i almost never vomit, actually. but, i was feeling it all morning; it was inevitable, and probably not entirely caused by the vodka, but also contributed to by my diet and the travelling and even the coffee. it could have happened hours earlier, really. as it is, it was the tums that triggered it.

i often bring antacids with me when i'm drinking, because the things we drink alcohol with are so inherently acidic. how many of us assume that that stomach ache you get after your third drink is because you've had too much alcohol? in fact, it's probably acid reflux, because you've consumed a litre of carbonated pop or whatever else in the process. maybe you want to take it as a cue to quit drinking, or maybe you don't - maybe you just want to pop a few grams of calcium to balance it out, and keep going. i find the latter usually works just fine...

so, i didn't think much about it when i started to feel it in my gut - i just got some tums at the corner store, scarfed them down and went back to browsing in the coffee shop. it was a little before 18:00, when i had to run outside...

i didn't take it seriously, at first. i put a shot in my coffee on the way in, but it was a tall cup, tall enough that i could have put in two. further, it took me five hours to drink it. so, i was only on my third drink in 10 hours. sure, i just had a big cup of coffee; sure, i hadn't eaten since early in the morning. but, i wasn't going to puke on three drinks in 10 hours was i? that would be lame.

so, i just sat outside the shop for a minute and waited. it's not going to happen...

...but, yes. it is going to happen.

i made it just past the band's vans for the first iteration, which was unfortunately directly on the sidewalk. well, i wasn't taking the situation seriously. i was able to get across the street into an alleyway for round two, to the concerns of some onlookers that were smoking something in the back.

"i'm alright. just a little too much vodka. nothing serious. i'll be fine in a few minutes. sorry for freaking you out."

this was met with some visually cautious skepticism, but at least the concern faded to indifference.

but, was it really too much vodka? i've never had difficulty with such little vodka, before. while i'll acknowledge that i hadn't had any alcohol at all since last may, it still seems like an absurdly low tolerance level. so, i'm going to reject the claim that i drank too much, and rather assert quite sternly that i wasn't even drunk. rather, i suspect that the coffee and the extra strength tums may have created an acid-base reaction that actually stimulated vomiting as a pressure release; this was more like a volcanic eruption in a grade school science fair project than alcohol poisoning.

i needed a third round before i was done and able to walk off.

"i'm fine. really. i'm sorry."

that was apparently more convincing, as i got a laugh and a wave.

the reality is that i wasn't feeling drunk before i puked, and i wasn't feeling drunk after i puked, either; the nausea faded a little, if not totally, but it didn't really make much of a difference at all, in terms of how i was feeling.

i made a choice, however, to stand outside, just in case - and to put my coffee away. it was about an hour's wait until doors.

there were some kids lined up early, so i just got in line behind them and waited.

"my friend is convinced he's in a coma and everything is just a dream."
"that's so ridiculously stupid, really. obviously false."
"i agree, but, like, how do you prove to him that it's wrong?"
"actually, maybe you can't do that, can you?"

*ahem*

that's right, kids. what you'd say is that that's not even wrong, that you could never disprove it and that it is therefore worthless as a hypothesis.

"makes sense."

the fact is that i've been to lots of shows with knapsacks, and nobody has ever given me a hard time about it before, so i couldn't imagine anybody giving me a hard time about it here. i expected there would be some kind of mosh pit, but moshing (or really dancing at all) to la dispute is like dancing at a funeral - it's inappropriate, in context. they're technically a hardcore band still, but they've always leaned towards beatnik poetry, and they're coming up on a flip over the cusp, to the point that i do suspect that there will be a time in a few years when the shows are almost entirely abandoned by hardcore fans. i didn't expect that to be true of this show, but my intent was to stand a little further back, out of the pit, while sipping on a beer and listening to the lyrics.

this isn't a rejection of the pit, it's just that la dispute is not really body music, it's more of an intellectual kind of thing, something that might even be better experienced at a seated venue than a general admission punk show. if you're showing up to a la dispute concert looking to dance it up and have a good time, you're kind of missing the plot.

so, in my mind, it wouldn't be much of a problem if i brought my bag in, considering i was going to be standing in the back, anyways. but, i wasn't able to get the point across to security, who just insisted they were sold out. well, they couldn't be that sold out; surely, they're not being reasonable. but, i simply wasn't getting in with the bag, so i had to relent and leave it at coat check, along with everything in it. they insisted it was safe...

so, i get in and learn it's $9 for a beer at the opera house in toronto. it was at least a big beer, but i only got one...

the place was about half full for the first act, called slow mass, which didn't make much of an impression on me. what they sound like is a parody of mopey 90s alt rock, without even the minimal amounts of tension that you got out of a genre that was intended to town done. there were some unnecessary outbursts of noise by the drummer and guitarist, but it just kind of added to the buttoned up feel of the show by telling the audience that the band itself recognizes that they are actually boring, and are even bored with being boring. while the self-awareness is perhaps a positive step, i don't have much else to say about this, other than to point out that this is indiscernible from any of the other thousand bands that have sounded exactly like this over the last forty years.

i let them finish, downed my beer and then went to retrieve my marijuana from my bag, which i had absent-mindedly left in there when i was unexpectedly coat-checked. i wasn't sure if it would be a hassle or not...

"sorry, there's just too many bags."

and, there were, indeed, a lot of bags.

