i am republishing everything temporarily in order to use mirroring software to pull it down. i expect this post to be taken down within 24-48 hours. i would request you refrain from unwanted moderation in that time frame, so i can take my site down from here and upload somewhere that cares more about speech rights and less about conservative value systems.
tuesday, february 1, 2022
be careful with doctors.
some of them are legitimately good at what they do.
a lot of them are horrifically awful.
logic and evidence are more valuable than authority, and we all need to collectively remember that, right now.
1:14
what mr trudeau has just demonstrated is that he does not respond to evidence.
when is he going to step down?
2:42
there is no use in having a debate with mr. trudeau on the topic.
2:53
mr trudeau was just hoisted by his own petard.
and, he has no idea it even happened.
3:02
i was critical of this from the start, but if there was some thinking, previously, that there was value in convincing healthy young people to get vaccinated, that argument is now outdated, and based on last year's science.
the math always said this was stupid. but, the current science is pretty clear that you need to update the passport system to requiring not just a third dose but regular dosing - every 5-6 months - or it's just a stupid, pointless annoyance.
if governments want the data, let them come out and say so. if they want to strengthen consumer confidence, let them admit it. but, the premise that this is driven by science is a charade, and a well exposed one.
politicians that continue to repeat last year's science as absolute truth need to be taken to task for it.
3:36
do you want the government to force you to get vaccinated for the common cold every six months in order to go to a concert, or get a meal in a restaurant?
i don't.
by the time the system is updated to three doses, a fourth will be required - or the virus will have mutated enough that a fourth or fifth is no longer helpful. it's regular vaccinations, with regularly updated shots, or bust. so, if it's fish or cut bait, let's cut bait.
and, yes, this was predictable.
it would be nice if the government had somebody to send the bill to, but the best we can do is hold them accountable for their stupidity, even if we should blame ourselves for our lack of sober thought.
i wish i could vote the people in this province out of it.
3:55
there's a high chance that the appspot site on the side is going to come down, which is a bit of a shame, but i don't have an answer.
there's no traffic to the site, so i'll never get past the free tier.
i'm disabled; i can't get a credit card. i mean, nobody's going to give a credit card to somebody with an income of $12,000/yr, whether i'd use it or not. they've been bugging me for one for years, and are now demanding one.
that site is the skeleton of the site that was previously hosted at carleton university, going back to about the year 2002. it's very old, and i'd like to find an answer to keep it up, but i don't want to pay to host a site with no traffic.
i'll take a look into it, but if google doesn't cease it's irrational demand for a credit card on a site that doesn't incur charges, it's going to come down, and i won't be able to stop it.
it shouldn't affect the blog, but i might need to update links.
7:06
when i signed up for appspot it was free, and they told me it would always be free.
in fact, that's still true - it is free, and it will always be free, relative to the way i use it.
but, what they did was merge the free appspot service into the commercial cloud service, which demands a credit card. this credit card will never be charged, but they demand it, anyways.
if i was in the united states, i could give them a debit card number, because american banks all use the credit card companies for debit services. but, canada uses interac for this purpose, and interac and google don't appear to be connected.
if it comes down, it's going to create hundreds of dead links across multiple sites and i'll be in no hurry to correct them. it's all mirrored here, i think. anything that isn't mirrored here will be, and the links will need to be replaced with links to this page, instead.
it's just more pointless work, and i'd like to avoid it.
but, i can't give them a credit card if i can't get one, and it's as simple as that.
7:36
there is some possibility that the project may stay up and backend services might shut down, which is fine - i don't use those backend services, or even really fully understand what they even are.
i've tried logging into the site a few times, and i don't understand it at all.
i spent a fair bit of time studying programming, but i really didn't have the interest or the aptitude. i could probably figure it out, but it looks beyond fucking boring.
7:39
i mean, i went through this once before, and the site did actually stay up.
we'll see what happens.
i remember arguing with them that i wasn't going to incur charges, and the support staff insisting i had to pay up. but, now, there's two years of $0.00/month statements. if my claim wasn't convincing then, it should be now.
there should hopefully be some way to get somebody to enter some kind of exception.
7:41
i could understand if i owed them money, but i don't.
i'm in the free tier, and there's no suggestion at all that i ever won't be.
but, i mean, the fundamental problem is that their payment options are simply too restricted. i have to specifically give them a credit card, and i just bluntly can't. if they would simply expand the list of payment options, however stupid the exercise is, then there wouldn't actually be a problem.
7:45
i just like very simple websites. the more simple, the better.
it's just all text-based html files, and that's how i want it to be....
we'll see what happens.
8:42
i could plausibly do a little better than $12,000/year, but i really don't want to.
i value time over status.
i just need enough to pay the rent, really. i'm frugal by nature, and i don't want a bourgeois lifestyle.
i've been over this many times, but if i got a job making $100,000/yr, i'd find myself a cheap apartment and put $80,000 away for retirement. then, i'd teach myself how to invest and retire in 5 or 6 years.
i'd just be looking for the shortest possible path out.
i know that capitalists like to make things up about why some people get so pissed off about markets, and maybe sometimes there's actually a kernel of truth to the pseudo-science and pop psychology of it all. but, i just think capitalism is a waste of time, and i just don't want to waste my life doing it.
i may have to make a different choice one day, but right now i'm happy with the minimal income, in exchange for almost boundless free time. that's what is important to me - time.
9:40
i mean, it might still happen. i'd rather put it off, but it might. i could, for example, end up teaching math. if i have to. for five years....
i may end up buying property, but it would be with the intent of renting it, not living in it. i actually like living in an apartment [if it's smoke-free], as there are safety benefits to being up several floors. you don't have to worry about things like flooding, either.
i don't want a car. i don't want a phone. etc.
the truth is that i'd live very luxuriously on $25,000/yr. and, if you cut out the cost of rent, i could live like a queen on more like $10,000. if i didn't have to pay rent, the truth is i'd be comfortable with $5,000/year. really...
and, i was always like that. i mean, i had friends that wanted to buy cars and stuff, but it just always struck me as foolish. it's not about fiscal conservatism, so much as it's about a labour theory of value. i guess i figured out fairly young that the more you spend, the more you have to work, and if you really hate working, you need to spend less. you can call me lazy if you insist, but you're missing the point - i just have better things to do than waste my time making somebody else money for a minimal cut.
if i ever find myself back in the workforce with intent, i will be seeking to save as much as i can and spend as little as i can, with the intent of getting back out as fast as i can.
so, $12,000 sounds impossibly low, and there's people that are forced into this, that i feel awful for. but, i'm mostly just trying to eek out an existence free of being forced to sell my labour, as long as i can. and, if i can make it to 65, i've beat the system, as far as i'm concerned.
9:55
i would actually strongly suggest that the protesters make an attempt to reach out to the local residents, as a pr tactic. this could include community activities, including distributing food.
there was apparently a lot of money raised for this.
from a tactical standpoint, you want the locals on your side.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/truck-convoy-downtown-ottawa-residents-mental-health-1.6333674
10:49
the protesters want to maintain an inviting festival or party-like atmosphere, and avoiding falling into a siege mentality.
10:58
can we still tax fat people, though?
can we?
11:01
i want to get out ahead of something.
i've seen a few studies from american media, apparently being driven by the whitehouse, that talk about the need to "restore confidence" in the cdc. what they're getting at is the idea that people aren't trusting the science, and it needs to be addressed.
there's going to be a major wrench thrown into this over the upcoming months as politicians are forced to acknowledge that the policy of enforcing mass vaccination for a disease like covid-19 was, in fact, a mistake. and, they are going to have to acknowledge that, as we start rolling out fourth or fifth booster shots, with increasingly waning efficacy.
you're going to be faced with the inevitable problem of anti-science hucksters, faith healers, religionists, naturalists and other snake-oil sales people standing up and saying "we were right and the science was wrong. follow us, instead.".
that's why it's so important that sites like this and voices like mine - which argued that the science predicted this mess and that the politicians were wrong because they didn't follow the science but rather gave in to populist hysteria in enacting irrational policies while doing little to restrict contact with the vulnerable - are not shut down by censors enforcing an already debunked mainstream narrative.
i may have sided with the uninformed when they argued for bodily autonomy, and i may have agreed with them when they argued against "public health restrictions", but my arguments were always drastically different and i will break with them when the narrative switches to a debate about the utility of science, rather than the efficacy of the policies. where i was previously playing the role of attacking the political class for not following the science, my role will shift to one of defending the science against attacks from the anti-intellectual know-nothing right, while distancing myself from the bourgeois political class that got it wrong.
"look", i will say "some people that understood the science got it right. so, don't blame the science. blame the state."
and, while the state may kneejerk, it must relent, because it did get it wrong, and sitting office holders will need to take the fall for it. when it is understood that vaccines no longer work, people are going to get angry about it, as they should be. we don't want them to turn to religion or nihilism - we want them to understand that the politicians were wrong, and the science was right. we will need to throw the bums out, but we must take care not to fall further into backwardsness than we already have.
the science is the light that will show us the way. what makes science different, and better, is that scientists can accept being wrong, so long as we learn from it. unlike religion, science is always changing; it does not make claims to absolute truths, or try to write facts into stone tablets. but, it needs defenders like this that hold to the data in the face of public pressure, and who are proven right in the end.
so, you liberal censors need to back away and fuck off.
your grandkids will understand.
18:46
this won't succeed, either.
there's a fundamental misunderstanding underlying this, regarding the way our laws work that has yet to be corrected in the mind of the mother filing the lawsuit, which is that the comedian has some obligation to behave nicely and needs to pay for being rude. that's just not how our laws work, and it will hopefully never be how our laws work. they're demanding a moral solution in a secular legal system, and they will likely be forced to pay costs by a court that is simply not tasked with policing morality and is increasingly fed up with being asked to do so.
if they want damages, about the only thing that i can see that might be successful is using an old british remedy called unjust enrichment that argues that it is unjust - we're back to morals - to make money at the expense of others. but, this argument is essentially reducing the issue to "but, we didn't get our cut", rather than a moral denunciation, which is what the mother seems to think she's entitled to.
in a secular society, nobody is entitled to what she wants. and, somebody failed in raising this woman to expect the state to play the role of nanny, in context.
at this point, the court is justified in getting exceedingly blunt with this woman, if she continues to file frivolous lawsuits.
19:06
"RUSSIA IS THE AGGRESZOR!!!!!11!!1!!11" - psaki-bot
one will further note that the statement was presented while glaring at a reporter, in an icy manner that clearly projected a desire for imminent death.
psaki-bot is perhaps an endless source of amusement to me, in that she's a professional liar with no poker face that has somehow held a job she's terrible at for what seems like decades, but the broader point remains valid - the americans seem rather forceful in their belligerence that russia is the aggressor, do they not?
"you vill agree that russia is the aggressor, and you vill like it!"
19:44
if the politicians got it wrong, and they listened to the scientists then....
no.
that's wrong.
the politicians did not listen to the scientists. the politicians listened to the pollsters.
20:17
one of the best things they can do is stop keying in on the spike and move back to a whole-virion vaccine (starting with omicron as a base) that better mimics natural immunity.
20:19
did the lockdowns work in ontario? is that why cases have plateaued?
it's a specious deduction.
in fact, if you look at historical data, flu cases almost always dip in january and rise again in february. there's two reasons why, and it's a compounding, double-whammy effect:
1) christmas
2) it's cold in january
so, people catch the flu over christmas [which boosts rates] and then stay inside in january [which cuts them].
the lockdown might have helped, mildly. but, what we're seeing is a pretty normal shape in the curve.
bc had less strenuous lockdowns and is seeing more or less the same outcome.
i'm not saying it's wrong, but it's not a supportable claim without much more deeper study. and, as a deduction, it's specious.
22:05
the flu season usually peaks in the spring, when it warms up a little.
22:12
this data is for ottawa, specifically.
as you can see, a local peak in late december or early january is very common, and a dip in late january and early february is quite normal. a maximum or second local peak in mach or april is quite frequent.
22:28
wednesday, february 2, 2022
you'll often hear christians make this claim that "life begins at conception", and it's never entirely clear what they mean.
if conception is a word to be taken literally, it refers to coming up with a concept. one may conceive of an idea, or a notion. so, to speak of conception implies the existence of a conceiver.
if the conceiver is the parents, conception is an intellectual process that refers to the decision making process around conscientiously having a child, if it occurs. but, that doesn't seem to be what christians mean.
rather, conception seems to refer to the idea that humans are created by some divine creator, which is patently absurd.
i need to call on people to reject the language, unless they insist on using it as defined. if you are a sane person that rejects the ridiculous notion that god creates human beings during understood reproductive processes, please actively reject the use of the term conception and instead replace it with more appropriate terms, like fertilization.
and, does life begin at fertilization? well, it's a a pretty uncontroversial point, i think. but, it is of little relevance, once you've ejected the absurdity of a creator and put the issue in the hands of human decision makers, where it belongs. there are more pressing issues at hand, in the discourse.
0:56
right.
so, the purpose of the demonstration is to cost the government a lot of money, as a negotiating tactic. it's leverage. so, that's right - it's very expensive. the message is that if you're going to take away people's rights, then it's going to cost you to do it. so, you should think twice about restricting rights, next time.
the entitled attitudes behind the bourgeois whiners that would complain about the consequences of their rights abuses is really something else. they seem to think they can act with impunity. the lesson here is that they can't. and, hopefully, if this doesn't end, the cost involved will continue to increase.
now, what about the idea that ottawans should be allowed to return to their lives? really? this is coming from a government that has repeatedly locked down the province, and taken away a long list of fundamental rights in a systematic attack on the country's constitution. they want to claim ottawans can go back to their lives?
no, we cannot return to our lives until the pandemic restrictions are removed, and the ford government has a lot of nerve suggesting that such a thing is possible, given how responsible they are for the situation on the ground.
clearly, they haven't learned much yet, so the action, and others like it, will need to continue until they start to get it.
but, the protesters do need to make an attempt to involve the community and win them over to their cause, and avoid a bunker-like us v them mentality.
6:46
6:53
when the government suspends the rule of law, and acts without a constitutional basis, it invites actions of this sort, and has no reasonable recourse to complaints of lawlessness.
the government must act first in returning to the application of law. only then can it expect the population to follow.
7:01
i have to explain locke to the liberals, apparently.
what a farce.
7:03
what basis does this government think it has the right to legislate on behalf of?
a monopoly on force?
divine right?
it clearly doesn't seem to grasp any sort of relevant concept of constitutional government, derived from modern concepts of law.
7:07
they basically seem to think they can do whatever they want, with total impunity, without any sort of cost.
this is a wake-up call that they can't - that this is the cost of what they've done.
and, it must be the start of a process, not the end of it, until the rule of law is restored in this country, and our constitutional rights are re-established.
7:10
vlad personally called me to ask me to speak out in favour of the convoy.
right, vlad?
vlad's got me on speed dial. we're besties. really.
22:10
i can't find a link to the cbc site to back up the accusation, and i haven't had access to a tv since the 90s.
maybe i should call vlad to ask him.
22:15
the laughable claim by justin trudeau that he will not be "bullied" by the convoy protesters is particularly surreal and hilarious.
really. the federal government, which controls the military in this country, and which has passed a law saying you cannot work if you do not have a vaccine, despite all science claiming such a policy is ineffective, and despite the prime minister himself contracting the virus after three shots of the vaccine, claims it will not be bullied by a collection of unemployed truckers who's greatest weapon is the loudness of their horns.
it's goliath threatening david that he will not cower before the threat of his puny slingshot.
the only bully that i can see is justin trudeau.
23:21
thursday, february 3, 2022
fwiw....
there is no archaeological evidence that david or solomon ever existed; rather, archaeological digs in the region have all but ruled out that they ever did. essentially nothing in the bible before cyrus II can be corroborated via archaeological evidence. it's not just that the story is a myth, it's that the entire idea of a hebrew monarchy in the region, at all, has been debunked.
the phillistines - a word which forms the historical root of the term palestine - did exist in the region, and have been proven to be a greek tribe that moved south during an event called the bronze age collapse, c. 1200 years before the common era. but, the semites in the region seem to have essentially been a colony of phoenicia, and under the direct control of the phoenician city-state of tyre. they appear to have worshipped baal and tanit and would not have been discernible in any significant way from the broader canaanite complex.
something did happen in the context of a war between babylon and ninevah, and much of the region seems to have been destroyed, but even the captivity itself is largely debunked by actual research. what the archaeology says is that the entire region suffered a major setback, that cities were left in ruins and that bedouins, who have been there since time immemorial, became dominant over the ruins. this has happened periodically in the region. the archaeologists call it a destruction horizon.
when cyrus II, who is a historical figure of some note, conquered mesopotamia in the name of the persian hjghlanders, who spoke a distant language and had unusual customs for the area, he seems to have taken a distinctly phil-phoenician view, and took great steps to try to restore their civilization, which had at that point largely fled to carthage. it is in that context that the jews are said to have returned to the region, but it is only with the introduction of persian hegemony that any recognizable idea of judaism first appears in the archaeological record. and, it should be noted that the persians - as zoroastrians - were essentially monotheistic, and that the basic crux of jewish theology and eschatology seems to be essentially persian in origin.
so, it seems as though the jews came to the region under the direction of cyrus, who wished to re-establish a phoenician civilization in the ruins of the assyrian civil war, and that essentially everything before that event is myth.
it should be noted that there were clearly northwest semites in the region in very ancient times and that the bible is definitely rooted in broad middle eastern motives, rather than specifically jewish ones. further, the arabs were still living very far away, at the time. they did not entire philistia/palestine for another 1500 years after cyrus.
stories of giants actually seem to be a common motif in areas that indo-europeans, like the philistines, settled in. such stories are actually common throughout europe. ideas like leprechauns and giants may have been exaggerated over the millennia, but the basic truth is that the indo-europeans had a good foot in height on the neolithic farming communities, which is probably due to having access to more nutritional food, and being less restricted by aristocracy or by the need to distribute food in communities. there is also very strong evidence of hobbit-like insular dwarfism in the british isles, until the neolithic invasion, which was late at such a high latitude.
that would suggest that the david and goliath story is probably a common motif, a story told within neolithic societies to describe interaction with more physically robust hunter-gatherers from the north, as they moved south, due to various push factors (a contemporary theory is due to climate change, although i tend to lean towards ideas of freedom-loving northerners pushing back against the neolithic societies, who sought to enslave the hunter-gatherers as they moved north, and moved south in waves of slaughter that were largely acts of self-preservation. one way to balance these two theories is to understand the direction of climate change at any given time. if the climate is thought to have been warming, the northerners likely moved south in self-defence; if the climate is thought to have been cooling, they probably moved south to escape the cold. both ideas have some historical examples, and some combination of them occurring is likely the correct model.), rather than any specifically jewish or semitic tale.
0:11
so, the basic point around this issue is that all data suggests that privatizing resources will make wait times longer, not shorter.
the basic data point is quebec, which has seen a dramatic increase in wait times since a terrible ruling allowed for partial privatization.
don't let them tell you the market will decrease wait times. remember when they tried that trick with electricity rates? how has that worked out for us?
9:07
so, what are some things that can be done to clear the backlog that might actually work, rather than make things worse, at a greater benefit to a small number of mostly foreign shareholders?
1) you could stop preventing surgeries by ministerial decree, to start
2) you could increase the number of surgeries a day by lengthening the hours, and perhaps bringing in surgeons on night shifts
3) you could have surgeons work weekends
i get it - i had my orchiectomy postponed, which was considered non-essential. it's why i had to make sure i got in over the summer. people want to do anything they think will help.
privatizing health care will not help. the studies are crystal clear - it will make the situation worse.
the government mismanaged resources for months around this, and perhaps some questions are beginning to develop as to motives. we can't let them get away with that.
if there are resources in the society to fund private surgery, they are better utilized in the public system, and the government needs to be focused on capturing them for that purpose.
9:32
i think it's very important that we have a change of government this summer.
9:39
i don't think stephen del duca is a competent individual, or has any chance of becoming premier.
he needs to fade out a little and let horwath run for premier.
she's not my first choice, either, but mr. ford has played his hand on healthcare and now needs to be pushed out.
9:45
the truckers want to go back to work, without being bullied into abrogating their s. 7 rights.
on that note, they may fail to realize that the federal government would need to coordinate with a whitehouse that sees them as annoying pothead flunkies. it is, after all, the american policy that is preventing them from crossing. without a cross-border movement, they are not likely to win that concession.
but, they basically want the right to work without being bullied by the majority into an irrational abrogation of their constitutional rights, that the science is now clear is ineffective in preventing transmission. some path forward will hinge on putting them back to work, in some context.
16:08
again - if you see the price come up, don't buy it. it's a game of chicken, in the end. wait for it to go on sale.
milk spoils very quickly, so if you let supplies build up, they have to cut prices to move it.
by making smart shopping decisions collectively, let's make the suppliers take the hit, not the consumers.
16:28
so, i've decided that it's clear - more so than before - that the most likely suspect as to the identity of the cyberstalker who is harassing me is the canadian liberal party, via the canadian government.
there appears to be some clique in the party itself that find this site threatening and is trying to alter it to adhere to their post-truth reality.
i'm quite certain that the problem isn't google, and it really doesn't seem to be american posts that get messed with. rather, it's long been issues related specifically to canadian politics, and more specifically to my criticism of justin trudeau, that seem to get changed.
they may or may not be working with law enforcement, but they don't seem to be working in coordination with the corporate actors. rather, they seem to be listening on the line in an attempt to steal passwords, which they use to log into the account and change the content of the posts. it's more like watergate than anything else.
listen - we're dealing with a party of amateurs in ottawa that act and think like overgrown children. as baffling and ridiculous as this is, i've been dealing with this for a long time and the nature of it has slowly presented itself to me. it really is the posts critical of trudeau and the liberals, and in a very narrow range, that get altered or disappeared. posts critical not of islam generally but of iranian islam specifically seem to disappear, which is consistent with the apparent truth that trudeau is some kind of closet ismaili. and, lately, there's been a weird attempt to alter my climate views that i'll need to pay special attention to, as i correct the edits.
at this time, i would expect this will probably stop when the liberals lose power because it seems to be specifically about this clique of overgrown children trying to erase a source of writing they're personally threatened by, rather than any kind of government policy. like, i'm not getting shut down by heavy-handed government censors - i'm getting hacked by sneaky psychopaths trying to enact some kind of hyper-orwellian dystopia. and, i suspect it's probably unique, or close to it.
but, i mean, all i can do is be aware of it, and let others be aware of it, and make an attempt to maintain the data in the threat of childish idiots that would try to distort it.
they won't be there forever.
this, too, shall pass. as annoying as it is....
21:41
i suppose it's possible that i'm some kind of pilot project. i don't know, and i shouldn't speculate.
but, what's obvious to me is that there's been a lot of effort put into this, and there's likely little i can do about it until they give up.
21:48
ok. that's probably as good as i'm going to get.
there's really only two logical outcomes, although the government has repeatedly demonstrated that it won't be bound by the constraints of logic:
a) you'll need to get vaccinated regularly - probably every 3 months - to maintain the passport
b) or the idea ends up in the dung heap, where it belongs
the current status quo - where they're asking for proof of two doses - is just retarded, and people holding to it are just idiots.
22:05
i have from the start and will continue to try to stay away from old people, as much as is possible.
i think that's my sole responsibility, and all anybody has any reasonable demands to expect of me, or of anybody else.
22:27
where i am, that means we're likely to maintain the warm, humid fall deep into the winter as this conflict continues to assert itself. i realize that that might result in some snow in february, but it will also likely lead to an early, hot spring,
that was posted in november.
i was a little off for january - it was, broadly, an unusually warm first half of winter, but we got a handful of days that were a touch below freezing. where i was right was that the polar air tried repeatedly to assert itself, but was consistently beaten back by the warmer, more humid air from the south; where i was off was in the depths of the swings. basically, the cold air put up more of a fight than i thought it would, but the warm air did consistently overpower. so, we'd get these 6 hour bursts of cold that would ease up unusually quickly, rather than the kind of week long deep freezes that the region is historically used to. and, now, we're getting snow, due to the humidity. that's what i said.
i'm going to wait until we come out of the snap we're in before i post a deconstruction.
22:59
so....
nato is going to send troops to the regions surrounding ukraine, and then the russians are going to fake an attack from ukraine, to justify responding to those troops.
that's the most convoluted tv show, ever.
maybe i should call vlad and get him to explain it to me, 'cause this isn't making much sense. but, if we understand this, why don't we avoid sending troops?
*crickets*
i might suggest that occam's razor may counter the state department's narrative and rather argue that the troops are being sent to back up the planned ukrainian action, which is intending to draw the russians in. further, we're being conditioned to react to the russian analysis as a lie.
i think the broader takeaway is to recognize the state of american propaganda, at this point. out is the mccarthyism, and in is a plotline from the young and the restless.
and, just wait until you catch zelensky sleeping with the russians behind your backs, you fools.
ukraine needs a moment of self-realization, here - the west is every bit as depraved as the russians claim.
...according to an openly transgendered person.
so, here we are - expect the ukrainians to do something very provocative. and, we'll see if vlad takes the bait or not.
you'll excuse me, but i have to give him a call, now, to explain it to him, and ask him not to behave foolishly.
23:13
what the russians need to do is set up something like an old roman fortress, and just shoot anybody that wanders into no man's land on contact.
23:15
friday, february 4, 2022
i'm just watching this for the first time now.
there appears to be a centralized effort to try to rewrite the history of the region - which herodotus identified as slavic as far as back as 800 years before the common era, albeit under west iranian dominance, and which archaeology uncovers an unbroken indo-european cultural continuity going back upwards of 10,000 years - from a pro-islamic and pro-turkic perspective, and has even gone so far as to make outlandish claims that turks are indigenous to the region, despite it being phenotypically obvious via base observation that turks are an eastern asian people, if you don't happen to know the clear historical and archaeological record demonstrating as much. while the asshole responsible for this is ultimately foucault, and his nihilistic rejection of truth in favour of power, this attempt to rewrite history seems to align with two primary interests: (1) american geostrategic initiatives and (2) "islamic historiography", which was written as obviously transparent statist lies with an imperialist agenda to begin with, so it makes sense to deduce that the push is coming from the american state department, and is being financed with muslim blood money. but, i'm reading into it. what i can see is the change in narrative, and who it benefits. regardless of guesses as to who or what is responsible, it's clear enough that it is a part of the co-ordinated attack on slavic culture that developed during the clinton state department, and largely in opposition to the general direction of obama's presidency, and has taken over the main thread of american foreign policy, and they seem to be using sites like wikipedia as a tool of informational warfare, probably because it's easier than dealing with university departments. these are people that don't care about history and don't care about truth but just want to warp everything as a pragmatic tool to aid in an advance of their conquests. whatever the details about what's going on, and which will require some serious journalism to really understand, this is essentially a joint american-arab attack on russian culture, at least partially as a reaction to russian "interference" in syria.
but, i bring the above up only to state i won't be approaching it. i understand this is happening, and i realize the need to push back against it, but i simply don't have the resources to push back on this in any substantive manner, besides to point out that it seems to actually be happening.
so, despite attempts by wealthy muslims to rewrite history to place themselves at the centre of it, which have been cynically picked up by american geostrategic interests to advance their own interests, the fact is that slavs are indigenous to this area and have occupied the region for thousands and thousands of years. gimbutas remains the authority on the topic; the slavs of the region represent the indigenous inhabitants, and the overwhelming science in favour of this reality does not even leave room to question that assertion any longer. this is as solid as anything that exists in any science. any other groups that have wandered into the region have done so as outsiders, and none have lasted very long before being absorbed into the slavic heartland.
but, that said, putin is misunderstanding his own history in creating a snapshot in the 9th century and trying to hold to it. he's making a typical mistake that conservatives always make, in glorifying a past that never really existed.
if we accept that the slavs have existed on this land for 10,000 years (perhaps as proto-slavs, or pre-proto-slavs, but nonetheless), it is worthwhile to ask what the general political situation of the area has been, if we are to try to properly understand the nature of it. russia and ukraine, together, are famous as being a lawless, unconquerable land of snow and ice, which was wandered by nomads and hunter-gatherers, and which civilization could not flourish within. i exaggerate only somewhat.
for putin to take a snapshot of a few hundred years and decide this represents some kind of ideal that should be resurrected is, as mentioned, to make the fundamental error made by conservatives, everywhere. so, putin wants to go back to simpler times. or perhaps he wants to make the slavs great again. it's a minor difference of scale.
if putin had thrown his dice into the wheel of history and come up with any other period besides the 9th century, and done so repeatedly, he would have seen that that the region is defined by disunity and chaos and not by any unifying force or centralized power. i will not cite the many russian writers, but you may do so if you'd like. it is the nature of russia: this is a land of anarchy.
if putin wants to really do what he's trying to do correctly, he should realize that this state of division is perpetual and that his mother slavia never truly existed, except in the mind of conservative historians. this is a land of confusion and chaos that wars amongst itself and with others. history suggests the region must remain divided, not that it ought to be united.
i do not think that aggressive american behaviour in the region is helpful in the establishment of world peace, and i recognize that religion (and therefore islam) and capitalism (and therefore the united states) are my primary ideological opponents in this world, not pan-slavism or communism (however anachronistically). i am naturally inclined to align with the slavs in their continuing struggle for self-determination against western hegemony, and against the tyranny of islamic imperialism, which has historically been particularly bloodthirsty in eastern europe. that doesn't mean that there's any historical basis for that support or there's any likelihood of it leading anywhere.
the slavs are stronger united, but let us not pretend that they truly ever have been. mr putin's analysis is a typical exercise in the application of conservative mythology to actual history.
4:58
we make a similar mistake in the west.
did the roman empire actually exist? well, clearly, it did. but, it was in almost constant civil war, and almost always split into western/celtic and central/latin components [in addition to greek components in the east, which had been under hellenic hegemony since alexander and, frankly, seemed to actually like it].
there were brief moments under caesar or trajan when a kind of empire existed, but it usually didn't, and the idea of roman citizenship as this unifying force was usually more of a unifying farce, as celts fought for independence on ethnic grounds, and hellenized easterners sought to avoid taxes [and, later on, fought over definitions of christian heresy].
so, we have this imaginary idea of an empire that mostly didn't actually exist, and we're constantly trying to recreate it in our own images. it\s more of an archetype, or even a meme, than it is actual history.
i'll admit that i would like to see a return to panslavism, but i think it has to be rooted in the future, rather than in the past. i don't want to take that away from them - they should aspire to it. but, they shouldn't make the mistake of seeking to reinvent the past, as they will no doubt find that their romanticism is a moving target, as it's a projection of a false reality.
8:44
no, listen.
islam is a dominant force of colonialism and imperialism. the idea that they're some kind of victimized minority is simply laughable. they're the ideal ally to christianity; they're essentially the same thing.
islam has, in fact, been trying to conquer the caucusus and southern pontic region for centuries, first when the caliphate existed and second when the turks had an empire.
you need to understand the reframing of history through the prism of arab religious sources and the historically laughable claim that turks are indigenous to the pontic-steppe region in the context of what is happening. nato does not intend for the poles to take over ukraine, they intend for it to become a client state of turkey.
so, the histories at wikipedia get rewritten, and the ukrainian puppet passes laws in the rada to direct the situation to the desired outcome.
europe sees poland as little more than a source of cheap labour, and has no interest in the debate putin is having about pan slavism. however, it sees the potential of a return to turko-russian wars as in it's long term benefit, in bottling russia up and advancing the interests of it's arab partners.
russia is rightfully concerned about it's western flank, but the long term threat is from the turks who seem to be the ones trying to move in, not the poles.
