this appears to quite honestly be more about incompetence than tyranny or corruption.
and, all i can really do is wait it out.
i keep saying "they'll figure it out, eventually. right?". but, i've been waiting a long time, now, and they're not figuring it out at all - they're just further demonstrating their own ridiculous incompetence.
yeah, so whatever is going on with the youtube account seems to be connected to some kind of military and/or secret service response - they seem to be trying to force me into a proxy relationship with something downstream, and it's having severe performance consequences.
i'm left to conclude that the complete fucking dipshits really, honestly, seriously think i'm a russian spy. it's baffling, but they won't relent.
so, you read these greenwald articles and whatnot and they have this kind of assumption underlying them that we're all being lied to, that the deep state has gone haywire - they can't really believe this stuff, right?
well, why have i been under cyberattack for years now, then?
some component of these people seems to actually believe this stuff, which introduces a layer that i don't think anybody's even really contemplated. it's one thing for an intelligence apparatus to start breaking laws in a purposeful attempt to spy on it's own people - that is wrong and must be stopped, but it's at least easy to understand. it's another thing altogether when that security apparatus starts attacking civilians, and is unable to determine whether they're a threat or not.
i'm a disabled transgendered person in canada that is currently working on a nutritional flow chart that i'm uploading to my blog. that hardly justifies military attention.
and, yet..
still no response from youtube.
i'm curious. really; your guess is as good as mine. i haven't the slightest idea what this is about.
maybe i should open up a a restaurant and just get these things moving on assembly: breakfast from 8:00-16:00, supper from 16:00-00:00 and eggs from 00:00-8:00.
i'd have to charge about $10.00 for breakfast.
so, i'm starting on the final run through the b8 line for the breakfast meal, and everything is perfect - except the price, which is about $1.50 more than i'd like.
i wanted it done last night; i should get very close to a post by sunrise, at least.
so, i had to sleep this morning, but i got a little done last night.
let's try the long day starting now.
they're afraid of me, for better or worse; there was no "hate speech", i'm just getting shut down as good old fashioned statist suppression.
i'm pretty sure of that, at least.
they go after me quickly and seem to think it's important to keep me quiet. so, watch this space, i guess.
just to be clear: while i haven't cross-posted everything i've posted to youtube here, i've cross-posted everything worth taking noting of. so, if i have to leave that account for dead and set up a new one, virtually everything worth keeping is already archived here.
...which is what makes it so head-scratching. why take down the fake account?
maybe they're even under some political pressure and are ultimately on my side - maybe that's the point. i dunno...
i know i'm not dropping this easily, though.
this is truly my own dressing, isn't it?
call it j's sauce.
yeah. you know you always wanted a good helping of j's sauce, didn't you?
this is the best you'll ever get - i've been sauceless for years.
- cheddar cheese (60 g) <----get a high retinol brand, for yourself
- 25-30 ml of frank's red hot sauce (original) [experiment] [more, even] <---some beta-carotene. taste.
- lime (1, ~37 g) (chopped, with pith) <----inositol, c
+
- 1-2 tbsp of yellow mustard [experiment] <----just doesn't work well. maybe try just a mini tsp.
- some pasta water (1/4 cup?) <----too watery, starchy
- a dash of celery salt <----careful. too much, and it's gross.
- a healthy amount of black pepper [experiment]
- anchovy paste for omega-3
- garlic clove <---fresh garlic has unique nutritional properties and everybody should make time for it, including me.
just an update on the "caesar" dressing:
- cheddar cheese (60 g)
- nutritional yeast (1 heaping tsp)
- sunflower seeds (1 tbsp)
- hemp seeds (1 tbsp)
- pro-biotic yogurt (50 g)
- full fatted soy milk (200 ml)
- 25-30 ml of frank's red hot sauce (original) [experiment] [more, even]
- lime (1, ~37 g) (chopped, with pith)
+
- 1-2 tbsp of yellow mustard [experiment] <----just doesn't work well. maybe try just a mini tsp.
- some pasta water (1/4 cup?) <----too watery, starchy
- a dash of celery salt <----careful. too much, and it's gross.
- a healthy amount of black pepper [experiment]
- anchovy paste for omega-3
- garlic clove
Wednesday, November 11, 2020
yeah, it's very weird.
it won't let me log in to see my comments, either - although it insists they're there. there's only 91 comments associated with this account, and i doubt many of them are very exciting. i don't even know what they are, off of the top of my head.
so, it hasn't removed anything, it's just put a restriction on logging in. and, it's taken down a site that has no videos, no content and no subscribers - leaving several sites with videos, content and subscribers up.
it's confusing, then, to say the least...
i guess that the worst thing that could happen is that i might have to set up a new fake account, but i'll let them work this out, first. i'm really completely at a loss as to what may have been posted there that some idiot whiners may have found that upsetting.
and, to be clear - i don't care. they can go cry by themselves, it's of no concern to me at all. i just wish they'd stop being fascistic about speech - no, you do not have the right to police other people's speech, and no, it does not matter if something i've said has offended you. suck it up....
like, i literally have absolutely no idea what got flagged, why it got flagged or who flagged it - it's a total mystery to me.
and, i can't mount a defence if i don't know what i'm accused of.
maybe it's the transition team, convinced i'm working for the russians, again.
lol.
hail putin! hail putin!
idiots...
everything else still seems to work, for now - they just went after that one placeholder youtube account that i've barely even ever used.
it's probably some annoying, whiny children and it'll probably get reversed, given that i don't know what they flagged or why (and don't think there's anything they could flag that could withhold much of a debate).
youtube should really be assuming innocence, rather than guilt. but, if annoying people insist on being annoying then i guess i need to let them work out their inner problems. i just wish they'd call a psychologist, instead.
i want to finally get this done, tonight.
this channel is also now stranded, as it is connected to the fake address, and i can't log into it:
it won't be long before i set up, elsewhere - it's just a waste of time.
youtube has (bizarrely) just canceled my fake account, which is the way i'm currently logging in to the blogger interface. i have not been posting from that account (or on youtube at all.), recently - i've been posting here pretty much exclusively. they didn't provide a clear explanation, so i sent an appeal and asked for an example. essentially, i don't have the slightest fucking idea what they're even talking about...
but, i'm still able to post from here, oddly enough.
