so, i was talking about flavonoids and wanted to post a summary. i still have some reading to do, but...

i can't find any actual science telling me what they're supposed to do; we can barely absorb them, we don't seem to need them for anything, and while eating berries seems to be correlated with healthiness, it's not clear if the flavonoids have anything to do with it. there's lots of other reasons why strawberries are good for you.

so, while these chemicals are antioxidants, your body doesn't seem to use them that way and claims that blueberries or red wine or chocolate help you fight off cancer or prevent dementia would consequently appear to be largely pseudo-science, at this point. that doesn't mean they're not good for you, though; and, it doesn't even mean that the science underlying the premise that the flavonoids is unsound. what it means is that you're not getting substantive levels of these chemicals from any of these foods in a way that you can actually absorb and use. the only ambiguity is that it's not totally clear if the glycoside metabolites may have some fleeting benefit that we don't currently understand, before we piss them out (despite it appearing to be unlikely). but, your body doesn't accept the flavonoids the way it accepts the carotenoids, either, so there's less of a reason to think there's an evolutionary process at work. one thing i'll want to see is what foods have a higher aglycone:glycoside ratio, and if i find something i may want to try it, but it's not clear to me how widely studied this is, and it seems like the assumption is that you get the two of them together in some unclear mix, where the glycoside almost always dominates (due to the poor stability of the aglycones).

that said,

1) i currently eat a daily amount of blueberries, raspberries and strawberries that, together, seems to be maximizing anthocyanidin intake. elderberries have more, but they're poisonous (they appear to be metabolized by your body as cyanide. see the connection?). there's not any good reason for me to cut any of that out of my fruit bowl, right now. there are no dietary requirements, but i couldn't imagine getting more than i already do. they don't seem to be harmful...
2) the only significant sources of flavon-3-ol seems to be chocolate, which i get in my coffee, and apples, which i drink in the form of juice. i'm otherwise not likely to consume any of these things. and, again - strawberries, blueberries, raspberries & cherries (all in my diet) are a minimal source. but, these chemicals are also said to build muscle, and i may even want to avoid them. thankfully, we apparently basically can't absorb them at all.
3) the highest source of flavonols appears to be kale, which i'm probably going to be integrating, anyways. blueberries & broccoli round it out. again - these are poorly absorbed antioxidants.
4) usable flavones only appear to be available in spices. salad, maybe.
5) flavanones only appear to be available in citrus fruits. should i get some lemon in my salad? sounds yummy.
6) about the only way to get isoflavones is via soy, which is a key part of my diet. i could maybe put some bacon bits in the salad. they're cheap, but the omega-6 is a little daunting. we'll see how i feel about that, and how it adds up. isoflavones are, of course, also estrogenic.

so, if i did nothing, i'd be getting tons of flavonoids, as it is.

and, i think berries are still a good gamble in trying to get your cancer risk down.

what i'm going to do is to go ahead and list them (except the flavon-3-ols, which it would appear i don't want much of, anyway) and try to figure out how much i'm getting, without really thinking about it too much further.

but, i am going to read through this pile of articles i've got in my tabs, too, and i'll let you know if anything interesting comes up.

so, here's the list - and we'll see how much of each one i'm getting, whether it really matters, or not:

anthocyanidins:
1) pelargonidin
2) delphinidin
3) cyanidin
4) malvinidin
5) peonidin
6) petunidin
7) rosinidin

flavonols:
1) isorhamnetin
2) kaempferol
3) myricetin
4) quercetin
5) fisetin
6) kaempferide

flavones:
1) luteolin
2) apigenin
3) techtochrysin
4) baicalein (to avoid!)
5) norwogonin
6) wogonin
7) nobiletin

flavanones:
1) eriodictyol
2) hesperetin
3) naringenin
4) hesperidin
5) isosakuranetin
6) pinocembrin
7) sterubin

isoflavones:
1) daidzein
2) genistein
3) glycitein
4) biochanin A
5) formononetin

science is about the method underlying it.

it's just as ignorant to write it off without testing it as it is to use it without any evidentiary basis.

show me the study - i'm agnostic until you do. skeptical, maybe. but, agnostic...

just to put this down, clearly.

what do i think about "herbal medicine"?

well, what does the science say? herbal medicine that works is called medicine. herbal medicine that doesn't work is called a placebo. and, herbal medicine that hasn't been tested is unknown.

so, i don't want to make broad comments about it; if people have been using some root for some reason for centuries, there may very well be good reasons for it. fine. but, show me the study.

and, that's really the right answer.

show me the study!

sure, it might work - i won't write it off, a priori. there's no reason to. but,

show me the study!

so, i had a little talk with my landlord, who decided he wanted to get a rent increase in before they froze it. status: denied.

well, let's deal with the smoke, first, huh?

i may be his sole source of income right now - well, except his pay check with the police, of course.

he hasn't raised rent since i moved in in oct, 2018. i know this place was previously occupied, because there cans of paint from the previous tenant - and because he told me as much. this region, like so many others, went through a wave of italian immigration, so this place seems to have been built with a kitchen in the basement. that's really what i inherited, although the landlord explained that this section was separated out to house an elderly relative, at one point. likely story.

so, i'm paying what i signed up for; he could have raised the rent by the legal amount, pegged to cpi, which was 2.2%, at any time since october, 2019.

i wondered why he didn't...but he didn't...

the legalities are that they announce a maximum rent increase in june, based on the cpi of the previous year and that comes into effect in january of the next year until the end of the calendar date. further, you need to give 90 days notice. that means that the 2.2% (a very high number, relative to recent years) kicked in on january 1st and expires on dec 31st.  as today is sept 11, and he requires 90 days notice, he'd have to date the increase to jan 1, 2021.

but, that's past the end of the calendar date, unfortunately.

denied.

the weirdness stems from the fact that they didn't announce a rent increase number this year, due to "instability".

instability, huh? i guess that's newspeak for deflation.

the cpi last year was 2.2% - an unusually high number. but, the cpi this year is -0.3%.

so, dougy is bringing in a rent freeze - it's for the people!

right. it's deflation, guys.

now, i suppose that they could revamp the legislation between now and then, which would probably not be in anybody's interests. but, if they don't, the fact that they didn't announce it doesn't change the reality of deflation in front of us.

and, are we going to have inflation over the next year? two years?

the rent freeze could last a long time - not because of an order by doug ford, but because we may be in for several years of deflation.

grargh.

let's start again on monday.

hi.

i received your message in response to my previous fax, and i've tried to reach your office a few times by phone with no answer. i call out using google voice and it seems to have specific routing issues that i don't understand - sometimes it works great, sometimes it just rings. this is why i prefer communication over email: death.to.koalas@gmail.com

i think dr e may be the doctor i saw in 2017. i don't fully recall. if so, he said he'd only do this for prostate cancer patients. perhaps he may reconsider - as i'm going to eventually end up there with prostate cancer if i don't get these things taken out, anyways.

i understand that dr. e would require a referral before he can schedule an appointment. but, what i'm trying to determine is what the value of asking to see dr. e is. would dr. e consider a voluntary orchidectomy for a trans person, if they have a referral and funding? or would he reject the premise offhand? see, i'm trying to avoid having to go to toronto. if i can do it here, it'll take twenty minutes and i can take a cab home. i don't see any good reason why i should be forced to go out of town for this.

the thing is that if dr ============= gives you the referral, and i eventually see dr e six months from now, and he refuses for some ideological reason, then i've just wasted six months of my life.

i cannot ask dr =========== to send out 50 referrals and hope one comes back.

so, i am doing the research upfront. 

would dr. e consider this? if so, i'd like to see him and will inform dr. =============. if he won't, i won't waste my time or yours - i'll look elsewhere. but, please understand the paucity of my options.

you can leave me a message at the number you called before, or open a discussion over email. but, what i'm trying to figure out is if this is a valid path, or if i need to call somebody else.

jessica

diamonds have some use in optics and lasers, but we don't need heaps of them.

it's the kind of economic activity that just simply shouldn't exist.

