i first decided to remove myself from facebook some time around the end of 2013, not due to any kind of security concern but due to being fed up by the terrible interface and incredibly slow servers. a few years later, i found myself with a similar desire to extricate myself from the youtube comments section, as the interface changes made it almost impossible to actually use. but, old habits die hard, and it took several attempts before i could really pry myself off, not having any kind of permanent success until i designated the migration as a time-wasting tactic while i successfully kicked the tobacco addiction, in the first half of 2016. this left me with thousands of pages of writing that i was going to need to eventually repost to a more user-friendly platform, which ended up being the blogger interface on google. faced with the need to build liner notes for my very first recording at the end of 1996, it was at the beginning of 2017 that i first sat down with the intent to rebuild my music journal as a singular whole, with the eventual plan of cutting it up and appending it in installments within the discography.

my life hit a roadblock in the middle of 2017 as a consequence of a shift in ownership of the building i was living in, which led to multiple legal battles (still ongoing) and two separate moves. the situation eventually worked itself out for the better, but it slowed me down dramatically and left me with a very large back log in working through the loose ends around closing my first two period discs that i am only finally beginning to clear in the spring of 2019. this added period of reflection has allowed me to think this through over and over, and add increasing levels of detail to the journal, and subsequent pending liner notes. while not every month is going to be equally exciting, the level of detail in what was initially a journal is now more like a series of novellas. the first entry, which is only the second half of july, is 222 pages long.

i am not going to summarize the story, but it is available on the web over here: musicofjessicamurray.blogspot.com/2013/07/.

this is a compilation of written correspondences that includes facebook posts, messenger chats and emails with friends and family members, in an attempt to build the context around my move from ottawa to windsor in early august, 2013. this was a pretty heavy two weeks, and the narrative consequently has an arc of it's own, but the story being told here is how i rebuilt my studio over the second half of 2013. the contents of this download are the dummy track, a word doc file and a pdf file, both written in a more readable, chronological ordering. i've also added the respective files for my other three blogs, for general interest.

the events documented in this journal occurred in july, 2013 and were compiled into a narrative in several stages over the years 2014-2019. journal completed on mar 31, 2019. released and finalized in doc and pdf format on april 14, 2019. doc0713. 

credits

released August 1, 2013

j - editing, participant

esa - participant
illuminous - participant
mom - participant
sister - participant
nana - participant
step-mother - participant
the youngest aunt - participant
jeff - participant
dad - participant

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/07-2013-music-journal-2-2

ok, so we're going to do this in two ways.

first, i've set up a noise trade account, where i can post all of the pdfs. i've done it like this rather consciously, as it allows me to accept donations without explicitly charging, and i think that this is important, in context.

however, i'm also going to set up downloads for the music journal entries in the bandcamp store, which means i have some exciting news: i will finally have a new product for sale within a few hours

here's the new link:
https://books.noisetrade.com/j

unfortunately, noise trade did not work out as a hosting solution, and i never got a clear answer as to why. but, i decided in the end that the site was full of ads and unworkable, anyways.

readable archives are now at the following sites:
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/deathtokoalas
https://www.lulu.com/search?contributor=jessica+murray
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1NI_sEi1t9NxTeOB9Es3A2Ge8ji4iTXit?usp=sharing

i still haven't really slept all weekend - a couple of two-three hour slots, that's it. it's a welcome change, but i'm still getting re-used to it.

the clean-up operation on 07/2013 is now done. i have four dynamic documents - one for the travel blog, one for the dtk site, one for this site and one for the music journal. what i'll want to do is set up a subscription for each one, somehow, and then got on to august asap.

now, i need to eat, and we'll see how much longer i'm awake for.

i don't know anything about these groups, but this is something that should not happen in a free and democratic society. further, they have no due process - no way to defend themselves.

on a democratic internet with a concept of due process and a functioning rule of law, facebook would be required to seek an injunction and get a court order before it is able to do this, and these groups would be entitled to appeal the decision in a court of law.

https://globalnews.ca/news/5141557/facebook-bans-extremism-hate-policy/

there are lots of reasons that i'm disappointed in this government, even if i didn't really have high expectations for it.

and, this isn't the reason i'm not voting for it; the reason i'm not voting for it is that it has utterly failed to take any meaningful action towards reducing emissions at all, whatsoever. emissions are up and are going to continue to rise. in my view, they had one job and they failed.

but, this is the kind of thing that i'm going to be actively campaigning against.

the idea of separating the behaviour of a religious group from it's own ideology, or of arguing that religion is not an ideology, is directly out of 1984. this is doublespeak, and it is wrong; this is an ignorant, anti-intellectual decision that sets a dangerous, worrisome precedent that must be rigorously countered.

it's not about the sikhs precisely, it's about the broader implications. this makes me embarrassed to be a canadian.

all things otherwise aside, i do not want to live in the kind of society that this decision projects. and, as great as a threat that climate change is to the planet, it is this kind of backwards thinking that is a far greater threat to the country.

i will obviously not be voting for the conservatives. i remain a leftist; this is a left-wing critique. but, when i vote against trudeau in the upcoming election, this is the idiocracy that i'm voting against, more-so than anything else.

and, i will not separate my decision from the ideology that informed it

https://globalnews.ca/news/5162913/goodale-terror-report-language/

the new nafta still sucks but it is an improvement over the old one, and while sanders needs to campaign on an even better one, i actually expect that he'll vote for it, in the end.

i'm actually interested in how this debate unfolds, because sanders is in a very delicate and wonkish position that may be difficult to get across to voters.

canada's liberal party had this problem in the 1987 election - it took a complex position on nafta, and then couldn't get voters to understand it. in the end, they got squeezed between the party that was clearly for it (the conservatives) and the party that was clearly against it (the ndp).

but, is this a ballot issue in 2019?

if you were thirty years old in 1987 and lost your job in the 90s, you'd be nearing retirement at this point.

we're coming up on a point of generational overturn on this; this might be our last chance on it.

but, simply on it's face?

he's 77 years old.

he's been working his whole life.

he should have a comfortable nest egg.

if you look at just his salary since 1990, 29 years ago, i'm sure it's at least two million dollars, after taxes.

he currently makes $174,000/yr. that number has certainly gone up since 1990, but he's also had investments, and there's also been inflation. if we take a naive - and no doubt wrong - calculation, 29*174,000 = $5,046,000. so, that's over five million dollars. all you have to do is cut that in half to account for taxes and overestimates to get to two and half million dollars.

which brings up another point that i think is more valid - should he be accepting social security payments? i think that's a more valid criticism than merely pointing at his net wealth.

according to 2016 numbers, a net worth of $2.5 million is at the 95th percentile, which means you're almost in the top 5%. these are united states numbers.

but there has been some inflation since, so it's going to be somewhere between the top 5% and 10% of americans.

i don't think that's unreasonable for a serious presidential candidate, but i might wonder if it hurts his fundraising.

i mean, his net worth is probably less than jill stein's.

i've been waiting to see how this thing about bernie's net worth plays out, because i wanted to see what angle the media was going to use with it.

personally, i never thought that bernie sanders was a poor person. he's been in congress for a long time, and i'm aware that it's a relatively high-paying job. so, anybody feigning shock is either being naive or dishonest. further, i knew that he's written books in the past, and doesn't seem to have had difficulty getting them published. if anything, for a man of his age and experience, a net worth of $2.5 million seems a little bit paltry. where's the rest of it? we've had a lot of inflation since the nineteenth century; it's arguably in the realm of' 'upper middle class'. this is maybe top 10%, but certainly not 1%. the clintons are worth 50x that.

that said, my view on the topic is that it is irrelevant, anyways, as net wealth is not a policy position. but, that leads me to wonder why anybody would take the dissenting view - why would people think it's important? and, the answer has to do with identity politics, which makes it easy to see why the media is pushing it.

according to the media, people just vote for whomever is most like them; policies don't matter, it's just all identity. it would follow that if bernie is a millionaire (whether it's a surprise or not), then the poor white voters that he attracts to his base would no longer identify with him. they then deduce they can take him down this way.

but, we're supposed to be trying to win the election by swinging trump voters. so, there's clearly some blurry thinking, there.

i wonder how much of it is lingering bitterness amongst former clinton supporters, who think she lost because she was "out of touch" and "elite". but, again, there's not a lot of clear thinking here, as she lost to somebody who is more out of touch and more elite than she is.

bernie is getting baited on it, and it looks like he's biting. he needs the discipline not to get goaded. while i don't expect that most of his voters thought he was poor, he does run the risk of making awkward comments if he allows himself to be baited.

i think it's only an issue if he misplays it; there's no reason for people to care about it, per se.

so, there's some reviews up at the dtk site, to start.

whatever ridiculous narrative that the press wants to spin, i think it's fairly obvious that assange was being fed information by the cia and manipulated as a useful idiot.

i'm sure we're going to see a collapse in the rule of law around this, and there's a good place for principled lawyerly critique, here. but, it's really better for everybody that he's done, and i'm not going to dwell much upon it.

here's an americanism that omar's "different cultural experience" may not have had her veil pierced with, yet.

