Saturday, August 1, 2020

there's a different story like this every few years. what it seems like is that the stones have multiple origin points.

these megaliths are all over the place, and one wonders if that is generally true, and maybe provides fresh evidence for the hypothesis that the purpose of the monuments was as a meeting point. if there were multiple origin points, it could be that there were multiple groups involved in making the monuments, and they could recognize a place where related clans came together for celebration or trade, or even be treaty or territorial markers.

let's take a step back.

most people probably don't realize that stonehenge is merely one example of a type of very ancient building structure that seems to have originated with the neolithic revolution and spread with farming from modern turkey across europe. a wide variety of evidence suggests that a caucasian, but not indo-european, people migrated into europe many thousands of years before the kurgan invasion brought the existing languages and r1* genotypes into the region. these people would have held out on britain longer than anywhere else, but the functions of the megaliths they built on the island are foreign in origin and purpose.

if it could be established that the stones came from many places, it could provide for a loose model as to how different communities in this farming culture, which spread over the entire area that caucasians are indigenous to today, carried out certain relations with each other.

https://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/world/2020/07/30/stonehenge-discovery-origins-large-sarsen-stones-finally-traced/5547629002/
i'm going to be getting back to work tonight...it's just a few more things to upload, and then i can get to 2014.
ok.

so, i got most of the cleaning i wanted done and picked up a bit more pot yesterday, to smoke through the rest of the rolling tobacco with. i also picked up some edibles to experiment with - and these are for experimenting, not for storing, so i will consume them relatively soon. the strain i picked up was royal highness by good supply, which is a company that has been selling the cheapest pot in the store for a while now, but always had slightly lower thc numbers; not this time, so i tried it. it's actually a little closer to the kind of buzz i'm used to, which is a bit of a nice surprise. it's good to know that the price tag is really not a market mechanism (and it rarely is, in reality).

the edibles i picked up were a chocolate bar sectioned into 4 pieces, with 2 mg each, and 2 gummies, at 5 mg each. that will allow me to try the 2s a couple of times to get used to it, before deciding if i think the 5s are a good idea or not - and ultimately whether i think looking at 10s is a good idea.

i'm approaching edibles more like i'd approach mushrooms, for now, which means i need to make sure i'm in a comfortable space before i try it. that may be overly cautious (my experience with edibles has been that it has knocked me out, but i don't know what doses i consumed), and i may end up wasting some of the chocolate, but i think it's best to ease my way in.

if this works out, i'll be happy about it; pot has been my last excuse for lingering levels of smoking for years. i've been waiting for a better solution for a long time, now. let's hope it's this easy.
so, that's my new diet, that i'm going to try. officially, this will be my daily intake, but i'm sure i won't be able to actually eat this much.

a) fruit bowl:
- 1 kiwi
- 1 banana
- 10-11 raspberries
- 20-25 blueberries
- 5-6 strawberries
- 1 medium-to-large scoop of cherry ice cream
- 250-350 ml of high-fortification vanilla soy milk

b) omelette:
- 4 eggs, cooked in olive oil margarine
- 50 g of wholesale genoa salami, pre-microwaved in slices and chopped
- 1 medium tomato (smaller than the ones for spaghetti, so that's a cost factor i didn't consider)
- 1/2 a red pepper
- 50 g of full fat marble block cheese
- 2 slices of rye or pumpernickel toast, with olive oil margarine
- 350-450 ml of real, but fortified, apple juice

in practice, i will probably make the omelette 4-5 times a week, and have fruit bowls daily.
if i know i'm only eating every couple of days, it makes the most sense to ensure that i eat the most nutritious meal i can every time, rather than pretend i'm going to eat every day, then work out averages to ensure proper requirements.
you know, i'm just looking at the components of these two meals and wondering why i don't just eat omelettes every day. this is eggs v tomato sandwiches....

bread <-------> bread
margarine <-----> mayo
salami <------>salami
cheese <----->cheese
tomato <------->tomato
red pepper
eggs

all i'm doing is cutting out the eggs & red peppers, which are two of the more nutritious components of the omelette.

i started eating tomato sandwiches in early 2013 because i was getting some truly delicious, firm, bright red greenhouse tomatoes in these plastic containers at the giant tiger on wellington, in ottawa. i just got hooked on them and brought the habit to windsor where the tomatoes are much bigger but a little less tasty. i eventually decided to move to the pasta to boost the calorie count (which didn't work out, and just led to me eating less and screwing up my calculations). so, i decided to go back to the tomato sandwiches, to get back to eating more eggs.

but, why bother?

i have to finish the open package of pasta first, but i think i'm going to omelettes full time.

what's the cost of this meal?