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/032615/how-can-marginal-utility-explain-diamondwater-paradox.asp

the sad reality with mining diamonds is that it's just another form of carbon extraction.

i'd rather mine graphene. it's far more useful.

and, to the extent that we are mining diamonds, it should be to convert them into graphene.

there's certain minerals that humans need, but we neither need gold nor diamonds.

this is just a net detriment to the environment, and i'd argue it shouldn't exist at all.

https://www.sudbury.com/local-news/trudeau-ford-to-attend-groundbreaking-ceremony-for-gogama-mine-this-morning-2704436

"but we're winning. and they're losing."

it doesn't matter who wins or loses. ok?

i want to live in a free society where people are allowed to make their own choices, not one where governments make choices for people, in order to "win".

you can tell me to escape to america.

and, i might, in the end.

but, you have to tear down the wall, first.

tear down that wall!

i mean, it's clear that our governments are going to continue to take the most conservative response possible. sadly. the canada i grew up in and used to love doesn't exist any more. we've become a very right-wing society, a gerontocracy and, increasingly, an authoritarian religious totalitarian state.

we are gleefully embracing fascism at the most flimsy excuse possible.

and, i'm heartbroken by it.

it's up to us, now, to participate or not.

if you keep getting tested every time you sneeze, if you participate in their tracing, if you allow them to build these datasets, we will be living through this fascist nightmare for another two or three years, potentially.

your cerb has run out. ei is half as much.

it's just a sneeze; ignore it, stop playing into it.

the flip side is this: if you're young, stop getting tested. it's an easily defeatable virus. you're fucking everything up.

my position is clear enough - the state needs to back off and let the virus spread amongst young people.

the elderly have been given full warning, and then some. they know the risks. it's their choice to stay in where it's safe or go out where it's not; it's their choice to expose themselves to their family, or ask them to stay away.

i have no interest, whatsoever, in continuing to live a cloistered life to "flatten the curve".

i don't care. i want my life back.

https://torontosun.com/news/provincial/ontario-covid-cases-top-200-67-are-people-under-40

get your head around this.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/30/topsoil-farming-agriculture-food-toxic-america

why hydro?

because we've ruined the ground. and, it's an upcoming crisis that we're maybe not aware of.

we will need to eventually return the nutrients to the soil, but it could take centuries to rebuild.

in the mean time, hooking it up to their roots is the most efficient approach - and that is something you could get to scale, if you can build, vertically, enough.

nobody's talking about this.

i do need to push back a little on the idea that you can push organic agriculture to scale.

you can't. we dump huge amounts of shit into the soil because we've leeched it of growing power. that's a hard problem that requires some careful thinking - hydroponics, greenhouses and a serious look at the growth rate.

and, storage is a problem, if you don't use a ton of hydro.

https://theanalysis.news/interviews/biden-not-phasing-out-fossil-fuel-relies-on-carbon-capture-robert-pollin/

right.

so, the plan is the pretend you're going to spend a zilion dollars implementing a technology that doesn't exist in order to bring the jobs back.

that's not a plan, at all. that's just cynical politicking.

that's the audacity of empty hope.

https://theanalysis.news/interviews/biden-not-phasing-out-fossil-fuel-relies-on-carbon-capture-robert-pollin/

and, here's a twist: the glucosides appear to be anti-oxidants, but the aglycones of the same flavonoids may actually be mutagenic.

:|.

maybe it's best that this be left alone, then.

i'm going to get that omelette and clean up the train of thought.

to be clear: my view is that if your body can't absorb this, it doesn't really want it.

i'm not taking flavonoid pills....

ok, i found a detailed walkthrough of flavonoid metabolism that is not the answer i want but is a big step towards finding it.

i had to log in through facebook to download it so i can't send you the link. you can search this:

REVIEW ARTICLE

Flavonoid interactions during digestion, absorption, distribution and
metabolism: a sequential structure–activity/property relationship-based
approach in the study of bioavailability and bioactivity

Gerard Bryan Gonzales, Guy Smagghe, Charlotte Grootaert, Moises Zotti, Katleen Raes, and John Van Camp

i expect that this will only help me understand why i can't absorb them when they're attached to a sugar, rather than help me get around the issue.

but, it may give me some clues.

i'm making an omelette, first, and i'll get back to it when i'm done.

no.

wait.

i'm hungry.

that article wasn't about naturally occurring aglycone flavonoids, it was about hydrolyed extracts, which i'm not fucking with.

so, i'm officially giving up on flavonoids - you just can't absorb them.

so, there's six types of flavonoids.

& there's in turn six of the first type, anthocyanidins:
1) cyanidin
2) delphinidin
3) malvidin
4) pelargonidin
5) peonidin
6) petunidin

when they did the studies on rats, they absorbed the complex molecule and metabolized it just fine. but, when they did it with humans, we just sucked the sugar out and discarded the anti-oxidant. these chemicals lose their id when you attach them to a sugar molecule, and freud just fell off his chair.

the absorption of anthocyanins requires either a specific active transport mechanism, to transport glycosides across the intestine wall, or they need to be hydrolyzed to the aglycone in the small intestine through the action of β-glucosidase, β-glucuronidase, and α-rhamnosidase (Manach and others 2005; Kay 2006).

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1541-4337.12024

guess rats are smarter than us.

how do you get them without the sugar attached to them, and without fermenting the fruit?

vegetables, maybe? eggplant? nope - sugar there, too. apparently, the flavonoid breaks down easily without the sugar, so there's not really a way out.

hrmmn.

these molecules are labelled as "potent antioxidants", and i don't have a reason to doubt the truth of it. but, they don't seem to do anything else, and if you can't absorb them then you can't absorb them. that's a major strike against blueberries.

according to the following article, i have eight options for sugar-free flavonoids.

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-1-4615-4913-0_11

1) pelargonidin
2) delphinidin
3) cyanidin
4) luteolin
5) apigenin
6) kaempferol
7) quercetin
8) myricetin

cross-referencing with the oregon page (https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/dietary-factors/phytochemicals/flavonoids), i can also add:

9) eriodictyol
10) hesperetin
11) naringenin
12) daidzein
13) genistein
14) glycitein
15) biochanin A
16) formononetin

...as potentially biovailable flavanones and isoflavones.

many of these may not be available in any food in a high enough dosage to meaningfully absorb. so, this list may get pruned down.

*ducks*

but, i'm going to list them anyways and get back to them later.

it's bad news for flavonoids, it seems. they don't get absorbed...

apparently, the problem is that flavonoids tend to come attached to glucose molecules, and the body seems to ignore them in favour of the sugar. so, while you can absorb the red & green pigments, you seem to mostly piss the purple ones out.

the way around this is to find purple pigments that aren't attached to sugar molecules. that would appear to mostly leave teas, soy and berries (including grapes) as the digestible choices, but only some of the options are digestible. does converting the sugar into alcohol release the flavonoid? is that it?

let me see what the exact molecules you can digest are.

so, it seems like carotenoids are worth it as anti-oxidants - we can't make them ourselves, we know we can absorb them into the blood and they seem to be doing something.

there's apparently even active transport for some of them, indicating that your body is expecting them and says "thanks, yoink" when they get in there. that in itself is strong evidence you should be seeking them out, even if we're not 100% sure what they're doing. that's not an accident; there's some evolutionary process, there.

what's next?

an unintended consequence of moving from green peppers to red peppers is that i lost a key source of chlorophyll. what else is green? kiwis, i guess? a quick google search says yes, but that's another good reason to bring in something like broccoli, which is very green.

the fact that you basically can't absorb curcumin tells me your body doesn't want it.

we've been through red/orange, green and yellow. purple's next. so, what about flavonoids, then? what can i actually absorb? let's figure that out...

hey, math nerds dabble.

math nerds on disability don't do anything but :)

obviously, i'm oversimplifying and being a little dramatic to make a point - with flair.

but, my point holds.

"you'd might as well just eat the grain..."

well.

the cow adds some value to it on it's way to you.

we talk about processed meat; but the meat, itself, is really just processed grain - fortified with goodness, but also loaded with byproducts.

when you eat a cow for lunch, your body converts that cow into grain, and then does what it will with it.

the difference is in the vitamins, and other chemicals.

and, what does your body do with protein?

get this.

it converts it into carbs.

what does your body do with fat, then?

it burns it. it's energy...

well, before we invented electricity, we used to use olive oil to make lamps. this is more intuitive than you think!

the amount of carbs i was eating in that pasta bowl over two or three days was still less than most people eat for breakfast. it was a boost, but not a big one. and, like i say - i couldn't fucking eat it, it was too much.

i'm adjusting, getting better, moving on.

eggs have a ridiculous nutritional profile.

they're probably the most healthy food on the planet.

it's like eggs.

people think that, because eggs are high in cholesterol, they're bad for your heart.

but, your body breaks down ingested cholesterol, it doesn't absorb it. so, that idea is based on a bad understanding of how your metabolism works.

if you're concerned about cholesterol, you want to reduce the amount of carbs that you eat, not the amount of cholesterol you eat.

you also want to keep the saturated fats down, a bit, but that seems to be less important.

the eggs are fine. what's killing you is the toast.

so, no - i'm not particularly concerned about consuming protein.

besides - it's carbs that build muscle, not protein. well, technically, your body converts carbs into fat, and you convert it into protein.

eating protein will not help you build muscle at all. sorry.

so, i think this is what we've got:

carotenoids (not including pro-vitamin a)
1) lutein
2) zeaxanthin
3) lycopene
4) phytofluene
5) phytoene
6) astaxanthin
7) capsanthin
8) canthaxanthin
9) cryptoxanthin

that appears to be the totality of what we can actually absorb.

it also seems like it's a good idea to get a little fat with your carotenoids, so if i'm doing this in the salad rather than egg, the caesar/hemp combo sounds like a good approach, to maximize absorption. i was previously eating the tomatoes/peppers mix with (1) omelettes, (2) pasta (cheese & caesar) and, way back, with mayo. that's an interesting twist: the mayo actually helps absorb the vitamins in the tomatoes. huh. wanna think twice about your low fat salad dressing? i'm not thinking twice about my high fat dressing, as it's the primary actual part of my diet....

