if you absolutely have to put somebody upstairs to try to hack into my computer over short-range radio (da fuck...), can you pick a clean person that doesn't smoke, please?

i have no idea why they're doing this at all.

but, talk about the worst stake-out cops, ever. i can smell them, i can hear them. i mean, c'mon.

it's more than just the smoke. she smells like she hasn't showered in quite a while; it's that stinky-ass smell that you normally get, specifically, with fat women.

take a shower, you dirty pig.

and go smoke somewhere else.

like, he's supposed to be gone this week. but, i can smell somebody smoking upstairs, and i can hear them talking, too. it's a female voice. and i'm fully cognizant of the fact that it's a cop filling in for him.

i can find no sign of any installed chip in this machine.

i cleared the cmos, and the bios isn't picking anything up. 

xp isn't picking anything up.

i don't see anything.

i'm going to have to test, i guess. 

ok, let me get the system back up and let me finish this up.

ugh.

there should be no work done in that region at all until a treaty is signed.

if i was the supreme court, i would tear that contract right up.

so, what would i tell the pipeline company?

i'd tell them that they need to wait for this nation to sign a treaty before they can move forward on any project, legally - and anything they sign or agree to runs the risk of having no legal force until such a treaty comes into existence.

i want to be clear: i'm not saying that this nation can't join the indian act, or shouldn't, or even won't in the end.

but, it hasn't at this point, and these indian act band councils are consequently extra-legal governing bodies that should be afforded no meaningful legal status.

maybe the way this ends is that the band councils opt to sign a treaty. i know there's been discussions on the point for many years. but, the court can't and shouldn't get ahead of itself by making assumptions about the outcomes of the treaty process.

until the process concludes, the court should be abiding by the status quo.

the way that british imperial law worked, and this was brought into the common law via roman precedent because the romans were the empire that the british had legal documents about and sought information about when conflicts arose, was that if you colonized an area with british subjects (terra nullius) then you introduced british law to rule over them but if you occupied or conquered an area that was already peopled (like india, or french canada) then you had to allow for them to govern themselves under their own laws.

canada was interpreted under british imperial law as a series of conquered french colonies first and foremost, and an area of unceded aboriginal land, second. so, the french colonies came under british dominion and kept their civil law traditions, which were at the time under the napoleonic code. this is why an algonquin claim about unceded territory in ontario would not be recognized under british law - it was conquered from the french. the aboriginal areas, on the other hand, were given a kind of suspended sovereignty. they could keep their land and their traditions, but only on the condition that they refused to cede their land to anybody else. specifically, the proclamation of 1763 gave the british crown the monopoly over land purchases, which american land buyers and sellers did not like one bit. it's still the law in canada, though - the crown, which now means the government in ottawa, still has a monopoly over indigenous land purchases in canada.

and, everywhere was eventually bought except for most of british columbia, which just never was. there have been some "land transfers" since then, but they've been unconstitutional under our own laws! really, the right way to look at the canadian occupation of british columbia is to compare it to the israeli occupation of palestine - people keep moving in, but there's no actual legal basis for it. the correct legal status for these areas remains defined by the 1763 proclamation, which defines them as a part of an "indian reserve", gives them ownership of their own land and denies their right to sell their land to any entity except the crown.

indigenous title in canada is not what these people actually want, as it's just another type of fief; indigenous title is not sovereign land rights, in canada. the nisga'a agreement presents a model that goes beyond "indigenous title" in the sense that it's actually a kind of peace treaty, which carves out a semi-autonomous area for the nisga'a people. i don't know what the various peoples in bc want, but if they want land rights, it's in the nisga'a agreement, and not in these judicial constructions of "indigenous title", which would keep them at the whim of the colonial government. there is not actually a way for the court system to award sovereignty...that has to be done via treaty.

so, this idea that "the white man's law" is oppressing them and allowing for this and they need to rebel against it is actually wrong, in this limited context. again: you can't apply these arguments in new brunswick, or ontario. but, in bc, british imperial law actually should forbid the application of the indian act on unceded territory, at least until a treaty is signed. the judge here is actually wrong, and the supreme court should reverse her ruling.

enforcing the indian act on unceded territory is roughly equivalent, under imperial law, to enforcing common law in quebec.

this is a major error of law that it seems like this judge has made before and that the supreme court should be taking a proper look at.

so, the court is arguing that it's own jurisdiction stems from the indian act, and that's the point that i'd argue is wrong, because the land was never ceded. it was occupied. as such, the indian act is the wrong type of law to use. they should rather be using british imperial law, which stems from roman precedents and allows the occupied nation to administer it's own laws.

we have a very clear precedent of this in canada, actually. it's called quebec.

by enforcing the indian act on unceded land in british columbia, the court is advancing the colonial project. the supreme court ought to reverse this.

my previous statement about the duty to consult applying to traditional law relies on the band council leadership accepting it, as that is the relevant body under canadian law. as there is a conflict here - something i knew, but forgot - that wouldn't be applicable, in context. the company's argument that it consulted the band council and sought it's approval would essentially be correct.

but, there is no legal basis for the band council to be making these decisions, as the land was never ceded or formally brought under the control of the indian act in the first place. for the supreme court to rule otherwise would be to argue for a unilateral annexation, which is something that is actually even inconsistent with imperial law, in this country.

https://www.bccourts.ca/jdb-txt/sc/19/22/2019BCSC2264cor1.htm

she had a following in conservative circles.

but, she was truly reviled and despised on the left.

personally, i think she was often just trolling, and i generally took her with a grain of salt when i didn't avoid her altogether. but, i'm a free speech advocate in ways that much of the contemporary left isn't. 

she was the type of writer that a lot of people wanted banned and censored.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/christie-blatchford-columnist-journalist-dead-68-1.5460763

there should be an injunction until the supreme court can deal with this.

i haven't read the ruling directly, but let's get a few things clear:

1) there are no treaties governing this particular space in british columbia (that is not true in ontario), so the jurisdiction of the constitution is questionable in the first place.

2) while the duty to meaningfully consult does not necessitate a duty to listen in all scenarios, i think it is reasonable to think that the supreme court may interpret it that way under the specific scenario of the existence of traditional laws, in unceded areas, if presented with that argument explicitly, which is something i do not believe has been done as of yet.

so, if i was the lawyer here, i would make those arguments - that this case should be dealt with under international law rather than constitutional law (this is very specific to some regions in bc, where that argument is actually seriously legally compelling beyond an indigenous pipe dream sort of thing....that wouldn't fly for a second in, say, new brunswick), because canada is technically an occupation force in this area rather than a national one, and that the duty to consult should include a special place for existing indigenous law, where it actually exists and can be convincingly articulated.

i otherwise stand in solidarity with the blockades, as well.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-anti-pipeline-protests-1.5460793

i might never really agree with buttigieg much on the issues.

but, he would earn my infinite respect by taking hold of this opportunity to go into these black churches and talk about the homophobia that exists within them.

that's the test that sanders failed, and he has the chance to pass.

for southern blacks to reject northern whites over issues of sexual and religious liberation would be a massive shot in their own foot.

....because the inevitable republican supermajority that would follow would not serve their interests. at all.

it's not my place to present an opinion on what order the primaries in the united states should be conducted in. that's ultimately a ballot question that should be decided by the people of america, and the outcome should be respected and implemented.

however.

let's not confuse ourselves as to what this discussion is really about.

if biden had swept iowa & new hampshire, does anybody think we'd be talking about how these states "lack diversity"? hardly. so, what is this, really, besides an attempt for biden to lay a lot of excuses for his losses?

we haven't seen any polling in nevada in weeks, but i think there's a good chance that biden is running a distant third or fourth. latinos may generally run a little to the right of the democratic party on social issues, which is something the party shouldn't cave in to, but vegas & reno don't present your typical latino demographics, and i don't think it's likely that buttigieg's sexuality is going to be the kind of problem there that it's going to be in somewhere like texas. i would actually be rather surprised to see biden ahead of buttigieg in nevada, at this point.

so, that leaves black voters, and i'll concede the point that they're not likely to like him, but why is that? they may point to various issues regarding race relations, but the truth is that buttigieg has good answers for all of this stuff - better than the answers that biden and sanders can provide for their own errors, such as voting for the crime bill. bloomberg has stop & frisk. klobuchar has her own problems. and, warren just hasn't had the opportunity to fuck up.

