Friday, December 18, 2015

finalizing i still don't fully understand this

this track is also closed. not altered.

even with the tinfoil, i'm picking up a little bit of signal right now. i'm going to tentatively suggest it's because it's friday night and the magnetic field is stronger due to the lines being at peak electrical use, do something else for a few hours and reapproach a little after midnight.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/i-still-dont-fully-understand-this

finalizing in some neighbourhoods, the boogeyman is slightly more than an imaginary monster

this track is closed. not altered.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/in-some-neighbourhoods-the-boogeyman-is-slightly-more-than-an-imaginary-monster

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

takers

i've decided to upload a drum machine mix of this after all. this is a brand new mix, dated to today.

initially written in 1997. recreated in jan, 1998. a failed rescue was attempted in 2013. reclaimed july 1, 2015. deconstructed dec 18, 2015.

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

finalizing thug culture is enforced by the media from the top down

this track is also closed.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/thug-culture-is-enforced-by-the-media-from-the-top-down

finalizing use value is somewhat difficult to define in the human propensity towards artistic expression

i'm closing this track, as well. no change from the initial upload.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/use-value-is-somewhat-difficult-to-define-in-the-human-propensity-towards-artistic-expression
fisk's comments here are very unfortunate, and no doubt driven by feelings of bitterness by ndp supporters, who were positioned to win the election for months leading up to the vote. strangely, this is no doubt second hand bitterness. this kind of reporting is useful in the line of work fisk usually does, but doesn't lend itself well to an analysis of an election in another country.

it seems like the reporting for the article consisted of fisk calling up a couple of friends in canada.

however, i think that it must also be acknowledged that quebec has developed a nasty nationalist streak in it's politics, but in the context of two important points: first that it is a pragmatic tactic to achieve independence, and second that this tactic keeps getting rejected by voters.

lucien bouchard blamed the loss in the second sovereigntist referendum on "money and the ethnic vote". that's the beginning of this strain of thought, as far as i know, but some others may want to trace it back further. he seemed aware that his vision of a sovereign quebec nation was being thwarted by people that did not have deep roots in the region. while it may be over-exaggerating a single factor at the expense of the importance of others, it is not a spurious observation and there is no doubt some level of truth to it, too.

in fact, there is also some truth to the idea that the federal government - under the guidance of quebec prime ministers - has purposefully targeted quebec for immigration with the purposes of changing the nature of quebec society, to prevent separation.

after the second referendum, quebec clearly started to get a little tired with this one party rule that didn't campaign on spectrum issues. they wanted a debate driven by normal election issues: budgets, services, changes in the laws, etc. so, the separatist forces started breaking up into different political factions. this was very much driven by the body politic, who just wanted a better debate on issues that actually affected them.

when you open things up like this, you have to expect that some bottled up issues are going to get out. there were bent up energies in the quebec nationalist regions that saw people without these multigenerational roots in the region as being responsible for the failure of the referendum. within this, a conservative separatist group - called the adq - started building a kind of collection of ideas about religious immigrants that would eventually be picked up by both the pq (the biggest separatist party) and the liberals (the federalist party).

you have to understand that the legal changes they want to make are purely about assimilation. there's not a racial bias to it, nor is there an exclusionary nature to them. it's about turning immigrants into cultural quebeckers, so they vote in favour of independence. they don't want to restrict immigration to any specific group, they just want to ensure that whomever comes to quebec becomes a quebecker and aligns with what they see as quebec values. should any of these ideas be adopted, i would not expect them to survive independence by very long.

but, canada is a pluralistic society, and so the federal law sometimes gets in the way of these ideas - there have been constitutional challenges. in canada, you can't arbitrarily tell somebody not to wear a scarf and try to enforce it under threat of something.

when the laws are explored over a public debate, the ramifications of them begin to make people uncomfortable - even if they are rational to get to the end point of separation - and they are invariably rejected, even when people admit to agreeing with them - confusing pollsters and policy makers.  a few years ago, the pq lost an election over a "values charter" that would have acted as an assimilating force regarding things like head coverings and jewelry. polls claimed strong support for the values charter - yet the party lost, because of it. to support an idea of something is not necessarily to support the actualization of it. "i'd like to tell you to take that off your head" does not necessarily translate into "the law should be able to force you to take that off your head".

we saw the same thing in the last federal election. harper's rhetoric about muslims was pretty gross. public opinion polls seemed to suggest people both approved and realized that they can't actually vote for it.

the nativist streak is there. it has historical reasons. but, it's not xenophobic; rather, it's very strongly assimilating.

it may be a little bit real right now, so it may be easy to lose perspective, but we need to analyze trump correctly, as well. and, le pen, for that matter - although i think le pen is something very different, and destabilizing the region quite intentionally.

my very first comments about trump, before i got lost myself, were that you have to put him in context and understand *why* this is happening. when all the nonsense is debunked, your left with the reality that white people have done poorly in america since the 70s. with the collapse of the unions, the offshoring of jobs, mechanization and the rest, there are really declining living standards. it may not be informed to blame it on mexicans and muslims. but, we can't just leave it at that. the economics underlying this spasm need to be seriously addressed - and a fair bit of it needs to be attributed to nafta. there's other causes, of course. but, you can't do that in print, it seems.

www.independent.co.uk/voices/the-joy-of-canada-delivered-from-stephen-harper-s-darkness-to-justin-trudeau-s-light-a6779106.html
 
Emdx
> however, i think that it must also be acknowledged that quebec has developed a nasty nationalist streak in it's politics

Ah, yet another outsider that only relies on other outsiders for his information. You just fell exactly into the same trap you deplore with Mr Fisk.

> lucien bouchard blamed the loss in the second sovereigntist referendum on "money and the ethnic vote".

It was not Lucien Bouchard who made that famous remark, but Premier Jacques Parizeau. The next day, Parizeau resigned and Bouchard became premier.

But yes, Parizeau was right. Of course, money would be against us, as in any colonial situation. And the amount of money illegally spent to buttress the “NO” side during the referendum campaign was staggering. For example, whole planeloads were flown to Montréal, courtesy of airlines, at no cost to passengers. This kind of expense squarely fell into the purview of our election financing laws, and it was clearly illegal.

But nobody howled at the “money” part of the comment, because it was a given that money would be against us.

Let’s tackle instead the “ethnic vote”. Historically, immigrants have been used as a tool to minorize us. The expectation was that any immigrant who would come to Canada would become anglicized, and thus would not become part of our community. This was completely true until 45 years ago when the assimilation machine was stopped dead on it’s tracks by Law 101, which simply shut down access to english schools for immigrants.

This is the main reason why Canada hates Law 101, because it almost killed outright the assimilation machine.

What Jacques Parizeau was referring to with the “ethnic vote” is those immigrant communities who blindly vote for what their leaders tell them to, without asking themselves any questions.

Anyone with a brain would acknowledge that such behaviour in a Democracy is pretty deplorable.

Well, we lost by some 50,000 votes, and no doubt a lot more than 50,000 “NOs” were clearly “ethnic votes”.

There is nothing racist in denouncing this, in fact, Parizeau’s remark was clearly a denunciation of the racism that brings about those “ethnic votes”, racism fomented by Canada against Québec’s aspiration for independence.

But again, any minority seeking freedom from a larger country, like the Scots or the Basques are readily labelled as “intolerant”, “xenophobes” and all the unsavoury stuff you hear from Canadian media whenever the subject skirts Québec.

> you have to understand that the legal changes they want to make are purely about assimilation.

As I said before, immigration has been largely been used as a tool to minorize the french and the indians in Canada.

> but, canada is a pluralistic society,

Bollo*ks. It's only “pluralistic” when it suits Canada. And you see it bursting at the seams whenever there are high concentration of immigrants. Why do you think Rob Ford got elected as mayor in Toronto?

We get tagged as “racist” because our interculturalism policies are at odds with the canadian multiculturalism. We have good reasons to reject multiculturalism, because it’s mostly a tool to divide and rule; with immigrants isolated in little cultural ghettoes, it is far easier to manipulate them to keep them subservient than if they were full members of their adoptive society.