1) bread - $0.50
2) salami - $0.50   [wholesale]
3) cheese - $0.50
4) tomato ~ $0.50
5) 1/2 red pepper ~ $1.00
6) 4 eggs - $1.03
7) margarine - $0.10
========================
$4.13

hrmmn.

& i do recall the price being an issue, now that i think about it. the fried eggs i've been eating would be $1.50 less, which is $2.63

tomato sandwich costs:

1) bread - $0.50
2) mayo - $0.25
3) salami - $0.50
4) cheese - $0.50
5) tomato ~ $0.50
6) hot sauce - $0.25
=================
$2.50

pasta costs:

1) pasta - $0.20
2) red pepper ~ $1.00
3) tomato ~ $0.50
4) salami - $0.50
5) caesar - $1.00
6) cheese - $2.00
7) hot sauce - $0.25
=============
$5.75 ~ 2*2.88

if i had pasta six days of the week and eggs once a week it would be 6*2.88 + 2.63 = $19.91/week.

19.91/4.13 = 4.82.

so, if i were to have eggs five days a week (and just fruit the other two), that's $20.65, not including the cost of fruit. 7*4.13 =$29. while i know i'm not going to actually eat seven days a week for any lengthy period, this applies to the other numbers, as well. so, this would be a 50% increase in the cost of food, for me.

if i alternate every day, i'd have seven of each over a two week period, so 0.5*7*(2.50+4.13) =$23.21/week; (7/2)*(2.5+2.63) = $17.96. the second number is no doubt why i did it. and, if you take the salami out of the sandwich (or alternate between tomato sandwiches and salami melts, as i did initially) that $17.96 will go down even more, too.

i've been thinking about this all day now, and i think it really is a contradiction - there's not really a good way to move to this for nutritional reasons without paying for it. if i want to do this, it's going to cost me a bit; it's the unavoidable trade-off. i'm good at finding sneaky tricks to absolve contradictions via dialectic, but there isn't one this time. good food costs money; that's how it is.

so, i'm going to give moving to a full egg diet a shot and see what the outcome is. for right now, at the height of the summer, i'm only eating anything at all every day or two. and, i'll see how i'm feeling about this in a month or two - if it's working out, if i want to tweak it.
see, i'm pretty soft on crime in general, but when i say i don't believe in punishment, and that incarceration should be a mental health concern, you have to realize this comes with a wholesale discarding of much of the existing legal precedents.

iirc, the literature suggests four valid reasons to incarcerate somebody, but i can only really accept one of them, and that is to protect the safety of the community. yet, in doing so, i take that single reason extremely seriously.

while i understand that the existing precedent suggests that punishment for multiple crimes should not be excessive, if we flip the issue over and look at it from a community safety perspective, multiple crimes of the same sort over a period of time becomes an issue of grave concern. this person does not appear to have made a mistake, but rather repeatedly carried out the same behaviour. that suggests some habituation to it, and the need for exceedingly strong intervention to correct it.

permanent incarceration via locking somebody in a cage is not a particularly good way to correct for behaviour, granted. but, in situations where it is decided that intervention is unlikely to be successful, it becomes necessary to protect the community.

that said, i would envision the prisons of the future to look more like enclosed communities than torture chambers. if we decide that people need to be removed from society to prevent them from harming others, that should not prevent them from being able to exist in some kind of relative comfort.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-reduced-sentence-for-serial-sex-offender-matthew-mcknight-spurs-uproar/
listen, there's no doubt that trump has made some terrible foreign policy decisions as well, but i'd view pulling out of the who as less concerning than redeploying to the middle east; you gotta take a weighted average, here. biden will do some things i'm ok with, but he's also going to do some things that enrage me.

but, what jumped out at me reading the article was to wonder if a biden presidency might actually be best implemented if it reverses the contemporary roles of presidency and vice presidency. that is, maybe biden is better off letting the vp do the speeches and appearances and stuff, while he tends to legislative priorities. maybe the vp with senatorial experience that he really wants is actually himself.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7243577/joe-biden-foreign-policy/
due to how small most of the numbers are on the chart, it would probably be more useful for him to present the data not as probabilities but as upper bounds.

so, if he says the probability is 0.6%, and the margin of error is 6%, then he should present the chart as <6.6%.

but, he might find, then, that essentially all of the entries look the same.
i think if you saw the margins of error here, you'd be a little concerned.

i toyed with doing a little bit of this at the start, but the amount of data available here hasn't really allowed for me to put much confidence in it. we know the numbers we're getting are pretty flawed. that said, it is reasonable to consult a variety of sources when you make a decision - just draw in the error bars, yourself, when you do.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/statistician-worried-back-to-school-plan-risky-1.5671012
with the fat shaming, my main irritant is people that find it very important to try to undo a general media bias against the acceptability of being overweight. this is a movement that seems to have come out of attempts to minimize unrealistic advertising to young girls, which i agree with to a degree, but in this case has been taken too far, and flipped over on it's axis; in a misguided attempt to stop girls from being coerced into being underweight, they've embraced an even more unhealthy lifestyle, and an even more negative message. media messaging should be focused on promoting healthy bmis as normal, and encouraging everybody to remain healthy.