i could see if the alternative had a perfect civil rights record, but has there ever been a serious democratic party candidate that has? buttigieg will argue for the reality of systemic racism, and the truth is that he's right in that answer. there is no ideal candidate from this perspective, they all have serious blemishes on their record.

so, there's lots of reasons to dislike buttigieg and not want to vote for him, but if your argument is racial, and your alternative is biden, then you're either ignorant of the facts or being dishonest in your argumentation - there is no reasonable argument that biden is a better candidate for the black community. biden also has a history of questionable racial decisions, it's just a longer history because he's older. and, if you think buttigieg is too right-wing, how is biden a solution? that's just not going anywhere. in fact, i'd go so far as to say that there is no rational reason to vote for biden over buttigieg at this point, at all.

so, why don't they like pete?

you could say he doesn't have the contacts in the community, but that's not hurting steyer or bloomberg, neither of which have any contacts in the community, either. on the other hand, sanders has been trying for decades to get black support and can't get the time of day from them. so, that doesn't seem real, either.

so, why don't they like pete?

and, why don't they like bernie, either?

if buttigieg is smart, he'll turn the issue on it's head and start talking about the pestilence of homophobia in the black community. let me tell you this, at least - they're not going to like him much, no matter what he does.

i think the faultlines in the democratic party have been building for a while, and, while northern liberals shouldn't let the party go without a fight, they should let the process run it's course. no political configuration lasts forever, no coalition is permanent. and, the coalition between southern black conservatives and northern white liberals may be getting to the end of it's cycle.

a theoretical southern black party is going to have a hard time winning without some kind of support in the north, though.

what i will say though is that the decision to headhunt me actually reflects rather poorly on the institution.

by the mid 00s, it should have been crystal clear that i wasn't somebody that cared very much about this country, or should have been offered any kind of security clearance. and, that's maybe the irony, here - while i'm not working for another government, i can tell you straight up that i wouldn't have any particular allegiance to the canadian government, if they had hired me, and probably would have ended up as a liability, and skipped the country for somewhere warmer at the first chance i got.

imagine there's no countries...

and, no religion, too.

i don't have this patriotic slant that somebody like an edward snowden has; i feel no particular connection to this country, or it's governing institutions, and no particular calling to serve, one way or the other.

so, what somebody else may have interpreted as some kind of patriotic duty just struck me as a boring waste of my time. it wasn't even ideological, really - i mean, i certainly would have some moral problems with working for csis, but i wouldn't even get that far in working out the problem. it's just a job i wouldn't enjoy doing, and i made a decision a long time ago not to spend my life doing jobs i don't want to do.

i'm not even sure that i had explicitly defined myself as an anarchist, yet. 

but, if i didn't want to do it then, nothing has changed, now. i would much rather live on disability and focus on my art than work for csis at whatever pay grade, because it's the job that matters, not the pay check. sorry.

i will not have anything to say about nevada until they publish some polls.

if they decide not to publish any, that's a red flag into the fairness of the outcome, itself.

i don't know what they ultimately want or why they're doing what they're doing. it feels exceedingly childish to me. they don't seem to operate with warrants, or present any kind of legal justification for their behaviour. it's just some kind of a game that they're trying to win.

i guess that if i'm dealing with federal agents of some sort - and i don't know if they're american or canadian - then they may be trained to approach what they think of as cyberwarfare using these methods. that is, they may be trained to play cat and mouse like this. but, i'm not a hacker, i'm an artist, and i have no interest in this at all. i'm just annoyed at the amount of time i have to waste on this.

i was headhunted by csis in the mid-00s at one point, and basically told them to fuck off. i just didn't want to work for a security agency. but, these people are trained to interpret the world through the filter of conspiracy theories. in their mind, telling them that i don't want to work for them may be equivalent to admitting i'm working for somebody else.

the last few days have been full of unexpectedly long sleeps, distractions over the primaries and eating far too much. i just wanted to get back to work today...

i've been periodically concerned about illegal entry into my living spaces since about mid-2017. that's when this appears to have started, i think because my analysis of the last american cycle got a little too close to being right for the comfort of whomever is keeping an eye on me.

but, i've been under surveillance for decades, now. 

and, i know they don't think i'm some kind of a spy, for that reason - my file goes back to the 90s. i'm just concerned they're going to use that as an argument.

i don't know how much the arrest in 2018 had to do with this.

just an update on what i think is going on:

1) it seems like my landlord is working for some kind of police agency. he's told me he's a former firefighter, and the front is that he's an auto-mechanic. but, he only seems to actually go to work every once in a while, and he's often gone for weeks at a time - indicating that he gets an awfully large number of holidays, for an auto-mechanic. i don't know if he's working for a local agency or a national one.

2) so, whatever agency it is that's monitoring me just comes down here at will when i'm gone. i have to go out from time to time, meaning i have little to no means of protecting myself, when they have the keys to my front door.

3) they appear to have been previously hacking into my laptop via the bluetooth chip on my wireless keyboard. so, i disabled that, and the system was stable for weeks, until they got down here yesterday when i was gone. i now have to waste my time trying to figure out what they did.

i don't think that moving is going to help much. do i call the cops and go into a witness protection program to protect me from the cops? but, a person can only handle so much invasion of privacy.

i'm going to have to find some way to prove that they're coming in here and work it out from there, once i have.

for now, i want to finish what i'm doing. this is such a fucking waste of my time...

the reason my posts are full of typos since mid-january is that i'm posting from a gmail account that i set up for travelling with, and i can't get into the blogspot interface to correct them from here.

i keep that machine off the internet because i've learned that i have to.

and i simply don't know what they did when i was gone, but i guess if they didn't install some kind of wireless chip then they must have introduced some kind of timer.

and, i knew there was somebody in here the moment i got back because i set my recycle bin up in front of the door as a trip wire, and it was tripped. i was kind of expecting something like this.

all i can do is look for chips, wipe it down and hope it's not persistent.

what i've been doing over the last few weeks is booting into my laptop's hard drive via the production pc, specifically because i can't connect to the internet on that machine (or i couldn't up until they apparently installed some kind of backdoor yesterday when i was out). i would then do the word processing i've been doing on that internetless machine, and upload the files to the internet through the chromebook by copying them over with a usb key.

i was forced to do this because some kind of intelligence agency keeps taking out the boot sector in my windows 7 machine in an apparent attempt to prevent me from posting to the internet, which is beyond retarded. that's never going to work...

then, they went and reinstalled the backdoor on the computer that i'm not using to post with, apparently because they got confused as to how i was continuing to post here even after they installed these back doors.

ugh.

the more they try and shut me down, the louder i'm going to yell. i'm like that. i won't be silenced.

so, what happened?

well, i guess they must have installed some kind of wireless chip in my pc. i have to buy groceries, and i can't bring my tower with me...

but, now what?

i don't see anything in there.

i'm clearing the cmos and i'm going to let the capacitors drain and i'm going to take a very close look over the system board. what do i do if i can't find the chip? i don't know.

but, the idiots installed the chip on my production machine, and i'm posting from my chromebook. the machine they installed the chip on is permanently quarantined from the internet, and has no networking capability by design. i have no intention to ever use it to connect to the internet with - it's just for making music with.

and, again - they have not succeeded in preventing me from posting here, they've just slowed down my documentation process. idiots...

there's a pattern here, though. - my machine consistently crashes whenever i post something insightful here.

you should take that as evidence that i'm on to something.

and, bizarrely, my hard drive just finally crashed, right when i was about to get back to work.

i went out for a few hours yesterday...

i'll have to put this back together, now.

it's far more likely that the pols did something wrong than that the polls were empirically wrong.

does it matter if klobuchar cheated in new hampshire or not?

if you talk to experts on the topic, they often say things like "there are inconsistencies in every election and they balance each other out.". is that the reality here?

well, i need to be clear about what i'm saying and what i'm not.

i am not able to tell you who cheated, why they cheated, whether it made a difference or if they'll do it again. i'm simply able to look at the polls and look at the results and say "something's wrong here". and, unlike everybody else in this society, i'm not accepting the doublethink required to say "i guess the polls were wrong".

again: it is far more likely that somebody cheated than that the polls were this wrong, and the media has shown us the establishment's hand by clearly prepping us for a "klobusurge" (who comes up with this idiocy?). the media is arguing that the electorate changed, but that's just a transparent and bullshit excuse. no, the electorate in new hampshire didn't change that dramatically over the last four years, and if exit polling insists that it did then that exit polling is suspect, itself. proper exit polling should be done by somebody other than the media institutions that need to be checked up on, and the fact that this is not done at all in the united states any more is at the core of the problem i'm drawing attention to - this is not the first time i'm saying this, and won't be the last.

