Monday, February 1, 2021
whether english is a pidgin or not is a technical debate that i'll leave to the linguists. but, people that aren't native in it continually complain that it doesn't make any sense, and they're right to do it - it's a primitive, guttural language. it's broken german loaded with loan words from french and currently in a rather pathetic state, truly.
effect v affect is one of the hardest things in the english language, and while i reject grammar as a broader principle, i think it's important to maintain the proper meanings of words, too.
i'll get that one wrong, sometimes, because the logic is blurry. it's not always clear what the right choice is, and sometimes it doesn't make sense.
i need to call for a re-evaluation of the english language to root it in proper axiomatic principles, to allow it to be deduced fully from first principles, so you don't have to memorize stupid rules and can figure it out on the fly, instead.
so, i reject the conventions around it's v its and use my own conventions, instead. it's should be both possessive and a contraction; its should only be plural, which is almost incoherent. so, i almost always use it's and will tell you your rules need to be reformed when you challenge me on it. and, i may have to come up with something similar for effect v affect and stick with it.
i guess that if you're going to allow grocery stores to sell alcohol (which isn't really food), you need to pass regulations to ensure that they also have regulations to follow in terms of stocking actual food.
otherwise, it's inevitable - every grocery store becomes a liquor store fist and a grocery store second, because you can markup a bottle of wine by 1000% and have to sell broccoli more or less at cost.
so, you walk into a grocery store nowadays and they're clearly all trying to sell you alcohol - wine, beer, etc. it's expanded from a small part of the store to entire aisles and sections, to the point that it's starting to crowd out other items. are grocery stores going to keep stocking less food and other items, and more alcohol? is the profit ratio that large?
i mean, a freshco or a sobey's is ultimately going to stock the products with the largest returns on them. fresh meat is increasingly rare, which is not such a bad thing, but driven by the economics of it. so, how long before you can't find grapes, because all of the shelf space is occupied by wine? how long before the only way to buy potatoes is via vodka?
the other thing i'm thinking of is how something like this would affect somebody like my mother. i can walk by a giant wine display in a grocery store and not think twice about it. she can't. and, on a bad day, she might just open the bottle in the store and pass out on the floor.
i'm not opposed to the idea of liberalizing the sale of alcohol in principle, but, again, we're seeing what happens when you allow for too much economic freedom in a primitive market society - i just want to blame the problem on markets, and not on freedom. with pollution, you end up with people dying of disease that shouldn't exist, and living with poor qualities of life while they survive. with marijuana, you end up with unlivable and unhealthy living spaces as people act oblivious to the externalities of their behaviour. with prostitution, you'll inevitably end up with corporate pimps pushing the women into conditions of abject slavery. and, with alcohol you're ending up with beer taking over the space of healthy food on the shelves. and, it's all because of the corrupting effects of profit on the general health of a society.
there are going to be some lucky people in a market society that can find some kind of remuneration for some kind of task that doesn't make them want to throw themselves off a building in boredom and disgust, but that's going to be exceedingly rare. and, yeah - you'll find a lot of people that don't have the cognitive abilities to care much beyond the basic labour contract, and are perfectly happy to exchange their freedom for material goods. this is really what the system is designed around and for - people that don't care about how they spend their time, and are just happy to have a job to buy things with - including drugs, and bad corporate media.
but, it's exceedingly difficult to be a legitimately smart person in a market society, because you don't find yourself concerned with whether people think you've succeeded or not, so much as you find yourself up against the impossibility of existing in a way that doesn't make you want to kill yourself. you may have an unending list of satisfying, enjoyable things to do with yourself, but nobody wants to pay you to do them, so unless you have an independent source of wealth, you have no choice but to not have the time to do those things because you have to find some way to pay the rentier class, instead. and, how excited does anybody get about living a life like that?
it's for that reason that the most intelligent people in a market society end up on the fringes of it, while the dumbest end up running the institutions.
if that's efficiency, it's efficiency in the sense of being an efficient algorithm for idiocracy - which is what we have around us, more and more every day.
there isn't a job you could give me that i wouldn't hate, or a labor relationship you could present to me that wouldn't make me loathe my existence, and despise who i am. i admit it would be easier if there was - if somebody would pay me for doing the things that i love. but, i would rather live in abject poverty and exercise the freedom to do what i want than throw everything i love away for material possessions.
and, i insist that's a sign of intelligence - whereas choosing freely to exist in a role you care little for is a sign of a lack of it, regardless of the salary figures attached to it.
so, i always looked at getting a job as giving up on life, and refusing to get one as continuing to resist, continuing to live, continuing to exist.
it would help if i had an income source, granted. but, that can neither be an ends, nor a means to one; it can only be coincidental, adjunct, secondary...
to be free, we must exist to devise our own ends, not to accumulate profit - not for you, and not for anybody else. and, we must be free to be happy...
myanmar is complicated, and it doesn't help to moralize it, despite the fact that that's what you're going to hear about for the next forever because it glosses over the complexities of the situation, but there's a very introductory crash course to the british partition of india with some fuller context, which you won't get anywhere in the news, here:
i am the source, here.
