see, this is a good example of the stupid side of donald trump's foreign policy.

trump's argument for pulling troops out of germany goes something like this: because germany engages in commerce with russia, it is unfair for it to ask the united states to protect it from russian aggression. i guess that the conclusion is that if they are going to engage in commerce with russia then they should face the consequences of russian tactics.

it's trumpian in that it's a threat, an intimidation tactic. the goal is probably not to remove troops from germany, but to bully the germans into buying fracked natural gas from the united states. so, it's a bluff, and we'll see if it actually happens.

but, it still demonstrates a fundamentally untactical way to view the world that has the potential for strongly self-defeating outcomes.

years ago, the united states saw germany as a tactical subject-ally, both in the sense of it's utility as a manufacturing center and in the sense of it being a buffer state to the access of western technology; that is, it was necessary to control germany for no other reason than to keep the russians from benefiting so dramatically from the understanding of vastly superior german technology. so, the united states deployed troops in the region to protect something very valuable to it.

while commercial links of the type described by trump did not exist in the cold war, an america of the past may have actually found it convenient that so much of the energy potential of russia's productive capacity was being exported to their competitors, who are our client-state, instead. stalin would have laughed at the idea of exporting gas to western europe - that gas belonged to russia.

so, the germans might have some right to a little self-dignity in the face of trump throwing away as valuable a prize as they, on such flimsy pretexts; the existence of those troops is hardly an act of benevolence, but muscle to protect a valuable asset.

if it weren't a bluff.

https://nypost.com/2020/07/31/president-trump-takes-on-the-permanent-war-lobby-over-germany/

so, they're projecting 230K dead, now.

i'm standing by 350K, minimum.

so, i got the 2013 travel blog to convert, which is just for personal use, but it means i can close that folder and keep trying with the 2014 stuff.

two more files left to convert, and a handful of things left to update.

so, the last update that i posted was for the december music journal. i was then able to get my third trimester files converted, which right now is for personal storage. i had initially converted the full 2013 documents last week, but the chromebook crashed before i could transfer them, and i've been fighting with that now all day.

i managed to get the full 2013 deathtokoalas pdf downloaded early this morning, but i'm still struggling with the travel blog.

it also took me all day to remember the trick to get smashwords to update the pdf file (you have to unclick online version, then reclick it after). this is the only place that the 2013 deathtokoalas compilation is uploaded to, but it is the most appropriate way to present it here.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1026620

this is the errata for this update:

deathtokoalas

september

1) profile picture update:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/09/i-got-little-lazy-or-was-that.html

2) potential cover art:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/09/death-valley-in-bloom-good-potential.html

october

3) kimmel post:
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2013/10/note-that-26-states-so-far-have-opted.html

4) delete this:
https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2013/10/google-account-password-changed.html

5) demo #1 cover art
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/10/blog-post_14.html

6) profile pic:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/10/blog-post.html

november

7) demo #2 cover art
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/11/demo-2-cover-art.html

8) inrisampled cover art:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/11/inrisampled-cover-art.html

9) inriched cover art:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/11/inriched-cover-art.html

10) inrijected cover art:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/11/inrijected-cover-art.html

11) warning cover art:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/11/warning-cover-art.html

december

12) delete this:
https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2013/12/this-is-balanced-and-informative-talk.html

13) weird wave form:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/12/very-fucking-weird-waveform.html

14) inrimixed cover art:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/12/inrimixed-cover-art.html

15) inridiculous cover art:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/12/inridiculous-cover-art.html

16) inricycled a cover art:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/12/inricycled-cover-art.html

17) inricycled b cover art:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/12/inricycled-b-cover-art.html

18) inrimake cover art:
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/12/inrimake-cover-art.html

i've spent a fair amount of time park drinking, and i have a few tips if you're concerned about the cops bugging you.

it's not toronto, but in ottawa there's a large amount of wooded areas near the river that are on what i believe is ncc property that can accommodate a reasonably large group - 30-40 people. a frequent social event that came out of the local occupy encampment was bush fires in a series of clearings off the parkway. just make sure you take your garbage with you.

if larger groups clear out of the public parks proper in favour of more secluded spaces, it could open up more possibilities for smaller groups to enjoy the parks, which is more typical of normal life. while i agree that alcohol bylaws in parks are an infringement of personal liberty, there are a few ways to get around it.

i would suggest, for example, that if you bring alcohol to the park then you do so in unmarked or differently marked (even better.) containers. i tend to carry around a bottle of mountain dew with me, so i always have a flask of convenience. if some cops walk by and you're drinking a bottle of coke, they won't have anything to say to you.