"listen, i could understand if there was a long line-up here and i was in your way, but it looks like the place has mostly filled up, and you're just kind of sitting around, so..."
"were you in recently or near the start?"
"i was one of the first people in."
"so, i'm going to have to sort through this to the bottom. there's no way."
"well, you're going to have to do this eventually, right?"
"what?"
"well, i'm going to eventually pick the bag up."
"but, that's only if you're here at the start of the line."
"i need to catch a bus out."
"so, i'll have to do it anyways. ugh. fine. i'm making you pay to recheck it, though: $4."

it was a good night for logic in toronto, at least.

i've rolled up a lot of marijuana in a lot of toilet stalls in a lot of cities, but this was the first time it was actually legal.....

a few minutes later, and i'm overhearing some lesbians talk to each other, as they're standing a few feet in front of me.

"my grandmother thinks we're all monsters. like, she seriously thinks we're evil. it's crazy. i love my grandmother and everything, but it kind of scares me. so, i'm just never telling her. ever. we're just not having this talk. she'll die thinking i'm straight."

i had to interject.

until she starts bothering you about having kids, then you're going to have to bring it up.

laughs from the crowd, as always.

"she already bugs me."

it's just going to get worse.

"well, it's not like i don't plan to have kids. i'll have kids, just not with a dude."

you're still going to have to bring it up.

"well..."

listen, studies have been done on this. your grandmother is an individual, but homophobic people often find themselves with a change of opinion when they are confronted with queer family members, as it presents them with a reality rather than an abstraction. i mean, she's going to go to some church or something..

"mosque."

right. whatever. so, she's going to go to that mosque, and they're going to say all kinds of hateful, damaging things about queer people as though they're some distant other, as though they don't actually exist as human beings, but then she's going to go home and see somebody she loves, and she's going to have to make a choice to trust these words that are thrown at her abstractly by this stranger on a podium, or a person in front of her that she know and loves and trusts.

"i'm not telling her."

that bad, huh?

a passing homeless person then interrupted the conversation with a request for change, of which neither of us had any. but, the other lesbian was upset about it.

"i wish i had some change. i once gave somebody $20."

the male member of the group that included the two lesbians is upset about this.

"you gave him $20?"
"i'm a generous person."
"but, they're all drug addicts. it's really hard to be homeless in canada, you know."

ugh. not on my sidewalk.

poverty does exist, you know. i mean, it might be true that there's a high percentage of drug addicts in the homeless population, but you can't just jump to the conclusion that if you're homeless then you're a drug addict. that would just be wrong.

(some applause on the street)

but, he didn't want a debate; he went inside, and i followed not far behind him.

the fiasco with the bag, and subsequent detour rolling and smoking, meant i actually missed most of the second band's set. the place also filled up to the brim in the time i was gone, forcing me to watch from the landing, which was actually the plan anyways, but perhaps not in the space i ended up in. gouge away are named after a pixies track, and sounded like it. the following audiotree set has some generic pixies-type tracks and some noisier hardcore; the bit of the set that i caught was in the generic pixies-type track style, and didn't appeal much to me. in fact, i decided to find somewhere to sit and take a rest...

i went directly back to the floor when the set was done, trying to measure the size of the crowd and how to set up and came to the conclusion that the place was packed as tight as possible; they weren't exaggerating about the place being sold out, and there really wasn't room to stand with a bag. that said, leaving my bag in coat check didn't all of a sudden make me want to go into the pit - i was still hoping to hang back a little and just watch. but there was barely even anywhere to stand. so, i decided i'd wait the pit out a little and then try and work my way in.

they started off with some less intense tracks, so i couldn't really get a feel on the size of the pit, or what was going to happen when they clicked in. if i could get some separation so that i could stand on the edge of the pit, it could work, but there just didn't look like there was much space. i was hoping to wait a little longer, wait for them to tire themselves out, so i could move up. but, the opposite happened: i saw the train of frat boys walk by me from the back a few songs in, and realized i was going to need to hang back.

if i had a chance to escape the back at that point, it closed pretty quickly, as this annoying teenage girl decided she was going to dance in front of me all night. i've been through this before; the girl wants to dance, but she doesn't want to get molested at the punk show, so she parks herself directly on top of the obvious fag, after testing it first to make sure it's safe. it's then my instant responsibility to make sure she's safe until she walks off, whether i asked for it or not and she inevitably gets pissy when i don't react, which is really quite the contradiction. if you check my reviews, you'll see me point to this happening repeatedly, and pretty much always at punk shows. in general, i can handle this - i can even enjoy dancing, and often do - but the lack of space on this floor, combined with the nature of the music, just made the scenario comical. even if there was space to dance, i would not have wanted to on this night - i wanted to watch the band. a lot of these lyrics are really quite morbid. and, this girl wanted to dance too - bumping into me repeatedly, flipping her hair around and just generally trying to get me grooving. nope...

in order to get by her, i would have had to shove her out of the way, and i wasn't going to do that. i didn't see any obvious space, anyway, as the pit seemed to take up most of the floor, and nothing was opening up. so, i spent most of the concert trying to dodge tassled hair flying into my face from this hyperactive kid that was hopping all over me, apparently desiring some kind of response.

if they had played for another hour, i would have moved up. alas...

