people are going to be arguing about this for basically ever. at the end of the day, the key point is that people aren't necessarily rational - if you want to know why people do things, you need to ask them and hope they aren't lying. but, i see it like this:
1) the most confounding point is why austria attacked serbia, knowing it was going to spark a war against russia. you can say something about historical control or whatever, but none of the arguments are really good. the only thing that makes any sense to me - besides outright idiocy - is that they were trying to dismantle prussia under the hope that they'd gain control in the end. that is, it might have been a sneaky tactic to unite the german heartland under hapsburg rather than hohenzollern control. that makes it an indirect result of the austro-prussian war of 1866, and ultimately an inter-german conflict.
2) russia had long been looking for an excuse to "unite the slavs". they were aiming to dismantle austria and absorb most of it. this is well understood.
3) the ottomans had their own interests in eastern europe and saw russian expansion as a security threat.
4) the germans knew that the belgians were not truly neutral. that's the unstated point, the necessary revision. if they left belgium sitting on the coast, it would have opened up staging grounds and spy networks. if they were going to invade france (and they had to to deal with the two front problem), they had no choice but to attack belgium.
5) i agree that the french saw the germans as weak and intended to dismantle them, with russian help. but, they expected the russians to do most of the work.
6) the british involvement had less to do with europe and more to do with africa. "belgian neutrality" meant "not taking over belgian colonies in africa". the british were both interested in reducing german influence in africa and, frankly, in not letting the germans get the spoils of belgian absorption. they may have agreed with the principle of neutrality so long as belgium was under de facto british alliance, but as soon as the germans invaded the congo became up for grabs.
7) the americans intervened largely to prevent a socialist revolution in germany and france, after what was happening in russia became clear.
the thing that screwed everything up for the western powers (and austria) and created the stalemate was russia's greater interest in the south than the north. had russia marched straight to berlin as they were supposed to, the prussians would have been dismantled and probably partitioned, and the british would have taken over most of their colonies in africa. oddly, the british and french may have ended up aligning with the ottomans in a drawn out russian-ottoman conflict that may have seen deep russian penetration into the middle east.
this is a dramatically different outcome and potential world order, and was likely made in a snap decision by the russian generals.
i've got the mix tape up which means inri048 is now done...
i've got a number of snippets after about 1999 that i'm not sure what to do with. i'm probably going to just forget about most of it, but some of it will no doubt end up on volume 3, which will be somewhere in the 60s or 70s. so i'll just put it aside for later.
i put aside a number of compilation ideas as i was sorting through the material. i wasn't expecting anything to get a release in this space, but i'm now questioning that. it's largely a process of elimination. but right now it'slooking like inri050 is actually going to be a similarly epic guitar-focused disc.
that said, there's plenty of guitars on this disc, especially in the mix tape. i'll post it when i figure it out...
===
i've taken to splitting my discography into phases, and my hitch-hiking trip to british columbia is a very important separation point - both in terms of the nature of the material that came out afterwards and what is now a substantial body of work that came before it. that makes it a natural point to look backwards and build compilations of intersecting ideas.
a characteristic of my work is that it does not conform well to genre norms. this is not an accident; when compiling a record, i'm guided more by the late beatles' philosophy of vast diversity in a small space than i am by any kind of desire to collect together nice singles, or by some kind of compulsive organizing into categories or concepts. i write psychedelic music. that means something different in 2015 than it did in 1966, but the commonality is that it's necessarily challenging. i want all of my records to do everything at once, and accomplish everything by their end point. that makes compilations of this sort inherently difficult, because every song touches on every compilation idea at the same time. the jazz record would have the same tracklisting as the punk record, the classical record and the folk record - and none would really be what they're claimed to be.
the one exception to this conundrum is how i interacted with ambient music in this period. i very regularly utilized ideas from the genre, but i tended to interpret ambience as something that is necessarily obscure. in this period, ambient pieces are almost always outtakes or b sides. i tended to interpret covers and remixes as ambient pieces, probably because that was unexpected. when ambient ideas make it on to the record, they're almost always for effect: introductions, endings, connecting passages, that sort of thing.
when i began reconstructing my discography in early 2014, i came across a handful of songs i'd written out into midi format and put aside for later. a number of these ended up reworked into ambient pieces, and released as b sides. i also ended up converting some of the material i wrote in this period into ambient sound collages that are more in the style of music i created after 2003.
the end result is enough bsides and remixes to put together two full cds of ambient music. none of the tracks on volumes one or two are on any official record as they appear here; this is technically a collection of remixes and outtakes.
initially written and recorded between 2000-2003 and remixed between 2014-2015. sequenced over mid may, 2015. final compilation date is may 21, 2015,. as always, please use headphones.
credits:
j - guitars (acoustic, electric, nylon), effects & treatments, bass, synthesizers, electric air reed organ, orchestral & other sequencing, drum & other programming, generative programming (sounder), "projectile synthesis" (audiomulch), granular synthesis (granulab), sound design, electronic and conventional drum kits, sampling, loops, films, voice, digital wave editing, composition, production.
strange headline; i was expecting to get a good rant on, but the video doesn't make the argument that i was expecting. so, i'm not needing to tear anything apart. however, i feel that an opportunity was missed to build a larger narrative. on a broader point, though: what's the point of independent media if it's going to parrot the propaganda in the mainsteam media?
and, the idea that europe wants to buy exports from america is just that: propaganda. to get your head around this, you have to understand the nature of the global economy that the united states built after world war two. of course, this order mostly collapsed as a consequence of reaganomics, and is now more or less gone. but, the current administration has put a bigger focus on exports...
back in the years between 1945 and 1993, the united states actually built stuff. a lot of stuff. more stuff than anywhere else in the world. and, as a result, it needed export markets. huge ones. the economic relationship between america and europe that emerged after world war two was (and i'm grossly over-simplifying) something along the lines of "you europeans are going to buy our stuff, in exchange for protection from russia. and, if you don't like that....you don't want to think about what happens if you don't like that. put it like this: or else.".
this is what america tricks itself into thinking a "friend" is.
so, in the world order created by the american empire, europe is designed as an export market for american goods. that is, it's a colony of america.
now, there's lots of reasons europe never really liked this idea, and a lot of it underlies the things europe has done to seek greater sovereignty over the last many decades, and especially since the "end" of the cold war. one of the biggest problems is that when you're stuck in these coercive trade relationships, you're forced to over pay for goods at the tip of a shot gun.
europe wants to buy gas from russia. it's cheap. it's stable. it's easy. and that's a threat to the economic order that exists. which is one of the reasons why the americans are doing everything they can (and largely failing...) to create divisions between russia and europe.
this is a sounder sequence, which was rendered some time in late 2002. i've dated the file to december 25, 2002. published on may 19, 2015.
this actually gets to the point of why i don't like to use the term "apartheid", and prefer to use the term "genocide".
when you start thinking in terms of israel being an "apartheid state", it's correct to conclude that it's unstable. no slave state has ever been stable. it's the actual reason we don't support slavery in "western liberal democracies" - it just doesn't work, in the long run.
but, when you start understanding the situation in terms of genocide, a different logic asserts itself. there is a way out of the logic of inevitable collapse. that is, if you take a step back and look at all of the options, you're left with a much more disturbing choice. it's true that the state is ultimately unsustainable, as it is. that means israel has the option of dismantling itself, or killing the palestinians off.
now, standing up and stating that is going to produce an immediate emotional reaction for a number of reasons on a number of levels, and that's fine - i think any halfways empathetic person has no choice but to react that way. but, if you look at the situation with a cold, analytical eye, it begins to seem less and less outrageous with every israeli action. from the continuing colonization of the occupied areas, to the continued imprisonment of gaza, it really would be obvious that that's the path israel is following - if it weren't too ghastly to consider.
unfortunately, surrounding countries like egypt are more likely to collaborate than intervene.