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.

i'm done.

#ignoreilhan. 

there needs to be a collective effort to stop giving her any kind of media time, to just completely cut her off.

so, this space is now ilhan free - i will not mention her again. ever. she no longer exists.

#ignoreilhan.

the democrats are really making a terrible tactical mistake by continuing to defend ilhan omar. this is a woman that clearly has a startlingly low level of intelligence, and is never going to be anything more than a liability. they need to cut her loose and throw her under the bus.

i neither want to stand with her, nor do i think that ripping her apart (again) is a useful expenditure of my time.

her fifteen minutes are up. i'm tired of hearing about her, and wish she'd just shut up and go away.

just a note on the language and labels, and this is one of the things i have to repost every so often because people forget, or it never sunk in. there's so many terms that are synonymous on the left.

if you look up, you can see where i am in the political compass, which is but one test, but nonetheless provides a physical co-ordinate. this is where i exist in space. and, what are the correct adjectives?

to begin with, i thoroughly reject the term progressive. i almost never use it, and when i do it's in a limited context, or out of laziness or irony. that is one hint at detecting my own irony, which is sometimes pretty thick. but, if you look at the issues, i don't align well with progressivism: i am not in favour of christian temperance, i reject sterilization and eugenics, i oppose the premise of retributive justice, i reject manifest destiny and the monroe doctrine and i don't think that encouraging competition throughout antitrust laws is the proper role of the federal government. i certainly have some kind of overlap with progressives, but i also have some kind of overlap with conservatives, and i might suggest these labels are in truth closer to each other in space-time than i am to either one of them.

i prefer the term liberal, but only in the historical sense, and in a contemporary way that is almost directly contrary to the way it is so often used today. marx, paine, bakunin, proudhon - these people would have all identified as liberals in their time, even if most contemporary self-identified liberals would refuse to identify with them, at this time. if i use this term, and i will, it is usually in reference to some sweeping idea, or some specific aspect of history.

i would really prefer the term socialist, but i do not use the same adverb that you see so often today. democracy has always been a blurry idea, in the sense that it is really so difficult to define the authority of a democratic structure to enforce it's will on those of others. in context, this is extremely important.

i'd rather use the adverb libertarian than democratic. it's a subtle difference in some ways, but it flips the situation over on it's head; it's a difference between positive and negative freedom, in a sense. the democratic socialist is still a statist and hence defers to the state as a tool of authority to impose it's will on others; democracy, in context, means justifying that use of force by pointing to the democratic will as legitimizing. the libertarian socialist sees some approximation of statism, in the form of councils and collectives, as existing for the purpose of helping the individual achieve it's own goals, without any bias or guidance. so, the democratic socialist is into negative freedom, whereas the libertarian socialist is into positive freedom.

and, a libertarian socialist is also called an anarchist.

if we can get the thing straight once and for all, please.

the rockstar vodkas that i would normally buy are about $3.55 cdn. fwiw, these drinks do not contain hundreds of milligrams of caffeine, nor do they contain taurine or most of the other things you associate with energy drinks. they do contain ginseng, as well as 15 mg of guarana and a measly 30 mg of caffeine, per 330 mg can, although i would buy them in 473 ml cans in ontario. they're 7% alcohol.

i can source that:
https://www.inspq.qc.ca/pdf/publications/1669_BoissonsEnergisantes.pdf

that's actually more comparable to a can of pop like mountain dew (52 mg/355 ml) or pepsi max (69 mg / 355 ml) than it is to an energy drink. so, it's really just a prepackaged mixed drink.

so, as stated, i have purchased a 750 ml bottle of cherry-infused 40 proof vodka, instead, for $27.20. i have also purchased two 2L bottles of mountain dew for $2 each. i will now proceed to mix my own drinks, however messy that may be.

have i saved any money?

a "drink" of vodka in canada is 43 ml of 40 proof vodka. while i understand enough chemistry to know why this is (conceptually) wrong, i'm going to carry through with the calculation, anyways - (43/5)*2 + 43 ~ 60. so, i will need to put approximately 60 ml of vodka in my mountain dew.

(60/750 = .08)*27.20 = $2.18. i should get around 12 drinks out of the bottle.

(473 - 60 = 413)/1000 = .413. so, the mountain dew will cost $0.41.

and, $2.18 + $0.41 = $2.59.

i've saved enough to buy a beer from doug ford.

so, i guess i should thank the government for saving me some money, even if it hasn't had any effect on my health.

but, i will reiterate my preference for the prepackaged drink, as it is far more convenient.

i always smoke marijuana with coffee, and i always drink alcohol with caffeine.

otherwise, it's not any fun.

that's fine; i'll mix it myself. i'm sure it's cheaper in the long run.

well, what did they think i was going to do?

if i bought a bottle of wine, i'd be passed out on the floor in ten minutes - i need the caffeine, or i get drowsy immediately.

so, i learned today that health canada has removed caffeine from alcoholic beverages, because some kid had negligent parents that didn't raise her properly, and she overdosed on malt liquor.

no word on a darwin award.

and, drano is still legal, apparently.

so, now rather than get a pre-mixed drink at the store with a regulated amount of caffeine and a regulated amount of vodka, i'm going to buy a case of mountain dew and a bottle of vodka and mix it myself, instead.

i'll try to get it as close as i can.

idiots...

so, i've got the travel blog updated, which was probably the most time consuming part of this because i had to log out and back in.

the link is on the side, but it's the same story, just told with a little less detail.

the ndp's tactic from the start should have been to vilify kenney as a bigot, in order to rouse their base up. they need to get them worked up to make sure they get out and vote.

instead, they're trying to make the ridiculous argument that they'll better advance oil interests, in an attempt to win votes in the middle. that's beyond naive, as a strategy; it's flatly stupid. the province is changing, but the center in alberta is still five degrees to the right of the rest of the country, and nobody is going to choose rachel notley as a moderate. they need to be going out of their way to polarize, and they need to make sure people know who the bad guys are.

the only circumstance where this hopey-changey bullshit works is when the sitting government is despised by 80% of the electorate. normal election cycles are not won on hope, but on fear.

and, alberta has very good reason to fear jason kenney.

i'm not sure why the ndp aren't projecting that.

this is an online survey, and you know i don't like those. but, i don't find anything about this very surprising.

i would expect the number of ndp supporters to increase as the number of undecided voters goes down. but, their best hope remains a minority, because they're never going to win in the rural heartland of dumbfuck, alberta, and they have to make up a lot more ground in calgary than they probably can.

but, don't be shocked when it's not the blow out that the media is telling you it's going to be. all evidence leans towards a heavy polling bias on the right.

http://angusreid.org/alberta-election-april-2019/

so, i should get some work done on the weekend, finally.

i think i've got my train of thought back. i'll need to double check the music journal for the second half of july, then i'll need to build a similar file for this blog, then i'll need to make sure the dtk file is up to date and then i'll need to build the travel blog for the second part of july 2013, in some random order.

i should be able to listen to some reviews for the dtk site while i'm at it, and otherwise plan for some shows.

ok. so, i'm going to do the travel blog first...it will just be a subset of this one...

you didn't think i'd like mainstream physics, did you?

i'm too alternative for that.

this is a popular science article, and is consequently quite readable.

if you wanted to know, i'm also a long-time supporter of bohmian mechanics.

https://www.wired.com/2014/06/the-new-quantum-reality/

as we know that the universe is expanding everywhere in all directions at the same time, it follows that calculations about the paths of particles, if precise enough, would need to account for that expansion, as the distance traveled, while perhaps computable, could never be measured with a ruler, as the distance is not static. it would follow that the inability to measure a particle's direction and location simultaneously would be a simple consequence of the fact that the universe is expanding: it would be a fundamental property of space-time. however, it would also follow that you could calculate these properties simultaneously by properly understanding the interaction between matter and space, if you alter your conception of space from one of empty, static neutrality into one of dynamic, active interaction.

any future theory of physics would have to being with a model of geometry that is dynamic.

and, as such, the assumption of locality would need to be more carefully analyzed.

perhaps these higher dimensions of string theory as we understand them are in truth merely a crude way to model the fundamentally dynamic nature of space-time.

and, in the end, perhaps the absurdities of quantum physics are just reducible to relativistic error, in a set of reference frames that we don't currently grasp.

i'm still not doing this just right now.

https://forum.xda-developers.com/chef-central/android/guide-how-to-build-rom-google-cloud-t3360430

the reason this is difficult on my end is that i don't have the processor speed. google has powerful computing abilities in the cloud, and it would make sense for them to do this there, which is what i kind of assumed.