but, i can't tell you that amy klobuchar is personally a nefarious ballot-stuffing no goodnik cheater, and i would think it doubtful that she did the deed herself. i can't tell you that she was aware of it - maybe nobody told her. all i can do is look at the results and tell you they don't add up, and insist that the polls actually probably weren't wrong.

so, does it matter? well, it depends. those 6 delegates probably don't matter. but, if klobuchar's inflated totals come at the death knell of an elizabeth warren then that matters.

i'm not a private investigator, i'm not a prosecutor, i'm not a detective, and i have no insider knowledge - i'm a nerd from canada with a math degree, and i can't answer these questions.

but, the data doesn't add up. and, somebody fudged it.

if i can get an important point across here, it's distrust of the institutions.

you should have a healthy skepticism of what the state tells you, and a healthy distrust of all political parties.

when the polling has somebody at 5-7% and they magically end up with 20% as the media is propping them up, you should be skeptical about what's unfolding in front of you, and you should be questioning the fairness of the process.

that skepticism, that suspension of faith in the system, is important, more important than these specific election results.

you hear this line from politicians all of the time.

"the only poll that matters is the one on election day".

well, no. the polling is important, to ensure the integrity of the process is kept in place. and, when the election contradicts the polls, you should get suspicious - chances are that the polls weren't wrong.

i will make this stand over and over again - when the results of an election do not make sense, i will point fingers and call for an investigation.

the 24 delegates may not be worth it. granted. it's more about momentum.

but, there should be an investigation...

...because this doesn't add up.

it's not like there was a deficit of polling, either.

if there was only one or two low quality polls...

...but there was lots of polling done, and the outcome for this specific candidate is simply not reflected in it, and what that means is that independent measures of popular support do not uphold the results of the election.

and, no, the russians didn't rig it. the dnc rigged it...

turnout in new hampshire is maybe not down by as much as it appeared to be initially. it looks like it's a little lower than 2008, but higher than 2016. so, arguing that bernie didn't get the vote out is only a part of the answer - he didn't, but it only accounts for a part of the discrepancy with the polling.

it makes sense that there would have been some non-ideological voters in 2016 that he couldn't hold in 2020, but that doesn't explain the distribution of votes. the glaring inconsistency isn't bernie's support level, it's klobuchar's. there is absolutely no polling evidence supporting this outcome at all - there's some propaganda coming from corporate media, but when the propaganda predicts the result in contradiction to the polling, that's actually a red flag about the fairness of the results.

when the gut feelings of tv anchors better reflect the outcome than scientific polling, there is something very wrong going on - chances are that the polling wasn't wrong, and chances are that the gut feeling wasn't more right; chances are that the election was rigged, and the tv anchor was in on the process.

my initial attempt to explain the situation by pointing to turnout was an attempt to provide a naturalistic explanation for an event that the evidence doesn't seem to support the likelihood of. if that isn't working out either, and it looks like it isn't, then we're left with a glaring contradiction between the polling and the results, which usually suggests a rigged election. the media's overwhelming support of a specific candidate seems to give itself away.

so, i'm changing my analysis - i think that amy klobuchar's numbers were falsified. she was propped up by the media days before, but none of the polling had her higher than 10%. when the polling disagrees with the results by this much, i don't tend to argue that the polling is wrong - i tend to argue that the process is unfair.

it's impossible to know who suffered at the benefit of klobuchar's vote totals being falsified upwards, but the main beneficiary of a split in the moderate vote was bernie sanders, who would not have won otherwise. i can't magically assign all of these votes to buttigieg - he actually outperformed his polling as well, but by an amount that is scientifically quantifiable. he didn't double his polling numbers, he's in a reasonable margin of error. but, you'll note that biden and warren both received 0 delegates.

the party itself might be pushing for generational change...

so, that's my official analysis - the results of the primary deviate so strongly from the polling that preceded it that i am casting doubt on the fairness of the election. and, i've done this more than once, now.

i believe that the results of elections on this continent are routinely falsified, in a way that north americans would naively assume is done in countries like russia, but isn't done here. it can happen here. it does all of the time...

i know what i posted about iowa the other day, but sometimes it takes time to believe the data. this idea of a falsified split to benefit sanders seems crazy, but i need to reiterate the point: when the polling fails to predict the outcome of an election, you should not deduce that the polling was wrong. you should question the fairness of the election. and, in context, the media's clear preference for the actor with the strangest results really clarifies the point.

and, you can only get so far with gramscian conditioning on this point. it's too much to invoke gramsci. it's more like some kind of manchurianism.

it's less complicated to argue it was rigged.

so, what happened?

yes, klobuchar got a bounce.

but, the real story is that sanders couldn't get the vote out, and the bounce was exaggerated by low turnout. buttigieg also benefited from this.

so, the numbers are in and klobuchar has indeed managed to stay over 19%, to my bafflement.

i'm not sure if i explicitly stated it or not, but i figured the narrative around klobuchar would be around whether she was viable or not - that she might get barely over 15%, if she was especially lucky, but that the culmination of the polling suggested she'd probably end up at something more like 13%. the polling also suggested that buttigieg would end up somewhere around 20%, although i'm less surprised that he overshot it, because he had some concrete reasons for momentum.

i was not personally impressed by klobuchar's debate performance at all; as mentioned, it came off as the last gasp of a dying candidate. and, this result itself hardly wins her the race - it may be that the last gasp was more like a last wheeze, and she's going to hack it out for a bit before she keels over.

sanders, on the other hand underperformed relative to most of the polling, although i sort of saw that coming - i pegged him around 25%.

when you have that combination of factors - the candidate popular with the young crowd underperforming, and both of the candidates that are popular with the older crowd overperforming by roughly the same amount, 4-5% - chances are that the thing you got wrong was actually turnout. and, indeed, turnout wasn't very impressive.

so, was there a surge in klobuchar support? she got a bump, clearly. but, the reason the polls undershot her by the same amount that they undershot buttigieg would be that they overestimated turnout by sanders supporters. and, that is where the inflation comes out of the numbers.

if sanders had gotten the vote out, she would have ended up closer to 15%, and buttigieg would have ended up closer to 20%, as sanders got closer to 30%.

but, he didn't.

is it fair for buttigieg supporters to blame klobuchar for costing him the win, then? well, it's kind of entitled, don't you think? it would be just as valid to flip the argument over.

what is true, though, is that the competition between these candidates allowed sanders to win, even on a weak night for him, and that if the moderate wing wants a win then it's going to need to figure that out.

if.

right...

guys.

i'm endorsing the greens. i told you that.

i am politically closest to sanders - i support universal healthcare, for example. i self identify as an anarchist/socialist. i'm more leftwing than sanders...

but, he's creeping me out in a number of ways, and i don't want to support him

i'm not a democrat, i'm an anarchist, and i would neither support klobuchar nor buttigieg in a general election.

it's interesting to me to see the order in which the data is coming in.

what i've been waiting for to post is for klobuchar's numbers to hit 18%, and they did fall to 19% for a bit, which on the screen likely means below 19.5%, but the fact that the numbers are disproportionately rural, and have been since the start, means she's getting a bit of an inflated result.

and, now she's talking with that inflated result on the screen.

i don't like her policies very much, but my interest is in analyzing the numbers. i don't work in the field, but i have a math degree. i'm interested in the analysis; i'm not really interested in the human condition. so, i'm not trying to denigrate this woman.

but, her numbers are going to come down before the end of the night....

...and the media isn't going to be able to prop her up forever.