10:23
no. they're wrong.
they can't move on the truckers because these trucks will kill people in the middle of downtown ottawa. that's the basic fact on the ground: the truckers have demonstrated an actual show of force, and it has tied the hands of police.
i've been criticizing the tactics of these indigenous groups for years, and they just don't get it. they keep putting up "blockades" that take five minutes to dismantle and don't cost anybody any money because they think they're trying to win an argument abuot a moral issue, and the only reason the cops don't take them down within seconds is that indigenous groups have greater protest rights, due to the constitution.
closer to the truth is that if these truckers tried to block a train with shopping cart like the indigenous groups do then they'd just get run over and thrown in jail - they wouldn't be given a nominal right to protest for a while, so long as they're good and go away after.
the indigenous groups should be taking notes regarding how to conduct an effective protest, not speciously claiming unfair treatment. i mean, consider how ridiculous that is for a second.
and, don't be confused - if the cops thought that bringing in snipers would work, they would do it. but, they've - probably correctly - determined that doing such a thing would lead to a lot of death, because these truckers are not hippies and do not have the same views that the indigenous protesters do on the sanctity of life.
12:03
the police have decided that the trucks pose a credible threat.
they generally do not believe that indigenous protesters pose a credible threat.
that is the difference, here. and, in the end, we're going to learn that the outcome is directly proportional to the credibility of the threat.
like i say - stop complaining and start taking notes.
12:09
the situation might not sit well with your sense of morals, but the lesson is that shows of power win fights, not appeals to morals.
12:10
the "peaceful protest" community frequently cites gandhi as an inspiration, and says - "look. gandhi won by arguing for morals over violence. peaceful protest works!".
so, what about that pre-print study?
i have a b. of mathematics (2006) that was fairly broad in focus, but was probably focused mostly on computer math. i didn't ever declare a specialization. after graduating, i found my job options unappealing, to me, so i went back to school in 2008 to get a second undergraduate degree in computer science, with an intent to eventually go to grad school for cognitive science. my interests were in finding ways to transition out of the human body, in order to attain immortality, which i decided was necessary, in a pascal's wager around the futility of existence: if i fail, i've lost nothing, but if i succeed, i've gained everything. over time, the computational complexity of the problem became apparent, and the technological limitations asserted themselves. contrary to popular myth, this has nothing to do with the turing-church thesis, but rather has to do with the sheer amount of data extent in a human brain, which we must accept off hand is actually a quantum computer, because it exists in the real world, and the real world is governed by quantum physics. you would require more storage space to store your feeble little mind than could be built on the face of the earth, at this time. further, we're up against hard problems in terms of computational complexity that do not have likely solutions in the near term. so, i had to pull out of my pascal's wager, and have resorted to a need to make the best out of inescapable meaninglessnes, instead. i have defined my purpose as completing my discography, and having fun doing it; i'm not interested in futile attempts by outside forces to attempt to define trivialities as meaningful, instead.
so, i didn't complete the second degree, but i spent some time taking graduate-level math courses, enough that i finished the requirements for a master's degree. but, i didn't tell anybody. instead, i started taking law courses.
so, my mathematical education is fairly broad, but i'd prefer to call myself a logician, as it best reflects the totality of my education, which encompasses not just math but also programming and law.
if i start with the critique so i know what to look for, i actually don't find these arguments by these scientists to be at all convincing.
this is a survey. so, the authors don't need to have any specialized knowledge, but rather need to be good at statistics. there is a counter-argument that having researchers outside of the field analyse results inside the field is a kind of useful peer review that minimizes bias, or at least presents an outside perspective. but, at the least, arguing that you shouldn't listen to them because they're economists is really a fallacious appeal to authority; the topic being analyzed is statistics, and the researchers are as capable or more capable of doing that than any scientist.
another critique is that the researchers ignored modelling and only focused on empirical studies, but i don't find that to be a flaw at all, but to rather be an asset. i am specifically interested in the empirical data as to whether lockdowns worked in real life - i'm not interested in the models, and would only consider including them to distort the data. removing studies that use models is the right decision, in the context of the study, and not something to be criticized.
another criticism is that the lockdowns are not all the same, but the statistical methods being used should balance that out. that's not a serious critique. nor is the claim that serious lockdowns were not used because (1) it is not true outside of the united states and (2) we're studying what actually happened in the real world, not what might have happened in a model. rather than critique the study for this reason, it would be more useful to suggest that the outcomes don't rule out the idea that more stringent lockdowns may have been more helpful, but rather correctly demonstrate that the actual lockdowns we had were not effective.
and, let's be real - clearly, they weren't that effective. look at the number of dead people. maybe they might have been more effective if we put everybody under house arrest for a year, but what we actually did didn't work very well.
further, making excuses that lockdowns weren't applied as effectively as desired (by the individuals commenting) is not relevant - the study is focused on empirical data regarding what we actually did, not what might have been done. this critique is recurrent, but it's not coherent.
more convincing to me is the idea of ideological bias, given that the authors work for the cato institute. but, pointing out the potential of bias is not the same thing as demonstrating it. none of these critiques demonstrate such a bias, reducing the claim to a baseless smear. that said, i grasp the concern and will keep a lookout for it.
i'm not clearing the study of problems, i'm just pointing out that these critiques are all missing the point: the study is trying to analyze what we actually did, explicitly, so pointing out that it doesn't include theory is not just irrelevant but is actually misunderstanding what they're doing.
and, it's a little disconcerting to see scientists reject empirical data in favour of deductive reasoning. that is backwards.
do not expect an immediate reply, but i'll take a look at this over the next few days and let you know what i think.
but, these people have entirely misunderstood gandhi, who very explicitly assembled millions of people as a show of force against the british, in an attempt to demonstrate that he had overwhelming numerical dominance. gandhi was trying to avoid actual violence by demonstrating what would happen should a revolt actually occur. he was in no way appealing to a moral argument, and that is in no way why he was successful. in fact, his success relied on the inherent rationality of british tactics, and he was well aware of that fact.
gandhi was not a moralist, and he didn't win with appeals to religion; gandhi was a tactician, and he won by using game theory to play a winning strategy. had the british not been rational, he would have armed his starving masses (likely with russian support) and driven the british out. as it is, the british maintained influence by withdrawing, instead. it was a smart decision, and a win-win.
it is actually the truckers that are using gandhian tactics in a correct manner, and "peaceful protesters" may want to take note of what a gandhian-style tactic actually looks like, in order to actually apply it correctly.
12:22
the objective fact is that the policy is not science driven and should be revoked. it's frustrating that it took something this stupid to get here. but, biden is not dealing with a fringe minority - there's some chance that these truckers could get 40%+ support in america.
he may be forced to act, and that's actually what the convoy in ottawa needs, because the government can't actually block re-entry due to s. 6.
that's right - what the truckers are actually protesting against is in american border policy. but, that's fine, i'll take it.
12:45
(this was edited in a way i find to be disgusting. i did not write this. i fully condemn this. i'll need to rewrite this entirely. i'm realizing that a pattern is that the science writing is being targeted in an attempt to align it with the sources, when the point of this blog is to provide a space for me to criticize those sources as specious. technical language is also being replaced with dumbed down language in an attempt to reach an audience of retards. particularly revolting to me is the insertion of seinfeld phrases, like "what's the deal with". i don't write like that. like, fuck off, you goddamned fucking idiots. do you think i'm writing this for a popular audience? i'm not. fuck off. now, i'm going to need to undo all of this sheer idiocy and reinsert intelligent language in the place of the dumbed down stupidity for morons that was inserted to replace the language i initially used.
i feel the need to apologize to the writers of seinfeld. i didn't do this, and i will take special care to undo it. if you think there's a problem here, i agree with you. when i'm done with this, there will no seinfeld references left here, at all.
remember: my argument from the start of the pandemic has been that we should follow the science, which would mean letting the virus spread with minimal restrictions in an attempt to quickly build population immunity. in pushing unscientific restrictions and trying to slow the virus' spread with authoritarian policies, the government has ignored and rejected the science, which was always clear that such approaches would be unsuccessful, and then, instead, has presented blatantly fascist policies using the label of "Science" in replace of the actual science, which stated the exact opposite of everything the government has said. i have spent hundreds and hundreds of pages deconstructing that in this space, and i do have it backed up, so i will need to consult as many backups to rebuild it as i can.
yes, this is a nightmare. so be it.)
13:33
the lengthy, centuries long turko-russian conflict is really better seen through the lens of a byzantine civil war. i have repeatedly taken the viewpoint that the russians represent the endpoint of byzantine civilization, and think it is the more correct perspective, but it is not without detractors. the turks saw themselves as the new romans, but nobody else ever did, and the claim is really rather tenuous. the turks came from the east and toppled the greeks, in a way that seemed more like a persian invasion than an internal revolt; the russians have adopted byzantine civilization in almost absolute totality. a better analysis is that the turks are an extension of the persian empire, who have managed to conquer and expel the greeks from their homeland to russia. it follows that such a conflict cannot end until history is righted, the usurping turks are expelled and the greeks re-enter constantinople - a historical process that may be lengthy, and may result in many dead people, but is probably unavoidable. far from being indigenous, the turks simply don't belong in europe at all.
putin is consequently really fighting the wrong war.
but, erdogan seems to be aware of what's going on. and, this is the conflict that is in real danger of re-erupting.
the russians are the superior force, but the turks have a large standing army and any russian victory would be very costly.
22:31
saturday, february 5, 2022
it should be obvious that i don't have anything to do with the protests in canada, and that i wouldn't get along well with most of the participants. i've made that point repeatedly clear. but, i stand in solidarity with them, nonetheless.
the handful of nazis they've pulled out of the crowds are cops. this happens in every protest movement - the cops send people in with nazi flags, then the media takes pictures of them and, instead of talking about their actual concerns, the government can rattle off some empty aphorisms about fighting hate, as though that's any sort of serious problem. the government, nowadays, seems to justify it's existence in policed state language about protecting you, rather than in terms that are foundational to western civilization. so, it lets them play into their founding myth, on top of everything else.
so, again - don't fall for that. it's the oldest trick in the book. the media will keep pushing it, and the state will keep using it as a distraction mechanism, but you need to be able to see through that, or we're all doomed. they don't want to talk about the actual issues, they want to tear down strawmen of nazis, instead. don't let them do it - insist on talking about the issues.
i'm an anti-authoritarian anarchist-socialist, so you should expect me to align with groups that reject statist mandates that tell people what to do with their bodies, but, my own predictable views aside, i need to insist we get the spectrum right, on this. the people on the ground may be pro-market conservatives, and they may be overwhelmingly religious, but they are standing up for the libertarian perspective on the scale, which has a major amount of overlap with the traditional liberal left. i know i'm disenfranchised, i know i'm a unicorn in the contemporary spectrum, but is the liberal left truly so moribund that it can't get representation out in a protest for bodily autonomy?
i may see them as very tenuous and very temporary allies, but i certainly don't see them as enemies, and i'm a little taken aback by views on the fake left that would try to frame the issue in those terms. anarchists, punks, socialists and other people that generally identify as resisting authority should really be taken to task for aligning with the state on the issue, when they should be out on the ground, showing their support for an anti-statist policy that is fundamentally about respecting individual human rights. you'll get a line from your typical bourgeois liberals on this, and that's fine, but anybody that would identify as counter-culture or anti-authoritarian and align with the state on this really needs to be rejected by the counter-culture for what they are. it's a moment of reckoning, a moment where closet statists are being exposed for what they really are, as they get in line with all of the other slaves and not only do what they're told, but tell others to do what they're told, as well.
the next step here should be for a left-libertarian contingent to show up on the ground and show it's support, to demonstrate that the issue is about statism v libertarianism, and not about right v left. this is something that should transcend traditional party politics.
and, those that will hold the statist line in opposition to basic freedoms, to fundamental human rights, should, in the end, be exposed for the statist slaves that they are.
0:57
i do not like ancaps (i think only a small number of the protesters are actually ancaps), and i do not like fake left authoritarian bourgeois liberals. so, i would usually avoid taking a side, and rather prefer to take a step back and let them kill each other, in the event of open warfare between them.
but, on the specific issue of bodily autonomy, and on the specific debate regarding individual constitutional rights, i will readily align with the ancaps against the fake left authoritarian bourgeois liberals, every time, without reservation or pause.
and, i will do more than tell you to fuck off if you don't like it - i will condemn you for it, as you're on the wrong side. you're going to lose.
1:58
a principled human rights supporter would stand up for the rights of the people they disagree with in equal or greater proportion to the people they agree with. otherwise, they're not really standing up for human rights, they're just using human rights as an excuse to argue for their self-interest.
keep that in mind when you listen to people discuss the issue, because the hypocrisy coming from the fake left on this is truly sickening.
2:16
to be clear, i remember joe rogan from such shows as newsradio and...
and...
and...
?
he kind of stole phil hartman's job, it seems, but phil hartman was actually funny. rogan's character on newsradio was kind of a douche, and i never found him to be very comical.
i know absolutely nothing else about joe rogan, i have never watched his show and absolutely nothing on this blog has anything to do with him at all.
5:22
newsradio also featured the perpetually annoying andy dick and "the guy from the kids in the hall".
5:31
this is really ahead of it's time.
6:19
this hate speech thing is coming up again, and i'm going to tell you why this isn't going to work.
in canada, hate speech is free speech - that is a direct quote from the precedent. restrictions to limit speech rights in this country will not be upheld by the courts. but, the way that they're trying to approach it won't even let the issue come up, because they're dealing with what is considered to be private propoerty.
let's rewind to claims made by people arguing against what they call online censorship by sites like twitter. one prominent example of this was donald trump, who complained about twitter taking his posts down. the established legal precedent regarding this concern is that it isn't actually a speech issue because the social media servers are private property. that is, any user, even the president, agrees to use the servers to post content, on grounds that they obey the terms and conditions. free speech has to do with rules made by government to limit expression, and has no effect on those conditions.
by trying to pass hate speech rules on private servers, the canadian government is essentially making the same legal mistake that the anti-censorship advocates are making. in both canada and the united states, the state is not allowed to police what it calls private communication. so, you can say racist hateful things to your friends, on your property or in a private club, and the government recognizes no grounds to interfere - it is only when you start broadcasting such views in public, and particularly in a way that is intended to be political, and with specific intent to harm, that the state has any grounds to interfere.
so, the government cannot tell you to take "hate speech" down from a private server any more than it can demand that "free speech" not be censored. the basic principle in both situations is private property, and the state would be overstepping it's bounds in both scenarios. the bottom line is that the server admins make this choice, not the government, and that will be upheld in any subsequent legal fight. the government would be wise to pick it's battles and not bother.
now, i actually don't like this, because it leaves what should be an issue of public discourse to the whims and discretion of private actors. this works both ways - i actually think my speech rights would be strengthened by a judicial process, although some others may see it differently. i guess it depends on what you're posting. but, we simply cannot apply the laws of the commons to private property without some process of nationalization, first, and that's all there is to it.
the threat to free speech in this country does remain moderate to high, but this particular issue of posting on social media is a non-starter for the thought police. the law of private property is paramount, and the idea of private communication is long established. this is open and shut. where they might be able to cause problems is with people speaking in public, and posting things to sites like youtube, that are generally wide open in terms of access. but, at the end of the day, youtube is private property, too.
in the long run, the thought police are simply going to need to back off. there's really no way for them to move on what they want to do without a dramatic shift in how we understand property, which is the same thing the anti-censorship people are going to have to deal with - twtter is going to censor your posts if they don't like them, and sensitive people are going to find offensive things that other platforms simply won't take down. that's the regime that the courts have put in place.
those that find certain opinions to be offensive are going to have to learn to deal with them, as they always have needed to in the past. the shift in technology doesn't change the need to have thick skin. that's life in a free society - suck it up.
11:17
by the time everybody gets a third dose, they'll be handing out a 4th dose to the old folks.
at risk people - old people, primarily - are going to need to be taking regular boosters for the rest of their lives.
for everybody else, this is stupid and needs to end. and, it always was stupid...
16:43
monday, february 7, 2022
google, i do not want to title every post. it's not of any use to me, and it would just clutter the site up with eyesore titles and make it harder to read. i'd end up with stupid titles like "post #37 on troubleshooting ram in recording machine". it's just not how this site is intended to operate.
so, stop trying to coerce me into titling every post here - that's not how i use the site, it's not how i want to use the site and it's never going to happen.
4:38
there's 30,000 posts here. it's stream of consciousness, rough notes, random thoughts.
i'm not a journalist, and i'm not publishing articles.
99% of what is posted here isn't formed well enough to deserve a title.
so, how would you propose titling this post? and, do you think it would be worthwhile to sort through a page with 200 titles?
it's a stupid idea. fuck off.
4:41
so, hopefully they change the archive widget back to what it used to be, or i can find a custom widget that does it.
for now, the best thing to do is hover over "no title" and observe the link. that should often provide a clue as to the post content.
4:44
so i found a list of "objects" and it seems like the best i can do for now is replace the title with the url.
7:09
i want something like post.body.getText();.
i don't think it exists, though.
7:16
ok. so, that's a shitty design decision that ruins the archive widget, and i don't see an obvious way around it.
i'll leave the url function up on this page for now and see if it reverts. if it doesn't, i'll switch the other blogs over in a bit.
8:00
actually, i should be able to create my own widget in the customize section. given that i basically want to undo what i think was a mistake, that shouldn't be hard at all, if i can find the source.
8:04
apparently they're called gadgets, not widgets.
what the fuck ever.
gogogadgetarchive.
8:06
so, they're called widgets in the code and gadgets in the layout.
it would be easiest if i could find a widget that does what i want. where is the source code for this? on the blogger server?
typical google.
8:17
8:21
i think i need to pull it out of here, dump it into the customize section and revert/fix it.
that was an unexpected detour, this morning.
there will be an update post coming shortly.
8:48
so, what have i been up to?
i wanted to finish updating the music journal by the end of last weekend, then do some legal stuff last week. but, the job was bigger than i thought (i thought it would be a few hundred posts and would take an afternoon. it was over a thousand posts.) and the posting limit kicked in repeatedly, which meant i could only really work at it for 5-6 hours a day, and had to wait until the next day for the script to pass.
it is done now, from feb, 2021 to the current date:
i intend to keep up to date on that, moving forwards, as i'm shifting back to a recording phase. that was the point. i wanted to be able to quickly reference what i was thinking without shifting through a pile of other stuff.
so, that means that, so long as everything goes forward accordingly, i should be able to get started on inri077 next weekend.
i also wanted to shut down the facebook page, and i've got almost all of the pictures down, at least:
as always, the crawling nature of facebook, as it hits 100 different cia scripts, made the process very difficult.
that archive is likely to get much, much bigger as i go through the rebuild. for now, it's almost everything that was at the facebook site, and a little more.
i still haven't decided how bare i'm going to leave the facebook site, but i've moved everything to the archive section, and will otherwise take it from there.
is that really all i've been doing since the 28th? well, i initially tried to update the other blogs, but pulled back when i realized they'd been edited. and, i had to sleep a couple of times. on top of that, my eating time was occupied by nato's bullying of russia and the convoy in ottawa. but, yeah - i've been stuck in a post-wait loop.
also, i stopped on the 3rd to do the foi request, which took most of the morning.
for today, i need to take a much closer look at the grocery store case, and get something filed in the next few days, if i'm doing it. i intended from the start to send this to divisional court, but i may have made a large mistake in that plan that's been complicated further by vavilov, but would have been a problem, regardless. the divisional court almost never seems to overrule the human rights court in ontario, because the legislation around it explicitly restricts oversight, which i didn't realize, and which i think is absurd. i just assumed that, as a higher court, the superior court would immediately assume inherent jurisdiction. i mean, that struck me as the point, in the first place. but, bizarrely, the legislation is actually very specific about this, which is really a circumvention of the legal process. i would have never guessed that the legislature would insist on something that backwards and despotic
i think this legislation should really be changed - i knew it was a kangaroo court, but i didn't realize it was a kangaroo court without oversight, by statute. such a creature should not exist at all. if we are to have kangaroo courts, there must be appeal bodies; if there are not to be appeal bodies to defer to, there should not be kangaroo courts at all.
so, if i intended to introduce it in the human rights court (because the fact that i didn't stop makes a case for illegal imprisonment very blurry) with the goal of taking it to divisional court, that might have been an error because the divisional court provides unusual amounts of deference, due to the statute.
let me carefully sort through canlii to see if i can find an example where the divisional court actually takes on a case with any seriousness.
i insist my case has merit, and the court refused to hear it because it was offended by the premise. i insist that citing employment law as precedent is patently unreasonable. and, i expected an outcome of that sort because it's a kangaroo court - i was expecting to escalate it. but, being right about something doesn't mean i can win a case about it, and this process is more difficult than i thought due to the absurd wrench created by the legislature.
on top of that, i'm trying to avoid jessica overload at the divisional court. i don't want to file this unless it's solid. i needed to be able to make a case to prove my point.
in the end, it may mean i might have to skip the divisional court and go right to civil court, instead. but, i have to figure that out today.
9:26
i'm finding a few cases, after all...
10:05
i'm not russian, or not exactly.
my mother's side is very scandinavian, including some finnish and some until recently not known (by her or i) eastern european jewry. my dad has long been assumed to have some slavic jew, but it's been difficult to track. his great-grandmother appears to have been of unclear ancestry; his paternal grandfather's name was stanislav.
genetic testing pulled out a measurable affinity with volgan germans, but the truth is that my genes did not show a strong affinity with any database at all - that i'm a bit of a unique specimen. i have substantive clovis ancestry, and that's probably what is throwing the databases off - the mix of finno-ugrian, scandinavian, jewish, west european and native american isn't something you see every day, anywhere. it couldn't pin me down, so it tossed out the volgan germans as a best guess. the eastern european jew on both sides also seems to be dominant in the algorithms.
but, if your average russian is a little finnish, a little slavic, a little jewish, a little west european and a little mongolian [which is similar to being a little native american], i have a lot of similarities with your average russian. i'm like an alter-russian, or a "derived russian". if you were to create a russian out of a mathematical formula, i'd fit most definitions.
my mother is apolitical, but my half finnish grandmother was a russophile, as well.
so, i mean, there's something to the idea of feeling some affinity to the slavic homeland and a northeastern european identity, but i have no russian ancestors, or at least none that i know of. both my parents were atheists, and all four of my grandparents were christians, none from the eastern rite. to the extent that my russophilia is ancestral, it's vague, and more rooted in panslavism.
11:23
so, when will the uk parliament introduce term limits and mandatory retirement at buckingham?
nobody should be head of state for life.
70 years is nothing to celebrate - the country should be embarrassed by the show of backwardsness.
nobody should be head of state for life.
70 years is nothing to celebrate - the country should be embarrassed by the show of backwardsness.
12:34
i don't expect mr trudeau to understand that it is his support for a tyranny of the majority that has overthrown the constitutional rule of law, broken the social contract and asserted a state of anarchy. for all his superfluous apologies, he never has and never will take responsibility for anything.
but, the country needs to realize he's responsible, and he needs to take the fall - either internally (which is preferable) or at the ballot box.
23:41
what's happening in canada is a classic, textbook example of bad governance brought on by dumb aristocrats.
it was entirely predictable by anybody with a basic education in western political theory - which this government does not have, and is not interested in.
the liberal party of canada needs to approach this in terms of a major rethink, and it should be dramatically shifting directions back to it's ideological roots as a liberal party, in response.
23:49
the liberals have abandoned liberalism.
and, this is what happens - and will continue to happen - if they insist on following through with it.
23:50
there's this idea floated by laurentian elites that canada is in some way a less reactive or more passive population, and that it values order over freedom. maybe they think that because they read the constitution that they wrote and passed without a vote, but, either way, it seems to reflect their own views, rather than the views of the population.
it is simply not upheld by history. canada has had more than it's share of revolts through the centuries, although we've also tended to have more enlightened government that is able to diffuse situations.
what made us a little different wasn't that our people desired order, but that our leaders were more willing to compromise and change. so, when we were on the brink, we frequently stepped back.
and, what has changed is that our leaders are no longer competent, partially because they've been misled by their own lies.
23:57
there is still plenty of time for the government to act like canadians and seek compromise, rather than act like uncanadian despots and try to force people to do what they're told, against their will.
but, don't be surprised to find anarchy when you absolve the rule of law - that's what you should have expected, in a free society, of free people.
23:58
tuesday, february 8, 2022
if mr. trudeau wants to act like a dictator, let him suffer the correct fate of one.
but, surely, the party can realize when it needs to intervene, end this depraved experiment in despotism and aristocracy and reassert itself as a party of liberalism.
0:10
so, i made it through 120 cases in divisional court and found at most 5 that are useful. of those 120 cases, only 15 were successful in having the appeal heard, and almost all of them were due to procedural or hidden correctness issues.
i'm going to do a little more reading tonight and try to have a rough draft done by the afternoon, and then decide if i want to do it or not.
the fact is that the usual outcome of appealing a human rights case to divisional court is that the appellant is ordered to pay costs, and the only really sure way to avoid that is to find a way to push a hidden correctness review on a legal technicality. some of the cases brought to review are frivolous, but a lot aren't, and the court doesn't seem interested in substantive oversight on that basis, which is a breakdown in the legitimacy of the legal system, but is what it is, nonetheless.
0:46
it doesn't seem to matter if i'm right or not, which reduces the system to a twisted joke and causes me, as a citizen, to lose confidence in the correctness of the outcome.
a court system based on what is determined to be "reasonable", rather than what is decided to be correct, is really of little actual use to society and should probably just be thrown away entirely.
i have no compelling urge to care whether a judge decides something is reasonable or not, or think that's any sort of meaningful authority to consider or listen to. as a citizen, if the judiciary can't adjudicate on a correctness basis, i'm not likely to see any value in listening to their opinion, at all.
but, what i have to do is argue for procedural unfairness (which i can do) and for "unreasonableness" (which i think is stupid and specious and trivial, but i'm pretty sure i can also do). i can complain about the court collapsing into backwardsness some other day - and you can be sure i will, too.
0:53
i used to think that the court system was still functioning in this country in the face of a decaying and collapsing political system, but, after vavilov, i'm not sure i can still hold to that opinion, in good faith.
the basic truth is that the judge's opinion does not matter, and "reasonableness" is not an acceptable ground to base a system of law on. it's now little more than a charade in the practice of organized stupidity.
1:12
nobody cares about your opinion, and nobody should care about the judge's opinion, either.
opinions are like assholes, right?
and, we should not be reducing the basis of the legal system to "the judiciary is full of assholes".
1:14
do i want to pay money to go through a process to hear the judge's...opinion?
no - i don't give a fuck.
i have better things to do.
1:15
this was 2003.
this was 2020.
this was 2020.
4:08
1.5 million?
you realize that, at current rates of admission, we'll be letting in 3-5 million people over the next ten years, right?
given population growth, we don't need to build 1.5 million homes over the next ten years. rather, we need to built 10-15 million homes over the next ten years.
or, we need to reanalyze our immigration levels.
10:07
you know that i'm an environmentalist, so you shouldn't be surprised to hear that i actually think that there should be a total moratorium placed on suburban-style single family dwellings for a least the next 50 years.
all housing in this province should be built upwards.
and, we need to build a million units/year to get caught up to decades of bad choices, not a million units/decade.
10:22
i'm somewhat skeptical that the ford government is going to back a report like that, but i'll be pleasantly surprised if they do.
you would expect this government to be more focused on finding ways to line the pockets of investors and developers. they explicitly campaigned on abolishing the greenbelt in toronto, and no doubt intended to use the land for mcmansions.
but, changes in development is a good example of the kind of thing we need to do dramatically differently in this country, and if it takes doug ford to lead the way, let it be the shame of the country's ruling elite liberal class.
but, i mean, you'll excuse my skepticism.
making it easier to build high-density apartment buildings would be very helpful. let's hope they pick up on that.
10:26
this looks like this might be in response to something i posted previously but, if it is, it didn't understand it.
i saw a post at a "science advocacy" site this morning that tried to argue this away by appealing to an average. "sure", they said "the numbers are balancing out. but, that's just the last few weeks. if you look at the last few months, you see that unvaccinated hospitalizations are still much higher."
well, ok. but, you're failing to account for omicron, which is the factor underlying the change. you don't want to average out these numbers over the last several months, you want a current snapshot.
this idea of a "base rate fallacy", which is the kind of fake "informal fallacy" you hear from people like sam harris and ben shapiro, is essentially making the same mistake. it's actually rather baffling to see this in print, and repeatedly, over several days, from several sites. the data just changed! so, yes, you do want to look at new data, and you don't want to look at trends. in context, this article is completely, perfectly wrong.
what we've seen happen is the data slowly get closer. at first, almost everybody in the hospital was unvaccinated. at the tail end of delta, you started seeing vaccinated hospitalizations creep up over 30%. it crossed 50% in early january, although the media forgot to tell us. next spike, the numbers will be closer to representative of the population, and you could very well see 80%+ of the hospitalizations being vaccinated people.
the reason this is predictable is that the science is very clear that the vaccines do not protect well against omicron. some studies suggest that boosters increase immune response, but the mechanism of such a thing really isn't very clear, and i'm fairly skeptical about it.
so, the next time you hear somebody claim "base rate fallacy", look them in the eye and tell them they're wrong - that the opposite is true, that you need to look at the most current data, and discard the old data, in context.
i don't want to see another stupid article like this one.
14:04
fwiw, it seems like the article i just posted has been updated since this morning and no longer references the so-called base rate fallacy in an ironically fallacious way, although the argument articulated by peter juni in the article is so stupid that it should not have been printed.
it's some movement towards a correct understanding. it's some progress.
14:13
as per the updated article (rather than the one i read this morning), 75% of the people admitted on the 5th in quebec were vaccinated. about 80% of the population is vaccinated. it's within a margin of error of what you'd expect if the vaccines had no effect at all.
so, as i suggested, before reading the update, that suggests that vaccination is no longer a causal determinant, because the virus has changed enough that the vaccines have all but stopped working.
we are now at the point where natural infection is no doubt superior, in terms of protection, to vaccination. outright.
14:17
rather than get into stupid arguments about this, let's just get the point - it means your grandmother is back to square one, and now has no protection, at all.
it probably doesn't make any difference to you, either way, because you'd probably just cough for a few days.
but, the difference between this spring and last spring is that the vulnerable were rightly scared last spring, and this spring have been falsely led to believe they're protected by vaccines that all the smart people knew would stop working with new variants.
it is more important than ever to keep your vulnerable relatives locked up if you want them to live through this, and if we don't collectively grasp that then it's going to be a blood bath in the fall.
14:24
no.
stop.
i've been predicting this outcome since mid-2020, and i'm not standing against any kind of science. i've merely been articulating well understood science, in the face of a media and government trying to confuse you into ignoring the science, and do what you're told, instead.
don't fall into the trap that the experts were wrong; the experts weren't wrong, the experts saw this coming, and i've been writing it about it now for years. if you looked closely, past the media messaging, the government admitted all of this as well. as one example, it's been stated on the health canada web page from the start that masks won't stop the spread of this virus - that's been there since 2019.
the media was wrong, but it wasn't an accident.
the media lied to you.
let's understand this the right way, please.
