that's obviously a syrian government outpost. the building looks at least 100 years old - it was clearly not recently erected by isis fighters, but was taken over by them. so, this is merely evidence that the united states is, in fact, targeting syrian military targets.

updating inrijected (inri022) & inrimixed (inri023)

i've also converted two tracks on this record (3,4) from mono to stereo.

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



as well as tracks 1 and 2 here.

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



that's all of them.

updating inrisampled (inri003)

today is a listening day and i heard something i didn't like.

these songs were created in mono, and i didn't see any reason to convert them to stereo; i actually thought the mono sound added a bit of a charm to it. they played through both channels in cool edit, on youtube and on bandcamp, but i just got the annoying left-ear thing through the downloaded flac, so i converted them to stereo for the upload.

it won't sound any different through the streaming. maybe there's a slight loss of character in moving from the original to the mono, but i think the ability to play it on modern equipment is more important.

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

to spin inside dull aberrations (final album mix)

written in the summer of 2001. remembered over july, 2014. completed august-september, 2014.

publishing to spin inside dull aberrations (inri048)

that completes inri029.

i want to see how much of the main track of inri030 that i can salvage for the j-squared part, but i believe the vocals are inseparable from the bass, permanently placing the track in rabit. i may have a trick or two.

the next project is that choir.

i don't expect a track to cost me as much time as this did for quit a ways, looking forward. the pace of uploads is going to increase quite a bit.

--

this track represents somewhat of a refocus, but it never found itself to fruition in the way it was meant to.

over the summer of 2001, a friend of a friend decided he wanted to start a band and asked me to play bass. now, we didn't really have a lot in common besides both being musicians. i was spiralling out into obscure independent music, and he was into all the mainstream rock bands. 2001 was the point where grunge was losing it's last bit of mainstream potential, and giving way to nu metal and various watered down, corporatized offshoots of hardcore. so, i was sitting around listening to tortoise and writing jazz compositions and he was sitting around listening to limp bizkit and writing mtv/radio rock. how could this legitimately work?

there was a small amount of overlap, centred mostly around tool. it so happened to be that tool had just released a new record, we were both listening to it and neither of us really had anybody else to talk to about it. so, something formed out of that.

now, when you're an isolated twenty year old that's never been lucky enough to meet another musician you can start a band with, you take what you can get. it seemed implausible that it was going anywhere, but wasn't that the case for every other band that ever went anywhere when they first started off? i don't think either of us thought we were natural creative partners, but we had a set of common goals and if we could put aside our differences...

see, the thing is i knew that the only way anything was going to happen is if i sat down and recorded a bunch of stuff. but, i also knew that this is a guy that defines himself in terms of his oversized ego and that the whole purpose of it from his perspective was to give himself a way to explore it. that's not the worst trait to have if you want to start a band, either. my overwhelmingly shy introversion hasn't exactly got me filling stadiums, has it? nor is it ever going to, and i realized it even at that stage. so, a natural role would be for me to play the producer (along with the bass guitar) while he throws some stuff at me. if that meant i'd be doing 90% of the actual recording, that would be ok, but i realized i had to let him provide the actual song structures or he'd storm off and pout about it.

so, i waited for him to provide some material. and waited. eventually it became clear that he didn't actually have any serious songs. we did a few demos, but he could barely play what he was trying to demo and the tracks were not of a gigging quality level.

in the mean time, he'd recruited a guitarist. he kept saying he was talking to a drummer (no drummer ever appeared), and he also recruited another friend of a friend as a singer. so, we had what seemed like a full band, if you include the imaginary drummer. what i saw was an opportunity. if he wasn't going to write some songs, i guess i'd have to...

the other guitarist almost immediately dropped out, and the whole project really fell apart rather quickly when the guy that initiated the whole thing stopped showing up to practice. it was several weeks in a row that only the singer and i showed up. i had a few songs i had written, so we started working on those instead and that became rabit is wolf. predictably, there was much pouting.

that leaves this particular song in an isolated limbo. when it was reworked for rabit is wolf (jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-day-i-saw-you-cry ), it took on the epic and experimental nature i was exploring at the time and lost the crux of itself as a stadium rock song. i feel something valuable was lost in this process, if for no other reason that this is so dramatically different than anything else i was doing at the time.

thankfully, i still have the original drum files, and i remember how to play the guitar part, so it's simply a process of recreating it. the raw mix sounds exactly as the track did in 2001. the complete mix takes it to it's final conclusion.

written in the summer of 2001. remembered over july, 2014. completed august-september, 2014. as always, please use headphones.

credits

j - drum programming, orchestral sequencing, guitars, effects, synths, electric bass guitar, digital wave editing, sampling, loops, equalization, vocals (5), production

the rendered electronic orchestra includes tuba, saxophone, flute, clarinet, orchestra hit, piano, violin, viola, cello, contrabass and various full string sections.

sean - vocals (track 6)
jon - guitar (track 6)

released september 16, 2001

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/to-spin-inside-dull-aberrations

to spin inside dull aberrations (reprise)

the second half, split off, to make the first more attractive to certain people, but still allow for full listening pleasure.

created over a few days near the end of september, 2014.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/reprise-2

so, what's the problem with feminism, then? why is it so unpopular?

i think it's partly a branding issue that cuts to something in the core of the word. it's an "ism". all the "isms" are bad, because all the "isms" are bad. so, what is the way this ism is bad? well, it's femin-ism, so it therefore must unfairly promote "femin" at the expense of it's opposite, which is....hey, wait a minute! i'm all for equality, but what's with this "ism" against it? and who supports that ism? we should stop them before it spreads...

as asinine as this deconstruction is, it's comedy is in it's rough accuracy.

maybe, it's actually not such a bad point. i mean, you don't speak of "black-ism" when you want to speak of racial equality, and for good reason - that would scare some people. maybe the valid point is that the language is less than ideal; maybe re-branding feminism as gender equality would be a good move in continuing progress on the underlying ideals. it's what feminism actually argues for, anyway.

i think it's partly a cultural issue, but this speaks of something broader in the continuing divide between urban and rural cultures in north america. i think it's important to have a healthy level of respect for those cultural differences, up to the point of reaching out to people limited by restrictions put in place by cultural requirements. i'm trying to avoid making that point, actually - it's cursory. the point is there's a need to minimize the fear that comes with great change and foster more organic points of development through cultural sharing. you can't force cultural change on resistant populations - this is well-established. and, there are resistant populations. you have to slowly convince them that the cultural change is worthwhile. carefully. pushing them too hard in the wrong way may produce a reaction against the proposed change. i think this is a factor in the existing resistance.

most people in modern urban environments do want legitimate equality, though. maybe it's time to cede a few trivial points in order to not lose track of the more important ones.

rap news 28

thought provoking, as always...

first things first, let's get the factories automated.

deathtokoalas
they're not articulating themselves well, but there is a strain of environmental politics that argues that reconstructing the hierarchical relationships of ownership to a more local-based command structure is the most promising approach in reducing the harmful effects of industry in general, not just reducing carbon emissions. the logic is that the people that live in the community will have a greater level of interest (and, wait, is this basically a property rights argument? from me? never....) in maintaining the health of the community than some disconnected board hundreds or thousands of miles away. it sure sounds like a more effective idea than carbon trading to me...

ultimately, i guess the important thing to realize is that these people aren't idiots in any reflective sense of their politics, but in the reflective sense of their nationality. this is the face of america today, regardless of where the meeting is on the political spectrum.

ukraine can't seriously fight with the russians. but, if the fighting goes on long enough, that's going to happen. then, you've got russian tanks in kiev and a really serious problem.

it's a late embrace of sanity in what was truly a reckless and outright criminal policy. if ukraine does not stop provoking it's much more powerful neighbour, it will soon cease to exist. what sort of delusion underlies the desire to keep fighting because the russians have invaded? that's a level of self-righteousness that's really hard to grasp. if this holds (and i do not think it will), it merely exposes how insane the idea of using force was in the first place.