*shrug*.
but, a government shut down here may be imminent due to nonsense about "hate speech". that's just an excuse to shut me up, if it happens...
yeah, and look who the jews get to put on their five.
lucky fuckers.
they get the guy that invented modern physics.
we get a guy who at least succeeded in his own frame of reference. right?
actually, that's the best answer for the replacement for laurier on the five, isn't it?
satan.
he belongs on all money, really. you should really replace the queen with satan wherever she appears.
what?
i mean, you seem to be surprised by my viewpoints, for some reason? huh?
hail satan! hail satan!
i'm glad to see them move forward on a bill that prioritizes individual rights over religious concepts of the sanctity of life, and the more religious people that find themselves upset by it, the more that means they're doing this right.
this bill should upset the religious - the ruling is a direct negation of religious law. the government needs to hold to that, not water it down or seek a compromise.
and, the courts have been very aggressive in asserting the point: this is an individual right and a personal choice and the government needs to get out of the way, while providing access at the same time.
my body, my choice is absolute - there is no caveat for the religious beliefs of family members.
so, i crashed after all, which is sort of ok. i was awake a little after noon and am eating my 1000 calorie breakfast.
long day starts now....let's drag it on until saturday....
it is very difficult to evade any virus in this climate.
protect the weak.
don't let them out.
it's november.
if you wanted to stamp out this virus - however realistic or unrealistic that is - you missed your chance.
you will need to adjust to this for the winter, now.
no....
sunflower seeds just have too much fat to use as an avocado replacement.
i'm stuck with them, it seems. hrmmn.
i seem to be awake, at least for now, which is good because i need a long day after sleeping through the last several.
these avocados are nutritious, but expensive. can i supplement them with sunflower seeds to reduce the price?
i got up and out for a few hours today and it was certainly good for me to help shake off the migraine, even if i'm still not feeling 100% as i'm sitting here typing this. it was the end of this bizarre warm spell, which also peaked today with a 28 degree humidex, if in the midst of some blustery winds. it was quite the juxtaposition to see the sun come down today at 16:30, and have it feel like it's 21:30 in mid-summer.
so, i did some groceries on foot, i got out on a bike to finish them and i took a last walk out for a compost run. it felt great. really. the pollution has even cleared out a little....
i should be in, now, until nearly the end of the month, so i'd better get what i was doing finished soon, and i should so long as i can avoid the migraines for a while.
for the night, i'm not sure i'm going to make it. i think i need another dose of sleep...
Tuesday, November 10, 2020
you know, it's one thing when trump says stupid things, and it's another when pompeo does.
the line of thinking is that if trump decides to occupy the white house in protest then the military will come in and drag him out, but under who's orders? trump is commander in chief, pompeo is the secretary of state and he just fired the defense secretary. pompeo is also deep state...
if some troika of trump, pompeo and the new defense secretary starts ordering troops around, they are in theory supposed to continue to listen to them.
when's the breaking point, here?
and what does it look like?
again: it's one thing if trump is running his mouth off, and it's another one altogether when his support staff is repeating it.
i've been unable to wake up or do anything for about 36 hours, now. my finalized breakfast post should be done by now. i've barely eaten. i had things to do this week that look like they're going to get canceled, too.
and, it's all because somebody decided to smoke something too close to my house.
i don't really see what the ethical problem here is.
i mean, i grasp that the rules are what they are, but this strikes me as fairly trivial. if somebody has information about money laundering or something, then out with it.
but, if you're telling me that hiring your sister as a secretary in and of itself is unethical for some reason then i'm not following you on that.
i would hope the ethics commissioner pens a recommendation that the rule be altered, rather than come down too strictly on somebody for giving her sister - a potentially close advisor - a job in her office.
i'm not saying it isn't sad and stuff, but sad gets you a pity donation, not a gig on the $5.
it really is like turfing jefferson in favour of forrest gump....
laurier is known for the manitoba compromise, an important component of our existing constitutional framework.
terry fox is known for dying before he got to manitoba.
it seems obvious what the right choice is, but that could just as well be an argument for the opposite one, with this backwards government.
canada, where we give it all we got, and fail terribly every time.
if we can't have laurier anymore, can we at least put a guy that finished the race on the bill instead? can we maintain some semblance of pride and accomplishment?
you wonder why we're third rate...
...just look at the people we look up to.
why not just put forrest gump on there?
run, terry....run.....
i really hope that the first thing the next government does is put our greatest leader, laurier, back on it.
terry fox was a failure. and a loser.
he tried really hard though, right?
nobody cares - he failed.
what an embarrassment: canada, land of the losers and failures, where the sick come to die.
it's important to realize that this law doesn't attempt to regulate wardrobe in private life, or even in private business, but rather erects a very strict separation wall between the church and the state, in order to protect children from religion.
and, it is important that you understand that this is what the argument is: that children need to be protected from religion.
it's not about race or about gender or about inclusion or exclusion, it's about a society that wishes to extricate itself from superstition and raise a generation free from it's influence.
and, i stand with that society, for those reasons - religion has no place at school, in any context.
i've talked to doctors, and while they seem to suggest i'm exaggerating (i'm not.), the consensus is that they can't do anything besides give me drugs, and i don't do drugs.
like, i won't even take an aspirin.
the pain seems to have finally subsided fully (length: 22 hours), but i'm still absolutely exhausted and will be for days.
i smelled something last night, and i felt myself triggered by it. i know that second-hand smoke of any type does that to me - it's repeatedly demonstrable. so, i have no reason to make further assumptions as to the cause, when what happened has happened before and came from a known trigger.
well, stay away from me, then.
the feeling's mutual.
i'm not getting vaccinated.
sorry.
it was about 21:00 last night that i stopped to get something to eat and got a whiff of something brutal from upstairs that may have been unusually garlicky food or very stinky feet, but that i suspect was probably somebody smoking mushrooms. whatever it was, breathing it in triggered a brutal migraine that i'm only starting to recover from, right now.
so, i lost the night, and i'm going to lose the day, too.
please, people - eat your shrooms. i don't care what you do with your body (like, at all. go kill yourself. have fun.), but the rest of the neighbourhood doesn't need to inhale your filth.
Sunday, November 8, 2020
i'm making progress on this update post, it's just a total update, so i keep redoing everything.
it will be done when it is, though.
i think everybody is realizing that the republicans are full of shit, but maybe the moment of clarity ought to be in realizing that the democrats always were full of shit, too. remember when clinton ran against nafta?
do you mean like the fema camps, glenn?
maybe what happened was that the fake left looked at how effective the collusion between right-wing media & the republican party was and looked to emulate it - so, you had left-wing news sources basically aping alex jones, and just reflecting it. what's required, here, is a little bit of perspective, and the recognition that both sides really are the same, nowadays.
again - carlson is a scary person, because he's not stupid.
he knows better - he's evil.
and, this interview was a trap.
he's rightfully pissed off, in his usual indignant liberal kind of way.
but, he was being naive to think he was anything but a lure for dissenters, essentially a useful idiot, like assange was. it's anything but surprising that the intelligence agencies got a hold of the intercept, and that was no doubt the point of the thing, from the start.
worse, he doesn't seem to realize that he's playing into a parallel narrative.
my analysis is mostly posted here if you go back a few years, but maybe i should summarize.
- trump was not working against the deep state, but was a puppet of it. he was essentially sent to defeat clinton, who was seen as the real threat to state power.
