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, march 1, 2022
so, yesterday was much better, but i crashed halfway through eating my eggs and slept for over 12 hours, in total. it was actually a pretty long day, though - about 30 hours. those are the days i like and want to reassert as the norm.
i don't know if it was mostly the coffee or mostly the iron, but i'm going to double up on the iron until the next test and then start over again. as mentioned, the weather has turned over, and it could hit even 20 degrees here this weekend, already. we really haven't had a cold day here since the end of the second week of february. my part came in last week, so i might be able to get back out on my bike again this weekend.
what i wanted to do yesterday was finish my picture archive, and i have definitely updated it substantially, from early 2016 up until mid-2017:
about mid-evening, i realized that i didn't have as many pictures from the period since the vlogs temporarily stopped until now as i thought. there's some possibly that somebody might have deleted the files, which is just another example of data in my space getting corrupted or disappearing. so, i was going to have to read my external drive where i have them kept to understand this, which is a bit of a problem.
i have three computers running where i'm sitting. one is an old 90s laptop running xp, the other is a half-broken out-of-service chromebook (as if that matters) and the third is my recording pc, which is running xp. this particular drive is 2 tb and was formatted in windows 7, which means it cannot be read in xp. but, i don't have the video drivers for the avi format that the camera uses on my chromebook. so, what's the answer?
i decided to try to boot the recording pc from my laptop hard drive, but it didn't boot, due to it experiencing the weird boot sector issue that i think is the result of a cia virus hiding somewhere in my laptop. i was able to format the partition and install vista to it, which is a better choice for this older pc. i got some pics for july and august pulled out before i crashed.
i didn't want to spend too much time on this, which is the story of my life, and i need to get some court stuff done this week, so it's frustrating that finding a workaround for this ate up most of my night, when i wanted to be spending it getting the pictures up. but, i'll be eating away at it for the night, as well, while i'm cleaning, as it's the start of the month.
i will need to switch focuses to court stuff by around noonish.
and, i hope it's another long day.
20:33
it's actually kind of startling how similar the images out of kiev are to the images out of charlottesville.
listen, i know that the western media wants you to think the russians are targeting civilians, but there just isn't evidence of it, and, if anything, the way the russians are conducting this tactically seems to uphold their narrative, rather than the west's.
but, without independent media on the ground, we can't know what's happening, and none of us should pretend we do.
22:38
wednesday, march 2, 2022
so, the western media is claiming the russians are invading kiev and pushing little old ladies into oncoming traffic as they do it, but they've been saying that every morning for days and it never seems to happen.
i wish i could find some good sources reporting on this from the ground, because kharkov is the one northern city that it actually makes sense for them to try to liberate. this is a russian speaking city that is close to the border and has some strategic value for the russians, if only because it takes it away from the ukrainians as a staging area.
it's not remotely clear what side the people in the city are on. it should be obvious that the presence of thugs shooting guns - whoever they are, and whoever is paying them. i mean, they could be anything from blackwater mercenaries to secret american troops to, yes, local vigilante groups with dubious racial politics. - doesn't say much about what the people actually want, regardless of who wins the fight, in the end. while there will be some strongly in favour and some strongly opposed, kharkov should, in theory, broadly see a russian annexation as a liberation process, even more so than most of the south, which seems to be falling into russian hands fairly easily. for that reason, the media framing is sort of hard to take at face value, and i'm very curious to see footage from non-governmental agents on the ground.
who is shooting at the russians in kharkov?
1:43
frankly, i think that ten years old is old enough to be given agency to make autonomous decisions about one's own health.
it should neither be up to mom nor dad, but the child to make the choice.
12:02
ms. lich is a political prisoner being held on politically motivated charges.
i have every expectation that these charges will be dropped. in the interim, she must be granted bail.
12:14
no, i'm not telling you what's real and what isn't.
i don't know what's real and what isn't.
as usual, jello is the voice of reason. yes - a man that calls himself jello is our culture's voice of reason.
"i don't know, ask jello" - buzz osborne on the jelvins
18:58
i hope that any investigations by the icc are unbiased, but the organization has a reputation of being an arm of eu expansionism, and i strongly doubt it will be much more than a politicized propaganda operation.
the russians are currently not under the jurisdiction of the icc, having withdrawn their signature in 2016. that fact makes the discussion purely political.
conversely, several ngos, such as amnesty, have documented the occurrence of ukrainian war crimes in the donbas.
21:43
no decision by the icc would have legal force in russia, but it might make putin have difficulty travelling.
there are countries that george w. bush can't go to, although, i mean....i'd like to see somebody try it.....
21:49
to be clear: i'd like to see a balanced investigation, that documents abuses by all actors.
the icc won't produce this, it will provide a political pretext for eu expansion.
21:50
“At best they are naive, at worst they actively give succour to authoritarian leaders who directly threaten democracies. There is nothing progressive in showing solidarity with the aggressor,” Starmer wrote.
A Labour spokesperson said: “Keir Starmer has set out the position of the Labour party and that is the position we expect every Labour MP to follow.”
they don't even see the irony, do they?
22:05
thursday, march 3, 2022
one thing i can state clearly enough is that i'm not calling for an immediate russian withdrawal from ukraine, which seems to be the general position taken by various leftist factions.
i think the invasion was foolish, and i strongly suspect the russians ran into some kind of unexpected western force on the ground, which they were drawn in to fight. the russians fell for a trap.
further, it's unlikely that they can hold the whole country indefinitely, with nato support coming in under the table. so, withdrawal isn't about if but when.
but, i actually hope they complete the mission of demilitarizing the country, before they leave - i think a demilitarized ukraine is a net positive. and, if they can bomb a few of these nazi militias while they're at it, great.
if your goal is peace in the region in the long run, the ongoing military build up in ukraine is a path to an absence of peace. demilitarizing the country is a step that might or might not increase the likelihood of peace in the future, but the status quo was a march towards inevitable war, on terms far worse than this.
0:34
when one party tries to censor another, it is the one engaging in censorship that is untrustworthy and inevitably, always, lying.
3:58
i was hoping to have a long day, but i didn't get into the groove with the coffee, and i'm behind schedule, again.
3:59
to state the obvious: chrystia freeland is a walking, talking conflict of interest and should be excusing herself from any decisions made regarding canadian deployment to eastern europe, or sanctions against or other responses to russia.
while i understand that canadian oil may find itself in competition with russian oil, our general economic interests do not align with sanctions against russia and i am not interested in engaging in personal sacrifice to uphold the individual whims of the country's finance minister.
russia is a country of close proximity, with a similar geography and economy and with strongly overlapping cultural values. i would be interested in expanding canada's economic relations with russia, not restricting them.
the issue of ukraine is of no relevance to me in the matter, and should be of no relevance to any unbiased actor in government.
4:34
the fact that ukraine is not a nato ally aside, nato is an anachronism that has long held no purpose but to needlessly antagonize the russians, and the situation in ukraine is the result of that needless antagonism. nato should have been disbanded years ago, not expanded.
as a person that is no longer under 40, but not much older than it, i have no meaningful memory of the cold war or have any real understanding of it, on an emotional level. it's something i have to read about in a book in order to understand. i feel no cultural attachment to nato, and harbour no feelings of negativity towards the russians.
this is a conflict that belongs to an era before my time, and that i have no interest in relitigating.
in the end, this is but a distraction brought about by an out of touch old man fighting a war that has long ceased to exist. canada would be wise to look forwards, rather than backwards.
the conflict of the 21st century is between the forces of secularism and the forces of religion, and i expect canada to align with the forces of secularism.
4:52
i did not endorse mr. obama, i endorsed the green party. twice. i found mr. obama's pro-market rhetoric to be somewhat disconcerting, and, in the end, i found his economic policies to be too right of centre.
but, in hindsight, he seems like a lone contemporary forward thinking vision in a culture lost in stagnation, and the reason is no doubt generational. since clinton, obama is the sole non-boomer in charge of a country that can't get out of the 80s, and that fact is obvious in terms of his analysis.
i strongly suspect that support for nato right now is starkly generational, and would encourage polling to be done on the matter. i strongly doubt that many people my age or younger feel the remotest tinge of nostalgia for the cold war. but, we live in a culture driven by old men, and they are driving the behaviour of the state.
the boomers are not immortal - this existence is not literal but only figuratively hell, so that truth must hold. they will eventually die. and, they will be replaced.
this is what america should sound like in 2021, and will sound like in 2031, so take note of the date of 2012:
5:02
ukrainian politics during world war two were pretty complicated, and i actually wouldn't expect that ms. freeland is particularly well-informed about the topic.
there are two things that are true here:
1. yes, it's a fascist slogan.
2. but, she probably doesn't even really realize it.
it was a long time ago, now. freeland's family history would be more connected to the nazi-aligned nationalist movement in ukraine than most, but she likely has little concept of what her family actually did, or what actually happened in the name of ukranian nationalism. further, the fact that it existed in the context of a war between stalin and hitler - like spain - is not entirely irrelevant.
but, the distance in time is a factor because symbols and slogans lose their meaning when they become normalized and sanitized, even when their original meaning was absolutely, unquestionably toxic. it's a poor reflection of the character of ukrainian culture, but it is what it is.
spain is actually a good comparison, and it is better known in the west due to the cultural importance of hemingway and orwell. if you want a crude comparison, you can make it - the ukrainian nationalists ended up selling the country out, just as the spanish republicans did.
as difficult as the situation might have been, there were remnants of makhno's anarchist movement on the ground that represented a real opposition movement to both stalinism and nazism. the good guys were the green guard and they fought both the nazis and the stalinists, in addition to the nationalists.
freeland should be censured for this, surely, but outcomes must lie with the opinions of her constituents. again: it's a poor reflection of the character of the ukrainian people, but it looks worse than it is.
5:26
the anarchist black army (the "real socialists") was betrayed and slaughtered by the fake socialist, collectivist/right-wing leninist red army and what was left of it by the time of world war two was fairly minimal, but it was there and it was the faction that actual principled leftists rallied around.
these were bakuninist/kropotkinist socialists that were very tied to the local population and operated strictly on the power of popular support. this was the actual populist movement in the region, and you'll note it was centered right in the donbas - russian speaking both then and now.
anarchist ukraine is, nonetheless, more of a world war one thing than a world war two thing, and it was largely located in the donbas:
these were bakuninist/kropotkinist socialists that were very tied to the local population and operated strictly on the power of popular support. this was the actual populist movement in the region, and you'll note it was centered right in the donbas - russian speaking both then and now.
i'm not exactly suggesting that there may be the potential of a new anarchist movement in the region, so much as i'm pointing out that this is one of a few parts of the world where socialism is rooted in cultural norms. other regions would include catalonia, the kurdish regions and parts of mexico.
there's been a lot of theories about how we get to socialism, some of which bring in ideas about vanguards that guide the ignorant to some utopia. one of the things that makes anarchism a little different than those theories is that it realizes that socialism is impossible without the consent and the participation of the populace. for a socialist society to function, people have to want it to be socialist. that seems obvious, but the crux of marxist theory denies it's importance, which is a big part of the reason it never gets anywhere.
the region doesn't want to be ruled by kiev, which wants to enforce rules about language that would erase the region's cultural identity. the basis of the movement on the ground doesn't seem to be more than that. but, these are examples of people spontaneously coming together to govern themselves in what they call "people's republics". to suggest there isn't a little black army in that is to ignore history, or not know it.
what i'm getting at is that anything that sets up a system of self-governance in this region is helpful, even if it's not particularly revolutionary in scope. yet.
unlike most of europe, the donbas is culturally socialist and any length of self-governance will demonstrate that.
7:19
the reason masks were mandated was not to reduce personal harm - which would be unconstitutional, and not saved by an oakes test - but to try to reduce the spread. the science never supported such a thing, it was just a political cave into mass panic. it has stated on the health canada web site since day one that masks will not reduce the spread.
he surely knows that. so, why is he changing the goal posts?
because the politics have changed. now, we have people afraid to take their masks off. it's like we all woke up in algeria.
i am staunchly pro-science, but what i've learned from this catastrophe is that you can't let government make scientific decisions. the premise that politics will be put aside has been demonstrated as absolute bullshit, if you needed it demonstrated, if it wasn't obvious to you to begin with.
it would be much more useful to have councils of scientists operating at an arm's length from government, and the need for some process of democracy underlying decisions - rather than the dictatorship of the health czar - has become apparent.
19:58
there's an election in the summer. so, the conservatives want everything back to normal.
but, listen - that means you should enjoy the summer while it's here, and it's going to be a hot one, too.
bc is already planning how to reintroduce restrictions in the fall.
20:03
so, i lost the last few days...
i have to do legal stuff tonight, like now.
20:05
some time ago, i posted about how the historical boundaries in the area of eastern europe have been defined by the existence of large rivers. in roman times, these were the rhine and the danube, but it would be more reasonable to look at the vistula and danube, today.
while the russians insist they plan on pulling out - and i do believe them - it also seems as though they intend to take some areas on the periphery of ukraine, including some port cities and probably all of the black sea coast. this will likely render ukraine land-locked, which will block nato from access to russia up the many large rivers that flow into the black sea through ukraine.
but, part of the problem the russians have is that the border between russia and ukraine is essentially just a big field. you couldn't defend such a border - it is not a border, it is an administrative division, created by the soviets.
the russians appear to be avoiding any sort of direct confrontation in urban areas, including both kiev and kharkov. rather, i might expect them to move to some set of rivers or mountains, secure it and then move backwards. that's what they want, here - some kind of border, rather than an administrative division running through a field.
securing everything east of the dnieper may seem like an obvious choice, but there's two reasons this seems unlikely to me:
1) it would essentially dismantle the ukrainian state, which the russians insist they are not trying to do.
2) it may create more problems than it solves, in terms of defense. it would be giving nato a staging ground, in the sense of being able to drive right up to the border. the river is very wide, and if nato could take control of it, it could launch attacks into russia from it. so, you kind of have to move to the dniester, which would eliminate ukraine altogether, or pull substantially back.
if they are avoiding kharkov, it may be because it's west of the donets, which may be a better idea of what their aspirations are. they could potentially then annex the area south of the samara river (the eastern tributary of the dnieper), and east of the dnieper itself. they may likewise look for a western tributary of the dnieper, and then annex the area south of it, to the coast.
i could be wrong - they might be trying to secure the entire east bank, but it just doesn't seem consistent with what they're doing.
regardless, i would expect the new map to have physical boundaries as a border in place of administrative divisions. if the west of ukraine does not want to be in russia, then they must be let go of, but only on the condition that russia can erect defensible borders that reflect actual ethnic divisions in place of the existing ones, which do not.
21:17
and, i mean, sure - if they stop short of the dnieper, and erect a boundary some place east of it, you could see the russians pick off oblasts over the next 20 years, as they organize independence movements within them. that will ensure that the territories moving back into russia are doing so with popular support, and can be held, without costly guerrilla uprisings.
but, it just doesn't make any sense for them to think they can do this all at once and hold it.
ukraine is a lot smaller than russia, but it is far more densely populated.
population of european russia: 120 million
population of ukraine: 40 million
so, absorbing the entirety of ukraine would increase russia's population by about a third.
that's not invading granada, that's more like the american annexation of mexico. it's just too much to do all at once, it has to be done in phases, or it's going to create a cascade of resistance that will go on for decades.
21:46
friday, march 4, 2022
to be clear: yes, i agree that the use of article 7 by the russians is flimsy. i said that. that would mean i'd agree that the war is technically illegal.
but, just because something is illegal doesn't mean it isn't justified. there's long lists of illegal behaviours that are the right thing to do, in context.
whether what the russians are doing is justified will depend on the ends, not on the means. and, i'm going to withhold judgement for some time.
as mentioned: the world is better off with a demilitarized ukraine, and i have no sympathy for bombed out nazi paramilitaries. that is an oversimplification of the reality on the ground, but the complexities of it are not yet clear.
1:05
these witch doctors should be banned outright, not deregulated.
it's a sad reflection of canadian culture that this is even a topic being discussed. there's no place for this bullshit in the modern world.
1:24
yeah, that's just what we need - more half-literate, racist, right-wing white people.
just because they're blond doesn't mean they're useful. in fact....
but, the liberals seem to be uniquely stupid, in this regard. if they can't figure out that conservative brown immigrants don't like them very much, surely they can figure out that half-literate conservative white people don't like them much...?
send them to the 905 in toronto.
1:40
how many plane loads of yokels that'll think trudeau is a communist can they fly in over one day?
1:41
can we keep the educational requirements in place, at the very fucking least?
there's lots of educated ukrainians. we don't have to pick the dumb ones.
1:54
canada - where our standards are so low that we'll call you a racist for insisting on any.
1:55
i promise you that 90% of the people you fly in from ukraine will vote for maxime bernier, or worse.
2:01
bernier would be centre-left in ukraine.
2:02
it's considered a mainstream policy in ukraine to completely ban immigration, and even to ban non-ukrainians from the public service.
2:05
another hint as to the sites the russians may want to target is to find a map of nuclear generating sites in ukraine.
they've been crystal clear on the point.
it's not clear if they intend to permanently occupy these sites, to annex them or even to shut them down.
2:52
so, i got what i needed to get done today, but i wasn't at 100% and i'm not convinced i'm happy about it.
the fact that i lost most of the last two weeks is that much more frustrating now because i have a busy schedule over the next few days and might not get much substantive done as a result of it.
things should clear up mid week. let's hope my iron is back to reasonable levels by then.
i've woken up more alert the last few days, although it hasn't always lasted.
23:47
saturday, march 5, 2022
the media is talking about about sending special ops to ukraine.
i think they're already there.
what happened to that "training operation" that was there?
1:21
"my dog ate my factum, your honour."
i'm sure it's happened at least once.
2:02
...and, of course the dog would need to be presented as a witness.
"did woo eat da factum. did joo? did joo? ahhhh."
and, of course, you know what exhibit a is. yup.
in ziplog bags, for freshness.
"this court is adjourned until i stop laughing."
2:08
"the witness may be seated"
*pause*
'the witness may be seated"
*pause*
"ugh. sit."
2:13
"the contents of these zip loc bags are inconclusive. i cannot deduce beyond a reasonable doubt that the witness truly ate your factum."
"well, the witness is scheduled for a movement to produce fresh evidence in about an hour."
2:22
sunday, march 6, 2022
monday, march 7, 2022
you know, it's a shame the government's in shambles, because i'd actually like to see statistics on alcohol use in ukraine, right now.
10:36
higher oil is generally good for canadian exchange rates into the united states.
there's still no word on useful vaccines - like sinovac - being recognized by the canadian government. i'm hardly going to inject myself with a useless vaccine, at this point, which just demonstrates the point - border mandates are really just a political charade. the way for me to maximize immunity, as an individual, at this point, is actually to catch a few variants. and, i'm actually not convinced i caught omicron, although i may have caught the tail end of delta (although i needed a white blood count test to notice it).
so, when will the united states drop the specious charade of checking for vaccine status at the border?
if it's going to be permanent, send me the message by including useful vaccination checks. i mean, if you want to check for typhoid or polio, i'm actually not going to argue with you much. if you are going to make a covid vaccine check mandatory, you really should expand it.
otherwise, i'm going to reasonably assume it's temporary and wait it out.
10:46
so, i have another call with my doctor today, and i think this one will be finally conclusive.
these are my conclusions:
1) i have sports anemia, and walking is harder on it than bicycling. the final, conclusive piece of evidence for this is the high mcv in presence of sufficient b12, but i had to get my b12 up enough to be sure. it's the only answer i can find that is consistent with all of the data.
2) that means i need iron supplements, and i need more in the winter, when i walk more.
3) i am not the best at absorbing iron, and it seems to run on my dad's side. but, i have no apparent serious absorption issues that aren't resolvable by dietary shifts, including large amounts of fortified yeast and vitamin d pills. i've tested for essentially everything, and it's all come in fine, after adjustments.
4) however, i am concerned about my bone marrow, as my reticulocytes simply don't adjust to input variables. constant reticulocytes in the face of fluctuating iron and blood work suggests some kind of limiting factor. i would like to speak to a marrow specialist about aplastic anemia, if possible. note that i have a high genetic risk for this.
i will tone down the blood work, moving forwards because a lot of the absorption and related issues have been resolved. but, i still want to check hormones, iron and bone density issues for a while, which means:
hormones:
- estradiol
- progesterone
- testosterone, fsh & lh [until i'm off the cyproterone]
iron:
- cbc: rbc, hemoglobin
- reticulocytes
- iron
- iron sat
- transferrin
- tibc
- ferritin
bone:
- alp
- pth
- tsh
- calcitonin
- vitamin d
i want to ask about liquid estrogen today.
12:24
the update to this is the most recent transferrin:
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 | 2.39 | ||||||||||
| 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 | ||||||||||
12:49
1. i have borderline low gastrin and a muted insulin response, which suggests a slightly underactive pancreas. but, this doesn't seem to be clinical.
2. there is an absorption issue on my dad's side. dad was diagnosed with crohn's, uncle with diverticulitis, aunt with borderline anemia, grandmother with low platelets.
3. but, i'm absorbing everything fine - including b12 and d, with proper adjustments, and iron in the summer. liquid progesterone is better absorbed than progesterone in tablet form, perhaps due to underactive pancreas. no further nutritional deficiencies have been established.
4. i'm on 2000 iu of vitamin d per day (in addition to fortified soy milk) and will hold to it, as i monitor pth levels. i want to get pth much lower. i seem to be absorbing the d, with this increased amount of intake.
5. the recent increase in b12 is due to the introduction of nutritional yeast in my diet. i am absorbing this well, at increased intakes.
6. b9 levels were measured once in the summer at a very high level.
7. mcv levels have been consistently high. increased b12 has not decreased mcv.
8. iron was first measured as low in the spring, after a winter of heavy walking. iron supplements slowly raised levels in the summer, when walking was rare, and bicycling more common. iron was decreased, but not discontinued. iron levels then fell again in the winter, with a return to walking.
9. this would seem to suggest that the iron deficiency is a combination of an unclear genetic risk factor for slightly poor absorption and large amounts of walking. while it's only half of the problem, the issue seems to primarily be "sports anemia".
10. i do not want to decrease my physical exercise, because my cardiovascular health is outstanding. so, i will need to take iron supplements to adjust for the sports anemia, in the presence of the genetic risk factor for poor absorption.
11. i have increased iron intake to the level it was at in the fall and expect levels to stabilize in the short term, and increase in the long term, with a return to bicycling in the summer. i do not plan to decrease iron supplement intake again moving forwards, as i have learned that i require it.
12. however, i am concerned about my bone marrow, as my reticulocytes simply don't adjust to input variables. constant reticulocytes in the face of fluctuating iron and blood work suggests some kind of limiting factor. i have learned through dna testing that i have a high genetic risk factor for aplastic anemia. so, i would like to speak to a marrow specialist about aplastic anemia, if possible.
13. i will tone down the blood work, moving forwards because a lot of the absorption and related issues have been resolved. but, i still want to check hormones, iron and bone density issues for a while. so, if possible, i'd like a new reduced monthly standing order with the following:
hormones:
- estradiol
- progesterone
- testosterone, fsh & lh [until i'm off the cyproterone]
iron:
- cbc: rbc, hemoglobin
- reticulocytes
- iron
- iron sat
- transferrin
- tibc
- ferritin
bone:
- alp
- pth
- tsh
- calcitonin
- vitamin d
14. is there a liquid estrogen analogue to the prometium?
13:36
see, this is just more weirdness coming from the pmo, because navalny is a known white supremacist - and, unlike tamara lich, actually belongs in jail.
13:52
think this through.
13:53
my father had colitis, not crohn's.
but, there's still no treatment i'd take, and the number of false positives on a gi for colitis is very high. guessing between whether the scarring you see on an endoscopy is this or that is an art more than a science.
i'm not taking immunosuppressants on a guess i might have colitis, if i can absorb everything through bombardment.
15:04
releasing ms. lich on a bond is the right decision, and it's a shame it required an appeal to get to, but so be it.
i am very concerned about the functioning of the legal system, right now. better late than never.
15:27
so, the river the russians seem to want to move up is the bug, which is concerning.
1) that would end ukrainian statehood.
2) that would suggest aspirations for a forward movement into poland
i've tried to keep an open mind about this, because i've expected the russians to behave rationally. i've had a very hard time criticizing the russians for striking military targets in ukraine, and i largely accept their claims to the south of the country, where they are quite popular, and are meeting minimal resistance.
i'm ultimately concerned about democracy, and while the data is sparse, i strongly suspect that the south and east would prefer to rejoin russia. self-determination is more valid to me than territorial integrity, around falsely drawn lines.
but, the west of ukraiine is a different story. if i suspect odesa would rather be russian, i know that lvov does not want to be russian, and i know that warsaw is now within nato.
if these trip lines have broken into all out war, i will continue to point the finger at nato expansion. but the russians are now crossing into territory they aren't wanted in, and some criticism becomes warranted.
the bottom line is that i don't want to defend poland, and i resent clinton for the mistake of bringing them into nato. but, here we are. and, i can't condemn nato for retaliating any more than i can condemn the russians for the pre-emptive attack.
this isn't a war with good guys and bad guys, it's a war between dumb and dumber. i don't want to get involved. but, the russians need to be careful, now, as they're coming close to a tripwire, themselves.
16:54
but, what are some of the actual things we've seen "the west" do in response to the situation in ukraine?
1) we've tried to sell europe liquified gas.
2) the american defense industry has suggested that some european countries use it as an excuse to buy new weapons from the united states, with us subsidies.
3) we've dropped visa requirements, to take advantage of the refugee crisis.
4) north american wheat producers are falling all over themselves to walk into the market, and take over ukrainian market share in wheat exports.
in other words, the truth is that the west is taking advantage of the situation, and actively aiding the dissolution of the country. this might look like a war on the surface, but it's in truth a scramble, and one that the west is participating in.
in the end, it may become a partition.
this is what being friends with the west looks like, because this is what capitalism looks like.
17:12
the truth is that the russians blowing up ukraine is good for north american farmers, and good for north american petroleum companies and great for us weapons contractors.
why would they risk a war stepping in, when standing back and watching is so good for business?
17:15
so, this is the message america is sending to ukraine: give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
...we'll make good use of them.
thanks.
17:16
fools.
17:18
friendship is impossible in capitalism.
17:22
tuesday, march 8, 2022
it is certainly interesting to see tara reade show up in the op-ed section of sputnik.
3:18
i always like drawing attention to pictures of representatives in the midst of conflicts, because you really do represent yourself with your appearance.
this is a shot of russian and ukrainian "delegations", pulled from russian media:
the russians are all wearing tailored suits, and look very business-like and professional; the ukrainian side seems to have been constructed by a kijiji ad seeking actors to play crazy uncles, and looks like it's dressed to live in a bomb shelter, to protect itself from imaginary threats imposed by a right-wing conspiracy theory. they couldn't even bother to shave.
you might suggest this is trite, but i'd strongly counter that - this is real, and this is what you're seeing: a corporation bombing a country that has collectively morphed into a bunch of fringe lunatics.
3:27
who wears a baseball cap to a meeting?
3:30
i want to see such a thing form - the crazy uncle ukrainian army.
insignia: CRUNK UA.
3:33
and, apparently, there are crazy uncles everywhere that are just dying to sign up, too.
3:35
crazy uncles of the world, unite!
you have nothing to lose but your canes.
3:40
you know all these crazy uncles have been waiting for this day, where they can go fight the ruskies, for their whole fucking lives, right?