and, what of these moshers? is it not somewhat perverse to mosh to la dispute? if anything, they ate it up. it was lines like "we buried our son today!" that got the pit in motion. i'm not going to pretend i understand that, but so be it. i'd rather be a little bit more sombre about such things and watch quietly from the side...

how was the show, though?

this is the third time i saw la dispute, but the second time was an acoustic set in detroit. the first time i saw them was with touche amore & balance & composure at maverick's in ottawa in 2011, and what i remember about the show is that the songs were unrecognizable when compared to the recordings. at the time, i decided that i hadn't listened to the material that much, and i was just not following it because i didn't know it. but, the same thing happened in toronto, on this night - i could sort of make out the songs, but not really. i mean, some of them were clear, but some of them seemed radically different and hard to follow.

i'm left to wonder if the band radically rearranges it's studio material for performance - or perhaps radically rearranges it's live material in studio - and if there's an entirely parallel discography that i'm not aware of. the other option is that the sound tech is terrible, but this seems unlikely, given that i experienced the same thing in two different bars, in two different cities and separated by 7.5 years.

a quick run through the setlist suggests that it may have mostly been tracks from rooms of the house that were rearranged, and i guess i can get my head around that, even if it threw me for a bit of a loop. there's some bands you go to see just expecting something new, and there's some that you go to see with the discography burned directly into your cortex, and la dispute are really in the latter category.

i don't want to play the show down; i enjoyed the components that i recognized, even as i was spitting the hair out of my mouth and craning my neck around to get a view. but, there were tracks i only half-recognized, and it left me wondering what was really going on.

i can't currently find a recent show on youtube and don't want to post an old one, so we'll leave this space open until one appears.

(insert youtube link)

i wasn't first in line, but i was near the front of the line, and the coat check had it ready for me.

"see, this is actually better, right? 'cause the line moves faster."
"oh, shut up."
"ok. have a good night.."

i had to step into the bathroom for a few minutes, again.

i was out before 11:30, so i just walked back to the greyhound. the subways were all closed, unfortunately, so no late night sub on the bus. it was a short wait, meaning i have a working model, even if this is not a frequent trip.

the migraine and the rain started almost immediately, and almost simultaneously, leaving me crunched up in pain and kind of freaked out, at the same time. i tried to sleep the migraine off, but it wouldn't come. the rain was so heavy that you could barely see the streetlamps, making it hard to tell where i actually was. yet, the driver of this express bus was not interested in slowing down, regardless of visibility, of the slippery roads or of the potholes that the bus was ripping through. but, it actually seemed like a short ride, somehow. and, i was in windsor and off the bus in no time - and home by around 6:30 in the morning.

so, would i do that again? yeah, for the right act. i just wish the weather was a little nicer.

it's now thursday afternoon, and i'm typing from home in windsor. i wanted to do some typing on the bus on the way home, but the migraine hit as soon as i sat down, and i was really just done for the ride; i wasn't able to sleep it off as i like to, but i nonetheless didn't want to do anything except roll up in a ball. as mentioned, i was nauseous on the way in as well, so i'm thinking it was partly to do with the air quality on the bus. the third hand smoke was noticeable - even after i'd smoked a few myself - but i'm wondering if it was more about a lack of circulation. it was also raining very hard through a lot of the ride, and i know i'm sensitive to the weather. whatever it was, it actually made the trip seem very short, as uncomfortable as it was.

i wanted to eat and shower first, but i was passed out within minutes of coming in on wednesday morning. i've tried to wake up a few times since yesterday afternoon, but it hasn't really succeeded; i've mostly been asleep since i got home. well, i'm up now, so i'm going to pick up where i left off...

so, i got a large amount of sleep....

i hadn't slept much in days; i crashed when i got in yesterday morning, then again last night, and then again this morning. so, i was awake for a few hours yesterday, and a few hours this morning, but never really got up. i think i'm finally awake...

i wasn't hungry when i got in, either, which is extra strange.

i wanted to make some calls today, but i guess it will need to wait until tomorrow.

so, i'm going to get to finishing up those reviews at the travel blog, and cross-post them properly, and then get back to rebuilding the archive for august, 2013 - which should be much shorter than the one for july. let's try to get this done for the weekend...

the more that i listen to the arguments against the secularism bill in quebec, the more i'm beginning to understand the debate as an argument between american and french concepts of secularism.

this was recently released in a statement by the mayor of montreal, who opposes the bill.

that the City of Montreal reaffirm the importance of the secularism of municipal rules debated and passed in our democratic institutions, without regard for the religion of those who make the rules, debate them or apply them.

that is essentially the establishment clause of the first amendment to the united states constitution - it is a quintessentially american way to understand secularism.

the french revolution produced the following statement: 

Article X – No one may be disturbed for his opinions, even religious ones, provided that their manifestation does not trouble the public order established by the law. 

this is a dramatically different statement. whereas the american constitution rejects any sort of law about religion at all, the french revolutionaries rather argued for conditions in which the state has the authority to intervene and produce laws that restrict "religious freedom", under the condition that the religion is troubling the public order as established by the law, which i think is clearly the case when it comes to allowing teachers to bring religious symbols into the classroom.

it wasn't really clear until they wrote it down, but once they did, it became clear what is happening here: the (largely anglophone) opposition is trying to apply an american concept of religious freedom to quebec law, whereas quebeckers are overwhelmingly pushing back with a more francophone conception of it, rooted in their own history and their own revolutionary discourse.