Which is what interculturalism does: we only take what we like from what immigrants take here; what we don’t like, we soundly reject and tell immigrants that they better forget about it.

Yes we are assimilationists. Although having immigrants keeping their culture is nice and all that, we don’t really care; what we want is them to take our language first and foremost. Culture will only naturally follow. We do this because we are strictly opposed to segregation and ghettoes; we want immigrants to be full-fledged members of Society, quite unlike the English who are very happy keeping their class system to keep the rabble at it’s place, which is pretty normal for a colonial society.

> In canada, you can't arbitrarily tell somebody not to wear a scarf and try to enforce it under threat of something.

Sure we can. And yet again, you cet carried away with the canadian media misrepresentation about Québec. We don’t bitch against the scarves (fu*k, we wear them ourselves six months a year — during winter, that is), it’s against the face veils we have against. And we’re not the only ones, almost all Europe is up in arms regarding this.

It’s just that the liberal crowd is so taken up in it’s multiculturalism that it stubbornly keeps going into the multiculturalist dead-end, despite the fact that this very subject made the NDP lose the chances at getting in power.

> the nativist streak is there. it has historical reasons. but, it's not xenophobic; rather, it's very strongly assimilating.

Well, yes. But it seems that in Canada, while it's okay to assimilate to the english, it's a no-no to assimilate to the french.

Which is a damn fine reason to get out of Canada.

deathtokoalas
i just want to point out that i'm a french canadian that grew up in the ottawa area. i do appreciate your correction about parizeau - i did misspeak on that point. but, i think you're otherwise demonstrating my points rather than rebutting them.

emdx
As a "french canadian from Ottawa", you have learned early on that your place is subservient to the english, and you clearly show it by your thoroughly colonized positions.

If you want to be french, you're welcome to come to Québec, but if you backstab us, you will be treated as you deserve.

deathtokoalas
i would rather leave ethnic nationalism in the 20th - if not the 19th - century. again: you're demonstrating my points.

to reiterate: the nativist streak is a problem in quebec, but they're not xenophobic. they're assimilationist. it's a very big difference in understanding them from a distance

perhaps the better way to understand quebec nationalism from britain - or the middle east - is to compare it to merkel's recent statements, rather than le pen's. the door is open. but they demand that migrants accept their value systems, should they choose to come in.

--

something else that you'll see floated around by the canadian pseudo-left is this idea of quebec as a victim of settler-colonialism. this is an outrageous narrative; france was of course a participant in settler-colonialism, and the french settlers were fundamentally no different than the english settlers. i'm glossing over a complicated history, but to put the french settlers on the side of the colonized is fundamentally wrong. regardless, i've seen it cited in international sources over the last few years, indicating that the narrative has some traction because it fits into the theories people like.

the actual reason this argument has popped up is due to the supreme court reference case on succession, which claimed that a unilateral declaration would only be valid in the context of a colonial relationship. as no such colonial relationship exists, such a unilateral declaration would be considered illegal and unconstitutional in canada.

you have to understand that context to make sense of the debate, but that's not what gets out of the country.

Emdx
Of course you are (again) wrong.
When the french settlers came, they certainly did not see themselves as superior to the natives; in fact, we actually “went native” and we formed a hybrid european-indian society.
To this day, we carry on several native way of doing things that are rather different from France (like seeking consensus rather than outright imposing one's views).
In all Canada, only the Québec government deals with natives as equals, on a nation-to-nation basis, rather than the “stupid, juvenile savage” way the federal government does. And the results show: in Québec, 80% of natives still speak their language (that’s because law 101 ALSO protects native languages) as opposed to less than 20% in Canada. We also deal with their traditional social structures, rather than the sham democracy that is imposed by Ottawa, and who elects corrupt, unaccountable band councils.
We also let natives administer Justice as they see fit, so, unlike Canada, we do not have a high native jail population.

But you don’t have to take my word for it; go to Moonsonee (or Attawapiskat), Ontario, and ask the Crees who live there if they would rather live in Québec…

deathtokoalas
see, this is skewed so many ways that i don't see any point in bothering. it's political whitewashing. but, as i pointed out, there's a reason for it.

at the start of the colonial period, the various native american groups were broadly more interested in using western technology to defeat their ancestral enemies than they were in defeating the invaders. european powers took advantage of this. but, a big part of understanding how colonialism in north america was possible lies in understanding that they have a very different cultural concept of property rights - the truth is that they didn't really see westerners as invaders because they didn't conceive of themselves as owners of the land. rather, they conceived of themselves as users of the land; it would not have made sense to them to try and stop others from using the land. there were treaties of friendship and land use signed with both early english settlers and early french settlers; neither the french nor the english held to these treaties particularly strongly. today, they're both under the interpretation of the same court system.

despite the complexity of the history, the broad truth is that the various native groups often found themselves aligned with imperial interests against the interests of the colonies. that is broadly true across the continent, and the broadest way to understand the nature of conflict in the period, and continuing to today.

so, for example, you saw the major native groups align with the french imperial interests against british settlers in the seven years war, but then you saw those same groups align with the british crown against american settlers during the revolutionary war. one of the reasons for the revolutionary war was a ban by the british crown on expansion westwards, in recognition of the sovereignty of the existing tribes. and, one of the reasons for the signing of the treaties in western canada was protection from american expansion.

what you're saying about treaty rights is simple nonsense - both in legal terms and historical terms. the single most violent colonial body in the history of canada was the francophone catholic church. there are some french-canadian metis (mixed) groups, but there are also english, scottish and ukrainian metis groups, amongst others.

quebec really needs to come to terms with it's participation in settler colonialism, rather than continue to deny the reality of it.
god, my brain hurts.

you know what? i know where the baltics are. i can identify each of them on a map. i know their capital cities. i know which language groups their dominant ethnicities fall into. and, i even know a fair bit of their history.

but, i don't have a favourite one. because that's really NOT a thing.

well, maybe prussia. it's them hats. but that would be a confusing answer.

i don't have a favourite balkan, favourite korea or favourite caribbean island, either.

i really hope the stupidity stops, soon. the canadian media is making fox news look insightful, right now.

this isn't tabloid quality journalism. it's closer to onion quality journalism.

...and it's sinking the conservatives to an ontario pc party level of amateurism. suddenly, they're more humorous than scary.

do they really think people can't work this out? really?

globalnews.ca/news/2409408/baltics-a-thing-because-its-2015/

Jane tow
Good for you Jessica, you sound like a very intelligent young lady. I hope one day you are PM!!

jessica amber murray
that's a good laugh.

maybe i should address this point. i've been rambling enough places that i think i have a passive audience. just a feeling. maybe paranoia, maybe solipsism - but maybe accurate. it's at least as likely, really, isn't it?

the idea of me running for office right now is really something that ought to be explained in the terms of a comic strip, with hilarious hijinks leading to total failure along the way. but, even if it weren't such an outrageously ludicrous proposition, the reality is that i wish my focus was 100% on music production at the moment. hear me out on this.

so, i've been dealing with radio interference in my head phones since july. since then, canada has been through an election and i've been kind of vocal about it. but, it was totally by the accident that my system was malfunctioning, and i had absolutely no idea why.

it took me forever to figure it out. first, i had to check things like drivers and system files, as it's the most likely option. that took months to rule out entirely, and i wasn't helped by the fact that i had two sets of headphones, both, it turns out, with shorts. so, every time i checked for issues with the phones, it was always "either the equipment is faulty, or both my phones are faulty.". and, you always take the odds on that gamble - you always say the equipment is faulty.

but, then i finally realized it had to be electrical. so, you have to check everything that could be creating interference. in a room full of gear, that's a nightmare. eventually, i realized that i was getting the same noise out of an mp3 player as i was getting out of the grid - indicating that the interference had to be in the air, as the mp3 player is not connected to the grid.

so, then i had to check to see how far i could go with this interference, realizing it has boundaries that are blocks away - meaning the interference is broadly environmental, and not coming from inside the unit. but, in the process i found the short in one pair of the phones. then, maybe both pairs had shorts, after all.

so, i think the shorts in my phones are interacting with the environmental field to turn my phones into radio antennas, and i'm picking up the local am radio signals. this isn't creating the sound of a radio station, it's just making the audio sound like am radio - kind of jagged and rough at the edges.

it turns out i can block the radio signals relatively well using tinfoil.

but, it took me six long months of experiments to get me this far. and, i'd never had taken the time to ramble on the internet, if it weren't to vent frustration about not knowing why i can't be done mixing this project by now.

that said, i might think about it. one day. in the exceedingly distant future. under certain unlikely conditions. so, it's not likely. but note that i have thought about how unlikely it is on more than one occasion.

