so, it stopped broadcasting yesterday afternoon and started broadcasting again this morning.
the missed posts are as follows:
aug 6, 2020
listen, nobody is saying the kids won't get it. if you send your kids to school, there's a good chance they're going to catch something or other - the cold, the flu, covid-19, whatever.
the point is that, as far as we can tell at this point, it's not going to
affect them very much. so, as long as the kids aren't living with elderly parents...
of course, if you had children very late, or you live in a large extended family that includes old or infirm people, you might want to avoid sending your kids to school. in general, those are scenarios where families have extra responsibility to protect the people around them. in reality, great-grandma probably can't handle the regular old flu very well either, and you really want to keep her away from that, too.
so, yeah, your kids'll get sick. but, so what?
https://globalnews.ca/news/7254294/coronavirus-student-tests-positive-georgia-school/
14:44
post not broadcast:
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2020/08/so-yes-some-fraction-of-percentage-of.html
14:45
so, yes - some fraction of a percentage of kids will die when they open the schools. if ifr for kids specifically is .05% (a high estimate), and 40% of the kids get it, then you should expect that 0.02% of the kids will die. very simple math.
but, that's a not a high number, and only the most ridiculously risk adverse people would see it as a reason to halt.
kids get sick from something they caught at school and die every year. kids are robust, but they're fragile; they die easily.
14:48
as a parent, you will
not be able to tell if your kid has a cold or has covid-19.
in fact, the testing might not be able to determine that with any clarity, either.
and, when your kid does get covid (and they will.) and beats it, you won't know, in the end, if they had it, or if it was just a cold.
14:58
post not broadcast:
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2020/08/as-parent-you-will-not-able-to-tel-if.html
15:00
they shut the broadcast down again...
see, i really don't understand what they're doing. they allow it, then stop it, then allow certain posts, etc. so, allow me to explain this yet again.
the only reason i have the broadcast set up at all is to archive the posts.
as it is not working, i have been archiving the posts using other means. but, ideally, i would like a copy of every post i make to this space to appear in my email, so i can eventually reconstruct it in a linear ordering, and reproduce it as a readable document.
i have no direct audience. there are two addresses that this broadcasts to - deathtokoalas and the koalacentralcommand. in both cases, it's simply intended to be back up. that's all.
so, the only audience that the pigs are stopping from getting these posts is, in fact, myself. there are no further recipients, afaik.
further, afaik, the posts are freely available at the actual blog, which is what i actually care about.
i guess i'm kind of struggling to articulate myself using concepts that i don't really understand well. i was very late to get on to social media, i never really liked it very much and i was very quick to get off. i do
not interpret this space as "social media", and in fact have moved here explicitly so that i'm
not interacting with a concept that i don't have a lot of interest in. i got on social media late, but i got on the internet early, so i still interpret the internet from the eyes of a 90s kid; i like simple web pages, i don't own a touch screen and i still use a mouse and keyboard. so, i'm getting the impression that i probably wouldn't even properly understand any of the accusations directed at me.
i
do want people to subscribe to the feed, and get updates in their email. but, i
don't want to interact with this space, or any other space that i create in, with any of the framework of "social media content". i don't see this as a "blogspot account", i see it as a personal website. and, i don't want you to log into a feed and interact with me in that way; i want you to come to the website and browse it.
so, i
think they're approaching this with an intent to reduce potential virality of these posts, but in doing so they're trying to shut down an internet 1.0 site using internet 2.0 tactics. and, i'm just left confused.
i'm just trying to archive my posts, guys, and all you're
really doing is just being pointlessly annoying.
15:13
but, what have i learned in sum?
1) they tend not to broadcast posts that include links, with the exceptions of links to this site and links to my commercial sites (sometimes). as they don't appear to discriminate about the kind of link to a broad degree, i'm suspecting that there is probably a filter somewhere along the way. but, this filter appears to be being monitored by a live thug/pig.
