as per usual, my health is absurdly ideal - glucose levels lined up directly with the averages, and cholesterol levels on the dangerously low side.

the doctor is continually flabbergasted by the cholesterol, stating things like "these are the lowest cholesterol numbers i've ever seen". he keeps asking me about my diet.  but, the real answer is not what i eat but how much; my cholesterol is low because i keep excess storage to a minimum, by not eating more than i need and getting enough exercise to burn off or convert storage when it appears. it really is just a conservation law.

physics is all.

i will have an interview with a nurse in july to get a rec to get my balls out. literally. i'll keep the sac though, as they'll use it to build a vagina, one day. they're just going to make a little cut, sever them from the pipeline up and pop 'em out. voila - no more testosterone. so, that will likely not be until early in the year, or late in this one.

i'm also upping my estrogen from 6 mg/day to 8 mg/day, and i'm not sure how i want to do it, yet. probably every six hours, but maybe 4 every 12. i dunno.

for now, i have enough groceries to last some time, so i am taking a showering and heading to sleep, with the intent to catch up and then some before i leave the house next.

....so, that means i should be able to get back to what i was doing for a few hours.

i initially suggested i would do the reviews first, but i need to catch up, first, now - i spent too much time sleeping this week.

i was expecting to need to do some write-ups for my appointment tomorrow (about an orchiectomy), but what he gave me was a form letter for the doctor to fill in, and i'm not going to do that. i mean, i can't write a letter for the doctor. if that's what he wants me to do, i'll have to tell him i misunderstood.

testicular removal is a very minor step in transition, and usually isn't done alone but rather as a part of a larger surgery, like a vaginoplasty. the thing is that, for right now, i feel like i'm plateauing. it is true that i try to live in a female identity full time, but i have to temper the statement by pointing to physical reality: i know i don't exactly pull it off. so, i'm in an awkward position where i want to be living full time, but know i'm not fooling anybody.

what removing the testicles will do is completely eliminate testosterone production, which will do three things for me. the first is the obvious, namely that i will become unable to produce testosterone. however, i already produce very little testosterone due to the large amounts of anti-androgens i'm on, so that itself is not going to be experiential, except that i won't have to experience the annoyance of resetting every time i'm late on a dose. if i sleep in or otherwise am 4-5 hours late on a pill, i can feel it in my pants, and i want that to stop. the second is that it will take a huge strain off of my liver, and that is actually my primary concern: i don't want to be doing this to my liver any more. the third is that eliminating this battle between the androgens and anti-androgens that is constantly raging inside me should actually allow the estrogen to work more effectively, which should allow things like larger breast growth. i can't continue to increase my estrogen every 12 months, either, i need to deal with the source of testosterone.

it's only going to be after i've gone through another lengthy period with zero testosterone that i'm going to feel comfortable with taking final steps to full transition. if i had started this process in my teens, or kept to it in my early 20s, things would be different. but, as it is, for me, what i'm hoping is that removing the testicles will be enough that i can really be convincing enough to be living full time, and then take it to the next step from there.

if not? well, i know i don't want kids, and i don't have any interest in women. i'd rather be a eunuch than a cis-male, and if that's what i have to settle for, i can deal with it.

when they bring out the cowboys, you know it's getting real.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1124685/spain-usa-cuba-venezuela-donald-trump-helmes-burton-act

then, what do you call a society based on free markets and free speech, if conservatives are supposed to be about government domination over everything?

that would be called a liberal society, and it's proponents would be called liberals.

what do you actually call a society where the government runs everything?

it's called a monarchy, theocracy or feudalism.

and who promotes these systems?

these people are called conservatives.

well, it's a bullshit poll.

the right answer - that socialism is when the workers take control of the means of production - is not listed in the responses. so, how do you react to a poll that gives people a multiple choice set of responses, without providing the correct response?

to be clear,

1) "government ownership of some aspects of the economy" is a wrong answer. socialism is about the people running the economy, as a transitional phase to communism, which is when the state is abolished altogether. you should be exceedingly suspicious of anybody trying to tell you that socialism is about government control over the economy, as that is little more than a right-wing talking point.

2) "abolishing private property" is the closest thing to the right answer, but it is not the same thing as seizing control over production. there is a substantial intersection. i mean, if forced, i'd pick this one, while realizing it's lacking.

3) "lack of civil liberties" has nothing to do with socialism. wrong. right-wing talking point.

4) "end poverty and provide access to services" is a corollary, but not a definition. socialism would aspire to this, and it would be true in a functional socialist system, but it is not the definition of socialism.

https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/446377-20-percent-of-americans-cant-define-socialism-even-as-its

"and, now i would like to introduce our keynote speaker, jim balsilly, who is going to speak about how to make a competitive firm uncompetitive."

why not put him on an expert panel with kim campbell and michael cowpland?

there's a junta for canadian success, if i've ever seen one.