17-12-2015: tweaking the solution & finalizing tracks

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inriclaimed

Thursday, December 17, 2015

finalizing there is definitely something wrong with ironic hipster homophobia

ok.

so, i still don't know if the ultimate problem here is the short or the interference, but i've found a short on the left side of my phones. and, i'm not sure if it's in the cord or in the phones, either.

i know that an extra bit of foil around the connector between the cable and the phones seems to have me fully shielded.

i am finalizing track four, as of right now. it hasn't been altered since june.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/there-is-definitely-something-wrong-with-ironic-hipster-homophobia 
i'd rather see a monument to the victims of capitalism.

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/victims-of-communism-monument-next-steps-1.3369261

--

Julius No, Ph.D.
Can we build a "Victims of Capitalism" memorial right next to it for balance?

sutherlj
who would pay for it?

jessica murray
it would be best if we just built it together using voluntary labour, and held it in common ownership.

BromleyBromley
Like all of the people it has elevated out of poverty? there arent any victims of capitalism. Only corporatism.

jessica murray
poverty is only possible under the enforcement of private property. capitalism can never lift anybody out of poverty - that's an absurd twisting of words - it can only mire people within it.

Corvus2
Although capitalism has a lot of bugs in it it is still preferable to hardcore communism.
North Korea is an example that is worth reviewing on this subject.

jessica murray
i agree that north korea is an example worth reviewing. how many autonomously owned worker co-ops exist in north korea?

the reality is that poverty has no meaning when divorced from the enforcement of property rights; you can only have poverty if you have property rights.

when you hear capitalists talk about "lifting people out of poverty", what they really mean is "erecting a hierarchy where one group exploits another."

MalContent Disabled
Victims of Crimelords. Victims of Monarchies. Victims of Bloodthirsty Nutjobs, Victims of Kleptocrats etc, etc.

jessica murray
i'd like a victims of trolling monument that rickrolls whenever you cross through a censor.

contributor7
You find it appropriate to joke while my relatives were starved to death by Stalin and executed following months of torture? How Canadian of you!

jessica murray
stalin was an extreme right-wing despot, though. i mean, you don't even need to read history. you just need to read animal farm.

this is the funnest stalin fact: the guy actually turned himself into a GOD in the russian empire. i kid you not. like, the kind of thing that ancient roman emperors used to do.

khruschev and his minions did the best they could in destroying all evidence of this. but, if you look hard enough you can find russian orthodox icons (you know, those pictures of jesus with the orbs around his head) with stalin in place of jesus.

they actually had people kneeling down and praying to images of stalin, as replacement for jesus.

that's not communism. that's as right-wing as the spectrum gets.

there's a shot of one:

https://02varvara.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/01-stalin-icon.jpg?w=600

if that was a picture of jesus, it would be relatively normal for a member of the orthodox church to say their prayers in front of it, maybe take a few beads off the rosary, etc.

what actually happened - and this is actually true - is that they replaced all the pictures of jesus with stalin, then left the people to carry on their rituals.

again: that's a roman emperor's tactic. that's caesar. that's augustus. and it ain't communism.

"It is impermissible and foreign to the spirit of Marxism-Leninism to elevate one person, to transform him into a superman possessing supernatural characteristics akin to those of a god." - khruschev, denouncing stalin

--

more seriously, i would support a monument for the victims of the cold war, more broadly: korean war deaths, vietnamese villagers that got wiped out by agent orange, those purposefully starved in the holodomor genocide, cuban/angolan freedom fighters killed by the apartheid regime in south africa, those purposefully starved by mao as population control, palestinians who have become throw away in america's need for an ally in the middle east, etc.

there's no deficit of people killed in the cold war that deserve remembering. and, in fact many of these stories are not well known in the west.

the problem with this is that it takes a side.

our world war one monuments don't talk about how we beat the germans down, or about victims of the kaiser. they recognize that the conflict was senseless, and take responsibility for it. that's what this monument seemed to be missing.
the rich are sitting on far too much cash right now.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/apec-unicef-trudeau-chair-1.3368564
after reading dozens of articles on the topic, i'm still not clear about what is unclear.

but, to answer a few questions posed in the article...

does committing to further bombing require purchasing new jets? how much will those jets cost? who will benefit from the defense contract? who might be pushing for that defense contract?

i think the liberals have been crystal clear - and that you should take them at face value. but, if you want to really delve into this, i think you need to be prepared to ask some questions, and receive some answers, that you're maybe not prepared for.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-isis-chris-hall-1.3368691

--

eggshaped
So, does that mean he will withdraw the jets but put our military personnel in harm's way by putting boots on the ground, even if only in a "training" capacity? Or is he going to wait for other countries to subdue ISIS so we can then take in the remnants?

jessica murray
the idea is that the only way to build stability in the region is to enable local actors to do it. not western ground troops, but iraqi ground troops.

it's something any expert will tell you. nato can't win this war. there is no tactic that will be successful. only iraqis can win this war. and it requires convincing the civilian population to work with the state. nothing else will ever work - and carpet bombing will just make it worse.

i think there's a bit of a caveat to that. if civilians begin aligning with isis, then they become isis and must be targeted. maybe we screwed something up to get there (or many things up...), but the end result remains. see, but then we're bombing villages - and canadians cannot stomach that the way americans can.

where it gets even more complicated is that the same logic suggests that only assad can win this war. worse, iraq seems to be increasingly aligning with assad. you put two and two together, and there's no way out besides pulling out altogether, or escalating dramatically. the inevitable outcome right now seems to be a russian-backed syrian/iraqi alliance to reconstruct both states. and, while that is probably the fastest way to end the war, supporting this would put as at odds with the americans.

the only specifics i've heard relate to supporting kurdish troops, which really sidesteps the issue.
the americans had no right to demand that assad step down in the first place.

the propaganda has been very thick, and this will likely produce much convulsion. but, the americans are making the right choice in backing off from this demand. they can't pull this off. they need to back off, get rid of the crazies, re-establish the syrian and iraqi states and then talk about letting assad - who wants to step down anyways - work his way out in an orderly transition.

they should have done this years ago.

also realize this: they may be trying to get out to destroy a paper trail linking them to isis before the next election.

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/kelly-mcparland-assad-can-stay-once-again-u-s-capitulates-to-russian-demands-on-syria
the reason gangs don't push pot is that it's not addictive.

if you want to go down this route, it would probably be more useful to spend the funds on treatment for alcohol addiction.

i've had these conversations with street dealers. they push speed, mostly. and meth. it's cheap enough to sell to poor people, and it gets them hooked so they can generate revenue streams. the street dealers are throwaway fronts for serious business people. it's big money. and, pot is basically useless if you're trying to ensure a steady revenue stream because people smoke it sporadically & socially.

when was the last time you saw somebody on the street begging for change for pot?

it doesn't happen.

the marijuana distribution network looks more along the lines of a collection of pacifist hippies that don't want to get a job. the ponytails. the beards. that's your average pot grower/dealer. there's also plenty of people that do it as a second job. and, they clearly don't understand economics well, because there's been no discernible inflation on pot in decades.

i'm not saying gangs don't sell pot at all. but, it's not the real core of how it gets distributed. again: in 20 years, i've never seen a thug or a gun or anything remotely shady. it's just hippies with beards and ponytails - or pizza delivery guys, or managers at mcdonalds.