14:31
this is a foolish and short-sighted analysis of the elder trudeau, that suggests the younger is forced to relive history as farce, rather than learn from his mistakes.
in fact, pierre trudeau was his own biggest detractor, in regards to how he behaved in 1970. when asked why he enacted the war measures act a mere few years later, his response was along the lines of "because i could.". to quote jello biafra,
that sure was easy, wasn't it?
but, the elder trudeau's statements were not glib, or observational, and he was not content to sit on his thumbs. after losing power in 1979, and briefly retiring, he returned to power in 1980 with the seemingly singular purpose of enacting legislation that would make it so that nobody would be able to pass another war measures act. we call this effort the constitution act, and it forms the basis of canada's current constitution, along with the charter of rights and freedoms.
the elder trudeau was ashamed of his behaviour in october, 1970 and went to the lengths of changing the country's constitution to make sure nobody could repeat the same mistakes he did.
don't ask his son to walk down this path - that's not fair to anybody.
15:09
as alberta and saskatchewan finally lift restrictions (hopefully, ontario follows shortly), i want to present my perspective on what the science suggests is (and mostly always was) justified and isn't (and mostly never was):
- the science is clear that everyday type masks do not work. the landmark study in nature suggested widespread masking would only reduce spread on the order of 10%, which does not justify mandating it's use. all mask laws should be immediately revoked, as the science does not uphold them.
- mask laws for children are particularly terrible in terms of their self-esteem, and the science is particularly lacking in support for mask laws for children.
- vaccine mandates are dumb. full stop. but, the most recent science is that the vaccines just don't work on omicron. vaccine mandates should be scrapped, outright, in totality. and, the idea should be permanently buried as dumb.
- travel and border restrictions are not upheld by science and should be entirely abandoned, permanently.
- the ontario government's specific focus on "punishing the sinners" by putting restrictions on alcohol and sex work is not upheld by the science and should be abandoned.
what are some restrictions or rules i think are worth keeping in place?
- i think that private businesses should be allowed to ask for vaccine status, if they'd like. as a customer, i have the choice to go somewhere else. what i've long opposed is the mandate telling businesses that don't want to implement mandates that they have to whether they like it or not; i don't want to go somewhere i'm not invited, or hang out in a space where i'm unwanted, but the government is overstepping it's bounds in setting rules that everybody has to follow, even if they don't want to. it's up to people to make these decisions on their own. the basic idea is freedom of association. so, if people want to enforce rules on their property, they can do so, so far as i'm concerned - i'll find more like-minded people and spend time with them, instead, and would encourage people like me to adopt that attitude, if they haven't already. this is what living in a free society is all about. for example, i would respect the right of an orchestra hall to tell me i can't enter, in order to protect it's audience, which is mostly older people.
- there are specific high risk settings where restrictions always were and do continue to be justified.
- i think that all precautions should be taken in hospitals, and i've tended to obey mask laws in health care settings. hospitals need to be aware of the fact that the vaccines are no longer working, but the premise of mandating regular vaccination amongst health care workers for all communicable diseases, including the flu and covid-19, is, i think, sound, and upheld by the evidence. that's right - i'd support firing a nurse for refusing the flu vaccine. the fact that the vaccines are not working right now isn't an argument against health care worker mandates, in broader generality.
- given the realization that vaccines are no longer effective, restrictions on long term care facilities should be increased, not decreased. the ford government, particularly, has this completely backwards, and appears to be being pushed by very stupid people that continue to insist on the necessity of physically touching decrepit old people. if these people have not learned yet, they will not; the decision should be taken away from them, and the science should be enforced, instead. these facilities should be on constant lockdown for the foreseeable future. in longterm care facilities, the pandemic might linger for the next ten years, and restrictions to enter these facilities should be exceedingly strict for as long as it takes for the population to turn over - ten years, twenty years, whatever. that's right - turnover. this won't end for the elderly until the people entering the facilities have built up natural immunity, as young people.
- likewise, i actually think that churches and other religious corporations should be subject to special restrictions, because they mostly attract old people. the government should maintain a veneer of voluntarism around a policy intended to be functionally mandatory, by doing things to help churches participate. after all, prolonging the lives of their paying customers is ultimately in their self-interest. and, that should be obvious.
- special programs to help maintain restrictions in churches should be extended to other places that old people congregate in, like bingo halls, matlock conventions and john travolta fan clubs.
- social distancing in public is a good idea, and should become normal behaviour, moving forwards. this is one thing i like - people are keeping their distance and better respecting personal space, when they didn't previously. dealing with gross people insisting on close-talking is less of an issue than it was previously. if we throw away everything else, let's keep social distancing and respect for personal space as a norm, please.
moving on doesn't mean sticking our heads in the sands and ignoring reality. rather, it means realizing that we've been in a fog of statist disinformation, as promulgated by unscrupulous mainstream media, for months, that has mostly been designed to control us. this experiment, it is now clear, has simply failed - we won't be controlled. waking up to this reality means looking at the science more carefully. maybe we've collectively become more educated regarding basic vaccine science over the last two years; if so, that newfound knowledge should help us understand why our government was wrong, why they didn't follow the science and what following the science actually means, moving forwards.
so, please be mindful of the threat the virus will continue to pose to at risk people, and please be respectful of the risks you may pose to these people by making a reasonable effort to continue to avoid them as much as is possible. make smart decisions regarding your grandparents. call them, instead. don't get too close to the old woman at the checkout line. etc.
and, if you're at risk yourself, please take the situation seriously. your health is your personal responsibility, not the responsibility of society. it is tyrannical of you to expect others to make sacrifices for you, and you need to drop the entitled attitude around it. if you don't make smart personal decisions to evade infection, you're going to end up dead. so, act accordingly - and understand you're on your own.
22:09
wednesday, february 9, 2022
it's never been remotely clear to me exactly what it is that the chain store mr. lube actually does.
3:44
i could just imagine a bunch of foreigners showing up in canada, looking at the signs and wondering "why is there a mr. lube near every major intersection in this country?".
3:46
as it happens to be, i was just reading a lawsuit about workplace harassment at one particular mr. lube.
3:53
so, let's do a survey of cases where the court has decided that the hrto's ruling was so unreasonable as to need to intervene.
i skipped a few partial interventions that i considered to be trivial.
after a thorough survey via canlii, this is really all i could find.
pre-vavilov, but post privative clause (dec 2006):
0) audmax v muslim woman
muslim woman wins a suit for getting fired for her clothing.
No reasons whatsoever are provided for rejecting the evidence of Ms. Telfer, or for accepting the evidence of Ms. Saadi. This makes appellate review of the findings illusory. The Court of Appeal held in Law Society of Upper Canada v. Neinstein27 that when credibility is an important factor, bald conclusions as to the credibility of one witness as compared to another will not suffice. The Court held (at § 83—84):
the court decides it's unreasonable and sends it back to a "different adjudicator". issue of procedural fairness, as well. reread this one carefully.
1) student v university of waterloo
this has to do with admissions criteria, and the technical question of whether the university provided for proper accommodations for a disability in it's admittance decision. the court ruled that admissions didn't evaluate whether the applicant might be admitted without undue hardship for his disability, so this is a correctness review in stealth. great. i don't have a checklist of this sort to pull out, so this doesn't help much.
2) indian doctor v ontario
this is a case about standing, where the court's dismissal was deemed unreasonable. it's more relevant, but not direct.
3) peel law society v lawyers
this is the opposite case of what i need, but it means it's useful in building the argument.
no arguments were heard in the case i'm trying to appeal, which was dismissed due to lack of "jurisdiction", based on inapplicable employment law precedent. as no case was heard, i'll have to make the case to the divisional court, instead.
the appeal here was allowed because there wasn't a causal link between the claim and the accusation. i claim i can establish a causal link, if allowed to interview the witnesses and view the video. i claim that the behaviour of the manager - who chased me down the street for blocks yelling at me - is too irrational and absurd to comprehend in any other manner. my argument was that ruling out all rational explanations for such behaviour leaves only irrational explanations. this is a proof by elimination, which is considered to be a demonstration of causality by mathematicians. but, some discussion of the nature of causality may be required.
in science, causality is often determined via elimination. likewise, hypothesis testing is based on elimination.
the ambiguity here comes in understanding the nature of the manager's behaviour. i do not understand how anybody could explain way such unreasonable behaviour, but it is within the realm of possibility. i was not stopped for a moment, or a victim of an offhand comment. rather, i was chased for blocks by an angry person under a false claim of theft. there's a point where the balance of probabilities is too great to deny the obvious truth, and i claim that is where the situation was at.
so, my argument is sound; the adjudicator didn't appear to understand it.
so, i think this case is probably useful, but in a reverse sense. i would have likely cited this case, i think, had i been permitted to make an argument, rather than dismissed offhand for offending the court, in the premise.
4) toronto v whiner:
this is another correctness review, as the question is whether you can sue a city for not providing a safe space in it's service office; somebody was called a mean name at the court office by a third party, and that person sued the city for it. which is ridiculous. but, he won. the tribunal's ruling was unreasonable, clearly, but it's also just a mistake at law. we see how absurd it has to be for the divisional court to step in, though. again.
5) black guy v ottawa cops
he wanted a hearing about racism underlying a traffic stop and didn't get one, so he appealed, and the court said he needs to get a hearing, but didn't rule on the outcome. this is close to relevant. again, it's procedural.
6) disabled kid v toronto school board
the kid needs to go to a private school and sued for funding. the board award damages, but not funding. the court claimed this was "unreasonable", but is really pointing to an error in the test used. so, it's a correctness review. again.
7) i haven't found the case for this yet, but i like this link for the language for the form 68a, if i fill it out:
8) college of nurses v nurse
this is another correctness review. the hrto went ahead with an application, even though the issue was dealt with in a civil case. the nurse won. the college appealed on grounds of double jeopardy, and the divisional court tossed the case. you can see the very limited scope of successful judicial review cases which are almost always hidden correctness reviews, despite the direction of the legislature.
this is why i'm doing this.
9) auto company suing dude they fired:
this is a rare example of an actual case being tossed aside due to the outcome actually being unreasonable. dude claimed he was fired for having a thyroid condition after getting in a fight, and the adjudicator bought it. the divisional court did not, and claimed he was fired for getting in a fight. ok. the question of proving the relevance of the harassment is central. as with the peel society case, reviewing this might be helpful to make sure i'm presenting the argument in the right way.
10) human rights commission sues human rights tribunal
bizarrely, the hrto finds a deincorporated company liable for discrimination, leaving the victim unable to collect damages. so, the commission sues the tribunal! wow. the divisional court finds the situation unreasonable and sends it back, but this is again a correctness issue, as the problem is that the ruling fucked up. we see how narrow these grounds are.
11) store owner v employees
some employees sue a store owner for sexual harassment and win, based on comments of some ambiguity. the divisional court decides those comments don't meet the bar for sexual harassment, and the result is unreasonable.
12) protein deficient v ontario government
this is a truly strange ruling, where the court determines that the tribunal didn't hear enough evidence to determine that eating more protein is an acceptable solution to a protein deficiency. the suggestion by the court that eating more vitamins might resolve a protein deficiency demonstrates a startling ignorance of basic science. the court sends the case back, and asks the tribunal to do more research into the science. i've seen more than a few cases like this, and the hard part about it is how lazy the court comes off as. i mean, this isn't a hard problem, and the testimony of the nutritionist should have been good enough. i would consider this to be an outlier in terms of how the court determines review criteria, and may wonder if the justices may have held a bias against the disabled woman, and rather felt the need to deny her the $36/month out of simple, mean-spirited spite.
post-vavilov:
13) racially profiled black man v durham cop shop:
this has to do with the technical interpretation of a document and has limited utility outside of that scope. this is really a correctness review, and it's nice to see it, in light of the supreme court's irrational banning of them, in a backwards fit of civil law application.
14) oil company v arab worker
this is another correctness review. an arab is turned down for a job on grounds of not being a permanent resident and claims discrimination. the hrto agreed that this was discrimination, on citizenship grounds. the divisional court claims it isn't analogous grounds, and the hrto made a mistake in extending it. the oil company is allowed to discriminate on this specific ground because it's not in the code. again - doesn't help.but, there's a pattern.
15) zu v hamilton:
this is a procedural issue - the woman missed her hearing date, and wants it rescheduled.
16) deaf guy v minister of justice
another correctness review in stealth, this points out that the minister failed to provide sign language services for a deaf guy, which is pretty brutal. but, it's of minimal relevance to me.
17) union v hotel
review claims awards so small that it's unreasonable; divisional court agrees, orders new trial. no real relevance.
==========
is that enough?
well, there's not anything since vavilov. maybe i can fix that.
i'm going to start writing the argument, and we'll see if i think it's good enough or not.
i have until monday, but i'd like this dealt with by friday, and ideally by thursday.
4:39
how do we solve this problem of ignorant judges that don't know anything about science?
well, i think we need to point fingers in the right places, first. the judges did not hire themselves. this is ultimately a breakdown in the hiring process, and the first step is that the political bodies in charge of placing judges [mostly the pmo, in canada] need to make sure that they're making more of an effort to not hire scientifically illiterate judges. we live in a reality where basic scientific knowledge is more and more important; it should increasingly be an explicit part of the hiring criteria. it's certainly a more important hiring criteria than religion or race.
second, i think the schools need to increase their breadth requirements, and this is an issue that applies to more than judges and justices. we broadly need the arts schools to make more stringent demands in terms of scientific knowledge, before they give people degrees.
i understand that we can't all be astronauts when we grow up and that the court will, at some point, need to rely on outside expertise. but, that particular ruling is embarrassing. if those justices are still alive and working, they should resign in shame.
5:02
i don't care much about olympic-endorsed gloves, but this perfectly represents everything wrong with the current incarnation of the liberal party, and the bourgeois fake left, in general.
it seems like it never crossed their minds that most people couldn't pay $70 for a pair of gloves, because they're the kinds of people that wipe theirs asses with $20 bills.
accessibility should have been in the contract, but the idiots very likely switched brands in order to make the product trendier, to better appeal to people in their social circle.
...because they don't care about anybody except investors.
the hudson's bay company was no doubt rejected due to concerns around the company's history, which is unquestionably pretty awful. so, they picked a brand that they themselves would buy, without even contemplating the general population. it just never struck them as a worthwhile thought to have.
maybe, one day, once you've worked hard enough to demonstrate that you're a part of the elect, you'll be able to buy olympic gloves, too. in the mean time, get back to work, slave. the prime minister's kids need their trust fund filled out with corporate profits.
10:20
the gloves were no doubt made by eight year olds in malaysia, as well.
10:21
i bought some nice black kombis a few years ago for $14.99.
10:27
thursday, february 10, 2022
that video of the defeater show in gatineau in 2012 - and the screen shot of myself at it - seems to have been picked up by a certain subset. it sure looks like a crazy show, huh?
it was a part of the yearly heartfest festival in gatineau, a loosely thrown together fundraiser for the heart and stroke foundation (supposedly). that year's lineup was stacked for hardcore fans, and i also got to see the code orange kids when they were kids on that night, as well as some minor pop-core acts from boston. but, i was there to see defeater tour what has become know as their opus, the 2011 punk rock concept record, empty days and sleepless nights.
i've actually pointed this out before - there was a collection of art rock screamo bands in the mid to late 00s that re-established an interest for me in punk rock, something i'd mostly lost interest in. people are supposed to "grow out" of punk rock, but i don't feel i ever really did. it's more that punk got very, very dumb - something the old punks all know is true. biafra, for example, has been just absolutely vicious. but, the view is standard across the kind of "real punk" spectrum. some time after nevermind, and cresting with the fake emo movement in the early 00s, the term punk rock became attached to increasingly stupid types of music, to the point that it just got flat out retarded. i was about the age that i should have liked what was really a hair metal revival, but...it's not even that i had this hate-on for it. i was actually mostly just oblivious to it. i just paid no attention to it, and barely realized it was even happening. i was into post-rock and idm...
but, there were actually quite a few conceptual hardcore acts that started showing up around 2005 and had mostly run their course by about 2015, and defeater was one of the best of them. these were clearly punk bands, but they drew massively from progressive rock, conceptually. maybe that's why they all ended up on epitaph.
so, i mentioned that defeater became a parody of themselves. but, were they really that much more interesting, at one point?
well, listen to the climax of their 2011 record, which tells the story of one brother tying the other to a set of railroad tracks before...
listen to that and tell me i'm wrong. then, listen to their last few records and tell me they haven't "tightened up".
it's maybe the most brutal piece of music i've ever heard, and i've heard a lot of brutal music. it doesn't bludgeon you with volume or aggression, either. like, you have to listen to the first ten tracks to really get it. it's far more effective, and far more brutal, for that reason. subversion is infinitely more brutal than violence.
8:37
i checked out the protest in windsor yesterday, from a distance.
10:14
i actually wonder if local capital in the detroit-windsor area, which is finding it difficult to move parts across the border, might consider investing in more sustainable infrastructure than a privately owned bridge that transports items by burning fossil fuels.
you could drone over car parts.
i'd like to see a pedestrian bridge over the detroit river, myself. but, another idea is to look at building an electric train link that is direct, between factories.
this is an opportunity to brainstorm about ways to build sustainable infrastructure, moving forward. i'd encourage it.
13:37
so, we're seeing two specific outcomes of the vaccine protests in canada, at this point.
1) justin trudeau's caucus is finally beginning to push back a little against what is, in truth, an unpopular prime minister, of low ability. it's minor, and the party simply doesn't tolerate dissent anymore - anybody criticizing trudeau doesn't run in the next election. but, it's getting the point across, and in quebec, which is key. quebec liberals may be willing to note that it's not always easy to tell the difference between mr legault and mr trudeau on policy, and it's not due to any intent by mr legault. at some point, quebec mps need to explain that to their voters, who aren't intending to elect the caq when they vote liberal and may find their views better represented by the ndp, nowadays.
2) there appears to be a dogfight opening up between doug ford (who, probably correctly, thinks he has a better read on the polls) and christine elliot (who is more representative of the old money, upper class high tory wing of the party) regarding the utility of vaccine passports, in the context of an upcoming election. this is very tricky, because it really splits the conservative voting base in half, in ontario - the "old stock" rural base of the party seems to be resentful of government interference, but the more traditionally "conservative" recent immigrant vote, which is centered in toronto, and which really won the party the last election due to a socially conservative backlash against the wynne government, wants government to behave in the way that tory governments are supposed to behave, which is strict adherence to rules-based governance, and the use of heavy-handed policing to enforce those rules. the confusing wrench in this is that this newfound urban base of recent immigrants would never vote for christine elliot because she's female and has a particular liking to doug ford's machismo, offensive-lineman type image. and, somewhere in the background are the scientists saying "look, this might be popular in certain key voting groups, and people may be inclined to do what they're told because they're too stupid to understand anyways, but it didn't fucking work.", and nobody is going to listen to them. this could be quite the show, and could lead to imminent implosion, as the contradictions in the party expose themselves. ford has tended to fall in line, but there's an election in a few months...
19:38
friday, february 11, 2022
of course, the easiest and fastest way to remove the costs being enacted by these protesters on the state would be for the state to reverse the unconstitutional and unscientific border restrictions it has put in place, which have had no meaningful effect and merely created even further costs.
the protesters are doing this the right way, through peaceful action.
it would behoove the state to get the fucking point already and change these illegal laws, which suspended the social contract and have consequently upended the rule of law.
the state does not rule by divine decree. it is not entitled to power. there are restrictions on authority that the state needs to obey in order to gain the obedience of citizens - that's the social contract. if the state won't obey those restrictions, which are enacted in the constitution, it has no further grounds to governance, and needs to be removed, by any means necessary.
these are the foundational principles of our system of government, and it is very concerning that the state isn't listening, or doesn't think it's important.
we need to return to the rule of law - which means return to a government that follows rules, for the slow kids that don't understand the term - or these disruptions will continue until the government is removed.
i mean, i don't know where the state officials are getting their constitutional law from, nowadays. aquinas? the koran? confucius? it's not locke or paine or rosseau, that's for sure. so, i don't know what their theory is, but it's clearly not western, in origin, and that should be of great concern to everybody.
what i see is a government that is off it's rails and now apparently willing to use violence to assert it's suspension of constitutional order; what i see is the onset of fascism.
and, let me tell the state this very clearly - the suspension of the rule of law is being taken on good faith amongst citizens with the assumption that it is temporary. but, temporary is a word with a meaning, which is not the same thing as permanent. the state may find that this good faith may begin to quickly absolve, should it start using violence to enforce a permanent new order of fascism, in place of the rule of constitutional law.
the rational thing for the state to do is change the laws, which are an expense and annoyance which is not justified by science or reason, and which the protests are a legitimate expression of frustration towards. and, in the future, the state should take greater care to ensure it is not passing unconstitutional laws that are not backed by science, which dissolve the social contract and which upend the rule of law - because this is what predictably happens when governments behave like despotic tyrants.
3:03
so, i'm about a full day behind schedule on filing the grocery case.
i had to take advantage of the break in the weather on wednesday to mail my odsp renewal because it's due on the 20th, or so i thought. i waited until the last minute to mail it to drag the process out, if necessary. if they deny me, i'm going to appeal it, and drag them through court for the next ten years. if i'm lucky, i can extend the legal process until old age pension kicks in, and then i don't need to fill reviews out anymore. or, maybe, they'll make it easy and make it permanent, like i've asked for.
but, when i checked my mail on wednesday for the first time in three weeks, i found a letter from odsp that put the process off until the end of may. if i'm lucky, i'll end up at the bottom of the queue, then, and they'll respond within 90 days of the end of may. but, we'll see what happens.
i'm preparing for a fight. the last time i did this, i had to fight to get the forms filled out. this time, my doctor filled them out for me without a peep, so the fight will be bureaucratic, instead, if it happens. with the delays due to covid and everything else, i could very plausibly put it off for the next five years, which at least gives me time to figure something out.
i may have to go back to school and, if i do, i'm likely to want to focus on getting a job managing stocks. i mean, i'm looking for the shortest path back out of the workforce. if i could go back in time, i'd have studied economics, with the intent of retiring at 35. i'd prefer to stay on disability, but if i have to adjust, so be it. i really wasn't ready to go to school at 20, or even 30 - i wish i'd have waited until now to go to school, because it's taken me this long to figure out what i'd want out of it, which is finding the fastest path to retirement. when i was 20, i just went to school because i was supposed to, and when i went back it was just because it was the path of least resistance to paying rent. like, i had zero aspirations, at all. i was bouncing around departments to try to figure out what i wanted...
i don't want to go to school in windsor, though. i might want to actually look at moving up north - now that i'm a little older, a city like sudbury is more appealing to me. i'm an advocate of apartment living and i want to minimize costs, remember.
anyways.
i had to get out on wednesday, so i got as much groceries done as i could, which meant walking for six hours, and i just ended up crashing when i got in. i've been having difficulty getting started, since.
i've got a coffee and am ready to go.
like, i've done the research. i'm still 50/50 as to whether i want to file or not, but i want a decision by noon, at the latest. the way the adjudicator wrote the refusal is frustrating, as it doesn't leave me with anything to actually appeal. it's almost like she adopted a scorched earth policy, that was designed to make an appeal difficult.
the result is a clearly unreasonable decision that will be very tricky to resolve. but, i think it's just a question of sitting down and doing it.
so, here i go. let's see what happens when i start writing it...
6:02
i, personally, really don't like the term "peace, order and good government". that phrase was never voted on, it was just invented by some dipshit aristocrats and thrust upon us, without consultation. it in no way reflects any popular movement that has ever occurred in this country, and if i had my way, i'd have it struck out. it's a term foisted upon the people by the state.
but, if we are to work with such an empty and bloated term, the framework of western liberal democracy insists that peace and order only follows from good government. so, what is good government?
good government is government that avoids passing legislation that pits the majority against the minority, that obeys the social contract and that upholds the constitutional rule of law. if you have a different definition of good government, i'd like to hear it, but the concept must be rooted in the idea of restraint, and respect for human rights.
this government has systematically ripped the constitution into pieces, which is not good government.
and, we cannot have peace or order without a return to good government.
but...i'm going to frame my arguments in terms of locke and rousseau, not in terms of pogg, which i think is bullshit.
6:27
you fucking pigs.
this is how i know you're reading my email:
that indicates that the file is open in two places, you inbred fucking retards.
what do you expect somebody to do in this situation? do you expect me to just carry about my business, under the understanding that some half-retarded, corrupt, inbred pig is listening to my email, no doubt without a warrant?
i've been over this repeatedly - you're terrible at your job. i know you're spying on me. if i was any sort of bad guy, i'd have marched upstairs and slit your stupid throat, by now.
your methods indicate your clear incompetence.
now, i don't know what you're trying to do. i don't communicate with anybody by email. go away, you idiots.
there's criminals out there, and you're harassing somebody trying to file a human rights complaint for getting chased down the street.
you're idiots.
fuck off.
8:35
the "log out of all accounts" option seemed to work, this time. i don't know for how long.
but, i need to get the point across, yet again - when you spy on people in such an incompetent manner, you're just wasting everybody's time.
8:50
i don't have a "social network" because i hate everybody. i'm a recluse. i don't want friends.
i mean, i could write the essay again, about how friendship is impossible in capitalism, but i've written it too may times, and i'm behind schedule on the filing.
it seems to be that they're perplexed about being unable to tie me to anybody or anything. they can't track me via my phone, because i don't have a phone. they've tried to hack my facebook site, but i deleted everybody from facebook in 2014. they're looking for email communication, and are confused that they can't find anything.
i don't like people.
there is no secret communist network.
8:55
there is no cabal.
8:56
i'm an extreme left, anarcho-communist that keeps myself disconnected from the world because i find it to be impure.
i like to go to concerts, and used to do so frequently, before they made music illegal.
nowadays, i sit inside by myself, because there's nothing else to do.
it's not any more complicated than it appears.
the world is sick, full of fucked up people that will stab you in the back for a few dollars. i've learned my lesson about it - you can't trust anybody. it's the society. i'd like to escape it entirely, but i can't; the only way out is non-participation.
i mean, don't get me wrong - if i could find a group of actual, real anarcho-communists, i would communicate with them, and probably frequently. but, every attempt i've made has exposed a lot of frauds, and the reality that it's almost impossible to escape capitalism, while existing within it. people will say all kinds of things, but they can't escape the conditioning, in the end.
and, maybe i wouldn't be any different, in the end, but i can't deal with people...
i live on disability for a stress disorder. like, that's my diagnosis - i can't co-exist with other people. these idiot cops are insistent that i must have a secret social life, despite searching for years for one and not finding one. i live on disability for social anxiety. if i had some secret social life, if the anxiety wasn't real, then wouldn't i go out and try to exist in the market?
who hired these retards?
fuck.
idiots.
9:02
i actually really seriously sit inside by myself and don't talk to anybody and don't have any friends - and that's how i like it, because all humans are functionally inherently evil, in a society where they're brainwashed by capitalism. they're not genetically evil by their nature, but they're raised into evil, and almost nobody can transcend it.
but, it doesn't help me to kill them all.
i just want them to leave me alone - and that includes the idiot cops reading my email.
9:06
and, can whoever the idiot that keeps signing me up for right-wing newsletters is fuck off?
i've been heavily critical of donald trump. i endorsed the green party in 2020, and hillary clinton in 2016. i'm a libertarian socialist.
fuck off.
14:34
to the extent that i find donald trump less annoying than a lot of bourgeois liberals, it's because he's actually more economically left-wing than they are.
but, i can't vote for or broadly support somebody with his social views.
if i'm pissing off the fake left, i'm doing something right - i do not like them, and i want them to know it. but, a pox on both houses. and, i'm very clear about it.
i am neither interested in supporting the bourgeois fake left, nor am i interested in falling into false dichotomies between the two bourgeois parties. i oppose them both, as any leftist would.
14:38
hey, how about this - i supported the aims of the 2020 blockades and i support the aims of the trucker convoy.
now, you're really confused - because i'm consistent.
consistency, apparently, is more subversive than opportunism; truth is more subversive than lies.
but, if you're a left libertarian, both of these concerns actually fall on your side of the spectrum.
16:32
so, i filed the damned thing, perhaps against my better judgement.
we'll see what happens.
16:33
the idiots are responding with force.
doug ford wants you to obey his authority.
ugh.
fucking chimps fighting for dominance. no logic. no rationality.
it's a stupid, costly policy to begin with. you need to protest to tell the government that 2+2=4, and they show up with guns to force you to submit to 2+2=5.
so, here we go - get ready for some fireworks.
and, ontario? this is fascism. we need to pick a side.
16:38
ok.
the feds might end up making a rational decision.
they're the ones with the decision making authority here, not cartman.
keep it clean this weekend in ottawa. it'll help your cause.
16:44
it's not my fault that reality frequently reflects cartoon satires.
i don't write this shit, i just post it.
16:47
the actions in ottawa and coutts are very impressive, from what i can see, and i'd imagine they'll be there for as long as they can be supplied.
but, the action in windsor is fairly minor.
i actually have a tactical suggestion for law enforcement - blockade them in. build a fence around them....
19:10
saturday, february 12, 2022
can the democrats please make it a priority to primary biden with somebody under the age of 70?
thanks.
3:49
we can't compete with the master race russians, so we accuse them of taking drugs and try to disqualify them, instead. u s a! u s a!
it's been going on for decades.
11:43
it's one thing to act that way with adults, but it's particularly tyrannical to take an olympic medal away from a child due to political considerations that she likely barely understands.
12:07
i think a part of the reason people want to identify me as being aligned with donald trump is that i have a tendency to decide things are real and fake. i talk about the fake left, and about real anarchists; i talk about fake and real punk.
outside of the obvious absurdity of assigning the discovery of an antonym pair to a politician, there's two reasons why this is retarded:
1) trump's use of the term is, i believe, actually derived from his status as an icon in the genre of hip-hop. and, this longstanding - hip-hop has a deep, complicated history with donald trump, and i think he knows it. the fake news needs to get back to keeping it real, yo. but, trump's the real deal.
2) punk and hip-hop are kind of mirror images of each other, and i'm pretty clear that my cultural background is about 93% punk rock. i don't want to assign primacy to punk over hip-hop in terms of who came up with being real first, but this i an overlap and commonality in the cultures. and, i get my language of real and fake things from punk rock, not from hip-hop and not from donald trump.
and, i mean, i should point out that you can easily see by sorting through this page that i was calling people fake leftists and watching the real news quite a long time before 2016.
so, let's keep it real regarding this, please.
13:46
this was from aug, 2014.