...which i'm going to repost so it's linear and readable:
sept 6, 2020
but, if involving ourselves slows the process down, it's self-serving and should be resisted.
i don't know what you do in this situation. the countries around them don't want them for various reasons, and (unlike canada, which is a colonial state) myanmar does have some self-determinancy in the matter; there's no valid reason why they ought to be forced to integrate a large group of foreign refugees that are not indigenous to the region and that they don't want, and there's valid accusations of continuing colonialism underlying demands by a country like canada that they should.
it's really the bangladeshis that deserve the higher levels of criticism here for kicking out their own, not myanmar that deserves the criticism for refusing them entry. some kind of proper solution really involves working with the bangladeshis to integrate the kind of population that the country was created to absorb, not pushing continuing muslim and indian colonization of what is a buddhist and ethnically different territory.
perhaps the pakistanis could offer them asylum.
but, if canada's ultimate angle here is that it sees them as a source of migration, then it should just start lifting them out and stop interfering in a legal process that it's just making worse by meddling in.
i don't know what you do in this situation. the countries around them don't want them for various reasons, and (unlike canada, which is a colonial state) myanmar does have some self-determinancy in the matter; there's no valid reason why they ought to be forced to integrate a large group of foreign refugees that are not indigenous to the region and that they don't want, and there's valid accusations of continuing colonialism underlying demands by a country like canada that they should.
it's really the bangladeshis that deserve the higher levels of criticism here for kicking out their own, not myanmar that deserves the criticism for refusing them entry. some kind of proper solution really involves working with the bangladeshis to integrate the kind of population that the country was created to absorb, not pushing continuing muslim and indian colonization of what is a buddhist and ethnically different territory.
perhaps the pakistanis could offer them asylum.
but, if canada's ultimate angle here is that it sees them as a source of migration, then it should just start lifting them out and stop interfering in a legal process that it's just making worse by meddling in.
13:59
that said, i don't think that canada has the infrastructure required to facilitate that kind of migration, at this time.
they'll just end up homeless here, where it's much colder, instead.
they'll just end up homeless here, where it's much colder, instead.
14:01
again: the atlantic is not a very good source, but they get the basic point, here.
islam is a violent system of brutal colonization, and it's quite understandable that myanmar is beyond apprehensive about opening the doors - it knows that they will take over, if they'e allowed to, and no educated person can really dispute the point, everybody realizes that truth. so, the indigenous burmese have an absolute right to protect themselves from muslim colonization in the form of bangladeshi encroachment into the region. that's not an act of repression; that's self-defence.
but, you have to work in the various alliances here, as well. while there was some thought that this aung san suu kyi character may provide an opening for the west in myanmar, the country in truth remains under a chinese-backed military dictatorship, which she is mostly playing ball with. so, western support for this group has the effect of destabilizing myanmar for western geostrategic gains, and the canadian intervention may be seen as something less than altruistic when interpreted that way - it's more like we're brown-nosing the cia, which is consistent with the turn we've taken under freeland's foreign policy direction. human rights are just an excuse to curry american favour.
but, i don't think that's our ultimate angle. while everybody else in the world is concerned about overpopulation and carrying capacities, we seem to delusionally want to increase our population levels by bringing in anybody we can. we don't seem to have learned the lesson of ellis island, or the extreme levels of poverty and inequality that such a policy produces. you give us your huddled masses, and they starve here instead; we don't have the infrastructure to be the world's dumping ground.
but, powerful people at the top of our hierarchy want us to be, in conjunction with arab blood money.
my request is that you educate yourself on the topic before you sprout the propaganda that ultimately comes from arab oil sheikhs and bankers pushing for colonization by rohingyas as a way to muslimify the region, at the end of the day - and that we support to contain the chinese, to curry american favour. you may find that the truth is not quite what it seems.
but, we should step back if we're a hindrance to the progress of getting these people a state in the end, even if that state should not be in the geographic area called myanmar.