3:42
fwiw, that article addresses a point about the russians opening humanitarian corridors directly to russia by accusing ukrainian militias, who are not under the command of the ukrainian army, of not obeying cease-fires. given the history of the fighting in the region, this is a believable accusation, but, even so, it's not the point.
in a situation like this, both armies want to be the ones that show up with water, first. most people have little understanding of what's really happening, and will align with the side that addresses their personal concerns. so, the russians want to be the ones that show up and distribute aid, and the french, particularly, are trying to get in and offer that aid, themselves.
that's a signal that some concept of rationality is returning to the russian command, which has been behaving uncharacteristically.
4:28
so, ukraine calls israel and asks them to mediate.
israel announces that it's willing to "provide refuge" for thousands of educated ukrainian jews.
hey, zelensky - how much for the shirt on your back?
8:34
nonono, let's understand what poland sending planes to ukraine is about.
1) it's been a while since poland bought new planes. i mean, they have planes.
2) it's surely understood that the russians will quickly bomb them out.
3) poland will therefore have to buy more planes.
4) poland gets massive us subsidies to buy planes.
5) us weapons contractors get a major contract to supply planes to poland.
this is what nato expansion actually seems to be about, and if it requires ukraine to get blown up, lockheed martin certainly doesn't give a fuck. the russians are really just giving them the pretext they need to force these countries to buy more weapons.
it's like a mafia-style extortion tactic, and this is how america keeps the region under domination.
it's not like the russians don't have grounds, here. but, they really seem to fundamentally not get it, because they're just not integrated into western finance capital. remember: putin isn't a communist or a fascist, he's actually a pretty textbook conservative. so, he predictably doesn't grasp debt.
23:58
wednesday, march 9, 2022
and, is canada going to get sucked into it, too?
well, you can be sure that those slimy salesmen from lockheed and raytheon will be knocking on rideau cottage's front door, and no doubt in plain view.
if i can vote on the matter, it will be to tell them to fuck off.
0:04
poland, particularly, is a victim of a classic mafia extortion tactic, as perpetrated by the west.
and, will the west show up to protect poland?
i wouldn't sacrifice a single hair on my head to protect poland.
0:11
poland, particularly, is a victim of a classic mafia extortion tactic, as perpetrated by the west.
and, will the west show up to protect poland?
i wouldn't sacrifice a single hair on my head to protect poland.
5:31
ok, i think i'm starting to get my head around what the russians are doing.
so, clearly there are russian forces in ukraine. but, what the russians are framing the situation as is that they are fighting not on their own behalf, but on the direction of the separatist movements. so, the russians have not occupied the south of ukraine; the newly independent region of the donbas has captured the south of ukraine, with russian logistical support.
so, then the russians sit the ukrainians down and say "recognize the donbas", but what that means is recognizing the donbas + the territorial expansion into the regions around the sea of azov, at least.
it's not entirely clear how they work this out, in the end. maybe russia takes an oblast or two, or maybe crimea even ends up in the new country.
but, the end result is a very cold-war like - think korea or vietnam - partition of the country into russian and european sections, each with their respective puppet governments.
8:22
if you're going to try to take away somebody's rights, the burden of proof needs to be set very high. "the data is messy" is, legally, an airtight argument that this cannot continue. there has to be clear, incontrovertible evidence that masks unquestionably work in order to justify blanket government mandates, and we've never been close to it.
i wish the issue would have gone to court, but it didn't - people just dealt with it, or just ignored it.
in the end, i don't care if you want to wear masks or do rain dances or do the hokey pokey and turn yourself around. just don't fucking tell me what to do.
8:47
my position is that mask wearing is a superstitious belief and should be treated like one, which will vary on how you view superstitions, broadly - either with a sense of deference, or with broad ridicule.
i think it's worth ridiculing, myself. but, i mean, i'm going to make fun of you for all your other superstitious beliefs, too.
8:54
ok.
so, i think legal stuff is done for a bit.
that was actually a pretty hectic week.
- i was struggling to stay awake most of the week
- i had a conference call with the grocery store case on friday morning, and then had to get documents for a motion in the karen case finished, served and uploaded.
- i slept all day saturday
- then, the fan broke down here a second time on saturday night. and, i dyed my hair red, anyways.
- i went on a major grocery run on sunday, but only got half done because the pharmacy gave me the wrong medication and i had to run around to deal with it.
- i had a doctor's appointment on monday and booked an appointment with a hematologist about my marrow.
- my landlord replaced the fan down here a second time on monday night
- i think i got a settlement in the grocery store case for about 6 months of groceries on tuesday. it's a reasonable outcome.
- i had a motion to add new evidence to the karen case, today. i think it went well.
- i will need to follow up on the groceries, today
and, then?
and, then i can get back to working on my art for a few weeks.
the actual hearing for the karen case is in april.
12:10
i'm glad the mask mandate is lifting, but let's not get too excited about applauding the people that implemented it in the first place.
12:24
i would have guessed that hokey pokey is short for "hocus pocus' and is mocking traditional religious practices, as performed by conservatives. kind of like zappa's cosmik debris.
the experts seem to think otherwise.
so be it.
12:32
well, isn't the hokey pokey literally mocking a shamanistic type ritual, really?
12:44
they're teaching "indigenous knowledge' in science class?
ugh.
welcome to the dark ages, canada.
13:31
i don't have kids...
but, "indigenous knowledge" is a stepping stone to "creation science".
stay vigilant, ontario. and, realize that it's probably going to get a lot worse here before it starts getting better again.
13:32
the smart kids will teach themselves.
i'm more worried about the dumb kids getting shoveled bullshit and believing it.
13:34
there's a recent pattern of conservative bureaucrats looking a lot like communist icons.
i remarked previously that erin o'toole looked a lot like mikhail gorbachev.
this is kieran moore, ontario's lead doctor, looking very much like vladimir lenin:
i kept asking harper if his economic action plan was a 4-year plan or a 5-year plan and he never answered me. oddly.
maybe i can deduce the answer.
13:41
listen - maybe you think "indigenous knowledge" is valuable, for some reason. i don't agree with you. whatever.
the important point is that it's not science and that it has no place in a science classroom.
it should be actively resisted.
13:52
thursday, march 10, 2022
see, i'm of the view that conscription is a war crime and blocking the escape of refugees from an active conflict zone is a very serious breach of international law.
is the sexism underlying it still supportable in today's world? i'm pretty critical of macho posteuring, but why let the women escape, if you're going to force your people to fight? why not force them to fight, too?
4:53
in canada, we had riots the last time our elite tried to conscript us to fight their wars for them.
ukraine should not tolerate such things from their elite.
4:54
let us never forget that the only real war is the class war, and that nationalism is just a tool used to control.
4:56
so, here comes the scare porn in the ontario media regarding mask use, in an attempt to swing out to the hard right of doug ford and condition the population into an even more authoritarian, statist/right-wing reaction.
we'll have to see if it works or not, and it will be a sort of an interesting test as to where the province is, politically, after so much targeted immigration to bring conservatives into the country. to be clear: the liberal position should be that mask use is a personal choice (the government has no place in the personal decisions of the nation), and the conservative position should be that we have to follow strict authoritarian government rules (because government exists to keep us safe), regardless of how media wants to twist and spin ideas around in confusing ways. i reject authoritarian laws because i'm an actual real leftist, and not in spite of being a fake leftist.
i haven't worn a mask in public, ever. like, not once. at all. and, there was absolutely no possibility i ever would. i have exceedingly grudgingly worn them at hospitals and blood labs, but that is it.
what that means is that i've seen people react.
there have been some poor reactions, mostly by decrepit old people that i'd rather go fuck off and die, anyways. without exception, anybody reacting poorly to me not wearing a mask is somebody i wouldn't brake for, anyways. i hope i kill them, for annoying me - serves them right.
most people actually express a kind of feeling of surprise and/or relief. i mean, it's a sense of normalcy. so, while i've had some people freak out and yell at me, i've had more people randomly strike up a conversation with me, probably because i'm reminding them of better times.
i've also experienced a very, very large amount of sort of muted solidarity - smiles, winks, smirks and feelings of longing to have the courage to follow my lead, as well as some frustrated reactions of jealousy by people that expressly do not like masks.
so, i'd suspect that most people will be happy to take them off, and a small minority of people are going to find the tables turned. but, these people are mostly paranoid idiots, and are mostly living in a fantasy reality, spurred on by a false sense of security.
if masks are a superstitious belief, they're also a security blanket. and, we take those blankets away when kids get attached - we don't tell the other kids not to make fun.
i will probably have better things to do than make fun of you for wearing a mask, unless you happen to catch me in the right setting. then, watch out.
7:38
it's time to take away your security blanket.
7:46
i'm a libertarian communist, and i'm not in the spectrum - i've been disenfranchised for years, and i usually spend electoral cycles attacking all candidates, and trying to figure out which one is the least terrible. sometimes, i vote; in recent years, i've more frequently not.
there will be no ambiguity in the upcoming ontario election: there is no possibility i will be supporting any of the parties, and i could very well find myself attacking the opposition more loudly than the government.
7:56
i would strongly advise the ndp to try to make the election about anything other than covid-19.
7:57
fwiw, i voted for the greens in 2018.
7:58
...but i was actually relatively content with the wynne/mcguinty government, which was probably closer to my own political positions than any government i've seen in canada at any level. they had a tendency to actually deliver on sound and well-researched policy, which is what i want from government.
8:00
so, we didn't get to 20 on the weekend, although we got to 16. it didn't feel like it though because there were 100 km/h winds, which is a problem we've been having here with warm snaps since the fall. we get lots of warm snaps, but they come with constant, hurricane force winds.
it looks like we could get legitimately into the 20s next week, though - and it seems like it could stay in the mid to high teens for a while, after.
10:47
so, the lawyer in the grocery store case offered me a settlement and is now refusing to write up the terms. i guess he didn't expect me to take it, and i guess he wants to milk the store owner.
that's the irony in the question of being taken seriously as self-represented - once you let me write you an essay, i'll show you my competence, i just need to get over the prejudice held by court staff. but, the number of incompetent, corrupt and/or sleazy lawyers is a very high percentage of their total. not only am i unfairly struggling to be taken seriously in a very systemic reality of discrimination, but the lawyers end up given free deference, when the vast majority of them simply don't deserve it.
what that means is that i have to follow through tonight and finish the documents, despite a settlement being in process, because the lawyer wants to overcharge the guy. asshole. but so be it.
23:24
you can reasonably expect honesty and transparency from a self-rep.
not so from most lawyers.
23:31
to be clear: the case is settled. the sleazebag will write the terms. we'll deal with this.
but, i don't want to deal with some bullshit about missing deadlines, so i have to follow through to make sure he doesn't have that.
there's enough evidence that i could get the court to order the settlement, at potential costs to the lawyer. but, as he's demonstrated himself to be dishonest already, i don't want any bullshit openings.
23:54
friday, march 11, 2022
the request for data to uphold the removal of mask mandates is a logical mistake called proving a negative. it's impossible. the more data you get, the more you'll want, so it's essentially a feet-dragging process. and, what it really demonstrates is that the fake left doesn't understand the words it is using when it speaks - which has become a general truth, as they've asserted themselves as the new stupid party.
rather, the burden of proof is on the legislature to prove that masking is actually effective, a task that they put off and has now been answered with clarity: masking simply does not work, and the science is abundantly clear on the point.
the legislature may be framing the issue differently for political reasons, because we now have a mass of ignorant idiots that have been scared into compliance by media and government, but the correct reason to remove mask mandates is that masks do not work in reducing the spread of the virus, if that ever even had anything to do with their mandating in the first place. i'm rather of the view that we're being conditioned into being enslaved by an islamic theocracy, and this is the first step of the process. we have probably not heard the last of this, but i certainly hope we push back against it with more force next time.
the other issue being raised by anti-science, reality denying pro-maskers is your typical "but, won't you think of the children?", which occurs in any right-wing moral panic by know-nothing conservatives, and which again demonstrates a complete lack of any grasp of reality on behalf of the pro-masking faction. children are simply not at risk of this virus, whether they are vaccinated or not.
i am not going to applaud the ford government for finally accepting the science in undoing a law that never had any rational bearing, whatsoever - i am going to condemn them for implementing an evidence-free set of draconian, restrictive rules in the first place. they deserve no credit for this.
but, what we're seeing is a very conservative political party that has a tendency to lean towards extreme impositions of authority and control slowly come to terms with the reality, and an opposition that is supposed to be centre-left and is acting against their own political axioms in simply opposing for the sake of opposing.
and, i'm not interested - i condemn them both.
and, i will take the imaginary mask that i never wore in the first place off, and tell the crybabies to fuck off and die if they don't like it.
*cough*.
oh. are you scared?
lol.
and deal with that - i will laugh at your anti-science pro-mask conspiracy theories, and cough in your face if you complain about it.
i don't care.
4:38
no, i want to repeat the point about the fake left being the new stupid because i think it's justin's trudeau primary legacy, in canada.
for many, many years the conservatives were the stupid party in this country. i don't know exactly when that started - stanfield, maybe? but, it's been a constant in canadian politics for as long as anybody can remember that almost all stupid people vote conservative, and almost all smart people vote against them. and, i was in that anti-stupid coalition, as well.
but, in recent years, and accelerating with the pandemic response, the situation has entirely flipped over. there are many spectrum reversals and party realignments underway right now, and i think the driving force is historically ridiculous levels of immigration, most of it from conservative countries, but, of all these reversals and realignments, i think this is the most enduring legacy: the liberals are now the new stupid.
6:36
at the end of the day, every ideology has holes and nobody sticks with one idea for their whole lives. or, at least no intelligent person does. for every vampire, there is a kind of cross - which is pynchon's poetic reinterpretation of newton's third law. or, "the grass is always greener, where the dogs are shitting", to quote a dead rock star in his most creative days.
everybody is going to see the value of their opponents' arguments, occasionally - that's why the spectrum keeps flipping.
but, stupid v smart is a stable relationship, and what kept the liberals in power for so long really wasn't any ideological position, but the fact that they were widely seen as the more intelligent group, of the two. the liberals can flop around in the wind on political issues, year after year, and not lose their base, if they stay smart. it's when they adopt the mantle of the stupid party that they lose their natural governing status.
i don't want to blame this entirely on trudeau - chretien started it, and running the right-wing fake intellectual michael ignatieff just proved the party's detractors were mostly right. but, if the new generation of liberals, who are running on the ghost fumes of their parents or grandparents, were only thought to be stupid up until now, they have opened their mouths and removed all doubt.
the movement towards full retard is now crystal clear, and once that perception becomes societally engrained, particularly amongst young people, who have a particularly deep loathing for mr. trudeau according to opinion polls, it will be almost impossible to reverse any time in the next 50 years.
the conservatives themselves will never be the smart party. but, the ndp should be looking to move quickly to find a new leader, because they have the opportunity to walk into a gaping hole, here.
6:49
if there is one thing that we have learned about covid-19, and that is not controversial, and that is agreed upon by everybody, and that is rigorously demonstrated by appeals to data, it is that the virus is seasonal - that transmission increases in the fall and decreases in the spring.
the dominant determinant is not anything that arrogant humans have decided they can control, like vaccination status or mask use (however ineffective...), but something we can't control at all, or at least not in real-time: the weather.
for that reason, it is unambiguously predictable that transmission will fall in the upcoming months, as the weather warms. everything else is secondary to the seasonality of the virus, and attempts by humans to shape the curve will have minimal impacts on the seasonality, if any at all.
that's the one thing that is clear and that we've actually learned: that, despite our best efforts to alter it, the curve consistently came in with the same shape as the flu.
that said, it is worth noting that, in canada, the flu actually often peaks in march or april, depending on the weather. the reason is that the winters here, through much of the country, are frequently so cold that it creates a silo effect in january, after christmas. canadians hibernate for the winter, and come out again in the spring, when it is still cold by the standards of most of the world, and people still gather mostly indoors, but it is no longer so cold that exiting our dwellings at all is, in fact, even life-threatening.
where i am, we're looking at a very early and very convincing spring, and perhaps even summer-like temperatures as early as mid-march. that likely means that the second peak should have been in february or march, rather than in late march or early april. i do not believe that there is any evidence of such a thing happening - and there is no convincing reason to think that would have been due to vaccine passports or mask use.
in other parts of canada, that thaw may come later, and a peak should be expected. but, there is no reason to think that mandated mask use would prevent it or dampen it, as it clearly had no effect at all over saturnalia. like, none.
so, because the dominant effect is not any government-imposed restrictions but rather the weather, it is not possible to separate the variable of mask use. it is obvious that transmission will decrease in an inverse relationship with increasing temperatures. you couldn't possibly learn anything from extending the mandates, for that reason, whether they have any effect on spread or not.
7:18
so,
1) transmission will decrease with the warmer weather, regardless of anything else that is done, one way or another. that is obvious.
2) most of canada should expect somewhat of a peak whenever it is that spring actually happens, as that is how seasonal viruses work in canada. nor is that preventable by mask mandates or vaccine passports, which is what we learned via experiment over the fall.
3) it is not possible to determine any minimal effect that masks might produce, given that the weather is the dominant cause. "waiting for data" is an irrigorous mistake that you'd expect to hear strictly from amateurs. and, i mean, let's remember this: no capable scientist would choose to work for the government in an advisory role. that's a job for flunkies that can't compete in the real world.
it follows that at-risk populations should avoid contact with healthy populations until summer and take it from there - but that would have been true, regardless.
7:23
there was a decision made in the 80s and 90s that markets would be more efficient in dealing with this issue. clearly, that was the wrong choice, and governments need to reassert control over the anarchy created by the market.
the cause of the problems we're experiencing is market failure, in the presence of out of control population growth (mostly due to high immigration).
this outcome was predictable by smart people, but the truth is that the government largely didn't care. decisions were driven solely by short term profit considerations, which is the fundamental reason markets are inefficient tools of social policy. we will not solve the problem until we admit this point, and until governments entirely reverse course.
there has been some movement recently to reverse course, but it is not enough to keep up with population growth and will at most slow down the increasing problem. it will not reverse it. only a return to truly government run subsidized housing - and massive investments, the likes of which have not been seen in the western world since the 1960s - will solve this problem.
7:39
i want to be clear about this: i've been hankering to sue places that put up mask rules, and i'm sure i could win on the merits, as the science is clear, but i know i'd have been suing the government, not the place. it's the opposite action that would have more success: stores suing the state for enforcing rules. and, for whatever reason, nobody decided it was worth it.
that changes on the 21st.
if you try to tell me to wear a mask after the 21st, i will see you in court.
19:31
and, i want to make that point across to people everywhere - it's time to stand up and say no.
i mean, it was always time to push back.
but, now it's time to stand up and resist.
19:33
well, it's also the same range as denmark and the netherlands.
and, finland is in the same range as ethiopia.
it's really a racist headline about a metric with little clear bearing on reality, as it is only partly about testing capacity, it's also about libertarian attitudes - which would be the real reason that finland and the netherlands score low, and russia and columbia score high.
it is not surprising that british columbians are less likely to get tested than others, especially in the interior.
19:48
19:50
i want to be clear: the legal questions around mask use reduce to the question of if it's rational or not.
if i were to bring an action, what i would be arguing is that there is no actual health benefit in mask mandates, that it's just an irrational, superstitious belief. that actually reduces to an issue of religious freedom, because what the store is doing is enforcing an evidenceless belief in mask use, which they can't actually do.
they would no doubt counter that there is a health benefit, and that's what the argument would be about. but, it would be disingenuous, because they're actually discriminating, in an attempt to make a certain kind of customer feel "safe".
i actually expect that it won't be an issue. the handful of stores that want to stick with this won't stick with it for long, as they will find it will hurt business, quite quickly. i see no evidence that there's any sizable market for paranoid mask-wearers, outside of very, very specialized business, and maybe stores for stupid hippies.
but, the question really revolves around whether a store can make the case - are masks actually a health issue? and, i claim that they can't - that it's irrational and discriminatory.
and, i will be quite aggressive on the point, should i have to.
i hope i don't have to, frankly.
20:01
that said, i want to advise people not to get into a fight.
i mean, state your case.
but, ultimately, if they force you to leave, you have to leave. don't get charged with trespassing. leave the premises, and sue them.
20:02
i see little difference between "mask-wearers only" and "only christians allowed".
it's a religion - it's not science.
20:05
i'm an atheist.
don't force your religion on me - you can fuck off and go die somewhere, instead,
20:07
i am curious, though.
i'd guess 95% of people will immediately discard them.
i don't really know though.
20:18
well, are people in alberta wearing them?
they lifted the mandate on the 1st.
first, what about this? this is messy....
you know i don't like masks, but i don't like authority, either. it's a sort of a false equivalency - saying you can't be authoritarian is not really the same thing as being authoritarian - but it's not ideal. then, you need to throw the question in: what of mask use and section 7?
when ford stepped into toronto and redistricted, my argument was that they should put the issue up for a vote. now, i strongly doubt edmonton would vote for a mask mandate, but i wouldn't really accept the premise, if they did - you can't vote away individual rights. it's not a good comparison.
i think what alberta is ultimately trying to say to edmonton is that the law is unconstitutional. so, why not present a reference case, then, and see what they say?
as a use of state power, without justification, it's heavy-handed and sets a difficult precedent, even if it's right, in this instance. what they're missing is a set of rules, again - it's a rule of law issue, and that's a consistent problem in this country, which lacked a serious constitution until 1982.
20:37
i can't find any serious analysis of the question, oddly.
i guess we'll have to see what happens.
21:10
this crazy week is over.
i need to finish eating, shower and sleep. and we'll see what day it is when i wake up.
it's been a week of sleeping in shifts.
21:13
saturday, march 12, 2022
this is what happens when i go to rt's youtube page:
it's like i woke up in a despotic, backwards country that doesn't believe in free speech.
my reaction to this? nationalize youtube.
it can only do this because it's not the government. unfortunately, the reality is that it's probably more concerned about ad revenue and it's image in fake left bourgeois circles than it is about free speech.
10:13
we're in a situation where private companies have absolute control over access to information, and it's simply not acceptable in a free society.
the communication lines should be owned by the people, and subject to constitutional protections to ensure access is not restricted.
10:17
thankfully, we haven't fallen entirely into fascism, yet:
10:20
i don't know what ground a school board would claim it has for itself in enforcing a mask mandate, after the government lifts it.
if i was a kid in high school, i wouldn't wear one anyways, and would instead force the school to repeatedly remove me for trespassing. i certainly wouldn't wear one, now.
i actually don't think that government strongarms are the right tactic, here - i'd rather see the students rise up and revolt. civil disobedience was always the right tactic, and it's the right tactic, now.
if you're in school right now, my suggestion is that you don't wear a mask in protest in a conscious act of defiance, and force the schools to have to discipline you.
11:34
sunday, march 13, 2022
i knew i was going to sleep all weekend.
i'll be finishing up that picture archive, today.
9:51
so, i wanted to fill in the photo album, and i wanted to do so relatively quickly.
in the process, i'm filing vlogs from mid-2017 (where i left off.) onwards.
so, i'm going to upload a "selected transient works" to the fake account:
i'll post playlists where appropriate. but, i should have a handful of more exciting days from 2017-2022 uploaded within a few days.
14:43
so, it seems clear that the liberals want to waste public resources on war spending.
we're going to have to elect the ndp, it looks like.
15:04
but, is the ndp smart enough to see that as an opening, or too stupid to figure it out?
15:06
i just became very confused by what time it actually is. but, it's the day to push your clock forward.
most of the year, i would rather the sun come up early than the sun set later. but, so be it.
17:49
if you're concerned about the cost of gas, might i suggest you use less, or none at all?
18:08
can biden do anything about ukraine?
no - and that's the point putin is really trying to get across: this is our sphere of interest, and america has no say in the matter. it's really reducible to two stubborn, grumpy old men fighting over which one is more stubborn.
biden might have pulled back to the danube, as i suggested, but then he'd lose the pissing match contest over who is more stubborn.
see, and this is why the issue is sort of dangerous - because, now, there isn't a clear way out.
i think biden is more responsible for the unfolding of the situation than putin, because you can't blame somebody for reacting in self-defense against an aggressive party. but, it's an oversimplification.
if there was some policy option biden once had, he has none now, and he's as helpless to stop the situation as anybody else - which is the point the russians were forced to demonstrate by the west's irresponsible aggression.
18:16
that said, am i going to condemn the russians for eating babies and killing old ladies?
i don't know the facts on the ground, but i'm pretty cynical. i mean, remember the story about incubators in iraq? you'd have to be flat out retarded to take anything western media says seriously, at least until the facts are clarified.
that doesn't mean that the accusations aren't correct, it means i'm not naive enough to pretend i can analyze the situation by comparing cnn to rt. that's not getting me anywhere. i know better than that.
any time militaries get involved, bad things happen. i'm sure the russians will do lots of bad things, and the ukrainians will do lots of bad things, too. that's war. there's no good conduct in war, and no military that behaves like boy scouts. i'm not getting drawn into that.
i'm more concerned about the movement on the ground and, frankly, i'm not getting useful information from much of anywhere on the point, the last few days. have the russians made any serious advances over the last week? neither side is willing to report on the question.
i would hope that the russians are at least getting close to making a clear decision as to what they are doing. if they are planning to withdraw, at least partially, they are getting to a point where it's time to get to it. if they are planning on occupying the country indefinitely, it's time they clarify that, as well.
absent clear reporting about movement on the ground, it would seem as though the russians have probably more or less secured the south and east. there's some suggestion that they're bombing targets in the west. it's time to tell the world what the next step is.
18:23
i will say this, though: the russians clearly have no desire to reduce kiev to rubble, and suggestions that they're unable to do so are rather terrible.
they want the ukrainian leadership to surrender, and they're being very patient in waiting for them to do so. vodka-induced courage leads to nasty hangovers.
18:39
youtube recommended i watch some soviet propaganda from the bbc.
the bbc is really far too kind.
19:58
i'm sorting through these files.
did i make the right choice in withdrawing the case against the landlord in august, 2017?
well, i probably would have lost the case. i realized that. i had to file it as a statement, and i would have had to follow through with it, but it would have been a very difficult case to get anything out of. my back was up against the wall, and i was necessarily lashing out - i had no other real option.
i realized afterwards that what was going on was that the new landlord was indeed trying to chase me out (which i figured out), for the reason that they wanted their mother to move in. they didn't understand the law, or realize they could evict me for personal use, so they just tried to give me a hard time with the intention of trying to get me to move. so, i figured everything out, except the fatal part, and it's something i couldn't have really guessed at.
it is true that the paralegal intended to sucker me, and it looks like he did on the surface, but my intent was to try to get them to stop, rather than to actually sue them. laws regarding personal winnings changed shortly afterwards, but, in mid-2017, i could not have kept any serious winnings. it was purely punitive, on my behalf, and my intent was strictly to get the harassment to stop.
in hindsight, i realize there was no way to get the harassment to stop and that the personal use eviction was going to happen; it was a matter of time before they figured it out.
further, filing the harassment case let me set up an argument that there was a pattern of harassment leading to the personal use application, which should have been a successful argument, and likely would have been upheld upon appeal. the ruling, which reversed the legally clear burden of proof, was so incoherent that i strongly suspect that the landlord paid the tenant board off. had i not filed, i would not have been able to make those arguments. filing the harassment case consequently put me in a better position to fight the personal use application, and in a very strong position to fight an appeal.
in the end, the actual technical reason i decided to move was that i couldn't deal with the heavy smoke from the new tenant upstairs. everything else aside, i simply couldn't mitigate it. the outcome of the move was frustrating, but that new tenant changed everything, and i just had to get out of the building.
but, if i could do it differently, the mistake i made was not reopening the application. the laws changed in the 6 month re-opening period, although i didn't realize it until afterwards. i could have sued them for an agreement in poor faith after i moved out, and likely won a part of the claim, which the changed laws would have let me keep. but, at the time, i was just thinking about moving on, and i didn't realize the laws had changed, so the logic of standing up for myself and having the court rule that the landlord was harassing me had passed.
it was a difficult situation, and what hindsight shows is that i didn't really have a way out. the landlord wanted me out, and wasn't going to stop at anything - a court ordering her to stop harassing me would have been temporary at best, and it was a matter of time before she found the personal use clause. and, even if i'd have managed to win all of these cases, and successfully appealed the personal use, my victory would leave me with an apartment i could no longer inhabit, due to the smoke from upstairs. and, no fans were going to solve this problem, the sheer volume was simply too high.
so, it seems like i got tricked, and in some sense i did, but i really got what i wanted out of the action, which was a stop to the harassment. the landlord did stop with the harassment, once she realized she could use personal use. the case allowed me to present the correct defense in what should have been an effective way, but was ruled against in a clearly incorrect manner that i nearly appealed. in the end, it didn't matter, because i couldn't deal with the new smoker sending smoke through every window simultaneously, anyways. i had to get out...
i suspect that one or both of the new landlord's parents are probably dead by now, and i wouldn't be surprised if one or both of them died of cancer. she probably spent more on legal costs than i could have extracted in punitive damages. if this is a victory on her behalf, it's entirely pyrrhic.
but, there was no solution, and i don't think i made a mistake - except not to reopen the case, after. but, it's far too late, now.