people are going to look back and wonder why nobody saw it coming.
right. so the answer isn't restricting voluntary association - private or not - but abolishing the concentration of capital into small amounts of hands. the problem is private property. that's some confusing a symptom for a cause, alright.
i've also decided that i need to prioritize getting over the final "not smoking" hump. i've been in this transitory state with this for...years...where i'll quit for a month, go back for a month, cut down, quit, pick up...
a lot of it has to do with focusing. nicotine increases alertness. that's well understood.
i'm convinced the swallowing issues i'm having are not exactly from smoking, but are probably the beginning symptoms of ms. but, if you have ms, the worst thing you can do is smoke.
so, i'm going to the doctor tomorrow or the next day to get the ball rolling on that. i've done enough experiments with not smoking, not drinking coffee, increasing water, etc to conclude it's the rational next step.
ironically, it will also help my financial situation if i can get diagnosed with it. that's permanent. capitalism: that system where you hope you get auto-immune disorders as a path to economic freedom.
there's two ways i can get over that week hump: (1) get sick and (2) focus on reading/writing. just about anything else requires that focus.
so, the next thing i'm going to do - before i start the lost symphony - is to migrate all of this into a new website.
i've been trying to get off facebook for quite some time. it's going to take a while to get off of it. but, it's what i need to do next.
this isn't just going to go quiet, it's going to more or less disappear. i'm going to need a more open journal interface to embed in my appspot site. facebook is just awful in every way. livejournal, maybe. tumblr. even blogspot. i'll have to see what works best. or i may even just hardcode it...
this will be reduced to a sort of cv, that uses the timeline in a minimal manner. you'll be able to scroll through and see major releases. but, i won't be posting here much longer.
this is an instrumental/ambient remix of a section of "me, myself and the time i thought this was a good idea". i did not initially reclaim this track from rabit is wolf because the source file for the bass and vocals are in the same wave file (making them inseparable) and i felt that redoing the bass would destroy the track's rough, lo-fi feel. i created this mix for this collection by removing both the bass and vocals via phase inversion and then reconstructing the bass via loops and strategic editing. i then faded the track out before the "chorus". it works in this context, but wouldn't work in any other, so this is an exclusive mix to this collection.
written and recorded in the fall of 2001. remixed on may 19, 2015.
written over 2001 and rethought repeatedly over 2002, again in 2007, a third time in 2009 and one last time in late 2014. this mix was initially completed on december 5, 2014 and augmented to include some further effects work on may 18, 2015.
richard wolff isn't just a master on the topic, he's also a treat to listen to. very colourful, engaging speaker. although i might suggest that the influx of attention is due less to occupy and more to some older people getting "scratched off the list" due to age or death. i've known of and listened to wolff for many years, i just think he was that extra name or two down the list....
and, the reaction of the third speaker is actually very indicative of why these ideas are so difficult to get across in a society that fetishizes wealth. you want to interpret her comments through some kind of hefty ironic psychoanalysis.
i mean, to begin with she's got everything backwards.
1) the leftists in the french parliament were those that opposed state power, whereas the rightists were the ones in favour of it. deregulation is a decrease in state power and is consequently left-wing.
2) wolff wasn't arguing for deregulation in terms of less oversight - in fact, he'd not be opposed to that kind of regulation. he was arguing in terms of more democracy. democracy does not mean less oversight. democracy means more oversight.
3) marx' politics were of course about abolishing the state.
4) his supply and demand argument on wages is classical marxism. it's the reserve army of labour.
you put that together, and she's suggesting that marx was a reactionary conservative. and, while marx had some strange authoritarian streaks, that's actually simply a contradiction in terms. "marxist conservative". it's almost funny.
it's easy to conclude she's simply ignorant - that she doesn't know anything about marxist economics. but i think it's deeper than that. what she's saying, in terms of her body language and actual language, is the following:
i worked hard to get ahead in society. i am experiencing class mobility. your ideas threaten my ability to get ahead by exploiting others. i am therefore going to run off an absurd character assassination based on emotional hubris, and rely on the audience's presumed ignorance to get away with it. hopefully, that stops these people from getting ideas that may take away my privilege.
you need to cut through all kinds of bravado and bullshit to get there, but it's basically that: it's a reactionary support of statist institutions to uphold the privilege she believes she's entitled herself to.
and that's dangerous.
because my immediate reaction is that if you're going to force me to choose between pluralism + hierarchy and homogeneity + democracy, i'll choose the latter. i'm not about to just shrug off being a wage slave so that she can be rewarded for her protestant work ethic. i didn't put that on the table, she did. but, where's my self interest here? it's not in upholding her interests at the expense of mine.
in reality, there's no danger in me taking that position: i understand that there's no contradiction between democracy and pluralism; she's got her cause and effect backwards. you'll never get to economic equality through political equality. you need economic equality before political equality is possible. it's a kneejerk, but it's intellectual - it's abstract. i know better.
but, not everybody is as clear thinking as i am. and, when you reduce complex issues to absurd ultimatums, don't be surprised when people react in a way that you didn't expect - because you're blinded by the arrogance of your own privilege.
as remains obvious, i'm very behind on my youtube newsfeed. which demonstrates how useful subscriptions are in building a channel. regardless...
i've been posting on the videos in the feed leading up to this that of course the germans knew, and he confirms that here in his necessary diplomatic language. so, it brings up the obvious question as to what they're angling for.
is it just domestic politics? well, josh makes an argument here that i've seen nowhere else - that sanctions on russia are beneficial for germany. really. i'd be curious to see if josh can cite somebody that shares his opinion, because then i'll know they're working for the state department.
there's something fishy going on here. something a real-life, serious investigative journalist should look into - to confirm the obvious. and it's about as obvious as obvious can be....
merkel, herself, might not be in on it, though.
and that's the most unsettling part of it.
Saturday, May 16, 2015
open carry laws are bullshit and shouldn't exist - and i don't care about your constitution, which is about two hundred years out of date. but, regardless, you have to expect that the cops will behave like this. the purpose of the police force is not to keep law and order, it's to protect property. when you live in a country with massive racial correlated inequality, a great deal of what the cops do is uphold it. what you're seeing here is a logical necessity.
this comes off as some kind of cancelled republican propaganda program.
fucking victoria's day. every year, no matter where you go, there are waves of degenerate idiots that get their jollies off on producing neon flashing lights in the sky. it's annoying because it's loud. why can't they just sit inside and drink themselves stupid while staring at winamp visualizations?
broadly speaking, he's got the right idea. but i think this is a good example of how you can get lost in something and lose perspective. it's been a plank on the left for a while now to defer to voices within a conflict. and, there's certainly value in ensuring those voices don't get lost. but, if you were to do a survey on global conflicts - that is, look at this empirically - i think you'd find it's more often the case that being outside it allows for a broader perspective.
the blame everything on israel thing is easy, and they're certainly rarely "good guys". but, what's happening here is bigger than israel. he points out that turkey and the gulf states are proxies for nato, and they have their own interests. he's able to see the conflict for what it is, but is lost in the battle on the ground.
the commonality with countries that america has attacked since yugoslavia is that they are all former soviet allies or puppets. it's clear as day when you look at it from a cold war perspective: yugoslavia, afghanistan, libya, syria. egypt and iraq are somewhere in between, but let's not forget the history of the baath party and it's connection to "arab socialism". now, sure, it's a long time ago in some cases. but the key point is that these are not "our guys" in power. and, now ukraine - tomorrow it'll be kazakhstan.
the meta level analysis is that all these conflicts are about prying states away from russian influence at what is perceived in the west as the end of the cold war. russia is defeated. it's time to clean up. israel doesn't play much of a role in that, besides providing for the odd air strike - because it can't. anybody can get involved except israel.
what that does is open up a power vacuum. or, at least, it would if it were a correct analysis. if you're stuck in this hegelian unfolding of history with liberal democracies as the end point, you assume that assad evaporates on contact. then, the power vacuum opens up, and you get these american allies jockeying for influence.
but i also wanted to say something about kosovo, because i think he has the exact wrong idea with that. kosovo happened when the west was hooking up to the internet, which broke the state's media monopoly and allowed for a wider cross-section of news to get out. as a young person at the time, i remember the war against serbia as the moment that i stopped trusting the state. i had access to that information. my parents didn't, and didn't quite understand; they thought i was reading pravda or something. but, there's no turning back from that point. and, i think that story is widely shared.
iraq produced a massive backlash. that required a shift in approach. the american-backed wars of the future are going to look like the funding of the contras or the mujahideen in afghanistan - or indeed of isis in the levant. secret wars. wars beyond critique.
that's of course what happened after vietnam, but that neo-con clique thought it had an answer. that failed to generate the support they were hoping for. so, it's back to the cia ops.
and, that's why it's useful to get that outside perspective. standing from where i am, all i see is a lot of co-option by state interests.
the just uploaded ambient mix is track 11. you might want to sit down for this, it's something else.
