there's a valid point in here somewhere, but as is generally the case with south park, it's not articulated well - because the writers for the program are just not very smart.

the basic premise in the episode is that social media comments represent reality, and ignoring them represents escaping reality. now, i do a lot of commenting - i think it's an underappreciated medium - but this premise is comically absurd. the vast majority of comments, negative or positive, are written at a level that is below grade school - they are often incoherent, at best, and are largely written in languages that linguistics has yet to actually define.

blocking, deleting or disabling comments is consequently not in any way equivalent to tuning reality out, unless you're willing to entirely conflate reality with unbearable idiocy. it's really more equivalent to standing on your balcony and screaming to the masses, over loudspeakers: i don't fucking care what you think. and, that's relatively healthy in terms of asserting individualism.

(deleted)

but, it's an absurd premise as to why people block others. i use my killfile very liberally. it has nothing to do with my feelings; i just don't have any patience for fucking idiots, and don't think i have any obligation to give them a platform. it is absolutely not my responsibility to hear them out, ponder what they have to say and thoughtfully respond - i have every right to just smite them from my internet altogether, and be on with it.

free speech does not imply an obligation to listen.

so, telling somebody to shut the fuck up doesn't always mean you're hiding from something, or can't deal with something. quite often, what it means is that the person talking is a hopeless, irredeemable dipshit that isn't worth the thirty seconds required to block them.

but, as mentioned, there is a point in there, somewhere, buried underneath piles of absolute nonsense.

see, it's the end part of the video that i think really understands the issue.

if you don't have an enthusiastic consent clause, you don't have an objective standard in court. there's this huge disconnect in reality between how feminists talk about rape and how a court deals with an accusation of rape. the court takes the assumption that the accused is innocent until proven guilty, and a large part of proving somebody is guilty of rape lies in establishing the intent. if one partner thinks there is consent, then there's not an intent to rape - and that is a big part of how the legal system works. feminists broadly ignore the legal realities in the course of a criminal investigation, and make statements like "intent doesn't matter". and, in context, sometimes it's legitimately true that intent shouldn't matter. it produces this set of contradictions that is both putting an ideology against legal traditions and opening up a grey area in what justice really ought to be - depending on context, it's as easy to argue that intent is less important than consent as it is to argue that intent is paramount in determining guilt.

now, we can talk about social engineering and whatnot, but at the end of the day the court is left with making what is an almost impossible determination, given that they were not there at the time.

what enthusiastic consent laws do is provide an objective standard that the court can use. it places a burden on both parties to ask and receive. and there's still he-said/she-said issues. but, at least it eliminates the grey area, so long as everybody is carrying through their legal responsibilities.

so, you're putting out the idea that some women could use the law to have sex with somebody and then maliciously turn around and accuse them of rape. but, in the abstract, this is the status quo. the enthusiastic consent clause places in law what is actually a safeguard against this. so long as you ask, you're safe from malicious lawsuits against you - so long as the person is not so malicious as to lie under oath.

now, people will spin this around in every which way. but what i'm saying is the actual reality of it.

another way to see what i'm saying is this: if somebody has the intent to rape somebody, it doesn't matter whether consent is denied, enthusiastically or not. a violent rapist is not interested in consent.

this a safe guard for what could be called "accidental rape".

actually, i don't think the kids have terrible taste or make garbage music. in fact, i think we're long overdue for a cultural overhaul, and there's a lot of reason to be optimistic that the kids can put gen y through the fucking blender and shoot it out into space.

i just called panic at the disco fans "kids". some of the more pathetic ones are probably even older than me; they're likely mostly within five years. but, i grew up right on the generational cusp, and consistently identified with older gen x types. so, i call them kids - even if they're only two years younger than i am - because that's honestly what it's always felt like, and still feels like. i didn't understand gen y in the 90s, and i don't understand it now. they seem to choose to be dipshits on purpose and somehow revel in it.

but, the actual kids? the ones born in the 90s? they seem to be far more creative, and have far better taste.

i've mostly ignored and skipped gen y. it's not because i was old - i wasn't old. first impressions by most people will assume i'm even of gen y. the truth is that their (my? ick.) music really did just honestly suck. and, there's not really any direction to move in but improvement.

the actual kids will do better. they can't not.

but you kids all understand that, in reality, you don't have a soul, and so nothing happens when you die, right? the electricity stops running, and you're just composted. there's neither pointy teeth, nor goat horns, involved at any stage of this process.

camera came in today.

it works, at least. maybe not so well. lol. well, there's lots of settings to play with....

i'll take it out tomorrow, to start.

it seems to be the plug, but i'm not done testing yet.

it got better when i set the exposure, but it seems to require a lot of the light for the video part. it's going to require a few experiments, clearly.

it's giving me about an hour on the 2 gb card. i'm going to want five or six hours, at least, so one of the things i'll do tomorrow is get a new card....

i think that the way a lot of these debates have been framed for the last 20 years is going to make his proposals hard to understand until you see them actually worked out.

consider climate change. we're so used to hearing about setting emissions targets. but, where has this approach gotten us? the answer is absolutely nowhere. we're used to hearing about taxes & market schemes. these haven't worked either. what's happened is that we've become so lost in the neo-conservative era, that we're not able to even consider anything that isn't a "market-based solution". it's just outside of the realm of imagination.

what nobody is talking about is that the best way to get us off of oil is to build the infrastructure to get us off oil. that's how we've always solved problems in the past: we get the government to throw billions down on getting it done. we didn't twiddle with tax policies to create incentives. we just did it.

i mean, imagine if roosevelt had left the manhatten project up to the market. it's so outrageous, we can't even fathom it. but, that's what we're proposing every time we hear about a cap & trade system or a carbon tax. it's really madness.

if he puts a third of the 20 billion dollars (yes. billion. with a b.) that are in his platform down on transitioning out of the carbon economy, he'll have had a more substantive contribution than any politician in north america has, to this point - and by a good margin. he's not setting targets. but, the truth is that what he's proposing is the most ambitious thing i've ever seen on this continent. it's so ambitious, after so many years of canada collectively having no real ambitions, that it's maybe hard to get one's head around it.

there's a bunch of issues like this.

your skepticism is healthy. i'd encourage it. but, i also think you should take a closer look at that platform and really absorb it.

thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/10/23/Trust-Justin-Trudeau/

cloudburst
There's an immediate, practical way to reduce consumption during our transition off carbon fuels: we need transferable licence plates, so when you don't need your larger gas hog vehicle: 4 wheel drives/trucks for farms, hauling, winter conditions etc you can transfer it to a vehicle that uses less fuel. ICBC could simply charge the rate for the higher cost vehicle and apply it to both, to cover the cost of extra admin.

I have an attack plan when I go into town usually once a week, I write down everything need, buy in bulk and plan an efficient route. Other ways I save energy is to put up a clothes line inside my home. Beware: some clothes racks can collapse creating a safety hazard if a child or cat climbs on them. I boil water on the stove for beverages, boil dirty pots with recycled dishwater in them and fill them with stained coffee cups etc, cutting down on the use of my dishwasher, I also heat water to do the dishes on my wood stove. I create "warm zones" in my home and roll up blankets to place at the bottom off drafty doors.

deathtokoalas
every little bit counts...

but the reality is that the single biggest culprit in canada is how we generate electricity, and this is something the government can take a direct role in.

the second biggest culprit is transportation, and it's hard to blame consumers when the options are not truly feasible. there's no real electric car market. and, there's been no coherent policy to reduce electricity costs.

industry comes in at third, and while the arguments underlying tax policies and market schemes may seem sophisticated, the truth is that they don't work. fines don't work, either - they're the cost of business. this is the hard part, and a big part of the solution needs to be people getting angry about it. you're better off writing a letter to your boss than writing a letter to your mp.

but, the government can do quite a bit through direct investment. yes: a lot of this needs to happen at a provincial level. but the feds can play a role in getting people working together in a common strategy.

cnusodef

i'm getting close. i really am.

i decided there was a headphone issue, and i should just go ahead and deal with the clock - started fading as soon as i opened cubase, as expected. so, i reinstalled the clock. and - bam - it's sounding perfect again.

i'll have to see what happens when i open cubase. i still need to do some more testing first.

in the meantime, i'm going to repost this instrumental remix of confused, with the added sequencer, because it's a new mix, and i'm really jonesing to move forward.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/cnusodef

this was a consequence of the laughter, and entirely out of his control.

actus reus - clearly
mens rea - certainly not

verdict: not guilty.

that is either a very small didgeridoo, or a very large amount of bullshit.

they've found laputa, clearly.

again: it's the smell.

you want to imagine an imaginary forcefield of odour around the pumpkin that the dog is aware of but we are not. if you work this in as you're watching it, the dog's movements begin to make more sense.

having such a sensitive sense of smell is probably a burden, and you probably shouldn't belittle the creature for it. it takes time to adjust.

clearly fake.

but the teacher has no right to take the guy's food or yell at the students like that and ought to be immediately fired.

matthew Sedillo
If it's a school rule for students to not eat in class, than the teachers have every right to do so. An old math teacher of mine used to throw away student food. He made it perfectly clear that it wasn't allowed, but of course our generation of kids love to defy rules

jessica
+matthew Sedillo but, it's an individual choice to eat, is it not? such a rule would break the constitution of any respectable institution. the teacher does not have the right to such an abuse of power!

ok, so let's take a step back.