23:08
there's no question that i liked that apartment, and did not want to move. i wish things would have turned out differently.
but, given how things actually turned out, i am better off for having moved.
23:16
monday, march 14, 2022
july 6th vlog, where i get my bicycle working for the first time in many years.
7:29
july 10-11 vlog, where i bike out to the edge of town and get stuck in the rain.
8:19
july 16-17 vlog where i bike out tecumseh to see a neurologist.
9:21
three night weekend, in which i go to a disappointing tea party show on thursday, go dancing on friday night and go to thurston moore on saturday night. july 13th-15th.
16:06
i want to be clear about a point: when i've talked about there not being enough housing due to supply not keeping up with population growth, i have consistently explicitly and specifically referred to the very lowest end of the rental market, and very specifically pointed out problems with poor people competing with refugees for shelter.
i have no interest in actual home prices, and nothing i said was intended to apply to new house prices. that's of no relevance to me, whatsoever.
i suppose that it is true that if you build more houses and sell more mortgages, you might open up more rental spaces, as people move out of them and into the houses, but i'm never going to be one of those people. i'm a single person on permanent disability. if i ever had the income to buy property, a big house in the suburbs is the last thing i'd want. but, i'd probably rather rent than buy anyways due to the different lifestyle associated with it, depending on the nature of the income.
i have at no point called for more housing starts, nor do i really care about home ownership concerns. i am not in that class of people, and i have no interest in existing within it - it's alien and disinteresting to me. what i've called for is more subsidized housing, which is what is relevant and real to me, as a member of the class i am in and culturally identify with.
16:46
the premise of "home ownership" strikes me as absurd.
16:47
the bottom line is that i don't care about rich people and don't write or think about concerns facing rich people, and you're misunderstanding the ideas here if you're seeking to co-opt and misapply them towards the upper classes.
that should be obvious, and any misapplication must be disingenuous.
i've presented the context of my ideas very clearly: i'm annoyed by the pressure that refugees place on the lower end of the rental market, and calling for the government to fuck off. if it has to bring in thousands of poor people, and it must force me to compete with them, then it should be building more housing for that purpose. if it won't build the housing, it should stop the flow of refugees.
that has nothing to do with fake paper wealth or impossible-to-burst mortgage bubbles in the bourgeois class due to the fake housing market controlled by the cmhc, nor do i have any remote interest in these things, at all. it's of no remote relevance to my life, whatsoever.
16:54
the main reason i oppose capitalism is that it's boring; the social organization it imposes just isn't any fun, and it make existence dreadful to trudge through.
17:00
but, if you want to know the reason that upper class housing is expensive, it's because the banks want it to be expensive. it's not some kind of accident due to mismanagement or unintentional consequences due to poor policy, it's an intentional, targeted decision by successive governments to inflate the price of housing, for decades.
you won't fix the problem until you change the direction of government and reform the cmhc. and, nobody seems to realize that.
17:04
the situation in canada is not one housing bubble, it's 50 bubbles built up on top of themselves. this is not some accident, it's not some kind of error, it's because the system is intentionally designed to prevent the market from functioning in decreasing the prices of housing, by purposeful policy decisions.
whenever a housing bubble starts to burst in canada, the cmhc steps in and buys up what it calls "bad assets", which are just the houses that are losing value due to a normal correction process, which they claim "stabilizes the market". the result is that the bubble doesn't burst - it loses a trace amount of air, and keeps growing. this is what is called a ponzi scheme.
we don't have housing corrections in this country, we have perpetual bubbles building up on top of themselves. we did that on purpose to protect the wealth of the older generation, which has allowed small investments in housing made decades ago to leave everyday people millionaires on paper.
now, after decades of this intentional government policy to prevent these bubbles from bursting, bubble after bubble has built itself up on top of itself, pushing the price ever higher, and creating ridiculous levels of what should be impossible inflation in housing.
there's a lot of other things that need to happen for a correction to take hold, granted. but, a correction in this country is impossible so long as the bank is specifically tasked with preventing one via an intentional policy decision.
that is why your mcmansions are now unaffordable - the government has intentionally prevented corrections for decades, and now you have dozens of bubbles to buy into, that were never burst, and just piled up. it's not some kind of accident, it's an intentional policy to build "intergenerational wealth" in a purposeful return to feudalism. and, that is what that jargon means - it means feudalism.
but, i don't care about this. what i care about is low-income housing. and, i'm annoyed that i'm being forced to compete to exist, when i just want to focus on making art.
17:28
july 23rd vlog, where i come to profound conclusions while purchasing lamps.
19:00
tuesday, march 15, 2022
see, this is the correct placing of the burden of responsibility to protect the weak from the virus, which is on the weak, themselves.
a reasonable person would step back if they saw a sign on somebody's face, and would be reasonably accused of negligence for refusing to do so. that's fine - that's due diligence. but, we need to get back to normal, common law type thinking, and drop the despotic state authoritarianism and one-size-fits-all collectivism.
9:46
july 24th vlog, where i go to detroit to drop off some recycling material, get a soundcard at the ups store, go to a jello biafra dj set and stumble on a crack in the pavement on the way home, spattering blood everywhere. therefore, i need a bicycle.
9:57
aug 3rd vlog, where i go to farmington hills to get a bicycle, get trapped in cougar country in the rain, bicycle back to detroit, stop at a show, stay overnight and eventually get home early in the morning.
10:05
aug 4-5 vlogs, which are two aimless nights out in detroit, where i'm really just going over to check on my bike.
at this point in time, it was not possible to bring a bicycle back and forth across the border under the tunnel without disassembling it, first. it is now possible to do so. i should be able to drive across the new bridge when it's finished, if i'm still here, and if they do away with unscientific vaccination restrictions.
10:47
just a note to self - i seem to have deleted footage on a first editing run at some point after 2017. i vaguely remember doing it.
i can imagine no way to recover it.
10:50
the vaccines don't work and the mandates are stupid.
in insisting on mandates at this point, the united states is merely harming itself by preventing tourism. i will not foolishly inject myself with a useless vaccine.
10:57
the border guards cannot prevent canadian citizens from entering the country, and they should just walk right by them and tell them to charge them.
i am not concerned about this - i will sue the government under a charter challenge, and win. i know my rights, and i'm not about to be told i can't enter my own country. if the parliament wants to make an issue of it, it can fuck off - that law is ultra vires and will be abolished.
but, i am not an american citizen, and have no rights to enter the country, except under the conditions they allow for.
to an extent, i'm actually eager to fight the canadian side in court, as i'd love to take credit for strengthening s. 6. but, it's a moot point so long as i can't cross in in the first place.
14:42
speaking of which, i won the request to admit new evidence in the karen case and am waiting for a response from the grocery store owner, which is supposed to happen today.
pending that response, we're just down to the karen case now, strictly.
14:44
no, my position on the matter of mask use is consistent. i'm sorry if you want me to bullshit my way through it, but i won't do that.
i've been saying for years that you can't measure the effectiveness of mask use, because it's far too subtle. the best evidence for that is actually the nature report that estimated about a 10% reduction in transmission from surgical masks (and no reduction at all from cloth masks), which is very small. they then pointed out in their own study that it was hard to even measure that accurately. that's about in line with what i've been saying - it's exceedingly difficult to sort it out from the noise, and almost impossible to actually measure. there's just far too many variables, and they're all more causal.
measuring the effect of mask use in the civilian population is like trying to record a mouse farting in an auditorium.
i'm not going to reverse positions and argue that the data supports eliminating masks now that the issue has come up, when my point the whole time was that it was impossible to measure it effectively, in the first place.
nothing's changed, and my position remains the same - you couldn't measure it when the mandates were in place, and you can't measure it when the mandates aren't in place, either. you cannot measure it on a boat, you cannot measure it in a moat - you cannot measure masking effects, you cannot measure them, you just can't.
so, if you want to be a schizophrenic and walk around like a druid, that's up to you, but the basis for a public health policy was never there, and discussions about "data" have always been red herrings. and, that was the point in resisting the mandates, in the first place.
15:03
so, i got my settlement in the grocery store case. i can't tell you exactly what it is, but it is reasonable.
see, you come in high on these things, but you expect to negotiate. it's a reasonable outcome, and i'm happy with it.
that's done with, now. but, i'm 2/2 on settlements. the karen case went through that process with no result. it's just the karen case left for legal stuff, which lightens the load considerably.
i mean, i had two divisional court cases for a while this month, and that's a lot for a self-rep that is (1) figuring out things as she goes and (2) doesn't have a secretary. you have to remember that the lawyer doesn't actually do most of the actual work, in most cases.
16:20
being an anarchist is fun, but you have to be smart enough to actually pull it off. i get it. i didn't always, though. and, to an extent, i had to prove that point to myself.
when i was a teenager, there was a running joke in my group of friends that communism would be obvious if everybody was like j, which was both serious and sardonic. i was both ridiculously honest, and a ridiculous source of information, more so given that we were young. like, if i was in the room, not only was it unnecessary to ask an adult, but i probably had a better answer than most adults, anyways. and, you made sure i wasn't around if you were going to be sneaky, because i'd call you on it - and i avoided any sort of retribution for it. it's funny how people expect nerds to be nerds. i had a different set of expectations.
we can't all be doctors and lawyers in our spare time, while we write essays for fun, and compose symphonies in our serious time. that's the point the anarchists have always missed. but, i'm not missing it, i grasp it - and i grasp the other point, too: i'm too smart to breed. i don't want to deal with that. anarchists don't reproduce, so we don't build. meanwhile, the religious are having 20 kids, each. we don't stand a chance.
one of the reasons this region attracted me was the idea of it being a temporary autonomous zone, and i've spent most of my time here having fun. i can only hope things get back to normal in the next few weeks, although i have to warn you: i'm over 40, now. i'm not feeling the same kind of pull to go to all night concerts that i once did, and i wouldn't expect a return to the same lifestyle. i've changed a lot.
but, i'm reminded of this ridiculous song.
"if we were all good men,
like walter benjamin..."
well, i'm not walter fucking benjamin.
but, i get it.
really.
16:57
wednesday, march 16, 2022
it's interesting to see omicron rip through asia, where all the other variants didn't. the infectiousness of the new strain potentially explains why it's evading controls (in theory. in fact, the science is pretty clear that these controls aren't supposed to work, and are even supposed to make situations like this worse.), but it doesn't explain why omicron is having the opposite effect, in terms of severity. omicron is killing more people in asia than any of the other strains. thankfully, it's nearly spring.
i've had a theory from the start that there may have been some existing immunity in that part of the world from previous infection. that is, i suspect covid-19 may have already been circulating in east asia for quite some time and that large amounts of the population may have already had some immunity. that would explain the illusory situation around border controls that the science completely rejects.
it also doubles down on the fact that omicron is a completely different virus and, if i'm right, shows the effect of virus evolution across multiple populations. at no point in our history could we travel across the world in a day; we can, now. so, where lingering immunity may have helped the chinese defeat delta without a new immune response, they're at square one with omicron; conversely, natural immunity to delta seems to have muted omicron's deadliness in the west, somewhat. listen, if you're old, this can still get you, don't think otherwise.
if that's correct, it would suggest that the next mutation will start in china, and the west will have no defenses against it. and, we're back where we began, no better off than when we started.
1:24
i have never endorsed donald trump for anything and would, at most, suggest voting for the greens if i thought he might actually be preferable, which is what i suggested in 2020. i very weakly endorsed clinton in 2016, and i almost never endorse democrats. i did not endorse obama, and i did endorse kerry, but i didn't endorse gore.
i did point out that trump was the moderate in the 2016 gop race and that trump was far less scary than cruz or rubio, but that was an observation, not an endorsement.
but, i am not amongst the people that think trump was worse than bush II. i'm not even convinced trump was worse than bill clinton. i would rank him somewhere in the middle of the pile of the last dozen presidents, keeping in mind that they've pretty much all been absolutely terrible.
i do not think trump even comes close to george w. bush in terms of disaster, or even comes close to reagan in terms of catastrophe.
for that reason, i would actually endorse donald trump in a race against liz cheney. but, i would probably endorse hitler, if the other option was liz cheney.
it should not be surprising at this point to have me come down in vicious opposition to the "centrist" political status quo, but if that's the path being walked down, you can be sure i'm not following it.
1:42
i will be forced to endorse the democrats if the republicans run cheney.
i will no doubt endorse the greens a second time in a trump v biden rematch.
1:50
biden has actualized my worst fears and proven exactly why i could not and would not endorse him.
1:51
does this have anything to do with what russia is doing in ukraine?
i'm going to vote nyet.
i mean, it's no doubt a minor part of the thinking, but there's little evidence that they're moving in to explicitly protect the pipeline. that main pipeline to germany would require occupying the country to protect. i suppose there's some chance that the part of the country they carve out exists south of that pipeline to the balkans, but they seem to have stopped advancing well to it's south, and may even leave ukraine with some access to the black sea, in the end.
i would be surprised if the russians relinquish control of the sea of azov now that they have it, even if it means attaching it to some partitioned successor puppet state.
i think the bottom line is that no government in ukraine could possibly resist russian energy dictates, because they are as reliant as anybody else. further, the russians clearly use it as massive leverage. there's really no reason to send soldiers to hold the lines.
keep an eye on that southern line, though, and see how close the russians end up straddling it.
2:12
aug 11-12 vlog, where i go to a doom rock show at the anarchist house in detroit, am handed something to eat and get trapped in my own body until the morning, awake but otherwise unable to function.
the narrative here is of being given something to eat and reacting to the contents of it, but, in hindsight, i may have been experiencing the effects of iron deficiency. i did not have much to drink, and the alcohol alone was not the cause. that said, even if the reason for shutting down was due to iron deficiency, the brownie clearly had an overwhelming effect on me. i don't really know how to separate the issues, but i know now that i have long term iron deficiency concerns and that it appears to be exacerbated by heavy exercise.
3:21
aug 13 vlog, where i try to explain what happened the night before, and devolve into a discourse about squirrel evolution, in the context of a hominid extinction event.
3:30
aug 15-16 vlog, where i go back to the anarchist house to apologize for the food poisoning outburst, unaware of the potential underlying cause of iron deficiency.
3:33
aug 18-19 vlog, where i decided not to waste the weather by essentially wasting the night.
4;15
aug 25th vlog, where i go to see actress and get slowed down after the show by what seems like a low iron attack.
13:50
aug 26-27th vlog, where i enjoy one more warm weekend for the summer, and finally get the all nighter in i was looking for.
13:56
they should just fail them.
i mean, they have clearly failed to critically reason in examining the evidence, and have instead been brainwashed by some of the weakest state propaganda i've ever seen. if i was a teacher, i'd consider walking out a reason to assign them a failing grade, absolutely. and, it certainly wouldn't be a reason to miss an exam, which i'd feel the need to schedule during the walkout.
15:49
this is bullshit.
nobody in this country cares about ukraine. at all.
i have an interest in geopolitics, and i'm clearly not your average person. but, to the extent that most people are going to care at all, it's going to be in ensuring that canadians are not put in harm's way to protect a part of europe that the country has absolutely zero cultural connection to.
justin trudeau is a product of the cold war, and it's been clear for a long time that he's a chauvinist jerk. and, that's all i'm getting from this - he's playing out rambo and rocky fantasies, like the brainwashed idiot he really is.
canadians, as a whole, have absolutely no interest in this at all, and i'm going to call on the ndp to aggressively campaign as an anti-interventionist, anti-war party, in reaction. but, they have a lot of mending to do, themselves, after taking an imperialist position on libya.
the only war is the class war, and i'd shoot anybody trying to conscript me before i volunteered to fight for a culture i don't care about.
16:55
see, this is delusional.
1) it relies on trusting nato to respect ukrainian neutrality, which is absurd. as we talk, they're trying to sway sweden and finland to join nato. and, even the swiss have joined the sanctions against russia. these ideas of neutrality are naive.
2) it's just setting up a new war, in the future.
this is why the russians really shouldn't have done this: now they have to finish what they started, or it's just putting off round 2 to a point where the ukrainian defenses are stronger.
meanwhile, the west is predictably just replacing everything russia is bombing, by printing money. it's a bottomless hole. there's no end point - the more things russia blows up, the more contracts that the pentagon hands out, which is what they wanted in the first place.
i mean, there's no question that the russians made a stupid mistake, here. but, that doesn't mean i want to capitalize on it. i have no self-interest in fighting this, and a lot of self-interest in resisting it.
that said, we have to recognize that both western media and russian media have the same bias on this, so we want to be careful: the western media wants to make it look like the russians are failing (which the evidence doesn't seem to support), and the russians want to make it seem like they're angling for peace and have no choice but to carry through. if the russians were planning on a full scale occupation, neither side would report it.
but, this idea of ukrainian neutrality...it's not real. and, i have to think the russians realize that.
17:24
if the ukrainian leadership is not removed, and/or the country is not partitioned to essentially expel the remnants to the western sphere, ukraine will immediately seek to rearm, in secret, if necessary. the time window where anything else was possible is now past.
17:27
the key point is that the swedes and finns resisted nato, for complex cultural and social reasons. they simply didn't want to pick a side.
the sitting ukrainian government, at the least, has clearly picked a side, as has the westernmost part of the country.
you can't enforce neutrality at the tip of a missile strike.
17:33
if the iron curtain was the most recent schism between abstractions of rome and constantinople, then the fact is that sweden - and ireland - has simply never had a side in that conflict, having never been aligned with either empire, but having always been an independent actor. the swedish position throughout the cold war was that it saw itself as a third party and, in fact, as a potential third power.
i've posted maps of cultural spheres in europe here, and i've always been very careful to draw three divisions, and not two - germany was conquered by rome, and russia by constantinople, but the vikings have always been outside of either empire, and the norse have always been a third civilization, outside of this latin-greek dichotomy.
ukraine has no such history as an independent actor. as the slavic heartland, it is intrinsically attached to the east. it has stronger connections to the turks than it does to rome or paris. but, even so, half of the country is historically connected to the hapsburg realms. it's a geopolitically unstable concoction that has bounced around, but has no real cultural existence of it's own.
ukraine could be a part of the west, or a part of the east, or under turkish domination, or partitioned into spheres, but it cannot be neutral and discussions around the point should not be taken seriously.
17:48
this is a crude overlap in terms of the ethnic breakdowns in europe, and the borders are shifting (with the uk and germany being borderlands between the north and the south, and the line between east and west constantly shifting), but it gets the point across that there are three historical divisions in europe, not two:
- catholicism/roman empire/latin civilization
- orthodoxy/byzantine empire/greek civiization
- protestantism (dare i say arianism?)/norse realms/germanic civilization
understanding swedish neutrality means understanding this third division.
but, it makes no sense in an east slavic context, where the ukrainian-russian conflict is, in truth, a civil war.
and, i mean, we can all flop and flounder around until we get it, but there is no stability in the premise of ukrainian neutrality - it won't and can't hold. it just opens up a historical process of civil war.
18:11
if you want a stupid comparison to american history, the situation in ukraine is neither like pearl harbour nor like 9/11 but rather like lincoln's invasion of the south.
18:42
a neutral ukraine is really no more rational than a neutral confederacy.
in civil wars, one side wins and the other loses. so, the question is how much of the slavic realm gets drawn into it.
18:44
you do realize that lincoln would be in ridiculous breach of contemporary international and human rights law, right?
total war criminal.
18:51
as we exit the pandemic, i want to draw attention to this idea of "the community". this term has always been thrown around by fake leftists to justify authoritarian restrictions on individual liberty, but it seems to be picking up, as it's kind of all they have left.
who is "the community"? i ask this, because it's exceedingly arrogant language. am i not a part of the community? what gives unelected talking heads, or even elected representatives, the right to talk about "protecting the community"? whose community?
i don't want to sound thatcherian, but her critique applies better to this situation than the one she used it in - society clearly exists, but "the community" is a strange term, that you might hear from a priest, or something. and, that observation is valid because it overlaps with another talking point from the fake left about "families", by which they mean "straight people".
"protecting the community" is weaselly language because it suggests that these restrictions are beneficial to large amounts of people, or even everybody. in truth, of course, this virus is really just a sniffle for almost everybody, meaning that these restrictions aren't protecting much of a "community" at all, but are rather protecting a very narrow subset of the population, namely old people. that's not "the community", it's actually a "special interest group", and specifically the particular special interest group that funds most of their projects and campaigns. but, fake leftists are hardly going to stand up and talk about protecting the special interests that financially bankroll them, so they present this fake gloss of universalism, instead.
the community does not need to be protected from the common cold, and in fact is much better off building natural immunity to it. it is only the special interest group of the elderly that needs to be protected, and i would advise you to tell that to the next fake leftist that bloviates on about "the community".
these restrictions are not protecting the community at the expense of the few, but are harming the community to the benefit of special interests, and it's long past time they were abolished.
19:09
"and, then he called vlad a war criminal!"
oh, no, he din't! (stated while snapping fingers)
"mmhmm. and, you know what vlad said?"
you tell me.
"he said that was 'unforgivable rhetoric'".
oh, lordy. well, i sure hope those two fellas work this thing out.
19:36
if you don't want to watch rt, you don't have to watch it. but, to block access to it altogether is an act of censorship, and the flimsy excuse presented here is neither convincing nor acceptable in a free and democratic society. i reject the constitutionality of hate speech laws on their face, but the idea that rt is broadcasting hate propaganda is preposterous, and the precedent this decision sets is exceedingly dangerous.
i would encourage somebody - perhaps the ccla - to file a challenge of this decision on free speech grounds.
19:59
rt is streaming on rumble:
20:03
thursday, march 17, 2022
aug 29-30 vlog, where i prepare the case against the landlord for harassment, go to court and withdraw, with the hope that the issue might resolve.
1:30
i want to clarify a point. i've done this a few times, now. i'm sure i'll do it a few more...
when i was a young person, in the early 00s, i graduated high school without any real career aspirations. my heart and brain were in music composition, but my parents wanted me to go to school. now, i explained to them repeatedly that i didn't have any interest in going to school, but they didn't seem to think that mattered, and they actually bribed me to go to school. i took the bribe - it was rational.
they wanted me to study computer science, because the jobs were in computer science, and i was admitted to ottawa university in a software engineering program. but, i knew from day one that i neither had any interest nor any aptitude in "software engineering" (i still don't even know what that even means), and i wasn't going to succeed in the course. then, i'd get yelled at. further, i hated having to go all the way downtown to go to school, when i could walk to carleton from where i lived in about 20 minutes, which i was used to, because i used to walk to pius. so, i almost immediately switched from "software engineering" into a math-physics program at carleton, hoping to study astronomy.
unfortunately, i realized relatively quickly that the physics program at carleton is almost strictly applied. specifically, it focused on "medical physics", which i had no interest in, at all. so, i lost interest almost immediately off the bat.
after first year, i found myself in the position i predicted i'd be in, if i was forced to go to school - my marks were not that good (because i wasn't interested), and i didn't want to continue in the program, which had no end point besides a topic (applied physics) i found dreadfully boring. i realized i liked theory better. so, i switched into math.
i had no plans and no goals in doing this, other than to finish a program i got bribed into taking. i spent most of my time writing music, skipped a lot of classes and just floated through out of necessity. the other option was working fast food. i was hoping to get somewhere with the music, because why waste the one life you have doing something you don't care about?
and, that situation carried on until i found myself graduating with a degree i never applied myself towards.
i do a lot of very simple mathematical analysis, here. i couldn't publish any of this - and i've never tried to publish anything. i haven't spent a second looking at math, since. and, as i never really had any interest in the topic, i never had any intention of working in the field. the closest thing to it would be maybe teaching high school math, but then i realized i can't fucking stand teenagers.
of course, my parents then blamed me for wasting their money, but i told them that i didn't want to go to school. they have nobody but themselves to blame for a stupid investment that i warned them against.
i'm not sure how my life would have turned out had i spent those years focused on something i was more interested in, other than to point out that they were actually some of my most productive years, musically. if the thing i actually got done when i was in school was a lot of recording, it's reflective of where my interests actually were.
i might have spent the time in a recording program, but i'm not convinced i'd actually want to be a for-hire producer, either. i can imagine putting myself through the program, then going on disability and recording my own stuff, anyways. and, the fundamental disinterest in society really has no clear solution.
i'm an advocate of independent learning - i don't want to suggest that i'm not. but, i wish i wouldn't have bothered studying much of anything, formally, because i just never had and never will have the interest in existing in a business-normal style professional reality. and, the fact is that i knew that, from the start.
3:33
the idea that i was going to go through a software engineering program and end up working as a computer scientist was never anything more than magical thinking. anybody looking at me in 2002 and expecting that from me was not seeing things as they exist in reality. and, i knew that.
3:39
if i had waited it out, might i have ended up as a lawyer?
see, the error in that thinking is that i'm deciding to sue people out of enjoyment, rather than out of necessity. it's been very time consuming, and i'm hardly enjoying it.
the answer is "probably not".
if i were to go to school tomorrow, i'd actually study something like investment banking, with the intent of using it to live strictly off of dividends. that's what i've learned - i don't want to work at all. but, i already knew that. i guess the difference is that i've learned more about how to do that.
i was never a likely stem employee, due to cultural reasons, if nothing else. i was never going to fit in there.
4:05
there are lots of people that have a desire to make their mark on the world, or prove themselves, or perform some task. and, there are lots of people that just want the cash.
i've always been the type that wanted to avoid the world, and stay in by myself, instead. and, no amount of education or professional training can undo the extreme introversion and disinterest.
i'm just trying to get the point across because i suspect that the surveillance around me is rooted in the premise that i'm some kind of hacker, and it's just not remotely accurate. yes, i can do the stuff, if i sit down and apply myself. but, i'd rather not - and i've always rather not. it's been a very, very long time since i've had to, and i consequently haven't.
4:12
i have no interest in being "successful".
what i want is to work on my projects in a quiet space, by myself. and, that's what i've given myself, and what i want to maintain.