(nbc just claimed she declared victory, which she did not do.)

i'll wait for more of the numbers to come in before i continue. but, what you're watching on tv is a charade.

so, after too much sleeping and too many distractions, i am actually finally done typesetting the html frontend for inri021, which is very similar to the one for inri015.

in the process, i found a couple of typos for inri002 & inri015 that i'll need to correct. these are just literally typos and they won't take long to fix but i have to do it.

and, then i have to take one last run over inri021, including doing proper testing to make sure it actually works. but, i'm at the very end of this. 

there are two more: inri023 (inrimixed) and inri022 (inrijected). and, then it's on to january, 2014.

but, i need to stop to get the recycle out because i've missed the last few, and i'm going to take the opportunity to eat and shower.

i think it was her poor debate performances, myself - especially her attempts to go after buttigieg, which brutally backfired.

there was also the fiasco with sanders where she tried to play the victim and nobody bought it.

but, there may have been a misconception about where she was on the spectrum, too. she seems to have initially done well with suburban, white liberals. in detroit, she seemed to be trending in the hipster-y ferndale area, primarily, as well as in the counties around metro detroit - so, oakland county, and ann arbor. these places usually vote for the leftmost candidate, so this was a little bit weird, given that she's kind of a moderate. these voters may not have realized that she was on the fence on healthcare, that she's kind of a market fundamentalist or that she used to be a republican. and, people may have just gotten scared off by her, the more they actually learned about her.

this was my position on warren from the start - i never really understood why she was being presented as a leftist in the first place, when she was obviously actually sort of a conservative.

and, i think the solution may be as simple as that people rejected her when they realized they didn't agree with her as much as they initially thought that they did.

https://www.vox.com/2020/2/11/21131657/elizabeth-warren-new-hampshire-trouble

i guess the obvious question is - "should this be proportional anyways, or should it be winner take all?".

i mean, a lot of people probably don't realize that the thing is proportional in the first place. there were people grumbling that "but, sanders won the popular vote" in iowa, clearly desiring a winner take all formula.

generally, leftists prefer proportional strategies, although we argue about how to do it. i don't like proportional representation at the parliamentary level (i prefer a ranked ballot), but i prefer a proportional process at the primary level to a first-past-the-post one, certainly. the caucuses are maybe kind of a dumb way to do ranked ballots in the 21st century. i'd rather see both the primaries and the caucuses move to ranked ballots, while maintaining the proportional delegate system.

but, i can imagine the pushback.

"it's not undemocratic to get all of the delegates if you win, because you won!"

....but you'd be more cutthroat of a person than i am, and i suspect you'd contradict yourself pretty quickly if we actually had this debate, properly. chances are that you don't actually believe that....

so, like i said - (klobuchar, warren, biden) will be lucky to get one or two delegates, total, between the three of them.

sanders will probably get around 25% of the vote, and buttigieg will probably get around 20% of the vote. remember - buttigieg doesn't get a second chance in new hampshire like he did in iowa, so it's the first ballot that is more likely to be predictive, and a bigger win is consequently more likely.

but, between the two of them, they will get nearly all of the delegates, despite getting less than half of the vote.

and, this threatens to be the norm moving forward, if the field doesn't narrow.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/breaking-down-our-new-hampshire-forecast-district-by-district/

this idea that you know exactly who or what you are when you're like three years old is....

i think it's bullshit.

and, i think a lot of trans people are just telling doctors what they want to hear.

this whole thing is fluid, and people can and do change in either direction.

what i say is that i realized i was more like a girl very young, but, i don't pretend i had some kind of early childhood schizophrenia or something. i was a nerdy, bookish kid. i understood which genitalia i had, and wasn't confused by it.

so, i didn't go through this process that trans kids are supposed to go through, where you refuse to accept your birth gender. frankly, i think the literature is kind of lacking, and probably mostly bullshit. but, you have to feed the doctors a certain line to get prescribed, so you end up with a lot of bullshit in the case studies.

i'm willing to be honest in stating that i resigned myself to what existed, and internalized it. i didn't think i was a "girl trapped in a boy's body". rather, i just realized i had more in common with the girls than the boys, and then accepted myself as an effeminate boy and left it at that.

so, there are these songs - confused, screwed up - that were written and recorded when i was roughly 14-17 and are explicitly about gender identity, but they take this perspective of existential angst and dour resignation about it. i didn't think i could actually do anything about it. maybe i wished i was a girl, but i also wished i was rich, and wished i lived in a warmer climate and ... and these are just things one deals with, as reality is that you don't get everything you wish for, in life. and, i thought i could deal with it. maybe i even thought i'd grow out of it.

all i really was sure of at that age was that i wasn't really attracted to girls very much, and that i liked to spend a lot of time by myself.

i was 20 years old when i finally decided i had to deal with it somehow and took steps to transition by contacting a psychologist through the networks at school. i started taking hormones at 21.

i was basically completely emotionally stunted at this point, as i'd never had any kind of meaningful relationship with anybody, romantic or platonic. the best way to describe me is as suffering from extreme arrested development - i never went through the emotional development that most people experience during puberty. i had the sexual, emotional and romantic maturity of a 12 year old girl.

and, that lack of emotional maturity put me through a rough couple of years that dramatically altered the course of my life.

in the end, i decided on a solitary existence. and, i'm not particularly unhappy, i don't think.

but, don't misinterpret these songs - i had absolutely no sex life, and they just aren't about sex, and shouldn't be interpreted as though they are.

we all write about the things that are relevant to us in our lives.

and, sex and romance and relationships have broadly not been relevant ideas to me in my life.

actually, the truth is that the closest thing i had to any kind of sexual or romantic encounters until i was in my early 20s was a series of avoidance attempts.

i didn't tell anybody i knew in real life; i went to a catholic school, and if there was a group of gay kids, i never figured out who they were. i think there was maybe one kid that was openly gay, but he was also....he didn't take very good care of himself.

if you talked to the people i communicated with online during high school, and these were mostly older people that i knew through mailing lists for bands, people that were university aged or older, they would have told you i identified as a homosexual male, which in itself wasn't even quite right, but was what i was sort of resigning myself to at about the age of 16 or so.

so, i was actually the kid that identified as gay and didn't want to tell anybody, which meant i found myself constantly avoiding the girls around me, who interpreted me as a straight, single boy. i just didn't want to deal with it.

the point of this post is to explain why my songs have nothing to do with the kinds of things that kids usually write songs about. there are some songs that are explicitly about identity, but i've never written a song about love or romance or sex from any perspective at all because these simply weren't things that were relevant to me. i had precisely zero girlfriends or boyfriends in high school; i wasn't even interested in the premise. i was a virgin until my third year of university. i hadn't even experienced a first kiss until i was 21.

so, these songs broadly have absolutely nothing to do with sex or sexuality in any way at all, whatsoever, for the simple reason that i had absolutely no interest in sex or sexuality in any way at all, whatsoever - and broadly still don't. my gender identity is transfemale, but my orientation is asexual. i haven't had consensual intercourse in almost 15 years, and don't feel i'm missing out on much of anything.

what the songs are about are personal struggles with identity, social and political commentaries about things like war or religion and other literary or philosophical topics.

i would never be caught dead writing a song about love or sex.

yes, it is very weird to grow up in ottawa, and have a father that was drafted by the 67s, and to have never learned how to skate. just about every kid around me, of both genders, was playing hockey as toddlers.

but, my dad found himself with a busted body, a lot of shattered dreams and no discernible future in his 20s, and he made a conscious choice to teach me how to read, instead.

i didn't play hockey. but, i went to pre-school.

this had a set of unintended consequences attached to it, i think. i ended up at a working class elementary school, and had difficulty relating to the other kids. if you're going to teach a kid to read instead of to play hockey, it makes sense to follow up on it, and they didn't - they kind of left me stranded due to finances. and, i ended up a floater. but, the early decisions were the right ones.

it was my mother that made a lot of bad choices...

but, i'm a socialist to my bones.

and, this is the sort of thing that baffles me about capitalists. we're going to watch them destroy each other and all lose because they're too stupid to cooperate for a common purpose....

i actually wasn't that bad at sports when i was a kid, it's more that i wasn't very interested in playing them, i was more interested in doing homework - i was a nerdy kid, and i preferred spending time by myself.

on my father's prodding, i actually made the high school football team in grade 9. even with his prodding, i wouldn't have gone to the tryouts if a friend of mine wasn't there, and when he didn't make the team i largely lost interest in going. i just didn't like hanging out with the jocks. it was when they tried to pull me out of math class to go to a game that i decided my schooling was more important.

yes: i actually made the football team, but then quit it when they tried to pull me out of math class to go to a game. i picked math over football. because i'm a nerd, and i'm proud of it.

but, my aversion to the people involved aside, i grew up with a very athletic father, and i had little choice but to engage with sports in some way in order to relate to him. i think i've mentioned here before that he was actually drafted by an ohl team, and was on his way to the nhl, but he blew his knees out and had to end his career. and, that had something to do with the fact that i never learned how to skate.

what my dad told me about sports was that it was about teamwork, and what he always tried to get across to me about it was the importance of being a good team player. if i learned anything from him on the topic, it was that.

if you take a course in economics 101 nowadays, it's probably going to be new keynesian economic theory, and they will actually teach you that a basic deduction of contemporary market theory is that competition is stupid.

we have this social tendency to lean towards competitive behaviour as some kind of ideal.

but, a rational economic actor will avoid competition at all costs. really. it will pay fines, it will escape markets - anything to avoid a competition. and, the reason is that competition is devastating to everybody that engages in it, it can completely destroy you.

any economist would tell you that the fact that these politicians are out there trumpeting the benefits of competition is just proof of how utterly idiotic and mentally deranged they all are. it's beyond irrational, it's child-like.

but, if you needed another example of the stupidity of competition...

even in new hampshire...

sanders is going to get 30% of the vote (at most) and upwards of 50% of the delegates because the field insists on competing instead of cooperating.

i'm not supporting him this cycle, but, if forced to pick, i would still pick sanders over the field. so, the pragmatist in me is willing to shrug that off.

but, the anarchist in me wants democracy.....and is frustrated by the stupidity in front of me.

