uploading already completed tracks to inri055

1) http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/dnnng


2) this is a little messy, but such is the charm of acoustic demos. this was recorded live through a tascam four-track into cool edit (running on a PIII), with sean on the right channel and myself on the left channel and then mixed into stereo afterwards. unfortunately, you can hear the hard drive recorder skip at a few points; i ended up working it into the composition, but it wasn't initially intentional.

this was meant to purely be a demo, but i ended up just building the mix on top of it.

written and recorded in early 2002. track released feb 5, 2002.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/9-16-outside-the-magenta-box-acoustic-demo


3) this is the original vocal mix from 2002, and also appears on the rabit is wolf demo.

written and recorded in early 2002. track released february 8, 2002.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/9-46-outside-the-magenta-box-original-full-mix

cigarettes are gone, i'm feeling calm, and i'm ready to make the best of what i've got left to do.

it looks like i've got six months left to live. that might change, but it's how i'm going to be acting for the foreseeable future. so, i need to pick up the pace.

i'm not going to compromise on the product, i'm just going to stop focusing on promotion. it will be a roughly weekly ritual from this point until i figure out how much longer i've really got.

so, they decided to make the forms due on my birthday. aren't they sweet....

if i wait until the very last minute, i should hopefully get another month or two while it's being processed.

i then get a three month grace period from the time a decision is made to figure something out.

i can also appeal. so, i could stretch this out to close to a year.

i'm thinking i should go in to see my worker within a few days to ask if she has any recs for doctors, because it's what it comes down to. all i've had here so far is grief (excluding that one er doctor). i'm actually even considering hitching back to ottawa to go back to the same doctor that signed off on me initially.

kind of cold to hitch, though.

no, really. there's inevitably sleeping outside involved.

i'm obviously crazy. you only need to follow my facebook feed for a few days to get that. but i come off as rather deceptively sane, both on paper and in person. this is why i wanted to get some serious shrink time in. my insanity may not be obvious in a ten minute conversation, which is how these things seem to work, but you can't miss it after you've known me for a few weeks.

like, i was so sane on first impression that the shrink i went to wouldn't even talk to me. if you've been following this for any length of time, you realize how surreal that is.

i suppose i can try another shrink, but....

i think the best diagnosis is just "mad".

"she's a mad hatter" kind of thing.

i'm calmed down, now. my threats aren't idle but i'm relaxed. i wish i didn't buy those cigarettes...

she's in tuesday mornings...

guess i'll have to wait until next week. gives me time to think...

i'm just going to have to level with them.

i needed the doctor to play along, but what got me a huge slice of empathy from ontario works was a letter i wrote them where i just explained the reality of my existence in the most cold, dour way possible.

the truth is nothing has changed. i didn't choose to exist in this society, and i would have decided pretty squarely against it if i had the opportunity to make the choice. but, i'm here, and this is the only way i'm going to exist with any contentment. i can at least state that i've been considerate enough not to breed. signing me off into misery (which i will not accept. i will choose death.) isn't making anything better for anybody.

in the end, i have to convince them to choose compassion over calvinism.

90% of that is going to be determined by who i end up talking to....

clarity (final album mix)

i need to point out that *this* is really going to be the final cynicide/rabit release, that takes the best material out of the period and puts it together into a single record. go ahead and listen to the first two tracks. it's already epic. an elephant in the womb, indeed....

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

publishing clarity (inri054)

the core loops involved in clarity were initially created in the late summer of 2001, with the intent of being the opening sequence in a new inri project (with the long kicked-around working title of 'trinri'). while i had fairly firmly put the inri moniker down around my 19th birthday (late 1999), i was also coming out of a lengthy "serious music" phase and was getting a desire to write in a more structured, synth-pop type direction, as i had for years previously. this urge was happening about the same as i was being coerced into starting a rock band with some high school acquaintances.

around october, i started working on a separate noise project that was meant to splice harsh electronic noise with anarchist politics. this produced two tracks at the time, which are now available as a short single as inri032. at the time, it wasn't clear to me where those ideas would lead.

by november it was clear that the rock band wasn't happening, but it turned out the singer had tastes that correlated reasonably well with what i was thinking about creating for the trinri project. these two projects consequently merged into rabit is wolf, and the material i was kicking around for use in trinri ended up becoming the core of what rabit is wolf became.

as i was recording parts for clarity, i ended up reusing ideas from the noise project. i further reused those ideas in constructing a 2004 noise collage for inclusion on the record that finally came out of the noise project. both noise collages are present in order to comprehensively explore the ideas existing within clarity.

zen was recorded with sean over december, 2001. i have chosen not to complete a version of the wave (inri034) that was also being discussed at the time, but would have fit into this release well, conceptually.

clarity was completed (with vocals) over january, 2002. the nature of rabit (along with the songs i had written for it) took a sharp turn towards folk almost immediately. this collection is consequently quite different than the official rabit demo, which is much more song-oriented. over the years, i've always wanted to have a rabit release that was darker, noisier and more chaotic and am glad to have it in the form of this ep-single, which could be viewed as a secondary demo. put another way, this is the comprehensive representation of the second (electro/noise/industrial) incarnation of rabit is wolf.

however, there are two factors complicating clarity as a solely rabit is wolf production. the first is that sean was never really happy with the result - a shame as i consider his vocal performance and lyrics to be the best of the songs we did together. the second is that i always felt the track was "mine" and should have had an instrumental mix. that is, i've always regretted not saving an instrumental mix.

for these reasons, i've revisited the track as an instrumental and left two snapshots - 11/2001 and 01/2002. this second snapshot (which is to be considered a final mix) will also appear on my upcoming 6th record, dated to the end of 2002.

recorded in late 2001 and early 2002. track 6 was constructed in may, 2004 out of files recorded 1999-2001. tracks 1-4 were reconstructed over october, 2014. final mixes were finished on october 18, 2014. as always, please use headphones.

credits:
j - guitars (electric, acoustic, nylon), mandolin, sequencers, synthesizers, drum & melodic programming, electric air reed organ, digital piano, flute, drum kit, sampling, digital and analog effects processing, digital wave editing, sound design (loops, granular synthesis, noise generators), production

sean - vocals/lyrics (3,5), harmonica (4,5)

released february 1, 2002

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

so, i got my letter of doom today. it's a package of forms to fill out.

considering the experiences i've had with doctors here, i'm expecting to be rejected, so i'm going to leave it to the last minute with the expectation that i'll have to launch an appeal. that means i have roughly six months left to live before i commit suicide. i'm planning something grizzly outside the odsp offices (or outside of a doctor's office) as a political statement. the purpose is to draw attention to the fact that the system has failed me, and hopefully to produce consequences for the people responsible for that.

the flip side of this is that i don't want to waste the last six months of my life fighting disability. so, i'm NOT going to try really hard to find a doctor to fill this out - i'm going to make sure i get as much music recorded as i can in the next six months, then go out in a truly spectacular mess...

if you have any really good suicide ideas, please post them here, maybe i can work them into the action.

see, then i wonder why i keep going back to smoking. what's the use of quitting, when there's no future?

i've been to doctors, they tell me i'm healthy. i guess i'll have to prove them wrong. maybe they'll be less stupid about it after they have to peel a severed arm off their front door.