1) the existing deficit is structural. there will be no sell-off of auto shares next year. and, oil is not rebounding. the upcoming changes in the tax system are necessary to prevent another ten years of deficits. i know that's not how the liberals sold the idea, but it's the actual truth of it. here is the reality: if harper had won, he would have run a deficit due to low oil prices and silly tax cuts. the liberals simply realized the nature of the structural deficit, and spun it around to present the expectations of unavoidable deficits for the next few years. and, if we're going to have deficits anyways, austerity is just shooting yourself in the foot. smart politics. but, do not be confused: we're in a structural deficit, and the changes they're making are necessary to fix it.

2) the liberals will probably take interest rates up a little; that's a historical truth with the liberal party. but, we're not fighting stagflation. it's not the 70s, and we won't see those kinds of interest rates. the reason is they want people to buy bonds. right now, canadian bonds are a crappy investment. and, housing is in a bubble that needs to crash, anyways.

3) an under-reported part of the liberal platform is that they're planning on returning to more lending from the bank of canada. on some level, this is a meaningless accounting issue. but, if they're increasing borrowing from the bank of canada (specifically on infrastructure spending), then where interest rates are set is less important to the overall debt-to-gdp ratio, because the interest on the new debt grows at a lower rate, even if interest rates go up. that new green infrastructure bank is going to be a subsidiary of the bank of canada. this is a big deal that not many people understand.

4) legalizing marijuana will both act as a huge boost to gdp and as a significant revenue generator.

the liberals pulled this trick in the 90s: next year is a wash, but expect "surprise surpluses" starting a year or two early, even with the infrastructure spending.

the key to balancing the books, even if it's all political, is in diversifying the economy and fixing the tax system - not in cutting spending. this is actually the liberals' strongpoint, as a party. you can take this for granted. i'm more concerned about making sure they hold up to their promises on the social side of things.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/10/20/liberal-party-economy-taxes-interest-rates_n_8337240.html

i remember feeling a few when i lived in ottawa - and remarking more than once that they really ought to shut down the reactor in deep river.

www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/earthquake-rattles-town-near-ottawa/58800/

it's just proof that cats aren't very smart.

no rational being would jump up to open the door when they can just stroll through the hole in it.

this is actually pretty good....

....for a microsoft product.

i hear the google talk has three times the viewer share, and there's a lot of excitement about sony's upcoming talk next month.

but, really - no argument. good points. warrants are important. i'm just not sure why that's not obvious.

"they killed kan-e"

those bastards.

the driver has plates on, so this isn't bright. but, if you're in a decent size truck without plates and you're in a situation, this is actually not a bad tactic. you're never going to outrun them, or win a car chase. but, if you can knock the cars out of commission and get far enough away to ditch the vehicle, there's a relatively decent chance you can get out of it.

i mean, it's a better tactic than trying to win a chase, anyways.

wouldn't a contrarian need to disagree with the label?

appointment

jessica
first, i should apologize for sending you faxes and emails; i don't have a phone.

my name is jessica parent. i saw you about a year ago regarding transgender hrt. you carried on a prescription i had been on for four years and have now been on for five years. at the time, we agreed that you would continue to prescribe the hormones from a distance, because i live in windsor and it's very difficult for me to commute to london. however, when i went to renew the prescription, the pharmacy received back a note that you need to see me.

i really can't afford to make the commute. i'm really not quite sure why it is that you need to see me, given that we agreed it was unnecessary. do you need a blood test? could you schedule one at a clinic here in windsor, and have the results faxed to you?

i'm exploring further options, here, but they're kind of bleak. i have an appointment with a family doctor on nov 17, and i'm hoping that works out. i'm also communicating with an endocrinologist, but he's put a condition down to attend a workshop in toronto with a year-long waiting list, and that's kind of a non-starter. i may be able to convince him to waive this, but it's up in the air right now.

if it's just a blood test, i can do that. but i would really like to avoid the bus fare; i could do it, if it's my only choice, but i live on odsp and it's going to be tight up against my budget.

if you require regular visits, i suppose i understand. i think i've been on hormones so long, that it's just a question of a check-up, and i do feel healthy enough that i think it's probably superfluous, but i realize there are due diligence issues, as well. but, i can't commit to that.

in the short run, i'm hoping maybe you could give me another 3-6 months to allow me to exhaust options here. again: if it's just a blood test, i'm more than willing to do that. if not, and you're ok with another few months, i'd ask you to let me know so i can ask the pharmacy to fax another request.

i know this is not ideal. *i'm* the one that's struggling to find a doctor, here, that's at a reasonable distance. i'm not quite sure why this is proving so difficult. but, it's obviously kind of frightening to come up against the idea of not being able to find hormones, after already transition fully for all functional purposes. i hope that the urgency is understood and the difficult situation is accounted for in your decision.

london clinic
Good morning Jessica,

Thanks so much for your email. We can absolutely empathize with the difficulty to get here for an appointment with the distance and financial constraints. I showed Dr. Martin your email and he came up with a bit of a compromise, I hope this can work. He has agreed to extend the prescriptions until June but in the meantime, if you could find a way to make it up here for an appointment that would be very important before we are able to give more beyond this date. The issue is just with the due diligence, for him to be able to be accountable and act in a medically responsible way while prescribing medications it is essential that we see you in our office for follow-ups. Hopefully the extension will make it a little easier to find a way to get here at some point between now and then. Let me know that you would be agreeable to this plan and where you would like me to send the refill for you medications.  If there is anything else I can do to help, don’t hesitate to let me know.

jessicaprobably the easiest thing to do would be for me to fax the refill request from the pharmacy. does that work for you?

extending it to june will give me more than enough time to figure things out here, so that is ideal: thank you. i will know if i need to make another appointment within a few weeks, and if i do i will call you near the end of november to make it. if i don't, i'll let you know as well.

london clinic
Hi Jessica,

I'm so glad to hear this plan will work. You can for sure have the pharmacy fax over the refill requests and I will fill it out and fax it back to them :)

i mostly called it, i just want to point out how i got to where i got to and what went wrong where it went wrong. my predictions were..

liberals: 160-170
conservatives: 95-100
ndp: ~45
bloc: ~35 - but i saw this as a max.

the liberals overperformed in quebec, so that's the major thing that i got wrong. otherwise, it would have been dead on.

error for quebec: the quebec polls were just impossible, near the end. the correct answer was "there are four parties in the margin of error, and the result is unpredictable". but, you can't do that. you need to pick something, even if you're aware it's really just a guess. aggregates break when you have a lot of movement near the end because they're designed to be conservative (as in not change a lot). i thought i picked up a bloc surge over the last 36 hours, and was guessing it would be something like libs 30, ndp 25, bloc 25, cons 15. i actually correctly pulled out low conservative turnout (or unchanged turnout since 2011), which was in direct contradiction to the media narrative; it struck me as absolute bollocks. so, i was thinking that the split would let the bloc come up the middle in many ridings, and leave the ndp with ~15. so, my quebec predictions were: bloc ~35, libs ~25, ndp ~15, cons ~5. what we actually got in quebec was libs 35, ndp 25, bloc 20, cons 20 - which let the liberals sweep. NOBODY picked that up.

almost nobody. i actually picked it up, in noticing that the ndp decrease seemed to primarily moving to the undecideds. but, then the polling firms stopped publishing that, and i was stuck in the dark.

i think that, when the dust settles and the numbers are crunched, what we will find out is that the liberals got a boost on a low turnout in quebec amongst left-leaning sovereigntist voters. people just rejected everything and tuned out. that is the reason that none of the polls seemed to have them so high in their published numbers; if you look at their unpublished numbers, i think it's something that will come out in a distinct swing from ndp to "they're all terrible, i'm staying home and watching the habs game."