2) when i try to get around this by posting a "post not broadcast" post (which does broadcast, and thereby broadcasts the link to the post with the link that wouldn't broadcast, effectively bypassing the censors), they will shut down broadcasting altogether within a few hours. so, they don't like that.
but, they're not communicating with me. i've tried opening this channel, which is clearly being read by the people that are trying to censor the broadcasts (which are only going to me, afaik), and i've received nothing at all but enigmatic behaviour that i'm left to try to interpret.
one of the principles i use in engaging with the thugs/pigs is to try to be as transparent as possible. i'm more law-abiding than most; since they legalized pot, they're going to have to bring me in on j-walking to get me. really. there's nothing to get me on, and they've tried, clearly. so, i'm all about being as honest as i can, to eliminate any ambiguities.
the most dangerous armed people in any society are always the pigs in it. i am fully cognizant of that, and want to ensure that these dangerous thugs in our midst are not confused about my nature or intentions. this is consistent with my views as a free speech activist - the best way to get your head around something is via open discourse. so, by taking this approach, i can be confident that if i'm ever found dead via suspicious suicide, or if the cops ever brazenly just shoot up my front door, that they are not acting proportionally. this is in contrast to an approach that involves hiding information from the cops, which has the potential to lead to miscommunication.
it would be useful if that communication was two-way.
at the end of the day, it is likely that i will choose to disagree with any decisions made by censors and seek to find ways to evade them; it is not very likely that i will just abide by the rules. but, it would be useful to know what these people are trying to prevent, at the least. i may project otherwise, but i'm
not an oracle. i need data to process before i can react, and in the absence of it, i can only make guesses.
so, that's what i know.
but, i don't fully understand what's happening.
15:48
so, i went looking for an official ifr for kids, and it seems to be a standard practice right now to refer to the ifr for not just kids but "young adults" in general as "close to zero". here is one example:
The estimated IFR is close to zero for children and younger adults but rises exponentially with age, reaching about 0.3 percent for ages 50-59, 1.3 percent for ages 60-69, 4.6 percent for ages 70-79, and 25 percent for ages 80 and above.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160895v2
that appears to be about as close as i'm going to get, right now.
so, 0.05% is probably a high estimate. but, when you start pushing the ifr much lower than that, you're just competing with error for results - it's effectively 0%, statistically.
no, that doesn't mean that the odd kid won't die; so long as the ifr is non-zero, which it clearly is, at least
one kid
will die. and, i'm sure the cameras will be on it like vultures on a carcass.
but, it's a number, and you need to plug in numbers if you want answers.
16:08
i mean, we could plug in an epsilon, right?
but, people are going to look at you funny when they tell them that epsilon percent of the population under 40 are really just the walking dead, right now.
16:13
mathematicians don't tend to have a lot of respect for epsilons. they are the weakest members of the real field - discarded as irrelevant, and often even multiplied or even squared and set as equal. a million epsilons is no more a threat than merely one. but, they're tenacious things, too - like the virus itself, always there.
cantor was a lunatic, but at least his ideas hinted at a new mathematics. we don't have the language to properly articulate it, and the mathematics is even in it's infancy, but we realize now that when we say there's an infinite number of numbers to count to and an infinite number of points on a real line that these are two different orders of infinity. we're not really there with infinitessimals, yet; we just produce epsilons and throw them away at will.
to you, an epsilon may be a person, and that's fine.
but, i can't and won't think like that. epsilons are to be thrown away and discarded.
16:19
"We have to behave with other people as we would want them to behave with us"
well, i don't agree with this idea, in principle. rather, i think we need to treat people in a way that is reflective of the way they've already treated us - we should not be naive, and allow people to take advantage us, in the hopes that they may change. they probably won't.
a statement like that coming from somebody that's supposed to be a socialist is actually rather disconcerting; it's an almost literal statement of the hard-right "golden rule", as pushed by backwards idiot christians.
that said, i would want those bar staff to accommodate my request for a larger seating area. by not treating me how i want to be treated, the bar owners are opening themselves up to reciprocal behaviour. it would follow that if the bar owners want to be treated with more respect, then they should treat their customers with more respect and cater to their requests to put the tables together.
if i was in that situation, i would not blame the staff, though. the staff are just doing their job. rather, i would bring the manager over and yell at
them, as it's
their behaviour that is not reflecting how i'd like to be treated.
in all likelihood though, given the circumstances, i would probably choose to avoid conflict.
here's what you do if bar owners want to get pushy and enforce bullshit laws on you.
1) ask for the manager.