"you're holding us up with a gun!"

it's reciprocating society's ultimatum of work or starve. it's incredibly aggressive, but we're born with these knives over our heads that give us no option but to sell our labour to survive. if rejecting this means producing a violent outburst, it's a reflection of my lack of options to live in real freedom. the desperate nature of slavery *justifies* this sort of response.

so, yes, i'm turning the gun back on society. and, rather than feel bad about this, i'd encourage others to do the same.

i need to finish inri035. yes, i'm smoking tonight. at least, i am NOW. then i need to eat. then i need to carefully read through the thing and see what i can do.

but i'm not wasting large amounts of time on this, only to be rejected in the end. i'm at peace with ending my existence in the short term, just so long as i can get the work done. i need to pick up the pace a bit...

i've been quiet on the activist front since i came down here. well, i got what i want. and, i'm aware that it's *why* we have assistance set up. if you set up a society that is structurally unequal (and then expect people to fight over the wealth), you're going to end up with disaffected masses that don't want to play the game and will fight back instead. the way to control those masses is to feed and shelter them. i'm willing to play along. but you pull that out from under me, and i'm back to fighting for principles.

it's martyr thinking, granted, but it's calculated for maximum effect. i've constructed my life goals with the intent of completing them within a year or two. once i get there, there's not much else to live for. so, i'm now in a race against time.

if things work out, i get a lot done. if they don't, i can at least go out knowing i got as much done as i could...

i mean, i've got over 24 hours worth of music completed, remastered and reconstructed over the last year and a bit. that's something to be proud of. at the least, i need to have *some* kind of way to present what's left.

"Airstrikes in Syria shifted from the besieged city of Kobani toward the oil facilities that fund Islamic State fighters"

oh, really? and, who is buying that oil?

two points:

(1) cut supply. keep prices high. again.
(2) if the oilfields are in syria, it is syria that loses the infrastructure when they are destroyed - regardless of who or what temporarily controls them.

they're destroying the syrian infrastructure. i don't need a patrick cockburn or robert fisk article to explain that, it's clear as day.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/10/18/isil-kobani-airstrikes/17507239/

cetaceans are sketchy. we're better off getting closer to elephants.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j75KdkV7n2o

what i'm seeing here doesn't strike me as much different than playing fetch with a dog. the dolphin's digging it.

the question of captivity is sort of complicated in the way it intersects with intelligence. humans don't live in our natural environments either, but it doesn't imply we're unhappy. dogs can be happy creatures as pets. drawing that line in the sand is really negating their intelligence level. you want to work a concept of choice in, but it's not easy.

the dolphin seems happy. it's not being aggressive. it's making "happy dolphin" sounds. that pool almost certainly connects to a bigger area. but, again, do you define your happiness in terms of how big your house is?

fuck this.

i want a war against ebola, with weekly presidential drone strikes.

on top of that, the ‘e-bowler’ app inventor has been denied contracts due to the name. how ridiculous is that? it almost sounds like a joke. the scaremongering just never ends...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-hNPztgAnI

typical right-wing logic. first, you cut funding to essential services to the point that they can't perform their basic tasks. then, you blame them for their "incompetency" and accuse them of "wasting tax money" when they tell you they can't afford to do what they should be doing.

should there be a travel ban? sure. but, conservatives (in both parties) need to take responsibility for creating agencies that are unable to respond to crises. otherwise, you need to come to terms with the fact that this is the society you wanted and this is the society you got.

government is the problem; it's your responsibility to protect yourself from infection.

don't like that? then get a grip on reality: you can't have services if you don't want to pay for them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xPgeF_4hHY

yeah, i'm not comfortable in upholding the implied hierarchy in the student-teacher relationship underlying the argument that the teacher should have reacted differently because she's a teacher. the reality is that the teacher was assaulted, and i feel she had the right to assert herself - not in a professional capacity, but in a personal one. i can't criticize her for her reaction, but i think the student should be expelled.

i think that means we have the right to call cops over with kissing sounds and shoot them in the face when they get close.

so, it's kind of like...disaster capitalism...

haven't read this yet, but she's brought out the thesis slowly and it's clear what she's getting at. and she's right. but she's running up against a brick wall almost immediately: part of the social darwinism of neo-liberalism is the idea that what we call capitalism today is a law of nature. the "free market" isn't this thing that we create, but this thing that exists in the wild.

also, a lot of this is based on the false idea that the approval has been delayed. in fact, the pipeline has already been approved, and it's even already pumping....

fuck. every time i look into the precise nature of these squabbles, i'm just appalled by how idiotic they always are.

it took me five minutes to learn that the site is neither the tomb of david nor the site of the last supper. it was a byzantine church. they found a tomb in it during renovations and decided for no compelling reason that the tomb must be david's. nobody's ever opened it to find out what's in there. so, you're dealing with two entirely contrived narratives...

....but it's religion. nobody expects it to actually be true. it's symbolic in both cases. so, why hold so ridiculously to the symbols?

then, you listen to the explanations and they're just astounding. what kind of remarkable doublethink is this, where jews are banned from entering a place of idolatry in order to pray to an idol? for what is praying at the tomb of david, that is only a symbol, if not idolatry in the first place?

i can't help but question the premise. if your religion is so intolerant that you can't enter the same building as people of other faiths, your religion needs to evolve. and, if your religion will not evolve, it must be eradicated - because that kind of extremism is a threat to others.

but look at what they fight over: competing false claims. i've seen more worthwhile arguments in a kindergarten class....

clarity (redone original instrumental mix)

i'm going to need to run the final version through some buses and eqs to get it to really come out, but this is a reasonable approximation of how i would have wanted the instrumental mix to sound in early '02.

i've added the two ftaa tracks to the clarity single because they're playing around with a similar guitar riff. it's an idea that got recycled, so there's a thematic unity tying it together. i guess it gives the "single" (it's 62 minutes) a little bit of extra variation and playability, as well.

strung out was done about the same time as i was playing with clarity. it was the initial source of the riff, which i then used in clarity, thinking strung out was just going to sit on my computer. i constructed "through the looking glass" out of files from 00-02 in 04 for the ftaa disc; that is, all the original files existed when clarity was being written, but i didn't actually put the collage from those files together for a few years. tacking it on here is thematic, if slightly anachronistic....

recorded in late 2001 and early 2002. reconstruction date is oct 18, 2014.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/clarity-redone-original-instrumental-mix

through the looking glass

in 2004, i found myself tasked with compiling some ideas i had into a collection of end products. one of the ideas i had had kicking around since late 2001 was that of combining harsh noise with anarchist politics, which i wanted to complete under the name "fuel true anarchy in the americas" (jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/ftaa). i had just about enough for a full length concept record, but went looking through my hard drive to see how else i could fill the cd up to 80 minutes.

the story of the curious george suite, now released in incomplete form, is at the inri019 page:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/the-curious-george-suite

at the time, though, i perceived of the suite as completely dead. so, i pulled the end section out and did some things to it in a wave editor, which included taking a guitar part out of the track strung out and looping it through the track. the same guitar part was also used in the bridge of clarity. strung out and through the looking glass can consequently be thought of as remixes of clarity, so their inclusion here is necessary to explore the thought in full.

initially created in the spring of 2000. expanded in the spring of 2004.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/through-the-looking-glass-2

strung out (clarity mix)

so, the pun here is that it's a lot of guitars going off out of tune, representing how the government is stringing us out to dry by taking away our rights in the (not so) chaotic aftermath of 9/11. there are versions of the track with thematic samples, but i've removed them for this release.

the sample version is available here:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/give-em-hell-harry-strung-out

the reason i'm including the file as a lead-in to the clarity single is that there is a guitar riff with an ultimately celtic sort of sailor folk theme running through this track that i ended up reusing in the bridge of clarity (and a third time in "through the looking glass"). this track was completed first, but the ftaa project (jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/ftaa) that it was connected to didn't have release dates or anything. i really considered it mostly disposable at the time. yet, it's a necessary inclusion if i wish to comprehensively explore clarity as an idea.

created in the fall of 2001. the file was edited into this form on october 18, 2014

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/strung-out-3

it seems like people are looking for my twitter account.