i understand that a phone is a device with minimal storage space and that just downloading all of the drivers and letting the os work it out, like you would with a desktop, isn't feasible. further, i avoid apple products for a reason - i want more control over the device. i bought an android device because i wanted to avoid the hyper-centralized model that apple uses, but google has kind of taken this too far; this is decentralization taken past the point of collaboration, and falling off into alienation. a process that was supposed to create more user choice has resulted in less of it.

it actually wouldn't be difficult for google to automate the api through a web form and let the cloud do it, resulting in a sleek download, after a short wait. this could either be done by having the user specify the hardware specs manually, or by entering the device model. google could then check for the device, or it's specs, in a database, and return a compiled image using open source drivers.

and, it wouldn't be an abuse of the cloud - this is what a cloud is supposed to be for!

as it is, i'll figure this out. just not right now; i have better things to do.

on third thought, it seems like this package is baked right into the phone's firmware.

the standard removal instructions are to block the package, but that's not good enough. you can delete it for the current user with the sdk, but it's still on the phone. to take it off, you'd have to root it, but then you're only taking the package off of the current installation - it's still there in the recovery.

the only way to get this off the device is to completely reprogram it.

again: i intended to completely wipe this device down before i used it. this is not a surprise to me. if anything, i should thank them for reminding me.

i have no immediate use for the device. so, i'm going to drain the battery and shelve it until i can put aside some time to build a clean image.

i need to get out of the house to do some errands in the afternoon. i'll be back to work tonight.

my spring stomach ache is finally here.

that was a harsh winter, ontario.

it's done.

so, i finally got a response from the privacy commissioner, and it's something else.

the request i made was for the content of my non-conviction record to be released to me - i asked for a printout of my cpic file, essentially. this was denied under the grounds that the information was "provided in confidence by a provincial organization", which is a clause in the law that i feel is being abused. that is not meant to apply to personal data of this sort, but rather to state secrets or terrorism investigations or something. i just want my own fucking record, here.

i had an email conversation that i'll withhold for right now where i got the same line i had been getting previously - this insistence that i run a record check, with little understanding of what i was actually asking for, or why running a record check wasn't what i wanted.

there is actually a law in ontario preventing disclosure of non-conviction information in a record check, and for good reason - something stupid like this shouldn't come up on a background check if you're applying for a job, or whatever else. so, i already know that a record check will come back negative, and it's not what i want, anyways.

i asked to speak to his manager, which was pretty acerbic. he said she'll call me back next week, which was probably equally so.

i've given him until the end of the month to give me some kind of meaningful response or otherwise close the file; this is going to judicial review, with an intent to stamp down the clause in the law, if he wants to be stupid about it.

in the mean time, that's fine - i'll file with the solicitor general under the provincial fippa, instead, and see what they say. i mean, if the feds tell me it's provincial, i'll ask the province, then. and, when the province tells me it's federal, we can take that to the judge and ask her to fix the fucking law already.

i think we're a long ways away from it being a slippery slope in quebec.

but, it's the depth of the reaction that ought to be seen as more concerning.

we don't need an iranian revolution in montreal, and while i don't think we're going to get one, i wonder what some of these people are really thinking.

if there were even a few more muslims than there actually are, this could be playing with fire. but, it is that itself that is the concerning proposition - that there's a potential fire hazard, in the first place.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-s-religious-symbols-ban-welcomed-by-some-who-left-muslim-countries-behind-1.5091277

to be clear: i'm confident i can do this.

and, i do have the tools to do it...

... but i'd have to install ubuntu - or debian or whatever else -  natively on one of my pcs, and that is the part that can wait until later.

i just don't use this device, and i'm probably not going to after i flash it, either.

grargh.

ok, let me just root the damned thing and remove the package and go from there.

if i need to use the thing - as unlikely as it is - i'll reset it before and after i do it.

sorry, nana. it's a pain in the ass, and i wasn't going to waste that money on a pixel.

i wouldn't have actually answered the phone, anyways.

just quickly downloading a custom rom isn't going to work either, because nobody has any roms that support the device. gah. so, i'd have to compile either way, and if i'm going to do that i'd rather do it from scratch.

i've already wasted too much time with this.

shelved. i'll figure it out one day..

note to google: it would be nice if you had vanilla roms to download. this is a ridiculously obtuse process.

i mentioned when i first came down in here in mid-2013 that i didn't really feel like i'd left toronto until i got out of london. and, we know toronto is big - 5th biggest metro area in north america now, iirc, meaning it's behind, what? new york, los angeles, chicago, houston?

is that it?

is it that big?

but what is that like on a map?

any concept of the gta nowadsays is more than just hamilton and the old boroughs, it's the string of cities around it, too. brantford - famous mostly as the hometown of wayne gretzky - is a suburb of hamilton, now. kitchener-guelph-cambridge-waterloo is becoming it's own amalgamation, and it is itself in the gta, too. i think that the strip up the niagara river, which is amalgamating too, is next, even if it's still distinct, right now. i mean, there are people that seriously want to move the buffalo bills to toronto in order to keep the team - such is the size of toronto as a regional centre, that even buffalo sees itself as a suburb.

it's a huge area, and i'm just looking at it from the west - it's moving north and east, too. 

the infrastructure of the city of toronto might end somewhere around the 401/403 split, but what i was trying to get across is that it doesn't feel like it anymore it just feels like you go through a string of suburban towns/cities that includes woodstock, ingersoll and then london. so, the infrastructure breaks, but the city doesn't really end; closing the gap is more about catching up than thinking forwards.

as it is., that's my limit point on the way back out of toronto: i can get to brantford, and no further - then i need to pay for it.

the previous government was taking about an extension to london by 2025. i haven't heard anything from the new one.

this won't withstand a court challenge, and if it does it will just increase illegal crossings, or lead to people coming here first. that is, this is more likely to decrease migration to the united states than to canada. it may even increase migration to canada...

we're not going to resolve this by changing laws, or signing agreements with the americans, or any kind of legal tactic. this isn't a legal issue, and it doesn't have a legal solution. this is a standard approach by the liberals nowadays, though, this idea that you can fix big, global systemic problems by changing the rules locally, or by creating market incentives or something. it's ultimately designed for the electoral reality in quebec rather than to actually address anything substantive.

we have four serious options here:

1) eliminate the push factors. we can't do that alone, we need the united nations, and we need the united states.
2) address the pull factors. we could alter the rhetoric a little, and if this legislation dos anything it is this, but this is not desirable, in totality. we don't want to be a poor country, and we don't want to be too harsh to legitimate refugees. so, it's a matter of degree, and not really the right answer.
3) ignore the push or pull factors and just build a wall - figuratively if not literally. this would require a major overhaul in the laws, as well as major changes in enforcement. it may be an inevitability, even if it gets gasps and dropped jaws.
4) accept it, and build the infrastructure to accommodate for it.

i'd like to see some combination of all of these things, with the major focus on 1 & 4, accepting we can't do it alone. we could use a little more security at the border - it's wide open. we could be a little more honest in the rhetoric about what the laws here actually are. but, so long as we live with these huge global disparities in wealth, we're going to have to accept that people are going to show up at the door and want to come in - and we should make some attempt to make some room. what we can't keep doing is letting them camp out at olympic stadium, or allowing toronto's shelter capacity to collapse and then shrug it off.

this response is indicative of the government's continuing lack of vision about much of anything.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/trudeau-defends-changes-to-asylum-laws-that-have-refugee-workers-alarmed-1.4373835

the problem i'm going to run into in building android from scratch is the build environment. i could use the chromebook with an external drive, but it's going to take a long time to do it, and it's not really what the device is for - it's a 1.5 ghz dual core with 4 gb of ram and 16 gb of ssd storage space on hand.

the access point and main pc are both running windows, and both have 4 gb of ram.

the broken laptop will eventually be a better choice, but i'm not planning on loading linux on it. unless maybe i am. i dunno.

the new pc, still unbuilt, is probably the better choice for the task. it's an excuse to set up a linux partition, actually.

but, i don't want to spend the time on this right now. eventually.

so, i'm going to flash it with a custom rom from the chromebook for just right now. i know - it's not what i want to do, but the process to do what i want to do is just too time consuming, for right now, considering that i'm not expecting to actually use the device very often, and the real point of this is just to get the proprietary software off of it so it stops spying on me.

so, i had a think about this.

i don't want to waste time setting up the phone. but, i need to get a clean rom in there. so, let's focus on the shortest path.

if i compile something from source, the issue is going to be with drivers. but, that might not so bad. what i mean is that i might not really want these devices working, anyways. so, maybe the camera won't work; it's just there to spy on me, and just using resources and space. i'm not looking for this swiss army device, but rather more literally just looking for a phone. so, all it has to do is be able to run the voip app over wifi or bluetooth. i can always reflash it later if i have some paradigm shift in function, but i don't expect that to actually happen.