4:17
i want to be clear on what the law was regarding keeping winnings in legal actions against my landlord, up until the end of 2017. the wynne government overhauled disability substantially at the end of it's term, including changing this, but the rules were quite strict, at the time.
i live on odsp, which is the ontario disability support program, which is a sort of welfare+ program. in a lot of ways, it's "welfare for lifers", but it's rooted in a demonstrable inability to work. i need to get doctors to sign off on the forms every few years.
the amount they give me is split into categories, but the rent amount is very specific. it may have gone up a little, but it's around $500 for rent. my rent is currently $750; it was $650 when i first moved to windsor, because that was very cheap for what i got, and had made it up to about $680 by the time i moved out of that first basement in the vlogs (to this point). so, i have to take some of what they give me for other purposes and give it to the landlord, but i cannot take what the landlord gives me and use it for anything else.
this restriction is very strict and it's retroactive, on top of it. the ministry has a copy of my lease and i have an obligation to return anything less than that rental amount (around $500) that i actually pay. what that means is that if a sue my landlord for a rent repayment, i actually have to send it back to the ministry - if it goes over the $500. i can keep the difference.
so, for example, in the apartment i was in for a few months in 2018, i sued them for a partial rent reduction, which i believe was 25%. the rent was $700. 700/4 = 175. 700 - 175 = 525. so, my rent was reduced from $700 to $525, which was over the $500 limit, and meant i got to keep the difference, because it wasn't earmarked for rent. if the reduction was 30%, my rent would come down to $490, and i'd have to send the ministry notice to reduce my check by $10/month until the difference was paid off. if i did not do that, i might get thrown off the program.
the action i took against the landlord was intended to get the point across that i was going to stand up for myself, so i asked for a 100% rent reduction. it is unlikely i would have got that. but, as my rent was about $680, anything more than a 25% reduction would have been taken off my check.
that meant that, while the case was filed for around $2000, i could have only kept a few hundred of it, at most. and, that was a key part of why i pulled back - something i explain repeatedly in the video. if the abatement was lower, i would have kept all of it, but it would have been less. i was trying to stand up to a bully by pushing back, but i wasn't looking to substantively profit.
in the end, i got more money from the city in the form of moving costs than i could have gotten if i had won the case. and, i'm sure it cost them more in legal costs than they would have been forced to pay out. the potential benefits of hoping that a concession might end the harassment greatly outweighed any small financial gain i may have been awarded, and the attempts to try to dissuade them by enacting sanctions on them did not have the intended effect, meaning i had no actual way out.
remember: this is specifically about rent, which is how the tenant board generally awards damages. if i was awarded broad damages for mental anguish or something then these rent-specific guidelines would not apply.
the way it was changed was to create a much larger limit for all winnings that are untouchable. i believe the new limit is very large, around $100,000, but you can look that up.
so, i do regret not re-opening it, for that reason, but i didn't actually realize those changes were taking place. at the time, i was looking at a maximum $550 payout (a little less, actually), which is less than a month of rent. i mean, it's better than a kick in the ass. but, it wasn't worth jettisoning any chance of reconciliation.
i needed leverage against an aggressive party that was acting irrationally, and what i learned was that the party was incapable of rationality - that there was no outcome besides total war, which i wasn't really into.
i still think i would have won the appeal. the ruling was completely backwards, to the point that i wonder if the justice was paid off, which just demonstrates my point.
but, it was time to move on, regardless - due to the air quality, which wasn't going to resolve.
13:30
so, i fixed my bike today and went out to enjoy the weather for a bit.
my complexion was a little bad after too much dry air, so i decided to let the air get at it. if anybody was wondering.
i have an extra set of brake levers now, and realized that it also fixed the braking issues i was having, which i can now see were due to worn out pads.
it was good to get out to enjoy the weather. let's hope the next warm day isn't too far away.
23:14
friday, march 18, 2022
i don't actually see any reason to think that ontario has "bottomed out", given that the level of transmission right now is much higher than it was in the summer, and the virus is clearly strictly seasonal.
some small bounce would be expected a little further north, including in ottawa, as the weather transitions from "isolated hibernation" to "mostly indoor gatherings". but, that will then crash as the weather transitions into summer.
be wary of scare porn from sensationalist media, particularly leading up to an election.
12:14
i agree with the russians - this is embarrassing, and it should really result in some resignations or firings.
if it were uncontested, it would still be embarrassing, but much of what is being "corrected" is in truth american propaganda, directly from the state department. the idea that the russians are targeting civilians is not upheld by the facts. it makes us look like a puppet state, trying to win the approval of our masters, like the pathetic, brainwashed slaves that we really are. and, that is the reason that canada will never make it to the security council - the world sees us as a client state of the american empire.
13:41
the rest of the world should understand that the party that is currently in power in this country is run by people in their 40s and 50s that act like people in their 20s, and identify as millennials. there's been a running gag about the pathetic 50-year old self-identifying millennial, and that's what justin trudeau actually, really is.
we skipped the baby boomers in this country because the generation before them did not step down, which let the conservatives run a gen xer in 2006. while clinton and bush II were running the united states, canada was being run by people born in the great depression - a generation skipped over by the united states. the liberals tried to run some boomers, but they were coming off as the party of the past, and were forced to run the son of a previous prime minister, whose previous work experience was as a drama teacher and a ski instructor. he ran primarily on legalizing marijuana.
he has proceeded to dismantle many of the country's institutions, through sheer incompetence.
his time is just about up, and this will be fixed, but we're in a bad spot, right now, as the government is run by people that never grew up. it's amateur hour in ottawa.
13:47
so, it wasn't long after i uploaded a rant about marx being inevaluable because we haven't reached the capitalist phase in history yet when i noticed a number of things uploaded to the internet that seemed to challenge that viewpoint. maybe i'm suffering from some solipsism, but i'm going to respond.
the response is that, actually, marx knew that slavery and capitalism were really the same thing the whole time, creating this absolute dichotomy between socialism and everything else. this is about the most literally wrong way to read marx possible, as it's the exact negation of historical materialism.
certainly, marx wrote a lot about history, to the point that he was arguably more of a historian than an economist. his economics flow from his history, rather than his politics, or the other way around. it was marx' historical writings that formed the actual basis of his theories. so, if you want to trace the history from slavery to capitalism, and talk about the failed revolutions, especially in bourgeois france, you can do that, and remain on firm footing. it's when you try to draw this line in the sand between marxism and this idea of corporatist capitalism that you actually start sounding more like a free market capitalist. and, marx would actually even see the logic in that.
what marx actually said was not that slavery and capitalism are the same thing up to the slave owner (although orwell said that, drawing on conservative thinkers), but that capitalism and communism are the same thing, up to the ownership of the means of production. marx very explicitly argues, repeatedly, that private ownership of the means of production is the way to maximize liberty within an agrarian society. by doing so, he presents liberal capitalism as the solution to slavery, within the confines of an agrarian economy. the key point is that the independent farmer owns their own means of production, which emancipates them from the domination of lordship. but, then the mode of production shifts with the industrial revolution, which leads to the socialization of production, by the introduction of the factory. the private property relations that maximized freedom in an agrarian society become a tool of oppression in a socialized economy, because the independent farmer can no longer compete, so it must be replaced with the socialization of the means of production, to compensate.
it's not that the parallels between capitalism and slavery aren't there, and i've drawn them myself, but it's just simply not what marx said; what marx said was that the bourgeois revolutions failed to overturn slavery, not that slavery and capitalism are the same thing. it's for that reason that marx was a staunch advocate of abraham lincoln and the industrialist north, rather than the confederate states in the south - the basis of his theory was that the path to communism requires going through a capitalist phase, and he saw that developing in america. conversely, he thought the peasantry in russia was hopeless, and there would never be communism in russia. he'd have been sure that mao flat out missed the fucking point altogether.
now, it's true that some fascists like vladimir lenin then showed up afterwards and co-opted the symbols of marx to introduce fascism into places like russia, but it's a serious error to try to attribute the distorted and perverted words of vladimir lenin to the far more respectable karl marx. marx would have torn those words apart. so, please be careful to attribute them correctly - and to identify yourself as a leninist, rather than a marxist, if you insist on taking this detour towards fascism.
marxist theory revolves around the mode of production, and argues for the revolutionary overthrow of society to adjust to the technological realities underlying the organization of production. in doing so, it actually places capitalism and socialism on one side, and feudalism and slavery on the other. it draws a continuum, certainly. but, it's the capitalist revolutions that form the beginning of socialism, as they seek to overturn the aristocracy.
it would be helpful if people would read these things themselves, rather than relying on others to explain it to them.
15:13
listen, my main point is this - there was this twisted process that happened after the russian revolution where it was decided that lenin "changed marx". that's fine as propaganda, if you're a reactionary, but it doesn't pass as academic attribution.
if you're a leninist, fine, whatever. but, own up to it and stop attributing leninist ideas to marx.
it's a smear on marx, and it's poor form, academically. attribute these ideas correctly, please.
15:27
if you're going to say "marx said", please make sure it's something marx actually said, and not something lenin "interpreted", meaning probably reversed.
and, if you want to say it anyways, get it right.
15:35
i was able to get the september, 2017 photos up before i left yesterday:
15:39
saturday, march 19, 2022
i'm working on a few things tonight, and i'm realizing that i really deleted a lot of footage over the second half of 2017. i remember doing it.
the logic at the time was that i wanted the show reviews to be written, and the video component to just focus on my own narrative. i generally delete a few clips, per vlog, so the idea isn't unusual. but, i deleted far too much, and there are things i know i had that i now know i've lost and mostly wish i hadn't.
so be it.
but, the adventures over the period are a little thin, as a result, and it's very much my fault.
it's taking too long to build a banner for the travel blog, but it's getting there.
4:59
band name i haven't seen but want to see: darwin and the finches.
13:54
canada has a lot of problems, but defense spending is not one.
during the pandemic, this woman has already demonstrated that she's for sale to the highest bidder. i would call on cabinet to reject her defense spending suggestions, which are just handouts to the military-industrial complex by a captured body. her job is to sign contracts that waste public resources and send tax dollars to violent criminals, instead of being utilized to do something useful.
what is my counter-proposal?
if the americans are at the door, begging for change, tell them that we can focus on issues of north american defense, which are actually relevant. let europe burn - i don't give a fuck. the only time i'd support bombing europe is to kill nazis, and that's exactly what the russians are actually doing. what have they ever done for us, besides extract our wealth and leave us impoverished?
that means that counter-proposals would have to do with things like norad, or perhaps the coast guard. i have no interest in fighting a war with the russians, but some disincentives in the north would be helpful.
the role of a modern military in a civilized society should be to distribute aid and contribute to geo-engineering projects, not to involve itself in killing people over irrelevant squabbles, or to involve itself in civil wars in foreign countries. climate change is a serious threat; russia is not. our military should be better equipped to deal with climate emergencies, not given more tools to kill people with.
there are very rare scenarios where i would support the use of force, and what russia is doing in ukraine to wipe out extremists is one of the very few situations where it's justified, but it's borderline. ukraine is clearly a hot bed of nationalist extremism, but the russians haven't really made the case that the actions are proportionate. i'm not going to argue against wiping out nazis or islamicists - they deserve to die, and they must be prevented from breeding. but, the kinds of large scale military purchases being looked at won't help us wipe out the primary threat to the society, which remains islamic extremism. instead of buying useless planes, we should focus on drone technology.
but, it's just another example of the liberals becoming everything they were once opposed to. nobody voted for them to waste more money on war, and they really have no electoral mandate to do so.
i would hope the ndp make an issue out of it, but i'm hardly expecting it, because they're mostly bourgeois cowards.
15:18
you know what i sound like?
i sound like a liberal.
the government does not sound like it's being run by liberals - it sounds like it's being run by stephen harper.
15:21
i need to let the russians finish what they're doing before i can decide if it was justified or not.
i'm not a pacifist - there are times when war is justified. the russians said the right things, and the concerns are real, but the pretext is flimsy, and the ends will determine the justification of the means.
i have no time for idealists or hippies.
my main concern is in opposing my own government, if it wants to get involved, including increasing defense spending, not brow-beating the russians over some moralistic nonsense.
15:41
and, you can call me a traitor if you want, but i'm not going to pull out the right-wing defense about "real patriots".
no. i reject patriotism, i reject nationalism, i abhor countries - and i have no attachment to the political entity in control in this geographic space.
imagine there's no countries....
a working class traitor is something to be. i'll wear your scorn with pride: fuck this country, and fuck the nationalists trying to work people up to fight.
15:46
if i had to pick, i'd rather send aid to the russians.
15:49
the russians probably aren't interested in another round of lend-lease.
15:50
if the europeans would like our protection, they may consider sending us reparations for centuries of extractive colonialism, first.
i'm done with being a slave to europe.
let them burn.
16:12
whatever the exact arrangement, the bill for europe's defense should be paid by europe, not by canada.
we have our own problems to deal with.
and, if there's billions available for war, it should be spent on housing, instead.
16:16
i mean, both sides are awful, here - i'm not presenting a pro-russian position, exactly. but, i'm certainly rejecting a pro-ukrainian one - with some force. ukraine is a failed state, and if it doesn't survive this, good riddance.
so, if you want to reduce it to stupid moral arguments, i'll be clear: both sides are pretty evil. the question is whether or not the russians are a lesser evil. historically, they've tended to be the lesser evil when compared to western europe, and they almost always come out on the right side of history. but, we'll have to see how it unfolds.
if they do what they've said they want to do - which is blow up some military targets, kill some nationalists and, it would appear, annex some russian-speaking areas in the south, perhaps through a puppet state, and then leave the west of the country as a rump - then history will uphold the decision, in the end.
but, if they get bogged down and try to literally occupy the west of the country, they will have overstepped their bounds.
the illegal 2003 invasion of iraq eliminated any authority of the united nations. deferring to un laws is no longer useful. we can't ignore a law one day, then cite it the next. principled actors can cobble together things, but the un has long gone the way of the league of nations, and this round two of farcical political theatre is just upholding it's irrelevance. so, i'm not particularly interested.
the un can still act as a rule of thumb, but the days of un declarations meaning anything ended in 2003, if they ever existed in the first place. i consequently cannot condemn the russians for ignoring the un, as that ship sailed out of harbour 20 years ago. but, i can question the proportionality. and, it's up to them to determine if this ends up relatively restrained, or if it becomes an occupation.
16:57
i would like to remind canadians volunteering in ukraine that aiding and abetting a terrorist organization is a criminal offence in this country, that the groups fighting in ukraine are unquestionably terrorist groups and that, while this government is uniquely clueless on this issue, future governments won't be. further, the crown is supposed to be independent of the pmo.
there is a relatively high chance that you might find yourself stuck there, and facing criminal charges if you try to return home.
23:55
sunday, march 20, 2022
this is the group that people are volunteering to fight for:
they are not currently listed as a terrorist group, but they should be, and they very will might be between the time you leave and the time you try to come back.
0:01
i don't think this is russian propaganda, but you can call stanford and ask them, if you want to be sure.
0:08
i previously asked the question: who is shooting at the russians in cities like kharkov and mariupol, which would be expected to offer minimal resistance to russian advances, who they would mostly see as liberators.
i strongly suspected there were cia assets on the ground. but, i guess i missed the obvious.
it is becoming clearer that it is in fact the nazi battalions mentioned by putin and analyzed at length by the western press as nazi battalions that are the actual shooters on the ground. in a bizarre example of orwellian language, the western press is calling them "volunteers", but it's pretty obvious that they must have a large amount of training. and, who is training these nazi groups? the answer is western intelligence groups, including both the cia and the canadian military. some percentage of these nazis shooting at the russians almost certainly received canadian military training, and i do wonder if we don't have troops on the ground, standing with these nazi paramilitaries.
and, it follows that this is where the guns are going.
i can't condemn the russians for firebombing a city taken over by nazis, as they appear to be doing in mariupol. i've been careful, but it seems like it's not rhetoric, and the russian media is getting the basic idea right, while the western media is censoring it via omission. if a city has been taken over by nazis, that city should be burned to the ground, along with any inhabitants that choose to stay within it. this is a virus that must be annihilated without concerns about the rights of the adherents.
the russians are claiming that the nazis are blocking escape, which sounds like something nazis would do, and is consistent with the broader ukrainian tactic of preventing escape. the logic is that those who escape do not fight. the west is claiming the russians won't let them leave, which makes less sense to me. i don't know which is true.
but, this is the situation everybody thought the russians were too smart to fall for, and it could go on for a while, if these groups are being backed by western intelligence services.
i will call the russians stupid for falling into a trap, but i won't condemn them; conversely, i hope they manage to win. but, it could take a very long time.
1:15
these are the kinds of independent sources you want to look for.
these are anecdotes - they're opinions, not facts. but, they're useful to help build a picture.
1:33
while the truth is that they probably don't really understand what's going on, it's really not surprising to see the clash come out in support of nazis in ukraine.
nazi punks can fuck off.
7:42
sept 1, 2017 vlog, where i go to a labour day party in hamtramck to see human eye, then get kidnapped by the locals and held in a tree fort, before they released me to my bicycle.
10:37
sept 2-3, 2017 vlog, where i go to a dead industrial night in mexicantown and then to a populated over night antwon faulkner set in a warehouse.
10:53
sept 8, 2017 vlog, where i print inri011 for the first time and start to close inri026, as the first step in the procedure of fulfilling a large order.
18:00
sept 9 vlog, where i continue the process of closing inri026.
18:10
sept 10 vlog, where i continue the process of closing inri026.
18:16
some video segments i know i deleted:
1) human eye segments about getting to hamtramck, and segments inside planet ant. i was a little drunk, and i wanted the written review to be the focus, then never wrote it. i wish i had the video driving into hamtramck for the first time.
2) there were video segments of me in the rain after antwon faulkner that i decided were pointless, but now wish i kept.
3) there were segments of me talking outside the russell at goldie that i decided would be better left for the review. and, i deleted segments after goldie because i didn't want a video trail to where i went.
the result is that there aren't actually vlogs of these days, but short films of me before i leave, and short segments of me getting home. more was recorded, but i was in a minimal phase, and deleted them. i do not expect i can recover them.
it's disappointing, in a sense, but i need to reiterate - i didn't delete much of substance, but i did delete a lot of atmosphere. like, the video coming into hamtramack may have been substantively pointless, but it set the tone. likewise for the video outside the russell, or the video of me in the rain after antwon faulkner. more importantly, the absence of them leaves me without a story at all.
the stories will develop when the written component finally comes up, but all i can do is apologize for not making a good choice when i consolidated these files over 2018.
i will get over a hump with this and will decide to no longer delete video segments of this nature, because the setting is important, even if not substantive. i realize my mistake.
in the mean time, you'll have to trust me when i tell you that you didn't miss anything - or at least didn't miss anything i might have recorded. i'm very careful with this; these vlogs are a personal journal, and not intended to document events, people or places. and, the nature of detroit is that the cops are constantly shutting things down, and you don't want to give them leads or publish hints.
19:06
sept 14th, 2017 vlog, where i focus on closing inri031 before getting shut down by a migraine.
20:42
sept 15, 2017 vlog where i go to an all night party in hamtramck that gets shut down by the venue owner, and ends up going all night in the parking lot, instead.
20:55
yeah, i make my point about the eviction very clearly in the vlogs, and that's a story that develops for the rest of the fall. i'm going to be uploading some pretty crazy vlogs - because they're real. i'm not an actor. this is real life. and, it's pretty good theatre, because it's not fake.
i want to clarify a statement, though - i stated there was no solution, nothing i could do.
i want to be clear - i don't mean that i couldn't win the appeal. the law is very clear that the property owner has the burden of proof to demonstrate need, and the board shifted that burden to me, apparently because i loudly pointed it out. that's an error of law. my case was very strong, and the paralegal (who i later learned was an "eviction specialist") admitted as much. i basically got a bad justice that made a bad ruling, and it should have been overturned on appeal.
but, then what?
i could reopen the harassment case, and win. but, then what?
this is what i mean when i say there was no solution - the property owner indicated she wasn't interested in coexistence. there's a point where a relationship becomes too dysfunctional to salvage. if we fast forward to a potential outcome where i win everything - after dumping cat shit on my window sill, after opening my mail, after illegally entering my apartment and after losing a divisional court case for a fake eviction on appeal, what happens if i come home from a party one day and find my belongings in a dumpster in the front of the house? what happens when they start a fire? what happens when they run me down on my bicycle with a truck?
you might suggest this is hyperbolic, but look at the evidence - months of harassment, pathological dishonesty and a seemingly singular drive to get me out of the building. that is what there was no way out of - perpetual conflict. and, i didn't have a desire to spend the next five or ten years in legal battles with a psychotic woman and her clinically retarded family.
you have to pick your battles. i might have won some battles, but i couldn't win the war, because the opponent wasn't rational. that's what i was getting at - when faced with absurdity, it's perhaps better to move on.
as mentioned, the smoke from upstairs becomes unbearable in the fall, when it gets cold. there was no way to fix that, either. in the end, i decided i was better off moving to a more healthy living space.
but, i'm not an aggressive, competitive or dominant person. i'll fight back if bullied, but i don't go looking for fights, and i don't enjoy conflict. i'll generally walk away rather than get in a shooting match, and if somebody advertises that they're in it to the death, i'm generally going to rather walk away than fight. that was impossible to avoid - that is what there was no solution to.
as stated, i wish things would have worked out differently. and, i wish i could have been given the opportunity to win the case. but, i decided i was better off walking away, and i do not regret that - that was the right choice.
i do wish i would have reopened the case after i moved out, though.
21:40
in order for me to actually win - not this or that spat, but the general conflict - i would have had to force her to sell.
those were the options: either i could move, or she could sell.
how plausible was that? well, i'd have to win the divisional court case, first, which meant appealing the ruling and putting the eviction process on hold, for potentially years. i do not know how the retarded father that lived upstairs would react to that, or if the property owner might decide to create some kind of situation that made something look like an accident - like a fire. i'd be playing with fire, and putting my self and my possessions in great jeopardy. they already demonstrated they were willing to enter the unit without permission, and it was clear that they lacked the ability to understand the concept of tenant rights, in context.
but, all of that aside, i think it would then reduce to the question as to whether my intuition that they were intending to sell was correct or not. if they intended to sell, perhaps after the unhealthy father died, i could potentially wait them out. if they did not intend to sell, i had no tactic, and i was just signing myself up for a fight that had no end - something i had no interest in.
22:04
sept 16-17, 2017 vlog where i go to see goldie at the russell industrial centre, then go to a late party after.
there was more filmed on this day, but it was deleted in a minimalist phase. i regret that, but it's gone.
22:22
sept 18 vlog, where i talk about how i'll spend the upcoming week.
22:32
monday, march 21, 2022
see, this is the problem the russians walked into - the media initially talked about the "iron will of ukranians to fight", or some such nonsense, and i just sort of rolled my eyes, but the people fighting on the ukranian side seem to legitimately be true believers in their cause, which is some kind of hybrid slavic nazism that was apparently invented by western intelligence. this will inevitably result in blowback, but, for now, they're going to fight until the russians send them to valhalla.
there is no reasoning with them - they're not rational. you're going to have to actually kill every one of them.
and, the russians should have seen that coming.
as it is, these idiots have no chance, but will sit there and waste everybody's time slowly dying, anyways. and, if the russians just obliterate them - as they really should - they'll have to deal with clueless western media.
it doesn't seem to be an intelligence failure - this is the point, this is why they felt the need to go in. but, they seem to have thought they were in the realm of discourse, and i can't really grasp why that would be.
3:45
that's the other thing that's coming out - these nazi paramilitaries seem to have mined everything. roads. canals. sea routes. the russians have to move very, very slowly because there's land and sea mines everywhere.
ukraine is a signatory to the ottawa treaty on the banning of landmines, so they're breaking international law in doing it. but, this isn't, like, stalingrad, or something - the russians don't have to run into the mines and die. they can take their time and demine...
but, it's exceedingly time consuming and no doubt exceedingly expensive, too.
3:50
you can no more reason with a nazi than you can with a hungry lion.
you have to kill them.
3:57
...and, it's clear the russians don't want to do that.
they want to walk in, to a ticker-tape parade.
it doesn't seem to be a failure in any systemic process, it just seems to have been poor reasoning.
4:00
what should the russians have done?
they should have done it slowly.
yes - there's been a war happening in eastern ukraine since 2014 that is about ethnic russians trying to get out of ukraine. western media ridicules the premise, but the united nations and amnesty international have been pretty clear that the ukrainians have been pretty vicious.
if the russians were concerned about a staging ground in ukraine, it didn't necessitate a full frontal attack like this. i mean, the point was that they didn't want a larger war - but now they have one. a slow proxy war that allowed the forces on the ground to organize under the guise of an independence movement would have been more sustainable in the long run, and fostered a sense of russianness in the general population. like, this is a long term project, here.
i'm not convinced that the russians are making enemies on the ground, exactly. i mean, the stubbornness on display is proportional to the level of terror wrought by the paramilitaries, as described by civilians in the region. but they're also drawing deep divisions that could last centuries.
i brought up the civil war in the united states. east slavic culture doesn't need ukrainians seeking to rise again.
4:25
that said, i've been pointing out for years that putin isn't the grand chessmaster that the western media portrays him as, but rather somewhat of a sap.
for years, putin was the kid that showed up to recess looking to make friends with the kids that didn't like him. all he wanted was to fit in and make friends - and all he got in return was ridicule and scorn. but, he kept trying. and trying.
i mean, he's given up, clearly. but, he took massive amounts of abuse, a lot of punches to the chin, and with a seeming intent to reconcile. every time the west fired something at him, he just shrugged it off.
the russians don't want to be cast off to the east like this, they want to be an integral part of europe. they want to be in nato and the eu, too. but, they can't be, because they're not invited, and it's taken forever for them to realize it.
so, maybe i shouldn't pretend i'm that surprised, as i've been mocking the russians for not getting it, for years. and, here we are, now - they finally react, and they've just exposed their inability to think things through carefully.
the russians could shift tactics, and just obliterate them. i mean, it's not too late for that - it could very well happen. but, we really haven't seen that anywhere in decades. ukraine is not syria or iraq, and adopting anything close to that kind of carnage would completely destabilize europe for decades.
it's hard to grapple with the fact that everybody saw this as obvious except the russians themselves, who geopolitical analysts have generally seen as the more rational actor, but it seems to be the actual truth.
call it a crime of passion, perhaps. but, it was clearly a mistake, and it's not clear how they get out, now.
4:38
rather than export arms to ukraine, canada should send surplus singles of never surrender.
there should be a drive to collect copies sitting in basement crates.
note to would be participants: copies of sunglasses at night will not be accepted for distribution.
13:06
ukrainians should love corey hart.
they love the scorpions, after all.
13:11
if they want to turn the clocks back to the last century, they should expect the domestic politics of the last century to follow, including open hostility and large scale anti-war riots.
i will take up arms against my own country before i am conscripted to fight another one - and i speak for a large percentage of canadians when i say that.
"peacekeeping" was mostly a reaction to the domestic situation in canada, which featured a militant anti-war opposition, centered in working class politics. the truce that set in has not helped our interests, and i will be happy to jettison it, in a return to open class warfare.
never again will we allow our elite to send us off to be slaughtered for their finances, and the aristocrats of the country will need to be sent to the gallows, should they demonstrate the nerve to try.
no war except the class war. so, let's get to fighting it, then.
13:23
tuesday, march 22, 2022
so, i got out for a bit today.
today was sunny, rather than humid, which is...i've been pointing this out forever: the sun is coming back. it will go away again. but, for the next 5-6 years, the sun will be brighter, and you should probably notice it. in recent years, unseasonably warm days have been due to humid air masses moving in, whereas the last few warm days have been because it's sunny. that means it felt a little warmer than it was, but it certainly seemed gorgeous, whatever the actual reading ended up as.
today was also the first day in ontario where we were technically allowed to go to the store maskless, which was less important to me than others, because i'd been going maskless anyways. but, it opened up two opportunities for me:
1) i didn't want to go back to the store i got the settlement from until today, just because i didn't want to create a stir. i don't know if there are lingering tensions. i'll be careful there for a bit.
