i'm going to provide a narrative that is going to drive some people nuts, but it's a reflection of how much nonsense is floating around the resistance movements. you can't forget that we arrived here after decades of slashes to education. the resistance doesn't build or organize anymore. it lacks the knowledge and ability to do this. rather, it sits in the park and demands that the rulers fix it. the reality is that we're as pathetic as they think we are- because they made us that way.
what you're calling austerity is a complex mix of cynicism and failed idealism. there were plenty of people that understood this was inevitable. there were some people that sought to profit from it. but there were enough people that thought this could work to declare it a failed experiment. there are still powerful people that are confused by what they're seeing. it's easy to think it's some master plan. but, it's really just a failed ideology. and the root of it is the way the euro was implemented.
the proper comparison is to the united states, under the gold standard, before the federal reserve. it's a little different, but it's the same basic problem. the austerity is coming from the fact that countries like greece have lost sovereignty over their money supply. when faced with default, they have two choices: spend less, or devalue their currency. but they cannot devalue their currency.
in order for greece and germany to use the same money supply, there has to be some redistribution of resources. in north america, this is actually systemic. the rich provinces and states (like alberta, and california) routinely transfer wealth to the poorer ones (like quebec and west virginia). in europe, it's a scandal - in north america, it's the basis of confederation. this needs to happen as a consequence of using a shared currency, despite having drastically unequal economies.
so long as the euro system continues, these transfers can never end. privatization will merely make things worse. vultures and whatnot. but this isn't a diabolical scheme. it's the result of economic incompetence.
now, here's the funny twist, here: europeans have repeatedly rejected further integration. yet, they want to keep using the euro. you won't hear anybody on the street that gets this. if you put it up for referendum, the popular consensus will be to continue the system that's causing the crisis. because they don't understand what's going on, and the demagogues on the ground are merely confusing things.
in the end, there are three solutions:
1) confederation. under such a system, wealth transfers from germany to the periphery would likely be written into the constitution.
2) abolition of the euro.
3) burn everything down and start over.
everything else that's happening is the result of idiocy run amok....
canada is the master race, we've solved everything - the germans could learn a thing from this.
i mean, i like option 3. but option 1 is most likely.
despite the fact that i think she's very right-wing, the banking/war establishment will never, ever, ever let hillary clinton run the world because they see her as too liberal. not even nominally. it's really not a gender thing. it just isn't. it's really just that her politics are not in the oligarchy's mainstream.
yes, it's very sad that hillary clinton is the closest thing to a serious anti-establishment candidate that we'll ever see in our lives. she makes rfk sound like thomas paine.
i mean, look what wall street did last time it looked like she was about to win the nomination. it pulled the strongest legal card it had to play.
i don't know what they're going to come up with this time. but, understand this: if they can't beat her, they'll kill her.
she's an unacceptable candidate to the people who are really in power. it's better to just get that and focus on somebody else as a middling centre-right compromise.
slycooper2002
Porkerficial Love
Bacon Is Theft
No Pork Out
Abolish Brocoli/Silent Shoppers
World War Bacon
bigpaddycool
Why not silent sausage?
Gabriel Bejarano
no -_-
deathtokoalas
bacon is freedom?
bacon is impossible...
slycooper2002
Aren't you that meanie who insulted Ty Segall's drumming skills?
deathtokoalas
stating the truth is not being mean. it's just stating the truth.
slycooper2002
He's not even bad though.
deathtokoalas
i've been through this. comprehensively.
slycooper2002 comprehensively
deathtokoalas
i'd never use italics to state a dry, weary point like that. in fact, the purpose of the punctuation i did use - a one word sentence - is to emphasize that.
i'd just keep on being slycooper2002 if i were you, because you make a lousy deathtokoalas.
slycooper2002
Wow. You're so cool. You can reasonably counter-argue stuff.
deathtokoalas
i'm a message board veteran.
slycooper2002
I dare you to not lower-case an I.
deathtokoalas
i'm an alphabetical egalitarian; an anti-capitalist. i'm not really into this idea that change begins at the atomistic level, but if we can't live up to our own ideals then they're not worth much.
slycooper2002
What would you say if I informed you of the mere fact that I happen to be a koala and find offence to your YouTube name?
deathtokoalas
see! the koalas are taking over! look at this, fellow citizens. i warned you, but you did not listen.
you must be annihilated.
slycooper2002
Bring it on. :c
deathtokoalas
we will rise and remove this pestilence. every eucalyptus tree will burn, when we launch a war against you nefarious creatures. i incite this out of necessity, not of desire. i would prefer that we share the earth's vegetation, but you demand that it be terraformed into a sea of eucalyptus groves. i wash my hands of wrongdoing. but, you will see. humans are petty creatures, but we are strong when we are united.
it's not clear whether it's trying to save the roach or trying to steal the meal from the spider. how does this end?
i wonder just how much of a roach's diet consists of other roaches. i know there's going to be a wide variation, but, generally - statistically speaking. 30%? 50%? even higher?
i'm just debating the idea of blocking a hole in my wall....
see, i'm in an old basement. there's cracks in the foundation, ancient sewers and abandoned properties all over the neighbourhood. roaches, where they exist, are generally a neighbourhood/city problem rather than an individual property owner one, but our concept of property in the anglosphere is right fucked so we lack the ability to realize that and deal with it collectively. what it means is that it kind of doesn't matter what i do, they're going to come back - because it's the neighbourhood that's infested. proper eradication would need to be done by the city, or by a neighbourhood group. and, like i say, there's no community awareness here....
i'm dealing with the big, dumb "oriental" sewer roaches, though, not these feisty little fighting german ones. these are actually outside insects, primarily. and i think the ones i've seen down here are mostly transients...
i literally have nothing for them to eat. all food is in the fridge. there isn't even any garbage; i pretty much survive on fruit, and keep the rinds and stuff in the freezer (and then drop it off at a charity compost when it fills up). so, it's not the best place to live, for a roach, food wise. except that it's a basement...
spraying & blocking holes with steel wool has been effective in not seeing them for the last year, but it's time to reapply. i will eventually spray like i did last time, because it worked: i went a whole year with nothing. now, i've seen two in the last ten days. as mentioned, i think they're transients. they were both old. and the orientals have a yearly life cycle that means old roaches die pretty much right now.
they're coming in through a large hole behind the stove that i had steel wooled up to great effect. figuring this out was a step forwards, as the previous tenants were apparently unable to figure out where they were coming from. now, the landlord wants to drywall the hole. but...
...the other side of the hole is a crawl space, adjacent to a shower. it's damp. and dark. i'm concerned that drywalling the hole is going to just give them a nesting space in the crawl space, and they're going to basically feed off each other back there.
i'm thinking it might be a better idea to stick with the steel wool and bait the crawl space once or twice a year. or at least spray it. i'd prefer to fill it with cement, but that's not an option.
but it would be nice to know if what i'm thinking is really feasible. could a roach nest survive like that, on itself, and still manage to grow? does that break some kind of conservation of energy law, or what?