but, i like this kind of thinking, and i'm curious to hear the nature of any official response to it.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/public-drinking-ontario-fines-parks-1.5670177

i'm a little baked; i'm going to re-articulate the kind of main point that i'm trying to get across.

if you elect biden in 2020, he's going to pick a youngish female vp, and the assumption is that she's going to be in power within 2-3 years. so, you're essentially allowing biden to pick the 2024 candidate for you, which turns him into the lamest duck of all time. a biden administration will almost instantly transition to the vp; he'll have six months to take a few trips, and that's it. further, we're going to know who that is fairly soon.

a key question that those on the american left need to ponder is whether it makes more sense to accept the candidate biden is presenting to them, or whether they are better off waiting and trying to pick a new candidate in 2024.

you should expect almost nothing from biden's presidency itself, at all.

a biden win may just end up blunting any momentum brewing up, as people take on a false sense of victory, and misplace their faith in a conservative administration to make changes it has no intention to make.

a trump win could accelerate that momentum, and lead to a more substantive change of power the next time around.

i guess the question is this.

what is more likely, at this point?

will a biden administration pave the way for a new generation of leadership that advances the ideas of the left, or will it impede that progress, requiring the process to essentially restart?

if the latter, are we better off essentially bypassing biden and looking to start fresh in the next cycle?

i remember back in 2016 that there was this argument that you should vote for trump because, in four years, he'll create such a backlash that it'll flush in a left of centre voice, for sure. i think that the face of this argument is probably jimmy dore; it's who i remember hearing it from.

that struck me as wishful thinking. rather, it seemed obvious to me that widespread opposition against trump would lead to a weakening of the centre, and a wholesale shift of the democratic party to the right - which is how we went from carter to clinton to obama, a sequential move towards conservatism, remember. like, that was exactly what we didn't want to do, because it was exactly what got us into this mess. if the intent was to create a revolt within the democratic party, the way to do it would be to let the democratic party rule and run itself into the ground.

at this point, it seems like i was right. joe biden is basically a republican, and the movement in the party over the last four years has been a very hard shift to the right, despite what some delusional media would have you think. now, people are just hoping that a biden win will be helpful for this swath of issues, with all evidence suggesting the exact opposite. along with this has been an influx of wealthier voters into the democratic party that seem interested primarily in identity issues, which is just going to lead them on further in the same direction of neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism.

my primary interest is not in removing donald trump, but in recharting the cultural course in the other direction. so, how does that argument work, now?

well, if what we didn't want was a big-tent, right-of-centre democrat than we got exactly what we dreaded. so, does the argument work better now? is it better to vote for trump in hopes that four more years will lead to some substantive upheaval?

i don't know yet - we need some more data about where the democrats are going with this. if biden picks susan rice and broadcasts that he's going to bring back the neo-cons and pick up where obama left off, it could very well be that this argument from jimmy dore makes more sense now than it did then - despite the reality that i'm sure he's distanced himself from it, and is all about stopping trump now (ironically). certainly, the left has a worse choice now than it did four years ago. if he picks somebody more left-wing, it makes the choice a bit more blurry.

so, what might happen if trump wins?

well, the unrest we've been seeing around race issues, while not revolutionary in scope at the moment, could become revolutionary if it refocuses away from race and puts a greater focus on organizing around class. when will the society break under climate change? how bad is the virus going to get, and might it provide for the possibility of more radical change in four years, when the ongoing demographic changes are that much more accelerated?

if we pick biden, it could slow that revolt down by 8-12 years if it just puts in place another conservative government that people need to reject all over again. if we pick trump, now, at this juncture in time, it could pave the way for a much better democratic candidate in 2024.

i'm not going to make a prediction, i don't know. i need to see the vp pick, first. but, the names in contention are all intending to appeal to a conservative black vote, which is charting a path towards competition with the republicans over the south. they always all want the south....

but, that argument would appeal to be more compelling now than it did then. and it's something i'll be thinking about, moving forwards.

so, i've got the following files updated, but i can't get the site to convert them:

- full 2013 travel blog  [personal records]
- january 2014 deathtokoalas  [bandcamp, smashwords]
- full first reconstruction phase deathtokoalas blog [lulu, drive]
- full first reconstruction phase travel blog [lulu, drive, smashwords]

there is no january 2014 travel blog, and i was able to download the 2013 deathtokoalas blog, which is also having trouble converting at the smashwords site.