2) in mid-february, the chain store of bulk barns decided that mask mandates would be enforced, company wide. i was waiting them out - and used my last bit of paprika up last night. i called ahead to make sure, and it was fine. so, i had to get in there today, to pick up a number of things, once i could go back in without a disguise on.
what did i see, in terms of behaviour?
i initially just wanted to take a quick run to the bulk barn, but it was nice out, so i hopped on my newly fixed bicycle and went to lasalle to find some soy milk, then went out to the other stores i usually go to to try to find some things there, too. so, i went to eight stores today, over the late afternoon, and into the late evening, and it was exceedingly variable. people at the bulk barn were all wearing masks, whereas the grocery stores were really variable - some of them were about 50//50, whereas some of them were almost entirely maskless. staff seemeed to be mandated in some places, and not in others.
the plexiglass barriers remain, and they're no doubt more effective, anyways.
if i were to draw some observations, they would be obvious: younger people seemed more likely to avoid masks, and people that came out later in the evening seemed to wear less masks than people shopping in the late afternoon, before 17:00. i didn't notice any specific gender or ethnic differences. but, age seemed to be the obvious factor.
all in all, i'd say about half of the people are continuing to wear masks, but it really changed a lot depending on time and location, and age is a major factor.
i also noticed that certain goods - like toilet paper - seemed to be flat out missing. traffic was broadly light. together, this suggests to me that a mini grocery run must have happened over the weekend or last week, as panicky older people flocked to get specific items before the mandate lifted.
i also picked up some unusual items, in canada:
- i found some red bananas in lasalle, and decided to try them. besides being smaller, i see no discernible difference in taste or texture, but they are supposed to have more beta carotene, and are a potential source of lutein, as well. i'm going to throw them in my fruit bowl on a trial basis, and we'll see if i stick with it or not.
- i found some very large guavas at the settlement store, which i hadn't been in in over a year. supposedly, they've been stocking them regularly, which is potentially great news. but, i don't know if they're white or pink. that's another potential source of lutein.
i'm going to look at moving from cayenne powder to physical red peppers, and may experiment with mangos in early april, just to see if i like it or not. i'm going to be on the lookout for strange fruit, or fruit strange to me.
i'm also considering going back to broccoli in the salad, as i take out some of the spices, which are not working in getting my iron up. i'm iffy on returning to beets, as i'm apprehensive about the nitrates.
i'm also switching from the metro house margarine brand ("irrestiible") to lactantia, because they seem to have switched distributors. previously, the metro house brand had added vitamin e and about twice as much vitamin d; they've recently removed the e and halved the d (on top of the decrease relative to the increase in the rda), so that the numbers seem to now be the same as becel. on the surface, it would now seem to be repackaged becel. the lactantia has the same stats as the old house brand, so i'm wondering if metro didn't switch from the same manufacturer as lactantia to the same manufacturer as becel. whatever the truth, i'm irked by the change, and will now be using the olivina, instead.
i still don't know what i'm doing about the soy, but i found some more, and will put the issue off. i've also found some potential apple juice replacements.
so, that was the day, and now i'm in for a bit. next month shouldn't be scattered like this - and i should save quite a bit of money on groceries, as well.
0:35
what about shows?
well, there's now nothing stopping me from going to shows in windsor, except the weather, and the fact that i have no interest in smoking. at all.
i will take a look at what's happening and make some decisions.
1:00
the charts will get updated as i rebuild and construct the saga. for now, here's the meal plan, and i will update it as i add supplementary items, as i experiment. that's part of what the settlement can let me do.
breakfast, in three parts:
1) cereal: vector + all bran + raw wheat bran + ground flax seed + soy milk + vitamin c. this is likely stable; at the least, i can't think of anything worth adding.
removed: fake cinnamon, as it is potentially toxic in repeated dose, and real cinnamon is hard to find in north america. meal replacements, as they're too high in sugar (and cost too much).
experiments: currently undefined. some kind of powdered milk, potentially.
cereals in other meals: flax bread with eggs
2) fruit bowl: fresh or frozen strawberry, white guava, kiwi, fresh avocado, banana, frozen raspberry, frozen blueberry, paprika (dried red peppers), sunflower seeds, nutritional yeast.
removed: nectarines (too bulky), lychees (not good, here), cranberries (oxalates)
experiments: red banana (current), mango (soon), pink guava?, fresh blackberries (periodic), fresh black cherries (periodic), peaches (if on sale and ripe), persimmon (they've always been very expensive...), currants?, rosehips?
fruits in other meals: tomatoes & red peppers in salad bowl, limes in quinoa, apple & grapefruit juice with eggs [apple may be replaced with pineapple or something else], black cherries in ice cream & yogurt, maybe olives in salad
3) dairy bowl: strawberries, nutritional yeast, condensed algal omega-3s, cherry yogurt, cherry ice cream, vitamin d.
removed: n/a
experiments: n/a
dairy in other meals: also a dairy bowl with salad, cheese in salad, cheese with eggs
lunch, in three parts
1) salad: kale, carrots, tomatoes, red peppers, nutritional yeast, sunflower seeds, paprika, cayenne pepper, hemp seeds, oregano, thyme, basil, cumin, red hot sauce, olive oil margarine, caesar salad dressing, soy milk, cheddar cheese
removed: lime (moved to quinoa bowl), garlic (moved to eggs), beets (nitrates & oxalates), spinach (oxalates), green beans (yuck), anchovies (less iron than thought), mustard seed, maybe cayenne, maybe basil, pepper, salt
experiments: broccoli, olives, chopped chili peppers, tofu, chickpeas (high omega-6, though), sesame seeds, red clover
2) quinoa: quinoa (cooked with hot sauce), lime, cumin, paprika, caesar salad dressing, cheddar cheese
removed: n/a
experiments: some kind of fish, eventually. i want indoor, non-grain fed, though, impossible. so, tofu?
3) dairy bowl: probiotic yogurt, cheddar cheese, nutritional yeast, hot sauce, vitamin d
supper:
eggs: extra large eggs cooked in olive oil margarine, flax bread, olive oil margarine on bread, garlic, nutritional yeast, cheddar cheese, apple + grapefruit juice, vitamin d
removed: pepper, salt, peppers, tomatoes
experiments: n/a
3:11
certain segments of the american political class are falling all over themselves to insist ukraine is just like afghanistan, by which they mean the soviet invasion of aghanistan in 1979. of course, it isn't, for a myriad of cultural reasons. but, let's go with it, regardless.
i have myself pointed out that the americans were very blatantly trying to draw the russians into an afghanistan or vietnam like quagmire, and that part seems to have worked - the united states set a trap, and the russians foolishly walked into it. ok.
but, let's let this narrative play out.
in afghanistan, the united states responded to the russian invasion by massively funding an islamic terrorist network (referred to by the lunatic idiot reagan as "freedom fighters") to take down the russian "empire" by bleeding it to death. i'm of the view that suggestions that afghanistan collapsed the soviet union are not well grounded; the soviet union collapsed under the weight of it's lack of left-wing street cred, to use the language of punk rock. if anybody thought this was communism in 1950, they were all dead by 1985, and the reality of a kleptocratic bureaucracy was laid bare to all - it was a farcical version of marxism, where the maxim became "from each according to their ability, to each according to their dishonesty". there was nothing to do but blow it up and start over again. and, lest you not be confused, this is a left-wing analysis - it was a joke, and it got to the point that there was no longer any use in carrying through with the charade. and, let's not forget that it ended in a coup that remains shrouded in mystery. eventually, this temporary reaction wears off, and the fundamentally leftist nature of russian culture will reassert itself. for now, putin perpetually stands in the middle of a spectrum where the left is the communist party and the right is actual, literal nazism. it's easy to see why he wins every election, and hard to see a way out unless the spectrum breaks open.
but, whatever you think of the contribution of afghanistan to the fall of sovietism, the sequence of events is clear enough - the americans create this network of crazy people to fight what they conceive of as their enemy, and then that network of crazy people turns to fight it's benefactors, instead. the result was a lengthy war against an entity of our own creation, that we rightfully were forced to bomb into holes in the ground, and got us bogged down into a series of our own quagmires, instead - which actually helped the russians to rebuild.
should this narrative repeat itself, what happens in ukraine?
well, the first thing to do is to realize that the russian narrative about cia-created nazi militias appears to be fundamentally correct - embellished and skewed, perhaps, but basically absolutely right. the forces fighting against the russians on the ground seem to have strong parallels to the mujahideen in terms of ideology, of funding and of training, with minor cultural differences; the mujahideen get their virgins, while the nazis get their valkyries. i have frequently compared nazism to islam in this space. it's the substitution of one form of barbarian religion with another, to get to the same end point of psychotic fighters brainwashed into thinking they're working for god, while they are in truth advancing the interests of an expansionist empire that is using them as canon fodder.
so, what happens when they figure that out?
the germans were right in their initial analysis that sending weapons to ukraine is dangerous, because it is a matter of time before the weapons are turned back on them. and, if american analysts are pushing the afghanistan analogy with force - something that i think is at least correct in terms of imperial american intent - the europeans would be smart to actually read that carefully, and learn the proper lessons from it.
8:55
it's never a good idea to sign a deal with the devil; you might find he doesn't keep his word.
my expectations regarding the ndp have been abysmal now for decades, and it just remains to see how bad it really gets, as they continue to prop up one of the most regressive, right-wing governments in the country's history.
dental care is a provincial responsibility; the feds have limited, if any, jurisdiction, and it's not clear what they could legally do, besides create a tax credit. there will not be a dental care program at the federal level, as the constitution of the country does not allow for it. i rather suspect that they're trying to avoid an election, and at a time where they could actually win one, if they would focus on promoting less stupid and less fascist policies.
if this is what you get when you vote ndp, why bother?
but, now i'm curious: how does the ndp go about pulling the plug on an agreement based on an impossible to implement policy? how absurd will that be?
14:10
According to a release from the Prime Minister's Office detailing the grounds of the agreement, the proposed dental program would start with those under 12-years-old in 2022, then expand to under-18-year-olds, seniors and persons living with a disability in 2023.
in ontario, these services are already covered under various legislation.
i have access to dental services through odsp, and would via a seniors program, if i were one. there is an existing program for children under 17.
14:17
i don't know what the rules are in other provinces, but i suspect they're similar.
so, the ndp just agreed to prop up the government in exchange for the implementation of a program that already exists.
in truth, they're afraid of the people's party, which seems to be destroying them in people under 40, which is very bad - the people's party has terrible economics that will leave people worse off.
can we get rid of jagmeet singh, already?
14:20
if they are afraid of losing ground to a libertarian party, why don't they focus on less authoritarian policies, rather than sign bullshit agreements with terrible governments, in order to avoid an inevitable devastating election?
the problem is mr. singh.
remove mr. singh and the party will recover.
14:22
for those that are happy about this, i will repeat an old request: join the liberal party.
14:23
when we rebuild the left in this country, we need to make it pointedly clear that the ndp is not invited.
14:24
the answer is "yes" - the ndp will vote for militarism and imperialist wars in eastern europe, because they're too cowardly and immoral to take a principled approach, and risk losing their seats over it.
they now have no utility in the system, whatsoever, and should be dissolved and/or merged into the liberal party in order to build a new left.
they're just standing in the way, and propping up the bourgeoisie.
14:35
in ontario, disabled people (relative to the provincial definition, which is relatively broad, and not the federal definition, which is very narrow. almost nobody will qualify for any of these programs under federal definitions of disability.) have access to a large formulary and can request access to a larger one, on approval of the ministry. there are specialized programs for seniors and something called ohip+ for anybody under 24.
that's right - 24 years of age.
it is not remotely clear what differences the federal government could introduce.
we do have a problem in ontario, namely people in their 30s and 40s working non-unionized jobs that don't allow for coverage. i would support addressing this, and i would prefer a government run, universal program to expanded private insurance, even if i'm a strong advocate of unionizing the service sector, including fast food restaurants.
but, it is fundamentally a provincial responsibility, and what singh is really broadcasting is that he never really left the ontario legislature, or had any particular aspirations at the federal level, other than the desire for power. these are issues that are to be dealt with at queen's park, not in ottawa. and, i see no evidence that the ford government is interested in expanding public drug coverage.
i need to be clear: it is doug ford that must sign off on this in the end, not justin truideau or jagmeet singh. the federal liberals and ndp can sign as many deals as they want, but they have no jurisdiction in the matter, and the provincial government will make any and all decisions, in the end.
to get a vague idea of their thinking, the ndp have suggested they want it be "like medicare". well, to begin with, we don't have medicare in canada, that's a yankee term. it kind of gives it away: they're talking to would-be bernie sanders voters that live in canada and barely know what they're talking about. but, what does that mean?
we have something in canada called the canada health act that lays out the conditions for transfer of money from the federal government to the provincial governments. one of those conditions is universality. now, that's not a federal law, in any sense, it's a condition for funding. the provinces are actually free to move forwards with private health care if they want, but they'd lose billions and billions in funding. it would be untenable. so, the situation in canada is actually that there is a legal agreement between the provinces and the federal government that the federal government will take on much of the funding responsibility for health care, so long as the provinces hold to universal models. being "like the canada health act" means introducing a funding model, and giving the federal government veto power over the provinces.
as mentioned, the provinces are not a party to this agreement, nor have they been consulted, nor have they indicated any interest. as far as i can see, there is no substantive change in actual benefits to much of anybody; if anything, the more restrictive definition of disability at the federal level may make it harder for odsp recipients to get access to services, if the feds make the funding decisions.
so, is this then an agreement that the federal government will send money to the provinces for pharmacare? i guess doug ford can say "thank you", but it won't make any difference to actual people on the ground.
as mentioned: this is electoral. they don't want to go into an election, and not everybody affected has a degree in constitutional law. but, this is the most recent example of how the ndp are frauds, and those that understand the truth of it should be appalled by it, truly.
17:01
there was a process that took place in canada in the 90s, where the federal government (largely under the direction of paul martin, who was finance minister) systematically "downloaded" costs to the provinces. this allowed the federal government to balance the budget, under threats of restructuring from the imf, caused by unrestrained deficit spending under the mulroney period.
there have since been calls to "upload" funding back to the federal government. if this is about anything at all, it would seem to be what it's about.
i would tentatively support such a thing, as the federal government is theoretically better positioned to take on this sort of debt, but we're talking about an accounting issue of concern to fiscal conservatives, and not an expansion of public services. and, it requires the consent of the provinces, who are the primary decision makers - not the prime minister, or the leader of the fourth party in the house.
further, it comes with the caveat that we just took on a lot of debt, and that the imf may be breathing down our necks in the near future.
if we're talking about re-uploading, let's be straight forward about it, and drop the political bs around it. i would support it, in principle. but, the only really concrete outcome is that it helps the provinces balance their budgets, which is important - this isn't sovereign debt. but, it's not a concession, or a basis for an agreement between the ndp and the liberals.
i would strongly suggest to the ndp caucus that helping doug ford balance his budget is hardly a basis to sign a confidence agreement with the liberals, and that they should vote against it.
18:02
this is ukrainian state media, broadcasting that they're being defended by a nazi paramilitary group, that the russians are trying to stamp out.
when the russians said they intended to "denazify" the country, this is clearly what they meant.
and, i can hardly criticize them for doing it, or for needing to destroy much of the infrastructure in order to do it.
leftists should see the primary threat as these nazis, not as the russians; the left should be standing with any group fighting these nazis, as difficult as real life may be, from time to time.
the western media narrative is daunting, and overpowering. i get it. but, they're blocking dissenting voices for a reason.
the russians may not be ideal protagonists, but the ukrainians are the clear, unambiguous bad guys in this war.
18:31
it seems as though the account in question has been suspended by twitter.
18:40
what does it mean when i tell you that i don't believe in property rights?
broadly speaking, single-dwelling units should be abolished. there's no compelling reasons why families should live apart from others - it's just an inefficient use of space. all humans should live in apartment complexes, and the rules of those apartment complexes should be determined by the inhabitants.
technical ownership should be placed in the hands of the city, which should oversee the movement of people between complexes and, in rare circumstances, remove people that will not follow the rules, as determined by the inhabitants.
all humans should have the right to a healthy place to live, but the "right to property" is inconsistent with a free and democratic society, and the laws should explicitly state as much.
20:11
sept 19, 2017 vlog, where i intend to take advantage of the unseasonable weather by putting closing inri031-inri034 on hold and going to a dj set for a few hours, but instead follow a local sound art label owner to somebody's house in an attempt to network, and then don't get home until the morning.
21:21
sept 20-21 vlog, where i mail a package containing inri011 and inri033 and determine that the n12 was filed without an affidavit.
22:18
sept 22, 2017 vlog where i sneak into the back of trinosophes for the last set of the first night of new music detroit and then go to a secret dance party over night, and don't vlog any of it.
22:45
sept 23-24 vlog, where i go to a steve reich performance at the bottom of the dso and then dance all night, again.
22:58
sept 25, 2017 vlog, where i struggle with an exaggerated bass response over top of the interference, for inri031 and don't get to closing it.
23:34
sept 26, 2017 vlog, where i continue to struggle with inri031, and put together the first mp3 disc.
23:46
wednesday, march 23, 2022
sept 27, 2017 vlog, where i finally finish remixing and permanently close inri031 and then remix and close inri034.
0:06
sept 28, 2017 vlog, where i close inri035, compile some alephs and look ahead to period 2.
0:16
sept 29-30, 2017 vlog, where i start by formally closing inri026-inri035 on the vlog, then go to screaming females, and then go dancing in a warehouse until the sun comes up.
0:54
so, that's done up until the end of september.
i am also posting longer playlists on my fake youtube channel, roughly by week:
there is a banner for the travel blog coming up next, and then pictures & vlogs for oct & nov, 2017. these are going to be some crazy vlogs.
december goes quiet on the blog, but there will be vlogs to fill in the narrative.
i'm going to push forward until at least the end of 2018, and then re-evaluate. so, there's another year of this coming up.
1:06
my larger guavas, it turns out, are pink.
i posted this last year:
===========
2) lycopene - the fact is that we don't yet have any positive data indicating that lycopene actually does anything, but we at least can absorb it, and that's pretty different than this list of flavonoids that we don't absorb at all. so, it works as an anti-oxidant in vitro and we can actually absorb it. so, it seems promising, but the studies just aren't extant, yet.
i've assumed that the lycopene data for guava applies strictly to pink guava rather than the green ones i'm eating (which are less domesticated and have more vitamins, overall), but is there a little in there? there's otherwise really no substantive source of lycopene in this meal, at all.
that said, based on this study, i think i should be aiming for about 5 mg/meal, to start, until i can get a better grasp of it:
with the exception of 100 g of pink guava (3.33x more than i'm currently consuming), there is no source of fruit that gives me anything close to that. i'd have to drink a carton of grapefruit juice, or start adding in large amounts of watermelons - which are otherwise nutritionally void.
so, realistically, you'd really have to get it from tomatoes, and i have added a tomato to my pasta bowl for that reason. but, until i can get some more serious data on the actual efficacy of the chemical, i'm not going to worry much about it.
i'll do a more serious write-up when the time comes.
======
in fact, i ended up using the data for the pink guavas - with the lycopene content nulled to zero - for the chart, even though i was using the white ones. so, the data is functionally equivalent. however, these guavas are 50-70 g when the seeds are scooped out (they're a bit bigger than good sized kiwis, smaller than pears and maybe about the same size as the mini avocados i eat), which is twice the mass of the white ones i was measuring. one of these pink guavas likely has 200%+ the daily requirement for vitamin c, which was the only thing they made the chart for.
i don't have any white guavas right now, so we'll stick with the pink ones for the next week and see what i think. but, as far as the data goes, i should be able to flat out substitute and come out ahead, as the amount of c is higher due to volume and the only better source of lycopene would be rosehips.
how do they taste? more like guava smells - a little skunky, mildly fermented.
the seeds remain inedible.
i may find myself alternating, depending on supply. but, why not try it and see?
4:28
yeah, the language coming from jagmeet singh around this is, while perhaps delusional, also exceedingly concerning, in terms of his governing philosophy, which is being exposed as backwards and despotic.
rather than talking about how he is a representative of the people, and requires a mandate to act in the interests of his constituents, whom he is supposed to be a spokesperson for, he is talking about "using power".
this language is simply incoherent in the context of british parliamentary democracy traditions. it's the kind of thing you'd expect from some third world tinpot dictator, somewhere.
i need to strenuously ask the ndp for a serious leadership review. whatever you think of the deal, the language he's using to sell it indicates he's not fit to lead a political party in this country.
8:20
the idea of "using power" to "get things done" is anathema in a democracy and has no place in the canadian political spectrum.
8:22
so, i slept all day, but i'd been sleeping in shifts since i came in on thursday.
i'm more alert, broadly, which is a good sign.
17:52
i'm going to go out on a whim and suggest that diagolon is a nonsense cia front group.
....'cause it's flat out retarded.
but, that doesn't mean it's harmless, if the intent is to take away our rights. as far as boogeymen go, this one is particularly transparent.
22:54
this is actually encouraging.
for younger people, it doesn't matter much. but, for older people, having the flu outcompete covid and reassert itself could be a life saver.
that said, the likely end point of covid is actually probably not as a flu replacement but rather as joining the list of mild viruses we call the "common cold".
but, one of the ways we'll know this is done is when the flu becomes a bigger problem than the common cold, again.
the end of march is obviously very late in the year for the flu, in canada. but, it's a sign of a return to normalcy.
23:26
could the flu outcompete covid? is that how this works?
i think i should be careful: it's not clear that that would be how this would work.
the mechanism is a little tricky, but, yes - if you catch multiple viruses, they will end up competing with each other over which one can spread itself more effectively. so, would you need a super flu to out-compete covid, then? not necessarily.
i'm being vague because it's entirely speculative: i strongly doubt we have any actual useful science regarding coronaviruses competing with flu viruses, but i also don't think we have a coronavirus epidemic like this one on record, either. that said, this experience may actually rewrite some history books; maybe we've had historical coronavirus epidemics in the past and don't realize it.
i'm going to reiterate what i said: if the flu outcompetes covid and reasserts itself as the dominant virus in circulation, that will be easier on the immune systems of the elderly to manage. how that might happen is a little more difficult to parse.
but, the return of the flu is certain an encouraging sign.
23:43
thursday, march 24, 2022
the "russian flu" of 1889 might have been a coronavirus.
however, we surprisingly have few confirmed examples of coronavirus epidemics in history.
0:03
is the western media complicit or clueless, in regards to it's open support of nazi militias in mariupol?
it's the age old question.
what we know about mariupol is that the russians are in the midst of a relatively serious fire fight on the ground with a rather vicious neo-nazi battalion that is located in the city and has been for a few years. that's what's going on - the russians are blowing up nato-funded, trained and backed nazis, who are both refusing to give up (despite a hopeless position) and managing to inflict some damage, at the same time. they've been brainwashed beyond retrieval, and will fight to the death.
this is the miscalculation by myself and many others - we knew these nazis were on the ground, but we didn't really take them seriously. we mostly imagined the population would either welcome the russians or shrug it off, and the nazis would just kind of fade out, as a fringe group. so, even if we realized there was truth in the russian declaration, we mostly still interpreted it cynically, as a flimsy pretext. in that sense, the russians were right, where the independent analysts were wrong - we didn't see the serious possibility of this kind of resistance by these groups, at all, and didn't quite understand why the russians reacted this way. it's at least now clear that the russian choice was more rational than it initially appeared, even if it's not clear that it was the right decision, and won't be for quite a while.
see, the difficult point is that, the harder the process ends up for the russians, the more justified the russian reaction becomes. the more russians that the nazis kill, the more sense it made to take them out now and not, say, when they're nuclear armed. unfortunately, the russians are proving their point.
so, what does the western media run stories on? it runs stories on the historical importance of mariupol to southern russia, and it's place in putin's evil plan to take over the world, as though this is a game of risk, and putin is that master strategist that the west has erected a strawman around. all coverage is entirely oblivious to the nature of the force on the ground, it's strength, it's potential threat to the russians, it's ideology. etc - this is just about putin playing chess.
the russians have actually been pretty clear about what they're doing: they're trying to demilitarize the country. and, it follows that the fighting is heavy in mariupol because the battalion they're targeting is located there. that's all there is to it.
the intentional misdirection suggests complicity, rather than cluelessness. and, in fact, it suggests malice, on top of it. it's not an honest mistake, or an act of careless omission, it's intentional obfuscation and open propaganda.
i can only do so much from a basement in canada, but we're entering a very frightening period, in the west, where we're openly supporting nazi militias, and our media is consciously obfuscating the point.
4:22
so, i did this because i thought it would be quick. lol.
this is intended to be a banner for the travel blog:
i'm going to call this my "neighbourhood" - what we call the quebec-windsor corridor in canada, expanded in a few different directions. you'll have to download it to expand it.
i've circled places i have been to and have either written stories about or will eventually write stories about. not included is british columbia (which i briefly visited about 20 years ago) and florida (which i went to twice when i was a kid). that's all the places i've been to.
i have been planning to get to chicago for a show, but haven't yet. it is plausible that i may end up in buffalo or cleveland. boston is less likely, but i'd actually like to go to boston. but, this is a maximum space that is likely much larger than i need.
the two places i've lived are ottawa and windsor, and you can tell. places i may live in the future include kitchener and sudbury.
so, that's done now.
4:40
it's up at the drive share, if you want to zoom in.
4:48
i wish i could make the banner clickable, then add a link to the drive file, so it could be zoomed in and explored.
the point of these templates is so i don't have to build an image map. even so, it doesn't seem possible to actually do it, and it seems to be intentional.
c'mon, google. a clickable banner is pretty standard stuff. seems pretty lame to go out of your way to disable it.
5:38
it's annoying, because i know how to do this, if i can just edit the code, directly. i don't want to load javascript to include a clickable header, that's idiotic. in fact, it's built into the html architecture.
but, i have to interact with the page using objects, and if the object doesn't exist, i can't do it.
if google is going to force people to do something as simple as add a header by going through an api, can they at least ensure they're not eliminating inherent functionality?
this should be very simple; as far as i can tell, it's impossible.
5:55
this should be a discussion of template settings, but it was replaced with retarded language and i have deleted it for now.
<b:widget-setting name='displayUrl'>https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhOyKOa_6ObH2A2zgD9xP6EVZP5WnLtzwHJmdKVMyHg0lGRNRKucB-me8TcI6wsxAt9pmIb3Ol_YR3dym4jWvjFuanMSzaLatwdDZObE0sFr-rZrsH4ZqFakj5vrvTVXAZSw20x9_YXNtl18_RgZWxBpHfAji7Scly_NPKHX5S_OquAviiuwIK77xM7RA=s1259</b:widget-setting>
<b:widget-setting name='displayHeight'>260</b:widget-setting>
<b:widget-setting name='sectionWidth'>752</b:widget-setting>
<b:widget-setting name='useImage'>true</b:widget-setting>
<b:widget-setting name='shrinkToFit'>false</b:widget-setting>
<b:widget-setting name='imagePlacement'>BEHIND</b:widget-setting>
<b:widget-setting name='displayWidth'>1259</b:widget-setting>
</b:widget-settings>
in order to be able to add a link, i need to have a setting for it.
if there's no setting for it, i'd have to create my own widget that has a setting. but, it's idiotic to do that, given that this is built into html.
