temp post:
john kasich is an uncivilized and bigoted right-wing extremist that the democrats should not be reaching out to, as a temporary ally, however temporary. his views on abortion, queer rights, climate change and a zillion other things should be clearly and thoroughly denounced by the party, and the person responsible for giving him a platform should resign.
unfortunately, as they allowed john kasich to speak at their convention, that means that the democrats must be endorsing his policies on abortion, climate change, queer rights, etc. otherwise, they wouldn't have given a platform to his bigotry.
Tuesday, August 18, 2020
temp post:
john kasich is a vicious bigot and a right-wing extremist. i suppose that, as they allowed john kasich to speak at their convention, that means that the democrats must be endorsing his policies on abortion, climate change, queer rights, etc. otherwise, they wouldn't have given a platform to his bigotry.
john kasich is a vicious bigot and a right-wing extremist. i suppose that, as they allowed john kasich to speak at their convention, that means that the democrats must be endorsing his policies on abortion, climate change, queer rights, etc. otherwise, they wouldn't have given a platform to his bigotry.
i'm actually going to hold off on attacking him on this, a little.
his predecessor, stephen harper, was often accused of using this tactic, in ways that were legitimately designed to shut down dissent, and prevent the institution from operating properly. that may be the actual reason that trudeau has avoided proroguing parliament; i believe this is the first time he's done this, since he was elected in 2015. that's actually an unusually sporadic usage of what is a legitimate procedure.
they just changed finance ministers, and that's a perfectly valid reason to prorogue. the guardian, being in the uk, knows that.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/18/justin-trudeau-scandal-prorogue-parliament
his predecessor, stephen harper, was often accused of using this tactic, in ways that were legitimately designed to shut down dissent, and prevent the institution from operating properly. that may be the actual reason that trudeau has avoided proroguing parliament; i believe this is the first time he's done this, since he was elected in 2015. that's actually an unusually sporadic usage of what is a legitimate procedure.
they just changed finance ministers, and that's a perfectly valid reason to prorogue. the guardian, being in the uk, knows that.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/18/justin-trudeau-scandal-prorogue-parliament
the reason that trump won is that republicans rejected the kind of hard, hard right extremism being pushed by overbearing conservatives like john kasich.
this is a really key wedge issue, too. i pushed back against it (clinton is not technically pro-choice, she's pro-doctor), but one of the best reasons people could come up with to vote for clinton was to stop the republicans from stacking the courts with pro-lifers.
if you take that argument away, you really pull the rug out from under the base of the party in large parts of the country.
as it is, how am i supposed to interpret this?
what is the party's stance on abortion?
this is a really key wedge issue, too. i pushed back against it (clinton is not technically pro-choice, she's pro-doctor), but one of the best reasons people could come up with to vote for clinton was to stop the republicans from stacking the courts with pro-lifers.
if you take that argument away, you really pull the rug out from under the base of the party in large parts of the country.
as it is, how am i supposed to interpret this?
what is the party's stance on abortion?
i mean...
we forget things easily, don't we?
we seem to think everybody was trying to stop trump in 2016.
in fact, the data suggests that people got stuck with trump because he was less extreme than the other options: cruz, rubio and kasich. trump, comparably speaking, was the moderate on the ballot.
we weren't even sure that trump was going to oppose abortion rights, at all. and, there's still little data suggesting that he really cares, much.
so, now it's 2020, and the democrats want to bring the right-wing extremists that republicans felt were too conservative, to the point that they settled for fucking trump instead, into their party?
it's remarkably tone-deaf.
we forget things easily, don't we?
we seem to think everybody was trying to stop trump in 2016.
in fact, the data suggests that people got stuck with trump because he was less extreme than the other options: cruz, rubio and kasich. trump, comparably speaking, was the moderate on the ballot.
we weren't even sure that trump was going to oppose abortion rights, at all. and, there's still little data suggesting that he really cares, much.
so, now it's 2020, and the democrats want to bring the right-wing extremists that republicans felt were too conservative, to the point that they settled for fucking trump instead, into their party?
it's remarkably tone-deaf.