High carotenoid intake, particularly β-carotene canthaxanthin may result in carotenodermia.[64]

i turned orange when i was a baby, because my mom fed me too much of the same kind of baby food; i actually think it was squash. i just ate the stuff more readily, apparently. you'd have to ask her, my memory is a little blurry, under two years...

1) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10942910601045271#
2) https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/132/3/531S/4687227
3) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6566388/
4) https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/dietary-factors/phytochemicals/carotenoids

so, that's my first update to the list i posted previously.

some of those will come with guidelines and some of them won't. i think i should get all of them in the salad bowl i had decided on, anyways. it's just a question of actually understanding what i'm eating.

i just want to clarify a point, because it seems like the pigs are retarded.

obviously, when i said i moved to pasta because i wanted to "gain weight", i mean i was trying to grow breasts - not that i was trying to build muscle.

that should have been obvious, but apparently wasn't.

i'm transgendered. the last thing i want is to build muscle. duh?

remember when i went on about antioxidants and i conceded that a lot of them are ruined by your stomach but the ones that aren't do, actually, work?

that is, i conceded that things like orac counts may be misleading, but i insisted that the science underlying oxidation was pretty sound.

so, that was the reason i stuck with tomatoes, but the literature seems to be messy, and it was never really clear what the actual effect was. carotenoids are both impossible for us to synthesize and measurably absorbed into the bloodstream.

so, this tomato/red-pepper mixture is a good idea, for sure - all of that lycopene is of some use, after all, because you can absorb it, it doesn't just get wiped out in your stomach.

and, i'm trying to get a comprehensive list of carotenoids that you can actually absorb...

ok, i'm taking a step back because i clearly missed a lot of phytonutrients.

i'm almost a vegetarian, and may end up cutting out the salami, if i don't think i need it anymore, rendering me an ovo-lacto-vegetarian. if i'm going to be almost entirely vegetarian, i'd might as well work this out, rather than wing it.

we don't need anarchy in consumption.

the linus pauling institute at the university of oregon seems to be an excellent resource and what i'm going to be focusing on in trying to build this correctly.

they have several articles, including this one on understanding how your body converts one type of omega acid into another.

https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/other-nutrients/essential-fatty-acids

what do you find yourself more concerned with?

you might find a little self-reflection in it...

are you constantly concerned about counting calories and making sure you don't over-eat? you might find you're more conservative, deep down, than you think.

are you concerned solely with the the experience of eating, what it tastes like, what it looks like, how it's presented, etc? you're probably really a bourgeois liberal, at your core.

and, are you solely concerned about the use value of food, and have little interest in what it looks or tastes like, or how much you need to consume to meet the scientifically determined requirements? you're a socialist, my friend! grab your sickle, let's re-engineer production for our benefit, not the benefit of the capitalist class, who are siphoning out our brain power and holding it hostage in offshore bank accounts.

there's a lot of food on the shelves that exists solely to generate surplus value and would just simply not exist in a socialist economy.

actually, i guess it would be the conservative wing of the capitalist class that would be concerned about counting calories, and the bourgeois liberals that are concerned about the hedonistic experience of eating, but, at the end of the day, they'd converge anyways, and nobody would be able to tell which is which.

it's actually a good demonstration of the differences in ideologies.

socialists care about the nutritional value of food, and will argue that food production should be designed to meet the full nutritional requirements of the people!

but, capitalists are just counting empty calories, and concerned solely about the hedonistic experience of eating their food, because who gives a fuck, anyways?

if i have to, i'll settle for kale, which should get me a ton of a, at least.

so, i left a few messages about rosehips & broccoli leaves, but i'm going to get to building a diet without them and seeing if there's a point or not.

eating healthy is not bourgeois; this is use-value, it's quite marxist.

it's worrying about calories, or appearance, or taste that is bourgeois.

good.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/cambie-surgeries-case-trial-decision-bc-supreme-court-2020-1.5718589

i don't want to ever move to the new blogger, ever.

fuck off.

so, i wasted another day because i couldn't sit here in the filth long enough to make a call - i had to sit in the shower, instead.

it's a little better, but i may have to take another one to really wipe all of this filth off of me. i'm going to lysol the walls and go from there.

i have received a response from one of the five doctors i faxed on monday, but i think it's the same person that denied me several years ago, and i couldn't get through over the phone this late in the day.

so, i guess i'm stuck until tomorrow, and can only hope i can stay awake through the filth for long enough to make the calls.

stupid people everywhere...

"but, i'll sue you."

yeah.

right.

send the bill to the ontario disability support program.

maybe they can pay your lawyer, while they're at it.

yeah, it's not the dehumidifier; it's smoke. more shit off the walls...

i guess the upside is that it's getting a little better.

but, i can spend four-five hours in the shower and go through $100/day worth of gas if that's what he wants.

laundry, it is.

for elderly people, yes - vaccinate. experimentally. get it to them now...

but, what 'safe' means is relative, and the safest vaccine may be more dangerous than the virus, in young kids - because the virus is so harmless for so many people.

and, that may just be the simple mathematical fact.

it's another question that we're going to need to grapple with and that we may very well get completely wrong.

if the vaccine has a 0.001% kill rate, and mortality is 0.0005% in people under 30, do you vaccinate them?

i'd suggest you shouldn't.

we probably will, though.

it's an epsilon.

but, there is always an epsilon.

always.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4599698/#S4title

yeah, the media will no doubt blow this up and scare people for clicks, like they always do, but all vaccines carry minimal risk, and it is a part of taking a vaccine. you have to realize there's an epsilon that will be killed by any vaccine. it's just a part of the process.

if you were to avoid all risk completely, you'd have to avoid all vaccines. none of them are 100% safe.

so, it stands to reason that if you vaccinate 10,000 people in a trial then a couple of them will die from it. that's not a reason to stop the trials, and not a reason to avoid the vaccine. it's just bad luck.

as an individual, you need to weigh those risks yourself and determine what you think is the best choice. but, the numbers are clear enough - if you're older, it's worth the risk. if you're younger, it's probably not. if you're a child, it's absolutely not.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/patient-who-prompted-vaccine-trial-pause-developed-severe-neurological-symptoms-1.5099757

we are all swedish now.

so, sell me some fucking rose hips.

right.

so, the problem isn't that masks don't work, which is what science has said for decades.

rather, the problem is that people aren't wearing masks.

because legault has a hunch, i suppose.

it's the cliched definition of insanity.

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/those-who-don-t-follow-mask-guidelines-in-quebec-will-be-fined-as-of-saturday-premier-1.5099115

if the flu was this easily contained, we'd have gotten rid of it by now, eh?

we just all took six months of our lives and flushed them down the toilet.

in the mean time, i'm left wondering why we did all of this when we could have just let the thing spread and build immunity in young people in the first place, as that is what is happening now, anyways.

and, the only answer i can come up with is abject stupidity.

and, the idiots thought they could stop the flu, and called us names when we told them they couldn't.

it's a perfect example of the irony underneath what was called "the smug style of liberalism" four years ago, and which i would prefer to called "elitist conservatism", because the people expressing these views are not liberals - the people they are attacking as "covidiots" are the actual liberals. it's the people that are trying to shut society down to protect the elderly, instead of telling them to stay home, that are the conservatives, here.

and, as usual, the data is on the liberals' side.

the only way to protect the elderly is to tell them to stay home. thankfully, people seem to have mostly figured that out themselves, whether the state has, or not.

but, my point is how this is topical - you sit there and call people names. but, you're the idiot, if you thought you could stop this. and, it's the perfect example of the dunning-kruger effect at work, that you're out there attacking people for existing, instead of using your brain and working through the realities in front of you.

there's two ways to stop a pathogen: let it burn itself out by killing everybody off and enforcing vicious quarantine (which is what they had to do with the plague. there are stories of people being locked in towers and stuff, after exposure. they had no choice - they'd lock you in a room by yourself until your fingers fell off, or you starved to death.), or getting a vaccine.

there's no middle point.

you'll have to deal with that.