(although, as mentioned, i need to suspend my naivete, and not pretend this is an accident)

the right lesson is this:

when actors compete, everybody loses. when actors cooperate, everybody wins.

democrats are notoriously poor at understanding election math.

they're going to have to figure it out somehow, or they're going to wake up with something they don't actually want.

and, we'll see if democrats are better at solving a prisoner's dilemma than republicans, too. i'm not counting on it....

this is a recent poll from california:


sanders 29%

warren 16%

-------------------

buttigieg 14%
bloomberg 13%
biden 11%
klobuchar 5%

if that actually happened, they would recurve the results like this:

sanders: 64%
warren: 36%
buttigieg: 0%

bloomberg: 0%

biden: 0%
klobuchar: 0%

ok.

there have been some polls released recently in south carolina, specifically, that suggest that steyer may be running higher than 15%. 

why or how, i'm not sure, but, they appear to exist.

i'm skeptical, to say the least.

there's been no data at all from nevada in weeks.

if warren can't get to 10% in new hampshire, she's not going to get to it in nevada or south carolina, either.

or, really, anywhere else.

maybe not even massachusetts.

so, amy klobuchar might come in third place.

but, if she only gets 14% of the vote statewide, she could end up with 0 delegates - they'll just curve bernie & pete up by the difference.

then, she could end up in third in nevada, too. but, if she only gets 13% of the vote, she's still goose egging.

and, it's hard to see how candidates like wang or gabbard or steyer are going anywhere at all, even if they consistently run at 5-10%. again: bloomberg isn't clearing these hurdles, either. and, how does bloomberg solve any of the problems biden presents?

you have to get to 15%, and if you can't then you're wasting your time.

who can do that in the big states? sanders, certainly. biden, probably, if he doesn't cave too much. buttigieg, likely, if he gets some momentum from these early wins - but the numbers aren't in yet.

and, right now, nobody else. warren is in free fall. klobuchar has never gotten close to those numbers. and, neither bloomberg nor steyer have generated them yet, either.

so, they got my package in toronto.

and, i think i just need to wait for them to send me stuff, now. i may have little to no work to do on the file until june.

i need to end talk of a contested convention. even 538 has "nobody" as the second most likely winner. this is all based on a misunderstanding of the way the delegates are awarded.

you need to get past 15% to get awarded delegates.

so, if we have a situation with a lot of candidates running around 10%, which is what we have now, that will not lead to a split field or a contested convention. rather, that will actually help inflate the totals of the frontrunners, who will get curved up.

as the threshold is 15%, the worst-case scenario would be if you have 6 candidates all running at just over 15%. any more than 6 competitive candidates, and the numbers just don't allow for that.

in reality, as sanders is running at around 30% pretty much across the board, he takes up two of those slots and you at most have space for four other candidates to be running over 15%.

but, neither klobuchar nor warren have much chance of getting to and staying over 15%. and, whether buttigieg is a serious candidate in the south or not is unclear - if he can't clear 15% either, then he's just going to add to the mess. i suspect that he will, though.

and, the reality is that i haven't seen a poll with bloomberg at 15% anywhere, either.

there are really only three candidates that are likely to get any substantive number of delegates, and biden's viability is itself an open question. this may end up as a two person race very quickly, even if the other candidates refuse to actually drop - and if they insist on sticking around with 5-10% of the vote, the party will award their delegates to the frontrunners, leaving them with the choice between dropping out and sticking around and whining that it's not fair.

so, don't trick yourself into thinking that this will balkanize and end up at the convention. the rules make that almost impossible. if the field splits, and it very well might, they'll just give all the delegates to the at most three candidates that can actually clear 15%.

expect four more years of trump.

the democratic candidate is just meant to be a clown to be gooned up, and the election is just a mock charade.

again: i don't know if they told bernie or not. 

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/11/its-not-first-military-intelligence.html

back in 2016, i spent months agonizing over how the republicans could be so daft as to allow themselves to be defeated by this buffoon donald trump - even while realizing that he was winning because he was the more moderate candidate, and a lot of the basis of him winning was an anti-cruz and anti-rubio vote, as those candidates were actually more extreme than he was. i criticized them from every direction for being unable to pass a prisoner's dilemma. i didn't get it.

i could see what was happening, but i couldn't believe it. and, i will remind you what my prediction of the election was: i said "if the election is fair, clinton will win. but, i suspect that it is not going to be fair, and trump will "win".".

i even suggested, sarcastically, that trump would win pennslyvania and michigan; that is, i suggested that that was going to be how they'd steal it. i said something like "they're going to try to tell you he won in pennsylvania, which is ridiculous.".

it wasn't until the day of the election, and i actually saw the tv tell me the republicans had won in pennyslvania, that it really clicked - the reason that these establishment candidates were running around like idiots, unable to organize a basic prisoner's dilemma, is because trump was actually the establishment choice. this wasn't some kind of mistake. this was what the fuckers decided on months ago, and i surmised that it was explicitly to keep clinton, who the deep state despises, out of power.

and, then i suggested (half sarcastically) that they'd change the topic by blaming it all on russia - that they would erect an imaginary russian bogeyman as a projection of themselves, and then train you to direct your hate at it.

it's all there. on the side. why do you think the cops are trying to shut me down?

i make mistakes like everybody else, but i try to learn from them as best i can, so i'm not going to be confused by the democrats running around like trained seals, bumping into each other, in order to facilitate a sanders victory. i don't think they're all in on it. but, if you see the senators campaigning into may without a chance in hell, and bleeding votes away from a biden or a buttigieg that won't quit, then you shouldn't get frustrated - you should realize who they're working for.

i'm not nearly as worried about bernie winning as i was about trump winning, and i'm not really convinced that he's not being set up as a patsy, anyways. does the president actually get to pick his opponent? is that the actual reality? because that's looking to me like what the game here, is - an opportunity to campaign against socialism. even as bernie's being handed the nomination, he's being stabbed in the back.

i've pointed out that bernie will lose a two person race against pretty much the entire field, and that the only way he can win is to split it like this. that may be exactly why it stays split.....because it's the only way he can actually win.

and, trump will get the pinata he wants, by the mutual consent of everybody involved.

and, i don't know how much he knows about it....

my point is not to get confused when these actors do things that don't make sense. they're making far more sense than you think, you just don't understand what they're doing.

is there some threat of the americans using low level nuclear weapons?

well, i'll remind you that they used depleted uranium in iraq and afghanistan which is equivalent or worse in terms of the radiation - and intentionally so. the radiation from an h-bomb is a secondary effect. with depleted uranium, you're dropping the birth defects on purpose - like agent orange.

but, it's worth pointing out that the conventional weapons they used in afghanistan were actually in the same power level as a small scale atomic weapon, so the difference between conventional and nuclear is not as profound as is generally imagined. it's really not as big a deal as you're imagining it is.

actually, it's worth ruminating a little on this idea that the weapons are directed at iran, and how the empire has used that claim in the past.

so, when the americans put these missiles in boats around the north and black seas, they had the nerve to claim they were putting them there to protect eastern europe from iranian missiles. the north sea is a funny place for an interceptor system to protect germany from iran, don't you think? and why are the missiles pointed at moscow, then?

likewise - as pointed out in the al jazeera report - the americans routinely justify deployment to the south china sea by claiming they're protecting the south koreans from the north koreans, but the chinese have tended to suggest that the target is actually them.