if i can't get this to work quickly, the second best thing would be to install a staunchly minimalist custom rom. i would be opening myself up to being spied on by the third party, so i'd have to be vigilant and adjust to new information as it appears.

i'm never going to trust the market.

but, i'm actually still tired.

i have an appointment at the beginning of may, and i'm going to make another pitch for removing the testicles, as i think this is the root of the problem - whether my body is reacting to the anti-androgens, or i'm overloading my liver with them, i think that the message that i'm getting is that this is unsustainable, that i need to get them out, asap. i think things are stable enough to try and plan around it, even if i do have to go toronto to get it done.

and, why am i so tired all of the time?

fuck.

the best option is to perhaps just put it back on the shelf and not use it at all.

this situation makes no sense to me.

i'm trying to get rid of an image that was installed on the device by a manufacturer i don't trust, and the only solutions that exist are to download software from independent groups that i don't trust.

the whole point is that i want a clean image that has not been altered by third parties, but i have to start by downloading a third party recovery software, and then find the least bad third party mod, made specifically for the device, and most likely by the people i'm trying to avoid. because who else uploads custom mods to the internet?

even if i can deal with the recovery software being third party, and i don't appear to have a choice, you'd think it would be very easy to find a simple vanilla android mod. apparently not.

and, this is crazy, really. i own this device, but i have no control over it.

i guess i'm down to two choices, then - i could see if i can download a pixel or nexus mod and find a way to trick it into working on this device or i could build my own from source. but, can i get open source drivers?

see, this is why it took me years to bother with this - what a useless device.

hrmmn.

except that doesn't exist, which is baffling.

why can't i just go to the android site and download a generic version of the operating system?

i'm sure there's a workaround...

ok, so i can read up on these things, but it doesn't really mean anything to me.

i should start with the stock option and work from there....

ok, so this seems to be a little different than i thought - and you'll excuse my ignorance about this, even if my use of language demonstrates the excuse isn't justified. i should really know far more about these walky-talkies that the kids are using than i actually do.

one way to remove the package would be to root in and take it out, which is the expected way to do it, and would keep the phone's proprietary software, but i intended from the start to wipe it right down. i could start talking about how you don't really know that it's clean until you format it, but that's actually secondary - i don't want the proprietary software, anyways. and, i guess this is where things get conceptually messy for somebody that has literally only held a smartphone in their hands a handful of times.

maybe it was naive, but i actually thought that the thing installed directly, and i'd be able to format and reinstall. so, i was trying to figure out how to find an android install disk on what? sd?

it turns out that it's more like flashing a bios, and that you kind of serial in over usb, like i did with the bus pirate in early 2014. so, you just need the right software and the right rom. easy. in theory.

except for the proprietary bit...

i'm going to spend some time reading up on custom roms just to try and figure out what they are, as maybe i'll find a rom that is perfectly suited. but, i'm an old nerd; i want to build my own device from the bottom up. just give me the boot loader, and let me build the rest myself.

as such, i expect to end up going with stock android and building up what i need from there, which is not going to be much at all. i don't want any passwords or personal data stored on this thing - it's a phone, and i don't expect to use it as much more than one. i just want it to be fast, spartan and safe.

i accidentally left it on overnight. it's charging. so, let's hope i can get the rom flashed by the afternoon.

what?

it was a harrison ford movie.

and, i'm going to call on benjamin netanyahu to resign, for the sake of the planet.

the region is in for a very turbulent four years, if he doesn't.

i don't care much about hockey - i never even learned to skate - but it would be nice to find a way to get the ark back from the philistines, without cheering for toronto or calgary.

so, go jets.

i guess.

can-a-duh! can-a-duh!

this is actually something that she'd probably understand...

how much faith do you put in a lawyer that decides to get elected as a doctor?

you have to go to school for a long time to be a doctor. and, hence...

"arrest the prime minister, mr. speaker!"

everything else aside, including the weird idea that the speaker could rule on a caucus matter, she doesn't seem to understand what parliamentary privilege is.

she may have been a good doctor, i don't know, ask her patients, but, she is clearly rather clueless about law.

https://canoe.com/news/national/trudeau-broke-law-by-kicking-former-ministers-out-of-caucus-philpott

the reason i had the phone on was because i was wondering if i could set up the laptop as an access point over bluetooth, which would be easier for me than setting up a network. it was just proof of concept: can i connect to a voip app via the bluetooth connection?

i don't have an answer at this point besides "nobody would want to do that".

that's what i'm cycling around, anyways.

so, i think that the netbook is set up to go. but i found something else...

i expected this phone to ship with something on it, and always intended to wipe it down before i seriously used it; it was cheap and from china, and i knew the thing was compromised. i didn't get the chance to do this (learn how to do this. but i'm quick with this stuff.) before i had to use it to contact my isp in late 2017. but, i had the foresight to actually ban the device from logging in to my google account at the time; i wasn't able to log in last october because the device was banned (i had forgotten and remembered afterwards), and it's part of the reason i bought the netbook. i changed my password as soon as i got back on. i haven't turned the phone on since october, and the first thing i noticed was some weird apps i didn't recognize, and some trips to the google music store that i definitely didn't do myself.

i don't even have a credit card to steal, and i haven't used the phone to buy anything, so i'm not really exposed to much. but, there's no sim card in the device. how is it phoning home?

at the same time, the device claimed there hadn't been any network traffic since oct 7, so it seems more like the apps activated and couldn't get anywhere...

i dunno. i reset the thing. but, a little research has pulled up this chinese spyware company that actually installed the thing in the image. so, i have to root this device and delete it.

in truth, i'm going to see if i can image the thing flat up; i have some pretty deep os experience, and i've played with linux, but i don't know much about phones, specifically. i'm going to have to teach myself how to do this. so, there's another detour.

i need a nap, though.

yup.

on the side, too.

https://jessicamurraytravelblog.blogspot.com/

it's easy to make this kind of argument when you're not actually poor, and you don't have any firsthand experience with what it's like to navigate through a system that is already overused, underfunded and understaffed.

the continent is not "full", but after decades of funding cuts and pro-market policies, we both lack the infrastructure at this time to accommodate an influx of refugees. we could rebuild this infrastructure, but it doesn't currently exist and the christian right/left needs to come to terms with that: no, in fact, we actually can't.

when trudeau flew all these people in from syria, they sat in military barracks for years because there was nowhere to put them. we just moved the refugee camp to petawawa. and, we've got the city of toronto musing about buying hotels because it doesn't have the shelter capacity and can't afford the rates. meanwhile, we have an affordability crisis in basic housing services. i'm sure all the same things are true in texas and california.

but, it is of course only half of the argument - it's not enough to argue against open borders, you also have to argue in favour of increasing access to services, which is what sets bernie apart from the demagogues on the right.

the truth is that bernie is right, and being firm on these kind of issues will resonate with the kinds of voters that will swing the election. it's exactly the kind of pushback on corporate driven globalism and unchecked neo-liberalism that we need a more clear articulation of on the left.

and, if you find that immoral or something, you need to push for more spending on infrastructure, first.

https://splinternews.com/heres-bernie-sanders-giving-an-unequivocally-bad-answer-1833882031

libel/defamation laws are a tort under the british legal tradition.

what that means is that we have a rule in our society that says that if you're going to lie about people in an attempt to harm them then you should be liable to compensate them for the damages it creates. this rule is very specific - you have to be acting with malicious intent, and you have to be purposefully dishonest about it. veracity is a valid defense in a defamation case; you can't be sued for saying things that are true, regardless of the effects it has.

while i support the abolition of the criminal justice system, i am a strong supporter of the english tort system, and a strong supporter of defamation laws. this is a more traditionally germanic system of government - when you do something wrong, you pay a fine for it. it's how the germans lived for centuries, before the romans introduced this idea of punishment. decolonization doesn't just mean dechristianization, it also means deromanization; getting closer to an indigenous form of european governance would mean putting tort at the central nexus of the legal system. it's also a more "anarchist" legal system, as it upholds a concept of remuneration while abolishing the more authoritarian concept of retribution.

trudeau is in kind of an annoying situation that i can empathize with because i'm going through something similar, myself. i was recently charged with an absurd offense, and the charges were dropped due to a deficit of meaningful evidence. the officer does not seem to have understood the law; the scenario should have never happened. however, i haven't been given the opportunity to actually defend myself in court. as such, i've had an injustice committed against me that i don't have a clear path to resolve. i will not be filing defamation charges (i can't demonstrate financial harm), but i will be filing a human rights complaint once the issue with the officer is dealt with, as well as a constitutional challenge when the time is appropriate. it's the closest thing i have to due process, in context.