and, what do the laws in canada say? are they more like the establishment clause, that forbids any religious legislation, or more like article X, which sets a condition on appropriate state regulation?

our constitutional and human rights documents simply list "freedom of religion" in a list of freedoms that a person has, with little further clarification. our constitution certainly has nothing at all like an establishment clause, but it does allow for two ways to suspend rights: (1) through judicial interpretation and (2) through the notwithstanding clause. so, our human rights framework when it comes to religion is substantively more similar to that which exists in france than that which exists in the united states.

i haven't changed my views: i support the thrust of the law, but think it should be subject to judicial interpretation to smooth the edges out around it.

but, the arguments coming from the opposition are perhaps demonstrating more about their mindset than they realize.

quebec is not a part of the united states, and does not share a legal or political history with the thirteen colonies. it was rather a rival colony, from an entirely different country, with an entirely different legal tradition, and, whether anybody realizes it or not, showing up in montreal and citing jeffersonian arguments from the united states constitution as an argument against the rights of the state to enforce a policy of secularism is exactly the kind of cultural infringement they're trying to prevent; the more that valerie plante pushes the establishment clause over article X, the more she demonstrates the need for the law.

it would be nice if people would send me some links, though.

i have this moderate perception that there's an entire, alternate reality of which i'm a part of, and that i don't actually know exists. and, i simply don't have the social network required to find it. somebody is going to have to tell me where it is...

see, this is the fun part, though - because i have no interest in exerting any kind of power over anybody, and i don't remotely care what you think of me, i'll still be here typing when all of today's politicians are out of the papers.

so, you can smear me all you want; i really, honestly don't give a fuck. anybody that actually wants to read what i have to say can come here and learn the truth, and if you're too stupid to do that then i can't be bothered with you, anyways. the smears won't silence me, or keep me away. and, over time, honesty always wins, because people eventually check the facts.

i've spent my whole life trying to avoid responsibility in order to maximize my own freedom.

it would be entirely incoherent for me to decide all of a sudden that i want responsibility over everybody else.

there's a strain in socratic philosophy that argues that it is better to watch the olympic games than take part, as it is a more enjoyable experience to observe and analyze from a distance than to participate or compete directly on the ground.

my head has been in that space since i was a kid, when i didn't care that i never got picked because i'd rather watch anyways.

and, this is the other point about asking me what kind of politician it is that i'm like. politicians have to win elections, which means they have to have some kind of interest in the popular will, be willing to present themselves in a way that is appealing to the masses, etc. i don't have the slightest fucking interest in being popular, i never did and i'm not going to develop one to get a job that i don't actually want.

if you're coming at me from this angle, you're hopelessly wrong. i'm an activist, i'm an artist, i'm a thinker, i'm a rambler - i'm not an actor, or a dictator, or a leader or much of a participant in much of anything at all.

i have always stood from a distance and watched, and i will continue to do so, as long as i can.

what politician am i most like, in terms of personality traits?

i would be a terrible politician, and i don't want to be one, and i don't know why anybody would think i would want to be one. what i am is a left-wing social activist that places the abolition of property rights as my most pressing political concern, and rejects the concept of state authority.

to be a politician, you have to be able to at least feign working in groups - something i am absolutely terrible at, regardless of context. i couldn't work in groups - even groups of two - at school. i was the kid that insisted on doing the group project by myself. i can't work with other musicians. i wasn't able to work in teams at work, either. technically speaking, the reason i live on disability is that i can't work in groups due to the presence of overwhelming social anxiety, and you have to be able to work in groups to do much of anything.

or, if you can't work as a team, you have to be a dictator, and i can't even handle ordering a pet around. sit. lay down. oh, whatever, i don't give a fuck. "power is the province of miserable pricks".

so, the answer to the question is that i don't have a personality type that is well-suited for politics, and there really isn't a very close comparison in the spectrum. i am not a politician, but a political analyst; not an actor, but an observer. so, if you want a comparison, you need to look away from the stage and more towards the sidelines, where you start seeing better comparisons: chomsky, voltaire, paine, etc.

that cathedral in france was always a sign of christian colonialism and roman occupation. they should tear it down to the ground and build a museum for celtic studies on the former site.

the way that trudeau uses the term "diversity" is actually quite similar to the way that upper-class, white southerners, usually democrats, always racist, would use the term "colour" before the 1960s.

kenney has problems with the gays, but his racism is actually quite subtle, as he fully realizes that the kind of socially conservative immigrant that he wants comes from the religious societies in asia and africa, and not the liberal countries of europe or south america. he may be unlikely to accept a coalition with non-white leadership, but he's more open to the ideas that immigrants bring in with them, because they're not very different from his own ideas. so, kenney sees the immigrant as an ally in his quest for a more conservative world, even if he wishes to retain power for himself and his own kind - it's racism lite, a subtler way to be white.