islam is a violent system of brutal colonization, and it's quite understandable that myanmar is beyond apprehensive about opening the doors - it knows that they will take over, if they'e allowed to, and no educated person can really dispute the point, everybody realizes that truth. so, the indigenous burmese have an absolute right to protect themselves from muslim colonization in the form of bangladeshi encroachment into the region. that's not an act of repression; that's self-defence.
but, you have to work in the various alliances here, as well. while there was some thought that this aung san suu kyi character may provide an opening for the west in myanmar, the country in truth remains under a chinese-backed military dictatorship, which she is mostly playing ball with. so, western support for this group has the effect of destabilizing myanmar for western geostrategic gains, and the canadian intervention may be seen as something less than altruistic when interpreted that way - it's more like we're brown-nosing the cia, which is consistent with the turn we've taken under freeland's foreign policy direction. human rights are just an excuse to curry american favour.
but, i don't think that's our ultimate angle. while everybody else in the world is concerned about overpopulation and carrying capacities, we seem to delusionally want to increase our population levels by bringing in anybody we can. we don't seem to have learned the lesson of ellis island, or the extreme levels of poverty and inequality that such a policy produces. you give us your huddled masses, and they starve here instead; we don't have the infrastructure to be the world's dumping ground.
but, powerful people at the top of our hierarchy want us to be, in conjunction with arab blood money.
my request is that you educate yourself on the topic before you sprout the propaganda that ultimately comes from arab oil sheikhs and bankers pushing for colonization by rohingyas as a way to muslimify the region, at the end of the day - and that we support to contain the chinese, to curry american favour. you may find that the truth is not quite what it seems.
but, we should step back if we're a hindrance to the progress of getting these people a state in the end, even if that state should not be in the geographic area called myanmar.
14:18
"what side are you on?"
i'm on the side of the international working class, that seeks to ease nationalist tensions in the overthrow of capitalism on both sides of the pacific.
i'm on the side of the international working class, that seeks to ease nationalist tensions in the overthrow of capitalism on both sides of the pacific.
14:32
there's even an angle with the gambia thing, regarding the struggle between the west and the chinese for control of resource extraction in africa, although the gambians seem to be playing both sides.
there's a link to a video in here somewhere where obama stands in front of a group of african emissaries and states, without blinking, that america does not intend to steal or extract resources from africa. it's perhaps one of the funniest things i've ever seen.
there's a link to a video in here somewhere where obama stands in front of a group of african emissaries and states, without blinking, that america does not intend to steal or extract resources from africa. it's perhaps one of the funniest things i've ever seen.
14:40
myanmar was lost to the chinese fifty years ago.
and, we have no business there, and never did - not even to back continued arab colonization in the region.
15:11
no, listen: i'm firm on this. anybody arguing that myanmar should carve out an islamic state on it's border are on the wrong side of history, here. the burmese have the right to self-determination, and the right to defend their borders.
but, let's take a step back and remember how the region became the way it did, and why it became the way it did, as well.
so, this is a history lesson post...
most people know the british were in india until gandhi threw them out (i'm being facetiously simple). but, let's remember what the map of british india looked like:
british india, of which the british monarch declared itself emperor (and emperess as it may be), was not merely what we today think of as "india", but also included:
1) pakistan
2) bangladesh
3) burma (now called myanmar)
4) nepal
5) bhutan
this is a huge area, with a very large number of people in it.
even back then, the british fought conflicts in afghanistan against the russians and iranians, in an attempt to expand influence into central asia and cut off the russians from the indian ocean - which the chinese are attempting to gain access to through myanmar, today.
when the country was partitioned in 1948, it was very purposefully split into three regions, as demonstrated by the following map:
the partitions were as follows:
1) green is muslim
2) orange is hindu
3) blue is buddhist
now, there are still muslims in india and burma, it is true, but the reason it was partitioned this way was to give primacy to specific religious groups in the various areas.
so, when the country of canada walks into this space and starts undoing the partition, and trying to bully the burmese into opening up an extra space for muslims, they should rightfully be seen as an imperial agent trying to reassert the primacy of british colonialism.
an area for muslims was already cut out - it's the green area. and, if muslims in the blue area want self-determinancy, they should move to the green areas.
but, let's take a step back and remember how the region became the way it did, and why it became the way it did, as well.
so, this is a history lesson post...
most people know the british were in india until gandhi threw them out (i'm being facetiously simple). but, let's remember what the map of british india looked like:
british india, of which the british monarch declared itself emperor (and emperess as it may be), was not merely what we today think of as "india", but also included:
1) pakistan
2) bangladesh
3) burma (now called myanmar)
4) nepal
5) bhutan
this is a huge area, with a very large number of people in it.