the reality is that, compared to speed or meth, it's a poor business model. you just don't create slaves out of marijuana addiction. and there's so many people selling from so many sources, that you can't build budgets around it or anything. not to mention the fact that most pot users don't want to deal with criminals. it's too unstable. and it's just not where the big money is...

so, it's like...let's do this to eliminate a problem that doesn't exist, to fund a problem that doesn't exist. ??. i know this is politics to ease centrists, but it simply doesn't exist in reality. i'd rather see an education program targeted at these centrists!

just sell it at the corner store, already. and, i'm not saying that funding addiction treatment is a bad idea, but it would help if it went towards something that's actually addictive.

i mean, it's going to be hilarious if we see marijuana addiction centers open up.

in today's society, the reality is that marijuana use is broadly passed down across generations, much as alcohol use is. it's cultural. if you look this up, you'll find that in a majority of cases of young marijuana use, there was a parent at home that was using it at some point. my dad quit when i was young, but he didn't have a problem with it and i was raised to see it differently than other drugs. i wouldn't even class it with alcohol. i'd class it with caffeine and aspirin. and, while not everybody can ask dad for a hookup, the reality is that that hookup that is found at some point along the chain is almost certainly coming from somebody's dad - and no doubt to a local grower without any connections to organized crime.

the reality is not like it is in the movies, built on reagan-era drug war propaganda.

globalnews.ca/news/2407903/trudeau-says-tax-on-legalized-pot-wont-be-a-government-cash-cow/
so, what’s the deal with those baltic states, anyways? are they really fascist, or is it just some kind of hipster irony?

“i can’t take it, jerry. i hear ‘lit your anus up’. every time. i can’t avoid it. it’s driving me nuts!”

well, perhaps you should take her up on her offer.

george’s eyebrow raises. the scene changes to one listening in from a distance.

“my god, what are you doing?”
“LIGHTING YOUR ANUS ON FIRE”
“what…no….HELP….”

www.macleans.ca/news/canada/the-baltics-to-trudeau-yes-were-a-thing/
people have been saying for years that the conservatives think voters are stupid. confirmation of this point is about the only thing i'm getting out of this.

of course he meant what he said he meant. that is blatantly obvious, and the only people that look stupid are the people jumping on him over it.

i don't like coming off as a liberal lackey. i'm not one. but, this is just an epic string of nonsense coming from the conservatives.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/12/17/trudeau-baltic-nations-macleans-video_n_8828124.html
mike,

you think those assault weapons are going to help you out against the swat team? or just give you a longer prison sentence?

bernie needed this. hope it helps.

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

16-12-2015: finally arriving at a solution.

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inriclaimed 

i know it's a little early.

and i may regret it...

but, i'm officially declaring that winter is cancelled in the detroit-windsor region.

this announcement does not apply to the rest of canada.

there's basically zero ice cover on the great lakes, and above freezing temperatures forecast well into january. winter is a thing that builds on itself. the snow cover, the ice cover, the absence of sunlight, etc. but, the solstice is next week. at this point, it seems essentially impossible.

even if we get a dip in the jet stream, if the lakes are wide open it won't be very intense. and, the fact that the days start getting longer again next week means there's not much that winter can do to assert itself.

it's not crystal ball shit. there's a point on the calendar where an absence of winter buildup means it can't happen at all. we're really just about there.

like, we might get a week where it hovers around zero or something. but, that's not winter.
it's not that i dispute the broad statistical realities, or see anything offensive about calling out muslims. it's just that i have a problem with singling them out as somehow worse than other religions.

i don't really have the time to make this argument. but, a quick google search tells me that 73% of born-again christians think that homosexuality is a sin. i can't find numbers, but i would expect well over 26% of christians would argue that abortion clinic bombings are "sometimes" justified.

i think we need to have this debate; i think we need to get rid of religion. but, i don't think we should be singling out muslims when we do it.


BigBadJuju
+jessica The big difference is in the amount of power these two religions have. Look at the body count. You can't equivocate these two crazies. One is marginal and barely has the power to protest loud enough, the other has the world on its guard.

jessica
+BigBadJuju i really think you need to take a closer look at the body count. christianity has the near extermination of the western hemisphere in it's list of accomplishments. 

BigBadJuju
Umm, no. Ancient holy wars are irrelevant. Christians today don't kill in the name of Christianity even a fraction of how much Islamists kill in the name of Islam. Don't get me wrong, all religions do some crazy shit, but the body count is incomparable.

jessica
+BigBadJuju i think you're mistaking what is no doubt a brief historical pause for some kind of permanent progress. if you take a broader historical perspective, you'll see that this pause is not unprecedented - and that it is in fact a consequence of christian hegemony rather than christian social evolution.

the kkk was not burning crosses very long ago, and hitler couldn't have succeeded to the extent that he did without support from the catholic church. the peace agreements in ireland are barely a few decades old. and, christians have no problem slaughtering people indiscriminately in africa.

mass christian violence has never been more than an inch under the surface; it's always been ready to erupt with the proper catalyst, which has always been economic.

BigBadJuju
+jessica I am not trying here to apologize for Christianity, or for any religion in that matter. Your argument may well have merit in the broader perspective. But I argue that, given the current circumstances, radical Islam is posing a more imminent threat and demands a more urgent action than any other religion today.

jessica
+BigBadJuju i don't agree. but, if i did, i'd still point out that what you do when you do that is deflect the argument away from an epistemological basis and towards an ethnic one, thereby creating a larger problem.

BigBadJuju
My argument has nothing to do with ethnicity. It has to do with the reality of radicals killing innocent civilians across the world in the name of religion. White European terrorist are just as bad as Middle-Eastern terrorists. You seem to argue from an idealistic perspective of how things should be and what we would like our problems to be. The reality is we have a distinct group that is making a lot of the troubles we have. And until you acknowledge this fact, this indisputable fact supported by every day events all over the world, your argument will remain detached from reality.

jessica
+BigBadJuju your argument has everything to do with ethnicity, whether you realize it or not. that's the faultline you're creating.
it seems to be getting targeted from every direction...

there's perspectives you wish were true, that fit some ideological bent or perhaps are even constructed entirely out of one. fantasies. projections.

then there's perspectives that actually exist.

i think the reason that almost everybody is upset about this is because it's pretty real.

the liberals are using the planes as leverage in a nation-to-nation dialogue, rather than as gifts to wow their imperial overlords, as harper did. it's the better approach. but, they need to walk a fine line on it, too - more than one liberal prime minister has not-so-mysteriously resigned after clearly ruffling feathers.

this is very delicate. there will no doubt be errors. and, don't be surprised if it trudeau's undoing in the end. but, it's the right approach, anyways - as dangerous as it is.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-isis-mission-us-letter-carter-1.3366185
liquor stores close too early. i want to be able to buy pot at 4:20 am. corner stores are a better idea.

but, i've pointed this out before: you will no doubt see high-end pot applications, because it's not just a smokable. in fact, in the long run, i'd expect to see higher market share from beverages and eatables.

in the medium term, expect to see very nice restaurants show up that offer marijuana deserts and wines. and, expect something like the "marijuana marguerita" to be a big hit on the bourgeois patios.

pot has never been about lurking around alleyways. and, a big part of legalization needs to be in abolishing that utterly ridiculous social stigma. it has a place in our culture, and that should be recognized.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/weed-in-every-liquor-store-what-could-happen-when-trudeau-legalizes-marijuana/article27755045/


Naomi moscoe
Restaurants serving edibles...brilliant!

deathtokoalas
count on it.

....and marijuana coolers will no doubt become the dominant means of consumption.