i don't want to be on the same side as any of these people, at all. these are a bunch of corporate suits and nazi thugs.
if i walked into a room and john kasich was speaking, i'd get up and walk right the fuck out.
or maybe come with pro-choice signs and slogans to drown him out.
biden may be wise to try to distance himself from these people.
or maybe come with pro-choice signs and slogans to drown him out.
biden may be wise to try to distance himself from these people.
when i saw spiral beach a handful of times in the mid 00s in ottawa - at the now defunct zaphod's, at the bluesfest opening for the white stripes - i interpreted them as a heavily zappa influenced goof-rock band that wasn't taking itself very seriously, but was having a lot of fun. i had no idea that they would become a kind of document 0 for a solid decade of various stuff that would develop out of it.
the core of the band were two brothers, along with a longterm partner of one of them. when the band broke up around 2010, one of the brothers went to montreal (where he became good friends and massively influential on an eventual pop star named grimes) and the other went to toronto with said partner, and then eventually to detroit, where he emerged under the moniker moon king. the bassist ended up in a pop-opera band called austra that released records under a number of monikers, after morphing in a few different directions.
so, while this record is a little bit unknown, it's existence is actually rather historically important as it formed the central focus of the very small canadian independent music scene that survived the 00s and moved into the 10s.
the core of the band were two brothers, along with a longterm partner of one of them. when the band broke up around 2010, one of the brothers went to montreal (where he became good friends and massively influential on an eventual pop star named grimes) and the other went to toronto with said partner, and then eventually to detroit, where he emerged under the moniker moon king. the bassist ended up in a pop-opera band called austra that released records under a number of monikers, after morphing in a few different directions.
so, while this record is a little bit unknown, it's existence is actually rather historically important as it formed the central focus of the very small canadian independent music scene that survived the 00s and moved into the 10s.
here's some kids having fun making a video:
and, here's some live footage, too:
canadian bands that you've never heard of flood?
ok, you talked me into it.
i saw the ssris (who self-identified as massive cardiacs fans) in 2011 in ottawa, at the now defunct zaphod's. unfortunately, they lost their drummer and had to disband, but they had a bright future as a high-end experimental pop band while they existed
they have some earlier material that's also interesting, but here's the finished record:
and, the time they got back together.
ok, you talked me into it.
i saw the ssris (who self-identified as massive cardiacs fans) in 2011 in ottawa, at the now defunct zaphod's. unfortunately, they lost their drummer and had to disband, but they had a bright future as a high-end experimental pop band while they existed
they have some earlier material that's also interesting, but here's the finished record:
and, the time they got back together.
what's next, do you think?
why don't i listen to more canadian music?
well, i do listen to a fair amount of canadian music, but it's fairly underground. my favourite industrial band is skinny puppy (vancouver), and my favourite post-rock act is a silver mt zion (montreal); together, those are perhaps my two biggest single influences. there were also a number of very interesting alternative rock bands from southern ontario in the 90s that i've listened to a whole lot of.
i think that the canadian music scene, like most music scenes, really went to shit in the late 90s, and it never really recovered. and, i am vehemently opposed to much of what gets labeled "canadian music", because it's mostly just puerile bullshit.
but, i'm actually more broadly opposed to the concept of music as a geographic idea. i find it very unappealing to think of a band as "canadian" or "german"; music is universal, and where a musician is from does not and should not matter. nor should people be coerced into participating in the cultural scenes that exist around them, simply because they're there.
so, i'd actually argue that there have been very, very substantive music scenes in this country, in the past. there just aren't any right now, and haven't been any for essentially my entire adult life.
i'd probably move to new york, if i could. that would be the ideal place for me to live, culturally.
well, i do listen to a fair amount of canadian music, but it's fairly underground. my favourite industrial band is skinny puppy (vancouver), and my favourite post-rock act is a silver mt zion (montreal); together, those are perhaps my two biggest single influences. there were also a number of very interesting alternative rock bands from southern ontario in the 90s that i've listened to a whole lot of.
i think that the canadian music scene, like most music scenes, really went to shit in the late 90s, and it never really recovered. and, i am vehemently opposed to much of what gets labeled "canadian music", because it's mostly just puerile bullshit.