even back then, the british fought conflicts in afghanistan against the russians and iranians, in an attempt to expand influence into central asia and cut off the russians from the indian ocean - which the chinese are attempting to gain access to through myanmar, today.
when the country was partitioned in 1948, it was very purposefully split into three regions, as demonstrated by the following map:
the partitions were as follows:
1) green is muslim
2) orange is hindu
3) blue is buddhist
now, there are still muslims in india and burma, it is true, but the reason it was partitioned this way was to give primacy to specific religious groups in the various areas.
so, when the country of canada walks into this space and starts undoing the partition, and trying to bully the burmese into opening up an extra space for muslims, they should rightfully be seen as an imperial agent trying to reassert the primacy of british colonialism.
an area for muslims was already cut out - it's the green area. and, if muslims in the blue area want self-determinancy, they should move to the green areas.
15:42
as an aside, comparing what is happening in myanmar today to what happened in germany in the second world war is ridiculous and outlandish and anybody making absurd statements of the sort should both apologize and resign.
15:43
the only thing that the world has seen that is remotely comparable to the nazis is in fact isis, and muslim extremism, in general.
when people assert that muslims are victims rather than oppressors, you should ask them how much they got paid by arab blood money to say that.
when people assert that muslims are victims rather than oppressors, you should ask them how much they got paid by arab blood money to say that.
15:44
"but bangladesh is poor and overpopulated. they can't absorb this group of refugees."
then they're going to need to breed less, aren't they?
i'd suggest a one child policy.
it worked wonders in china.
then they're going to need to breed less, aren't they?
i'd suggest a one child policy.
it worked wonders in china.
16:19
or, they could just wait a few years until they sink into the sea.
solves that problem...
solves that problem...
16:20
so, is the cfr a better or worse source than the atlantic? i don't know. that's a pretty daunting insult directed at the atlantic...
if this is the way things are, that is good, as it's also how things ought to be.
again: there's ways to sort of try to blunt the effects on bangladesh by trying to scatter them around a little - to pakistan, to the middle east and, in some small numbers, perhaps to canada, as well.
but, that line was drawn to give the buddhists in the former empire a homeland of their own, and the muslims don't get to encroach on it just because they overbred. they don't get lebensraum by default, just because they're muslims, or because they're brown.
they need to get their population levels under control, not argue that overpopulation gives them some kind of right to spill over into neighbouring regions. and, whatever the solution to easing the existing issues are, they should come with the acceptance that the country was partitioned for a reason, and muslims need to stay out of the buddhist regions.
....at least for now. we don't talk like that on this side of the world, but it's because we've reached a different cultural plateau. and, some level of atheism in the region, an inevitable consequence of higher standards of living, is likely the way to get to a more substantive level of peace.
for now, these religious groups don't like each other, and their various autonomy needs to be respected.
i'd say the same thing if you flipped the situation over.
https://www.cfr.org/blog/what-happens-if-rohingya-stay-bangladesh-forever
if this is the way things are, that is good, as it's also how things ought to be.
again: there's ways to sort of try to blunt the effects on bangladesh by trying to scatter them around a little - to pakistan, to the middle east and, in some small numbers, perhaps to canada, as well.
but, that line was drawn to give the buddhists in the former empire a homeland of their own, and the muslims don't get to encroach on it just because they overbred. they don't get lebensraum by default, just because they're muslims, or because they're brown.
they need to get their population levels under control, not argue that overpopulation gives them some kind of right to spill over into neighbouring regions. and, whatever the solution to easing the existing issues are, they should come with the acceptance that the country was partitioned for a reason, and muslims need to stay out of the buddhist regions.
....at least for now. we don't talk like that on this side of the world, but it's because we've reached a different cultural plateau. and, some level of atheism in the region, an inevitable consequence of higher standards of living, is likely the way to get to a more substantive level of peace.
for now, these religious groups don't like each other, and their various autonomy needs to be respected.
i'd say the same thing if you flipped the situation over.
https://www.cfr.org/blog/what-happens-if-rohingya-stay-bangladesh-forever
19:33
i hope that this government gains a little perspective and pulls back before this becomes an albatross for them.
we are not taking the right position on this; we're just embarrassing ourselves, in a rush to contain the chinese.
we are not taking the right position on this; we're just embarrassing ourselves, in a rush to contain the chinese.