5:57
there should be a setting for a clickable banner; that's pretty basic stuff.
5:59
i can in fact get a url to the image underneath.
if it's too weird, i can just turn them into different things. that's fine. <-----??????
i can also get a link to the text over top of the image.
however, if i try to nest them, it loses functionality. can i get around that, or should i denest them?
i don't know if "denest" is accepted terminology, but you should understand what i mean.
6:58
what i have is this
<a href="link to image">
<div for img>
<div for title wrapper>
</div>
</div>
</a>
so, the a applies to both the divs, and it's written so that the title wrapper overlays on the image.
html is pretty crude like this - i can't undo that. maybe the wrapper has an override. if it doesn't, i'll have to split it into:
<a href="link to wrapper"><title></title></a>
<a href="link to image"> <div for img></div></a>
i can't do something like this:
<a>
<div>
<a>
<div>
</a>
</div>
</a>
...because the outer a negates the inner one.
7:06
to be clear, what i want to do is very simple.
i just want the banner to go one place and the text to go another. it's a simple application, not at all complex. and, it would be easily accomplished using an image map in a different context. but, i'm forced to use the api, here.
i have a banner with a little bit of txt overfront:
what it does is force me to nest the links because the title is an object inside the image. i mean, that's the problem - the api is stupid. this is something that should have been realized, as it's a fairly normal request. alas.
the easy way to do it is to pull the link on top of the image, but it's kind of not as nice looking.
hrmmn.
i could conceivably paste the link over the image and do the image map, but...
7:24
last step, i think, is dropping this here:
8:32
let's try again:
.png)
.png)
8:44
one more time:
.png)
.png)
8:51
so, i was able to very closely approximate what i wanted done, and it's up at the travel blog, now:
there is a very small sliver at the top that's not clickable. that's fine.
8:54
this is the code, if you're curious.
you need to begin by uploading your header as background only. then, upload a small sliver of extra background somewhere (i used this blog to host it, below). then, go to that part of the template and replace it as follows
====
<!--Show the image only-->
<div id='header-inner'>
<div expr:style='"background-image: url(\"" + "url to jpg of sliver at top" + "\"); " + "background-position: " + data:backgroundPositionStyleStr + "; " + data:widthStyleStr + "background-repeat: no-repeat; "' id='header-inner'>
<b:include name='title'/>
</div>
<a expr:href='"url to link for larger header"' style='display: block'>
<img expr:alt='data:title' expr:height='data:height' expr:id='data:widget.instanceId + "_headerimg"' expr:src='data:sourceUrl' expr:width='data:width' style='display: block'/>
</a>
=======
the first div adds the text section to the top, over top of a sliver of background, that you uploaded.
the second puts a link around the header, which is stored at sourceUrl, via the api.
you'll note i removed the padding in the first part, to allow it to be seamless.
so, it wasn't that hard to get around it after all, but the api is still dumb.
9:01
so, it turns out joe biden is a uniter, not a divider.
he's a fucking republican.
19:14
i think marine le pen is going to take a serious run at macron this time around. the system in france produces a run-off, and the extreme right (as opposed to the far right, which is where macron stands) seems to have a plurality.
the election is going to come down to whether melenchon voters feel the urge to block her. again. and, you can only run that trick so many times.
melenchon voters should take a hard look at macron and ask whether it's actually worth it or not.
i actually think it might be good for france in the long run to blow the spectrum up and start over.
21:28
marine le pen is certainly far less frightening than ted cruz is.
21:29
friday, march 25, 2022
on an issue-by-issue basis, who is scarier, marie le pen or ted cruz?
cruz is unquestionably far scarier. there's no comparison. i actually agree with le pen on a lot of economic issues, more so than the contemporary bourgeois fake left, which is often just as creepy as ted cruz.
overall, i'd agree with about 40-45% off le pen's political positions, about 40-45% of biden's political positions (mostly different issues) and about 5-10%, max, of cruz' political positions.
0:20
political positions that i agree with marine le pen on:
- opposition to unrestrained free trade
- opposition to the banning of 0% borrowing - something i strongly agree with her on
- opposition to privatization of government services
- abolishing the wto
- reintroduction of glass-steagall
- abolishing road tolls
- more local food production (food sovereignty)
- increased collectivization of agriculture
- nationalization of energy
- higher taxes on oil companies
- opposition to nuclear power
- funding public transportation
- higher corporate taxes
- opposition to the eu
- opposition to nato
- french independence from american hegemony
- pro-choice
- i am an advocate of the french concept of secularism, which is much more aggressive than the american concept of secularism, due to the historical power of the catholic church in historical france, and the need to actively dismantle it and prevent it from reconstituting itself. some of her particular positions on religion seem distractionist, or politically motivated, and i may find myself arguing that a le pen government should show greater restraint in it's treatment of some minority groups. but, i agree with the general thrust of her views on religion.
- fwiw, i oppose straight marriage. that is, i do not think the government should be involving itself in marriage, and would support the abolition of all marriage contracts in society. while i would concede that anybody should be allowed to get married if we are to have marriage at all, i really i have no support for gay marriage, as a concept. basically, i think marriage is a religious idea, and that a proper separation of church and state would remove the state from the process. and, then, of what utility is gay marriage in a secular society, if it's reduced to a strictly religious ritual? my secularist politics are more central to my core than my queer identity. frankly, i can't grasp why queer people would want to get married. the church can fuck off, as far as i'm concerned.
- i think capital punishment is barbaric, and a ban should be written into the constitution to ensure it's impossible.
she's not really what you'd consider "right-wing" by north american standards, is she? she's, in some ways, sort of like an old tory. but, as a socialist, i see more commonality with old toryism than i do with contemporary neo-liberalism. really, she's kind of a leninist, in the sense that lenin was a protege of mussolini.
see, and this is why i can deal with a le pen (who is arguably an economic leftist) and cannot deal with a maxime bernier (who is a hard-right libertarian, something i'd even take up arms against).
to be clear: i'm a leftist and she isn't, and i'm sure i'd find lots of things to disagree with her on, but i'm probably in greater agreement with her, overall, than i am with most contemporary bourgeois fake left politicians. unlike the contemporary fake left, le pen has a socialist core in her economic policies, and it's enough to be enticing, when faced with a neo-liberal opponent.
i'd probably vote for le pen before i voted for andrea horwath.
0:51
so, when i was building the banner, something that happened was that i ran out of ram.
the chromebook is a fairly powerful machine, but the architecture destroys it - it's a dumb terminal, so i have to rely on a slow internet connection and server-side apps to do anything except type. once i realized this was going to be a more serious project, i moved it to the production machine, which is still running a 32-bit xp - and had 2 gb of ram, as i continue to be testing it. i'm a lot of things, but i'm not a graphic artist, and i don't have any sort of serious graphic software at my disposal. frankly, i've very rarely had any need to use anything more complicated than paint.
at some point, thought, paint got bogged down by the size of the bitmap. which eventually got to almost 300 mb. it needs to dump that all into ram, apparently. so, it started to crash when it got a little over 1 gb of ram in memory. but, i had 2 gb installed.
i tried a few things and could not get paint to use more ram than this limit, which is something i'll need to keep an eye on. i know, for example, that cubase will use for more ram than that, on a regular basis. so, i'm blaming it on paint.
but, one of the things i did was add my third stick of ram in, and it seems to be ok, up to now.
so, we're up to 3 gb, now, and i'm still not seeing the machine crash. that's good news, but it's frustrating - i still don't know what the problem was.
i should clarify that i'm regularly flashing my bios when i come inside after i go out, and i'm still seeing repeated signs of tampering with my computers. it's clear enough that somebody is very interested in understanding the tools i'm using, but it's not clear to me what they're looking for, or what they imagine i'm doing.
i have blogs. i have vlogs. it shouldn't be hard to figure out. but, i'm essentially dealing with conspiratorial logic, it seems - the harder it is to find evidence of whatever it is that they imagine i must be doing, the more obvious it is that i must be doing it.
at some point, somebody must have to write a report; at some point, funding must dry up. i dunno. for now, i'm happy that it's running with 3 gb.
i want to get the end of 2017 filed by the end of the night.
so, how long does it carry on for? we're going to go until at least the end of 2018, and decide from there.
2:01
i already have december, 2017 & the first four months of 2018 filed from the court battle against the second landlord (the place i briefly moved to for less than a year), so i'm going to do six months all at once.
let me get my screenshots first, which is the actual point, and then i can get the uploads running for the next week or something, which will let me get back to what i was doing.
i keep intending these detours to be short, right? fuck. well, i keep telling myself i'm doing things, and it will balance out in the end.
5:12
actually, let me push forward a little later, even, because i stayed in over the summer of 2018, so there are very few selfies.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/battery-plant-essex-1.6396546
to be clear: expect thumbnails from 10/2017-07/2018 to be up by noon, and for (selected) vlogs over that period to come up over the next week.
5:14
they're building a giant electric battery plant in windsor. this plant is actually located on the fringe of the city's boundary, and will mostly employ people from the outlying areas of tecumseh, lakeshore and essex.
it could lead to rapid development along cabana, along with the new hospital. this will likely just contribute to the capital flight out of the city centre and accelerate the urban decay.
that's fine. so long as they can get the trucks off huron church.
17:47
i crashed for a few hours today, but it was after the kind of long day i want to be normal, again. i think the iron is working, again.
listen - this isn't new, i've been trying to figure it out for years, and i think i've finally figured it out.
i got the pictures for 2017 up this morning:
i also got the filing done up until mid-june, which i'm doubling back around on to pull further thumbnails out for.
i'd expect thumbnails for the rest of 2018 up relatively soon, and videos to upload over the weekend.
if i rewind a little, i wanted to work on inri077 in mid-february, but i started doing the picture archive instead because i was concerned about the stability of the power, due to a storm. that got me on the picture archive. but, i also had to spend much of march on legal stuff.
i could actually get back to inri077 tonight or tomorrow, and back into the schedule for mid-april, after the actual hearing.
19:22
so, i've got some pictures for early 2018 up, now, in the apartment i briefly moved to.
i am visibly less attractive in pictures taken in that apartment. what happened?
what happened is that i moved into an apartment with a drug addict pothead living directly below me, and her disgusting smoke had a devastating effect on my skin and my hair. i've tried to mitigate it in the pictures, but the facts are what they are, and you can only do so much: smoking makes you unattractive and disgusting looking, and the results are what they are.
i got out as fast as i could, but my hair never recovered, and it's actually very depressing to see the extent of the damage the marijuana caused it.
20:51
there is apparently a philip morris covid-19 vaccine.
studies indicate that recipients report desiring a booster shot shortly after receiving the second dose.
23:43
so, they understand the business model. who can blame them?
23:44
nine out of ten doctors recommend the philip morris vaccine.
23:46
saturday, march 26, 2022
the media is now suggesting that belarus is going to invade the northern or western part of ukraine. i could actually take that seriously, as it would allow russia to organize the region into a wider buffer state. that sounds like a plan.
the logic is that ukraine would be absorbed into the friendly belarus, which is an east slavic state that, like ukraine, is intermediate to poland. if i were putin, i'd be concerned it might backfire. what is the population of western ukraine, as opposed to belarus? the opposite might happen: kiev might occupy minsk.
if they're going to do this, and i don't think they should, they should maintain a separate ukraine. ukraine means "borderlands", and it means that for a reason.
i need to reiterate that the russians are really missing the point: pan-slavism is impossible unless it's voluntary. as it is, this is a civil war, and one side may have to conquer the other for it to end. but, the tactic has to be integration, not some sneaky attempt to control.
the better tactic is to cut out the east and south in some abstraction and leave a rump in the west, with a puppet-government, if need be. but, that puppet government will then be faced with a thousand maidan's, back to back, and the state will then need to suppress them.
that's unavoidable; a union with belarus, or an invasion by belarussian soldiers, will not help.
0:08
the last foofighters record i bothered listening to was the colour and the shape.
fwiw.
i think the drummer at the time was william goldsmith, from sunny day real estate.
1:13
i actually think that dave grohl is an utterly talentless blowhard.
1:16
i did enjoy that first record, though.
when i was 15.
1:20
the colour and the shape just didn't excite me. it wasn't cringey like some of the other records by other established artists of the period, but i just found it incredibly boring. there really are not any memorable tracks on it, in hindsight. looking at the tracklisting, i don't even remember any of the songs on it. i remember monkey wrench, but i couldn't identify any of the other songs on the record or conjure them up in my mind by looking at the titles of them. it's a record i really have no substantive recollection of.
i listened to it a few times, got very quickly bored with it, shelved it and never bothered with them ever again.
i haven't even heard more than forty seconds of anything by the foofighters since the mid 90s. i can't even offer a coherent critique; i haven't even heard any of it.
1:28
i really liked the first record, though. it had a lot of weird tonal combinations, in the context of what was really a pretty raw punk rock record.
while i barely remember the contents of the colour and the shape, what i do remember about the record is that the reason it struck me as boring was that there was a dramatic slow down in the tempo, to the point that it was borderline country music. i just had no remote interest in the genre or style, at the time, and completely lost interest in it for that reason.
1:33
i'm not anti-foofighters or something. i'm more just completely and utterly disinterested in everything they've done in well over 20 years, to the point that i honestly haven't even heard any of it. it's just not in what i'd label as my sphere of interest.
i'm more familiar with the work of taylor swift, frankly.
1:44
i consequently have absolutely no comment to make.
1:46
the reality is that the correct genre to put the foofighters in is jock rock. that's really not a style of music i've ever listened to. at all.
3:01
i'm stopping with the pictures at the end of may, 2018. for now.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/sV3UzY6P7HPFEbw59
the winter of 2017/2018 was unusually snowy and i did not talk to myself in the mirror for the vlogs. there were no shows of interest, that i recall. i saw sunsquabi & screaming females in april, then went to two shows in may in hamtramck, namely the messthetics and the telescopes. i think i got drugged by a random guy at a gay bar after the telescopes, but, in hindsight, i may have also had a seizure, and it might have been iron related.
there was a saajtak show in may that i didn't take pictures of. oddly. i may have been self conscious about my hair. i did die my hair again at the end of may, so there are shows for three days of movement sets. and then that's it.
june was cold. july, august & september were very quiet regarding shows because i was focused on moving and didn't want to spend any money; obviously, i hoped to have it dealt with asap to salvage the summer, but it didn't happen. in fact, iirc, there wasn't a lot going on, anyways. the arrest at the end of september made me apprehensive about going back to detroit until the spring, but i wouldn't normally go out much in the winter, anyways.
there is not a vlog regarding the arrest. however, there should be pictures of me in october and november regarding the court appearance, and that was properly vlogged. i go to a la dispute show in early 2019 and have a pretty good summer over 2019; there should be lots of pictures. the last shows were in early 2020. like, at all. there's maybe a handful of pictures, total, since.
i'm stopping here because i haven't decided what vlogs i want to upload over early 2018, where the main narrative in my life was dealing with the second-hand smoke from the neighbour and trying to get out of a dirty space. there are no adventures, but rather a lengthy saga. so, i will probably need to upload everything to tell the story, and will probably skip it altogether, for now.
i'd rather get back to the music production, in three stages, and leave this for later.
i can multitask by uploading while i'm doing other things, and this is going to take a long time to upload, unedited. i should get the rest of 2017 up over the next few days, and then i'll stop to re-evaluate.
in the mean time, i'll also need to recalibrate. this diversion starting in late february, and also included a lot of time spent on court stuff. i know where i was, but i want to update the music blog, first.
3:57
what happened was that i sat down to work on some music in late february and noticed the power was cutting in and out. so, i decided to focus on the picture archive, instead, so that my gear would not be exposed, and it took me on a detour. i also spent much of march focusing on legal concerns with the karen/cop case and the now settled grocery store case.
4:06
and, as expected, i'm immediately totally overwhelmed and absolutely baffled by where i am with this. it was so much easier when everything was linear. it's tempting to go back to the beginning.
fuck, you know what?
lol.
no.
but, yes.
i can't multitask. i've learned that. i'm terrible at it. i keep trying to do many things at once, and i just fail over and over. i have to start at the beginning and push forwards - i don't feel i have another choice. and, i keep coming to that conclusion, and then trying to avoid it.
right now, "the beginning" is the alter-reality in 1989, at least until i catch up in early 1992. i keep reminding people that the alter-reality doesn't really get interesting until about the release of siamese dream and the downward spiral. while i cycled back around on them, i'm actually really too young for nirvana. and, in the end, i became more interested in a fairly wide swath of underground 80s music than contemporary 90s music. so, i have time. and, i don't need to close anything in real time until 2026.
but, i'm going to have to move within the next 6-12 months, and i may lose a lot of space in the process as a consequence of the cost of living in this country. i've been putting this inevitability off, sort of not wanting to deal with it; watching the vlogs again, i'm reminded that it's reality. i'm 41 years old, and i don't know if i want to live a long life or not, or if my genes are going to let me. i haven't created any new recordings in several years, at this point.
my primary, sole focus needs to be finishing period 3, while i can - while i have space, while i have electricity, and while i'm still alive. i've been fucking around doing other things, partly out of pragmatism and partly out of necessity. my gear started picking up large amounts of noise in mid-2015, as i was remastering items from source. i got through that in two phases, in early and late 2016. i then put it aside for almost all of 2017, as i focused on a variety of other things (including "archiving"), but finished it up over late 2017 and early 2018. i finished my last compilations to end period 2 in the first weeks of 2018. i then wanted to go back and write liner notes, and got a start on it, but got thrown off repeatedly, by more housing issues (i could not work in the previous apartment), by a frivolous arrest (leading to dropped charges), by fighting back against the police for illegally filing those charges, by the pandemic, by issues with my transition, by realizing i was dealing with malnutrition, by a cancer scare, etc.
i've got all of this dealt with now, but it's a lull. there's a storm coming. i need to make use of the time i have.
i'm down to one court issue - and i have a pivotal hearing on the 7th that i suspect might end all aspects of the concern simultaneously.
after that, i want to - and need to - spend the summer working, and working hard.
so, i'm going to run thrrough the notes for the last month, but i'm not going to do this three-part schedule that i've tried to put in place. i came to the same conclusion in early 2014 - i don't work like this. i need to do one thing at a time...
that said, i will need to rewind eventually, too.
i keep posting these work plans and i never follow them. everything i've done for years has been scattered and disconnected, and i feel like i'm sputtering, but i have to remind myself that it will converge to a completed result, in the end.
so, i have to do it like this:
1) i've run out of time to mess around with liner notes and shit, and get back to period 3 "later". i knew i had a few years; that was a few years ago. now, i need to get period 3 done, at the least. and, maybe period 4, too. that means actually recording actual music. it's long past due.
2) then, once i get through period 3 - and maybe period 4 - i will need to go back to the alter-reality and aggressively push forward with it up until the point i get to. if i get through most of period 3 before i move some time next year, it might mean working through up to 1994. and, it could take months to catch up. this isn't how i wanted to do this, but i'm not pushing forward another ten years. or, not yet, anyways.
3) and, what about rebuilding? well...fuck. i dunno. i suppose i'll need to do it in sequence, which means what? well, it might mean waiting until 2026, when i start working out the alter-reality for 1996. seriously. that would have everything converge in 2030.
listen, if i've learned anything, it's that i can't plan like this, it's crazy talk.
but, i need to drop all of this other stuff and basically pick up where i left off in early 2018.
that means that i'm going to republish the files without editing them, but with the caveat that i may edit them when the time comes.
the main point is that i'm back to a singular focus on linearly completing the discography, because i feel that i've lost any time i may have bought and that i need to take advantage of the relatively clean space i have while i still have it.
tomorrow, at the latest - and let's try to get through inri077 by the end of the month, and get back on track for the spring and summer. the space is organized and clean. the computer seems to be usable, if somewhat disheveled. let's just get to it.
4:53
deep breaths.
i'm centered and focused.
4:54
to be clear: i decided in 2018 that i had to get the liner notes done before 2020 to release the period disc, then pushed it forward by ten years in 2019, because there was just no way i'd get it done. i might end up doing that again. then, i thought i could push forward with it, and sort of did, but stopped in early 2020. and, i've spent the last two years running around in circles. time's up, now - i need to get to period 3 and get it done.
period 3 was the space between when i got back from bc and when i moved to bronson in early 2007. there's plenty of work to do, but it's actually mostly 75% done. it should be comparatively fast, which is why i put it off.
at the very, very least, i need to finish the lost symphony. like, now.
6:18
technically, i stalled in the summer of 2020. those were the last release points. i went back to double check, and got bogged down. then, i completely shifted to the diet over late 2020 and early 2021. i decided to clean the place with the intent to get back to work in early 2021 and have been slowly getting back into order since mid-2021, but have just left a lot of loose ends open, in the process.
i have some new gear.
i released a few things, closed a few things.
but, i spent 2013-2018 in a strict, linear path, and i need to get back to that, now, to get as much as i can done, before i lose access, which is back to being a serious concern.
6:22
i keep pointing out that all of these subprojects are components of the main project, and that they all need to be done, in the end. and, that's true.
but, at the same time, it's the music that's the point, and if i die halfway through finishing the writing component, i can deal with that; i don't want to leave music unfinished.
i have to get that done, first.
i am multitasking, a little bit - i'm uploading. multitasking was easier when i had multiple computers running. alas.
6:29
it's all republished.
i can only hope it's not corrupted. if it's been corrupted, please return it to the state i last left it in and go fuck off and die somewhere.
7:20
i got something to eat and fell asleep.
i need to do some loose ends first.
and, i can't completely let go of the alter-reality for a long period, either. it's the rebuilding that i'll need to put off.
i've done this so many times and it always falls apart, but here's my new setup.
a) i'll need to alternate between 1. period 3 and 2. the alter-reality.
b) eventually, i'll need to go back to rebuilding liner notes and whatnot - before 2030, at least.
if i thought i could sneak (b) in, i can't. i've run out of time.
but, i can't let the alter-reality go completely....
i also want to get files uploaded to payhip.
if i look at the list of sites on the side, i can categorize them:
these sites house music. the discography started in 1996 and has currently made it to 2003. the tentative end point for these sites is 2011, but it gets blurry after i go back to school in 2009 and might continue forward in another context. right now, everything posted to a space after 2011 is a remaster or reconstruction of something created before 2011. period 3 is 2003-2007 and period 4 is 2007-2011 (period 1 is 1996-2000, period 2 is 2000-2003). i want this to be my primary focus, now, with a focus on pulling it all together before the end of 2026, at the very latest, for eventual total completion in the form of period discs by 2030, 2033, 2037 and 2041. i will be 60 years old in 2041, if i'm still alive at all.
these sites house music. the discography started in 1996 and has currently made it to 2003. the tentative end point for these sites is 2011, but it gets blurry after i go back to school in 2009 and might continue forward in another context. right now, everything posted to a space after 2011 is a remaster or reconstruction of something created before 2011. period 3 is 2003-2007 and period 4 is 2007-2011 (period 1 is 1996-2000, period 2 is 2000-2003). i want this to be my primary focus, now, with a focus on pulling it all together before the end of 2026, at the very latest, for eventual total completion in the form of period discs by 2030, 2033, 2037 and 2041. i will be 60 years old in 2041, if i'm still alive at all.
- bandcamp
- payhip
these archives start in 1989 or 1996 and will end in 2013, but will expand to other sites. they contain reflections about how my experiences as a young person influence my music, as it was written from 1996-2011.
- j's journal
- the alter-reality
these sites will need to be updated together, pushing forward from 2013. they mostly contain writing about music written between 1996-2011, but also contain life narratives from 2013-present. posts are dated from 2013-present.
- lulu
- smashwords
- rants
- current music blog
- music review blog
- travel blog
- daily vlog
- music videos
these sites are being shut down:
personal timeline
these sites are continuous:
photo album [2004-now]
music timeline [1996-now]
youtube review site
these sites are not in serious use:
appspot
soundcloud
twitter
it's too many sites, clearly - too many ways to present the data. call me obsessive or compulsive; you're probably right about both.
but, if the things i'm concerned about right now are the first two things, i need to get them in order before focusing strictly on them.
i know. i'm stuck in a recursion and can't get out. but, i have to finish.
loose ends are required, first.
22:32
the end result will be a continuous blog running from 1989 to 2041 (or later) with embedded media of my life's work, presented in the form of a single disc, or iso-style download.
so, i keep pointing out that it's holistic.
but, i have to get the music done, now. i'm done fucking around with these other things.
22:38
how long is my 50 year blog going to be, if converted into legacy paper?
100,000 pages.
some of it has value. some of it doesn't. i'll let the future sort it out.
22:44
enjoy your government job, if you do, although we both know you don't.
i'm not into it.
i don't see the point.
22:46
oct 4th, 2017 vlog, where i close some discs in the morning (inri036-inri037), and go over to detroit to fix my bike, then go see sadie dupuis & deerhoof at the magic stick.
23:21
oct 5, 2017 vlog, which is just an in between day.
23:25
sunday, march 27, 2022
oct 6-7th vlog, where i go to touche amore and then spend the last hot night of the year out dancing.
0:04
there's many more files uploading to the fake account, which is now on the side.
so, now let me rewind to the end of 2021 and move forward through the music blog to refocus on what i was doing.
i may end up publishing a number of things this morning, before i get back to inri077.
0:11
so, this is the way i'm doing the loose ends: i'm rewinding the blog back to when i came out of the diet update, which was early 2021, and finishing what i left open. so, for example, i have a takeharu guitar i bought last year that i need to fix before i can get to inri075, i was rebuilding my 10th symphony and left it aside, etc.
this is where i tried to refocus before getting distracted a hundred different times:
i'm really not used to getting things half done and left incomplete like this, but the sheer volume of things in front of me is just flooring me. but, it's really the distractions that are throwing me off: the hospital settlement, the cancer scare, the surgery in toronto, the ancestry.com distraction and a dozen other things had me stopping and starting in ways i don't do, normally.
that's fine.
let's get this going, and let's finish this all, piece by piece.
2:48
so, i spent 2019 and 2020 doing journal entries, partially because my computer wasn't functioning, and partially because i couldn't get the space clean enough to record in. contrary to popular mythology, most talented/interesting musicians actually find it almost impossible to be creative under the influence of any sort of drugs, besides perhaps coffee, and perhaps more potent versions of coffee. marijuana makes me stupid, tired, uncreative and uncoordinated. i didn't know how long i'd be in this space, and thought typing was the better use of time, given the drifting smoke of unclear origin.
i spent the summer of 2020 cycling back around and trying to finalize those journals. then, i pivoted into the diet in september, thinking it would be quick. i was still doing it at christmas.
that's where i'm going to pick back up, and finish all the things i didn't finish, then, with an aim to getting period 3.1 finished.
i need to fix the guitar to finish inri075.
inri076 is done.
inri077 is started.
inri078 will need to start from scratch.
inri079 is done.
inri080 is done.
inri081 is done.
and, that is the end of period 3.1.
3:04
it's curious to me that azerbaijan just attacked armenia.
see, this is the truth that nobody will explain to you: i think this is really a proxy war between turkey and russia, and that this is where the fighting really erupts, if the situation gets out of hand.
biden is trying to sell gas to the germans, but it's the turks that are arming the ukrainians. and, i don't think putin really gets it, either.