Keith p.
Weed has a stigma that is richly deserved. It stinks, it is usually consumed by smoking, which has a sub-stigma all of its own, and it tends to be used by those who are shiftless and act dumb, likely because they are. No "nice" restaurant will want to add weed to their plates if they wish to continue to exist. Hopefully after the initial teenager rush of business is over, the marijuana business will die a natural death because legalization will make it unappealing to the perpetually disaffected, and its use will again be limited only to aging hippies and layabouts.

deathtokoalas
see, that's a bunch of lunatic fringe nonsense.

i'm actually hoping that legalization reduces alcohol use - because, unlike pot, alcohol actually really does make you stupid when you're under it's influence.
the liquor store closes too early. i believe i should have the right to purchase marijuana at all times of night - and especially at 4:20 am.

if they can make it as hard to find pot as it is to find cigarettes, they'll have done the best that they realistically can. unless they want to move cigarettes to the liquor store, too?

i think that corner stores are a better idea. i mean, they just allowed supermarkets to sell beer, let's be consistent here...

this is what nobody wants to say: if you're really concerned about crime (and the actual reality is that the shadiest thing i've seen in over twenty years of smoking is a confederate flag on a baggie...i don't get the impression that the gangs push much pot.), you want to have that bit of space - so that the kids that really want it can get it from the state. you want to put up hurdles, make it annoying - but not make it impossible.

you can't stop kids from smoking pot any more than you can stop them from having sex. and, given that, i'd rather have them get it from the store through some convoluted process than have them get it from the bikers.

that's how things work today with cigs and booze. it's how things will work with pot, too. there's not a choice here, really. so, it doesn't make sense to me for them to get stricter on pot while they're loosening up on alcohol; alcohol is far more destructive. i'd rather see it at corner stores, at supermarkets, etc.

anywhere that can sell beer or cigarettes should be able to sell marijuana, too.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/12/15/liquor-stores-not-the-place-to-sell-pot-says-rona-ambrose_n_8809934.html
it's not clear that you're better off buying a house. you just said you don't have kids, so you don't care about school districts. then, why do you need the extra space?

the reality is that this youtube thing is not likely to be permanent as a source of income, and i'm sure you realize that. fast forward a year or two from now, when you've sunk everything into a house.

on the one hand, your property taxes are based on your income, not the price of your property. so, if you see your income crash, you could end up paying less in taxes than you'd pay in rent. my parents had friends that won millions on the stock market, bought a house and then paid no taxes on it because they had no income. it's not exactly fair, but you're in a position to take advantage of that.

on the other hand, a big house requires a lot of maintenance. you can get out of that by buying a condo, but then you're paying condo fees. balancing act. further, housing is really not the safest investment, despite what your elders may claim. look at what happened in 2008. it will happen again.

you're probably best off buying a cheap, new house for two reasons. the first is so you're not sinking everything you have into it. the second is to minimize maintenance costs. if you're buying an older house, renovations could very well offset inflation - if you even get inflation. housing will crash again when the boomers start dying off.

renting will give you a point of stability. it might seem like you're wasting money, but if you really crunch the numbers you'll find out you're probably not. you'll have more disposable income, which you will soon realize the importance of. and, you won't have to move when you have to actually get an actual job.

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

15-12-2015: compost run & determining the boundaries of the magnetic field

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inriclaimed

zero bills have been passed. trudeau hasn't done anything to directly harm himself yet - although he's done some things he doesn't want to get into the habit of - so there's really no reason to disapprove of him, considering he hasn't done anything yet.

it upholds what everybody knew: that the liberal/ndp vote is extremely fluid, and has a large swing component to it. but it doesn't present any other useful finding.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/grenier-approval-ratings-polls-1.3363911

DickStorm
In less than 6 weeks

- Launched missing and murdered aboriginal women inquiry
- Banned Oil tankers from the Northern Coast of BC
- Ordered Justice Ministers to get to work on Marijuana Legalization
- Already landed refugee's in Canada
- Already implemented a tax cut for the middle class

AND signed a climate agreement in mere weeks and Harper couldn't do it in the ten years he was in power.

jessica murray
i know your job is to spin things around to the party's benefit, but there really isn't anything substantive in that list. it's good to see him following through and everything. but, you shouldn't expect to see a reaction until we see the results of these commissions.

don't misunderstand me: i don't see any reason to expect to see a decrease in support any time soon. i think he's made some bad pr decisions that might hurt him if they continue, but it's going to be a while before that works itself out, if it does. and, it's going to be a catalytic thing.

DickStorm
A climate pact that people have been trying to put together for decades is nothing substantive? HAHA the Convo ends there.

jessica murray
well, it really isn't. it's not the agreement that people have been trying to put together for decades - it's just another colossal failure that will not prevent emissions. and, we were hardly a dominant factor in it's construction, anyways.

the government will not be judged on whether or not it signs agreements. it will be judged on whether or not it reduces emissions.

that's substantive. a non-binding pledge to uphold harper's baseline emissions reduction targets is certainly not.

jplondon
well. i certainly can't disagree with you there.

nor can i agree with you, either.

what exactly did you just say?

jessica murray
what i said is that the polls at this point don't say anything.

jplondon
polls never say anything but what a representative sample though when the poll was taken.

the moment they are released, they are instantly history.

but, watching the people who are down in those polls get worked up over them is most amusing.

they also serve as a handy distraction from them doing what they could to reverse the numbers.

jessica murray
well, there's some pretty convincing mathematical theory that suggests that polling can be a very useful *snapshot* of the public's perspective on things, even with small sample sizes. but, you are right that that snapshot fades very quickly.

in this circumstance, all i'm trying to say is that it's not useful to read much into this. it's just reflecting continued elation at the change of government.

--

Undefinedcolor
New Democrats have to use research to find out why voters chose to vote Liberal.
It's better to use the scientific approach and make some changes.
I suspect that the problem is ND foreign policy, but I don't have an ounce of proof.
Get that proof and make the changes. That's what I would do.

jessica murray
i would normally lean considerably left of the ndp, but i did vote for the liberals. it wasn't foreign policy related at all.

the primary factor was that i did not like my local ndp candidate (cheryl hardcastle). she did win in the riding, here in windsor. she struck as a kind of an anti-science hippie. on the other hand, the liberal candidate in the region was campaigning on a repeal of nafta. i didn't think that would happen, mind you, but i thought he would be a better representative of the region. so, that was the primary consideration, for me: the quality of the local candidate.

i was also alienated a little by mulcair's apparent rightward leanings. i preferred legalization to decriminalization. i thought the liberals' idea of top-down spending was a better approach to climate change than carbon trading.

broadly speaking, the ndp swung to the right of the liberals, and i reacted to that.

but, the dominant issue was really seriously the quality of the local candidate.

there was also the fact that, when fored to consider the possibility of the ndp actually governing, issues like proportional representation and senate reform started to become more important. i'm very much opposed to pr, especially. it didn't matter much when i knew i was voting for a third party. it became a more important consideration when they had a real chance of winning. there was a collection of issues like this. their position on the clarity act was another one of them.

Monday, December 14, 2015

the stories surrounding the equipment that i use

14-12-2015: the interference is present all across the neighbourhood!

tracks worked on in this vlog:
1) https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inriclaimed

did she just compare trump to lincoln?

i don't think this is possible, to begin with. but she's making a different argument than trump is. her argument doesn't apply specifically to any single group, and it really doesn't help her own cause for her to be implying that it does. it's both disingenuous and opportunistic for her to suggest that what she's said about immigration has anything to do with what trump has.

canada used to actually have one of the most racist immigration systems in the world. back in the 60s, we adopted a system that was meant to address that by neutrally assigning a system of points based on criteria such as education. it was explicitly designed to ensure that immigrants are "economically viable", while ignoring their ethnicity. this was a liberal government. on top of that, we tend to be generous regarding making spaces for refugees - even if they end up on welfare. the population tends to conflate immigrants & refugees, both on the right and on the left, but the government is careful to maintain the distinction.

american policy makers should take the time to look into this system.

you might guess correctly that i've never listened to a miley cyrus record all the way through, and probably never will. you might not guess that i'd argue that the flaming lips have a very low signal-to-noise ratio. 5% of it is brilliant, 45% of it is lacklustre - and 50% of it is flat out awful.

the cover, here, is an obvious embryonic reference, which makes it clear where miley's references are. and, that's their best record, actually.

you can tell that she's out of her element. a lot of it sounds less like a collaboration and more like a mash-up. you might expect that. it doesn't necessarily imply a poor result, though; splicing distant ideas together is often a surefire way to stumble upon something transcendental. but, to get to that point you have to listen to each other.

listening to each other is an n-person game - and a zero sum one. you can't blame the lack of chemistry entirely on miley and her ego. coyne sounds like he's invested on a financial level rather than an artistic one; it's hard to blame him for being disinterested, he's literally twice her age, but the proper choice is to avoid the situation altogether, rather than drop her with some b-sides and hit the bong while she struggles with them.

