if the supply of sex workers increases faster than the demand for sex work, that will lead to decreases in prices, which is supposed to be the draw to the thing. so, if you're on the side of a sex workers union, you'd think the focus would be on restricting supply.

like any other job, you want to put the power in the hands of the workers.

but, given the economic status quo, i worry that these workers are in for a terrible surprise.

there it is, though. here's your chance...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/ontario-court-judge-rules-parts-of-canada-s-prostitution-laws-are-unconstitutional-1.5471207

it's about managing perceptions and making the government look like it had no other choice.

they know that the things they're offering are insufficient, or even just sneaky ways to advance the project. that's the lie, here - the idea that they're acting in good faith. they aren't.

i don't know how much longer this will continue on for. it will depend on when the government thinks it's convinced it's own voters that they've done everything they can.

what is a real solution here?

it has to go through a treaty process in the region. without a treaty, we don't have a clear understanding of the proper jurisdiction, and the role of the courts will remain unclear.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-incident-response-group-friday-1.5471095

so, excluding the short amount of time in between, that was more or less 15 more hours of heavy, can't-move kind of sleep.

it's enough to make me think about starting up a cocaine addiction.

or starting smoking cigarettes again.

i was initially hoping to do some testing, to see if i could narrow the issue down to some other thing. so, i've got this machine down to the minimum i can get it to - wired usb keyboard & mouse and one stick of ram and that's it. no battery, even.

but, the fact that i just connected to microsoft's servers on a computer with no working and connected network card is making me realize the pointlessness of this, if i didn't already know it.

i've convinced myself the drive is fine. there was an off chance there was an issue with ram or a short in the board. but, this backdoor is more consistent with all of the evidence...

i don't know what they want or why they're doing this but this machine has no long term future. sadly. 

i've said over and over again that i don't actually care if the cia hacks my machine, because i don't break any laws, anyways. it's not that i like that argument - obviously, i'd rather they didn't - so much as i'm cognizant of what the internet is and how it works and the reality you are signing yourself up for when you use it.

this has been run by the military from the start...the first person that showed me the internet was my retired step-grandfather, who worked as a signals interpreter in alert. and, he died skeptical that the internet would ever be used by civilians; he didn't think the military would really open it up. lol.

what was pissing me off was that the surveillance software was slowing the computer down. 

if you could write better software for older machines, i wouldn't care. but, when you take surveillance software that is designed for modern machines and install it on a 15 year old laptop, it makes the computer unusable.

and, i'm not buying a new computer so that the cia can spy on me more effectively.

so, on some level, i don't even fucking care, so long as it doesn't interfere with my work. but, once you hold that mirror up, it's also unsettling - it's one thing to say you don't care, and another to realize you really can't turn it off.

i may end up moving back to the pc relatively fast, but i need to do some things online with this image, and i don't want to connect to the internet from the pc, ever.

but, maybe if i write it out on my screen i'll believe it: there's a hidden wireless card in my computer that is connected to a surveillance network on the backend, and is not otherwise displayed by the operating system.

i promise you they didn't get a warrant, either.

if i go in there and just rip the wire out, i could short the board.

why don't i just do what i want to do to start and see how far i get. i have a lot of things to do before i even get to the point of opening up the master document.

the machine shows no network device. at all.

and, yet, i am connected to some kind of remote access wireless network that i can only detect indirectly. like, i know the connection is there. but, i appear to be completely blocked, somehow, from figuring out what it is.

obviously , i don't like this, and i don't like the idea of using this computer under this scenario. but what do i do, then?

am i suggesting that some kind of law enforcement came into my house and spliced a wireless chip into my laptop's system board in order to prevent me from uninstalling their surveillance software, because they insist on spying on me while i'm writing liner notes for 20 year old records?

i can only react to what i see in front of me, as baffling as it might be.

they really seem to think i'm some kind of russian spy. the fucking idiots...

i got the laptop back up, without the wireless keyboard, and two bizarre things showed up immediately:

1) there was a remote access server driver that i'd never seen before.