but, i'm actually more broadly opposed to the concept of music as a geographic idea. i find it very unappealing to think of a band as "canadian" or "german"; music is universal, and where a musician is from does not and should not matter. nor should people be coerced into participating in the cultural scenes that exist around them, simply because they're there.
so, i'd actually argue that there have been very, very substantive music scenes in this country, in the past. there just aren't any right now, and haven't been any for essentially my entire adult life.
i'd probably move to new york, if i could. that would be the ideal place for me to live, culturally.
we seem to be developing a kind of cultural cop-out in blaming things on hackers, and we should maybe stop to get a handle on it.
don't like the results of the election? it was hackers.
don't like somebody's opinion online? must be a bot.
don't want to take responsibility for something you posted? claim your account was hacked.
and, now, don't want to get busted for stealing cerb money? it wasn't me, your honour, i was hacked!
i've been clear enough that i don't support prosecuting these people.
but, hackers seem to be the answer to everything nowadays, aren't they?
don't like the results of the election? it was hackers.
don't like somebody's opinion online? must be a bot.
don't want to take responsibility for something you posted? claim your account was hacked.
and, now, don't want to get busted for stealing cerb money? it wasn't me, your honour, i was hacked!
i've been clear enough that i don't support prosecuting these people.
but, hackers seem to be the answer to everything nowadays, aren't they?
there really seems to be a lot of people that claim that it was "hackers" that signed up, and not them.
maybe i should have signed up and blamed it on hackers, too.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/victim-of-cra-breach-says-someone-applied-for-cerb-with-her-account-1.5067986
maybe i should have signed up and blamed it on hackers, too.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/victim-of-cra-breach-says-someone-applied-for-cerb-with-her-account-1.5067986
what politicians need to do when they hear things from economists is ask a simple question:
do you have any actual data?
if you're a policy maker at any level, please heed this critique from a self-described failed mathematician: the theory is useless. if it hasn't been proven wrong yet, it's a matter of time.
when they tell you there are trade-offs, correlations or relationships, be skeptical.
ask for and look exclusively at data - when they make claims, tell them you want empirical proof, not a mathematical one.
and, if they get iffy, or tell you they can't do the experiment, take it for what it actually is: a wild, speculative guess.
do you have any actual data?
if you're a policy maker at any level, please heed this critique from a self-described failed mathematician: the theory is useless. if it hasn't been proven wrong yet, it's a matter of time.
when they tell you there are trade-offs, correlations or relationships, be skeptical.
ask for and look exclusively at data - when they make claims, tell them you want empirical proof, not a mathematical one.
and, if they get iffy, or tell you they can't do the experiment, take it for what it actually is: a wild, speculative guess.
economics is at the point of development that physics was at before newton - it's a lot of badly formed ideas, it's full of contradictions, and it doesn't have a rigorous presentation.
we have more data now than we did 200 years ago, so we should be able to look at things more analytically than we could in the past. we need to essentially throw it all in the trash and start all over again, in building a rigourous system based on evidence, rather than an axiomatic system based on opinions.
who knows when that happens, but the result will be unlikely to resemble classical liberal economics very much, when it does.
for now, you need to look at economists as charlatans. they can be very confident, it is true; they don't actually really know what they're talking about, because the science is too undeveloped for them to be able to.
we have more data now than we did 200 years ago, so we should be able to look at things more analytically than we could in the past. we need to essentially throw it all in the trash and start all over again, in building a rigourous system based on evidence, rather than an axiomatic system based on opinions.
who knows when that happens, but the result will be unlikely to resemble classical liberal economics very much, when it does.
for now, you need to look at economists as charlatans. they can be very confident, it is true; they don't actually really know what they're talking about, because the science is too undeveloped for them to be able to.
the philips curve is the classic argument against mainstream economics as a science. it came from the right, but the argument isn't ideological, it's about data v theory.
here's the graph:
if you look at just the little bit of it at the front, it looks like a good correlation. now, eyeing correlations from graphs is always bad, but you can at least see it by looking at it.