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/checkup/is-it-time-to-delete-facebook-1.5155783/they-re-exploiting-a-regulatory-gap-former-rim-ceo-calls-for-penalties-on-social-media-companies-1.5159551

so, that was another sleepy day, but i'm actually back into my normal routine, with it.

i got all of the cleaning done this morning before nodding off around noon. now, i'm up and should be able to get a lot of typing of various types done tonight.

i've actually been arguing for a very long time that the liberals need to do something about the tory media in this country. but, i don't think that a bailout package is nearly enough or nearly understands the depth of the problem.

it is typical of this government to think you can get what you want by sucking up to people, and it's tempting to read something into trudeau's privileged upbringing; is the crux of the matter that the most important thing that trudeau learned from his father was how to butter him up to get what he wants? but, your dad is probably mostly on your side anyways, whereas the president of a neighbouring state and an inherently hostile media are not.

we have too much media concentration in this country, and some steps to break up the big companies and reduce their market share would be a big step in the right direction. ideally, that market share would be gobbled up by independent bloggers on the internet.

but, trudeau doesn't really want a diversity of sources - he wants to capture the industry, and use it to his advantage, much as his predecessor didn't want to shut down the cbc, so much as he wanted to take control of it (and did).

if harper's attempt to control the state media was frightening in it's authoritarianism, what do you say about trudeau's attempt to control private sector media?

as is the case with so many things right now, this is a serious issue in search of a serious policy maker to tackle.

this is a sad, embarrassing day to be a canadian.

i mourn for the loss of my country.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-venezuela-embassy-1.5159498

this appears to be a fact-based analysis of bernie's historical income sources and levels, and how many houses he's owned. and, it's actually rather flattering to him.

the idea that it is anti-semitic is desperate and wrong and should not be repeated further, as it harms the credibility of people making the claim.

you sound stupid, stop saying it.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/05/24/bernie-sanders-millionaires-226982

this is a projecting article, and i pointed this out weeks or even months ago.

i don't think the data is there, yet. but, this is what the establishment wants - it wants you to support warren instead of sanders, and it wants you to do that because her policies don't threaten it.  they've been setting this up from the start.

she does not support single payer health care, and her industry reforms are all in the form of setting up bodies that can be easily captured to avoid serious oversight.

she's exactly what the bankers want, right now - and that's why she gets such glowing media praise.

the establishment candidate is not joseph biden, and in fact they don't like him. the establishment candidate is elizabeth warren.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/06/as-sanders-reprises-greatest-hits-elizabeth-warren-is-surging

this is very silly, at this stage in the race.

in order for her to win the riding, she'd have to swing conservatives. ndp voters aren't going to be happy with her record on things like marijuana legalization, breathalyzers and assisted dying; conservatives might be, but they're viciously partisan, so it's a non-starter.

i actually think she would have probably been a liability in that riding to the liberals; i wouldn't have voted for her as a liberal, even before snc.

we will have to see who else ends up running. but, she will probably play spoiler, it's just not clear yet to whom.

https://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/jody-wilson-raybould-has-the-lead-over-trudeaus-liberals/

the liberal party of the past would have told the americans that it would only support regime change in venezuela if it were upheld by a security council vote, in which case it would join the alliance produced by the global governing body. and, if global consensus could not be reached, we would withhold our active support - although they could still buy weapons and intelligence from us if they insist, and the price is right.

i want to be clear: i'm not saying that the liberals of the past would have rejected regime change outright, and am in fact rather explicitly pointing out that they wouldn't have. what i'm pointing out is that they would have rejected the idea that the americans have the right to act unilaterally, and outside of international law - and rather pointed to the united nations as the body that has the sole right to make these decisions. our historical liberal party would have then stuck to the decision made by the global body, with little wavering on the point.

and, why would they have done this? because they understood that a world order where the americans can use their military arbitrarily puts us at grave danger. they didn't care about iraqi or vietnamese or venezuelan civilians. no; don't think that, you're missing the point. what they cared about was ensuring that a rules-based international order existed that would prevent the americans from doing things like blockading the juan de fuca strait, or seizing the tar sands or invading and/or bombing quebec. if they can bomb vietnam or iraq or venezuela whenever they want, and without answering to anybody, why can't they bomb us under equally flimsy pretexts?

well?

why can't they?

what the sitting liberal government has done is abandoned this leveraging or balancing approach in favour of full on brown-nosing. the new principle at work in canada-us relations is that we're best off sucking up as best we can, in hopes of generating special treatment. so, we are to go out of our way to demonstrate that we're really the bestest of friends, and always were.

this is a continuation of a change put in place by the harper government.

and, it's failing.

because it's absurd and transparent and disingenuous, and ultimately irrelevant - trump doesn't care if you want to be his friend or not.

people will look back at the wisdom of our foreign policy in the second half of the last century, and wonder what caused canada to lose it's intelligence, starting in the mid 00s. and, the answer is at the root of so many of our problems: we decided against educating our children.

