temporary full september, 2021 backup archive (not source material - to be permanently deleted when pdf uploads)
wednesday, september 1, 2021
the issue is clearly that they don't want to check for vaccines, and don't want a piecemeal system that essentially offloads problems to their side of the border.
so, a vaccinated american can come into canada, and then come home with no real restrictions. it's the canadian side doing that screening.
but, if the americans allow entry with minimal screening (as all evidence suggests they will do, in the end), and the canadians maintain far more stringent requirements, they're going to potentially have problems with canadians being rejected from coming back into their own country, which they don't want.
i would expect that the condition for a reopening of travel into the united states would be for the canadian government to fully open the border - they don't want a vaccine passport system, and they don't want an unbalanced system.
november 21st would therefore be the earliest potential reopening date, but the spring is more likely.
0:06
our side is willing to partially reopen, but their side doesn't want to do that - and if we don't want to reopen fully, they'll wait until we do.
trudeau may never agree to that.
we'll see if a change in government brings a change in policy.
0:12
i've been waiting for this to flip over. the liberals have been overextended in this region for a few cycles now, and were bound to a lose a lot of seats there.
everything else stable, the liberals have no chance of a majority if they lose 20 seats out east - a region they seem to hold in contempt.
if their hubris has a first casualty, this will be it.
(screenshot from ekos politics)
0:15
i'm also expecting bc to be a conservative rout - at least outside of the very core of downtown vancouver. the liberals were making gains in the okanagan valley region, but the provincial ndp has been targeting and scapegoating them, and it's inevitable that they're going to react.
i'd suspect that it's more of an anti-ndp vote than anything else. but, trudeau is going to take the brunt of it.
as the ndp is actually more competitive in downtown vancouver, the liberals could get almost wiped out of bc this cycle.
(screenshot from ekos)
0:21
joe biden would not recognize a "vital national interest" if it shot him in the face. <----?
1:27
the russians are claiming over four million refugees have already found their way into the former ssrs.
i'm sure that quite a few have made their way to pakistan and iran, as well.
it puts those airport pictures in a little perspective - those were the rich.
1:32
"but it's what they want!"
you're looking at probably a quarter to a third of the population that's so scared that it's physically escaping.
i'm sure there's a minuscule religious fundamentalist fringe that's ecstatic, but the data says the exact opposite.
1:36
the insistence by certain voices in the west that the people of afghanistan want to live under sharia law, as enforced by a gang of thugs, is really just saudi propaganda, as amplified through a white supremacist filter of base racism.
that's insane. nobody wants this. only a ridiculous racist would say that.
1:38
we put these people in power because we decided it's in our interests to do so.
we are responsible for the consequences that result from it.
1:38
religion is not something that builds from the bottom up, or that defines identity, or that people do freely.
religion is a system of mind control pushed down from the top, by rulers that wish to dominate a population into submission.
nobody wants sharia law, except the rulers that want to inflict it as a means of dominance.
and, the people of afghanistan are no more interested in living under tyranny and dominance than you or i are.
1:53
i might actually be tempted to suggest a likelihood that we're going into recession.
with structural decreases in employment, drying up social assistance and a post-hysteria stabilization in housing shifts, i'm not sure exactly why anybody would suggest anything besides declining gdp over the next year or two.
speculation that canadians were saving money up to spend seems to have been misplaced, as we fact in spent any excess on debt.
and, despite the rhetoric otherwise, i'd expect a vaccine passport system to lead to declining in-person spending, not fuel consumer confidence.
i don't like predicting the future, but, if you ask me, a recession seems likely, starting just after the election.
2:22
i've pointed this out before - you walk down the streets of windsor, and anything that isn't a chain store is boarded up.
it looks like a depression, not a recession.
2:27
i would actually broadly support banning video games.
it's a plague on society.
2:51
“The more unvaccinated people there are, the more opportunities for the virus to multiply,” Schaffner said. “When it does, it mutates, and it could throw off a variant mutation that is even more serious down the road.
this is false. while vaccines can help eliminate a virus from an individual's body, they don't actually prevent the virus from spreading. recent studies have shown that vaccine levels in the vaccinated are no different from vaccine levels in the unvaccinated.
vaccination can help at the level of the individual, but not at the level of society.
The unvaccinated are the cause of those numbers at the level they are and that is why politicians will not yet let up on vaccine mandates, mask regulations and a reluctance to fully open our economy and our lives.
this is also false. while unvaccinated people are making up a larger percentage of cases, there are still enough cases amongst the vaccinated to justify public health concerns and that is only set to increase as the virus continues to mutate.
I care because there are people who cannot be vaccinated and by refusing to participate in public health the unvaccinated are more of a danger to those innocent people than are those who did get the shots.
this is not just false but completely backwards. as the vaccinated are more likely to be silent spreaders - contagious but asymptomatic - they pose a far greater threat than the unvaccinated, who will be more likely to show symptoms and self-isolate. as the seasonal wave unfolds, we should expect the vast majority of transmission to occur in asymptomatic, vaccinated people - and not in symptomatic, unvaccinated people. but, as stated previously, the vaccinated have no less virus than the unvaccinated do, once infected.
this article is not an accident - it's the consequence of months and months of misleading messaging from the public health authorities, and it is that misleading messaging around vaccines, more than anything else, that is going to be a cause of a first truly seasonal wave that is likely to be worse than any previous one.
More and more vaccinated people are losing compassion for the unvaccinated and some of the unvaccinated are losing their minds, screaming that their freedom has been eroded to the level of Nazi Germany. It is outrageous.
i suppose that the inversion of the yellow star system is enough to think that these policies are different than existence under nazi rule for those that lack critical thinking skills. but, it's not fundamentally different.
i tend to avoid the comparison, but i won't denounce it. it's a difference of scale, but there's some truth in it.
I am fully vaccinated, so why do I care that you aren’t? Because I want this whole nasty business to come to an end.
Don’t you?
vaccination rates are not going to end the pandemic, and the science never argued it would.
i do need to point out that these are also symptoms of alcohol and marijuana use, though.
Three-quarters of the infections were in fully vaccinated individuals. Among those fully vaccinated, about 80% experienced symptoms with the most common being cough, headache, sore throat, muscle aches and fever.
it would be difficult to control for the fact that this was a party, in terms of symptoms.
the point is that they tested for the virus - symptomatic or not.
4:31
"the day after the party, 80% of people tested positive for headaches and muscle aches." is something that would be generally true of most parties.
the important point is that the viral load was there.
the volume of liquid in the glass is equal to 50% of the total possible volume.
i'm cynical, but i'm a realist - and think both pessimists and optimists are anti-empirical.
4:45
Two-thirds of epidemiologists who took part in a recent global survey have predicted it will be less than a year before SARS-CoV-2 mutates to such an extent that the majority of first generation COVID vaccines are rendered ineffective and new or modified candidates are required.
that was in march of this year.
as far as i can see, they were spot on.
this is hosted by the australian college of practitioners. you'll just accuse me of posting fox news propaganda, right?
it's unavoidable that the state is going to have to step in and bail out renters, who should have been given pandemic money as social assistance in the first place. this can only be done via the legislature.
so, if the house won't act, it will need to be done at the state level. props to new york for showing some leadership on this.
but, here's an idea - why not raise property taxes to pay for it?
some inflation in the price of meat isn't a bad thing, if it curbs consumption.
18:01
when they took my testicles out, they tested them for cancer, and didn't find any.
good to know.
they were a cancer risk, just sitting there, with no use, like that.
18:28
so, as far as i can tell, this will have absolutely no effect on me as there's no live music anywhere anyways.
that said, i'm still in solidarity with business owners that want to fight the restrictions. there were a series of cases regarding duplessis in quebec years ago that rejected the government's ability to enforce these kinds of laws. there's also the sunday shopping case, that rejected the state's ability to ban sunday shopping. i think a coalition of businesses could easily win a suit like this, forcing the state to retreat to a fully voluntary application.
...which is fine.
if you don't want my money, i'll spend it somewhere else.
so, i'm opposed to this outright, but it doesn't affect me and i have no reason to react to it, besides standing with those opposed to it.
i'm going to repeat my previous call - please boycott any business checking vaccine status, whether you happen to be vaccinated or not.
20:18
i want to be clear - i don't suspect that patrons to a business will win a lawsuit overturning vaccine passport rules. ultimately, the business has property rights.
however, i do expect a business would win a case, based on the idea that the state can't tell them what to do - due precisely to those same property rights.
do you see why there's a contradiction in arguing that businesses can refuse service, but can't refuse the government's mandates?
if the government can order a business to enforce a vaccine passport, there's an opening for a discrimination suit, because it's no longer about property rights - now it's a government policy. but, that's not how it will be interpreted - it will be interpreted as a property rights issue, which should give the owner the right to set the policy.
the closest thing i can think of is smoking laws, but it's very different - smoking is a serious health concern for everybody that is upheld by rock solid science, and stopping the spread of this virus is a lot of guessing, based on a lot of flimsy deductions. i've recently presented a mathematical proof that the use of passports in any situation large enough to justify them is a waste of time to implement, as transmission will occur, regardless.
so, what i want to see is a bunch of businesses get together and sue the government for infringing on their discretion, as businesses, to serve the customers they want - with a consequence of loss of income, and an infringement on freedom of assembly. that's the kind of argument that will win.
20:34
i know that there are bourgeois businesses that will find this useful, and i probably couldn't meet their dress code, or want to hang out there, anyways.
but, you have to understand that passing a law like this is telling working class businesses that they're not allowed to carry out business with a class of people that may be their exclusive customer base, and coming off a lockdown and on the brink of what may be a lengthy recession. that is a loss of income for these businesses, due to a law restricting their freedom of association. and, that is the potential cause of substantive legal action, not concerns coming from customers.
20:41
thursday, september 2, 2021
Data showed that of the serious cases being admitted to hospital, around 60 per cent of patients were people who had been fully vaccinated, though most were over 60 or with underlying health condition
it's people over 60 that are of course at highest risk and that need to rely on the vaccine the most. writing them off is absurd - we're doing this entirely for them. if there weren't any old people, we wouldn't need any restrictions at all.
it follows that if the vaccine is no longer working on old people then it's no longer useful at all.
what we need is an update to the vaccine to increase it's efficacy for newer variants - and we're going to continue needing updates to the vaccine for a long, long time. decades.
pushing people to take a vaccine that doesn't work isn't going to resolve anything.
and, we're going to learn the hard way, here - we're going to insist on the efficacy of mass vaccination with an outdated vaccine, and watch it blow up in our faces.
again - if you're old, take responsibility for your health and avoid crowds and young people. and, if you're young, don't make the mistake of believing that the vaccine makes contact with the elderly safe - that's a myth.
i understand that the government is desperately trying to avoid another lockdown, under heavy pressure from upper class capital - which could care less about working class businesses. so, it's pulling every stupid idea it can find out of the hat, and it's probably just going to make the situation worse.
the simple fact is that masks do not work at all, that vaccines do not work well enough and that distancing isn't feasible.
if you really want to save the economy, there's only one solution, and it's the only solution we've ever had - you have to isolate old people from the rest of society for the rest of their lives.
this is never going to end until we come to terms with that.
6:22
in the mean time, the government is just going to keep scapegoating young people at nightclubs - who pose minimal risk to each other - while ignoring the actual problem, which is religion, and the the veneration of the old that comes from it.
6:24
you'll note that there's a commonality in the restrictions - you need to submit to being tracked by the government if you want to enjoy alcohol in public, with a group of people.
the best away around that, of course, is to party at home.
and, i'd recommend it, because you won't accidentally infect some old guy hanging out at the bar, ogling the staff.
6:25
if you wanted to pass a policy at a nightclub that would actually save lives, it would be to ban anybody over 50 from entering the premises, which is mostly unnecessary.
conversely, i'm looking at the dso policy, and all i'm thinking is "this doesn't matter - they shouldn't open at all". like, i promise you that at least a hundred people will die this year after contracting covid at the dso, if they go ahead with normal operations. and, it doesn't matter what they do, it's just a function of the event.
6:43
if we had rational, limited policies targeted at protecting the elderly, i'd probably support them.
we don't - we have an irrational, overly-broad, generalized scapegoating of the young, and an apparent attack by these fucking right-wing "progressives" (again.) on alcohol consumption.
6:47
so, go ahead, ye faithful - blame it on the sinners.
but, don't choke at church.
eh?
6:49
this is a real world example of what i demonstrated with probability theory.
this should have been a virus free event - they checked status at the door.
but, there was substantive transmission - over 5000 cases. the reason is that the vaccines are only 90% effective against the actual virus, and even less so against the newer variants. when you have a lot of people in one place, that 10% failure rate adds up. it's simple math. i showed you already....
so, checking vaccination status is not going to help much.
if they had a rapid test on site, that would have worked better.
in fact, as the event had 50000 people, and there were 5000 cases, that 10% failure rate is directly recoverable from the data - about 10% of the population got sick.
7:06
if you have been vaccinated, and you are at risk, and you want to attend an event like this (well, maybe not quite like that one, if you're at risk), the best thing you can do for yourself and the people around you is to get an antibody test.
the antibody test will tell you if the vaccine generated an immune response or not.
now, that might still not be enough for the new variants, but it's a start. and, if your body did not produce an immune response, you should seek another shot and try again.
7:13
i mean, i'm throwing around this 10+% failure rate, but it's not entirely random.
we can test for it, and adjust to it.
7:15
we went through this with the travel bans, as well - which have no scientific or empirical support, whatsoever. but, governments keep implementing travel bans anyways, and claiming they're upheld by the science, which is false.
7:19
vaccine passports aren't even upheld by "common sense".
i shouldn't need a fancy mathematical argument or a body of empirical evidence to demonstrate that the idea is foolish. that should be obvious to anybody with basic reasoning skills.
7:21
but, like i say, i think what's really going on is threefold:
1) the app is intended primarily as a tracking tool. that's really what they want - and why governments are flip-flopping. i mean, doug ford's excuse was "they made me do it". who is they, doug? csis?
2) business leaders are going along with it because they're guessing it'll increase consumer confidence, which i think is probably wrong.
3) there's an opportunity for the government to scapegoat young people, put barriers on the public consumption of alcohol and make it seem like they're doing something, as an election ploy to woo older voters (who are then going to catch it at church).
7:26
this is a screenshot from this morning's nanos tracking poll.
nik assigns a lot of importance to this, and it sort of reduces to a question as to what canadians vote for. if all politics is local, this shouldn't matter much. but, if canadians are ultimately voting for the prime minister (like americans vote for a president), it could in theory be a decisive metric.
my position is that it ought to be a lagging indicator, which means it should start to flip over once the fluctuations start to stabilize. so, if you see a horse race in the party polling, with the leading party fluctuating between 2 or perhaps 3 options, but the incumbent has a large lead in the prime minister question, it could indicate that people are unhappy with the ruling party but, ultimately, not ready for a change in government. it's when the pm starts to flip over that you start to realize that people actually want the government to change.
however you want to interpret it, trudeau and the liberals are now officially losing the election.
and, you have to wonder if a different liberal leader might have fared better than him, had trudeau stepped down and been replaced some months ago.
i don't think that a continuing trudeau government is healthy for the country's institutions; i think he's a threat to democracy, and a threat to the constitutional order, and i've been making that argument, now, for years. i would have rather seen the party replace him, but so be it.
we rarely have good choices in life.
right now, the primary concern should be removing mr. trudeau from power, and i'm glad to see the country realize it.
7:42
the liberals may still well get a very weak minority, but the damage has been done, and we can be sure that our dauphin will either be defeated, or forced to resign and let somebody else step in to replace him.
7:46
it's hard for me to believe that erin o'toole is only a few years older than me.
i'd guess he was in his late 60s.
he's only 48.
in fact, he's younger than trudeau is.
7:51
this infrastructure bank is the actual reason i voted for trudeau in 2015, but they marketed it as a way to print dollars (without borrowing money) to create public infrastructure, and specifically green infrastructure (i was hoping to see the money printed for things like hydro dams and fueling stations), then completely changed it's purpose to act as a mechanism for the privatization of public resources, which is of course how the state generally behaves under neo-liberalism.
so, i voted for a green industrial policy and i got a ploy to sell off public infrastructure to foreign investors. and, they bought a pipeline, instead.
my position on this is certainly not similar to o'toole's, but i see little reason in trying to salvage this.
rather, i'd pitch the idea to the ndp - pick this up, and promise to do it right. it's the only real way out - we have to print tons of dollars, and with the financial situation after covid, we certainly can't be handing that kind of debt to private banks.
the next thing to watch for is to see if the ndp gets a boost from sagging liberal numbers.
liberal strategists like to pretend that the party gets a boost when people are scared the conservatives might win, but the data suggests that the exact opposite happens - that people only really jump on the liberal bandwagon when they're sure they have a real chance of winning, and tend to vote with their hearts once they've given up on them.
the liberals ran on the kind of electoral reform that could have prevented this in 2015, but decided not to implement it. they made their bed...
8:13
if we had ranked choice voting, that kind of movement to the ndp in the face of sagging liberal numbers could be avoided, by giving people that would prefer to vote ndp the option of picking the liberals as their second choice. it wouldn't give them a majority, but it would probably prevent them from losing outright.
but, they decided against it.
*shrug*.
8:15
so, watch for that - if people are convinced that the liberals have already lost, the ndp should get a bump, and the liberals should see a steep decline.
8:16
"The anti-Trudeau folks seem to be a very loose collective of anti-statists, anti-vaxxers, etc., as well as right-wing adherents who are exploiting their own anxieties to swell their own ranks," Perry wrote in an e-mail. "Consequently, they are mobilizing across mainstream and fringe platforms on pages associated with a diverse array of "believers."
listen - i'm not out there with these people because i don't think this is the way to do it, but i'm an open, self-identifying communist. i'm about as left-wing as you can get.
so, this characterization is likely a lot of nonsense, and just ultimately liberal party propaganda.
however...
we've seen something like this develop in europe on a number of occasions: by not offering a bourgeois option for a legitimate political grievance, the system risks giving the far right a platform. large amounts of these people are probably center-left voters, historically. i've pointed out before that there appears to be a measurable movement of voters from the liberal party to the ppc, and we know from polling that the ndp base is buckling. a lot of these people would likely prefer to vote for an economic left, but all of the options on the economic left are pushing fascist social policies.
the result is that they have no option but to run to the far right.
we need a bourgeois option that opposes these policies, or we're going to end up with a far right in this country. and, you have no right to be shocked by that, as it's blatantly predictable.
for right now, the liberals appear to be shooting themselves in the foot, as they're the ones that seem to be bleeding the most votes.
legitimacy is not to be determined by force, it is to be determined by votes.
right now, the legitimate government of afghanistan under international law remains that headed by the vice president (as the president has resigned), which is currently located in the panjshir valley.
9:22
there is no context in which a group of armed thugs can legitimately overthrow a democratically elected government and take power.
that's a coup - and there can be no legitimacy attached to such a thing, ever.
9:25
who is in charge of this?
victoria fucking nuland.
maybe she should just bake them some cookies. they'd like that.
9:28
Thursday, April 29, 2021
israel is as close to herd immunity as anywhere right now.
so, it's going to be like getting a yearly flu shot.
and, you might not need to get yearly flu shots anymore, because the flu is essentially crowded out.
if youngish people want to get vaccinated, and there are extra vaccines, there's minimal harm associated with it. but, the focus should be on ensuring that people that are in more direct risk of harm get both vaccine doses asap.
and, i'll probably wait until it stabilizes and i'm in the 55+ category.
so, if we're 3-4 months behind israel on this, it would suggest that, when we peak, after saturnalia, we will get major transmission in the vaccinated population.
if our public health system realized that the vaccines are out of date and that vaccination is consequently not the answer then we could maybe get through this with it being about the same as it was last year.
we're marching into a catastrophe.
it's going to be a very rough winter in canada.
11:11
you will rarely see this kind of convergence.
it suggests they're either all correct, or all completely wrong.
i do have to reiterate that i suspect the demographic modeling they're all using is out of date, in a way that probably benefits the conservatives.
12:38
i've been trying to present a scientific and mathematical analysis of vaccine mandates, and arguing they're neither proportional, nor likely to be effective in any scenario that matters. i stand by my analysis, and i stand in solidarity with those opposed to the restrictions.
but, blocking ambulances is daft and not going to help win the argument.
it's not the hospitals that are pushing the policy, it's the chamber of commerce; it's not about health outcomes, it's about consumer confidence. so, go picket the houses and offices of business leaders. go protest at the csis offices. go find a politician to bother.
what is a demographically representative sample of opposition to vaccine passports?
i ask because online polling doesn't utilize random sampling, it tries to pick a group of people it thinks represents the population, as a whole. and, while we at least have a lot of (social) science telling us how people vote based on things like income and gender and race, we have no idea who opposes vaccine mandates and who doesn't.
i'll generally prefer random sampling over online polling even with issues that social scientists claim they understand. but, this?
again: the vaccination rate is not the important metric, and won't make the actual difference, in the end.
at risk people simply need to keep themselves out of harm's way. instead, they've been told they're invincible when they get their magic potion.
but, the business community will not allow public health to backtrack on this.
it's going to be horrific, as baffled vaccinated old people start piling up, led to their death by a system of capitalism that tricked them into thinking it was safe for them to spend.
the "problem" is that nobody wants to buy newspapers anymore, although i don't consider that a problem - it removes the profit incentive. we should get better journalism in a not-for-profit model.
so, just give journalists state subsidies, then.
why enforce a convoluted market relation that nobody can even make any sense of, to uphold the delusion that a market is functioning? just give them a subsidy.
3:43
i'd love a way out of the market.
so, give me a ubi - don't give me a government dictated fake market relationship, to make it seem like we're not in a technological dystopia, when everybody can see we are. <----to make it seem like we're in a free market, when everybody can see that we aren't.
(although, all markets are fake government creations (<----require government regulation in order to exist), so these are redundancies)
3:45
i'm going to hang out in the icu with bellbottoms, platforms, oversized sunglasses and a boombox blaring queen records.
"you know that one, eh?"
4:00
i need to clarify again that this is not a for profit blog. i've made a total of $0.00 blogging, vlogging or writing over the course of my entire life. i do this for the historical record, not for accumulation.
i know it doesn't seem like it nowadays, but i'm a musician, and the product i have for sale is my music.
and, i don't want to sell this...i think the internet should be free....
like i say - give me a gai. that's what i actually want, not a patchwork of annoying property rights and people yelling at each other over money.
4:22
the northern alliance was always hemmed in near the tajikstan border.
this resistance movement is not far from the capital (located in the striped area) and is claiming to have made some gains in the adjacent province that includes bagram:
the taliban are claiming the opposite.
but, if they get any momentum - and all evidence is that the taliban is far from a populist group in the region - they could conceivably be in striking distance from the capital relatively soon.
so, did i speak too soon? is it the obama model?
no - the implication is that these fighters might be getting covert support from the russians, and that the russians may be catching us asleep at the wheel, sort of thing.
it would be the smartest thing they could do, if it's true - and then america will have legit lost this war.
i understand why the public health is arguing for vaccination as a solution, but they're just mathematically wrong.
we're getting consistent 20+% case results in the vaccinated here in ontario - 150-200/day. using a factor of 10, you're looking at 1500-2000 actual cases amongst the vaccinated. that's more than enough to continue the situation indefinitely.
but, as the primary metric of concern appears to be age (and the secondary appears to be underlying conditions), one of the questions that's impossible to answer is how many of the unvaccinated people would be sick if they'd gotten vaccinated, anyways. there's this underlying assumption that they wouldn't be testing positive or going to the hospital if they'd have vaccinated themselves, but the hundreds of vaccinated people testing positive every day seem to belie that. you really can't split the data up in a simple manner like, it's an error in combinatorics, as it ignores the intersection point. so, your statistics are irreconcilably broken.
and, i don't really know how to test the question - how do you figure out what percentage of the unvaccinated ill would be testing positive if they were vaccinated, given factors like age and obesity?
the best answer i have is to look at underlying conditions and to suggest that what you're being presented with is ultimately an illusion.
and, the best response i have to the fiasco is to ask you to remind yourself that the public health authorities are flawed humans that are prone to making mistakes, and that they've made a lot of them. they're not going to save you, and you shouldn't put your trust in the system to protect you.
if you're at risk, you have to understand that you're at risk and take personal precautions.
but, most at risk people won't do that, and will kill themselves off in the process.
18:47
trudeau should stop whining.
he's just gotta learn to take things into his own hands:
18:59
are people just pissed off about the election call? is that it?
the contrast with chretien is quite instructive, though.
chretien was (i guess still is) an affable, down to earth, relatable "man of the people" type politician with a relatively good sense of humour.
trudeau is an insufferable, whiny, priggish, upper class twit that wouldn't understand irony if it hit him over the head with a crowbar.
chretien laughed a pie-in-the-face off. trudeau would probably launch a drone strike for ruffling his hair.
i miss the liberal party i grew up with. it wasn't perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than this one.
22:34
chretien would probably still be in office if the idiots in the liberal party hadn't pushed him out.
chretien was a populist politician in canada; trudeau is not.
22:36
something else coming out of the pictures of afghan media is a reminder that the country is heavily ethnically iranian.
there's a lot of different people intersecting in the region.
but a lot of afghans are actually quite pasty white.
23:17
i'm pointing it out because it plays into the reactionary narrative on the fake left which is now railing against "white feminism", in addition to imagining that afghans love sharia law.
i don't know if it's a strict majority, but a lot of afghans are white.
i think it's a majority in iran.
23:28
so, i mean, we can talk about the region being colonized by islam, if you'd like.
but, i'd rather reject the reactionary narrative on it's face.
23:29
only white girls care about learning how to read, apparently.
23:31
i am actually making some progress on what i'm doing and could be done by sunrise.
23:40
this is the worst-case scenario.
In 60.6% of the elderly vaccinated group, serum neutralization of the Delta variant was observed six months after vaccination.
that is a 40% failure rate in the most at-risk population, which has been brainwashed by the media into deluding itself into believing it's safe from evil spirits because it took the government's magic potion. now, what's going to happen if a vaccinated person brings a case of delta into something like the dso? death, on a massive scale.
if the authorities can convince the weak and old to stay inside, the worst case might be avoided. however, capital has already decided that we're merely going to vaccinate everybody and send them out shopping. shop until you drop, boomers.
if you're in favour of conservative, traditionalist social norms then i'm not interested in being your ally, i'm interested in being your liberal opponent's ally.
sorry.
there's plenty of brown liberals out there, and i'd rather align with them, instead.
0:50
i actually think the left needs to stop catering to these reactionary ideologues and take a firmer stand on that.
0:51
i never signed up anywhere to be an ally for conservative brown people.
i'm trying to advance the interests of the left - and being an ally for conservative brown people is not going to get me very far in that task.