...you idiots.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/covid-19-coronavirus-ontario-september-10-update-1.5718641

dr. day is really just trying to bullshit his way into maximizing profit at the expense of access to care.

let's hope the courts see through his charade and deny his claim.

i hope they don't make a stupid decision around this.

basically, the facts are this: while access to care may need improvement, private health care will not provide for that. so, it's an answer that doesn't solve the problem.

the courts in the past have produced rulings that have attempted to carefully nudge governments in the direction of increasing expenditures, and at times seen those rulings backfire. we at least have some data from quebec at this point that indicated that "market liberalization" had the opposite effect - while some wealthy people may now be able to buy their way to the front of line, wait times in quebec are the highest in the country.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/cambie-surgeries-case-trial-decision-bc-supreme-court-2020-1.5718589

again: i agree with this, but trump seems a little less senile, over all.

if i were to put odds down, i'd say there's a 75% chance that biden gets dementia in the next four years and a 100% chance that he gets it in the next eight, if he survives that long, whereas i'd say there's a 49% chance that trump doesn't get through the next four years.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/10/2020-election-news-voters-see-trump-biden-as-mentally-unfit-to-be-president.html

it was absolutely beautiful in here this morning, for a few hours, but i woke up to dry air again.

i think it's the dehumidifier, and not smoke, but i basically can't tell the difference between a smoker and a dehumidifier with my bodily senses, alone.

so, i'm just going to try to replace the humidity in the air and move on.

i need to make some calls this afternoon.

https://ginaconkle.com/how-to-eat-like-a-viking-the-magic-of-mead-by-gina-conkle/

we've been so viciously colonized...and we don't even realize it....

we eat potatoes, right?

and hamburgers. from hamburg. right.

& pizza.

ugh.

you wouldn't recognize the food your own ancestral culture ate if it was put right in front of you...

we talk about acai berries like they're this exotic thing that could save the world.

we have our own acai berries, and we plant the flowers in our gardens and don't even realize it.

your fucking ancestors ate rosehips, and they grow on the side of the road, and you don't even know what they are.

why is the food available at the grocery store so low in nutrition, anyways?

i mean, i get that a big mac is delicious, and you're not worried about vitamins just right that minute.

but, why is there a stack of fucking lettuce at the grocery store? the shit's useless. really. out of all the things we could eat, we seem to have picked some of the worst options.

rose hips are a weed - they grow on the side of the road. but, it's something that europeans eat in their diet, on top of being a native american staple.

why wouldn't they be at your average store? you can get hummus everywhere, but you can't get rose hips; it's weird, really.

it seems like broccoli leaves are likely to be difficult to locate...

what about seeds?

don't eat the seeds. they're poisonous!

but, the sprouts are even better than the leaves...

so, could i find myself buying seeds and letting them sprout?

let's see if i think it's necessary, first. the thing i was concerned about was the e, and if the hemp seeds fix that, then great. plus, e is one of the few things that i should be careful about overdoing, apparently.

sound good?

fruit bowl:
- strawberries
- bananas
- kiwis
- blueberries?
- raspberries?
- rosehips
- ice cream
- soy milk

salad bowl:
- red pepper
- tomato?
- carrot?
- chopped broccoli
- broccoli leaves
- hemp seeds
- oregano & pepper
- kalamata olives
- chopped cheese
- caesar dressing

eggs:

- fried eggs

- cheese

- whole wheat bread

- salami?

- olive oil margarine

let's see if it's good enough.

well, there's no concerts to go to, so why not eat better?

so, how the fuck do you get vitamin e in decent dosages without swallowing a pill, anyways?

it's hard, as far as i can tell.

you can eat very large amounts of fish, and then get sick from the mercury.

....or you can eat nuts or seeds by the spoonful and get a heart attack from it.

but, i've found a few interesting sources.

first, the obvious stuff, that i'm already eating:

1) if you use a little margarine, you can get a lot of e (and a lot of d) fairly easily. but, careful with the 6s. this is probably where i currently get most of my e, as my margarine (irresistible canola & olive oil) has a whopping 10% per tsp and i'm averaging out to about 3 tsp/day (which is 1 tablespoon). i'm also getting about 15%/tsp of the d i need from that at a relatively low 3:1 omega-6:omega-3 ratio. that's low in absolute terms, too - 1 g/tsp. so, i'm at 30% from the margarine to start.
2) cereals have a lot of e and a lot of 6. that doesn't make sense to me.
3) kiwis are probably the single easiest way to get a shot of e, but you're looking at around 10% of the rdi, 15% max. this is better than a serving of tuna, for e. if there's a better source, besides nuts, i don't know it. kiwis are low in total fat, if not great on the 3:6 ratio.
4) red peppers can get you another 10%, and are actually relatively good on the 3:6 ratio, on top of being low fat in total.
5) are tomatoes worth it? you can get another 5% of the e, at least. but, the 3:6 ratio is pretty bad, despite being low fat overall.
6) you get another 3-4%/egg, so at an average of two eggs/day, that's another 6-8.

so, i'm starting with 30 + 15 + 5 + 2.5 + 7.5 = 60%. there's little bits of e in the other things i eat as well, but it's really in the <5% range of the rdi, so while it may all add up, it's still on the low side. i need a major source.

so, this is what i've found that is interesting:

1) broccoli leaves apparently have 130x the e per mg as stems or flowers and a positive 3:6 ratio to boot. they are clearly the superior choice to lettuce or spinach, or dandelions, for salads; if you dump 200-300 g of broccoli that's 40-60% of your e (as well as tons of a & k). can i find them anywhere, though?
2) another apparent source of vitamin e that seems to be overlooked is rosehips, which seem to have almost no fat. a serving of of rosehips will give you 500+% of your c requirements, 100% of your a requirements and 30% of your e requirements. they're also unusually high in both calcium and iron, and have a low glycemic index. great, right? the problem is apparently that the seeds can cause problems on the way out because they're surround in a hairy substance, so you just want to avoid those. but, rosehips are eaten widely by both native americans and indigenous europeans, so i should really be all over them - this is forest people food!
3) the next best thing would appear to be to try to find seeds or nuts with low 3:6 ratios and i've come up with two answers. hemp seeds are relatively high in fat, but an ounce of seeds (not the ounce you wanted?) will get you 75% of your needed vitamin e at a relatively low omega cost, which is 3x as many 6s. they're carrying some saturated fats, unfortunately, but it seems roughly comparable to margarine, so maybe it's not so bad. they also seem to have all 9 amino acids, and at a lower saturated fat cost than eggs. hrmmn. the trade-offs here seem better than my existing staples, so i should probably not freak out - this seems like a good answer. you can get them at bulk barn...
4) the other thing i'm looking at is black walnuts, which have a slightly higher 4:1 ratio, and a sneaky trick with the vitamin e, in that it is high in the gamma version rather than the alpha version. i can't quite figure out if that's good enough, or even desirable in it's own right. but, they come with the caveats attached to all nuts - they're very fattening.

so, that's what i've got, and i think it's a good enough answer, so long as i can find it.

and, now let me try to redesign this properly from the bottom up with my daily fruit/salad bowls to try to offset some of the lost calories from dropping the pasta, and to really flesh out the vitamins.

so, an unexpected result of this move to total eggs is actually that i'm hungrier than expected, which.....

you'd think it would be predictable, actually, except i kind of tricked myself into under-estimating the fullness effect of carbs. but, we'll see how long that lasts. i don't mind being hungry for the next three weeks if it balances itself in the end.

i was previously eating about the following in terms of pasta, daily, in theory:

1/2 of a large green pepper
1/2 medium sized tomato
50 g of pasta
150 ml of caesar as sauce
50 g of salami
100 g of block marble cheese (melted)

that ^ is a half plate of pasta, which is what i was supposed to be eating. i'd put the other half away for the next day.

however, i rarely actually did that. instead, i'd go two or three days without eating, then eat a quarter of the plate, then pick at it for a few days. so, i moved to that diet to boost my calorie count, and in truth it seems to have probably come down - i just got less vitamins, instead.

