so, the barbarians are back at the gates of vienna. as though they ever left...

these people are delusional, and it's never really been clear how high up this stuff goes. sometimes, it's just a crazy person, and it's obvious. sometimes, you wonder if somebody quite powerful is legitimately trying to turn the clocks back, as though they think france and austria are front lines in a conquest they never completed. never mind the centuries of reversals, napoleon or the wars of independence in eastern europe - that never happened. let alone charles martel, or the reconquista. instead, they have their own manifest destiny to finish the conquest of rome and convert the infidels once and for all. it has no existence except in their warped minds, but they can't see beyond it, either.

they lose every war they start - in syria, in libya, in afghanistan, etc. but, they keep launching them because they have so much cash, and i guess that if they can't defeat syria then they'd might as well pick an easier target, like france. right?

regardless of whether this is organized or random, this is increasingly sustained, and some kind of regional response is increasingly necessitated.

the french once had to invade northern africa to stop the arabs from raiding the coast. one would think that sort of thing ought to be behind us, but...

gee.

i wonder if the unnecessary election had anything to do with it.

idiots.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/monday-covid-numbers-dix-1.5786155

the cheese grater thing didn't work like i hoped. maybe, if i get a hand strainer (i don't have one right now).

i could just suck the nectar up out of the seeds, but....can i even freeze it first, then try to pull them out?

so, i tried to let the guava sit and, while it got a little creamier, the seeds didn't soften up much.

i'm going to try one more out one more day to be sure.

but, this one came in at 20 g after deseeding, which is 45 g of vitamin c - more than the 25 i need to fill the hole. and, in fact, even that lowballed 12 g was enough to get over it.

so, i'm going to pencil it in for 15 and get on with it.

so, in looking through the polling for the 2020 election, i'm struck by how much it reflects what the pollsters wish it would look like. there's been quite a bit made about how the polls were wrong in 2016 (that is not my analysis), so what if what they've done has made the polling worse?

what if the appearance of competitive races in texas and arizona and georgia is the result of an overcompensation for a democratic electorate that was always there in the first place?

so, i'm beyond skeptical about the "correction" being made for education levels, and would like to "uncorrect it" by shifting it back. it's wrong-headed - one of the things we saw last time was that educated voters actually leaned republican in kind of shockingly high numbers. further, you shouldn't apply that to georgia or texas or florida even if you should apply it to wisconsin - and that could be at the crux of the overshooting of democratic support, there. educated southerners are still going to lean republican! so, this is a systemic shift of a few points, and tightens the race up immediately.

that being said, biden is doing well with two groups of voters that you wouldn't expect a democrat to do so well with - seniors and (religious) conservatives. they often toy with democrats; they didn't swing back, this time. and, 65+ in 2020 means you might be the first hint of gen x, too - don't forget that. biden is, overall, the more conservative candidate, and by a wide margin; aging gen xers that have been voting democrat most of their lives may not see a reason to get old and become republicans, but that might shift back in four years. old (white) conservatives have reason to vote for him and, if he pulls this off, they will be the reason why he does.

but, when all of these things balance out, i think the democrats will be disappointed in the sun belt, tomorrow. or this week. or this month, as it may be. i'm still not seeing numbers push up over 50 in these states - it's still too close to undo all of the advantages that the republicans have on the ground.

the thing is that i don't think it matters, because he's so clearly far ahead in the north that trump does not have the path he had before. whatever set of circumstances creeped up in 2016 are flipped over, now - union voters in the north are flopping back to biden. and, because of that, no republican has a chance in a fair election - the map is just permanently tilted.

so, what could go wrong, then?

could he lose pennsylvania? i thought that was crazy in 2016, and i called it out as much and suggested that if the tv tries to tell you that donald trump won pennsylvania then you know this is just a lot of bullshit. there was no way. and, then they did.

i'm simply not getting those kinds of signals from the media, this cycle. 

so, does that mean the media is just out, then? i mean, they don't need the media to rig it, right? well, i think donald trump needs the media onside - he can't do this by himself, he needs to have people in place that he thinks he's buying off but are really just putting him in place for later. a more talented despot could get around this kind of roadblock, but not trump. and, the clearest signal that trump was going to lose may have been the disappearance of his goebbels, kellyanne conway.

people might forget to vote, though - true. but i suspect somebody will remember to vote for them. yeah...

so, the details are a little unclear, and i'll accept i could be wrong.

but, all evidence is pointing to a biden victory, and if it doesn't happen then the riots that result from it will be happening with serious cause.

....and i'm going to try to separate the seeds out from the middle part with a cheese grater and see what happens, too.

i can't find anything better.

i'm going to use the usda data, but i'm going to use it with a grain of salt for everything except the c and insist i'm not relying on it for anything except the c until i get further clarification.

ok, let's just get back to it, then. i have a big update...

....and, on second thought, because the usda numbers have such high lycopene counts, i'm led to conclude that their "common guavas" must be a pink variety, like the hawaiian type.

but, that would just mean that my little white mexicans are higher in c. 

hrmmn.

should i use these numbers, then? well, where can i find better ones?

if i can find the pink ones - the ones i bought were white - then i could potentially also get a substantive dose of lycopene from guavas, as well - twice as much, per gram, as tomatoes.

the consensus actually seems to be that the asian guavas (which are cultivated mexican versions that were brought to asia, presumably by spaniards, and not endemic to asia) have less c per g, even if they have more in one of their larger fruits, over all.

see:

Although vitamin C contents were not measured in this work, previous studies where guava germplasm from Calvillo has been included show that Mexican germplasm has up to 520 mg/100 g of mesocarp, compared to 80 mg of vitamin C/100 g of mesocarp in foreign germplasm (Laksminarayana and Moreno, 1978). 