2) calmly and tersely explain that you are taking your business elsewhere for the precise reason that they are enforcing the rules. that way, they know the reason for their loss of revenue; they understand
why they're losing business.
3) write an informative review on the company's website that this establishment is enforcing questionably valid rules and if you don't like that to go elsewhere.
4) find somewhere that is more reasonable.
5) tell your friends about the more reasonable spot.
yelling at staff, who are underpaid and overworked, doesn't help.
go after the bar owners, and go after them where it hurts.
https://vancouverisland.ctvnews.ca/b-c-premier-calls-restaurant-patrons-idiots-for-abusing-staff-over-covid-19-health-orders-1.5053892
18:08
stated differently: if you're going to treat adults like children, you shouldn't be surprised when they act like it.
18:14
decolonization means dechristianization.
it's not just about saying "they were wrong about heliocentrism and evolution and homosexuality and ..., but they had a sound moral system, and are fixing the problems".
no...
decolonization is dechristianization means overthrowing the entire order, and reversing the system at it's most critical points.
it's not
just about leaving the theology behind, or filling in gaps. it has to be a total revolution in thought, to a more enlightened way of seeing reality, as driven by data and evidence.
18:23
the golden rule is garbage.
throw it away.
it's trash.
18:24
for me, as a self-identified european pagan, dechristianization means going back to the old ways, before christianity existed - which was the literal project of the renaissance, and it's flowering in the enlightenment.
for you, it might mean chanting at rocks or something.
but, the point is to throw christianity away, part and parcel, not to try to adjust it to fit modernity.
we don't put combustion engines on horses, and we shouldn't try to put science on religion.
18:28
i mean, you realize that, don't you?
that's how they
really get you - that's how they
colonize you: they send you to church. it's what colonization
is.
and, if colonization is essentially the same thing as christianization (or islamification, in some areas, like the middle east), then decolonization is the same thing as dechristianization (or deislamification).
and, i will assert that you will never truly undo the colonization if you don't address the centrality of religion in the process.
18:36
if you're serious about decolonization, attacking organized religion should really be at the top of your agenda.
18:39
the hebrew nation has produced some great minds. don't get me wrong. some of our most important advances....
but, their religion is quite simply an abomination, and it's offshoots have been, without question, the single greatest retarding force in history.
19:41
we need to get past this.
it will ruin us, if we don't.
the biggest threat to individual liberty has, throughout history, always been religion. that's just going to get worst, until it's finally defeated.
and, in the end, we can place our martyrs in the shrine where they belong, to remind us of our victory over this great threat to our freedom.
19:43
"she sounds like...."
i sound like a socialist.
and, i'd be happy to party like it's paris, 1793.
19:46
ahahahahahahahahaha.
hope it gets him.
https://torontosun.com/news/world/former-u-of-t-prof-jordan-peterson-contracts-coronavirus
22:30
at this point, we should actually be escalating.
if trump wants to pick a stupid fight with canada before the election, make it backfire. make it hurt.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/trump-aluminum-tariff-1.5677036
22:35
i mean, there's a pattern here.
you wanna go, donny? come at me. let's go.
22:37
there's a point where we have the right to get fed up and just bludgeon them.
22:37
how about a major tariff on softwood lumber?
22:38
you have to stand up to a bully, and this bully is currently at half strength - meaning it's a good time to pounce.
so, with the border closed and commerce down anyways, this is the time to hit them as hard as we can, in the hopes that it slaps some sense into them.
22:44
if you don't fight back, if you treat people how they want to be treated rather than how they deserve to be treated, they will just continue to push you around...
22:46
if we're going to make a statement, if we're going to push back, this is the time to do it, now.
22:47
this despotic moron really needs a date at the hague sooner than later.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/saudi-hit-squad-aljabri-1.5676650
22:50
we haven't seen this level of despotism much of anywhere in really centuries.
it's truly alarming...and he's clearly going to cause massive amounts of problems if he's not removed sooner than later.
22:52
a nice precision strike would do the job...
22:54
i mean.
what if they had offed saddam in the 80s?
it would have prevented a lot of problems.
mbs doesn't strike me as having half the brain power as saddam, but he seems to be every bit as horrible. and, when you put together stupidity, power and wealth you get nightmares in the end.
if we can get rid of him now, it's probably a good idea.