what economics does over and over again is cherry pick little pieces of graphs like that, build simple mathematical relationships around them and then project them into the future.
but, as we can see, that didn't work with the philips curve, did it?
what you're seeing here is a specific example that generalizes fairly well. these are the types of errors that economists make over and over again, because they don't use the scientific method.
here's the graph:
if you look at just the little bit of it at the front, it looks like a good correlation. now, eyeing correlations from graphs is always bad, but you can at least see it by looking at it.
what economics does over and over again is cherry pick little pieces of graphs like that, build simple mathematical relationships around them and then project them into the future.
but, as we can see, that didn't work with the philips curve, did it?
what you're seeing here is a specific example that generalizes fairly well. these are the types of errors that economists make over and over again, because they don't use the scientific method.
mainstream economics is based on assuming various correlations and then projecting those correlations into the future. but, that's not how you do science; in science, you have to demonstrate the correlation with empirical evidence, and they just don't do it.
they'll tell you they can't do experiments in economics. fine. but, stop calling it a science, then.
in fact, if you look at actual reality, you'll see that the evidence generally collapses most of the correlations. for example, the idea that corporate tax rates effect employment - they simply don't, that's an assumption that the evidence has debunked over and over and over again.
so, they'll tell you it's "bad economics" to push for higher corporate taxes.
in fact, their economics is bad science - the evidence suggests the opposite of what the theory does.
they'll tell you they can't do experiments in economics. fine. but, stop calling it a science, then.
in fact, if you look at actual reality, you'll see that the evidence generally collapses most of the correlations. for example, the idea that corporate tax rates effect employment - they simply don't, that's an assumption that the evidence has debunked over and over and over again.
so, they'll tell you it's "bad economics" to push for higher corporate taxes.
in fact, their economics is bad science - the evidence suggests the opposite of what the theory does.
here's a question.
is it possible that freeland could go down in history as a bigger loser than kim campbell? and, might the liberals follow the progressives into the dustbin of history? well, let's think this through.
in 1993, you had a progressive/conservative (same thing.) government in place. an extremely unpopular prime minister, who had earlier swept into power on the back of a populist movement, was at this point absolutely decimated in the polls. history argues it's because he shifted the manufacturing tax from a hidden tax (on corporations) to an obvious consumption tax, that is he shifted the tax burden from the corporate sector to private individuals, and he got nailed at the box for it. i'm using the word 'shift' because it mirrors the neo-liberal propaganda pushed by the corporate sector; they modeled it as a shift, but it was in truth a tax increase, because corporations will always seek to maximize accumulation at all costs, and they took it as an excuse to price gauge. so, yes - if you work it out with the models, it's a shift. but, the models do not reflect reality - which is a general problem with economics.
mainstream economics is not a science, it's mostly magical thinking with badly designed graphs. and, you can trust me on this - i'm a mathematician, i actually understand what they're doing, and what they're doing is always flatly wrong. you can throw the lot of it in the trash - which we keep doing when it fails, and then forgetting.
that is the history; we have the memories of goldfish. we trumpet orthodoxy in economics over and over, and watch it fail over and over; then the keynesians and krugmanites and mmt people come in and fix it, and within a few years we're back at orthodoxy, which fails again. we don't learn. homo economicus is a fucking idiot, incapable of any sort of cogent thought. they should rename it to homo retardicus economicus.
but, anyways.
mulroney stepped down in 1992 or 1993 (look it up) and was replaced with kim campbell, who had a few months to try and salvage a bad situation, something she was not intellectually or organizationally capable of. she was an elitist that thought she was really, really smart but just simply wasn't, so she went out and ran off a bunch of demeaning statements and got thoroughly rejected for it.
here's one:
an election is no time for serious issues.
you can see this kind of attitude in freeland, and she's not likely to be able to hold in her misguided contempt for very long.
the liberals won the 1993 election in a landslide, but it's not because there was a shift to the left in the conservative base. rather, what happened is that conservatives utterly rejected kim campbell as an airhead idiot (and, she was an airhead idiot), and moved en masse to the reform party, a new party that developed in the west to the right of the conservatives. and, they never really saw it coming.