this is why i'm switching to full eggs. so, i've replaced that with the following, every second day:

1 small red pepper
1 small tomato
2 tablespoons of olive oil margarine
four large scrambled eggs (scrambled in margarine, hot sauce & the tomato & pepper)
50 g of salami
100 g of block marble cheese, chopped
two slices of whole wheat bread

to compare these two meals, i'd have to cut the second in half:

1/2 small red pepper   < 1/2 of a large green pepper
1/2 small tomato        <  1/2 medium sized tomato
1 tablespoon of olive oil margarine   < 150 ml of caesar
25 g of salami  < 50 g salami
50 g of block marble cheese, chopped   < 100 g of same
once slice (35 g) of whole wheat bread  < 50 g of pasta
+ two large scrambled eggs

so, i just nearly cut my diet in half, and i knew i was doing it, but it was under the assumption that i wasn't really eating nearly as much, anyways, and the balance of the extra eggs would be enough.

i'm actually holding to that. for a few days. i think that's right, still.

the difference is probably more that 50 g of pasta, eaten daily, fills you up for way, way longer than 70 g of whole wheat bread, eaten every second day, does - & the eggs just aren't going to compensate.

so, what's next, then?

i could move to two eggs daily, instead of four eggs every day and split everything in half.

i'm going to wait it out, and see if bringing in the salads helps a bit. but, i'm inevitably going to be introducing fibre if i do that, and you know what that means.

hey, i have a math degree, but i'm not a nutritionist. i'm thinking out loud. i may make some mistakes...

what i'm saying about bonnie henry is that, because she never learned to fail, she's going to behave like a sore loser, and should be removed before she lashes out too absurdly.

individual human rights are not determined by plebiscite.

obviously, his opinion is of no concern to anybody, and the number of signatures he gets is of no consequence, whatsoever.

i'm going to start a petition telling derek sloan to fuck off.

this inbred retard should mind his own business.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/tory-mp-sloan-sponsors-e-petition-calling-for-moratorium-on-gender-affirming-surgery-for-transgender-minors-1.5098294

shutting down nightclubs at this stage of the pandemic is just stupid.

i've met people like bonnie henry.

they're incapable of failing. they don't know how.

they can't be given positions like this; they don't have the psychological ability to withstand it.

she should resign, if the premier is too cowardly to fire her.

i'm not in bc, but this is potentially next here as well...

i'm not blaming people for existing.

i'm blaming the government for trying to eradicate the flu - it's not possible, and the premise is retarded.

the virus is going to spread. if you're at high risk, stay home until a vaccine is released.

everything they're doing is stupid...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/reaction-to-closure-order-nightclubs-banquet-halls-bc-1.5716742

we have the grid in canada, but we're not using it - and our politicians have been making it harder to use it, not easier to use it.

so, for example, mike harris privatized the grid in ontario, which sent prices through the roof and pushed a move away from clean electric heat to dirty natural gas heating. it was absolutely insane, and subsequent governments have only marginally been able to get a handle on it.

if we simply encouraged people to use electric heating by bringing the price down, we'd solve a giant component of the problem, in this country.

our natural resources make the problem much easier to solve, here: we just need to maximize our hydro capacity, and get everybody to actually use it. but, we're doing the exact opposite: we're pushing people off the grid, we're mining dirty energy and now we're trying to export lng, a project that will drastically increase our emissions even more.

more so than most places in the world, the fundamental problem in this country is simply greed. and, we need to grapple with that fact in undoing the profit motive.

we were better positioned to deal with this in the 80s and 90s; with the notable exception of our move away from coal, we've been moving in the wrong direction since then, and getting worse, not better.

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/news/article/canadians-energy-use-is-among-the-highest-in-the-world

"we just need to keep pounding at the deplorables, until they get it."

"He just needs to keep pounding on the message," said Ohio Representative Tim Ryan, a Democrat. "He’s right on point and just needs to get the message to the low-information voter that Joe Biden understands the economic challenges that you’re facing and Donald Trump just keeps talking about the stock market."

is that who you represent, tim?

low information voters?

what an asshole...

"i honestly don't know the answer to that." is the most intelligent phrase in the english language.

being smart doesn't mean you know all the answers.

being smart means admitting when you don't know the answers, and having the humility to learn them.

i will frequently attack people as ignorant, and be right.

but i won't call them uneducated.

and, there's a big difference - because we're all horribly ignorant, in our own ways. some less than others, perhaps, but our ignorance is a fundamental component of our nature, as primates.

trying to frame the election as the educated v the uneducated is kind of elitist, and smug. and, it's bullshit - the data doesn't back it up.

it's a part of the reason the democrats have problems with certain key voting groups; they just interpret their critics as being too uneducated to agree with them, rather than bother listening to what they have to say. and, of course, there's great irony underlying the truth of it.

i don't know how old this is. i remember watching free trade protesters just rip apart nafta supporters, who were convinced that they were too stupid to understand the deal, back in the 90s. and, i'm reminded of the famous quip by adlai stevenson: don't send them to jail; send them to school.

i don't want to call these people liberals; they're not. it's the people they attack as uneducated that are generally the actual liberals, in most debates. but, the party needs to get a handle on this mentality and aggressively move to wipe it out.

this almost seems like it was written in reaction to me.

i don't have any particular gripe. i don't think people vote based on their education level, and it's only useful in any analysis as a proxy for ideology. so, i ignore it because i think it's causally irrelevant. remember, kids: correlation does not imply causality. but, i appreciate the deconstruction.

and, i also think there's been a measurable movement of both blacks and latinos out of the democratic party over the last 20 years, and trying to balance it out by pointing to averages is just going to obscure it. i'm generally critical of approaching polling with averages; in the end, you get a snapshot on election day that may or may not reflect trends and averages.

i just want to point out that we saw a weird phenomenon in 2016 where all of the polls suggested white women would support clinton, and then they didn't. that would be a bizarre bradley effect, huh? i may have presented the answer in the above paragraph; they may have polled "educated whites" in california and tried to project the results into georgia, which would be daft; i don't remember figuring that out, four years ago. but, the consensus is that some kind of weird patriarchal effect set in; that, in the end, it was wives, especially, that voted with their husbands.

there was a measurable disconnect in 2016, at least, between polling and exit polls. so, careful.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-big-chunk-of-white-americans-with-degrees-and-people-of-color-are-behind-trump/

and, yes, he was a habs fan.

he was vaguely deist, but not really....the truth is that he didn't really think about religion long enough to really form a serious belief system. i call myself an atheist out of some serious conviction; it wouldn't be fair to call him an atheist, or even an agnostic, given that he didn't even have that basic level of conviction to uphold it.

if you were to ask him about god, he'd just change the topic. he cared more about hockey than religion.

and, he probably avoided going to church simply because he thought it was boring; going for brunch with me was as much of an escape tactic as anything else. and, it was maybe the only way out that presented him with an acceptable excuse, as well.

she was not religious when they met, but became a pretty staunch evangelical after her own father died. he'd bring up the old cliche from time to time, but very carefully: you have to remember, j, that only bad people need to go to church. and, to an extent, he was maybe on to something.

but, it was really no doubt as simple as preferring the experience of eating breakfast with his child over sitting in a pew, and i don't fault him for that.

the ritual was that he'd go for brunch with me when my stepmother was at church, then go home and watch the game...

i'd say that was reality for 98% of the sunday mornings between 2006 and 2011.

it was weird to dream, today, about having brunch with my dad, though, something i used to do fairly often when he was alive. more or less weekly, actually. i maybe took it for granted sometimes, but he was persistent about it...he maybe seemed to realize the time frames around existence better than i did, and i'll give him credit for that, even if i'll withhold it in so many other areas....

it may be because i recently saw this seinfeld reboot:

your brain works like that; i've read freud, but the truth is that he was pretty much completely wrong about dreams. i like his ideas, but they're just not correct. rather, your brain tends to take random images of things and scramble them up in ways that have more to do with bad error-correcting than with any deep delve into your psyche.

my brain saw "george and jerry at the diner" and it seems to have triggered "dad and i at the diner". it just pulled out the wrong file; random error, nothing deep about it. so, i dreamt about one thing because i saw another, and my brain made a mistake in processing it....

the dead only exist in our dreams, and they exist the way we want them to. so, anything that was said was what i decided would be said; i'm clear on that much at least - this was a conversation with myself, not a conversation with a spirit of a lost relative. he only appeared to me in the form of a projection of my own mind; as real as dreams can be, sometimes, we write our own scripts. ok, maybe there's some room in there for freud after all, even if the dreams themselves are merely randomized error...