Friday, April 10, 2015
yes, they're trying to tip the boat, and no they don't think that they're seals.
this is experimentation with a new hunting technique. if it's successful, it will be taught. that pod needs to be culled...
the last time i found myself on this page, it was to react to laci's suggestion that the word pussy should be less censored by arguing that liberalizing the word isn't likely to have much of a positive effect. i'm not so arrogant as to think i changed laci's opinion, but i'm not getting a level of consistency, here. she's basically making the same argument for bitch that i was making for pussy, against her suggestion for liberalization. and, ironically, i feel myself leaning more towards the reverse perspective, with "bitch" - mostly because it's that much more broad.
that is, i don't think "bitch" is one word. it's a series of homonyms. the etymology thing is kind of whatever. but "you're a snivelling, manipulative whiner" and "you're a bossy, dominant jerk"...these are not the same accusation. they're the opposite of each other. and, while one is sexist in just about any context, sometimes the other is just an accurate description of somebody you don't enjoy spending time with.
then, there's the use of bitch as "friend". well, it's not my vocabulary. but it's really pretty harmless. it could just as easily mean "enemy". and, why waste time wondering if you're being nice to your enemies?
the lack of any real meaning to the word really makes any broad, general analysis pretty much impossible.
that said, it can be used in a brutal, misogynist way. but so can anything. you can imagine some violent douche calling his redheaded victims a "carrot". "that fucking carrot deserved it". i'm not making light of the situation. but, when you substitute like this you can see that the description of the subject in such a situation is actually the least pressing part of the issue.
should rihanna be talking like this? well, you could ask her, but i bet i know her response.
"please, bitch. don't you fucking tell me what to say."
fwiw, rihanna did not write the song. and, i'm left wondering if she's actually the topic of it.
Thursday, April 9, 2015
i've had a few of those. have one right now. and, the most amazing thing about it is that they tend to have the nerve to march downstairs and yell at you the moment they hear a sneeze....
you can't reduce this to a choice like the chief is trying to. you need to take the guns out of the hands of police enforcement. everything that led up to this event is just catalyst; the real problem is that you had an angry cop with a gun in his hand.
this presentation is, in large part, broadly dishonest.
so, these oligarchs take the money out and play around with it - they make money off of currency swaps, and stock options and all kinds of other imaginary paper wealth sources. i'm with you up to this.
but what you don't point out is that they then put it back. plus interest. the accounting sheet balances out.
now, it's certainly unfair. they're able to create money out of nothing, while the rest of us get shipped off to work. it's a class system built on extreme inequality....
but the monetary basis of this has no net harmful end. excluding job losses from mechanization or outsourcing (and attacks on unions in general), at the end of these "crises" the bastards always leave things as they found them.
this is consequently not a pressing concern. nothing to do with paper wealth is, really. pressing concerns have to do with finding ways to change who owns real wealth. that is, property.
i've cut my political facebook feed off altogether, and i'm very behind on my youtube feed, which i'm just watching when i eat lunch. i'm currently watching videos from july, 2014 - almost a year ago. and, i'm becoming cognizant that my writing up until i switched my focus to music (much based around this now abolished facebook feed) had managed to generate an audience that was more influential than i'd ever expect, or even might deserve.
i've suspected this for a while, but it's a hard thing to confirm or interact with. i mean, they can't cite me. i'm a nobody ranting into a blog. and it's maybe not in one's self-interest to quote an unknown blogger, anyways. i come off as a little arrogant, but it's of course mostly a mask - and, regardless, i'm not solipsistic. these are sources i look to for information and guidance, not sources i expect to listen to me or be influenced by my perceptions.
but an interview i saw today made it too clear, and it's the kind of thing that is all or nothing, so i feel the need to post a statement on what the delay has been since this time last year and when it is that i'll get back to writing and analyzing.
please understand this: i'd actually prefer to maintain my anonymity. this is my self-interest. so, i'm not naming names. i'm typing in the dark, as i always am, and throwing it out into cyberspace for whom it comes across to. and i want my ideas listened to, so i hold no grudge or insistence on ownership; i just state that, as far as my life is concerned, i just want things to stay like they are.
my two narrowed down life goals are composition (music) and analysis (writing). i initially planned to alternate: do a record, exhaust a topic, repeat. however, this was based on the certainty of my ability to stay on disability perpetually. about a year ago, i realized i was faced with renewal and the possibility that it might be denied, imploding my financial situation.
i'll state flat out that if the disability is made permanent then i'll likely move back to the original plan. i've received several extensions since last year; with each one, i'm getting closer to a useful diagnosis. i'm currently looking at july for my submit date, which gives me until at least the end of the year. if this isn't renewed then i'm likely going to lose the space i need to set up my gear and end up back on the street. now, reading, analyzing and reviewing doesn't require any kind of gear, or space for it. so, i've been forced to reanalyze my priorities. right now, i'm in a race against time to complete my unfinished recordings - i can do the readings later, when or if i'm back on the street, if necessary.
i was making excellent time until december, when i got stuck on a track from 2002. up to december, i successfully remastered, remixed and otherwise completed over thirty hours of music written between 1996-2002. that's about half of the work. what that means is that i should expect to be done in roughly another year, if i can delay that long, but that it may be wise to plan for two.
am i wasting time? should i be building? organizing?
in a statement: no.
i've stated this before, so i'll be brief here. i think the future unfolding of the economy is crystal clear. we've switched to a retail & service based economy, but the mechanization of manufacturing is only step one. more than half of the jobs in the economy right now are service jobs: cashiers, stocking, etc. have you seen a self-serve checkout? warehouse robotics?
you're looking at half of the jobs in the existing economy wiped out by this. and, as the robotics get better, skilled jobs are next. that's maybe a bit beyond people alive today, granted.
but i think that 40-60% structural unemployment is the near future. and that it's quite certain.
we can't withstand that, socially. it's going to produce widespread squats, urban co-ops, etc. you won't have to fight the landlord, because he'll just evaporate in the absence of anything approaching a market. this is an upcoming revolution in the mode of production that has little choice but to create massive change in society...
so, what does this have to do with reclaiming unionization for the workers? with non-hierarchical management? with worker self-ownership? the truth is it makes these ideas incoherent. it leaves them in the industrial past.
the idea is to maximize freedom relative to the existing economic paradigm. liberalism did that for agrarianism, socialism for industrialism. but we're pivoting out. right out. "bye bye industrial world" out. communism? well, not exactly, obviously. it's pretty dumb to dust off 150-200 year old ideas and stick to them without updating them. but kropotkin's ideas don't seem so looney in the context of a collectively owned system of robotic manufacturing that requires essentially no labour to run. they actually almost seem inevitable.
to be clear: i think we need to talk this through.
but do i think i'm wasting time? no. in fact, i think it's imperative to wait a little.
the distinguished baby boomer (or older) academics of the world want to tell us that we're running out of time. but we're not running out of time. they are running out of time.
and, we likely need to let them pass before we can really begin to reanalyze the world in the ways we need to.
give me two years, max. this is important to me, as an individual. but i'm tying loose ends, really. i'll be back.
i don't see any significant problems with the existing system. just open the stores on sundays.
if you read the news regularly, you realize that the fuckers actually have a very developed sense of humour. but the precondition is that they have no interest in what people on the ground actually have to say, except in these crude terms, as these punchlines to this wry, dark humour.
this is russian state media. seriously. not a joke. take it seriously? well...
the reason it's interesting to me is that it frames an answer around an old science fiction cold war narrative.
if we take roswell and the rest of the ufo movement seriously, if we allow for the possibility of an organized and intelligent extra-terrestrial presence during the cold war, what side would the aliens pick? although we would have to pretend that it wasn't a bunch of bullshit, if we consider the ideological debate of the cold war, this is actually a very interesting question, isn't it?
would these highly advanced beings prefer to side with communism or capitalism? would they prefer us to develop using co-operative or competitive models? would they be more concerned with our development or their safety? or would they follow the prime directive and not interfere?
apparently, according to russian state media, they hacked into the us system and disarmed it and then tried to launch an attack from russia to the united states, one that the russians valiantly prevented.
waking up out of an allergy-induced sinus headache haze into something approaching mental clarity really reinforces the magic that is consciousness. it's short. enjoy it.
i was also going to point out that it looks like a cougar, if not for the cut tail, but what jumped into my mind was a possible hybrid. if you look closely, you can see some patterns on it's coat, which is not a cougar trait. cougars are declining in florida, that's when these hybrid events start happening....
nowadays, it's actually high school biology to understand that you're really not what you eat. your body takes everything you eat, breaks it down into small carbon chains and then puts it back together again. blood cholesterol levels are consequently controlled by your liver, not your diet.
an easy understanding is this:
energy consumed - energy burned = energy stored.
if your body is storing too much energy, be it in cholesterol or some other way, what it means is that this equation is not balancing - which in practical terms usually means that not enough energy is being burned. so, the answer is to get the cardio up.
next, can you guys do a spot on the difference between sea salt and table salt?
organic refers to the type of pesticide used. there's no difference.
well, except price....