so, this is a longstanding tactic, actually, and i'll thank the talking head on al jazeera for reminding me of it.

also, look up stephen cohen's comments.

a couple of years ago, the russians announced a new sea-based nuclear weapon that they claim can evade american defenses. this was seen as a major break in american hegemony, and a potential return to an arms race and mad. it seems rather obvious to me that this is an expression of that arms race, and i'm left wondering how democracy now could publish something like this without even mentioning that, and even suggest it has more to do with iran.

i passed out in the evening, and i got distracted this morning. i'm about half done.

we're continuing on with this through the day. but, i'm stopping to eat and shower.

warren and klobuchar both have absolutely no chance at all, and are simply propping up sanders by staying in the race.

buttigieg is going to face a reckoning by the end of the month. we'll see if he clears these barriers or not.

and, biden needs to put up or get out.

what if we end up with the following in some large state?

sanders - 25%

biden - 14%

warren - 13%

buttigieg - 12%

bloomberg - 11%

klobuchar - 10%

steyer - 9%

wang - 6% 

do you know happens?

sanders gets 100% of the delegates.

that's not democratic.

i've been searching for post-iowa polling in nevada and can't find any.

the 15% threshold exists to force failed candidates that don't get it out. right now, that would appear to apply most directly to warren and klobuchar, who may fail to clear 15% in almost every state, or literally in every subsequent state. the party can't force them out, but it can stop them from balkanizing the vote and forcing a contested convention.

but, is biden going to clear 15% in nevada? if he has a dozen other candidates to siphon votes away from him, it might be harder than appears obvious. 

and, is buttigieg going to clear 15% in nevada or south carolina? if he doesn't, he's in trouble.

nobody should be happy about sanders getting 60% of the delegates with 25% of the vote. but, if things stay the way they are, if these awful-across-the-board candidates can't get over themselves, that's what might happen.

who's going to win new hampshire?

this was always going to be one of sanders' best states, however he was doing. i haven't seen a poll with him higher than 33%, which is not very high, given the totality of the circumstances, but the field appears to be split badly enough that that measly 33% will be more than enough to win. i doubt he even gets to 33% - 25% is probably closer to the final tally - but that still looks like enough to win a plurality.

it's not a lot of delegates, though.

if 25% is a weak delegate haul, the ~20% that buttigieg is going to get is even weaker.

but, is anybody else going to clear the 15% threshold? this is important. it does not appear as though biden or warren are going to. klobuchar is the media's new favourite, but she's still a long shot to get to 15% in new hampshire, or much of anywhere else for that matter.

if you don't get to 15%, you don't get delegates, and the candidates that do get over 15% get curved up. so, sanders is all of a sudden getting 25%/45% = 56%, and buttigieg is all of a sudden getting 20/45 = 44%.

and, everybody else gets zero.

this middle tier of (klobuchar, warren, biden) may manage to clear 15% at the district level, here and there. but, they are going to be fighting to get on the board, and some or all of them might fail to do so.

so, you're looking at a likely outcome of something like this:

sanders - 12
buttigieg - 9
klobuchar - 1
warren - 1
biden - 1

that would put sanders and buttigieg basically tied going into nevada, with the other three falling back. but, we haven't awarded a lot of delegates yet, and there's still a lot of voting to do.

first liner note release for inri021

the second record was always a...second record. see, the phenomenon of the underperforming second record is actually well-established. i just think it's worth thinking about what a second record actually is, in order to understand this.

a second record is necessarily the tracks that did not make it on to the first record.

i actually tried to resist this, but i was swayed by the argument (with myself) that the tracks would otherwise be lost because i was shifting in a direction away from the electro-grunge sound, and i would eventually go back and compile them anyways. i had enough raw sound for a full record, so i released a full record.

something that is common of second records is that they are uneven because the tracks are recorded at differing levels of attention. demos that were forgotten tend to get promoted without cause, while the tracks that show evidence of attention tend to seem overproduced, in comparison. in recompleting this record, i've paid attention to the uneven nature that the tracks initially existed in and taken an effort to close the gap where it was needed.

i've also removed two tracks from the initial recording due to a combination of technical and artistic incompatibilities.

while most of these songs have defined concepts underlying them, i have ejected these concepts from the final recording and left them in a series of singles, or behind altogether. i would prefer that this album be understood solely as the instrumental recording of electronic music that i am presenting it as.

written and demoed in multiple stages from 1993-1999. initially constructed in this form in feb, 1999. a failed rescue was attempted in 2013. reconstructed and resequenced over november and december, 2016 from parts that were rebuilt over 2013-2016. re-released & finalized on dec 15, 2016. first liner note release added on feb 9, 2020 to also include the deleted masters from 1999 and 2013 in 192 kbps mp3 only. this is my second official record; as always, please use headphones.

this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (1996-1999, 2013-2020). as of feb 9, 2020, the release includes a 126 page booklet in doc, pdf & html, with an html5 audio frontend, that includes journal entries from the remastering process over sept-dec, 2013, as well as the deleted masters from 1999 and 2013 in 192 kbps mp3 only.

credits

released January 25, 1999

j - guitar, effects, bass, bass synth, synthesizers, piano, octavers, drum programming, sequencing, found sound (paper crumpling), noise generators, sound design, cool edit synthesis, light-wave synthesis, windows 95 sound recorder, sampling, mic noises, digital wave editing, loops, a broken tape deck, chance, production.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inriched

so, it only ended up 126 pages because i removed a couple of images to be consistent with inri015.

and, it will be posted shortly.

so, the doc file for inri021 is done. it's 128 pages, and 90 of them are overlap with inri015, so the html frontend for this should be much quicker.

i just need to do a quality control check, and then the first liner note release of my second record will be up within an hour or two.

are the cops big fans of beethoven's sixth?

did i offend them?

well, that's too fucking bad, isn't it?

so, that's twice in the last few days now that the chromebook has strangely reset on me.

i'm logged in as a guest, so there's not much they could really do. and, there's nothing on the device, at all. by design.

the persistence is ridiculous, though. like, i'm literally sitting here listening to beethoven and typing. if i could understand what they're thinking, what their motives are....

broad takeaway from the debates....

- wang looked a bit more serious this time, but he seems to....i got the impression that he saw himself as out of place, and he doesn't like being the token nigger, you can tell. i wonder how seriously he would consider an independent run.

- steyer seems to see himself more as a moderator than a candidate at this point. it's not at all clear what his purpose is, other than to try to directly influence the discourse by standing on stage. how long is he going to carry through with this for?

- buttigieg was clearly trying to come off as "presidential". that's a term i don't think i've heard this cycle. i've heard repeated appeals to "authenticity". but, i think "presidential" sells better than "authentic", in the end. he just keeps doing everything right. he's going to be hard to beat. this was a strong performance, and while it won't convince the party's left (or people further to the left than the party altogether, like myself), it was likely quite compelling to the core of the actual party. i keep pointing this out: for all the revulsion that buttigieg creates on the left, he's exactly what your actual card-carrying, dues-paying, fully registered member of the democratic party actually wants to vote for - and they're the ones that actually vote for who gets to lead their party.

- the abc anchors argued that klobuchar had a breakthrough performance, but that just struck me as the latest iteration of the media shilling for her. they like her, clearly - and, on paper, as the only competitive candidate between the ages of 40 and 70, she should have a lock on this. but, her policies suck; her politics are, broadly, flat out awful. and, she's getting upstaged by a charismatic young male that doesn't really deserve to be there, something i bet she's been through before. the media saw a breakthrough; i saw a last gasp, and a desperate plea. i suspect that was the last we've heard from amy klobuchar as a major candidate, this cycle.

- warren seemed to acknowledge that she's having funding issues along with her sagging poll numbers, and, to me, that was the most interesting thing that she said all night. i think she checked out quite a while ago, around the time that buttigieg bludgeoned her for being a hypocrite. she's kind of going through the motions. and, if she has some kind of a chip or a grudge, her passive aggressive attacks on sanders are just going to get more bitter, as she sputters out further into total emotional collapse. the people that care about her need to sit down and talk to her in an attempt to avoid her from hurting herself.