i actually don't dream about him very much at all. 

i'm awake, now, and in the realm of the living. for now. i'd like to try to enjoy that as best i can, rather than dwell on the past.

don't overcheer, though - it's annoying.

i wanted to do a million things today, but i passed out early this morning, instead.

the air in here is way, way, way better. finally.

i'm sorry to be horrible, but it's the only thing that works.

if i'm awake, and the air stays clean, maybe i can do something today.

they need to get the fucking bill out already before (more) people start dying on the fucking streets.

it seems beyond disingenuous to create a crisis by obstructing legislation, then blame the situation on the republicans, then offer a solution.

that is dishonest.

so, why should anybody believe your promises, when they're based on lies?

now, that doesn't mean that the bill is going to be perfect, or that the democrats shouldn't criticize it or campaign against it.

but, there are people in very dire straits right now due to inaction, and it's not the republicans blocking the legislation, it's the democrats.

so, if the government can't get anything passed, it's the opposition that needs to take responsibility for obstructing it.

no.

stop.

the republicans have the presidency and the senate.

they get to write the legislation, right now - the democrats can pass the bill, or obstruct it, but they can't write it.

they have to win an election, first, if they want to govern.

sorry.

ok.

but, it was the democrats that refused to pass the bill. now, they're playing political games about it.

your anger should be directed at nancy pelosi.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/09/09/biden-focus-rebuild-after-trump-covid-economic-disaster-column/5744882002/

people are just so fucking ignorant...

https://no-smoke.org/indoor-air-pollution-from-marijuana-emissions-as-bad-as-the-worst-wildfires/

so, i wasn't able to escape that particularly vicious round of air pollution from upstairs, and it knocked me right the fuck out.

the good side of that is that my low tolerance is back, which is how i like it.

but, the bad side is that i'm back to being very badly affected by the habits of my neighbours - and i am certain that the problem is my landlord, or whomever else is living upstairs, and not the neighbours on either side.

i'm exhausted, i'm grouchy, i'm dehydrated, i can't think straight and i have a brutal headache.

so, i'm going to eat, drink a lot of coffee and take another shower and hopefully i feel a bit better when i get out.

actually, this is another potential major source of clean electricity that ought to be fully explored.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_power

it's this error that people have been making for centuries - they look for this concept of progress in history.

hegel was the worst, and the guy that gets most of the shit for it. but, marx did it too; even as he railed against teleology, he produced his own form of it.

history moves in feedback cycles, not in any linear direction. being savvy about it and taking advantage of it is about figuring out where you are in the cycle and reacting to it, not about falling for the trap of linear progress.

the more you buy into it, the more thoroughly you'll be wiped away when the tide comes in - and it always will, because the moon is always there.

generally, periods of....i'm going to use the word repression rather than regression....but, there's always a backlash, eventually.

give it time.

and, the harder that the neo-victorian reactionaries push down, the more powerful the liberation will be.

i mean, there was quite a bit of talk about this being the new gilded age, right?

the snowflakes are just the new victorians, in that sense.

and, this, too, shall pass.

remember, though: we got rid of the victorians.

we can get rid of the snowflakes, too.

so, let's listen to genesis p'orridge paraphrase some oscar wilde over what sounds like a download outtake.

full treatment in the picture of dorian grey.

and, he's right.

listen, cia spooks...

if my pen is my sword, i may slay a few beasts.

i won't apologize.

it wouldn't be honest.

yes, i tend to stand up for that woman.

she's been viciously abused her whole life, and it just.....doesn't.....stop.

when was the last time she released a new single? i don't even know.

but, you still see these vicious articles....all the time....

i will always stand with the marginalized. and, the media should really back off.

i guess the corporate fascists would rather she buy a slave to make her a new outfit every day.

the stupidity is really astounding.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-8711867/Britney-Spears-defends-wearing-17-times-repetitive-posts-Project-Rose.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-518499/Buddhist-monk-cut-pieces-run-lawnmower-Milton-Keynes-temple.html

the bassline instantly started in my mind, microseconds after reading the headline.

sorry.

really.

see, i'm like a russian doll - i just gave you a physics joke, in disguise.

"uhm....no. not yet."

oddly, it's the buddhists that seem to present more resistance, isn't it?

all very strange...

i know that trump is mostly full of shit, it's just a question of trying to figure whether there's enough truth in the mixture to take him seriously enough...

the democrats are scaring the hell out of me, basically.

and, at least on war and the military, trump is saying all the right things that i want to hear.

ugh.

you know how sometimes you hear those buddhist lawnmowers?

ohhhhhhhhm. ohhhhhhhhhhhm.

they seem to largely be in competition with the russian ones, which go

nyetnyetnyetnyetnyetnyetnyetnyet.

?

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/09/08/trump-attack-military-leadership-wesley-clark-intv-nr-sciutto-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/this-week-in-politics/

awful, awful thing they did...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/government-broke-law-on-ei-financing-in-3-years-top-court-1.750084

eliminating the payroll tax is something i strongly disagree with trump about. thankfully, he couldn't really do it - not without congress, anyways.

it's not a question of how you pay for it, in the end, it's a question of who owns the money. even if the next ten administrations pay for it from general revenue, it's still shifting ownership of the fund from workers to government, and that must be resisted in principle.

we had a court case up in canada years ago, when the liberals (under paul martin) actually dipped into the fund to pay down the debt, which was horrific in principle - they literally took money from workers' pensions and destroyed it, by cashing it in at the bank. horrific. the ensuing court case ensured they can never do that again.

i would expect a similar battle in the end, but it opens up a valid question: should this system be reformed to ensure that politicians cannot touch it? maybe spun off or something?

if beethoven had a blog, what would it be like?

i don't know.

i know there's a lot of historians that would find it interesting, though.

this is, first and foremost, for the historians of the future.

and, that is all.

i can't sit in here when it smells like this, so i'm going to get something to eat.

is the fact that i've never made i dime from blogging or vlogging, and something like $500 total from selling music over the last 25 years, shocking to you?

i seem to be confusing some powerful people that just don't understand what i am or what i'm doing....maybe the narrative is fragmented.....

let's rewind. i'll tell you the short story, right here.

i started posting comments on youtube in early 2014, initially when my computer was in a state of disrepair. the story is partially up here, now - click 2014 on the side. first, i lost a hard drive, and then i lost a bios. so, i had to wait for a bus pirate to arrive in the mail before i could get back to recording (in april, 2014), and found myself with a lot of time to blow.

i started uploading music to this site, first, in dec 2013:
https://www.youtube.com/user/deathtokoalas

from that account, i found myself commenting on a lot of music.

years before that, starting around 2010, i also had a facebook page set up that was essentially a link dump for political analysis that came out of my facebook feed, which was full of sites like the real news. i also found myself commenting on general youtube videos from that account, as they came to me in my facebook feed. this itself was continuation of prominent commenting on the cbc site over roughly 2006-2010, and posting in various places under different pseudonyms years before that.

it wasn't long before i realized that i was directing traffic to my music site by commenting on youtube videos, so i recognized an opportunity to market my music and jumped at it. i started purposefully trolling high traffic sites to draw attention to myself, and try to direct random viewers to my own site instead of the site they were at. while i come from a left-wing activist background, the ultimate purpose of this was always really solely to sell my own music; i was a musician long before i was ever an activist.

once i started realizing i was directing hundreds or sometimes even thousands of people to my youtube site a day, i had to ask myself a question: did i want to put ads on my music? i grappled with this pretty thoroughly, as i would consider that a form of prostitution, which i'm morally opposed to. i'm not like these young people that are willing to sell whatever they can to get by; i'm a gen xer, i have values, and i didn't want to whore myself out to some fucking youtube ad revenue. the premise revolted me, truly. on top of that, i realized that i'd be unlikely to make any kind of significant revenue that way. putting an ad on my youtube videos (which were all music at this point, like exists at bandcamp, and like still exists at the deathtokoalas site) would just give somebody an opportunity to steal the attention of potential listeners; it struck me as counterproductive to go through so much effort to get people's attention, only to let some advertiser co-opt me. the video was an ad for my own product, available at bandcamp; i didn't want to put an ad for something else in the way and risk sending people off to watch some vacuous movie or something.

so, over 2014 and 2015, i made thousands of youtube posts on hundreds of videos about everything, and developed somewhat of a following amongst youtube addicts, who would sometimes go to my music site but really cared mostly about my comments.