trudeau's racism is more visceral, which is ever the more obvious given that he fucks up every once and again with outbursts of disdain and superiority. there's a list of pretty brutal comments, at this point. the jig is up, really. so, he hides his hate in these choreographed displays of "diversity", using clinical language out of a marketing class. his white supremacy is more absolute, in that he's happy to parade as many different-looking people around him as he can find, but he doesn't have the slightest interest in listening to a word that they actually say, or offering up any kind of position of real authority. how about the bizarre reaction to the raybould resignation/firing, which really had nothing to do with race: diversity only works when it is rooted in trust. what the actual fuck does that even mean? it may appear as incomprehensible word salad on first glance, but it really reveals a fundamentally racist world view: she really was just a token indian in cabinet. so, trudeau sees the immigrant as a voter to control at a distance within a class hierarchy with a white, liberal elite at the top. it's racism with a smile, and you just don't talk about it, because it's not polite.

while the reality is that trudeau is probably defaulting to this because he wants to create a wedge issue with minority voters and can't figure anything else out, that by vilifying kenney as a racist he's essentially acknowledging that he can't compete with him on ideas with immigrant voters and is stuck trying to scare people instead, what you're going to get out of trudeau on this is a lot of projection. most of what trudeau is going to throw out there about his opponents is going to be more true of himself than of them, and it's exactly the reason he's going to throw it out there.

and, a part of the reason that the tories tend to win the immigrant vote in canada is because immigrants can see through this clearly enough. the conservatives are actually willing to accept them for who they are and reflect their actual values; the liberals just pander to them for votes with fake appeals to togetherness, while then passing laws that they stringently oppose.

the liberals are at a dead-end with this. they've tried to build a party around cultural inclusion, only to find out that majorities in all of these different cultures would rather live in a christian society than a secular one, and that the path to multiculturalism is through the destruction of liberalism, rather than the elevation of it. in the mean time, they've alienated swaths of white voters, who are actually liberal and secular in their beliefs.

but, trudeau doesn't live in reality, he lives in a bubble that is curated by his advisors. and, he could very well spend the next six months tilting at these aforementioned windmills, slaying the monster that is the projection of his own inner, racist demons.

and, just to be clear: justin trudeau and jason kenney are both racists, but justin trudeau is way more racist than jason kenney is.

jason kenney is actually the architect of the immigration policies that trudeau likes to take credit for. so, if they want to make the election about "diversity", which is such a ridiculously clinical and racist way to take about immigration from the start, it's the language you hear in a $500/plate fundraiser with a bunch of upper-class old money white people that are trying very hard to hide their racism, i'm going to go out of my way to throw that in their faces.

immigration levels are historically higher under conservative governments, who have been using the process as a way to shift the population to the right and solidify their own voting base, and recent immigrants to canada should support kenney over trudeau - they agree with him more on core governing issues, and kenney likes them better than trudeau does, too.

so, when i looked through all of these polls and saw that the ndp and conservatives were barely separated by the margin, and there were 15% undecided, a number larger than the spread, it seemed clear enough that the election was almost in play - that they had some chance of keeping the conservatives to a minority, if those undecideds were located in calgary and leaning slightly left, and not reporting it due to a bradley effect (being afraid to tell people they weren't conservatives).

but, now that the numbers have come in, it seems more likely that the bradley effect was on the right, and it was the closeness of the election that was an illusion. it seems like it was former wildrose supporters that didn't want to tell pollsters that they were considering bailing, and that the real takeaway is that infighting on the albertan right may continue to make elections competitive there.

that was some sleep. needed that. and, i woke up to some clarity of thought.

i will repeat that a shy tory effect makes no sense in alberta, but there is another party to their right called the alberta freedom party that is one of these faux right-libertarian parties. they believe in freedom of thought, so long as you're a christian; they believe in private property rights, so long as they don't end up excluded, and etc. it's really a "status quo" party, that uses these vague appeals to liberal ideology in order to justify their own dominance. i have a lot of sympathy for libertarians in principle, when they're honest they're the real liberals, but it's so hard to find any that actually are honest and consistent about it, or that even realize their own contradictions. some of my favourite arguments have been with right-libertarians, partly because we're able to better focus on the actual underlying issues - which is so frequently how we address property in this society.

anyways.

in the last election, there were two major parties on the right - the old "progressive conservative party" (which i claim is a redundancy rather than an oxymoron), the tories, and the wildrose party, which was a bunch of these upstart, pro-christian fake libertarians. between the two of them, the tories and the libertarians won a clear plurality, but, in a fitting outcome for the capitalist parties, their competition destroyed each other, and the ndp were able to come up the middle. now, that wouldn't have mattered had ndp turnout not been stronger than expected, but notley would not have won against a united right, and everybody knows that.

so, i might have actually made the same mistake i've been so carefully warning against for so long. i've been yelling for years that when you look at national polls, "undecided" usually means "undecided on the left", rather than "undecided in the centre", and i've cited actual polls that indicate as much, through direct querying. you will no doubt see the same kind of polling come up over the next few months, that asks people if they're undecided, then who they're leaning towards, then who they won't vote for, etc in order to try and build a set of causal inferences around it. caveat: the liberal majority may have thrown a wrench into this, as the opposition is no longer united against the government, and i'm not going to carry this forward, a priori. we'll see what evidence appears about this. but, the logic is nonetheless sound enough: when the tories are in power, the undecided vote comes up on the left, because we're predominantly a liberal society.

but, alberta is a conservative society, and the ndp were in power. so, these high numbers of undecideds and uncommitteds may have actually been wary about the conservatives not being faux christian libertarian enough, and sitting between the conservatives and the freedom party. in the end, they made a pragmatic choice to remove the government, even if they'd prefer a more right-wing option.