errors for ontario: i predicated 90+ seats for the liberals in ontario and -25 for the conservatives. we ended up with 80 for the liberals and 33 for the conservatives. this is better than the models, but still off by about ten seats.

i got to 90 seats by looking at the 2004 federal election, which had the following numbers:

libs: 44.7
cons: 31.5
ndp: 18.1

that seemed to be very similar to what we were seeing in the polling. it netted the liberals 75 seats in 2004; there have been 15 seats added since, mostly in urban spaces, so i added it up to get to 90+. i also suspected the liberals were going to crest over 45, which made me feel ok about the + part. if you check a map of 2004, that would give the liberals a nearly clean sweep all the way around toronto (including brantford, milton, durham, thornilll, markham-unionville, barrie and kitchener-conestoga to name a few), some of hamilton and most of northern ontario.

actual numbers were:

libs: 44.8
cons: 35.0
ndp: 16.6

so, we see the cause of error here: the conservatives polled higher than expected in the gta. nobody had them as high as 35. northern ontario mirrored the 2004 election well, and they actually did better this time around in the 613 than they did in 2004. but that 3.5% difference for the conservatives (clearly at the expense of the ndp) was the ten point difference.

i still beat the models, though.

errors for alberta: i was arguing that the uniform swing was naive and overestimating conservative support; based on the polling, most of calgary and all of edmonton should have been in play. this was based on the idea of the conservatives polling at 53% province wide, which is what the aggregates were suggesting. in the end, they polled at 60% over the province. if you had plugged 60% into those models, they would not have predicted any seats for the liberals (and may have even handed over linda duncan's seat).

6/66 = 9%. doubled is 18%. this, ironically, recreates numbers that are closer to what the models were producing - but it's a total fluke & coincidence.

so, conservatives were being underpolled in alberta. it could have been a last minute swing back, even. i based a calculation on it. it didn't work out because the data was inaccurate.

that will be it for me, here, for another four years.

deathtokoalas, dvlghgfgjhjhfkhghjklka and all the other pseudonyms are signing out until the next cycle. track down my blogs if you're really upset by this.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-majority-liberal-regional-narrative-1.3279126

i just want to comment on the last point, because it's strangely american-centric for a cbc talking head.

the canadian liberal party is the last remaining descendant of the british liberal party, which dominated politics in britain for a large amount of the nineteenth century. america had whigs (although they were very different than british whigs), which actually turned into the republican party. the liberals absorbed new deal keynesian policies when they were fashionable, but they are at their core an ideologically liberal party. they're the party of mills and ricardo and smith.

when americans hear the term "liberal", they think of vietnam protesters or something. but the term "liberal", in context, actually MEANS "free trade". it refers to trade liberalization. at the beginning of the last century, we called it "reciprocity". in fact, the fta (forerunner of nafta) was borne out of a commission created by the elder trudeau, near the end of his tenure. it was our idea, and it has been our idea since before the time of wilfred laurier - who was quoted by the new prime minister yesterday, and often quoted by his father.

this is contrasted against tory protectionism.

our constitution, largely written by his father, is very "liberal" as well - in the sense of it being very rooted in individual rights.

the term has changed in the united states to something unrecognizable from it's initial meaning. but the canadian liberal party is essentially unique on this planet in holding relatively close to nineteenth century british classical liberalism.

you may want to think of them as halfway between libertarians and democrats, in the american context.

www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/drove-canadas-liberal-party-election-upset/

the one thing i seriously got wrong was where the ndp were collapsing *to*. i figured they'd be around 25, but that the swing would go to the bloc. nobody had the liberals at 35 in quebec, but a few had the bloc at 25. so, i pegged the liberals about 160 and the bloc at about 35. that 25 seat difference on the 5 point swing in quebec, which nobody picked up, is what got me.

otherwise, i think my decision to base ontario results on the 2004 federal election rather than any kind of models (which, by the way they work, couldn't pick up the dramatic swings in cambridge or st. catherines or durham or kitchener or barrie - even if the conservatives squeaked a few of those seats out) was a better overall approach. it was pretty accurate in northern ontario. the conservatives were up a little on 2004 (and relative to most of the polling), and the ndp were down a little. if the conservatives had come down just a tad closer to the polling, the liberals would have won some of those seats - which all the models had as safe conservative seats.

i don't think we'll see another election like this for some time. the lesson is in the uniform distribution not applying well to huge swings. but, it's more on the level of requiring the caveat that the models are designed to distribute small changes.

i would suggest maybe pushing pollsters to get better sampling frames, though. if you could split ontario into three or four frames, you'd be better able to apply a uniform swing to those frames. another idea is to use the last five or six elections as a base, rather than just the last one, and then base the distribution on where you've calculated it's most likely to exist based on a broader survey of where it's existed previously. that's why i went looking for a close match in 2004 to compensate for the huge swing; but, what would have been better would have been to integrate new and old data together.

www.tooclosetocall.ca/2015/10/performance-of-polls-for-2015-federal.html3:38

just some final notes on the election.

the liberals won by doing three things:

1) getting back a good proportion of their base from the ndp, which had been wandering left since 2004.
2) cementing the red tory vote.
3) taking advantage of apathy towards sovereignty in quebec.

but, they peaked at the right time and got a lot of pragmatic support. you could call it a perfect storm, or a perfect planetary alignment. expect polls next month to wander dramatically.

the conservatives are the easiest to understand because they have the strongest base. the conservative base is around 27-30%, but sometimes seems a little higher due to low turnout. there's an additional swing of about 6-8% that they can access under ideal circumstances. this separation became clear in 2004, when joe clark endorsed paul martin and actually swung about that much from the new conservatives to the liberals. you can call this the "clark swing", but the traditional term for this is "red tories". what is useful about the 2004 election is that it provided a direct measurement of how many red tories there are out there.

the fact that the conservatives ran about 30% (a touch higher due to moderately low turnout, albeit higher than the last few elections) indicates that the liberals got almost all of that red tory support.

but, the reality that the conservatives were flatlined at 30 the whole time indicates that the red tories seem to have decided on the liberals a good way out from the election. dominant factors were likely related to corruption - duffy and things of the sort.

the liberals can hold these votes for long periods, but they are moderate conservatives at their core and will bolt back at the first opportunity. they would prefer to vote conservative, unless the option seems too extreme. i expect the conservatives to elect jason kenney, who has a bad reputation amongst these voters and could keep them voting liberal for quite a while. but, if they pick a more moderate option then this support will flow back. further, they will react badly to certain social issues. they're going to lean towards the liberals on a lot of social issues, including multiculturalism, abortion, the death penalty and marijuana legalization. but, an underlooked factor in their swing back to the conservatives in 2006, in addition to the sponsorship scandal, was probably the gay marriage ruling and the martin government's acceptance of it. if the media finds some kind of a scandal, at least a part of it could swing back pretty quick. and, they may have some reservations about assisted suicide. but, to hold these people, they mostly need to run a clean government. that's fighting against gravity.

most of the rest of the swing is traditional liberal support, which is actually still running a little low - the ndp managed to hold about a third of it. they're going to want to see the liberals avoid getting too mixed up in foreign conflicts, which could be somewhat of a weak spot. the tpp is a wildcard. the environment is a growing dominant concern amongst younger voters. but, the point is that this support is mostly policy driven, and something they consequently have far more control over. the ontario liberals have - up until recently - done a good job in holding this support by actually putting through good policy positions. if the liberals actually do this, they could even eat further into ndp support as the holdout liberals slowly give in.

it remains to be seen whether or not they can hold their support in quebec, but i think it is largely out of their hands. the bloc need to make some big decisions.

a disaster scenario will occur if the liberals misinterpret the situation and start pandering to red tories. what the red tories base their voting decisions on is broadly unattainable: every government has corruption in it, but they keep switching sides naively hoping it will reduce corruption. it's the definition of insanity. but, it's been happening for a long time and will keep happening. the pandering will get them nowhere, but will piss off the base they won back. we'll be thrown back to the situation we were in in 2011.

part of the reason i endorsed the liberals is that i was convinced they've come to understand that. but, we'll see if they do or not.

if they act like liberals, and keep acting like liberals, the younger trudeau could be in power for longer than his father - as the conservatives spin-out trying to please their base, and the ndp have difficulty articulating why they'd be better.

if they act like conservatives, expect the government to be short-lived.

wow. snl has really lost it's edge. twenty years ago.

this doesn't even pretend to be insightful satire. it's half an attempt to explain the candidates to a disinterested audience, and half a collection of surface-deep caricatures that could apply to more or less anybody.