you know the line about history repeating; i don't want to repeat myself, yet again.
but, there's a huge opening for either the greens or the ndp to walk into, if she falls flat on her face - which she will.
so, will a chrystia freeland led party manage two seats as the base caves in to the left?
stay tuned.
is it possible that freeland could go down in history as a bigger loser than kim campbell? and, might the liberals follow the progressives into the dustbin of history? well, let's think this through.
in 1993, you had a progressive/conservative (same thing.) government in place. an extremely unpopular prime minister, who had earlier swept into power on the back of a populist movement, was at this point absolutely decimated in the polls. history argues it's because he shifted the manufacturing tax from a hidden tax (on corporations) to an obvious consumption tax, that is he shifted the tax burden from the corporate sector to private individuals, and he got nailed at the box for it. i'm using the word 'shift' because it mirrors the neo-liberal propaganda pushed by the corporate sector; they modeled it as a shift, but it was in truth a tax increase, because corporations will always seek to maximize accumulation at all costs, and they took it as an excuse to price gauge. so, yes - if you work it out with the models, it's a shift. but, the models do not reflect reality - which is a general problem with economics.
mainstream economics is not a science, it's mostly magical thinking with badly designed graphs. and, you can trust me on this - i'm a mathematician, i actually understand what they're doing, and what they're doing is always flatly wrong. you can throw the lot of it in the trash - which we keep doing when it fails, and then forgetting.
that is the history; we have the memories of goldfish. we trumpet orthodoxy in economics over and over, and watch it fail over and over; then the keynesians and krugmanites and mmt people come in and fix it, and within a few years we're back at orthodoxy, which fails again. we don't learn. homo economicus is a fucking idiot, incapable of any sort of cogent thought. they should rename it to homo retardicus economicus.
but, anyways.
mulroney stepped down in 1992 or 1993 (look it up) and was replaced with kim campbell, who had a few months to try and salvage a bad situation, something she was not intellectually or organizationally capable of. she was an elitist that thought she was really, really smart but just simply wasn't, so she went out and ran off a bunch of demeaning statements and got thoroughly rejected for it.
here's one:
an election is no time for serious issues.
you can see this kind of attitude in freeland, and she's not likely to be able to hold in her misguided contempt for very long.
the liberals won the 1993 election in a landslide, but it's not because there was a shift to the left in the conservative base. rather, what happened is that conservatives utterly rejected kim campbell as an airhead idiot (and, she was an airhead idiot), and moved en masse to the reform party, a new party that developed in the west to the right of the conservatives. and, they never really saw it coming.
you know the line about history repeating; i don't want to repeat myself, yet again.
but, there's a huge opening for either the greens or the ndp to walk into, if she falls flat on her face - which she will.
so, will a chrystia freeland led party manage two seats as the base caves in to the left?
stay tuned.
ew. gross.
i wouldn't expect much of an improvement - she might actually end up being worse, as she's just about as right-wing as you can get, in this country.
https://www.cp24.com/news/parliament-prorogued-till-sept-23-says-pm-trudeau-1.5068586
i wouldn't expect much of an improvement - she might actually end up being worse, as she's just about as right-wing as you can get, in this country.
https://www.cp24.com/news/parliament-prorogued-till-sept-23-says-pm-trudeau-1.5068586
i'd like to see stricter penalties for this government, for failing to follow the science and giving into magical thinking, instead.
if they want to be fascists, we're going to have to fight about it.
but, i'm not interested in following magical thinking, and he can basically just fuck off.
https://www.richmond-news.com/news/stricter-penalties-on-the-way-for-covid-19-rule-breakers-dix-1.24188331
if they want to be fascists, we're going to have to fight about it.
but, i'm not interested in following magical thinking, and he can basically just fuck off.
https://www.richmond-news.com/news/stricter-penalties-on-the-way-for-covid-19-rule-breakers-dix-1.24188331
it seems like ms. ardern has been patently wrong for months, herself.
she should have let the virus spread, rather than have the masculine arrogance to think she could stop it.