it follows that media biases that demonstrate an aversion to obesity ought to be as welcome as media biases that reject the anorexic images we once saw dominate media, that these things should be seen as equivalently undesirable.

some coercion, here, is to be desired, i think.
i'm also imagining a vigilante mask police that ends up spreading the virus by going around and yelling at people.

sometimes it's best to leave things alone.
see, in principle, the question is if this works or not. it's an informal means of social control, and i'm in principle in favour of that.

perhaps i should clarify some of the remarks i made about fat shaming. i would certainly not recommend randomly attacking fat people walking by on the street for no reason; if my comments were misinterpreted to suggest i am proposing that we all go out and yell "fatass!" at every behemoth that comes across our path, i do apologize, as that was not my intent. rather, i would advocate that fat shaming be done in more intimate settings, by loved ones and health professionals, that have the person's best interests in mind. further, something that utilizes a little bit of wit is probably helpful; you don't want to depress this person too much, as that will just lead to more eating.

i think there's a different psychology to mask wearing, though. it's sort of a reversal of the situation, as it's usually going to be healthy people that don't want to wear the masks, and people more likely to catch it that want to enforce mask wearing. as a non mask-wearer, i can tell you that i'm not particularly concerned about the opinions of people that want me to wear a mask, and i'm just as happy to avoid them; part of the calculus built into my decision to not wear a mask is that i'm reasonably distant from people to begin with, and reality at the moment is that i'm just not walking into many high risk situations.

but, in the hypothetical scenario where i was living with a high risk individual and refused to wear a mask (in fact, if i was living with a high risk individual, i would without question be considerate enough to take all relevant precautions), due to some temporary deficit in thought, i would be likely to respond to an emotional plea that laces into me for putting that person at risk.

as with any means of informal social control, execution and context are key.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/31/bill-gates-suggests-calling-out-non-mask-wearers.html
he has a conflict of interest on this issue and should avoid making policy prescriptions.

i would vote for bill gates, though. this was posted on dec 12, 2016.

---

bill gates v donald trump?

i'm in.

revenge of the nerds.

this would be epic.

"i come forward to represent the interests of rationality and science against the dark forces of magical thinking. i bring forth realism; i champion data. we shall always follow the evidence."

meanwhile, trump gets to play high school bully to his most advanced desires.

"look at him. he's a fucking loser. he's got four-eyes glasses. maybe we could hire him to run our email servers, or something? i hear he's good at that. loser. i bet i know what's microsoft about him."

he would then proceed to place an L over his head, and walk menacingly towards him.

and, you could imagine the speech you'd get from gates.

"i've been called a loser my whole life. and, yet look at what i've accomplished?"

i'm not sure the nerds will win, in the end. but, i'd still like to watch the game.
postnot broadcast:
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2020/08/it-should-be-noted-that-bill-gates-is.html
it should be noted that bill gates is both intellectually and financially invested very heavily in distance learning.

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/bill-gates-explains-how-he-would-fight-coronavirus-if-he-was-president-dont-mislead-people-130857486.html
it's just a reminder that the real mob bosses in new york were always the dutch aristocracy.

those italian immigrants were just street agents.
wait.

so, they're lacing the opiates with an agent that counters the effect of the antidote, now?


so, they're trying to kill you? doesn't sound good for business....well, unless the model is to steal your money quickly, and snuff you out before they get busted.

there's been rumours for as long as opiates have existed that the whole thing is a population control scheme, and the whole crux of the opium wars, as driven by the harriman family, provides the only leaked model for how such a thing may be implemented. i remember my stomach sinking, the first time i read this:

In May 2007, Anthony Harriman, the senior director for Afghanistan at the National Security Council....

so, i've noticed this happen a couple of times, now.

if i logout for a few hours, the posts start broadcasting again for a short period, and then they stop.

are they getting intercepted? is that what's happening?

listen, pigs - i broadcast the posts to myself (that is, email them to myself, from the blogger interface; there's a "send updates" feature at the site) to ensure i have a record of them. if anybody else is receiving the broadcasts, i'm not aware of them. but, this is very useful to me for record-keeping purposes.

i actually don't care if you want to receive updates. it's set up that way - that's the point. subscribe here:
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

or, send me an email address to add to the updates list. it's not necessary to physically intercept the transmission; i'm intending for it to reach an audience.

but, if you must be a spy, realize that you're not only copying the information for your own records, but also preventing me from receiving the email; that is, i'm not getting copies of these updates because whatever you're doing is not letting them through to me.