19:37
===
got it?
so, you might want to take note of the fact that the chinese did this after obama too, indicating that they have reason to think that this administration is looking to generate instability in myanmar via the rohingya issue, or other issues on the thai border. so, read this as pre-emptive. we'll have to see if it works, or if it's an indication of a starting geopolitical hot point and another pointless war over the next four years.
despite it's reliance on chomsky, the modern left seems to have no concept of where it came from.
Freedom without socialism is privilege, injustice - socialism without freedom is slavery, brutality - bakunin
stated differently,
liberalism without socialism is barbarism; socialism without liberalism is slavery
and, it's important that the left remembers this constantly, or it will lose over and over and over.
going out there and railing against individual rights isn't going to get you anywhere; nobody wants that, and it misunderstands the theory, anyways.
if you go carrying pictures of chairman mao, you ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow - john lennon
what is ice?
you can't come to reasonable policy until you understand what this is: it's a human resources agency for capital. republicans take advantage of it's role in that context to fear-monger, whereas democrats (who are the historical party of the types of capital that ice works for) obfuscate and deflect, to make it hard to understand what they actually do - which you will learn is not what you expect, when you look into it and read up on it.
ice does not exist to protect the border and does not exist to protect the community. nor is it carrying out white supremacist policies under the direction of nazis (obama was deporter-in-chief, recall). it exists to do the dirty work of mostly agricultural capital in managing, controlling and regulating the flow and cost of labour.
and, you'll never fix it until you get it.
so, i had to do some groceries today,...
i mentioned previously that i wasn't sure if my keyboard difficulties were the result of a spill - which did happen, but seemed minor - or the consequences of accidentally installing this "adobe update" that seemed to be pushed down from some kind of intelligence network via the google servers (i'm on a chromebook, so google controls my os via a network domain relationship, which i clearly need to get off of), and was obviously absurd.
see, i spilled a little water on the keyboard and in the process of drying it mashed the keys a little. maybe you've done that - you're more concerned about getting the water out at that point, and you stop worrying about the state of the machine. i should have turned it off, first. nonetheless, i think i ended up pressing one of the shortcut keys to install the update being pushed down. oops - but it might be a big oops, partly because i'm now in the awkward position of being able to point to the spill as occam's razor (you spilled water on your machine jessica, deal with it), when it just doesn't add up as the cause. i fully realize that i sound ridiculous acknowledging that the keyboard stopped working after the spill, and not believing it caused it. but...
first, this seems to be coming from google, so i think it's government that's going after me, and i don't know what level or even what country. that was a few weeks ago. the adobe update - which showed up every time i rebooted and sat in the system tray - has since stopped. chrome banned flash years ago, and nobody's used it for anything in eons.
i mentioned that the keys that stopped working were also curious and showed no real pattern. so, the t button - nowhere near the spill - stopped working, meaning i can't launch crosh. backspace, in the far corner, stopped working, but delete didn't. the refresh key stopped working, so getting to developer mode was impossible. the shift, ctrl & alt keys stopped working on only one side, which seemed like a half-finished job. so, if it was about the local spill, it didn't add up; if it was about the internal logic, it didn't add up. it seemed more like somebody picked specific keys that would stop me from utilizing the machine fully, and also seemed designed to stop me from editing my own writing.
which means that the entire usb channel from the keyboard in is compromised.
so, i tried to reformat it a few different ways, ran into some roadblocks and put it aside.
when i came in today, it seems like they finished the job. the mousepad doesn't work anymore, the function keys that were working have ceased functioning, both delete & backspace are broken and even the arrow keys are out. i haven't done anything further - and that was all fine before i left. so, if i were to get into the bios on the device, i wouldn't be able to do anything in it.
initially, the keyboard didn't work at all, but i took the device apart and realized they plugged the ribbon back in upside down. that didn't just happen, obviously.
so, i don't know what to do next. what would you do?
what, exactly, am i doing here that is drawing this kind of attention to me?
is this all really the consequence of being an independent thinker? are they really this fearful of independent thought? or, are they so incompetent that they actually, truly, honestly can't figure out that i'm not a russian spy?
i couldn't call the cops if i wanted to do; it's the cops doing it.
i have a usb mouse, and am using a usb wireless keyboard. they destroyed the last wired usb keyboard i bought. i guess i will have to buy another one.
in the meantime, i'm going to see if there's anything i can do to try to retake control of this. it's now entirely useless as a mobile device, and i'll have to find a way to get another laptop of some sort, it seems (i do not want a phone - you can't type on a phone, so it's useless to me). but, that's hardly a priority for the moment, given the pandemic.
it's clear enough what's happening, but i really don't get it.
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