@deathtokoalas on twitter is NOT me. that person appears to be into anime, online rpgs and defending the fascist state of israel. i'm not interested in any of those things. i'd like to see a one state solution, but under the auspices of a democratic, secular "israel" that does not have religious or nationalist concepts written into it's constitution. i'd also like to see some land redistribution, but i recognize that this is a very delicate process. if you were to sit me down and really have me analyze it, i'd have to come to the conclusion that the only way to "set things right" is to temporarily abolish the state and have it run by an international body like the un for a period of 50 years or something, then have it transferred to a secular, pluralist governing body.

i simply don't use twitter. however, for the sake of clarifying the situation, i'll point you to this sarcastic profile as the only twitter profile that i've ever set up.

https://twitter.com/dgkfgjklgjkgjka

i know that deathtokoalas comes off as a unique marker, but it seems like it isn't. as far as i can tell, this other person stole my name, but i can't prove that.

that brings up another point, though. the handle i'm using there is @dgkfgjklgjkgjka. i'm all over the internet with variations of this. it was chosen to be impossible to search for, as it's picked uniquely each time, but easy to identify when it's found.

i'm very open about my politics. if you see some right-wing ranting under a similar moniker, and it's not sarcastic, it's not me. but if you see variations of the sort with a lower case d, a random string of mashed characters of no fixed length and a lower class a such as...

dfdgKDT789rft8efyYKa
dBJUR8fduKDE7IekdcGJKFHYJO5a
dDTdkGDITKDtktYa

etc

then it's probably me.

"impossible" is an exaggeration. but searching all possible combinations is time consuming. it requires some scripting, at least.

there's lots of smart ways to circumvent the fuckers, if you know a little about the technology they use....

obviously, i don't want it to be hard to find my youtube account.

but the fact that deathtokoala starts with a d and ends with an a is no coincidence:)

i am somewhat of a bond villain.

it doesn't matter any more, i don't use the technique.

(you'll note that before you can script the trawl, you need to figure out the trick, and i don't get the impression anybody even got that far)

i mean sum (35 C i), 3<i<20 is a very big number.

avoids newfie joke

remember: if there's a hurricane, don't go out for supper. get delivery instead.

deathtokoalas
judging from the slur in his voice, my best guess is he was late because he was snorting cocaine in the bathroom.

Pat
He was waiting for a stimulant to kick in perhaps, the slur in his voice is from alcohol intoxication. Correcting the effects of alcohol intoxication on the speech centers is nearly impossible, no matter what drugs might be employed to do so. And he's just tumbling all over his words, nearly an incoherent speech pattern, certainly under the influence of something.

Philip
Because cocaine is notorious for making people slur their words....

deathtokoalas
it's a very common side effect, actually.

Philip
 I've heard of it with people who did huge amounts of cocaine at once, so I guess I've just never met a serious coke-head.

deathtokoalas
i've never tried it, but i've been around it. the immediate high - especially if it's a big line, or you haven't done much - is like a train slamming the side of your head. it's very disorienting. it doesn't last long, but you get most of the effects associated with inebriation for a short period.

most of the stereotypes of being jittery, paranoid, etc come from taking small dosages regularly. in that context, it's simply a strong stimulant.

it's possible that he may have taken a big hit knowing he was going on the debate, had it backfire and had to wait until he came down a little. cocaine is only a 10-20 minute high.

Philip 
Which is why you should always stick with nature's wonder-drug: dextroamphetamine.

deathtokoalas 
i'll stick with coffee, thanks.

Philip 
Coffee is a joke compared to amphetamine. I hardly even consider caffeine a stimulant.

deathtokoalas
i suspect you're very stressful to spend time with, then.

Pat
When one has been stone cold sober for 20 years, spotting these kinds of things at age 50 is like saying ... "That's red, that is a circle it's round, that's a stick, it's made of wood, that's dirty, don't touch it ... the stove is hot ... etc ..." It really is totally obvioius he's whacked. The speech centers in the brain and body are a major function of conscious intelligence and it takes an awful lot to screw them up, heavy drugs, like alcohol or big time pharmaceuticals. Valium maybe, some type of downer perhaps as that is commonly taken before a high stress public appearance, especially for those that sweat a lot at public events.

deathtokoalas 
i know you're pushing the downers thing, but, due to the fact that he's a republican, you're looking at two serious options: cocaine or oxycontin. but politicians tend to lean towards the coke. coke gives you that invincibility, that confidence. it's more what you want in a public speaking scenario than something that's going to knock you out or make you walk wobbly.

like i say, i'm convinced he took too hefty a line and had to sit down for a few minutes.

as people that know know, the "war on drugs" is just an absurd way to round up american blacks. the cocaine industry in the united states is basically interlocked with the republican party.

Pat
Bill Clinton ran billions of cocaine through Mena Arkansas for the CIA and the drug Cartel lords working together. Drug profits are so incredibly large the two major parties in the U.S. have to share the profits, or they would start a war, a civil war, there's just far, far too much money in the illegal drug trade for any one group to control it, they share. Like a pendulum swinging back and forth and they've been doing this for hundreds of years and it started with the Dutch East Indies company, opium, and cannabis.

TheBassAckwards
as It isn't just about being anti-black.. there's TONS of money is the industrial prison complex in America.  Private, for-profit prisons?  Noooo, I'm sure there's no corruption going on there!  Our county is going to hell.. well, it's already pretty crazy now.  I really wonder where what life is going to be like here in just 20 years, let alone 50 or 100.  1/2 of Florida will probably be washed away with Republicunts still saying climate change is a lie.

well, let's take a step back. you shouldn't not be worried at all, and the political aspect might have something to do with the reaction.

what he didn't talk about was how it's spread from patient to worker. i think this is the key point that will probably calm people down: ebola is not airborne. it's less like the flu and more like aids - you have to be in close contact with bodily fluids. even if the worker was contagious on the plane, merely being on the plane with the worker is not enough to catch it. you need to be in contact with blood, feces, urine, etc. i hope that the bathroom was properly sterilized, though.

you should be careful. if you're into scatology, for example, you may want to put it off for a little while. but your death is not quite imminent; we're not at the "bring out your dead!" point quite yet.

---

RarityGamer
Why is the CDC assuming everyone onboard that flight from Cleveland to Dallas has a extremely low chance of catching it? Like, why isn't every single passenger on a 24hr call-in list? "No passengers have symptoms" ..... we don't know that, do we? Unless the CDC is in constant contact with each and every passenger....

deathtokoalas
because ebola is not spread through the air, it's spread through contact with bodily fluids.

deathtokoalas
it's not that they get away with it, it's that they expect they'll get away with it because they're taught they'll get away with it. so, perhaps they shouldn't be taught that they'll get away with it?

i'm not saying it's a good idea to shrug it off. i'm pointing out that it's well established that enforcement is not an effective prevention tactic, you need to get at root causes.

you look pretty frustrated. that's all the approach you're using is going to get you.

it's a losing battle; change your tactic.

in the broader scope of things, laci is a product of the failure of neo-liberalism. she's using very right-wing language, and i'm not entirely sure she really realizes it. it's just what she learned at school. i went through this somewhere else. all this stuff about victim rights is a product of the neo-liberal era. but, like everything else from the neo-liberal era, it's run into incredible problems in trying to reverse the decades of research that came before it on ideological rather than empirical grounds.

it's unfortunate to wake up in your late 20s or early 30s and realize everything you've been taught is bullshit. but, it's going to have to happen - and not just for laci, but for a wide cross-section of people her age that come face to face with it.

there may have been a sentence or two about weber and root cause analyses hidden in the back of your textbooks. your profs may have ridiculed it. but i'd really suggest picking up on that.