was it pointless?

yes.

it was idiotic.

actually, she gets it in ways that a long of younger feminists seem not to. she's drawing attention to the structural concerns regarding the origins of the culture. "when men don't feel the need to control anymore...". meaning when men aren't taught to control anymore. that's the money statement, what you want to hear out of a speech like this.

easier analyzed than corrected, mind you, and it's not clear if the campaign's initiatives are working on that level. but this is a bit refreshing to hear in the sea of confused messaging...

dunno what's up with that edmund burke quote, though, she could have picked somebody else to express the sentiment. not sure i'm approving of that.

see, i'm actually kind of partial to the observers > actors argument. it's an old argument, and not particularly aligned with the culture we live in, but it just makes it more important to argue for it. i'm not going to argue against participating if you really insist, but i have my reasons for preferring to sit back, watch and analyze.

to spin inside dull aberrations (final single mix)

so, part 2 ended up being a bit more minimalist than i was initially thinking, but i think it's the better way to get the idea across. the busier piano part didn't really segue well, it just sounded kind of hokey. maybe it's 'cause i'm sick right now, but this really feels like the right way to end it.

the reprise is quite large and may take a few days, but it's actually very much rooted in a monotonous sort of minimalism so it's not going to be nearly as ridiculous to build up. i spent two months on this. if you take a flip through the page, you'll see it was actually quite a struggle: broken guitars, fighting with headphones, sequencing strings, etc. but it's done...

bandcamp offers high quality downloads (not yet for this track, after the reprise - i don't do single tracks, full album dls only) but compresses a little on playback. try to boost the bass just a tad to compensate.

written in the summer of 2001. remembered over july, 2014. completed august-september, 2014.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/to-spin-inside-dull-aberrations

orcas aren't going to confuse you or a dog for a seal. they're too smart for that.

would you eat a strange animal you've never seen before? no. you might be curious about it, though....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-stGK3P1mo

deathtokoalas
"if guys worried about the things that sexist guys incorrectly perceive that women worry about."

this might apply very loosely to very badly sheltered 12-13 year olds in two or three counties in the bible belt...

these videos do more to perpetuate really, really bad stereotypes than they do to function as some kind of role reversal.

it's just another example of how blatant sexist idiocy routinely masquerades as feminism nowadays.

most young women do not talk to each other as though they're mindless puppets of enforced systemic patriarchy, and the male-projected fantasy that they do is precisely the sexist bullshit that upholds that patriarchy.

i would encourage buzzfeed to hire some female writers and correct this skit to properly reflect the kind of modern, emancipated discussions that women actually have with each other on this topic - not a script written by some balding 50 year-old university prof that thinks he understands women from analyzing freud.

MelancholicRomance
You go girl! :)

Privacy Pl0x
hahaha! well said. xD  I think these videos are over exaggerated on purpose in order to be more entertaining and offensive. anything that's annoying draws attention somehow, otherwise how could it be annoying?

there's no complex analysis necessary. they're just hungry. your friendly, well-bred pet would attack you, too, if starved.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRCbzL97vPE

orcas are also dolphins, and also very smart.

cetaceans are sketchy. i wouldn't trust one....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_YN5GnW94o

don't listen to the dog fascists. i watched my sister try and "train" a dog like that, and by the end of it the dog completely ignored her - because all she ever did was yell at it. it was a very affectionate, friendly lab that learned quickly and always listened to everybody else. it didn't need discipline, it simply needed positive reinforcement.

your dog is a companion, not a slave. you don't want it to be obedient, you want it to be empathetic. it will respond far better to affection than to discipline...

now, that dog, right there, is actually telling it's cohabitant that it doesn't want to go home at all. it wants to make the creek it's new home. as an independently thinking entity, it has every right to express that desire and should not be punished or disciplined for it. to the contrary, it's the dog's cohabitant that has the responsibility to convince the dog to come home - and leave it if it insists on staying.

a little walk towards the car would have brought the dog running....

well, we don't know what she was doing there, she could have fucked up and corrected it. not proof.

but, of course it was rigged. i'll tell you the mistake they made, though: they made the numbers too obvious. 55% is unbelievably high, given recent polling. when they rigged the quebec vote in canada, they made it a lot closer. most people didn't even suspect it. that's the way you have to do it if you want to get away with it...

i don't expect scots to put on their tartans and warpaint and head down from the highlands for battle. in fact, i'd argue they're much better off in the uk...

...but of course it was rigged. they're all rigged...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbJif7vISQg

deathtokoalas
more cynical politicking from the obama administration....

expect a lot of empty statements and stale rhetoric - with absolutely no meaningful action.

i hope he proves me wrong, though.

in fact, i dare him to.

convince me there's something to this...

yeah. i just took a look at the report and it's focusing on four things.

1) ending "extreme behaviour". i'm going to sidestep the debate: abstinence-based approaches are usually unsuccessful. but there's an analog to "safe(r) sex" that should be pushed hard through public education. it has to be stated though that this is kind of making the error of connecting rape to drinking, which is a false one. and, despite the rhetoric, it's dangerously close to the right-wing perspective. kids are going to get drunk, but, before they do, they should know things they need to do to be safe when they're drunk.

2) bystander prevention. this is messy. the supreme court has continually rejected this kind of thinking. when it's possible, sure, but it's going to be difficult to shift the legal system to assign that kind of responsibility to people - because it's been explicitly rejected. repeatedly. it's also ignoring the facts, which are that rapes usually happen in situations of trust without bystanders. this is really just rhetoric.

3) the psas. these strike me as useless for any purpose other than party messaging.

4) increased funding for crisis centres - which is needed, and probably the most substantial part of this. but it doesn't address the problem or take steps to prevent it.

i don't really know what the white house can do, besides aggressively push the "safe drinking" perspective and try to foster a level of peer pressure coercion against rape. i could argue it's not a total solution, but who would ever think that it is? there's such a complex interplay between defining culture from the top down and erecting it from the bottom up that it's hard to predict how successful it could or might be.

i'm skeptical. but i think it has to be stated that it has to be tried to determine if it's mostly successful and requires minor adjustments (which will become more clear if it is mostly successful), partially successful and require major adjustments or not successful at all. but i'm leaning towards the middle option as a best case.

we'll have to see how the money gets spent when it's in the hands of university administrators. that's probably going to be a defining point. so, if you're in a university, here's your chance to get involved and make sure they don't fuck it up....

the culture of male dominance is something that starts in the home, when boys are very young. often, mothers do as much to foster it as fathers do. every aspect of our culture enforces, upholds and shapes it. you get all this warped thinking about entitlement and ownership in men, and equally warped thinking about submission to dominance in women. that's really at the root of the problem. these are all band-aid solutions rooted in a confused understanding of the issue, and a bit of warped logic regarding what drives people...

i should note the "extreme behaviour" part wasn't in the report, but was an approach suggested by a third party. i initially misread that.

V Whitaker
Exactly!

(deleted response)

deathtokoalas
i don't delete all of the comments that disagree with me, and the ones i do delete are not deleted due to disagreement. i merely expect a respectful level of discourse, and a moderate level of understanding of the topic at hand. note that a lot of the missing comments in threads i'm involved with are actually removed due to account deletion, as when a participant shuts down their account, their responses disappear. of the posts i have deleted, they fit one or more of the following characteristics:

1) a personal insult. even if you provide a long argument, an insult will get you blocked. i have a zero tolerance policy. if you will not conform to that, i am not interested in debating with you.

2) oppressive bullshit. again, i don't care about the rest of the argument. if there's racist, sexist, homophobic bullshit in there, it's gone. i won't tolerate this.