there's a lot to play with here. and, there's actually quite a bit of competition out there. i know that snl is basically catering to a prime time network tv sitcom audience nowadays, but it's hard to believe that the lowest common denominator is so small.

bernie has been transparent that his primary aim is to try and alter the narrative, and that is working. and, his answer on the socialism issue - which is basically that most americans don't understand what socialism is, and would support it if they did - is correct in the abstract. there's tons of polling on this. if you ask americans about socialism, they reject it. but, if you ask them about socialist policies, they support them. it's a sad state of affairs, but it has been true for a very long time [it's something chomsky was fond of pointing out at least as far back as the 80s].

but, anderson cooper is bringing up a valid point. you get this 45/45 split in american politics that is partisan and doesn't move. you're stuck winning elections with the remaining "independents", who are also generally the least informed members of the public. the two party system has created this reality where big money gets to define narratives and win elections because it's the only way that the swing vote interacts with issues. it's just a very narrow battlefield, and because it's so narrow, it's so easy to control. sanders is an easy target.

could he increase turnout and overpower it? this is the correct answer: it's not the least risky choice for the democratic party.

it's a harder road to walk down, but the country would be better off in the long run if people like sanders were helping to build a third party, although that should be happening at the congressional level rather than the presidential level. i mean, it's what he's done. he has a base to work with. a model. a long, hard road - but one that could be emulated. that said, and because the important shift needs to be happening congressionally, i do think that it's important that he's there and getting people to think of things from a different perspective.

but, at the end of the day, the spectrum he's trying to work within out of pragmatism is going to kill him off out of pragmatism.

i'm still waiting for the banks to put their candidate down. i thought it was sanders, which would be outrageous, but it's just not adding up. it's not hillary. they hate hillary. they ran obama against her, they will run somebody else against her. it looked like it was going to be fiorina, but that seemed like an attempt to neutralize the female vote that has collapsed with the uncertainty of her winning the primary; it may come back if she takes a wider lead. when it's obvious, it will become obvious.

for that reason, democrats should be questioning their logic. clinton has done everything she can to position herself as the establishment, and the establishment has rejected her. if you allow her to win the primary, the banks will ensure she loses the general.

if i was an american, i'd certainly be leaning towards bernie. but, i really don't see a candidate here that the media will allow to win.

biden is probably the party's best chance. but, the party might not like what he gets you, either.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr1KJR5UZjM

also: bernie needs to stop referring to himself in the third person, before somebody picks up on it and starts doing a reprise of the comedy routine that turned bob dole into a joke.

that's fertile ground.

so, why am i doing this? what are my motives? what are my goals?

the cynical assumption is no doubt that i'm looking to cash a check,  but in fact i live very happily on disability and have no real incentives to generate income. i mean, i'm not going to turn it down if it comes. and, sure, i'll pay a little bit back. but i'm simply not desperately trying to charm myself out of wage slavery, because i'm actually not in it. i made a decision several years ago that i would not live under the goal of profit maximization; i've held to it fairly well to this point and i don't plan on reversing myself on it.

that's maybe something to grasp about me, overall: i need real motives, not just monetary ones. it's the dour existentialist in me that sees the society around me as disparagingly absurd. i just don't find capitalism motivational; this is the real reason that i have not been able to survive without state aid - i become hopelessly depressed and unable to function when forced to work to exist. i mean, look at how much writing i do for free. i'm rambling with an aim. i need that. methods to madness and whatnot. i don't even mirror with an ad space; and while i do plan to mirror, i don't plan to put ads up. call me a fool if you'd like, but understand that the feeling is mutual.

that said, i do plan to monetize these videos and that is a definite difference. i have not and will not monetize any of my music videos. i'm comfortable with monetizing this, so why not? but it's not a motive, so much as it's just possible gravy. i'm happy as i am, but could think of plenty of activist things to do with a larger stream of income.

the primary reason i'm doing this is to act as a gateway to the music. when i first put up my other youtube channel, i had no real expectations for it. but, i learned quickly that the commenting system could act as an effective means of promotion so long as i was consistently being interesting or provocative - which are things that i'm naturally good at. i found my hits growing relatively quickly, and on a fairly steep curve, as a consequence of posting insightful, witty and/or challenging comments on other people's videos - or, from time to time, just being a good troll.

over the last few months, youtube has taken steps to hurt "spammers". was i spammer? well, it depends. i was certainly advertising, but it was through the stealth approach of posing interesting questions rather than the obvious approach of pushing links in your face. i might suggest we're all better off for that and it's a kind of fair game type of spamming. but, purposefully or collaterally, i was caught up in the anti-spam shifts and have seen hits come down dramatically. as i understand that this is systemic, i realize i need to take further steps.

now, a vlog can only act as a frontend for something else if it is actually interesting, and can actually hold an audience, and the fact that i think i can do this is a big part of the point. on the one hand: merely look at my comments. look at the arguments, debates, discussions. i'm obviously able to generate interest. it's more than that.

i think the primary reason i'm of interest is that i can offer a worldview into a "real life" transgendered person. by that, what i mean is a lower class transgendered person that neither lives a celebrity lifestyle nor has had any plastic surgery. the media is complicit in this perpetual, brutal stereotyping of transwomen as these passive little barbified bimbos that spend their whole lives fantasizing about becoming porn stars. i don't wear fishnets. i don't have a boob job. i don't talk like rupaul. i'm really rather shockingly normal. i think that this kind of realness is what is missing from the conversation, because so many of us are so shy and so unwilling to draw attention to it. i can walk into this space fairly freely; i openly identify as specifically trans and will actually correct you if you suggest or imply otherwise. i have no social aspirations in either gender for this kind of open discussion to interfere with. hopefully, by presenting the perspective of a "normal" trans person, i can help break down stereotypes of the shallow, materialistic porn star or model wannabe transfemale. did you know that transgendered people are actually statistically of greater likelihood to be of above average intelligence? it's a condition that is actually correlated very strongly with bookishness, aloof intellectualism and sometimes crippling levels of introversion. very few of us want to be porn stars. most of us would prefer to spend a saturday night in the library than at the club.

the second reason is that i often find myself walking over long distances and mentally putting aside thoughts to write down somewhere later. as i spend a lot of time walking, i spend a lot of time thinking. i think some of these thoughts are worth sharing. this goes back to the same political motives i have in ranting everywhere. i suppose this is more of the traditional vlog, right: the webcam in the bedroom. but, i won't do that. if i'm at home, i'd actually prefer to write it down - i think more fluidly when i'm typing. rather, a substantial part of this blog is going to be me talking into the camera as i'm walking around in the wee hours of the morning, ejecting scattered thoughts and various insights.

that brings up another point: i'm a single person. this is by choice, by desire and without any reservations. i couldn't imagine not being single. but, what that means is that this is an exercise in introversion, rather than a display of social behaviour. as an outlet, that might be healthy, for me.

i also think it will be good for me to need to have a greater incentive to focus on how i present myself. as i'm single, and live on disability, i can go through rather long periods of personal neglect. if i need to be on screen every day, or every other day, that is going to make a big difference in how i treat myself, which will have consequences in terms of self-esteem. i think this will be good for me.

so, these are the social and personal goals i have in running a vlog. they may not always be obvious, as you're following me to a concert or watching me make lunch. but, i hope that i'm able to use this vlog both to build awareness and to help myself deal with various issues - as well as to draw attention to myself as a working artist.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/108929126523080872678/108929126523080872678/posts/fHiPrp3Rwd8

well, i was by far the closest of any of the predictions i've seen. what i got wrong was that the split in quebec helped the liberals in places nobody would have expected them to win. but, the bloc vote is still coming in, and it could still get a bit closer.

but i figured it would be a seat or two short of a majority, and it does seem like they managed one, even if it does get a little closer to where i was predicting.

i'll need to look at specific data more specifically in the morning, but it's actually aligned almost exactly to my predictions, except that swing in quebec.

nobody got quebec right. everybody else suggested the ndp holding 35-40 seats. give me credit for realizing that that didn't make sense, but i seem to have jumped on a last-minute bloc bump that was really just statistical noise [although it was present in the data, it's always a coin flip whether you're picking up a bump or not over the last 36 hours - it's equally likely to be noise, and appears to have been this time].

the liberals seem to have picked up around 35% of the vote in quebec. nobody had them that high.

so, i can make a tentative guess as to what went wrong. i suggested that an ndp--->liberal swing would not be enough for the liberals to win rural quebec, and that the bloc would come up the middle. this would have been a decent guess if the numbers would have stabilized at libs 30, ndp 25, bloc 25.