it's easy to understand why trudeau may actually want some kind of a trial in order to clear his own name, even if the process is politically perilous. but, then, why not allow for an investigation through parliament? a defamation suit would amount to the same thing. if there's a contradiction here, it's in demanding one without the other, and/or not realizing that the political liability of one is the same as the other. see, the question of whether he has a case or not depends on how effectively he can demonstrate the point, but he also needs to show financial or reputational damage, which is the more difficult point.

so, i'm not following the tory media's line on this - i think the premise is entirely valid, and he might even have a good case. i'm just not sure it's been thought through very well in the pmo, or even if there's anybody left in there that has the ability to think it through, any more.

so, it took me a long time to even get my head around the depth of a survey of music in the gta this month. it's a big place, with lots of venues. and, i'm only just getting caught up to the upcoming week, just now.

i don't expect to go anywhere before the la dispute show, and i don't see any obvious trips in the second half of april, ether.

but, i'm going to pause at this point and listen to a few things more closely, because i'll otherwise be sitting here for the next year.

reviews at the dtk site...

while i'm listening, i should be able to get back to what i was doing. i need to set up the new blog, first. then, i need to go over july, 2013 that last time to finalize it.

maybe a nap first, though .

so, i don't like the girls, but the girls like me; and, i do like the guys, but the guys don't like me. so, what do you do? you keep to yourself. and, there's no serious way out.

to clarify the point: if you took me off the hormones, i'd be gay, but i'd be 120 pounds and scrawny, long haired and disinterested in guy stuff, and consequently not particularly interesting to gay men.

so, i might like the gay men, but the gay men wouldn't like me so much.

it's a circle that you can't really square, which is why i'm certain i will spend my life single. but, you need to take me at face value on it.

if you were to take me off the hormones, i'd be gay, and if it makes you feel better to interpret me that way, i can deal with that.

so, yes, i mostly hang out in rooms full of guys.

but, you need to invert your logic, if you find it confusing.

there are reasons why i avoid putting myself in spaces dominated by cis-females, and it's only partly that there's no desirable endpoint, from my perspective.

i don't like getting hit on by women. but, it happens. so, i avoid the spaces.

it's a weird condition, but at this point i'm too old for it to really be a meaningful discussion point, anyways.

i need to do my undecided analysis, as i always do.

is this actually in play?

i picked this one out, but the numbers across the board are closer than you might expect, if still just outside of the margin of error. at a 7% spread, perfect distribution and a 3% margin, a minority is still the best possible outcome.

is there any evidence, though, that the undecideds might lean ndp?

you'd need some kind of shy dipper effect, and the article i just posted may suggest one. albertans may not realize the speed that the province is transforming at, as they seem to think that they're more conservative than they actually are. that is the kind of social pressure that may lead somebody to tell a pollster that they're undecided, when they really expect to vote ndp.

i would certainly not expect a shy tory effect, anyways.

if the redistribution is slightly tipped towards the ndp, you start getting into a blurry error bar. if it's a bit bigger, they start running neck to neck. and, if it's overwhelming, you're looking at an upset.

we'll find out soon enough.

but i wouldn't expect it split evenly, anyways - they will beat the polling, even if it's not enough.

it's probably too little too late. they should have done this months ago and hammered it.

but, here's a thought that is as unprecedented as anything else: could we maybe see a minority government in alberta?

barring some catastrophic collapse, that's the best hope the ndp has right now, and even that is pretty distant. i think it would be good for the province, though.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-election-2019-jason-kenney-rachel-notley-1.5087164

your grandkids will cite the jones case as the dominant legal precedent about online expression.

it's always baffling to me how stupid right-libertarians are about an issue that they ought to be kind of experts about.

the status quo is that posting to facebook is uploading your writing to be displayed on private property (the facebook servers), so it is up to facebook to make an arbitrary decision as to whether your posts should be deleted or not. there is no appeal mechanism, here, merely the dictatorship of private capital - if facebook or google or twitter or whomever else doesn't like your posts, you're gone. and, people have been legitimately banned, without any kind of due process.

what zuckerberg is saying here is "wait a minute. i'm just a boy wonder that got lucky. i'm technically a college dropout. what the fuck am i doing adjudicating speech issues? this is a rights issue. government is on my ass about it, but shouldn't a court deal with this?".

reason would apparently prefer the dictatorship of private capital, however unqualified, and however incompetent.

if a government agency were to step in here, it would be subject to appeal, and i can assure you that no judiciary anywhere in the english-speaking world is going to uphold any kind of meaningful prohibition of political expression online.

alex jones might even be able to get his profile back. and that's what we all want, right?

https://reason.com/blog/2019/04/05/mark-zuckerberg-calls-for-government-reg

i don't often go into this deeper level of analysis, and don't be surprised if i don't pull it out again until close to the election, but you can broadly split american politics (and most politics in the satellite states, including canada) down this dividing line, between the rhodes clique (the aristocracy, who remain powerful at the un) and the birchers (the bourgeoisie, most importantly the koch brothers). the parties are both messy big tents, and don't really mean much. but, you see sides develop more readily when you look at the candidates' backgrounds, and it's easy to predict how they're going to legislate, regardless of what they actually say.

that's why this mayor pete is probably going to be in the same governing philosophy as clinton - an internationalist that wants to outsource foreign policy to the united nations (which i would support), is in favour of "free trade" (which i would not support), is in support of bringing in low wage workers from other countries (which i would not support) and says nice things about black people while legislating against them (which i would not support). if you're a black or latino democrat, you should rightfully be wary about a guy that was educated by a group designed to maintain the priority of the british aristocracy in the commonwealth, however bizarre those words might look to you on paper. you went through this with clinton. maybe you didn't really understand it then, but you have the opportunity to, now.

so, if you can split the spectrum this way, what about sanders?

as with everything else, he doesn't align; i see no evidence that either side has ever co-ordinated with him at all. if somebody shows me some, i'll change my mind. but, as it is, it's a part of the reason he's still exciting.

the biggest error that the conspiracy theorists make is in assigning uniformity of opinion to the power elite; this idea that everything is connected, that there's a single force dominating everything. the illumnati, the masons, the nwo, the catholics, the muslims, the satanists, the monarchists, the communists, the nazis - they're all the same thing, and no amount of education on the topic can get through to them. it's as though they're projecting this hobbesian sovereign into reality, and then setting themselves upon it's destruction. you can't reason with them. the leviathan, this grendel, must be slain...

but, if you approach the conspiratorial view of history from a marxist perspective rather than a hobbesian perspective, you begin with the assumption of conflict rather than of uniformity; rather than having this singular force dominating the course of world events, you have different classes in conflict with each other, all trying to advance their own interests. specifically, you have an aristocratic class (that meets in universities), you have a bourgeois class (that runs the economy) and you have a banking class that sits in between them. as per marxist analysis, the aristocracy and bourgeoisie are in a constant jockeying for power.

if you want to approach this rigorously, the first thing you need to do is figure out if these groups actually exist(ed) or not, and the truth is that they actually do and/or did. all souls exists. skull and bones exists. the illuminati existed, and the catholic church stamped it out. masonic lodges were fundamental in both the french and american revolutions. the john birch society existed, too. so, these are not imaginary constructs - they are actual existing bodies, and the people that meet in them and/or advanced through them have been shaped by their goals and aspirations. this is all empirical, and demonstrated easily enough.

the next thing that you need to do is tie the aims of the organizations to the individuals you suspect of working for them. and, with that we can get to the point that i want to make about what actual forces are extant today, and what exactly the conflict points are.

for all the talk amongst conspiracy theorists about the "nwo", it is actually the primary conflict point. on the left, for all it's historical ills, you have the cliveden set - the all souls group, the rhodes scholars. this group has had dominance in the liberal party of canada for decades, and recently exerted itself in the united states through the presidency of bill clinton. the left, in context, is the aristocracy; odd, but it's the alliance, as it is. when i spoke of a deep state fear of a hillary clinton presidency, a part of it was allowing the rhodes clique back into power, out of fear of a collapse in sovereignty. the rhodes clique does in fact believe in world government, with a central administration in the united nations.

on the flip side of this is the right, the bourgeoisie, as represented by the john birch society, and also by the skull and bones clique of american industrialist powers. this side of the power elite actually rejects world governance, in favour of an american-dominated world, centered in washington. since the defeat of al gore in 2000, this side of the power elite has had almost total control over american politics. both john kerry and barack obama are actually on this side of the power elite, and despite their fears, hillary clinton would prefer this side as well - a point she went to great lengths to demonstrate, but could not do so.

so, who is this mayor?

i don't know.

but, if you want to know what he'll be like, the truth is that clinton is probably the better comparison than obama.