...so i'm a little disappointed by the musical aspect. not surprised, but disappointed. coyne has released a dozen records like this that don't really go anywhere. it's actually really a rare occurrence when he can transcend that. when he does, it's brilliant. but these moments have always been fleeting, and there's none of them here.

i can abstractly understand how and why miley wants out of the world she grew up in. but, maybe the single biggest disconnect of growing up the way she has is the way it's (seemingly) prevented her from understanding the concept of musical chemistry. i would encourage her to branch out the way she'd want to, but it has to be with the understanding that writing a truly memorable record - rather than merely a financially successful one - is something that cannot be delegated out, or purchased from a top notch producer. it's something that has to either arise from years of building relationships with the musicians around you, or, more frequently nowadays, by doing everything yourself.

a good start would be finding some people her own age to jam with.

i'll grant that it's a creatively cheeky extrapolation on a theme.

but, that theme is completely irrelevant and the result is that this is boring.

it's at least a nice change to see wasted talent as opposed to an absolute deficit of it.

this argument about not bombing the oil wells...

i don't think it's a genuine argument. i think it's a cover to explain why they're not obliterating their own investments. but, let's work this through, anyways.

so, the claim is that bombing the oil will turn the villagers against the anti-isis coalition and, therefore, we should not bomb the oil. the ramifications of this are quite profound. do the villagers feel aligned with the ideology of isis? is it some kind of stockholm syndrome?

it goes beyond pragmatism. pragmatism would suggest that you co-operate with whomever has the ability to get you the oil, and switch sides as soon as possible. the concern that it would radicalize is a pretty devastating attack on the mindsets of the locals.

i would like to hope that bombing the oil would help the locals revolt against isis. and, if it will not, then i'm sorry: these civilian populations are valid targets.

as mentioned, i think it's propaganda. but, insofar as there is some truth to it, it is an argument in favour of civilian bombing - and not an argument against bombing the oil wells.

logic can be harsh sometimes. it doesn't always respect civil rights.

see, this demonstrates that "socialist" voters can be relied on to vote for the center-right in sufficient numbers, as expected - although one should also point out that plenty of them seemed to prefer the national front to the republicans. fascism doesn't fit well in our traditional spectrum; it leans left on a fair number of economic issues. that's where they're getting a lot of the increased support from in the first place. it's not beyond the pale to suggest that the national front is threatening to displace the socialists on the LEFT of the french spectrum.

what remains untested is whether or not republicans will vote for socialists to defeat the national front. this strikes me as a more difficult proposition.

i think we can safely conclude that the republicans can defeat the national front in a run-off. but, if the run-off is between the socialists and the national front? i'm not sure that ends well.

we've seen the collapse of the soft left all over the world in the last couple of years. the socialists are really in an existential crisis, here. by meandering in the center, they've allowed the far right to take over key leftist constituencies.

i think that to fix this is more than cosmetic. it may take more than a generation. it may require dissolving the party. and, frankly, hollande may want to think about stepping down asap, and even about the party not running in the upcoming election at all.

here's the reality: there's a lot of useful idiots running off their mouths about this or that.

but, the fn is very closely aligned with the kremlin. that's the actual truth. that's the actual political reality.

whatever happens with anything else, having france pull out of nato (and that is the one promise you can expect them to keep) would break the global order into pieces.

it would be the biggest russian victory since stalingrad, and the most profound political event since the fall of the berlin wall.

www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/13/front-national-held-back-in-france-but-its-trajectory-is-on-the-up#comments

Sunday, December 13, 2015

12/13-12-2015: a clear conclusion that the source of the interference is outside the apartment

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inriclaimed

Saturday, December 12, 2015

you can truly never know whether or not you have something on your shirt. the events are entirely independent.

you must check every single time.

how do you even ban muslims?

the russians couldn't ban christianity. the chinese couldn't ban confucianism. how's he gonna pull this off?

send them to mars? right. one illudium q-36 explosive space modulator, coming up. wait for it. we'll have to invade with rabbits. or unblock the view of the crescent moon, somehow.

it's not even offensive, really. the actual reality is that it's actually too stupid to be offensive. it doesn't disqualify him on the basis of intolerance, it disqualifies him on the basis of intelligence. but, we already knew that...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSnOwUE5Fro
fun fact: canada has yet to elect a baby boomer prime minister. and, it seems unlikely to happen, now.

rather, we had a string of "silent generation" prime ministers from 1967-2006, and gen x took over directly from there.

the conservatives transitioned to a boomer prime minister in 1993, but she got destroyed in the subsequent election. she was only prime minister for a few months and left no meaningful legacy. she's basically forgotten to history, in every context except being our only female prime minister.

the right then completely collapsed, and when it came back it consciously decided to pick a younger leader. stephen harper is arguably a very late boomer, in that cusp area, but he was really totally gen x in just about every way.

the liberals had a few boomer leaders, but they spent the whole time in opposition. trudeau the younger was born in 1971.

the conservatives will have a leadership convention in 2017. there are no prominent boomer candidates at this point.

the leader of the third party - thomas mulcair - is a more recognizable boomer. but, his chances of winning the next election are rather low. and, if he gets replaced, it's almost certain to be by an xer.

it's just another example of how canada is different. the narrative in the english speaking world for decades has been how the boomers control everything, and gen x is going to get skipped over.

but, in canada, the oldest generation never ceded power to the boomers and instead skipped them in favour of the xers.

it's tempting to draw conclusions about how canada was able to avoid the boomer generation obsession with tax cuts at the expense of social services.

canada: gen x nation. i admit i like the idea. that's a different set of values. what does it mean? well, we already have superior music, and arguably culture in general. legal pot is on the way. a bit of an existentialist slant in the law? shit, how about a guaranteed annual income.

this is not a crazy perception of things.

... because it really does seem relevant to point out how important the silent generation was to our politics here, and how comparably unimportant the boomers were.

maybe that's the answer. maybe the difference between canada and the united states is that we're staggered a generation. the americans jumped from the gis to the boomers, skipping the silent generation, and seem poised to skip over gen x and jump to the millenials. look at the democratic primaries. they're both past retirement age. suppose you get eight years out of clinton, even. you could start getting some young millenials running.

it looks like canada jumped from the silent generation to gen x and may very well skip the millenials.

i know that these kinds of analysis are overly broad. vague. statistical, if anything; mostly, just meaningless. but, maybe there's some truth underlying it.

hey, hey (my, my): we all know grunge was really about trying to be canadian. lumberjack shirts. neil young solos. we should get royalties from that shit.

"and, in other news, canada has finally won it's copyright infringement legal battle to pay down it's debt with royalties from the 1991 classic 'nevermind'."

but, for real. look at these birth dates. we skip generations.
i've removed appointments.
they all won an election.
and this is the complete list.

macdonald - 1815
mackenzie - 1822

laurier - 1841
borden - 1854

bennett - 1870
mackenzie-king - 1874
st laurent - 1882

diefenbaker - 1895
pearson - 1897

trudeau - 1919
chretien - 1934
martin - 1938
clark - 1939
mulroney - 1939

harper - 1959
trudeau - 1971

zero between 1939 and 1959.

skipped....
india is still very much a developing country and, despite actually being fairly ambitious on switching to renewables, should be given a little more space. their per capita is amongst the lowest on the planet.

but, china is arguably now a developed country and should be pressed to commit to comparable levels of responsibility if it wants comparable levels of influence. their emissions exceed their population percentage; they're already emitting beyond their share. i think that's the right argument - if it wants the seat at the big kids table, it needs to act like a big kid.

www.cbc.ca/news/world/cop21-climate-change-talks-saturday-announced-1.3362354

Dee1965
The average Chinese citizen uses 1/5 the energy that the average North American uses. Where do you suggest they cut back?