===
yeah, i've seen enough to realize that the flowers are fake and the gorilla's articulation of sign language isn't. separating between the idea of "falsity" and "representation" may be a little abstract for her (although it might be something that could be taught), but she clearly understood that the picture of a flower was not actually a flower and felt the need to specify it. that is, she wasn't content with saying "that's a flower", she needed to find a way to express "that's a picture of a flower". that might not imply that she meets any technical definitions regarding the use of human language, but it does demonstrate that she understands what she's doing when she flops her fingers around. she is very clearly consciously doing so with the intent of expressing ideas that are her own.
i'm not sure it even makes sense to try and ask questions about grammar as they relate to sign language outside of the context of a spoken and written language, and i think it opens up a lot of questions regarding the circularity of it. i know there's different ideas about it, but i have a hard time separating grammar from written language. it seems to me that it's the writing that enforces the grammar, rather than the other way around. when you look at tribes that don't have written languages, the grammar may exist but is often rather basic - and they have thousands of years of linguistic evolution to get to the point, whereas koko only has her lifetime and a set of limited tools to express herself. i don't really have to hypothesize about taking europeans and putting them on a different planet without writing - you can look at how the language has broken down in areas of australia and north america, where the written component is not great. that is, you take the writing out and the grammar demonstrably starts to fracture. so, i just don't see how this experiment is able to produce any kind of meaningful conclusions on the question. to answer that question, you'd have to carry the experiment out over generations, teach them how to use written language and then construct something that gives the gorilla more ability to use grammar than signing.
but, i'm not falling for this idea that the gorilla is being conditioned. i've seen very little, of course - youtube videos. but the bit i've seen is just overwhelmingly in favour of an independent agent producing independent thought.
if the gorilla can understand over a thousand signs, it could conceivably understand just as many key combinations on a keyboard. that would eliminate a lot of ambiguity. perhaps using chinese style writing (or even something roughly comparable to hieroglyphs) may be a better way to start.
after all, humans didn't start with a complicated alphabet, either. we built it up over time. we started with pictorial representations that expressed ideas.
so, it's not really fair to grab a gorilla and expect it to grasp a modern roman alphabet with the complexity of a modern language right off the bat. i wouldn't even expect that a pre-neolithic member of our own species would be able to do that.
everything we know about plasticity and evolution nowadays suggests that whatever is inherent must have developed over the time we've been using language and grammar. so, if you want to do this and draw any meaningful results, you need to control for that by emulating the same kind of systems that early humans used, not the fully developed ones we use now.
i mean, we have no idea what ancient egyptians sounded like when they talked to each other. we can take some guesses. but there's not really any serious way to really understand how complex their grammar was, at the time.
chinese would be better for that reason, but it might be too complicated.
if tolkien can construct a new language, it can't be that hard to make one for some apes using a simple but "correct" grammar and then transliterate it with pictures constructed with combinations on an oversized keyboard.
and i'm suggesting this because i think the results will be shocking to certain people and put some questions to rest rather permanently.
i'm not sure it even makes sense to try and ask questions about grammar as they relate to sign language outside of the context of a spoken and written language, and i think it opens up a lot of questions regarding the circularity of it. i know there's different ideas about it, but i have a hard time separating grammar from written language. it seems to me that it's the writing that enforces the grammar, rather than the other way around. when you look at tribes that don't have written languages, the grammar may exist but is often rather basic - and they have thousands of years of linguistic evolution to get to the point, whereas koko only has her lifetime and a set of limited tools to express herself. i don't really have to hypothesize about taking europeans and putting them on a different planet without writing - you can look at how the language has broken down in areas of australia and north america, where the written component is not great. that is, you take the writing out and the grammar demonstrably starts to fracture. so, i just don't see how this experiment is able to produce any kind of meaningful conclusions on the question. to answer that question, you'd have to carry the experiment out over generations, teach them how to use written language and then construct something that gives the gorilla more ability to use grammar than signing.
but, i'm not falling for this idea that the gorilla is being conditioned. i've seen very little, of course - youtube videos. but the bit i've seen is just overwhelmingly in favour of an independent agent producing independent thought.
if the gorilla can understand over a thousand signs, it could conceivably understand just as many key combinations on a keyboard. that would eliminate a lot of ambiguity. perhaps using chinese style writing (or even something roughly comparable to hieroglyphs) may be a better way to start.
after all, humans didn't start with a complicated alphabet, either. we built it up over time. we started with pictorial representations that expressed ideas.
so, it's not really fair to grab a gorilla and expect it to grasp a modern roman alphabet with the complexity of a modern language right off the bat. i wouldn't even expect that a pre-neolithic member of our own species would be able to do that.
everything we know about plasticity and evolution nowadays suggests that whatever is inherent must have developed over the time we've been using language and grammar. so, if you want to do this and draw any meaningful results, you need to control for that by emulating the same kind of systems that early humans used, not the fully developed ones we use now.
i mean, we have no idea what ancient egyptians sounded like when they talked to each other. we can take some guesses. but there's not really any serious way to really understand how complex their grammar was, at the time.
chinese would be better for that reason, but it might be too complicated.
if tolkien can construct a new language, it can't be that hard to make one for some apes using a simple but "correct" grammar and then transliterate it with pictures constructed with combinations on an oversized keyboard.
and i'm suggesting this because i think the results will be shocking to certain people and put some questions to rest rather permanently.
13:47
see, it was pretty obvious that this was going to happen very fast, as the protest was simply too small to hold the ground.
did they win, though?
it's a slow process.
politicians care about polls, not about science. they may be driven by ego, but they don't tend to die on hills, not today. whether they've won or not depends on whether the polls move or not.
it's early, but i think they've made an impact. and, i'll leave it to historians to sort it out.
i hope that the mask mandates in ontario lift very soon.
14:16
these protests were necessary, and they were annoying because being annoying was necessary.
14:17
i am back to work on inri077 this weekend because, like, i have to get on with it. everything remains unorganized, but i'll just have to deal with it.
i mentioned several times that something seemed to be wrong with the digitization i did in may. indeed, the recording seems to have a lot of clicks in it, and i don't remember that being that case. i also mentioned that it seemed like it was out of sync, oddly enough.
i've re-digitized it, and it seems to have essentially fixed it. now, i need to decide if i want to save the files from may or just delete them.
i've decided that the way i'm doing this is that the ep itself will be
01. the section recorded for like divine amoebas, which was digitized in early 2004 and exists, unaltered.
02. the completed version of the section of the lost symphony i'm digitizing, and which is the last random cassette demo of this sort.
03+ will be transient versions of the track, including the raw 2003 mix direct from tape, etc.
so, the need to redo this is going to slow me down a little, but cubase is running fine through the alesis, so whatever was causing the problems has not yet been identified and i can at least use this machine, even if it's a little slow due to the base video card drivers.
i'm going to have to reinstall those at some point, and we'll see if it's the problem or not, but i'm going to want to put the ram back in, next. actually, no - i want to test with the external drives, first, as that was the other thing that was screwy.
so, some minor progress this weekend, and probably not much else, but i'm at least ready to get started now, i think, after so many years of not understanding what was wrong with the gear. i'm not just going to replace electronics without understanding what's wrong with them. like, i have to have a guess as to what broke, or i'm going to conclude nothing's actually broken at all.
anyways, that's what i'm doing today, and some mixes will be up soon.
16:38
yeah, the clicks seem to be being caused by the dongle calls, although it never did that before.
when i build the 64 bit system, i'm going to pick a daw without a dongle, if i can find one. like, you're trying to use your processor to it's maximum advantage, and you have to waste it on a fucking dongle? it's retarded.
for now, the way around it is to use cool edit to record in, but that's only useful in the immediate short term. it didn't do that before. so, is it actually the video card refreshing, which is causing the dongle call to hiccup? is it not enough ram?
i should also point out that i have multiprocessing turned off...
i had to do this, and it's going to be annoying for a while until i figure out what the problem was, but i need to push forward with it.
i want to hold off on the ram, and i'm not sure that make sense, anyways. but, i might have to turn the multiprocessing back on almost immediately, and see what happens.
18:30
hey, i did my first digital recording in a basic wave editor on a computer that simply couldn't run a multitrack recording interface.
i'm very comfortable in cool edit, to the point that i'd argue it's even more important than cubase. i can get around cubase not working. but, i need cool edit.
18:39
i have to tell you that if somebody threatened me with a $100,000 fine, i'd have to laugh at them.
the chances that you'll ever get anywhere close to $100,000 out of me are pretty much nil.
you'd might as well demand i bring you a unicorn.
it's again reflective of what's wrong with the government - i guess, in their social circles, $100,000 is a number that means something, rather than a number that's so big it's of no meaning.
18:52
this is not a revolutionary movement, and what's happening in ottawa is not a revolution but rather simply a breakdown in public order. it's anarchy in the colloquial sense. but, i really hope that the bourgeois elite are getting the message: this is why governments need to show restraint before passing draconian laws.
the city councillors might not get it, but they're just city councillors. the mayor might not get it, either. and, don't expect cryptofascist conservative residents hammering for law and order to get it. at all.
but, the party machineries need to get it, and they shouldn't have had to learn the lesson, they should have known better.
19:03
ok, i'm 98% sure it's the video card.
i noticed it was skipping, rather than clicking, when i tried to record through cool edit. so, i minimized the window, which stopped the video card from refreshing the recording. that worked.
but, the signal into cool edit isn't adjustable, and the maximum volume coming from the 4-track is creating massive amounts of hiss out of the poorly recorded 20 year old demo. so, i can't do that, after all.
i went back to cubase to get a louder recording and minimized the window when it was recording, that seems to have worked...
there's some other strange things i'm noticing, such as that the recording is now five seconds longer than it was previously, consistently, across cards and software. that's very strange, but so be it.
19:49
apparently, harry potter is the new premier of manitoba...?
20:20
this should sound way better on your own device.
this version is digitized direct, without noise reduction, so it's as close to the mix was left off in 2003 as can be constructed. i tried to do this previously in may, 2021, but the file ended up corrupted, at some unclear point. this version is a fresh digitization dated to feb 12, 2022.
sarah had her drums set up in the dining room of her apartment, so i ended up parking a small amplifier in there. we tried to jam a few times, but she was apparently weirded out by it for some confusing psychological reasons that i never got my head around. stated tersely, she couldn't make music with anybody she was fucking, which kind of defeated the point, for me. her drumming skills were not particularly developed, but we could have worked on it if she wanted to; she didn't want to. anyways, i had a guitar & amp in her dining room, which had some interesting room acoustics because it was solid wood. i tend to usually record in direct, but this was recorded live to take advantage of the room. unfortunately, the recording was much quieter than i thought it was, and i have to live with that and the tape noise created from it. but, you can also hear the room in both of the guitars. the room gives the sound a punchy almost tube-like quality, which i don't normally get out of my little 15 watt cheri.
the lead guitar part (on the right channel) stops about 80% of the way through. what happened was that i broke a string on my sg, mid-tremolo. i was going to edit over it, but it didn't happen.
a third guitar part was played into the four-track, but i forgot to set the bus to record, so it didn't find it's way to the tape. and, this demo just didn't get finished.
so, this is the demo from 2003 in it's original state and which is to be cleaned up, built up and finished up.
21:41
yeah, crank the volume on that mix if you can.
22:18
actually, no.
i had the fucking dbx on. no wonder it sounded dead.
i need to do this a third time.
22:37
ok, this sounds a million times better than the last one, which sounded a million times better than the one from may.
the dbx may come in handy as i'm building the track, but it's not what i want in this slot, which is the raw mix from 2003. now that i've turned the dbx off (i guess i must have accidentally flipped it. i never, ever, ever use dolby noise reduction, i find it destroys my guitar style, which is expressive, primarily.), the dynamics in the stabs are back, and you can hear the little riffs going on, again.
i just thought the recording was of poor quality and i'd have to fix it. but, with the dbx off, it's not nearly as bad as i thought.
great.
next step is going to be splitting the stereo channels into separate tracks and cleaning each of them up a little.
this version is digitized direct, without noise reduction, so it's as close to the mix was left off in 2003 as can be constructed. i tried to do this previously in may, 2021, but the file ended up corrupted, at some unclear point. this version is a fresh digitization dated to feb 12, 2022.
sarah had her drums set up in the dining room of her apartment, so i ended up parking a small amplifier in there. we tried to jam a few times, but she was apparently weirded out by it for some confusing psychological reasons that i never got my head around. stated tersely, she couldn't make music with anybody she was fucking, which kind of defeated the point, for me. her drumming skills were not particularly developed, but we could have worked on it if she wanted to; she didn't want to. anyways, i had a guitar & amp in her dining room, which had some interesting room acoustics because it was solid wood. i tend to usually record in direct, but this was recorded live to take advantage of the room. unfortunately, the recording was much quieter than i thought it was, and i have to live with that and the tape noise created from it. but, you can also hear the room in both of the guitars. the room gives the sound a punchy almost tube-like quality, which i don't normally get out of my little 15 watt cheri.
the lead guitar part (on the right channel) stops about 80% of the way through. what happened was that i broke a string on my sg, mid-tremolo. i was going to edit over it, but it didn't happen.
a third guitar part was played into the four-track, but i forgot to set the bus to record, so it didn't find it's way to the tape. and, this demo just didn't get finished.
so, this is the demo from 2003 in it's original state and which is to be cleaned up, built up and finished up.
23:23
sunday, february 13, 2022
i'm actually surprised that what you're seeing in ottawa right now didn't happen during the last election.
what i pointed out at the time was that people were misreading the polls, which consistently demonstrated that 25-35% of people were opposed to the restrictions with every ounce of their being, while some vague majority sort of supported them.
what i said at the time was that it didn't make sense to base a political strategy on trying to oppose such a strongly positioned minority. i mean, if 30% is a fringe minority, that's roughly what the liberals got in the last election - not adjusting for low turnout. when you just for turnout, 30% is about twice what the liberals got in the last election.
see, and the difference is that it's been strongly concentrated this whole time, while support for the restrictions was flopping all over the place. my message to the ruling liberals was that polarizing the electorate was going to backfire.
and, there were hints of this during the election campaign...
i want to be clear: i'm not suggesting that the protesters represent a majority, but we live in a country where 30% is a substantive plurality. parties win majority governments with not much more than that, in this country. so, it's easy to write it off as "only 30%", but that's a miscalculation - 30% is as much as anybody else ever gets here nowadays.
this was predictable, and i really want to hear the liberals acknowledge the point. regardless of what side you're on, there's a point where the cops are going to move in; i think everybody realizes that this is inevitable, and i think we're all going to have to stomach a bunch of politicians playing army-guy for a few days.
then it will be over.
the liberals are going to have to own this.
0:29
"In Windsor we have at its core, several dozen people who are macroeconomically illiterate and absolutely disrespectful of their own community, that they would imperil the economy of the region to make a point," he said. "Never has a tantrum cost so many people so much."
those are the words of flavio volpe, who comes from a powerful family, in this country.
flavio, listen - if you don't care about them, why should they care about you?
you took away their rights. why should they care about yours?
flavio doesn't think he's more important than they are, does he?
0:46
the police are understaffed and apparently prioritizing the bridge, for obvious financial reasons.
this action might not have had enough people at it to hold the bridge, but these cops are going to ottawa when they're done in windsor.
i would therefore call on the protesters in the region to maintain enough of a credible threat to reoccupy the bridge to prevent the police from redeploying, and that is tricky - it's a cat and mouse game, to avoid getting arrested.
basically, so long as the police are needed in windsor, the ottawa protests cannot be stopped. so, drag this out.
i mean, you're going to lose - the cops are going to hold the bridge. but, make them fight for it. make them occupy the bridge.
11:18
it's going to be cold for the next 48 hours.
windsor has a large homeless community, and there are many, many places to camp out in the city. i will not post them here, but the hint is to look around the railroads.
if you have a vehicle, you may want to look at malden park for the very short term.
11:33
moving forward, please make it a focus to maintain an element of....
12:40
on fifth thought, if i'm going to have a "direct from 2003" mix, it should be in stereo. the track was initially digitized in separate channels so i could mix it in cubase, but i didn't explicitly intend to have it mixed that way.
the dolby mix is currently discarded, but we'll see if it comes back or if it's useful in building the final mix.
so, i have three versions, now (the no dolby stereo, the no dolby split stereo and the dolby, which is split), and will use the last two to rebuild the track.
================
this version is digitized direct, without noise reduction, so it's as close to the mix was left off in 2003 as can be constructed. i tried to do this previously in may, 2021, but the file ended up corrupted, at some unclear point. this version is a fresh digitization dated to feb 13, 2022.
sarah had her drums set up in the dining room of her apartment, so i ended up parking a small amplifier in there. we tried to jam a few times, but she was apparently weirded out by it for some confusing psychological reasons. stated tersely, she couldn't make music with anybody she was fucking, which kind of defeated the point, for me. her drumming skills were not particularly developed, but we could have worked on it if she wanted to; she didn't want to. anyways, i had a guitar & amp in her dining room, which had some interesting room acoustics because it was solid wood. i tend to usually record in direct, but this was recorded live to take advantage of the room. unfortunately, the recording was much quieter than i thought it was, and i have to live with that and the tape noise created from it. but, you can also hear the room in both of the guitars. the room gives the guitar a punchy, almost tube-like quality, which i don't normally get out of my little 15 watt cheri.
the lead guitar part stops about 80% of the way through. what happened was that i broke a string on my sg, mid-tremolo. i was going to edit over it, but it didn't happen.
a third guitar part was played into the four-track, but i forgot to set the bus to record, so it didn't find it's way to the tape. and, this demo just didn't get finished.
so, this is the demo from 2003 in it's original state, presented as an unaltered time capsule.
=============
as i will be completing this demo on the spot in cubase, i needed a way to record the tracks so they were in sync and still separated, so they can be edited further in cubase. i know from experience that you can't just digitize tracks from tape one by one, as it will create subtle timing issues when you try to realign them. i have a multitrack recording interface, but no way to isolate the tracks in real time on my tascam. the tracks were both recorded in mono, so simply panning them left and right is an easy fix to create two separate channels for playback.
this is the version that will be used to complete the track.
this track was digitized on feb 12, 2022.
19:26
so, both the federal and provincial government will have some guidance as to where they're going with restoring the constitution in this country, early in the week. i don't want to gloat or say i told you so, i want my rights back. and, i'm obviously operating in a very parallel manner to the truckers on the ground, and their supporters.
what would cause me to ease up a little on my criticism?
well, i'm not going to rewrite the past, but these are my personal requests, that i'd like to see:
1) while entry to detroit ultimately relies on american policy, which i have no say on, i would like the canadian side to start a change in focus by acknowledging the utility of previous infection. the science actually says that previous infection is more likely to produce an immune response against omicron than vaccination. that is, previous infection is better than vaccination right now, and that's likely to be even more pronounced in the next wave. so, i'd really like to see the government stop trying to coerce me to get vaccinated, when i was actually right that my previous infection was better than a vaccine, in the long run, the whole time. please alter your policies to accept that an antibody test is superior to proof of vaccination.
2) vaccine passports are less important to me than mask laws, because i wouldn't go anywhere where i'd have to show proof of vaccination if it's contingent on mask use, in the first place. that is, vaccine passports offer me no incentives to get vaccinated, unless they're paired with the elimination of masking rules. i'm not going to follow the mask rules anyways. while there is no science at all around the idea of mandating masks in schools, and the idea is beyond specious, and clearly damaging to children, i am not a child and do not have children. please eliminate all mask requirements as they pertain to adults going about their day-to-day lives, and i can get to making fun of you for ignoring the science, as it pertains to children.
3) i'm actually not particularly opposed to allowing businesses to enforce mask mandates, if they decide. i can boycott those businesses until they grow up. whatever.
4) likewise, i don't oppose the idea of letting businesses carry on with vaccine passports, if they want to. i can boycott those businesses. and, eliminating vaccine passports doesn't help me much, if the mask mandates aren't lifted first.
most of these other restrictions do not affect me, and my views on them vary depending on the context. these are the two things i want: for the border to acknowledge that previous infection is better than vaccination and for the government to remove the mask mandate and let businesses make individual choices on the matter, and consumers decide how and where they want to spend their money.
there are some valid contexts for mandated restrictions, in scenarios with old or vulnerable people, and i can respect the freedom of others to choose who to associate with, in limited contexts. but, i want the right to choose my own freedom of association back - full stop. no caveats.
in the end, i may find there are places i'm not welcome at for the foreseeable future, and i can deal with that. it's the inability to choose otherwise that is inconsistent with liberal democracy and a free society.
20:02
so, i was hoping to get a little more done this weekend than i did, but i've at least got the thing set up, now. i thought i had done that already, but whatever.
i need to stop to eat. and, something that's going to be different about this phase is that i'll be eating a little more. but, i should be back at it after, i hope. and, i'm going to push forward a few more days...
the next thing i need to do is cut the two tracks up a little so that the syncopation is perfect. am i going to try digital noise reduction? let's test it to check the results. i'm not going to re-play the guitar part that ended with the broken string, but i can digitally edit it to fill the sound out. i can also multitrack the two existing parts and load them up with effects in guitar rig. the result will be a collage of these two base tracks, and it is probably going to be relatively thick.
i want to play the third track through the mini orange, because the first two tracks were recorded using amps.
this track is going to maintain a shoegazey vibe, but there's going to be a very grungey riff dropped right into the middle of it. i don't think i'll get to that tonight.
the final version will have some epic drums, and i'm going to drop this track, because it's where my mind was in recording it, after having just been thrown out of the house, but that won't happen for the demo, as it pertains to inri077, which will be just about guitars:
it's not going to be quite that ridiculous, in the end - i'm going to be going more for heavily harmonically intertwined guitars, rather than the onslaught of amp distortion. in fact, this track will have nearly no distortion at all.
but, this is the right tone.
and, in fact, if it's not clear, soundtracks was the dominant influence on period 3.1, and very much sets the general tone for inri076-inri085.
22:08
monday, february 14, 2022
mr. trudeau.
there is an old cliche that goes along the lines of:
lead, follow or get out of the way
which is sometimes attributed to dead smart people, but that i think is better attributed, in context, to joe from idiocracy.
you gotta get out of the way, now.
time's up, mr. trudeau.
8:08
ok.
so, the announcement from doug ford today is not good enough, but it's some progress in the right direction.
9:52
from a personal perspective, what he announced this morning has absolute no relevance to me. at all.
9:57
it's not much - 0.8 - but i finally got a non-zero calcitonin response.
10:05
here's my chart:
| 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 | 84 | 83 / 81 | 80 | 90/64 | 66 | |||||||||||
| egfr | 107/106 | - | - | - | - | 96 | 100 | 101 / 104 | 106 | 92/116 | 115 | |||||||||||
| alp | 61 | - | - | 63 | 59 | 50 | 60 | 59 /55 | 47 | 50 | 60 | |||||||||||
| albumin | -/45.7 | - | - | - | 45.9 | 44.6 | 46.8 | 48 /46 | 46.7 | 49.8 | 43.7 | |||||||||||
| cholesterol | 3.93 | - | - | - | 3.99 | 3.8 | 4.15 | 4.01/3.83 | 4.14/4.02 | 4.14/3.67 | 3.54/3.8 | |||||||||||
| triglycerides | .87 | - | - | - | .95 | .89 | 1.41 | 1.05/0.94 | 1.09/1.32 | 1.86/0.73 | 2.26/0.75 | |||||||||||
| hdl | 1.69 | - | - | - | 1.84 | 1.59 | 1.73 | 1.42/1.55 | 1.37/1.42 | 1.51/1.74 | 1.75/1.72 | |||||||||||
| ldl | 1.85 | - | - | - | 1.72 | 1.81 | 1.78 | 2.11/1.85 | 2.28/2.00 | 1.79/1.6 | <0.8/1.75 | |||||||||||
| non-hdl | 2.24 | - | - | - | 2.15 | 2.21 | 2.42 | 2.59/2.28 | 2.77/2.60 | 2.63/1.93 | 1.79/2.09 | |||||||||||
| wbc | 8.7/8.4 | 9.9/9.0 | - | - | ? | 7.0 | 7.6 | 6.9/6.9 | 7.8 | 11.3/8.2 | 6.7/6.4 | |||||||||||
| rbc | 3.97/4.25 | 4.11/4.38 | - | - | 4.17 | 4.12 | 4.33 | 4.47/4.2 | 4.28 | 4.55/4.19 | 4.3/4.22 | |||||||||||
| hemoglobin | 132/140 | 133/142 | - | - | 139 | 136 | 141 | 138/138 | 139 | 144/131 | 141/133 | |||||||||||
| hematocrit | .382/.404 | .394/.424 | - | - | .405 | .398 | .418 | .417/.402 | .405 | 0.431/0.393 | .409/.396 | |||||||||||
| mcv | 96.1/95.1 | 95.8/97.0 | - | - | 97 | 96.8 | 96.6 | 93/95.7 | 94.6 | 94.7/94 | 95/94 | |||||||||||
| mch | 33.1/32.9 | 32.4/32.5 | - | - | 33.3 | 33.2 | 32.7 | 30.9/32.8 | 32.5 | 31.8/31.3 | 32.7/31.5 | |||||||||||
| mchc | 345/346 | 338/335 | - | - | ? | 343 | 338 | 331/343 | 344 | 335/333 | 344/336 | |||||||||||
| rdw | 13.3/13.5 | 13.0/13.1 | - | - | ? | 13 | 12.3 | 11.7/12.9 | 12.6 | 13.4/12.0 | 13.2/11.7 | |||||||||||
| platelet | 199/187 | 171/171 | - | - | ? | 175 | 167 | 168/150 | 155 | 188/185 | 159/184 | |||||||||||
| reticulocytes | - | -/42 | - | - | 53 | 56 | 46 | 35 | 33 | 33 | 39 | |||||||||||
| vitamin d | 87 | - | - | - | 109 | 72 | 64 | 72/83 | 78 | 64/71 | 61/74 | |||||||||||
| estradiol | 363/388 | - | - | - | - | 563 | 443 | 432 | 777 | 343 | 578 | |||||||||||
| estrone | - | - | - | - | - | ? | 4138 | 5203 | 7000+ | - | - | |||||||||||
| testosterone | 0.9 | - | - | - | - | - | <0.4 | <0.4 | <0.4 | <0.4 | <0.4 | |||||||||||
| progesterone | 1.9 | - | - | - | - | - | <0.5 | 0.7 | 0.5 | 0.9 | <0.5 | |||||||||||
| fsh | <0.2 | - | - | - | - | - | 0.2 | 0.1 | <0.1 | - | <0.1 | |||||||||||
| lh | <0.2 | - | - | - | - | - | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.1 | - | 0.1 | |||||||||||
| ferritin | 12/9 | 6/17 | 21 | - | 29 | 43 | 28 | 40 | 42 | 59 | 33 | |||||||||||
| tibc | - | 69.5 | - | - | 65.7 | 62.9 | 64.7 | 58.9 | 58.2 | 63.2 | 57.4 | |||||||||||
| iron | - | 9.6 | - | - | 22.7 | 37.3 | 19.3 | 28.3 | 37.3 | 32.5 | 13.1 | |||||||||||
| iron sat | - | 0.14 | - | - | 0.35 | 0.59 | 0.3 | .48 | 0.64 | 0.51 | 0.23 | |||||||||||
| transferrin | - | - | - | - | - | - | 2.59 | 2.29 | 2.38 | 2.49 | 2.31 | |||||||||||
| sodium | - | - | - | - | - | - | 141 | 141/139 | 140 | 141 | 138 | |||||||||||
| potassium | - | - | - | - | - | - | 5.0 | 4.7/4.6 | 4.3 | 4.0 | 4.7 | |||||||||||
| chloride | - | - | - | - | - | - | 104 | 107/105 | 104 | 101 | 105 | |||||||||||
| phosphate | -/1.42 | - | - | - | - | 1.09 | 1.34 | 1.08 | 1.35 | 1.27 | 1.13 | |||||||||||
| magnesium | -/.93 | - | - | - | - | 0.8 | 0.82 | 0.86 | 0.82 | 0.84 | 0.85 | |||||||||||
| calcium | -/2.4 | - | - | - | 2.38 | 2.32 | 2.44 | 2.39 | 2.4 | 2.43 | 2.33 | |||||||||||
| pth | - | - | - | 5.5 | - | 6.2 | 5.9 | 6.2 | 5.5 | 8.0 | 6.3 | |||||||||||
| tsh | 0.92 | - | - | - | - | 0.94 | 1.22 | 1.67 | 1.48 | 1.07 | 1.39 | |||||||||||
| calcitonin | - | - | - | <0.6 | - | - | - | - | 0.6 | - | 0.8 | |||||||||||
| cortisol | - | - | - | 325 | - | 464 | 170 | 129 | 225 | 136 | 367 | |||||||||||
| insulin | - | - | - | - | - | 50 | 33 | 68 | 92 | 312 | 53 | |||||||||||
| b12 | 223/251 | - | 304 | - | 363 | 313 | 370 | 292 | 369 | 376 | 293 | |||||||||||
10:16
yeah, i don't think this is appropriate and i would vote it against it, myself.
the way out of this is to restore the rule of law, not to suspend it.
12:14
i am exceedingly uncomfortable with any process that would give justin trudeau any sort of unchecked power, as he's consistently demonstrated that he lacks the responsibility, clear-mindedness and basic intelligence level to use it.
12:17
i would rather suggest that having the prime minister invoke this act, in context, is a reason to stage a protest, not a reason to abandon one.
12:18
i am consequently going to call for massive protests against the government's invocation of the emergencies act, should they decide to invoke it.
12:19
these protests might be annoying, and they may be enacting costs, but they are not endangering the lives, health or safety of canadians, and this is not an occasion to suspend parliament or give the prime minister excessive powers.
12:25
also - i've lost any minimal tolerance i may have had for mask rules.
i am going to call on an immediate boycott of all businesses that continue to enforce mask rules, with the exception of health care contexts.
13:40
it's long past time for mass civil disobedience on mask laws.
if you don't want to wear them then don't wear them.
and, if businesses tell you to leave, boycott them until they change their mind.
13:49
we're in an unprecedented situation in canada, if the government invokes the emergencies act. i've been warning for years now that trudeau is a fascist dictator waiting to happen, and it maybe starts to answer some questions as to why he hasn't been providing the support that he's promised to the mayor of ottawa - he's been planning this moment.
he's perhaps been planning this moment for his whole life.
his father's use of the war measures act is widely condemned by historians across the spectrum as an abuse of power, but let's nonetheless compare the situations. the elder trudeau was dealing with an armed wing of a separatist movement that kidnapped and actually killed a foreign dignitary. the younger trudeau is dealing with an unstable coalition of evangelical christians and fed up twenty-somethings throwing street parties and lounging about in hot tubs. if the elder trudeau's use was an abuse of power, the younger trudeau's use is an abuse of dignified thought, that isn't worthy of a condemnation.
but, it will necessitate one.
i'm going to urge a little bit of calm, to start, because it's necessary to determine what trudeau thinks he's doing, first. i think it's fairly clear that he thinks he's the king, and that he might not give up these powers very easily. if history is our guide, this is the type of situation that dictators take advantage of to dissolve the constitutional order and do away with the rule of law - which describes the situation entirely. when faced with the predictable outcome of his government's lawless behaviour, he shows up with force and asserts his will.
there will need to be public demonstrations of some sort to condemn trudeau's imminent seizure of absolute power.
but, we'll need to see just how barbaric he intends to be, before it's clear what kind of denunciation is required.
16:03
mr. singh,
please take a principled position and deny the dauphin what he thinks is his birth right. you have a chance to stand on the right side of history or on the wrong side of it. and, the consequences may be severe.
16:11
i will do a write-up on the last six weeks of weather when we get through this last cold dip, which will be some time next week, but i want to show you the forecast for the next three days in windsor.
this is tues-wed-thurs.
you'll notice two things about this.