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sanjuana_Hernandez-Delgado/publication/231996696_Morphological_and_genetic_diversity_of_Mexican_guava_germplasm/links/0046353a0c34d20aef000000.pdf

& this study which lowballs the asian varieties:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318113147_Characterization_of_guava_Psidium_guajava_germplasm_based_on_leaf_and_fruit_parameters

this is leading me to conclude that the "common guava" is probably an american variety, after all, and that i'm not doing poorly by using it as a baseline, given that all fruit has some variation.

ok.

done.

and, let's be clear - it's the upper class that wants to bring all these people in, so it's the upper class that ought to be paying for it.

like, really paying for it.

and, maybe if you dropped the bill in the mail, so they really understood it, they might reconsider.

they don't care, they just want more people to squeeze more surplus value out of.

and, while all of the parties are basically the same on this point, the liberals are really probably the worst of the three.

"but, the population density in canada is so low, compared to the rest of the world!"

well, that's why the quality of life was so high compared to the rest of the world, too.

we're a long ways before we run out of space, or something. but, we're bringing people in at a rate that is much faster than we're adjusting to it, and that's not sustainable - that needs to change.

ok, great - this article suggests that the 228 mg/100g of pulp number at the usda may even be a lowball and these "mexican guavas" may have even higher levels of c than that. 

do i need strawberries, then? kiwis? let me work it out...

i'm going to use the usda numbers for "common guava" because it's at least standardized, but the thing is that i don't know what a "common guava" is. i'm led to believe that it's probably the more apple-like asian version, but it's not at all clear.

what is clear is that what i'm buying is the mexican variety and that they seem to have substantive amounts of c in them, after all. good.

the other thing is that i'm eating the skin because i can. i'm even toying with eating avocado skin, if it seems edible (and sometimes it does). i've got a big pile of avocado seeds in the freezer, too, that i'll need to figure out how to consume, in time. one thing at a time...

for now, i'm confident enough in the c content of these little guavas to move forward with them.

http://journals.fcla.edu/fshs/article/viewFile/96905/92911

we keep increasing immigration levels, but we don't build new housing and we don't build new hospitals (or new child care spaces, or new schools.....or new jails) at the level required to support it.

we bring them in to build a tax base, but it's broken math - they barely pay their own way.

we need to be taxing the wealthy to pay for the infrastructure, and it's just going to get worse until we figure it out.

and, it's not complicated, either - more people means more infrastructure. we only refuse to see it because we're not approaching it the right way - we just want more and more taxes to pay the investor class with. and, it's going to collapse if a change in mindset isn't embraced.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-hospital-occupancy-covid-19-hallway-healthcare-1.5784075

....but, the cream guavas are supposed to be.....creamy. the seeds aren't supposed to be crunchy, like that.

maybe they're not fully ripe, yet. they're the right colour and seem right, but...

i'm going to leave a few out and see what happens.

or, if i can find this, right?

there's tons of useless apples at the store, though. and pears. ugh. how'd i get stuck in this place?

https://specialtyproduce.com/produce/Seedless_Guavas_12835.php

i seem to have bough "mexican cream" guava, which is why they're so sweet. these seem to be mostly for desserts. they may not even be that good for you at all :(.

what i want is the vietnamese variety...

guavas are native to latin america, but are more popular in asia, for some reason. so, they probably should be in any grocery store that sells oranges, but you might need to check the asian aisle. the guava i bought was in the same section as the dragon fruit. it's quite weird - they picked up on something that we clearly ought to have been mass producing. they've been growing here, with rose hips, the whole time, just hidden in plain sight.

as such, there are varieties that have been manufactured to maximize the fruit content, but they may be harder to find here, where we're still buying the natural variety, and mostly for a market of asians that are no doubt as baffled as i am. that itself is unusual, and may be part of the reason they're so high in c; most of the fruit we eat has had the vitamins bred out in favour of bourgeois characteristics, like appearance and taste. but what it means is that we have the opportunity to modify this item responsibly, if we choose to, so that we don't lose the vitamins as we maximize the edible portions.

i have no idea what's really out there, here in windsor; i haven't looked that closely. i'll have to take a careful survey...

yeah, i'm concluding that these little bite size things are kind of just that and that i'm really supposed to throw away the middle part. i should consequently be weighing just the rind.

two mini-guavas is still probably more efficient than a big one, which i probably won't be able to find, anyways. a medium sized one would be even better.

so, i'm going to pencil these in and hope i can find what i want - about a 60 g guava that i can get about 30 g of actual fruit from.

so, i tried to deseed a guava and...

these guavas are very small. you basically can't - you're left with a rind that's about half the fruit's total weight. the rind is edible, but how much c is in it? 

what i ended up doing was separating the rind out and putting it in the bowl, and then sucking the sap off of the part in the middle, before spitting the seeds out. i don't know how worthwhile that was; i couldn't really taste the c, it just had this kind of gross sugary taste. i always like my fruit sour, and never like it sweet. and i don't know if that means that i'm only getting 12 g, or less, of usable fruit from a 25 g guava.

if i'm only supposed to take the part in between out, then these little guavas have almost no usable fruit, at all.

so, this may be a dead end, but i'm going to hope i can find them a tad bigger, next time.

for now, i'm going to double up and enter the data in at 25 g of rind to reflect it. but, i hope i'm underestimating.