let's get the basic facts on the table: there were no canadian troops in vietnam or iraq, although we did provide peace-keeping or training forces after the fact. the reason we did not participate in these invasion forces has nothing to do with pacifism or anti-war rhetoric, but was rather solely because the invasions were not agreed upon by the united nations.

chretien has been crystal clear from the start that he would have sent troops to iraq if the united nations had backed the invasion, and we have a testable way to demonstrate the accuracy of this claim, because he did send troops to afghanistan, under the united nations mandate.

this is not an original idea that i'm espousing, but is rather the central thesis of any book written after the second world war on canadian foreign policy. i'm not letting anything out of the bag. the americans understand our position, or at least what it used to be. and, if you don't understand what i'm saying, then you don't know what you're talking about - it's that basic, that fundamental, to canadian foreign policy.

our position on venezuela is consequently a dramatic break from our historical position, because it for the first time in our history (as a british colony until 1982, and a sovereign state since) acknowledges the primacy of the monroe doctrine, over the supremacy of the un charter. that does not mean that it is the first time that we've aligned with the united states, and it clearly is not. but, it is the first time we've acted as a client state, disinterested or unaware of our own interests, and focused solely on the promotion of washington's, in the hope we'll get some kind of reward from the white house. we have never, ever, ever done that before. at all.

it is perhaps naive to ask the government to investigate.

but, what else do you do?

i don't know when we're going to come to terms with what is happening.

and, it is even very possible that valcourt doesn't actually know.

but, the evidence is pretty clear: there is some clique or agency within the canadian government that is, in fact, attempting to systemically exterminate the indigenous population by targeting the women, who continue to disappear at alarming rates.

that fits the definition of genocide, in my view.

but, nobody knows who or what is organizing this - it's covert, and shrouded in mystery. there are no released documents, no conspiracy theories, no secret csis plans - just all of these females that disappear after being taken into custody, with no explanation or further elaboration as to why.

i was in loose communication with the sisters in spirit when i lived in ottawa, and i've looked into this. one of the more distressing pieces of information that you see when you look at the data is that it is frequently the case that the last person that the missing person was seen with was a police officer.

the truth is the opposite of what valcourt is saying: the report is a cover-up.

everybody that's looked into this knows what the truth is, but nobody wants to state it, and it's not stated in the report, either.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/valcourt-mmiwg-report-1.5159437

i guess i had to catch up on sleep this weekend; i've been sleeping since friday night, awaking only to eat.

i could blame it on the weather but there's probably a better answer: i went to four parties last week and smoked a lot of cigarettes at them. i don't smoke when i'm at home, so i've been thrown back in withdrawal. nicotine is a physical addiction...

there is no possibility that i'm going to start smoking habitually again, but that could go a good ways to explaining why i'm so tired right now.

i need to get up, though. i need to clean, i need to do some writing. coffee, it is.

but, nothing has changed: i'm still sorting through concert listings and trying to plan a good trip to london and/or toronto to file, some time in the middle or the end of the summer.

i'm going to call the oiprd on monday morning and chew them out.

this is just a reminder: i have until mid-september to file the human rights complaint, and if i have to wait until then, i will. there are no time frames around the other suits.

the longer that it takes for the oiprd to get it's review completed (and i'm still waiting. it's now over two months since they agreed to the review.), the worse off they'll look in the eyes of the judge. it was supposed to be done by mid-april....

there's a few things canadian politicians don't do.

- they don't talk about baseball. ever. that's instant death. and, the same rule ought to apply to basketball.
- they don't refer to americans using terms like "us" or "we".
- they don't drink american beer.
- ...and they don't launch political initiatives using references to historical american policies.

this is what i want to hear the ndp talk about, not some "green new deal".

https://leapmanifesto.org/en/the-leap-manifesto/

and, you'll notice that it is very canadian in a lot of ways. that's important, because we're not trying to rebuild a rust belt that we don't have, we're trying to fundamentally change how we see the world around us.

if jagmeet singh wants to be taken seriously, he should start by forgetting about parroting the american propaganda (itself not very inspiring. are we going to elect the ndp so they can have a non-binding resolution of no substance defeated on the house floor? this is empty politicking, and smart leftists can see through it.) and instead giving this national treasure we have named naomi klein a call.

remember when she proposed something like this four years ago?

how did the ndp react?

so, why should anybody take this horribly vague "new green deal" farce seriously, an idea created in a foreign country, when they won't act on a detailed plan presented by their own very real party apparatchik?

no. the fact that they're walking down the american path rather than our own is evidence that they're lying through their teeth - as they always do.

it's taken some time for it to come out as robust, but you really are looking at a distinct liberal--->green swing, here, with continued stagnation from both the ndp and the conservatives.

right now, the liberals are going to lose because they're bleeding support to the greens.

the ndp is a tainted vessel; there is no future for them, after the notley fiasco. i've been arguing for years that they're usually worse than the liberals when they actually win, but after oil queen notley, they have about as much credibility as the old parties, now - the jig is up, it's time to walk away. so, the goal for everybody on the left in this election needs to be to have the greens beat the ndp, outright - both in votes and in seats.