1) this is over a 20 degree temperature difference, which might be normal in calgary, but is very unusual here.
2) the temperature increases all day on tuesday, continues to increase after the sun has gone down, increases over night on wednesday, keeps increasing when the sun comes up, hits a maximum at around midnight (when there's no sun), and starts a slow decline all day on thursday, which accelerates when the sun comes up.
this isn't at all unheard of in canadian winters, as warm patches of air will periodically wander north at any point of the winter. but, what you're seeing there has been consistent here since late december. the normal expectation of having the temperature increase as the sun comes up and decrease as the sun comes down has been all but jettisoned here all winter.
that's what i'm going to draw attention to, the fact that we're currently existing underneath a really epic atmospheric struggle, where very cold air is literally in a tug of war with atlantic warmth.
it has refused to get cold here for more than a few hours at a time, so my prediction was actually alarmingly close. but the swings have also been unusually dramatic, and the result has been that we've had these half day teases of winter that result in mixes of rain and snow, without it actually triggering into anything resembling any sort of winter.
it's been the fake winter that tried it's hardest to be a real winter and failed.
17:41
so, i'm doing surgery on the breakdown in this track.
it's a 20 year old tape recorded hastily without a click track. i don't even remember what i intended to do with it. but, it's messy; i'm fixing it.
17:50
again, i'm driving myself crazy.
this song was written without a downbeat. it should have a syncopated pickup note, and the one is at the end of the figure, not the start of it.
it sounded fine on the weekend when i was digitizing it, so why does it sound wrong now, as though the rhythm part got replayed by fucking bambam or something? the nice, subtle pickup note has been replaced with this crass, boring down beat.
so, i checked the tape, and it's the same thing.
so, now what do i do?
if the syncopation on the track is wrong, i won't be able to use it for the full version. then, is there any point in finishing it, or should i leave it as a two track ep and start the lost symphony over from scratch?
let me listen very carefully.
i may have to abandon this.
18:39
sometimes, we hear what we want to hear, rather than what is.
but, if that's the case, then the demo is stranded, and unsalvageable because the syncopation is wrong.
18:44
ok.
it's....i'm doing both.
sometimes, i play the pickup note, and sometimes i do the downbeat.
so, the demo cannot be used to rebuild the lost symphony, as was intended. i will need to rebuild the lost symphony from scratch.
that's ok.
i'm glad i caught it.
the difference is between whether the and before the eight is emphasized or if it skips and picks up on the 16th after. it should always skip. but i'm bouncing back and forth, probably because i didn't have any sort of click or anything.
hey, it's what happens when you pick up a 20 year old 4-track demo that you barely remember recording, but know is a piece you composed. it runs correctly in your head. so, you press play on the tape, and you hear the composition, not the recording. and, because you have no memory recording it, you forget any errors you might have made.
i am going to finish it, but then i'm stranding it.
18:58
i would have recorded this on an amp in an empty apartment, by myself, using my mental compass for timing, strictly. and, then i left it there for 20 years.
if i were to do it now, i'd get it right the first time, because i've been listening to it in my brain for 20 years.
but, at the time, it was still new, and i guess i confused myself.
in fact, i think i even remember doing it, now. oddly. but, your mind can play tricks on you.
19:04
so, this is the demo.
we'll fix it up.
and, we'll leave it there, and start anew for the mix for the record.
19:05
to be clear: when i recorded this demo 20 years ago, i made a lot of subtle timing errors in the rhythm section. if i had finished it at the time, i would have no doubt fixed it. but, i didn't. so, it's been sitting on a tape for twenty years, in a botched state.
now, i'm picking the tape up, and it took me a few listens to realize it and remember what i did wrong.
the demo was incredibly rough and i'm not sure i could have done anything with it.
i can fix the middle part, but not the broader mistake, which will just have to be a part of the demo. i'll fix it for the finished version, as i no doubt would have, had i got there, at the time.
19:21
yeah, this version is way too fast, anyways.
the correct syncopation and tempo can be heard in this demo:
ok. so, it was a non-starter, anyways.
20:07
tuesday, february 15, 2022
i'd like to call for international sanctions against canada as a rogue state for it's suspension of the constitutional rule of law, and it's embrace of fascism.
3:53
canada should be thrown out of the g8, isolated at the un and suspended from nato.
3:56
so, as soon as the corrupt rcmp get involved, you see false and no-chance charges like "attempted police vehicle ramming" that are quite transparently just flimsy contexts for illegal arrests.
there's a long history of police making up charges to clear protests.
let's hope the cops don't feel the need to kill anybody.
but, the state is exposed as the fascists they are, for all to see.
4:20
i keep falling asleep in awkward ways.
so, if the track is too fast, let's slow it down for the final version.
i have a tentative tracklist and it's another double. i'd expect that to probably be the norm, moving forwards. the first disc has the two tracks on the cassette, completed, with the five versions of the second track, at the speed on the tape. the second will have the first four of those slowed down to the corrected tempo, which is two thirds of the tempo on the tape.
i keep falling asleep in awkward ways.
so, if the track is too fast, let's slow it down for the final version.
i have a tentative tracklist and it's another double. i'd expect that to probably be the norm, moving forwards. the first disc has the two tracks on the cassette, completed, with the five versions of the second track, at the speed on the tape. the second will have the first four of those slowed down to the corrected tempo, which is two thirds of the tempo on the tape.
disc 1:
01. a section
02. [final] [vocals] [tempo correction] <---this is track 7 slowed down.
---------------
03. direct from tape
04. direct [stereo split]
05. corrected <-----this is the version, post-surgery, where the track is better lined up. soon.
06. completed [instrumental] <-----this will have the third guitar track + all kinds of layering of the second one
07. completed [vocal] <-----i have a txt file with vocals dated to may, 2004. i'm going to record these for the demo, but probably not for the lost symphony. we'll see.
disc 2:
08. direct from tape [tempo correction] <-----03 slowed down
09. direct [stereo split] [tempo correction] <------04 slowed down
10. corrected [instrumental] [tempo correction] <----------05 slowed down
11. completed [instrumental] [tempo correction] <--------06 slowed down
disc 1:
01. a section
02. [final] [vocals] [tempo correction] <---this is track 7 slowed down.
---------------
03. direct from tape
04. direct [stereo split]
05. corrected <-----this is the version, post-surgery, where the track is better lined up. soon.
06. completed [instrumental] <-----this will have the third guitar track + all kinds of layering of the second one
07. completed [vocal] <-----i have a txt file with vocals dated to may, 2004. i'm going to record these for the demo, but probably not for the lost symphony. we'll see.
disc 2:
08. direct from tape [tempo correction] <-----03 slowed down
09. direct [stereo split] [tempo correction] <------04 slowed down
10. corrected [instrumental] [tempo correction] <----------05 slowed down
11. completed [instrumental] [tempo correction] <--------06 slowed down
5:44
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said Monday the government was increasing the scope of the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) to oversee crowdfunding websites, allowing banks to freeze accounts without first obtaining a court order.
that is just outrageously fascistic, and an idea that cannot co-exist in a democratic society.
6:19
so, it's warming up this afternoon.
if you're in windsor, this is your task - annoy the cops enough to force them to hold the bridge, while avoiding getting arrested yourself. that will bog them down, here.
i can't join you.
first, despite being on your side, i think you're assholes. i don't believe in your god or your social values.
second, the cops follow me everywhere because they think i'm a communist. well, i mean, they're right - i am a communist. but, they think there's some cabal and want me to lead them to it. i'd be leading cops into your house.
but, the goal is to annoy them, not to beat them. they win, at least for now. so, if they get aggressive, you're going to lose. do not stand your ground - run down the street, get a coffee and come back.
but, make it clear to the cops that they'll lose the bridge if they leave, thereby forcing them to stay.
8:44
so, this is the tentative tracklist:
disc 1:
01. quantum psychosis (uncut instrumental mix)
02. laced in remorse
03. laced in remorse (2003 direct from tape mix)
04. laced in remorse (2003 direct from tape mix) (split stereo)
05. laced in remorse (corrected direct from tape mix)
06. laced in remorse (instrumental tape tempo)
07. laced in remorse (tape tempo)
disc 2:
08. laced in remorse (direct from tape) (tempo correction)
09. laced in remorse (direct from tape) (split stereo) (tempo correction)
10. laced in remorse (corrected direct from tape mix) (tempo correction)
11. laced in remorse (instrumental)
01, 03 & 04 were previously posted.
here are the two new slower mixes [08 & 09]
...and, if i can stay awake long enough, i hope to finish 5 & 10 by the end of the night.
15:31
see, what i think just happened in ottawa is that the federal government withheld support to the police because it wanted the rcmp to deal with the situation, and that the chief just resigned, correctly, in protest.
the feds could have released resources to the "police of local jurisdiction" without declaring martial law, but they seem to have very purposefully decided not to because they wanted to declare martial law.
and, i have to again remind you that our dauphin has very likely been acting out the day he would become dictator of canada in the mirror since he was about ten years old.
this is why aristocracy cannot be tolerated in a democracy.
15:36
i still don't know what the appropriate response to this is, other than to wait for the feds to act and to advise caution to anybody that may be under threat of the consequences of police violence.
don't fool yourself - canada has a long history of bringing in the mounted police to smash skulls, and that's exactly what they're up to, right now.
15:38
the government has not even tried to present evidence suggesting that the protesters in ottawa are planning any sort of violent altercation, nor would they be likely to even understand what doing so would entail, nor would they be likely to even think it's important.
this is a government that operates on the maxims of goebbels, rather than in any sort of foundation of liberal legal theory. they're concerned strictly with how the population responds to media conditioning, not to what the facts on the ground are. the statement from goebbels, as popularized more recently by karl rove, is that truth is not important, it's the perception of truth that is important. so, so long as they can convince you that a peaceful protest is violent through deceptive media practices, they think they've created the justification to act. the facts on the ground don't actually matter to them, and the legalities are just annoying formalities.
they don't believe in democracy, but rather think it's up to the state to control people by shaping their perceptions of reality through controlled, deceptive media. it's textbook fascist propaganda, even if they've flipped the symbols (which are meaningless.) over.
so, they haven't made their case, and they wouldn't know how to make their case and they wouldn't even think it's important to make their case. you're just supposed to listen to what they say, take it on face value and do what you're told. this discourse around evidence should be central to the events unfolding, but it's not even a tertiary consideration to this government, and i wouldn't expect the media to push them on it.
rather, i might suggest that it is the government itself that is planning the use of violence to carry through with an ideological agenda.
16:34
so, i've spent the night weighing whether i want to try to digitally fix the syncopation error or not.
in hindsight, i just really don't like the more aggressive rhythm section in the demo. i think it sounds crude and sort of crass. the track is supposed to have a very passive, dream-like quality to it...or, at least, it developed that way. i guess that hadn't yet been decided, at the time. but, it has now.
what i'm weighing is the question as to how much of the demo i want to fix and how much i want to leave broken. i mean, i'm trying to avoid too heavy a hand, here, because i don't want to deviate too far from the demo. that's been my general approach - finish tracks, but don't completely redo them. but, this is an unusual situation for two reasons:
(1) this demo doesn't represent the track, as i wrote it. it's the rare example of something that was demoed before it was really written.
(2) i really don't like the aggression in the rhythm section of the demo. like, it's beyond the question as to whether it represents the track or not. i haven't run across this very often in completing all these old tracks, but i just flat out think this guitar part sucks. in fact, i'm not aware of any other demo i've come across and decided i just flat out don't like.
obviously, i don't want to spend too much time working on music i don't like.
i've decided to fix the initial pick-up note by fading it in to temper some of the unwanted aggression of a song that's really supposed to be exceedingly passive and meek and otherwise to just deal with it.
but, this will not be used for the lost symphony. at all.
22:02
slowing it down does help eliminate the attack on the guitar, but only to a point.
and, i won't be able to slow it down until it's done...
22:04
there is no scenario where the government can order anybody to do anything. they could maybe try levying a fine, but it wouldn't hold up in court.
what the government could potentially do is nationalize the tow trucks, although that seems insane.
i think the outgoing police chief was correct that the premise is unworkable.
you'd be better off trying to toe them with tanks.
23:13
wednesday, february 16, 2022
biden really seems to think he's going to get a poll bump by standing on his soapbox and growling at the russians.
it's a sad display by a sad old man.
3:05
the russians have claimed the whole time that they're doing routine exercises. no credible analyst thinks they're intending to invade.
so, the drills finish, and it's a "withdrawal".
we've gone insane.
3:08
as far as i can tell, what's happened is that the french and germans are getting fed up with the anachronistic stupidity and moving forward without the americans.
it's about time.
3:16
no, i mean, suppose you're france. you've got all these cultural issues in your society to deal with, and are trying to chart some kind of path to the future. you have no specific qualm with the russians.
then, from out in right field in the far distance, some yankee cowboy rides in on a horse made by boston dynamics, with laser eyes and fire breath, and demands we all unite to face a threat that hasn't existed for thirty years.
the correct response would be...
quoi?
the yankee dismounts and offers you a freedom fry from his holster.
non. ton cuisine yankee c'est terrible pour le coeur.
he puts his other hand on his holster, and you feel obliged to humour him. you take the fry.
mayonnaise?
what?
mayonnaise. pour les potates.
you put ketchup on it, you damned frog.
non. mayonnaise.
american ketchup.
the yankee cowboy motions towards the robot horse, which lifts it's leg up, to display a heinz logo and a rather large ketchup dispenser, which appears to need to be milked to dispense.
ol' johnny boy came up with that one.
monsieur kerry est..
oh, he's probably cuddling with vlad. damned weakling. anyways. about that gas.
j'excuse. les frites...
no, the gas.
quoi?
the gas!
the frenchman motions to the palace luthier, who...
no, the gas!
=====
at some point, this routine necessarily gets tiring. american gas. american ketchup. american guns. it's all so last century. and, it's all at such great cost, and no benefit to france. or germany...
4:05
the next day, france takes a call from the kremlin.
we are aware of your discussion with the yankee cowboy, yesterday.
france pauses, waiting for a further response.
mayonnaise on french fries is degenerative. *click*.
9:09
i need to call on the ontario government to rethink eliminating mask mandates immediately, and it's for reasons that are not related to what is really a pseudo-science underlying the policy - i'm noticing that specific actors, frequently those with openly displayed religions symbols, are beginning to get aggressive about it's enforcement.
regardless of what one thinks about the situation, we cannot normalize people being intimidated or followed around by thuggish security staff that appear to be there to scare people into compliance. this was not the intent of the mask mandate, but it's increasingly what's happening. we're increasingly devolving to a kind of social order you'd see in a backwards country, like iran.
i don't think there's a way to fix this, but it's creating potential for violence. when anti-mask demonstrators come together to protest, they develop safety in numbers. and, some may say or do obnoxious things. fine. but, more often, the unmasked is going to be a single mother with a child, or a disabled person with anxiety, and they are going to enter into places that perform essential services alone, and with little means to defend themselves.
it was never a good idea to mandate a law of this sort, and then leave it up to business owners to enforce. but, i'm now at the point where i'm fearing for my safety, and i'm hardly about to give into the threat of violence. i will walk right past that thug, dare him to hit me and have him charged with assault if he tries.
others may be less willing to assert their rights. and, this was never the intent.
we can debate whether masks are actually useful at reducing the spread in a substantive manner, or if it's a placebo being marketed as a pseudoscience and is being latched on to by a coalition of capitalists and naturalists that are seeking to increase consumer confidence. these are valid debates. fine.
but, the collapse in social cohesion transcends that, and i'm starting to see signs that some store owners are acting out a milgram's experiment.
the law needs to be clarified that masks are voluntary, and that store owners neither have the obligation nor the right to enforce dress codes on their customers. if this is not done soon, there will be incidents of violence, where vigilante store owners start beating up those they consider non-compliant, because they feel they have some kind of authority. and, i'll be looking to exploit such a thing for maximum gain.
23:13
i had to walk by a bouncer at the pharmacy to get a prescription. that's an essential service - they have no grounds to even talk to me.
and, walk by him i did, to his visible consternation.
it was the most exaggerated example i've yet to see of a developing trend that the state needs to prevent from developing. please look up milgram's experiment, as it's the right explanation, and something we want to nip in the bud.
23:33
mr. wolff bugs me sometimes, and i could quibble, but i think he's got the idea right.
23:51
thursday, february 17, 2022
so, i'm going to quibble to clear up some errors of fact by mr wolff, and to suggest a more appropriate analysis. where he's correct is in realizing the need for the left to work with the convoy. a real left would consider that so obvious it's not worth pointing out.
first of all, canada has a bill of rights called the charter of rights and freedoms that includes, amongst other things, the right of canadians to return home. this is s. 6 of the charter. americans, likewise, cannot be denied entry into their country. it is for that reason that the existing policy in canada actually is quarantine, as the government cannot deny entry to canadian citizens at the border. mr. wolff's supposed compromise is, in fact, the status quo in place.
it's been difficult to get this point across much of anywhere, but the policy being opposed by the canadian truckers is actually the policy on the american side of the border. as mentioned, canadians cannot be denied entry to canada. but, the united states can deny entry to canadians. the problem the truckers are facing is not that the canadian government won't let them come back, but that the american government won't let them in in the first place.
now, if mr. wolff think it's reasonable to tell cross-border truckers - who spend weeks alone in their trucks - to isolate, he should think that through. that is neither a thoughtful analysis nor an acceptable solution, it's just an extension of the evidence-free, pseudoscientific policies that have led us into this mess in the first place. but, the problem with mr. wolff's approach is that he's placing the burden of responsibility to keep himself healthy on strangers from another country, that are almost certainly not even sick. suggesting that truckers have a responsibility to keep mr. wolff safe from the virus is entirely and completely irrational, as it shifts the burden of personal responsibility from the individual to the collective. that is not socialism, it is fascism.
to salvage mr. wolff's ideas means to shift the burden of responsibility back on to him, where it belongs. if we are to appropriate and re-utilize resources, they should be to ensure that mr. wolff has the ability to make smart choices to make himself safe. for example, he should be able to go grocery shopping on special hours, so that he doesn't have to mingle with the general population. and, perhaps, there could be special buses for the weak, elderly and vulnerable, should he need to use public transportation. while the question as to how this is paid for is an irrelevant accounting identity, we can tax the wealthy if we want - or we could just print it. whatever. same thing.
so, as usual, mr. wolff gets his facts wrong, and, as usual, his analysis is more fascistic than communistic. but, we do need to stop othering workers if we want to rebuild the left. and, we can work out the facts in committee.
8:38
i understand that mr. wolff is at high risk, and i hope he is taking regular boosters. but, i also hope he's keeping up to date with the science, so that he's not misled into making poor choices that may lead to him harming himself.
8:50
will mandating cross-border trucker vaccination make vulnerable people like mr. wolff safe or at least safer from the virus?
the answer is an emphatic no, it will not.
it's political theatre.
the rights of these workers is what matters here. but, i've argued from the start that society should be assigning resources to help the vulnerable carry on, as best they can.
8:59
this is actually a typical line heard uttered by right-wing dictators, which is what justin trudeau is, and frequently in the muslim world.
it's what hosni mubarak said, for example.
the evidence is pretty clear that it's bullshit. but, the liberals don't care about whether things are true or not, they just want to manipulate you into doing what they want you to do.
9:38
so, i got some blood work done yesterday, and good news - my progesterone came back up!
| 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 | 84 | 83 / 81 | 80 | 90/64 | 66 | |||||||||||
| egfr | 107/106 | - | - | - | - | 96 | 100 | 101 / 104 | 106 | 92/116 | 115 | |||||||||||
| alp | 61 | - | - | 63 | 59 | 50 | 60 | 59 /55 | 47 | 50 | 60 | |||||||||||
| albumin | -/45.7 | - | - | - | 45.9 | 44.6 | 46.8 | 48 /46 | 46.7 | 49.8 | 43.7 | |||||||||||
| cholesterol | 3.93 | - | - | - | 3.99 | 3.8 | 4.15 | 4.01/3.83 | 4.14/4.02 | 4.14/3.67 | 3.54/3.8 | 3.78 | ||||||||||
| triglycerides | .87 | - | - | - | .95 | .89 | 1.41 | 1.05/0.94 | 1.09/1.32 | 1.86/0.73 | 2.26/0.75 | 0.69 | ||||||||||
| hdl | 1.69 | - | - | - | 1.84 | 1.59 | 1.73 | 1.42/1.55 | 1.37/1.42 | 1.51/1.74 | 1.75/1.72 | 1.74 | ||||||||||
| ldl | 1.85 | - | - | - | 1.72 | 1.81 | 1.78 | 2.11/1.85 | 2.28/2.00 | 1.79/1.6 | <0.8/1.75 | 1.73 | ||||||||||
| non-hdl | 2.24 | - | - | - | 2.15 | 2.21 | 2.42 | 2.59/2.28 | 2.77/2.60 | 2.63/1.93 | 1.79/2.09 | 2.04 | ||||||||||
| wbc | 8.7/8.4 | 9.9/9.0 | - | - | ? | 7.0 | 7.6 | 6.9/6.9 | 7.8 | 11.3/8.2 | 6.7/6.4 | 7.4 | ||||||||||
| rbc | 3.97/4.25 | 4.11/4.38 | - | - | 4.17 | 4.12 | 4.33 | 4.47/4.2 | 4.28 | 4.55/4.19 | 4.3/4.22 | 4.42 | ||||||||||
| hemoglobin | 132/140 | 133/142 | - | - | 139 | 136 | 141 | 138/138 | 139 | 144/131 | 141/133 | 140 | ||||||||||
| hematocrit | .382/.404 | .394/.424 | - | - | .405 | .398 | .418 | .417/.402 | .405 | 0.431/0.393 | .409/.396 | .417 | ||||||||||
| mcv | 96.1/95.1 | 95.8/97.0 | - | - | 97 | 96.8 | 96.6 | 93/95.7 | 94.6 | 94.7/94 | 95/94 | 94 | ||||||||||
| mch | 33.1/32.9 | 32.4/32.5 | - | - | 33.3 | 33.2 | 32.7 | 30.9/32.8 | 32.5 | 31.8/31.3 | 32.7/31.5 | 31.7 | ||||||||||
| mchc | 345/346 | 338/335 | - | - | ? | 343 | 338 | 331/343 | 344 | 335/333 | 344/336 | 336 | ||||||||||
| rdw | 13.3/13.5 | 13.0/13.1 | - | - | ? | 13 | 12.3 | 11.7/12.9 | 12.6 | 13.4/12.0 | 13.2/11.7 | 11.7 | ||||||||||
| platelet | 199/187 | 171/171 | - | - | ? | 175 | 167 | 168/150 | 155 | 188/185 | 159/184 | 187 | ||||||||||
| reticulocytes | - | -/42 | - | - | 53 | 56 | 46 | 35 | 33 | 33 | 39 | |||||||||||
| vitamin d | 87 | - | - | - | 109 | 72 | 64 | 72/83 | 78 | 64/71 | 61/74 | 74 | ||||||||||
| estradiol | 363/388 | - | - | - | - | 563 | 443 | 432 | 777 | 343 | 578 | 416 | ||||||||||
| estrone | - | - | - | - | - | ? | 4138 | 5203 | 7000+ | - | - | - | ||||||||||
| testosterone | 0.9 | - | - | - | - | - | <0.4 | <0.4 | <0.4 | <0.4 | <0.4 | <0.4 | ||||||||||
| progesterone | 1.9 | - | - | - | - | - | <0.5 | 0.7 | 0.5 | 0.9 | <0.5 | 3.7 | ||||||||||
| fsh | <0.2 | - | - | - | - | - | 0.2 | 0.1 | <0.1 | - | <0.1 | 0.1 | ||||||||||
| lh | <0.2 | - | - | - | - | - | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.1 | - | 0.1 | <0.1 | ||||||||||
| ferritin | 12/9 | 6/17 | 21 | - | 29 | 43 | 28 | 40 | 42 | 59 | 33 | |||||||||||
| tibc | - | 69.5 | - | - | 65.7 | 62.9 | 64.7 | 58.9 | 58.2 | 63.2 | 57.4 | |||||||||||
| iron | - | 9.6 | - | - | 22.7 | 37.3 | 19.3 | 28.3 | 37.3 | 32.5 | 13.1 | |||||||||||
| iron sat | - | 0.14 | - | - | 0.35 | 0.59 | 0.3 | .48 | 0.64 | 0.51 | 0.23 | |||||||||||
| transferrin | - | - | - | - | - | - | 2.59 | 2.29 | 2.38 | 2.49 | 2.31 | |||||||||||
| sodium | - | - | - | - | - | - | 141 | 141/139 | 140 | 141 | 138 | |||||||||||
| potassium | - | - | - | - | - | - | 5.0 | 4.7/4.6 | 4.3 | 4.0 | 4.7 | |||||||||||
| chloride | - | - | - | - | - | - | 104 | 107/105 | 104 | 101 | 105 | |||||||||||
| phosphate | -/1.42 | - | - | - | - | 1.09 | 1.34 | 1.08 | 1.35 | 1.27 | 1.13 | |||||||||||
| magnesium | -/.93 | - | - | - | - | 0.8 | 0.82 | 0.86 | 0.82 | 0.84 | 0.85 | |||||||||||
| calcium | -/2.4 | - | - | - | 2.38 | 2.32 | 2.44 | 2.39 | 2.4 | 2.43 | 2.33 | |||||||||||
| pth | - | - | - | 5.5 | - | 6.2 | 5.9 | 6.2 | 5.5 | 8.0 | 6.3 | |||||||||||
| tsh | 0.92 | - | - | - | - | 0.94 | 1.22 | 1.67 | 1.48 | 1.07 | 1.39 | |||||||||||
| calcitonin | - | - | - | <0.6 | - | - | - | - | 0.6 | - | 0.8 | - | ||||||||||
| cortisol | - | - | - | 325 | - | 464 | 170 | 129 | 225 | 136 | 367 | - | ||||||||||
| insulin | - | - | - | - | - | 50 | 33 | 68 | 92 | 312 | 53 | - | ||||||||||
| b12 | 223/251 | - | 304 | - | 363 | 313 | 370 | 292 | 369 | 376 | 293 | |||||||||||
i've changed the colour code for vitamin d yellow, because the fact is that the science suggests 50 as the baseline, not 75. 75 is considered optimal - if you live in california. for a canadian, 74 is probably as good as i can hope for, in february. and, it's probably a lot better than it's been in february, at least since i stopped smoking [which, for all it's other harms, at least sent me outside into the sun for a few minutes 10 times a day].
that said, i'd like it about 75, but i'm going to wait because i wonder if they actually did the test or if the result of 74 was the one from last month.
i'll do it again when i update the lab work.
i'm going to actually be doubling the progesterone on top of that. the low progesterone was from the medroxyprogesterone, which i've realized the whole time was inferior, but which was free. i had to pay for the superior prometrium. so long as the blood results had me in the 5+ range - and they did for years - it didn't matter. but, i've recently since the progesterone fall to almost nothing, so i put in a funding request and got the prometrium covered. i wanted to test it to see, though, in case the funding fell through. i bought a half month's supply last month and halved it to stretch out the month (it still cost me $65) as a test run, to make sure it was going to work before i ponied up. so, that jump up to 3.7 from at least a year of it barely registering is actually at half the dosage for prometrium. if doubling it is linear, i should be back up over 5 very soon.
i went from every third to every second day for the iron and it seems to be back in normal range. i'm probably going to have to stick to that. like, forever.
so, these are broadly good results that indicate that what i'm doing is working.
10:59
that fence on parliament hill should be torn down immediately.
13:07
so, what am i doing?
i should have my bike part in next week, but i took advantage of the warmer day yesterday to walk 15 km to the blood lab, get some groceries and walk back. you'd imagine that was a little exhausting, and i am still feeling it in my legs.
so, i've slept in stints since i came in last night. i've eaten a few times. and, i've really done nothing else.
my bathroom fan experienced some kind of electrical failure on tuesday night, so i've been in limbo the last few days, waiting until it gets fixed. it's creating a draft that's letting in disgusting air from outside, so i can't really do anything until it's fixed and i'm able to spend a few days cleaning to compensate for it.
so, that's really what i'll be doing this weekend - cleaning. i might get back to inri077 for sunday. hopefully.
i've decided the most reasonable way to do this is to cycle by project rather than try to enforce a weekly schedule, because i don't multitask well. i don't like leaving things half-finished. so, forget about the weekly schedule, and let's look at it more like this:
1) period 3.1
2) rebuild
3) alter-reality
so, i'll be cycling through them like that, instead of doing one thing at a time. i've tried to assert something like this repeatedly, and i find it never really works well. but, i need to be more strenuous about it.
for right now, i'm going to stop tonight for a few hours and double check that i understand what's going on with the legal stuff. i'm going to see if i can figure out how to do my taxes, which seems to be a more difficult task than in previous years. etc.
and, hopefully, i'm done with these things by the time the fan is back in order.
21:32
for the sake of clarity.
normally, the rule in ontario at least (and i believe canada, as well, as the rule came out of a supreme court ruling) is that people can only be held without charge for 24 hours before being brought before a judge. that is habeas corpus, which was just suspended by the invocation of the emergencies act.
but, as habeas corpus is actually common law in canada, and the emergencies act is supposed to not suspend common law, it will be interesting to see how long the convoy organizers are held for.
my legal opinion is that they should be released in 24 hours.
21:54
do the liberals, so obsessed with their global image, want the reality of arresting political prisoners on their hands?
24 hours.
the rule of law insists upon it.
22:45
i keep calling them fascists, and they keep proving me right.
23:18
so, i'm supposed to get a response by feb 18. we'll see what happens tomorrow.
the oiprd has missed every deadline requested of it, which forms part of the basis for my certiorari request. i hope they have something ready and they're just being dramatic. if they don't, i'm going to request that the judge grant the motion, unopposed.
regarding taxes, i'm supposed to get a package in the mail by the 21st, but i suspect that they're not going to mail me one and that making it difficult to file tax returns is a part of the logic in them not being available at the post office, as they have been for as long as i've filed them. but, i have a few more days to wait for them to get here.
23:46
friday, february 18, 2022
who reads this blog, anyways?
the actual answer is that i don't know.
i can share these pieces of data with you.
there are spikes here, clearly. the simple truth is that i don't know who drove them or why.
this is what google tells me about where the traffic has come from over the last 30 days, and all time:
i live in canada. obviously.
even accepting that most of the hits from canada are plausibly me, i've had 20,000 hits from the united states and, for some reason, over a thousand hits from turkmenistan. i have no idea why that is, or why 13,000 people from sweden have been to this site. nor do i know why half of the traffic to this site over the last 30 days has been from the united states - or why most of the traffic here has not been from me over that period.
i write with the assumption that i'm talking to myself, or for the benefit of some historian in the distant future.
but, if you want an answer to this question, there it is - and your guess is as good as mine.
0:40
i may get a lot of traffic from fake proxies.
i know i have a following in some of the seedier places of the internet, i've found forums dedicated to me on four chan, but i have nothing to do with them. they're fans. and, maybe i might find that i wouldn't like my fans, much. but, i'm as distant from it as any other entertainer is from their fan base.
i've actually requested on more than a few occasions that people reach out, and nobody does.
so, do i have over a thousand hits from turkmenistan, or is that a proxy server from somebody using tor, or something? i'd guess the latter is far more likely.
as far as i can tell, my interest to these people is that they find me amusing. and, that's actually fine with me. i just wish they'd buy my records, from time to time.