3) stupidity. it happens a lot, actually. i don't suffer idiots well, i'm sorry, and i don't feel obligated to reply to or engage with everybody that decides to reply to one of my comments. i've blocked people that agree with me because they're using bad technique. that just comes down to a personal choice to avoid certain people.

i'm not a politician, i'm a reclusive artist. i hate almost everybody. i have no prerogative towards or interest in building coalitions of people. it's really of no concern to me if you're blocked or not.

but if you don't want me to block you, simply don't insult me or reply to my posts with oppressive bullshit.....and try not to sound like you flunked out of grade school.

you know, i didn't know that the building in odessa was a labour building.

that was not reported. anywhere.

deathtokoalas
it's not a happy reality, but we don't live in the kind of judeo-christian fantasy reality projected by the garden of eden or in disney cartoons. cougars are not our friends. they want to eat us. that puts us in a mortal struggle with them, one that must end with either their demise or ours.

with cougars - and lions and tigers and crocodiles - the only interaction that we can have with them is "kill or be killed". there is no possibility of peaceful co-existence. we will consequently drive them to extinction. this is natural and unavoidable.

Terri
I don't get this "pop culture" thing with the "mortal struggle"? What?  Judeo-Christianity "fantasy"?  From what I have gleaned: that puts us at the top of the food chain where we have "dominion" over everything, which seems to be what you are saying.  Ends with our demise or theirs? What? No possibility of peaceful co-existence?  Natural and unavoidable? Uuuuuh: No.  Of course nature does right itself -- always -- and it seems to me there is in fact, a possibility: humans have a frontal lobe and should be using it to coexist with nature.

deathtokoalas
no. the struggle does not put as at the top of any chain, it puts us in competition with other creatures aspiring to be at the top of the food chain. systems have predators that compete with each other for dominance, and that competition ends when one creature drives the other to extinction. this is the history of evolution - dominant species eliminate less dominant species.

we can maintain this fantasy that we ought to be holding on to reserves to protect things that eat us for a small amount of time, but it's ultimately impossible to be anything more than an illusion. that's the dominion you think of - this idea that we are their protectors. but, we are not their protectors. we are their competitors.

eventually the reality asserts itself: humans and species that eat humans cannot co-exist. we must eliminate them, and we will.

there's no use in being slave to a system of morals about it. it's evolution.

(deleted response)

deathtokoalas
well, i stated that it's not a happy reality. i don't enjoy the idea of eliminating species. but large cats, specifically, interpret us as prey - forcing us to kill them or become their next meal. excluding the large cats, the only other species that treats us specifically as prey would be crocodiles.

cougars are shy animals, and are not as threatening to us as tigers or lions. but you have to get a grip on the amount of people that tigers and lions consume in an average year. there are large areas of india and bangladesh where humans are actually a primary prey source. it's not because we're invading their habitat, or because we're killing their natural prey - we are their natural prey, and they have evolved to eat us. it's common in some regions of africa for lions to literally walk into a village, knock the door on the hut down, grab the person inside and drag them out. deaths due to lion and tiger predation regularly run into the thousands.

it's easy to come up with other ideas, but they're rooted in a level of naivete. the governments in the areas have tried to create reserves for tigers and lions, but it doesn't have the effect of keeping them away from humans, it just gives them a safe haven in which they can prey on us. there's a real political discussion in some areas of africa right now about how the reserves are causing increases in predation, and this is only going to continue as the protection increases - if it does increase, which i must suggest it cannot.

nor can we speak of drawing these lines in the sand, a la "i love lucy" and telling the lions to stay on the other side. they will expand. they will colonize. and they will eat us...

humans are going to populate the earth. we're not going to check our population in order to allow the cats to thrive, and as we do so we are going to have no choice but to eliminate them from areas that we are inhabiting - because they will eat us if we do not.

we should not shed tears for the crocodiles, as they will only respond by eating us.

deathtokoalas
ugh. what happened to the separation of church and state?

this is absolutely terrifying.

the first amendment in the united states constitution was intended to build a "wall" between church and state. it's written the way that it is because the concern at the time was that one religion would use the state to oppress another. that is, the intent was to prevent one sect of christianity from forcing itself on another. that might seem a little alien today, but that's because it was relatively successful. the underlying idea was that the state should reflect the values of no single religious institution. as mentioned, what that meant at the time was largely in relation to different sects of christianity, but it's meaning has been correctly interpreted since then to apply equally as well to different religions. if you're writing a constitutional amendment to separate church from state for the purposes of preventing anglicans from oppressing catholics, it follows that you don't want the state to act as a vehicle for christians to oppress jews or atheists, either. there are various morons that have tried to interpret the amendment differently, but they are just that - morons - and should not be listened to. there's absolutely no ambiguity in the historical record if you read the words of the people that wrote the constitution (most of whom were deists or atheists) that the first amendment was meant to separate church and state and honest, educated christians will agree with you on that point. there's no value in entertaining arguments to the contrary, as they are necessarily disingenuous.

now, the reason this is concerning is because it is attaching a religious component to what should be a religiously neutral institution. i'm not commenting on this in a vacuum, either. the state has been carefully nurturing religious sentiment in the military since at least the second bush administration, for the purposes of creating an us v them mentality.

the end result is a lot of self-righteous people with guns, who think they're acting out god's will of manifest destiny in "american exceptionalism". it's dark age, byzantine nonsense.

toantanya
I'm sure this was done on their own time and not forced. 

deathtokoalas
the military is fostering it. "forced" is not the right word to use. "coerced" is more like it.

Newb55
what are you afraid of? Marines are atheist, agnostic, etc.....if they did not want to participate, believe me they wouldn't.

deathtokoalas
religion is a very powerful tool of control that states have historically used for horrific military purposes.

(deleted reply)

deathtokoalas
again, i don't see a use in this discussion. people want to talk about jefferson's writings as though they were just some isolated, irrelevant musings. well, he's the guy that wrote the damned thing. if you want to know what he meant, you need to look at what he said. i know that religious people want to look at things in strict, literal interpretations and when you're dealing with ancient texts that come down to us with little if any commentary there may be some justification for that - i mean, what else are you going to do besides discard it as archaic? but, we have a wealth of literature from the founders, and it's not ambiguous on the topic.

if you want to get into it, you should look into the writings of some british preachers like richard price, who argued for the separation on the grounds that it would keep the church pure from statist corruption. they weren't as far removed from the reformation at the time, and understood the papal lesson of integrating the state too closely with the religion. they would have also been working on roughly lockean principles in their understanding of power as a corrupting force. all that stuff about the separation of powers is kind of meaningless if you're going to fuse the church and the executive, or the church and the military, right afterwards.

there's just absolutely no meaningful argument for this, and i'm not interested in giving space to demagogues that want to push it. so, you'd might as well just drop it.

(deleted reply)

deathtokoalas
i'm more worried about them destroying everybody else. these are people that want to see the apocalypse, you have to continually remember.

"yay! it's the end of world! i'll be judged and separated from the wicked and spend eternity with god! yay!"

there's one thing i'll agree with them on: it's really hard to get them out of public life. i'm not particularly threatened by somebody hanging out in a church and talking to an imaginary friend, but that's not really what religion is.

Edward 
dumb bitch. I remember when we had one of those in Bootcamp and we all participated just to get the fuck away from the Drill Instructors and im an atheist that gives no shit about god. So stop spreading your stupid bs about the government trying to fuck all of us.

deathtokoalas
no, but this is what i'm talking about - it's not a spontaneous display of religious fervour (from people that kill for a living), but something that's very organized with specific brainwashing purposes. they didn't send you there to get away from the drill sergeant, they sent you there to steal your mind.

Michael
Fear not, Jesus loves you too!

deathtokoalas
yeah, well, if jesus loves me, maybe he can do something about his followers for me, 'cause they have a habit of freaking me the fuck out.

Terry
Zen Training at Fort Benning, Buddhist Chaplain Part:2 here you go. Enjoy your freedom. -Merica'

deathtokoalas
yeah. that's meant to eliminate empathy. equally terrifying.

