dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja: 08/03/20

Monday, August 3, 2020

see, this is what happens when a communist experiment needs to rely on the imperialist hegemon for protection.

at least their autonomous self-discipline should make them good slaves as oil exporters in the petro-empire. and, i'm sure there will be some oil produced for local use....for a few months.

i'm sorry that i'm just not naive; it's not that i didn't want to believe in the possibility of an autonomous socialist kurdish state, it's just that it doesn't make sense at such a subregional level, and the ramifications of cooperation with the americans were simply impossible to evade. when you accept help from america, you become it's client.

is this legal? no. but, the united states seems to have carved an enclave out of the country by sheer force, and it's probably not wise to try to dislodge them. assad may have won the war, but he seems to have lost the northeast, perhaps for good.

all of this is better than open warfare, and it does remain true that building strong interconnected economic foundations remains the key to building peace in the region (which is what america has constantly tried to prevent, until recently).

as i'm a climate activist, i don't assign the middle east the same tactical value as other regions in the world. the united states is even producing it's own oil, right now. it doesn't seem worth it. so, my prime concern is the conflict halting (so long as the crazies are suppressed), and really my biggest opposition to the outcome is the exact commodity being traded. leave the oil in the ground....

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/03/delta-crescent-energy-syrian-oil-391033

see, i can go along with this to push for smaller class sizes, anyways. that's some good kleinist thinking.

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2020/08/03/thousands-sign-petition-asking-ontario-to-reduce-class-sizes-for-elementary-school-students-this-fall.html

these are very low numbers for toronto, which makes it incredibly vulnerable moving forward, if subsequent studies back up the findings.

do the numbers make sense?

well, these are about the same numbers as presented by bc, and we know that the outbreak in vancouver was much milder than in toronto. if about the same percentage of people were infected in toronto as in vancouver, why was the death count so much higher in toronto? the population size doesn't account for it.

so, not really; given the number of deaths that are publicly acknowledged, and the fact that it is publicly acknowledged that many deaths are uncounted, one would expect a much higher rate in toronto than vancouver.

so, are there potential biases around the sample? well, they made some attempt to randomize it; i'd rather wait to see what further studies say than aimlessly nitpick.

so, i'll acknowledge the study, but i'm a little skeptical about it, it just seems a little too low.

https://www.publichealthontario.ca/-/media/documents/ncov/epi/2020/07/covid-19-epi-seroprevalence-in-ontario.pdf?la=en

with that, i have now finished updating the things i needed to update for the already published sections of the blog.

i am going to run through a similar analysis of the things already posted to 2014, but it will be a much faster process. as mentioned previously, the primary motion should be a slimming of the politics blog to include less frivolous posts.

the january music journal package at bandcamp has been updated by updating the files for the deathtokoalas blog. the purpose of this update is solely to ensure that a level of consistency around certain types of posts is maintained throughout the blog.

as these updates are minor and to the deathtokoalas blog only, it will not be documented in the notes.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/01-2014-music-journal

the deathtokoalas blog was edited to remove a news link, add a pynchon quote, add a courtney love article and also to add five cover art posts in order to ensure consistency of type across the blog:

january

19) pynchon quote
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014/01/its.html

20) courtney love essay
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014/01/classic-essay.html

21) pop music cover art
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/01/pop-music-tribute-to-dioxide-cover-art.html

22) curious george suite cover art
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/01/blog-post_9.html

23) ignorance is bliss cover art
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/01/ignorance-is-bliss-cover-art.html

24) deny everything cover art
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/01/deny-everything-cover-art.html

25) acidosis cover art
https://musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2014/01/acidosis-cover-art.html

~~29) delete this:~~
~~https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-world-has-changed-very-little-in.html~~

this file was also updated at the smashwords site:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1026660

got the files.

finally.

so, here comes a bunch of update posts.

they're talking about moving troops from germany to poland, in the long run, making it more of a shift of troops towards the russian border.

they won't like that, you know. there were verbal agreements made....

https://www.c-span.org/video/?474327-1/defense-secretary-esper-announces-11900-troops-withdraw-germany#