https://globalnews.ca/news/7283303/new-zealand-coronavirus-trump/
she should have let the virus spread, rather than have the masculine arrogance to think she could stop it.
https://globalnews.ca/news/7283303/new-zealand-coronavirus-trump/
something that happened in the nineteenth century is that european pseudo-intellectuals went out looking towards the "oriental" world, in search of "ancient wisdom", under the assumption that the eastern cultures were older & more wise.
thus spoke zarathustra, after all.
in fact, zoroaster was seen as a massive dilettante once they could actually translate him properly.
and, it turns out that what these people were looking for was really right in front of them the whole time - those supposedly oriental & eastern ideas seem to have actually originated in the west, after all.
so, you'll hear people wonder if jesus went to india and brought back ideas, which is just silliness. jesus never existed at all.
but, in terms of it's coherence as an idea, it seems increasingly more likely that the greeks brought their ideas to india than that they found their ideas there.
that said, you can trace this stuff to weird cults in greece that appear to have iranian origins, which is not hard to make sense of. the orphics were apparently a christian-like cult that claimed origin with the scythians, who would have lived in the steppes and spoken an iranian language. you can build a very early model of cultural diffusion across the steppes that would have moved ideas from central asia into both greece and india with indo-iranian speakers, much as the vedas record the movement of indo-aryan peoples into the subcontinent.
but, it's funny what the archaeological record will tell you if you let it, huh?
gotta do those experiments, in the end - because neither racist europeans nor nativist indians would have guessed that buddhism was fundamentally greek, despite the obvious cultural interchanges around it.
thus spoke zarathustra, after all.
in fact, zoroaster was seen as a massive dilettante once they could actually translate him properly.
and, it turns out that what these people were looking for was really right in front of them the whole time - those supposedly oriental & eastern ideas seem to have actually originated in the west, after all.
so, you'll hear people wonder if jesus went to india and brought back ideas, which is just silliness. jesus never existed at all.
but, in terms of it's coherence as an idea, it seems increasingly more likely that the greeks brought their ideas to india than that they found their ideas there.
that said, you can trace this stuff to weird cults in greece that appear to have iranian origins, which is not hard to make sense of. the orphics were apparently a christian-like cult that claimed origin with the scythians, who would have lived in the steppes and spoken an iranian language. you can build a very early model of cultural diffusion across the steppes that would have moved ideas from central asia into both greece and india with indo-iranian speakers, much as the vedas record the movement of indo-aryan peoples into the subcontinent.
but, it's funny what the archaeological record will tell you if you let it, huh?
gotta do those experiments, in the end - because neither racist europeans nor nativist indians would have guessed that buddhism was fundamentally greek, despite the obvious cultural interchanges around it.
well, ok.
maybe, the stoics would accept the change, overall - even if parmenides wouldn't, and zeno would have come to his defense. parmenides was...we don't have the sources, i'm going to stop myself before i start. but, zeno was massively influential on the development of calculus (via archimedes), and the fact that parmenides was so influential on zeno means that, along with pythagoras, he's one of the origin points of western thought, even as he exists in history as a distant, distorted memory.
i wish we had better sources on parmenides...
but, when using the term 'stoic', i should refrain from referring too heavily to parmenides, who was really pre-stoic, even if it is the zeno/parmenides connection that is most interesting to myself as a failed mathematician. i mean, a seneca or a marcus aurelius doesn't really have a lot to say about the history of mathematics, which is where i'm actually coming at this from (if it wasn't obvious).
it's more the inability to affect the world around you that would define the later stoics than the idea that change is impossible, altogether. so, they'd end up just resigning themselves to it, and focusing more on how they feel about it than about how to actually do anything about it.
i suppose my tune, ignorance is bliss, is fairly stoic:
to worry about things you can't change,
is pointless and completely deranged
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/stress
maybe, the stoics would accept the change, overall - even if parmenides wouldn't, and zeno would have come to his defense. parmenides was...we don't have the sources, i'm going to stop myself before i start. but, zeno was massively influential on the development of calculus (via archimedes), and the fact that parmenides was so influential on zeno means that, along with pythagoras, he's one of the origin points of western thought, even as he exists in history as a distant, distorted memory.