--
some time in late 2002, sean sent me a message over msn or icq requesting that we begin a song based on looped birds chirping. i thought his idea was kind of cliched, but i took to working around his suggestions by converting them into something more musically expressive. i didn't want to write a song that literally climaxes around birds chirping, but i was willing to write something tonal that evoked the feeling of birds chirping.
at the time, i had my sister's electronic piano downstairs. she had a miniature grand upstairs. it was initially written on the keyboard with a very strange timing, which the scorewriter had difficulties capturing - partly because i was inconsistent in performing it. the piece was greatly simplified as it was arranged.
however, i believe the piece sat for a long time before the second section was added to it.
sean and i didn't talk much over the next few months, and the truth is that i just never brought this piece up to him. by the time it was finished, i had firmly placed it in my successor project, the trivial group. it was initially dedicated to sean as a part of the going away disc, but that's really as close as this ever got to being a rabit tune.
i don't have clear memories around composing it, although circumstantial evidence makes it very likely that this happened in the late winter and early spring of 2003. i vaguely recall playing it on the grand upstairs, which could have only happened after sarah moved home to the outer suburbs to get ready for the trip. this was around march. i do remember recording the guitar parts and percussion parts, and am convinced this was in the spring due to memories of the spring sun hitting the bowls. the april 25th date may be a little late, but i have every reason to believe that this was not finished until after exams that year.
the percussion sections in the track are notable. the metallic sounds were created by smashing cutlery into a metal bowl, whereas the woody sounds were created by "playing" a pen on a desk. the track also includes hand claps.
these percussion parts were not notated until 2015. this was a careful, lengthy process that required a lot of careful listening, and a bit of napkin math. notating the percussion allowed for a more comprehensive exploration of the track over midi.
this is sequenced for indefinite looping.
i've included the midi files of the original composition, if you'd like to mess with it on your own.
written and recorded in early 2003. transcribed, slightly rearranged, remixed repeatedly and re-rendered repeatedly over may, 2015. all renders finalized on may 16, 2015. as always, please use headphones.
i wanted a longer version, but i went a little overboard on the ambient mix, and got a twenty-five minute head cave that sounds like the climax to a sentimental film.
there's a level of randomness to the mix, so i need to listen to a few different renders. as it's 25 minutes, that's a lengthy process. but it will be up before the sun is.
and that closes the period. i just need to go over the last 25 records i finished to try and separate out compilation material.
--
this is the ambient mix, created by slowing the track down, running it through some cut/paste algorithms and putting it through an array of arpeggiators and delay effects.
so, i set up the guitar mix over vst with the intent of arranging it and then playing it, but the reality is that the piano part spans seven octaves - meaning i'm going to need at least an eight string guitar, and i don't have access to one. it would defeat the point to put it through a pitch shifter, as a pitch shifter is a synthesizer. i could see myself revisiting this one day if i ever get one of those monster guitars...
as it is, this is going to have to stay like this. i had to mix and match the guitar synths a little as sample-based guitar synths can't hit the higher registers (because no such guitar exists to sample...), but i think it sounds pretty good. so i'm happy with it.
written and recorded in early 2003. transcribed, slightly rearranged, remixed and re-rendered over may, 2015. this render is from may 14, 2015, and was edited mildly on the fade-out on may 15, 2015.
roaches23
Update: those guys got fired from their jobs and got lifetime bans from Toronto FC, Raptors, and Maple Leaf games.
deathtokoalas
that would never hold up in a court. employment contracts refer to conditions inside the workplace. this is textbook wrongful dismissal - unless somebody files charges. if he challenges this, he'll win a large payout. and he should. your boss is neither judge, nor jury, nor executioner.
A Hermit +deathtokoalas You're awfully naive I'm afrad. This kind of vulgar, abusive behaviour is actually grounds for firing. He could try and fight it I suppose, but depending on his actual position he's certainly not guaranteed a win. (Does he supervise others? Does that include women? Does he deal with customers? What effect does his notoriety have on his ability to work with co-workers, subordinates, customers?)
His employer has a code of conduct which includes not harassing women. That he's been caught on camera doing exactly that kind of leaves him without much of a case.
deathtokoalas +A Hermit your employer can set conditions as to how you must behave at work, but they are your employer and not your owner. a good intuitive comparison is to drunkeness. you can get fired for coming to work drunk. you can't get fired for being drunk on the weekend - unless you get charged for something, like a dui.
basically, nothing you're talking about is at all legally relevant.
droptop10001
I bet these guys will take legal actions
deathtokoalas +droptop10001 a factor in the case is likely to be that hydro one doesn't have any competitors.
i'd lean heavily towards the idea that the only way to successfully make the argument for dismissal in a court is if it involves a conviction. just about anything else reduces to the boss morally intervening in your private affairs, which is a definite no-no. even an acquittal just says "not guilty of the accusations". the legal analysts in the papers are focusing on the idea of financial harm, but i think it's only half the argument. at the end of the day, your boss does not have the right to convict you of a crime and punish you for it. but, it can certainly react to a judicial decision.
there's really no way to argue financial harm, here. electricity is largely inelastic in demand and consumers don't have any other option to turn to.
i'm quite certain he'd win this case. these lawyers seem to be misunderstanding the situation (hydro one is not private sector) and then applying the wrong test.
Ella Jones +droptop10001 They don't have a legal leg to stand on.
deathtokoalas +Ella Jones rather, it's the opposite. the talking heads in media have been quick to point out that they're talking in abstract, and this kind of firing has never withstood a court challenge.
Ella Jones +deathtokoalas That's strange, a women I worked with got fired, soooooo.
deathtokoalas +Ella Jones i don't think anybody is arguing that they'll get their jobs back. it's a question of back pay and punitive damages. Ella Jones +deathtokoalas Write down the date and time, they will never get their jobs back and won't go to court.
deathtokoalas +Ella Jones well, i don't expect them to get their jobs back - or to try. i don't know what the government actually gave them in terms of severance. court is not free, one needs to apply a cost-benefit analysis....
i'm just pointing out that, if they did go, they would almost certainly be awarded about a year's pay on top of hefty punitive damages.
A Hermit +deathtokoalas Well that last link I gave you was was to three labour/employment lawyers discussing the issue. I'll take their opinions over some anonymous Youtube commenter's any day.
And what they're saying is that you can be fired for behaviour which might reflect badly on your employer even if legal charges aren't involved. That can't be for something like expressing a political opinion but if it's behaviour which would be in violation of your terms of employment (like sexually harassing someone) you are unlikely to have any success fighting the dismissal.