22:59
the flip side, i guess, is that if he goes full retard (and he seems to be consistently on the brink), it could put enough strain on this old anglo-saudi alliance of convenience to help break the bond in half. in the end, if what you want is to see the saudi state dismantled like iraq was (and are we not funding them for the same reasons we funded iraq?), letting it play out may be a better course of action than taking him out before it happens.
but, you'd probably save a lot of lives in the long run if you just got it over with and got rid of him now.
23:03
as it is, it's hard to see how he avoids an eventual american bombing campaign unless he magically grows a brain, very fast.
he's a disaster waiting to happen.
23:05
well, actually, i guess he's a disaster unfolding in slow motion....
23:06
isn't it illegal to bomb a head of state?
i'd look the other way, just this time. call it an exception.
but, what legitimate grounds does the saudi monarchy have to call themselves heads of state? there's no election, no constitution - not even a pretense of democracy. the closest thing they have is a kind of "right of kings" type argument, which has been debunked as nonsense since the end of the dark ages.
so, i'd have a hard time calling mbs a "legitimate head of state"; he just
isn't. he's an aristocrat that assumed power, and there's no legitimacy in that.
that's putting aside the fact, of course, that he's only an acting head of state just right now.
23:30
he's really more like a mob boss than a head of state...
23:31
i mean, what
is legitimacy?
it's rooted in the ability to demonstrate the public will; that's legitimacy, that's what it means. this guy is just about the literal opposite of that.
and, if he has no legitimacy as a head of state, then removing him from power is to be seen as a part of a legitimate revolutionary process, and not an illegal assassination of a legitimate ruler.
23:34
here's the good stuff, here:
The Enlightenment-era British social philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) said that political legitimacy derives from popular explicit and implicit consent of the governed: "The argument of the [Second] Treatise is that the government is not legitimate unless it is carried on with the consent of the governed."
23:47
Article 21 of the United Nations' 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government".
well?
how do you give the house of saud crime family legitimacy as heads of state, in context?
you can't.
they aren't.
23:50
aug 7
just look at the name of the country:
saudi arabia.
saudi is not a geographic region, it's the name of the ruling family. and, arabia is a peninsula, not a country. the saudi family controls a considerable portion of that peninsula, but not all of it.
so, the actual name of the country literally translates as "the part of arabia under the control of the saud family". it's not south arabia, or central arabia, or the monarchy of arabia or anything. it's an area of land that is owned by the family, who named the fake country after it.
so, that's not a country, that's just a powerful family that owns land - and these people aren't heads of a state, they're mob bosses.
00:00
remember.
00:28
k is a really shit drug, and it's hard to stand up for people selling it. what was the other guy selling? was it an opiate? i do support some relaxation of laws around use, but i really don't support relaxing laws around selling dangerous or shitty drugs on the black market; k doesn't kill people directly, it just destroys them as people.
you have to work in china's unique history of westerners bringing drugs into the country into the situation as well.
i've been a little skeptical about the narrative, and it's why i'm not really paying a lot of attention to these arrests. i think that one of them was arrested on a triviality, but two of three arrests are for crimes that....i don't believe in the efficacy of punishment, but i don't have a lot of sympathy for them, and think they really belong in some kind of incarceration and/or treatment program, so long as the charges can actually be demonstrated, which is difficult in the chinese court system. it's so corrupt, that we tend to ignore the possibility of legitimate convictions.
i've been arguing that the huawei case is a legitimate process, and the chinese have no right to get pissed off about it. frankly, i'm not convinced that's not true of the other charges as well, or that the media isn't trying to game this for their own reasons.
sadly, there may also be a component in the canadian upper establishment that actually wants to talk in terms of hostage negotiations, which i find to be revolting on it's face.
so, is it possible that this guy was actually, really selling k in china and got busted? it's entirely plausible, and i'm not going to be the person standing up for him, so long as i suspect that's a likely truth.
if somebody could direct me to evidence suggesting the innocence of any of the three accused, though, that would be useful to me.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/china-sentences-third-canadian-to-death-on-drug-charges-1.5053191
0:55
i'm really ideologically straight-edge, even if i'm not actually in practice.