0:46
what about the music blog?
this is for the last three months:
i don't have a clear reason for why that might have spiked on dec 6.
this is all time:
again - most of the traffic comes from the united states. they don't buy a lot of records, though. while i have shipped items to the uk, i have never shipped anything else to anywhere besides the united states or canada. if i have fans in italy or russia, i'd like for them to reach out.
1:01
the archive seems to have fixed itself, thankfully.
1:09
so, the bathroom issue got fixed fairly quickly and cleaning's going to be a process, so i'm going to try to get this fixed up tonight.
1:10
the electrical here is flickering, probably due to the weather. i'm going to need to stop and wait for it to pass.
2:14
the charges against the convoy organizers are rather curious to say the least, as counselling to commit mischief both opens up questions as to definitions of counselling (does it require two witnesses?) and to whether any mischief has actually been committed. a characteristic of this particular protest has been the utter lack of property damage, which is actually rather unusual. just the other day, some leftists took down another statue in bc, and will at most get community service for it.
if that's the best the crown can do, it should be easily defeated in due course, and they should be free on bail or bond - with the condition to avoid the site, which is the real point - by the end of the day.
so, the charges are bullshit, but at least habeas corpus was respected. that's a positive sign.
10:35
the area is currently a large, decaying parking lot. this would certainly be an improvement to the city.
but, i doubt it would find much of a market, downtown.
every building within five blocks from there is subsidized housing, either explicitly or due to refugee programs. there's no jobs in the downtown core either, and that's going to get worse when they move the hospital to the middle of nowhere.
it would be a shame to have a project like that fail due to location.
11:11
the electrical has stabilized, but i'm going to finish my thought on the process of dismantling my facebook page.
i've finally got all the images off of the site. so, this page now has all of the images that were up to now still at facebook, and a few more:
but, many of the photos i uploaded to facebook just sort of disappeared over the years, and i'm frankly not entirely sure what happened to them. i suspect that some childish retard may have decided some of them were "inappropriate" and tattled on me about them. that some people have nothing better to do is sort of mind boggling.
i have everything backed up. of course.
so, i'm going to upload a large amount of the missing pics this afternoon and get to working on inri077 this evening.
12:37
ok, i'm done with the facebook page for a bit. i've completely removed any reference to any picture and republished most of the release dates for the discography, but it only shows back to 2003. that's ok - i'll rebuild it as a part of the broader process. that's not urgent, and is mostly a waste of time. the music facebook page is still up and will need to be dismantled as a part of building the release timeline, which is also a part of the broader process.
i've also unliked and unfollowed pretty much everything.
so, now i'm going to rebuild the picture archive for a few hours.
17:41
is what happened in ottawa this afternoon excesive?
contrary to the popular mythos, there is a long history of peaceful protest followed by violent police action in this country, and it usually leaves people dead. the police may construct false pretexts, in order to act. but, the expectation of how police have responded to these kinds of actions, historically, is that they've flat out opened fire on unarmed protesters.
so, this was actually relatively tame, by historical standards. but, one would also hope that we're more civilized today than we were in the past, as well.
the fact of the matter is that it was as inevitable as the protest was necessary.
these unnecessary, unscientific, draconian laws need to be abolished immediately, and i applaud the truckers for standing up for our rights.
20:58
it is, however, not clear why emergency powers were required, nor is there any reason to enact them, now.
i would call on the ndp to vote against the motion.
21:03
have you ever nearly bit your tongue off?
i might need stitches. really.
at least i know my teeth have density.
yeowch.
21:44
saturday, february 19, 2022
so, i've slept most of the last 24 hours. i think i'm awake now and ready to get started on a long day.
21:18
but, why did the progesterone go up when i switched?
it could be the different formulation, but it wasn't a problem, previously. it could have been "tolerance" to the delivery mechanism.
i have a hunch that the reason is because the prometrium is liquid, and the medroxy is solid and what i demonstrated is that i'm having difficulty breaking down the pills into usable pharmacological compounds. that's the way it's supposed to work - you swallow this chalky, hard pill and it dissolves in your stomach, separating the medicine from the salt.
but, if it doesn't dissolve, you don't absorb it.
given the amount i'm taking, my d should probably be higher than it is, although i'm not sure if the rdis are for the 75 i'm aiming for or the 50 that the colleges of science recommend. it's probably for the 50, meaning i'm probably doing ok. but, if we accept the premise that i'm now taking a lot of d and the absorption is at least a little bit bad, we still don't know exactly why. we've ruled out cancer and we've ruled out celiac. that leaves a collection of crohn's-like diseases (which i have no symptoms of) and this idea of low stomach acid, which nobody wants to take seriously.
but, the fact is that my gastrin is unusually low. it's not clinically low, it's just at the bottom of the range. likewise, my lipase and amylase are at the bottom of the range, but not in clinically low levels. my random insulin seemed low, which is usually not a bad thing, but it was just really low. then, we tested my pancreas - it produced an insulin response. it's maybe not as robust a response as i'd like, but it's a response. so, maybe my pancreas is just a little underactive - not enough to try to fix it, but enough to take note of it and keep it in mind for future reference.
if that's the case, it would make sense that i would absorb the liquid progesterone better, because my stomach wasn't breaking down the pill, due to low levels of acid. and, it might explain why i need to go crazy with the iron and the d, as well.
the idea of liquid vitamins increasing absorption may, in general, be somewhat of a myth. from what i can see, there's not enough science to evaluate the claim, and the industry is probably mostly pushing nonsense. but, there would be a class of people - that would include celiacs, people with crohn's-type disorders, cancer patients and survivors and people with low stomach acid - that would, logically, benefit from the increased bioavailability in the liquid capsules.
this is a deduction, though. i can't throw studies at you - there aren't any.
what i can do is decide that the idea make sense and try the experiment on myself.
i'm going to wait with the iron, although my ultimate goal is to stop taking 300 mg of ferrous fumate every other day. let's try it with the d, first. it seems like it worked well for the progesterone. if it works for the d, i'll take it from there.
and, i might throw it out there - i might be pioneering a useful treatment option.
22:21
sunday, february 20, 2022
regarding the question of r1* in the chad area, which has long been an open question.
it is generally understood that this was some kind of back-migration, but i want to point out that we actually have a historical record of the romans leaving a legion in the lake chad area, which they called "the lake of hippopotamus". the purpose of the legion was to secure trade routes with west african countries, who supplied gold and spices to the empire.
some kind of comparative study would be helpful to actually prove the point, but that the r1* presence in the region is the result of descendants of this roman legion is by far the most likely explanation.
it should also be pointed out that a large italian presence in historical timbuktu is well understood.
1:18
so, my discussion of austronesian migration to madagascar - which is well attested - seems to have disappeared.
it's just curious to take note of the posts that get censored. that seems to upset people?
it's established science.
3:13
i'm also sure that i posted something about how the "volgan german" hit may have something to do with my finnish ancestry, which may be more deep asian than i realized. i suggested volgan finns as the better link. and, i'm sure i posted a link to the wikipedia article about it.
i'm pointing this out because i look very finnish in some of my pictures.
5:12
so, i got a little distracted with the dna posts because i wanted to post a few things to the picture archive...
i've got it updated up to the end of 2011, now:
there are a very small number of new pictures there (i mean newly posted. they're all from 2011.), but almost everything was posted to facebook in 2011, at some point.
i took some of them down.
others mysteriously disappeared, as previously noted.
10:10
so, trudeau has built a wall.
and who is going to pay for it?
tear it down, mr. trudeau.
10:39
i just want to bring people up to date on the migration v continuity debate.
so, the historical default was migration - it's what all the ancient histories said, and what everybody accepted as obvious up until the 19th century, when more rigorous cross-disciplinary approaches began to be applied for the first time. by the time the 60s came along, we had pretty convincing, established and rigourous migration theories that took into account historical, archaeological and linguistic evidence to build clear depictions of historical population movements.
then the hippies showed up in the 60s and 70s and started arguing that these theories were "racist" and, based on naive applications of vulgar marxism rather than any kind of science, starting systematically replacing the migration models with what they called "continuity" models. these were liberals, not socialists - don't get confused. this is an error in liberalism, not an error of the left. but, they started aggressively arguing that recorded history was just racist, and that what actually happened throughout history wasn't violence and suppression and replacement but a series of melting pot societies. as this theory of history coincided with dominant contemporary political views, it started to gain traction, in spite of it not being based on any actual evidence. when evidence was cited, it was often done in transparently cynical ways designed to uphold the theory.
there was great pushback to this, as it was an exercise in base anti-intellectualism. but, by the 90s, the continuity model had largely replaced the migration model, despite the desperate howls of experts, everywhere. i first entered this discourse at the tail end of it, in the 90s, and largely sided with the migration models, as i thought they better advanced themselves, based on the actual evidence. but, this wasn't actually testable - there weren't actual experiments that could be done to settle it.
that started to change in the late 90s and early 00s, when enough genetic data had begun to accrue to determine which idea had more evidence behind it, and what's come out in study after study is that the migration theories were almost universally correct, and that continuity is almost entirely wrong.
unfortunately, the hippies are still around; if anything, they've become more powerful, as they're now the administrators.
they will need to die before the continuity theories are strictly rejected as utter pseudo-science, and the migration theories are restored to their place as well founded and rigourous science. but, it's coming soon to a university near you.
16:40
no. stop.
marxism is about class conflict. which makes more sense to a marxist - replacement or continuity? it's strictly definitional.
marx would without question choose replacement, not continuity.
18:09
i know that there's this kind of perception of the left being about egalitarianism and the right being about hierarchy, and it's not entirely wrong, but it's confusing basic concepts.
it is true that, coming out of the french revolution, liberals would argue for continuity. but, the left was standing there, making fun of them for it the whole time.
marxists want equality, in the end. sure. but, the left knows that history is about conflict. you'll realize very quickly that the continuity models are actually rooted in assumptions about market theory, if you actually read and understand them.
18:12
the undemocratic fascist government in ottawa has truly exposed itself, now.
a fence around downtown ottawa is unacceptable and i would call on the residents of ottawa to rise up and tear it down.
this needs to be the start, not the end.
18:20
joe....
it's clear enough that you're trying to pull the russians into ukraine. but, it's just as clear that they're not falling for it.
it's getting tiring.
if you're going to fake an altercation, do it already; just shit or get off the fucking pot.
18:28
hey, at least when you told me that iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the premise was vaguely plausible. i didn't believe it, but i might have.
do you expect me to believe you, now?
no - fuck you.
i don't believe a word you say.
your words are worse than meaningless - they're the opposite of reality, and should be strictly negated, at all times.
18:40
the last time we went through something vaguely similar to this, it ended with the georgian military stupidly attacking the russian positions. and, putin fell for it, then.
so, if you want to attack the russians in an attempt to create a quagmire then hurry the fuck up and do it so i can stop watching the president make an ass of himself every day.
18:42
remember this?
remember.....?
remember...?
18:52
so, again - today was sleepier than i would have liked. what can i do?
i want to get the picture archive finished and done with.
20:05
i gotta give it to them.
we'd have never thought to do that, because we're a bunch of anarchists that hate countries.
i may chuckle, but it's good theatre, and likely more effective on a mainstream audience than imagine there's no countries.
i said this previously: the left should be taking notes. these fuckers handed us our ass - they beat us at our own game. and, i hope it works.
22:42
monday, february 21, 2022
ukraine is not a nation state the way that france or germany are. there may be parts of the country that speak a particular east slavic dialect, but roughly half of the country does not, and if the concept of "ukrainian nationalism" is to be taken seriously at all then it needs to sever itself from the parts of the country that don't uphold it.
the issue should ultimately be up to the inhabitants of the region, who have already voted to secede from ukraine. and, this is a consistency question - you can't support ukrainian independence and deny independence for russian speakers in ukraine. that's simply a base contradiction.
i view ukrainian nationalism about the same way i do quebecois separatism, which is that i think it's foolishness. i would ultimately respect the outcome of a referendum result in quebec, but i would insult the intelligence of quebeckers if they were to choose independence. likewise, i think the ukrainians are idiots for seeking to sever themselves from russia. but, i would expect quebec to allow montreal and gatineau the right to stay in canada, should they vote for it and, likewise, i would expect the ukrainians to respect the Independence movements in the east of their country. they can hardly speak of joining the democratic west, however seriously you want to take the discourse, while suppressing a democratic movement in their own country.
i would likewise call on the west to respect the democratic will of the people in the east of ukraine, and recognize their expressions of sovereignty.
the west has no grounds to criticize this action, whatsoever. it is in truth long overdue.
16:22
the messaging from the prime minister is that he does not intend to lift the state of emergency any time soon. he does not deserve the benefit of the doubt.
i strongly urge the ndp to trigger an election, if the governor general decides on that outcome, which i think is a bluff. i see no evidence that the outcome would be different. the governor general should not and probably would not allow that to happen so soon after the last election.
if that's the ndp's excuse, it's bullshit.
16:50
nobody voted for this.
it's the perfect time for an election.
but, it won't happen.
16:54
we can talk about democracy all night, but if quebec were to ever separate, the canadian military would have little option but to invade the southern portion of the province, which is largely english speaking, to create a land bridge to new brunswick. and, this area would likely not be minimal. they would likely form a line parallel to the meridian through tremblant and seize everything south of it.
that is, if the americans don't do it first.
it is a little known fact that clinton had the marines and the airforce on standby during the last referendum.
17:11
if texas ever declared independence, the americans would waste no time in seizing the oil infrastructure.
and etc.
17:14
it would have been much better if they had simply been honest about the utility of vaccines in the under 65 population.
the scientifically literate have known from the start that the vaccines are really only directly useful on the weak and old. it's less a question as to whether they work or not, and more of a question as to whether they meaningfully increase a natural immune response. more to the point has been the question as to whether it might prevent spread, and the simple margin of error on immune response was enough to conclude that you couldn't really expect that in any serious sense.
if we're moving to disclosure, can i please request that the state puts a focus on making the politicians take the fall, and not the science? we couldn't distrust the government any more - that's spitting on a fish. but, we don't want people turning away from science and embracing religion as a result of this.
that's my biggest concern - that this might fuel increases in adherence to christianity and/or islam. and, that's going to undo the democratic super-majority, as useless as it's been so far.
17:42
when the ndp say they do not want to trigger an election, what they mean is that they do not want to lose seats. but, where do they hold seats?
as of 2021, they hold seats almost entirely in areas where their main competition is the conservatives. the inroads that jack layton made into urban regions has almost entirely evaporated - they're back to being a rural party, with a leader that is deeply unrepresentative of their voting base.
mr. singh has had some time, now, and he's accomplished nothing. being leader of a political party isn't a permanent position, and maintaining it depends highly on job performance.
perhaps it is time for the members of the ndp to listen to their constituents instead of their leader, because i can predict the future - the ndp will be all but wiped out in the next election, if they can't compete in rural areas.
20:19
ugh.
see, this is again the kind of thing that's driving me nuts.
so, i've got all of the facebook photos uploaded, and then turned to uploading youtube thumbnails. i realized quickly that i don't actually have backups of anything between oct 2015 to april 2016. so, i started downloading thumbnails.
now, i'm sure that i actually spent a fair bit of time sorting through these videos and looking for screenshots that emphasized specific facial features. so, i'm certain that i had a series of "pretty girl" screenshots. bafflingly, this seems to be replaced by pictures that not only de-emphasize the prettiness of the shots i'm sure i picked out, but actually exaggerate grossness. i look overwhelmingly disgusting in essentially all of these shots.
it's very frustrating, because if i open up any random video, i'm able to easily find screenshots of the "pretty girl" variety. like, with minimal effort. so, why are the screenshots systematically selected for grossness, when i'm sure i made an effort otherwise?
i can't go through 100 videos looking for screenshots to replace the ones that seem to have disappeared, or at least not now. and, if i had a backup, i can't find it.
so, i'm just going to delete them for now and focus on the stuff from after april.
this should be done within a few hours.
23:38
to be clear: i'll fix the screenshots in the videos so that they're pretty again when i do the general rebuilding run through.
23:43
tuesday, february 22, 2022
it would be helpful if the republics in the east of ukraine could pass some kind of resolution indicating that they are inviting the russians in, as would be their democratic right.
and, i hope the government in ottawa is paying attention, because it's behaviour in ukraine would leave it with no rational grounds for opposition should the chinese or russians back separatist movements in alberta or quebec.
0:46
now, is this an invasion of ukraine?
Therefore it seeks in Russia the enemy it has lost in France, and appears to say to the universe, or to say to itself. "If nobody will be so kind as to become my foe, I shall need no more fleets nor armies, and shall be forced to reduce my taxes. The American war enabled me to double the taxes; the Dutch business to add more; the Nootka humbug gave me a pretext for raising three millions sterling more; but unless I can make an enemy of Russia the harvest from wars will end. I was the first to incite Turk against Russian, and now I hope to reap a fresh crop of taxes."
well, hardly.
but, there was never any credible information backing the supposed imminence of such an invasion, in the first place. the white houses's claims of "predicting" the event are utter rubbish, and merely propaganda designed to frame the situation in a specific manner.
the russians have been clear that they're trying to defend themselves, and this will advance that aim for two reasons:
1) if the americans were trying to fabricate an altercation, like in georgia, in under to pull them into an afghanistan-like nightmare, it just became a lot harder to do it. the russian action is legitimate, and they're already there.
2) it signals that what the russians really want is to dismantle ukraine, not to invade it, and i think that should have been obvious from the start.
so, what are you actually going to see happen, now?
well, you could see things like spontaneous revolutions in kharkiv, or special forces operations in odessa.
the army is there in the background, if the ukrainians get stupid, but the russians are not looking to invade the country, so much as they're looking for political control. a controlled ukraine is more useful to them than an annexed one, but the territorial integrity of ukraine no longer has any validity, if it ever did.
i watched putin's address, and it was a mix of delusional conservatism, critique of neo-liberalism, interesting geopolitical insight, history of dubious value and bitterness at the mistakes made by the previous soviet government. but, the basic point putin was getting across is that it considers ukraine to be a fake country, created by khruschev, as an exercise in local autonomy gone haywire. the soviet system is literally the translation of a russian parliament, and socialism is supposed to be about self-representation. but, putin seems to think that lenin took that idea too far by tolerating ukrainian nationalism, which is of course incompatible with socialism. i have little patience for nationalism, because i'm an anarchist; putin at the least points to an interesting contradiction in how lenin juggled the questionable validity of ukrainian nationalism as a defensible idea with the more supportable right to self-autonomy, and then deduces that tolerating the nationalists in the name of self-autonomy is what's created the problem on the ground.
in constructing the current state of ukraine out of arbitrary boundaries, khruschev was of course focusing on two things, and putin doesn't go into it:
1) he was trying to water down ukrainian nationalism by bringing russians into the national polity.
2) he was actually trying to create a sort of multiculturalism in the soviet union, which was russian led, but exceedingly diverse.
he's basically right that if you're to take ukrainian nationalism seriously, it should only apply to historical ukraine, and should not include the russian-speaking regions that khruschev added. if the soviet union is divisible, then ukraine is, too.
so, is it a pretext? perhaps, it is, in the sense that putin is more concerned about defending his country from an attack by nato than saving the wretched from harm in the east of ukraine. but, everything that putin has said for years suggests that the pretext is only as useful as itself; the medium is the message, so to say.
we've seen the russians behave this way in other former ssrs, and the intent is always to build defenses. there's no reason to think this will be any different.
.....except to point out that the algorithm may repeat itself, and you may see more breakaway regions that need russian protection.
so, no - an invasion is not imminent, and there was never any logic underlying such a thing, or any credible voices suggesting as much. the russians want to balkanize and control ukraine, not conquer it. and, remember - balkanization is a term that refers to russian policy in the southeast of europe.
we'll see if it works or not, but putin is trying to stop a war, not start one. it's america that's trying to start one.
1:09
putin made an interesting comment in his address about how he didn't understand why america wanted to make an enemy of russia.
read thomas paine, vlad.
1:10
if there was no russian threat, there would be no nato, and there would be no american war machine - no justification for the trillions of dollars funnelled to the defense industry, large amounts of which routinely "disappear".
it sounds too insane to believe.
but, it is largely true.
1:14
the talking point appears to be that russia is in breach of international law.
i would advise world leaders to seek legal counsel before making statements such as these, as the recognition of self-determination, as determined through plebiscite, is in fact well established in international law.
certainly, what russia is doing in donetsk and luhansk is far less dubious or controversial than what the united states and britain did in syria or iraq. and, should the ukrainians react with force, there would be a strong case that they should be tried for war crimes for it.
2:22
if there's an upside to this, i'm back to calling boris johnson an idiot.
it's nice to move past the surreal politics of covid and get back to normal.
2:31
there's no ads or revenue streams on this page, or on any of my other media sites. in fact, i've gone out of my way to avoid revenue streams, as i support an ad free internet. i use adblock.
my sole source of income is odsp. i was previously selling a small amount of music, but that has since entirely dried up.
i am not driven by a profit motive, and i never have been. my rejection of market theory is truly absolute and complete.
7:55
the only thing for sale is the music, and the only reason i charge for the music is because i really have to, given that i reject advertising. if i had an independent source of income, i would not charge for the music, i'd put it up at a google drive share.
7:56
so, what is this song about?
the song is an attack on the hippie movement, and specifically on what is referred to as "useful idiots". it's a critique of the kind of western maoist that came out of the new left in the 1960s. what ogre is doing is saying "look, the chinese are not better than we are. if anything, they're far worse. maoism doesn't address the fundamental problem, which is the centralization of power into the state; if anything, it makes it worse. and, this is the result of putting so much power in so few hands.".
what it really is is a rewrite of holiday in cambodia, and was no doubt heavily influenced by al jourgenson's tenure with the band.
so, the joke is on the dirty hippies that bathe once a week - for all their accusations of fascism directed at the nixons and goldwaters of the world, it's the system they were advocating that led to actual, literal fascism. and, this is prescient, because the chinese system is literal, actual fascism.
so, let's be careful that we understand things before we start referencing them.
8:03
this was the dominant influence on tin omen:
8:13
mr trudeau can speak for himself on the issue of ukraine, but he does not speak for canadians and i really wish that he'd stop pretending that he does.
it's beyond annoying but actually incredibly offensive to have a guy that can't get 20% of the vote claim to speak for the country in any context at all. remember: he seems to think he's the king. but, he's not, and he should stop pretending that his opinions are those of the nation's.
i am a canadian, and he certainly does not speak for me, on the matter. nor does he seem to have even contemplated - let alone understand - that ramifications of the position he is taking, insofar as it relates to the status of quebec.
ukraine is not an ally of canada, and we are not at war with russia. trudeau is entitled to his opinion, and entitled to state it, but he does not speak for me or for the country and i condemn him for having the arrogance to claim that he does.
11:02
canadians, as a general rule, do not care about ukraine and have no interest in or opinion about ukraine at all.
those few that do have a wide spectrum of opinion, and many are fully in support of the russian position.
it is for that reason that the actions of the government are inappropriate. but, we can talk about that later. for now, i'd settle for mr trudeau keeping his fool mouth shut, on the issue - or at least stipulate that he is voicing his own, personal views, if he must open it.
11:06
ms. lich is now a prisoner of conscience, captured by an out of control authoritarian government bent on smashing dissent at the boot of a gun.
shame on the judge for this egregious decision.
11:17
what's happening to ms. lich is the kind of thing you'd expect in a backwards country like iran, and not in a free society.
11:21
it is now incumbent on the international human rights community to put pressure on the trudeau government to have ms. lich released, and these politically motivated charges torn up.
11:29
if mr trudeau wants to act like a corrupt muslim dictator, then he should be treated like one by the international community.
11:31
this is an utterly retarded decision that will only harm germany, at nobody's benefit.
if this is what a post-communist europe looks like, it makes communism look fairly attractive.
13:26
if you live in germany, i would focus on finding some alternative heating solution, because your gas prices are about to skyrocket, so your retarded government can piss-take as they "stand in solidarity" with a bunch of genocidal nazis.
13:37
but, then again, maybe you think the "moral support" of standing with nazis is worth the cost.
putin 1
maybe you're really that fucking stupid.
ugh.
13:38
so, let's check the scoreboard.
biden 1
ukraine 0
germany -50
13:39
the idiots set themselves up for it. what a bunch of suckers.
the lesson is that you shouldn't be coerced into making stupid bluffs, because you might have to follow through with it to uphold your machismo. if you're of the variety, of course.
i think he should have eaten his hat, and made a show of it.
in truth, it's a function of inexperienced leadership in germany.
13:41
the germans will lie to you about nato expansion, but they'll keep their word on cancelling gas pipelines.
mr. scholz just made a complete ass of himself, and let us hope the foolishness is quickly reversed.
13:43
mein arsch!
13:51
so, i came back for a walk today to headlines from every country denouncing russia for an invasion of ukraine.
but, russia has neither invaded ukraine nor announced any concrete plans to move any troops into the contested region.
we're not going to agree on this, regardless of what happens. but, don't you think you should wait until the russians at least announce an intent to position troops in the country, before you accuse them of invading it?
what it exposes is that this was all already planned, and the russians really had no way out of it. the truth is that, everything else aside, the bourgeois fake left seems to think it's going to gain some kind of political traction by presenting empty, anachronistic speeches directed at geriatrics lost in the 60s. everybody else is just kind of baffled.
the actual reality is that nobody gives a fuck.
23:02
the liberals have completely destroyed any chance they have of winning the under 40 vote any time in the next 20 years, and this is just going to make them look even more out of touch with reality.
23:06
i don't think anybody voted for trudeau with the hopes that he'd turn the clocks back to the 1980s, or earlier. and, in a canadian context, it's really unprecedented - we never had a political leadership act like this, not even at the height of the cold war.
we were arguing with the americans about missile placement, and vacationing in cuba.
23:10
and, the idea of trudeau bloviating about sending troops to russia to save democracy, whilst in the midst of a completely absurd and entirely naked grab for power, is so absurdly comical as to defy any sort of analysis. like, he's not even trying to be taken seriously, at this point. he's become a literal clown.
so, i have a new name for the dauphin: el douche.
i intend to use that one quite a bit.
23:59
wednesday, february 23, 2022
what does the international law on the topic actually say?
well, my ultimate point of reference is going to be to the quebec reference case, as posed to the supreme court, which articulated the consensus position - separation is legal when a country can assert and defend it's borders. the international law on the topic largely reduces to the maxim of the state being a monopoly on power - if you can get away with it, it's legal.
this is, largely, the absence of law, rather than the assertion of it, but that's sort of just the point. see, if canada were to attack quebec, that would be illegal; if quebec were to declare independence, the only issue governing it's legality would be whether it could pull it off or not. that sounds whacked, but when you secede from a country, you are asserting a state of lawlessness, so what law could exist to govern it? it's up to the new state to assert it's own laws, and it's up to the existing state to follow the rule of law in not getting pushy about it.
perhaps there's some broader law to reference, then? well, we've mostly done away with it. nobody takes ecclesiastical law of any religion seriously anymore (with the glaring exception of islam, but we'll do away with that too, in time), natural law is more often cited by secular humanists than christians, who use it as a rule of thumb, feudalism is thankfully done away with...
to the extent that "international law" is a real thing, it's pretty vague. it applies to those that opt in to it, and not to those that don't. russia has no obligation to abide by this set of conventions. but, what does it say, in terms of when it's justified to secede, rather than whether secession is legitimate?
well, the idea is this: people have the inalienable right to secede, but you're supposed to go to counselling before you break up. that's the helsinki act, stated tersely. the justification for a region to break away from a state is consequently that it tried to work something out first and couldn't do it.
regardless of what you think of the situation, it is abundantly clear that the russians have respected this principal of international law, through the minsk process. yes, that's what they say, but guess what? they're right. now, maybe you can argue that there was a lack of good faith [on which side?] and maybe you can argue they didn't wait long enough, but it seems to me that ukraine wanted to wipe them out with violence rather than grant them autonomy, that fact, under international law, if you accept it, grants them the basis to secede. then, whether secession is legitimate or not depends on whether they can pull it off or not.
so, are the russians breaking international law? if you take that position, you'd have to argue something like that they didn't wait it out long enough, or that they didn't negotiate faithfully. the act of providing support for the separatists is not, in itself, a breach of international law. and, as of this moment, they haven't actually done anything yet.
as mentioned previously, there would be a much stronger case that the ukrainian state, in refusing to acknowledge autonomy, and reacting with force, is guilty of war crimes.
but, these arguments are of no meaning to decision makers in washington. one expects that they understand this, but they don't remotely care about it. the language they are using is not intended to be interpreted legally or analyzed by lawyers, but is rather propaganda designed to confuse the masses with, and to present pretexts for further actions on.
biden appears to have insisted on sanctions. i can guess why. but, the decision was made and the rest was theatre.
1:02
i've said this before: unlike joe rogan, who i know nothing remotely about, and don't remotely care about, i actually know a little about tucker carlson, because i did used to watch him on cnn back in the early 00s. at the time, i mostly lived on leftover spaghetti, and would venture out of my basement hideaway at my parent's [i was a university student at the time] from time to time to eat it in the living room, parked in front of the tv. i just left it on cnn. and, he was often on.
but, what that means is that, in my mind, tucker carlson is 20 years younger, and he always wears a bow tie.
at the time, i would have characterized him as a moderate. i dunno; maybe his views have changed. but, what stood out about him at the time was that he wasn't a specious right-wing extremist, but rather a relatively careful thinking moderate conservative. like, he differentiated himself that way. i simply don't know if his views have changed or if the spectrum has, but i suspect he's mostly being targeted for his employment choices, rather than his actual views. if you simply changed the network he works for, most of the criticism directed at him would evaporate.
every time i run into a view by tucker carlson, i'm struck by the fact that it's moderate and thoughtful, not that it's right-wing or extreme.
i would say the opposite about rachel maddow, who i know less about than tucker carlson and roughly the same amount as i know about joe rogan. i haven't watched network tv since the 90s, remember, and haven't even watched the news since 2005. i get my news from online newspapers, strictly. i have usually paid for internet access, but i'm 41 years old and have spent roughly half of my life paying rent and i've never paid a cable bill. ever. so, i barely know who rachel maddow even is. but, every time i've heard a view attributed to her, i've been struck by how extremely right-wing and ridiculously specious it is.
so, this is the question i want pondered: given that rachel maddow and tucker carlson are both right-wing ideologues, which of these two right-wing ideologues is more distant, to a traditional leftist?
i acknowledge that i have minimal information to draw upon, because i don't watch tv, but it seems to me that tucker carlson is less right-wing and less extreme than rachel maddow, by a good margin. and, that's what i want discussed - i want the acceptance to be that they're both far-right extremists, and for some careful intellectual process to take place to compare the two of them, on rigorous grounds.
i don't have time because i don't actually care.
but, in the mean time, if my views are closer to tucker carlson's, my reaction is going to be "well, that's because he's less of an extreme right-winger than rachel maddow is. his views are frequently more moderate and more reasonable than hers, which frequently collapse on the most frivolous of inspections.".
if the overlap is greater, it's because i'm a leftist, rather than in spite of it.