1:23
i'm going to keep track of the results here.
2021
2022
m
a
m
j
j
a
s
o
n
d
j
f
m
a
m
j
j
a
s
o
n
d
creatinine
78/80
-
-
-
-
87
egfr
107/106
-
-
-
-
96
alp
61
-
-
63
59
50
albumin
-/45.7
-
-
-
45.9
44.6
cholesterol
3.93
-
-
-
3.99
3.8
triglycerides
.87
-
-
-
.95
.89
hdl
1.69
-
-
-
1.84
1.59
ldl
1.85
-
-
-
1.72
1.81
non-hdl
2.24
-
-
-
2.15
2.21
wbc
8.7/8.4
9.9/9.0
-
-
?
7.0
rbc
3.97/4.25
4.11/4.38
-
-
4.17
4.12
hemoglobin
132/140
133/142
-
-
139
136
hematocrit
.382/.404
.394/.424
-
-
.405
.398
mcv
96.1/95.1
95.8/97.0
-
-
97
96.8
mch
33.1/32.9
32.4/32.5
-
-
33.3
33.2
mchc
345/346
338/335
-
-
?
343
rdw
13.3/13.5
13.0/13.1
-
-
?
13
platelet
199/187
171/171
-
-
?
175
reticulocytes
-
-/42
-
-
53
56
vitamin d
87
-
-
-
109
72
estradiol
363/388
-
-
-
-
563
estrone
-
-
-
-
-
?
testosterone
0.9
-
-
-
-
-
progesterone
1.9
-
-
-
-
-
fsh
<0.2
-
-
-
-
-
lh
<0.2
-
-
-
-
-
ferritin
12/9
6/17
21
-
29
43
tibc
-
69.5
-
-
65.7
62.9
iron
-
9.6
-
-
22.7
37.3
iron sat
-
0.14
-
-
0.35
0.59
phosphate
-/1.42
-
-
-
-
1.09
magnesium
-/.93
-
-
-
-
0.8
calcium
-/2.4
-
-
-
2.38
2.32
pth
-
-
-
5.5
-
6.2
tsh
0.92
-
-
-
-
0.94
calcitonin
-
-
-
<0.6
-
-
cortisol
-
-
-
325
-
464
insulin
-
-
-
-
-
50
b12
223/251
-
304
-
363
313
3:34
i have never heard anything labelled "grindcore" that wasn't unlistenable, irredeemable, total waste-of-time garbage.
5:59
but, i've never really had time for much of anything that labels itself metal.
i like experimental music, i like electronic music, i like punk rock and i like jazz. metal barely bleeds in via crossover, but it's about as interesting to me as opera is - which is not very. you might find that disappointing, but i don't fucking care.
6:02
it's largely because metal is a concept that can't escape the image it's attached to. it's the definition of the genre that is just impossible to work with, as it's just irrevocably attached to an exploration of male sexuality and male ego, which i just find childish and boring. so, when metal is interesting, it won't call itself metal - it'll call itself alternative, or something. if you're going to market yourself as metal, you're pretty much guaranteed to be boring, as you'd know better than to do it if you weren't.
6:05
i consider myself pretty open-minded, but i won't go near the culture.
it's unworkable, as an artform.
6:07
this is very dangerous behaviour that would have been unheard of in the late 90s. it requires a lot of courage, and shows a lot of defiance.
i hope that those arguing that the country hadn't changed begin to relent. i don't want to call them names, i want them to react to empirical evidence.
these were the kinds of scenes we saw in the west in the 18th century, so don't pretend like it's a cultural difference. it's not. it's a question of progress, and a question of a reversal of it.
if all we can do is send moral solidarity, so be it. but, any barbarism in terms of reactions must be swiftly condemned, as well.
what, exactly, is the science underlying banning dancing. anyways?
seems more like a religious restriction, to me.
most religions do not allow dancing in public, if you're unaware of it.
if you're going to allow churches and mosques to open, it seems inconsistent, to say the least, to ban dancing. that is probably a religious bias on behalf of the legislators, and should be challenged as overly broad and unsupported by the evidence.
17:19
as an atheist, i strongly resent being told i cannot dance in public by a government that is unwilling to curb the inherent danger presented in continuing to allow religious gatherings.
17:21
sunday, september 5, 2021
in 2015, the labour day polling inflated ndp totals dramatically, and i have hypothesized that it was because ndp supporters were more likely to be at home and willing to pick up a phone and do a survey over the long weekend than liberal or conservative voters.
the tracking companies need to produce a product for their clients, but they really should stop polling on the thursday and pick it back up on the tuesday.
i consequently wouldn't look too much into fluctuations that have occurred over the last few days.
22:12
it would seem, this cycle, that it's the liberals sitting at home by themselves doing surveys on labour day weekend.
22:14
i want to post a write-up about my thoughts about the election cycle.
anarchists tend to avoid really buying into bourgeois politics, while accepting that the existence of the state is reality and if you can make a choice that makes your life better (or avoids making it worse) then you should do so. through the hard work and struggle of the working class against capital, aspects of the state do exist that make our lives easier, even if most of them are ultimately there because they benefit capital. this may not be ideal, it may not be what we really want in a stateless and marketless society, but they're better than aristocratic feudal statism, or it's mirror-image, corporate-regulated capitalism. the new aristocracy is the corporatocracy.
so, i'm usually razor-focused on policy, trying to find some angle that salvages the charade, this time around. i can't do that this time - it's not at all obvious what option is the least worst, or if a totally ordered set is even a coherent way to approach the situation, this cycle; the liberals are too dishonest and opportunistic on policy to bother analyzing (does anybody believe anything they say?) what they say, the ndp are still led by a clown that consistently utters nonsense that cannot be taken seriously (his latest retarded suggestion is to put protesters in jail, as though we have no rights framework in this country, which he wouldn't seem to care about, anyways) and i don't need to look at the conservative platform to know it's terrible, it's just a question of measuring how terrible it is. so, it's the kind of situation where i may support one party in one part of the country and another in a different part of it, and where specific candidates and their own vision, rather than that of their parties, is really the ultimate focus.
if the dominant issue in front of us is how we should approach "encouraging vaccination", the conservatives are presenting the option that is, by far, most appealing to a traditional liberal, while the two fake left parties are falling over each other to appeal to the authoritarian right. it's a total spectrum reversal, in perhaps the most egregious way possible. if the liberals don't care about civil rights, they're just another right-wing party and not worth bothering with. but, of course, i can't support the conservative economic platform - not for a minute. no self-respecting leftist could vote for a party that supports opening the health care system up to the free market, along with a zillion other things, even if they're the only party in the spectrum with an acceptable position on vaccines.
so, this is very hard and it's not at all clear what to suggest.
on this specific issue of vaccines, the conservatives are, as a party, moving in the right direction, while the liberals and the ndp are moving in the wrong direction, from an anarchist perspective. when you overlap that fact with a dozen other issues of importance - climate change, housing, civil rights in general - you're left with a mess, and no clearly discernible spectrum direction from any party. if the justified cynicism as a reaction to the depravity of the options isn't enough, all three of the parties are transitioning in directions that may or may nor be permanent, none of which really make any sense relative to their historic bases. with the liberals' embrace of far-right social policies, the conservatives are left as the more moderate option, even if that isn't a very good description of them. and, the ndp are just enthusiastically following the liberals into fascism, rather than trying to stand up to it (and do realize that, for all his evils, tommy douglas would have taken the right side on the pandemic issue. jagmeet singh has not.).
so, what is a conservative minority or a liberal majority going to actually be like, and which would a traditional liberal or conservative voter actually prefer, let alone an anarchist trying to figure out which is least bad? it's not obvious - and in truth not entirely predictable.
this hard-right swing in the liberal party is something that americans old enough to remember the southern strategy of richard nixon should recognize. the republicans were, up to that point, consistently the more liberal of the two parties, for better or worse. but, you saw a regional disparity open up and the republicans eventually embraced nihilism, rather than conservatism - they decided the best way to get elected was to pretend they were right-wing christians. but, nixon was no such thing, nor was reagan, nor were either bush, nor was trump. and, whatever is going through mr trudeau's pretty little head, if anything at all, appears to be secondary to what the party has decided is most likely to gain them power. the difference is that the liberals seem to be trying to build a swing base of right-wing muslims, rather than a coalition of right-wing christians. but, underneath the facade, it's the same basic policy.
so, is it reasonable to suggest that the liberals are about to become as nihilistic as the republicans? what that means is different in canada, but the outcome may be no less satisfying.
the traditional wisdom is that people make decisions on the long weekend. i'm not buying that, that's old media thinking. but, here we are, nonetheless, and i'm going to reiterate what i stated previously - the most important thing this election is to prevent the liberals from getting a majority, whatever that means. that is likely enough to generate a cleaning mechanism in the party, who will begin to see trudeau as a liability and a loser. and, if it doesn't work this time, we can try again next time. but you don't want to leave a fascist in a tenuous hold on power like this - you want to topple them, before they topple us.
in some parts of the country, that might mean voting for the ndp, and there may even be a good local candidate caught up in the catastrophe that should be maintained through it.
in some parts, it might mean strategically voting conservative to block a liberal from winning.
and, in quebec, the best option is probably the bloc, in most places - but please check the polling before you vote strategically.
once this cesspool is cleared out, we can return to normal politics.
right now, we should unite to send this aristocrat to the gallows, which is where all aristocrats belong.
that will be my one and only analysis of this election cycle.
22:46
i was almost done on saturday morning, and the machine crashed. i took it as an opportunity to reinstall when i got back from groceries, which needed to be done.
i need to finish some cleaning tonight, but i should be in for the next 10 days or so and have to get this done very soon.
22:47
i don't care about "gun control". i've typed a lot about this - i've never seen a gun in my life, and hope i never do, but, i don't think that access to weapons is the problem. i think that the war culture we live in - and the heteropatriarchal system of religious control upholding it - is. i'd rather abolish religion than abolish gun ownership, and think it will get us more to the point we want to get to.
so, pass your gun laws if you want, i don't really care - but i'd like to see a policy that might actually work, too, and largely see these debates as just distracting from real violence-reduction strategies.
but, this is not a constitutional monarchy, and the pmo should not be passing legislation of this sort via order-in-council. this should be left up to the house of commons. to me, that's the only real issue here - the way they tried to do it might be normal in the united states (or would have been in 17th century england), but it is considered an abuse of power, in canada.
and, they keep doing that...because they don't give a fuck about our system of government...
so, i actually think that the conservatives would be taking the correct option in tearing down the order and introducing legislation to the house in it's place. it would then be up to the house to figure it out, however meaningless it is, in the end.
and, my actual position on this empty, endless debate is actually that the fact that the liberals now think it's reasonable to ram through policy using orders-in-council is another reason in a long list of why they should be removed from power.
23:10
in eras past, i may have aligned with the idea that the citzenry needs guns to hold the government accountable, and that may seem more relevant today than ever.
but, we need to expand that debate past firearms to aerial drones, helicopters, howitzers....
it's about the change in technology. chances are pretty low that a militia in canada is going to stand much of a chance against the military, nowadays, so we need to change our thinking on that and adopt a different strategy.
information warfare is key in this society, and it's more important that we grasp that point than hole ourselves up in bunkers awaiting a drone strike to wipe us out.
23:19
no, an abuse of power isn't ok because you like the outcome.
that's the logic of fascism.
23:23
however, most of the arguments underlying banning guns are not about stopping militias, or at least not on the surface. that might be what's really driving it, but i'd be arguing with myself.
if some alpha male decides he's going to kill his wife because she doesn't like him anymore, is access to weapons what's driving it, or is the actual problem the heteropatriarchal system of dominance that tells this alpha male that he owns his wife, in the first place? if you take away the guns and the knives and everything else, he's going to beat her to death with his bare hands.
and, if you look at the mass killings, there's recently been attacks using every tool these people can find, including trucks. i'd actually support banning trucks, so i can't ask that rhetorical question, i'd have to answer 'yes', albeit for different reasons. but, you get the point - it's the culture that creates these people, not the arms industry.
so, sure - let's abolish the religious foundations of society that create these viewpoints and normalize them within the traditional nuclear family. let's abolish the concept of marriage altogether, to begin with.
but, both of the fake left parties are in favour of strengthening these bonds, and are embracing positions around the issue that are generally associated with traditional conservatism. it's a part of the spectrum flop, and it makes what they have to say about access to guns entirely meaningless.
if you're buying into this, you're just being manipulated to garner votes and you probably won't even get what you want, in the end, because then you'd stop voting for it. you should wise up to it.
23:39
monday, september 6, 2021
there seems to be a strange level of agreement across the spectrum on this point, but i want to present a clarification of it, and a suggestion that europe is probably better off hoping for a "normal" republican administration if it wants to salvage ties.
trump's position on europe being weak and not worthy of defending is well understood, if foolish, and it's easy enough to misinterpret a continuity of policy under biden on the point.
but, if you look at biden's governing coalition, which is rooted in black voters, and driven by a policy team steeped in wokism and critical race theory, you might get a different interpretation of why future democrats are perhaps more likely to snub europe - it's a fundamentally anti-white coalition of voters and policy makers who are going to (however speciously) interpret special rules for europe (as well as for canada..) as upholding a concept of white supremacism.
the democratic party, moving forward, is going to be more interested in building alliances in africa, which it sees as it's historical point of origin, and not in europe, which it sees as a colonial force that it overthrew, and the source of most bad things in the world. it's going to interpret islam as the religion of the future and christianity as the religion of the past.
while this isn't trumpism, exactly, it has a lot of overlaps with it, by accident, and it presents a lot of disincentives towards undoing what was done. and, unlike trumpism, this is a long-term coalition that is likely to be around for a while.
so, europe - as well as canada - is going to have to adjust to a world where the historical alliances are no longer seen as foundational by a rapidly changing dominant demographic that wants to move past them and is likely to find more commonality with conservatives that want to hold on to the past - and may have to risk aligning with groups attacked as white supremacist, justly or not, in order to do it.
that's the new reality in america - white people are always irreversibly racist to their rotten core, and aligning with europe means aligning with nazism. and, it means canada and mexico must always be put on an equal policy footing as well - and that canada's insistence that it's special is not a consequence of the shared legal system and language but just canada being racist. it's absurd, but it's real, and it's not going anywhere for a long while.
so, don't write this off as continuity with trump. i don't think it actually is...
my bios reacted very differently when i cleared it this time than it did previously. it normally defaults to 2000 on the date clear, but it defaulted to 2099 this time. i don't know why.
i have not flashed this machine in quite a while. i once had to rereprogram the board with a bus pirate because it bricked when i tried to flash it from inside windows, which is something that i should have know better than to try doing. alas.
i've long suspected that the actual problem with this machine is that somebody (cia. csis.) installed a bios virus on it when i wasn't here which included some kind of backdoor to a wireless device locked into the chip.
i'm wondering if this change means that somebody altered the bios when i was gone.
the script has completed, so let me go from there.
1:23
spoke too soon.
3:09
it seems to be the cubase install program that's forcing a reboot in a place i don't remember.
it seems like something is crashing, but i think it's actually hardcoded.
i don't remember it doing that before. but, let's see what happens.
3:15
i don't want to move to the 64 bit system until i start the matlab project.
i'm actually intending on using the windows 98 pc for a lot of the work left to do for peiod 3.1, to get a continuity of sound that wasn't intended for the period 1 & 2 material.
yes, i'm about to switch over, i just need to finish that update post. i have a large amount of new equipment, and i'm almost ready to restart, i just need to reorder my thoughts. this constant needless troubleshooting isn't helping. <----what did this intend to say before it was vandalized to include retardspeak?
3:17
yeah, that didn't launch.
let me try one more time before i format/reinstall.
again, the projects i want to be working on right now are the period 3.1 pieces from late 2003 and early 2004 listed at the top of this page:
period 3.2 won't click in until late 2004, but the matlab project won't start until after that, even.
i'm not interested in writing new music until i've completed the old pieces, but my music is not intended to be contemporary, or to comment on current topics.
when i finish the discography up until 2011, i will need to complete loose ends over the last 10-15 years (or whatever it ends up being) before i look at ideas relevant to then-contemporary concepts.
there is no possibility that i'm going to drop anything and start over, either. and, if this process never completes, so be it.
3:26
i have no idea why it's not working correctly.
but, i'm going to try to install from a different drive.
3:27
we're in a bottoming out, in music.
there's no audience.
what's the point?
i'm writing for a post-capitalist future that art exists in, again.
3:29
i'd might as well try to approach it from a vantage point, and try to get it right, rather than just rush it out to meet demand. there isn't a demand.
some of my favourite pieces took 30 years to write and underwent multiple revisions; this used to be a normal part of the composition process, before music was reduced to a commodity. i know it sounds bizarre to have no interest in being relevant, but that's what music has usually been about - realize the historical weirdness of the current neo-liberal paradigm in art. this isn't how it has ever been before, and it's not how it will be in the future. i'm just stuck in it. unfortunately.
so, yeah - it's going to take me 10-20 years to complete each of these pieces, and i wish other contemporary artists would see their work in this kind of historical context, rather than being obsessed with being a part of the fall's fashion trends.
3:34
ok, i got an error message this time, that's some progress.
3:49
i wonder if the reason it's doing this is because i changed driver signing in the middle of the script.
regardless, i think this is my last try before i format.
4:06
i wish i understood the underlying problem.
but, i set this machine up so that i wouldn't waste time troubleshooting - it's designed to instantly reformat on any kind of problem. and, i'm not going to waste large amounts of time troubleshooting, i'll reformat until it works.
4:08
i mean, it seems like some piece of hardware is malfunctioning, on first approach.
but, it's not obvious what it is and the more i tease it apart the less likely it seems that that's the case.
i really think that somebody thinks i'm doing something with this machine that i shouldn't be doing, and it seems like all i can do is wait until they give up, as they're operating on a level that i can only gleam.
it's a recording machine. that is all.
4:12
ok, so i was able to get the program to launch.
i was installing the copy protection software, then cubase sx 3 and then an update to it. this time, i skipped the cubase sx 3 install and just installed the update. it seems to have produced a stable install, but the asio driver won't load.
so, i'm reinstalling the alesis asio drivers and....
no.
let me try with the m-audio asio drivers..
yes. hrmmn.
so, let me try the alesis again...
yes.
weird.
ok.
one more reboot, then.
we'll have to test it when i finish the update post, i just wanted to get through the script. if that stabilizes, then maybe i need to alter the cubase install process.
there's been two repeated scenarios where the machine freezes:
1) the cubase issue, which looks like ram on first glance, but i think probably isn't. i mean, either all the ram is bad or none of it is. and it's probably not that all of it is.
2) when i search on one of the larger drives, which i think is an xp issue. again - that looks like ram, but i can't figure it which stick is bad, if it is.
it sounds crazy, but i'm guessing it's probably more along the lines of that i'm freezing the logger when i use too many resources. essentially, i'm crashing the software they're using to spy on me, which seems to be running at the firmware level.
yes, that's insane. but, it's what seems to be true. it is insane, but they're crazy, not me...
4:34
ok, no, it just did the same thing it was doing. ugh.
let me try it with the mixer running and see if it helps.
(these notes will be useful to me in the future)
4:38
that was enough to get me through the script, anyways.
i may have to revisit this afterwards, but let's just finish the update post, first.
so, let me take note of this - i want to revisit the deletion part of the script. while i seem to be stuck with some kind of process running in the background that i can't turn off (something i've noticed on my other machines, as well), i am not technically connected to the internet with this machine anymore (the nic is disabled in the bios) and don't need the kind of scripting i was running previously to avoid spyware intrusions. so, i can turn off most of the script as a troubleshooting step and turn it back on, incrementally, as i stabilize the system.
4:58
ok, so now cubase is crashing instead of the pc.
that's major progress, actually - and demonstrates the point, a little.
5:07
ok, so this is better, now, but i won't know how stable it is for a while.
this is what i did after the script was finished:
- increased pagefile size
- set number of processors to 2
- uninstalled and reinstalled alesis drivers and maudio drivers
- uninstalled three step cubase install and reinstalled with 2 step (just the copy protection device and the update file, not the base sx 3)
- took everything out of the vst plugin folder
- reinstalled the update on top of itself a second time
it's launching without instantly crashing, and that's good enough for now.
so, back to the update post, then.
well, i gotta finish cleaning, first. then the update post....after i sleep, probably. i didn't think this would take all night...
5:21
see, this was completely stable, and i really didn't change anything, so i don't know...
5:22
i should note that my dns client service has reinstalled randomly a few times, which makes no sense.
i can see these little glimpses, but i need to be clear - i don't have a network card installed in the machine.
i noticed a few months (years?) ago that my laptop was connecting to the microsoft servers....without a network card installed.
so, i mean - i disabled the integrated wired nics in the bios. the spec for the board says it doesn't have an integrated wireless (although i suspect it does and it was just shorted out on this model). i've turned off everything i can get to in the bios, and windows says there's nothing there. so, whatever it's accessing is inaccessible to me, and that's all there is to it.
but, there's something going on...
5:28
so, the machine froze on launching cubase, again. dammit...
i had the mixer on.
let's try with the mixer off.
5:32
yeah, the build date is different now - it's oct 13, 2005.
i will update my daw when i move to the 64 bit os, but this is the best 32 bit daw there is, and i've messed around quite a bit.
i also need this to be halfways usable because i've got so many projects done up in it.
if it's hardware, i can replace it, but i don't think it is....
5:36
ok, so it doesn't want to crash with the m-audio card.
the m-audio was purchased for playback, not for recording. like, it was meant to be a part of a stereo system, but it didn't end up used that way. it has rca outs and ultimately connects to a stereo receiver on the desk...it's a backup...i can't multitrack into it or even record a guitar through it...that's why i have a mixer...
the soundblaster interface can take a single line in, but it's in the 16-bit pc and i want to keep it there for now. so, i need the alesis to work...and, i mean, it's what this is built around...
let me see what happens when i load it with the generic asio drivers.
i should point out that, because i'm using xp, the operating system uses wdm as it's sound engine. this is archaic, even by windows standards. but, i've got it turned off in the driver framework.
if it's stable with the other devices now (it wasn't previously) then i guess i can try to update the firmware or play with some driver settings...
i know i'm dancing around something deeper, but i ultimately want the device to work, first and foremost. i keep pointing out that i don't actually even care if i'm being spied on, i just don't have a fast enough computer to be spied on and record on at the same time.
5:48
hey, i could be using an atari.
5:50
i'm not actually old enough to have ever recorded anything on an atari.
i had a friend with a commodore 64, but the first computer i actually used for recording was an entry level pentium. which is pretty old, nowadays, but not atari old.
5:51
you have to understand that a very large percentage of the best electronic music ever created was recorded on an 8-bit atari.
this 32-bit dual core windows xp machine is pretty high tech, in comparison.
5:57
ok, so it just froze with the mixer off and the default asio driver loaded.
the only actual asio device in the machine and turned on right now is the m-audio delta 1010 card. so, let me try it again with a direct connection to the m-audio card.
i guess that if i can repeatedly avoid crashing with a direct connection and crash with a layered connection then it's something in the asio framework.
6:06
i can just avoid the default asio driver, right? i have no real actual use for it.
6:07
i don't want to use wdm because i learned a while back that windows automatically resamples streaming audio for you - and you have no control over it. i figured that out because i could hear it.
it was designed for consumer audio, of course. they fixed this in later versions of windows, but it's a quirk of xp. so, you want to use asio if you're recording with xp in 2021.
6:12
it just crashed in the m-audio driver, so that was merely a coincidence.
6:14
ok.
i have extra ram.
let me try it with one stick of ram and go from there.
6:16
i've done this before and mostly reduced the issue to seating. it was running quite smoothly...
however, if i'm correct in my deduction that they corrupted the bios then they probably shorted the ram again. it's not acting correctly.
so, i'll do a little cleaning while i wait for the board to cool down and then start again with one as i finish that update post, again. see, i need a word document open on the recording pc as i'm doing it....
6:19
the taliban appear to be getting air support.
the hypothesis on the ground is that it's pakistan, but i can't imagine the united states letting the pakistani air force operate in the region.
i suspect it's the united states that is giving the taliban air support.
6:25
i might be wrong.
could the state actor that is giving the taliban air support identify itself, please?
6:29
if there are bombs falling in afghanistan right now, the only likely source of those bombs is the united states.
i'm sorry.
this is what's happening.
6:35
america has a long history of supporting viciously repressive regimes when it suits their interest, and has done more than a few very sneaky things, as well. this seems to have been planned in the gulf, not in kabul; trump seems to have caved to the saudis, who he actually got along with very well, by all accounts.
they made a deal.
we'll probably never know the details for sure, but we can try and figure them out.
there was a secret war in cambodia going on through the ending phases of vietnam. that seems to be the better comparison.
but, we're going to find out what it is that got set in motion - we've put these people in power for some reason that is in america's material self-interest, and we'll find out why soon enough.
6:43
it's been a few weeks, now, and how am i feeling?
my initial reaction was quite positive, but i'm not experiencing the results i hoped for, at this time, and am considering going back on cyproterone, at a lower dosage.
it is apparently not unusual for adrenal glands to overcompensate for a period of time after surgery, but my tolerance for defeminization is exceedingly minimal and i don't want even the slightest bit of it. i've even had a few unwanted erections, which i hoped would be impossible. i have to assume that semen production is physically impossible, even if erections are not, which is that much more annoying. i cut my balls out, brain - can you lay off the nrbs already? fuck.
frankly, i'm starting to get a little bit worried that this isn't going to suppress my testosterone to the levels that i hoped it would, that i may be experiencing side effects that i might have trouble suppressing and that i may have to accept the need to stay on the anti-androgens indefinitely.
i went through a lot of effort to deal with this and the results so far aren't what i hoped for. it's not clear what the next step is. i mean, if i can't get my testosterone down by cutting my balls out, what's left to live for? so, it's depressing - that's the simple truth of it.
7:38
again - i understand that it's normal for some backlash to sink in for a period of time after the surgery. i've been on suppressors for a very long time, and my hormones are essentially going haywire as a result of going off of them. ok.
the doctor told me to just go off the drugs entirely...i did what he said....
but, it had better stop soon, or i'm going to sink into a very deep depression that i don't have an algorithm out of.
all i can do for now is hide inside for a bit and hope it gets better.
7:42
i had to get some groceries this weekend and the simple truth is that i was too embarrassed to leave the house for several days in a row.
it seemed like it was getting better on saturday night, but it's gotten worse again since.
7:44
ok, so i'm going to do a rigorous ram testing here, on second thought. i have a simple test i can do to see if it's the problem or not.
there's one stick in the first slot.
let me open cubase, with the m-audio drivers, and see if it crashes after an hour or so.
9:03
stick one in slot one did in fact crash.
ok.
let's try slot 2...