with the exception of mushrooms, i've actually never done any other illegal drugs. i would probably legit beat the shit out of you if you ever offered me meth or cocaine, and i very well might kill you if you ever tried to get me to do opiates - and then argue self-defence in court. i have no interest in these drugs, no desire to be around people that do them and no patience with people trying to sell it. the day that you offer me drugs of this sort is the day that you're no longer a human being, in my estimation.
i watched an old friend start doing coke in front of me, and i've talked to him maybe twice since. through mutual friends, i later learned he got hooked on it and almost got fired for it. it was just an instant
delete, 'cause i'm not going to be the friend that lets you drag me through that. not for a second. not dealing with that. nope;
bye.
the only exception to the mushrooms/pot/alcohol triad that i'd ever even so much as think about trying is mdma. the reason i've avoided it to this point is that i know that you can't find it; i think the general understanding on the street nowadays is that molly doesn't even mean mdma anymore, it means meth. if you could get me legit, pure mdma, i'd give it a shot. but, i have zero faith in the market to provide it, and i just don't bother with it.
k isn't going to kill you, unless you accidentally fuck up, but it's going to turn you into mush. if you want those kinds of effects, it's far safer to try lsd.
safe drugs: marijuana. actual pure mdma. mushrooms.
iffy drugs: alcohol. lsd.
stupid drugs: k, meth, cocaine, heroin.
1:30
Straight edge (sometimes abbreviated sXe or signified by XXX or X) is a subculture of hardcore punk whose adherents refrain from using alcohol, tobacco and other recreational drugs, in reaction to the excesses of punk subculture mainstream culture, particularly the culture around popular rock music (ed). For some, this extends to refraining from engaging in promiscuous sex, to following a vegetarian or vegan diet, and to not using caffeine or prescription drugs.
- alcohol? i drink when i'm at concerts, partly to help the bars stay open. i have drank socially for short periods in the past, but i haven't, generally. i've consumed no alcohol since march, but it's just because there aren't any shows. i expect normal alcohol consumption to resume when the shows start back up. there's a good chance that i may abstain entirely until then, however long it takes
- tobacco? i am no fan of tobacco, and have been trying to cut it out entirely for years. i have succeeded, with the caveats of various functions around marijuana, which i'm about to flip over. i could be completely tobacco-free, again, within a few weeks.
- marijuana? this year has been weird, but i generally buy once to twice a year and smoke through it in a haze. i will routinely go weeks or months without it, and i insist on it. i'd like to move to edibles, and restrict it to special occasions. i'm going to need to experiment a bit to figure out dosages, but this has mostly been a christmas thing for me for years and it's not likely to change.
- other recreational drugs? i don't touch them, anymore. at all. i'm too old for mushrooms.
- promiscuous sex? ive been straight-up celibate for years.
- vegan/vegetarian? i've been ovo-vegetarian for long periods, but i learned i need to eat a small amount of meat for iron absorption. i didn't evolve myself, it's not my fault. that said, i'm an advocate of replacing livestock production with insect production, or even test-tube meat. i'd rather get my protein from something that doesn't have a brain; i'd jump at the opportunity to switch. as it is, i mostly eat salami, partly because it doesn't seem like actual meat. i
do have a no-raw rule in effect in the house; no uncooked meat is allowed in my living spaces.
- caffeine? lol. i drink a lot of caffeine, and do not want to stop.
- prescription drugs? well, i take hormones, but that's a different kind of thing. it's otherwise very, very hard to get me to take anything a dr prescribes to me. i will rarely even take aspirin, and i get vicious migraines with auras; i will suffer through them, i won't medicate.
so, as you can see, it's an ideological thing....i may not be technically straight-edge, and i wouldn't claim i am, but i am ideologically in agreement with the straight-edge mentality, and i'm about as close to it as you can get, on multiple fronts, without actually being it.
i feel i'm getting more straight-edge as i age, not less.