it would make the data both consistent and sensible, at least.

and, i have made it home from toronto. my plan to type on the bus was ruined by a migraine; it's bad circulation on the bus, or something. reviews when i wake up, even if it's just a nap.

so, it turns out that that big swing of undecideds went disproportionately to the conservatives in alberta. if you look at the numbers, it comes up to a 90% swing in the undecideds. that should be tempered slightly - i suspect they probably made sure they were going to win in calgary, whether it changed the results or not. but, it's still a pretty hard swing in a scenario where you wouldn't expect a bias in the data of that sort. alberta is such a conservative society, that you don't expect a shy tory effect there; you expect that to work the other way around, for everybody to honk around at church in their pickups by day, but maybe go home and secretly think something else. i might rather suspect that the ndp are going to analyze their data and realize there was low turnout - they couldn't get their base out. there's some evidence of this in edmonton, where a tighter than expected outcome would be more likely representative of apathy than conversion.

well, she governed like an oil despot. it's easy to understand a level of deflation. i mentioned previously that it was a lesser catastrophe calculation, rather than a lesser evil one. and, while the political reality in alberta is different now, notley may have seriously damaged the party's long term ability to attract left-wing voters.

to be clear: i'm sure there was excitement about the conservative party and everything, but the quick crunch is that the dominant factor was most likely low turnout on the ndp side. that's how you get these inflated conservative numbers in the undecided swings.

it was a hard task, and nobody gave her a chance, and rightly so. but, the data did suggest some possibility of a minority outcome, if the undecideds leaned that direction. they didn't, apparently. i think a little oddly.

and, were people just legitimately undecided until the last minute? i'm not sure what about. kenny himself?

whatever it was, it's not surprising, if even not as disturbing as it should be. the ndp largely governed like conservatives.

if the numbers come back as i suspect them to, the ndp in alberta are going to have a lot of contemplating to do, as it would mean that their base abandoned them for the sin of governing, and it might be hard to get it back.

16-04-2019: slow mass, gouge away & la dispute @ the opera house, toronto

their music:

review:

event listing:
https://www.facebook.com/events/954857924720602/

link:

so, i'm in toronto, at the opera house grill, a small coffee shop directly beside/below the venue in toronto.

i believe that i'm listening to the drum tech doing sound check upstairs, and it's pretty intense in it's monotony.

the ride in was fairly uneventful, if a little bit cramped and a tad long. but, i spent the ride evaluating the band's discography, and i think there's a chance that this is their most substantive record so far, which is not to say it's their best necessarily, but that it is their most mature and consistent one. there were very strong tracks on both of their first two records, but they had different levels of inconsistency - there are some plodding hardcore tracks on their first record, although the vocals are really next-level throughout; the second record is bloated by lyrical filler that probably should have been cut off as bsides, if done at all. the first record needs to stand as it is, regardless of any flaws; it's too unique as a cohesive whole to split up. but, the second record could have been cut in half.

i think that the third largely missed the mark on both fronts.

this new record is a movement in a different direction, musically, if not too radically so, as the pieces of it already existed. but, it is for the first time a record that doesn't have some cringey tracks on it. not only is this so, but the lyricist seems to have returned to the kind of flow that existed on the first record. it's really a huge step forward for the band, and i'm excited about hearing them develop what they're doing further.

something else i'm noticing is that la dispute is in some ways very similar to my own dead project, rabit is wolf. sean didn't have the chance to write anything profound as la dispute, and i don't know if he could, but he has a very similar voice to the singer for the band, whose name i am not entirely sure of. jordan something, i think. i'm not going to look it up. but, some of the more plaintive guitar & vocal work strikes me as a very plausible end goal for rabbit, should it have carried forwads. and, it's interesting to me that you can hear sean and i play around with the same ideas that la dispute do/did, but way back in 2002. the record is too musically different, but you could probably trick somebody into thinking that acoustic demo ep was a lost la dispute demo.

i actually felt a little sick for much of the bus ride. stale air combined with third hand smoke and little bit of vodka in my stomach combined to get me a little oozy. the person that sat down beside me then added to that by eating an oiniony sub and a bag of doritos, which just had me on the verging of vomiting. it wasn't one thing but all of them...but i made it through....

i got off the bus and walked in the wrong direction, then corrected myself after a block. i had the map memorized, but i had to properly orient myself first. first stop was the marijuana store.

am i feeling over the permabuzz enough to get back to moderate use again? well, i want to go to the show, and that's what i do at the show, so it's like i have to move on with life, regardless. i may run the risk of imagining a more coherent state of existence than is realistic; i don't have a control, in the question of measuring the coherence of consciousness. it shouldn't take this long to wear off. this is probably as good as it gets.

but, my habits are likely to change now that i'm not worried about getting it out of the house. i'll likely hang on to the small amount that i bought for quite a while, just bringing it out occasionally.

i was there at about 1:30 on a cloudy, grey tuesday afternoon, and they were lined up around the corner, and carding people at the door. patrons were allowed in slowly, and asked to meet with a "budtender" who was supposed to help you find what you wanted. i knew that i was in search of a high thc:cbd ratio at the lowest price on offer, and informed the "budtender" of this fact. he proceeded to bring me to the sativa area, and sell me on a 15:9 ratio hybrid. i asked him repeatedly if that he was the highest ratio he had, and he said it was. this seemed unlikely to me, but he insisted. he then sold me an 1/8th, told me to go to the counter to buy it and said "but, feel free to look around". i then walked into the indica section and found what i actually wanted.