- it may never be entirely clear why the deep state felt such a need to stop clinton like this. i've wondered, in the past, if it may have even triggered a contingency plan, due to fears of her being for sale. like, trump may have been the front for a temporary military takeover; it's never been clear if he's a hapless dunce being used or a talented actor playing a role. and, i've wondered if bernie might be in on it, too.
- bernie's line about the goldman sachs speech is essentially what i'm getting at, but the details are blurry and hard to put together. was the deep state concerned that clinton represented the interests of a specific foreign actor, or were they concerned that she was for sale to any actor? i don't know. what seems to be apparent - and this is a deduction drawn from watching media and reading between the lines, i have no secret stash of documents or anything - is that they felt she was a serious national security threat and stepped in to stop her.
- so, yes - the 2016 election was rigged in favour of trump.....by the cia.
- then, in order to distract from it, they blamed it on the russians. classic projection. and, if you want to understand how they did it, just take everything rachel maddow said and replace "russia" with "cia".
- and, then, the final step of the operation was that they tore trump down - whether he was in on it or not. but, this was a clean-up operation: the real contingency was about removing clinton's political ambitions and ending her career. to do that, they built trump up and then tore him down.
- it seemed like they intended to replace trump with pence all along, but then they didn't in the end. is it because biden stepped in, instead?
- the media in 2016 was actually extremely pro-trump. kellyanne conway was constantly on tv. while the anchors may have made certain arguments, everything was framed in a way that put trump in a positive light, albeit in a sneaky one. take the "grab them by the pussy" line, for example - this seemed designed to maximize trump's appeal to men by advertising a kind of machismo, and it probably worked. but, that flipped in 2020. it was really the media analysis that had me predict a trump win in 2016 and a biden win in 2020.
so, we're back where we started in 2012 - biden is back in the white house with deep state support, even if it's fleeting. we'll have to see if the contingency plan has run through, and things are back to normal again - or if this is a new normal, and we essentially watched a coup take place in slow motion. that part of this seems to be accurate.
but, trump was either a pawn or an active participant in it, and that's where i break with the right-wing narrative, and where glenn should really be more clear.
but, what glenn got sucked into was probably not that different than the kind of psy-ops underlying these franchised activist movements. we know that the black panthers were deeply infiltrated by the cia because enough time has elapsed to uncover it; we will no doubt learn that the same thing is true of all of these other movements, like occupy or black lives matter. my own experience in occupy had me walking away from it convinced that more than half of the participants were cops, and it was essentially a sting operation to build datasets on dissidents - like right out of 1984.
if glenn has been chewed up and spat out, it's because he's served his purpose and is no longer useful.
but, as stated, i wish him luck and hope he finds some model to take the fuckers on with.
i'd say it's a rather curious decision by the intercept to refuse to publish this, but this kind of party-line journalism has become the norm on the fake left.
greenwald often pisses me off, but i wish him the best of luck in the future. the corporate censorship model needs an axe smashed through it. hopefully, he figures something out and leads the way.
this is an interesting site, and i'll say clearly that i like the idea of organizing content around writers better than i like the idea of organizing content around newspapers. but, i fear that, in the end, it gets taken over by twitter-style right-wing censorship, and i'd consequently seek to avoid it. besides - i actually like this blogging interface.
if you want to send me cash, send it. i could use it; i'm disabled, and my other income is almost nil.
but, i'd rather fight for a gai than start charging people for access to read my thoughts; i think this should be free to read, not put behind a paywall.
our greatest leader, wilfrid laurier, is spinning in his grave.
again: i expect this kind of stupid, right-wing rhetoric from the conservatives. it's enraging to hear it, but it's expected - they're conservatives, they're about war and veterans and guns and bibles and etc.
but, to hear it from the liberals, let alone the ndp, is truly heartbreaking and saddening.
this country has lost it's way, and there's not much left here that's worth saving.
whole foods was right and they should stand their ground in the face of a government interfering where they have no place interfering.
it's really the perfect example of the kind of stupid capitalist practice that needs to be outright abolished.
we needlessly create tonnes of plastic waste to fund social systems for seniors that should just be directed from the public purse because we think it's important to rouse nationalist fervour and militarism on a year by year basis.
20 million of these things a year end up in landfills.
and, that's just in canada.
and, this government just announced a ban on single-use plastics, too.
i guess that grocery bags aren't sufficiently nationalist enough. maybe if they said bombardier on them, eh?
so, if you have to wear the white ones, try to find ones that aren't plastic, too.
i support taxpayer-funded healthcare, not throwing quarters at seniors on the street.
no, stop.
why are veterans - who are just a subgroup of seniors, really. i don't care that they're veterans, specifically - having to resort to raising money by selling plastic flowers?
why don't we have taxpayer-funded social systems that are sufficient to cover their needs?
then, the government attacks people for refusing to throw change at them, as they wrap themselves in the flag and yell nationalist slogans.
it's a sad parade, indeed.
Saturday, November 7, 2020
so, i watched the speech.
a lot of silly yankee nonsense...
but, there were a lot of people on that stage, there.
i hope he doesn't come down with anything.
but, i mean, the first thing he's going to do is hand out a trillion dollars to wall street under the guise of a "stimulus bill".
that's fine - hold your vomit. he's gotta pay his benefactors, first...that's how this works....
listen - don't get me wrong, here. i want substantive, meaningful policy decisions. if we get anything at all out of this, let's hope it's at least a refocus on actual policy, and less focus on meaningless stories and empty narratives.
but, i am not a person that dwells on gestures or symbols and this is not a space that will allow this guy to rest on his laurels. my criticism may present a viewpoint that is very different from the mainstream consensus, and it will be vicious and without remorse, but it will be fair and fact-based.
so, if he wants to go out there and cancel keystone xl to start, great. get to it...
i'm not holding my breath - my expectations are rock bottom, and i won't give him an inch.
arizona is still in play, btw.
trump could very well pick up 15-20K votes in pinal county, and the big democratic counties seem to be just about done.
the recount margin in arizona is very strict, but that could work either way, in the end.
again: i am acknowledging that i overshot the correction. but, that's not a done deal, even if pennsylvania is.
well, we used to let rats run around all over the place, until we realized how dangerous it was.
squirrels have moved in to replace them - but they are potentially every bit as dangerous.
it might not be this virus, but it's a matter of time. they're a ticking time bomb.
i'm worried about squirrels.
i've been saying for years that the squirrels will kill us all...
but, this is likely futile, in the long run. are we going to kill all the animals? this is just going to keep happening, until we run out of reservoirs to eliminate - or we develop immunity, naturally, via the difficult evolutionary process of trial and error....and natural selection.
the map has been tilted this way since the democrats peeled off virginia & colorado. even this election was closer than it needed to be, because the candidate was weaker than he should have been. but, all the democrats need to do is run somebody halfways respectable and they will win for the foreseeable future. if arizona eventually swings, that just cements the map - even if georgia flips back.
trump shouldn't have had a chance in 2016 and only did due to how horrible the democratic candidate was, and he didn't have a chance this year, either.
the republicans need some kind of serious way to smash the map open or they're going to need to get used to losing, and it's not at all clear how they're going to do it.