2:24
does ketamine have therapeutic potential to "cure depression"?
that's hilarious. really.
it seems, somewhat unsurprisingly, that when they give people the drug, they report feeling good for a little while,
but, that those feelings wear off after a bit. that would appear to be because they get
high and then
come down. now, if your definition of a "cure for depression" is getting high to distract you from it, then i guess that fits the definition. frankly, i'm not convinced of the premise that depression is a physical disorder, or at least not up to random experiences that just reduce to reactions to natural variation in hormone levels, and the idea of treating depression with drugs at all strikes me as going about it the entirely wrong way;
sure, you
could just get high, and feel better for a bit, but you're not actually addressing the issues, or dealing with the problems that have led you to the state of depression.
there may be some caveats, for specific people that are specifically missing the ability to generate, regulate or reuptake certain neurochemicals, which would be the result of some kind of genetic error, and, again, probably mostly random and not inherited in construction; in these people, which would be rare in the diagnosed population, the inability to produce a specific hormone would be a function of faulty body chemistry, and the fact that the drugs are doing it for them is overcoming that particular issue. but, then, why not figure out what the actual transmitter is that they can't produce, and just give them that instead? for these cases, careful experimentation with ketamine may help pinpoint the exact faulty neurotransmitter, but the preferred treatment option in the end is going to be to key in on the actual missing chemical, rather than try to reconstruct it with ketamine by brute force. further, if you're going to do these trials, you should probably use something a little less invasive, like mdma. these drugs all operate using roughly the same pathways, even if the somewhat different results of consuming magic mushrooms is actually the result of your body attacking the delivery mechanism (the mushroom) as a pathogen (which is true, look it up).
so, i can accept some experimental use for ketamine in determining the actual problem hormone in cases where a neurotransmitter issue can actually be shown to actually, really exist.
but, is it a cure?
no.
that's absurd.
3:26
also, i just read through that wiki article on straight edge and it's predictably awful. it looks like some green day fan went through and marked it up, or something.
why did punk go straight edge? what was that about?
while the term
straight edge does appear to have been invented by ian mackeye (who also invented emo), and very late (the song was written in 1984, years after the development of an anti-drug mentality in the hardcore scene), it didn't start anything but rather reflected something that already existed. there are earlier examples of jello biafra (
too drunk to fuck, drug me) and roughly contemporary examples of henry rollins (
drinking and driving) that are pushing broadly anti-drug messaging, and i believe that, like most things in the anarcho-punk tradition, the issue ultimately goes back to crass, who were known to reject drug use when performing, at least.
why, though?
these are the lyrics to a dead kennedys song from 1985/86 that gets the point across:
What's ripped us apart even more than drugs
Are the thieves and the goddamn liars
Ripping people off when they share their stuff
When someone falls are there any friends?
Harder-core-than-thou for a year or two
Then it's time to get a real job
Others stay home, it's no fun to go out
When the gigs are wrecked by gangs and thugs
When the thugs form bands, look who gets record deals
From New York metal labels looking to scam
Who sign the most racist, queer-bashing bands they can find
To make a buck revving kids up for war
....
That farty old rock and roll attitude's back
It's competition, man, we wanna break big
Who needs friends when the money's good?
That's right, the '70s are back
Cock-rock metal's like a bad laxative
It just don't move me, you know?
The music so okay when there's more ideas than solos
Do we really need the attitude too?
Shedding thin skin too quickly
As a fan it disappoints me
Same stupid sexist lyrıcs
Or is Satan all you can think of?
....
The more things change, the more they stay the same
We can't grow if we won't criticize ourselves
The '60s weren't all failure, it's the '70s that stunk
As the clock ticks, we dig the same hole
Music scenes ain't real life, they won't get rid of the bomb
Won't eliminate rape or bring down the banks
Any kind of real change takes more time and work
Than changing channels on a TV set
So why are we so eager to please, peer pressure decrees
So eager to please, peer pressure decrees
Make the same old mistakes again and again
Chickenshit conformist like your parents
===
what's the key line there?
Any kind of real change takes more time and work
Than changing channels on a TV set
the reason that punks attempted to clean up the rock scene is that they were social activists. they looked at the promising movements that came out of the 60s and fizzled out in the 70s and concluded that the reason that it all fell apart was the drug use. in order to reclaim rock music as a political vehicle to institute radical left-wing social change, they decided they were going to have to get the drugs down, first.
and, they mostly all knew that the drugs were coming in from the government as a placation tactic. as social activists, they watched the agents come in and drug up their foot soldiers, making them useless in the fight. and, yeah - that pissed them off.
so, what they were trying to do was take these thousands of kids at the rock concerts and turn them into an anarchist revolutionary force, a kind of industrial reserve army composed of lumpenproletariat; they wanted them to stop getting drunk and moshing at shows and go out and burn down a bank, instead. here's another gem from jello:
Punk ain't no religious cult
Punk means thinking for yourself
You ain't hardcore 'cause you spike your hair
When a jock still lives inside your head
Nazi punks
Nazi punks
Nazi punks, fuck off!