9:33
stick one in slot two crashed.
see, i'm convinced it's not the ram, so if i go through all of this and it crashes every single time, i'll have to conclude it's something else. i guess there could be a nasty short in the board. but, i'm going to have to operate on some other cause.
and, if i can find a stable configuration then i've fixed the problem.
9:56
stick one in slots three and four also crashed.
bad stick of ram, right?
well, let's see if i can find a stick that doesn't crash before i come to that conclusion.
10:06
stick two in slot one crashed.
it's 15 year old ram, and i've used it quite heavily. it's possible that two sticks are bad.
let's try slot two.
10:10
so, i took a shower, slept a little and woke up feeling a little better than the last few days.
let's hope things are started to stabilizing into a new normal and my adrenaline glands are done spazzing out, now.
i'll do the ram thing later - right now i should be focusing on finishing the update post.
19:15
in addition to gorillas and chimpanzees, any mention of jews is now banned in the youtube comments.
20:05
youtube really needs to revisit that decision.
20:05
i do not support mask mandates in general and quite obviously would not support mask mandates in the specific context of schools, given that i don't support them at all. there is absolutely no science whatsoever to support mandating masks in schools, given that children are far less likely to get sick from this virus than the general population is. schools are the place where the evidence would least support mandating mask use. if you disagree with me, don't call me names, or cite "health experts" on authority, actually find me peer-reviewed scientific studies that were published before the pandemic (to minimize bias introduced by the political discussion around mask use during the pandemic.) that back up your point.
you can't; the studies all state that masks do not work.
however, i also realize that there's a lot of irrational, hysterical, easily frightened people out there that aren't as grounded in careful or clear thinking that i am. if a student does not want to sit in a classroom with unmasked students, their preference should have some value; conversely, if an unmasked student does not want to sit in a room full of hijabbed fundamentalist muslims, they should not be forced to do so, either.
i actually don't think it would be that hard to split the classrooms up ( and understand that i don't think mask use is going to measurably reduce spread, so i'm not interested just catering to a kind of superstitious belief in mask use. i promise you that, if you study it, you'll notice that rejecting the ideas that masks work well enough to bother with is strongly correlated with atheism, and believing in mask use is more common amongst religious people. because that's what you're really dealing with: faith in masks. <----this has been vandalized, clearly
but, it's invasive enough (from either perspective) to just split the schools in half - mask use in one part and no mask use in the other. and, you can take it as an experiment...
i would just keep my kid home, regardless, if i had one, right now. because i don't like where this is heading...and i would probably be planning a way out of the country altogether, if i hadn't already left.
but, it's a reasonable compromise.
if forced to pick between one option or the other, i would argue that those arguing that forced mask use is a rights restriction have a better argument than those arguing that exposure to non-masked people is a rights restriction, as the first is about bodily autonomy and the second is merely a religious belief, which is less important than individual autonomy.
22:03
tuesday, september 7, 2021
i just woke up.
so, i've now had two dreams where i non-consensually "orgasmed" since the orchiectomy, both after having left the house for a short amount of time. i'm writing this because i suspect i'm still being drugged, and the people drugging me are too fucking stupid to understand what happened.
that should basically never happen anymore, and is why i went through this. so, the fact that it's happening suggests i'm being drugged, somehow. i suspected that before the operation, as well.
i cannot call either dream a "sex dream". i used to dream about having sex with men as a female, but it's actually stopped for a very long period of time. nowadays, the most frequent way these kinds of dreams work is that i find myself realizing i'm about to ejaculate in the middle of doing something else and have to run to the bathroom, and i can of course never stop it because i'm asleep. so, the dream climaxes in a point of embarrassment about not getting to the bathroom in time, not in any kind of sexual activity. sometimes, my body seems to go through this process without any dream occurring at all, and i just wake up sort of twitching. but, the commonality is always that i'm randomly ejaculating in a way that i want to stop, and never that i'm enjoying any kind of sex at all - not with either gender, and not as either gender.
i'd say it's been at least ten years - probably closer to 15 - since i had any sort of enjoyable, consensual sex dream. and, i've long just wanted to turn the process off and get on with life without it. so, i'm finding these continued random orgasms to be annoying, to say the least.
but, i guess that my subconscious hasn't caught up yet, either, because i just had my testicles removed, which means i can no longer ejaculate. in fact, i was on high dosage cyproterone for years before that, and have generally not producing any kind of excretion during orgasm for years and years and years. sometimes, there's the tiniest little bit, but it's usually nothing at all.
i have not masturbated since i got back from the surgery, and had not masturbated for several months leading up to the surgery.
so, why exactly is this happening?
and how do i get it to stop?
if these hormone fluctuations stabilize into high estrogen and low testosterone within a few more weeks, great. and, if it sets me back and i have to start over, so be it - i didn't choose it, but it happened. but, if these bursts of testosterone do not stop soon, what is going to begin to happen is that my hair is going to fall out, and i'll have to start wearing wigs, which...it's better than being bald, but not something i'm looking forward to.
so, i'm going to prioritize getting the testosterone tested asap.
if it's higher than 0.5, i'm going to ask to go back on the cyproterone. in fact, i still have quite a bit of it and am going to take one right now as a reaction to what just happened, which is what i did previously, as well...
that's probably going to knock me out, but it's better than the fluctuations. and, let's hope my adrenal gland can be trained correctly to knock this nonsense off.
2:49
the secretary seemed insistent that this was going to be something traumatic, but i guess she's used to dealing with male-identifying cis-men with active sex lives.
i haven't had sex since george w. bush was president, and haven't want to in about as long. i just want the whole thing to cease and am annoyed and sort of depressed that it still hasn't.
2:54
so, this is my message to whoever is drugging me - if you keep putting testosterone in my food when i'm gone, i'm going to keep taking anti-androgen pills. this is not good for my organs, but i'd rather be dead than have to continue with this bullshit.
so, stop.
2:56
i'm consistently frustrated by the youtube suggestions page, as it consistently completely misunderstands why i'm searching for what i'm searching for. the way it works is just not very well thought through. so, for example, if you were to do a research essay on stalin's defeat of nazism in the context of a struggle within the european left, you'd end up with a suggestions page full of nazi videos. and, in fact, i'll probably get one for writing this trite comment.
but, the one thing it's really good at is throwing these little snippets of christopher hitchens at me:
i've found him frustrating since i was a teenager. sometimes, he's so wrong it demands some kind of explanation; other times, his foresight is just baffling.
and, watching the situation unfold in afghanistan, he's bringing up a very good point, and one i've made myself - it's easy to understand how people may be sympathetic to the taliban, if their animosity for america is just so thick that they can't see a foot in front of them as a result of it. and, it's potentially that much worse if they're not actually that opposed to them, deep down.
5:01
you can find the video on youtube. it's, like, eight little rocks, and it didn't come close to hitting him.
it makes palestinian protesters look like tactical geniuses, in comparison.
some combination of western military and political factions seem to want to see the headline "afghanistan war is over" in the news, because they seem to think it will give them a bump.
two years ago, i would have - and in fact did - make that argument. but, it presupposed not signing an agreement with the group of thugs we were fighting against (or, rather, holding the fort against as they launched endless ineffective attacks - they could have never mounted a substantive offensive) that transferred power to them as a precondition to ending the war.
ending the war might have been popular, if it wasn't a surrender agreement. if there was a list of things to not do, they checked every one of them off.
regardless, that seems to be the point - and the timeline seems to be apocalypse day, 9/11.
if the resistance can sort of stay low for a few weeks and let the idiots run their propaganda blitz, the logic underlying the air support will cease, and these western factions will no doubt get bored and go away by the 15th.
5:25
so, is it pakistan bombing?
i haven't seen any definitive proof.
but, even if it is pakistan, it's really the united states.
if you're standing on the ground in afghanistan, it looks like your foe is the pakistanis, i get it. but, the money is coming from the gulf under american guidance, it's been that way for decades, and the ultimate arbiter and decision maker is central command, not the isi.
5:31
i'll say it again: if there's bombs falling in afghanistan, it's because central command decided they should be falling. there's no way around it.
and, what they want is that headline.
at least for now.
but, they can't keep bombing indefinitely. so, let's hope the resistance can figure that out and find a way to evade the drones for a few weeks, until they move on.
5:34
if afghanistan is to be gobbled up by a regional power, which ought it to be?
it looks like a former ssr on paper, and it certainly underwent a period of mongol domination, but it's actually been a part of almost all historical iranian empires, going back to the achaemenids, about 600-550 bce. they speak an iranian, rather than an indian, dialectic (although "indian" and iranian are branches of the same language group). pakistan, on the other hand, is a historical part of india, and speaks indian dialects.
the media is drawing attention to the fact that the taliban is "more moderate" than isis, which is an absurd argument given how extreme they both are. but, the taliban and isis are both sunnis. one of the issues likely to come up in the region is the genocide of shia groups, like the hazara. iran is, of course, the dominant shia group in the region. and that might be a part of the logic. remember - iraq was supposed to be a sunni counterpoint to iran, as well. that's a substantive point of conflict, and one the taliban are not likely to yield on.
but, if we're living through a period of consolidation into historical trade blocs, with arab leagues and european unions and chinese empires and american trade blocs, afghanistan is a part of persia, in the end - and there is really no ambiguity about it.
5:55
the indo-iranians were a steppe people, at one time - they lived to the north and west of afghanistan, and moved downwards into the region through mountains and river valleys. they split into east factions (which invaded india) and west factions (which invaded iran). that was a long time ago....
...but the historical iran maintained a memory of their ancestral heritage, which is in modern day russia.
the iranians came from the area labeled uzbekistan on this map of greater iran:
now, those boundaries are no longer modern because the region was overrun by turks and mongols, in succession. uzbeks are not iranians, for example.
but, afghanistan itself absolutely remains a sort of "eastern iran" and that fact should not be forgotten when analyzing unfolding events.
6:03
afghanistan, as we know it, was carved out of a persian empire by the british. that's how afghanistan became afghanistan - the iranians ceded the territory to the british.
but, unlike india, iran has a history of empire and has usually formed a unitary state.
so, if you believe there's a process in history, it's hard to deny the ultimate conclusion - in the end, it's the iranians that take over.
6:10
this is a map of the iranian language family, which overlaps fairly well with the historical iranian empire:
historically, armenia has been under very heavy persian influence, and the extent of iranian-speakers extended much farther to the north in central asia, encompassing modern day turkmenistan, uzbekistan and parts of russia and kazakhstan.
understanding that map will help in understanding both the depths and boundaries of iranian influence in central asia.
6:16
so, i mean, i know there's this narrative about a proxy war between pakistan and india developing, but...
the more fundamental reality on the ground is in the context of greater iran. if pakistan and india are operating in the region, it's a proxy war by foreign powers - and no less so than a conflict between russia and the united states.
but, i don't actually expect that india will put up much of a fight.
the actors likely to actually put fighters on the ground are russia, pakistan, iran and the united states.
6:20
if there was a hindu or buddhist minority on the ground, the indians might be more interested.
they don't want to fight over a landlocked muslim country - it's in their interests to have less war, not more war.
6:22
ok.
back to what i was doing.
i need to make some calls this morning, as well.
7:00
i'm actually not ashamed to admit that i would have supported saddam hussein in a theoretical conflict between baathism and the islamists.
but, see you're missing the point - it's the actual reason they took him out.
8:24
he would have been the lesser evil, by far.
but, it's a reflection of the depravity of islamism and not a statement of support for saddam hussein.
8:25
this policy is developed by central command, which exists in the saudi sphere of interest. it's literally physically located in the gulf, and largely acts as a proxy for saudi interests, given that the saudis are the dominant us ally in the region.
the saudis want an islamist state in iraq, in syria and in afghanistan, too.
but, they can't get one in iraq or syria, and we can only hope they lose in afghanistan, too.
the policy that needs to change is that we need to stop being lapdogs for the saudi oil sheikhs. that is the root cause of the problem, here - the geopolitics of strategic control of oil, which remains at the crux of us foreign policy, regardless of biden's rhetoric on the climate.
and, it's probably worse than it's ever been.
canada is in a long running spat with the saudis over a number of issues, and i have a hunch that a big part of the cold shoulder we're getting from biden has to do with the white house picking the saudis as the more strategic partner.
in a lot of ways the saudi alliance is the most fundamental alliance in contemporary american foreign policy, even more important than nato. well, look at the decisions being made - they picked the saudi interests as of primary importance.
it's not well understood by everybody, but it's been an undercurrent in the analysis for a long time. it's not surprising. it's just jarring to see it laid so bare, and i think a lot of people are kind of denying it.
8:34
so, that was a sleepy day, and i expected as much after taking the androgen suppressor. i may be circulating more than i'd like due to my adrenal glands spazzing out, but my ability to produce testosterone is drastically reduced and taking 50 mg of cyproterone is, in context, something like smashing an ant with an anvil. ants are resilient, though. little fuckers are hard to smash sometimes...
anyways, i'm feeling better, i think.
if i have to take a pill or two a week for the next six months, whatever - i have enough left for it. but, i'm stepping back from the wait-and-see. i'll be popping cyproterone at the slightest hint of circulating androgen, and have to hope i can train my adrenal gland to just fucking stop.
of course, if i'm being drugged, like, fuck off - what's the point? the only logic i can erect out of it is that somebody insists i need to breed, like i'd have any fucking interest in raising some bag of snot, anyways. if i accidentally managed to impregnate somebody, my logic would work something like this:
1. insist on an abortion. if i can't get one,
2. insist on adoption. if i can't get that,
3. insist on signing a waiver agreement in which the mother agrees to take sole responsibility over parenting, given that they are refusing abortion or adoption. if i can't get that,
4. refuse any sort of support at all and cite the mother's refusal to get an abortion as an argument that she is taking sole responsibility, whether she accepts it or not. and, if i can't get that
5. flee the country. then, if i get caught,
6. flee again. and again. until...
7. they throw me in jail. i'll take the jail sentence as preferable.
and, by then, the kid is probably old enough to tell me to fuck off - which would be the only logical decision, if they have any brains. i'd clearly have no interest. and, they'd be justified in hating me for it. whatever.
if there's some entity or organization out there that absolutely insists i must breed, then take a strand of hair, do it in a test tube and let somebody else deal with it. i'm not going to.
i did not store sperm.
anyways. yes - i'm awake and about to eat. but i wanted to do a hydroxyapatite update post...
19:46
is there any precedent of demanding an abortion, then arguing against child support when the mother refuses one?
i'll make the argument - i think it's the proper legal agreement. if the sperm donor doesn't want anything to do with it, and the mother insists on following through, then it's hers - strictly.
19:51
i do not have no testicles. therefore, i do not have the cells that are required in order to create sperm.
no amount of drugging me with testosterone can undo that, it's impossible.
forever.
irreversibly.
i understand that, and i'm ecstatic about it. the complete fucking idiot that is drugging me against my will is quite obviously intellectually incapable of understanding that fact.
(this post is horribly vandalized, clearly)
19:53
i agree that a woman owns her body and that she has veto power over pregnancy decisions. if you look at my position, that's actually the fundamental assumption - that a sperm donor has no right to make that choice. a sperm donor can petition and try to convince, perhaps even using monetary means (and i don't accept social conventions that ban convincing people, i'm in favour of argumentative discourse with the end purpose of persuasion), but the individual that owns the uterus has full autonomy over her body, in the end, and there's no debating of the issue.
but, likewise, i believe that a sperm donor would have full ownership over their labour and that it's just as tyrannical to force a sperm donor into a non-consensual financial relationship as it is to force a child carrier into an unwanted termination.
and, i think that responsibility for one's decisions follows from the autonomy to make those decisions; that a right to make free choices implies the obligation to suffer the consequences of those choices, as well.
so, i'm not arguing for sperm donor interference, and i think it's abundantly clear that i'm not. but, i think there's a logical inconsistency in arguing for autonomy of the child carrier, but not in autonomy for the sperm donor. broadcasting intent during the pregnancy to not be involved in the raising of the child should be enough to allow the child carrier to make an informed choice, and understand the consequences of that choice, as well - and then be required to live by them.
the full abolition of heteropatriarchal social relations must end in full positive freedom for all, not in inversions of the existing status quo.
20:07
if you find that really upsetting, it's not very likely that you and i are going to get along very well, anyways.
about that hydroxyapatite post....
20:14
so, the hydroxyapatite.
is this working?
let's remember what i'm doing, first. i bought some ground up cow bones that are marketed as a potent calcium supplement but are something like 90% pure hydroxyapatite, which is the lattice structure involved in your teeth. your body cannot produce this in adulthood, but it can absorb it on contact. it's actually nasa that did most of the research on this, trying to find a way to get around bone resorption in space (if you spend much time in space, your bones start to disintegrate, and it's permanent. that is the real reason that space travel is almost impossible to consider, at the moment.), and this is legit, in theory. but, pure hydroxyapatite isn't a widely available commodity...
i was hoping that the hydroxyapatite might help to rebuild some dips opening up around the gumline. i had some kind of cementing of the gumline done a few years ago, and think it was probably a bad idea, and may have even been malicious. i just listened to the dentist; don't we all? but, when he was done he told me not to tell anybody, which is a pretty strong suggestion that he shouldn't have done what he did. i also have a chipped tooth on one side from falling off my bicycle, years ago. but, i've never had a filling or been told i had a cavity. for that reason, i'm being told that fillings aren't the best idea (i'd have to drill into healthy teeth). so, i was hoping to just strengthen and rebuild around decay that is due to aging, to gum recession and, maybe, some dental malpractice.
the studies i was able to find suggested that it works best as a topical, as mixed in saliva - and that it does actually work, eventually.
but, i mean, is this serious or just hokey bullshit?
i stopped for a few weeks when i got back from surgery and tried it again this morning and i can instantly feel the difference, even if i can't see it in the mirror. the gaps haven't filled in, or at least not entirely - i think there has been some reversal, but it hasn't restored perfect teeth, and i might be tricking myself. but, i can feel the difference in strength.
so, i keep posting these periodic updates and keep saying "it's working. sort of. i think.", and i'm going to hold to that, again.
but, expectations should be lowered a little, as well - it's not going to restore your gumline to perfection. or, at least, it doesn't seem like it.
20:31
and, if the government were to force me to hang out with the snot bag in jail, i'd play them this song as a lullaby:
22:26
every night.
repeatedly.
22:27
wednesday, september 8, 2021
"that song is too descartian."
0:16
wow, that thunderclap sounded like a bomb dropping.
0:28
so, now it's not pakistan bombing.
now, it's "Afghan government warplanes that escaped to Tajikistan during the Taliban takeover", which is....what?
if it's confirmed that it is in fact afghan planes that are bombing the resistance, it follows clearly enough that the taliban now have an air force, which was an obvious enough inevitability, given the facts on the ground.
but, who exactly is facilitating that?
i'm a logician, i'm not a magician, and i don't have secret data. but, c'mon, people - see what's happening in front of you.
0:49
but, it's remarkable how fast normally skeptical people become gullible when they're dangled with some delusions that fit their bias, isn't it?
0:54
look at the sources you're relying on!
would you normally believe a word these people say?
so, why are you so gullible, now?
0:54
i certainly appreciate the irony, but i actually don't think this is helpful.
ok, so yesterday was fri-sat-sun - and was a bad sample due to the long weekend.
today is sat-sun-tues, and you're seeing the previous trend reassert.
tomorrow will be sun-tue-wed and that should see further correction.
reliable polling won't reassert itself until friday morning.
i'm sure nik knows that the demographics on the long weekend are wonky, up to and including higher completion rates. you know i have a math degree; it's been a while since i pointed out i worked the phones while i was getting one. i understand this business pretty well.
long weekends are great if you're a surveyor trying to hit targets, but the data is shit.
hey - i could be wrong. but, let's wait until friday before we start drawing conclusions.
again: we saw something similar in 2015, and it's easy to understand it. there's a bias on long weekends, and it fucks with the randomness of the sampling.
there's not any empirical evidence that carbon taxation actually works, so putting faith in the market mechanism is essentially a fallacy. the assumption that emissions will fall when the system clicks up to the next level is really rooted mostly in faith. but, that's markets for you - they're a religion, not a science.
there are other policies, mostly at the provincial level, that have prevented emissions from rising out of control. fuel efficiency standards are increasing, buildings are making progress in efficiency and the shutdown of fossil fuel driven power plants cut a huge amount of emissions out, so why exactly did they still go up?
the answer is that the major source of emissions in canada is the tar sands, themselves, and the more production of oil you get, the worse the situation ends up.
further, the cut in power-related emissions is a kind of a one time dip. that doesn't continue forwards, and there's not a lot left to do. but, the tar sands are still expanding.
my analysis is that it's not likely that any of the efficiency tweaks we have in front of us over the next five-ten years will come close to offsetting the rise from the oil industry, carbon tax or not.
you might, indeed, see a one time dip in 2020 due to the economy crashing, but that'll just make the recovery that much more of an eyesore.
the only serious way to reduce emissions in canada is to shut the tar sands down, and that's off the table.
so, you should expect emissions to continue to increase over the next five-ten years, regardless of the outcome of this election, or the next one, for that matter.
it might take a while to get this right. and that's ok.
19:41
thursday, september 9, 2021
much more sleepiness, alas.
i'm feeling better.
i think.
7:06
it's a shame i slept this morning, the air is always cleaner in here in the morning.
i've made it most of the way through august on the update post, really. it shouldn't be that much longer.
7:07
i first started drawing attention to this issue in this space around 2018, but it was in fact the reason i moved from ottawa to windsor, and then watched thousands of others do the same thing, undoing the reason i moved here.
while the root cause is that wages haven't kept up with inflation due to the collapse in unionization (a well understood trend and one that won't be fixed by bourgeois politics - workers need to stand up and demand higher salaries.), i'm not even in the labour force and that doesn't even apply to me.
the thing i find most annoying is property companies that want to budget for me.
i live a freer life than most, and i spend 65% of my odsp on rent. i don't know what assumptions are underlying the idea that i need to keep 70% of my income, but they're not realistic, or even desirable, for most people. if you were to give me these extra hundreds of dollars a month, i don't even know what i'd spend it on.
i can take guesses - i don't have a car or pay for transportation, for example, i bicycle or walk. but, that's not a financial decision, it's a health decision, and an issue of individual accountability regarding the climate. if you gave me an extra $200/month to spend on transportation, i would just spend it on something else.
i don't pay for cable, but i wouldn't pay for cable if you gave me the money as an earmark for it - i'd use it for internet. i don't pay for a cell phone because i don't want to be tracked, not because i can't afford it.
i don't have kids or support payments. i don't have a pet.
and, i have a math degree - i can budget my finances.
it's actually not legal for rental companies to deny you based on not meeting an arbitrary percentage. but, the reason they keep doing it is that they have enough demand that the supply doesn't sit, and they don't have to change. so, they won't. and, i can sit here and bitch about it, but what that means is i'm going to get outcompeted regardless, and i have better ways to spend my life than try to win a competition for housing by generating 1000% more income than i'd have any interest in spending.
and, i look at the immigration targets set by all the parties - hundreds of thousands of people a year. they're all the same. we're not building a fraction of that. i mean, the platforms talk about building something like a million new homes, total - which is what we needed last year. i want to see a million new homes per year for the next ten years. it's not even on the radar.
....and, the maximum amount of rent i can pay is x = y - 440.
plugging in y= 1225,
x = 1225 - 440 = 785.
that is 785/1225 = 64%.
i'm not interested in and strongly resent having people tell me i need to budget for things i don't want.
9:11
yes, i'd like to see odsp go up and yes i'd like to get into subsidized housing.
but, i need to exist in the mean time, and having stable housing is more important to me than having disposable income - something any person with a brain would agree with.
9:15
that disposable income isn't very useful to me if i'm living in a tent, is it?
9:15
yes, i've had some extra money during the pandemic, and i've spent it on things like furniture, vegetables, cleaning supplies and music gear.
these aren't monthly purchases that need to be budgeted for and i am in fact running up against a sort of a wall on it - i don't have any furniture left to get and i'm ready to start working on period 3.1.
i have no idea where that money's going to go if these restrictions on concerts continue much longer...but i can tell you with certainty that i'm not going to buy a car, i'm not going to get a bus pass, i'm not going to get a phone and i'm not going to start regularly eating in restaurants.
when i was younger, i used to buy a lot of cds, but that's not technologically relevant, any more.
maybe i could donate it to a housing advocacy group.
9:28
the people of afghanistan neither support nor condone this.
so, it seems like the balance of power in this election is, indeed, going to reduce to the four-way mess in quebec, which is likely not predictable. what is the movement here, on the ground?
the liberals seem to be steady, while the bloc seem to be down - and the biggest movement seems to be to the conservatives. four-way splits are dangerous, though, in tracking movements. so, does that actually make sense?
i'm going to claim it does. while the bloc is a social democratic party, it's also a nationalist party, and it has long held a substantive minority of conservative voters. in fact, it was initially created as a splinter of the conservative party, before being overrun by soft leftists. something that's happened over the last five-ten years is that the nationalist-federalist split in quebec politics has softened up, re-establishing a normal spectrum. this is why there's a right-wing soft-nationalist party in power in quebec today, and why the pq seems to be losing relevancy, altogether. as bloc voters move away from nationalism as a workable political idea in the presence of a more competitive ndp (they may not win seats this cycle, but they're still running much higher than they did 20 years ago, largely at the expense of the bloc), it make sense that many would move to the right, in an attempt to align with their provincial voting choices. there is no provincial "conservative party" in quebec.
so, the idea that we're seeing caq/bloc voters become caq/conservative voters makes tons of sense, and that visual movement can be seen as plausible, however difficult it is to test for significance.
what does that mean on the ground?
in montreal, it probably means little. so, most of the liberal seats there are probably safe.
in the rural regions, as well as in quebec city (the latter more so), where the bloc actually wins nowadays, it may present a counter-intuitive outcome, as a bloc---->conservative swing may actually help the liberals in suburban or exurban ridings. close bloc/liberal races would definitely result in liberal wins, if bloc voters move to the conservatives in numbers that are not large enough to produce conservative victories.
but, this is very complicated, and the data isn't clear. it doesn't appear as though the two big polling companies - nanos and mainstreet - are going to release details this cycle, either. i would call on them to do so, for the national interest. but, these are private companies, and they're keeping their data hidden for a reason.
the conservatives will make gains in the atlantic region, in bc and in ontario, but it won't be enough unless they get some luck in quebec, too.
what about ontario?
again - i don't have the data available to me, but i'm not sure how good it would be, anyways. hundreds of thousands of people have changed riding boundaries in the last two years in ontario, especially in what we call the 416 and 905 areas. both areas actually have multiple calling codes. the conservatives are up, but i would be cautious in plugging those numbers into existing models.
what i'm going to say is this: the models might get the seat totals roughly correct, but i'd be surprised if they get the actual flipped seats correct. generally, when the conservatives go up, they do better in the 905 areas; the 416 areas are generally off limits, except in elections where the liberals crash very hard (2011, 1984). i think that this is beginning to change, both due to the pandemic and due to broader changes in demographics as a result of immigration. the doug ford vote is a gigantic wild card, here. so, if the models say the conservatives will get 10-15 seats in the 905, i'm going to suggest that they'll probably get their 10-15 seats in the gta, but that some of them will be in the 416. and, you want to consult the last ontario election to get your head around that.
the other thing to look for in ontario is to see if the ndp have recovered at all. if they have, they could flip some of the seats they lost in 2019. that will also hurt the liberals, a little. it's 5-6 or seats, tops.
but, it's quebec that will determine if there's a liberal minority or a conservative minority, and that's a complicated multi-player game that is very hard to project the winner of.