2) i was again able to activate windows, in a machine that does not have a network card and now has no known bluetooth device.

i need to be clear.

i have removed the wireless card from this device, and have dismantled the bluetooth keyboard. the rj-45 is not plugged in. and, yet, i can still activate windows.

i could not activate the same image from the pc.

so, it's increasingly becoming clear that there's a very serious backdoor hardwired into the board, and that there might not be anything i can do about it besides throw the computer away. taking a look at the wireless compartment, it almost looks like they spliced something.

the level of effort put into this is just baffling. i'm just an artist. for fuck's sakes.

i don't know what to do next. if i start working on this machine, are they going to reboot it on me?

what does marijuana do to jessica?

marijuana makes jessica extremely tired, lethargic, unmotivated and sort of depressed. however, it can make her more talkative in public, as well. that's why jessica only really likes to smoke marijuana at bars, and explicitly seeks to avoid it at home, by herself. 

jessica has never smoked marijuana habitually and never will.

jessica prefers drugs that make her more alert, focused and upbeat - like caffeine or nicotine, although she quit smoking, as a habit, many years ago.

so, i was going to get started a little after 23:00, when the overwhelming stench of marijuana from upstairs started pouring in from what i think was the porch, and i had to stop, make some coffee and take a very long shower. and, it was so bad that i think it knocked me out. i slept for a little bit, regardless...

somebody seemed to come in midway through the night and shut it down. and, i wanted to wait until after 4:30 to post.

that smelled like a group of people smoking, which is something that i'm not going to be able to tolerate if it happens on any sort of regular basis. i've been crystal clear: i don't care what you do to your body, but i expect to have total dominion over mine. if people want to smoke out in the forest, or at the bar, where it doesn't bother anybody, then i have no argument against it - in fact, i'll do it myself from time to time. but, on the issue of cleaning smoke out of residential areas, i align strictly with the rights of non-smokers to fresh air and a healthy, smoke-free environment over the so-called "rights of smokers". and, i insist i'm the one taking a libertarian position on this, as the right to fresh air is a real thing that is enshrined in all kinds of human rights literature. there is no such thing as the right to smoke anything, and there is nothing libertarian about smoking a foot from somebody's window, and pissing them off - that is randian, it's selfish, it's nihilistic, but it's not libertarian or socialist or anarchistic.

the way we deal with issues like this is that we (1) write city bylaws and enforce fines on people that break them and (2) allow for civil litigation, so that people that are harmed by the behaviour of others can be compensated properly for it.

we don't say "mah property, fuck you.". that's barbaric, really.

so, the idea of somebody smoking outside my window on a regular basis is a non-starter. i signed a non-smoking lease, here. i will film them smoking on their own porch, take the video to court, and sue them for thousands of dollars over it - and insist i'm in the right to do it, because it's my rights to fresh air that are what is substantive and must be enforced above all others, here.

i don't want to move, but i can't handle that.

after taking a nap, i was able to get the local parts of inri023 finished up and decided against building seeds for the other files, because i know i'm just going to redo it all, anyways. there are ten releases dated to january, 2014, two of them "lps", so i will have a fair amount of work to do when that comes up.

but, that means i'm now jumping directly to building the master document for january.

...if i can stay awake. fuck.

like, i just passed out in public from a marijuana attack, which i haven't fully recovered from. it's clearly having a horrific effect on me. what the fuck are they doing?

my understanding of the russian mentality is that what the russians would want from america is a partner - somebody that sees them as an equal, and is willing to focus mostly on diplomacy.

trump would have been preferable to clinton, certainly. but, clinton would have been particularly bad, perhaps worse than bush, from a global security perspective. she was a legit war monger.

but, that was a rare reversal. in the modern era, the candidates mostly likely to see the russians as equals exist on the democratic side. currently, i would have to expect that the russians would consider bernie sanders their best option - and not because he's a socialist, but because he's most interested in human rights.

the american narrative, across the spectrum, is essentially utterly ridiculous and pretty much complete nonsense to the core. you should know better than to take memos from the nsa at face value.

so, do i think the russians are trying to interfere in the primary on behalf of trump?

that is preposterously laughable, and you're frankly a complete moron if you believe it.