Nazi punks
Nazi punks
Nazi punks, fuck off!
If you've come to fight, get outta here
You ain't no better than the bouncers
We ain't trying to be police
When you ape the cops it ain't anarchy
Nazi punks
Nazi punks
Nazi punks, fuck off!
Nazi punks
Nazi punks
Nazi punks, fuck off!
Ten guys jump one, what a man
You fight each other, the police state wins
Stab your backs when you trash our halls
Trash a bank if you've got real balls
You still think swastikas look cool
The real Nazis run your schools
They're coaches, businessmen and cops
In a real fourth Reich you'll be the first to go
Nazi punks
Nazi punks
Nazi punks, fuck off!
Nazi punks
Nazi punks
Nazi punks, fuck off!
You'll be the first to go
You'll be the first to go
You'll be the first to go
Unless you think
==
that's right - trash a bank. but, put the beer down first - you'll do more damage if you're in control of yourself, and understand what you're doing.
that was the point; that was what it was about.
were they right?
well, i think that a lot of these people, who were much younger then than i am now, were maybe looking at the 60s with some flower-covered glasses; the 60s were vicious, people were getting the shit beaten out of them left and right, and nothing much really came out of it, in the end. was it the drugs that ended the movement? i think there's an argument that it got suppressed the old fashioned way. nixon didn't accidentally win, in the end;
nixon won the hippie vote.
there was more than drug use underlying the failure, although i'm sure it didn't really help much.
i think the idea that the 70s were such a period of stagnation and reversion is a better argument, though. disco was notorious for being an escape from reality. in that context, jello and the bunch of them were trying to hold up that mirror, to shock people into seeing that their decadence was leading to things like climate change and an eventual nuclear war. that came out of the situationist movement, and is ultimately a type of agitprop.
when punk went mainstream in the 90s, a lot of this kind of evaporated. you can hear remnants of straight-edge messaging in a number of the popular 90s punk-pop bands (offspring, bad religion, propaghandi, nofx, fugazi, etc), but the truth is that when the money started coming in they almost all fell into it, and we're now a generation removed from any memory of it.
so, what is with the narrative at wikipedia? well, that's the narrative you'll read in the history of music sociology course, that teaches you about the centrality of vivanne westwood to punk culture. in this absolute whitewashing of history, punk was not a social movement trying to rip the system down but just a fashion movement, about jewelry. and, there was a promoter named malcolm mclaren that created some fake bands, too, but it's the
jewelry that's of historical significance.
that is, they're trying to write it out of history - because they realize that, unlike the hippies, the punks were actually a legit threat to the existing order, if they could have ever got the kids to put down the beer and succeeded in organizing them to fight. jewelry, and kids getting fucked up on airplane glue, are far less threatening topics.
even in the sense that that was true, the punk
movement began with crass, and the hardcore scene (as centered mostly in california) was the actual
real punk scene, not what happened in the uk with the sex pistols. it was in california that hardcore punk became what we call punk rock, today. there was always a dramatic disconnect between these punk-as-fashion types and the punk-as-movement types, and it manifested itself in the journalism; the punk-as-fashion types were mostly arts students with money, largely english, wrote most of the articles in the mainstream press and eventually ended up morphing into new wave fans, while the punk-as-movement types were mostly working class and self-taught, centered themselves mostly in america, fought hard to control their own means of production and produced their own writing by self-distributing zines and pamphlets, like early labour activists.
so, this idea that straight-edge culture was some kind of conservative backlash....it sounds like what the cia would tell you before they sell you lsd. and, it's probably close to the actual truth of it.
it was a reaction by labour activists trying to generate an actual movement.
what do i think about this today?