3:34
so, the first thing i did was rebuild the 16-bit machine and put windows 98 on it. it is still sitting where i left it.i haven't turned it on in months.
i was considering using it to record parts for period 3. i fact, i still am.
however, i don't have any specific reason to turn it on or mess with it further, at this time. if i get back to it, it will be for period 3.2.
i will also need to finally build the 64-bit machine when i get to the matlab project, which is penciled in for the start of 2005.
so, i'm making sure i still have my install files in place and passing through that process. it's ready to go, when i need to do it, if i need to do it, potentially for xenophanes, specifically.
3:44
i had to rewrite this post from march 2, 2021, because it seems like it was corrupted by some kind of virus.
========
so, i got distracted there.
as i'm dusting everything off and making sure it still works, which is not the first time i've done that, i'm realizing the need to rebuild the machines. i ultimately want to put the 32-bit machine in it's spot in the desk and plug it in, but i need to figure out what i'm putting in it and not putting in it, which has changed since i initially bought the parts for the 64-bit machine, which i haven't gotten around to building yet.
i should go back and check my notes from 2017 to see exactly what i wanted to do with each item, and each part for each item, before i commit to doing anything with them, now, just to make sure i don't miss any ideas i may have had at the time.
i now have three pcs (the 90s pc, the 32-bit production pc and a new 64-bit machine that i haven't set up yet) and four laptops (two broken modern hps, a 90s laptop that still works but is impossibly slow and a falling apart expired ibm chromebook) to utilize, and need to figure out the best way to set them up, relative to what i want to actually do. back when i lived in the other basement apartment, i initially had the oldest pc set up in the living room as a streaming device to send youtube out to an old tv set, the hp laptop in my bedroom as a glorified typewriting gateway device and what i'm calling the 32-bit machine set up as my main production machine in the recording room. what happened was that both modern laptops lost their screens in sequence within a few months, leaving me without a good access point, and i decided i'd be foolish to buy another laptop, given that laptops are just mass manufactured garbage, in today's world.
it's just based on empirical observation; i've learned, by experience, that laptops are simply designed to break - they're made of shitty components with intentionally short lifetimes. it's planned obsolescence. so, i decided i wouldn't waste my money on them, and i'd stick with good asus boards in all of my machines, moving forwards, instead. i'll never waste money on a laptop that is designed to break within a few months, ever again.
so, what i wanted to do was move the 32-bit machine into my bedroom to replace the broken laptop, and then use the new machine as the recording machine in the music room. the intent was to take large amounts of what is currently in the 32-bit machine (the recording stuff) and put it in the 64 bit machine. i think i even wanted to switch the cases, which i now think is insane.
i then wanted to convert the newer hp laptop - which has 8 gb of ram in it - into a video processing console, and connect it to the bedroom pc via a network cable. i was intending to use the other hp laptop as a real-time guitar effects processor. i had no plans for the oldest laptop, except as an emergency backup.
when i moved to the apartment building, i went from three rooms to two rooms and that plan no longer made any sense. first, i lost my server room, which buffered the noise from the old pc, which it no longer made any sense to leave on all of the time. on top of that, there wasn't really room for the tv, which ended up sitting in a corner, and was ultimately left there; the 90s laptop was still able to connect to the internet with minimal effort, so it made sense to just use that by putting it on the coffee table, instead. so, i decided that i'd convert the old pc (which was no longer being used as a tv) into a 16-bit machine for recording, keep the 32-bit machine as it is, and build the 64-bit machine when it was time to do so. the idea was to swap between them using a kvm. but, things did not work out there, and i never really got around to setting up any of these things.
after i moved into the space i'm in now, i kept using the 90s laptop as a tv and i bought a cheap chromebook, which was intended for use strictly as a mobile device, given that my laptops were now both non-mobile. this is, itself, now falling apart. it lost the battery several months ago, and i've got a usb mouse and keyboard attached to it, just like the other ones. that means it's no longer of use as it's intended purpose, leaving me in the same scenario as previously (without a mobile computer), although it still connects as an access device, which is what i've been using it as, recently. i can't type on a phone, which renders it useless to me - i just have no interest in it, i think it's useless. if i get my climate money in, i could conceivably use it to buy a new laptop for mobile use, and then convert the chromebook into a new tv. that would solve all of these laptop and tv problems, and clear up the 16-bit pc for further musical use.
it's a shame that i can't just use the old laptop, which is built like a tank and still runs. i mean, it's a perfectly functional device. i actually winlited an installation disc specifically for it, and specifically to use it as a tv, but it's of minimal use to me at this point because i need an html-5 ready browser to access youtube, now. that is the specific thing that broke the 90s pc, and the specific thing that broke the 90s laptop, too. this thinkpad should have no such problems for quite some time. so, i could use it as a tv replacement, in the medium to long run.
i want to go back, though, to make sure that i didn't have some other plan for this 16-bit pc, before i turn it back into a recording console.
it may seem obsolete, but i think it makes sense to keep dedicated 16-bit and 32-bit recording machines, on top of the incoming 64-bit machine. i have both hardware and software that only really works right with 16-bit drivers, and that is no doubt true in a 32-bit environment, too - although i truly don't know, because i honestly haven't tried. i have a very detailed winlited install disc with a complex script that was built for the 32-bit environment. i need to upgrade to get more ram - 4 gb is a real and hard limit - but i don't want to lose the functionality. so, it makes more sense to set the three devices up in parallel and kvm between them.
i just need to go back over my notes and remind myself how i wanted to do it.
so, that's the plan for the next few hours, and i should at least have the 16 and 32 bit machines properly rebuilt by the end of it.
but, if i'm going to be sitting at home all summer with a little bit of extra cash in my account, i should use it to fix these broken machines up, one at a time.
6:07
i've tried a dozen different browsers, and youtube just won't run smoothly on the 90s laptop, anymore. it is html5. it was fine with flash, but youtube no longer allows flash. that breaks older computers, and no doubt breaks older phones, too.
is this my answer?
i'll try it.
6:18
the consistently pro-catholic slant in western media reports regarding ukraine - from the strange recurrence of bach (who was not catholic, but who has been co-opted by catholics.) in the coverage to repeated fluff stories about the ukrainian catholic church - is a curious signal as to how the deep state is interpreting the events.
catholicism v orthodoxy is one of the few actual schisms between east and west slavia, and catholics can be rightfully accused of colonialism in the region. you would frame it that way if you were looking to create a deeper conflict.
7:22
the west slavic regions were conquered by papal-aligned teutonic knights in the 12th-16th centuries in a series of wars called the "northern crusades".
to have the western media start pushing catholicism is historically relevant.
7:33
if the little old queen can beat covid, you have no fucking excuse at all if it gets you.
8:13
i had to rewrite this post from mar 2, 2021 to eliminate language that is not normally in my vocabulary, and i suspect ended up in the post due to corruption from the same virus:
==========
so, i've sorted through my notes from 2017 and pulled out the following:
old laptop - nothing <---it was in the closet, at the time.
old desktop - nothing <----still the tv
access point - rca sound out, ps/2 mouse/keyboard combo. <----this was the converted recording pc, with several parts stripped out.
cq60 - guitar interface <-----i wanted to turn the compaq laptop into a real time guitar effects processor. that's no longer feasible, due to the broken screen.
pav g6 - editing software? <--- at the time, it still booted, but the screen was dead. i was going to connect this to the access point via rj-45 and use it as an external processor for editing videos for vlogging, strictly. and a big part of why i haven't uploaded any vlogs in several years is that i never got around to it....
new desktop - square dvi or hdmi monitor, new audio receiver & studio monitor speakers <---new recording pc, built from new components and old parts.
how can i update this?
old laptop - i need to get more ram for this thing. i can max it out for cheap and should. it could still work as a tv.
old desktop - i previously upgraded the ram in this machine for cheap and put a firewire connector in it. it's pretty much maxed out, but i can't use it as a tv, as it just can't run an html5 browser, even maxxed out. but, it is maxxed out and that's something i can take advantage of in putting 98 on it. it has a working dvd-reader (no writer) in it, which is ironically less important than it was even five years ago. it has a tv tuner (and could take a cable in if i had one) and i'm putting the sb live it came with back in it, with the front-end interface. so, it's going to be just like when i bought it, but upgraded as much as is possible to take maximum ram specs. i don't think i need to add anything else to it
access point - i was using the cq60 as the access point and would like to go back to it if i can get it to work. i have newish ram, a newish battery & a newish hard drive. but, the machine has seemingly been heavily hacked, for what reason, exactly, i don't fully understand. until then, i need to use the chromebook to get on the internet - and the ability to powerwash the device is highly useful given the constant police harassment that i'm apparently under.
guitar interface - i no longer have a laptop that i can convert into a guitar interface. this idea is not entirely ejected, but no longer makes much sense to think about it. i mean, the logic was that i had this extra laptop that was perfectly fine - i no longer have an extra, perfectly working laptop but rather have four mostly broken laptops.
pav g6 - if i can fix this, i'd like to convert it into a video processor. if i can't, i need to find something else to process video with.
recording pc - keep the same, more or less. this machine works, but i need to keep it off the internet to prevent interference in what i'm doing.
new pc - build into 64 bit recording pc for eventual use. i'm penciling in the matlab project, iirc.
the new item is "mobile device", which i had used both the broken hps for in the past and never really got to use the chromebook much for. i should try to fix the chromebook one way or the other; if i can fix it well enough to salvage it as a mobile device, great. for now, it's the access point. and, it would no doubt make a better tv, if it comes to it. but, then i need a new mobile device.
ok.
i've got these ideas clear in my head, again.
now, i need to find a more detailed post that explains what i wanted to keep in the old pc and move to the new one, before i put the old pc away for a bit.
9:39
so, that old guy above me in the old apartment (who was the brother of the guy i rented from, and the father of the woman that evicted me for personal use, so her mother could move in) died at the very end of 2021, about three months ago.
could i have waited them out?
well, that's almost exactly four years. yes, i could have waited them out - in theory.
i keep pointing out that it didn't matter because the smoke got so bad, in the end. i could wait out the old guy, but not the smoker that moved in. and the woman did not have any concept of the rights of non smokers, which is a common problem in this area, where people are stuck in the 70s. it's the city time forgot.
but, now i'm curious. is the building going to come up for sale? i haven't seen it come up, yet, and i look every little while.
my plan made sense, it's just that i couldn't implement it, with the new tenant upstairs.
the cause of death is "sudden". i'm going to guess it was a heart attack. the second-hand smoke was no doubt not helpful, at least.
10:29
fwiw, i want you to have some fun with my dead body.
for example, i bet it would be hilarious to go bungee jumping....after i'm dead. there's no fucking way i'd go bungee jumping before i'm dead. so, why not go all out when you're dead? yolo, right?
don't waste my organic materials - find a way to recycle me.
and, i don't want a legacy marker, like a tombstone. that's a triviality - temporal, physical, useless. i want infinite server space.
10:55
i really think the kind of language we're hearing from biden, along with his completely disastrous foreign policy approaches, in general, suggest he cannot be allowed to stay in power much longer, and must be forced to step down as soon as possible.
23:27
i don't think that one actor is responsible for the situation in ukraine, which has been building for decades, but biden's behaviour has been reckless and delusional and some kind of movement to push him out and replace him with kamala harris ought to be under way.
23:28
monday, march 28, 2022
is there an answer to the issue in armenia?
well, the azeris want a land bridge to that little part of their country, so it's hard to see them accepting the status quo; they're going to keep trying ways to get in there, more or less forever. the bottom line is that the azeris are turks and are therefore not indigenous to the region, whereas the armenians are probably culturally related to the first civilization in the region, the sumerians - they've been there for thousands of years and are the most indigenous group to the region. but, these arguments are only of partial value.
so, the answer is no - there is no end to this conflict, as the borders are unstable. the borders will need to be redrawn.
one solution would be to encourage the azeris to form a union with the iranians which they were a part of for most of history. in fact, armenia has also been under persian domination for most of history. but, if you re-connect baku to iran, something happens - the region becomes contiguous, through iran. that is potentially a stable outcome.
the other option is for either the russians or the turks to come in, but nobody wants to see turkish forces in armenia, for obvious historical reasons, and the azeris no doubt do not want the russians there, either.
recognizing the fundamental religious and cultural breaks in the area without undergoing yet another round of genocide against christians in the middle east means recombining fractured states into larger wholes. what is this place on the map, this azerbaijan? is it a country? is it self-sufficient? it is not - it is a province. it should be reabsorbed, to prevent it from barbaric behaviour.
there are other solutions, surely. but, an iranian occupation of baku would create a stable solution that would likely be acceptable to everybody, hopefully including the azeris.
0:39
ok, that was another normal length day, which is better than a short day, but it end in a crash that was supposed to be a rest, and i don't like that.
i've got coffee.
let me focus.
i want to have a discernible project to look at starting by the morning.
1:16
one of the loose threads i have from january is figuring out where i want to upload completed vocal remasters of my early records. i guess i'm coming full circle with that.
i initially took the vocals out, and i did that for a reason, and it was the right choice. since the end of 2016, my first and second records have existed in remastered, instrumental form. my third record had the vocal track removed and placed on an outtakes collection, which also included a vocal track split from my unofficial "3.5th" covers record and a vocal track from my fourth record, which had vocals and samples entirely stripped out. my 5th and 6th records were constructed for the first time in 2014 and 2015. in 2021, i finally reconstructed my 7th record without samples or vocals.
in putting together my upcoming eighth record, i decided to make a decision to complete vocal and instrumental recordings, as per the eventual proverbs release. then, i started thinking about it - should i have this option for all of my records?
the only way to get vocals for these other records, together, was via the aleph releases, and that created somewhat of a problem, as the results weren't continuous. the reality is that i had the vocals tracks for the records partially remastered and released, but they were never put together in a combined manner. so, there was a hole here, and one i sort of tried to deny existed, but now decided i had to deal with, in the fact of the two options for the 8th record, and all records moving forwards
i decided i'd fix it by taking the pieces from the singles and pulling them together into new recordings, but i couldn't figure out where to place them. it might make sense to release a vocal version of inri015 right after it, but i couldn't call it inri016, i'd have to call it inri015-v or something. then, do i want to expand the thing to a double? well, then i'd end up with vocal mixes, and didn't want to have them. i could release them in 2017, but then i'd have to wait for numbers, and that struck me as poor planning.
so, i've been sitting on it since.
this morning, i took a closer look at it and decided that the best way to do it is like this:
1. inri015/inri021 should release as a double with vocals, as constructed in the singles.
2. inri032/inri033 should release as a remastered version of the initial release, as it existed in late 1999.
3. inri041/inri081 should release as a double of the sample collage concept, with readded samples to the remasters.
4. inri052/inri063 should release as a jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj double, unaltered.
the idea is that i wanted to recapture each of the original concepts, if i were to do this. i didn't want to send people to the aleph discs to listen to unremastered versions if they wanted the initial ideas, i wanted to have alternate recordings that are final versions of the original ideas, in addition to the actual finished product.
and, i should be clear - the actual finished products are the instrumental versions. these are going to be labeled as "alternate lp", like inri079.
that is my first seven official records, with the unofficial covers disc and actually also includes everything substantive from the unofficial outtakes disc, inrimoved. it does not include the wave, inri053, which i consider to be an unofficial official lp. however, it may make sense to release the wave with the matlab project; we'll see. it's also worth pointing out that the wave exists in the ambient works collection. i will be uploading these to payhip shortly in the form of isos.
i'm going to release them in 2004, making them the new inri082, inri083, inri084 and inri085. this creates unique releases for the alternate lps, and bundles them as 2xlp sets, so that it is clear they aren't official lps. it also ensures i have my first 7 records in alternate vocal and sample releases before i finish the alternate vocal mix for my eighth record, which will be a double lp and will now probably be inri094.
it may seem like an odd place to put it, but it's in the context of a general rethink that happened in 2004. to be clear: this is almost the exact opposite of what i actually did in 2004. but, i have the opportunity to do this here because i legitimately overhauled my discography for the first time in the summer of 2004.
so, these are coming up, without commentary, over the morning.
3:48
so, that means i can upload these flac discs, because i'm no longer worried about the vocal mixes being out of order.
4:10
there's an eye-opening write up at tass regarding this cyrillic/russian article that i, of course, cannot read myself:
the curious point is the naivete around baku's actions - as though it thinks the turks aren't the ultimate arbiters in the country, which they of course are.
the premise that the russian may not want to aggravate the situation with russia would be appear to be unilateral; the reality of an azeri action in the disputed area (which is a part of azerbaijan, but is overwhelmingly armenian, and has been for many centuries) suggests the turks are not nearly concerned about aggravating the russians.
the correct reading is consequently that the turks are taking advantage of the situation. and, the russians don't seem to grasp the situation.
in addition to the turks sending weapons to ukraine, the russians and turks are, of course, also in direct conflict in syria. there is potential for conflict in cyprus, in greece, in the balkans and in romania. if a larger war develops, my bet is that this is what it is - another russian-turkish war, the first in quite a while. i guess the first since the greek civil war...
8:44
why would the turks want to start a war with russia?
because there's lots of ethnic turks in russia. conversely, russia's historical purpose is to liberate constantinople. this is inevitable - there's no way out. it's why there's been so many wars, and will continue to be in the future.
turkey would have, at one point, preferred to just be a province in the eu, but the eu doesn't want them. and, i mean, i'm sorry, but i get the point - the eu sees islam as outside of it. i think they have a right to that viewpoint, in the sense of defining the terms of the eu. there a long history of the unified empire being ungovernable, and while european turkey may need to eventually come home, the rest of anatolia, to the east of the mountains, is outside of traditional european territory.
so, if turkey is to be rejected from europe because it is muslim, then it may then look to the south, where there are muslim societies. but, these societies are arab, and they are wary of centuries of turkish colonialism (and the thousands of years of greek colonialism before it). the turks have a conflict with the saudis right on their door step, in syria.
turkey is therefore forced to look to the east, to it's ancestral home in central asia, and eventually towards china, to find a trade bloc it is truly welcome in. and, because it is also hostile to iran, it must go through the turkic-speaking regions of southern russia to get there.
in some sense, it could be easier - russia and turkey could form their own bloc, together. but, this is not stable.
constantine made a truly tragic mistake in centering the empire in byzantium; perhaps we should not expect so much from a man that was instructed by visions of burning crosses in the sky. if he thought that centering the empire in the bosphorus would provide for a projection of power via the sea, history has shown that it inevitably leads to a defensive position, due to a lack of ground projection. being at the intersection of three landmasses, three continents and three cultures means that the state in byzantium will always be surrounded by three forces stretching out infinitely, in all directions. it's an algorithm for encirclement; there's no way out but to surrender.
turkey may consequently be conquered by russia, and i insist that it must be, in the end. but, no union is worthwhile. a sovereign turkey in such a relationship could not survive.
the russians are the only power that will have the turks, and it is a matter of time before they are swallowed, and constantinople throws off the yoke of tatarism.
even the russians will tell me i'm nuts, but it's true - it's unavoidable.
9:12
turks get mad when they hear people talk about liberating constantinople, but i hardly give a fuck.
it's an occupation by an alien culture.
like, deal with the facts.
9:14
is constantinople russia's door to the south?
or is russia staging an inevitable new dorian migration?
our oldest literature tells stories of this nature. it is bound to come back around, again.
9:27
so, here's my first two records, rebuilt as a 2.5 hour epic double lp, with selected vocals.
you might consider tossing me a few dollars for this one.
9:37
whatever you think about the general geopolitical situation, the f-35 jets are a legacy technology and a waste of taxpayer money. i entirely reject the language of george dubya bush - and viciously condemn any fake leftists for utilizing it - but the simple empirical fact is that buying expensive, obsolete jets will not "keep us safe". this purchase should be opposed by any sane political observer, on either the left or the right. opposition to this foolishness should transcend politics.
it is simply a bad decision, and simply a poor use of public resources.
16:46
the ndp's position on imperialist war spending is something like "if we're going to send our trained murderers into imperialist conflicts to advance the interests of western capital, it's only proper that we give them the equipment required to kill people. it's not fair to send our professional murderers to carry out the dirty work of capital without the equipment they require."
it's the most cynically retarded pro-capitalist bs you could conjure up.
oh, and they want the killing devices to be made in canada, too.
the greens have been better when it doesn't matter, but let's see if the lobbyists have gotten to them too, now.
18:25
the only valid use of military force in the modern world is to annihilate religious groups, which is what the russians are doing in ukraine.
18:42
i forced myself to sleep this afternoon to flip my schedule over.
i want a full day, today.
19:07
it is good to see the russians take control of mariupol and it's good to see some effort to get civilians out, but this lingering struggle against these brainwashed nazis is going to go on for years.
the destruction required to just take control of the city is evidence of the size of the evil that the russians are up against. if there wasn't a serious nazi force on the ground, it wouldn't have been necessary to level the city.
the russians can at least clear the heavy machinery out, but the nazis just keep coming. it's a religion, and it needs to be annihilated, like any other.
19:52
tuesday, march 29, 2022
so, i have my speakers set at about 80% on my chromebook as i'm streaming that 2xlp of my first two discs that i just uploaded (path: bandcamp--->network--->chromebook--->sennheisers), and i find that the bass increases louder than the high end if i take it up more than that. while i know i'm dealing with corrupted audio from some external actor, i'm going to blame this particular issue primarily on the drivers on the low end output device, but that means your phone is probably worse. if you turn it up too loud, it's going to distort. this is frustrating, because i mixed it for headphones on a better system, but so be it.
1:58
to be clear: if i take that sound (with the volume set to 80% on the chromebook) and amplify it further on a better soundcard, it amplifies cleanly. so, i can turn it up louder through my mixer - and would like you to listen to it very loudly.
but, if i try to amplify it more than that on this crappy soundcard, the frequency response becomes uneven, the bass distorts and i lose the highs.
so, the actual takeaway is don't listen to my music on your mobile device. but, i'm stuck with consumer grade hardware at the moment, myself, until i get my laptop running again, and the answer is to run it at low volume because it doesn't reproduce well at higher volumes.
2:04
so, i now have a second flac disc up at payhip.
the first one was here:
these are exactly what they say they are - inri000-inri014 and inri015-inri029 in the form of < 4.7 gb iso files, for direct dvd burning. in essence, they're torrents for sale, in the form of iso files. i know it's what people want, so there it is - finally.
they do not have liner notes, etc. i'll update them one day, but i suspect few people besides myself will care much. and, now, it could take a while.
i'm not doing every aleph - i'm going to skip the box sets, the period discs and the mp3 discs. do people still listen to mps? or does nobody care about flac? fuck apple and their proprietary bullshit. so, it's mostly going to be flac discs 0-6, with the seventh on it's way. i'm going to do the lp collections and the symph collections and will upload temporary ambient works, etc collections, as well.
i went over this before, but the pricing for the digital alephs is just the sum of the pricing for the digital downloads, at least for now. if i find a pattern, i may standardize it something like $125.
3:10
i actually don't know what to think about this.
i use bandcamp because it's convenient as a hosting solution, but i hardly sell a lot of records. if it goes down, or gets shitty, i might just set up a google drive share, instead, and front-end it with a blog. i'm not losing revenue.
i've long wondered if taking down the paywall might actually help. i dunno.
i don't want to join a streaming site - streaming is a marketing tool, it's not a product, in itself. i get that people aren't buying cds, but i don't want to end up in some library, with some corporation managing access to it. it's just an entirely useless model, to me.
so, i'll stick with it until it breaks, but the exit plan is probably just giving it away for free - and i suspect that's the end point for a lot of people, as well.
that said, i've long wanted bandcamp to offer more flexible download types, and i wonder if epic's goal isn't to sell video games using bandcamp, which would convert it into a general file selling platform. that might actually be useful to me.
what i really need help with, though, is promo. i was good at trolling youtube, until they figured it out and shadow-banned me. i haven't bought any ads yet, google, and i'm hardly going to, now. it would be helpful if they could integrate more of a social component, as well, in order for the artists to interact with each other.
3:53
as a consumer, i would never even consider signing up for streaming music. the premise just strikes me as baffling and unworkable.
as an artist, i have no interest in the idea, at all.
3:56
if you're curious, i've had 81 plays at bandcamp over the last three months, and most of them were me.
i wouldn't even make a dollar from that.
it's an open question, though - is bandcamp now giving away something that other sites charge for? is that how people look at it?
call it a generation gap, but i'm never going to look at like that, and i'm going to push for free streaming before i push for trying to sell it. listening to a stream is like listening to the radio, and nobody pays to listen to the radio. as an independent artist with a very limited potential fan base - i would consider selling out a 100 person venue in new york city to be a major accomplishment - i just can't get anywhere with that. and, i'm not interested in making pop music, or altering my art for a broader distribution, in general.
i make weird music, and very few people are ever going to like it. the few that do have to buy it and cherish it, not stream it a few times and get distracted by something else. i need customers with an attention span.
i mean, streaming is a numbers game - if you stream thousands of tracks a day, you can get something from pennies on the track. these huge artists made money from streaming radio in the past, right? every time you hear an eagles song on the radio, the band gets a half a cent, or something. to them, it's comparable, it's just a shift in technology. but, if you have no potential of radio play, and you're going to sell a hundred cds a year (i've never sold 100 cds in a year.), each of those sales is exceedingly valuable, and the streaming platform cannot replace that. each of those hundred people would need to stream your record something like 1000 times to make up for revenue lost to the cd. i guess that's good value, as a consumer, but it's unworkable, as an independent artist. that doesn't mean that independent artists aren't trying to do it, but (1) most of the ones that can get a foothold are much more pop-oriented than i am and (2) most of them aren't good at math, and don't realize they're getting taken advantage of. hope is a powerful narcotic.
i need to flip the situation over - if i'm going to only make a handful of sales a year, and sales are much more difficult now than previously, then i need to maximize each transaction, as much as possible. and, that is what i actually see. when somebody does come to my bandcamp site and pay me, they buy 10 cds at a time. so, these torrents are what they actually want.
it's a niche market, but i'm a niche market, anyways.
i just don't know how long the logic remains workable. if people really do just interpret a site like bandcamp as giving away streams for free because they're hopelessly conditioned to it, then me and all other abstract artists are basically permanently fucked, and all art becomes reduced to hobbies in an empty world of ubiquitous capital. we're not there yet, but we might be closer than i want to admit.
for now, you can help me pay rent by downloading these isos, or buying bandcamp downloads. and, you can help ensure i'm able to finish this discography, even if what that means, to you, is streaming it.
my question, for the future, is this: how do independent artists even share music, in a reality where 3 or 4 corporations control all server access and people only understand music via streaming, and consider files to be a legacy concept? we had tape trading in the 80s. it'll have to go underground, have to end up free...
4:36
if bandcamp does come down, where else do we upload to?
there actually isn't an obvious answer to that question.
4:43
spotify can replace the radio if you're neil young.
but, it can't replace album sales if you're godspeed you black emperor.
4:49
...so, you need to tour more, do more live shows. fine.
that doesn't help somebody like me that is, inherently, a creature of the studio.
i'd rather get an actual, real, formal ubi, and officially give it away for free.
4:50
could i do what bandcamp does myself by just setting up a blog at blogspot?
up to the paywall, yes.
and, i could probably figure out the paywall, too.
it wouldn't be automated...
and, i guess i have the answer to my previous question: it would have to end up at payhip.
let's hope it works out. and, i mean, let's hope some people find the site, too.
5:00
i was watching youtube uploads, and wanted to take a shower this morning.
5:01
should i upload the in between days?
well, up to oct 4-7, which is the last vlog i posted here (there are more coming soon), i skipped
let me finish what i'm doing, and think about it.
5:34
uploading is time consuming. i'm still uploading vlogs from 2017, and i have aleph-8 (flac dvd disc 3) and aleph 11 (flac dvd disc 4) on their way up. inri082, inri083, inri084 and inri085 are coming, too. it could take a bit.
i'm also watching vlogs. so, do i want to fill in the holes?