- i've become less and less impressed by sanders the more i hear him talk, and there were a few points of absolute cringe. his argument against assassinating soleimani by invoking the slippery slope canard was pretty awful, for example - the right answer being that you don't change the direction of an organization by killing it's leaders, and you'd never think that unless you were a corporatist fascist like trump; they'll just replace him with somebody else, it was tactically pointless, and not worth the problems it caused.....if they were going to do something like this, they should have done a massive strike that took out the entire leadership class, not just one guy they can easily replace with somebody else - but he also has this tendency to avoid answering questions that makes him come off as sort of a bot. who's writing these scripted lines of his, anyways? there's reasons his support is stagnant to declining, and i don't think he did much to help himself on this night. there really are a lot of things about him that you have to put aside in order to vote for his health care plan, at this point.

- what i'm going to say about biden is that it would be hard for me to understand why anybody would go with him over buttigieg when presented with the kind of contrast we saw in that debate. where buttigieg looked young, confident and in control (things these types of voters like), biden stumbled over words, was unsure of himself, and came off as flat out ancient. a debate between biden and sanders is one thing, but buttigieg has this guy dominated, and all he did was cycle himself down the drain. there is finally some evidence of polling decline, and the only thing saving him right now is that the south doesn't have an obvious candidate to move to.

winners:
buttigieg, wang

losers:
the rest

i'm still endorsing the greens.

i had a big meal and passed out.

i'm going to have a second bowl of fruit, get in the shower and get to work on inri021.

notwithstanding perpetual concerns about corruption, sending money to africa for mitigation is a smart barbarian management strategy.

one of the biggest problems that we're going to face here in canada as a result of climate change is an unorderly flow of illegal migrants from africa. this presents some opportunities, sure, but many, many more challenges than opportunities. so, it is in our self-interest to fund mitigation programs that aim to reduce the outflow of migrants and prevent them from overrunning the systems here. i'd support that.

we need to be able to measure how many refugees we can take in based on the infrastructure that exists, which is actually relatively limited due to decades of underfunding. it's a big, empty country. but, the land is bought up, and there's not enough housing to just open the gates.

likewise, health is a global issue in the 21st century. i would prefer to see us direct our funds through international bodies like the who, but this is something that is apparent, and we need to see ourselves as actors in a global system, moving forward.

i'm a little wary of bribing african leaders, given that the political systems in these countries are systemic corruption, across the board - something that this government actually seems to be ok with. 

but, mitigation for climate change and funding to help integrate africa into a global health network are two things that all developed countries should be actively engaged with.

that's right.

in many ways, norway is the country that canada imagines itself as, but actually isn't.

i would vote for norway over canada, myself. sorry.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-norway-africa-security-council-1.5457183

there's this debate they're having over whether they need to appeal to the centre or the fringe, and it's something i'm kind of qualified to comment on.

the actual, technically correct answer is that the debate suffers from definitional problems; the kinds of voters that klobuchar is imagining are purplish swing voters are actually historical democrats, through and through, who feel the democrats have turned on them. and, they're not wrong. it follows that the best way to appeal to republican support is to campaign on the left.

i'm talking about voters in pennsylvania, in michigan, in wisconsin...and also in minnesota and in ohio. these people didn't vote for trump because of his messaging on immigration, because of his evangelical phoniness, because of his tax policies or because of any of the other things that we associate with the republican party. they voted for trump because they thought he was less dangerous than clinton - on trade, on foreign policy, on health care and on other issues that historically are associated with democrats.

and, on some of these issues, they were stupid, and they need to be told as much. on others, trump has arguably been less evil than clinton would have been expected to be, and the arguments you hear coming from biden, and sometimes even from sanders, just exacerbate the point as to why they lost.

but, the party has been so out of touch with these voters for so long that they can't even define them any more, and it's an open question as to whether they're even still in play.

the flip side of this is that the voters they need to win in the south - blacks, catholics, and disgruntled whites, too - are actually much more in the description of what a klobuchar imagines exists in wisconsin (and in truth doesn't). if you want to win the south, you run on the right. that should be obvious...

so, there's this weird disconnect where you have the sanders people arguing that you need to run on the left, and then going after demographics that are dominated by conservative values, and you have the klobuchar people arguing that you need to run in the centre, and then mostly going after white liberals. but, it demonstrates the broader point - wherever you are on the spectrum, you need to convince people beyond your base. that's what the job is.

what's the answer? well, you want to maximize your vote totals, which means avoiding thinking in dichotomies. these propositions are not mutually exclusive, you can and must do both at the same time. and, there are challenges on both sides of this, but i might point something out - it's easier to convince a registered voter to vote than it is to register a new voter.

if you want to win back the trump-obama swing vote, the key is to focus on union issues. 

so, i've got inri015 filed away locally, now.

i'm going to make some pasta and watch last night's debate.

and, then, if i'm lucky, i might get the first part of inri021 up before midnight.

i've been clear for quite a long time, actually, that i would support hefty fines for smoking in residential areas, and paid to the people affected by the smoke instead of to the state.

and, i would hope that would act as a disincentive.

go smoke in the woods...

in fact, a lot of anarchists - and i'm one of them - will argue that not only is it the case that we don't need laws to force us to behave, but it's the process of writing and enforcing laws via the state that makes us behave so shoddily. look at isis, for a demonstration of this theory at it's most extreme. in the west, the state often coddles and protects antisocial actors from any sort of meaningful justice. so, the idea is that abolishing the state should lead to more virtuous behaviour, not less virtuous behaviour.

it's not some kind of empty rebellion, it's a critique of the foundational basis of the social contract, and a rejection of the conservative concept of "human nature". the state doesn't keep us in line, it keeps us out of line.

"the policeman is here to preserve disorder".

but, we need some way to right wrongs, then, to undo transgressions, to fix problems. the socialist critique of policing is actually just that it doesn't actually work; putting people in jail is an intimidation tactic to advance the interests of the powerful, it's not a way to advance any sort of actual justice. nothing is undone. nobody is compensated. but, the king has his rule enforced with violence, in the hopes that it will scare people into line. this is simply barbaric, there is no other way to describe it. a tort process may often be incomplete, but it's usually a good start, and generally the right way to think about how to fix antisocial behaviour.

i admit having an affinity for the civilization of northern europe, even more so than that of southern europe, and the legal system is something that i think that british civilization got uniquely right. my anarchism is very rooted in common law. and, i've suggested before that we can perhaps look at the situation that developed in britain after the withdrawal of the legions to get a precedent for the challenges that anarchy would face, in it's initial years - and look at the subsequent development of british common law for some guidance in how to move forward.

we were always anarchists, up in the north, after all.

a good anarchist should agree that if you're going to harm the people around you then you have a responsibility to "make it whole" and undo the damage.

anarchists aren't generally nihilists, in fact we tend to have more developed codes of behaviour that we bring in to replace the state, which, for me, includes a reliance on tort law. we have things like the non-aggression principle that we try and base our ethics around. the idea isn't that we can just do whatever we want and fuck anybody that doesn't like it, it's that we don't need a government to pass laws to tell us how to behave responsibly, we can figure it out on our own.

a good anarchist would know not to smoke in a residential area where there are kids or non-smokers, and they would abide by the agreements they sign to not smoke inside, if they do so. 

i've stated here many times that i'm a strong advocate of tort law, and would like to see the function of tort expanded to take over large amounts of the criminal law.

so, i support a type of tort reform, but the type of tort reform i support would be to implement more tort law.

it's the criminal law i'd like to get rid of...

if you want to smoke for the express purpose of pissing off your neighbours or tenants, they can't physically stop you from doing it.

but, they can sue you for disturbing them. and, if you're intentionally intending to bother them, it's going to cost you a lot of money to do it...

i'm starting to conclude that he made some sort of change to something after i sued him, and he's unchanged it now that the lawsuit is stopped. it's not coming from under the floor any more, but the stench from upstairs is both complex and ridiculous, and a component of it is clearly somebody smoking.

what do i do to attract these kinds of assholes in my life?

if i convince myself of this, i'm going to have to reopen the suit. if he's going to act maliciously, i will make him pay for it.

if that's what has happened, then what we've learned is that he is able to reverse the smell and has decided not to, and/or or has decided to make it worse to upset me. and, i'll gleefully hold him liable, as that would be landlord harassment, if i can convince myself that that's actually true.

it's only been a few days. it could be a coincidence. and i can't really identify the source, clearly. it's something burning, mostly....

inri015 updated and tested

this is tested and working on the chromebook and on firefox on the windows 7 box.

what's in there, now?