And I don't think that's unreasonable. If an employee is in the habit of sexually harassing women who are complete strangers to him in public on his time off how can you trust him to behave himself at the office? The guy's a lawsuit waiting to happen. No employer should be expected to take that chance.
deathtokoalas +A Hermit
a few things.
i was maybe a little sloppy in what i was saying. in ontario, nobody gets reinstated under much of any circumstance. imagine getting fired and then having the court send you back to work - that's not a healthy work environment, and basically can't be. and the court can't be firing bosses, either.
when i said "you can't get fired for this", what i meant to say was "you can't get fired for this without your boss being liable for paying financial consequences.". the argument is over punitive damages for wrongful dismissal, not reinstatement. that damage is done and can't be reversed.
one of the talking heads acknowledges he is speaking abstractly, not basing his analysis on legal precedent. further, the basic idea is that people can be fired for making a firm look poorly compared to their competitors - which doesn't apply here, because this company is not private sector. you're misreading your source, which is misunderstanding the situation in the first place.
now, i agree with what you're saying about harassment in principal. the question is who gets to decide on this point. again: your boss is not the legal system. he can't go around accusing you of harassment without a conviction, then firing you for it. in addition to wrongful dismissal, this guy has defamation in his list of legal remedies.
in order for what you're saying to make sense. the only legally effective argument is a conviction. just about anything else is going to be the boss taking the law into his own hands, which he will be liable for in terms of punitive damages - because he can't and shouldn't be able to do that.
once a conviction is established, what you're saying becomes reasonable. and i would agree with putting somebody on leave while they're being tried. but, your boss can't just charge, try, sentence and execute you in the kangaroo court of his office - and if he tries then that is wrongful dismissal.
in this case? i think the behaviour falls short of harassment. the bottom line is that your boss can tell you not to be a misogynist at work, and enforce it, but he can't tell you not to be a misogynist at home. we don't have thought crimes in our legal code. we're not placed into permanent categories of thought criminals like "racist" and "sexist" by the law. rather, we're forced to deal with the consequences of specific actions that occur under specific circumstances. there's no reason to think he couldn't behave more appropriately at work, or that he didn't behave more appropriately at work.
again: the alcohol comparison is the correct one, here.
so long as he doesn't act like that at work, and no charges are filed outside of work, he is likely to win a large settlement. and despite thinking that we need to get to the root cause of this, i think that's correct.
i mean, today it's getting fired for saying stupid things to a reporter. tomorrow, it's getting fired for organizing a union. and, that's why he can't lose the settlement.
A Hermit +deathtokoalas There's a big difference between organizing a union and sexually harassing women. I don't think the slippery slope you're proposing here is actually much of a concern.
deathtokoalas +A Hermit see, the crux of the matter is that this accusation of harassment is not proven anywhere. i'm not presenting a slippery slope like you're suggesting. this doesn't come down to a conviction, or even an arraignment. it's just some random accusation. it's ultimately no different than firing somebody for using contraception, or being gay. i know that nobody wants to think of it like that, but there's really no objective standard of behaviour being applied here. that is why it's a problem.
it's easy to say there's a difference. but, until the issue is proven in a court? there really isn't.
so, what's the right answer then?
well, if you're going to fire him you have to give him sufficient notice if you want to make sure he can't sue you. but i think he's a network admin. that's a bad scene, for obvious reasons. and he can still sue you for punitive damages (although i think his chances of convincing a judge decrease if he gets notice).
so, to get out of all that, you give him a year's severance, and then some. i know - rewarding bad behaviour.
i think maybe the better option is to give him the option between getting fired (with sufficient severance) and going to counselling. ultimately, the goal here should not be to punish the guy. i mean, if he pushes it far enough, it's likely to backfire, yeah, but that's not really the point i'm trying to get across - punishment isn't an answer, and doesn't correct behaviour. ultimately, what you want is for him to understand he's a douchebag and knock it off. counselling is the right means to that end.
then, if it doesn't work out, there's a stronger grounds for termination without the need for a payout.
Boaz Ezekial +deathtokoalas why you hate koalas so much?
deathtokoalas +Boaz Ezekial it's their nefarious cuteness. they must be destroyed. and they don't deserve due process - too evil to the core.
A Hermit +deathtokoalas Not proven? It's right there in the video above... deathtokoalas +A Hermit you're not much into due process, are you? just shoot 'em all and let god sort them out? you sound like a self-righteous, moral majority type reagan republican.
if the accusation is harassment, the evidence in the video is very ambiguous. i think we can agree it was a stupid thing to say. but, the question of whether it is harassment or not requires a trial to arrive at.
based on the video? i would argue that it is not harassment. which just demonstrates that your value system is arbitrary, and you can't be going around punishing people for not adhering to your subjective code of morality.
A Hermit
I'm all for due process (and Hydro One reports that they are engaging in a process to terminate this joker's employment, so all that speculation you're engaging in about notice and severance is presumably being worked out right now.) But the idea that we can't reach conclusions without going to trial is just absurd.
Look, the guy did what he did on video in front of the whole world. He's part of a group of men who acknowledge participating in the harassment of that reporter, and admit planning to do it again and he not only defends that harassment (he knows that she's been repeatedly subjected to this demeaning threatening phrase being shouted at her) he decides to pile on more by telling her she's lucky not to get a dildo shoved in her ear.
You shouldn't need a trial to figure out that what you just saw is harassment. No one should have to put up with that kind of verbal abuse on the job. participating in that abuse is a violation of his employment contract and his employer has every right to can him.
Oh, and I'm a sex-positive feminist social-democrat, a secular humanist and a fan of the labour movement so you fail at making assumptions about people too.
deathtokoalas +A Hermit "But the idea that we can't reach conclusions without going to trial is just absurd."
so, who gets to be dictator, then? you?
i've just disagreed with you. how do we figure this out without a trial, besides through the force of your authority?
harassment in canada is not about discomfort, it's about fear. the law does not lean towards some dictatorial concept of "safe spaces" and let one group of people demand that the other uphold their arbitrary moral convictions under the weight of some kind of self-righteous superiority, it leans toward freedom of expression regardless of consequence. from a legal perspective, it's blatantly obvious that the guy was not attempting to frighten the reporter, and it consequently would not result in a harassment conviction. it's just somebody being a moron.
if you claim otherwise, you have an argument that you need to make. and you need to convince people of the point.
until that evidence is analyzed and weighed in an official capacity, his employer remains liable for it's actions in firing him.
"i don't think your joke is funny" != "sexual harassment". even if the joke is obviously unfunny.
A Hermit +deathtokoalas But if the "joke' is obviously sexual insulting and demeaning, directed at an individual because of their gender, repeated even after it's clear the attention is unwanted and added to with more sexual comments/innuendo and possibly threatening language...that's undoubtedly harassment. And that's exactly what happened here.
deathtokoalas +A Hermit regarding the legal definition of harassment (which is different than the workplace definition of it - that is, people are held to a higher standard at work than outside it), the important part is the last point - repeated threatening behaviour, after being asked to stop. the reporter indicates that she deals with this repeatedly, but you can't hold an individual to account for a group's behaviour (and despite "soccer hooligans" not being an identifiable group, it's clear what i mean when i say that). his defence is actually relevant: it wasn't intended specifically at her, and wasn't meant to be threatening. the video would actually likely be used as evidence in his favour, on that point.
now, if you consider the possibility of this specific individual being filmed repeatedly? well, that's closer to the definition. i mean, if he's stalking her, than that's intimidation. but it's a different issue than what is at hand.
i'm not clear on the actual process being used to deal with this. the initial reports made it seem like he'd been turfed and asked to not let the door hit him on the ass, kind of thing. on reflection, i suppose that was never likely: i really have no doubt that hydro one is aware of the legalities surrounding a firing of this nature.
the point is that this isn't open and shut. it's far from obvious; it's actually extremely subtle, and the legal arguments are actually very delicate, because it's in a grey area of socially unacceptable but (in my estimation) legally acceptable behaviour. and, if the company wants to avoid a payout, it needs to be very careful in how it deals with this.
again: i'd prefer counselling as the best option. the only thing that's clear to me from the video is that these guys need some therapy.