what happened, instead, was that the swing to the liberals was larger than any pollster picked up. we ended up with libs 35, ndp 25, bloc 20. that meant the swing was actually enough for the liberals to win, after all.

i got everything else dead on, almost.

i suggested the conservatives would be around 100.

i suggested the ndp would be around 45.

but, i suggested the bloc would be around 35 (they got 10) and that the liberals would be around 160 (they got 185).

i did far better than the official pollsters, and by citing precedent and using logic rather than using modelling (which i was certainly right in suggesting was inapplicable to this election). but, you have to understand that quebec was impossible to predict. it wasn't even sure what order the parties were in. and, with margins of error over 5%, you couldn't really peg them better than an unordered 10 point spread - which meant you were literally left making a guess.

that said: if there were some numbers putting the liberals higher than 30, consistently, i think i would have seen this coming. and, i suspect we'll find out that turnout in quebec was low, which propped the numbers up a bit. i did see that coming at some point, but i didn't factor it in. and, even so, i would have had a hard time suggesting liberals could win in a lot of the seats they did.

so, i got most of it dead on. quebec was completely unpredictable; i broke with the conventional wisdom, but what actually happened was even more unlikely than my break with the conventional thinking. although, i think we'll find out in the end that turnout was very low, and it's really what caused these unexpectedly high liberal numbers there.

TheDragonCat99
So Harper is like the Trump of Canada?

deathtokoalas
+TheDragonCat99
a new york republican is the right idea, and i've said things like "a less absurd trump" before. but, you really want to think more along the lines of somebody like giuliani.

i've posted this a few places. here's my prediction.

liberals: 160+, but a minority. the major movement is ontario, where they get 90+ seats. i'm basing this on the feeling that the results will be similar to the 2004 federal election, and then giving the liberals basically every seat created by redistribution.

conservatives: -100. just under - 97, 98, somewhere around there. -25 in ontario. losses in calgary. reduced almost entirely to rural seats.

ndp: ~45. i think they only win around ~15 seats in quebec. traditional seats in bc & ontario. a few new seats in saskatchewan and edmonton.

bloc: ~35. the way i see this working is that as the ndp support swings to the liberals, it opens up the bloc in many, many seats. there is evidence of some last minute movement towards them. i should point out that i'm ballparking them around 25% in quebec and the ndp at just about that, as well. there may be some last minute strategic movement to the bloc around quebec city, too.

greens: 1.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/10/18/election-2015-seat-projections-liberals-trudeau_n_8325024.html

can you at least decriminalize in the first few days so we can celebrate freely?

yeah, yeah. i know why it's not in the speech. and he's pointed out he'll move quickly before. still...

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/canada-election-2015-justin-trudeau-100-days-1.3276219

“Why are Liberals higher with a live interviewer than with the robot?”

you really gotta figure that out. i’ve provided some ideas. but, you really need to work that through.

i just want to add that the comments i’ve posted are not meant to be generalized. the dynamics of this specific election – where 2/3rds of the population sees the two opposition parties as interchangeable – is not likely to repeat itself.

but i would also point out that you were lowballing the ndp when they were ahead, too.

whatever explanation you get should have to explain both of these things. mine can do that.

www.ekospolitics.com/index.php/2015/10/deadlock-broken-liberals-surging/#comment-60049

Jeremy
It is interesting. I have heard some say the “shy Conservatives” are more likely to hang up the phone (based on UK studies). Without declaring my own support – I know I hang up the phone anytime I hear a robo-dialler without waiting to here what it is about.

deathtokoalas
the thing with biases like this is that they’re constantly shifting, constantly cancelled out, constantly complicated…

i’ve posted here a few times. i think he’s picking up a “dithering progressive” reaction over ivr, where liberal-ndp swing voters are having a harder time committing to a machine, but are reflecting social bias on the phone.

you can transfer the mainstreet results down from 38/33 (decided only) to 34/30 (including undecideds). it’s harder to do that with ekos’ data because he’s mixing sample, which i think is really the core of the inconsistencies. but, i would suspect that those results would scale down consistently – at least with the conservative vote.

he may actually simply be correctly picking up that the polls putting the liberals over 35, and heading to 40, are picking up a lot of very soft liberal support – people that would tell a live interviewer they’re voting liberal, and legitimately will probably vote liberal if they vote at all, but are, in their heart, truly conflicted.

if a polling company is meant to predict results, it’s a crappy result. if it’s meant to understand what people are actually thinking, there’s perhaps some usefulness in what he’s picking up.

ways to know frank was picking something up:

1) an unexpected last minute low turnout leads to a higher conservative outcome. this may happen if the ditherers can’t pull the trigger and stay home.
2) there’s an unexpected surge in ndp support. i know he’s not picking that up. but he seems to be picking up huge amounts of indecisiveness (that maybe broke at the last minute).

caveat: i’m interpreting these results in ways the pollster has not, and likely would not (yet) endorse. but, i’m mildly worried about (1), if not particularly worried about (2).

Raunch
Yeah……the polls for the National Post (Postmedia), Global News, and the Globe and Mail (who all have the Libs in front) are trying to support the Libs? Seriously?

3 weeks ago, when Nanos, Ekos, Angus Reid, etc. were showing the Cons taking a lead over the other two parties, the Con-friendly commentors on here thought these polls were legit.

Now, because these polls show different results than what you want to see….you think they are garbage. Well, good luck with your way of thinking. Seems a little hypocritical, don’t you think?

deathtokoalas
i’ve been wondering for a while if there might be a kind of scare tactic at play, to rev up the base.

but, at the least, you don’t expect nik to play around with this. he nails elections. you can do just about anything you want with an online panel at this point, then blame it on untested technology. but, nik has a reputation, and if he’s putting those numbers out, it’s because he believes in them.

--

that liberal swing in quebec is going to elect bloc mps.

i’m plugging in:

libs: 160+, but not 170. 90+ seats in ontario.

cons: ~100, probably a seat or two less. -25 seats in ontario.

ndp: ~45. only ~15 seats in quebec.

bloc: ~35, by coming up the middle on the ndp–>liberal shift. i also think that they get a last minute boost around quebec city to stop the conservatives there.

i’d say you’ve got a last minute bloc surge, there. forum is picking it up as well. nanos has….let’s call it a bump rather than a surge. i would agree with anybody suggesting that you can’t honestly separate it from possible sampling error, but the thing is that i think this makes sense. with the ndp down a large chunk as it is, a lot of what’s left are going to be scrambling to find ways to make sure neither the conservatives nor the liberals (who are nearly equally despised in much of quebec) can win in their riding. with those numbers, i think it’s clear that the bloc win a lot of seats.

i don’t think a late swing to the conservatives in bc is unbelievable, either. but nobody else is picking it up yet. and, you have to ask “where?”, too, and “from who?”. i’m skeptical about a swing in the lower mainland. rather. what i’m willing to believe here is maybe counter-intuitive. outside of the lower mainland, the haunting sceptre of a liberal minority, even, could be enough to firm up traditional conservatives that were leaning ndp on the perception they had a chance of forming government. most of bc is going to vote on a populist/elitist axis, which makes the liberals broadly uncompetitive. it’s the one place in the country where you’ll get ndp voters voting strategically for the conservatives, just because the spectrum is completely different. nanos *does* have the ndp down and the conservatives up a bit relative to last week, but it’s the same thing with sampling and margins. i’m not overwhelmingly skeptical, anyways. it was maybe hard to believe they were down 15-20 points.

it’s clearly the uncertainty in bc and quebec that are warping your numbers. i’m still leaning towards it being a consequence, or artefact, of the method. but these have been trouble points for pollsters recently, too. really: you’re not telling me anything absurd, right now. i’m just left with same concerns regarding the question of what are truly reasonable sampling frames.

--

i’ve been posting photos of the 2014 ontario election for comparison, but the numbers have stabilized higher than that – closer to the 2004 federal election.

this is a very different map than the models are producing, but i suspect it will be closer to the final outcome.

you know what i want, as a trans person? to no longer see trans people thought of as a voting block, or for there to be a section of supposed election concerns called "trans issues".

i vote on the same issues everybody else does, and resent being pandered to as an identity voter. my gender identity has no effect on my other perspectives. that human rights amendment would be great and everything, but it will make no functional difference in the actual real world.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/10/18/transgender-issues-canada-election_n_8323144.html

i complain about the models. so, what's my prediction?