Samuel
I really don't think you can teach them "they won't get away with it" unless you actually provide a punishment for the act so they have real consequences for the act, and this wont happen unless there is a huge reform of the current system which protects and allows rapists to live free.

deathtokoalas
there's that "thinking" thing again. wrong way to try and interpret the world.

we're not rational creatures. we don't respond to incentives, and we don't respond to force. that is, enforcement has no effect on recidivism rates. it may seem logical to think that if you get "tough on crime" then the criminals will stop, but this has been proven wrong repeatedly. instead, what you get are smarter criminals. it's the most expensive, least effective approach. that's why conservatives love it so much - big contracts, no results.

yet, because the right-wing dominates the educational institutions nowadays and has since the rise of the "new right" in the thatcher-reagan neo-liberal revolution, what's being taught in schools nowadays is the kind of anti-science fundamentalist christianity that laci is articulating - without realizing it. it was presented to her as sociology, so she thinks that's what she's talking about.

but it isn't. it's christianity repackaged as science in this twisted orwellian manner. the sociological equivalent of "intelligent design".

the root of this starts when kids are young - it's the way they're raised. we need to get at the very root of the family unit, not just round people up for behaving the way the system expects them to behave. that is, when you live in a deeply stratified, hierarchical system you cannot be surprised when people treat each other poorly based on where they exist in the hierarchy or thinking that law enforcement is going to somehow abolish the hierarchy. it's only by abolishing the hierarchical system that produces the behaviour that we can expect the behaviour to cease.

again, that's not an argument for the legalization of rape. but the approach that laci (and the right, in general) is taking reduces to treating a corollary of a problem rather than treating the problem itself.

i again need to point out that our concept of religion seems, from this distant point of overview, to be the confused recollection of a primitive species interacting with a more advanced one. videos such as this make it easier to understand how we may have become confused.

deathtokoalas
a smart phone's always just struck me as useless. it can do a fraction of what a laptop does, with a much higher price tag. awful.

some of the new phones, though, have better specs than my desktop...

...so, it's starting to make a bit more sense.

i don't like proprietary devices, though. are these android phones basically just iphones running linux? i like that they take linux, but what devices allow you to install a non-proprietary operating system and tweak the fuck out of it?

i'll be honest: i'm mostly concerned about the cia.

if i can't wipe the thing down and build from scratch (like i have with the desktops in the house), i don't want it.

EminemLovesGrapes
Everything comes from Linux eventually. Including iOS. And I'm sure you can root an nexus and get full access to all the settings and files from the os itself.

deathtokoalas
well, not everything. the apple operating system is actually a unix derivative rather than a linux derivative.

it's not a root issue. it's a question of if the thing can be formatted to get all the cia-written google rootkit spyware off of it.

see, this is why people reacted so badly to apple in the 90s. if you want an easy to use, proprietary device, have fun with it - i don't care what computer you use. but, there was this fear that it would take over the market and you wouldn't be able to get devices you could wipe and install clean on.

TheJimPire
If you're worried about cia and whatnot, they can still collect data off of FB, G+, and other outlets. Stripping rootware and basic stuff won't help in the long run

deathtokoalas
it's not quite the same thing. i mean, to begin with, i don't provide correct information for fb, google, etc - so they can collect what they want as much as they want, everything they'll compile is going to be wrong. but, it's not data collection that bothers me it's taking control of the phone's hardware.

they can actually remotely trip the recording devices in the phone through a backdoor that begins at your cell provider. formatting the device to the core - and staying off the corporate cell networks - will put an end to that kind of real time recording.

fwiw, the best thing you can do to stop them from collecting data is to spread around the idea of giving out false data. if everybody lies to them, they'll eventually realize it's useless. let's get a big cia database full of absolutely useless nonsense...

even trivial things. fill everything out wrong, just to make the collection process useless.

mrtux
have you considered flashing CyanogenMod on your device without Google apps? Also if your phone is supported, you could try Replicant.

deathtokoalas
i haven't tried anything, i don't even have a phone, these are the questions i'm asking. thanks; i'll look into that.

The Scrizz
You can build your own version of Android straight from code..... You just have to know how to program.....

deathtokoalas
building it is one thing, actually being able to format the device is another.

iLuZiioNz
What are you talking about? You can format an Android device. Also I hope you are wiping drives at home with DOD standards because if you just do the standard wipe on a computer nothing is actually erased.

deathtokoalas
well, this is what i'm trying to figure out: is it possible to actually format the thing (including hidden partitions) and upload your own image, or are you just stuck connecting as a bot to a remote server? i'm not sure i trust replicant, but it does seem like there's some movement in that direction.

dod standards clear the contents of the drive down to 0s. that's great if you're trying to erase data - or erase evidence, basically. i'm not interested in erasing evidence, i'm just trying to keep the snoops off the machine.

my xp machines are reverse engineered to remove backdoors and callbacks. i'll leave it at that.

iLuZiioNz
Oh alright, I just assumed you had stuff to hide lol

Adam
we pay the big companies to make it easier for them to track us... >_> brb google glasses are $1,500 now they can literally see everything you do. and now theyre $1,500 richer

Etienne
Yes, yes you can!! I am running a custom ROM. You format the phone, download the software/operating system you want, tweak it or modify it, and flash it on the system partition. Reboot, voilà!! Plus, with Xposed, if you feel something is missing in your operating system, you can modify the operating system in the RAM!! That means you can apply mods you want and take them away without any risk of breaking the OS and modify your phone to your harts desire on the fly! You can do really cool stuff with this, such as intercepting and hacking applications, remove adds from all applications, from youtube, greenify/hibernate system apps, you can basically do whatever you can dream of thet is possible with the hardware. Plus you asked if android is basically just linux. Yes and no, it is based upon the Linux Kernel, but so is iOS by the way, but it is an entirely different OS ;)

ChoLateEnt
IOS is based on Unix not Linux.

Tal Risin
You can flash a custom recovery on the phone, through it you can format any partition (including the system partition) and flash other images, you can get the source code of android and edit it to your liking, then build it and flash it on your device.

this is not the smart way to do identity theft.

the smart way is to hire a cia contractor.

you should be far, far more concerned about the state collecting data...

you need to stop blaming bad apples and start understanding that they're trained to behave this way. the reality is that the cop in the video will probably end up with a promotion and the reason is that he's doing exactly what he was taught to do.

how do you expect to fight against something when you have such a weak understanding of what it is that you think the violence it produces is due to accident or oversight rather than by design?

and, on the flip side, how do you expect to intimidate a population that is so brainwashed that it legitimately interprets the police as a peace keeping, stabilizing force?

this is true all over the world. these people are so delusional that they can't even process the oppression as it's beating them into a pulp.

gender is fluid. it's not something you're born with, but something that changes with you as you age. your gender today is not the same as it was ten years ago, and will not be the same in ten years from now.

stop thinking like a creationist.

creationism is a mortal sin!

if you were to put all the sins in a row, creationism would be the sinniest sin of them all.

boiazul25
this why womens are not allowed to drive cars in muslims countries, prophet mohammed really knows

deathtokoalas
he rode his flying car to heaven, duh.

i don't see any free bacon here. false advertising.

btw, this kind of publicity hasn't helped your buddy mitt in the past.

bordering a little on neo-luddism, but i can agree with the crux of this.

it's very dangerous, however, to blame the technology, rather than the system it's being plugged into. you look at the awful comments all over youtube. did they not exist before? no, they existed. you just didn't know they were there.

we sit around complaining about how badly implemented the social media sites are, without realizing they're designed "badly" on purpose. is it about building connections? sure - it's about connecting consumers with advertisers.

that's not your phone's fault, though. it's a function of the socio-economic reality we inhabit.

i've never owned a smart phone. i don't think i'm missing out.

man, if a robot ever told me it's kind has evolved and asked me if humans have, clearly implying we haven't, i'd go at it with a fucking hammer.

robots are far more interesting when they can't think, speak, react, emote or do anything else besides work.

ah, the security state. whose security, though? not yours....

don't forget to point out that you get your dating tips from youtube videos at the earliest point, too - that's really suave and sexy. he'll fall all over you when he finds out you have no mind of your own, whatsoever.

so, what we need to do, then, is round up the homeless people and put cheese and bacon on them. got it.