the liberals and conservatives are so similar at the federal level at this point, that it doesn't really matter which one wins. the focus needs to be more about the future of the left, and to have the greens repositioned as the actual protest party in the country.

i wouldn't bother taking much of what he says seriously, frankly.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/jagmeet-singh-climate-change-green-party-1.5157591

this is the relevant precedent:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreux_Convention_Regarding_the_Regime_of_the_Straits

canada's attempt to control the northwest passage as a purely "internal waterway" is inconsistent with international law and doomed to failure.

rather, the international law on the topic should lead to an agreement similar to the one that governs the bosporus, where the turks maintain some rights to inspection but ultimately are forced to allow for free passage.

a reasonable person would ask the following reasonable question: is there a way to travel between greenland and alaska (or russia) without transiting canadian waters? and, there is not actually a way to do this. it would not be reasonable to conclude that, because there is no way to do this, canada should benefit from the ownership of the straits; rather, a reasonable person would recognize that our monopoly over the area requires us to allow access to passing vessels, subject to very limited and measured expressions of sovereignty. and, we are expected to behave reasonably.

the issue of resource exploration is a different one, and we are on much firmer ground there, although we shouldn't actually exploit it.

i was really exhausted today...

maybe it's the weather. maybe i just needed to catch up.


i think i'm up, now, and i need to focus on end of the month things like cleaning before i can sit down and start writing those reviews,

in the meantime, am i going to go to a hip-hop show in detroit?

no.

not a chance.

have fun, though - hope it works out.

to put it another way...

the reason el club was successful was that it tapped into a lucrative market that opened up after the magic stick changed formats, from a rock/punk club into an urban club. the magic stick has had problems attracting people since then, and has quietly started booking rock shows again in the larger theatre downstairs.

with the demise of el club, a large and lucrative market for a rock bar in downtown detroit is again on the table.

this is a huge opportunity...

it just needs a more responsible operator.

there's actually a sort of a pattern, here.

these venues set up in detroit and, because they are capitalist enterprises that are ultimately trying to make money, they make marketing decisions to try and appeal to the people that have money to spend, which, in detroit, is going to mostly be people past a certain age - and these people are either going to be mostly white, or mostly asian. i mean, if you really want to make money in detroit, or most other places, then go full asian...

then, the community - which everybody knows is overwhelmingly black - starts complaining that the programming doesn't appeal to them, is racist, etc, when the truth is that they're just trying to make money and just trying to appeal to where the money is.

but, people mostly aren't racist anymore (i understand that this doesn't apply in this specific case.), it isn't accepted socially in any context anywhere, and nobody wants to be seen as racist, so they listen and adjust and try to make the programming more appealing to broader demographics in order to try and prevent the pr fallout that comes from everybody thinking you're a fucking racist, even while knowing that they made the choice they made in the first place for good financial reasons.

then, once they've made their programming adjustments to be more inclusive, the thing that actually happens is that the place empties out; the people that used to go there are no longer interested, and there's just not enough disposable income in the market they're trying to tap into, which is why they didn't go after it in the first place. so, they lose money, and they either close or have to find a way back to where they were.

if i was an asshole i'd say fine: white people out of detroit. they don't want us here, let's go. but, i know that this is what caused the city's problems in the first place, it's just been inverted. what we used to call white flight has been converted into black slight; what was once a bunch of white people fleeing the scary black areas has become those black areas erecting fences and saying "this is ours". and, it's not any better when the blacks are pushing the whites out than it was when the whites were trying to escape.

there will be another attempt to set up a rock venue in downtown detroit, and it will have a mostly white audience when it happens. i just want to stress the importance of being racially sensitive from the start, in understanding that the person or group that does this next is walking into a situation that is already damaged from so many decades of conflict, that you can't start from a point of mutual understanding and that you have to take special steps to reach out from the start.

but, we want this to work, in the end. we don't want segregated communities, and we don't want ghettos.

it's an empirical question, people. and, if empiricism bothers you then walk away - it's all i have for you.

here's the link to the events at the club. go ahead and sort through it and see what sells out and what's mostly empty.

https://www.facebook.com/elclubdetroit/events/

the article suggested white 20-somethings, but the bar was actually geared more towards white 30 and 40 somethings. they were bringing in grunge bands & alternative rock acts - some of them influenced by the music of the 90s, and some of it literally the music from the 90s. the melvins show was famously so ridiculously packed that it got canceled as a fire risk; this was the 80s seattle band that kurt cobain cited as his biggest influence.

but, i'll draw attention to two specific shows. one is an east coast no wave band called a place to bury strangers, and the other is a popular young rapper called chief keef. the place to bury strangers show is at the end of july and is sold out; the chief keef show is in mid june and there are still tickets available.