well, i'm not sure there are posts about this
here, but i have mentioned repeatedly that my moderate embrace of decadence is mostly a function of a lack of activity on the ground. yes, i see the race riots; that's not useful to me. the people are useful, but the messaging needs dramatic altering before the movement becomes revolutionary. i need something class based, that's focused on more important concerns, like climate change and ... . if i show up at the anti-nuclear protest, and it's three white guys smoking a joint and listening to marley, i'd might as well hit the show and have a beer, instead - i'm not getting anywhere when there's no interest on the ground.
if i saw a movement develop, i'd be the first to put the beer down and get to work in building it. right now, it's not there. so, what's the point?
i hope that helps a little in understanding what that was about.
here's some tunes:
1979:
1980:
1981:
1984:
1985:
1986:
4:36
and, surely, if straight-edge punk was a conservative reaction to the liberal norm, the reagan republicans and clinton democrats must have loved it, right?
lol.
no. they viciously tried to shut them down; jello ended up in court on an obscenity trial, and the pmrc showed up to try to censor their lyrics and artwork.
5:02
but, i mean, the idea was always there.
here's a contribution from roger waters (a trotskyist. yeah.), who doesn't like drugs, either:
5:19
after the dissolution of the dead kennedys, jello released a series of records as a guest vocalist for prominent underground acts, perhaps most famously in
lard with members of the industrial-punk band
ministry.
this comes from an ep he did with a highly seminal early punk band from vancouver, canada called d.o.a. it provides another example of how the formative punk movement viewed "counter-cultural" drug use.
you
could study this and write a paper on it.
5:55
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_North
6:18
ok, here's some lard.
next time we have sex, just pretend that i'm ed meese!
i've heard roger waters speak of drugs in various terms, but there is actually a broad
theme running through pink floyd, from about 1970-1984, of...in hindsight, it almost seems like the band took 15 years to shake off the trauma of watching their best friend, and somebody who was clearly exceedingly talented, turn into a complete idiot in front of them. and, their reaction to that was actually fairly complex - they tried to honour his legacy (while he was still alive. which must have been very confusing and difficult.), they tried to write songs reflecting on the potential outcomes of heavy drug use and they tried to explore themes that, in hindsight, have been interpreted as being a part of drug culture.
but, i've heard roger ask that his music be separated from drug culture - he's not comfortable with that, clearly. and, that would no doubt have to do with the complexities around what he saw happen in front of him.
i'm not sure how roger would reflect on that now, or if he'd want to. i would press him a little. syd's dead now, and so is the keyboard player (richard wright). gilmour was syd's replacement (ok, not really, but sort of). so, roger's views, as an older person, are really of some historical value. roger was there from the start to the end.
what it seems like is that they took a very long time to process it, and you or i can only really imagine the conflicts of feelings and views that must have occurred over the period.
8:07
somebody else that i've known for years is straight-edge, or almost straight-edge, is michael stipe, the singer of rem.
for years, i assumed that was a part of his ian mackeye fetish. and, that is a known fact: michael stipe was known to be very impressed by minor threat, and the bands that came out of it.
but, i learned fairly recently that it was sort of a similar story. apparently, somebody close to him was involved in a drug related fatality, and he just stopped altogether at that point. again, i don't know how he'd reflect on that now.
but, if you look into it, it always seems to be the people most affected by drugs that are most opposed to them; that is, you generally get these pro-drug arguments from people that have never
actually done drugs, or known anybody affected by them.
it's the people with the most experience that seem to be the most apprehensive.
that observation ought to count for something.
listen: i've said repeatedly that i don't think drug addicts belong in jail, and that i don't even really support the concept of jail. but, i
do support means of intervention to try to get sellers into a different line of work. i'm not naive enough to think i can cut the supply, but i can't in good conscience support removing restrictions to purchase.
whatever the legal regime around the dangerous classes of drugs ends up as, it should be very hard to locate them. harder than now...
8:37
you know, if i thought that was true, i'd be more excited about voting for him.
it's been clear for a long time that trump has very little respect for his audience, which is reasonable - i don't have a lot of respect for his audience, either. but, a side story over the next few months may be how cynical he gets in his contempt.
when biden is a baby-eater, that's when you know trump knows he's in trouble.
i actually would still give trump a lead, based on my analysis of media & polling together, but i'm not going into this in detail, this year.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-says-biden-will-hurt-god-hurt-the-bible-1040799/
10:14