after the 2015 canadian election, i started a vlog and kept at it until mid 2017:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCinQSeEtF0vSN1XVhQGfwKA/

i decided that i would feel ok about monetizing the vlog, but not the music, and i did. i still hoped to direct people to my music through commenting, but i allowed for ads in that space as a kind of compromise to myself.

because, you only get that chance once, and, if you blow it you're potentially throwing away a life of true freedom. i've always said i'd give the music away for free if i wasn't so desperately fucking poor.

i guess it was in late 2016 or early 2017 - not long after the last election - that i started noticing i'd been shadow-banned on youtube. they went after me on google+ first, delaying a few posts (i don't think anything was deleted permanently, but some things sort of disappeared for a bit before reappearing). so, i launched a project to get everything i could off of youtube as fast as i could, and migrated here instead.

the technical reason i stopped publishing the vlog was that i got into a fight with my landlord that eventually led to me getting evicted. i didn't want to put vlogs up while in a legal dispute, as i was going to present some of them as evidence.

but, i eventually mostly dropped it because i wasn't directing anything to the bandcamp site; it wasn't working as the portal that i hoped it would.

rather, i just drew a lot of attention to myself by people that seem to think i'm some kind of spy, which sounds like the plot to a fucking jim carrey movie.

i think i sort of get that these commenting systems are basically run by psychologists in the employ of the state that use it to measure the effectiveness of propaganda. i'm absolutely beyond their reach, and they don't know what to do, or how to react, so they just target me and try to shut me down.

*shrug*

why am i doing this now?

i'm generating documentation for my life, essentially. if i can ever get back on top of this, this vlog will be a front-end that documents my life as a composer. the political views are a part of that, and my analysis and deconstruction exists in the context of my works as an artist, but it's all just a front-end, a way into the discography.

you can believe me or not, or use it as an excuse to continue to try to repress me.

but, this is what i am, why i exist and what i'm doing.

....in between choking on drugs being smoked by the undercover police officers upstairs.

...and, the smell of anal rape is now wafting downstairs, again. it's not quite skunk, really; it smells more like that old man is getting fucked up on drugs, and raping his daughter. you know that smell of cheap lube and deep shit, the kind you need to pull out of your ass with some kind of device? it's about as rank a smell as exists in the world, but it's what i'm stuck with until he passes out in his own filth.

so, the shower is running.

again.

for who knows how long.

and, i may have to do laundry again, as well. we'll see.

i just got a strange email from my youtube vlog, which i haven't even uploaded a video to in years.

========

Hi jessica,

This email is to notify you that you’ll need to accept YPP terms again once your channel is eligible for the program. The YPP application process, your channel watchtime, and subscriber count are not impacted.

At some point, you signed contract terms with YouTube regarding the YouTube Partner Program (YPP). Previously, we allowed creators to pre-sign YPP terms before reaching the minimum eligibility thresholds. We have since re-designed this process. Our records show that your channel hasn’t yet met the existing thresholds for program eligibility. In 30 days, if your channel is still not eligible for YPP, we will invalidate your contract.

Not to worry, though. When you do reach the thresholds needed for YPP, it’s just a few easy clicks to apply using our standard process. (Note you can always check your progress on the monetization tab in YouTube Studio.)

What this means for your channel

In short, nothing is changing for your channel. The only change is that you will need to accept YPP terms again when you become eligible. The way you use or experience YouTube stays the same. You still have access to all your creator features that enable you to grow your audience, build your community, and manage your videos. You can:
Upload, edit, or delete your videos
Read, respond to, or moderate your comments
Analyze your channel performance in YouTube Analytics
Get best practices and strategic advice from Creator Academy
Connect to other Creators in the YouTube Help Forum

Thank you for being part of the YouTube Community! We look forward to your application in the future.

Sincerely,
The YouTube Team

==========

i've purposefully left my subscriber count unknown, but it's not anywhere close to 1000 subscribers, on either account. the former deathtokoalas and current koala central command account hit a max of about 500 before slowly falling due to disuse; the vlog account hit a max that was considerably less then 100. i think it was 93, iirc. i'd have to log into the other account to check and don't want to.

my google plus page had thousands and thousands of hits, and some of my comments had thousand of likes before they were removed by some shady governing structure that i only vaguely understand, but my subscriber count was never very high, and i never had anything at the music site with more than a few hundred hits.

excluding the cover video, and some concert footage that i've left unmonetized for ethical reasons, the most popular video on the vlog site has 159 views. while the vlog has been monetized for years, the other site has never been and never will be (i don't want ads on my music. gross.), and the reality is that i've never made a single cashable cent from youtube royalties. i think the total uncashed amount was about $3.50, at it's max.

the reason that i've left these numbers unpublished is the same reason that i don't allow "likes" to appear on the page - i don't think that how many subscribers i have, or the watch count, or the number of likes should be presented as a way to validate or invalidate the content. that is, i want people to react to the content without being coerced by popularity metrics. i really don't like social media or how it tries to shape popular opinion with herd mentality.

i will eventually update that vlog. i mean, i'm still vlogging, i'm just years behind on the updates. it could be sitting there for five or ten years before i get around to it.

but, i don't expect that i'll ever get that many subscribers, and i don't expect i'll ever remonetize. so, what youtube is essentially telling me is that it wants to give me server space for free. which is fine, but what's in it for them, then? are they going to start closing down unpopular or unmonetizable sites? there's a bit of a speech issue there, if they do - if they decide that you're only allowed a platform if you can generate an audience.

i have all of the files in a safe space and intend to put them up for sale at bandcamp in the form of isos and dvds, eventually. maybe they'll end up at vimeo or somewhere else, in the long run. it would be very frustrating to have to update all of the links, though.

the purpose of the vlog was to act as a marketing portal to the bandcamp site, not to make money on it's own. i didn't want ads on my music, but i wondered if i might be missing out on the possibility of a viral video; it never happened, and it was probably never very likely that it ever would. but, what i was hoping was that i could string an audience along with a vlog for long enough to sell them a couple of mp3s, and it didn't work out in the end, so i abandoned it.

given that it didn't work out as hoped, i probably should have removed the ads from the site quite some time ago, and am, at this point, sort of glad that youtube has done it for me. it sort of removes the issue for me - i don't have to wonder about whether i should compromise myself by allowing myself to be monetized, because i can't be monetized anyways. that's a weight lifted off of my shoulders, in the end.

if you'd like to support me, please either go to the bandcamp site and buy some tunes or send me something directly at death.to.koalas@gmail.com. small scale artists like myself cannot make money from advertising, even if we want to - and, generally, we don't want to.

so, i've been sitting here for a few hours, trying to figure out if i'm awake or not.

the smokey/dry air smell is better. but, if the smoker has retreated, it's going to take a day or two to clear out, minimum.

i'm hoping i get some turnover with the cooler air overnight, but it relies on the outside air being breathable, too.

for now, i think i'm alert enough to get back to what i was doing.

hey, i'd rather have trump act out of political expediency than biden not act at all.

would biden have extended the moratorium? maybe, maybe not. i wouldn't recommend voting for him, hoping he does.

that's a hellluva stark reversal, alright. wow.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/09/08/reversal-trump-ban-oil-drilling-off-coasts-florida-georgia-south-carolina/

the politico article suggests his hands are tied and it's just a pr stunt:
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/08/trump-oil-drilling-florida-410042

i'll take it, either way.

but, we're at a kind of a crossroads with this, and the poll i just posted indicates some reason to be concerned, in a different way.

given that masks are not helping to reduce the spread of the virus, how is the state going to react? are they going to ease or enforce restrictions?

getting our heads around this may help us all better understand what is actually in the process of happening.

Of Canada’s major cities, Ottawa had the highest percentage of seroprevalence at 1.29 per cent, followed by Toronto with 1.07 per cent and Vancouver with 0.60 per cent.

again: these numbers continue to be very weird, and broadly inconsistent with themselves.

ottawa had one of the lowest case counts in the country at the time.

i don't know what the right analysis is, but i'm leaning towards biases in the sampling. if this method of testing blood donors is being chosen because it's supposed to be a random sample, that doesn't seem to really be the case.

https://www.cp24.com/news/more-than-1-per-cent-of-torontonians-have-covid-19-antibodies-canadian-blood-services-study-1.5096825

no, stop for a second.

when you ask somebody like fauci about the efficacy of certain drugs, of which there is good evidence of the efficacy of, he'll tell you there are no randomized, controlled studies, despite the fact that that kind of study is completely inappropriate, in context.

but, when you ask him about the efficacy of a mask, of which most evidence i've seen suggests is useless, he jumps all over it, without bothering to cite controlled studies, despite them being the appropriate standard to use, in context.

and, then, when we see real world data unfold in front of us, we just insist on doubling down on a policy that obviously isn't working.

it's just about perfectly dysfunctional.

if you want to change the constitution and run trudeau, you'll have to get him to resign from his side hustle, though.