....and, the margin in pennsylvania is too big.
the outcome in georgia, specifically, won't be known for some time. but, the election is called.
i actually agree with those pointing out that trump has the right to bring his issues to court. it's just that there's no serious chance of overturning these results, in the north.
it's done.
well, hey, you'd have to use a newton's method in a real world analysis, right?
the models went too far one way - i saw that, i called it, i was right. but, then i pulled back too far....
the next step is to pull it back the other way - and that's just how you do real world analysis.
so, i did about all i could do.
but, i'm learning, too - maybe i'll be a little more careful, next time.
so, what's my post-mortem on my analysis?
what i said was that the democrats would win back their states in the north (and they did, all three of them) and that they would be disappointed and lose in the south (and they lost texas, florida and north carolina). that said, i refrained from predicting outcomes in nevada (due to low hispanic turnout, and maybe even a swing in the hispanic vote to the republicans), iowa (it wasn't clear to me if iowa would act more like wisconsin or more like missouri) and north carolina (which is currently a real swing state) under the argument that it didn't matter. while the outcome will not be clear for some time still, and despite a disappointing night overall in the south, the democrats are currently holding to very small leads in both georgia and arizona.
the reason i argued that the polls were wrong in the south was due to over-estimating the swing to the democrats amongst educated voters. so, i made an explicit claim about a modeling error and made a prediction surrounding it.
while i insist my critique is both valid and upheld, i seem to have overshot the correction by the smallest of margins. if biden wins georgia and arizona by .01% each, which is looking to be about right, then all i had to do was overshoot the correction by a point. certainly, the models had biden doing better in both of those states, so he did underperform his predictions - it's a question of by how much, and those small differences might end up flipping both those states.
i'm posting now to move on, because it sort of doesn't matter. as i stated in my projection, the south doesn't matter because they won back the north. but, regardless of the outcome, i am right in pointing out that a polling bias existed - what i did wrong was overestimate the correction, and by what is going to end up being the very slightest amount possible.
should i have penciled in arizona and georgia as grey, then? well, i penciled in arizona as light red, indicating i was convinced that the counter-correction would still make it very close. arizona is being absorbed by california, and i actually agree that the trends are that it's becoming more democrat. but, i actually think the voter breakdown in the future will be liberal, white, wealthy democrats v. desperately poor socially conservative hispanic republicans. because abortion. georgia, i think is more of a fluke - i think biden got a helping hand from a lot of white evangelicals and that's not likely to last. so, the short answer is "no" because the modeling arguments being presented to me were not convincing. i made an explicit argument, and i think my position was grounded.
i'm not willing to concede either state, yet, and won't be until after recounts. but, it largely doesn't matter in terms of the post-mortem - regardless of the eventual winner, my counter-correction was correct, but i over-counter-corrected and it may leave me short by a hair.
and, my projection was more accurate, overall.
i rode most of the way up the main strip in town yesterday and the number of empty storefronts is starting to really pronounce itself. i don't know know how it is elsewhere, but i haven't seen it this bad since i first moved here. it's just blocks of dead space at a time...
we are, in truth, in an existential crisis as a result of this that will likely lead to massive deregulation, marketization and privatization.
so, just in case you weren't paying attention to canada's quixotic struggle against covid-19, our four biggest provinces - quebec, ontario, alberta & bc - are all reporting massive case spikes.
canada has almost ubiquitous mask use and fairly widespread mask laws. many jurisdictions have seen restrictions and lockdowns. the increase in spread is happening despite staunch measures to stop it.
...which is what the science always said was inevitable, short of chinese-style fascist tactics. so, if you want to live in a police state anyways, right? no thanks.
the reasons for the spread in canada seem to be the following:
- religion seems to be the primary non-essential culprit, and the thing that should be restricted the most, if you want to learn from our failings
- schools & workplaces are major vectors
- get togethers like thanksgiving (which aligns with colombus day in canada) are a major source of spread
- there was a very stupid election in bc two weeks ago that seems to have completely blown the situation up
bars, restaurants and night clubs do not seem to be a substantive source of transmission.
while it is clear that we are somewhat behind the united states in the epidemic curve, it is just as clear that nothing we've done has made any substantive difference at all.
the amount of debt we've taken on, however, is a potential serious threat to the longterm viability of our superior government-run social services.
so, stop pointing to canada as a success story - it's just not true, and it never was. it just took longer to get here because we're on the northern fringes of civilization.
rather, the lesson to learn from canada is that quixotic struggles against viruses are foolish.
we are an actual example of extreme mismanagement, and the very purpose of the country is under threat due to it.
in fact, i heard a rumour that they were thinking about lieberman as secretary of state.
it's weird how trump + biden looks like lieberman, isn't it?
i guess the jomentum worked out, after all.
and, that's probably not far from what we're actually going to get.
and, listen - i think warren is too right-wing, aoc is an empty slate and bernie is...bernie is playing footsie with the devil. bernie should retire....
don't smear me by associating me with them - i'm a real communist, not just a phony one.
listen
it's not complicated.
biden isn't clinton. qed.
odd that google won't give me this in it's results.
i'll update the banner soon.
"you have no respect!"
this guy sent his own son to die.
he doesn't deserve any respect.
also, i'd like to see bookies place bets on how long it takes for biden to end up in a home and harris to take over.
six months? a year?
i doubt he lasts a year.
that said, biden is not a smart person, and he no doubt thinks he can declare a war on the common cold and win. so, we're all going to have to deal with that stupidity for who knows how long.
if he decides to push down fascist mask laws, i hope america flat out revolts.
so, i'm not going to push back against the idea that this colour system is incoherent.
but, mask mandates are incoherent, bar closures are incoherent, border closures are incoherent, etc - it's just more of the same.
and, right now, the right thing for the state to do is to pass token rules to pacify the weak (which is this government's base - the elderly and the religious), and let everybody else go about their lives.
at least they're retreating from the "blame the sinners" bullshit. that's really what i'm more concerned about than prolonging the lives of a few geriatrics.
and, let's be clear - the reason they put peel into the red is because the mayor was running his mouth off.
it's disingenuous at this point to continue to pretend that anything the government has done at any level from the start of this has had anything to do with the science. like, they're keeping the border closed. they're mandating masks. they closed bars. none of this has anything to do with science - it's all about identifying populations to blame, attacking opponents, etc.
if you were expecting a scientific response, you were being naive.
but, the science has been clear for some time - this is futile, and we need to give up and move on.
the fire is already out of control.
let it burn.
it's baffling to me that there are still some idiots out there that think this can be contained, or that it would be beneficial to do so.
now, can we get things back to normal, like, now, please?