The pollution from China is coming from its massive production of goods that are sent HERE.

So, how about we cut back to help them cut back?

jessica murray
westerners should cut emissions by around 70%. china should cut emissions by about 30%. we need to cut more than them, but they need to cut deeply, too.

the idea that we could fix this by boycotting goods from china or something would be a nice plan in a market utopia. but, that's not how things work in the real world. so long as their government allows us to export our pollution to them, we will continue to do so. they have to put those standards in place. it may lead to a decrease in exports, but even china is realizing it needs to focus it's economy more on domestic consumption.

it's only a half-truth, anyways. they're building massive cities. and, they're using coal for electricity generation.

Blackbird

Both China and India have the money to do something about their outputs. Why should they be cut any slack.

If you really want to do something for the world, cut down on pollution of all types and spend all this money on research to find an energy source that pollutes less but will provide enough power to meet our constantly growing demand

jessica murray
because india's per capita emissions level is actually lower than most countries in sub-saharan africa. the gross numbers in india seem impressive, but the population is well over a billion and when you split it all up - which does not account for the vast disparities in wealth that exist there - it does not add up to much for the average person. the average indian is still very, very poor and simply does not produce many emissions as a consequence of this poverty.

the indian government has made it clear that it intends to focus as much on renewables as it can, and that is good news. i mean, it simply makes more economic sense to put the infrastructure in place as renewables than it does to swap it out in ten years. and, understand that that is the reality in much of india - they are not converting from carbon, but making the choice as to what kind of energy source they will be implementing for the first time. but there are few places in the world where the argument for lenience is as powerful as it is in india, due to the persistent levels of quite staggering poverty.
we're too dependent on foreign growers, and despite the claim in the article, the truth is that we don't need to be. i don't want to spend my life growing produce. but, there's a great business opportunity here for indoor growers.

www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/here-are-7-foods-that-you-will-pay-more-for-in-the-new-year/60975/
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-commentary/paris-climate-talks-were-about-business-not-politics/article27722810/

11-12-2015: starting to lose it a little

tracks worked on in this vlog:
1) https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/aliens-are-more-likely-than-god

Thursday, December 10, 2015

09-12-2015: automatic obligatory influentials - for the people

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inriclaimed

this sounds like a poison pill. remember: the government has ultimate discretion here, not poloz. and, i would hope that the liberals sack him if he decides to seriously do this. this sounds like harper pulling strings in the background, trying to create a disaster.

a big part of the liberals' tax policy, as it is, is meant to find a balance that increases revenue and prevents capital flight. combined with the dollar continuing to crash, this announcement seems designed for the sole purpose of scaring investors.

a corporate tax hike, followed by direct spending, would be more effective because it would actually spend the cash. this is just going to send money flying out of the country...

i'm serious.

i think this is a partisan move, designed to sabotage the government. and, the government should react very swiftly.

but, i mean...

listen. i'm a leftist. i'm into high corporate tax rates. and, a large amount of the canadian economy is tied to natural resources, meaning the argument around flight falls apart. but, if we want to diversify, we need to look at building economies that are more mobile and finding ways to keep them there. and, the arguments around minimizing corporate taxation are meaningful.

it's probably going to be more effective to do this using the "backroom deals" model than trying to force people to spend. that is, by using the tools of rhetorical persuasion. by sitting down and talking with people and convincing them to invest in this or that.

these heavy-handed, top down, punitive approaches don't work. that understanding is supposed to be something that this government is rooting itself around.

this is a policy perspective rooted in the previous government's ideology. and, i think the government consequently has a valid prerogative in asking poloz to resign.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/what-are-negative-interest-rates-and-how-do-they-work/article27669897/


K Fitzwilliam
Really, still beating on Harper????

deathtokoalas
he appointed this guy. and, if we end up with a conflict between the minister and the governor, it reduces to a process of completing the transition.

canadians tend to interpret the relationship between the minister and the governor through the prism of the federal reserve. but, this is false. the minister can override the governor, and in this case should.

that said, i'm not aware of morneau's position on this. but, it strikes me as inconsistent with the government's position on holding the corporate tax rate steady. i'm deducing. a little clarification would help.

--

Hallbfb
And seniors just keep taking it on the chin.....

deathtokoalas
boomers spent their entire lives trying to dismantle the welfare state, and now take a look around and wonder where it went. it would be easier to have empathy if they didn't play such a central role in the creation of the problems we have today.

--

Robf2
Ok, so we have an "economic crisis" and the BOC is charging commercial banks for their reserves. Are these commercial banks going to increase lending during a crisis? No. They are going to discourage deposits with fees. And the depositors who have been shunned, what should they do? One clever idea (courtesy BOC research papers) is to prepay your taxes :)

Superscape
It's actually the opposite- by charging banks for holding reserves with the BoC, it means that banks will be discouraged from sitting on their cash, and therefore lend it out.

deathtokoalas
no. they'll just pass on the cost to creditors, who will in turn be discouraged from leaving their money in the bank. that doesn't necessarily mean spending, and in most cases won't - in most cases it will mean flight.
ethan maly
Orangutans are apes, nor monkeys. That's like saying that a ring tailed lemur or a slow loris are monkeys

jessica
+ethan maly

meh. humans are monkeys, too.


ethan maly
+jessica no we're technically great apes 

Damon Teichroeb
Whoever was stupid enough to think that we humans came from monkeys should have never been a scientist. Prove me wrong once you have OBSERVABLE evidence of a monkey or ape or great ape transform into a human. It is very simple. Monkeys, apes, and great apes are animals and always have been. 

jessica
+ethan maly
but, i have no problem in using the terms "primate" and "monkey" interchangeably. it's a perfectly acceptable colloquialism. tarsiers are a bit of a problem, granted. but not enough to deny the usage.

the offense comes out merely in a hierarchical perception. an ape is not merely a monkey. but, there's not a lion in the world that sees a human differently than any other monkey. it's a shallow anthropomorphic absurdity, really.

i mean, a lion might very well think it important to point out the difference between a leopard and a cougar. a leopard can roar. it is not merely a cat. a wolf may take great offense to being called a dog. but, we see them all as essentially the same thing. 

Joshua Quint Norton
+jessica
You may. People with the slightest ability of differentiation wahtsoever - do not. 

jessica
+Joshua Quint Norton
hrmmn. and, what are these criteria that you believe are so obvious?

surely, you don't claim that it's dna.

Joshua Quint Norton
It's so clear what I said. So very clear.

So my response is go stick a porcupine in your eurethra and call it a puppy , you disengenious sophistic  twat.

jessica
+Joshua Quint Norton
it does not matter how angry you are. you have yet to put down meaningful separation criteria, let alone defend it from scrutiny. 

Joshua Quint Norton
Well when I'm responding to such utter shite as 'We see dogs and wolves as essentially the same' (imagines a Pug and Wolf and giggles) I know I'm dealing with a sophistic diehard who will defend the most insane statements with the zeal of a true fuckwit.

So no. You don't deserve a response if you do not realise all labels are labels of convienience.

jessica
+Joshua Quint Norton
but, dogs and wolves are scientifically classified as the same species. 

Joshua Quint Norton
Again. go fuck yourself. I can read you like a comic book, only a lot quicker. 

jessica
+Joshua Quint Norton
i suspect that it would take you an unusually long amount of time to make your way through a comic book. 

Joshua Quint Norton
Keep your narcissm to thyself.
I can tell you're an expert on it.
Fare thee badly. I'm out. 

jessica
+Joshua Quint Norton
many baseless insults, zero reasoned arguments.

i'll help you out on the disengage.