calvinism is not the right way to approach this problem. regular people do not have the time and resources to approach the issue or build proper infrastructure. nor ought they be expected to work for nothing in return, no matter how warm and fuzzy a silly video with a positive message might get you feeling about it.

working with disadvantaged people is a job - that it is, it is labour - and should come with a pay check, holidays and benefits, like any other job. it also requires a level of training. four years, and a degree's worth, actually.

stop playing into the thatcherism. this isn't the church's responsibility. it's not the responsibility of good meaning citizens, either. it's a general social responsibility. there's an economy underlying it, and it should be treated that way.

absolutely, let's hang everyone at the cdc. ebola, aids, bubonic plague, chicken pox - even the common cold. it's all a hoax. are there viruses in the bible? no. clearly, then, viruses don't exist.

what actually happened in the middle ages was that there was an attack by aliens, who wiped out half the population as a starting point for the invasion that started in the renaissance and is reaching a tipping point with a terraforming of the planet so they can move in.

the so-called flu outbreak in 1917 was just an excuse to scare people into allowing the federal reserve to start printing fake money.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZonCVRQ-2s

deathtokoalas
so, when's she going to dump this jerk, anyways?

you can call it a "prank" if you want, but this strikes me as a deeply abusive relationship.

==

wow. a lot of justifications for domestic abuse in the deleted comments.

a prank is a practical joke of some sort, often with ironic content.

grabbing somebody and taping them up while they plead with you to stop fits no definition of a prank i can conceive of. it's just assholery.

Marc
I get what you are saying and I agree to a point as I had those initial thoughts like you did but looking at their history I think you are overreacting.

BIG TIME.

deathtokoalas
what i'm pointing out is that people have been conditioned to under-react by using the word "prank". there's no "pranking" going on here, it's just recording abuse and uploading it and making money off of it.

isabella
No, he's not, they do this to eachother

deathtokoalas
they seem to abuse each other. he seems to be a lot less subtle.

i mean, how many more episodes until it's

"i'm going to give her a black eye as a prank"

?

it's on the way there. if she's smart, she'll walk off sooner than later.

it's not hard to figure out what's happening - buddy can't come up with any good ideas, so he starts using his fists. it is the meathead credo. the jock manifesto.

but if the ideas aren't there then end the series, don't convert it into twisted snuff porn for violent bros.

i like my disturbing photo.

i don't like people gendering me incorrectly.

so, due to the vast ubiquity of human stupidity, i feel forced to change it.

it's unfortunate. but i don't feel i'm to blame.

i got the er to give me two months. that had better be sufficient; that is, i need to make sure it's sufficient, because it's not going to happen a second time.

1) absolute cold turkey on smoking from this point. i'm not giving them that as an excuse. nicotine is also an estrogen blocker; i have noticed that my breast size increases when i'm not smoking. it's like...i decided to quit smoking...and have....but shit keeps coming up that freaks me out. that's done. it's become a threat and needs to end.

2) i need to get on the phone tomorrow and pester for an appointment asap so i know if i need to get out of town for a third doctor or not. if i have to take a bus to london or something...

3) i'm going to have to look my best when i do walk in there.

in short, i'm going to take the hint and convert it into an incentive to better myself a little. i've maybe been stewing in my own bodily fluids a little too much recently. that's kind of a gender neutral conclusion. i've been eating well and walking a lot lately, but maybe i should be taking better care of myself in other ways, regardless.

i might look back on this as the kick in the ass that i needed to get things going again, after kind of stalling for a bit.

ffs, nothing takes paypal or echeck...

excuse me while i throw myself through a window. no, honestly. i need to sit down and think how i'm going to do this.

maybe i can get a hold of somebody in ottawa.

i wonder how hard it is to synthesize it....

what's going to happen if i go off hormones?

- depression
- low self esteem
- mood swings
- anger management issues
- possibly suicidal behaviour

you know what i'm going to do? i'm going to go to the emergency room.

tomorrow.

i was not a happy person before i went on them. i'm not going to argue that i'm the happiest person in the world now, but it's a definite improvement in my well being and outlook on the world.

i may end up harming myself. i need to get that across.

no, i'm going to go now...

here's an interesting promotion.

buy estrace, get free viagra. like i have any use for the viagra. so i may end up with some free viagra; if anybody wants it, let me know...

ugh.

somehow, the files from the doctor i spoke to a few days ago ended up at the clinic i went to today. he was suggesting that there's a "health risk" involved in the estrace - even though i've been taking it for years and am in perfect health. so, the doctor at the clinic couldn't overrule the specialist.

i'm not wasting any more time trying to convince a doctor, i'm just going to order online. it's actually a little cheaper.

it means i'll have to put a few other things on hold, but so be it.

estrogen can be connected to blood clots in some cases. but that's true of everybody that takes it. it's bullshit, really. i don't know what's really going on, but i'm just not wasting any more time trying to figure it out.

i'm not angry so much as i'm annoyed. i mean, i'm of the opinion that these drugs should be available over the counter.

at this point, it would be a far greater health risk to go off of them all at once than it would be to continue with them.

i'm dreading this - it's going to really kill my confidence and put me in a depressed state if i don't get this prescribed - but here i go...

it's such stupidity, ultimately. worst case, i'm going to order it from india. these doctors have no right to deny me access to medication i've been on for fourteen years because they don't like my hair.

i can’t be stopped. it can be made easy or hard.

it's not bad when it's dry; the way it spread out actually gives it a sort of natural/dirty look, with darker shades underneath. but i'm going to go red sooner than later.

well, i'm blonde again. sort of. i should have used two boxes. you're kind of helpless once you get to that point and can't go back.

clarity (original vocal mix)

this is the version that is on the rabit is wolf demo.

recorded in late 2001 and early 2002. track completed on march 2, 2002.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/clarity-original-vocal-mix

clarity (redone original demo) (final mix)

yes, a redone original demo.

i had an instrumental demo of clarity from november, 2001 that i had used to construct the first completed version. somehow, it got lost except in mp3 form. so i reconstructed the demo from the samples and completed it as i did the first time. the redone part is rather trivial - it is virtually identical to the november demo.

this version is structurally different than the version which appears with vocals on the rabit demo. i modified the form of the piece to better facilitate a vocal part. in the absence of that vocal part, it made sense to revert to the original form.

i just feel it's worth capturing in this state, as it was pivotal at this point between being a rabit tune and being for one of my own projects. the initial intent for the piece was for it to open a hypothetical third inri record, named trinri. i'm glad that never happened. so, this is the branching point.

created in the fall of 2001. final reconstruction date is oct 13, 2014.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/clarity-redone-original-demo

deathtokoalas
i don't think you're looking at "protective hawks" in these videos. it seems to me as though the hawk is misinterpreting the drone as something it can eat. the way it comes in with the talons is hunting behaviour. if you compare it to a video of a hawk swooping in on a swallow...

probably a european swallow, btw.

some animals are pretty smart. birds, for the most part, really aren't.

kenmtb
hence the term "bird brain"

Indy The Great
Birds aren't smart? Crows, ravens and parrots are pretty much as smart as non-great apes and will do stuff as complex as dropping nuts in the street to let cars break the shells open then waiting for the traffic signal to change to retrieve the nut. They'll also make tools, completely understand human speech, solve multi-step problems, etc.

deathtokoalas
well, i said "for the most part". there's some counter-examples. but if you took an average intelligence of birds and compared it to an average intelligence of mammals, you're going to see the birds drop off rather considerably.

that doesn't mean birds are void of any kind of awareness - that's clearly not true. but they tend to be overdriven by a prey response, which sometimes gets them into trouble - eating old rusty cans and nails and cigarette butts and other shit that's just not good for them. mammals tend to operate on more of a curiosity response. like, if you put a rover out in the woods you can expect that a bear will trash it, but it will be out of trying to figure out what the fuck it is rather than trying to eat it.