TheAsianPlaysGames
Why did they call non-organic fruit regular? deathtokoalas
the distinction is not between gmo and non-gmo. none of these fruits have commercially available gmo strains, so you can't buy gmo bananas. the distinction is between the types of pesticides that are used. "conventional" means oil-based pesticides, "organic" means pesticides made from organic compounds.
Rani Hanna
I'm lost, by organic, do you mean authentically grown, or the fake label?
deathtokoalas
organic means that the pesticides they use are made of organic chemicals, which is stuff that's present in naturally occurring biology.
Moon Man
Sup Dra'nakyuek, Destroyer of worlds. Congrats on stompiing that village yesterday
deathtokoalas
i'm sorry. i'm not privy to your dungeons and dragons lingo, and haven't the slightest clue which virgin-playing board or card game you're referencing.
theunkownviolinist
Did you know that most of the bananas in the world are clones of clones? So even if they were "organic" they're still genetically modified bananas.
Waldo
I thought it meant that they used bullshit instead of artificial fertilizers
T Dog +Rani Hanna pretty sad how everyone is calling you stupid, they seem to forget that everyone who is ever born isnt automatically programmed with all knowledge on all subjects and has to learn over time, probably because they are retards that dont know much about anything, i wonder if projecting they're stupidity onto you helped them feel smart for a second, on second thought i couldnt give a shit
Rani Hanna +T dog Honestly, I don't take offense, as people have the right to judge me on the internet. They can call me dumb if they want, but they don't know who I am
T Dog +Rani Hanna noone has the right to judge anyone, i know i judged them in the last post but im as much an idiot as they are
Rani Hanna +T dog They are ignorant, as they are from Europe, where fake organic labels don't exist, and didn't know America has them. I am fine with that, as it is their choice to judge
T Dog +Rani Hanna oh its been a problem here in the UK since the early 2000's, dont know about the rest of the EU though
Rani Hanna +T Dog Really? Dat sux
T Dog +Rani Hanna yeh, not just supermarkets but farmers markets would regularly miss label there stuff as freerange or organic just to make more money
deathtokoalas +T Dog i've read un reports that suggest growing organic food in africa for export to developed economies, specifically for economic reasons - it fetches a higher price. of course, they don't address the issue of whether the higher prices end up back with the producers or not. and, ironically, given the transportation costs of transporting produce out of africa, these were actually in "adaptations to climate change" documents.
correct labelling or not, it's really mostly a scam.
now, if you want to talk locally grown indoor produce that doesn't need pesticides because it's inside, and preferably with hydroponics, then i'm listening...
JustSiouxMe
organic=grown using the same methods they used 200 years ago conventional=crops that have been made better with science
GMO's produce higher yeilds, larger fruits and vegetables and are able to grow in much harsher environments than organic crops. Also modern synthetic pesticides used on GMO crops are completely harmess to humans. Organic farming still uses natrual poisons that are harmful to humans.
deathtokoalas +JustSiouxMe completely harmless is a tad bit of an exaggeration. organic farming actually tends to use pesticides in higher concentrations, because the ones they're allowed to use are less effective. but, there's been studies done on round-up's effect, and it's pretty disastrous to frogs, at the least. i'd advise against drinking the stuff.
as i've pointed out a few times, the only way to get to pesticide-free growing is to move production indoors. there's a lot of other benefits to this, including year-long growing cycles, automation and the possibility of dramatically reducing transportation. it also opens up the possibility of using genetic modification to more productive purposes, like increasing nutritional yield. if we're serious about health, yields and sustainability then it's the only real answer, in the long run.
EddyBearr
Growing food indoors could be disastrous for the bees, which in turn would be disastrous for basically everything. Alongside that, it's not very reasonable -- you're not going to have a corn-soybean rotation indoors, huge disruption of soils, and etc. It's decent at a local level for specific crops, but not as a plan for agriculture overall.
With that said, I looked into a few of the studies regarding glyphosate (and other round-up ingredients) and frogs. "Pretty disastrous to frogs, at the least" is a huge overstatement for what happens to frogs. It has a negative affect, but it's not creating some kind of amphibian disaster.
deathtokoalas
well, bees were fine before we came along, i'm sure they'll figure it out. i could deal with less stinging potential. pesticides are a far greater concern to them. but, you need to realize that bees are only an issue insofar as certain outdoor crops require them. moving production inside would largely null our reliance on them; for a handful of crops that require them, we can always bring them inside with us.
there's no reason we can't grow corn or soy indoors, we just need a big enough space.
round-up's benefit is that it's "less bad" than some of the other alternatives. all of things you want - half-life, toxicity - are demonstrably better than most of the other options. but, at the end of the day you're spraying something that seems to be both a carcinogen and an endocrine disruptor on your food. it's easy to point to studies that say that low doses do not increase the background risk. but, it's the kind of thing that you can't really do an experiment on, except in real time. we won't really know the effects of this stuff for decades. another problem is that it does breed resistance, which has a host of problems.
again: the ideal is to get rid of the pesticides and fungicides altogether by controlling the environment that crops are grown in. there's nothing really preventing us from doing this, besides political will and startup capital.
up in canada, one of the few positive things that our extreme right-wing government is doing is funding indoor grow sites for crops like tomatoes that we have a historical industry in, but can only operate a part of the year. i'm hoping that we can build on this. the potential is much greater than that.
this narrative of the collapse of american moral authority is pretty tenacious in it's refusal to acknowledge it's own doublethink. it came up during vietnam, in the contra wars, in iraq...
the reality is that if america had any moral authority it's been gone for over a half century. the rest of the world has not seen america this way for generations. and, americans know better - they just suppress it, as they're trained to.
the reality is that the only morality america needs is the master morality of "might makes right". these rumours of it's demise....
also... i'm not up-to-date on this isis war. but you could see this coming from the mid-00s. and it's not clear whether this caliphate is a threat to the countries in the region, or an intended construction to legitimize a desired confederation.
if prince whomever in riyadh declared a caliphate, the muslim world would laugh at him. as bad as the ottomans. if this is a desired end point, it needs something that appears to be a little more organic to get it rolling.....
why is it different to say "i won't make you a cake because i have philosophical objections to homosexuality" than it is to say "i won't make you a sandwich because i have philosophical objections to whites serving blacks"?
put another way, if you support the right to deny service to gays on philosophical grounds, then why wouldn't you support the right to deny service to blacks on philosophical grounds? can you make that argument, without contradicting yourself?
to be clear, i'd argue that denying service based on religious grounds is discrimination. the canadian constitution would be clear on this point - s. 15 equality rights. and there's a human rights code that upholds it and bans this sort of thing. we're similar in some ways, but very different on issues of discrimination. i wouldn't expect a law like the one in indiana to withhold a constitutional challenge, here. and most canadians would think this is right.
the gay wedding cake thing is a little more subtle, as none of these stores are providing an exclusive service. that is, there is no monopoly. if there was a monopoly, they'd have to do it. otherwise, the court would tell you to chill out and just go to a different store.
that's the legality of this: you could sue them, but you'd probably lose, even in canada - because they don't have a monopoly.
from a social standpoint, i feel the more important issue is that the dominant secular society really ought to push the message that this kind of mindset is unacceptable - that it is not acceptable for a business to judge their customers, or try and force their religious beliefs on them. hiding behind a book and calling your bigotry "religion" shouldn't give it a stronger legal protection. bigotry is bigotry, whether it's religious or not.
to me, that makes these laws wrong-headed. the state should not be working to uphold religious exceptions under a tenuous reading of the constitution (it's about making peace between denominations), but to establish a post-religious society, where these arbitrary systems of judgement are kept out of the public discourse.
it's backwardsness, no matter how you try and parse it. and indiana's economy will suffer for it.