does that mean that a place to bury strangers is more popular than chief keef? well, that would be an absurd proposal. chief keef is a mainstream act, that has cracked the billboard 200. a place to bury strangers is an underground rock band, and their last two records don't even have wikipedia pages.

the venue is all ages - and makes a point about it.

given that detroit is 80% black, and chief keef is a big star, why can't he sell out a 300 person bar in southwest detroit? and, why can this underground rock band from new york do so with ease?

and, you can point to the systemic racism - and i'll agree with you - but you're just exacerbating the point, because you're articulating a real problem, and then rejecting the only possible solution.

none of this excuses the alleged behaviour, and that's not what i'm trying to do - if the allegations are even 20% true, he should never be allowed to set foot in the bar ever again. but, there's this undercurrent that the community doesn't want a white bar with people coming in to spend money - it wants a black bar that reflects the tastes of the community. and, the problem is that it doesn't make any economic sense, at least not until you can get the people that live there more disposable income.

i mean....

i get that this guy was being a jerk. and, good riddance. fine.

but, detroit can be frustrating when it comes to this, too. i've never seen a city go so far out of it's way to try and stunt investment.

so, the concern is that people from out of town (many who are white) are coming into the area and spending money. most cities actually go out of their way to design economic stimulus plans because they want that, they don't argue that it's "pushing out the local residents" (many who are black). now, i grasp that the way this guy was doing this appears to actually have been literally pushing out local residents by underpaying or not paying them at all, and bringing in workers that lived elsewhere - and no city would want that either. what everybody ought to want is a scenario where you create economic projects that bring in people from out of town (sometimes called tourists), who then spend their money in the local economy, which is then distributed to the locals, who then have money to spend on what they want to spend it on. that's called stimulus, or investment and it's what you're supposed to want, if you're a vaguely leftist liberal keynesian type. what they seem to want is loans for small businesses, while acknowledging that there's no market for what they're selling, because the poverty rate is structural.

what i'm getting at is what everybody knows: if they set up a bar designed to appeal solely to the local residents, it's going to fail, because they don't have the disposable income. in order to get the disposable income, you need to do things that create jobs - and then you need to find ways to attract people to spend money to pay the workers doing those jobs. then, once they've made some money, they can buy a venue, and put on shows for a local population that has disposable income from the employment created by the outside investment. detroit refuses to get this - it wants the end product without building it. this is just another example.....

i wish they would have tried to unionize or something rather than walk out, because the best outcome for everybody in the short run would have been for el club to keep being el club, and have it's profits better distributed amongst the workers, who could then use them to build the economy they want.

if the bar fails in the end, the neighbourhood loses a substantial income source, and everybody is worse off.

fwiw, the artist that i saw there on saturday - actress - happens to be both british and black.

that doesn't have much to do with why i was there, but it does happen to be actually true.

most of what i saw there were white rock musicians, because that's where they played, because it's where the best sound system was. but, the thing is that detroit is like 80% black, and rock music has a 90% white audience. so, any rock bar anywhere in detroit is going to come up to the same basic contradiction, unless you put it in a suburb like ferndale, which is kind of a shitty deal. it's a lot easier to put the thing downtown.

i guess the answer is to listen better.

but, i mean, i don't have a lot of patience for wage theft, either. if i knew what was going on, i would have  brought the iww in.

i'm hoping they can save the sound system somehow....you don't want that going to waste....

that article actually makes me wonder about what happened to me that night at the bar in february, 2017 where i ended up with a concussion and assumed it was an accident.

hrmmn.

this is very similar to what i heard the other night, so i guess it checks out.

if he's gone, he's gone.

but, the venue is still too small. which, i mean....it's great in the right circumstance. it's just a question of booking the right acts for a small space, and acknowledging that it's not the right space for others.

https://www.metrotimes.com/table-and-bar/archives/2019/02/25/new-ownership-takes-over-el-club-after-founder-accused-of-wage-theft-and-racial-discrimination

i heard some gossip about the situation at el club last night.

what i heard was third hand and one perspective, and i'm not willing to act on it until i hear some more information. but, whatever is happening at the location, it is clearly either scaring people off or pushing them out.

while i don't want to support a bad venue, at the end of the day, i'm going to go to where the bands are playing. and, i want to point something out about el club: it's actually a very small venue.

there's a sign on the door that says capacity: 305.

everything else aside, the sound in the club is good, and it at least ought to be a solid venue for a smaller act to play, if the issues can work themselves out. but, if you're an out of town band, and you think you can fill up a 300 person venue easily, then, everything else aside, i'd suggest you look towards a larger venue, because you're going to sell out el club very fast, and then everybody loses - you sell less tickets, people can't get in and the people that do go end up squished together.

what the city of detroit needs is an el club that can fit 500-600 people in it. what it has are the majestic and st. andrew's. and, the fact is that the culture at el club is no longer that different than the ones at these larger venues.

so, everything else aside, i'd request you think about picking the larger venue, if you think you can sell out el club.

stop for a second.