(deleted reply)

yeah. so, as i've stated repeatedly, the first amendment was built on lockean principles (as articulated by jefferson) with the purpose of separating the institutions from each other. somehow, you idiots seem to think that the purpose of the american revolution was to create a monolithic british state. no. that's what was being avoided. the singular, driving purpose of the american constitution is the separation of powers into executive, judicial and legislative branches. in addition to this separation is the separation of the military, the church, banks, etc. that is the foundation your country is built upon.

you can deny that if you want, but if you want to live in a country where the military is interconnected with the religion, your best bet is israel - and second best bet is saudi arabia. in the united states, it's not constitutional for the military to conduct prayer services. what you're seeing in this video should not be happening and will hopefully be stopped shortly. hopefully, somebody gets the information and launches the proper court battles.

thread closed. replies to new threads will be blocked.

(deleted reply)

again - as i've stated repeatedly - the issue here is not voluntary exercise of religion or accommodation of services but hierarchical enforcement of engaging in religion as a mandated experience.

this is a good start to learn about some of the recent issues surrounding the military forcing religious services on it's officers.

http://www.pewforum.org/2008/07/03/accommodating-faith-in-the-military/

another thing worth reading: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:5dyrGlQ-uoQJ:www.truth-out.org/article/military-evangelism-deeper-wider-than-first-thought+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca

you know, it really seems clear that our religious narratives are largely confused stories of contacts with extra-terrestrial beings. and, when you see something like this, it makes it easier to understand how we may have become confused.

deathtokoalas
b12 is in fact really the only thing that you need to seriously worry about...

...other than that she looks twice her age. 25? i thought she was an expressive, girlishly immature 45 year-old hippie. she sounds like 25. she doesn't look like 25...

the lack of animal fat and abundance of indigestible cellulose has got her skin sagging. going vegan is healthy for your internal organs, but it will physically age you at twice or thrice the rate. she's going to be full of wrinkles and look like an old lady by the time she's thirty-five.

there's some research indicating that vegans have some difficulty with absorption, which isn't going to come out in these results. all the stuff is in the blood. can it all get out of the blood? there's a lot of suggestions that some of it can't - particularly the iron. that's not quite anemia, but it's something like it. it's thought that it may have some effect on calcium and vitamin absorption as well.

the flip side is that a high fat diet is demonstrably shown to be exceedingly unhealthy. no meat at all is incomparably better than large amounts of meat. but there's a bit of a caveat to this, in terms of bulk consumption.

i've spent a lot of time as a pseudo-vegetarian (i've never considered giving up cheese or eggs or fish) for broader health reasons related to keeping the stuff away from me in it's raw form. i won't handle raw meat of any type under any circumstance. the path it takes from the farm through the factory and the store to my kitchen is not a path that i would argue creates something that is safe to handle without taking biohazard precautions. bacteria. viruses. i'm not touching the stuff. but, i'll eat the odd burger or chicken breast at a restaurant, and pick up a bit of salami or sliced chicken from time to time. what that means is that my meat consumption occurs, but infrequently. despite having other issues with unhealthy substances, i've always been tested as being in perfect health...

the reality is that what you eat is less important than how much of it that you eat. your body breaks all the things you eat down the same way - it doesn't really care what it was before you ate it. it then stores what it doesn't need. if you sit around and eat enough tomatoes that your body is storing it as fat, you will develop heart problems. the thing is that tomatoes are much less dense than cow when it comes to this, so you're much more likely to "eat too much" if you have a lot of cow in your diet. in the end, though, it's simply a per gram issue, worked into the form of stored fat = energy consumed - energy burnt. the more "sophisticated" arguments are generally without much real scientific basis, and built on industry propaganda - getting your head around the healthy diet is really as simple as adjusting your calorie intake to your calorie expenditure, and the best way to do that is to let your stomach guide you. where veganism can come off as more healthy is in the lightness of the foods. if you eat really dense foods, you need to eat a lot less; if you eat really light foods, you can more or less eat all day without it catching up to you. so, that makes vegans seem to have less issues with their heart and liver, but it's not the proper conclusion to make - moderate meat consumption relative to energy expenditure (enough that minimal amounts are being stored) is equally as healthy, and the theoretical idea of gorging on vegetables to the point of massive cholesterol storage is no better than eating too many burgers.

moleman was probably a vegan.

---

FullyRawKristina
For those who are asking, my triglycerides are OK. They show high but that's because eating any carbs (especially fruits after you have gone some hours without eating) makes triglycerides go up. Given my perfect cholesterol levels it is nothing to worry about. Any food that had carbs will mobilize fat. Vegans often will test high in TG but have far less risk of heart disease.

deathtokoalas
yeah. cholesterol = stored energy. it doesn't matter where the energy came from. the idea that eating animals increases your cholesterol is completely wrong. it was based on the idea that the cholesterol enters directly from your stomach, which is not a scientific idea - the cholesterol is broken down through your liver and stored the same way that plant sugars are.

if you have high tricglycerides, it doesn't mean you're not eating enough animals. it means you're eating too many plants. it's not a reason to change the contents of your diet, but it is perhaps a reason to reduce the amount being consumed.

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deathtokoalas
that's incorrect. triglycerides are made inside your liver and broken down in the process of digestion. insofar as they contribute to clogged arteries, it's to do with the way they are reconstructed by your body. this is a consequence of consuming more energy than is being burned, not a consequence of eating any specific thing.

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deathtokoalas
there's no scientific distinction between "good" and "bad" fats.

the solution is not to change diet, and is certainly not to increase nuts, but to change the factors relating to excess storage. excess fat means you're consuming more than your metabolism requires to function. there's two solutions to this: reduce the amount of energy being consumed, or increase the amount of energy being burned (ie exercise more).

i would suspect that christina, like most foodies, tends to eat when she's not hungry. that's probably the real crux of the issue.

but perhaps she could also spend a bit more time walking. i don't know her habits...

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deathtokoalas
see, it's a funny sort of thing. the american literature takes an obese population as a starting assumption. it just discards the possibility of reducing total energy intake - and there may be some big agriculture money underlying this, who knows.

but the presumed context in all that stuff about different types of fat is that you're dealing with people that are eating way more than they need to to begin with. so, if you're going to have all kinds of fat floating around in the blood anyways you're better off with the stuff that's cleaning the bloodstream out.

arguing that you should eat more nuts to reduce the triglycerides is like arguing that you should open the windows if you're going to smoke. there's a certain logic to it, but it's pretty warped, and it will produce it's own problems. the solution to high fat is never to eat more of something and always to eat less of something.

it's mostly the carbs, yes. you eat less carbs, you do a bit more exercise, you cut the fats down...

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deathtokoalas
the idea that eating nuts will "reduce your hunger for carbs" is utter nonsense, and i wouldn't take metaphysical advice from somebody that can't spell physiospatial. i wouldn't take metaphysical advice from anybody at all, except maybe artistotle...

and i want to be clear about this: nor will increasing your hdl lower your triglyceride counts. if you have high triglyceride, it might suggest you also have low hdl, but the reverse causal relationship does not hold. triglycerides are not removed with hdl.

replacing the carb source with a protein source may reduce the total energy consumption, but it's not the actual solution to the actual problem. the actual problem is that too much energy is being consumed for this individual's lifestyle, and the actual solution is to decrease consumption.

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deathtokoalas
ugh. fucking hippies...

she had a blood test done that told her her energy intake is higher than her lifestyle requires. therefore, she needs to consume less or expend more. it seems like i'm oversimplifying, but i'm not - the misconceptions in populist literature tend to overcomplicate it, and get away with it by taking advantage of people's ignorance.

i'll state it one more time:

stored fat = consumed energy - expended energy

therefore, excess stored fat ====> consumed energy >> expended energy.

we need to have consumed > expended. what we want is to minimize stored fat, which means minimizing (consumed - expended).

this can be done by decreasing consumed, increasing expended or both. there's nothing else to add.