ArnoldArchives
Easy question. Here's one way to put it: In your lifetime, you may meet or learn about many former homosexuals, but you will never come across or learn about a former black person. Get the point? If not, maybe this will help: Homosexuality is a chosen behavior or lifestyle, whereas ethnicity is an immutable fact of biology. Thus, comparing homosexuality to ethnicity/race is like comparing apples and tennis shoes -- they're worlds apart.
Furthermore, as a matter of conscience and conviction, neither Christians nor Jews nor Muslims can or should be compelled by the government (that's called fascism or tyranny) to bake a cake, photograph, provide flowers for or participate in any other capacity in a same-sex wedding ceremony, because such an event is a public celebration and affirmation of sexual behavior that is clearly prohibited in both the Bible and the Quran. Moreover, the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects each citizen's (that includes entrepreneurs) freedom of religion -- which includes the free exercise of religion -- and conscience rights. These same protections apply to self-identifying homosexuals and supporters of same-sex marriage, for which you and they should be grateful. After all, if these laws do not protect ALL business owners from having to violate their consciences, then business owners who are proponents of same-sex marriage and the homosexual lifestyle should equally be forced by the government to decorate cakes, t-shirts, signs, etc. with anti-homosexual messages or to photograph a KKK or Westboro Baptist Church rally, for example, if their customers request as much. Be careful what you ask for (or ferociously demand, as may be the case), because the sword of the law cuts both ways. Bet you never thought your own logic through, did you? Glad I could help.
deathtokoalas
i don't see how the choice argument is relevant - the issue isn't the gay/black person, it's your opinion of that person. your opinion may change if you perceive the issue as one of choice, but that's not the issue - the issue is your opinion. if i had a racist book that claimed blacks are inferior - and the book of mormon gets close - i could present the same argument you're presenting. would you therefore agree that it should be legal to deny service to blacks, merely because a person has racist opinions?
there's also two different issues, here, and i tried to point that out. denying general service is not the same thing as denying specific service. this case is not actionable, for that reason. the kkk thing would fail for the same reason that this one would. but, i don't think the courts should uphold the idea that a black store owner can refuse general service to a klan member based solely on their political affiliation - should they choose to enter the store.
your argument is essentially "i should have the right to be a bigot, because i have bigoted beliefs.". it's entirely circular.
it's logically the same as stating "i should have the right to beat my wife, because i believe in beating my wife."
(deleted response)
deathtokoalas
yes - anybody can deny specific service for any reason. that's why this "expose" is a strawman. i explained that clearly. it's not the issue in the bill, and there's no use in pretending it's an issue for debate. i'm not interested in debating with dishonest (or stupid, as it may be) people and will block and delete.
if anybody else would like to try and break the logic down and explain why you think that saying it's alright to deny general service based on one arbitrary characteristic does not imply it's alright to deny general service based on any other then i'm all for it.
Monday, April 6, 2015
bill, you're right to point out that young, healthy people don't need a flu shot and it's just a cash grab by an industry looking for structural income.
and you're in good shape for your age...
...but it's kind of time to start thinking like an older person. young, in context, generally means under 55.
well, i'm with the aclu on this and hope it goes up the proper channels. up in canada, we couldn't even contemplate a law like this - it's blatant age discrimination, and clearly unconstitutional. i think the relevant amendment in the united states is the 14th amendment, not the 4th. i'm really astounded that this is even in the realm of discourse, and hope the courts act to stamp it out, as they should.
that said, you'll note that the cops are concerned about kids under ten, while the neighbourhood is concerned about teenagers. politics aside, that indicates there's two different issues here. nobody's going to argue that kids under ten should be out on the streets. but it doesn't strike me as necessary to create new laws to deal with this....
a quick google search indicates that these laws have been frequently found unconstitutional over the last twenty years.
there's some hope, anyways...
this is indeed a terrible article. "coywolf" refers specifically to
gray wolf hybridization around algonquin, and the migration outwards.
red wolves are smaller than other species, share a suspicious amount of
dna with coyotes and are thought by many experts to be a hybrid between
the eastern wolf and the coyote in the first place. that is to say that
this interbreeding is very likely "normal" and "natural", and would
probably be happening on the border of their range even if europeans
never colonized the area at all....
the species concept is
obsolete. it's a way for humans to categorize things, not something that
actually exists. dogs, coyotes, wolves, jackals - there's no simple
relationship to place in a graph. introgression is natural, and probably
selective. interfering with this isn't helping anybody, it's just
interfering with evolution. and, for what reason? to maintain and
enforce our imaginary categories...
aristotle strikes again. somebody really needs to get rid of this guy.
i'm not sure why the documentary suggests that the only options are protecting the calf or predatory behaviour. rather, the more obvious explanation is competition over resources. you'd imagine that the orca would be more interested in the seals, and are just trying to scatter the sharks out. if they can get some food out of it, great. but that's not really the point.
it's just more evidence that orcas are evolving to occupy the niche that sharks currently occupy. nor is this shocking - the era of mammal diversification and replacement is the era we're continuing to live through. bye sharks...
i know the topic is generally understood to be l ron hubbard, but i think it's an oversimplification to state as much - i don't think there's a specific target. it's about the martyr archetype, in general. and, i think it's actually very easily applied to a number of targets that aren't generally spoken of - politicians, the military and perhaps the crux of american culture, itself.
the song itself is pretty obvious, but the line that's always struck me as most important in determining it's intended target is this one:
don't you step out of line
that's military language, and evokes the imagery of an officer attacking his superior. it's always led me to the conclusion that this is some kind of an anti-war song - a criticism of american war culture, and this idea of the soldier as martyr.
you know, it's really remarkable. it doesn't matter what the policies are. it doesn't matter what the evidence is. the reality is that obama has deported more immigrants than any other president, and by a large order of magnitude. when he says he's putting more staff at the border to keep the kids out, his record supports that.
the media doesn't care. it's stuck in these reagan-era narratives. to the media, obama is walter mondale.
that's scary for two reasons.
1) it suggests that the narrative is fixed. that is, that the media will not allow the two party system to change. not even when the narrative has nothing to do with reality.
2) because the narrative is fixed, the perspective will never change, regardless of the policies. that gives both parties free hands on certain concerns, that everybody will just flat out ignore.
it's really remarkable. it really is.