11:12
do, i think the ndp have recovered in ontario?
taking the bradley effect into consideration, i do not.
but, regional variations might be more important than provincial voting averages, and the data available to me isn't good enough to make a decision about it.
i'd suggest the ndp might win a seat or two back, but that's a guess.
11:19
i do not think the data supports the idea that the ndp are poised for large gains this election, at this time, and especially not if the conservatives run away liberals overperform in bc.
11:21
what it seems to me is that the national ndp average is actually being propped up by the collapse of the greens in the atlantic provinces, and that that will have precisely no effect on seat totals.
the ndp could consequently increase their total vote share by a couple of percentage points and gain nothing substantive from it.
but, i need to remind you that we've seen a bradley effect around jagmeet singh before and we should be careful with that polling.
11:24
if the polling has them at 20% and the bradley effect cuts them to 17% and they're up 5-10% in the east, the end result is a wash.
if the conservatives liberals do really well in bc, they could even lose seats, in total.
this is the kind of thing that happens when the society refuses to build social housing.
the other options are:
1) accept this happening outside the hotel instead of inside it, and police tasked not to enforce laws because the system can't deal with it
2) build more jails and hire more officers and more judges to put people in the jails
the money is being spent one way or the other - on a hotel, on subsidized housing or on jails.
how do you want to spend this money?
i vote for housing.
12:38
that money could have been spent on building housing, instead.
and, if anything, you want to accuse the mayor of fiscal mismanagement for spending the money on short-term hotels instead of on long term accommodations.
12:40
so, i'm done the update post up until i started the update post, which was right before i left. in fact, i'm done up to where i left...
in a democracy governed by the rule of law, it is the constitution that determines the distribution of power, not the rule of force, as brandished by armed thugs.
why is anybody arguing about that, exactly?
18:44
there appears to be a lot of denial about the situation going around.
we're routinely getting 30%+ of patients in ontario that have had at least one shot. is that 10x multiplier still useful, or are many times more vaccinated people assuming they just have a cold when they catch the delta strain?
so, what exactly are they going to do when they get to 90% vaccination rates and the virus is still running rampant?
i'm relatively patient, myself. at some point, they'll have to stop deluding themselves and face the evidence, right?
you're not going to stop this with mass vaccination. you never were. deal with it.
and, then you look at what the authorities are saying, stuff like this:
"At this point, the best way to preserve the flexibility in life that we have and to protect that large number of little people who can't yet be vaccinated, is to drive up vaccination levels, and adjust our contact with each other,”
it's entirely disingenuous nonsense - children have an essentially immeasurable level of mortality from this disease, and are almost certainly better off fighting it themselves. but, people don't really understand that, because they're bloody idiots. so, this is a purposeful attempt to play on people's ignorance and unfounded fears to manipulate them into doing something.
it's disgraceful.
but, what happens when they hit the goal and.....nothing changes?
free gym passes, and incentives to go, would probably be more effective than vaccine mandates.
but, this is america - land of the free refills, home of the lazy.
and, we're clearly just as bad.
19:57
it's probably the munchies causing the problem, though.
you'd expect a heart disease risk, but not a heart attack risk, exactly - that's probably more a comorbidity, connected to lifestyle decisions around marijuana use.
i know some people will argue that pot has helped them lose weight, and i've also lost weight while smoking, albeit unintentionally.
people with low tolerance may find themselves losing weight in the short run because they're too useless to eat. no, really - if you sleep 15 hours a day, you eat less. so, if you're fat because you eat too much, any kind of sleeping pills should help you lose weight. right?
but, most potheads develop a tolerance in the long run, and instead of eating less because they're falling asleep will tend to eat more because they're stuck on their ass.
so, it depends - sure.
but, in general? yes - potheads are fat and lazy.
21:02
has anybody actually explored the idea of inducing a coma to aid in weight loss?
"i was gonna make a quadruple bacon cheeseburger with pastries as buns and maple syrup in place of ketchup...
....but then i get high.
was gonna eat three extra large pizzas and down two bottles of mountain dew and then eat a cake, too.
....but then i got high."
21:13
i'm thinking of the children!
some of them won't know this song, so here you go, kids.
i've said it before: i do it for the kids.
21:16
"now, my pants actually fit, and i know why...."
21:22
you have to be really, really fat for that to work, though - it usually works the other way.
21:23
no, i'm not interested in watching some overgrown children bicker amongst each other on tv.
they're all a bunch of idiots - more so than usual.
23:04
again - i'm not telling you not to get vaccinated. in fact, if you're in a vulnerable group - old. fat. sick from something else. - you should get vaccinated.
i'm telling you i don't want to get vaccinated, or at least not yet - and that i don't actually give the slightest fuck what you think about me for that.
right now, i want to catch the thing, and i want to catch the thing a few times. i am not afraid of this - i want to develop natural immunity.
yes - me, me, me.
and, you, you, you can do what you see fit, i don't give a fuck.
i'm willing to make a real effort to avoid old people as best i can, but i ultimately think they have the obligation to avoid me, rather than the other way around.
and, i ultimately think the developing science is suggesting that i'm making the right choice - that it's in my self-interest to fight the thing off on my own.
sorry.
and, what i'm saying - crucially - is that mass vaccination won't stop the spread, and i'm saying that by citing a lot of science that makes it clear that that's the case.
you, as an individual, may see fit to vaccinate yourself, if you think it's in your best interests. but, as a society, that tactic will not eliminate this disease - it is too contagious, too weak (for most spreaders) and too seeded.
and, my own patience for stupid policies that have no chance of actually working is not infinite, either.
but, let's see what the public health actually does when it gets to 90%.
23:50
and, i'm also telling you that if you want to actually be selective about letting people enter spaces, the following is the criteria you should use, in order:
1) rapid testing is the best way to tell if somebody is sick or not
2) the only way to know if somebody has antibodies is to test for them directly
3) vaccination status is the least reliable way to tell if somebody is prone to spreading the disease or not
23:56
friday, september 10, 2021
i know that people want to imagine that there's some way we can work together to fix this. but, viruses exploit that kind of thinking, and you're just walking into a trap.
we need to fix this by working apart, not by working together.
so, we need to repress that urge. the only thing you can do is avoid people you might accidentally kill, altogether, until the thing burns itself out - and it could take years.
and, what people that might accidentally die need to do is not put themselves in situations where they might catch it.
we don't want to think like this. we want quick solutions, and we don't want to "blame victims". but, reality isn't a safe space, and you have to make hard choices if you want to solve hard problems.
the idea that mass vaccination is going to end the pandemic is maybe easy to understand in a consumer culture. just buy the magic pill. right? that's not what the science ever said.
vulnerable people are dying because they're putting themselves in situations where they can get sick, getting sick and suffering the consequences of it. there's no solution besides people not making bad choices like this.
and, at the end of the day, with these building variants, we're all going to catch the thing, anyways.
it's not what anybody wants to hear, but it's how it is.
0:17
easy rule for the elderly to follow: don't trust anybody under 60.
0:26
but, i'm a realist.
these are people that grew up thinking they owned the world, that they were invincible and they'd die beautiful. they're the most sheltered, stuck-up, self-centered catastrophe that the world has ever seen.
they lived recklessly - and hoped they'd die before they got old.
do you think they're going to learn these lessons, now?
no - they're not. they're going to make stupid decisions that put themselves at risk, and they're going to die in a drunken, coked out mess.
and, it will be nobody's fault but their own - don't let them pin it on you. that's bullshit.
the left is supposed to be about people - workers, serfs, slaves, whatever. and, in recent years, that especially means people in less developed countries.
do these academics lining up to pat themselves on the back, if not jerk each other off, about this care about the people in afghanistan?
no. not at all.
fake left is the correct, empirical observation.
2:17
so, here's my notes...
- i got lost trying to fix specific items in the diet matrix and have completely lost my train of thought, but i know i wanted to start with a line-by-line and recheck everything, anyways. the fruit bowl was essentially finished, while the afternoon meal was missing key nutrients. starting next week or soon after, i'm going to want to post a new update every day that includes complete run downs of each of the items in the matrix, starting with vitamin a1, which was retinol. the ambiguities i was dealing with will come out in the wash.
---
so, yeah - i'm in a recursion with this.
i was updating the data for valine when i realized fluoride data was wrong, which sent me back to the start, and i went off on a tangent....
right now, the first task in the recursion is to build the dtk & travels blogs up over 2020, until i get back to september, when i'm going to pick up on a number of parallel builds.
- teeth got put aside. there's one pocket that's full of decayed filler and probably needs to be cleared to reattach. i had decided to let the hydroxyapatite and the antibiotics work a little before i started considering the potential ramifications of a deep cleaning (which will damage the teeth in order to save them). but, i didn't initially realize that the brown spots were previous filler, and i wanted to wait until i got the iron issue dealt with before i looked at the antibiotics. the next appointment is at the end of september, and i'd have to argue that the situation has stabilized but not gotten much better. the cleaning routine i've brought in (dish soap, daily fluoride baths) has kept my teeth very, very clean, but the crowding is getting worst, and i suspect that's the ultimate cause of the gum recession. i am at least convinced i don't have any cavities and i don't have gum disease, but i don't know what the best approach to trying to rebuild the gumline is. i think it's best that i wait to talk at the end of september, and try to figure out what i can do about these teeth coming in behind my gumline, that seem to be pushing the aligned ones out. enough of the previous filler may have also ground down to allow for a second application, without needing to drill. again - they could get the brown out, but only by drilling into healthy teeth and covering over it, and the last dentist i saw (the one that actually realized what was happening) agreed with me that that would be daft. but, i mean, i want to fix the brown eventually, too...
i have mostly kept up with the c, and my c levels were saturated. my b9 levels were off the chart, and should have come down with the removal of beets, but i haven't tested since.
- right now, the court stuff is mostly on hold, but let me look at that when i get back from the surgery. for right now, i should wait until the mediation with the karen completes before escalating further.
- first diet document dated to jan 30th
- was rebuilding blogs with the diet document, start again in 2013. need to properly file computer for this purpose - yes, that's...ok. this is why i'm doing this. so, the filing is the fundamental task for both weekend and weekday activities.
- switch to generic estrogen at end of january
- first pandemic document dated to feb 8th
- kept pushing further and further back until i went to the start. will rebuild documents as i move forwards.
ok, so i can't do a brute force hack on the pasta bowl or the eggs and i don't want to do a final run for the fruit bowl. i've got too many loose threads open and i'm just totally unravelling. how do i reweave myself back into some semblance of coherence?
i was building liner notes, and i stopped to fix my diet - thinking it would take a few days to build. six months later, and i'm reaching a conclusion, but need to move on.
i realized my fluoride data totals were wrong, and went to backtrack to fix them. in the process, i decided i'd make a final fruit bowl post because i was almost done and set about compiling it. but, then i wanted to build a book documenting the entire saga. but, then i decided i wanted to build a book documenting my comments on the pandemic. and, i kept going further back, until i decided to go back to the start...
- iron issues start mar 9th
- mar 15th;
these are the following draft posts that will be finished simultaneously:
- a clean-up post for the fluoride, because i caught some arithmetic errors.
- a total amino acid post where i combine all of the existing amino acid posts and the still to be written ones into a major update in the chart, which more or less takes me to the end of this
- a complete fruit bowl post where i post everything
- the document at google drive, which is being compiled at the one drive site
there are four further unpublished posts that have to do with the 2013 rebuild.
- was also working on the payhip uploads, had to stop at the aleph-disc. need liner notes, first. so, need blog completion phase, first - including alter-reality.
so, those unexpected reboots. i don't know what the idiots are trying to do, but it's often frustrating in terms of losing trains of thought. and, i'm going to construct that, now.
- i was going through from sept 24th, 2018 ----> now and rebuilding the four blogs, along with several side documents at one drive.
- but, i wanted to go through and understand what files may have been removed, if any. so, i rewound back to early 2018 and was reading through them, forwards.
- i decided i can probably build the dtk blog up as i do that. at least.
- but i needed to go back and reread the components i added to each of the vlogs to understand what should and shouldn't be added.
i was going through the travel blog when the machine rebooted. and, this is why i'm not using my normal pcs to connect to the internet.
- mar 30th was aleph-0. wanted to build html front-end, but wanted to update existing liner notes. went back to update to double check, got lost. some concept of aleph-0 should update as i get through quintuple check on first reconstruction phase (but then it's done). need to test html frontend with updates (typo fixes) as well. can compare. time to winlite windows 7 for laptop? virtual machine?
there's apparently all kinds of files missing on my backup drive...
ugh.
i thought i left it in good order; it's in total disarray.
i know i had deleted some files i wanted to replace, but i've lost my train of thought around it.
i really do have to start from scratch, now.
what that means is that i don't see the point in doing these aleph discs yet - i'm just going to have to redo it all because some of the liner notes need to be rewritten.
so, i'm going to have to take a step back, and i'm skipping everything else and going right back to 2013/2014 first. once i get those items fixed, i can finish the frontends properly and go from there. they should hopefully be minor changes.
and, i have to do this first - i've put it off for far too long.
that means everything is on hold until i finish this, but it should hopefully not be too long.
...everything except the alter-reality. i need to start that next friday.
- april 3rd:
so, going back to the july music journal.....
- the master document, which includes all files related to the journal, is dated to mar 31, 2019
- the bandcamp archive is dated to april 14, 2019
- the deathtokoalas file is dated to april 14, 2019 - and has apparently not been touched at all since
- there is a pdf for the politics blog dated to april 27, 2019 but the word document is dated to aug 14, 2020
- the blogs.7z file, which includes the blogs saved to html format, is dated to aug 22, 2019 - which is wrong. i never updated it. i can be sure of that. i need to do that.
- the smashwords upload of the music and politics journals are dated to june 6 & 7, 2020, which is right after the noise trade site shut down.
- my most recent download of the bandcamp archive is dated to july 27, 2020 but probably includes updates from the other blogs (travel blog, etc)
- the music journal document, travel blog document and politics document are all dated august 14, 2020, but there is no pdf for the music journal or the travel blog
so, if i were to take that at face value, it would suggest that i left three of the four blogs in an unfinished state, possibly because i updated them, but didn't move those updates into the other files.
the first thing i need to do is make sure that the complete archive is the same as the master document and i can do that fairly quickly in notepad++.
...so quickly that i'm already done. good. so, that means i haven't added anything to or deleted anything from that section of the master document since mar, 2019.
now, i need to rewind all four of the blogs that are online to the start of each of them in july, 2013 and make sure each is complete relative to what i want them to be, while cross-referencing the master document on the other machine. when that is done, i'll be able to close the july portion of the blog and move to august.
- was trying to update the liner notes to add to the aleph, but had to file computer, first
- reposted july docs on april 6th. went to file correctly, filed whole computer instead.
- never got to august, which needs to be where i started with the weekly
- apr 18th:
yeah, so that's what i'm doing this morning, if i can stay awake - i need to get back to organizing the pc, and then to finalizing the journal for august, 2013.
- i need to organize the pc before i can get to working on period 3 over the weekend, and that's very soon. next week, potentially.
- i need to organize the pc and get the master document up before i can focus on the blogging section, which is the weekly task
- and, i wanted to scour documents before i got back to the alter-reality
the landlord and i decided that if we're going to defrost the fridge then we should do it at the end of the month. so, i'm going to put cleaning on that side on hold until then.
let's hope i can get something done this morning.
- spent some time copying data to pc, organizing it
- pc has odd issue causing reboots, gave up on perfecting it, decided to be pragmatic
- only installing programs required for recording, one at a time
- april 28th:
i'm less sleepy tonight, and making progress on the filing.
let's remember why i'm doing this.
so, i finished the july, 2013 archive and went to file it, but realized i couldn't do it because my filing apparatus was all in disorder. i then realized that in order to get the filing apparatus back in order, i'd have to get the laptop back up, but i can't do that until i get the filing apparatus back in order. ack.
so, i went through all of the loose media i have, copied it all over to the music pc and now need to put it all where i needs to be. then, i can build a copy of the laptop's backup drive, and then i can file the july archive and move on to the august one.
in the process, i should be able to build the alter-reality as well as get the machine in order for inri075.
...which means a reinstalll of the disc is imminent.
if i can sort through and finalize the material from mid 2003 to mid 2006 before i face another disruption, that's serious progress.
-
i guess my system started collapsing in mid 2015, and i've long concluded that i only have marginal control over it - that somebody basically doesn't want me on the internet, and doesn't care if they have to ruin my tools in order to do it. i mean, i'd guess i'm dealing with the kind of people that reject the concept of art as vocation. the idea that i'm just an artist seems incomprehensible to them - i must be working for somebody. so, they just want me offline, and all they interpret this gear as is as a means to corrupt the youth. and, they just want to listen in, and they don't care how badly they have to screw all the signals up in order to do it.
have i shaken them yet? i might never....
but, it means i have this giant pile of electronics that the cia has rendered inoperable in a flatly stupid attempt to shut me down and that i'm going to have to slowly try to salvage.
one thing at a time. i can connect to the internet using the chromebook, and i need to get the recording pc up. i'm minus a stick of ram and will want to replace it soonish; it looks like concerts are probably cancelled for the year, so the next thing to spend money on is replacement parts for all the gear that was broken. the windows 98 pc is working, as well. and, finally building the 64-bit pc is no longer a distant task, but coming up when i work on the matlab project.
i'm not going to replace the backlight on the laptop as it's too risky, but i'll need to reimage the laptop with a customized windows 7 to rip out all of the networking apps, so they can't slave the machine.
so, i spent the morning filing and i think i got enough sleep to carry forward for the night, so long as the air quality in here doesn't degrade too badly.
the guy is supposed to be gone, but his replacement cop and/or daughter and/or mother seems to be up there instead, and she's the actual source of both the smoke and the other smells and the vicious a/c. i actually asked him to turn the a/c off before he left; so much for that, huh? it's freezing in here :(.
the guy i interface with is broadly reasonable, but this woman that fills in for him is a horrible, self-centered piece of shit that should be dragged through the streets attached to the back of a car.
i know this person is female because i can hear them and because i can smell them - they smell like a female, and not in a good way. but, they smoke, so they have no idea. again - it's the worst undercover cop in the history of the world, which i suppose is why she does these substitute roles.
i mean, we all remember how bad the substitute teachers were. imagine substitute stakeout cops.
"officer malone is gone, parrrrtaaaayyyy!"
and, i'm only slightly exaggerating. she seems to be entirely retarded, and that seems to be roughly her level of operation.
so, because she cranked the air up as soon as he left (despite repeated requests to not do that and...why would somebody pay to run an a/c in an empty room? that alone makes it obvious somebody is up there.), i had to start filling in the baseboard cracks with sealer to stop the place from condensing up. i'm also going to go in the next few days and get some vinyl mats for that corner. and, we'll take it from there for the next round.
if i can potentially get through this stack of cds by the end of the night, i'd consider that massive progress.
may 24th:
alright, so i got through one stack of cds and all of the cassettes, save one, and i'm deciding to go ahead and reinstall rather than continue filing because i have to to archive the cassette. there have been some minor hardware changes that will require updating the script, but i guess i'll have to just deal with it.
this machine has been in a broken state for years, as i spent a very long time troubleshooting what i decided in the end was an environmental signals problem. so, i ripped everything to do with the windows xp subsystem out and just finished the last mixes i was dealing with over asio drivers. and want to put it back, now.
i simply don't know what the signals are like down here, and am long overdue to find out.
the install is automated but it's lengthy so that's likely the morning.
- then focused on cleaning and installing the tarps
- finished downloading emulators for old hardware for 16-bit machine:
ok, so i've got the machine installed, finally. i still have some filing to do, though.
i need to sleep...
june 8th:
alright. so, i don't really want to troubleshoot this machine, but i unfortunately have to as it keeps freezing, and i'm not convinced it's hardware. i simply don't know what the problem is.
there were some periodic freezing issues back in 2015 that i thought was ram, but i'm no longer convinced is. there were also base issues with chipset drivers when i first bought the machine, years ago.
what i'm going to do is reinstall the machine in the most minimal way possible - just the programs integrated on the disc + the drivers for the most minimal hardware configuration possible. and, then i'll bring things in further as i need them, rather than all at once and carefully observe what happens.
i suspect i may need to reprogram the board again like i did in 2014. why do i have to keep reprogramming the board, pigs?
the reality is that there's a lot of software on here that i barely use and that the next phase is not going to be heavy on things like vst synths so much as it's going to be about guitars, actual hardware (like drum heads) and abstract sound design. so, i shouldn't get caught up in getting all of these virtual vstis to work, because i'm probably not going to use them much anyways.
and, once i'm convinced that i've found the problem, i can rerun the script again.
and, before i do that, even, i should run chkdsks on all four drives in the machine.
it might be bad sata cable or something stupid like that, but i have to strip it right down to figure it out.
---
ok.
so, what i wanted to do was organize everything perfectly and completely (i've never been diagnosed with ocd, really) before i got back to recording, so everything was perfectly functioning and i could just quickly get through everything. yes, it would require some time invested upfront, but it would be with the payoff of efficiency as i went.
as the machine has some kind of unknown problem, that's not actually feasible. instead, i should do a quick and rough organization upfront and file things as i go - which means i can be back to work within a day or two, but will need to stop frequently to reorganize, until i'm done.
i have to adjust. so be it.
so, i'm going to take the audigy back out (soundblaster installs are just loaded with bloated drivers, and it's a perfectly plausible cause), disconnect the front panel (i'm not using it) and even unplug the blu-ray burner (which was added years after i constructed it) to start.
i'm also going to hold up on the deletion script, for the reason that the machine is no longer on the internet so i don't have to worry about locking it down as hard as i did. the machine will still run faster with as much of windows taken out as is possible, but i'm going to slow down and take things out one piece at a time.
and, i'm just going to get right to it, so i'm back in order for the weekend, which is the schedule i want to click in to.
i have every reason to think i'll be able to get back to normal rebuilding on monday, and to the alter-reality not this friday but next friday. and, if i'm productive, i can hopefully get tons of stuff done by labour day.
- updated timeline release [had spent week working on period 3.1]
- cleaning took a lot of time this summer....
release timeline:
- had worked backwards to the end of 2018 (the 12/2013 journal), started adding special categories - houses, gear. started buying gear. left off there. did i get all the gear in?
- check all files on hard drive, search by date
july 1st
so, the next thing is getting back to filing my drive. i think. let me double check that. i think i put it aside about a week ago to do the sealing.
see, i wanted to finish filing first and then do the sealing after, but i was running out of time to do it, so i had to do the sealing first, and now it's taken about a week to finish cleaning. the last music post was june 23rd.
so, yeah, that's right - now i need to get back to filing. but, i actually want to take a good run through the facebook page first and see if i can build the alternate releases blog up. so, i'm going to fast forward the alter-reality to today and then we'll do the running around on friday and saturday.
so, i've been rebuilding that releases archive again all night and listening to a few things. i've got pictures of all the places i lived at up (i think this is relevant.) and the places i went to school at (i'm going to have some essays posted there, too), as well as most of the original release cycle back to 1996. i want to get that done before i stop.
july 11th:
so, i'm up to 777 posts and still have hundreds (thousands.) left to go, bhut i got the heavy lifting done for the part of the discography which was redone the most number of times, which is the part from 1996 to early 1999 (the first two demos and subsequent first two lps).
so, i was offline all day today and i got a very large amount of filing done in the process, which was a bit out of order but a productive act, nonetheless.
so, i'm going to try to upload some temp mixes of the interplanetary isomorphism, as well as some temp mixes of xenophanes tonight.
july 30th:
so, i also picked up some c-clamps and a sanding block at home depot yesterday, and have some glue coming in the mail.
i grabbed a few more books as well, including some bradbury, which is relevant for the alter-reality.
is this going to work? i think it should.
i want to actually start writing this weekend. and, how am i going to do this? i wanted to started in 2019 and do it in real-time...
the real-time portion of the blog doesn't really get interesting until about 1993 or 1994, but i still wanted to be clicked into it by now.
if i do monthly entries every week, i can catch up by early 2022. i guess i got my first electric guitar around early 1992, so that's a reasonable catch up point.
and, these little asimov and bradbury tests can be read by an adult in an afternoon.
i needed to do the filing on the main computer before i got back to recording, and i'm actually pretty close.
and, if i can get back to the blogging process on monday, i guess i'm getting back to the diet, first.
i need to look over the last few weeks and refocus, but i think i stopped in mid-june.
july 31st:
ok, where was i?
it's saturday night (31st).
- i slept in until the afternoon today and haven't done anything
- yesterday was a short day that never got started. the one thing i did do was clean the fridge, a little more. or, try to, anyways.
- thursday, i got out to get some bloodwork, bought some books, got some clamps
- tuesday & wednesday were spent looking at the takeharu guitar
- monday, i went to get the mic stand, and got some books
- sunday was a kind of a down day
- saturday (24th) was a running around day, and i got the takeharu, the bottom of the vox (video coming...) and the mini xylophone
- most of last week (18th-23rd)) was spent sorting through kijiji, etc ads and also in researching gear
- 17th, these were uploaded, and i started working on a big post about the old gear i had and how to replace it.
- on the 16th, i uploaded a rough mix of the lost symphony to the trivial group lp as a placeholder, uploaded some rough xenophanes mixes, bought a microcasette, did some orange testing...
- on the 15th, i was looking at dna sequencing and spent a lot of time filing the recording machine
- on the 14th, i decided to get a pignose when i went in to get the mini vox (and didn't, yet)
- i got a mini vox and a mini orange to go with the mini ms-2
- on sunday morning / monday night (11/12th), i started adding gear to the alter-reality page, which included a ms-2 mini marshall amp and i started researching mini-amps for period 3 recording...