The white poppy stands for three things. They represent remembrance for all victims of war, a commitment to peace and a challenge to attempts to glamorise or celebrate war.
i will refuse to wear a poppy, and that is the statement i intend to make - i reject the culture of war, and the romanticization of the ritual murder of our children along with it.
these people were not heroes - they were either victims, or they are criminals and should be prosecuted for it.
but, if you must wear one then consider wearing one of the white ones, as it sends a message that is more in line with the original meaning of the day, before it was corrupted by stephen harper.
what they did was decidedly uncanadian and has no place in the politics of this country.
i will again state that i am embarrassed by the behaviour of the house of commons today and hope saner heads prevail in the end.
it's supposed to be one of the major defining differences between canada and the united states.
in america, they pretend that they send their children off to die for democracy and erect them as heroes in disturbing displays of delusion.
in canada, we mourn the unnecessary loss of life and condemn those responsible for it.
we should and must resist the americanization of remembrance day into a celebration of war; it should be anything but.
"[Poppies are] to show respect for people who stood in danger for our freedom and democracy around the world."
that's a heaping pile of jingoist bullshit and mcauley should be ashamed of himself for peddling it. you are a liar, sir. you have no decency,
what the poppies are supposed to represent is the fields of children we sent to die, aimlessly, in a war that served no purpose but the geopolitical whims of the elite - as we vow to never again let them do that to us. it was a war by and for corruption, and by and for nothing else. to this day, historians can't really get their story straight about it, although everybody knows it was about resources, like oil.
it is supposed to be about mourning the loss of people that died needlessly, not about rallying around the flag. worse, this corruption of the meaning of the day is actually fairly recent, in that it is a creation of stephen harper's broadly revisionist worldview.
these people that want to turn this day into a celebration of war are traitors to the proletariat of this country and should be hoisted up on flagpoles like the fascist scum that they are.
mcauley's statements are uncanadian, and i am embarrassed by the behaviour of the house today. shame.
so, i went out today in the unusual warmth and found a store that sells the soy milk i want. bizarrely, i had called that exact store last week and they told me they don't carry it. it's a little out of the way, but it's doable on a monthly basis. there's also some chance that they might sell it at the mall, which is a little closer (and a lot more convenient). i don't mind getting the exercise.
it's not clear how long they'll sell it for...
i crashed when i got back, so i'm up and i really want to focus and finalizing this fruit bowl.
Friday, November 6, 2020
ok, so her name is ronna mcdaniel.
but, that's not what it sounded like.
wait.
so, the chair of the rnc is ronald mcdonald?
why was i not informed?
just a reality check: as a voter, i don't want to "bank my vote".
i want to wait as long as i can before i make a choice.
further, campaigns that try to coerce me into voting too early are likely to come into some serious resistance.
while allowing people to vote early may make the process more efficient for undecided voters, that doesn't mean the schedule needs to change - if you're voting two months early, you weren't in play, anyways.
so, what just happened in the united states? what are the americans saying? is this a shift left? a shift right? a rebuke of trump? what's the message in the medium?
the medium is the message, isn't it?
it's a statement about democracy, more than anything else.
but, the winner here is neither the republican party nor the democratic party but the conservative movement, as a whole - they, and only they, got what they wanted.
1) they kept the senate.
2) they functionally split the house.
3) they got the president they wanted - the more conservative option, of the two.
and, so, you'll hear all kinds of bloviated nonsense from the usual suspects about socialists taking over government. further, the fake left will take this as a fake mandate and just repeat what they say.
but, it's all bullshit.
this is a major, resounding victory for the traditional right and that is what you're going to get for the next two years, at least - and it may, in truth, be surprisingly functional, if in ways that enrage many of the people that just put mr. biden in power.
biden, pelosi and mcconnell may not find themselves disagreeing about much.
you got fooled.
again.
november 11th is no day to be proud.
it is a day to be deeply ashamed.
when you take that moment of silence on nov 11, it should be to remember this country's culpability in one of the greatest war crimes in the history of the world and all of the innocents we murdered in the process of it.
...which means, yes - many of the children we sent to early graves from 1914-1918 could not participate in this country's democracy at all.
ironically.
or enragingly.
neither women nor men who did not own property could vote in canada until 1919.
what we need to remember, regarding the first world war, was that we lived in a society where people could be conscripted by a foreign monarch, rounded up at gunpoint and sent to die for the banks.
don't let them tell you they died for democracy - they did not, that is a lie and the people telling you as much should be called liars to their face.
so, i'll clarify - i will stand with those children who were given weapons and marched to their death, in a crime of such great enormity that we should never alleviate ourselves of our guilt. what we did to our own people in the first world war is on the same level of moral monstrosity as the slave trade or the genocide of indigenous people, and those responsible for this crime should be held in an equal amount of contempt.
i will stand with these innocent victims.
i will not stand with those who volunteered - i will condemn them for perpetuity, and curse the ground they are buried in.
i would, broadly, oppose wearing poppies as an act of militaristic, jingoist garbage.
it is important that we never let the elite kill us the way they did in the first world war ever again, fair enough. but, i stand with those that opposed that war, and not with those that fought in it.
i would support this policy.
keep your politics, beliefs, values and feelings at home and away from work, school and other broad social functions. they don't belong there - as a customer, i don't want to see it or have to interact with it.
i think the vanilla flavour in the soy milk is enough to avoid the need for further sugar. i eat a lot of fruit, but i tend to avoid the refined stuff. i'll try it with (expired) mustard next time....
the surprise in pennsylvania is how long this is taking and how close it is. again - a lot of democratic votes are no doubt being thrown away because the signatures don't match or the stamp is in the wrong place or whatever else, and this is no doubt the reason it's so unexpectedly close.
i still think trump has the upper hand in georgia and arizona, and biden still has to concern himself with avoiding a recount in pennsylvania, which i think is unlikely. so, biden should still be officially worried about pennsylvania.
but, it's about time that it flipped, and that is probably the deciding event, in the end.
the next update took some time to take shape due to the reproportioning, so it's going to need to be a quadruple check as much as anything else. i now have 12 components rather than 11, there's a cost row added, etc. the data is going to be dramatically different, so it's going to be another day or two still, probably. but when it's done, i believe it will be the final update for the breakfast component, except to add further items for further nutrients (like seaweed, potentially).
i'm just starting to readd the vitamins, starting with a.