so, i'm going to stop to eat and hope everything works when i'm done.

it's extra frustrating because i had downloaded a working copy previously but i lost it when the machine crashed.

i've been sitting here for hours trying to get this to work.

as mentioned previously, there are reasons why i want to use the microsoft site to convert and not one of these shady free conversion sites, but if the microsoft site refuses to skip the conversion to docx, i don't have a choice but to resort to the shady sites.

docx is simply not an acceptable file format for me.

so, i guess i'll try again when i get through the next phase, but, for now, i need to move on.

this is such a horrible waste of my time.

upload.

view version history.

fail.

delete.

repeat.

over. and over. for hours. why?

but, on the 35456th try it will work. and all i can do is wait.

:(.

i really wish there was a way to force the microsoft server to read the file properly.

it's just random. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but something seems to flip when it does.

maybe i should make a clear post about where i stand regarding gimbutas, renfrew, cavalli-sforza and the role of religion in science.

colin renfrew is a christian fundamentalist, and i don't think it's a coincidence that his model is essentially a relabeled telling of the biblical narrative regarding the tower of babel. that is a vicious statement to level at somebody that has legitimate academic qualifications, but it would appear to be true nonetheless.

the issue was ultimately to be decided by sforza, who was able to provide an empirical test for which model was more correct, and what he discovered was that the answer to the problem is better resolved via dialectic than via competition.

while renfrew's anatolian model was shown to be inconsistent with the spread of indo-european languages, which was shown to instead conform very closely to gimbutas' kurgan model, his anatolian model was also shown to be a relatively good survey of the existing understanding of the spread of farming from an origin in turkey, which was uncovered rather clearly in the data.

that would mean that renfrew's anatolian hypothesis could be salvaged by attaching it to earlier language groups, which we can currently only find in the substratum but may have been ancestral to poorly understood languages like etruscan, pelasgian, sumerian and elamite. so, instead of renfrew's very late linguistic derivations of every language group, as per the tower of babel, you have instead a model of linguistic diffusion via farming that is strictly local in scope, and now entirely lost.

so, the chronology in the synthesis is that this neolithic expansion would have taken place first, in the years 10000-6000 bce or so and then the kurgan invasion would have come in after that, starting around 4000 bce or so.

the megaliths seem to be strongly correlated with this cultural farming expansion, and central to the existence of these people in rather profound ways.

fwiw, i think it's pretty much settled that homo sapiens probably just outbred neanderthals, and overwhelmed them with sheer numbers. there was substantive neanderthal introgression into the anatomically modern homo sapiens, but in the end they just got back-crossed out.

one would expect that a species like neanderthal, that was adapted to a cold climate with scare resources, would develop lower breeding rates than a species like sapiens, which lived in warm climates and had abundant predators. when the climate warmed up, allowing sapiens to move north, they would have carried those higher fertility rates north, and there you go.

they tell us we have some percentage of neanderthal genes depending on our existing racial genotypes, but it's never really discussed what those genes are. i would expect that we'll eventually learn that the genes we inherited from neanderthals largely have to do with adaptations to colder climates. if true, the introgression no doubt increased the fitness of the donor species.

https://www.washington.edu/news/2003/09/22/bones-from-french-cave-show-neanderthals-cro-magnon-hunted-same-prey/

i'm going to suspend disbelief around the evidence, and wonder if it upholds the idea of neanderthals worshipping bears, in the first place. there's quite a bit of reason to expect early hominids to have had some kind of perceived spiritual relationship with wild bears, whatever one thinks of the arrangement of the bone fragments.

i've previously pointed to lions as the perfect representation of the word monster, but for humans living in more northern climates, the best example of a monster would clearly be a bear. like humans, bears demonstrate a large amount of bipedalism, to the point that they seem vaguely hominid. if i didn't know what a bear was, and i saw it coming at me, i might wonder if it was some kind of zombie apocalypse or something. further, i would imagine that any species of hominid in a bear's range would have experienced a large amount of predation at the hands of those bears until relatively recently, meaning living humans may very well have had memories of having their children or other family members eaten by these monsters that roamed around them.

my understanding is that humans eventually developed some very specific rituals around the killing of bears; there appears to have been a procedure that involved puncturing their lungs with arrows, to make sure they were really dead. this suggests that early hominids may have ultimately seen bears as dangerous competitors for the niche of head omnivore, rather than as superiors. one wonders if any observed ritual behaviour around the bears may have been to disturb their spirits, in an attempt to try to stop them from returning.

https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/the-cult-of-the-cave-bear/