i haven't posted anything exactly like this in this space, and the reason is that it hasn't been entirely relevant. but, it's a thing that shows up from time to time, both in the united states and in canada - is there actually a power elite, who are they and what do they want?

you can't dismiss the issue out of hand; it's an empirical question, and an answer must be arrived at through the proper methods. the important thing is that you do use the right methods and be extra careful about documentation, because you're going to get piled on from every direction if you walk down this path - which is both proof of the depth of the conspiracy and of the deficit of conspiratorial logic.

there is also a difficulty inherent in the bias that exists in the research, as so much of it comes from the loony fringes on the right. the standard conspiracy theory - at least from the msm's perspective - is that the world is run by shadowy communist groups trying to take away your free market. i've never been able to take this analysis past the smell test; it strikes me as absurd on it's face, as the left represents the exploited by definition. you have to have a fundamental starting point in ignorance to even begin to take this hypothesis seriously. as it is, the issue has actually been explored in some detail from the right by a hoover institute academic named antony sutton, who examined the evidence very carefully and rather came to the opposite conclusion - that what we called "communism" in the mid 20th century was actually created by western capital as a means to monopolize eastern markets.

so, it is actually true that big american companies like ford and exxon (standard oil) signed very large contracts with communist regimes - we can prove this very clearly, these contracts happened, the money changed hands and etc. the typical right-wing conspiracy theory takes these contracts (and general cooperation) as evidence of collusion and deduces that the american elite are secretly a bunch of sickle-flag waving communists. but, sutton's academic analysis corrected this hypothesis, in rather clearly showing that the interest of these american industrialists was merely to further their own interests. sutton, a right-libertarian, may have actually predicted the neo-keynesian consensus in pointing out that no corporation wants a free market, if they can have a monopoly. so, when these companies had the opportunity to ensure unchallenged access to a market as large as eastern europe, china or even nazi germany, of course they jumped all over it. a key aspect of sutton's research was demonstrating that capital doesn't really have an ideological preference in ensuring monopoly access, either - it's just as happy to work with the despotic monarchy in saudi arabia, or the fascist regimes in spain or germany, as it is with the so-called communists in russia or china.

sutton was widely read in his time, too. brzezinski famously called him a "jerk".

and, he was even able to take the thing a step forward in demonstrating that these capitalists didn't just seek to monopolize these markets by cutting deals with the despots there, but would actually help them create the infrastructure necessary to create the markets by underwriting them through affiliated bank loans. it would have been nearly impossible for stalin or mao to get access to that kind of capital without cutting that kind of deal. is that communism? or does it sound more like typical capitalism?

sutton concludes that these industrialists were something that he called vulgar marxists, which means people that used marxist theory as a tool to achieve their own self-interest in a capitalist economy. so, in his view, marxism becomes just another tactic to advance one's own interests on the market. i do not know if he ever saw himself in the mirror; i do not know if he ever realize that the vulgar marxist was actually him, as his analysis really could have been written by anybody on the left - zinn, chomsky, bakunin or even marx himself.

so, we can see that when an actual academic on the right tried to rigorously demonstrate the truth of his right-wing conspiracy theories, he just ended up paraphrasing marx. funny, that.

and, is marxist history itself a conspiracy theory? i think it's hard to make the argument otherwise, the question is whether there's any evidence to uphold it or not. marxism does in truth argue that there is a conspiracy of capital seeking to steal surplus value from the proletariat, and willing to stop at nothing in order to do it. when you get deep into these theories, it eventually becomes obvious that there's really a fine line here between marxist theory and conspiracy theory, and that you need to be very careful in being rigorous about it.

so, what is a rhodes scholarship, anyways?

stated in as clinical terms as possible, it is a scholarship program set up by the british imperialist cecil rhodes, who is known to history for being central to the establishment of the racist dictatorship in south africa. he was primarily in charge of mining diamonds, which meant sending slaves into the mines to get the product and then selling it to the english-speaking parts of the empire at ridiculous profits.

so, the most immediate thing that being a rhodes scholar means is that you went to school on apartheid money - that your schooling was paid for by an institution that existed solely to perpetuate a particularly brutal and racist form of slavery. i hope that takes the gloss off a little.

bill clinton was a rhodes scholar.

but, there are some more shady components to the program that have been explored in depth by writers like carroll quigley, and particularly in his text the anglo-american establishment. i'll remind you that dr. quigley was a very legitimate academic that happened to have some insider contacts with these people, and found it necessary to document it for the historical record; his writing is genuine on both the level that he was a respected academic and on the level that he was a primary source. this is not some kooky guy in his mom's basement, this is legit stuff.

according to quigley, and others before him, the rhodes scholarship program was actually the recruitment arm of a kind of secret society centered at all souls college in london that was intended to advance the interests of rhodesian imperialism. that is, rhodes left a large amount of money to this program for the specific intent of ensuring that his political project - not just imperialism, but specifically apartheid - would carry on past his death. while the rhodes scholarship program does have some means-testing, it is not a program that is intended to alleviate inequality. they're solely looking for new blood to advance their own agenda.

while it is fair game to tie recent participants to the legacy of apartheid, it would be disingenuous to suggest that being a rhodes scholar today means you support apartheid. a more legitimate observation is pointing out that a candidate running for office with a history in the program is a front for a very powerful organization that is actually not american-centric; this is an organization dedicated to the continuation of british imperialism, and that sees america as a part of the commonwealth.

so, who is mayor pete, anyways? i don't know, but i know that when somebody says "i'm a rhodes scholar", what that means is something like "i work directly for the illuminati.". legit.

now, is it impressive, anyways? i don't think that merely attending an elite institution is that exciting, especially given the importance of money in the process. the scholarship program picked him because they thought he had potential for their cause, rather than due to excitement over his pure intellect. if somebody comes to me and says "i'm faculty at an elite institution", that is a more qualifying claim, but this particular person seems to have gone right back to nowhere, indiana where he came from rather than stay at the institution and do any kind of meaningful academic work. his credentials are really not as impressive as his campaign is presenting them as; i might rather point to cory booker or elizabeth warren as being more impressive, in that way.

but, if you feel like there's something guiding this, you're right. there is. your intuition is correct.

the la dispute show is a special case because the local option is in pontiac, which is pretty much as far as i can go, locally; now that i have the tickets, i have to actually argue i'd rather bus to toronto, anyways. i'm going to be on the bus for around 8 hours; i would have been on the bus for around 3 hours, anyways. the cost is the same, roughly. and, i suspect i'll be happy to have a warm space with wifi. that logic might alter over time, but i might rather go to toronto than ann arbor, for example. it depends on the time of the year....

but, it seems insane to spend $70 on bus tickets and an eight hour ride if the alternative is in downtown detroit.

then, there's the question of shows that aren't happening in detroit at all, of which i've found two so far - an electronic jazz artist named anomie and the now infamous efrim menuck. i'll have to see what he's been up to; he's due for something profound. and, i may end up going to hamilton.

the anomie show is monday night, thoug, meaning i'm paying exorbitant bus prices.

what about this?

https://www.kijiji.ca/b-rideshare-carpool/ontario/windsor-to-toronto/k0c5l9004

well, it's still not cheap. but, if i can pare it down to $20-30, total, and plan it so i'm not waiting for hours, i can write that off as reasonable - so long as it's infrequent.

i don't expect to get to the show on sunday, but that might be the more reasonable approach, long tern, especially if i'm hitting last call at 4 am, which is legal in toronto, now. if i have to wait until 6, it's just enough time for breakfast...

i don't want to give off the wrong impression: this is clearly going to be infrequent. but, i actually probably should have thought of this earlier. alas.

you would expect fiscal conservatives to support "safe" injection sites, because they minimize the amount of resources wasted on drug addicts.

i think that this discussion about "saving lives" is disingenuous on both sides. insofar as these injection sites are "safe", it's only temporary - we are taking about an addiction that will certainly eventually kill you. what "safe" means is that the needles aren't full of aids or hepatitis, which are both expensive to treat - and a frustrating cost, given that the spread of the diseases is preventable and the projected life span of the person being treated is short. it's legitimately deflating to fork out thousands of dollars of public money on anti-hiv drugs, only to find the patient dead of an overdose on the drug that gave them the disease. so, if you give them clean needles, you at least don't have to treat them for infections.

treatment doesn't work, either; you have to find ways to stop people from being so fucking stupid as to get hooked. and, with heroin, there isn't another description, unless a doctor injected you when you were unconscious - you can't not know the risks at this point, you have to just be plain out stupid. there's no excuse for this, anymore. you deserve your darwin award.

so, don't tell me that the sites save lives - they don't, they merely postpone death, and minimize the costs involved with managing the problem.

but, don't tell me that removing the sites would save lives either - because you're just going to end up with people dying of infections, instead.