Friday, April 3, 2015
this is such capitalist propaganda. they even put the atonal russian strings in. it's all over the show.
canada is a relatively small market, compared to asia. the arguments about cost here are largely wrong - the cost has to do with shipping, not labour. these factories are mostly automated. and, if you're focusing on emerging markets, it makes sense to place your automated production facilities as close to the emerging markets as possible.
cars made in canada would be mostly made for the canadian market. given that our economy is stagnant, there's no reason to increase production. the only thing that's going to increase production in canada would be increased sales in canada, and that's not likely any time soon. even so, the increase would be relatively minor...
it really essentially has nothing to do with us, and everything to do with massive growth rates in asia and the rearrangement of production to emphasize local production, due to automation.
you know, the reason there's no tornadoes in china is the same reason it's so cold in siberia. i think canada might want to discuss this before any bricks get laid....
see, this is...
this appears exceedingly absurd because jello's a public figure with known positions, and strong anti-racist credentials. we know jello's position is not racist, and these guys are going after the wrong guy.
but this happens all of the time. in the end, what you're seeing here is the reason occupy evaporated. instead of getting people that agree with each other working together, you get these pointless arguments pushing divisiveness, and eventual disassociation. the artificial divisions pushed from the top overpower, and nothing gets done. eventually, people look around and realize the only people still there are white men.
it didn't happen overnight. it's the crux of organizing since 1965. and it may take as long to spin the focus back around on class as it did to spin it off it. this is deep damage. but that just means it's necessary to take a good, hard look at it.
it's not an ideal tactic, but i think that the left needs to grow a bit of a backbone with this, that organizing groups need to take the initiative in expulsion and ostracism of people that refuse to accept an egalitarian basis rather than let themselves continually be eaten out from the inside by these foucaldian conservatives in sheep's clothing.
and, in turn, this may help recapture the working class from the republican party, who has taken advantage of the situation and is the prime winner of the infighting.
i mean, jello was smart about this, but he's approaching it like he's getting picked on by a jock - which is telling. instant "you're bigger than me, but i can outsmart you" reaction. in this case it's true.
"he's one of them, not one of us."
that is: class. not race. with a little psychology thrown in. smart.
it wouldn't be so effective if his "opponents" had masters degrees. then you're arguing with these whacked fundamentalists. smart people. just extremists, and fully convinced.
i mean, here's the thing: i'm in the audience, and your religion can't affect me. i need a different type of argument. i have a different epistemology. but i'm not the norm.
the norm is much more swayed by the group, by appeals to emotion, etc. so, these arguments have a certain effectiveness that can't be effectively countered without using their tactics. we're not robots. i've been trained to think like one, but most people just aren't. so, then, it's like...i don't want to live through the fucking reformation...i'd rather stay home....
and, you're stuck with this just irresolvable barrier. if leftists ought to be realists, it's gotta be looked at squarely. the classical anarchists, with their enlightenment principles in science and logic, are simply not on the same side as the post-everything subjectivists, with their screwy logic, rejection of empiricism and orwellian language. either both ideas need to be put aside, which is virtually impossible as it's epistemological, or these groups need to go their separate ways.
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
TensaLeggy Crywank (Tensa)
American Tune's supposed to be ironic and true you mad fucks. He IS white/straight, and white people DO get advantages in this society, same with straight males.! Coming from a white person, every damn thing he said in that song is true. I think it's disgusting as well, how race/gender preference really does impact our ways of living as they do.
deathtokoalas
it's statistically false. the most privileged group in north america is east asians, followed by south asians. northern european whites are in the middle, with blacks and latinos and native americans on the bottom.
the model was developed by black academics in the southeastern us to try and understand the consequences of american apartheid. it works well enough in that limited context. you could also apply it reasonably well to, say, south africa, which has a similar history.
the problem is when you take something with an extremely limited intended application and try to blow it up to a general, universal rule. it happens all the time. and you can't blame the authors.
there's just a lot of morons out there.
bakerbrown6 +deathtokoalas One question: which group in North America has the most money, most members in congress and the most influence?
deathtokoalas +bakerbrown6 these people are slaves to the investor class. bankers. pointing to the composition of congress as "privilege" is like arguing that workers must run society because they do all the work.
the investor class is mostly inherited wealth, and is a lot more diverse than you may realize.
to put it differently, the investor class will run the candidate it believes has the highest chance of winning. if the majority of politicians are white, it does not suggest that white people have more power in any real sense. it merely suggests that they are a plurality in most places, and running white people is the best way for the investor class to get votes. the investor class will readily invert this logic by running candidates of any colour and gender combination, when it is likely to maximize votes.
bakerbrown6 +deathtokoalas"If the majority of politicians are white, it does not suggest that white people have more power in any real sense"... no? I guess there is a way to spin anything haha. You don't have to go back too far in American history when people of color had NO rights. There are many who would love to go back.
deathtokoalas +bakerbrown6 i want to be clear that i'm not rejecting the model outright, i'm just pointing out that it's a specific model and not a universal one. and, the people that built the model would acknowledge that. it's specifically meant to deal with the consequences of slavery, as they applied to the southeastern united states. they simply weren't interested in trying to describe a universal social phenomenon.
so, if you want to talk about white privilege in atlanta or dallas or st. louis? yeah, that's a real thing. it's a consequence of the legacy of slavery. but, if you start crunching data in chicago or detroit (even with the recent mess) or new york or toronto or seattle, you're going to see a different picture emerge. and, this is where people start pushing back.
the exact error here is called "universalizing the specific". it's a first year logic error. but you see it quite commonly in academia, especially in the social sciences, where academics want to take these ideas and paint them over these large academic or geographic areas, often with poor results.
trying to apply it to canada yields particularly bad results. i know it's called "american song", but you hear the same ideas coming from activists here. the reality? there are so few blacks in canada, that there hasn't even been a real opportunity to systemically discriminate against them. number of blacks descended from slaves in canada? statistically insignificant. blacks make up a few percentage points of the overall population, but almost all of them are highly educated recent immigrants directly from africa or the caribbean. statistically, they're actually slightly privileged due to the immigration rules requiring high levels of education for entry. so, you just can't apply a model meant to explain the legacy of slavery to a country with no serious legacy of slavery. but, people do it anyways because they want to universalize this specific idea.
(to be clear: yes, there was slavery in canada. but it was short lived, and it left almost no descendants. certainly, it didn't leave large swaths of areas of freed slaves.)
that's not to say we don't have structural racism here, but it's historically applied mostly to native americans overall - and to french canadians and east asians in specific geographic regions.
the take-away is just that critical theories are specific things, and you need to be very careful in applying them in ways that are not catered directly to the issue being analyzed.
the reason this gets scary to me is that it constructs a social hierarchy that really doesn't otherwise exist. but, if it exists in our mind, we will create it in front of us. i don't think that was the intent. but it scares me that it's often the result. worse, the type of argumentation attached to proponents of these ideas (as universals) tend to reject data and logic in favour of subjective experience. as a whole, this comes off quite orwellian.
bakerbrown6 +deathtokoalas Just curious what you might have to say about blacks in all of the jails and mostly for drugs (even though whites do more drugs)....
deathtokoalas +bakerbrown6 yeah, that's a good example of the systemic racism that exists primarily in the american south (although the profiling exists throughout the country in different degrees). i mean, it's a backdoor to slavery. meant to replace the collapse of jim crow. the root of the problem here is in the continuation of prison labour. did you know that the prison system has a monopoly on paint in the united states? if you look at prison labourers at "workers", the united states prison system is one of the largest employers in the country. so, you get the whole school-to-prison pipeline issue.
it's just important to recognize it's a largely regional issue. we don't have any prison labour at all up here, so trying to pull that out doesn't make any sense.
i'm only going to do this once, this election cycle...
trudeau
and mulcair are both horrible candidates, for their respective bases.
i'd expect harper to effectively split the vote. the only really serious
possibility of a change of government in the upcoming election is going
to be in a highly tenuous minority situation.
let's ignore the
conservative propaganda. it's useful in appealing to the base, but it
has nothing to do with reality in any way.
the reality is that
trudeau seems to primarily be concerned about appealing to the right,
and so long as he does that he's going to bleed votes to the ndp. the
liberals have not learned anything. they seem to be convinced their
failures have to do with their front person, not their policies. in the
end, if trudeau continues this "appeal to the right" strategy, i
wouldn't expect him to perform much better than his immediate
predecessors. i can only hope that they clue in to this soon...
so,
as a left-leaning voter, trudeau's policies are too right-wing for me.
default to mulcair, then? not so quick - he's no less of a center-right
liberal. if you listen to him talk about economics, you immediately
wonder why he's in the ndp. then the answer becomes clear - opportunism.
and you realize you don't want to vote for this guy.
reality:
all three major candidates are right-wing liberals. it's really about
identity politics. and, that gives harper a major advantage.
i
don't want the liberals and ndp to merge. i want one of them to
re-establish the spectrum, by swinging out to the left. and, until that
happens, i probably won't vote very often at all.
but, for 2015? nothing has changed. harper wins by splitting the left. again.