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deathtokoalas +Mr Magoo you have clearly been brainwashed by the nefarious koalas. for all i know, they may have advanced in their pursuit of global domination to the point that they can use the internet; you may, in fact, be a koala. if that is true, god help us all.
no civilized society can tolerate these creatures and their disgusting cuteness. they must be annihilated, before it is too late.
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deathtokoalas +Mr Magoo see, here's the thing: i'm an anti-capitalist, alphabetical egalitarian and general grammar anti-authoritarian. i don't believe in hierarchy, or in centralized grammar authorities. the abolition of punctuation is the redemption of sanity. if we lack the freedom to order our own thoughts as we choose, we lack any freedom at all.
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deathtokoalas +Mr Magoo let me state to all who can hear: behold the manipulative nature of the koala. but, you do not fool me! no! i am on to your koala tricks, your evil plans, your nefarious aims. your cuteness disgusts me. how long can we tolerate this?
people, open your eyes! the koalas are taking over! before we know it, there will be a eucalyptus tree to replace every maple. eucalyptol to replace the maple syrup. imagine this: drunken koalas everywhere, terraforming the planet for their disgusting habits.
and, now they can type! i fear it may be too late to save us. but heed my warnings: we must declare a war on koalas. not tomorrow, but immediately! the future depends on our action, or our inaction, against this grave threat to our national security.
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A Hermit +1jomojo I think it's more like sexually harassing someone and getting fired...
No wait, it's not "like" that, it actually IS that... deathtokoalas +A Hermit again: these accusations are defamatory. this has been explained to you. this is rather clearly not sexual harassment under canadian law; rather, your continued insistence on defaming his character is harassment.
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deathtokoalas +Hem3fiction it doesn't matter that she went to talk to them. harassment is not about offending people, it's about intimidating them. as offensive as these idiots are, they're neither succeeding in nor attempting to scare anybody.
one way to understand this is to research the difference between the "offense principle" (which is the conservative approach to speech, sometimes pushed by a peculiar brand of right-wing foucaldian quasi-fascists) and the "harm principle" (which is the liberal approach to speech).
because workplaces are inherently conservative institutions, they tend to lean towards the right-wing "offense principle". this defines ideas like "safe spaces".
however, in canada, we have a legal history of liberalism, and our law is entirely focused on the "harm principle".
what that means is that the legal argument is not "you offended me", but rather "you pose a threat to harm me.".
if you don't like that, you can always move to a more conservative society.
A Hermit +deathtokoalas And you think there's no harm in sexually harassing someone?
That's interesting...
deathtokoalas +A Hermit that's an interesting choice of words.
A Hermit +deathtokoalas Well you're making a distinction between "offense" and "harm". you seem to think there is no harm in the kind of sexual harassment on display here. (and it is plainly sexual harassment by any reasonable definition.)
"Harassment: means a course of comments or actions that are known, or ought reasonably to be known, to be unwelcome. It can involve words or actions that are known or should be known to be offensive, embarrassing, humiliating, demeaning or unwelcome..."
"Sexual harassment: A course of comment or conduct based on an individual’s sex or gender that is known or ought reasonably to be known to be unwelcome...
Forms of sexual and gender-based harassment could include:
Suggestive or offensive remarks or innuendoes about members of a specific gender
Propositions of physical intimacy
Gender-related verbal abuse, threats or taunting
Rough and vulgar humour or language related to gender"
I think it's reasonable to take repeatedly having "fuck her in the pussy" shouted at her and being told she's lucky not get a dildo shoved in her her fit any number of those criteria.
But you see no harm in any of that?
deathtokoalas +A Hermit you're accidentally making my point. the ohrc is not a body that creates or enforces law, it is a body that interprets whether laws are followed. it cannot charge you with criminal harassment, it can only award damages in a situation where the human rights code is violated under the specific circumstance that the claim refers to a body or individual in authority over the claimant.
criminal law of this nature is a federal responsibility, not a provincial responsibility. again: the relationship between our provinces and central government is the opposite of what exists in the united states, because our constitution was largely built in order to prevent a civil war, which our framers blamed on the american concept of "states rights". the province does not have a criminal code.
the appropriate federal criminal law to cite is the following:
Criminal harassment
264. (1) No person shall, without lawful authority and knowing that another person is harassed or recklessly as to whether the other person is harassed, engage in conduct referred to in subsection (2) that causes that other person reasonably, in all the circumstances, to fear for their safety or the safety of anyone known to them.
Prohibited conduct
(2) The conduct mentioned in subsection (1) consists of
(a) repeatedly following from place to place the other person or anyone known to them;
(b) repeatedly communicating with, either directly or indirectly, the other person or anyone known to them;
(c) besetting or watching the dwelling-house, or place where the other person, or anyone known to them, resides, works, carries on business or happens to be; or
(d) engaging in threatening conduct directed at the other person or any member of their family.
that's harassment in canada. it is neither more than this, nor is it less than this.
before you can claim harassment, you have to demonstrate that the behaviour "causes that other person reasonably, in all the circumstances, to fear for their safety or the safety of anyone known to them.". if that's not true, it's not harassment in canada.
do we know this is true? i claim it isn't. but, the point is that it's not my choice or your choice. note the following, which is the civil rights issue i'm attempting to get across to you:
as mentioned, the legal basis of our law is mills. canada is the only part of the british empire where the liberals got to actually build the country, and the law is consequently erected on somewhat of an extreme basis, in terms of liberal ideology. speech issues in canada require a very high bar.
just to clarify the point: the ohrc enforces the human rights code, which is a law that primarily puts restrictions on the ability of government bodies to behave in a discriminatory fashion. it's not a criminal law. it's mostly in place to prevent things like not handing out driver's licenses to women, or not hiring somebody because they're muslim. it's primarily a civil litigation body, and it's remedies are largely restricted to forcing payouts for damages. it can't send you to jail or force you to do community service or anything like that.
the reporter here can't just take this random guy on the street to the human rights commission. if it was her boss? sure. but, in this circumstance, it's not the right to law to cite.
there are some limited private sector circumstances regarding things like housing and employment opportunities where the human rights code can intervene on the basis of something systemic; authority or hierarchy type circumstances. but we don't have a general "social human rights code" that forces random people to not discriminate against each other in random on-the-street circumstances.
the code is explicit in it's application, but i would expect a concept of "analogous grounds" around the idea of "not using authority to oppress" to apply.
In Ontario, the Code prohibits all forms of discrimination based on sex – and this includes sexual harassment.
The Code applies to five “social" areas:
services, goods and facilities (including education)
housing
contracts
employment
membership in vocational associations such as trade unions.
this is hierarchical and authoritarian type stuff. not random idiots on the street.
you can kind of think of it like the same way that people often define racism as something that is only hierarchical - that is, comments and statements aren't racism, but profiling or racial hiring standards are.
the tl;dr there (after a few edits designed to clarify a few specific points....i took three years of law, but i'm not a lawyer, and the law is famously byzantine, so i'm going to sometimes get broad ideas across correctly while being a little off on specific details) is the following:
1) the ohcr definition of sexual harassment is specific to situations of authority that do not apply here. it has to be some kind of abuse of power.
2) the ohcr does not have the power to make criminal charges and must defer to federal law.
3) the federal definition of harassment necessitates the creation of fear.
i'd argue that all of this leads to the conduct in the video neither being legal nor civil harassment.
but it's apparent - from the existence of this debate - that a trial is necessary to get to an answer.
A Hermit +deathtokoalas Very impressive, but the question here isn't whether the reporter can take the guy to court, it's whether his employer has grounds to fire him. Since his behaviour in so many ways fits the definition of harassment and his contract forbids harassment I'd say they clearly have cause. Behaviour doesn't have to rise to the level of criminality to be cause for firing.
Any honest observer shouldn't need a trial to see that he was participating in a continuing effort to demean and harass that reporter.