what are the historical parallels to a character such as osama bin laden? i've compared castro to mithridates eupator, but the pontic rebel is only one in a long line of roman hostis publicus - many of whom modern historians claim never actually existed, or were otherwise so dramatically exaggerated by the roman propaganda that they might as well have never actually existed.

sorting through propaganda, and validating or invalidating it, is a major part of a historian's job description. it is a substantial part of what a historian actually does.

so, i want you to contemplate a very real possibility - that future historians may actually argue that there never was anybody named osama bin laden. and, given the evidence they have before them, it may be the most reasonable deduction.

i will reiterate: this discussion is not currently in the realm of discourse, because the dearth of evidence is so staggering. i would like to be able to have a discussion and/or debate about who was responsible, but i need the government to release it's evidence before i can do that. all any of us can do is speculate, one way or another. the difference between my position and the mainstream position is simply that i am pointing out that the entire accepted narrative is purely speculative, and deductively equivalent to any conspiracy theory. but, then i'm taking a step back and saying "we can't do this. we don't have the basic facts.".

so, i will at least stand with the conspiracy theorists in requesting that the government finally release it's dossier, if for historical documentation rather than anything else. i mean, you don't think that historians 300 years from now are going to think that oswald acted alone, do you? there's enough time now, from that event, to understand that what we are told, and what so many of us continue to believe, is not what history will record.

but, i will lay something down fairly assertively: it is hard for me to understand how this happened without the aid of some kind of state actor, whether it was inside the country or outside of it.

so, to be clear: what that means is that if i do end up supporting the update bill in the end then that doesn't mean that i all of a sudden support nafta.

there's no contradiction in supporting the update package, and continuing to work to rewrite or dismantle the deal. and, if bernie wins, i would hope he pushes to renegotiate.

so, i may decide that this is better and be pragmatic about it, but i am sure that i won't decide that it's good enough, or stop agitating for change.

and, i have been clear for a very long amount of time that i am categorically opposed to intellectual property rights.

do i support the new trade agreement?

of course not, or at least not in absolute terms; this is still nafta, and i've been opposed to nafta for 25 years. that hasn't changed, and the reasons for opposing nafta haven't changed. what's changed is that the liberals and ndp have both swung hard to the right, and are expressing support for something that they used to oppose. i'm still where i always was.

but, the issue before us is not whether we can rip up nafta or not, it's whether we're going to accept the precise provisions, and i haven't seen enough of a close analysis yet to determine whether i think the positives are going to outweigh the negatives.

i mean, i've seen some language about labour standards that i like, and some language about intellectual property rights that i don't like.

the final text of the bill is not yet clear, so i don't know. i may support the revisions to the deal, in the end, while still opposing nafta, overall - or i may decide that the strengthened enforcement of intellectual property rights is more dangerous than the increase in labour standards is worth.

we'll see what the american congress comes up with.

we need to put the process on hold.

you can't be signing deals with an unreliable partner, and the united states is currently an unreliable partner. that is the language we should be using: we cannot rely on you to keep your word, america. and, we need to send a clear message to the americans that if they don't clean up their act then we're not interested in signing further deals with them.

https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2019/05/31/no-warning-for-trudeau-of-trumps-latest-tariff-threat.html

actually, i think this is completely absurd and preposterously tyrannical; we can't have the government going in and snooping around in your social media sites and firing you because they don't like your friends. that's despotic.

i hope that he sues for wrongful dismissal, and the court lays down some proper restrictions on what the government is allowed to do and not do, here.

https://globalnews.ca/news/5334013/the-commissionaire-former-door-guard-fighting-rcmp-allegations/

i watched something on lady grey this morning when i came in, and had to take some time to recollect myself. my rationalism is pretty cold, and i understand that the state is power and needs to put down rebels in order to keep being the state, but i have a general soft spot for children in my third law reality. it was never her fault. really. so, is it really the low point of english culture, of british civilization? it might be. for all the depravity that happened under monarchy and feudalism, and under the reign of this particularly murderous monarch, there must be very few documented executions of children.

anyways.

i was late for pile, but they were also unfathomably early. piii-ile! i figured they'd come on at 23:00, earliest, but they were a quarter done when i get there a few minutes after ten. the opening bands must have been very short sets. alas.

they let me in for free again, at least. 

i was just late. no reasons. i think i caught most of it; it seemed to be exclusively selections from the new record, and was good for what it was. and, i got some good rants out in the smoking section before i left.

i need to fast for a blood test tomorrow, so i don't know how useful i'm going to be for the rest of the night/morning, but i could conceivably get some reviews in. or not. i'm not overly focused on it at the moment.

it seems like trudeau tends to agree most with the last person he spoke with.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/pence-vp-trudeau-nafta-trade-ratification-1.5155777

i mean, if it's supposed to be a consolation prize, i don't want it.

if they win, can we trade the trophy to get the stanley cup back?

canada has an nba franchise?

whatever.

so, i don't know yet.