i wish we had better sources on parmenides...
but, when using the term 'stoic', i should refrain from referring too heavily to parmenides, who was really pre-stoic, even if it is the zeno/parmenides connection that is most interesting to myself as a failed mathematician. i mean, a seneca or a marcus aurelius doesn't really have a lot to say about the history of mathematics, which is where i'm actually coming at this from (if it wasn't obvious).
it's more the inability to affect the world around you that would define the later stoics than the idea that change is impossible, altogether. so, they'd end up just resigning themselves to it, and focusing more on how they feel about it than about how to actually do anything about it.
i suppose my tune, ignorance is bliss, is fairly stoic:
to worry about things you can't change,
is pointless and completely deranged
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/stress
cynical spreaders.
hrmmn.
cynicism and stoicism are ideas that i sort of like, and sort of don't. i'll admit to having a tendency to romanticize poverty, and i certainly reject wealth, but i don't like the naturalistic fallacy. i also generally find myself weary of people arguing in favour of virtue, even as i try to strive for these things myself, for myself. my single biggest enemies in life are people that think they can tell me how to think correctly.
but, i'd actually imagine that cynics would be poor at spreading viruses due to their disinterest in people. viruses need to find more sociable people to infect, if they want to get around.
stoics would probably end up arguing that the virus is impossible, and only really exists in our minds, anyways. we'd certainly be unable to control it. stoicism is dangerous, but wise; be careful with that, as you can gain much from it, and be led much astray by it, too.
if they want to relate the spread of the virus to a school of greek philosophy, they should probably be more concerned with epicurean spreaders. it would be the epicureans that would be your social butterflies, your heavy drinkers, your pleasure-seekers and your utilitarian hedonists.
stoics may be a threat in theory, but nobody would like them in reality, so they wouldn't actually be. and, cynics would be more likely to go sit inside and read.
this was immediately obvious, as fallout.
biden is a known quantity, but harris is largely undefined, and it's going to be very hard for her to define herself in a pandemic, when everybody's communicating over the interwebs. it's a major advantage for the republicans, especially given the little bit of time that she had to define herself did not work in her favour at all.
these numbers should be scaring the biden campaign, who should be looking at the situation as a crises point. they need these states to win...
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/16/politics/cnn-poll-biden-trump-august/index.html
biden is a known quantity, but harris is largely undefined, and it's going to be very hard for her to define herself in a pandemic, when everybody's communicating over the interwebs. it's a major advantage for the republicans, especially given the little bit of time that she had to define herself did not work in her favour at all.
these numbers should be scaring the biden campaign, who should be looking at the situation as a crises point. they need these states to win...
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/16/politics/cnn-poll-biden-trump-august/index.html
and, are they going to run michelle obama?
she doesn't have the ambitions that hillary had from day one. like, the punchline was that hillary was running the show back when bill was governor of arkansas. it was clear the whole time that she was going to run, herself.
michelle obama, on the other hand, always seemed to look like she wasn't sure how she got there, what she was doing there or if she wanted to be there at all, and she seemed to literally run out of the place as soon as she could get out.
whereas you had to fight hillary off, you're going to have to drag michelle in.
she's popular, it's true, which is no doubt the depth of the calculus around the situation. but, she's never run for office, has she?
they're going to try to talk her into it, expect it.
she doesn't have the ambitions that hillary had from day one. like, the punchline was that hillary was running the show back when bill was governor of arkansas. it was clear the whole time that she was going to run, herself.
michelle obama, on the other hand, always seemed to look like she wasn't sure how she got there, what she was doing there or if she wanted to be there at all, and she seemed to literally run out of the place as soon as she could get out.
whereas you had to fight hillary off, you're going to have to drag michelle in.
she's popular, it's true, which is no doubt the depth of the calculus around the situation. but, she's never run for office, has she?
they're going to try to talk her into it, expect it.
this is just bizarre and weird.
https://www.vox.com/2020/8/17/21373196/john-kasich-dnc-speech-transcript
https://www.vox.com/2020/8/17/21373196/john-kasich-dnc-speech-transcript
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