"but, what about your grandparents?"

i'm a maskless rebel; i don't have grandparents, i descended, fully formed, from the sky.

if i was interacting with vulnerable people, i'd take precautions. but, i'm not.

so, you old folks can keep your distance - i'd rather you did under normal circumstances, anyways.

i'm personally more concerned about what the evidence says than what about people's opinions are, in determining whether i should wear a mask or not.

i'll repeat myself, to make my position clear...

1) i don't doubt that proper mask use by trained professionals may marginally reduce the spread of the virus, but the data doesn't seem to uphold the idea that cloth masks worn by random people (that grab at them, put them in their pockets, reuse them without washing them, etc) are helping reduce the spread in any way at all. in fact, as they act like magnets for dirt and dust, they could potentially be making the issue worse.
2) i do not want to protect myself from contracting this virus, at this time. as i am young and relatively healthy, i would rather catch the virus and defeat it than try to hide from it. i understand the risk (which is very low.) and am assuming it, under the assumption that my body will be better positioned to fight a potentially more dangerous mutant strain at a more advanced age if it has seen it when i am young.

i hope i've clarified that a little.

so, when we see rising mask use correlated with increasing case numbers, what does that tell you about how effective they are at reducing spread?

but, you want my polling analysis.

the answer is that you can't poll questions like this, because they come attached with coercion. it's equivalent to doing political polling in a country like iran; you can call people, and you can ask them questions, but they're just going to tell you what you want to hear.

of course i support the ayatollah. but, umm, how did you get my number? and do you know where i live?

it's against the law to not wear a mask in public in most places in canada right now. one would expect polling around the issue to reflect that reality, as people are going to be naturally fearful of admitting they're breaking the law, or siding with an illegal position. because we don't know what's next...

there's also a response bias; i'm one of the few people that has the audacity to be vocal about this, and i know i'm representing more people than is apparent, but if somebody managed to reach me on my cell phone (that i don't have) and started asking me questions about whether i'm wearing a mask or not, i wouldn't just instantly hang up, but would instantly change cell phone providers. that's a scary scenario.

so,

1) the people most likely to answer these kinds of polls are the people that support the policy.
2) those people are going to tell you exactly what you want to hear.

what i see walking around is general compliance, and a lot of kvetching about it. and, i'm increasingly being interpreted as a bad-ass, in a kind of rock star sort of way for not wearing one. that is, i don't feel i'm getting any push back - i feel people are maybe even kind of attracted by it. i'm a sexy, maskless rebel that plays by my own rules, and they wish they were too.

or, that's the impression.

i didn't call them up on their phones and ask them about it.

so, are these numbers right or wrong? it's not that easy. what i'm going to say is that you can't do this kind of polling accurately, and you shouldn't be surprised when the polling just reflects the status quo.

conversely, if you did this kind of polling right now and got a strong level of pushback, it would indicate a lot of anger at the state. that's not what we're seeing; people are going along to get along, whatever their feelings are about it, and ultimately repeating back what they're told.

we'll see how long that lasts for.

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/support-face-mask-policy-high-canadians-poll

if the democrats really want to win in a landslide, what they should do is run justin trudeau.

(who, afaik, was born in ottawa. so, impossible. yet, look up the polling numbers - he blows everybody else away.)

the country wants a young, dynamic liberal, and the party establishment just refuses to give it one.

i was going to make some calls about the orchidectomy and other things late tonight, but i'm going to wait until early in the morning, and kind of get right on it.

what about the edibles?

well, they're still sitting there, proving i can let them sit. but, i also don't know exactly what they're going to do me.

i'm still a few days short of a full month, and i wanted to give it a little longer (i had penciled in oct 1), but they're in a tupperware container and i sort of need to eat them before they start to disintegrate.

i need to be clear-headed and alert, first. i don't want to take them when i'm agitated, or drowsy. so, we'll see how i feel. but it may be sooner than later.

am i just making up this second-hand smoke thing?

i could concede, on some level, that i might be imagining it if it was only the smell. maybe it's pollution from outside, or even burning coffee. i do drink a lot of coffee...

but, if it was any of those things, running the shower wouldn't create yellow condensation on white walls, which is what is happening.

so, it's not just that i can smell the smoke; it's that i can see the nicotine leaching out of the walls when i steam them, and that really eliminates any ambiguity as to what is happening.

i have never smoked inside of the unit, and the closest i've come to smoking near the unit is about 100 feet down the street.

i bummed a few smokes when i was out last monday, so i can't claim cold turkey since i re-quit. but, i've had something like five smokes in the last month, all very far away from the building.

this is the generous version:

i think this is more realistic:

if the democrats are going to swing anywhere in the south this cycle, it's going to be arizona, and it's going to be because it's becoming california-east and not because its being overrun by latinos.

what he has to hope is that that are enough white moderates in the state to flip it. it's a long shot.

i don't think he has a serious chance anywhere else in the sun belt.

john kerry claims that biden would never lavish praise on a brutal dictator.

hrmmn, i seem to recall this:

"Jill and I were saddened to learn of the passing of King Abdullah. We extend our sympathies to his family in their moment of loss," the statement added. "King Abdullah's death is a great loss for his country. It is hard to distinguish him from Saudi Arabia itself. Over many decades, he played an outsized role in building his country."

"I always appreciated [King Abdullah's] frankness, his sense of history, his pride in his efforts to move his country forward, and his steadfast belief in the U.S.-Saudi relationship," it added.

https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/saudi-arabia-succession/vice-president-joe-biden-visit-saudi-arabia-after-king-abdullahs-n291921

that sure sounds like lavishing praise on a dictator, to me.

or, how about this time, when he denied that mubarak was a dictator:
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/140923-biden-mubarak-not-a-dictator-protests-not-like-eastern-europe

i'm sure i could find plenty of examples if i looked for them.

so, what johnny boy really meant to say is that biden wouldn't engage in silly things like entente with our enemies - he knows who the bad guys are, and is going to go out there with his fists swinging, ready to get 'em.

so, what directions are key swing demographics likely to move in this election?

i'm going to create a collection of partial orderings. if obama > clinton, that means obama did better with that demographic than clinton. an equal means they should be about the same.

blacks, north & south:
obama > clinton > biden. so, expect biden to continue, and perhaps even accelerate, the bleed of blacks out of the party. they probably won't vote republican, they'll probably stay home, thereby skewing the numbers to make it look like they shifted right.

latinos, north & south:
obama > clinton > biden. likewise, biden should accelerate the movement of latinos out of the party that started with clinton (with obama, really; why does everybody ignore the deporter-in-chief thing?). some of them might swing republican, on social issues. sadly.

northern white liberals:
(obama = biden) > clinton. biden appears to be likely to regain much of the ground with northern white liberals that clinton lost. this doesn't appear to be rational, but it's happening, nonetheless. and, he needs to be careful he doesn't fuck it up.

southern white conservatives:
(obama = biden) < clinton. biden appears likely to lose the increase in support amongst southern white voters that clinton generated and that made states like texas a little closer than they had been in some time. biden wouldn't be expected to outperform clinton in this region, given her history there. clinton should have won missouri.

white moderates, north & south:
(obama = biden) > clinton. biden, however, appears likely to regain obama's stronger support amongst white moderates.

why is my analysis so drastically different?

because i'm looking at the actual data, not projecting my feelings about race on to it, as appears to be common in "progressive" circles that want the democrats to be the "black party", and overthrow republican white supremacy, or some silly thing such as that. as facile as that narrative is on it's face, the numbers just don't exist to support it...

clinton probably would have been more likely to win in the south than in the north, and i may be the person that suggested that, but it would have been on the back of white conservatives, who would have repelled young liberals. that makes that strategy very hard for the democrats - if you're trying to win the south by running on the right, like clinton & biden have been, you have to throw away the young voters that were supposed to be the reason you're targeting the region in the first place. and, then you're outrepublicaning the republicans, which is exactly what's happening.

if they were to run a liberal in the south, they'd have to rely entirely on young people, who vote in lower numbers - a strategy we saw bernie fail at (but that may work better in like 20 years, if the often more market-oriented asians don't walk in and blow the whole thing up). but, if they just ran a damned liberal, they'd sweep the north, and wouldn't need to worry about winning in the south.

i hope i'm clarifying this a little.

but, my main point is this: please, people....call a statistician. don't wing it. polls are tricky.