- the 19 songs on the record

- cover.jpg & a jpg of the backsheet for cd-r printing (the insert for the spine)

- a playlist.m3u file stored as raw text
- inertia.mp4

- a 125 page doc file of liner notes over the fall of 2013

- a 125 page pdf file (same)

- an instructions file

- inri015.html.7z.txt is a 200 mb document that must be renamed and unzipped and contains (1) an html version of the liner note package, including an html5 player that can load the purchased audio & video in the browser and (2) deleted masters of the record from 1998 and 2013, in standalone 192 kbps mp3 and embedded into the html file.

the full download, in flac, is 626 mb.

there will be further updates to the liner notes as i run through the alter-reality, and as i run through the remastering period that took place over 2015-2016. but, this is likely the last major revision to my first record, which is nearing a point of final completion.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-3

it's time to stop to eat and shower.

there is no such thing as happiness, and, the sooner you figure that out, the happier you'll be.

so, the frontend is finished. everything is slower than i want it to be, but i could still conceivably get done inri021 by the end of the weekend. finishing inri015 actually gets me through the bulk of the work of inri021...

i had to fast forward a little to jan, 2016 to get the actual release data in, which means these releases will come packaged with three versions and three subsequent front-ends. they're about 125 pages, each. so, these are major release updates for the first two official records.

i need to dot some is before i upload this, including doing a good testing, but it's coming. soon.

no, really. how did i get those numbers?

i took a look at recent polling results for sanders, buttigieg, warren and klobuchar and then awarded biden the balance, due to the fact that all of the polls had him ahead. i completely ignored the lower tier candidates, thinking they might get 5% between them and it'll come out as error. i gave them 4%. i posted a poll the day of that suggested that large amounts of lower tier candidates had biden as their second choice, which usually means they're strongly considering it.

in hindsight, i should have paid more attention for two reasons. the first is that they got roughly 15% between them, which is a lot. it's basically the difference in the results - if i had given biden 15% instead of 25%, and "other" 14% instead of 4%, i would have nailed it, despite the fact that nobody nails caucuses.

the other is that biden didn't actually win, and, in hindsight, that wasn't completely unseen. if i had instead reasoned that he was just coming up second due to name recognition, and the large amount of people leaning towards nonviable candidates was a warning sign...

but, i'm a mathematician, jim, i'm not a clairvoyant. i work with data, not with feelings. i follow my brain, not my gut. this is an analytical process, not an emotional one.

that's how you put together the actual right prediction, though. and, the data was there.

nobody nails a caucus.

but my basic logic was (buttigieg OR biden) AND (sanders) and (NOT warren) and i got the thing right.

in new hampshire, buttigieg is going to beat biden, and whether he wins or not depends on how badly.

and, we need data for nevada. but it's the same uncertainty.

actually, i think i got the right idea.

i suggested that, if warren ends up viable more often than not, the results in iowa would be:

sanders - 26
buttigieg - 25
warren - 20

i also pegged biden at 31. but, you'll notice that those four results add to 100, and that's what i really did wrong - i wiped all of the nonviable candidates out and folded them into biden as error, rather than string them along.

who else was this close?

http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2020/02/there-going-to-be-wide-variability.html

i also presented three likely outcomes, and two of them worked out:
http://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2020/01/this-gets-right-idea-across-but-i-think.html

you would have to tie me down and inject me, kicking and screaming, to get me to take that shit.

there's no way i'd volunteer. ever.

the "field" that jordan peterson "works" within was debunked as complete and utterly nonsensical pseudoscience decades ago.

i know he sells a lot of books. but, he doesn't really deserve to be taken seriously enough to dedicate much time towards rebutting him.

ahahahahahahaha.

no wonder he needs those benzos.

wasn't it common knowledge that his writing was kind of, umm, subpar? i mean, he's pushing freud and jung in 2020. that puts him on about the same level of academic credibility as your average creationist. it's a lot of fucking bullshit.

i've been asked to address his writing a few times, and i won't even bother with it, it's just a waste of time.

it's funny how they all end up addicted to painkillers though, isn't it? 

i'm a bit of an existentialist, and am convinced that we're better off coping with the tragedy of existence than pretending there's some path to some concept of happiness that doesn't actually exist. so, you won't see me smile very often, and you won't hear me pretend i'm ass-slappin' happy all that often. but, i don't intend to show up in a hospital bed in russia, strung out on benzos, either..... 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/cambridge-uni-peterson-1.5066342

ahahahahahaha.

what a loser.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/jordan-peterson-treatment-russia-1.5456939

but, like i say.

this is only relevant, in context, in the question of a systemic abuse of power.

i'm not actually accused of doing anything. 

leftists would never argue that women are incapable of lying.

leftists would argue that empirical studies should demonstrate the expectation that men and women are equally dishonest, and if they do not uphold that expectation then they should be examined closely for bias. we may need some explanations in terms of social conditioning in order to smooth out the data, but that is the ideological left.

these arguments that you hear from these fake feminists, and that are masquerading as the pseudo-left, are actually reactionary and culturally conservative.

if you think that girls can't lie, you're very conservative.

women are perfectly capable of telling horrible lies.

and, they do.

i did try to call the court office on friday, and the person i want to contact was not in the office. they claim the package did not arrive, which is...it should have. it might be on her desk, waiting for her to come back.

i want to clarify a few points if they weren't clear.

i pointed out that this is the kind of case the mras warned us about, but this case is not about women's rights, and i don't feel i'm being attacked by a consortium of fake third-wave "feminists", although it may be the case that some dumb people that call themselves feminists may have fallen for the line of argumentation (something the court has yet to fall for, and i don't expect it will fall for, in the end). i have not been accused of any kind of sexual misconduct. rather, it is agreed by everybody that i have never met this woman, and it is clear from the emails that i didn't even know she was a woman (i thought she was a man named ryan.) until she filed charges.

that's not what what i was charged with. i was charged with "repeated communication" which, in context, is repeated application for housing. they put me in jail for applying for an apartment over and over again. the charges do not claim any sort of sexual behaviour or motive on my behalf at all; nobody has accused me of any sort of sexual harassment, and it is clear that none took place, that i was strictly interested in the apartment. that sounds absurd, and it is - that's why i'm launching a human rights complaint, and trying to get the arrest declared to be illegal, for preparation of an eventual constitutional rights challenge and an expensive lawsuit. but, those are the actual facts in the case. 

- i have never met this woman.
- i do not know what she looks like. still. i've never even seen a picture of her.

- all communication was with a ryan myon that later claimed he was the property owner, caroline chevalier. this ryan did not identify himself as female at any point in the application process. i am not certain that this is actually true. there may be a dude named ryan myon out there that was the actual person i was communicating with. that will come out in the human rights case.

so, if i don't think i was being attacked by a feminist cabal, what do i think was happening?

and, i think the answer is clear enough - i informed the property owner that she was discriminating against me and i would be taking legal action, and she had me arrested as retaliation for it. the police then used a transphobic pretext to build a case that was immediately thrown out as complete bullshit, and the oiprd repeated it in their factum last week (to their great discredit). but, it's not what the appeal is about, it's not what the charges were about and it really has essentially nothing to do with the situation.

the precautionary component of the case is that this is what happens when you buy into conservative narratives about the inherent honesty of the weaker sex. i'm not sure that i can prove that she explicitly lied to the police, but the premise that i might go to her house was invented completely out of thin air (i couldn't pick this person out of a lineup - and i literally thought it was a dude named ryan), for the apparent purposes of preventing me from suing her.

when you eliminate the need for evidence-based reasoning, you open up the system to these kinds of abuses. and, we can't allow ourselves to go down the rabbit hole like that - we have to insist on the primacy of evidence, regardless of the genders involved in the conflict.

i had to sleep. it wasn't a choice.

it's almost done. soon.

so, this liner note release is actually going to have two discarded versions of the record attached to it, from 2013 and also from 1998. i had to take them down to 192 khz to get the package under 300 mb. remember: these are deleted masters, so this is material i've deleted from my discography. it's here for historical reasons, and it's buried in the download on purpose, but i feel it's necessary to include it - in one file format, in relatively low quality. if you want these deleted items in high quality flac, you'll have to get the aleph discs. even accessing these 192 khz mp3 files requires purchasing and downloading the item, and unzipping an html package. the files are there, but it's meant to be streamed via the html frontend.

that means i have two player controls in this package. i'm done the first one. the second should be minor tweaks on the first, and then it's just typesetting the rest of it. so, it should be done relatively soon.