....here's my election prediction.

liberals: 160+. probably not more than 170. they're going to try and get some people to floor cross. i think they're going to nearly sweep not just the gta but all of ontario, including coming very close and winning in seats nobody would normally give them a chance in. the numbers look similar to 2004, which would give them around 90/121 seats - and reduce the conservatives to less than 25 seats in ontario. find the 2004 map on wiki for an idea as to what it will look like in ontario. they'll also do well in the east, in montreal, in gatineau, in winnipeg, in calgary (expect big upsets here) and in vancouver. but note that they will have essentially no rural representation, outside of the maritimes and probably ontario.

conservatives: ~100. it's going to be basically all rural seats. but, they're going to get hurt in ontario and it may actually take them under 100, a little.

ndp: ~45. they'll do slightly better in quebec and bc, but they're going to be shut out out of a lot of provinces and be down to a handful in the rest of them. mulcair will lose his seat, which will mean they'll be pushovers for a while.

bloc: ~35. so, what has actually happened in quebec? as usual, begin by ignoring the media. the conservatives show no statistically meaningful growth, and the bloc haven't up to now either - although they may be surging a little the last few days. it won't matter much, at this point, unless the ndp vote completely collapses, which seems unlikely; it'd already have happened by now. but, there has been a large and clear and measurable movement from the ndp to the liberals. that is what has happened in quebec. obviously, that helps the liberals where they are competitive. but, it does not help them where they are not, which is most of quebec. rather, what happens is that, as the ndp vote fades away to the liberals, the bloc (which finished second in 2011 almost everywhere) move into a dominant position almost everywhere outside of montreal (where the liberals become dominant) and quebec (where the conservatives do). and, the more the province becomes aware of this advantage for the conservatives, the more they vote for the bloc for strategic reasons.

green: 1.

i actually don't think it's the gta that's going to be key. the conservatives probably have a better shot of winning in brampton than they do in brantford, and that may actually be long term due to demographics. i'm not writing them off in brampton, i just think the numbers will be closer there at the end of the night than elsewhere.

i actually think it's going to be the 519, around the western edges of toronto. these are huge swings that your model can't pick up. mainstreet seems to have picked this up today, putting the conservatives in the 40s but competitive in toronto, suggesting the biggest swings are not in the gta but in southwestern ontario - and i have to presume he means the swath of territory that the wynne liberals managed to win in 2014 (and you can see on a map), rather than windsor or sarnia. this is the growing metropolitan area of guelph-waterloo-kitchener-cambridge-brantford. i dunno. call it west toronto or something. it's not normally considered the gta, but it maybe should start being thought of as a part of some kind of megacity centered on toronto. i hitch-hiked through there a few years ago, and it seemed to be me like i didn't really get out of the gta until i was heading towards london.

all data i can piece together seems like this is where the bulk of the swing actually is, and that it is a dramatic and (seemingly, though not really - it's just mirroring the last provincial election) unpredictable swing that you just can't pick up with what you're doing.

he also seemed to suggest the liberals were ahead in the north and the 613. but, that would be gravy - it would be the majority. it's those small cities west of toronto that win the liberals the election.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-grenier-gta-oct18-1.3276166

funstuf
oh you mean where the PC volunteers where illegally tearing down the NDP and Liberal signs?? lol NO chance, anyone with a brain is voting ABC in GTA, cons are good with the all rural areas where there are very few minorities, but GTA has a lot of seats and mostly going red, bye bye con crooks and liars!

jessica murray
i'm not suggesting that the conservatives will win in brampton. i'm just pointing out that they could very well poll close to 40 in a two-way race, and they probably won't get close to that in other places where the models put them comfortably ahead.

i'm a little concerned that there are some areas in toronto that are tuning out the rest of the country, and are maybe less voting against what's happening around them and more legitimately unaware of what is really happening around them. they may be reliant on local media in their own language that has very strong conservative biases, for cultural reasons. what that suggests is a large number of ideological voters that are practically impossible to convince, and simply don't swing.

it remains to be seen how the demographics balance themselves out. we've historically had urban policies that seek to prevent the local concentration of specific minorities at such large levels, and should maybe consider dusting some of those ideas off.

but, for now, it creates the potential of a stronger conservative base than exists elsewhere in urban ontario.

we'll find out on monday night.

in terms of numbers, what i'm getting at could be summed up by suggesting that the conservatives will likely do better in brampton than they do in the province, overall; if they get 31-33 province wide, as is suggested, you should expect higher than that in brampton - mid to high 30s.

these results are only different from the consensus in quebec and bc. in both cases, ekos is polling the conservatives much higher and the liberals much lower. it happens to be that these are also the places that have three or four way races.

passive consumers need to understand that pollsters don’t just collect opinions and send them out. they modify the results to fit the census, and there’s some interpretation in the process. that could be a part of the difference you’re seeing.

i’m also not sure that the blended sample is the best idea, because of the way that undecideds are being measured. and, i’d kind of argue against unlike aggregates for the same reason. aggregate live interview with live interview, and ivr with ivr, but don’t aggregate online samples with ivr and live interviews. if the ivr is truly measuring undecideds in such a way that reduces the sample size and inflates the conservatives, and you take more ivr in the sample, than you would expect inflated conservative numbers in the end result.

it’s not enough to do the “one of these things is not like the others” skit and rule ekos out. but, i think this experiment with ivr and live interviewer is maybe pulling out a bit of a bias, and destroying the ability to adjust for it by mixing the data up. that, i think, is a methodological flaw.

www.ekospolitics.com/index.php/2015/10/and-the-winner-is-we-dont-know/#comment-59737

i just want to add that the actual results of the mainstreet poll are

lib 34
con 30
ndp 19
und 10

and, once again, you see the relationship that shows up with this “dithering progressive” effect over ivr, and it’s subsequent inflation of the conservatives due to a decrease in sample space. and, it again absolutely nails the conservatives at a 30% flatline, which has been true for months and months.

--

angus reid is also an online panel.

the shy tory effect is bunk. but, we seem to be seeing a “dithering progressive” effect in the ivrs – it is absolutely consistent.

i can just imagine my physics profs trying to understand deerhoof.

"panda...panda..panda....pan...what is this, a poisson distribution?"

there's some tonal drones back there; there was an opportunity for some weird harmonies.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCinQSeEtF0vSN1XVhQGfwKA

so, i'm launching a vlog...

in fact, i wish i had launched this three or four years ago. it could have caught me hitch-hiking, or maybe caught a few things from occupy.

vlogs are largely trivial. it's what a vlog is. sometimes, you'll have to watch me make spaghetti or something. but, i go for long walks, too - routinely. not just in windsor, but also in detroit. concerts. recording. overall, i'm probably considerably more exciting than you or most people you know are, even if i'm essentially always by myself.

what i'm thinking is that it might act as a reasonable front-end for the music production. i was using the comment system to great effect for a while, but youtube then went and changed the way the system works in such a way that it almost seems designed to explicitly prevent me from doing what i was doing. they sell ads, right? if i'm using the comment system for free advertising, i'm breaking their model. so, they've done several things - i could list 5 or 6 - to make it harder for people like me to do what i was doing. i got a little touch of exposure, anyways - enough to make me think restrategizing is worthwhile. but, it's clear that they've broken what i was doing. they've crashed me from 200 hits/day to 10 hits/day.

this seems to be a better advertising strategy for right now. we'll see how it goes.

i bought a $50 camera from best buy. it should be here in five or six days. expect this to launch saturday; i'll be posting daily updates here, as well.

yeah.

i just ordered this cheap little guy:

i'd normally go and pick it up because shipping is half the price of the object, but this looks like it's last gen - that they're trying to get rid of it, really - and so it's free shipping.

the key point is it's cheap. but, it's also waterproof, which is....i'm not going to go swimming with it, but i don't want to worry about it in the rain, either.

the actual truth is that i'm really not well-versed in the language of megapixels and digital video. i'm going to guess that the differences in video quality past a certain point are largely trivial. and, you know, i don't know how long i'm going to do this for. i'm not expecting pristine quality, but i'm maybe not requiring it just quite yet, either. i'm sure it'll be fine - or better than fine, really.

i've got plenty of rechargeable batteries, although i'll have to experiment with how much power the device uses. i'll have to figure out how much storage i'm going to need for an average ten hour adventure and get the right sized sd card, as well. i suspect my old 2 gb card for pictures is too small.

the actual reality is that this device was probably ten times the price ten years ago. this is how i operate with technology - i wait, i get the last gen when it's falling into obsolescence and then i actually use it to it's potential. i'm lucky enough to be living through the period where technology is plateauing, allowing for what is truly high end technology to sell for basically nothing, in order to drive the market. i actually probably fluked out on that.