(deleted)

deathtokoalas
he seems to be a quack that can't pass peer review.

listen, i'm not interested in continuing this.

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deathtokoalas
the triglycerides in the blood are a much smaller risk factor. what she's going to be more concerned about is what happens when her metabolism shifts and all the triglycerides in her blood get parked in her thighs.

triglycerides cannot be absorbed through the stomach or the intestine without being broken down first. in canada, that was taught in grade 11 biology class.

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deathtokoalas
i want to clarify, because it's clear you're confused and/or not very well learned on the topic, and i feel my statements may be further confusing you.

so, you eat some fatty foods. your body will break the fat down so it can absorb it, then put it back together again in a slightly modified form and send it through your blood, where it will either be metabolized or stored. but the fat doesn't exist in your blood in the form of a "triglyceride", it exists in the form of a molecule that carries the triglyceride. generally, your body prefers not to burn fat but to store it..

now, you eat some carbs. your body will break the carbs down into sugar and store them in your liver. at some point, your body will shoot off some hormones that will trigger your liver into releasing the sugar in the form of triglycerides. this is the primary source of the triglycerides in your bloodstream, because your body converts the triglycerides you get from fat into storage material before it enters your bloodstream, with the intent of putting it away for later.

now, depending on your diet, your body might not put the fat away for later, but burn it right away. but a metabolism that relies on fat for energy is going to show low triglyceride levels in the bloodstream. a very thin person like myself (who, again, is an omnivore) is likely to use fat for fuel rather than store it. this is the health ideal, but is not what she's seeing in her results.

having excess triglycerides like she does basically means her liver isn't able to store the amount of energy she's consuming in the form of sugar and is dumping it all into the bloodstream. that's a vast oversimplification, but it's basically what's happening...

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Al Pal
The point she's trying to make is that it ISN'T working for her because her HDL and trigs are crap.

deathtokoalas
the doctor was right about hdl, though. if you have low ldl, you don't need high hdl. in fact, you're better off with low counts of both. the thinking around having high hdl is "if americans are going to be grotesque pigs and eat themselves to obesity, they're better off eating absurd amounts of foods with high hdl to counteract it a little.". but this is a compromise. ideally, you want low counts of both; you're better off reducing your ldl through healthy eating and exercise than band-aiding over it with hdl. so, her low hdl is not a negative, considering she doesn't need it to band-aid her low ldl. that's a sign of being healthy...

Gracie Decker
lol well since she was pre diabetic for her early life and this lifestyle brought her back from that, I'd say its working just fine.

deathtokoalas
the results don't suggest she has reversed her risk of diabetes, which doesn't have anything to do with eating animals - it's about sugar.

Big_Tex
Come to think of it, Kristina already meets at least 2 of the 5 criteria for metabolic syndrome (namely, HDL below 50 for a woman, and trigs above 150). If a person meets 3 of those criteria, they are considered to suffer from metabolic syndrome (roughly speaking, "pre-diabetes".)  Would  be interesting to know if she has it, if she were to get properly tested. The other three criteria are large waist size, high fasting glucose, and high blood pressure. Kristina obviously doesn't have a fat waist -- but there are skinny people who have metabolic syndrome and who get diabetes. We don't know from this video what's her fasting glucose and BP, unless I missed it.

And that's what this William Petersen wannabe should be talking to her about. Instead of rationalizing to her why her shitty numbers are OK, this doctor should be saying Uh-oh, you might have metabolic syndrome and pre-diabetes, come back tomorrow and we'll do a proper fasting blood draw and check your BP, and oh btw leave the camera at home.

Sarah R
If the results she posted were fasting lipid levels, then I don't think a high carb diet would cause a high triglyceride level.  I don't remember any of the vegan doctors (Dr McDougall, Dr Barnard, Dr Fuhrman) mentioning that high carb vegans tend to have high triglyceride levels either.  I have heard that they tend to have low cholesterol levels (LDL, HDL, total).  In fact, I think I remember hearing Dr McDougall say that people with high triglycerides should focus on getting their carbs from starches because eating too much fruit can cause triglycerides to go up.  I don't remember the exact reason why, but I think he said it was because of the fructose or just simple sugars in general.

deathtokoalas
the triglyceride levels in her blood should not be affected by whether she's consuming simple or complex sugars because it's regulated by the hormones releasing sugar from her liver and not by her diet.

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deathtokoalas
it doesn't make a difference relative to the triglyceride content of your blood, which is hormonally regulated. there will be some simple sugar that will enter your bloodstream directly, but it's not in the form of triglycerides.

she's probably diabetic. i've provided the option of eating less or exercising more, and those are the better options, but there is a third option of better sugar regulation with hormone injections.

Sarah R
Hmmm . . . I'm pretty sure that what Cynthia Bai said is correct: - fructose is metabolized by the liver and can affect triglyceride levels - glucose that comes from the digestion of starch is not processed by the liver and does not affect triglyceride levels

deathtokoalas
no. if there's anything approaching something that's almost right, it's completely backwards.

as far as your stomach is concerned, there's two kinds of sugar: monosaccharides (including glucose and fructose, wich would be treated the same) and all the rest. some of the monosaccharides (including straight glucose) will go direct to the bloodstream (and might give you a bit of a boost of energy). the rest is broken down and stored in the liver for future use.

most of the food you eat is not going to be in the form of a monosaccharide - and starch is one of the larger chains you can digest. your stomach will break the starch down to individual glucose molecules and store them in the liver for future retrieval. your stomach (your liver, actually, but i said stomach for a reason) will convert almost all the fructose you get into glucose and store it in precisely the same way.

if there's a difference it could come in terms of how you digest it. if you're eating some candy or sugar-water, then digesting a monosaccharide (fructose or glucose or any other) will bypass the whole thing and directly boost your blood-sugar levels - until your hormones kick in to shut it down. if there's any "bypassing", it's that. this has absolutely nothing to do with triglycerides, as it goes into the blood as actual sugar. carbs are always stored first, and retrieved later.

but it ultimately matters very little if we're talking about fruit or bread because neither are going to be digested as monos - they're both going to go through the liver.

Jackeyla Carty
hi fullyraw do you take probiotic to

deathtokoalas
considering that stomach acids are going to kill the bacteria and digest them, probiotics would not be consistent with a vegan diet.

(deleted)

deathtokoalas
well, i don't know her diet, but i'm not sure why she'd be so adamant about it.....

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deathtokoalas
vegans are the zero animal product under any circumstances type. it's generally rooted in ethical concerns, or very misguided medical advice.

vegetarians come in different flavours and may or may not eat some of the following: nuts, fish, eggs, dairy depending on various perspectives. 

a raw vegan would only eat uncooked fruits and vegetables.

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deathtokoalas
that depends on if you're a pythagorean or not.

(deleted)

deathtokoalas
if you were a pythagorean, you'd know you're a pythagorean.

the pythagoreans were a group of mystical mathematicians in the classical age that were very strict vegetarians under metempsychosis arguments. they had a bit of a quirk that extended their belief of transmigration to beans. so, they refused to eat beans because they could prove that beans had a soul. yes, they had a mathematical proof for this.

they didn't merely believe that beans have souls, they insisted they could prove it. seriously.

so, when somebody would question them on it - guys, this beans having souls thing, i dunno about that... - they would launch into a vigorous number theoretic defense that would end in the rigorous demonstration of the existence of beans' souls, clear enough that all with sound minds can agree.

math is a funny thing. especially if you pick unusual axioms.

but, yeah, that's why beans are listed separately. we have to account for the pythagoreans, too...

Rae Rael ラエ・ラエル
The triglycerides are high because of nuts overeating.

deathtokoalas
that's gotta be that bloodstream idea again, right.

hey, look a spider. i'm going to go follow it over there....