i'm not sure what the purpose of the detour was, but it's of little concern in the end, other than to put out a warning to be careful about these so-called budtenders. if he works on commission, he may have been trying to squeeze out a sativa sale; if true, the misdirection would be management's fault. but, i should have looked at a menu coming in, and will next time.

i picked one of the cheapest options, and it was still at the highest end of an acceptable price. when you buy in bulk from your friend, it's $5-7/gram. when you make a business transaction with your dealer, the expected price is $10/gram. and, when you're forced to find a pusher on the street, you pay $12/g for something you're afraid to actually smoke.

the cheapest option in the store was $11.99. to me, that is a warning shot to what should now be called independent growers - the corporate growers aren't planning on competing with them over a free market. when the government charges you $12/gram, that broadcasts that they're planning on enforcing the laws.

fulton street blaring at me from next door.

the transaction took roughly an hour, in total, and it was then less than an hour's walk up queen street to the venue, which is where i am right now, having a coffee. i of course made a detour to try out the product.

i'm kind of fried right now, regardless. i had a restless weekend, with little solid sleep. i then caught yamantaka // sonic titan and the acid mothers temple at phog last night, after having barely slept all weekend. this experience was at least enough to stimulate some actual sleep in me early this morning, but i was up at 5:30 to catch the bus for 8:00, and then sat on the bus for almost six hours. but, i bought a high thc strain because i like an uplifting buzz rather than a draining stone, and because i like to smoke pinners, infrequently - a small amount should last a long time. i may have sampled slightly too much. i'll be fine soon enough.

i think doors are at 7:00, so i've got some time to waste...

15-04-2019: yamantaka // sonic titan & acid mothers temple @ phog, windsor

their music:

review:

event listing:
https://www.facebook.com/events/907769916278336/

link:

i'm not even sure if the $154 that was applied is a minimum payment on the loan.

i suspect that it isn't.

so, they withheld a refund amount that is probably less than a month's worth of interest on the balance.

no previous government in my memory has ever been that petty. but, like i say - i suspect this is incompetence rather than malice.

i don't drive, and my carbon footprint is extremely low. my biggest crime is importing fruit, but imports are exempt from the tax, which is part of the reason it's not likely to be effective.

if i start noticing the price of food go up, i might react differently, but i don't expect that to happen.

so, this isn't really going to cost me anything, because i didn't need to be hit over the head with a tax to be responsible - i already was, and i would be anyways.

so, i'm not going to react because i don't expect to get hit, anyways.

but, the way it's designed is going to disproportionately affect low income voters with outstanding debts. if you're a cab driver with an outstanding loan, for example, you're going to get nailed, and you're not going to get it back. it is consequently correct to label this a tax on poor people, even if it's as a consequence of a poor design rather than a malicious ploy.

normally, when the conservatives make arguments like this, it's based on a misunderstanding of the policy, because the liberals are smart enough to see it coming and make the proper adjustments ahead of time. not so, here - the expected naive & wrong attack is actually going to be correct.

it's one thing to take a risk like this on a policy that's probably not going to work. it's another to completely fuck it up....

so, how many people are going to get an unpleasant surprise in the mail? and how is that going to affect voting decisions?

i guess it's one way to forgive a loan, right?

it's amateur hour. really.

from an economics standpoint, we'd all be better off if i spent that money tipping a local bartender.

they should have offered the credit as a rebate.

that's the first payment i've made since 2008.

yeah. they transferred my carbon tax credit to pay down my student loan balance.

student loan balance before tax return applied: 67889.96.
current student loan balance: 67735.96

current bank account balance: ~ $1800.00

well, the price of carbon goes up every year, right?

i'm not wasting my time with this...

some shit disturbing from nik, here.

that's a six point spread at the edges of the margin, with 15% undecided and a high number of uncommitted voters. based solely on this one poll, it is statistically possible that she might actually win.

what was supposed to be a sure thing now looks more like a province that doesn't know what it wants.

does she have enough support in calgary to hold him to a minority? i think that's the open question.

http://www.nanos.co/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/2019-1424-Globe-Nanos-Alberta-Election-Populated-Report-with-tabulations.pdf

Shop and save 
Beneath the western Sun 
Bought and paid for with 
Teddy Roosevelt's guns

and, i need to point out once again that all of my sites are listed on the sidebar, and sites that are not listed on the sidebar are not my sites.

i am aware that there is a person that lives in detroit that has been confused for me, to some problematic outcomes. i have met that person, but i am not her, and in truth have little in common with her. i do not want to be associated with her.

i am rather a canadian citizen that lives in windsor.

i do not have dual citizenship.

i do not live in detroit.

it is a matter of historical fact that the term "progressive" is associated with some of the most horrific crimes of systemic racism, conservative reactionaryism and hierarchical oppression in american history, and this idea of romanticizing it as an era of positive change is something that needs to be attacked head-on. it's a total whitewashing of history.

this was a period in american history where human rights were discarded as meaningless, and religious fundamentalism nearly drove the country into totalitarianism; it is a period where the country dodged a bullet, as it teetered on the brink of fascism.