Apollo23
The Libs have always governed from the Right--and well in opposition they criticized from the Left..
deathtokoalas
that's an over-simplification, but the rhetoric from the younger trudeau is really dramatically different. he sounds more like a democrat, most of the time.
casino logic
fair analysis of sorts. But opting out of voting is the ultimate cop out. Apathy is contagious. I dare say that all parties count strategically on a certain level of voter apathy.
BigRocks
The only focus for voters this fall is to vote for the candidate in your riding most likely to beat the conservatives. Do some research, organize, become informed and effective voters. harper is strategizing to split the vote. We can't let this happen again.
Organize the left vote. Vote for the your local riding candidate most likely to beat the cons.
deathtokoalas @casino logic i think that the policies i'm seeing from the liberals & ndp present apathy as the best option. the better option at this point is to let them both crash and burn and focus on a protest party to re-establish some left-wing ideas. given that there's not going to be any difference between harper & trudeau & mulcair, anyways, there's no threat in letting harper retire...
i'm not well-positioned to actually do this. i'm an introverted artist. but, tactically, these parties ought to both be abandoned at this point. there's no future with either of them.
the greens look like the easy answer, but it's also a right-wing party, so you're looking at years of power struggles. better to start clean...
deathtokoalas @BigRocks since 2006, the parties have positioned themselves too far to the right for it to matter. even reduction to minority isn't going to matter, because you have to expect the liberals to support them on virtual everything that makes any difference. so, please don't waste your time with this. please stop pretending that there's a future in the establishment left and support a new party, instead.
Maurice
Sounds neocon to me.LPC???
Green-PAC??? Isnt that neocon???
deathtokoalas
what i'm pointing out is that the liberal party has moved dramatically to the right over the last several decades. they were previously a social democratic party that advocated for a mixed economy, which was definitely not "neo-con". today, i think neo-con is a slight exaggeration, although they're not far from it.
the green party in canada is roughly classical liberal (it's right-libertarian in origin), and should not be confused with the more left-wing green parties in the united states and europe. neo-con, or neo-liberal as we tend to say in canada and europe, would not be a very good description.
mid 30s and virtually everybody assumes i'm not legal. i was hit on by obvious high school students well into my late 20s; i'm glad that seems to have stopped, at least.
it helps to be clever rather than blunt. but, really: just ask....
i've spent a lot of time in activist groups - on the ground, interacting and protesting, as well as debating online - and i've only met around three (don't hold me to that exact number) feminists that are as "radical" as you're suggesting, and one of them was a cis male. the literature is vast and largely troubling, but it's not taken particularly seriously by most people once they get out of the classroom. most self-identified feminists have the intelligence and critical thinking skills to deconstruct this the way you have.
in a sentence, you're stating that the biggest victim of patriarchy is men. you've just hit the tip of it. i've heard dozens of women state that at meetings, conferences, book clubs and other activist get togethers. it's directly in the mainstream of feminist thinking.
it's just a shame that the loudest voices are often the ones most listened to, considering that they're quite often completely fringe.
what people want is equality. that's intuitive. and we can see that it's possible - we've all interacted in specific settings where it exists.
there's really no reason to let this stack of logically dubious, and mostly empirically debunked, "theories" erase what you're able to construct with your own experiences. it will all end up in the trash heap, eventually...
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
actually, i think he's missed the boat on this. this was true in the
70s, nobody listened, and now we have a mess. moving forward, college
degrees are the next thing to become useless, as industry after industry
becomes integrated with advanced automation.
rather than bite
and claw around ways to find new types of jobs, i think we need to come
face-to-face with the so-called luddite fallacy and realize that the
technology is getting to the post-marxist reality of superproduction,
taking us off these so-called infinite growth curves. this is actually
progress, in terms of maximizing individual human freedom. but it's
going to require a paradigm shift in economics, which of course won't
happen.
in the meantime, you're looking at an economy run by
robots and endemic structural employment, driving political unrest
that's going to lead to some hard choices. the teleology be damned, but i
think the dude got it right.
nowadays, unless you have a
passion for academia, you're really better off just trying to get in
somewhere when you're 17 and focusing on climbing the ladder.
i just saw the animal i've been seeing traces of around here for the last few months, but i neither had my glasses nor a camera. it looked like a large black felid, which is confusing me in how i ought to react.
see, there aren't supposed to be large, black felids anywhere around here. it's established that there are cougars in the region, but melanistic cougars aren't supposed to exist; rather, a large, black felid would probably be a jaguar, and this is nowhere near it's historical range. the thing is, though, that people keep seeing them, all over the eastern side of the continent.
it was standing in a back alley, beside a garbage can, about 20 m away and just looking at me. my eyesight is not terrible, but it's not good enough to tell the difference between a large cat, a large dog and a coywolf at 20 m. i just backed away slowly, ensuring i didn't turn my back, like one is supposed to in such an encounter.
given the combination of evidence i have (including it's interest in the garbage can) it seems far more likely that it's a coywolf. if so, i'm not really worried. they sound scary, and everything, but they don't see us a prey source. in fact, they help in the pest control (rats, birds, and especially canada geese) that the city won't carry out anymore.
but i can't shake the fact that it *looked* like a cat. and if it is a cat, it's an obligate carnivore - unlike the coywolves. canids can eat fruit and whatever else is left out. cats need fresh meat, and if that's a cat, it's a big one.
again: the reality is that i have no convincing evidence. the idea of a jaguar hanging out in downtown windsor is patently absurd; if i were on the other side of the phone, i would laugh at anybody calling that in. but i remain concerned about the possible consequences (children being eaten) of ignoring this.
i need to make sure i have my phone on me when i go out...
i mean, if i was confident it was just passing through, then whatever. but it seems to be making a home here.
something i've been thinking about is whether this might be a good "safe place" for a species like this, specifically to raise cubs. big cats like this can move a good distance, and it's really not that far out to areas where there's large amounts of deer. an abandoned house in the city is probably a safer place to leave the cubs.
i know - they'd be detected by now. but they're pretty sneaky, actually.
wow, rt. i don't expect your media major anchors to have masters degrees in law, but this is painful to watch.
the division of powers is a jurisdictional issue, and it's crystal clear within constitutions. even the most corrupt judge can't really fuck these kinds of cases up. there's very little room for interpretation. in fact, it's surprising it even went to court - especially if the argument was some kind of incoherent "exception". no. no exceptions to division of powers...
this could turn itself on it's head, though. if the rule is that it's in the city's jurisdiction, that means that local law trumps state law, absolutely. which means that all the companies need to do is bribe their way into city council to get a specific ban overturned.
it actually renders cuomo's decision irrelevant.
it's also the reason why city council votes on decriminalizing marijuana are useless; the division of powers places this (criminal law) in state and ultimately federal jurisdiction, so the city has no control over it.
he more i look at the reaction to this, the more i think it will backfire.