we talk about harm reduction as though the addict's life is the most important concern, even though they've already written themselves off; with opiates, specifically, we should rather be treating the issue as an unnecessary public expense, and speaking about cost reduction.

this should actually be an issue where socialists and conservatives agree with each other, due to a convergence of thought around public resources. but, while the liberals are consistently incoherent on this kind of thing nowadays, the conservatives are constantly blinded by their own hypocrisy.

we should all support the sites; they save public money.

so, i'm concluding that i need to do a survey.

i'm sorting through these lists and realizing it might be less that i'm disinterested in what's coming up and more that i don't know much of it. to be sure, the 40% that i recognize is mostly coming off as less than exciting, and that's disappointing, but a part of the problem might be that i don't know what the other 60% is.

music is cyclical, so a thing that is going to happen once in a while is that you're going to realize that everything you've been listening to is out of fashion or past it's creative cycle, and the trends and new artists have completely flipped over to something else. i think the last time i really remember coming face to face with this relatively starkly was in the late 00s. i just had to sit down and do the research.

i'm going to reject most of what gets thrown at me, so the difference between a good year and a bad year is 20%; i will reject 70% of what gets thrown at me in a good year, and 90% in a bad year. but, something else about the phase of the cycle we're in - and i guess i'm learning that this is the down point - is that we're in the "cool" phase, where everybody is preoccupied with image; this is the place in the cycle where a talented artist can't get booked because they don't look the right way, or perhaps weren't born in the right country. instead, everything gets homogenized down into a digestible package. there's no stage for the anti-cool, right now.

so, the punk shows are syrupy and catchy, rather than messy and noisy; the techno scenes are focused on extravagance and wealth rather than on composition or creativity; the folk and country scenes are inoffensive and squeaky clean, rather than political or thoughtful and progressive rock, in any form, does not exist (except for established artists, who will get bumped out of slots for kpop bands). pick a genre, and the focus is on careerism and advancement over creativity and expression - everybody is going through the motions and playing the part, trying to get big.

it's not like this is ever going to go away, but the pendulum will swing back in time. people will get bored with this and react, and that one bar owner that takes the chances will find themselves rewarded with being the center of a new scene. then, the vultures will swoop in, and we'll have to start all over again.

something may be a little different this time, in terms of instrumentation. i can't imagine yet another punk or new wave or hip-hop or techno or folk revival. it's all been done to death. gen x must be at the end of the line; renewal is going to have to be driven by a different concept of music, altogether, driven by younger people. we must be on the cusp of a revolution in sound design, but where is it?

for now, things are sleepy on the ground, both in toronto and detroit. it seems like hamilton may actually be a little better, oddly. but it just means i have to do the research and figure it out...

so, i've got a list of 200 young bands to sort through that are playing detroit or toronto in the next 6 weeks. 190+ of them are going to be terrible; let's hope i can find what i'm looking for.

i'm otherwise going to have to do a deep internet search, if the local venues are turning up nil.

the body language and tone of response i'm getting him from him is that he actually thinks it's an invasion of his privacy.

and, is it? well, that's kind of not my choice.

it's quickly becoming a distraction. he wants to deal with this asap.

https://theintercept.com/2019/04/05/bernie-sanders-tax-returns/

and, to clarify an absurd misconception...

canada's legal system is primarily british in origin, meaning it is a combination of germanic common law and roman civil law, with the germanic common law in the dominant component. quebec is a strange animal in this sense, as the british allowed them to maintain aspects of their french legal heritage upon the final conquest of 1763. while france was overrun by barbarians during the empire's collapse, it was not abandoned the same way that britain was, and did not develop a germanic system of common law; french law is directly romanic in origin.

the roman law was in fact very different than jewish law, as it was enacted by a legislative body. while the jewish texts are older (however you want to measure it), i will remind you that jesus himself lived under roman law. while the popes eventually took over for the emperors, no pope ever enacted the torah as law; roman law remained dominant throughout the feudal period in europe, in whatever extent it could be enforced under (with the exception being in the areas that rome withdrew from, or never conquered, with england being the unique melting pot).

it follows that the idea that any existing concept of western law is based on the ten commandments is in actuality completely retarded.

the issue around the religious symbols ban in quebec seems to be coalescing around teachers - and i'll remind you that polling suggests a clear supermajority of quebeckers would actually extend it to daycare workers, so the law is actually more lenient than voters actually want.

(even if it should be up to the court to interpret the law and not the mob to do so; if there is a criticism of this, and i have made it, it is not that it is fascist but that it is ochlocratic.)

i'll also remind you that i don't really support "religious freedom" as a fundamental right, and i've been pointing that out for years. so, i'm not making any kind of exception, here; i'm denying the existence of this right, altogether. it is actually a matter of consistency! and, can i do that? well, humans determine rights, not god; there isn't some ethereal source of rights out there, they're just things we decide on. nor is there a god. so, if we decide that "religious freedom" is bullshit then it is. i'm not granting myself a veto over the constitution, i'm just pointing out that i'd allow just about anything to overpower religion, if i were on the court. i could rephrase this in another way that is less controversial: we don't have the right to our own facts, so the only time "religious freedom" is of any argumentative value is when it is happening independent of reality. i will allow the right to pray by yourself in your bedroom, so long as you're not too loud, but not much more.

but, if it's about teachers primarily, so be it. and, i have a question for all those that support this so-called right of teachers to public displays of religious affiliation.

what are your views on displaying the ten commandments in public schools? do you think that's acceptable? why or why not?

and, this is about public schools.

and seniors, apparently.

increasingly.

TCH buildings are home to 110,000 people. Every existing unit is also badly needed. By the end of 2018, the number of active applications for households looking for social housing, which includes co-operative housing, TCH properties and private not-for-profit housing, hit 100,515, according to the City of Toronto website. Of that reported total, 35 per cent were identified as being seniors.

https://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2019/04/05/ottawa-pledges-13-billion-for-toronto-community-housing-repairs.html

the reason the price is so high is of course because the system has been underfunded for so long. this creates this circular problem: nobody wants to invest because the costs are so high, which just further increases the costs.

the best way to make it sustainable is to keep on top of it.

again, though - the feds are providing cash, but in the form of loans. the federal government is the only institution in the country that can print money, and it insists on setting up a loan to the city of toronto for community housing, the inhabitants of which are mostly recent immigrants and disabled people. then, it underwrites subsidies to oil companies, or outright purchases pipelines. it's insane.

and, this is happening on the initiative of a proactive conservative mayor, trying to get the money out of a liberal prime minister. how did these roles reverse?

trudeau seems to have this complex where he doesn't want to associate with "losers", and that has to be the underlying driving force; he seems to see government as a tool for the successful to award the successful, rather than as a way to balance out inequalities in society. whatever you think of this, it's not what canadians associate with the term 'liberal' - or at least not east of the rockies. they no doubt had to drag him to this, and he's no doubt interpreting it as a vote-buying scam. but, he doesn't seem to get weird around the global poor and is even willing to send these huge checks out of the country; it's this construct of "winning" and "losing", and this affinity with "winners" and revulsion at "losers". it's like "you had your chance, and you lost. too bad." kind of thing - equality of opportunity on some level, i guess, but perhaps more a consequence of a fucked up childhood. it's the kind of thing you go to therapy to work out - it's an inferiority complex, compensated for with a lot of flair.

regardless, this is necessary. it's not progressive or forward-thinking; it's years past due, and absolutely required. and, i don't know who gets the money flowing, but there needs to be an eye on making sure that the system stays on top of itself, in order to ensure it's own solvency.
 