Thursday, November 5, 2020
by my estimate, biden needs 57% of the remaining less than 13000 non-military votes to get 1 more vote than trump and will need much higher than that to avoid a recount - especially considering that the 8000 military ballots coming in afterwards are far less likely to swing overwhelmingly to biden.
again: georgia is much closer than i expected. but, i still think trump has the edge.
why is it closer than expected? i know the narrative is about black and latino voters, but if you check the data you'll no doubt see that these demographics decreased their support for biden overall, not increased it. that's a longstanding trend. my analysis was that the polling error was a systemic bias that overestimated the effect of educated voters swinging away from trump in the south, and that seems to be broadly correct. i expect it to hold in arizona, in the end, too. so, why was georgia different enough that it almost swung?
when you're talking about small margins like this, you can essentially pick and choose. if trump wins by 800 votes in the end, you could assign that to anything - there may be 800 transgender voters in georgia, for all i know. there may be 800 executives for companies making steroids that compete directly with hydroxychloroquine. there may be 800 people in the georgia chapter of the ivana trump fan club. and, if anybody is going to defeat donald trump, it really ought to be fans of ivana trump.
and, i'm sure there would certainly be 800 white evangelical christian seniors that turned on him as a phony christofascist.
so, we can play this game in multiple different ways, but if we're to ask "what changed the most?", i suspect the right answer in the end will be that biden pulled enough christians to give trump a run, even if he didn't actually win. that doesn't make it a better or worse tactic than trying to win black voters if both tactics fail, in the end. however, it's worth pointing out which tactic involves swinging voters and which doesn't.
but, i'm surprised that it almost worked, if my intuition works out to be correct.
so, if biden pulls ahead by a few hundred votes, don't get too excited. you still have to wait until they're done.
take a deep breath, this update from arizona is going to be painful.
there's something like 2-3x as many votes left in arizona, and the spread is smaller than it is in pennsylvania.
if arizona, pennsylvania and georgia all end up in recounts - an increasingly likely truth - then this is going to drag on for weeks.
and, biden should now officially be worried about pennsylvania - because it looks like it's going to a recount, too.
you're waiting for biden to catch trump in georgia.
but, georgia is going to a recount - the closer they get, the further a decision gets.
sometimes, trump is dishonest.
more often, he's just wrong.
i suspect this is more the latter than the former.
my point is simply that if you want to understand who is going to win the election and make accurate predictions with your models then you need to pull your head out of your ass, recognize the ubiquity of corruption in the system and adjust for that absolutely clear reality in your projections.
otherwise, you're just producing nonsense that has no existence outside of a fantasy reality and are just wasting everybody's time doing it.
it's a part of the game....
and, i apologize if you misinterpreted my tone.
in politics, cheating is a part of the game; i'm not here to preach to you about morality, i'm here to analyze things as they are. if you're too aloof or morally pristine to get your hands dirty, you're going to lose and might as well stay home. a prince needs to manipulate situations to his or her advantage as opportunities arise, not sit around and worry about what's right and what's wrong.
biden outcheated bernie in the first place, as hillary did four years earlier. as an advocate of universal health care, amongst other things, i don't want to "clean up the system"; what i want is a candidate that knows how to win. as a climate activist, i'm not concerned about counting every vote; what i want is a candidate that will ram through systemic change, without bothering to gather opinions.
so, it seems like trump got outmanoeuvred and lost to a more corrupt foe.
sad.
i mean, the difference in wisconsin is twice as wide as the difference in nevada, right now.
percentages can be deceiving.
wait.
12,000 votes is never callable.
wait.
so, these guava seeds are just...
i don't want to waste the nectar in the middle, so what i'm going to do is throw the seeds with the nectar into the freezer and wait until they build up enough that i can't grind them all up.
....and, i would suggest that a serious model should attempt to compensate for corruption.
nonononono.
when i make a forecast, efficiency at cheating is a part of the process - i explicitly, purposefully, soberly weigh how i think the cheating will happen, and what will work itself out in the end.
and, a big part of the reason i gave the south to trump and the north to biden was a perception on how the cheating will work itself out.
so, were the polls wrong? no - the polls weren't wrong. but, not every vote gets counted. so, when the polling suggests that biden is ahead by a certain amount, you have to balance that out with the amount of cheating that's going to happen on the ground - is that enough to act as a buffer for all the democrats that will try to vote by mail and just have their ballots thrown out? well, that's the question i'm asking - that's what my projection is about.
i decided that biden was far ahead enough in the north that the cheating couldn't undo it, but he wasn't in the south, that the republican advantage on the ground (meaning: republican corruption) would be decisive, in the end.
and, right now, it looks like i nailed it - but the margins are very small.
we can ask more specific questions and get more precise answers.
do i believe that joe biden got more votes than any other candidate in history, except donald trump? well, population growth is a thing - those numbers are going to come up. but, flatly - no, i don't believe that at all.
they're saying it's the highest turnout in over a hundred years...
...or maybe they both stuffed a lot of ballot boxes, in places where the authorities can and have and will cook the books.
and, maybe biden cheated more effectively than trump in the end - and trump needs to deal with it.
but, we're not there, yet.
fwiw, do i think that the democrats cheated?
i think it's fairly uncontroversial to point out that they unquestionably both cheated. and, i'm not in the camp that argues it tends to balance out.
you may claim there's no evidence, and while that evidence may be useful in prosecuting a case or getting a judge to agree with you (but might not be, depending on the judge), it doesn't really answer the question. these guys are pros - they're very good at cheating. they do it all of the time. they don't just leave incriminating evidence lying around. so, arguing that you can't find any evidence isn't really much of an argument for anything except the talent of the cheaters.
but, we tend to look the other way, and what trump is really up against here is a precedent - if trump decides he's going to go after the democrats for any cheating that they no doubt did, he's opening the floodgates for the democrats to go after him and his own party for their own no good behaviour. and, it's for that reason that this is unlikely to go much of anywhere beyond the lowest hanging fruit available.
what bush did to gore was just too easy to not do it, but gore dared not escalate. call him up and have a talk to him about that.
likewise, if giuliani sees an easy kill...
i don't see that happening, though - trump's comments should be interpreted politically, rather than legally.
but, are they all a bunch of liars and cheaters and thieves?
yeah. they are.
so, i've put some hot sauce in the pasta bowl, and i'm almost satisfied with it just like that.
what is casear dressing?
wiki provides the following list of ingredients:
olive oil fortified soy milk
lemon juice fresh lime
crushed garlic, salt, Worcestershire sauce frank's red hot sauce
i guess one could sub mayo instead of yogurt, but that would be daft. you'll get far more vitamins from good yogurt. i just wish i had a more fortified choice.
so, here's my caesar recipe:
200 ml of highly fortified soy milk
1 chopped fresh lime (with pith)
60 g of chopped medium cheddar cheese
65-70 ml (2 tbsp) of astro biobest yogurt (amidst pleas to refortify)
+
1-2 tbsp of yellow mustard [experiment]
25-30 ml of frank's red hot sauce (original) [experiment]
some pasta water (1/4 cup?)
a dash of celery salt [experiment]
a healthy amount of black pepper [experiment]
anchovy paste for omega-3
and, here's my total bowl:
- red peppers (200 g)
- carrots (110 g)
- beets (82 g)
- pasta (55 g, dry)
- nutritional yeast (1 heaping tsp)
- sunflower seeds (raw, hulled) (1 tbsp) <---for b5, mostly, but other things too
- 25-30 ml of frank's red hot sauce (original) [experiment]
- some pasta water (1/4 cup?)