*plonk*

Fedor Steeman
+jessica There is in fact a host of synapomorphies (shared derived traits) that distinguish the superfamily of apes (Hominoidea) from other simians. Here's a few:

1. tubular tympanic bone
2. dental formula 2.1.2.3
3. broad incisors
4. primitive molars with rounded cusps
5. broad palates
6. broad nasal regions
7. large brain
8. no tail
9. reduced lumbar region
10. long upper limbs
11. wrist lacks an articulation between the ulna and carpel bones; have a fibrous meniscus
12. hind limbs: broad ilium, broad femoral condyles, large hallux

There are also many synapomorphies to be found on the molecular level like DNA, MtRNA and protein sequences that you can go look up yourself. 

jessica
+Fedor Steeman
while those characteristics may be used to suggest that apes are a specific type of monkey, i don't see anything in that list that would suggest that an ape is a different thing than a monkey. i mean, you could make these kinds of arguments in comparing great danes to chihuahuas, too.

a valid characteristic, here, would have to necessarily define a monkey and be sufficiently different in apes.

Fedor Steeman
+jessica I really don't think you're qualified to asses the validity of morphological data. Especially when you think that these differences also can be seen within a species and that a single characteristic would be sufficient to define a group. That is ridiculous nonsense and by that you have just proven your complete incompetence. Why don't you go study zoological systematics with emphasis on cladistics AND mammalian morphology and come back then? 

These are the anatomical details that actual scientists use to distinguish groups. The Hominoid clade is well-defined cladistically. It is true that the "monkeys" form a so-called paraphyletic grade group that especially strict cladists frown upon, but I have not heard of any of them propose to redefine this vernacular group name to include apes. Not so strict taxonomists have suits of characters for defining both delimiters of the "monkey" grade.

Zoologists, you know, people who actually know what they're talking about, call the monophyletic group that includes monkeys and apes "Haplorrhini", not "monkeys".

In vernacular, zoologists generally talk of "monkeys" as something distinct from "apes" and are fine with it.  Now you may go maverick and throw around your own personal definitions, but no one has to accept those, because you're just some nobody on the internet.

jessica
+Fedor Steeman
again, there's a lot of anger here, but not a lot of reasoned thought.

the best characteristic you provided was the lack of a tail. but, then the deduction is that apes are just tailless monkeys. and, as it turns out, there are species of monkeys without tails (the macaque is one), anyways.

i'm used to people yelling at me when i frustrate them with the tyranny of logic. but, it is now as it always is - you simply have no argument.

again: you are providing a list of reasonable characteristics to define apes as a subset of monkeys. but, you have not provided any argument at all to suggest that an ape is not a monkey.

perhaps we should take a step back for a second to clarify a distinction, as i think it might be at the root (pardon the pun) of the difficulty, here.

a cladistic relationship is not a set-theoretical relationship. it defines a broad genealogical relationship between species. but, we don't claim that mammals are fish. and, likewise, we don't need a recent common ancestor to point out that dolphins and sharks are both aquatic predators.

the question of whether apes are monkeys or not is not a cladistic question, it is a categorical one.

what you need to do to provide a good argument here is what i said:

1) find some characteristics that uniquely define monkeys. what makes a monkey a monkey?
2) demonstrate that those characteristics fail to describe apes. how is it that what makes a monkey a monkey makes an ape not a monkey?

and, good luck to you.

i wouldn't have suggested that apes are monkeys if such a distinction were truly readily apparent.
it's not the content of the piece that is important here, that's really not even being considered, it's the process of going through the photoshoot. if there was a glossy photoshoot in the new york times, the same reaction would take hold; if the vogue piece was just writing, or even an interview, nobody would get upset, either.

and, the critics (i'm not really one of them....i'm in the "this is entirely irrelevant" category) have somewhat of a point. here's the thing: you do this once, you ruffle a few feathers but get away with it. you do it repeatedly, and it becomes a liability because it makes you look like a celebrity.

it's a good way to demonstrate the differences between how canadians see their politicians, in comparison to americans and brits. trudeau's name didn't help him in the general (although it was everything at the convention). in fact, it almost destroyed him. we react very badly to the idea of a kennedy family, or an upper class "ruling" us. we'd prefer to see our prime minister in donated clothes than in expensive ones.

it's a reflection of our past. canada has never seen itself as a rich country. and, in the broader sense of things, the truth is that it never really has been. we're a country of lumberjacks and refugees. this is alienating because it reflects a foreign culture that we don't understand and, frankly, don't like very much. even those that transcend this view of ourselves still broadly *like* it, because it's quaint.

if this goes away soon, it will be forgotten. but, as i pointed out with the brooch issue, this is something that they want to avoid, not something they want to perpetuate.

it's nothing of any importance. no intelligent person will have their upcoming votes affected by it. but, it is a massive pr error, in canada.

and, frankly, a smart pr team would have seen it as an obvious pr error before it happened.

the liberals had the best platform. that's why they won. let's write that out on the board 500 times, please, so we all understand it.

if you look at the archetypal "canadian icon" it's something like neil young. left-leaning, for sure. but, earthy. "real".

i've said this before: the right idea here is not the aristocratic pomp of a jfk. it's the populism of an rfk.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/12/10/justin-trudeau-sophie-gregoire-vogue-critics_n_8771490.html

Hannah Hanrahan
This is a well reasoned viewpoint, obviously not coming from partisanship. It's true for me. I was over the roof when Trudeau won the election and this has put an end to my elation. Vogue is fine. It's the analysis of this particular image that produces the problems. It's not an image I feel connected to as a Canadain. It's an image of a colonialized Canadian whose been convinced to allow themselves to be appropriated by a culture that is actually quite oppressive and that we don't really like . It promotes values we don't identify with, and in fact a lot of canadians have made their way as comdic cirtics of those values. We're comedians of all this pompous American riche, expensive fashion, sexualized celebrity elitism, not minions of it. LOL

jessica amber murray
i agree, but it's not entirely what i'm getting at. that's something else i was thinking about. canada was run by the silent generation all the way until 2006. if harper was a boomer (he was born in 1959, and doesn't strike me as a boomer...), he's probably the only boomer pm we'll ever have. rather, we seem to have skipped from the silent generation to gen x - while the americans skipped from the gis to the boomers and will probably skip gen x. and, canada may very well skip the millenials. we skipped the boomers, the gis and the lost. it would fit the pattern...

we may end up with gen x in charge for the next 40 years, just like we had the silent generation in charge for 40 years. this is all very crude and everything, but i think it's reflective of broad values. look at the liberals after 1965 and look at the stereotypes of the silent generation and tell me that it doesn't make sense. meanwhile, the americans completely skipped over them.

if this kind of commercialism is a defining boomer characteristic, it makes sense that gen x has tended to rail against it. and, as a country, our collective decisions over the next few decades may end up clustered around these generational stereotypes - as they ended up clustered around the silent generation stereotypes over the last several decades, generally pushing back against the boomer status quo of tax cuts and hyperindividualism. we could be on track to really double down on this, while the millenials carry on as boomer v 2.0 - boomers, but worse. we'd likely be wise to avoid them, as we were wise to avoid the boomers.

that may be the difference in the countries. we're staggered a half a generation. canada is silent--->x---->z; america is gi--->boomers--->millenials.

crude. sure. perhaps useful, though.

what i was getting at was more of a distance thing.

those pictures of steve-o in his cowboy garb are likely to elicit laughter for many years. but, there's a correctness of strategy in this in that it makes him look human. i'm still not sure about whether he really was, but he convinced enough people.

why was chretien invincible, and why did martin's ship run out of steam so fast? because chretien was a man of the people, and martin was seen as an upper class business person. the elder trudeau was moderately wealthy, but he made a strong attempt to seem down to earth. it didn't always work.

standing up on your first day of office and doing a photoshoot like this? it suggests some broad cluelessness.

but, as i stated previously, i could hardly actually care.

i will judge him solely on his legislation.

also, he wants to avoid jerry maguire memes.

"show me the bills!"
it's admittedly surreal, but relax - it'll be over soon. you need a reality tv show to sustain this kind of media.

if we're lucky, though, some actual liberal party politics will rub themselves off on the democratic primary. don't hold your breath. but at least cross your fingers.

www.cbc.ca/news/trending/vogue-justin-trudeau-sophie-grégoire-trudeau-photo-1.3357616
feeling kind of numb myself, right now.

out of grapes, though.

if you look carefully, you can see that the monkey catches him dropping the cherry or the fig or whatever it is. i think he's laughing at the guy for thinking he was going to fall for it.

youth is wasted on the young.