- friday the 9th was back to alter-reality,
- the rest of the week was spent looking at blood tests, genetics, shopping online & cleaning./
- i got some more bloodwork on the 5th
- i stopped filling in the blog on monday morning (the 4th)
- the bookcase (required to access cds for reviews) came in on the 2nd
- on the 1st, i decided july would be extremely productive and continued transferring the facebook page to the new blog, which was my friday project
...
i don't want to buy anything else until i can get some tickets to toronto for the orchiectomy.
and, because i think we're going back into lockdown, i need to take advantage of this time window as best i can. so, i need to call on tuesday and get this booked.
at the moment, i need to start my first post in the alter-reality and take it from there. then, i'm going to want to finish that gear replacement post. it's the end of the month, so i need to clean - although this is being bottlenecked by the fridge. and, i can get back to the blog clean-up, maybe, early in the week.
again, this is the intent:
- friday: alter-reality
- sat--->mon: period 3 recording
- tues--->thurs: liner note rebuild (and general writing workthrough)
the last diet update was on may 19th.
is this too much work?
i think so, yes.
but, i'm stuck...i have to just hit it head on and see what happens.
so, i was hoping to approach the alter-reality in a more ordered manner, but it's not going to be possible due to the disgusting fridge, that i may have to take him to court over. and, i'm apparently stuck inside until next spring, at the earliest. so, let's just try to catch up...
july kind of sucked in terms of productivity, although i got a lot of gear that i'll make good use of. let's make august the most productive month ever, instead.
not much. some rem. some u2. that gowan record. tears for fears. actually, i loved that klf record...
beatles, yes; genesis, floyd, crimson...not yet.
that also seems to be a somewhat sanitized version of the list. the next oldest version i have is from 2001, and it has a lot more stuff that i didn't include....things like bryan adams cassettes.
we'll do this next week.
this week is just going to be an introduction.
aug 1
ok, so that took far longer than intended, but i've got my template down:
https://thejournalofj.blogspot.com/
the mechanism is that i'm writing in a little book, and i find it somewhere and scan it. hence, the lines - and the trouble i'm taking to line the writing up.
here's the trick - i used a 12 line image because that's when it starts to overlap, but even that will only take me so far before i need to reset. it's like a calendar - you need a leap year every four years to make up for the measurement error. but, i posted many test posts to make sure that the cycle resets on a new post, so long as i post it with a title.
i'll have to keep an eye on it and make adjustment if necessary but i think this is sufficient.
i just want to finish the template, and then i'll upload it for anybody, as i think this is useful and am happy to share it.
this will run from 1989-1996, and is intended as a preface - these are childhood year notes, from before i did any recording. the alter-reality will run from 1996-2013 and occupies the actual writing phase. and, current reality runs from 2013-death and is the cleanup and finish phase.
this is the best document for me to use to try to triangulate the things i was influenced by at that age, as the radio & television set were by far the biggest influences on me:
so, i was working on that replacement process so long that i forgot what i was doing before.
i've spent most of what i won. so, i need to make sure i get the operation done first 0 that was the point, after all.
i need to finalize the plan with the shuttle service, first.
aug 12:
i stopped some time in early july and started focusing on finding cheap gear for the period 3 rebuild. i do remember clearly that i was doing an alter-reality rebuild on the blogger timeline and entered the ms-2 as an entry. that got me wondering about other miniamps, and it went off from there.
and, i think the thing i was doing was filing the pc, and i even think i was almost done.
but, i'm going to do a quick throwback to earlier in the year and just read through the blog and go from there. i'll take notes. and, i should be back into the schedule i devised very soon.
- write travel updates from june 15th on based on vlogs
- do reviews of new gear,. based on last gear update post:
so, i got my update post down, which means two things.
first is the post i just posted, which summarizes the last several months and helps me refocus. that's going to be my rough notes for the next few months.
some time back in may, i decided that i needed to start writing posts in real time, and while i got a little lost in it, i want to get back to ensuring i'm doing it. i also think that archiving will be easier in real time, moving forwards, that way.
so, that's why this took a little longer - i was also rebuilding that file.
now what?
- i need to eat, shower and sleep. this is a nice long day, and i can only hope that's a return to normal for me.
- it's friday, and i need to catch up on the asimov, in fact quite a bit. i will probably spend the weekend on that, i think.
- i need to read that update post and carefully understand it in full detail as i move back into the schedule. i should be focusing on the gear that was recently purchased for the recording components, but i need to finish filing, first, i think.
- i want to get back to the schedule for monday, meaning i should be doing the daily food bowl update.
that's a mess, but i'll work through it.
i never got my invoice for the ride out of the hospital, and i wonder if it's still coming. if it doesn't show up, i guess i'm $100 richer...
so, i guess we'll meet back here some time this afternoon or this evening, and i'll get to working out a big set of alter-reality updates.
7:48
what i'll need to do is copy that file in to a new document and delete posts as they lose relevance.
7:53
i'm going to provide a really different take on consciousness.
consciousness is a biological phenomena, right? songs about humans being fuck and shit machines aside, this whole descartian thing isn't taken seriously anymore. so, the mind is a part of the biological world, and must have been shaped through darwinian, evolutionary processes.
and, then you've kind of answered the question by defining it properly - it couldn't be anything more than an adaptation to maximize reproductive success. and, you can sort of get your head around this if you imagine animals slowly moving around and taking control of their surroundings in such a way that make it easier to mate. in very crude terms, the simple truth must be that it's easier to inject your sperm into something when you're in control of it.
i know that's not the kind of answer people want, because the discipline comes out of philosophy. but, it's a biological question. and, i actually think it's far less complicated than it seems, when you grasp that it really is a strictly biological problem.
complexities in consciousness would then arise via competition for sexual reproduction. again: it's easy enough to imagine that the entity with more control over their sperm injector device will be more successful than the one with less. and, that just continues forward. the early mammal in greater control over their penis will be more successful than the one in lesser control. and, likewise, the females with the greater ability to both evade and dominate potential sperm donors will have greater success in choosing successful mates, as well - even if the most successful get their way by having the most control.
you want something else, right?
that's not what we are - we're eating, breeding, shitting machines.
sorry.
so, can we get past the reductionism, then?
i don't think you can really define the question, entirely. i mean, your brain could be doing experiments with unclear outcomes, but i doubt that strikes much of anybody as correct. our concepts of reductionism may need to be tweaked as we understand how this works better and better, but i lack the imagination to guess how a brain might work outside of neurons shooting in a causal manner, even if we still have a lot to learn about the complexity of it.
9:47
our culture never really worked out the difference between wonky spencerian social darwinism, which was really an ancient master morality converted into a mathematical theory of economics, and legitimate scientific darwinism.
it's not strength or dominance or even adaptation that drives selection. an individual can thrive and flourish in their environment, but it must breed to leave it's mutations in the gene pool. it is consequently strictly reproductive fitness that is selected for.
so, when you're talking about consciousness, you have to remember that, in the face of so many millennia of philosophy texts, of religious writings and even of great novels and plays that lacked darwin's great insight - social dominance and feelings of cultural superiority mean nothing to the genome.
we could not have evolved to be smart.
we could only have evolved to fuck more efficiently.
and, hence consciousness can only be about sex - but you know that already, given that it dominates your conscious thoughts. right?
12:45
so, is the answer to the hard problem simply hard-ons?
if it's strictly biological, there can't be that much more to it than that.
12:54
you could argue that it doesn't really explain much, but i think you're missing the point.
we can use our legs to do karate kicks, but we don't have our legs because we needed them to do karate kicks. we need to fucking walk. that's good enough.
our brains may have a variety of other peripheral uses, but they're there to help us get laid - it's the evolutionary pressure on them, it's how they came to be.
it follows that we don't need to present an answer as to why we can do these other non-sexual things with our brains. it's just an accident.
i know - you wanted something deeper. but, i don't think it's actually there. i think it's that empty.
12:57
humans are such an adorable accident of a species, though?
i guess it depends on who you ask...
13:06
i have a sneaking suspicion that i'm not the only person a little put off and weirded out by these giant, realistic pictures of jagmeet singh staring at me when i'm reading the news, like he's big brother.
it's creepy.
that ad buy wasn't thought through.
13:12
so, how much do i need to catch up on the asimov, this week?
this is probably the best way to do it, too - all at once.
the last post was for friday aug 6th. i want to do one per week in the alter-reality time frame, so that's:
- aug 13th: [month of august, 1989] [4 weeks]
- aug 20th: [month of sept, 1989] [5 weeks]
- aug 27th: [month of oct, 1989] [4 weeks]
- sept 3 : [month of nov, 1989] [4 weeks]
- sept 10: [month of dec, 1989] [5 weeks]
- sept 17: [month of jan, 1990] 4 weeks]
so, that's 26 texts in the list, which is basically all of them.
i'd say this is an underestimate of the amount of reading i did in the summer over those years, although maybe more like 1990/1991. i may be starting a year early, but i'm not going to obsess over that sort of thing. it's a mechanism. i remember getting through 2 novels a day, on some days. i was one of those kids that they tested at a grade 12+ reading level when i was 10.
but, it's an overestimate of how much reading i did in the school year. so, i'm balancing out for presentation purposes - it obviously wasn't that steady.
i'm also going to need to look at the music issue.
iirc, i got a ghettoblaster for christmas in grade 4, which would be the next year. but, we'll fast forward it a year. that's something that will happen in december, 1989.
i was eight years old, so you might be disappointed in my tastes, but i'm not going to pretend i was an 8 year-old skinny puppy fan, or that i grew up listening to joy division. my mother was a sunset-strip style 80s hair metal junkie [she used to listen to stuff like whitesnake and poison and guns 'n' roses], and it's one of the biggest reasons i ended up into punk, in kind of typical gen x fashion. i thought she was retarded, and it turns out the government agreed with the perception, in the end. she was a huge metallica fan, as well.
my dad was into prog and 80s blues-rock like dire straits. srv's stint with bowie turned him into a big srv fan.
i was eight years old, and i listened to the radio and watched mtv (or, muchmusic). so, i liked michael jackson and tears for fears and the bangles and genesis and gowan. there are roots here in what was called "college" or "jangle" rock at the time, which was one of the foundational points of alternative rock, and in that sense my music tastes aligned with my reading comprehension. i was the 10 year old kid with the same record collection as your average first year student, but you might be a little surprised to realize what that meant, if you don't remember it. there were also some delves into things that i'd never touch nowadays, and i'm going to be as honest as i can in telling you what they are. is the fact that i knew how to play quite a few bon jovi songs, as a kid, of some relevance to my guitar style? it's at least as important as the sober realization that i avoided anything labeled metal.
so, i'll focus on radio songs for the second half of 1989 and start looking at the records in the first part of 1990.
i'll need to go through the school year as well, and the karate lessons. i didn't take karate for very long, and i wasn't very good at it, but my dad bought a black belt from the corporate dojo he was paying because he thought it would generate some confidence in me - and i happened to be perceptive enough to realize it. so, it actually turned into something rather embarrassing, this charade of putting on a black belt that i knew i didn't earn, and going into a class of other people with it on. so, the guitar was initially a way out of the dojo. that's the reason i'll be focusing on that.
21:38
i actually enjoyed doing the katas, which were a kind of martial arts ballet, and if you were to grade me on that, specifically, then, sure - i earned the black belt.
but, i couldn't spar past a second belt level, and i had little interest in it.
21:54
iirc, the first concert i went to was a jeff healey show at the rainbow in ottawa that i ended up at because my dad had custody. and, i had to sit cross-legged on the floor a foot in front of him because i was underage (my dad knew the bar owner, otherwise i wouldn't have been allowed in at all). my dad was livid that he had to sit in the bar while i got to basically sit on the stage. he was playing his slide up there...
i also vaguely remember seeing blue rodeo in a field at the gloucester fair or something.
22:15
i'd say the covenant's clearly bullshit, given that we're about to get deluged due to climate change.
i have a hunch that that's the actual reason that climate denial is so widespread in the united states - the noah myth means that, in their mind, flooding of this sort is impossible.
22:35
saturday, september 11, 2021
ok, so this is a shortlist of items i pulled from the canadian charts from 1989 that's likely to be of some significance:
4 4 14 Big League-Tom Cochrane & Red Rider
14 14 15 Desire-U2
18 18 11 In Your Room-Bangles
19 24 9 Five Long Years-Colin James
10 22 8 Smooth Criminal-Michael Jackson
14 11 13 I Don't Want Your Love-Duran Duran
20 40 4 Angel Of Harlem-U2
20 26 7 Born To Be My Baby-Bon Jovi
20 24 7 Tell Somebody-Sass Jordan
17 26 6 The Living Years-Mike & The Mechanics
20 22 9 Send Your Love-Glass Tiger
20 29 9 If A Tree Falls-Bruce Cockburn
9 18 8 Good Times-Tom Cochrane
14 22 8 Orinoco Flow (Sail Away)-Enya
11 7 13 My Heart Can't Tell You No-Rod Stewart
13 28 7 Eternal Flame-The Bangles
16 25 8 She Drives Me Crazy-Fine Young Cannibals
15 23 6 The Look-Roxette
18 31 3 Like A Prayer-Madonna
12 27 8 Girl You Know It's True-Milli Vanilli
15 25 10 Stand-R.E.M.
19 28 5 Diamond Mine-Blue Rodeo
13 25 8 I'LL BE THERE FOR YOU-Bon Jovi
18 28 8 DOUBLE TROUBLE-Sass Jordan
20 24 8 ANGEL EYES-Jeff Healey Band
18 26 8 I WON'T BACK DOWN-Tom Petty
10 22 6 SATISFIED-Richard Marx
19 30 9 LOVE IS-Alannah Myles
19 35 7 IF YOU DON'T KNOW ME BY NOW-Simply Red
20 31 5 BABY DON'T FORGET MY NUMBER-Milli Vanilli
10 22 5 EXPRESS YOURSELF-Madonna
11 59 3 BATDANCE-Prince
12 8 14 I WON'T BACK DOWN-Tom Petty
15 24 6 SO ALIVE-Love & Rockets
16 26 5 END OF INNOCENCE-Don Henley
17 22 7 CRAZY ABOUT HER-Rod Stewart
20 23 8 DRESSED FOR SUCCESS-Roxette
12 24 6 ROCK N ROLL DUTY-Kim Mitchell
20 27 10 LAY YOUR HANDS ON ME-Bon Jovi
1 3 7 RIGHT HERE WAITING-RICHARD MARX
19 22 7 ALL THE THINGS I WASN'T-Grapes Of Wrath
20 21 10 BLACK VELVET-Alannah Myles
7 19 6 GIRL I'M GONNA MISS YOU-Milli Vanilli
18 45 3 SOWING THE SEEDS OF LOVE-Tears For Fears
19 26 5 LOVE SONG-Cure
16 24 7 LISTEN TO YOUR HEART-Roxette
18 25 7 NO SOUVENIRS-Melissa Etheridge
15 19 5 ANGELIA-Richard Marx
16 29 8 LOVE SHACK-B52s
10 25 3 ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE-Phil Colliins
13 21 9 DON'T ASK ME WHY-Eurythmics
17 7 14 CHERISH-Madonna
18 34 5 HEY MEN-Men Without Hats
10 15 6 WE DIDN'T START THE FIRE-Billy Joel
16 24 10 ROCKLAND WONDERLAND-Kim Mitchell
18 26 6 BLAME IT ON THE RAIN-Milli Vanilli
18 18 6 FREE FALLIN'-Tom Petty
i don't know how to make this comprehensive, given how young i was and that i can barely remember.
i also found the muchmusic charts and pulled these out:
3 The Jeff Healey Band - Confidence Man
4 Colin James - Voodoo Thing
25 Bon Jovi - Bad Medicine
30 Glass Tiger - Far Away From Here
25 Duran Duran - All She Wants Is
12 Michael Jackson - Leave Me Alone
18 Tom Cochrane & Red Rider - Good Times
29 Colin James - Why'd You Lie
27 Glass Tiger - Watching Worlds Crumble
27 The Cult - Fire Woman
29 Cowboy Junkies - Misguided Angel
28 Tom Cochrane & Red Rider - Victory Day
28 Tin Machine - Under the God
24 Roxette - Dressed For Success
11 Neil Young - Rockin' In The Free World
22 Eurythmics - Don't Ask Me Why
29 Sass Jordan - So Hard
Bon Jovi - Living In Sin
12 Alannah Myles - Still Got This Thing
13 Madonna - Oh Father
22 Rod Stewart - Downtown Train
24 Richard Marx - Angelia
26 Tom Petty - Free Fallin'
27 Tragically Hip - New Orleans Is Sinking
29 Tears for Fears - Woman In Chains
30 Eurythimics - Angel
i will not explore all of these, but i'll look at a few.
0:47
there's a lot of canadiana on there.
well, i lived in canada.
i have very early memories of bruce cockburn, actually.
a lot of this is probably his fault.
0:55
fuck, i forgot how good this was:
i'm building a 1989 playlist.
i didn't know it at the time, but it actually sounds more like 1969 than 1989.
i was eight years old, but i clearly had about as good taste as an eight year-old can have.
how honest is this, really? it's stretching mildly - i didn't get into some of this until i was more like 10.
11:32
so, here's my 1989 playlist, which i'm going to be listening to as i do this writing, and which i may pare down substantively. i'll pull some of the things that are more important out; i think you can probably guess what most of them are going to be, and it's not necessarily the stuff i'd still point to as substantive.
you can hear that my little brain was mostly interested in 60s retro, and not contemporary 80s music, even if it didn't understand it. but, i was also looking forwards to the styles that would dominate the early to mid 90s. i had no interest in the music marketed to kids in those days, and while the gender imbalance isn't that bad given the sources i had, it is indeed overwhelmingly white. but, i mean, i'm pretty white, too. that changes a little as i age, but not a lot....
as mentioned, i didn't even have a cassette deck at the time. no walkman. nothing. i had an alarm clock, and the alarm clock had a radio. i had a tv, with access to muchmusic. that was it. and, i had parents with music collections, which i mostly hadn't raided, yet. i've mentioned before that i got my first rem dubs by taking the tapes out of the library. i knew some of the names, but i was exposed to much of what my mom listened to and didn't like really any of it, while my dad's collection was esoteric and difficult, and would be for most eight year-olds. that will be a running narrative, but not yet.
my dad liked a little u2 (mostly due to the eno thing) and my mom had some older 70s glam that was less terrible than the 80s stuff, but neither of them listened to the student rock i listened to from about the ages of 8-12 and neither would have had much interest in 90% of what's compiled, here. you can get a good taste of what's coming from 1990-1993 or so, when i started to switch over to punk and industrial.
i will review some of the records these tracks are on when i get the ghetto blaster after christmas, but i will be selective. i'm going to need to do a comprehensive survey of tears for fears, for sure.
14:15
this is the kind of ridiculous charge you'd expect in a country with an absurdly conservative, backwards legal system, like afghanistan.
i hope he argues for a constitutional right to free expression, and i hope he wins the case.
this is ridiculous, and has no place in a free society.
i don't think we've seen a protest movement like this in the west since the 90s, have we?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNJGJM3_pjk
20:21
and, then you get this bullshit, again - which i think we haven't seen in a while, actually.
it seems to indicate they're having some effect, when the robocop thugs show up to beat them up.
20:31
now, we're starting up in toronto.
polling puts support for these things in the 65-75% range, which seems like a safe political bet - but that's still potentially a third or more of the population that's dead set against it, which is enough to create a serious political movement. and, it wouldn't be the first time that a vocal minority is right in the eyes of history, and a passive majority is wrong.
i probably wouldn't get along with most of these people, but they're correct on this specific issue.
and, i'm still toying with whether i think it's worthwhile to join them or not.
20:38
if there was an economic left willing to take a principled approach and stand up for bodily autonomy and civil rights in the face of a tyranny of the majority trying to take these things away, they'd have my vote.
unfortunately, we have a half dozen fake left parties, and they're all following the polls, which negates the reason for having them. in canada, you actually expect the liberals to stand up for bodily autonomy over order and safety, and it's actually pretty shocking that they aren't. but, if the ndp and the greens are just going to act like the liberals anyways and carry forward with the same attack on constitutional rights, what's the point? why not just vote liberal?
20:44
what's attracting me to this movement is partially that it isn't another boring, reactionary, go-nowhere protest about race.
race politics is necessarily reactionary, by definition - you're pitting one group against another. you can argue you're not, but you are. it's a go nowhere strategy, from a leftist perspective, as any actual left is going to have to undo all of it to get anywhere.
this movement has the potential to reset the narrative to being about something that we can unite against - a government setting unjust restrictions on individual freedom. that can be a legitimately populist issue, as it doesn't rely on setting these groups against each other. we can actually unite around that.
i haven't been on the ground, but i remember the media telling me that occupy activists were fascists, too. there were, like, three nazis at the camp in ottawa, and the theory on the ground was that they were probably undercover cops.
but, i'm an obviously transgendered person of native american and jewish origin, and there's a lot of reasons i need to be a little bit apprehensive, a priori. i can guess that the media reports are probably bullshit, but i can't just run into it on a whim.
a better example is probably the student strike movement in quebec, which was not about race, and got what it wanted. these restrictions are temporary, so, yes, they\re going to lift - or at least that's the idea. so, it's an easy win, right? a little bit of pressure to hold them to their word is probably useful.
like i say, i want to turn the page over on race as an organizing strategy, because it's a dead-end. if this helps refocus the ground on class and reminds everybody that people care about individual autonomy as an organizing principle, it's a net benefit to the socialist struggle. that might create some tension with what i label the fake left, but it's required to move forward - this conflict is unavoidable. and, i'd like some influence over that, if i can get it.
21:12
i still have my red square from the quebec student protests:
21:22
it's global, too.
21:26
looks like the free party movement c. 1990.
21:33
sunday, september 12, 2021
yeah.
nurses don't write laws - and while seizing control of the means of production is a positive end goal, we should be nationalizing hospitals using the legislature, so as to not disturb their organization. there's no factory floor to sit down in in the hospital, no profit system to disrupt. we have to pick the right tactics, here. this is a public service, and they're trying to do their job within the restrictions the state forces down on them.
these protestors are not running for office, they're frustrated by what they (i think correctly) see as an infringement on their autonomy. and, again, to me, the primary issue is that the government is mandating this - i'm not going to crash your party if you don't want unvaccinated people there, but i'd expect the same respect, in turn, in not being told i have to be tracked by the government to see a show or have a beer, if i can find organizers that aren't interested in doing it. in the end, i should have the freedom to assemble with other unvaccinated people (or organizers that don't care to check) to engage in whatever activities i see fit to assemble with them to do. that's the issue, here - the overly broad nature of the law, and it's infringement on the right to assemble.
so, this is the right decision, but realize that you're attacking something that appears to be pretty spontaneous and doesn't have aspirations on power (and hence can't be held to much account...) before you do it. there's nobody to blame here except an idea in process that needs to work the kinks out.
i understand that some vaccinated people think that unvaccinated people cause them a greater risk of transmission. that's actually base ignorance - the science says the opposite - but i get it. and, in the end, i have an obligation to accept their right to freedom of association.
but, what they're failing to grasp in this is that i actually don't want to associate with them, either - that the rejection is mutual. i want to go hang out somewhere else, and would be just as happy to if the laws didn't infringe on my own freedom of association, and my own right to assemble.
if there's going to be an effective legal action against this, that's what it's going to be about.
but, frankly, i don't think that the laws should be followed, by those that don't want to. it won't be every bar, it won't be every venue, but there will be places to go.
find those places.
but, let's get the correct legal process in place, as well.
0:57
there's also a lot of confusion about the application of existing precedent on civil rights, due to the fact that there's two different legal categories, here. and, that's what happens when you let doctors write laws. they're just out of their field.
so, the civil rights legislation talks about general and specific services. consider baking a cake, for example. baking a cake is not a general service intended for the wider public, it's a specific service that requires a contract underlying it to do something unique to the customer's requests - so you pay somebody to bake a cake for you that you design for them. they consequently don't need a reason to deny service, due to the specificity of the underlying contract. if a baker doesn't like a queer person, or an unvaccinated person, they can therefore refuse to bake the design if they want, and there's nothing further to it than that.
if you don't like the fact that a baker doesn't want to serve you, the correct thing to do is organize a boycott. and, i would support your boycott. but, you can't order somebody to bake you a cake if they don't want to.
this contrasts against a general service, like ordering something from a menu or taking something up to a cash. if a baker refuses to sell you a premade cake because you're queer, and tells you as much, then, yes, that's discrimination. and, if a server in a restaurant won't let you order an item on a menu because of how you look or dress then that's discrimination, as well.
so, how do you apply that to vaccines? the strict application - if you consider vaccination an analogous ground, which is a technical question that has some ambiguity around it and ultimately reduces to whether unvaccinated people are more dangerous than vaccinated people, a position that the science would appear to reject - of that precedent would be that a restaurant would be able to deny you specific services but not general services. so, they should be able to tell you they don't want to do a specific thing, but not able to deny you general service, like ordering an item from a menu.
now, let's understand that these rules also only apply to public spaces, when dealing with civil rights. so, if you're a club owner and don't want to let specific types of people in, you can get around the civil rights act by converting your establishment into a private club. if we were to apply the precedent correctly, vaccine passports should also be inapplicable to private nightclubs and bars. as far as i can tell, no such distinction is being made about vaccine passports - a position that is likely liable to legal challenge.
in fact, the legislation for vaccine passports doesn't talk about general or specific services at all, but about essential and inessential services. in fact, you will not need a vaccine passport for essential services. but, these are different categories...
so, if we want to try to make sense of this relevant to civil rights legislation, we need to ask the question - what is the intersection of services that are general (and covered under civil rights legislation) and also inessential (and therefore require disclosing vaccine status to get service). applying the precedent would mean that general services should not be covered by mandates, whether they are inessential or not. so, that is where some legal battles could occur, as well. the primary example i can imagine would be restaurants and bars, where discrimination should be restricted by law, even though the services are deemed inessential. only inessential & specific services would be safe from a legal challenge.
1:45
the bottom line is that it should be up to the establishment owner, and not the government.
if people don't want to go somewhere that doesn't check for vaccine status, they don't have to go there; if people don't want to get scanned to enter a restaurant, they should have options that accommodate that, as well.
1:50
listen. again.
i'm not attempting to present a moral analysis of the existing precedent. only conservatives care about morality, and i'm definitely not one of those.
i'm just telling you what the precedent says and offering suggestions to get around it.
the government shouldn't be telling businesses to check vaccine status at the door and it is subject to serious legal challenge by business owners that don't want to do it. freedom of association is a conscience right and quite legally powerful. further, while this is currently blurry, there should be creative ways to use property rights to legally get around it, quite soon. and, it will ultimately be up to venue owners as to how to approach the situation.