And whether or not that rises to the level of criminal harassment I'm amazed that anyone could look at that kind of behaviour and say that it does no harm. deathtokoalas +A Hermit but the question of whether he can be fired (without a payout.....your boss doesn't actually need a reason to fire you, it just might have to pay damages....) is largely dependent on whether the behaviour fits a trial definition of harassment. when a court asks the question "is this harassment?", that's what it looks at.
as mentioned, i think the situation really had nothing to do with shauna hunt. i think it had to do with trying to get on tv, and be the centre of internet attention. she just happened to be the reporter there. if it was a different reporter, it wouldn't have made any difference. this neither has anything to do with an abuse of power, nor is it really an attempt to "demean" - although being "demeaning" is not any kind of legal argument. "moooooommmmmm. he's being mean!". it's just not going to fly. and, i can't see how you - as a claimed "honest observer" - can't see that my continued counter-arguments don't make the necessity of a trial clear.
there was a similar case the other day with a comedian. now, to begin with, i think that is a situation that was legally criminal harassment - it was something like "i want to fuck you", clearly intended to intimidate and with the end result of the comedian leaving the stage, partially out of fear for her safety. those are the ingredients for a criminal harassment suit. so, this is a case of (i'd argue) far worse behaviour. the next day, she got a call from his boss indicating he's been put on paid leave while an internal investigation concludes. the employee there would have no argument for wrongful dismissal, if it happens.
icbones +A Hermit It's not harassment. He was asked an opinion on what some other dude did.
deathtokoalas +icbones wait. is this issue surrounding the guy in the red shirt, or the guy that actually took the mic?
A Hermit +deathtokoalas It's about both of them, and the rest of the nitwits who were egging on the first guy and planning to harass the reporter again.
By the way I think it's interesting that after accusing me of being a "self righteous moral majority type" you're the one hiding behind rigid legalism to try and deny the obvious...
A Hermit +icbones He's participating with a group of people who are harassing, encouraging the harassment and planning more harassment.
And he wasn't asked for his opinion; she was talking to someone else when he jumped in to tell her how fucking hilarious it would be to see someone shove a vibrator in her ear...
deathtokoalas +A Hermit "aiding and abetting being mean".
while this is juvenile and stupid, it's equally clear that it's wrongful dismissal - unless there were some charges filed. you can't fire somebody for expressing their opinions outside of the workplace.
based on the evidence i see, no charges were filed - which means he wins an easy lawsuit and gets a hefty payout from it. that's not a penalty for this behaviour, it's an award.
but, the truth is he deserves it. because you really shouldn't be able to fire somebody for expressing their opinions outside of the workplace - even if those opinions are juvenile and stupid.
it's yet another example of poor tactics leading to counterproductive results. authoritarianism doesn't solve anything. this is a cultural issue.
i've also finished inri047 today, which is a 2xcd compilation of scored electronic music written between 2001-2003 and completed from 2013-2015. this falls outside of my record list enumeration, but it's a substantial release. influences range across the electronic music spectrum from varese to rdj and everything in between - and also to early forms of classical music - but these are all scored pieces, and very much connected to ideas of written music with the notes and the time signatures and the aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh.....
there's plenty of weird electronic music in my discography, but this is a reprieve from that.
it's arranged in two discs that mirror each other. the first is soundblaster mixes. these mixes sound sort of 8-bit, but they're actually 16-bit; it's next gen 8-bit technology, before the game changed from wavetables to larger sample databases and software synthesizers. disc two rearranges disc one for vst software synths, which gives it a huge facelift in terms of sound quality.
this is pretty much comprehensive in terms of this style, for me. i left to hitch across the country in the spring of 2003; there's very little scored soundcard music in my discography after i came back.
so, this is a musical statement. it's a little weird, but there's a niche audience waiting for it.
===
back in 2001, and bleeding into about 2003, i wrote a number of tracks into a scorewriter with the explicit intent of eventually having them performed by live ensembles. at the beginning of 2014, i decided that this wasn't likely to ever actually happen and went about completing the tracks in finalized forms - which happened over 2014 and 2015.
my initial plan for this compilation was to produce a record of midi compositions mapped to modern vst instruments as a "chiptune" (not literally) project, and have it double a record of fully realized versions of the tracks. as i went about completing the project, i began to realize that these vst versions were not sufficiently different enough from the finalized versions to justify a separate album and consequently aborted the project.
however, something that's happened since 2001 is that a more mature market has developed for midi-generated music, largely on the back of the success of the gaming industry. people have nostalgia for the sounds that their childhood gaming consoles made and an interest in listening to original music in the style of the soundtracks to those games.
i need to be clear that these are not gaming soundtracks - they're a mix of various types of classical and jazz, taking in influences from across the musical spectrum but essentially none from gaming. gaming isn't a thing i've ever really done, and the little bit i've done has tended to act as an excuse for listening to music (i had a mild civ2 obsession in early high school).
however, i feel that compiling a record of soundblaster mixes is something that could appeal to a specialized, niche audience and am going to put this record together for those people. i also feel it captures the headspace that i was in at the time. i've decided to mirror this soundblaster disc with the vst disc i was initially contemplating, to demonstrate where the technology has arrived at.
all of these tracks also appear on a set of cross-listed singles, and most of them are sequenced into a record at some point. there's more info on the track pages.
i've included the raw midi files in the download for further listening and modification.
these tracks were written from 2001 until 2003 and in some cases rearranged over the course of 2014 and 2015. all disc 1 tracks rendered through a soundblaster live! wave device that was manufactured c.1999. all disc 2 tracks created in cubase with vst software synthesizer technology. the compilation date is may 14, 2015. as always, please use headphones.
credits:
j - controller inputs, programming, composition, digital wave editing, effects processing, production
the
various rendered electronic orchestras include acoustic bass, synth
bass, electric bass, flute, clarinet, brass, trumpet, trombone, tuba,
soprano saxophone, orchestra hit, violin, cello, string section
(tremolo), drum machine, electronic drum kit, hand drums, finger snaps,
nylon guitar, electric guitar (distorted, clean), steel string acoustic
guitar, fret noise, sitar, banjo, pc card clavinet, music box, piano,
organ, bells, synthesizers, mellotron and choir.
this is the vst software synth mix that updates the soundfonts.
some time in late 2002, sean sent me a message over msn or icq requesting that we begin a song based on looped birds chirping. i thought his idea was kind of cliched, but i took to working around his suggestions by converting them into something more musically expressive. i didn't want to write a song that literally climaxes around birds chirping, but i was willing to write something tonal that evoked the feeling of birds chirping.
at the time, i had my sister's electronic piano downstairs. she had a miniature grand upstairs. it was initially written on the keyboard with a very strange timing, which the scorewriter had difficulties capturing - partly because i was inconsistent in performing it. the piece was greatly simplified as it was arranged.
however, i believe the piece sat for a long time before the second section was added to it.
written and recorded in early 2003. transcribed, slightly rearranged, remixed and re-rendered over may, 2015. this render is from may 14, 2015.
i've seen enough leaks and exposes on the iaea to conclude it's hopelessly, permanently captured by the cia, and this really just sounds like a way to sucker them into handing over their detonator plans.
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
dad-bod means sugar-daddy. women are gaining more economic freedom every year, but the reality remains that what most attractive women over about 25 want is financial security, not sexy bodies. if you can get both, great, sure, but, otherwise, that's what the pool guy is for, right?
that's what these bros don't get. lifting is great if you're young, or if you want to be every married woman's fling. but, at the end of the day, if you really want the girl then you need to be exercising your brain and bringing in the cash.
lwAtErOnEl
Calling it "dad bod" is creepy as fuck. Do these girls think of their dads when they see them?