- a dash of celery salt [experiment]
- a healthy amount of black pepper [experiment]
- anchovy paste for omega-3
georgia has admittedly ended up closer than i thought. it will be interesting to see what the factor there is.
but, biden needs to get over 70% of the remaining vote, and it still seems like too much.
i still think arizona might flip, though - there's still a lot of votes, there.
and, at some point, biden needs to get worried about pennsylvania, too.
the numbers still look ok for biden, but my gut is telling me we're heading into a crises.
Wednesday, November 4, 2020
....and, yes, i'm going to have to weigh the ice cream.
i'm pleasantly surprised that the tub is exactly 1100 g, because i had previously calculated that 200 ml would weigh 110 g. then, 110*3/4 = 82.5, and that's how much ice cream is going in there.
gah...
i was sloppy in taking the vector out. there were initially four issues: a, b5, b7, b15. i boosted the all bran for the b15 and calculated the a as the new bottleneck. so, i needed enough vector to get 4% of the rdi for retinol - because that would mean i'd also have enough b5 and b7. then, i subbed in the yogurt to replace the a, without adjusting for the b5 or b7. it wasn't that i miscalculated or something, i just overlooked it.
b5 is not listed on the label for the yogurt, but it should be substantive, due to the milk. that should be ok.
the vector, however, was quite highly fortified with biotin, and while i actually can find some yogurt that has some biotin, it doesn't have any a or d or b12 (and, i am making use of that d3 after all, even if it's secondary), thereby eliminating the point. so, where else can i got biotin?
one answer is seaweed, which i was looking at anyways for the epa and dha and may very well bring in.
but, the vector is simply a better source of vitamins at a lower cost, especially if i cut it down to a very small amount. if i go back to 15 g/day, i can get 55 days out of a box of the stuff. that's only $0.15/day, and it's only 60 calories - about the same as a cup of law fat soy milk. it's also still over 23% of the rdi for biotin.
i can get the same amount of retinol from 67 g of yogurt, which would only be 23 calories, but would cost $0.30. i'd get more vitamins i don't need, but i'd lose out on the ones i do. bad idea, after all.
so, replacing the vector with yogurt may perhaps reduce the number of calories, but it's neither cost effective nor particularly vitamin efficient. and, it does matter, after all. i'm needing to pull back on that. so long as i keep it down, the vector is not so bad.
instead, then, could i sub the yogurt to cut into the ice cream for the a? i do want to hold on to some ice cream for the saturated fat, but that seems like the better trade-off, calorie-wise.
for 100 ml of ice cream, there's 8*100/125 = 6.4% of the rdi for retinol - a roughly equivalent amount as for 100 ml of yogurt. 100 ml of ice cream is 1/20th of the tub, which is 6.00/20 = $.30. so, i'm currently spending $.60 on ice cream a day. the same amount of yogurt is $3.00/6.50 = $0.46. so, if i subbed the yogurt in, i'd be spending $0.76 instead of $0.60. if i put in 150/50, it's going to end up .45 + .23 = .68. and, 175/25 is .60*175/200 + .46/4 = $0.64.
calorie wise, 175/25 is 224*175/200 + 35/4 = 204.75; 150/50 is 224*150/200 + 35/2 = 185.5.
in total, the second option would be:
avocado - 240
ice cream - 168 <----decreased to 150 ml
all bran - 125 <----increased to 45 g
banana - 121
soy milk - 96 <----increased to 400 ml
vector - 60
kiwi - 45
flax - 37.4
strawberry - 32 <----decreased to 100 g
guava - 20.4 <----two, not one
yogurt - 17.5 <----- decreased to 50 ml/g
yeast - 11.25
=================
973.55
that leaves space open for seaweed, and i expect it is otherwise the final tweak.
it's not like i've been disagreeing with the narrative. i expected biden to win pennsylvania and am not pushing back on the point. but, the reality is that trump has been ahead for 24 hours, now. solid. it's hard to look you in the eye and say "biden will win, for sure" when the fact of the matter is that trump's been ahead from the start, however tentatively.
but, the margin is actually coming down, now.
that said, if you agree that pennsylvania is likely to flip, how can you be so sure about arizona?
you can't.
unless you're not so sure about pennsylvania, after all.
the fact that this is still dragging is a huge problem, regardless of the projections - it's going to be close, and it wasn't supposed to be. it's when these things get very close that issues arise.
fwiw, it looks like trump will win georgia and north carolina.
i looks like biden has michigan.
arizona, nevada and pennsylvania are not clear, yet - and the election outcome is consequently not yet clear.
so, i would call on mr. biden to immediately resign.
if mr biden has a mandate, it is to vanquish mr trump.
done - mandate complete.
and, the faster he moves on, the better.
so, does biden have a mandate?
well, to do what?
to shovel money into wall street?
to start a war in the middle east?
to start a trade war with china?
before you go arguing that joe biden has a mandate, let's try to understand what that means.
and, if we think it through, we might actually conclude that we might rather that he not have much of a mandate, at all - that we might rather he be a caretaker, and perhaps not even for very long.
the republicans spent the last six months pleading with their base to show up to vote on election day.
the democrats spent the last six months assuring everybody that voting by mail was safe and it didn't matter.
the republicans were right.
and, the #1 thing that a post-mortem needs to do, whether biden wins in the end or not, is go after these idiots that tried to assure everybody that mail-in votes were going to count. were they wrong or corrupt?
so, did i get this right?
i think i got the idea when everybody else didn't, although the northern states are surprisingly close and arizona is still up in the air. there's a good chance i could get everything except arizona right, but i could still get arizona right, too
i didn't "follow my intuition" or "express my gut" - i pointed out a clearly incorrect systemic polling bias in adjusting for education in the south, i predicted that that would be in error and i was shown to be correct.
what's happened in the north seems to be more like what happened in 2016, except that it looks like biden is going to squeak it out, when clinton couldn't. those small margins appear like they're going to flip over.
and, we'll see in the end if greg palast's analysis about democratic mail-in ballots being disqualified at higher percentages was correct or not (it seems on first glance that it was).
you should have voted in person, america - and you should have known to, too. if trump does win in the end because you foolishly trusted your system, you only have yourself to blame for it. such is the folly of faith.
Tuesday, November 3, 2020
arizona will tighten up.
a lot.
i don't think the polling error is specific to the southeast, but i do think it will only hold across the south.
i'll admit i may have gotten ohio wrong, but i'm not conceding yet - but that's the narrative, tonight. trump will hold on in the south, and lose badly in the north.