8:33
i don't know the context here, but i want to say a little bit about the idea.
i frequently sieg heiled my grade 8 teacher, and i neither feel bad about it today, nor would i care if somebody told me that her parents were holocaust survivors - if anything, it makes the gesture more effective. the teacher in question was extremely authoritarian, and my gesture was a statement of disrespect towards her dictatorial tendencies; it was intended as a means of protest, as an intentional gesture of disrespect, and was entirely justified and supportable for that reason. there's a lot of tinpot dictators out there that turn into teachers because they need somebody to bully, and there's a lot of teachers that end up stuck in what is a dead-end job because they lacked the ability to succeed in the real world. children should be extremely disrespectful towards anybody in authority that abuses that authority,
the individual's family background is of no relevance in the situation, whatsoever.
i mean, it's like arguing that jews can't be guilty of genocide in palestine because of the holocaust - an egregiously specious position. the gesture reflected the teacher's individual behaviour.
this is a broad logical mistake that is frequently made in our society. you see it, for example, in blaming random white people for slavery, as though they have any responsibility for the behaviour of their ancestors. it's a racist attitude at it's core.
so, i don't know what these kids were thinking, but it's perfectly plausible that it's the teacher that requires some education, here, not the students. the students were likely very aware of the meaning of their gesture, and intended the teacher to understand it. if the teacher didn't understand it, maybe they should think about it a little more carefully, and adjust accordingly to the protestation.
we don't want to follow the path europe walked down, that bans legitimate means of protest because some crybabies find it "offensive".
the real nazis run your schools
10:15
if she wanted to act like a nazi, i was happyy to treat her like one.
and, i think that was the right thing to do, in hindsight - i support my actions, and i'd do it again.
i was actually hoping it would catch on and everybody would seig heil her when they saw her.
there's no evidence that she reacted thoughtfully to the protest, or adjusted her fascistic behaviour in response to it; my memory is that she just ignored it.
10:18
i was eventually moved into a different class, and greatly appreciated getting away from this horrible, micromanaging, fascist woman, who, suffice it to say, was not a good teacher.
10:27
if mrs. sloan is reading this, or even still alive, take heed - i called you a fascist then, and i'd call you a fascist now.
...because you are, in fact, a fascist.
that is all.
10:31
the most recent blood test is quite odd.
- d is up. i'm absorbing it.
- pth is down, finally
- tsh is down
- b12 is up. i'm absorbing it.
- but, iron is....down?
yet, i increased the dosage.
it's maybe better labelled as sideways. ferritin went from 33 to 28. iron went from 13.1 to 14.8, sat from .23 to .25 and tibc from 57.4 to 58.7.
reticulocytes remain low at 41.
i think i'm uncovering somewhat of a lag in behavioural changes. if i increase my iron, the results take a few months. so, if i decrease and then increase, it takes a while for it to reverse. i'm probably seeing the tail end of the result of the previous decrease, and if it goes up next month then it's probably the result of the last increase. so, it's too soon to deduce i'm having specific iron absorption issues, especially considering i'm absorbing everything else.
there remains no evidence that i'm bleeding.
these results are not dangerous, so i'm going to keep it steady, for now. we'll see what it says next month.
10:59
to be clear - are taking these d pills doing anything?
well, my results last year were 87 in the spring and 109 in the summer. then, i got a bone density test, got a little concerned, and started taking a pill in the morning on top of my diet - which decreased the d to 72, which isn't terrible if the base level is 75. i kept at it and it went down again to 64. so, when i started taking d pills, my serum levels decreased from 109 to 64. i concluded that my kidneys were working properly, and the d was actually getting removed to keep my calcium down, given that i was actually getting enough d simply from the sun, in the summer.
i then went off the d altogether and the serum levels increased to 83.
then, the amount of sunlight where i live dramatically decreased and i went back on the pills. while i expected that i was getting enough d from the sun in the summer - which the data supports - i was not sure if i was getting enough in the winter. i was intending to figure this out by doing an experiment. i also wanted to get my pth down, and wanted to see if i could push it down by getting my d higher than the recommended levels. i then realized that the amount of d available in my margarine and soy milk had recently decreased, which broke the control. i do not know if the d decreased into the 60s at the start of the winter due to randomness, due to the decrease in sunlight or due to the decrease in dietary availability, due to changes in government fortification requirements. i know that i have no choice but to take pills to compensate.
so, i slowly increased from 500 iu to 2000 iu, and the results i've seen are really not out of the margin of error. 60s, 70s and now an 80. it's gone up and down, with no clear trend (yet). and, there's more sun in february than in january, too.
i'm going to stick with it, but i can't really deduce with any clarity that increasing my d intake by 150% did much of anything to my serum levels at all. it's just not a clear enough signal - it's just as likely to be random. i mean, it's an easy trap, but it's not robust, and i know better than to fall into it. and, i see little reason to think that, all things steady, i won't return a result in the 60s or 70s again in mid march.
but, the fact that it hasn't crashed in the face of a decrease in dietary availability indicates i'm at least absorbing and storing it, even if it has minimal, if any, effect on my serum levels.
11:45
this incident was actually broadcast live on ctv, with play-by-play by that piece of shit evan solomon, who is well known to canadians.
i happen to have caught the livestream.
the higher ups at ctv were instructed to not film the event, because the cops didn't want the images broadcast.
not only did this happen, but there was an active attempt by corporate media in canada to ensure that there was no evidence that it did. i'm trying to avoid the word "cover up", but there was quite obviously an attempt to frame the narrative.
i'd encourage the new york times to contact that piece of shit even solomon. canadians consider him a trustworthy source, although i'm not sure why.
11:56
“I’m the mother and wife of two high-risk immunocompromised people, so I’m just making sure that I have every possible level of protection in place against a virus that, ultimately, could kill my child.â€
this is an example of why the government's unscientific insistence on mass vaccination to increase consumer confidence is such a wrongheaded policy.
if the individual is in contact with high risk people on a day-to-day basis, she really has a choice to make:
a) she can find a different job where she deals less with the public or
b) she can eliminate her contact with high risk people
there is no way to have it both ways, with this - you can't protect yourself from this virus. you can't have a social life and immuno-compromised family, too. the masks never worked, the vaccines do not work against newer strains and tactics like distancing are risk-reducing, at best, to the extent that they are practical in job scenarios such as this one.
by misleading people such as this person into thinking that vaccination will reduce the risk of conduits, the government is tricking people into putting high risk individuals at risk by instilling a false sense of confidence into them. but, they don't care, because they're mostly concerned about the long term effects on commerce.
the messaging from the government should have been about personal responsibility from the start, not this specious fascist nonsense about sacrifice under collective suffering.
15:32
so, that state of emergency appears to be over, for now - until trudeau can't find his hairdresser.
have we seen the last of el douche?
stay tuned.
19:34
a runaway hair dresser would require the suspension of habeas corpus for the duration of non-compliance.
19:41
i lost last weekend, but i'll be back at it soon. i need to do a few legal things, first.
i posted the swans tune, but what's been floating through my mind this week is this smashing pumpkins song, because i'm borrowing the syncopation in the extended climax.
20:24
thursday, february 24, 2022
here's my chart update:
| 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 | 84 | 83 / 81 | 80 | 90/64 | 66 | 77 | ||||||||||
| egfr | 107/106 | - | - | - | - | 96 | 100 | 101 / 104 | 106 | 92/116 | 115 | 107 | ||||||||||
| alp | 61 | - | - | 63 | 59 | 50 | 60 | 59 /55 | 47 | 50 | 60 | 58 | ||||||||||
| albumin | -/45.7 | - | - | - | 45.9 | 44.6 | 46.8 | 48 /46 | 46.7 | 49.8 | 43.7 | 45.1 | ||||||||||
| cholesterol | 3.93 | - | - | - | 3.99 | 3.8 | 4.15 | 4.01/3.83 | 4.14/4.02 | 4.14/3.67 | 3.54/3.8 | 3.78/3.68 | ||||||||||
| triglycerides | .87 | - | - | - | .95 | .89 | 1.41 | 1.05/0.94 | 1.09/1.32 | 1.86/0.73 | 2.26/0.75 | 0.69/1.02 | ||||||||||
| hdl | 1.69 | - | - | - | 1.84 | 1.59 | 1.73 | 1.42/1.55 | 1.37/1.42 | 1.51/1.74 | 1.75/1.72 | 1.74/1.69 | ||||||||||
| ldl | 1.85 | - | - | - | 1.72 | 1.81 | 1.78 | 2.11/1.85 | 2.28/2.00 | 1.79/1.6 | <0.8/1.75 | 1.73/1.52 | ||||||||||
| non-hdl | 2.24 | - | - | - | 2.15 | 2.21 | 2.42 | 2.59/2.28 | 2.77/2.60 | 2.63/1.93 | 1.79/2.09 | 2.04/1.99 | ||||||||||
| wbc | 8.7/8.4 | 9.9/9.0 | - | - | ? | 7.0 | 7.6 | 6.9/6.9 | 7.8 | 11.3/8.2 | 6.7/6.4 | 7.4/7.1 | ||||||||||
| rbc | 3.97/4.25 | 4.11/4.38 | - | - | 4.17 | 4.12 | 4.33 | 4.47/4.2 | 4.28 | 4.55/4.19 | 4.3/4.22 | 4.42/4.26 | ||||||||||
| hemoglobin | 132/140 | 133/142 | - | - | 139 | 136 | 141 | 138/138 | 139 | 144/131 | 141/133 | 140/136 | ||||||||||
| hematocrit | .382/.404 | .394/.424 | - | - | .405 | .398 | .418 | .417/.402 | .405 | 0.431/0.393 | .409/.396 | .417/.404 | ||||||||||
| mcv | 96.1/95.1 | 95.8/97.0 | - | - | 97 | 96.8 | 96.6 | 93/95.7 | 94.6 | 94.7/94 | 95/94 | 94/95 | ||||||||||
| mch | 33.1/32.9 | 32.4/32.5 | - | - | 33.3 | 33.2 | 32.7 | 30.9/32.8 | 32.5 | 31.8/31.3 | 32.7/31.5 | 31.7/32 | ||||||||||
| mchc | 345/346 | 338/335 | - | - | ? | 343 | 338 | 331/343 | 344 | 335/333 | 344/336 | 336/337 | ||||||||||
| rdw | 13.3/13.5 | 13.0/13.1 | - | - | ? | 13 | 12.3 | 11.7/12.9 | 12.6 | 13.4/12.0 | 13.2/11.7 | 11.7/13 | ||||||||||
| platelet | 199/187 | 171/171 | - | - | ? | 175 | 167 | 168/150 | 155 | 188/185 | 159/184 | 187/175 | ||||||||||
| reticulocytes | - | -/42 | - | - | 53 | 56 | 46 | 35 | 33 | 33 | 39 | 41 | ||||||||||
| vitamin d | 87 | - | - | - | 109 | 72 | 64 | 72/83 | 78 | 64/71 | 61/74 | 74/80 | ||||||||||
| estradiol | 363/388 | - | - | - | - | 563 | 443 | 432 | 777 | 343 | 578 | 416 | ||||||||||
| estrone | - | - | - | - | - | ? | 4138 | 5203 | 7000+ | - | - | - | ||||||||||
| testosterone | 0.9 | - | - | - | - | - | <0.4 | <0.4 | <0.4 | <0.4 | <0.4 | <0.4 | ||||||||||
| progesterone | 1.9 | - | - | - | - | - | <0.5 | 0.7 | 0.5 | 0.9 | <0.5 | 3.7 | ||||||||||
| fsh | <0.2 | - | - | - | - | - | 0.2 | 0.1 | <0.1 | - | <0.1 | 0.1 | ||||||||||
| lh | <0.2 | - | - | - | - | - | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.1 | - | 0.1 | <0.1 | ||||||||||
| ferritin | 12/9 | 6/17 | 21 | - | 29 | 43 | 28 | 40 | 42 | 59 | 33 | 28 | ||||||||||
| tibc | - | 69.5 | - | - | 65.7 | 62.9 | 64.7 | 58.9 | 58.2 | 63.2 | 57.4 | 58.7 | ||||||||||
| iron | - | 9.6 | - | - | 22.7 | 37.3 | 19.3 | 28.3 | 37.3 | 32.5 | 13.1 | 14.8 | ||||||||||
| iron sat | - | 0.14 | - | - | 0.35 | 0.59 | 0.3 | .48 | 0.64 | 0.51 | 0.23 | 0.25 | ||||||||||
| transferrin | - | - | - | - | - | - | 2.59 | 2.29 | 2.38 | 2.49 | 2.31 | |||||||||||
| sodium | - | - | - | - | - | - | 141 | 141/139 | 140 | 141 | 138 | 138 | ||||||||||
| potassium | - | - | - | - | - | - | 5.0 | 4.7/4.6 | 4.3 | 4.0 | 4.7 | 4.1 | ||||||||||
| chloride | - | - | - | - | - | - | 104 | 107/105 | 104 | 101 | 105 | 104 | ||||||||||
| phosphate | -/1.42 | - | - | - | - | 1.09 | 1.34 | 1.08 | 1.35 | 1.27 | 1.13 | 1.36 | ||||||||||
| magnesium | -/.93 | - | - | - | - | 0.8 | 0.82 | 0.86 | 0.82 | 0.84 | 0.85 | 0.88 | ||||||||||
| calcium | -/2.4 | - | - | - | 2.38 | 2.32 | 2.44 | 2.39 | 2.4 | 2.43 | 2.33 | 2.32 | ||||||||||
| pth | - | - | - | 5.5 | - | 6.2 | 5.9 | 6.2 | 5.5 | 8.0 | 6.3 | 5.7 | ||||||||||
| tsh | 0.92 | - | - | - | - | 0.94 | 1.22 | 1.67 | 1.48 | 1.07 | 1.39 | 0.97 | ||||||||||
| calcitonin | - | - | - | <0.6 | - | - | - | - | 0.6 | - | 0.8 | - | ||||||||||
| cortisol | - | - | - | 325 | - | 464 | 170 | 129 | 225 | 136 | 367 | - | ||||||||||
| insulin | - | - | - | - | - | 50 | 33 | 68 | 92 | 312 | 53 | - | ||||||||||
| b12 | 223/251 | - | 304 | - | 363 | 313 | 370 | 292 | 369 | 376 | 293 | 448 | ||||||||||
so, everything's great about this lab....except the iron, which remains mysterious, but which i think is on a lag in terms of reaction time.
i need iron pills. really. i should have realized that years ago. it's not clear, still, why, but almost everything's been ruled out.
i really wish i could get a hepcidin test...
3:42
this is an idea i need to take somewhat seriously, i think.
3:53
i don't have a write-up for my last grocery shopping trip, which is what i'm reduced to narrating nowadays. that had better change, and had better change, soon. i'd expect a lot of house parties this summer, if the mask requirements in this province are not lifted by that time. and, i might have to go looking for them.
but, something i noticed is that my hair is now officially too dark.
my hair is a natural light brown, or at least is usually. if you look through the picture archive, you'll see it comes up a number of colours - black (which i don't like much), red (which i like), orange (which i like a little better) and blond (which is the colour i like the best). i've also had my hair purple, blue and much brighter oranges and reds, but i don't have pictures. the basic rule is that i look better with lighter hair, and the lighter the hair, the better i look.
"better" is a subjective term, of course. i look more feminine with lighter hair, and more masculine with dark hair. i had to do the experiment to understand that, but i've systematically avoided darker hair for many, many years as a result of realizing that. the last time i died my hair black was in 2013, and i strongly disliked the outcome.
my personality is more akin to a blond, as well, i think. to the extent that i'm a goth, i'm what's called a cherry goth; in truth, i am not a goth, i do not identify with goth culture and i'd never call myself one, even if i might hang out with them, sometimes. i'm a punk, not a goth - although i enjoy the subset of punk rock music often labelled goth, as well as i do other types of punk and post-punk.
so, i was frustrated yesterday to notice that the very top of my hair had darkened substantively. i do not know why that would be. at my age, my hair should be lightening, not darkening.
my dad's hair was darker than mine, which is more like my mother's. my father had straight, black hair, which is hard to make sense of looking directly at his parents, who both had curly hair. his father had the wooly hair, usually associated entirely with africans; his mother's hair was more identifiably mediterranean. but, they were both curly haired. my grandmother was adopted, and all we know about her parents is that at least one of them was part italian, and she seems to have died in a mob hit. i have pictures of my grandfather's mother, who seems to have been a blond quebecker. my grandfather's father has known indigenous ancestry, but his mother is unclear, and may have been a polish jew; my great-grandther's name was stanislaus, which does not fit into the family's naming conventions, going back to unclear origins in the gaspe peninsula. so, the straight black, which is standard on that side, is actually of unclear direct origin, but may be sort of complicated.
my mother's mother's side looks blond all the way back, although my grandmother has suggested that she has some asian ancestry on her finnish side. after doing some research on the topic, i actually think that my mother's brown hair is due to the recently uncovered jewish ancestry on her father's side, which she seems to have been falsely led to believe was "welsh". my mother is pretty racist, although she might actually be less racist than other family members, including her recently discovered to be part jewish father, so this is not likely to be taken well on that side, but that's not my problem.
i've generally noticed that my hair type is better on hormones, which makes a darker hair coming post-orchiectomy that much more disappointing.
what i'm getting to is that i will be lightening my hair this weekend, which is long overdue. i'll be using dye that i originally purchased in late 2018, and did not use. i decided over 2019 to let my hair grow back in before i dyed it again, because it was somewhat damaged due to overtreatment. i should have died it again by 2020, but the pandemic made it pointless.
at this point, i feel the need to dye it, because the darker colour is undoing my choice in gender expression.
it will be redder by the end of the weekend, and i'll try to post pictures.
10:02
while russia's previous actions in the region were in line with international law, the pre-emptive strike being launched on ukraine is essentially the bush doctrine, and is not legal.
this is not a smart move by russia, and it is disappointing to see what was a careful level of diplomacy be replaced by foolish macho stupidity. that said, it is still not an invasion, and the russians would be stupid to let themselves be drawn into an occupation.
for those of us that believe russia is on the right side of history, and the west is on the wrong side of it, this is a setback for two reasons:
1) the russians were required to convince ukraine they wanted a union. this will not help, and may set the process back by decades. it remains inevitable.
2) it lowers the position of the russians to one that is equivalent to the united states. in recent years, only the united states has acted in a rogue manner like this. a part of the appeal of russia is that they were offering a more principled approach to world affairs. they've just lost all of the goodwill they'd built up since 2014, and are now no better than the americans are.
i have no solidarity with ukraine, and hope they burn for their duplicity. let this be a lesson for future turncoats.
but, this is a surprising and disappointing mistake by the russians that nobody saw coming. the expectation was that you'd see a slow war of attrition along the borders, in line with international conventions and that would maintain much of their alliances.
now, the chinese and indians will have no choice but to join the sanctions. and, the chinese, if they are smart, will seize the opportunity, and move into central asia, before the americans do. if they play this right, china is the overwhelming victor in putin's unexpected, unpredictable and egregious mistake.
but, do not expect an occupation or invasion of ukraine - it would bog the russians down for the next 50 years. putin will be assassinated by the russian military before that happens.
10:33
does biden bear responsibility for this, by egging the russians on? would this have happened, if the americans had taken a less bellicose position on the matter?
i think he does, and i wonder if it might not have.
but, it's a complex question that requires a detailed response, which i will not provide, at this time.
it is an outcome that might have been avoided, had nato taken a less aggressive stance. and, the question ukraine should be asking now is "what has alliance with the west brought us?".
10:36
the russians are citing s. 7:
“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.â€
it's beyond flimsy.
it's the same warped logic that the americans and israelis have used in their strikes on yugoslavia, iran and iraq. afghanistan is a different case, because there was not a functioning government in the region in 2001, and arguably still isn't.
this is a loophole that the americans have used many times, and the russians are now using.
it's long past time that this loophole be closed.
so, that's my response - i'm rejecting the russian citation of s. 7 as cynical, and calling for reform at the united nations.
i am certainly not calling for a chauvinistic response by nato. macho stupidity + macho stupidity = nuclear war. let putin piss on his own grass.
10:48
i need to be clear: i can't and won't condemn the russians for what they're doing. it's not what they're doing that's a mistake, it's how they're doing it. the build-up of weapons in ukraine legitimately poses russia a threat, and they have a legitimate self-interest in neutralizing it.
but, there were less blunt methods to use, and what they ultimately needed to do - which is gain political control of the country - is now further away from them than it was previously. for that reason, this is more of a setback in their ultimate goals than it is an advancement.
ukraine will now no doubt take the foolish path of doubling down on resistance, and the west will cite "russian aggression" as a justification for flooding the country with more weapons. the arms industry will secure more contracts, and more weapons will enter the region. if putin thinks it will cost the americans resources, he doesn't understand the financial system - the war machine will just use it as an excuse to increase the budget, which is what they're constantly seeking. the americans will now double the amount of debt to triple the amount spent on the defense industry, which will cash in on this, massively.
this will consequently be entirely undone in a matter of years, if not months, and the russians will have gained nothing but a loss of international prestige, in their abrogation of international law.
russia needed a diplomat, here, and it got a strongman, instead. and, perhaps the russians may want to now think about whether vlad ought to retire or not.
12:15
the russians are claiming that they don't want to occupy the country, and i believe them when they claim they didn't intend to.
but, they kind of have to, now.
not invading is now a massive error that follows from the error of launching strikes.
12:18
they just made the same stupid mistake that the americans made in iraq, and now have to follow through in the same stupid way.
12:19
so, what do i think the russians should have done?
well, this is what the legitimate intelligence suggested, and what i have to think was the actual plan until probably two or three days ago:
1. the russians are, i think, permitted by international law to intervene in the donbass region. i don't believe in morality, so i'm not interested in what somebody thinks might be moral and might not be. but, i believe in democracy, and i believe in autonomy, and i accept the russian narrative that this is an area with people seeking self-determination. the extent of the claim is up to some debate, but it relies on the area covered by the elections held in 2014.
2. for that reason, it would have been useful for the separatists in the donbass to organize a second referendum, to determine the area which sought to secede from ukraine.
3. there are several areas in ukraine that might have chosen to leave ukraine freely, if such an option were presented to them, but none has been presented. these are primarily areas in the east and south of the country. it is not clear at this point what public opinion may be in cities like kharkiv and mariupol.
4. independence movements should have been organized in these regions, first, and declarations of autonomy should have preceded any action. only then is a movement of russian forces justified.
5. the area of kiev (and i'm not interested in stupid arguments about correct transliterations from cyrillic) is one of the few regions where nationalist linguistic ukrainian sentiment is very strong, and where this kind of action is not justified. outside of repelling an actual attack, it is almost impossible for me to imagine a justification for russian action on the city of kiev, itself.
now, if you're incredibly cynical and want to be an overt realist about the whole thing, you can argue that this is just a stupid waste of time, and in some sense i can see your point. but, the russians need to be thinking long term, and need to be thinking in terms of control.
as far as i can tell, it seems like vlad lost his patience, and that's bad news in a lot of ways.
the russians have a limited time window in which they can pull back and still do this right. but, the longer they stay, the more they're required to occupy areas that don't want them, rather than slowly annex areas that do want them. and, the longer the occupation, the worse the reaction.
14:30
there are areas of ukraine where the russians will be met as liberators.
but, this should have been worked out beforehand.
14:32
by announcing sanctions after the recognition of the eastern breakaway regions, did biden play his hand too eagerly?
it seems like biden was trying to draw putin into ukraine and start a war, and it seemed like putin was trying to avoid falling for it. russia's initial reaction was actually quite reasonable, given the scenario. but, then biden dropped sanctions on him, at the first possible opportunity, indicating that he was just looking for the first excuse.
then, biden no longer had any leverage whatsoever, because it was clear that he was going to place down sanctions, regardless of what russia actually did. then, why not exert maximum force, if the outcome is the same, anyways?
it's not entirely clear that the final outcome might have been different, but the general consensus amongst credible experts (ie. not the white house) is that this reaction is really unexpected from the russians, and must have been decided at the last minute. i mean, the russians had the option, clearly, but nobody expected it. putin seems to be reacting to the sanctions.
it's been a fundamental principle in geopolitics for decades that the russans are rational actors, even when the americans are not. biden consequently appears to have miscalculated, in egging him on, creating a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy.
he seems to have gotten what he wanted.
but, now what, gi joe?
now what, dhimmi joe?
16:49
well, what's the outcome here?
the west just lost ukraine. clearly.
constantiople is now going to be a flashpoint, as the russians resume their naval gazing.
16:56
i mean, say what you want, but biden clearly fucked this up rather badly.
maybe it's because he played his hand too soon, thinking it was the maximum possible outcome.
or, maybe it was from holding to indefensible positions in the first place.
but, it's a fail. clearly.
16:57
i need to remind people that neither canada nor the united states have any sort of treaty relationship with ukraine, and we are not at war with russia - unless you consider economic sanctions to be an act of war, in which case we've just declared war and are therefore the aggressor.
there is no fundamental reason why i or anybody else has to agree with my government's statements regarding the issue, but it's doubly so given that the state has no obligations and no interests in the matter. perhaps some politicians have private interests in the matter, but it would be inappropriate for them to use the state as tools to carry out their financial interests, which is no doubt what is happening both in canafa and the united states. powerful politicians in both countries have distinct conflicts of interest in ukraine, and should be excusing themselves from decision making, not levying sanctions to uphold those financial interests.
this is what happens when you let corruption take over government.
so, i will not even be finger-wagged, let alone silenced. if you don't like my views, i'd advise you move to ukraine and go get yourself shot. and, good riddance to you.
17:48
hey vlad...
if you're going to do this, can you blow up biden's investments for me, on the ground?
you can put my name on the bombs.
thanks.
19:35
can somebody explain to me why rt appears to be blocked in canada?
i demand access to russian media, immediately.
20:25
if i cannot access rt right now, it is proof that i live in an unfree society with a controlled media.
20:29
the rt youtube site is still up, but it's less useful:
tass is still up:
so is ria novosti ("sputnik"):
so is interfax:
so, if rt is down, it's something very specific.
there's lots of reasons a site may be down. but, it had better come up soon - or press freedom in canada should fall to somewhere between afghanistan and zimbabwe.
20:34
ok, i'm getting a skeleton.
https://www.rt.com/russia/550546-zelensky-nato-ukraine-neutrality/
i actually think it's getting too much traffic - a denial of service, but due to actual overload.
20:37
see, this is a rational reaction, but it's...
see, if you have to put your ally in a cage, he's not your ally. everybody told ukraine that it would come to this (although nobody expected this, exactly), and yet it held to it's foolish delusions. and, now, when forced to it's knees, it capitulates, but the russians cannot trust it. there will need to be russian weapons inspectors, etc.
the russians have created a mess, and i don't know how you get out of it, now. but, it's not by signing an agreement with a partner that you know you can't trust.
that's why this would have been so much more effective had there been actual independence movements on the ground. now, ukraine is just being forced to submit - and they might do it, but it's not what the russians want, and it won't create stability in the region.
20:45
so, i reviewed some legal stuff and i'll take a look at it next week.
unfortunately, my recording pc has begun to malfunction again, and this is after plenty of evidence suggesting that somebody was in here when i was grocery shopping, including having the sata ports swapped on my board.
i don't know what they did, but my device manager is no longer refreshing properly and my mouse is acting funny. a bios flash did not work, but sometimes it takes a few tries. and, i've noticed that turning the modem off helps, too - suggesting it's relaying a hidden wireless chip.
i can't prove any of this.
i've explained repeatedly that the machine is intentionally air gapped because i use it to make music, but the fucking retards just don't want to listen.
now, i was testing the machine to try to find a hardware fault, even though i know the issue is that the cops are messing with the machine when i'm gone. so, i don't want to reinstall the operating system, yet. but, that's the ultimate solution, if required.
instead, i'm going to have to start by going offline and flashing without a connection, and i might be offline for a few days, depending on the outcome.
22:54
friday, february 25, 2022
ok, that was a relatively quick fix.
but, i was searching the data drive via usb when i was doing the picture updates, and nothing crashed, which is a great sign. that was one of the things that was crashing. so, i've added a second stick of ram back in, and the machine is already a lot snappier.
i still haven't identified the problem, remember.
i'm going to finish the picture updates first, and then get to inri077.
2:55
what would happen if the russians decided to only ship oil & gas to china for now on?
3:57
if the russians are serious about going into kiev, it should fall immediately.
if they're pausing, it's because they want to work something out.
remember: the russians need to assimilate ukraine, not annihilate it. this is like iraq in a lot of ways, but it's also like the united states invading canada. the russians see the ukrainians as confused allies, as disgruntled friends. it would be in their self-interest to avoid leveling the city.
i'm surprised they went this far, but for thousands of strikes, a few hundred dead is a far better level of precision than american weapons.
4:01
i'm also not convinced that this is a larger scale attack than the american invasion of serbia, which was a land war, to counter a talking point.
also, nobody remembers the greek revolution, for some reason.
4:05
in terms of loss of life, the russians have a good ways to go to catch up to the nato bombing of serbia - they're only about 10% of the way there.
4:07
i'd like to urge the residents of kiev to not fight.
and, those that die should be recognized for their stupidity with posthumous darwin awards.
10:21
there is no glory in war, and nobody that dies defending the russian operation is a hero - they're just idiots for offing themselves, pointlessly.
10:31
when faced with overwhelming odds, those that defy them are not brave, they're dumb.
the rational thing to do is surrender.
fighting is stupid.
10:32
instead of dying for your country, let's imagine that there aren't any.
it isn't hard to do.
nothing to kill or die for.
and, no religion, too.
imagine all the people...
listen, i hope that as few people die as is possible, but no solidarity for ukraine, especially not if they're resorting to childish nationalism in the face of impossible odds.
if that is how they'd like to die, good riddance to them.
10:51
lay your arms down, ukraine.
it's not worth it.
10:58
i'm extremely pissed off that the government is making it so difficult to get access to tax forms this year.
i rely on those returns.
if the government is running a deficit, it should tax the elderly, not go after poor people.
17:52
yeah.
it seems to me like the russians are trying to avoid a direct attack on the city. that doesn't mean they won't do it, but what they want is the ukrainian leadership to behave rationally and surrender. it's easy to understand this.
i still don't know how they can leave afterwards, though.
something russia's talked about is federalizing the country, which means you might see it partitioned.
19:54
i mean, realize that when russia says it wants an independent ukraine, that does not mean crimea or the two eastern republics it just recognized.
it might not mean other areas, as well, perhaps including the coast and the industrial heartland east of the dnieper.
19:56
saturday, february 26, 2022
the last few days have really been up and down - eat, sleep, eat, sleep.
i'm eating well. i have an appetite. i've never gained weight, but i'm not losing weight.
i think it's actually partly that the temperature in here is the worst possible combination. it's too warm for a sweater, and too cold to not wear one, so i keep lying down to warm up. if the annoying draft from the windows being open and/or the doors opening upstairs would stop, it would help a lot in maintaining a warmer basement. i really don't like breezy weather - i like it still and humid and hot.
i'll have a write-up on the complete absence of winter this year here in southern ontario probably on tuesday, the ups and downs are not good for me - i can't stand it. i'd actually rather it just get cold and stay cold than have it jump 30 up and down by degrees every other day.
but, my iron levels are not encouraging, and i get it. i may have to go back to every day, but not until i check the levels next month.
at the least, i've caught up on my meal cycle; i was a day or so behind. and, the machine does seem to be back to "normal" after a flash with the modem off - something that is repeatedly demonstrable, and rather curious at that. for now, let's hope i can sit down and stay awake long enough to do something.
unfortunately, because i slept the last part of the week, i might not get as much done as i want before i have to look at legal stuff again next week.
i've looked into the tax situation and i've ordered a form, but i'm not interested in signing up for a third party company to use their software. there are far better ways for the government to do this.