progressive should be a bad word, something that people on the left distance themselves from, and not some way to disassociate yourself from corporatism. as an actual leftist, i see progressivism as a movement that exists on the right, and the word as interchangeable with conservatism.

some history of the progressive movement:

1) in america, it was progressives that were advocates of eugenics - not liberals or socialists. today, california continues to regularly sterilize people, with no opposition from progressives. leftists thoroughly oppose eugenics as pseudo-science.
https://fee.org/articles/the-progressive-ideas-that-fueled-america-s-eugenics-movement/

2) it was progressives that were the force behind the puritanical christian temperance movement, which it took decades to defeat. these were basically the rad fems of their era. leftists were and still are in diametric opposition to everything about this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman%27s_Christian_Temperance_Union

3) it was progressives that were behind the tyrannical roosevelt corollary, and the colonialism of the roosevelt presidency, in general. leftists oppose colonialism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roosevelt_Corollary

4) it was progressives that argued that anti-trust legislation is required to maintain competitive practices within the framework of free market capitalism. leftists refer to competition as "anarchy in production" and instead argue for planned economies, either centralized or decentralized.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clayton_Antitrust_Act_of_1914

progressives had a few good ideas, too. so did hitler. so did stalin.

but, progressivism needs to be defined by the policies that were legislated in the progressive era, and none of this is remotely left-wing, at all.

so, my claim is that progressives and conservatives are the same thing, and that leftists should reject the term progressive due to it's historical association with terrible legislative acts and backwards, repressive ideals. i can and will back my argument up with specific references, reasoned arguments and facts.

i guess you can react by calling me names, if you really want.

i am now totally, completely done with july and ready to move on to august.

but, i have things to do and deal with this week, so don't expect me to get a serious start on it until mid-week.

what states are really in play in the rust belt?

well, it's hard to understand how minnesota was ever in play to begin with. the democrats can certainly win minnesota.

the democrats are going to need some help from the new governor in wisconsin to reverse the mess that scott walker created in terms of voting rights, but wisconsin is certainly in play - if that happens. if there is not fast, decisive action on that front, wisconsin could be more of a challenge than you think.

iowa is winnable in theory, but it's a murky task. i think it's driven by a demographic conflict, where you have a lot of students and a lot of farmers. the traditional tactic is to go to iowa and talk about corn subsidies, but the democrats probably actually need to appeal to the youth vote if they want to win in iowa. that's probably actually why obama did well there in his first term, which would indicate that it is particularly winnable for sanders. it's actually probably about getting kids out to vote.

kansas is urbanizing, while missouri is collapsing. it's probably more of a question of local politics. i've been arguing for years that missouri should be seen as the bellweather state that it used to be - that a competitive democrat should be able to win in missouri, and easily. but, there's some recent evidence that my logic around missouri may be better applied to kansas, as the state's financial center shifts west, and the bulk of missouri ends up swallowed by arkansas. this discussion may end up better applied to the next cycle, but the evidence right now may suggest that the democrats' traditional attempts to win back missouri may be better applied to kansas.

so long as chicago is chicago, illinois will not be in play. but note that detroit is no longer detroit, and michigan is now in play. things can change, but don't expect it to happen in 2020.

then, you tun into indiana. while obama did win in indiana, it was some kind of weird fluke; the republicans have consistently held indiana since lincoln. it didn't even realign in the 60s; this is probably the most republican state in the country. if the democrats end up winning indiana, it will be as a symptom of a sweep and nothing more. it is really not in play and really never has been.

likewise, i don't actually think that ohio is a swing state. ohio is a red state. the democrats should not sink themselves trying to win in ohio. they have a better chance in virginia and a better chance in north carolina.

michigan is winnable but, like wisconsin, there needs to be some active effort put into undoing the suppression tactics put in place by rick snyder. if democrats don't address this, they could be in for another nasty surprise.

and, the same thing needs to be said of pennsylvania: the democrats should easily win here, but they need to undo the suppression tactics....

in defense of working canadians, the fact is that singh hasn't integrated. it would be one thing if there was this kind of a reaction against an ujjal dosanjh or a niki haley - that would simply be racist. these people have integrated; they're just like us. but, singh's claim to fame was fighting against helmet laws on religious grounds. he wears a ridiculous beard, and he won't take his turban off. an aversion to this kind of thing isn't inherently racist, as there is a political basis underlying the argument. by refusing to integrate, he's wearing a set of political beliefs and ideologies on his sleeves that voters have every right to back away from.

i might rather make the opposite point - that electing somebody that refuses to shave off his magic beard would be a massive step backwards into the void of pre-modern ignorance.

i just wish we had a better option.

it was easy to predict that core ndp voters were not going to like jagmeet singh very much.

unfortunately, it's starting to look like they may be unwilling to support the liberals for more or less the same reason.

as the ndp and the liberals one-up each other to pander to ethnic voters, there appears to be a large migration from the ndp to the conservatives underway, and it is probably being driven by a backlash against the pandering.

the beneficiary of the coming ndp collapse may turn out to be andrew scheer, and that is not rational - because he supports the same policies, and many that are worse, too.

here is the noise trade smashwords link for the july archive of this blog:

https://books.noisetrade.com/j/072013-dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja-22
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1026589

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