2:00
alright, so let's get this going, then.
i don't know how long this is going to take, but i'm going to keep at it until it's done. one post per book per week. let's go...
i've finally got the bandage off my scrotum, and there's still a few stitches in there, but it seems to have largely healed. so, i should be able to wear normal clothes again (i've been wearing these loose fitting pajama pants when i go out) and get back on my bicycle when i go out next. and, i'm going to take a good ride to the goodwill book store soon.
there's a narrative opening up that the ppc is splitting the vote on the right, but i need to reiterate that this isn't what the data suggests at all.
while the numbers are floating around, the conservatives are roughly where they were in 2019. it initially seemed as though the conservatives were pulling votes back from the liberals, and if that is true then it just amplifies the point: the liberals have generally been down from where they were in 2019 by around 5 points.
the greens and bloc are also down, and the ndp have been running about where they polled in the last election. the only party that is up is the ppc - and they seem to be taking votes from all four of the soft left parties, and hardly anything from the conservatives.
another clue is that ppc voters seem to be working class voters, which in canada would historically align them with the ndp or liberals. this "white working class" swinging to the hard right thing hasn't happened in canada, much at all. they don't seem to be of any particular ethnic group or religion, but they do seem to be very young.
the intersection of young & working class voters, without any specific cultural identity, should be a lock for the soft left. very few of these voters would have looked at the conservative party in past cycles.
further, when the right splits, it doesn't split like this - it accuses the mainstream party of being liberals. while there may be a little of that going on, the people's party (which is pro-choice, crucially, and not interested in religion) is not a rational choice for disgruntled conservatives to turn to. rather, maxime bernier is the kind of seen-as-fake-conservative that the right wing base tends to react against. but, he's a logical alternative for working class kids that are sick of the pandemic and want their lives back.
we'll see what happens.
but, i think the read on this is completely wrong.
there was a time when liberal pollsters thought the greens might split the right, as well. ask stephane dion if he got that one right or not.
7:49
i've got a start on this, and these stories are...
pointless.
they're chronological, and i'll have to see if they get more substantive over time.
you can tell a meaningful story in 20 pages if you lay on the symbolism or technical imagination, but none of these ones are doing that, yet.
8:09
if i find a black hole big enough and suspend myself in it in the right way, with enough data and food to keep me going, might i live inside it, then, for 20,000 years?
you could solve the problem of mortality that way, potentially - and then proceed to solve every problem in the history of humanity, and create volumes of masterful art.
but you couldn't get the data out, before you die a horribly painful heat death.
is it worth it, anyways?
11:26
one argument is that you would just die of old age centuries before the black hole gets you.
i'm not so sure.
aging isn't actually a result of a clock ticking, it's about dna replication. a lot of these old questions kind of misunderstand that basic point, which is reasonable because the questions were formulated before we discovered dna.
how does moving at fast speeds actually affect dna replication, error and damage?
11:57
what if your telomeres undergo lorentz expansion?
i want to imagine that the complete absence of any interaction with any sort of radiation might extend your lifespan substantively.
when i asked the question, i was imagining that once you get in there, you're stuck in a sort of a glass jar that's falling in on itself. so, you're moving at an incredible speed, but the biological process of aging stops because you're isolated from what's around you.
i'm not sure that's supportable, but i'm going to go with it, anyways.
now, just let me find the universe's biggest black hole...
12:04
monday, september 13, 2021
ugh.
gross.
there's no green candidate in this riding, unfortunately.
we should nationalize the plant and turn it into a solar panel factory, instead.
0:36
if we want people to stop buying cars, it might help if we stop making them. right?
0:38
there's a subsidized housing list with thousands and thousands of names on it, and i'm one of them. i've been on that list for almost ten years.
i live on permanent disability, as do many of the people on this list.
the capacity to accept more people only relies on the assumption that the people living here are less worthy of state aid than refugees from other parts of the world, which is base protestant work ethic bullshit. we should clear that list out before we accept even one more refugee from anywhere.
and, if the government doesn't like the fact that i'm forced to compete with refugees for housing, then they should build more housing - i'm just reacting to reality. and, the need to compete will not absolve by uttering stupid moral statements that don't alter the economic facts.
refugees coming into the country should be placed at the bottom of the list, and not at the top of it.
let them live in homeless shelters, like everybody else.
0:51
no, stop - you have to understand the economics. i don't care about morality. i care about facts.
and, the fact is that if you take this family from out of the country and you put them into one of these units then there is necessarily going to be a local family that doesn't get into that unit. it's zero-sum. it's unavoidable. deal with it.
and, i'm going to pick the side of local families over foreigners every time, regardless of the self-righteous dictates of some middle class religionists, who can't see the actual consequences of their actions, amongst their hollow counterproductive do-gooding and their empty, moralistic back-patting. remember: this is about their own salvation, it has nothing to do with the refugees, or the local populations suffering due to the displacement. and, it's about a political class that has gotten into the habit of piling poor people on top of each other, in order to try to win the votes of this deluded, calvinist middle class.
the fact of the matter is that we don't have the housing to bring refugees in without rendering other people homeless.
and, i insist that you need to stop pretending otherwise.
0:56
we don't have excess housing to dump refugees into.
what we have is waiting lists with thousands and thousands and thousands of names on them.
making room for refugees means members of the local population sleep on the street - and our libraries get converted to homeless shelters.
0:58
yes - our libraries get converted to homeless shelters:
it's obviously not fair, and it's obviously going to breed resentment. you'd have to be an out of touch, upper class piece of shit not to realize that.
but, like i've said before, this is what inevitably happens:
- the refugees are dumped into some substandard apartment for a few months in order to boost some douchebag's polling numbers
- they either don't understand that they have to find a job or can't find one [and large percentages of them can't read and can't speak english, so their job opportunities are exceedingly limited in a country without an undocumented workforce because it enforces labour laws]
- they end up in the homeless shelter, too
in the end, we just end up with strain on the shelter system.
1:06
they were initially supposed to take over that library, but i guess it was too small, so they're moving to an abandoned factory, instead.
i don't want to write your typical bullshit liberal condemnation of racism type post, here. race is an invention of capital - it doesn't exist. i have no interest in playing into their narrative around it.
but, it's important that you don't take out your frustration on the refugees themselves. a lot of them are coming from bad situations, and you'd take the plane ticket if you were in their situation, too. at the end of the day, they have a difficult task ahead of them. most of them will fail, but they were set up to by a political class that's trying to take advantage of the moralistic sensibilities of middle class voters, that think they're doing good in the world based on their flawed interpretation of archaic texts, but in truth can't see a foot in front of their face.
so, yes - you're going to have to compete with them, and yes you have a right to be frustrated and annoyed by that. you should rightfully see them as competition, because that is, in truth, what they are. but, they - like you - are just trying to survive in a system that pits people against each other.
and, it doesn't help to unite, either, because the fundamental problem is a lack of housing. working together means sharing accommodations, and i know i can't do that. i need to live alone; i can't negotiate that away and have no desire to discuss it further.
the enemy is the political class which has created the problem by
1) not funding social housing and
2) bringing in more poor people than the system can support
(insert dismissive comment about legislating morality or reducing complicated problems to simplistic moral statements)
(this post is oddly written from a third person perspective when it should be written from a first person perspective. correct that.)
housing and food shortages are the kinds of things socialists can't deal with.
you can only share these things to a point, when there's a fundamental problem with supply.
with food shortages, in the end, some starve and some do not - competition is unavoidable. it's not desirable, but it can't be resolved.
housing is only a bit better. but, there isn't a socialist solution when standing in solidarity means putting fifty people in the same house, unless it's associated with a strategy to fix it asap. and, as there is no solution in sight, it's not a feasible approach in the short term - some will have housing and some will not. competition can't be avoided.
2:24
why did the home let her on to their property? if there's an issue here, it's not the candidate's vaccination status, it's mismanagement by the company running the site.
i would actually argue that there should be a no-visitors policy in these facilities, period. but, if you have to let people in, you should have rapid testing at the door. that is the entry requirement that the home should have, not vaccination status.
if you're an older person that is likely to suffer complications, getting vaccinated can increase the likelihood that you'll mount a response. but, vaccination status is not a useful metric in determining the spread of the disease.
the attacks on the candidate are consequently rooted in ignorance around the utility and purpose of vaccines.
...but i agree that she should have been tested, on site, at her expense, before being allowed entry, and think the home needs to answer questions as to why she wasn't.
so, i crashed hard yesterday afternoon, and have been sleeping more or less since. how am i feeling?
i'm losing patience with my adrenaline glands (if i'm not being drugged, which i suspect i am), and am putting myself back on the androgen blockers. these are 50 mg tabs. i'm going to be taking one per day, in the morning, until i'm able to get a new rx. we'll see how that works out. if it seems like it's too much, maybe we can go down to 25.
i want my testosterone <0.5. that's where it's been for most of the last ten years. i didn't get my testicles cut out to suffer from a testosterone increase.
6:58
one thing that the left should be doing with incoming refugees, though, is trying very hard to shatter their faith in whatever religion they have. and, all religions are the same - even if some are more observed nowadays than others.
if engels was right, and we can demonstrate to capital that incoming populations are just as likely to lose their religion when they get here, then perhaps we can undermine some of their own faith in the value of competition.
so, when they get here, we should try to aggressively convert them to atheism.
otherwise, the enemy is the political class that is dumping them here, and not the refugees, themselves.
8:20
yes, if we had a real left, it would be absolutely disinterested in the sanctity of religious identity, and strictly interested in deconstructing it as a tool of control.
all of this stuff about religious identity is a lot of bourgeois bullshit.
that's one of the reasons why the fake left is fake - because it insists on religion as a source of identity, rather than as a means of control.
8:40
cutting the cord of religious identity is fundamental to turning refugees against the state, which should be the goal of the left, in the short term. annoyances about competition aside, they have some potential use to the left as lumpenproletariat.
8:43
the chinese actually have the better model on this, regarding housing availability, and maybe we should study what they're doing.
they will build cities first and move people in afterwards. because they plan things out; they think before they act.
the amount of housing i'm calling for - a million units per year for the next ten years - is nothing, in china.
if we want to be a serious country, it's the kind of thing we need to look at a little more closely - building housing first and then bringing people in after, not the other way around.
10:38
of course, it's easy enough to understand why they can build millions of empty skyscrapers in china and we can't even house our own homeless, or even get potable water for our indigenous communities, and it's not even due to capitalism, exactly (china is more aggressively capitalist than anywhere else in the world), but due to the role that property rights play in the english legal system.
we have a landholding class, and they need their rent. we have bankers that need mortgage payments. all of this restricts the ability of the society to house people - because it's not about housing people, it's about generating profit.
10:43
so, the election is next week. we'd normally have an answer by now.
i initially suggested that this election was going to be hard to predict, and the existing models would likely have difficulty with the kind of changes that are happening in the population, right now - i surmised that older voters would probably prefer the liberals, and young voters were probably up for grabs. and, that started to come out in the early data, which suggested the conservatives were headed for a landslide. as i was unable to make sense of the data based on the propositions by leading pollsters - debates about gun control or tax credits - i decided that there must be a substantive number of young, left-wing voters swinging conservative out of frustration, and that they might end up regretting it, if they do. then, older voters started running back to the conservatives - and if the liberals can't hold young voters, and can't swing older voters, then who exactly is voting for them? i even found a data point suggesting conservatives were winning university-educated voters, which probably hasn't happened in canada since 1984, if it even happened in 1984 (i was three years old and have not looked it up).
i think that was probably real, but what's happened since is that the whole thing has collapsed in on itself. older voters have gone back to the liberals, younger voters have demonstrated no discernible trendline at all, the smaller parties are all over the place, quebec is a mess...
it would help if the two big landline firms - nanos and mainstreet - would release their data, rather than put a paywall over it. but, the forum numbers that came out demonstrated the point - they look nothing like the ekos numbers. and, i can deduce by looking at grenier's aggregate site that there's no real discernible trendline much of anywhere at all.
again: i'm not a prophet. i'm a data analyst. i have no patience for fortune tellers, and would plead with you not to interpret me as one.
the data is simply incoherent - we have no idea what's going to happen, and anybody trying to tell you that we do is lying to you.
so, given that truth, i'd point to nanos' snapshot polling, but he's only releasing averages, and the only thing you can really deduce is that the two major bourgeois parties are in the margin of error of each other, and bouncing back and forth. what grenier is doing may be mathematically correct in a textbook sense, but it's not helpful in actually understanding what's going to happen.
we could still see a trendline develop.
right now?
flip a coin.
12:27
i want to repeat myself using different language.
the data is chaotic, it's all over the place. i picked that up following the ekos numbers, but it's not just chaos in the poll, now, it's chaos between polls, too. you just can't pull anything useful out of data like this - it's all zigzags and criss-crosses, and it's impossible to tell what is real and what isn't.
so, the idea that the ppc is getting a bit more support right now makes a little sense - until these kids realize what they're about to vote for and pull back from it. it's a measure of frustration, and that is real, but we'd all be foolish to decide there's been a fundamental swing in the electorate based on three days of polling.
the only substantive, actually real conclusion to draw from this at the moment is that the numbers are all over the place, that there are fundamental changes occurring in the electorate, and that it is not at all clear how that works itself out.
it could be that there's incredibly low turnout and that the liberals rely on their newfound dominance amongst older voters to win back their majority.
or, it could be that the ppc dominate younger voters, robbing the ndp of their usual base, and leading to a surprise conservative victory.
you should expect to be surprised - i can't give you more than that, or at least not right now.
and, i can't present you with the kind of detailed analysis i've provided you with previously because the data to do so is currently hidden behind a series of paywalls.
12:43
things that have been true about elections in canada for 30-40 years, and that analysts expect and take for granted, appear to no longer be true in this election.
allegiances are flip-flopping.
demographics are realigning.
tribes are re-evaluating.
and, nobody's really confident about their new views - everybody's demonstrating a lot of caution and angst about switching from one group to another, and kind of moving back and forth from day to day.
the naive analysis is that it could be that these methods of analyzing the data - age. income. education level. gender. - are even losing relevance, and that the polling firms might want to come up with other ways to try to figure this out. it could be that the polling is throwing back scatter plots because long-standing correlations are collapsing - and the result is actually going to look like a scatter plot, in the end.
but, right now, all we have from the data is volatility.
and, that's all i can tell you about it - it's volatile, and not currently predictive as a result of it.
12:57
this is utterly demagogic nonsense - the supreme court would tear this down in five seconds.
...but it once again demonstrates that this person has no interest, whatsoever, in civil rights and would be happy to usher in a fascist state tomorrow, if you would only let him do it.
and, that's why we can't have dynasties in democracies - this is inevitable.
he thinks he's the king.
it's a non-solution to a non-problem, and if he thinks it will win him votes, let's prove him wrong.
the liberals are now the furthest right party in the spectrum in this country; they seem to very purposefully be running to the right of the conservatives.
some recalibration is necessary.
16:20
yes - threatening to throw people in jail for protesting is an extreme, far right position.
wake up.
if you're concerned about the far right in this country, justin trudeau is it.
16:23
again - this is completely illegal (and, frankly, flat out absurd), and somebody has to mount a legal challenge against it.
you can't even use the notwithstanding clause, for this. it's section 3.
this is what i'm concerned about this election. and, i wish there was even an option i could vote for - but there isn't.
some constitutional rights group needs to show up to vote without a mask just to create a scenario, and then push it to the supreme court to get a ruling.
0:01
i'm tempted to show up without a mask in order to spoil my ballot with the intent to sue them if they turn me away.
0:04
this is important enough to be civilly disobedient about.
0:05
france, today.
corporate news media is arguing that these photos and videos are being faked, and you'll see it come up prominently in google searches. there may be some isolated examples where that is true. but, there are vaccine passport related signs in this video, so that would appear to be unlikely for this particular media.
2:09
this is the only corporate news outlet covering the demonstrations, as far as i can tell.
i don't think that the authorities have convincingly made the case for the necessity of vaccines at school, where the kids are at virtually no threat of harm and the teachers can make free choices about their health, for themselves.
it's actually been quite warm here. september is historically a flippity month in most of canada, but it's consistently been summer throughout september here in windsor since i moved here, pretty much.
it's just been that much warmer here, this year - it's been 25+ degrees almost every day this month, including the forecast today, which is nearly 40 degree humidity. that's peak summer late july / early august weather, here. it's going to be one of the hottest days of the year, and there's an off chance it might be the hottest day of the year. it's a shame i had to miss much of the last month due to the surgery, but i think i'm ready to get back out, now.
we've recently had hard crashes midway through october, though. like, 20 degrees in one day, sort of thing. and, then it barely recovers, if at all.
this year was different though, in that it was sporadic. we had more snow in february than in a long time, but i also bicycled out to amherstburg in a tshirt in november last year and was out in a tank top in march. the winter was really very short.
i usually just try to tweak it a little, but i expect that this forecast is probably simply dead wrong. the head meteorologist for the weather network is a known climate denialist, and he appears to be pushing a bullshit forecast for political reasons. in fact, he's been doing that every year for years - forecasting a "classic winter" that never actually happens. it seems like he wants a classic winter, and may even be playing the odds on it.
but, this year, the magnets have flipped over.
what i expect to happen this fall is that all of that lingering heat in the atlantic will dominate the weaker than usual winter vortex, caused by moving forward in the solar cycle. it's not going to end winter entirely, but it should be the weakest, mildest winter we've ever seen - and that is a pattern that should accelerate in the upcoming years, as the solar cycle picks up.
in southern ontario, expect the winter to be dominated by bursts of warm, humid atlantic air. this might create a bit more snow than usual (especially late in the season), but it should mean very hot, summer-like temperatures lingering into november (or later) and a very early summer, starting back up in march.
5:47
my progress got slowed down by sleeping too much and i'll need to correct that to pick it up.
but, here's a few notes on the first few stories as i focus on some other things for the day.
i need to pick up the pace, clearly.
- callistan menace: we don't know there aren't giant caterpillars on callisto, and i'd be surprised if we don't one day find some life form that traps it's prey using magnetic fields. but, the story has no actual point to it, no conclusion and no context. it's not even a chapter of a book, it's an idea to be developed, in the abstract.
- ring around the sun: delivering letters by spaceship is hilariously pre-internet, as a concept. this story has a purpose, namely the foolishness of young men.
- the magnificent possession: this is clearly about asimov's views on the corporate dominance in the field of chemistry, and reality not aligning with his expectations, before entering the field. you have the politician, the capitalist and the mobster (if they're not all the same thing), and the silver spoon that smells like shit, on top of it. i can sort of relate to that, as an adult. it's an interesting potential device to go into these three characters, but it's only a few pages long, and doesn't begin to actually do so. it's a shame - it's a good premise.
- trends: appears to predict neo-liberalism, even if his concept of space travel in 1973 is a little bit optimistic. well, we got to the moon in 1969. and the dark side of the moon in 1973. it's a reminder that moore's law has it's limitations, that these exponential growth curves are just delusional economic theories. but, the prediction of neo-liberalism (and of the kind of ludditism that defined the 60s counterculture, which was the mirror image of neoliberalism, and a prerequisite of it's ability to actually function) is indeed some insight.
“I know, I know. You’re going to tell me of the First War of 1914, and the Second of 1940. It’s an old story to me; my father fought in the Second and my grandfather in the First. Nevertheless, those were the days when science flourished. Men were not afraid then; somehow they dreamed and dared. There was no such thing as conservatism when it came to matters mechanical and scientific. No theory was too radical to advance, no discovery too revolutionary to publish. Today, dry rot has seized the world when a great vision, such as space travel, is hailed as ‘defiance of God.’ “
.
.
.
However, the masses didn’t take it that way. It seems strange, perhaps, to you of the twenty-first century, but perhaps we should have expected it in those days of ‘73. People weren’t very progressive then. For years there had been a swing toward religion, and when the churches came out unanimously against Harman’s rocket-well, there you were.
standing in 2021, the united states has actually left space travel up to the market, and is getting leapfrogged by not just china and the eu (the russians have long ceded ground, as well), but also by india and japan. we have idiots like elon musk and jeff bezos making fools of themselves in public, while the eu does all of the actually interesting work. meanwhile, the public cares more about religious freedom, as the continent sinks into the sea.
he also predicts the coming of jihad to destroy advanced civilization, which is something currently in the process of happening, as well as the role of the supreme court in facilitating the power of religion to overturn science. we can only hope the pendulum swings once again.
so, he got something with this. but, i wish it was longer and explored the issue in more depth.
- the weapon too dreadful to use: the idea of life on venus was once taken pretty seriously, before we understood that it was a ball of gaseous sulfuric acid, overtaken by a runaway greenhouse effect. there's a comical exploration of descartian dualism here which is not particularly believable nowadays but is a silly enough mechanism to topple the arrogance of slavery with, nonetheless. remember that asimov was writing from the united states in the late 1930s, here.
8:16
with all of the boomer-bashing that's been going on since punk rock, it's interesting to go back and read what the generations before the boomers felt was coming in that period.
while it risks defining history on their terms (which is what they want and expect...), a lot of writers of the period got the basic point right.
8:22
- increased literacy rates
- the introduction of science (and subsequent discarding of unscientific agricultural methods)
- increased access to technology
- the introduction of horses
- higher immunity rates
- broad cultural interchange
- better medical care
these things are often lacking, granted.
but, one would have to be fairly dense to argue that native americans gained nothing at all via contact with europe - it's pretty clear that they've gained quite substantively, even as they've lost quite a lot, as well.
no, listen - this is an old argument that, i believe, starts in haiti, which was able to launch a revolutionary movement that was framed in western terminology.
you had colonized black africans looking to overthrow the monarchy and built a state constructed in revolutionary western language. and, the last thing in the world that they wanted was to go back to africa, or revert back to witchcraft.
it's a complicated discourse, but there is an undeniable reality that integrating into western culture from a starting point of pre-neolithic hunter-gatherers has some substantive upsides to it.
23:20
wednesday, september 15, 2021
so, norm mcdonald died.
3:44
i have to say that, if i were a g10 leader, and i looked out in the parking lot and saw a single guy with a ghetto blaring we're not gonna take it!...yes...seriously....
...i'd have to go down and offer him a beer, and make a photo op out of it.
i mean, that's too hilarious to skip.
i'd then have to sing along with him...
"no! we ain't gonna take it!",
...while shaking my fist in the air.
and, then the media would run a light-hearted story about what is a legitimately comical situation, and i'd pick up some street cred, and voters might be able to relate to me a little as a human being.
while i'm tempted to go track trudeau down and crack jokes about his mom, because mom jokes are better than wife jokes, his response was actually refreshingly non-fascist. he could have had him arrested for harassment, however absurd it might have been. the childish, half-witted comeback is consequently an improvement of sorts.
but, onlookers should be beginning to grasp the problem, if they haven't already - this shiny hair, fashion magazine model thing might seem great if you're horribly out of touch because you're hopelessly bourgeois, but, justin trudeau is, in truth, an almost impossible person to actually like. and, the party clearly needs to address that, if it won't address his authoritarian tendencies, if they're not rooted in the same childhood trauma.
so, hey justin - don't you have a constitution to run through a paper shredder, or something?
no, we're not gonna take it!
4:21
i'd like to see somebody fact check shachi kurl's performance at the debate.
that was the single worst moderator that i've ever seen, and i certainly hope she's not asked back. wow.
5:37
i just watched all of the leaders fall all over each other promising to release a methamphetamine trafficker into the community. not one of them pushed back against the messaging, which is just an excuse to bash china.
what are the plans of the various parties to prosecute these now convicted criminals, should their return to canada be secured?
5:55
so, yes i'm watching the damned debate.
....and i'm not finding it very useful or interesting - it's the same tired bullshit - but something new is their discussion about inflation.
i can't, for the life of me, understand how anybody can walk up to a podium in 2021, claim that inflation is driven by monetary policy and expect to be taken seriously. that has been debunked, and debunked and debunked and debunked again.
and, while the price of rent is rising quickly, that's not usually what we mean by "inflation". i haven't seen any inflation at all in my day to day life. if anything, i'm noticing that it's cheaper than ever to order things from china. so, when people point to inflation, i'm not exactly sure what they mean - i'm not experiencing it.
but, i've noticed that the price of oil has skyrocketed, and that is a much more likely cause of inflation than monetary policy. as i'm unusually insulated from fluctuations in the cost of oil, it might also explain why i'm not noticing it - if it's the cause of the inflation people are observing. and a quick google search suggests i'm not the first person to put that together.
this is actually a great opportunity, then.
want to reduce inflation?
use less oil, and support policies that increase the rate of transition to renewables in the manufacturing sector. give tax breaks to companies that use renewables in manufacturing, thereby reducing the cost of production - and watch them outcompete goods with manufacturing costs being inflated by the price of oil.
so, everybody jumped at that, right?
no - they all fell into the old debunked friedmanite myth (which was taught to be as a myth in first year) about monetary policy causing inflation.
8:42
oh no, not that fucking piece of shit evan solomon.
don't listen to him!
9:14
so, as i expected that was a waste of time.
if i could rank choice those options, it would be:
1. bloc
2. greens
3. ndp
4. liberals
5. conservatives
but, i would probably only fill in the top two options.
and, i cannot vote for either in this riding.