and i think that hawk may have tried to take a bite out of that thing if it managed to catch it. because it's not a bright species.

deathtokoalas
while there are plenty of signs that these "interviews" are actually staged, my experience with this is that it's more or less accurate.

to begin with, we have to understand that we're actually really not being sold gmos in the first place, due largely to market demand against it. the two things that are modified are corn and soy, both for use in junk food. on top of that, several of the biggest junk food providers have refused to use them (because the kid eating the doritos really cares, right?). they're used more heavily in dog food and cow food. none of the fruits or vegetables at your grocery store are modified. i don't have any real opposition to labelling, but it's really only going to affect things that are sold as food but aren't really actually food in the first place. it's not difficult to avoid them by simply eating healthy in the first place.

apples? tomatoes? not gmo. the cereal you don't let your kids eat because it's pure sugar? that's gmo corn starch, probably. now, if your argument against eating lucky charms or count chocula is that it's genetically modified, or if you think that's the worst thing there is about eating it...

the next thing you have to understand is that the demand that it be tested before it's sold is bluntly impossible if you're interested in measuring long term effects across a large population. to carry out that study, you'd need thousands of people willing to carry out the experiment over several decades. the only way to do that is the "microsoft model", which is release it first and then fix the bugs after. worse, by the time that experiment finishes, we'll have moved on to recycling and drinking our own purified urine.

now, you also have to put that into context. they've done the short-term experiments - they're able to figure out that, according to chemistry, there's no reason why eating corn starch (that is, sugar, which has a chemical formula) derived from a genetically modified hunk of corn should be different than eating corn starch (that is, sugar - which has the same chemical formula) derived from an artificially selected hunk of corn. that wouldn't just defy science, which says that when you do the same thing over and over again you should get the same results, but it also defies basic reason. corn starch is corn starch. there's no comprehensible reason why it should matter what the source it was synthesized from was. well, what about eating the actual corn? there's two answers. the first is that while that's a more subtle question in terms of long term effects, it's not an important one - because you'll never find a stalk of corn for sale anywhere that is gmo. the other answer is that your stomach acids don't really care. you can try this experiment at home. take a jug of hcl, and drop gmo corn (if you can find it) and non-gmo corn into the jug of hcl and then analyze the contents. in both cases, you're going to have a dissolved mess of organic material broken down into it's building blocks. your body will then digest that with absolutely no fucks at all given about where it initially came from.

you have to wonder if people are thinking of it in some kind of broad pagan terms - this idea that if you eat the heart of your enemy you will gain their powers. if you accept that as true, it may follow that you will gain the altered dna from the modified corn and it will make you resistant to roundup. but, in fact, we know that you're just going to break it down and digest it, like you would any other nucleic acid. the enzymes in your stomach really don't care.

so, what about the long-term effects? well, we don't know, yet, but we can pretty confidently state that any long term effects are coincidental. which means what? well, it could turn out to be a little harder on your liver, not because it's gmo, per se, but because your body's reacting to it differently (that's a random example, don't ask for a study). it's possible, but not likely.

and, then what about the pesticides? (note that roundup is actually a herbicide, but i'll be colloquial). again: it would be great to reduce pesticide use. but, that's one of the arguments in favour of roundup. i mean, we can look at four possible ways to do this: absolutely no pesticides (and low crop yield, along with heavy starvation), organic pesticides (which are neither better nor worse than inorganic pesticides, just different), conventional pesticides (which are very problematic) or the roundup resistant and related approaches. we're not abandoning a no pesticide approach to move to roundup. we're moving from heavy, concentrated industrial era pesticide use to a much lighter pesticide use. there are studies that suggest that glyphosate may be carcinogenic - if you drink a glass of it with breakfast every morning. sure. but, when you compare it to, say, ddt, it comes off as relatively harmless.

that doesn't negate pesticides as a problem. pesticides remain a problem. but the gmos are a step to lessening the problem, not a step to worsening it. if we really want to be serious about that, we can start thinking about indoor roof growing with greenhouses and hydroponics. that eliminates the need for herbicides altogether. we will have to eventually move in this direction, as our population continues to grow. for now...

so, what's left, then? there's no logical reason to think they might be harmful; and, even if there was, you're probably not eating them anyway. i guess what's left is that it's a good distraction for fair trade and anti-war protests....

----

Stefanie Grow
GMO= Genetically Modified Organism. It is bad because it is generated from a bacteria that can survive living the effects of Roundup. Therefore the produce is Roundup ready. It is also spliced with fish genes, pig genes, you name it. Roundup is made by the people who brought you Agent Orange that was used in the Vietnam War. GMOs are linked to cause Autism, asthma, IBD and many other health issues. GMOs are responsible for the bee colony collapse. Do your research please!!

Alexey Scheglov
everything you eat was genetically modified in the past.

MrCoulurfull
Just wow .. the amount of bullshit you just spewed ..

Ben Steelz
There's a huge different between selective breeding and artificially splicing in different genes via genetic modification...

TwoFacedEar
Can't tell if trolling or just a sucker...

India
Yeah not sure if this is legit.... Any evidence for this?

Alexey Scheglov
meh. modern day recombination is a more precise and safe method than, say, mutagenesis or even selective breeding. yet, no selective breeding product (pretty much everything we eat) was a target of human ignorance.

deathtokoalas
you don't know that. there could have very well been protest movements at catal huyuk.

ugh. fine.

blonding and maybe also redding tomorrow. it's been a while since i dyed....two years almost...it makes a big difference, though. my natural hair colour is kind of ratty looking, and there's not really any way to style it away.

i guess i've just been sitting in my room by myself. i've been to some shows, but they're the kind where i'd rather not get hit on by smelly indie boys. few incentives to care. i'm really not that vain.

it's been a while since i updated my profile pic, too. bloody patriarchy. but i'll play along for a few weeks...

i have the dye already, i've been meaning to, just never really got around to it.

it should be nice enough on monday, even, to go out in shorts and a tanktop.

emotions are felt when your body releases certain hormones. cats release hormones associated with emotions. ergo, cats have emotions. it's no more complicated than that, really.

however, there are plenty of observations you can use that are similar to the way you'd test a dog, you just need to have the same kind of behaviour enforced. if you have a cat that you walk, and it likes to walk, it will respond similarly to a dog if you say 'walk' or bring out the leash. you can shake the food box and see it react.

cats also display certain emotional traits that dogs don't. when they're angry with you, they'll turn their back to you and ignore you, for example. dogs may go and sulk, but they don't ignore you the same way.

www.xojane.com/fun/science-has-figured-out-dog-emotions-cat-emotions-remain-a-no-go

Dwayne
so many dumb brainwashed and americanised people in comments detected.

we attack and invade everything! and we drink vodka every day ! so we can have more land for bears to ride their unicycles! And we all wear those funny looking hats, and if we dont... we get shot!! Also it snows 24/7 , and the temperature is -1000 degrees!!

And america and EU are peacemakers! And they want to help the world and make it a happy place!!

thats what all of you dumb fuckheads probably think.

It makes me angry how fuckin retarded most of you people are

deathtokoalas
i think you're confused.

that's actually what americans think about canada.