- oct 2-3, which was nothing
- oct 1, which was nothing
- sept 11-13, which was nothing
- sept 7, where i had a minor crisis with my shoes
- sept 5-6, where i went to get some ink, drop off forms for subsidized housing and a few other things
- sept 4, which was nothing
- aug 31 - end of the month stuff
i'll double check that i'm not skipping concepts moving forwards, but i'm not intending on this being comprehensive, immediately. for now, that's enough.
i just want the adventures and the music production, for now. as it turns out, that's almost every day....
9:12
to be clear, i'm doing three things:
1) i'm uploading vlogs from 2017 to youtube
2) i'm uploading aleph isos to payhip
3) i'm uploading the alternate lps to bandcamp
(1) will carry on for a while. when i'm done (2) and (3), i can get back to moving forward through 2021.
9:19
i have no interest in the lies the liberals are telling regarding their "climate plan".
i would reiterate my calls for the government to develop a plan to reduce emissions that will actually work.
15:14
i don't have to read or analyze the government's climate policy to predict that emissions will increase as a result of it. and, i'm not going to waste my time reading or analyzing it, either.
they have negative credibility on the topic - it's a waste of my time to humour their bullshit.
15:43
the third torrent disc is up here, now:
this one is inri030-inri042, which is the end of period 1 (inri030-inri035) and the start of period 2 (inri036-inri042) and has my 3rd (33) and 4th (41) records, as well as the covers disc (32), the first ambient works (35) and the outtakes disc (42), in addition to a string of singles around them (30, 31, 34. 36-40).
the first one was inri000-inri014, and included everything up to my first record (but not including it):
the second was inri015-inri029 and included my first (15) and second (21) records, the singles between them (16-20) and a string of compilations and singles after the second one (22-29):
16:52
the russians never intended to invade kiev. the encirclement was a threat to extract concessions. whether it was successful or not will be determined by the nature of those concessions.
18:44
that said, i don't expect the russians to accept this screwy ukrainian proposal floating around.
18:50
the fourth torrent disc is now up:
this is inri043-inri053, which is essentially all of the material initially written over 2001, except inri054. it contains my fifth official record (52), a string of singles leading up to it (43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 50), the first ftaa single (51) and three releases related to the work done with sean (48, 49, 53). 53 is the unofficial full-length kosmische record, 49 is a stranded track that was left abandoned as a rabit is wolf song and only instrumentalized for the ambient works and 48 is the lead track on my sixth record.
22:58
i was going to do some of the conceptual alephs (lp collections, symphonic works), but not now. i'm going to restrict this strictly to a linear movement through the discography, so that downloading all isos is equivalent to downloading a full discography torrent.
i'd upload it somewhere as one ridiculous file 40 gb+ file if there was somewhere to put it. and, there will be, eventually. when i'm done...
23:16
when i'm done, it will be closer to 100 gb.
23:23
by necessity, the 7th flac disc will contain inri070-inri076, as inri075 will certainly fit and inri077 will certainly not. so, the 8th flac disc will probably be inri077-inri082. ish. these are longer recordings, and denser pieces of sound that don't compress to flac as well. i'm looking at upwards of 800 mb/release, in flac.
i want to get a final tracklising for 75 down very soon. there's at least one track i want to redo. but, if i'm only adding a track or two, i could upload a temporary seventh flac disc, as well.
five and six are uploading tonight.
and, i should get some vlogs posted, too.
23:54
wednesday, march 30, 2022
if you're curious, the total running time of inri000-inri074, according to foobar, is 3 days, 15 hours, 42 minutes and 33 seconds.
that's 87:15:42 - 87 hours and 15 minutes.
adding inri075 and inri076 to close the seventh flac disc should get me up to or past 3d, 18 hours, 29 minutes and 8 seconds - 90:29:08.
the eighth disc should be roughly another 12 hours, so that will get me up over 100 hours and should be done within a few weeks, i think.
0:24
so, i've got the track data copied over for the pieces of the 2xlp of the first two discs with the vocals mixed back in (inri082), although i haven't done the front-end writeup, yet:
that'll help me close some empty tabs. there's three more of these coming up.
it does sound good, i just need to cut the volume on the device. i find this is variable; sometimes, i can't get enough volume. but, i may, in the end, find i'm not getting enough power to drive the soundcard in this thinkpad, and that's a part of the reason for the bass-heavy mixes i'm complaining about.
1:25
the fifth flac disc is on it's way up. it's slow, on this connection. but, what's next?
- well, i still have those other doubles with vocals to upload.
- i still want to finish the payhip uploads
- i'm still wanting to push forward from march, 2021
so, how do i piece that together?
i should push forward through 2021 from march to the point i get to inri075, which is the acoustic disc. once that is finished, i can add it to the aleph disc. that will close the 7th aleph disc, as inri076 is already done.
first, though, i'm going to finish the cover art for inri076 and make the disc available as a physical purchase, even if it's considered quaint, nowadays. i don't plan on stopping buying cds, even if i'm years behind. i like the display item, in my living room - i like the shelf full of memories. you don't get that from a stream, or a flac library.
i'm also going to want to get inri083-inri085 up first, before i get back to moving forwards.
so, let's order that, then.
1) finishing the vocal alternate double lps closes the thought and should happen first.
2) i should finish cover art for a bunch of things - inri076, inri079-inri085.
3) then, i can push forward from march, 2021.
4) as i'm pushing forward, inri075 becomes the first thing to finish. i think. i'll double check. then, the 7th flac closes, when that does.
i guess that, from this point on, uploading flac discs to payhip can become sequential. it's a very small subset of the project as i initially envisioned it, but at least it's something concrete, for the first time in a long time.
i have to stop to eat soon, but i guess the next immediate concern is the inri032/inri033 alternate double, augmented with vocal remasters, and presented as a part of the alternate lp collection, in preparation for the release of the 8th record, in vocal and instrumental forms.
4:45
i swapped the cover art for inri075.
the previous cover art will end up on the back of the cd.
4:57
this is the vlog for oct 8-10, 2017, where i close inri038-inri042.
7:17
vlog for oct 11, 2017, where i work on inri043.
8:07
vlog for oct 12, 2017 where i finish inr043 & work on inri044 before getting hit by another migraine.
8:16
vlog for oct 13, 2017, where i get back to working on inri044, after a sleepy post-migraine start to the day.
8:38
vlog for oct 14, 2017, where i continue work on inri044.
8:45
vlog for oct 15, 2017, where i augment inri047 & inri048 before putting closing on hold for a few days.
9:03
oct 18-19 vlog, where i go to court to fight a frivolous eviction attempt by an aggressive, malicious, dishonest landlord.
i have a recording of this, but i can't upload it, as it's against the law to distribute court recordings in public.
9:19
it's been a long time since that day i walked home from court, and this video has been sitting on my external drive for many years, but i find some of the language used to be a little curious.
landlords do not have property rights in canada, and i find it strange that i might have said that. in fact, i explicitly made the argument in the court that property rights do not exist in canada. there is no charter protection for property, and no legislation that governs it.
property rights are an american idea that do not make sense in a canadian legal framework. and, frankly, i don't think they're a very good idea - i'd call on my american neighbours to abolish the property rights component of their constitution.
it's not that property is theft, exactly, although that's more or less exactly what occurred, here. it's more that property is impossible - it's a concept ridden with too many contradictions to salvage. it should be done away with, tossed into the dung heap of history.
that said, n12s are indeed very difficult to beat, but it is not because of any implication of property rights. i need to repeat: there is no such thing as property rights, legally, in the country of canada, and suggestions that there are are extra-legal hubris that have no basis in law. rather, the problem is that the law specifically allows for this loophole. there's no underlying "rights" framework, but there is an explicit clause that says "a tenant may be evicted for personal use". you can read into that, but it's colloquial. nowhere in canadian law is there any suggestion of property rights, and nowhere is it suggested that personal use comes from property rights, or is in any way a corollary to it.
i don't remember what i said walking home on that day, but i suspect i was ranting about the non-existence of property rights, and i'm confused by the language that exists in the recording.
i cannot unedit video that has been manipulated by secret service agents, and i cannot recreate data that's been destroyed. but, i can clarify - there is no right to private property in canada, and landlords do not have a right to evict tenants for personal use. rather, landlords have the burden to demonstrate that their proposed use of the property is consistent with the terms outlined by the crown, which is the only entity with property rights in this country. i do not believe that this bar was met, and believe the court erred in it's ruling. but, i moved on.
9:58
there are a number of videos with long silent segments.
it makes me wonder.
again: i can't prove anything. my local metadata suggests the file has not been altered since it was ripped from the device.
10:11
i'm a vocal proponent of left anarchism.
my rejection of property rights is total and longstanding; there is no ambiguity on the matter. i have repeatedly, virulently and consistently rejected property rights in totality for many, many years. this view of mine has not changed much since the mid 00s, and was certainly not under ideological question during the period i challenged this case.
it's possible that i was tired and oversimplified a complicated issue. but, even the video itself is blurry - it sounds muddled, like it was inserted.
i dunno.
i can clarify, and i can point out it doesn't seem right. i'm not going to delete or edit it.
10:15
would some secret service agency hack my vlog and diabolically insert propertarian language in place of anarchist rants?
i could see that happening, yeah.
property is the bludgeon that capital uses to enslave the masses with. there's a reason that every leftist movement in the history of the world is so singularly focused on abolishing property - it really is legislated tyranny. it is always those that challenge property that end up dead, while the rest of the riff-raff can carry on, unmolested. it's when you challenge property that you challenge power.
as an ancient monarchy that did not undergo a formal revolution, britain is actually very different than the united states on this issue. the royal proclamation - which prevented settlers from buying lands from native americans, insisting that the crown had a monopoly on all land to the west of the colonies - was a major factor in the american revolution. the question of property rights in the united states is difficult and blurry, but there is no such ambiguity in canada. the american revolution was largely about property rights, and by resisting the revolution, canada resisted the concept of property. no process has ever occurred to undo the rejection of property rights that led to the canadian position in the american civil war.
but, a cia or an nsa might not even know that, if it were to care, if it did. and, the idea, while lacking in evidence, is not particularly farfetched.
if the nsa was going to hack my vlog because they decided i was a threat, i bet the thing they'd be targeting would be my views on the abolition of property. only orwell knows. and, that's the point i keep saying - if orwell was right, nobody would know.
10:24
vlog for oct 22-oct 24, 2017, where i close inri043-inri053.
18:17
so, the 5th and 6th torrents are up.
the 5th torrent is inri054-inri062, which is almost all of 2002:
that would include 6 singles that were initially intended for rabit is wolf (54, 55, 56, 58, 61, 62), along with the rabit is wolf demo (57), the imaginary tour demo (59) and the atom's single (60), which is something else entirely. five of those rabit is wolf demos are finished as instrumental compositions for my sixth record (which is not on the torrent). so, this is most of the rabit is wolf sequence, because it was my main focus over 2002.
the 6th torrent is inri063-inri069, which is the very end of 2002 and the last loose projects from 2003, before i left for bc:
inri063 is my sixth record, inri064 and inri065 are singles attached to the trivial group project and inri066-inri069 is four compilations at the end of period 2, that combine various ideas worked out over 1996-2003: inri066 is the ry30 + jx8p disc that strips my early synthpop work into strictly electronic components, inri067 is the sample collage works that combines the concepts of deny everything and ftaa into a single political commentary over 2000-2003, inri068 consist of specific recordings made over 2014-2017 for the purpose of completing the first two periods and inri069 is the 4xcd electro-guitar works, tetris, that attempts to comprehensively document my guitar-oriented pieces into citable volumes.
we went from 15 to 12 to 11 to 9 to 7 releases, but these torrents are all full. the 5th has 9 releases, but inri058 is a 4 disc single and inri061 is a 3 disc single. inri069 is a 4xlp set.
the 7th torrent is going to be inri70-inri076, which is 4 more compilations to close period 2, the reflections ep, the acoustic travel disc and the double ep, all you need, which was released right when i came back. inri70 is a 2xlp midi music compilation that combines the tracks from period 2 in the form they were written in and heard as as at the time with their completed versions using vst technology, inri071 is the 2xlp ambient works release, inri072 is the orchestral works and inri073 is the chamber works. inri074 is the reflections ep, my eighth symphony. inri075 is the acoustic disc. inri076 is the double ep. so, that's 10 lengthy discs, even if it's only 7 releases.
so, i can close those tabs now and get to the next thing. those huge uploads killed my system, and i only have one access point due to the unending nsa harassment.
19:07
so, i've imagined a way to set up a bandcamp replacement over blogger. and, it might even be preferable to me.
what i'd do is just set up the front end in more or less the same way - and i can do that easily enough. if anything, i might prefer the greater flexibility in design.
then, what i'd do is just dump a paypal button on the site, which is not a complicated endeavour. it's very easy to carry out the actual transaction; the hard part is delivering the product, without paying for a backend, and, for that reason, i'm going to stick with bandcamp - they will host, serve, convert and deliver the files in a way i don't have the resources to do.
that said, and as mentioned, i don't sell large amounts of music. i don't need the backend. i cannot, for example, convert something into alac on request, because i don't have access to an apple device (and don't want one), but that's a minor concern, i'd hope.
what i can do i set up a google drive share and send you the link, which is not that different than what bandcamp does. that's really pretty easy. bandcamp is automated, and on demand; i would not be automated, and you'd have to wait for me to do it. but, i can handle the volume, i think.
now, google share space is pretty generous, but it's not unlimited, so that space would be temporary, and i'd tell you that. but, i have 15 gb (i think) to play with. so, if the average record is less than a gb, chances are high that that will sit for quite a while before i'd need to delete it. and, i'd tell you before i did.
so, it would be a simple process:
1) you'd buy the item using a paypal checkout button
2) i'd get an email
3) i'd sent up the share
4) i'd send you a link
that's it.
it's a little crude, but maybe we should be honest: bandcamp is really a lot for almost nothing, especially if you are obscure. that will let me keep my art out of these corporate libraries and help me keep control over the means of distribution, which is something i feel is worth resisting.
like i say, i'll stick with bandcamp for now. bandcamp is largely archiving my art, rather than selling it. i need to acknowledge that fact - my sales are minimal, and i'm not covering their costs. it's not sustainable.
i'm not going to pay them.
so, i'm looking past it. and that's my idea.
i hope they provide sufficient forewarning if they intend to dramatically alter their site.
19:33
if they change blogger, i don't know what's next.
19:34
so, i posted this to the front of the inri record page a few hours ago and am already deleting it:
=======
this is a stub, for now.
like others, i am concerned about the future of bandcamp, and am wondering if i should get out ahead of it. unlike others, i do not process large amounts of sales through bandcamp and could not survive from bandcamp sales. for me, bandcamp serves as a way to archive a very large discography of almost unmarketable music. i guess i always knew this was unsustainable.
i guess i'm realizing that i have far too much invested, intellectually, in something that is not sustainable, and need to find a more sustainable way to host the music. the sales are really much less of a concern.
i have an idea as to how to work this out, but it's going to take some experimenting. so, the site will be available here as i work it out, but won't be "live" for some time.
bandcamp offers options that we've come to take for granted, regarding converting and distributing on the backend. it's an automated process that can't be easily replaced by obscure, independent artists that have no real aspirations towards stardom or financial success. we get a lot for nothing, and i'm not going to be able to reproduce most of what they do, with no potential for startup costs, and no real likelihood of substantive sales. for that reason, i do not intend to take that site down until i'm more or less forced to.
but, what i can do is slowly build a parallel site in this space that mimics the functionality i do care about.
a few things:
1) i don't use javascript. this page will use html5. so, it will be a little less pretty. whatever.
2) i won't be able to hide the streaming source like bandcamp does, although i realize that one can steal rips from bandcamp should they truly desire to. so, i may want to do something like upload everything to youtube. and, maybe i can kind of build a hybrid model, in the process. so, for example, if the stream to the album purchase site is ultimately monetized by youtube, i could potentially get the $0.000001/stream that they pay out. maybe i can get a chocolate bar with it before i retire - or leave a bag of chips to my relatives. inflation might kill that idea, though. but, it's maybe the answer - if the kids want to stream, they can stream from the store. and, i guess they can do what they will with it, over youtube.
3) i will only upload tracks to youtube in preview quality, though. you'll have to buy the full quality flacs. for now.
4) if i'm ultimately using bandcamp as a front-end for paypal, i am really removing a middle man. you'll just just send it right to me, instead.
5) i won't have a thousand conversion options - i can give it to you in 320 kbps cbr mp3 or glorious, lossless flac. i won't sell you a 128 kbps mp3 - get some self-respect. stream it, instead.
6) i will need to take on the labour of the automation, so it won't be in real-time. but, i'm an independent artist - i can handle that.
maybe, i can set up a more realistic algorithm for independent artists to try to navigate an increasingly corporate dominated and ad-driven entertainment industry, where the value of the art is being systematically reduced, and the quality is suffering as a result of it. i'm still uncomfortable about uploading files to youtube, even. i recently deleted everything, due to some phrases in the user agreement. so, i may just toss the files in a drive share, and i may find some other hosting solution.
but, there's my starting point, and i'm going to try to build this up slowly by adding one release a day until it's done.
in the end, if you want to buy flac, cutting out bandcamp gets me more money and the corporate layer less. right now, bandcamp is still not the worst layer to support, and they do provide a useful distribution service to large independent artists. but, for me, they're just archiving something that is really intended for the distant future. and, i'm realizing the need to look beyond it.
notes:
- if i set up a front page here and link out, i can house pages by dating them. so, if i release a record on dec 25, 1996, i can date it to the date. that allows for the timeline to function on the side.
- i actually like the link list on the other side that i have at the music blog site and should bring that in, as well.
- there needs to be a merch page, as well
- it's probably best to setup the front page using an html table, rather than javascript. test:
1997
1996
 inri inri000 |  | | |
| | | |
1996
inri inri000 |
20:21
20:22
i tried to set up a google play account some time ago, and could not connect it to my bank account.
they might get pissed if i use them to host files sold with a paypal account, but they don't do what i want.
maybe i can put a wallet link, too, if they let me sign up.
20:53
see, it's exactly because these sites don't want to sell the music that i don't want to upload anything to them. they want total control over distribution, and in the process will streamline everything to k-pop.
all music in the future will be k-pop.
well, it will be if we don't build some alternate distribution mechanism. i'm not flailing against a model that would benefit me if i'd buy into it; i can't use it, it's designed to cut me out.
i mean that - i literally can't use many of these services. i'm talking about being apprehensive about content ids, but they might not even let me do it at all.
the problem is ultimately hosting. and, what's likely to happen is that people are going to be forced to buy hosting for their files (choices: google or amazon), and decide whether it's cost effective or not. the content id system i'm talking about will likely remain restricted to major label artists, and those connected to a small collection of fake indies.
21:02
yeah, you'd have to set up ads on your youtube stream to get the thousandth of a cent per stream, which i'm opposed to in general, but which makes no sense in context.
i could still use youtube to host the low quality streams, but i don't want anything to do with their "partner" program, and their attempt to foist ads upon content.
they seem to think that removing ads is some kind of disincentive, but i actually think it's a feature. i don't want my promo to be a platform for somebody else's promo - that makes no sense to me at all.
21:10
i want to know if i can do this, fundamentally.
can i upload the songs in radio quality to a site that pays out some tiny amount for streaming and post them to a playlist in a blog, then put a paypal button on it to buy it in lossless flac?
is that something that's feasible?
21:12
what's going to happen is we're going to have to stop going to bandcamp, and start going to the band's site, likely at www.bandname.com, and go to the online store at bandname.com to download files that the band pays to host, instead.
and, if you can't afford to do that or to pay for bandname.com, you'll need to share your music using file sharing software, instead.
21:19
i mean, if i could justify it, i'd set up the automated process.
it's just that this has always been a hand made product and likely always will be. i have no need to automate something that doesn't require much effort to do by hand.
21:22
let me get some coffee and refocus.
i got the payhip uploads up. i want to get some liner notes done, tonight.
21:24
it seems like i could use something like songtradr to get everything up on all of these streaming sites. see, there's your middleman, again. and, sites like youtube demand a middleman.
but, it's only useful to me if i can get my own stream, so i can link them to a store to buy the actual records. i don't want to have tracks cut out of my records and played without context and i don't want them to end up in somebody's playlist, with music by other people.
22:59
is there a maximum file size?
one way that i could get around people cutting my records up and adding them to playlists would be to upload the entire record as one low quality file. i could then just set up a preview stream on the bandcamp replacement blog, and post a tracklisting. i'd then send the flacs out in split up tracks.
23:05
my content is probably not going to get ads placed on it anyways because it's not advertiser friendly. it's not really the concern i'm imagining it is.
if i pick one of these distributors, my concern is that i'm not really going to understand what's going on, because i'm never going to log into the site, and i find that difficult to grapple with.
why don't i sign up for something and look at it.
what i really need in order to build the front-end is somewhere to host the tracks in low quality. these sites stream at radio quality, right? if i can get a link to a youtube stream out of it, and i can maintain a bandcamp-like store, i might potentially be ok with uploading to a few of them. i think tidal's alittle better.
fuck apple - no apple. apple is boycotted.
23:24
i have my first 75 releases in single file low quality wav format, ready to go.
if i'm doing this, it's full album tracks. i don't allow by-track downloads.
23:27
thursday, march 31, 2022
it's a rough shell, but i like the ui a lot better.
0:02
so, i'm going to try to get one release posted to that blog per day, dated to the right place. it wll be hardlinked to on the side, and will carry on with the linked list. i have a lot more coding flexibiility, and we'll see where that takes me.
all of the side bar structure is set up, and the format of the front page is in place, which uses html tables. it's ready to go. i just need t:
1) figure out where i'm hosting it.
2) figure out how to get the paypal buttons on the front.
1:33
so, this is as much of this as i'm building now, i just wanted to get some design issues worked out, and make sure it would be smooth:
i think this is a better looking front-end, frankly. i've got the links on the side, i've got the search, i've got the chronological archive, which allows for easy access to any specific point, etc. if i can get the rest of it running, great.
i'm linking the pictures at that site to the following album art archive:
i had something like that at facebook, but they made it so you couldn't date pictures any more, which was annoying and made me lose interest in the site. this will allow for proper ordering, and give me back something i wish i still had.
the plan will be to do one album per day, so i don't get overwhelmed by it.\
now, where am i hosting the music? that's next.
3:45
so, i've set up a songtrdr account and i'm going to upload inri063 as a dummy track. i looked at "amuse", but it wouldn't open on my chromebook.
i'm more curious as to how the process develops. this is an economy i'll probably never take part in, myself, but i want a grasp as to how the process actually works, and whether or not i can access any of these streams outside a paywall.
4:31
this week has been beyond scattered and, like i say, that's uncharacteristic of me. i'm normally really razor-focused on things.
did i lose track of anything?
i was doing five things:
1) payhip uploads, which is done up to inri069. paused.
2) youtube uploads, which are on pause for the minute.
3) liner notes from inri075--->inri085
4) uploading vocal discs, which i wanted to do in the morning but didn't.
5) moving backwards from feb/2021
and, now the 6th is updating the new inri records blog, once per day. but, only once i understand how.
i'm strongly leaning towards youtube, but we'll see.
4:39
like, i have no idea how this works.
i think i understand youtube fairly well.
but, when they say they give me a thousandth of a cent per stream, does that mean "ad revenue" or is that the percentage of the fee that the user pays that goes to the artist? if your music is deemed a poor choice for advertisers (and they can fuck off. i don's make jingles to sell shoes to retards.), does that mean you're uploading for free? does spotify have a store where users can buy downloaded music? etc.
it seems like there's a lot of options to look at, and maybe i can work with one of these sites. we'll have to see.
4:54
so, spotfy is a no.
i would do this. i can't expect you not to.
if you want to download my tracks in high quality, purchase them at the bandcamp site.
amazon is also a no. i boycott apple. i'm trying to avoid facebook altogether.
that leaves youtube, deezer and tidal and i think i'm probably going to try all three.
6:34
deezer is also out.
as is tidal.
ok. so, i'm not doing this. except maybe youtube. let me look into this.
yes, you can pirate youtube, but the point is that i'm uploading a low quality file. so, steal the 128 kbps mp3 all you want. i just don't want you stealing my flacs.
it's just unworkable - any decryption can be broken. there's no way to do this besides the way that bandcamp does it, which is to make you buy it, piecemeal. so, the model is unworkable.
my brief analysis is that, by putting a paywall up over a vast library of music, what they've done is shift the risk of piracy from labels to artists. that is, you can still pirate these files extremely easily, but now you're paying to get access to the files. spotify is basically the same thing as the pirate bay, they've just put up a user fee to access it. so, the artists are no better off, but the labels have found a way to cash in.
i'm not buying into or falling for that.
so, the question is whether i want to play with the youtube content stuff or just upload it myself in low quality.
6:50
so, i carried through with the request to enter the item in youtube music, but the site wants a passport. i uploaded a nexus card.
i don't have a passport, and i don't have a driver's license.
if they reject the submission for that reason, that's fine, i'll just go ahead with the low quality youtube stream via my dtk account. putting ads on my art is a disincentive, not a feature.
7:18
yeah, i sorted through the youtube music page, and it's not something i'm interested in. it's just a front end to youtube with a lot of ads on it. i'd rather upload my music to youtube without the ads, thanks.
7:42
i'm not going to delete the profile. i actually read the user terms, and it's got some weird language in it; i'm going to keep the account open.
but, i'm not interested in distributing music to any of the streaming sites, at this time.
we'll just keep the low quality streams at youtube and put up links to paypal to download the flacs directly. and, if you really, really want to pirate a low quality youtube stream, i feel sorry for you.
let me read the youtube terms again and get a better grasp on what it was that freaked me out last year.
7:44
i was going to get some groceries, but the weather crapped out at the last minute - the warm front came through overnight, and we're stuck with another shitty windstorm.
it's relatively warm out right now, but i think i'm better off waiting a few days. i have no particular need for anything right now.
7:47
ok.
so, the thing that weirded me out about the new terms of service when they came up was the idea of treating ad revenue as royalties. while that may seem like a technicality, a royalty is something that happens when a corporation buys art from an artist, as compensation for it. royalties do no exist in the context of a licensing or distribution service, which is what youtube always was up to this point. i got spooked by the language, and interpreted it as a potential cash grab.
what was less clear was that youtube was introducing a management layer, and making it very difficult to actually get ad revenue. now, i can only guess what that's about. maybe they're trying to reduce access to ad revenue by outlandish pranksters; now, you can't just throw something up and make a fortune, you have to either pay a management layer for access or slowly build an audience. maybe they were concerned about advertisers not wanting their ads associated with specific content. these things aren't really relevant to me. but, the question of royalties is of little concern if there's no reasonable prospect of getting paid. if my concern was that youtube was going to force an ad on every piece of html real estate available, i seem to have severely miscalculated - they seem to be more focused on not placing ads alongside large amounts of the content.
and, that's fine. like, i say - i don't want ads on my music. i want server space for a low quality stream. what i was afraid about - a power grab - seems to be moving in the opposite direction of my fears and, if anything, the terms are now better, because i never need to be afraid of ads being placed on my music without my consent.
so, i'm going to reupload everything that was uploaded.
it's going to be just like bandcamp, but the stream will be located at youtube.
9:05
as mentioned, i have my entire discography ready to go, in the form of low quality 128 kbps wmv files encoded in movie maker.
and, they're just picture videos. that's fine. for now.
don't tell the koala central command what i'm up to.
9:41