FutureDirector24 +lwAtErOnEl Do guys think of their moms when they say "milf"? All milfs aren't moms, it's more of an age thing.
deathtokoalas +FutureDirector24 it's not the same thing. milf is about the sexuality of older women - it's a process of objectification. "dad-bod" refers to the relative unimportance of sexual attraction in favour of financial security - just like daddy. as i mentioned, things are changing, but when you culturally enforce patriarchy you have to expect that young women are going to have this idea of husband as father. it's more than subconscious.
you can't draw these broad equivalences in a society that remains fundamentally unequal. it's more accurate to suggest that "dad bod" and "milf" are the opposite of each other, in terms of sexual objectification.
Joe Themig +deathtokoalas Lol... patriarchy? Really?
Guess when they call a dad a DILF, it's just the patriarchy in action.
Tin foiled hat nonsense.
deathtokoalas +Joe Themig if dilf was a thing, it would at least be an equivalence. it doesn't really actually make sense, though, as dads don't need to go through the rearrangement of their bodies that mothers do. but it's not actually a thing. and you can clearly see how a dad-bod is not a dilf, but the opposite of it. Ivan Ivanovsky +deathtokoalas LOL! You said "patriarchy". Go back to Tumblr. Xaxaxa! You can't blame "patriarchy" for stupid trend made popular by childish, trend-hopping western female. This "dad bod" nonsense only became topic of conversation because stupid, childish, celebrity obsessed, American woman gushes over and promote Lenard DeCrapio's "dad bod". The so-called mans getting on this bandwagon are of pathetic weak mans who think this is their chance for female approval.
deathtokoalas +Ivan Ivanovsky the empirical truth that women overwhelmingly choose financial stability over sexual desire is neither recent nor a trend. if you want women to choose muscles over money, that is short-term fun over long-term security, you need to ensure they have the financial freedom to do so, and exist within a culture that encourages independent thought. otherwise, the size of your house is going to remain sexier than the size of your chest, as the groupthink enforces the family structure.
Aaron Brown +deathtokoalas So you sound like a feminist gold digger. Females want equal rights and to be treated fairly but yet you want the man to make the income. Sorry but that's that what equality is about. Taken from Merriam Webster- " the quality or state of being equal : the quality or state of having the same rights, social status, etc." So with that being said , according to "equality" the man is not equal in your "long-term security" plan. Stuff happens in the world. People lose jobs out of nowhere for no reason everyday. AND in case you try to say "I'm not a gold digger" BAM! HERE YOU GO: a person who dates others purely to extract money from them, in particular a woman who strives to marry a wealthy man.
deathtokoalas +Aaron Brown it's a conditioning thing - it's what women are taught. and mostly by men, although mom doesn't always set a good example or say the right things, here. i've stated a few times that things are changing. slowly. but the society continues to teach women to be dependent on male economic activity. breaking that cycle relies on opening up more opportunities, but all the opportunities in the world aren't going to break the cycle if the dominant christian patriarchal culture that teaches female submission isn't smashed, too.
i'm telling you how things are. i'm not endorsing this.
John Doe +deathtokoalas The problem with your analysis is the "dad bod" trend doesn't equate with financial status. Actually, in relative terms attractive men tend to make more money than less attractive men. You're approaching the issue as a matter of "everything is patriarchy" in spite of the reality we don't live in a patriarchy.
A better way to look at the dad bod trend might be to examine if women are rethinking their stance towards hypergamy on a wider scale. Perhaps women are realizing that always choosing relationships with men that are above them is responsible for a lot of women's relationships wounds. Choosing the "dad bod" might be a step away from hypergamy towards lateral relationship choices, which numerous studies have shown make women happier.
deathtokoalas +John Doe you're incoherent - you claim it's not financial, then claim it is. further, the studies you're citing about attractiveness and wealth tend to suffer from the flaw of being circular. it's difficult to define the term "attractive" but, in context, it usually means things like "well dressed" rather than "works out". as the primary thing that defines male attractiveness is wealth, you end up in this circular argument that resolves by reversing causality - it's not that more attractive men make more money, it's that men that make more money are more attractive.
Aaron Brown +deathtokoalas Are you a christian....do you go to church....do you read the bible. If you answer no to any of these then your statement is just an observation you have made. I could look at a muslim who is all dressed up and assume that they are a terrorist or I could assume that that is their religion. One would be right and the other would be null. However for you to state this is literally as vague as saying a rainbow has pretty colors. Your view on christianity is warped. If you were to go to most modern christian establishmenst (Some denominations still live in the old times, yes) what you just said is irrelevent. They don't teach that women are to rely on the man for money.
deathtokoalas +Aaron Brown i'll acknowledge that christianity does not have a single set of views; just about anything has been argued from the bible, and the result is that just about anything can be blamed on christianity.
the broader perspective is to realize that religion is never a world view in itself, but always a way to enforce a worldview. in the era of slavery, you had southern churches arguing that blacks were cursed by god some time back in the garden of eden days, and the bible demands they're enslaved....while you had christian abolitionists in the north. neither came to their positions because of christianity. rather, both used the religion to argue their point.
so, when you have these limbaugh and falwell type groups preaching their ideas of male dominance, it's perhaps worthwhile to point out that they're using the old testament statements as a means to convince somebody of something they'd try and convince them of anyways.
that doesn't change the reality on the ground that evangelical christianity produces, or the coercive nature of the social shaping that it promotes.
some milder denominations may have moved on, but, as a whole, does christianity (especially the evangelical sort) continue to push patriarchy? yes. absolutely.
Dom Ferris
How did this turn into a religous debate?
deathtokoalas +Dom Ferris i'm not interested in a religious debate. christianity is stupid. this is a social debate.
erwin s +deathtokoalas Islam is even worse ;-)
deathtokoalas +erwin s they're all the same. ask anna comnena.
i'm just not sure exactly what the problem is. twerking is not pornography, so if you had done the video and sent it back he wouldn't be in possession of child pornography or whatever. you didn't feel comfortable, and you refused and that was that. the legal action is something else - but if the accusation is that you're defaming him by calling him a pedophile, he's actually pretty much correct in asking you to cease and desist (although the judge has some room for interpretation, there). it's certainly eccentric, granted. and i actually don't even know who he is. but eccentricity is not a crime. i'm not really clear about what the accusation, here, is...
Taylor Tanguay +deathtokoalas This was never meant to be a legal accusation, at all. I will continue to use the term pedophile in the sense of its definition being an adult who is sexually attracted to people under the legal age of consent. Given that he was soliciting these images from girls strictly between the ages of 13-16, and openly said he wanted them because he was "horny", I believe that the term is used appropriately. But again, that may just be me.
deathtokoalas +Taylor Tanguay if that's your logic, you'll certainly lose the court case - you're defining defamation and then claiming you have the right to it under the first amendment. you have to wait until he's at least charged with something before you can do that in a way that tarnishes somebody's reputation. otherwise, you're legally liable for the consequences of your speech.
fwiw, you should realize that pedophilia refers to attraction to children - that is people that have yet to hit puberty.
so,
1) you're not charging him with a crime.
2) you're suggesting he's guilty of a crime
3) you're suggesting he's guilty of a crime that does not fit the definition of what you're accusing him of.
i gather you're what, 17? that's your best defense.
Taylor Tanguay
I'm not accusing him of a crime. I have never once implied that this should be brought to court. I don't think theres any reason for the authorities to get involved in my case. The other, more invasive instances- maybe. But those are not my stories to share or problems to deal with. The only thing I want is for teenager girls to stop flocking to him.
deathtokoalas +Taylor Tanguay i really strongly suggest you retract your accusation of pedophilia, then, because he will win if he can get the judge to grant you standing.
i just want to be clear: you have a right to tell your story, regardless of if it affects others, so long as it's true (and i don't doubt that it is).
but you don't have a right to make ambiguous or false accusations with the express intent of harming his career, which you've actually admitted to doing in this video.
because you're still a minor, you likely retain the ability to back out of this and focus solely on the first part, if you distance yourself from the second.