"mike pence is a leader.
mike pence turned indiana into the new west virginia.
vote mike pence, 2016."
on the bright side, it should be good for west virginia.
this would have been assumed unconstitutional before the hobby lobby case last year. i know it looks like a local legislative issue, but it's really a federal judicial issue.
a lot of companies have come out against this as unworkable, including a lot of what's left of the manufacturing sector there. what they need to do is focus on changing the judicial precedent, by orchestrating a case that forces the court to deal with a contradiction they can't square. it should have to do with workplaces restricting christianity, somehow. that will force the court to reverse itself, which will allow a judicial challenge of this law.
my guess is that the second car was following the first, the driver got scared about getting lost and made a stupid choice as a consequence of it. the truck has too much inertia to stop that quickly.
you know who is likely to argue against intelligent extra-terrestrial life?
lizard people.
think about it.
i agree that intelligence seems to be lethal, here, on this planet. i even wrote a symphony about it in the late 90s.
but we really can't even talk about the chemistry of possible extra-terrestrial life, really. there's just far too many variables to be able to get a handle on this...
for example, look at the way that plants or mushrooms work, with these elaborate root structures. if a species like that evolved intelligence, it might be collective, and then the game changes. or, look at ants. smart ants would be a frightening proposition.
i want to argue the bigger issue is distance, but it's only meaningful relative to our short lives. maybe some other species has a lifespan of 10,000 years. then, these distances are manageable.
but i do think that, if there was anything close enough to contact, we'd already know about it. either there's nothing in this area of the universe or the information is being suppressed (i don't think that's so crazy....) or they were here before, and are avoiding us....
it seems like a lot of the people in the united states want a king, not a president.
he's kind of half making a valid point. it's one thing to point out that the lack of local activism is responsible for the lack of movement - and he's technically correct in doing so. it's another to look at the viability of local activism, combined with the broad intentions of the american public. it's not clear that americans ever wanted a republic. it's pretty clear at this point, however, that they don't, right now. maybe they will one day...
putting obama's soft right leanings aside, historians looking back are going to see a blown opportunity. he walked into this with a congressional majority, and sat on his hands until it disappeared. now, he complains he can't get anything through congress. oops.
Sunday, March 29, 2015
a kid doesn't like tests.
shocking.
"i propose less tests and more recess."
i think she's half right, but she's got it backwards. people who have attended university have been through these courses where you take a final exam that's worth 60-75% of your grade. they're often multiple choice, and focus on irrelevant details. they're worded in tricky, confusing ways. as metrics, they're useless in determining anything other than whether the student can memorize large amounts of mostly useless information - information that can be googled in 20 seconds in the modern real world. many large employers also use similar tests for screening purposes.
like it or not, and criticize it's value, but it's what job applicants have to deal with in the real world.
walking into that reality, i wish i'd been prepped for it a bit more. i never took tests like that in high school and never really adjusted properly.
it's got to be one way or the other - either we need to prepare our kids better for what's going to happen when they get older, or we need to revamp everything. as it is, as long as the universities and employers continue to use these kinds of tests, it's important to get the kids ready. this idea of marching kids along naively and shrugging when they don't adjust to the things you never taught them is really shitty.
she denies that the results of the test are meaningful. whomever told her this is wrong. her ability to pass tests of this sort will have long term implications, when she starts writing them as a young adult.
the mirror-test as a metric for innate self-awareness seems to have some problems. these kids react exactly the same way an iguana would.
i don't know what you're doing up there this morning, but i'm pretty sure i heard some wood snap and the light fixture in the other bedroom was literally knocked out of it's frame as the result of the banging. it sounds like a lot of heavy things have been dropped on to old wood that shouldn't have heavy things dropped on it.
i think i should be able to rescrew the fixture in. but the fixtures belong to you, and i'm supposed to inform you of issues involving them.
but i mean...this is pretty extreme. and the snap was loud; it seems like the joists in the room were damaged, so i'd advise coming down to see the damage - and maybe being a little more careful with these old, rotting floors. between the water damage and the crumbling plaster and everything else, the floors are really taking a lot of stress.
(pause)
i was able to fix the fixture, and there's nothing to see except some chunks of plaster - although it seems like there's a lot of loose chunks of something in the ceiling. like, when you adjust the fixture, you can feel it rolling around in large, loose chunks of something broken.
so, on second thought, i'm not sure there's anything to see.
but it really sounded awful. it wasn't the creak of an old floor. it was more like a stick snapping in a fire.
i mean, these are old floors. if you abuse them enough, they'll give way.
Friday, March 27, 2015
"not the first time i lost to a black guy"
this makes no sense as a joke, unless it means to say that blacks are inferior, and it's some kind of shameful thing - in which case it's self-deprecating. and flatly racist. he deserves some pushback for that, it's not acceptable....
Thursday, March 26, 2015
in all seriousness
1) dogs have very sensitive noses. some of that stuff - like the taco - was pretty heavy. it's like getting kicked in the groin.
2) i'd be worried about the dog choking on a few of the smaller items. i've seen dogs that can barely eat out of a bowl without coughing.
3) your dog sucks. i've never had to teach a dog - especially not a golden - how to catch. it's innate.
regarding the carbs...
dogs are not obligate carnivores like most cats are. wild canids actually tend to eat a lot of fruit. you can pretty much follow the same rules as you'd follow for people - keep the refined sugars down.
rachele.ls
You took it too far, it's not that serious. It's food, not bricks so his nose is probably fine.
deathtokoalas
no, i think you're underestimating how sensitive the nose is. that taco would have really stung, if she didn't move out of the way.
if you've seen those videos of lava flows moving at a crawl towards villages and everybody just standing around shrugging, it does bring up the question of trying to do something to stop it. of course, the problem is that just about anything you could think of putting in the way is just going to melt, so it seems pointless. and you'd imagine that the amount of ice necessary to even slow it down a little is going to create flooding issues as bad as the lava flow (once the bulk of it transfers to the atmosphere).
i guess this is maybe useful as something exploratory, to get a better understanding of it. but i wouldn't count on seeing helicopters dropping piles of ice on moving lava flows any time soon...
he's logically correct, but it's pulling a negative proof trick. it's not a fallacy, it's more of a refuge. it's like a theist pointing out that you can't disprove the existence of god. fair enough, but it doesn't really help. there really isn't any way to disprove free will, either. but i think the balance of evidence leads to a skeptical position.
i mean, it's pretty convincing, this idea that we're in control. and it may seem trivial to suggest that we're bound to trivial debates. but, it's not really an argument.
every human out there has their intellectual crutches. there's really good reasons why chomsky, as an individual, is going to fight against the rejection of free will. but he's really just twisting the question around.
dj cavi +deathtokoalas free will does not need to be disproved. it is a meaningless term. our will directs our decisions. man that is not in a prison is free... from being in prison, and that is it
deathtokoalas +dj cavi i think you're misunderstanding the concept of free will - it refers to whether we're in control of our decisions. you claim our will directs our decisions. but, that's exactly the question to be pondered - does it really, or are we in some way controlled by outside forces? not market forces, or biological forces. that's more the question of a hobson's choice. but a hobson's choice is only a false choice in the sense that taking the other option leads to negative consequences. in that sense we're not and probably never can be truly free. but we can always choose (or seem to choose) to starve ourselves, or get beaten or be homeless or whatever other thing comes from not taking the "only" choice. i mean, i don't want to come off as a randian or something, but if you're approaching the issue strictly logically, you can't just ignore this. we are seemingly free to do stupid things that will harm us in the short or long term.
that's not really getting at the issue of free will, though. that asks a question more subtle: if we seem to choose to starve or be beaten or be homeless, did we really make that decision?
personally, i'm somewhat of a verificationist. and, in that sense i do agree that the question is rather meaningless. but, i'd take a position of agnosticism on issues of the sort. i think that's the correctly rational perspective: the evidence may lean towards skepticism, but i'm not about to take a hard position either way. i couldn't imagine a theory on free will that could be falsifiable.
but, the "nice story" i like is sort of leaning towards a fatalist conception of the universe. this huge explosion happened some time in the distant past, and the entire universe is a complicated consequence of it - inalterable, and entirely determined. that actually abolishes free will. you choose to starve because of the big bang. modern physics would argue "but there's so many random things!". well, that's not entirely clear. we know there are some things we don't seem to be able to alter. that's as easily an argument for fatalism as it is for chaos - we lack the ability to affect outcomes, and have no concept of how we conceivably might, meaning, as far as we can tell, there's only one way it can conceivably happen. and, we simply can't argue we have "controlled conditions" when we don't understand the factors that could possibly alter the outcome, so the basis of the argument for "different outcomes from controlled experiments" collapses on the point of the experiment possibly not being controlled.
but, that's not falsifiable and is likely never going to be.