should be here by friday.

yeah. decided. if i can find a usable camera for under $100.

i'm thinking about starting a vlog.

all the popular vlogs are families. it's great and everything, from a certain perspective, i guess. i think i have something a bit more unique to offer - single transgender canadian that is a total loner and is right on the us border and that is often on foot, heads to concerts, etc.

i guess a lot of it is going to be kind of trivial, but it's what a vlog is, right? a lot of it it's going to be me walking around by myself and talking into the mic.

i think there's some other upsides to it. i would be comfortable monetizing a vlog channel, for example - i won't monetize the music channel. it could maybe create exposure for the music, and possibly even income.

i'm sort of wishing i'd vlogged some of the more erratic moments of the last three or four years. hitch-hiking from ottawa to windsor, through toronto, would be great to have on tape; i tried to document it through writing, but it only gets you so far. and i'm sure i'll have more than a few more crazy moments.

in fact, i suspect halloween could be a bit of a ride, with deafhaven early and probably hitting a rave later. it's going to depend on the weather, though - i'm not floating around detroit all night if it's snowing.

the error he's making is thinking that harper is going to be replaced by a moderate. harper probably actually *will* step down mid mandate - he's suggested as much.

but, all evidence suggests that jason kenney is the overwhelming favourite to replace him, and he makes harper seem downright liberal, in comparison. voting for the party is going to throw us into a war over abortion and capital punishment.

i know that's not what he wants. he's just lost in a fantasy reality, where some old tory can mount a comeback, get the reformers under control and sail back towards the policies of clark & mulroney.

first, it's clear that the neither the numbers nor the candidates exist. who is his phantom candidate? the harris tories that were brought on are really just as awful. is he going to bring jean charest back? or joe clark, himself? danny williams? there's no obvious candidate.

but, if it somehow happens? then the west starts another party. there's been rumbling for years that harper is too left wing. i'm not making that up.

he's disenfranchised. he's not a liberal, and doesn't want to be. that's fine. i'm not a liberal, and don't want to be either - although i'm on the other side of the spectrum. i get that. i get not wanting to vote for the bloody liberals, yet again, and taking the awful with the mediocre because there's not a better choice. but what he's projecting doesn't exist.

the ndp tried to park themselves in this space, but it didn't get the traction. if they stay there (and i hope they don't...), it might get some traction in the next election.

for now, what it reflects is the disenfranchisement of old tory canada, and it's difficulty coming to terms with what the real options are.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-globe-harper-endorsement-reaction-1.3275224

peppypoo
The PM is not going anyway, he will win a majority government hands down. The National press finally has woken from their dreams and has now seen that Justin & the liberal party are the same old rotten corrupt party they have always been, new face same old bunch of hacks running it.

jessica murray
right.

listen: they're all corrupt.

people need to vote on policies, and expect corruption from all of them.

Alan Cane
My conclusion? Liberal voters are weak.

jessica murray
CONSERVATIVE VOTERS STRONG LIKE BEAR.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-grenier-polls-oct16-1.3273313

we've been brainwashed by conservative "Strong Leader" propaganda for so long that we've forgotten that we live in a parliamentary system, where the prime minister is meant to be first amongst equals.

i'm personally very excited about the potential of devolution of power out of the prime minister's office and back where it belongs: in cabinet.

the prime minister is not meant to be an authoritarian leader. the prime minister is meant to be a dignitary - a figurehead. a pretty face to rile up the masses, and allow a party to govern.

it's about time. and i hope to the god i don't believe in that this is the last we ever hear of "Strong Leadership".

www.huffingtonpost.ca/g-elijah-dann/justin-isnt-ready_b_8288558.html

"Right now, there are five Canadians working for every retiree and that's going to fall by almost half to 2.7 by 2030. "

and, if you look at net wealth, you see that the average baby boomer is worth two to three times that of the average gen xer.

the reality is that the boomers have all the wealth. part of understanding the generational shift is understanding the shifts in wealth. the image of the impoverished pensioner that developed in the 80s and 90s was largely a consequence of the boomers taking over their parents' wealth, and then not giving any back; now, when they reach that age themselves, they will hoard it as long as they can, and refuse to pass it down.

the way to care for the boomers is to tax the boomers. tobin taxes are probably the best option. and, they should really remove tax breaks like income splitting, too. when you look at hard numbers with a sober mindset, you'll see that there really isn't a problem at all - except that they're not paying their share, and truly never have.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/10/13/national-seniors-strategy-canada-election-eldercare_n_8260078.html

well, i'm not going to pretend i'm a fan of this, but at least it's a bit more tasteful than the softcore porn that defines most pop music nowadays. hopefully, it kickstarts a trend for some of these young girls to focus more on their voice and less on their bodies.

if you were to do that to my computer, i would sneak into your house at night, get your password out of your temp files, go home, log into your account, change your password, delete all your videos and upload episodes of fawlty towers on an hourly basis, until i run out - when i would then block all your subscribers.

well, this reeks of desperation.

her riding is generally considered safe. it says a lot about the internal polling she's doing.

there hasn't been much media coverage of this the last few months. and, there's not really a lot of "ins" that the liberals have in rural ontario to work with. i was thinking about internet access - which the liberals should really seriously consider, as a way to open isolated communities up to the outside world. but, i could see how home mail delivery might be considered sort of substantial, if you live in a farm in the middle of nowhere.

i wonder how applicable that is elsewhere....

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/conservative-cheryl-gallant-s-claim-she-ll-save-canada-post-raises-ire-of-postal-workers-1.3272916

i would take any predictions in quebec at this point with a grain of salt. we're going to be seeing splits and upsets all over the place in ways the models are not robust enough to pull out.

but, as far as i can tell, there's really not any reason to think the conservative or bloc totals will be significantly different than they were in 2011. a point or two one way or the other.

the only big movement seems to be somewhere between a ten and a fifteen point swing from the ndp to the liberals. this will help the liberals in montreal, and the odd riding outside it. it may also help the conservatives in a seat or two around quebec city. but it's going to help the bloc dramatically, even if they only manage to get what they got last time.

the forum poll released this morning should raise some eyebrows, in it's projection of 19 seats for the bloc. that's way higher than anybody else (except me) has suggested. i'm going to expect between 10-30.

the reason is that the movement from ndp--->liberals is going to open up a lot of seats for the bloc, even with the bloc staying put or even being down a little. something that got lost in the shuffle of the ndp pulling in bloc support was that the ndp also got a hefty ten point swing from the liberals. there were a lot of close ndp-bloc races. you take away that ten point liberal swing, or even increase the reversal to 15, and these ndp seats start melting away into the st. lawerence, mostly in favour of the bloc.

the models will have a hard time with this. but, with that 10-15 point swing from the ndp to the liberals, all the bloc need to do is run somewhere in the low 20s to win a substantial number of seats back. 19 is probably about right, in terms of what to expect.

and, i'll say this again - with the liberals running ahead of the ndp now, apparently, it's hard to see how the ndp win outremont, which is mulcair's seat.

the cbc model has a clause in it that gives party leaders an advantage. it's the kind of thing that's probably true, most of the time. but outremont is one of the most liberal seats in the country. and, mulcair was of course a quebec liberal cabinet minister - which likely is a big part of the reason he was able to win the riding in the first place.

now that the dust has settled, and the liberals are in reach of a strong minority or even a majority, it seems obvious that outremont should swing, party leader or not.

and that's going to have a big effect on how the parliament operates, in the case of a liberal minority.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-quebec-split-michelle-gagnon-1.3272915

Mo
harper surging in quebec? somebody's got their hat on too tight!

jessica murray
there was a blip in the polls about the same time that the niqab thing came up. it didn't sustain itself. it was probably just sampling error.

but, it's a good lesson in two truths:

1) day-to-day polling can be erratic.
2) you can't trust the media to interpret polls.

i would have actually expected advance voters to support the conservatives in much higher numbers, because they have the highest number of decided & dedicated voters. the average conservative voter made up their mind months or years before the writ dropped. the election isn’t a period of contemplation, for the bulk of them. i would have expected something more like 45%. so, those are actually relatively good numbers for the liberals in the advance polls.

in a sense, polling the advance voters does the same thing that removing very high numbers of undecideds does. when you reduce the sample space to dedicated decideds, the conservatives invariably get the highest numbers.

to put it another way: if the liberals were clearly ahead in the advance polls (remember that there’s margins here…it’s a statistical tie), even by a point beyond the margin, you’d expect them to be on their way to a a huge majority. that would demonstrate endemic apathy in the conservative base, which you expect to dominate advance polls because they’re not deliberating anything. these numbers, as they are, suggest some pretty low levels of enthusiasm for the conservatives in their base. you may see the situation reversed (as it was in the 2014 ontario election); it may be the conservatives that end up with some turnout problems.

i mean, that’s just unusually low for a party that continually polls 75+ in terms of dedicated voter support. what are they waiting for? why *didn’t* they vote in greater numbers in advance polls?

www.ekospolitics.com/index.php/2015/10/stalemate-continues

so, that means there's a baseball game on election day, right?