Taylor Tanguay +deathtokoalas my exact quote containing the phrase in question is "he's like, straight up pedophile-ish". I would highly question anyone who took that as a legal accusation of pedophilia.
deathtokoalas +Taylor Tanguay so, what they're going to want to prove, if they can take it to court, and they could conceivably sue your parents, is the following:
1) is the accusation false? (yes, by your own admission)
2) did you intend the accusation to create harm? (yes, by your own admission)
3) is there any financial hardship as a consequence? (yes, if he gets kicked off warp)
the cause and effect relationship is that you (or your parents) would then be liable for the financial consequences caused by the video, because it's intended to create harm.
i took three years of a law program before i got bored with it. but you don't have to - and really probably shouldn't - believe me. if you have access to legal advice, i would suggest it.
but you should be cognizant of the cause and effect relationship between any financial harm you intended to create (by your own admission) and any actual financial harm.
i would suspect a smart lawyer would ask you to cancel the petition. if sales fall after that, a causal relationship is harder to establish.
but clear malice behind a clear exaggeration and a clear causal relationship to financial harm is a very short case. the more lengthy argument is around your age.
Taylor Tanguay
what petition?? Literally all i did was post this video, AFTER the stories of him soliciting videos from other girls had went viral on twitter, and post my conversations with him online
deathtokoalas +Taylor Tanguay well, i'd never heard of him before. this video is trending at the top of youtube; i check that fairly regularly. so, i googled him and a petition came up to get him off warp that appears to have a lot of signatures. i put two and two together...
that's a bad idea, though. if he were to sue you or anybody else, he would have to establish actual financial loss in order to win an award. if that petition goes through, he has sufficient financial loss (and clear causality) to launch a suit and win.
his lawsuit depends on the three things i outlined, and that causal link to your video(s) is absolutely necessary to establish. if that cannot be established, you would not be the right person to sue.
Erica Gene +deathtokoalas It doesn't take nudity for something to be sexual. It isn't a matter of him simply possessing it, the issue is what he does with the videos when he has it.
deathtokoalas +Erica Gene no. you have no right to interfere, out of some arbitrary and meaningless moral perspective. what he does in the sanctity of his own home is none of your business. it's not a matter of what he does with it, it's a matter of the legality of possessing it.
Erica Gene
Eh, okay.
Pink guy +deathtokoalas She has every right to interfere, this is youtube not a court hearing. You obviously went to law school, but you missed the fact that if Austin is kicked off of the tour for felonious actions, and there is undeniable proof (which there is), he can not sue. He obviously will not sue, anyway, if this were a real court case, what would he say? "I got kicked off a tour because I was soliciting videos of teens twerking for sexual pleasure and I demand compensation"? The case would be thrown out immediately, and austin would be charged.
deathtokoalas +Pink guy so, who exactly gave you the right to decide this?
there seems to be a general problem with young people nowadays, and your inability to understand the concept of due process. for some reason, you seem to think that trial by media is valid. you seem to think that these decisions are up to the general public to decide, rather than up to the court system. it's a problem that's been building for a few decades now, to the point that you all seem to just be oblivious to it.
we don't know why he was asking for those videos. that's the issue that needs to be determined in a court. that means that evidence needs to be provided, arguments need to be had and a decision needs to be come to to weigh all of these things. that's not done by talking heads in the media, or headlines in cnn. "it's obvious" is not a legal argument. depending on the context, it's actually possible defamatory.
now, if it's determined that a felony has taken place, then that's a defence in a defamation suit. until that time has come, your "undeniable proof" is merely possible evidence in a trial that never happened, and accusations that presume guilt are subject to censure and penalty. that's why you hear news reports use the word "alleged" so often - even in cases where it's "obvious".
the result is that, yes, he can say exactly what you're saying - if he can demonstrate a causal link between false statements made with malicious intent and a financial loss as a consequence of them.
in this particular case? you should realize that there's almost no chance he'd face any charges, unless he's selling the videos, basically. even if he's jerking off to the videos, that's neither paedophilia in a legal nor a clinical sense.
if it were, there'd be millions of people in jail for jerking off to britney spears and miley cyrus and ariana grand and the rest of them. that's just not a crime.
Pink guy +deathtokoalas You forget that possession said videos of minors doing such acts is also highly illegal. OF course, no charges will be brought upon him, since he was never taken to court, but you can't deny that his actions were highly illegal, and the videos where he teaches them how to twerk would be considered "Bait"
And yes, jerking off to said videos is not pedophilia, it's ephebophilia. Which is the sexual attraction to someone between 15 and 17. Depending on which states you are in, that is highly illegal and can land you a good bit of jail time if caught in your possession.
The fact that he won't be charged is completely true, but you can't ignore the fact that what he did was illegal.
deathtokoalas +Pink guy i'd argue it's just some kids dancing, obtained in consensual circumstances. that's neither pornography, nor is it coercive. i don't see what he could possibly be charged with.
you're allowed to disagree - that's what a trial is for. until then, statements of his guilt that may lead to financial consequences should be avoided, as they may lead to legal liability.
i want you to look up the video for "hit me baby one more time". she was seventeen 16 at the time.
this is "normal" across media. it's a part of the culture. you can argue it's gross, and i'd largely agree with you. but criminalizing this would have some pretty severe consequences.
Pink guy +deathtokoalas Keep in mind, these were FANS that Austin manipulated and harrassed until they complied
deathtokoalas +Pink guy he's not in any kind of position of authority or influence over them. and, even if he was, there's no meaningful consequence of asking somebody to dance on camera.
Pink guy +deathtokoalas These girls idolized him, so of course they would keep talking to him. There was also a video where he was "I'm horny all the time and if we keep talking i'm probably gonna ask for a video", Austin admitted he used it for sexual reasons.
But this whole argument is pointless, so have a nice day <3
deathtokoalas +Pink guy you're trying to tap into a legal argument that has to do with coercion. if you have a boss or a teacher, they may be able to coerce you into behaviour you don't really want in return for awards or to prevent consequences - like getting fired or failing a course. that's a well-tested legal argument, and i agree with the basis of it. people in authority should not use their authority to coerce people.
this argument has been extrapolated by some legal arguments to try and include the effects that celebrities may have on people. it's kind of scary to consider the ramifications of celebrity worship on such a deep level. but, it's a hail mary legal argument that doesn't usually work.
judges don't always base their decisions strictly on logic. sometimes, they look at a situation and say "this person has a lot, and this person has very little. i'm going to redistribute the wealth a little.". those decisions are usually reversed on appeal, if the appeals are granted. but, that's the kind of situation where these arguments work.
if this kid was, like, bono, or something? paul mcartney? i just mean somebody with billions of dollars, literally. another place this might come up is with a working class person suing a multi-national company. with something like that, you might see an activist judge step in and redistribute the wealth a little, out of a feeling that the billionaire can part with a little cash.
but, that's not the situation, here. as far as i can tell, this guy lives in his mom's basement. and the idea that he had some kind of coercive authority over anybody at all is not going to stand up in court.
social critics are unpopular, by definition. they seek to hold up a mirror, not to win popularity contests. they reject admiration and revel in pariah status. they're often killed by angry mobs, die penniless and dejected or even take their own lives.
i know exactly what i'm doing. you just can't see beyond the flaws in the human model of homo economicus.
the level of nonsense surrounding this story is hard to cut through, but binney is basically correct in how he's describing the spy game - which leads to the logical conclusion that the germans also have spies in the us government. obviously.
i have no indication that the state department has clued into this. but my hypothesis on what's going on is that snowden (and probably a few people involved with wikileaks) is the obvious spy connected to that clearly existing german intelligence network.
i think that what's happening here is a controlled leak by the germans (without american knowledge or approval) to create a crisis with the goal of reducing american influence in germany, and western continental europe generally.
which answers the question as to why they're spying in the first place.