9:29
i did one of these compass things, and the questions were frequently...
one example was the question about whether some provinces pay more than their fair share. it wanted me to evaluate whether the statement was true or not - and i think it is true. but, i'm a socialist, and i think the wealthy should pay more than their fair share. the question, though, was clearly intended to catch conservatives that think alberta pays too much, and i realized that instantly. so, i said "i don't know" because i realized the lead in the question. it's true that i think that some province pay more than their fair share, but i think they should pay more than their fair share, too. so, answering the question verbatim would confuse the algorithm, and answering it dishonestly to get the algorithm to do what i want would be disingenuous.
so, these sorts of things are always screwy for that reason - they're always designed around leading questions because they want to caricature your views into easy categories. polling can't catch subtlety like this. and, i'm both pretty subtle and entirely cognizant of how polling operates.
nonetheless, i actually think the outcome demonstrates what i mean when i say i'm disenfranchised.
this is the spectrum it created:
i've renamed the axes because...conservatism and progressivism are the same thing, but what they're trying to say is not what they're actually saying. progressivism is, historically, a reactionary/moralistic reaction to liberalism that functionally reconstructs traditional conservatism in the form of authoritarian toryism. this has essentially taken over the contemporary right, which calls itself the contemporary left (and i call the fake left). historical liberals then end up calling themselves conservatives because they're struggling against the reactionaries. it gets confusing when we bring religion in, which is why the two right wing parties are further off the axes than i am, but the basic point i'm pushing back against is that they're trying to argue that support for civil rights, free speech, etc is a conservative political position, which is an incoherent way to use words (and ahistorical, to say the least). i've typed in libertarian in replace of conservative, and replaced this phony term progressive with the actual idea being measured by the poll, which is authoritarian. it's a little funny due to the false association of religious conservatism with social liberalism as a "right" that is underlying the algorithm, but this reconstructs a more useful scale, and places me in the libertarian left, which is where i identify.
the important point to realize is that the reason the ndp are higher up the social axes than i am is that they're now an overwhelmingly socially authoritarian party and my views are very socially libertarian. the same thing is true for the greens and liberals, if perhaps less so.
kvetching about the incoherence of modern political discourse aside, you see the point i've been getting across - i'm really not very close to any of the parties, am i? whatever words you want to use, i'm clearly not aligned with the fake left parties on social issues, which is what i've been pointing out for months. but, i'm not any closer to the right-wing parties, either, so i'm not feeling much pull from them on social issues - even if i'm starting to realize i don't really care which one wins, because i'm too far from either to have a preference. and, i'm falling off the scale, to the left, on economic issues. there isn't a party close to me, economically.
putting this screwy spectrum aside - and i'll again state that i can't make sense of a social progressive v social conservative spectrum because i interpret social progressivism as a conservative reaction to social liberalism, so i'd want to put progressives and conservatives on one side of a social dichotomy and liberals on the other - we can also try to see how much in agreement i am with each of the parties, and i don't have a lot of surprises with the outcome:
that's about what i'd expect - i'm a pretty far left voter, over all, so i'd be more likely to lean green or ndp, and only see the liberals as a little better than the conservatives.
but, that's not what i've been saying this cycle, is it?
there's a helpful option to weight the issues by importance, and when i do that, the following comes out:
now, the weighting is of course arbitrary and i don't know the exact algorithm they're using, but i can kind of guess it.
this is actually a little more like what i've been saying, isn't it? the two lefter fake left parties are clearly preferable, but i don't really have a serious preference between the liberals and conservatives on issues i actually care about (not gun control, not daycare, not abortion), do i?
i saw the same thing come up when i did one of these in the us election for 2016, to my surprise at the time. i had something like 95% agreement with jill stein and 20% agreement with gary johnston, neither of which surprised me. but, i was at 55% for clinton and 45% for trump. ten years earlier, i would have had 70% for john kerry and 30% for george w. bush. and, it started to click that the spectrum was changing in a way that rendered me an unwilling swing voter - an educated libertarian communist that is so alienated from the bourgeois left that the right-wing doesn't seem that much worse anymore.
i would probably vote green if i had the option, but there is no green candidate in the riding.
and, national politics and ideological allegiances aside, i really would like to get rid of brian masse - he's been warming that seat for far too long.
i'm not voting.
13:54
i replotted it with the bloc, and you can see i'm a little closer to them than i am to the greens.
but, given that the liberals and ndp are both moving away from me (i claim they're becoming more authoritarian) and the conservatives are moving towards me (i claim they're becoming more liberal), how much longer before the conservatives become the lesser social evil?
14:21
i've been railing against progressives and insisting i'm not one for years, so don't pretend i haven't.
i'll call myself an anarchist, a socialist, a libertarian and a small-l liberal, amongst other things.
i'd never call myself a progressive.
i've stated as much many times.
14:25
i support free speech and i support abortion rights.
however, i care more about what the liberals want to do to restrict free speech than i care about what the conservatives might want to do to restrict abortion rights (whether they deny it or not). if you're going to force me to choose, i'd pick the party that wants to save free speech over the party that wants to save abortion - although i don't want to choose.
i want to support a party that supports free speech and supports abortion access.
splitting traditionally liberal positions down the line like this puts people like myself in a difficult position, where i need to pick the concepts of liberal expression i care more about. the reality is that the fake left might not like what it gets, if it puts people like me up against the wall, like that.
14:30
i'm closing down on a very long day that involved the first bike ride since i got the testicles out. it was absolutely beautiful yesterday, so i took advantage of it, by getting a chance to dress for the hot weather, and take a good long ride across the city.
unfortunately, there was a cold wind blowing through the day that culminated in a hell of a rain storm at around 21:00. but it was otherwise great to get some exercise for the first time in a while...
after i got the blood test, i took a ride out to the goodwill bookstore to look for some asimov and was actually surprised by it's small size. this was pitched to me as a warehouse, but was more like a garage. they didn't have what i wanted. they might, next time.
this ride was up through the windsor-east riding, and i have to say that this irek guy (the liberal candidate) seems to be pretty popular in the riding. i didn't do a comprehensive survey, but he was clearly winning by a good margin, based on the sign count. i used to live in that riding and would consider cheryl hardcastle to be a horrible candidate due to her opposition to gmos. the ndp candidate in essex is opposed to fluoridated water. it's hokey anti-science stuff like this that hurts the ndp nationally, but it's a reflection of the difficulty it has in finding quality candidates.
when i left the bookstore, i took a ride around to get to the bulk barn, looking for some omega-3s - and they didn't have any. by the time i got back to the metro, i'd wasted probably an hour, but, like i say, i was happy to go for the ride. i got some soy at the metro (cleared them out.) and went home, to get back out for trip number two, and then trip #3, and then trip #4, which landed me at the walmart, where i got stuck waiting for the rain to pass in the aforementioned storm. and, this was a deluge, too. i was surprised to find the basement completely dry when i came in - i was somewhat concerned about tornadic activity, as i was waiting for it to pass.
i wanted to take a last trip to store #2, but it was closed by the time i got back from the walmart. so i got something to eat, stayed up all night and headed out early in the morning. and that was that, for most of the month.
i had to get out one more time this morning to pick up a package at the post office, and realized i hadn't seen a single conservative party sign, anywhere, the whole time i was out. this is unusual - there were plenty of signs in 2019. so, where did all of the signs go? i don't know. i know that the handful of strips i bike through that i'd expect to see conservative signs in were completely bare.
but, i'll point out that i saw quite a few ppc signs in regions that i'm used to seeing ndp signs in. that might be good news for the liberals in this riding, if the ppc saps away enough ndp support to help them steal a win, here.
i had a little bit of cleaning to do this afternoon, and now i'm in for the week.
now, let me see if those results are in.
16:33
the site is currently not broadcasting posts with images, so we're back to that again.
i don't understand what the purpose of restricting broadcasts, specifically, is. but, the algorithm does stupid things like this, sometimes, without any particular warning or really even any logic.
my estradiol came in at 443. that's about 8 hours in, so it seems like it's staying high.
what i'm more interested in, though, is estrone. it's not done yet.
the progesterone, lh and fsh were all undetectable, which is weird. you want to monitor lh and fsh to make sure they don't go into feedback cycles, so having them low - if not undetectable - is in theory a good thing. but, i normally have some progesterone circulating. it's making me wonder if the progesterone was from the cyproterone.
the testosterone levels aren't in yet, but i'm suspecting they're very low. otherwise, i might need to get worried about my pituitary, as i was with the growth hormone.
my cortisol is in low levels for the first time, which is good news.
they may have skipped the calcitonin. again.
17:11
thursday, september 16, 2021
i'm just waking up and am starting the day with a fruit bowl.
i want to make today a long day and i want to get back into the habit of having long days.
3:36
my testosterone is undetectable - < 0.4.
great.
so, i'll stick with the 50s every morning until i run out in early december, and ask to switch to the 25s. that should let the estrogen actually work for a while before i take another dose cut.
i did this to get off the cyproterone, and i've halved it. that's a start. i was on them for a really, really long time, so the rebound i got was understandable. i still want to get off it entirely, but i simply didn't get acceptable results by going cold turkey. clearly, the 50 in the morning is working. let's run out and take it from there.
my insulin was also very low (33 pmol/L), which is good to see.
6:52
here's my chart update.
everything is in normal range, but that low progesterone is something to keep an eye on.
2021
2022
m
a
m
j
j
a
s
o
n
d
j
f
m
a
m
j
j
a
s
o
n
d
creatinine
78/80
-
-
-
-
87
egfr
107/106
-
-
-
-
96
alp
61
-
-
63
59
50
albumin
-/45.7
-
-
-
45.9
44.6
cholesterol
3.93
-
-
-
3.99
3.8
triglycerides
.87
-
-
-
.95
.89
hdl
1.69
-
-
-
1.84
1.59
ldl
1.85
-
-
-
1.72
1.81
non-hdl
2.24
-
-
-
2.15
2.21
wbc
8.7/8.4
9.9/9.0
-
-
?
7.0
rbc
3.97/4.25
4.11/4.38
-
-
4.17
4.12
hemoglobin
132/140
133/142
-
-
139
136
hematocrit
.382/.404
.394/.424
-
-
.405
.398
mcv
96.1/95.1
95.8/97.0
-
-
97
96.8
mch
33.1/32.9
32.4/32.5
-
-
33.3
33.2
mchc
345/346
338/335
-
-
?
343
rdw
13.3/13.5
13.0/13.1
-
-
?
13
platelet
199/187
171/171
-
-
?
175
reticulocytes
-
-/42
-
-
53
56
vitamin d
87
-
-
-
109
72
estradiol
363/388
-
-
-
-
563
443
estrone
-
-
-
-
-
?
?
testosterone
0.9
-
-
-
-
-
<0.4
progesterone
1.9
-
-
-
-
-
<0.5
fsh
<0.2
-
-
-
-
-
0.2
lh
<0.2
-
-
-
-
-
0.1
ferritin
12/9
6/17
21
-
29
43
tibc
-
69.5
-
-
65.7
62.9
iron
-
9.6
-
-
22.7
37.3
iron sat
-
0.14
-
-
0.35
0.59
phosphate
-/1.42
-
-
-
-
1.09
magnesium
-/.93
-
-
-
-
0.8
calcium
-/2.4
-
-
-
2.38
2.32
pth
-
-
-
5.5
-
6.2
tsh
0.92
-
-
-
-
0.94
calcitonin
-
-
-
<0.6
-
-
?
cortisol
-
-
-
325
-
464
170
insulin
-
-
-
-
-
50
33
b12
223/251
-
304
-
363
313
7:04
none of the parties will meet the targets, so this is going to happen, anyways.
i'm not going to challenge the premise, it's probably true.
but, have tomatoes increased in price by 20%?
well, if you're used to paying $0.99/lb, you'll now be paying $1.20/lb. i'd say i get around 5-6 pounds on a big trip. that'll work out to a dollar.
is it actually true, though?
see, that number is an average price, and the irony is that it's probably being inflated by higher prices at bourgeois grocery stores. here in canada, we have two major grocery chains and they both run budget stores.
my experience is that i've been easily able to continue finding tomatoes here for $0.99/lb at the budget stores, although i sometimes have to shop around a little.
so, those numbers can be misleading - and, in the case of tomatoes, i think they are.
conversely, i've happily noticed that the price of red peppers has come down dramatically, meaning i'm paying less for salad, overall. kale is down about 50%, limes are down more than that and carrots are up and down, but about flat.
strawberries vary dramatically, but i haven't seen a change. guavas and bananas are always the same price. kiwis have not changed in price, but have maybe gotten smaller, which is probably random or seasonal. avocados are up, but only in the sense that they're no longer perpetually on sale. raspberries are perhaps down a tad.
i've recently seen essentially all of the bulk items i buy - paprika, sunflower seeds, nutritional yeast, ground flax, cumin, oregano, thyme, cayenne powder, hemp seeds, basil, red wheat bran - on sale, some as much as half off.
vector cereal has not gone up in price. i noticed a spike in all bran, but it's since receded. maybe garbage sugary cereal has gone up. chapman's ice cream went up quite a bit a few years ago (i think it was a nafta thing), but has since stabilized. the fortified yogurt i buy is always on sale; maybe the garbage arab and greek varieties that take up most of the space on the shelf aren't, i dunno. the low-fat cherry yogurt has shrunk mildly.
plant-based omega-3 syrup has come down in price, recently, albeit not by much. the highly fortified soy milk i buy is often on sale, and the list price has not changed.
the high-retinol cheddar cheese i buy is almost always at half price and still is. hot sauce is maybe up a bit, but that trend is longstanding - frank is running a real racket, i tells ya.
100% pure grapefruit and apple juice are both stable, or at least the versions i buy are. the grapefruit juice container has shrunk mildly. eggs are stable. the margarine i buy is stable. the bread i buy is always on sale. garlic is stable.
so, in total:
- hot sauce & ice cream are experiencing long term inflationary trends
- the size of the yogurt container and the grapefruit juice container have both shrunk very mildly, recently
- some fresh fruit & vegetable items are actually down, and i suspect it's due to local sourcing
- bulk spices & other bulk items are down
- avocados are no longer perpetually on sale
- most frequent sale items i purchase remain that way
maybe the truth is that garbage food is up - poison like factory-farmed meat that you shouldn't eat, anyways.
i bet fast food is way up. i don't eat much of it.
so, maybe the secret to getting your grocery bill down is to be more healthy in your diet choices.
i'm all for nailing trudeau for being an elitist, out of touch ass, but if i'm not noticing grocery inflation with my income - less than $1200/month - then it can't be too bad.
it's probably mostly centered on the "expensive chains" (like sobeys) and probably mostly to due with processed food and meat.
no, brian - economists aren't arguing that government spending is driving inflation. that's demagogic politicians that are doing that. economists are trying to explain that that idea was firmly debunked by about 1985, or so, while flunking first year students trying to bring it up.
i can posts links to the economist or the wall street journal, too, if you'd like.
9:42
the claim that government spending causes inflation is entirely insupportable, utterly imbecilic nonsense that has never been upheld by any empirical study, anywhere, in the history of the world.
any politician that is stating as much is either too stupid to understand what they're saying, or thinks you're too stupid to understand it.
i'm not sure what the more accurate analysis of mr. o'toole is.
9:47
i'm not an economic genius with brilliant analytical insights.
i'm just a math major that took economics 101.
that's all you need to rip apart what o'toole is saying about inflation as absolute bollocks - economics 101.
in economics 101, they will explain how the stagflation of the 70s was caused by the oil embargo, not by printing too much money.
the conservative old men out there that insist otherwise simply don't understand basic economics, and they never did, despite their insistence to the contrary. the reality is that they're repeating what amounts to 50 year old propaganda, and in the process they're recycling the same myths they were tricked by, in order to try and trick you. don't fall for the mythology they bought into.
9:58
i'm annoyed by this because the people that came up with this bullshit are all dead, and yet the bullshit lives on.
drop the bullshit, already.
10:04
while mr. o'toole looks like an old man, and i look like a teenager, we are in fact nearly the same age.
he has no excuse.
10:05
so, why don't we just print infinite amounts of money, then?
the actual reason is that we've been coerced, by international convention, into private lending. that wasn't true until the early 70s, when bretton woods fell apart and the western economies signed an agreement to borrow money from private banks.
the united states is unique, at least for now - they can print as much money as they want, and tell anybody that doesn't like it to fuck off. it won't cause inflation. it doesn't put them in debt to china. it's just an accounting identity.
but, canada has to abide by rules set by the international community, or it's going to get hit by the credit agencies and find itself dealing with hostile bankers using the imf to try to take over the country.
we could get around this by using the bank of canada to print money, instead - and have been, recently. but, convention is hard to break, in bourgeois circles. and, we don't appear to have the panache to go it alone on this.
so, the answer is that we could print infinite amounts of money, and that it has nothing to do with inflation, but we'd have to change the way we do it, first, to appease the credit agencies. right now, walking down that path puts us at risk of being attacked by the imf. we don't want that, so we need to show a little restraint.
10:14
ok, so we're going to get an emergency injunction and block this fascist bullshit, right?
i'll repeat my position on carbon taxes, which is this: while i generally support any kind of wealth redistribution, i do not expect the carbon pricing system brought in by the liberal government to have any substantive effect on emissions.
i spend almost nothing on oil, so i should get to keep the money, flat out. it has nothing to do with the program, itself - i just avoid purchasing oil, regardless. in past years, the government has unfortunately withheld this money due to the fact that i haven't made a student loan payment since 2008 (and don't intend to any time soon). while i got a $300 check this year, it might have been due to the pandemic and it might have even been an error.
as i don't expect the program to reduce emissions, and i'm probably not eligible for it, and i don't expect it to meaningfully affect inflation in the goods i actually buy, i have no actual position on the matter - except to call for an actual emissions reduction strategy.
11:06
that's correct - my position on carbon taxes is to completely ignore them and call for the government to develop an emission reductions strategy.
11:12
carbon taxes are merely an irrelevant distraction, in terms of emissions reduction strategies.
11:15
ok, let's get this done by the end of the day, then.
11:40
while i have no real position on the issue, i would probably vote against legalizing single sports betting, if it were a strict up and down vote in the commons. i am not a fan of gambling of any sort. while i realize that criminalizing gambling is just going to push it underground, this is a niche product that the government is now tasked with marketing to addicts in order to generate revenue and that is going to create more gambling addicts and more of the social problems that are associated with gambling. as such, i doubt that the revenue generated (which is the point. it's a bill to victimize gambling addicts by turning them into government cash cows.) is actually going to offset the social costs involved, including increased costs on policing it; on a purely financial level, i would doubt it would pass a cost/benefit analysis.
allowing it to remain illegal and not bothering to enforce it (the previous status quo.) would allow it to exist in an underground market, where hardcore lifers can go find it - and that's a better option than bringing it above ground and having the government try to turn it into a profit-generating business, with the eventual intent of privatizing it.
as far as i can tell, that's the only thing brian masse has ever accomplished - legalizing a specific type of gambling.
that's not much to get excited about, to me, from somebody that's supposed to be looking out for workers, rather than finding ways to victimize them.
12:01
i don't exactly want to crack down on sports gambling.
but, it's something that you should need to deal with some kind of shady process around in order to make it uninviting, and not something you should be able to buy at the grocery store.
12:09
i would rather keep it illegal and not enforce the laws than legalize it and create a class of victims of government greed out of it.
12:11
as it is, i hope that the legislation came with money earmarked for people that end up bankrupted by it, and kids with fathers that can't pay their mortgages because of it.
because that will happen.
and, if the government is profiting from it, it should be investing into the problems it's creating.
12:16
people before profits, huh?
right.
12:20
it opens up....questions...about the role of government, as well.
we used to have government run hydro, for example.
now, what does government do? it sells marijuana, alcohol and gambling.
why not just let the mafia do it? they're just as likely to care about the rule of law.
12:37
it's been clear for quite a while that there's a pretty bad rift and that biden doesn't seem to like trudeau much more than trump did. and, i don't blame him.
i'll be the first to point out that i don't want to be a citizen of the united states, but this isn't good for us. we need a strong alliance with the americans to exist at all - the chinese will just wipe us out and move in, if they get the chance.
it's probably not entirely trudeau's fault, in the sense that this didn't start in 2016. but, his incompetence has consequences.
when is the liberal party going to realize that they need to get rid of this guy?
- black friar of the flame: has david icke read this one? it was written before he was born. the text explores the cynical use of religion as a nationalistic tool of control by the elite to develop a rather vicious satire of the various nationalist movements that were occurring at the time. the use of a viceroy suggests an influence from the kind of british imperialism that existed in india, but a sinister reading may even suggest a parody of nazism and asimov (much later) suggested greeks and persians. but, the twist is that earth is overrun by reptilian overlords (might nationalist hindus have thought differently of the british?) intent on annihilating humanity. see, and this is something i remember about asimov, this kind of acknowledgement that the insanity of religion might have some pragmatic purpose, if only the right context could be derived. it's an optimistic perspective, i guess; if we're stuck with this, how best to make use of it, then? did the soviets not deduce the same thing? and, i'll say what i remember thinking to myself - let's bring this up again when we need to unite to fight the galactic reptilians, ok? the closest thing we've seen since is climate change, but the thing is that, if you use that example, then climate science becomes the galactic reptilians that the oil industry is using religion to destroy (capital used the same tactic to fight socialism, as well). likewise, the bankers are currently using a common cold virus to bring in a surveillance state by cynically appealing to science in a disturbingly religious sort of way. so, i take his point, but i can't take it seriously. call me an idealist (i'm not...), but i must insist that if we can't win with rationalism, then we haven't truly won - galactic reptilians, be damned.
15:01
- half-breed: this is primarily an allegory of the treatment of minorities (blacks or jews or both) in 1930s america. but, is this also an allegory of einstein's correction of maxwell's equations? of the einstein-bohr debates? of zionism on the brink of the second world war? even of thomas jefferson as benevolent slave owner? there's little bits of all of it. and, like many of these texts, i'm wishing there would be a deeper exploration of pretty much all of it. asimov is still young, here...
15:54
this is the world we're living in right now, in canada.
it's making 9/11 look like the first act of a full frontal assault on civil rights, in this country.
they're having a crisis in alberta. the media is predictably pushing it's slant. what are the facts?
the truth is that the numbers aren't that different than the ones in ontario or bc, both of whom had far more restrictions. if an 80% increase in restrictions only leads to a 20% decrease in cases, it suggests the lack of restrictions aren't really the issue.
all three provinces are about a month - at least - ahead of where they were last year, in terms of cases. that is, all three provinces are seeing september numbers that are comparable to october or november numbers from last year - when nobody was vaccinated, at all.
yet, they continue to argue that everything will be fine when we get to 90 95% vaccination rates. it's clearly not working out as planned...
so, what are they going to do?
the correct thing to do is order anybody that is vulnerable to stay the fuck inside, and make fun of them when they don't listen and get sick.
but, we refuse to do this basic, obvious thing.
the only way to stop this is to go into another lockdown, and i initially thought they were gearing up for it, but i suspect they're going to hold off until the last minute...
so, this is what i think is going to happen.
1) all three provinces - and, probably quebec, too - are going to insist that vaccine passports are the answer, that it's all the unvaccinated's fault and everybody should shop, shop, shop - especially you wealthy old boomers, you.
2) meanwhile, anything that involves alcohol will continue to be locked down and under extreme surveillance, with essentially no effect on case loads or mortality rates.
3) hospitals everywhere will get swamped. but the government will push it and push it until..
4)...we find ourselves in lockdown, despite the vaccine passports, and despite hitting 90%+ targets.
samhain, at the latest. wait for it.
and, it's going to hit hard and vicious.
if you're vulnerable, what can you do?
first, understand that your vaccine is not a magic shield and stop acting like it is.
then, and i'll say it again - if you're in a high risk category (if you're old or fat or smoke or are generally weak) then just don't fucking go outside. at all. and get used to it, too.
16:39
we're never going to get out of this by pushing down general restrictions on everybody.
99.999% of people that catch this disease will defeat it, and with barely getting sick at all.
it's that .001% of people that resources need to be focused on protecting, and they're going to keep dying until we figure out that we're doing this wrong.
and, it could very well be a very long time before we actually do figure this out - because we're horribly dumb.
and, at this point, i really need to plead with people that are at risk - you're holding up people's lives. if you don't care about yourself, think about the people that are around you and stop putting yourself in scenarios where you might get sick. stay in. this doesn't end until you figure that out - or you all die of stupidity.
we should create a monument that represents a mass grave for covid victims and place a crystal darwin award on top of it.
16:46
i have little faith in the intelligence of the older generation; i'm expecting a lockdown, and i'm expecting a bloodbath on the way there.
16:47
there are no laws or regulations or policies that you can pass to stop what's about to happen.
at risk people simply need to not put themselves at risk.
but, they will.
so, get ready for it.
16:50
there's no surprises here, anymore.
if you get sick, and can't fight it off, it's your own fault.
do you understand?
16:53
at this point, if we could just kill the elderly off as quickly as possible in order to move on, that'd be great.
the faster they die, the sooner we can move on.
17:01
i may not get vaccinated, and i may make you sick, and you may die.
but, if i beat the disease and you don't, whose responsibility is it that you're dead?
is it my fault for not getting vaccinated, given that you didn't take precautions? no - that's incoherent.
you're the one that didn't take precautions, and whether i'm vaccinated or not wouldn't matter, if you had.
and, this isn't ideological. we can't blame everybody else - we need at risk individuals to own their own decisions in getting sick. this simply can't end until that happens, one way or another.
respiratory diseases are not spontaneous - they don't jump out of drains at you, or sneak up on you when you're asleep. you have to go out and find them.
with the single exception of people living in geriatric facilities, which need to have strict entry policies, every single person that gets sick and dies from this disease went out somewhere to find it and needs to take responsibility for that mistake.
i'm not taking responsibility for the mistakes of others; i'm following the science regarding my own health, which tells me i'm better off catching it than vaccinating myself against it.
17:20
you went to bingo.
you went to church.
you went to thanksgiving dinner.
you didn't have to do any of those things.
you therefore need to take responsibility for the consequences of your poor decisions.
when you get sick and die, it's your fault.
17:27
i may start getting seasonal shots when i'm in my 50s or 60s, depending on the situation, as it unfolds.
but, it is simply not appropriate to insist i accept this vaccine, at this time.
and, there is essentially no chance i will take it within the next ten years or so.
i made a bit of progress yesterday, but then i had to sleep, unfortunately.
i have not abandoned the hypothesis that my food is being spiked when i'm gone, and the same thing happened again - i went out somewhere, i came back, i felt fine until i ate and, then.....:(.
i'm awake now.
the next part of the pattern is that it gets better when i'm in for a bit. so, let's keep going and hope it balances itself out.
2:05
if my food is being spiked, what the test results demonstrate is the pointlessness of trying to drug me with testosterone, given that i can no longer produce it, by choice.
what would be happening - and i'd have to get a blood test at home to verify this - is that the drugs are producing a short-term spike in testosterone that my body is unable to sustain - and thankfully so, as i don't want my body to sustain it. i would then experience the unwanted psychotropic effects of testosterone intoxication, before my body metabolizes it out. and, it's probably why it makes me so tired, too.
i can only imagine the damage that it's doing to my organs and my bones, on top of it.
i used to have a hypothesis that there was some rogue doctor up there working for the cops, but this is getting too fucking stupid to imagine any doctor could actually be pushing through with it. i've met some piss-poor doctors, granted. but, whether i'm dealing with a rogue doctor or not, it seems like i'm really dealing with a fucking bigoted religionist that is operating on the depravity of faith.
the evidence is pretty clear that i'm able to clear the testosterone very fast, and i suppose that if we're going to have an arms race then i'll have to up the dosage. but, i don't want to do that - i want this unwanted and nonconsensual drugging to cease.
2:12
instead of labelling fur and down coats, i'd propose the following:
1) passing a law obligating all citizens to immediately locate a can of paint in which to douse any fur coat seen, on contact, under penalty of tarring and feathering (feathers from pre-deceased avians, only) for non-compliance
2) banning the manufacture and sale of all items involving fur and downs, immediately.
3:43
no, bill 21 is not discriminatory.
to the contrary, it is a necessary protection by the state to shield itself from the discriminatory views of religion; allowing people with religious views into the civil service will necessarily intertwine their views within the state, which is unacceptable in a secular society.
that is a socialist perspective; the opposite burkean view about religous tolerance is a conservative perspective.