1) it could just create fillable pdf forms. that would be simple and inexpensive.
2) it could let me download the package, rather than having to order it.
as it is, it does not appear that i can independently access the tax forms, and that's a very big problem. i have to convince somebody at the cra to give me a form in order to fill it out, which creates concerns around access. if there was some problem with the previous system of getting the forms at the post office, it should have been replaced with some other central depository, so people can independently get the forms of their own agency, rather than need to have a bureaucrat decide to send it.
i am actually not convinced that the forms that i ordered are going to get here (according to the government, they should have been sent in the first place), so i'm going to seek alternate methods to try to find a package.
1:20
ok, i at least found the forms:
but, i have to then print those forms and mail them, which is stupid. if i want to file online, i have to sign up with a "certified partner", which is just unnecessary red tape.
i should be able to just fill in the pdf, log into cra and upload the files.
i wonder if can kind of fudge it.
if i can't, i'll want to wait another week or so to let the package arrive. if it doesn't get here, i'll have to print it and mail it.
1:26
something else i could potentially try is a "community tax clinic".
i don't want them to do the taxes for me, but maybe they have a package for me.
1:47
there's a spot at the cra website to "adjust" your taxes, but they won't let you "file" them.
i'm going to do it anyways and see what they do.
1:51
"We will not put down weapons, we will defend our state," Zelenskiy said.
this man is a fool. but, he is also the country's head of state.
see, and this is the problem, and has been the problem for decades - the utter foolishness of the ukrainian position.
but, mr zelensky, take heed - nobody will come to your aid, and it is not because they fear the russians, but because they question your cause. ukrainian nationalism is at best dumb and at worst racist. there is no convincing basis for ethnic difference. nobody sees you as anything other than a province of the russian empire.
i mean, the siberians have a better claim to autonomy.
but, history is a clear lesson - these people will not behave rationally. if the plan was to surround kiev and face the government with a choice between destruction and submission, and have them rationally choose submission, it was rooted in the error of ukraine being a rational actor. ukraine is not and has never been a rational actor, and the russians should have known better than to assume they would be.
the russians should have focused on partitioning the country on a piecemeal basis. now that they've made the mistake of sending in forces to try to force the government to capitulate, they have the choice between partitioning the country with force and getting bogged down in an endless occupation.
the ukranians are, unfortunately, so irrational that they would rather be destroyed. and, the last thing the russians want is images of bombers blowing up kiev.
siege warfare does not exist in the modern world, and the idea of starving them out is not actionable.
what they're going to have to do is parachute in and just take over, and it's going to look awful, but they've made their bed.
2:16
remember: while the media is focusing on kiev, and the russians are clearly attempting to put pressure on the government, the areas that the russians are actually interested in and potentially intend to actually hold are in the south and east of the country.
if the russians can parachute into kiev, they can probably deal with dissent via police operations. but, they'll need to pull out, one way or another.
they may not pull out of the south and east and, as stated, it's not entirely clear how the people that live there would view that outcome. there would no doubt be some very supportive and some very opposed, but the question as to whether the majority of the population is passively supportive or passively opposed is not clear.
5:04
likewise, while the media is focused on reaction from england and france (as though it's 1855.), and the position of the turks is important but relatively obvious, there are two countries i am more concerned about that are perhaps pivotal in the development of outcomes over the next several years, namely hungary and romania.
viktor orban is a wildcard here. he seems to be stating a preference for neutrality, but he's both reliant on nato funding for his own military (which he relies on for power) and ideologically more in tune with the russians. he has unusually good relations with putin.
romania is another question mark, in the long run. while there is currently a liberal party in power, it has historically leaned towards strong-arm dictators, and it has a long and complex history with the russians. the current party in power may not accurately reflect popular sentiment in romania, and a movement of russian troops on to their border may open questions as to what side they're actually on.
this is important because the russians have much more friendly nations in the balkans, potentially including the greeks, than they do in the baltic regions, or in the western part of the slavic-speaking regions. hungary & romania, together, are a potential weak part of the nato alliance, and areas where russian operatives may have some success on the ground.
that said, the bluntness of the actions in ukraine opens up the question as to whether the russians are going to be smart or stupid about this, in the long run. they ought to realize that they win this by jostling for control on the ground, but they seem to think it's a waste of time. and, they'll lose if they insist upon that.
5:45
when yugoslavia broke apart in the 90s, it created six countries, as per the federal boundaries that existed:
- slovenia
- croatia
- bosnia
- serbia
- macedonia
- montenegro
that is, yugoslavia was a federation of these six countries, which became independent in 1991. there was a war in the late 90s that led to kosovo succeeding from serbia, but you should understand that that is still not recognized by all countries, that kosovo is still considered a part of serbia in a large part of the world.
this is a potential model of what the russians, i think, want to do in ukraine. they've already split crimea off, and it's not clear if they wish to annex the two eastern republics or not.
a federated ukraine might consist of a polish or ruthenian north-west, a ukrainian-russian north-east, and a primarily russian south-west, in addition to the previously mentioned lost territories. and, in the end, that means "ukraine" becomes a region in the west of the country, while these other regions slowly develop autonomy and independence.
and, it might result in a civil war inside ukraine, as we saw in yugoslavia, as factions fight for control.
the russians were humiliated by their inability to control events in serbia. the west should be less humiliated by it's inability to control events in ukraine.
6:23
i've stated before that i've never formed a clear opinion on what happened in yugoslavia. i was quite young, and what i actually remember about it was becoming cognizant, for the first time, that dystopian media lies weren't just in books and movies, that they existed in real life, too.
i think there were bad guys on both sides, and i think there were lies all around. what's not clear to me is if the nato actions were justified in the face of atrocities occurring in every direction, if it really made sense to say these bad guys were worse than those ones, or if it was just a cynical pretext. i mean, it was a cynical pretext, regardless. but, the fuckers got me with isis - whatever the actual motives were, isis was simply too brutal to allow to exist. it had to be annihilated. questions of actual motives were secondary to the requirement to act, something i can't say i've supported at any time before that, as far back as world war two. they were a uniquely vicious threat. i'm not saying that milosevic did or didn't meet the bar, what i'm saying is i've never actually decided, given that (1) he may have been less bad than the people we were supporting and (2) it's not actually clear that everything, or even most of, what he was accused of even happened at all. so, if it was bad, even with questionable facts, was it bad enough? and, were the guys we supported even worse?
the same sorts of questions are likely to become apparent in ukraine. there are legitimate nazis fighting on behalf of ukrainian nationalism. that's not to say everybody in ukraine is a nazi, but the glorification of nazism is a central component of contemporary ukrainian nationalism. there's a video of zelensky on the ground today chanting fascist slogans. and, no, his ancestry isn't relevant, in context; hitler's primary target was the russians, who he considered inferior half mongoloids that needed to be depopulated to allow for lebensraum, and not the jews, who were more of a minor annoyance. the thrust of the actual war was an attempted russian genocide. the holocaust was really incidental to that point. but, i'm just getting the point across about the subtlety of it - if the russians end up largely fighting white supremacists on the actual ground, which is likely to be the actual fact, and they're doing so in pre-emptive self-defense, which is largely actually true, what do you make of how to justify the fighting, in the face of a flimsy application of article 7?
i've been clear i'm not happy about this, and that i think it's a mistake, but i've stopped short of a condemnation. and, i know that if we start flooding the country with weapons, it is going to end up in the hands of nazi militias, partly because that's what happened in 2014.
there were aspects of the yugoslav civil wars that i could at least understand. the turks were clearly the historical bad guys in the region, and they clearly occupied a people that weren't happy about it, in clearly brutal and vicious ways, including the horrific janissary system, which kidnapped children, brainwashed them and then sent them to fight their own families. the conflict that developed, which accused one side of collaborating with the turks, is comprehensible. but, other parts of the conflict, which put speakers of the same language and adherents of the same religion against each other based on trivial denominational differences, were hard to grasp, and remain difficult to sort out, in hindsight.
i would expect the same kind of baffling conflicts to erupt in ukraine, as speakers of mutually intelligible dialects turn against each other based on denominational trivialities, and some ethnic minorities end up caught up in it.
whether the west bears responsibility for erecting this jenga tower, or putin does for toppling it, will be debated for many years. and, i may not decide for some time, if at all.
6:46
i don't think we should let outcomes weigh too heavily in the analysis.
6:47
the blunt truth is really that there weren't actually good guys or bad guys in yugoslavia, so much as there were aligned and non-aligned interests.
the same thing is likely to be the truth in ukraine, meaning that you're not likely to get anywhere trying to figure out who is wrong and who is right.
you need to be cynical from the start, and not be blinded by propaganda from either side.
7:18
ok, my taxes are done and put aside. let's hope i don't have to spend $20 on full colour copies. i'll decide next week.
it's time to eat again.
7:19
i'm going to throw this out there.
it's deductive, but i think it's rational.
a few weeks ago, the white house suggested that the russians might go to the length of prefilming events, hiring actors, etc to frame a narrative in a specific way, and were widely ridiculed for it. i don't see any evidence of such things. but, remember my theory of reverse projection, regarding western media and russia: if western media accuses russia of something nefarious, it is always because the western media or intelligence is doing it, itself.
so, then, is it possible that much of the media we're receiving from ukraine is pre-filmed, and the narrative is pre-recorded? well, remember: zelensky is a major movie star in ukraine. this isn't like reagan or trudeau, it's more like arnold or stallone. he played the ukrainian president on tv.
it could very well be that he's just a politician, and he's just acting like one, but this really is coming off like a propaganda production, along the lines of rambo or rocky. no, really. review some of the media now that i've pointed it out. the dialogue seems oddly pre-written to emphasize a certain kind of drama.
i couldn't imagine i could prove this. i mean, if it's true, it means we've gone full dystopia, and it's no longer possible to differentiate between fact and propaganda, no matter how hard you try. it means the reports are being manipulated. it means the truth is impossible to obtain.
but, my maxim has been correct in the past.
it will take time to evaluate this idea.
9:27
it could very well be that we have no idea what's really happening, and we have no potential means of finding it out.
9:31
you shouldn't believe everything you read.
but, if this is true, it would suggest that the multiple videos from kiev the last few days must have been pre-recorded.
9:39
see, maybe trump is "confused".
or, maybe he doesn't realize that we're not getting privileged secret service reports like he is.
?
9:50
have the chinese turned on the russians so quickly?
i've been trying to get this point across for a long time, because westerners don't understand it. you hear this china-russia thing all of the time, and it's rooted in the error of treating the chinese like they're europeans.
we might not realize it, but a military alliance is actually a peculiarly white european concept that comes specifically out of feudalism, and the marriage alliance. even in the classical world, alliances were seen as pretty temporary. our indigenous americans did not really understand such things, and china fundamentally simply does not see itself or the world around it in those terms. to the chinese, there is china and there is the world outside china - much as the greeks saw themselves as one entity, and the barbarians as another. china may work with the non-chinese if it is in the interests of the chinese, but the premise of an alliance with a non-chinese actor makes no sense to the chinese, who operate strictly on self-interest. china would see no inconsistency with signing an agreement with russia on tuesday and discarding it on the next thursday, if it's self-interest in the matter were to change. it will sacrifice for itself, but it will not sacrifice for another. such is the logic of how it sees itself, in a civilizational context; to china, it is china v the rest of the world, and the non-chinese are really just a series of inferior races that will be assimilated or discarded over time. this is a fascist ideology to it's core.
the russians have withdrawn from the east, to fight ukraine. they did so thinking they had signed friendship agreements with the chinese, and their eastern flank would be safe.
but, that is to treat the chinese like europeans, which is wrong. the chinese will merely see a weakness to be exploited, and will do so for maximum self-advantage.
do not be surprised if the chinese quickly seize large amounts of asia, and do so very fast.
10:14
this is a historical fact.
it's not controversial.
the holocaust was an event that occurred during world war two, but world war two was not about the holocaust. in fact, the extent of the holocaust was not understood until after the war was over.
rather, the german invasion of eastern europe was strictly about depopulating the region of slavs, to make space for germans to move in.
it's the most basic, cursory fact about world war two that you could possibly know.
in hitler's mind, the russians (in fact all of the slavs) were an inferior race full of useless eaters that were just occupying land that was meant for germans. that was why the invasion of russia happened, and why the germans sought maximum destruction of everything - they intended to burn everything down, kill everybody and rebuild from scratch. it's why more than 25 million russians were killed, which massively depopulated huge stretches of eastern europe.
11:28
the british empire did not declare war on germany to stop the holocaust, it declared war to attempt to stop germany from expanding eastwards.
and, hitler didn't invade poland to catch the jews, he was seeking to expel the slavs from lands he considered rightfully german.
11:31
from 1939-1945, roughly 25 million russians were killed by nazis forces. this does not include other slavs like poles and ukrainians.
in that period, from 1933--1945, roughly 6 million jews were killed.
but, to get a handle on how many russians died, consider this - in 2022, the combined populations of ontario and quebec, total, is roughly 23 million.
as mentioned, the nazi aim was simply to kill everybody, burn everything and move in. to deny this was a genocide is to deny reality, and is a position that no academic would uphold. any competent historian would agree that the nazis intended to exterminate the slavs entirely.
and, you don't need a math degree to realize that 25 > 6. in fact, 6*4 < 25.
12:03
russia: we're strictly targeting military infrastructure and not interested in population centres. we don't intend to take cities and don't want to occupy the country.
nato: the fact that the russians have not yet seized any cities indicates the operation has failed.
listen - the credible sources said they'd never do this. but, i mean, we'll see what happens.
the russians have now indicated that they did indeed pause, seeking negotiations, and are claiming that those negotiations have failed and that operations will now accelerate. we'll see what that means, but it doesn't sound good.
again: i don't believe in morals. i believe in logic. and, everything else aside, the ukrainian leadership needs to take responsibility for the outcome, if it chooses to resist, in the face of such odds. such irrational behaviour is neither brave nor heroic, but reckless and stupid.
17:56
no, i don't see any reason why i should take a side in an east slavic civil war.
i would, in line with my generally anti-war politics, oppose nato intervention, of any sort, including sending arms. that is the proper libertarian position on the matter.
but, i mean, if you want to volunteer, good riddance to you.
i would stand against the russophobia and bellicose pro-war propaganda coming from western capitals. that is consistent with my politics. "standing up" for ukrainian nationalism is not remotely consistent with my politics.
19:05
see, i would label these as "right-wing protesters", myself.
if we start seeing russian targeting of civilian infrastructure, i might change my mind, somewhat. but, as it is, they're just arguing in favour of nationalism, and nationalism has no place on the left.
20:10
what is the extent of us and nato involvement in the situation in ukraine?
23:17
sunday, february 27, 2022
just to get out ahead of this, because i know it's coming...
if i reject government mask mandates on self-ownership grounds, am i not contradicting myself in supporting bans on religious symbols in public spaces?
the answer is that i'm not. you might think i was if you decided to reduce the idea of wearing a religious symbol or not to a personal decision, but the crux of the argument in banning religious symbols is the rejection of the premise that religiously-mandated face coverings are a personal choice. rather, i would argue that religiously-mandated face coverings are worse than government-mandated face coverings, because at least the government has a questionably valid reason. the religion is merely operating on oppression and authority.
the correct logic is that if i oppose mandated medical masks when the reason is flimsy, but at least discernible, it would follow that i would have to oppose mandated religious coverings as well, because they provide for no good reason at all; if the burden of proof is not being met by the medical community, it's certainly not even close to being met by these religious corporations.
now, you might counter with arguments about "religious freedom", and i'll acknowledge the existence of the constitution, but i'm ultimately going to reject the premise as bourgeois. religion is not a right, it's a means of control; humans don't freely choose religion, they're forcibly coerced into it.
so, that's the reason that your attempt to catch me in a contradiction fails - i reject the idea that religion is a personal choice.
9:24
i need to repeat that this talking point of "biggest war in europe since 1945" is flat out wrong.
if you don't want to include the greek war that came out of world war two, serbia was certainly a much large conflict - and has a lot in common with this one.
i don't expect anybody to listen, but let it be written.
13:43
monday, february 28, 2022
so, there is apparently a ukrainian "delegation" (what is it, the dark ages?) headed to belarus via...poland.
if you look at a map, that's a very long detour. kiev is a few kilometres from the belarussian border.
so, are they in poland?
are they in lvov, as the russian media suggests?
i don't want to present the perception that i'm reading russian media and believing it, but i find it astounding that people will turn to cnn at a time like this and expect to get useful information. the fact is that they're not even trying - it's all "personal interest" stories, designed to turn your brain off and make you pick a side. well, i mean, maybe they are trying in that sense, but i think it's less nefarious than some others may portray. i mean, pull out the chomsky, right? it's less that there'a some centralized bureaucracy in wahsington, and more that the people doing the job know what their self-interest is.
regardless, it's clear enough that we're supposed to root for the abandoned blond children in kiev that are being harassed by the mean russian mongrels, and i'd bet that the narrative doesn't even have to be directed from the whitehouse, because the latent russophobia is inherently cultural. but, i'm not even interested in that right now, i just want to know where to find useful information - and i know it's not cnn, and i know it's not rt either, even if i'd suggest that rt has a better track record than cnn, going back many years.
i hope that the idea i'm trying to get across is clear, which is that i'm neither pro-ukrainian nor pro-russian but somewhat of a neutral observer; i'm not pushing this propaganda or that, but trying to be skeptical about the issue. i'm not telling you that i know what's going on and what's going to happen, so much as i'm pointing out that i don't feel it's really possible to know what's going on.
back in 2014, vice news sent a reporter to the donbass region named simon ostrovsky. he was kidnapped by somebody - i think western agents - and replaced by a downing street bot, but his reporting on the ground was immensely useful to getting an actual understanding of what was happening, because he wasn't aligned with either government. he was just a dude on the ground, without any really clear bias, and he just explained what he saw. great. we're going to need another ostrovsky before we're able to put together any sort of clear picture, because we can't trust either government.
for now, i need to repeat a few observations in summary, as this mess seems to be transitioning into a new phase:
1) it doesn't seem like the information that western media is presenting is "live". large amount of it seem to be pre-recorded.
2) the messaging is rather clearly that we're supposed to identify with the oppressed white blond ukrainians, who are being bullied by the evil mongrel mongoloid russians. this is a centuries-old narrative in the west that has strong cultural parallels to the antisemitic motifs, and overlaps with it in the period of bolshevik revolution (and, in fact, earlier than that, too). i wish i could remember the author of this massive history of europe i read when i was in high school, which belonged to my stepmother's father before he died, but i lent the book to a friend and never got it back. the book was written quite some time ago, and narrated european history only up until the start of world war one. maybe it was written in the 20s, then. but, it had an entire section devoted to anglo-saxon russophobia, going back to the hanseatic league. the author very convincingly made the argument that russophobia - and he used the exact term - is inherently embedded in anglo-saxon culture, which has this irrational fear of being overrun by inferior mongoloids.
3) i suspect the americans, specifically, are operating in the south of ukraine. but, as trump said, you're not supposed to know about it.
4) the russians consequently seem to have fallen into a trap that is deeper than i suggested previously. it seemed to me that the white house was trying to draw them into a vietam or afghanistan like quagmire; in fact, it seems to have been more of an ambush, and they seem to have walked right into it.
5) for that reason, ukrainian claims of russian casualties may be less inflated than good sense would think is obvious - the "unexpected resistance" being encountered would seem to be nato forces, lying in wait.
6) if the russians intended to take any cities, it's still not obvious that they did. it would seem as though the stated russian intent of blowing up military targets is largely upheld by what they're doing, which involves avoiding cities and large population centres.
i can't prove any of this, and it's just the point - neither side would publish this, if it were true. the americans would be carrying out an undeclared war that they'd want to keep from congress, at the least, and the russians would be too embarrassed to admit they walked into it. we would need an ostrovsky to show us the truth.
if, in the end, the russians actually do what they've said they wanted to do - which is drive some tanks around for a while, shooting at airports, and then go home - then i might criticize the wisdom of the action, but would ultimately refrain from condemning it. the response from western capitals - which is to send more weapons rather than negotiate - is just proof that the russians were correct in assessing the nature of the threat on their border. if, however, they start shooting up cities and hunkering in for an occupation, particularly west of the dnieper, they will have made a fatal mistake that will slowly unravel them.
i think they should have done this slowly and methodically. as it is, the rash action has undone many years of careful work.
this is one analysis, and it's deductive. it may be partially or wholly correct, but that's not the point. the point is that the information being fed to us is not reliable, and may be being entirely manipulated. now is the worst time to trust the state - now is the time to be the most skeptical.
0:40
so, i got nothing at all done this weekend. i tried to sit down and get started over and over again and just couldn't get over the exhaustion. like, i slept for something like 55 hours this weekend - and spent the few hours i was awake doing basic things like laundry, dishes, eating, showering...
my workstation is set up the way i set it up on thursday. i haven't touched it.
in the process, i may have set off a caffeine withdrawal, which would no doubt make things worse, so i'm going to sit myself down and finish this coffee. i mentioned the temperature in here is frustrating, and the tendency of the property owner to frequently open and close the windows and doors [he claims his dog goes in and out, and i can at least understand when he has kids up there, but i think that the female cop that frequently stays there is in truth going in and out to smoke] is certainly not helping, but i know the issue is the iron.
i've taken some iron. i'd better absorb it. what else can i do?
as stated repeatedly, there's no sign of any bleeding, and i've already ruled out cancer (for now. one must continually check for cancer, and it is always possible that it might spontaneously occur. like most people alive today in western industrialized countries, i will, in fact, probably die of cancer, eventually.). if anything, i'm gaining weight, but i'm thin and always have been. i'll admit that i had some loose bowel movements last week, but it's normal for me this time of year, because i get dehydrated from the heaters. i increased my water intake, and the issue cleared itself up.
i know that the physical exercise explanation is seen as sort of confusing, and i get it - where does it go? well, let's be clear thinking about this: if our bodies had perfect iron recycling, we wouldn't need any at all. i don't menstruate. i don't spontaneously bleed. so, why do i need any iron at all, then - let alone 10-15 mg a day? the answer is that your muscles are constantly bleeding, in and outside of your stomach. it does make sense to think that i might be rupturing blood vessels when walking 50 km at a time, much of it with heavy loads on my back. i don't want to reduce my physical exercise to save my iron, so i need to take lots of iron. i just needed to experiment with it to find the right balance.
right now, it seems like i'm not getting enough, given the amount of walking i did through february, so i need to take more. it's also worth pointing out that it seems like walking uses more iron than bicycling, and i get more anemic in the winter, for that reason. i should make sure that i take iron before and after going for long walks.
i don't know if the fundamental problem is extreme iron use or extremely poor absorption, but it seems to be some combination of things, and it doesn't seem to be life-threatening, so much as it seems to be incredibly annoying. the only treatment or cure is just to take more iron.
but, i really want these sleepy weekends to end...
for now, let's just get this coffee going and start at it.
1:48
i'm going to wait until early in the week to do my monthly cleaning, but i'm going to go ahead with my write-up on the non-winter in southern ontario.
i made a claim in the fall that we'd avoid subzero days all winter. how close did i get, literally speaking?
well, these were the high temperatures for november-february:
november had 0 subzero days.
rounding -0.4 up to 0, december had 1 subzero day, and it was a weird day that never warmed up, which is the pattern that defined the winter:
january had 22 subzero days, but we'll get back to this.
february has had 13 subzero days, and the forecast for today is actually now changed to 0.
march currently has no subzero days in the forecast, and it would be unlikely that any will happen.
now, let's introduce a concept of margin of error, which i will state outright is a gloss. but, i'm doing it to get a point across. if i claim we'll get no subzero days, and we get a lot of days where the high is around -2 to -3, we have to look at a conceptual basis of the winter not entering freezing temperature zones, and approach the technical question of the temperature being above 0 or not as somewhat arbitrary. we also have to realize that we're looking at one reading at the airport in windsor, and that temperatures around the city will fluctuate by a few degrees, so that margin of error is required to get a rigorous reading.
if the temperature is -2 at the airport in windsor, there's a good chance it's +1 on lake erie, in leamington.
so, what is a good margin of error? 1? 2? 3? 4? 5?
let's start at three.
then,
1) november still had 0 subzero days (+/- 3 degrees)
2) december had 0 subzero days (+/- 3 degrees)
3) january now had 13 subzero days (+/- 3 degrees, with rounding)
4) february now had 7 subzero days (+/- 3 degrees, with rounding)
5) it is unlikely that we will have subzero days in march or april
what if the margin of error is four degrees?
1) november still had 0 subzero days (+/- 4 degrees)
2) december still had 0 subzero days (+/- 4 degrees)
3) january now had 12 subzero days (+/- 4 degrees, with rounding)
4) february now had 5 subzero days (+/- 4 degrees, with rounding)
5) it is unlikely that we will have subzero days in march or april
and, what if it is 5 degrees?
1) november still had 0 subzero days (+/- 5 degrees)
2) december still had 0 subzero days (+/- 5 degrees)
3) january now had 6 subzero days (+/- 5 degrees, with rounding)
4) february now had 3 subzero days (+/- 5 degrees, with rounding)
5) it is unlikely that we will have subzero days in march or april
so, while the difference between 3 and 4 is not large, the difference between 4 and 5 is substantive. rather than present a clear answer to the question as to whether -4 or -5 is an appropriate cutoff, i'll point out that this appears to be a strong boundary between "cold" and "not cold".
for the sake of brevity, let's discard november, december, march and april and focus strictly on january and february.
now, let's ask this question: how were the subzero days distributed?
for a margin of 3,
1) january had a two day period (6+7), a one day period (10), a one day period (15) and then an eleven day period (20-30) in which nine of the days were below -3 (with rounding)
2) february had two three day periods (3-4-5), (13-14-15) and one questionable one day period (25, at -3.5).
for a margin of 4,
1) the only change for january is that the eleven day string now has eight days below -4 (with rounding)
2) for february, the second three day period becomes two days and the questionable day is discarded.
for a margin of 5,
1) there is one cold day on the 7th, one cold day on the 15th, one cold day on the 20th, a string of two cold days on the 25th and 26th and one more cold day on the 29th,
2) there is one cold day on the 5th and a string of two cold days on the 13th-14th.
i want to bring your attention back to the day i posted about in mid february.
=====
i will do a write-up on the last six weeks of weather when we get through this last cold dip, which will be some time next week, but i want to show you the forecast for the next three days in windsor.
this is tues-wed-thurs.
you'll notice two things about this.
1) this is over a 20 degree temperature difference, which might be normal in calgary, but is very unusual here.
2) the temperature increases all day on tuesday, continues to increase after the sun has gone down, increases over night on wednesday, keeps increasing when the sun comes up, hits a maximum at around midnight (when there's no sun), and starts a slow decline all day on thursday, which accelerates when the sun comes up.
this isn't at all unheard of in canadian winters, as warm patches of air will periodically wander north at any point of the winter. but, what you're seeing there has been consistent here since late december. the normal expectation of having the temperature increase as the sun comes up and decrease as the sun comes down has been all but jettisoned here all winter.
that's what i'm going to draw attention to, the fact that we're currently existing underneath a really epic atmospheric struggle, where very cold air is literally in a tug of war with atlantic warmth.
it has refused to get cold here for more than a few hours at a time, so my prediction was actually alarmingly close. but the swings have also been unusually dramatic, and the result has been that we've had these half day teases of winter that result in mixes of rain and snow, without it actually triggering into anything resembling any sort of winter.
it's been the fake winter that tried it's hardest to be a real winter and failed.
=========
taking the above into consideration, while recognizing that we have had no discernible streaks of cold weather, puts the situation into context. this is really what defined the winter - a handful of very short-lived bursts of cold air that were not able to take hold, and were instead pushed back by warmth from the atlantic. we at the very most had that ten day streak of moderately cold weather, from jan 20th-30th, but it really wasn't very cold.
if my claim was that we'd have 0 subzero days, i clearly overshot. we clearly had a number of subzero days, and clearly even had a very small number of what could be called "cold" days - around 10, give or take, in total.
but, the claim was rooted in observing that the dominant factors controlling the winter here are changing and, even if i overshot the outcome, i got the premise correct.
future modelling in the great lakes region is going to have to take into consideration the increasing climatic effects of a rapidly warming atlantic. if i was slightly off this year, i may not be next year.
and, i understand that my claim was outrageous - that's why i made it.
3:38
another stat worth pointing to:
number of days where the high is below -10: 0.
3:46
regarding the spring.
the models are focusing on la nina, again. i don't think that la nina will dominate the spring, as it didn't have much of an effect on the winter, either. these are pre-climate change models that need to be torn up and redone from scratch.
more important is to note that we will have an early break up of the polar vortex this year, due to a sudden stratospheric warming, which happens when the sun starts increasing it's output. to be clear: this is more of a magnetic effect than an effect of "total solar irradiance". but, the sum result is that a stronger sun will lead to an earlier spring:
https://www.severe-weather.eu/global-weather/polar-vortex-warming-split-2022-usa-europe-forecast-fa/
this, combined with record warmth in the atlantic, should lead to an early lifting of the jet stream, which should keep the cold air out of southern ontario for most of the spring. any wandering breakages of the polar vortex should be easily annihilated by atlantic warmth.
expect an early spring and a hot summer.
4:16
the climate has changed.
meteorologists need to stop consulting old models and start working on new ones.
4:18
that article is great, actually.
send that article to your friends.
4:26
i've noticed that the western press has added an extra y to the name 'zelensky'.
https://www.militarytimes.com/flashpoints/ukraine/2022/02/27/russian-troops-enter-ukraines-2nd-largest-city-of-kharkiv/
that should probably be correctly read as "zelensky, why?".
4:47
they seem to legitimately be concerned about the potential ability of ukraine to produce nuclear weapons.
due to soviet-era advances, much of it from the soviet equivalent of project paperclip, which was itself intended to stop nazi scientists from falling into soviet hands, the ability of ukraine to produce a nuclear weapon is under little doubt. ukraine is in a list of countries that includes germany, sweden and canada that would have little difficulty producing a weapon, if they wanted one.
i think the question as to whether nato itself would allow such a thing is more open.
frankly, i think the russians are missing out on an opportunity for collaboration with the west on the issue. conversely, the more russia attacks, the more convincing that the argument for deterrence is.
ukraine consequently finds itself in a similar position as iran, in that it may be accused of building a weapon, in the face of a rather naked threat to it - and that it's detractors make ever more apparent with every threat against it. if ukraine's argument for nuclear deterrence was weak previously, it is much stronger now.
that doesn't make it any more likely that the americans would allow for it, though. far more likely is that the americans may want to position weapons in ukraine. and, note that weapons have been positioned in turkey, in germany and in the baltics - that is a feasible threat.
but, the russians said they were concerned about this, and they're following through on it.
4:59