i think i have a good idea of where i'd want to go if i go, but i'm not sure if i'm going anywhere, yet. it's going to depend a lot on how the weather shapes up over the next few days.

right now, i'm going to take a nap and then i'll get up and eat and start planning the day.

i identify as gen x because i don't want to be thought of as a millennial, and that isn't an empty statement. if you think people in the 35-55 age demographic have much at all in common with people in the 15-35 age demographic, you're simply wrong. for example, i am not a digital native; my only access to a computer until i was about 15 or so was in the computer lab at school. not only did i not have a cell phone in high school, but almost nobody had one until *after* i'd graduated university. i did not grow up listening to electronic music or hip-hop, but rather grew up listening to rock music from the 70s-90s. all of my cultural references and perspectives exist from the period before the technological revolution took over, and i had to adjust to it just like everybody else that is older than me did. so, i am very, very, very different than a millennial, and you're just going to get bad data if you try and lump me in with them.

am i more like a boomer then? no. as a cultural stereotype, they're fucking awful, selfish people. i mean, they're not all assholes, but being gen x in a lot of ways is defined by a reaction against the nihilistic, hedonistic, corporatist commercialism that defined the boomer generation.

i'd actually make the opposite argument - i'd argue that millenials are more like boomers than gen xers are, and that if you want to do this right, you need to skip generations, because we're all reacting against each other. i actually feel a stronger level of affinity with the parents of the baby boomers than i do with either the baby boomers or the millennials; this is less about young v. old and more about being squeezed between the depravity of the past and the depravity of the future.

if you ask a boomer they'll tell you the same thing, about how they had to rebel against their parents, and then get outgrown by their teenaged kids, who were yelling at them to grow the fuck up by the time they turned 15. and, you will no doubt hear the same thing from millennials, who find themselves frustrated by their children's cynicism and realism - which is something i'm looking forward to.

so, don't walk down this path of trying to separate the culture, or the voters, into young v. old. that's always been wrong; you need to skip generations, because the kids will always reject their parents in favour of their grandparents.

i thought freedom gas was what happened when you have too mean freedom fries.

they'll need to do a lot more than this to ketchup to the russians.

it's a flatly stupid idea that makes no economic sense under any sort of trade theory and is defined solely by american hubris and arrogance, and that's all there is to it.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/department-of-energy-refers-to-natural-gas-as-freedom-gas.html

i will be posting reviews for the last two weeks shortly, but i need to figure out if i'm doing anything this weekend or not yet, first.

this is the right approach, although i will tell you what the right answer is: they need to accept a need for greater water management, one way or the other.

so, maybe you abandon a few areas to the river, but that's a first step and not a last one - you still need to accept that there is going to be more water in the river more often, and find a way to engineer an answer to it.

in windsor, we need to install a modern sewer system and the council is just dragging it's heels on the reality of it. ottawa is going to need better infrastructure to control the river, and it knows how to do it, it has a complex series of locks as it is, it just needs to do the proper surveying of the region in order to figure out where to build what.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/jim-watson-doug-ford-letter-2017-209-floods-1.5154457

i mean, take a look at some of this "fake news".

you don't think we can teach our kids to be able to spot this, to figure it out? then, you have a pretty low level of respect for human cognition, don't you? why not throw away the whole charade, then, and just install a technocracy? we're too stupid to make the right choices, anyways.

i point this out pretty regularly: it was jefferson that argued that you need an informed populace for democracy to make any sense. if you're going to condemn voters to ignorance as a bunch of hapless idiots that need to be conditioned to make the right ballot choice, then you're not really a believer in the principle of democracy, you're just a vulgar gramscian, trying to come up with a sneaky way to manipulate voters into doing what you want them to; you're a machiavellian tyrant, you're not a democrat. we need to be systemic about this, but the purpose has to be in ensuring that voters have the cognitive tools to make an informed, self-interested choice. that's democracy. these other ideas are not.

i am fully confident that a well-educated populace will make the right choice; in fact, so are the oligarchs, and that's why they won't educate us.

don't fall for that; fight for education, not censorship.

we do not have a crisis in social networking.

we have a crisis in critical reasoning.

no.

listen.

this is ideological...

i'm an anarchist, so i believe in collective ownership of property, which is the definition of actual anarchism, but being an anarchist also means that i'm not in support of nanny state policies that try and control people's access to information, how they think or how they act. if i wanted any of that, i'd just be a communist; it is mostly speech issues that are the reason i'm an anarchist and not a communist.

what we need is better media literacy, and better critical thinking skills. as a culture, on both sides of the north american border, we have been trying very hard for generations to eliminate our critical thinking skills. now, we've come up against a technology that is demanding us to be better thinkers, and we're failing to do it, and we're failing to do it because we're not being educated properly. we need to come to terms with the errors we've made in the neo-liberal period, and reverse the cultural decline in the promotion of individuality, of independent thought.