.....now.

they thought i was joking, apparently

deathtokoalas
hey kids.

this game is what you call unpaid job training.

it's just like how the first person shooters are actually unpaid military training, except it's for those of you that are fucking hopeless with a gun in real life.

ThiefGuard
Or maybe its just for entertainment? You ever think of that? Instead of randomly swearing for no reason? Well guess what? Your statement is invalid because you're a retard!

(note that thief guard had a phillip banks icon)

deathtokoalas
yeah, well, everybody knows what the correct come back for uncle phil is. we know why you like the game. you're just drooling over those burgers.

and i'll swear as i see fit. we're not all fucking bourgeois bastards from bel-air, you know.

Bread Man
You seem like a wonderful bucket of sunshine.

deathtokoalas
i get my tan from standing in the english rain...

Yargle Barg
You look like a female Professor Snape.

deathtokoalas
you know, i was in that precise age group that harry potter didn't appeal to, as i was just a little too old to read children's books seriously and not quite old enough to read them ironically. i don't know the characters very well.

i agree with the people that are expressing outrage, but there's a bit of privilege in the argument and it's producing a touch of circular logic. "why not wait to have children?". for most military families, the military is the only option they have to generate enough income to raise a family. it's the only way they can afford a house and the only way they can afford to go to school. now, it's true that, by the time they're done training, they're stripped of compassion and converted into subhuman monsters that cannot be deconditioned properly and ought to not be anywhere near children in the first place, but what drives somebody to stand up and consciously make this decision, to stand in front of their families and state "i aspire to murder in cold blood", is generally the level of desperation that is brought on by the extreme levels of poverty and inequality that exist in america.

america's leaders are bloodthirsty tyrants, the bulk of whom deserve to be strung from lampposts and spit upon like the fascist scum that they are. but, the soldiers are mostly victims of a system that creates them and gives them few other options to live a life of prosperity.

that doesn't mean they should be allowed to reintegrate. that child should have been taken away from these lunatics, placed in protective services and put up for adoption. mom should be banished to an island...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIHnhBDOzjM

to spin inside dull aberrations (overdub mix)

i've included the raw mix to document what the track sounded like in 2001. so, i've included an overdub only mix as a counter to it to document what was added in 2014. paste the two on top of each other to get the cubase output of the track.

created over august and september, 2014 to augment track written late in the summer of 2001.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/overdub-mix

see, i've been through a referendum or two and here's the thing...

they're only not rigged when the state expects the result they want. remember: the uk is a "democracy", not a democracy.

lucien bouchard blamed it on "money and the ethnic vote". he was half right, but it's a good thing for the country i live in that he was more racist than rational. if he had figured out what *actually* happened, there could have been a real mess on the streets of montreal.

salmond has quit, indicating he's no less naive.

and, you have another victory for "democracy" at the expense of democracy. but, in this case it is really truly for the better.

burning at the stake was more of an inquisition thing, and it did happen - mostly jews, though.

deathtokoalas
this is terribly regressive...

and, remarkably, nobody has said it yet. there's some dumbass mras kneejerking to it, without stopping to realize how remarkably anti-feminist this is, to the point that it's arguably worse than the 60s music it's ripping on.

please don't let your daughters listen to this pro-patriarchal shit, and please take the time to talk to them about it if you see them being brainwashed by it.

dear future owner,

it'll be nice if you don't beat me.

subserviently yours, meghan trainor

Alyssa W
Ya.. but, thank god, it takes many types to live in this world. If this is her dream, and if anyone else wants to buy into it, so be it. As long as the rest of us can live more or less completely different lifestyles, and arn't oppressed.. no harm, right?   *shrug. 

deathtokoalas
the funny thing about oppression is that it's mostly a perception.

i don't really care about meghan trainor's personal life decisions, i'm more concerned about the renormalization of female domestication that this furthers without seeming to realize it. the message of the song is that the existing hierarchy is acceptable so long as it produces certain concessions. that's a big step backwards for social progress, and a big victory for the status quo.

it'd be one thing if it was some kid in her basement, it's another when it's media that is mass marketed to children with the explicit purpose of expounding a worldview.

also, to clarify: the play here is on 60s girl groups, like the supremes. this does not sound like music from the 1950s. whatever journalist initially wrote that had no idea what they were talking about....

deathtokoalas
i know almost nothing about gaming, other than that gaming doesn't seem to cause antisocial behaviour (beyond it's addictive qualities). rather, it seems to be that people with pre-existing issues are attracted to certain types of games.

i think the point is that if there's a problem then it's not gaming culture precisely, but more what gaming culture reflects - as mainstream film and music also reflects. you're not going to get to any conclusion at all by looking at gaming in this monolithic way, as though all games are the same or present the same perception of reality. there's not some centralized body overseeing sexism in games. some games may present a strong female protagonist, while others are full of patriarchal bullshit - and they may be released by the same company.

if the games that sell are the awful ones, the process of addressing it isn't demonizing the industry but addressing the cultural issues that produce the market for them in the first place.

fl4shblade
Games do not addict anybody. For a game to be addictive they would have to alter brain chemicals like for example alcohol. Games do not do that. They can create a compulsion to play though.

deathtokoalas
games actually do do that. they create a physical dopamine dependency in the same way that cocaine does.

in terms of addictive power, games are far worse than most drugs.

(although you don't overdose on them)

(deleted reply)

deathtokoalas
i'm merely stating the science. addicts will rationalize their addictions in complex and convoluted ways, but i'm not an addictions counsellor and i frankly don't give a fuck about your problem(s). i'm not going to empathize with your struggle or entertain your delusions, i'm simply going to remove your nonsense and block you.

video games are dangerously addictive. they ruin people's lives. that is a fact. no amount of anecdotes or bitching and moaning is going to change it.

i think he danced around the question of mass mobilization by talking about land ownership, but he didn't really answer it directly. there's some parallels in terms of segregation, but the better comparison in america's history is not to black slavery but to the genocide of it's indigenous population. nor is apartheid really the right comparison or description. it's genocide...

the direct answer is that the american economy relied on black labour, so civil disobedience produced a large amount of leverage in terms of it's ability to shut down the economy. israel does not have the same economic relationship with it's palestinian population. israel wants to be jewish from the bottom up, at all levels of their social hierarchy, and just be done with the palestinian "problem" altogether. so, israel would gleefully jump at the opportunity to replace striking arab israelis with ethnic jews.

i think the best thing to learn from looking at the two systems is how incomparable they are, and the analysis ought to be rooted in not applying methods that made sense in america but do not make sense in the middle east.

in fact, america has been trying very hard recently to create the kind of apartheid state that activists pretend exists by proposing the construction of palestinian factories to produce goods for the israeli market. the logic is it will cut down on unemployment, get the economy running and reduce poverty. it's a bad answer, but it's a bad situation. the israelis have consistently rejected these proposals. they don't want the palestinians to be economically subservient to them, they simply want them to cease to exist.

deathtokoalas
there's far more evidence for bigfoot than there is for jesus.

phil27hardie 
Hay-seuss

deathtokoalas
it's probably actually isis; you have to keep in mind there was no "j" in the alphabet at the time.

Stephanie R
theres more evidence for just about everything than god, not jesus. Jesus was a real person! Just nothing special about him :P

deathtokoalas
there's no real convincing evidence of the historicity of jesus. none of the historians of the time said anything about him. that's not to say there's evidence he didn't exist, but considering his existence is so fundamental to the religion he's the central aspect of, it's reasonable to demand convincing proof that he actually existed and was crucified - and there isn't anything.

i was at one point fooled into thinking there were tax records, but this doesn't hold up, either.