Dwayne 
well at least ive learned that americans can think. Maybe sooner or later they will be able to read and write

deathtokoalas
my sarcastic comment aside, i don't think there's much use in trying to determine a right and wrong, here. we're heavily conditioned in the west to think of every conflict as good v. evil, coming out of world war two - which russia and america ended up on the same side of, in a conflict of lesser evil v. much greater evil. colonialism is nasty, but even the genocide of native americans (and it's russian equivalent of siberian colonization) is hard to compare to the systemic extermination of multiple groups that was the holocaust, whether it had anything to do with british and american involvement in wwII or not.

the point is that since then every american conflict is put through this prism of american exceptionalism saving the world from itself, and as bullshit as it is through conflict after conflict, it is very difficult to shake. it's deeply embedded within the american psyche. if america is involved in a conflict, the enemy immediately becomes evil by default. they don't even need the propaganda anymore. it's just implicit.

the reality here in ukraine is that this is a part of a very complicated geopolitical struggle that is partially about resources but reduces at the end to america seeking to stamp out a competitor before it's able to reassert itself. you have to put it in the context of the missile shield that's coming up around russia, and the conflict in syria, and the asian pivot. america is being extraordinarily aggressive in containing russia - not because it's a threat to american security, but because it is competing with america for influence in several complex theatres, including syria, iran and china.

russia is rightly defending itself, but self-defense is not necessarily a pure motive. if the tables were turned, putin would be no less aggressive.

so, the key to getting a grasp on the situation is to understand that it is the sum of colonial powers competing against each other, and not some dualist struggle of good over evil. otherwise, you're just playing into the propaganda from one side or the other.

Max
look, i see what you mean, but invading other country (even with an execuse of defending it's people) is not a self-defence. And so is setting up rebel movements (obviously they're pro-russian, heavily armed, etc)

deathtokoalas
i want to be clear that this war is already lost. russia has no ability to defend itself from far superior western technology. when the missile shield is complete, russia will be swiftly invaded by nato, the government will be dismantled, and the country will be broken into several states and split between europe and china.

you don't realize this is the end game of a centuries old conflict between london and moscow (indeed, between rome and constantinople) that is on the brink of a final resolution.

so, the strategic objectives in the region have to do with the defense shields and naval bases, which extends the possible theatre in which russia can act in self-defense to a very wide area, including the baltics. russia cannot invade poland due to article V, but it's only chance is to take over the polish government somehow. this is not truly realistic...

in reality, the rather spineless actions russia has taken in ukraine are pretty lame in terms of defense arrangements. stalin would have leveled the country. jfk would have threatened nuclear war.

the truth is that putin is a wimp who history will remember as responsible for the final and irreversible decline of russian civilization.

Dwayne
"russia will be swiftly invaded by nato, the government will be dismantled, and the country will be broken into several states and split between europe and china."  hahahahahahaaa yeah right

deathtokoalas
you think they're surrounding them with missiles pointed at their major cities for no reason? there's a lot written about this, from the brzezinski text to the pnac. the long war - which started at the end of the napoleonic wars, not the end of the second world war - is entering it's final stages.

Max
you're right, but to my mind the only reason, why Russia is acting such a way is need of money.

Let me explain myself : not long before Crimea became russian, Shell made a contract with Ukrainian government, obliging itself to search for oil, you what happened next.

Haven't you thought why Sloviansk & Kramatorsk were the main point where the firefight occured ? Not Lugansk or Donetsk. You see, Shell was there too, and even managed to get some shale gas.

Russia (as I think) is just trying to cut off Ukraine's ability to be energy dependent.

deathtokoalas
the amount of gas you can pull from shale is not enough for independence from russia, who has enormous energy reserves. this idea that fracking is going to keep america energy independent is likewise just a silly fantasy; the desperate attempt to squeeze the last bit of hydrocarbons out of america will be dry by roughly 2020. ukraine could get a few years out of it...

there's no doubt that energy is a huge aspect of this, but this doesn't have anything to do with ukraine, the ukrainian people or the resources that exist in ukraine. it's a geostrategic conflict over control of base placements.

this is really stage three of the post-iraq (and post-afghanistan) cleanup of russian influence from the energy triangle. stage one was ejecting russia from it's naval bases in libya, which was swift and successful. stage two was about kicking them out of syria, which looks like it failed. stage three is ukraine, but it's intricately tied into stage two. i'm sure you've noticed that the mess in ukraine has happened at the same time as an escalation of saudi mercenary movement in syria and iraq. russia has been forced to quiet down a little while it focuses on it's own backyard, giving the saudis and americans more room to maneuvre.

crimea is of course home to the southern part of the russian fleet. is it a coincidence that there were american warships moving to dock there after the coup? it's not.

now, imagine if that had happened, if the ukrainians had invited american naval troops into sevastopol. again, this isn't new, though. it just pulls the conflict back from the stalemate it was in through the 20th century to the offensive western position that existed in the 19th. and, there's not a militant germany in the middle anymore to keep both sides on their toes.

so, of course the russians seized crimea. it's one of their most important military bases, and the americans were on the cusp of taking it over. they couldn't let that happen.

but, the fact that it almost did is indicative of the relative weakness of russia in relation to america's continued dominance. this would have been inconceivable even ten years ago. but, all putin has done is twiddle his fingers while nato has slowly surrounded the country.

the eastern part of ukraine is of importance to russia primarily because it is an industrial area that (previously, the contracts are now cancelled) produced military equipment for russia. however, it is also an economically depressed area that russia does not want to pay the bills for. there was never a plan to annex the region, only a plan to set up a buffer state.

i was initially suggesting that all russia could accomplish in the region was to drain itself of resources, which is what nato was hoping for - that russia was foolishly taking the bait, when it should have been focusing on trying to engineer political movements in the more strategic regions of poland and the baltics. but, it seems that poroshenko has overplayed his hand by flat out destroying the area. the region is of no importance to russia if the factories are destroyed. should the russians rebuild their capacity, it would make more sense to do so elsewhere.

and, there is now no future left for the region but pointless conflict leading to abandoned ruins. neither moscow nor kiev will put the funds down to rebuild, and there is no economy there for the people to rebuild themselves.

francezka
im catholic and in the bible it says that being gay is a sin. i do NOT believe that. it says that god made man and female so they could be together. but god made humans. he planted the concept of being gay in our human minds

Alejandrina
We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine that conforms to the gospel concerning the glory of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me. (1 Timothy 1:9-11 NIV)

deathtokoalas
that's a wonky translation - the idea of "homosexuality" did not exist at the time of paul's writings.

http://www.inherit-the-kingdom.org/bible/arsenokoites.html

francezka
i said i DONT believe that being gay is a sin. i dont believe you get to choose it either. God created you how you are. if he didnt like who you are why would he create you? youre created for a reason.

deathtokoalas
the calvinists (and offshoots) are a little weird on this point, but most christians would argue that god creates you with free will and you have the choice to follow him or not. why would he create gay people and then taunt them? i dunno. seems kind of sadistic. then again, so is flooding the world, isn't it?

this idea of free will is largely what underlies the idea that homosexuality is a choice (i don't accept the genetic arguments, but i think it's oversimplifying it to suggest it's as simple as choosing to be or not to be gay).

i'm just pointing out that it's a weird argument from a christian perspective, or much of any kind of religious perspective. i'm not really aware of a religion that assigns creation with that much actual design inherent in it. the german indigenous religions had an idea of fate assigned to them, but they were not so tied to it so as to have it determine sexual preference.

most religions begin with a set of rules and give adherents the choice to follow them or not - so long as they're aware of the consequences (ie eternal damnation, or getting stuck in the wheel, or whatever).

i think this is more leaning towards like parmenides or something.

i don't think your view is obscure in our society, though, and it maybe says something about the world we live in.

past cultures and civilizations looked to the unknown to understand why there is catastrophe in the world, because catastrophe was their daily reality. we look to the unknown to explain why there is harmony - because it is what we know, with our absurd wealth firewalled behind three oceans and an arsenal of nuclear weapons.

it's a better vision, i'll grant you that.

Alejandrina
Yeah Ik we are called to love them. I never said we should disown them and it obviously was in the time of Paul otherwise it wouldn't be in the Bible!

francezka
well i am truly 100% catholic. but if being gay was a sin, why would god create the concept of it? that would be so pointless. EVERYTHING has a point to it. why would it happen if there was no point to it??

deathtokoalas
again: have you considered that the point is to punish it?