3:47
the quebec parties want to insist that the issue is about protecting quebec culture as inherently francophone, and they bring in a lot of language that stems from the french revolution. like most canadians, i do have a certain amount of french ancestry, but i don't identify as a francophone or a quebecker.
i do identify as a libertarian and a socialist, and as such i pick up quite a bit of ideological baggage from the french revolution, which was in a long running spat with burkean tolerance - and presented secularism as the opposite view to it, in the end.
the idea that it's about secularism, rather than quebec nationalism, isn't a contradiction - there's a large, non-trivial intersection. but, for me, it's about the tradition of state secularism that came out of the french revolution, which also has parallels in the united states.
i would actually support the introduction of something similar in ontario.
3:57
if we stand back and allow religion to infiltrate the state, we can be sure that it will use it as a tool to advance itself with.
we've been focusing a lot on stamping out viruses, but we're ignoring the most dangerous virus of them all - faith.
the value of bill 21 is that it inoculates the state from this dangerous virus of faith.
and, yeah - i'd like to see it brought in here, too.
3:59
i'll ask you this again - if you think it's ok to wear a niqab in a position of authority in a classroom or a courthouse, why don't you think it's ok to put the ten commandments on the wall?
or, maybe you do think it's ok to put the ten commandments on the wall - in which case, we are bitter, sworn enemies that have no common ground, and i curse the graves of your ancestors.
4:08
our laws come from a confluence of roman civil codes and tribal german customs.
they do not come from religious mythologies invented by foreigners from the middle east.
that is something that is worth fighting for.
4:14
i don't like to receive services from people wearing religious symbols, either. i find it intimidating and degrading, and don't think i should have to put up with it. for now, i'm happy to vote with my feet.
i would strongly support a law mandating the absence of religion from any sort of public-facing job.
4:18
religion should be entirely done away with, burned, decapitated and abolished. that's easier said than implemented. in the mean time, it should be kept in dark corners, away from the public, where it can't harm anybody. just keep it at home; i don't want to know about it.
4:19
i'm using the term "secularism", and i think that's correct, but i don't deny being an anti-clericalist, either, and would just as happily advance the same ideas under that label.
4:26
i don't accept the premise that religion is a form of free expression; that's a lot of bourgeois nonsense. religion is synonymous with slavery and is little more than a tool of brainwashing that the elite uses to control the masses with.
"religious freedom" is a contradiction in terms.
so, we can have the debate on those terms if you'd like; i don't pretend i'm hiding anything. i'm not. my intent is pull the rug out from under you and convince listeners and readers that religion is not something worthy of rights or protection at all, but something that must be abolished as a prerequisite for the attainment of freedom.
your freedom is the same thing as your slavery, and the mirror must be held up for you to see it.
that clarification aside, i'll tend to use the term secularism in the context of a general discourse, as it is most appropriate.
4:30
it is important to understand, though - and this is my point - that my concept of secularism is rooted in the french revolution, and not in the american revolution, and that this is the dominant viewpoint in quebec.
you're not going to get anywhere in quebec city by quoting thomas jeffersoon on the topic; nobody gives a fuck about that, there.
4:34
understanding this discourse, as it exists outside of quebec, is largely about understanding the differences between the american and french revolutionary concepts of the role of religion in society. and, it's no accident that burke supported the american revolution, while opposing the french revolution.
you have to understand that quebeckers get this, too, even if you don't - and that they're going to react very badly if you show up and try to enforce the american constitution on them. they have their own revolutionary traditions, from their own home culture.
but, the different approaches to religion came out of different pressures on the respective societies, and are very much not interchangeable for that reason.
so, in the united states, you had a puritan society lost in bickering over theological discourses that did not matter to the bourgeoisie, the landholders - the slaveowners. to them, this argument between baptists and presbyterians over what colour the glass on the windows should be was just cutting into profits, and no good could come from it. so, this jeffersonian rule that you can't pass a law about religion is intended to stop christian denominations from enforcing themselves on others - out of fear that the aristocratic english/scottish infighting between protestants and catholics might reconstruct itself in the colonies. there was no serious dissent on the primacy of christianity in puritanical american society.
in france, on the other hand, you had a history of papal despotism intertwined with regal barbarism that led to a confluence of landowners and church functionaries committing unspeakable crimes against the population. there were certainly protestants in france....until the church killed them all. this was not about finding a way for different denominations to coexist but a way to overthrow the power of religion in the affairs of people - not a bureaucratic rule to facilitate commerce, but a struggle for freedom, itself. the french tradition is consequently much stronger - it is not enough to merely not write laws about religion. it is not enough to have a separation wall. religion must be extricated from the state, and we must begin anew, without it.
britain, meanwhile, had a polite revolution a hundred years earlier, in which power was merely ceded to the parliament, because the traditions of tribal democracy had never been fully lost, there. england was reconquered by saxons, and then by normans, who only introduced a layer of feudalism on top of the saxon thing. the saxons insisted on their own laws, and never gave in - much like the quebecois, in truth. so, this need for violent overthrow seemed less pressing. the role of religion in england was no doubt both retarding and stabilizing, but they'd found a way to avoid an overthrow by holding to a tradition of power sharing in the country. most of canada inherits this position of british onlooking, as france and america both erupted in flames.
it is for that reason that we have both burkean views of tolerance and a jeffersonian concept of separation.
but, when quebec says it is different, it would behoove you to listen - it derives itself very differently.
it took many decades for the ideals of revolutionary france to take hold in a very conservative, catholic quebec. we call that period the "quiet revolution". but, a revolution, it was. and, today, quebeckers see themselves as in the lineage of french laicite, not in the lineage of jeffersonian separation walls.
i hope i've got my point across.
it might help explain blanchet's baffled reaction to a moderator who knew not what she spoke of.
5:11
we're talking about people that feel like they need to dress a certain way because they're ordered to by what they see as authority, and are pushing back because they think religious authority is more important than democratic legitimacy.
that's a clear and obvious threat to the neutrality of the state.
that's not free expression, it's subservience.
6:05
free expression isn't what happens when everybody dresses the same way in order to follow the rules; that's the opposite of free expression, that's the absence of free expression.
if this is your idea of free expression, you need to think about it a lot more:
6:08
i actually don't think this is an endorsement at all, i think it's mr. obama not reacting to a request by the trudeau team for an explicit endorsement in a way that's intended to be polite.
yes, i think that it's likely that trudeau called him and asked for an endorsement.
he has repeatedly stolen campaign slogans from obama.
if obama wanted to endorse trudeau, he would say it.
he didn't.
so, he doesn't.
6:35
wow.
now only does it seem like i'm being drugged, it seems like they've upped the dosage.
i need to be clear: until i had my testicles removed in august, i'd been suppressing my testosterone twice a day, every day, since 2008. that's 13 years - roughly a third of my total life and much more of my conscious life. from 2002-2008, another six years, i was experimenting with methods of testosterone reduction, and was sometimes on full suppression. together, that is roughly half of my total life and the totality of my adult life.
over that period, i've had next to no sex drive. i used to masturbate when i was a teenager, but have barely masturbated at all in years and years. i had random unwanted orgasms in my sleep every few months, few of which were attached to actual sex dreams. what i am experiencing right now - an almost constant, deeply annoying sensation in my scrotum while both awake and asleep - is something i've never experienced before, and something i very much don't like and something i very much want to stop.
what i feel like is that i'm on drugs, and it's a very bad trip that i want to stop.
and, i don't know what to do...
i didn't get my testicles cut out by my mistake - i went out of my way to stop any further testosterone production. it was supposed to be permanent and irreversible. so, in theory, i should not be experiencing anything at all - it's why i did this. i don't want this. so, how do i get it to stop? do i take a butcher knife and chop it off? what do i do, now?
how do i make this go away?
i need to be clear: i cannot ejaculate and i shouldn't be able to maintain an erection (i actually haven't tried, and i have no intent to try). you can pump me with testosterone all you want, but there's no purpose to it - i couldn't have sex, even if i wanted to (and i don't).
i've woken up to hydroxyapatite my teeth, but the only solution is to try to sleep it off.
so, unfortunately, that's going to be my weekend - large amounts of sleeping, until this poison wears off.
12:19
i didn't mark it on the calendar, but i think the last time i had sex was in 2006. i've turned a lot of people down since then, and i might have been raped once in a blackout that might have been a roofie, but the last actual consensual purposeful sex choice was roughly 15 years ago.
what happened was that i decided to avoid any sort of intercourse until i was post-op, and that's a decision i've held to and will continue to hold to.
i'm just annoyed by this; i have no use for it.
it's too late. give up. fuck off.
12:27
it is quebec that will be the society that survives this dark age we're bringing on to ourselves and will be the light at the end of this darkness, when we re-emerge from an era of ignorance.
it is quebec that will survive, when the rest of north america does not
13:45
- the secret sense: i've actually wondered quite a bit in this space about the possibility of magnetism as a sixth sense, and don't remember what sparked it. i vaguely recall reading some genetic studies pointing out that humans (and most other mammals) have the dna to understand magnetism, as our ancestors had it, back when we were fish. we have a few organs that don't seem to have an entirely clear purpose, and it's worth wondering if they might be vestigial. so, it's actually not as insane as you might think to hypothesize that we could bring this back out of our genome, although i suspect that trying to navigate a reality full of cell phone signals and wireless internet would be pretty painful. i'm not particularly interested in the underlying discourse about relativity in art, but he seems to be predicting the way in which a class of retards used lsd in the 60s, down to the flashbacks.
14:09
- homo sol: federation entrance. besides being disparaging towards humans in an empty manner, the plot has no apparent purpose. this one is throwaway.
15:15
- half-breeds on venus: this appears to have been a commissioned piece, and it picks up the plotline of the first part without any kind of interesting undertones. audience-pandering for-profit throwaway.
15:54
i think i've passed it and am feeling better. let's take another shot at starting a nice long day now, then.
i don't expect much to change in the election, so i'm going to post a final analysis and move on from it. please note that i don't have access to the kind of data i had previously, and the (lack of) detail in the analysis is a consequence of it. i'm not a fortune teller; i don't make predictions. i'm a data analyst; i analyze numbers. if i don't have numbers, i don't have an analysis. somehow, in the 21st century, that point remains unclear.
this is my suggestion as to the outcome of the election
conservatives: 130-140ish
liberals: 130-140ish
bloc: 40-45ish
ndp: 20-25ish
green: 1, maybe.
i do not expect the liberals + ndp, together, to have enough seats to be able to form government. as such, that looks like a conservative minority - and a very unstable one. neither the liberals nor the conservatives are likely to convince the bloc to form government, no matter how they plead. the conservatives will need to rely mostly on liberal support to pass legislation.
how am i getting to these numbers?
as mentioned, i don't have detailed data, so i'm going to throw out some trends:
1) there is a clear bradley effect around jagmeet singh, who is running within the margin of error of where he ran last time. the ndp is not up in ontario. they may be winning green support in the east, which doesn't help. so, they may win a seat or two in vancouver, at most. but, they may also lose a few in ontario and that one in quebec - including the one i'm in. i think, in the end, it is the ndp that suffer most from the uptick in the ppc vote, even if a lot of those traditional ndp voters were looking at the conservatives. they will be lucky to break even and might not.
2) the bloc are going to win as many seats as they can, which is less than they used to be able to due to demographic changes in montreal. montreal was always hard for the bloc; today, it's almost impossible.
3) but, that means the liberals will lose seats in quebec - and that's the election. they have no other path to a workable minority, even.
4) the conservatives will win a couple of seats in ontario, mostly at the expense of the liberals.
5) the wide swath of conservative territory from outside sudbury to outside vancouver will largely hold.
6) the liberals will also lose seats in bc.
so, you're looking at an election where the ndp are stable, the liberals are down, the greens are down and the conservatives are also down. the parties that are up are the bloc and the ppc.
you shouldn't misinterpret the results, then - this is a "fuck them all" type election, and it's not the first one we've had, in canada. there's widespread discontent, across the spectrum. nobody's getting what they want, and everybody's pissed off at their usual choices. unusually, even conservative support seems to be weak - but it looks like it's going to hold.
what's going to result in changed seats, then, are not any broader changes in the general voting public, but micro changes in swing demographics, and a lot of it is going to be hyper-local. i mentioned that irek guy in the riding next door, for example - that's a working class riding, but irek is just more popular than the ndp are. it's not about gun control, it's not about daycare, it's not about drugs, it's not about healthcare - the liberals just fluked out with a good candidate that's well liked in the community.
these sorts of things are not easy to figure out without very detailed riding-level data that only the campaigns actually have. there will be ridings that are very old, and the liberals will do well in them. student ridings may have unpredictable outcomes, due to the shift from the ndp to the ppc in the younger generation.
so, there's going to be some weird results - results nobody could really predict. that is what the data says, or at least what as much of it as i can find says: there is no national trend, no defining issue (except with ppc voters), no real...no real reason for the election. i guess that's the narrative: this is an election about nothing, and so much so that the electorate isn't responding to it in any discernible manner, except in the form of a broader hiccup in opposition to the status quo.
but, when the dust settles, that's what i think happens - ndp steady, bloc up, conservatives up a bit and liberals down a bit more.
if the liberals are lucky, they might be able to get enough seats to salvage their minority coalition. otherwise, i think the result is a conservative minority - even if the liberals win more seats.
23:43
saturday, september 18, 2021
why do the models give the liberals a 50-60(+)% chance of winning a minority, then?
note that the models measure who gets the most seats, not the most likely outcome. i mean, they say "liberal minority", but that's rooted in the assumption that the liberals can form a coalition if they get more seats than the conservatives. that's not how our government operates.
if we end up with this, for example:
liberals: 136
conservative: 135
bloc: 43
ndp: 24
then the liberal + ndp coalition gets to 160 seats, meaning it needs bloc support to pass a budget.
but, a conservative government could pass a budget with liberal support, or vice versa - so you end up with a conservative/liberal coalition, one way or the other.
what the governor-general is tasked to figure out is what the most stable government is, and while no option here is stable, i would suggest that a conservative government is more stable, as the liberals are less likely to topple the government in a scenario, like this. that is, the liberals are more likely to support the conservative than the conservatives are to support the liberals.
of course, if you flip that over and get this instead:
conservatives: 136
liberals: 135
bloc: 43
ndp: 24
then the conservatives form the government, straight up, because these stability concerns can only resolve in the face of a formal coalition, which the fake left coalition simply wouldn't have enough seats for.
however, this is the kind of outcome you should expect.
0:10
for those that are really struggling to understand bill 21 from the quebecois perspective, and i've been over this before, it might help to look at it from a residential school perspective.
i know that this is going to upset your narrative of world history, and i am indeed consciously challenging it, as i do think it is lacking in actually understanding colonialism. you have this idea that colonialism was about race, because it's what you've been taught. so, because of that, you see white people (europeans of germano-romanic extraction, specifically) coming to the americas and enslaving the part of the population that it didn't kill; further, because of that, you see muslim women as being victimized by laws written by the descendants of those colonists (despite the obvious reality that they are the new colonists, which you discard, for some reason). the conclusion is that white people are the root of the problem and laws that eliminate the dominance of white people are the solution to it.
i get it - really. but, it's historically incoherent, and largely fabricated to get to the desired endpoint. and, i mean, if you want to make this about race, i know what colour i am and what side i need to pick - i'm not a dumb white liberal that's going to walk into my own noose.
but, it's not really about race, so i don't need to do that. it's really about religion, and actually about profit. capital can create and dissolve these divide and conquer strategies as it deems useful, but this is about religion, and it's imperative we all grasp that if we want to actually undo it. pretending it's about race merely perpetuates the status quo. now, i can't educate you too deeply on this, but i can try to counter some of the programming and put you on the right track to educate yourself about it.
so, what is the commonality between residential schools, as they existed to assimilate indigenous groups, and the church-run social system in quebec before the quiet revolution? well, i've answered the question by posing it - the systems were almost identical. little french kids were treated in essentially the same way that little indigenous kids were - and little mexican kids and little brazilian kids and many little african kids (africa is a big place ) were, too. this is a matter of just understanding the scope and power of the catholic church from the onset of colonialism up until the decolonization push after world war two, which, yes, coincided with vatican II (although i'd argue vatican II was a consequence rather than a cause).
and, in fact, the same thing happened in france, itself. i find it difficult to condemn the slaughter of muslims with too great a force, given the fact that they conquered and slaughtered their way into spain, if not into north africa, as well - they sort of had it coming. but, the church launched crusades against heretics in southern france, it persecuted huguenots and it burned jews and women at the stake. it put bretons - an ancient celtic group that survived the roman genocide and the germanic migrations, but has barely survived the church, and might not survive it in the end - in concentration camps that were very similar to residential schools. it even tried to stamp out occitan as a language group, a policy that was, to it's discredit, picked up by the revolutionary movement in france.
so, if i told you that this law is intended to prevent residential school systems in the future, you might laugh at me, but it's because you're confused - you think colonialism is about race, rather than about religion. you don't understand that islam poses the same sorts of threats that christianity did, and allowing it to take over government will have the same results. and, you might even support the elimination of christian symbols, while supporting the introduction of muslim symbols, because you're so lost in the narrative.
but, if you allow yourself to see history from the view of religious conflict rather than the view of racial conflict, which is the view held by the french revolutionaries, as well as the view dominant in the silent revolution, you'll start to get it - and you'll start to realize why you should see advocates of bill 21 as allies to an anti-colonial narrative, rather than as opponents to it.
7:14
i will repeat that i would support the abolition of catholic school boards here in ontario, where i live - as well as a total moratorium on public funding for religious school boards, moving forwards.
we should have one public, secular school system for everybody.
if you want to brainwash your kids with religion, do it yourself - but i'd actually even stand up for their rights in preventing you from doing even that.
7:36
i also want to double down on the vaccine thing one more time, because...
what happens over the next few months is really dependent on whether people can understand this basic point or not. if people get this, we could avoid a catastrophe. i'm not holding my breath. but, if people fail to grasp this, we're in for a blood bath, and there's nothing the authorities can really do about it.
so, yes - vaccines can protect you. that is, vaccines work relatively well at an individual level. they're not perfect - there's a roughly 10% and growing chance that they won't generate an immune response in any particular individual - but they definitely reduce your risk of getting sick, at an individual level. further, if you follow up with periodic antibody tests, you can have a pretty good idea if you're really protected or not. so, if you are at risk, personally, you can definitely reduce your chance of infection by getting vaccinated.
further, vaccination can work at the population level if the amount of transmission is low enough. this is ultimately independent of how contagious the virus is. measles, for example, are extremely contagious, but we have herd immunity because it's also very rare - and it's very easy to identify somebody that has it by the giant red splotches all over them.
but, because this virus is hard to detect (because it's so weak) and very contagious, we now have the data to state with certainty that mass vaccination will not prevent the spread of this disease at a population level. it may reduce it, somewhat, but any belief that mass vaccination on it's own will put an end to the strain on public health is just that - faith. it's simply not upheld by the evidence.
what that means is that vaccine passports are not useful in stopping the spread, which is what public health officials should be basing decisions on (but are apparently not basing decisions on). rapid testing would be the preferred public health option, but it is not being utilized due to expense and inconvenience. the state wants a "business as normal" attitude, and is just pushing forward with vaccination, despite the evidence being clear that this will not stop transmission.
what that means is that transmission will continue throughout the fall and winter and that, if we have a return to normal, it will actually increase, and probably exponentially. the state will respond with vaccine-dependent population-level responses. but, vaccine-dependent population-level responses cannot stop the spread - only generalized population-level responses can do that. and, it's just a basic calculation to understand that.
conversely, individual-level responses can prevent death from the virus if the at-risk population can finally understand itself as at risk and understand that it needs to adjust itself to a new reality where it has less freedom than it once did.
government can't do that for us - we have to do that, ourselves.
it follows that the only way to avoid another lockdown is for at-risk people, specifically, to minimize their social contacts. if at-risk people give the broader society the finger and continue to live dangerously and do what they want, this does not end this fall, and does not end next fall - it ends only when they die off.
and, all the government can do is force us all to suffer because the at-risk won't take responsibility for their conditions - their bad habits (smoking, overeating, drinking), their poor lifestyles, their obesity, their age, their immune function. some of it is their own fault, some of it is not - it doesn't matter. unless they stay in, this carries on.
so, i am expecting a lockdown in ontario and most of canada starting around samhain.
and, i'm expecting this winter to be deadly for at-risk canadians, that were falsely led to believe it's safe to go out.
i will now stop talking about this until the spring, when i hope the border re-opens to normal traffic. it's of little relevance to me over the winter.
7:59
i oppose this policy, but there is precedent and it's clear enough: they should be given severance, not placed on unpaid leave.
the legal challenge to what the city just did would be around placing people on unpaid leave rather than offering them severance, and not around the vaccination policy.
it's easy to understand why the city did what it did, but they're wrong, and i'd call on them to reverse course, follow the law and offer people severance, instead.
9:22
what the city should do is calculate how much it's going to spend on legal costs v. how much it would spend on severance and make the proper deduction that paying out employees is more cost effective than fighting them in court.
9:23
so, i had a false start early this morning, but i am in fact awake now and do in fact feel better - not as better as i'd hoped, but enough to keep going.
so, let's make this a nice, long 36+ hour day.
9:45
no - you don't get it.
bill 21 is a fundamentally anti-catholic policy that only happens to coincidentally have anything to do with muslim women as irrelevant collateral, due to the fact that they walked into a culture that is in the midst of a cultural revolution.
it has nothing to do with them at all, and their concerns are not of any substantive relevance to the legislation as it exists, as a long overdue anti-catholic policy.
11:15
- the imaginary: the idea of using a theory in "mathematical psychology" that is derived in the complex field to solve physical problems in the real world would appear to be a sort of sardonic joke about the actual usefulness of "applied psychology". see, hard science nerds don't tend to take psychology very seriously, so the lark lies in the idea of using the complex (or "imaginary") field to build the theory, and is actually a rather heavy-handed joke, if you're a hard science nerd. it's not that deep, but it's actually a decent work of comedy - and i can only once again wish it was longer. but, to be honest, it sort of seems like what asimov is doing here is just aimlessly making up dialogue with big words to sell to a magazine, strictly for the cash. so, decent joke aside, this is more throwaway, although i also realize that the plot for the foundation series is starting to develop, here, out of the joke.
i know that asimov is not generally known as a comedy writer, but it's because few people get the dry wit.
his writing is actually loaded with sardonic jokes like this - which i pointed out immediately, when i started this.
12:10
so, if you're one of the many, many people that writes off asimov as "dry", i have to tell you that you didn't get it.
it's dry, alright - dry wit.
12:13
- heredity: i thought this was going to be a nature v nurture thing, but it isn't developed. getting stuck in the mud in the canals on mars is an interesting addition to what is actually a kind of marxist dialogue that is developed further, elsewhere. it's interesting to see the first glimpses of it, here; the story is otherwise throwaway. if asimov really thought the opposition to mechanization was cultural rather than economic, he missed the point of the marxist analysis. he's not particularly vicious on this joadian representation of ludditism, but he misses an opportunity for an honest dialogue, resorting instead to what are, in truth, ignorant caricatures, from an ivory tower perspective.
12:51
- history: this appears to be an ill-advised commentary about the second world war. being a pacifist in the early 40s would be kind of an invitation to intellectual dead-ends, and can only be firmly condemned, in hindsight. i'm not walking down this path.
13:16
this is an example of the kind of errors i think we're seeing in the analysis, this cycle.
if you look at ontario naively, you might see something like this:
lib: -5
con: 0
ndp: +3
it seems like the liberals are down and the ndp are up, right? the truth is that, if that's true, you're looking at the conservatives winning 5-10 seats - because that's what happens when you see a swing of that sort, in ontario. ask doug ford.
but, i think this is misleading. let's bring in two other parties:
lib: -5
con: 0
ndp: +3
greens: -3
ppc: +5
that's a different story, isn't it?
now, it looks like the ndp are polling a little higher because green supporters are leaning in that direction, and the liberals are losing support to the ppc. right?
the truth is that both of these reads are naive, and there's in truth a helluva mess going on. i'd actually suspect that the ndp aren't up at all (by bringing in a bradley effect) and that everybody except the conservatives are bleeding massively to the ppc.
in a lot of places, that won't matter much, or you'll just see the whole spectrum fall. in other places, it's going to be more targeted.
i just don't have this kind of riding data - i can just point out the false read.
14:32
the only party that is polling positively, outside of the margin, this cycle is the ppc.
they're clearly taking support across the spectrum.
- christmas on ganymede: silly christian-baiting from an atheist jew.
- the little man on the subway: i made a conscious decision to skip non science fiction pieces as nobody cares about asimov's non science fiction work. no comment.
16:04
you know i love the irony.
i wouldn't say he's angry, so much as i'd say he generally comes off like he's got something crammed up his ass.
- the hazing: this is more pre-foundation, and the way he's building this up is to describe humans as not obeying mathematical laws, which i think is correct. i mean, if you can reduce things to hormones, fine. but, there's no evidence at all that you can predict how humans are going to behave, or coerce them into doing things as individuals - in aggregate, statistically, at the population level, perhaps, but, then you're dealing with statistics, not humans; that works due to the laws of probability, like quantum mechanics, and not due to a deep understanding of the subject matter. so, he's deriving this imaginary idea of psychology as a hard, mathematical science and then insisting it applies to every other intelligent species except us. so, what he's doing with this is taking a joke and running with it, out into right field, until he's run so far that he's forgotten why he was running - and dropped the fact that it was initially intended as satire. and, is there some basis to this? i think the argument he persistently makes, as this unfolds, is the opposite - that there isn't, that mathematical psychology really is crazy talk. and i think he's mostly right. again - if you can reduce it to chemicals, to hormones, fine. but, our neural system is so complex....
as before, though, this story has no actual point. i do agree that landing on a planet in a spaceship would make the natives think you're a god, and have hypothesized that this is what our concept of god actually is. but, he doesn't go anywhere with it. again.
there's lots of ideas here in these little stories, but very poor development of them.
17:42
so, is the actual point that asimov is making that psychology isn't actually a science?
i think he's playing with that idea - and toying with people that want to believe otherwise. it appears to be an elaborate joke, really.
certainly, at the time, in the days of freud and jung (and lacan, but don't listen to that guy), it would not have seemed like psychology was a science, or had much hope of ever becoming one. to a chemistry nerd, it would have seemed like a bunch of utter nonsense - and that is the correct actual reaction.
i think things are a bit better now, but the discipline remains a long ways away from commanding enough respect to call it a science. it's moving in the right direction, but when you move beyond the basic first year textbook, it's still full of shamanistic bullshit and flagrant pseudoscience.
18:00
- super-neutron: appears to be a satire of parliamentary democracy, where he runs off competing boasts of physically impossible (and clearly nonsensical) statements under the sanctity of parliamentary privilege. while somewhat comical on a surface level, he's again just stringing together nonsense for publication - albeit doing so rather openly, this time. that said, he may also be taking a diversionary side-swipe at peer review, and the problems inherent to taking a truth=consensus approach in science, even while acknowledging that it's the best idea that we have (as i'm sure he'd agree that it is). a