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/trudeau-tory-affordable-housing-toronto-crisis-1.5086114

i didn't have my morning nap, so i could barely keep my eyes open long enough to get the faxes sent. but they're sent.

i'll follow up on monday, but i have been led to believe - correctly or not - that this is the extent of my concerns regarding nexus, until i apply to have the card renewed in the summer. i should probably apply for renewal on the day that the file destruction processes.

i'm going to take a second pass through the toronto show listings, as i'm going to need to figure out when the next potential booking is.

could i hitch this? probably, but the bus is mostly a timing thing. they're not going to wait for me to get there....

so, now i know how to do this - i get a prepaid credit card. everybody seems to accept that.

show tickets purchased. greyhound tickets purchased. and, i'm going to la dispute in toronto, a city i've transited through many times but never really explored.

now, what if the show is over late and i can't get to the bus before it leaves?

i don't expect this to be an issue for this particular show, which will almost certainly be done before midnight due to bylaws. it might even be done at 11:00. further, there's a short city bus ride back to the station, so i don't really need to catch the bus until around 12:30. that would be an issue that is more likely to arise in a smaller bar, in a less central location. if i make the trip, though, it's likely to eventually happen, and i'll want to make sure i plan accordingly when it does. i would simply need to plan ahead to take the morning bus, and figure out something to do for a few hours.

if it's at all tight, i'll make sure not to take a chance next time. but, i don't expect the weather to be particularly good, and that's a big factor in planning on an all-nighter in a strange city two weeks in advance.

i'll be there early, so i'll be able to get to nexus if i have to. i won't be stopping in london on this trip, though - it's express in both directions. next time...

but, now i need to call nexus.

i also picked up a 64 gb usb 3.0 card for $15 cdn. well, who wants a 64 gb flash card when they have 256 gb cards on the market? as absurd as this is, that solves the storage issue on the chrome book; it's going to be a long time before i fill up a 64 gb card, given that it's a secondary storage device. and, with that, the machine is built to any reasonable standard, and just about ready to travel with. i just need to set that blog up, and enter it into the rebuild process.

it's going to be nice this weekend, but i don't see anything happening in town. so i should be able to get back to what i was doing.

i will admit that, having never been to toronto, i am not aware of where the house parties and small shows are happening.

that said, i think i did a fairly detailed survey of the medium sized venues in the city, and i'm left to conclude that it's not just that detroit is getting skipped - the music scene right now seems to be legitimately boring across the spectrum.

i did the math for you; it may actually be cheaper for me to spend 8 hours busing back and forth from toronto than it is to amuse myself overnight in detroit, while i wait for the shuttle bus to start running. but, it seems unreasonable to go to toronto to check something out on a whim, which i was doing frequently in detroit up until last spring. that said, i'm aware that i'm a little out of the loop and need to take some chances. so, i may end up psyching myself up to get to toronto to see some things.

well, the only thing i've got penciled in is the la dispute. i'm surely going to want to get out of the house more frequently than that.

speaking of which, i need to get a prepaid mastercard in order for this plan to be feasible. i both have to buy tickets at least a week in advance to keep the cost down, and need to make sure i can actually get into the show before i buy tickets. so, that's my task this morning.

let's compare the costs for these shows directly. as they are also playing pontiac, which is a good ways north of detroit. what are the costs of seeing them in pontiac?

1) i have to take the shuttle bus back and forth over the border. that's $10. cdn.
2) i'll need to take the city bus there and back, which is going to be about $6. usd. and, it's a good ways out, that's not expensive.
3) let's assume that the cost of the show is equivalent and i spend the same amount on beer at the show.
4 ) i will not be getting back from pontiac at that time of night, so i will need to hang out in the dance club next door, or the gay bar down the street. that's an extra $10 minimum. usd.
5) i will buy a few drinks after the show. let's say $10, minimum. usd.
6) i will then need to buy something to eat in order to sit in an open restaurant. $10, minimum. usd.
7) as i'm going to be spending hours drinking with strangers, i'm going to need to buy a pack of cigrattes, or otherwise throw bills at people to bum them. $7.00. usd.

$10 + (6 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 7)*4/3 = $67.33

the cost of the bus tickets is $61, and while i may buy a pre-roll before the show, i won't be drinking on the bus. rather, i'll be typing up the review on the way home.

$61 + $10 = $71.

i suppose i could sit by myself in pontiac until the morning without buying anything, drinking or smoking, but that would be pretty boring.

the pontiac trip is probably a better story, in the long run. but, my hands are tied for a few months, and the same thing is going to be true of any other show that comes up.

so, if i were to go to see some obscure math band on a whim in hamtramck in mid-may, it would end up costing me $100, anyways. why not go to toronto, then?

as an aside, i believe it's going to be until the middle of the year before i can legally buy pre-rolls in detroit, and it could be years before i can buy anything in windsor.

la dispute is a very vocal-driven act, so the value of the music is unlikely to reveal itself on immediate listen. these types of records consequently don't lend themselves to first impression reviews. these are the kinds of songs that you come back to at random places, that reveal themselves to you at the least expected....

you could hear the power of a line like "we are but hopeless lovers, we are the last of our kind, and if we let our hearts move outward we will never die." more or less immediately, but it took time - years - for the story to unfold itself, and the climax to actually present itself as such. the second record was certainly less ridiculous, all around; i wouldn't have guessed on first listen that it would be the clever language in harder harmonies that comes off as the high point on the record, i had to live it and digest it and experience it first. and, while i didn't spend very much time with the third record, i'm sure that somebody else has some similar stories about it. so, i'm not going to pretend i've digested this over a handful of listens - i haven't, and i don't know what's going to click over time, or if anything is going to click at all.

but, that third record. it seemed like a death blow; i didn't think there would be a fourth one. i saw them do a little acoustic set at the masonic temple in detroit, and they just came off like a third rate rem knockoff. i am a gigantic rem fan, and the singer, at least, has some obvious lyrical ability, so i wasn't opposed to the direction, but it just didn't execute. the record itself seemed flat and just kind of boring, and i want to take a minute to explore the point because the contrast here is what's most exciting about the new record...

i'm sure that a lot of their fans recoiled at the record by claiming it was "soft", or something. my tastes are too diverse for anything that gauche - i like "soft" music as much, if not more, than i like "heavy" music, whether it is hard or easy. these are qualitative terms, but they don't speak to the quality of the art. so, yeah. the record was kind of "soft". so what? a more poignant critique is that the band seemed like a fish out of water; they toned down too far too fast and in the process lost the plot, just kind of meandering on without much of a musical point. the record needed some kind of foil to itself, but the correct idea is not that it needed "heavier" outbursts, but some kind of tension and, when you use the right language, it's all of a sudden easy to understand why so many of their fans got kind of scared away by a la dispute record that had no tension in it - as the band is all about tension.

i can actually make the argument that i love la dispute for the same reason that i love rachmaninov. but, i'll spare you that.

but, what they needed here was not to bring back the heavy but to bring back the tension and they have actually done that. so, this is a return to form, in that sense.

however, the band is also clearly in the process of completely altering it's sound, and if you need the heavy rather than merely the tension then maybe you might want to check out something else.

is this going to work out in the long run, after all? well, michael stipe was a huge ian mackaye fan boy, you know. it just might.

https://ladispute.bandcamp.com/album/panorama

that was another sleepy afternoon.

i couldn't get through to the privacy commissioner, either. everybody wants to play phone tag, but i don't have the gear.

i hope to get a response on a hearing date tomorrow, and will need to call nexus about faxing documents.

i wasn't up until close to 21:00; ate, showered, and have been browsing since.

if i'm stuck in canada for the next six months, i may have to plan around transiting to toronto for shows. if i plan ahead, it's about $60 back and forth - expensive, but these nights out in detroit often end up being $100 when you factor in multiple covers, drinks, food and exchange rates. further, i'm often out all night. if the show is under $30, and i can get home before the sun comes up, it's actually comparable. and, indeed, there's a 1:00 am express bus back.

this is counter-intuitive, but let's say i get out of a show in detroit at 1:30. i'm usually going to want to find a party or after hours club (shhh), otherwise i'm sitting at the diner for hours. cover is going to be at least $10, probably closer to $20, and i'm going to buy a few drinks when i'm there. i'll get out of there in the morning, and have an hour or two to wait for the shuttle bus, meaning i'm going to want to at least get a coffee, but probably something to eat (and i've probably been drinking and smoking , and maybe dancing, since 19:00 last night). so, i'm looking at spending $30-50 because i can't get home. usd. if i can catch the express bus out of toronto at 1:00 am, instead, and get home for 5:00, i'm probably actually spending less money. plus, there's wifi access on the greyhound; i might find it flies right by. so, it's the time and cost of the bus ride there that is the added expense, not the cost or time of the bus ride back. i'm going to need to wait for the new bridge to open to get 24 hour access across the border without a car.

if i book ahead, that's $30. worse is that i'm going to need to get there for 1:30 pm. well, that was like the ann arbour show - i had to leave early. it's an adventure. in reality, the bus is always late. and, i'll need to buy tickets and things when i get there...

obviously, that is going to cut the number of shows down for the rest of the spring, but if the schedule is weak and the weather is bad, it may be less of a functional difference than you might think. i'm looking through the concert listings in detroit, and while i've demonstrated interest in a large number of shows, i don't think i'd actually intend to go to most of them. again: i haven't gone anywhere in almost a year, and i don't feel like i'm missing out on much because it doesn't seem like much is actually happening.

i actually have roughly $200/month budgeted for concerts, remember - and a bit of cash put away because i haven't gone anywhere in months. i can't do this daily, but i could make the trip once or twice a month, just to get to the stuff i'm most interested in, until the issue resolves itself. detroit is getting skipped all of the time, right now; toronto never gets skipped.

i would have certainly tried to get to the la dispute show in pontiac on the 15th. so, i'm going to spend the night listening to the new record to figure out if it's worth the voyage to toronto or not, as i scour the listings in the city for events that are within walking distance of the bus station.

https://ladispute.bandcamp.com/album/panorama