Tuesday, September 8, 2020
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.
when ms. tam points out that the recommendations around mask use are evolving with the science, it's important that you realize that what she's really saying is "hey, i read the papers just like you do.".
and, what do you want? a crystal ball?
she didn't take covid-501 at med school; she doesn't have a base of knowledge to draw on, and she's not even out there working in the field. she really is just reading the papers and following along, even if she has access to better data than you do.
if you really want an expert opinion, go to a field hospital, or interview somebody that is uploading papers to medrxiv. those are the people doing experimental work on the ground, that are really trying to figure this out and adjusting to things as they see it happen.
ms. tam is just a bureaucrat, and she doesn't have the answers you're expecting her to. nor is she ever going to get them...
the studies on mask use are clear enough: they don't work, except incidentally and as an absolute last line of defense. so, if you want to take every possible precaution because you're just like that then it makes sense to wear one. but, unless your mask use is accompanied by very specific behaviour, it will not substantively reduce your chances of infection - and if that very specific behaviour is adhered to, the extra protection provided by the mask is truly at best marginal.
the suggestion to utilize a filter is long overdue, but it's still hardly going to save you, if you're at risk. the bottom line is that humans need to exchange air particles with the atmosphere in order to undergo cellular respiration or they will overdose on carbon dioxide, and there's not a way to do that that eliminates the risk of viral transmission short of avoiding contact with other people altogether.
all solutions are false.
and, on the eve of a likely trump loss, let's stop for a moment and reflect on why this happened: because the elite could not allow a hillary presidency.
and, it wasn't because of her gender - it was because they knew she was for sale, in a way that even the deep state found threatening.
with all of the phony distractions about russian intrigue from cia talking heads like rachel maddow, we may never really know why they couldn't let her win. who were her benefactors that were so threatening that we had to endure four years of donald trump?
but, it is almost done.
so, meet the old boss. er, i mean. yeah...
beep
beep
beep
beep
c'mon, doug. push! push!
"i hate you all right now!"
beep
beep
beep
beep
ok, you've got three inches on the right, there. easy....easy....
beep
beep
beep
beep
there's no guarantee that he won't just put it right back in, of course.
i've been saying this for years.
on a right-left scale, trudeau is decidedly right of centre, and has been the whole time. we're seeing it come out in the pandemic response, too, where the most left-wing leader in the country is probably, bafflingly, jason kenney - and doug ford seems to be the only one pulling his head out of his ass about it, however slowly (it's a great, big ass, after all, give him space to get it out of there). meanwhile, the most conservative responses are coming from ndp governments.
the dauphin seems to have picked up his concept of liberalism more from bill clinton than from his father, in truth.
there's a reason he got passed over, and if it wasn't clear then, it should be now.
so, the barbarians are back at the gates of vienna. as though they ever left...
these people are delusional, and it's never really been clear how high up this stuff goes. sometimes, it's just a crazy person, and it's obvious. sometimes, you wonder if somebody quite powerful is legitimately trying to turn the clocks back, as though they think france and austria are front lines in a conquest they never completed. never mind the centuries of reversals, napoleon or the wars of independence in eastern europe - that never happened. let alone charles martel, or the reconquista. instead, they have their own manifest destiny to finish the conquest of rome and convert the infidels once and for all. it has no existence except in their warped minds, but they can't see beyond it, either.
they lose every war they start - in syria, in libya, in afghanistan, etc. but, they keep launching them because they have so much cash, and i guess that if they can't defeat syria then they'd might as well pick an easier target, like france. right?
regardless of whether this is organized or random, this is increasingly sustained, and some kind of regional response is increasingly necessitated.
the french once had to invade northern africa to stop the arabs from raiding the coast. one would think that sort of thing ought to be behind us, but...
gee.
i wonder if the unnecessary election had anything to do with it.
the cheese grater thing didn't work like i hoped. maybe, if i get a hand strainer (i don't have one right now).
i could just suck the nectar up out of the seeds, but....can i even freeze it first, then try to pull them out?
so, i tried to let the guava sit and, while it got a little creamier, the seeds didn't soften up much.
i'm going to try one more out one more day to be sure.
but, this one came in at 20 g after deseeding, which is 45 g of vitamin c - more than the 25 i need to fill the hole. and, in fact, even that lowballed 12 g was enough to get over it.
so, i'm going to pencil it in for 15 and get on with it.
so, in looking through the polling for the 2020 election, i'm struck by how much it reflects what the pollsters wish it would look like. there's been quite a bit made about how the polls were wrong in 2016 (that is not my analysis), so what if what they've done has made the polling worse?
what if the appearance of competitive races in texas and arizona and georgia is the result of an overcompensation for a democratic electorate that was always there in the first place?
so, i'm beyond skeptical about the "correction" being made for education levels, and would like to "uncorrect it" by shifting it back. it's wrong-headed - one of the things we saw last time was that educated voters actually leaned republican in kind of shockingly high numbers. further, you shouldn't apply that to georgia or texas or florida even if you should apply it to wisconsin - and that could be at the crux of the overshooting of democratic support, there. educated southerners are still going to lean republican! so, this is a systemic shift of a few points, and tightens the race up immediately.
that being said, biden is doing well with two groups of voters that you wouldn't expect a democrat to do so well with - seniors and (religious) conservatives. they often toy with democrats; they didn't swing back, this time. and, 65+ in 2020 means you might be the first hint of gen x, too - don't forget that. biden is, overall, the more conservative candidate, and by a wide margin; aging gen xers that have been voting democrat most of their lives may not see a reason to get old and become republicans, but that might shift back in four years. old (white) conservatives have reason to vote for him and, if he pulls this off, they will be the reason why he does.
but, when all of these things balance out, i think the democrats will be disappointed in the sun belt, tomorrow. or this week. or this month, as it may be. i'm still not seeing numbers push up over 50 in these states - it's still too close to undo all of the advantages that the republicans have on the ground.
the thing is that i don't think it matters, because he's so clearly far ahead in the north that trump does not have the path he had before. whatever set of circumstances creeped up in 2016 are flipped over, now - union voters in the north are flopping back to biden. and, because of that, no republican has a chance in a fair election - the map is just permanently tilted.
so, what could go wrong, then?
could he lose pennsylvania? i thought that was crazy in 2016, and i called it out as much and suggested that if the tv tries to tell you that donald trump won pennsylvania then you know this is just a lot of bullshit. there was no way. and, then they did.
i'm simply not getting those kinds of signals from the media, this cycle.
so, does that mean the media is just out, then? i mean, they don't need the media to rig it, right? well, i think donald trump needs the media onside - he can't do this by himself, he needs to have people in place that he thinks he's buying off but are really just putting him in place for later. a more talented despot could get around this kind of roadblock, but not trump. and, the clearest signal that trump was going to lose may have been the disappearance of his goebbels, kellyanne conway.
people might forget to vote, though - true. but i suspect somebody will remember to vote for them. yeah...
so, the details are a little unclear, and i'll accept i could be wrong.
but, all evidence is pointing to a biden victory, and if it doesn't happen then the riots that result from it will be happening with serious cause.
....and i'm going to try to separate the seeds out from the middle part with a cheese grater and see what happens, too.
i can't find anything better.
i'm going to use the usda data, but i'm going to use it with a grain of salt for everything except the c and insist i'm not relying on it for anything except the c until i get further clarification.
ok, let's just get back to it, then. i have a big update...