Stephanie R
What I was saying is there is proof there was a man named jesus back in the day. nothing more than that. haha

deathtokoalas
the thing is that there isn't even actually that much.

it's become fashionable in certain academic circles to try and prove jesus didn't exist, and was inventing by the roman hierarchy. it strikes me as an impossible to prove claim. however, the balance of evidence seems to suggest that the "jesus myth" is entirely syncretic. the story about visiting the underworld for three days and rising again is an old pagan motive. other figures were said to walk on the water. etc. once you deconstruct all the stories into their mythological origins, there becomes little reason to think that this "jesus" character has any more historical validity than socrates, odysseus or frodo.

Kestra
you don't need physical proof of jesus, he proves himself to you spiritually.

deathtokoalas
no, i need physical proof. sorry.

Stephanie R
I recommend you reading the bible, then you'll truly know how awful jesus/god really is... although he isn't real. He's about as real as a unicorn.

nightwingplaysmc
How on earth do we get proof of Jesus when he was born 2000 years ago

deathtokoalas
well, we're pretty sure augustus existed.

what is a proof? a proof is a proof, and you know it's a proof, because then it's been proven.

it's a tough question. but i'm not suggesting there's proof he didn't exist. that's the really hard thing to try and argue. you can come up with various arguments, but they all require a leap of faith at some point.

what i'm getting across is more that the proper way to approach something with such a dearth of evidence is skepticism.

with jesus, you've literally got nothing at all. with bigfoot, there are arguably some stool samples. there's native american folklore - which is unlikely to come from nothing at all. with jesus, it's true that the stories also must have a basis, but the fact that they can be deconstructed to non-christian sources indicates there's little reason to think the human was actually a real being. there's this idea that jesus was initially conceived of as this celestial being and was only given human form afterwards, as the stories got confused over the years. taking a similar line of thinking with bigfoot would suggest that you're - at least - dealing with an extinct species.

one of the more convincing arguments i've seen is that the legend has parallels in asia. could it be that the legend is so old as to have pre-migration roots in north asia? far from a proven hypothesis, but an interesting one.

i don't think the idea of a late non-human hominid is really that crazy. the evidence is admittedly pretty sketchy, but it's far more convincing than the total deficit of evidence surrounding the historicity of jesus.

Shia Islam is the righteous path
He was real. And God is real too. Bigfoot is a myth.

deathtokoalas
well, ok, if you say so.

Shia Islam is the righteous path
I do say so. It's a fact.  And it's nice that you were convinced fast, I thought you would resist a bit with an ignorant debate. Good girl :)

deathtokoalas
well, i don't really have much to debate with. i'm up for it, but i'm not really into starting it, and you've gotta give me more than that if you want me to react.

HylianTimelord
Why does this video have a comment section riddled with Religious flame wars? It's just astronomy, no blasphemy or bible bashing..,

deathtokoalas
it's probably because he's implying that the earth is more than 5000 years old.

the correct scientific answer is not atheism but agnosticism. we may conclude that the likelihood of a god existing is low, but the moment we make any declarations we're leaving science behind. we don't know, we can never know and there's no use in pretending otherwise.

what science can do is demonstrate that certain claims in certain texts are incorrect and in the process demonstrate that the texts are fallible. but this isn't testing the question of whether a god exists, it's merely testing the validity of scientific statements that appear in religious texts. in all fairness, the bible isn't really much worse than the works of aristotle - they're just wrong in different ways.

if you're arguing about claims, you're carrying on a meaningful discourse that can have a resolution. if you're arguing about the existence or non-existence of god, you're engaging in meaningless rhetoric that has no possible resolution.

you know, you could have shaved in front of her so she'd understand and save her the trouble of thinking her father has been replaced by an imposter. and, if you think she'll quickly get over it or forget about, you're wrong. i still have memories of the day my dad shaved, and i've never really been fully convinced he wasn't replaced.

i must confess: i may be the source of all of the hatred of 12 year-olds in the world, and especially on the internet.

you may have noticed that i use a turn of phrase semi-frequently. "what are you some kind of ____ or something?". it's mel brooks comedy, lifted from get smart. i've been using it as long as i can remember. i always use it ironically, but the nature of the irony shifts. so, if i say something very anarchist that i know most people would think is outlandish, i'll parody the reaction: "what is she, some kind of anarchist or something?". if i see somebody being naive in their politeness, it's "what are you, some kind of canadian, or something?". &etc.

i had a 12 year-old sister once, and i really mercilessly ridiculed her for being 12. "what are you, like 12 or something?". see, the humour is that she actually really was 12, so she had no way to defend herself against the accusation other than to collapse into fits of laughter. but, see, she found it so funny that she went off and accused everybody else of being 12....

that was 1996.

so, i may be responsible for this. if it's true, i must publicly apologize. now that i'm a little older, i understand that 12 year-olds have every right to be as frustratingly idiotic as anybody twice or even thrice their age. it's not fair to pick on them, specifically.

as silly as this is, i actually think it brings up a good point. in a world where national boundaries are falling and nation-states are giving way to regional associations, leave it to scotland to demand independence.

the thing is i can't figure out what they want out of this, besides some vapid emotional attachment to some long dead cultural identity. because the scots need to protect their catholic faith. or their language?

the historic context of the anglo-scot fighting is generally over-simplified, to the point that people don't really get it. scotland was generally used as a conduit for papal interests. scottish independence was never a real option; they had the ability to chose between being vassals of the english or vassals of the pope. the pope was constantly seeking to punish the english. the catholic forces attacked repeatedly from the north. but all we ever hear about is how the scots have been colonized by the dastardly english, severely warping the entire discourse. papal propaganda is very widespread and seems to really capitalize on a certain level of historical ignorance.

i really don't think this is at all different. the french are prying scotland away, yet again. this really isn't a referendum on scottish independence (ffs, it's 2014), it's a referendum on whether scotland should integrate directly with the british or european economic and financial systems. to leave britain is to enter europe in a way that the british elite will never agree to.

Stark Clark
Scotland isn't a catholic nation, the largest religion is the Church of Scotland which is Protestant.

deathtokoalas
scotland has historically been a part of the catholic alliance, which was usually dominated by a french emperor that was a puppet of the papacy.

ach. i was being facetious...

Stark Clark
The Scottish reformation was in 1560. The English reformation started in 1534, but was repealed in 1553 by queen Mary I, which caused a rockier road to reformation including the Rising of the Northern in 1569, which yes I realise was to put a Scottish catholic on the throne, but it was then her son who finally started to try finish reformation under the Stuarts in 1603 which led to the War of the Three Kingdoms and the English Civil War.

deathtokoalas
the franco-scottish alliance was the scottish alliance that preceded the anglo-scottish alliance, and took on pro-catholic and anti-english traits at various points during it's history, most prominently during the tudor period.

Stark Clark
The Franco-Scottish alliance ended in 1560 with the reformation during the Tudor period. Then the Stuarts inherited the English throne and finally but brutally and bloodily caused reformation in full in England.

deathtokoalas
right. that's the basis underlying the facetious nature of my comment.

i mean, what are you, an american or something? you seem to have no concept of irony or sarcasm.

REZOWNO
when you generalize countries to catholic or protestant you really are just using tribal logic at that point.

Stark Clark
That was not my intention and it feels like you are twisting my words, my only point was that the Church of Scotland is the dominant religion in Scotland. However a slim majority of Scots are actually atheist/agnostic/irreligious so if anything Scotland would be irreligious.

James Red
you can real off all your book knowledge about Scotland all you want but I who actually am Scottish and have lived here my entire life know that we are not a Catholic nation and that we do want independance to finally free us from the corrupt democracy that is Westminster! We make more money than the whole of the UK. We should be able to make our own decisions without requesting if its okay to English men way way down south.

deathtokoalas
do you really think it's the english that are stealing your money, rather than the bankers and shareholders not just in scotland but throughout the world? do you not think you might gain a thing or two in return for what you send out?

but, more to the point, how does taking the british out of the equation eliminate the corruption? why don't you realize the corruption is in the institution and will merely shift?

and has it crossed your mind that you may be better off working with the british to fight off the bankers and corporate managers than splitting yourselves in two, thereby making it easier to continue to beat you down?

if that's your answer, you're being divided and conquered.

but the scots are quite good at being conquered, aren't they?