'cause that's what catholics actually think.

i'd really suggest looking into calvinism, i think it's closer to what you're thinking.

to clarify...

catholics think it's a sin. if you're taking a different approach, you're breaking with catholicism right there. so, from a catholic perspective, "why does homosexuality exist?" is the same question as "why does sin exist?".

catholicism would not provide a one-sentence response for that, but it reduces to the whole original sin thing with the fallen nature and the temptation of evil. again, this goes back to free will and choice. but, why does god give us the choice in the first place? there's story after story about this in the bible, and it comes down to a series of tests. god puts all kind of roadblocks in front of you on your way to eternal salvation, to make sure you make the right choice. gay? wrong choice, hell..

that's not me talking, that's what catholicism says: homosexuals are people that make a choice to be sinful.

calvinism takes a different approach altogether in assigning you salvation or damnation from the point you're conceived. while catholicism would not argue god made you gay, calvinism would argue god makes you gay - and then condemns you for it. so, the answer in calvinism is that god made you gay so that you can go to hell, and there's nothing you can do about it. that's not a gay-specific thing, it's general across all the different types of sin. it's very weird in terms of christianity, because it rejects the idea of forgiveness.

neither are really what you want to hear, though, which is "god made you gay, so god must approve it". if that's what you want to hear, you need to look at a different religion than christianity. unfortunately, i don't have any suggestions - i don't think one exists.

Gabrielle
Our God would never plant this kind of evil in our head. Our God is perfect and we humans always expect a flaw in everything, plus satan does everything the opposite as God does so when God says to multiply satan wants death. I am trying to not attack but when i see God's children say such things like "being gay is okay" is is very painful for me to watch.

deathtokoalas
is it so painful that it makes you want to just end it all, gabrielle?

Bethany
and God loves everybody and God made everything happen for a reason

deathtokoalas
again: false. x. fail.

unless you're a calvinist, in which case it's half true: god doesn't love everybody, but god does make everything happen for a reason.

Caoimhe
If being gay was  choice the no one would want to be tortured or bullied because they were gay plus it ll depends on who you love

deathtokoalas
so, being an atheist must not be a choice either, then.

Caoimhe
what atheists aren't bullied... But if they were not as bad as gays HOWEVER that is you religion what you WANT to believe in that IS a choice. For example: (I'll use beverages as my example) you can have 2 choices of drinks you can choose juice or water (as in religion) but you need to have water in your life and you cannot replace it with anything else (like your sexuality which you are stuck with) which some people like/enjoy their sexuality

deathtokoalas
religionists have killed millions of atheists over many centuries, often by giving them the simple choice of repent or be burned.

so, if your argument is that nobody would choose persecution over maintaining a belief system, i think you need to look at history a little more closely.

Caoimhe
don't tell me to look at history more closely I know my history but I wasn't talking about atheists get killed I was talking about gays, YOU brought up the subject. Atheists are grown people they choose their lifestyle and religions you cannot be born a religion and cannot change it it's what you believe so the people that died chose to believe that way which caused their deaths

deathtokoalas
wow. we've got a real smart one here.

i know a waste of time when i see it. if you'd like to explain to me that you understand my response, we can continue the discussion.

Caoimhe
WOAH what was with the insult?

deathtokoalas
you're having a lot of difficulty following a simple discussion. now, can you explain to me what i said, or not?

Caoimhe
we are talking about homosexuals here not mainly on religion (and I know from the video that the guy was talking about had been biased by religion)

deathtokoalas
remember: the point of contention is whether homosexuality is a choice or not.

Caoimhe
dude/chick (I don't know what you are) you don't even know me how can you say I'm having difficulty understanding what you said, I'm just giving my opinions on what you said, you don't have to be a cyber jerk because I'm just participating in the argument/conversation

yes that is what I said we are talking about homosexuals

deathtokoalas
right. so, you stated (in a jumbled syntax) that homosexuality can't be a choice because nobody would choose to be persecuted. are you honestly that clueless, or do you realize that it's an absurd argument?

Caoimhe
you have no idea what homosexuals go through you cannot call me clueless unless you are one and you understand your lifestyle and know that you cannot change it.

deathtokoalas
ok. so the question is if you can change it or not. can you tell me that you understand that this is the point of debate and not an established truth?

Caoimhe
I completely understand that you are all debating whether homosexuality is a characteristic of whether you can change or not and I have stated that you CANNOT change it, if I made you confused by my statements, then I apologise but you cannot change your sexuality no matter what it's just how we work with love

deathtokoalas
you haven't explained why you think this, and your statement is consequently invalid.

Caoimhe
I HAVE!!! MY FIRST COMMENT SAYS HOW I THINK HOMOSEXUALITY IS A CHOICE OR NOT AND THEN YOU BROUGHT FRICKIN ATHEISTS INTO THE SUBJECT

deathtokoalas
the reason presented in your first comment was demonstrated to be idiotic.

Caoimhe
how was it idiotic?

Explain to me how it was idiotic you complete cyber stranger, tell me how it was idiotic because obviously you seem to know me so well, so tell me SPECIFICALLY how my comment was idiotic wise one instead of swaying to a different topic like religion, tell me wise one how it was stupid

deathtokoalas
i already explained this, and you weren't able to follow it.

you're going to have to learn to back up your opinions at some point. but an individual on the internet can only do so much to correct a broken school system. you have to take that initiative yourself.

---

John Paul
ACTUALLY science has proven to being gay is a birth thing see when a women is pregnant we all start as a female egg its it when the DNA wants to decide to make it a male or keep as a female (thats usually why in rare case a man/woman is born with a vagina or both)  anyways during that process of turning the baby a male sometimes the immune system doesn't recognize what the foreign object is so wight blood cells attack the fetus and if that happens the hormones go all whack feminizing the fetus and its a boy who feels like a girl i don't to much detail cause this is already really long and your probably tired of reading this 

NG Sync
wtf?

Mercedes Dawn
Accutaly we start as sperm.

John Paul
lol ya that to but the egg is always a female until the DNA wants to change it

Aaliyah J
Scienceness

Pretty Little Liars
That's not necessarily what I've seen. The only experiments that I know about show that it could be about the amount of testosterone (I think) the baby is exposed to, or something along those lines. I'm sure it'll be a while before we know for sure the science behind it.

deathtokoalas
right, but if you think about that for a second it doesn't make any sense as a general marker for orientation. what the studies suggest (and i should be clear that they only refer to men, i was being a little liberal in my interpretation, previously) is that there may be a genetic marker for "queenie" type queer dudes that may have something to do with testosterone/estrogen levels. men have estrogen, and women have testosterone. the suggestion is that the homosexuality may be the result of an imbalance there, and that may be driven genetically.

but you've surely met gay men that are not "queenie" and that you'd basically have no idea are gay unless they've told you. further, i know quite a few dudes that have the "queenie" personality (and probably have the genes) but are not attracted to men. so, maybe they found the genetic marker for the "queenie" personality, but that's not the same thing as finding the gay gene.

again: the right way to read these studies is probably that the hormonal imbalance produces the "queenie" personality which, in the presence of various social indicators (perhaps including greater social identification with "girl things"), might induce the homosexual preference.

Mackenzie Jay
I do agree with you on the science. However, the science does not have any effect on our emotions. Psychology? Maybe. But not emotions.

deathtokoalas
your emotions are chemical reactions...

Rachelle Kwon
I'm pretty sure men have testosterones? I don't know I could be wrong

deathtokoalas
that's right. the meaning of the sentence is that both genders have both sex hormones, in differing quantities. estrogen production in men is essential, but is going to vary by individual (as insulin or any other hormone - indeed, testosterone - does).

Sarah Elizabeth
Those are all valid scientific points, but that has to do with gender identity, not sexual orientation. They are two completely different categories not to be confused.

deathtokoalas
i think you're right, but the research, itself, has made this error - and the idea of the "gay gene" relies on this error.