i would appreciate it if you'd correct your surveillance software, so it's not preventing emails from reaching me.

as an aside, if i was actually some kind of bad person, the fact that you're making it so obvious would not be working out for you - i'd have dropped this line of communication, by now.
let's talk about kids, as one example.

we know that the initial strains of the virus have had very little effect on kids - they're not invincible, but, compared to more lethal threats like the flu, this virus is of least concern. that is, if you have kids, you should be more concerned about them getting the flu than you are about them getting covid-19, so long as your sole concern is the kids.

for now.

now, let's say that a mutation appears that makes the virus more lethal in kids. maybe it's producing virus at a faster rate. maybe it's killing cells at a faster rate. maybe it finds a better way to trick the immune system. the opposite may happen too, but let's suppose the worst case - let's say the next wave starts killing kids at a rate more comparable to the flu, even.

and, let's say your kid gets hit with the second wave, without having defended itself against the first one.

if, at that point, your child had already defended itself against the initial strain of the virus, it would have developed some level of immunity to the new strain; as it is, your child is now being forced to defend itself against a greater threat, without any defenses at all.

now, you can argue that this isn't a fair argument, because we could have stamped the thing out if we had tried better, but the level of naivete underlying that is too great to accept as reasonable error, and we are nonetheless past that point, now. we should all be able to agree, with confidence, that this virus will not be stamped out, now.

as an adult nearing the age of 40, i'm getting to that middle point. i don't have another 40 years to bump into this thing and beat it effortlessly; i have 10-20, depending on my health. give it to me now, please.
in a real sense, what the state is doing here is a kind of helicopter parenting, and the results are going to be more or less the same.

if you oppose helicopter parenting (and you should.), then you should oppose what they're doing for the same reasons.
if it was ebola, or aids-gone-airborne, or some other deadlier thing, i'd have a different story.

but it isn't.

and, you will suffer from your decisions, if you make the wrong choices, in the long run.
so, it's not that i don't think proper mask use is going to work to some minimal effect if all the sufficient clauses are met, although i'll argue they're overrated, and their efficacy is being overstated. it's that i don't want to protect myself from the virus - i want to expose myself, and develop immunity naturally.

and, it's not that i don't think that vaccines will be effective, up to the most recent strain of the virus. it's that i want to beat the virus on my own.
so, the messaging around the situation is finally starting to change to what analytically-minded people realized was obvious from the start. i'm starting to hear more talking heads talk about the permanency of the existence of the virus, and the who is warning to think in terms of decades when planning.

so, we're not going to get rid of this. ever. it's here, forever, and you have to get used to it.

now, i want you to carefully listen to what i'm going to say next because it really is crucial in understanding how this is going to affect your health moving forwards.

this was my argument from the start:

1) you can't wipe out a virus with social distancing or mask use, and it was crazy to ever think you could. no, they have not wiped it out in asia, they've just postponed the inevitable, and now they're stuck - they have no way out of lockdown, and will be in fascism forever. but, they don't have a cultural history of barbarism and anarchy like white people do. they just don't. they really will tolerate all kinds of tyranny that we just won't stand for, here. so, it's not that asia has won the fight against anything, it's that they decided they're happy enough to live in a fascist reality, anyways - they will still be in this lockdown 40 years from now, if they don't find some kind of breaking point. and, new zealand is in the same mess (although australia has now been hit.).

2) because you can't wipe out the virus, you are better getting it when you are young, and perhaps fight off a few mutations of it. that way, it won't kill you 50-60 years from now.

3) i've always supported vaccination for the elderly, but due to how widespread this disease is, the vaccines will have short shelf-lives. maybe it's not exactly seasonal like the flu; maybe it's every 2-3 years. but, if you just to do this via vaccination, you're going to have to get vaccinated over and over and over and....which is going to create a culture of dependency on the vaccine, like exists with the flu. you know those healthy 23 year olds that insist on getting flu vaccines, then die from the common cold at 28? the state got mixed up in it's projection, but it shouldn't be encouraging this kind of thing - it should be sending young people out to get sick.

the logic you need to follow is this:

if you are weak, protect yourself and wait for the vaccine; otherwise, preventing yourself from exposure is just harming yourself in the long run. you will run into this virus eventually, and if you've never seen it before at 75, it will likely kill you. if you've fought off ten different strains by the time you get there, you'll have a far better chance of winning in the long run.

it's a perfect example of the tendency we've developed to coddle, and we don't want to see the ramifications of that play out.

for the zillionth time, protect the weak.

but, otherwise?

you need to think of this more like throwing your kids or yourself in the deep end, and sinking or swimming.

you don't want to deny yourself exposure to this when your immune system can handle it. you want to get this now, not when you're too old to fight it.