Jordan Kay
I agree independence dosnt mean shit this day and age the global elite run it all.

wexfordam
Well all I know is the language was dieing out and they had to borrow or use irish phrasing to fill in gaps not 100% if that's a stupid rumour that people spread

deathtokoalas
that sounds like a false rumour. scots gaelic is a dialect of irish, and it is in irreversible decline, but it is not a lost or obscure language the way that, say, crimean gothic is. there's no deficit of source material and there are still several thousand extant speakers.....

....but they all live very far from the urban areas and the idea that the language is going to return to scotland as a spoken language is bluntly downright laughable. it's no longer spoken because it's lost it's utility. when a language loses it's utility, it becomes useless and ought to be forgotten. there's a place for museums and whatnot, but this idea of saving languages is just being conservative for the sake of being conservative. there's no benefit to anybody in it....

deathtokoalas
fuck being cool. i'd rather be a dork.

and i'd rather hang out with the dorks, too.

there's nothing worse than hanging out with cool people, who demand you conform to all these childish social codes that you thought everybody forgot about in the tenth grade. being forced to conform to all these absurd conventions is like being sentenced to a short jail sentence, or going to church or something. it's really not enjoyable.

the reality is that the "cool people" are never going to grow up and dorks need to accept that and stop pretending they will. that's this guy's problem. no, she's not going to grow out of it. deal with it.

i'm for all the dorks banding together to ostracize the "cool" people out of existence. so, don't talk to cool people. don't date them. don't have sex with them. don't hire them. eventually, they'll go away.

that guy looks like he might be fun to hang out with.

on the other hand, i would go out of my way to avoid somebody who thinks like that woman does.

i'd much rather have seen him tell her to fuck off when she suggests they hang out.

"you think i want to hang out with a stuck up, full-of-themself, hierarchical piece of shit like you? go fuck yourself. call me when you're over yourself."

although, if it was me (in a past life), i wouldn't have gotten that far because i wouldn't have even stopped to talk to her. the closest i would have gotten to communication with a stuck-up piece of shit like that would have been a really nasty dirty look.

a girl like that will you drop you with the next fashion trend. you're nothing to her but an accessory to be taken in and out of her wardrobe. if indie boys were hot last season, and jocks are the new rage, you're gone as fast as the name brand on her purse changes.

it's the increasing process of commodifying everything around us, reducing every aspect of our lives to a capitalist relation with a market mechanism. it's going to define your relationships for your entire life. you should get an understanding of it.

P Vong
Do you really look like that in your picture...

deathtokoalas
i look exactly like that, in my picture.

Alanna Lancaster
poor you.

deathtokoalas
i'm trying to empower myself; your pity is very misplaced. i don't need your cool kid approval to justify my nerdiness.

i'm sorry, but all the viral videos are trash right now. i'm fed up with taylor swift and nicki minaj and jimmy fallon (i fucking despise jimmy fallon) and pewdiepie and ellen. stop sharing this crap. stop watching it. i mean, get your fucking tv off my youtube to start with, i don't want to see it. i don't want to even know it exists.

go forth and watch better youtube videos. give me something to troll! what you're watching is just shit, i can't work with this garbage.

it's kind of comical watching these. part of the reason the reporters are so easily intimidated by her is that they're just totally clueless.

she knows she doesn't have any more information on israel's spying to give them. they know she doesn't, either. yet, they try every stupid trick there is - like a freshman trying to get the TA's phone number.

again: this seems to be working right there in that room. but, it's very easy to deconstruct from a distance from the video.

so weird how sleeping patterns respond so quickly to the weather.

excluding a few nights where i was sick or mildly drunk, i didn't sleep much more than 4 hours a night all summer. that's normal for me. and it wasn't a hot summer. but as soon as the cold hits, i'm sleeping 10+ hours again.

there are two kinds of "two kinds of..." arguments. there's the kind that correctly interprets the situation as binary (and is usually trivial), and there's the kind that misinterprets a complex situation as something binary and subsequently completely ignores a myriad of subtle and synthesized positions.

or....

there are two kinds of "two kinds of..." arguments. there are the ones that are trivial, and the ones that are wrong.

wow. that usb card was $3.00 from a reseller in hong kong who isn't paying forty-three layers of white bourgeois parasites to distribute it to myself up in canada - with free shipping. no wonder the businesses are going under.

and they should go under. that's progress. fuck the capitalist distribution system, buy direct from asia...

i mean, what's more efficient:

a) the bourgeois computer store down the street randomly buys stock in an attempt to guess what people might want and is constantly under and over stocked as a result of not being clairvoyent, producing a much higher carbon footprint than is necessary. you, the customer, have to pay his mortgage for this "service".

b) i buy what i want when i want it at the same price that the bourgeois computer store does, don't have to pay his mortgage and reduce waste by only shipping over what's requested.

it'd be nice if we didn't have to buy everything from asia, but one thing at a time...

it's not like this is news, but the price differential has really become staggering and it's gotten to the point where it's hard to see how physical retailers can compete in any way other than the impulse factor of getting it right now.

i've said this before: this economy clinton set up where we create all these jobs selling things that are made elsewhere isn't sustainable. first the production jobs got sent out on purpose. next, the sales jobs are going to disappear as technology completely abolishes the need for humans to sit in stores and sell things.

as a socialist, it sounds like good news. but that's a lot of unemployed people, too, and it's going to require the exact opposite of the systemic adjustments that have been unfolding since clinton....

so, the grocery store is getting propertarian about it's shopping carts. it's kind of hard to blame them, because people in the neighbourhood aren't being good anarchists.

i was thinking about it on the way home, and it's actually a great topic to use in an introductory discourse. there might be this misperception that it's unruly hooligan anarchists stealing the shopping carts. the actual reality is that it's the anarchists that bring them back, because they understand them as socially owned property. but, the fact that people take them in the first place indicates a level of intuition towards the idea of social ownership.

and isn't it obvious that people ought to be able to take the carts home? i'm just not quite sure why it isn't so obvious that they should bring them back. laziness only gets you so far, here. i mean, i've walked by houses with four or five on their yard, indicating they're not even bringing them back when they get more food.

i might suggest it lies in the perception of property. that intuition towards social ownership may be overpowered by the enforced hierarchical guilt that keeps propertarianism in place. that is, they may be "stealing" the carts because they figure they ought to be able to use them, but then they can't rationalize it, and figure once they've stolen it it becomes theirs. then they just "steal" more. there could even be fear of consequence regarding being caught "stealing" them when they bring them back. but i'm just making wild guesses, and i'd really like to get a better understanding of this.

me? i'm a good anarchist, so i always return the public property as soon as i'm done using it, so other people can use it. that's the basis of a system of social ownership.

there's been a few times where i've been halfway home, realized my neck was sore, pulled a cart off somebody's lawn and then brought it back to their lawn when i was done. that's taking temporary control of a public good and returning it how i found it.

there's also been a few times where somebody has asked me for the cart on the way back to the store and i've given it to them - although i make sure they promise to bring it back to the store. it wasn't even for groceries a few times. one woman had a broken stroller and used it to get her kid home. another guy had a bag of soil. that's the way this ought to work.

the thing is that the level of social responsibility to make it work doesn't seem to be absent. people are taking the carts home, indicating they get it. but what's suppressing the responsibility to bring them back?

the answer to this isn't locking carts down or whatever other silly approach the store might come up with, it's talking to people and trying to understand why they're not being good anarchists.

rigour is great and all, but it took me roughly three seconds to realize it's a blue whale.

i haven't heard rhetoric this strong in a long time. he really wants you to hate these guys. i wouldn't take much of what he says seriously, but i'd take the heightened rhetoric seriously. it suggests preparedness for a larger conflict. and we know the target of that larger conflict.