Wizardry
Time is modeled as a line. A line is formed of ∞ points. Points are zero-dimensional; i.e., they do not have volume, area, length, or any other higher-dimensional analogue. Is the line, used to represent time, so different from time itself? Or may the line represent time more accurately than you are presently aware? Only time will tell. Welcome to the Mysterium Tremendum. Please excuse the self-possessed numinosity and have a wonderful new day, my Shpongled friends!
ImprovisedSurvival
Not so sure. Even a period on a paper has a third dimension. From a far enough distance, the Earth will appear as a single point/ zero dimensional, as do the stars in space, or the cells in your body, or the galaxy above, or the grain of sand below, or the atom inside, or the solar system outside, the nucleus, the electron, the photon... universe.
All is perspective
Wizardry
The period on a paper though, is not the same as a point as defined by Euclidean geometry: "The description of a point, 'that which has no part,' indicates that Euclid will be treating a point as having no width, length, or breadth, but as an indivisible location."
That being said, I think you may have been making reference to the fractal nature of the universe (As above, so below) in which case I partially agree with your sentiment.
ImprovisedSurvival
Euclid is dead, the only thing that has no width, length and breadth is the space in between the lights
enleuk
A line is not made of points if a line has length but a point does not. Instead it becomes a line as soon as it is something more than a mere point, as soon as it has a length, however minuscule, i.e. even an infinitesimal line is a line and not a point as long as it retains any length at all. In other words, a line is not a row of non-dimensional dots, but a distance between two non-dimensional positions. In reality, there are neither straight lines nor points.
Time is motion, motion is a change in any direction, we can call this direction length. It's not a straight line though. If we assume that the Big Bang was the start of time, at least the start of motion in our universe, our bubble, regardless if other bubbles exist, then obviously time and motion is rather chaotic, spreading outwards from the centre and also clumping together and moving in fairly unpredictable directions at any given local point.
Wizardry
Theoretical science seems to have a way with creating something from nothing for no reason. Lines arise from nothings in big fancy bangs and bring forth talking monkeys after aeons of "chaos." I guess that's not as far fetched as an omnipotent creator designing a world intentionally...or is it? I guess the big explosion at the start with all the chaos makes it more edgy and entertaining for the youth.
enleuk
Excuse me for explaining the errors of your description of Euclidian geometry, I'll never do it again.
deathtokoalas
euclidean geometry is either incomplete or inconsistent. i think that hilbert's approach of undefined terms is preferable. what is a point? what is a line? we can't express these things in language, but we know them when we see them.
that said, it's not really all that bad to think of an infinite number of points in a line segment. any continuous subset of the real line is uncountable.
time is often modeled as a line, but you're oversimplifying it. if you'd like to understand how time and space are connected, i would suggest investing some time into the theory of relativity. which, fwiw, requires very non-euclidean geometry.
yeah. i think he's a cia agent, basically.
i think it's actually occam's razor. the idea that he's really that
brainwashed and self-righteous is hard to believe. and he really doesn't
seem to be trolling.
it's just a step beyond apologism. it's active support. i know he
denies it, but it's purely cognitive dissonance. he's gotta be working
this...
give him another 5-10 years, and he'll miraculously "see the light" and
starting writing books about "spirituality". that's the end game: hook
then co-opt. wait for it....
Wednesday, March 25, 2015
you know, i'm always skeptical about these kinds of things. it's like.....nice speech, johnny, but then why don't you ratify the rome convention? the rules exist. they've been worked out. but your country won't adopt them. you can stand around and talk all you want, but you won't sign the critical documents. but, bringing angelina jolie in is simply good politics, if you're trying to shore up the vagina vote.
there's some code words in this speech that have made me look at it a little differently, though. population control code words. eugenics code words.
i mean, the bottom line is that we can't have a reasonable discussion about this, so it's just kept out of public debate. we're going to start calling each other nazis and stuff. that doesn't mean there aren't valid policy objectives underlying family planning or abortion planning. i mean, we breed like rodents. we've been lucky that the technology has continually put malthus off to the next decade. but that carrying capacity is an unavoidable, finite limit. it's an eventual inevitability.
let's be clear: rape continues as a military tactic because it is successful in asserting dominance over conquered populations. it's the most successful intimidation tactic out there. the american army used it in iraq. so long as it continues to be effective, it's going to be continued to be used, by militias and major armies, alike.
but, let's consider the ramifications of mass rape in a society with little to no access to contraception, and essentially no access to abortion. these are children born to displaced mothers into violent circumstances. they have little future but to become a "security concern", as angelina put it.
i remain skeptical that this is really possible, except on paper. it's too powerful a tactic. and i'd again point to those unratified statutes. but what's driving this is not what's apparent, and it may be wielding a higher level of influence than is obvious.
in order to maintain a healthy species, women need to be able to make
free and uncoerced decisions about who they allow to impregnate them.
i'm not sure this history has been written. and, if it were, it would
likely be rejected as racist. but, take a look at the areas of the world
that were mass raped by the mongol armies for centuries and think it
through.
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
but, how do you convince your boss to pay you in bitcoins, when he works for the bank?
i remain skeptical about this stuff. but, it might make some sense on the other side of automation, which is the actual revolution we're on the brink of.
retail is now the largest part of the economy, and it's on the brink of being replaced by robots. when that happens, we're looking at a highly productive and almost jobless economy.
where bitcoin makes some sense, in this context, is as a rationing tool to ensure roughly equal access to goods.
but, if you're putting your faith in the future of a currency, you're really just daydreaming as the car heads towards the cliff. the trends are pointing to a distributive system where currency, as a medium of exchange, is largely obsolete.
Monday, March 23, 2015
neither are really wrong. but you need to back 'er up a bit.
crt is a subset of a broader critical legal theory. the idea of critical legal theory is that the law is just a tool to push through political opinions, so all this idea of reasonable people and objective rational logic is just a lot of bullshit - smoke and mirrors to cover the state's application of it's ideological aims. it applies to all kinds of things. crt is a racial application of the broader theory to the remnants of apartheid in the american south.
the way i'd explain it quickly in a youtube comment is just that the official approach to legal theory has it backwards. the basis of our legal system is that the judge is supposed to look at the evidence and draw a rational, logical conclusion of how the law applies to it, in a way that is consistent with existing legal precedents. what the critical theorists says is that this is, in practice, almost always just a utopian abstraction. what judges actually do is form an opinion, then go looking for a precedent that backs up the opinion. there are so many legal cases to draw upon that this is more or less a worthless formality, especially at the higher levels. the court system consequently reduces to a person in a robe enforcing a subjective and personal opinion, not an objective system of impartial justice. justice is not blind, but merely the personal opinion of the judge.
i wouldn't consider this to be radical. it's pretty apparent, actually, if you take a look through some case law. and the applications are very, very wide.
now, a lot of things are going to affect those personal opinions. crt is just the idea that racism is going to be one of them, if the society is rooted in racist institutions. and, through large swaths of the southern united states, this is pretty apparently true.
now, soledad is right in pointing out that you're going to read this at any school. not just harvard. it's in the spectrum. it can't be ignored. teaching it doesn't imply any partiality towards it. it's just barack doing his job.
but, suggesting that it has nothing to do with white supremacy is disingenuous. it is the basic premise. but, it's not particularly radical to acknowledge that it's an accurate premise - so long as you're careful about your application of it.