*sigh*

can we sue the team for breaking the social contract? hold them liable for gross negligence? there should be some kind of rule against this. they should have to put the game off a day.

if we're lucky, it's just going to siphon out the rob ford voters. but, i hope it's not a turnout issue.

www.cbc.ca/sports/baseball/blue-jays-bautista-batflip-meme-1.3273814

Eric Haskins
Right...it's the team's fault. Grow up.

jessica murray
because politics are childish and baseball is grown up. right.

they have the option to forfeit the game - and i'd argue that this is the socially responsible thing to do. it would send a powerful message. but, perhaps more realistically, i think the league has a very strong responsibility to step in and postpone the game for 24 hours. and, i would suggest that they should be viewed in a very poor light if they decide to go ahead with it.

elections are important social events that truly matter to adults; childish and silly things like baseball games, that do not matter, should never be scheduled in a way that interferes with important social events like elections. and, i would argue quite honestly that the league and the team have some responsibility for gross negligence in distracting people from things of importance, and should be held liable for it.

it was certainly tongue in cheek, but i also did certainly mean it.

the tort doesn't actually exist. i would lose the case. i'd love to argue it, though.

i've been over this before. they expect me to show up dressed like a prostitute. and i think a part of it may be trying to get them to understand that i'm 35 years old. i don't look it. i get that. but the truth is that i'm old, and i dress like i'm old, which is to be expected. i don't have any patience with this "35 is the new 25" stuff, and this refusal to grow up. i don't want to be 25. i'm happy to be out of that headspace. i don't want to walk into a doctor's office and be analyzed like a piece of meat.

it's dehumanizing.

these doctors - they're creepy old men. i'd mostly rather they didn't touch me at all, kind of thing. to have them evaluate your gender based on whether they find you attractive is - there's something wrong with this. it's like, "i'm wearing a sweater because i don't want your creepy ass ogling me, you sonofabitch.".

they honestly seem to expect me to walk in in fishnets and heels and laugh provocatively when they speak. it's really disgusting.

it's this base archetype of patriarchally enforced "femininity" that they want reflected back at them.

i had one ask "what are you, some kind of lesbian?".

like as though that might disqualify me, if it were true. (i'm asexual. just no interest in sex.)

i had another frown and clearly write me off when i claimed i was a feminist. as though transwomen being feminists is some kind of contradiction, and disqualifying.

it's 2015, guys. i know you're in your 60s. but, you could try to keep up just a little.

that week just zoomed by...

i've had some running around to do with doctors. again. they're such assholes. and often surprisingly averse to evidence-based reasoning, in favour of rigidity to strict protocol. you'd think you're dealing with the military half the time...

they've got me in this ridiculous loop. the same people that just rediagnosed me with gender dysphoria want me to go through a training program in toronto for people that have yet been diagnosed. this is ridiculous; i could be teaching the program. but, i'd do it if it's a day program and there's an easy end to it. but, it's a months long program with a year long waiting list. and, here's the bizarre part: there's an open letter on their web page requesting that doctors do not send people through this program and just assign hormones themselves.

so, they won't represcribe until they send me through a program that is telling them to go ahead and prescribe already. it's just rigidity to a set of protocols, oblivious of anything resembling independent thought or adherence to logic.

you can imagine a far side cartoon at a school for the gifted with a star on the floor beside a christmas tree and a child frowning - because there's no instruction manual.

so, i'm calling more doctors. and more doctors. until i can find one with some common fucking sense. surely, it's inevitable, right?

i mean, it's not an option to go off hormones. i can't detransition. i'm already done. i'd sooner kill myself than put myself in that kind of state. and, if i do, it will be in their front office.

i've got some things done, though, and am ready to sit down for a few days.

i'm going to take a shower this afternoon and should hopefully get some more troubleshooting in tonight.

sampling frames / area codes

To: nnanos@nanosresearch.com, fgraves@ekos.com, lbozinoff@forumresearch.com

hi.

i don't think it's going to require much of an argument from me to have you acknowledge that provincial wide data isn't very useful to plug into riding modelling the way it's being done; the idea that a swing in vancouver might be felt in kelowna, or that a swing in montreal might be felt in sherbrooke, is not really well thought out. canadian provinces are big and diverse and often have two or three proper sample frames, as opposed to american states, which are mostly small and get away with one, or maybe two if you're being really rigorous. if people doing models are to create systems that are robust enough to handle the massive and unpredictable swings we're seeing in this election, they're going to need more targeted sample frames to begin with.

but, you don't model; you poll. maybe, if a few of you might want to think about modelling, we could get some better sample frames.

for right now, i know you're focused on what you're doing. but, releasing data organized by area code would probably be a five minute job, right? organize by area code. print. done...

in lieu of better sample frames for the models, maybe it might help people understand things a little bit better, so they're not being led astray by models that are operating well beyond the assumptions they were constructed with.

j

lol. you old progressive conservatives, you...lost in the past. you're endorsing mulroney, guys. that was a long time ago. hopefully, the generational change in media follows the generational change in governance. it's long overdue.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/the-tories-deserve-another-mandate-stephen-harper-doesnt/article26842506/

wow. this struck a chord. ahaha.

again: it's easy to understand.

the media establishment in canada is run by upper class old tories that are in their 60s and 70s. old people. old money. old stock, even. they've been living in denial since the merger, just waiting for their old party to come back. and, when they vote for harper, they are not really voting for harper - they are voting for mulroney and clark and stanfield.

but, that party doesn't exist anymore.

maybe, if they go out and try really hard, they can find a way to recreate their old party, which now only exists in their own faded memories. but, this endorsement is putting the cart before the horse. and, it's only through their disconnect from reality, their projected fantasies, that they don't see how obvious that is.

if you want your pcs back, you do this:

1) you vote against the conservatives, however feels best to you. for the liberals. for the ndp. for the greens. or not at all.
2) then you get your candidate into the convention, and you get them to beat kenney. good luck on that, though - because the west of the country completely disagrees with you, and is going to support kenney.

i don't mean to be crass. i really don't. well, i'm known to be crass rather often, but i don't mean to be crass just right now.

this is a matter of an out of touch generation passing away. and, when that happens, things change - because these memories of stanfield and clark pass along with them.

then, we can get back to living in the present.

just one more reason to hope that retirement age gets pushed back to 65.

we need to get the progressive conservatives out of the media. it's really important. they don't exist. they haven't existed for a generation. we need perspectives rooted in the existing spectrum, not the spectrum of the 1980s.

kenney will win the convention on his stellar anti-abortion credentials. then, what are you going to do? keep plugging? keep hoping? keep waiting for it to turn around?

this doesn't happen.

meanwhile, the age required to remember the pcs increases. in 2019, it will be 31 years since 1988. which means, you'd need to be in your 50s to be old enough to remember voting pc.

there are not one but two generations of voters with no understanding of the term "progressive conservative" as anything beyond a bizarre oxymoron.

this past needs to be let go. most of the country has done so. the media is trailing far behind.

even if the fantasy that you can elect the conservatives and ditch harper is somehow plausible, what's in the pipeline, so to speak, is much more divisive - much more socially conservative, much more combative, much more regressive.

it's willful blindness and total delusion to see the future of the conservative party differently.

OgtheDim
Except they do exist all over the country and would be quite willing to vote for somebody unlike Kenny.

deathtokoalas
please. it's very clear that he wins the next convention. remember: the reform party was primarily created as a response to mulroney's non-reaction to morgantaler. that's what the base is all about. it's the number one driver of donations. it's the single greatest issue that drives new tory voters. not the economy. not security. not tough on crime. abortion.

just because old tories refuse to see this, or adjust to it, doesn't mean the facts aren't as they are.

you're not going to see a moderate replacement. harper IS the moderate. or the closest thing to one...

---

well, my golden retriever can catch better than stanfield. i don't know who even gets that anymore, besides the globe staff.