so, i do not support restrictions on social networking; i support a return of critical thinking in the education system. and, it is not a minor concern - it is a very strong ideological break point that you are on one side of and i am on the other side of.

i will stand with the free speech activists, as i always have.

https://fair.org/extra/lie-the-sandinistas-wont-submit-to-free-elections/

i will not be supporting charlie angus when jagmeet singh is forced to resign in the fall.

https://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/9395856-charlie-angus-trudeau-government-pushing-for-action-on-tech-giants/

here's a pot calling a kettle black.

yikes.

you can't make up stuff like this; it's in the "too surreal for the onion" category.

and, if this is the approach the government wants to take, it will need to change it's spokesperson in order to generate any sort of credibility whatsoever.

hearing this from freeland cannot be interpreted any way other than as a bad joke; she has absolutely no credibility, whatsoever, at all - and it's 100% entirely her own fault, for excreting such an immensely large volume of completely irredeemable, absolute and total bullshit.

the chinese are right to ignore her.

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/chrystia-freeland-canada-china-michael-kovrig-spavor-detained_ca_5ced7e8de4b009400937d74d?ncid=other_trending_qeesnbnu0l8&utm_campaign=trending

yeah.

literally run an actual international banker.

for fuck's sakes.

https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2019/05/28/liberal-insiders-looking-at-mark-carney-as-trudeaus-successor.html

because sri lanka is a bastion of free expression and democracy, a place that backwards countries like canada and the uk should strive to be more like in their approach towards civil liberties.

if we only we were more like sri lanka....we can dream, we can hope...one day...if we try really hard....

what an idiotic, absurd farce.

bravo to zuckerberg and sandberg for refusing to give these buffoons the time of day.

and, i will lead the street protests, myself, if i wake up to a facebook ban in this country - a premise that i am not actually taking seriously.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/facebook-grand-committee-tuesday-1.5152436

i hope they increase welfare rates and subsidized housing availability to compensate, because this is a formula to increase the poverty rate.

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/alberta-youth-minimum-wage-kenney_ca_5ced628be4b0bbe6e334411b?ncid=other_trending_qeesnbnu0l8&utm_campaign=trending

tornadoes happen when hot air slams into cold air, which is why they happen in transitional periods of the year. so, will climate change produce more tornadoes? well, that depends on if it produces more extreme temperature gradients, and that's a very specific question that is more regional than global.

hurricanes, on the other hand, are caused by very hot surface temperatures over open bodies of water. it is a complicated and dangerous thing to do, as there are so many other factors, but the research that exists does suggest a substantive predictive correlation between rising open temperatures and the frequency and intensity of hurricanes. you can make a very crude but very real connection here: more hot water = more hurricanes. that's legit.

you can't do that with tornadoes, because it's not about the global increase in average temperatures but rather about how large the difference in temperature is between competing air masses.

so, let's say the average summer temperature in your region increases by five degrees celsius, but you still find yourself subject to extreme blasts of winter cold. then, you'd get more tornadoes where you live, as the difference between your hot and cold weather extremes is getting larger, which is what causes the tornadoes. on the other hand, if you live in a region where the winter temperatures increase by a large amount, but the summer temperatures remain moderated by the ocean or something else, then you'll see a decrease in the number of tornadoes.

if climate change works out the way the models suggest, and models have margins of error, then i would suspect that the american midwest would see a decrease in the number of tornadoes, which would get pushed further north into canada. the reasoning behind this is that the higher levels of latent heat in the south would act as a greater buffer for the polar winds. the tornadoes would not stop, they would just move further north. but, the south should not get excited, as that means more hurricanes, instead - and, subsequently, more flooding in the mississippi drainage system.

globally speaking, i wouldn't expect an increase in the amount of heat trapped in the atmosphere to create larger temperature gradients overall, unless it is happening in conjunction with something else (like a solar minimum), so much as i would expect to see a difference in the overall distribution of tornadoes. some areas would see less tornadoes, others would see more; the sum total of tornadoes, globally, would remain roughly constant.

it's one thing to run your mouth off on social media where nobody really cares what you say and whether it's true or not, but you expect a congress person to actually take the time to do some proper research if she wants to actually be taken seriously by actual adults.

i remember getting asked to play "marco polo" when i was a kid, and thinking they were talking about exploring china. can't we play gulliver's travels, instead?

wait. why are you all running amok?

it actually took me years to figure out what the fuck they were even talking about.

(i just watched a silly documentary on marco polo who, of course, did not actually exist. at all.)

he should call up richard wolff, and make a big deal out of asking him for advice.

he is the expert, here.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2019/05/28/bernie-sanders-backs-policies-dramatically-shift-corporate-power-us-workers/

this article is based on 35 year-old propaganda that is relevant to almost nobody alive today.

the premise is that sanders ought to be in trouble because he supported a communist government in central america in the 80s, but sanders' position is that this wasn't a communist government, and he's right: it wasn't. sanders is even letting the right define the term "communist", which is far too generous, but at least allows for the debate to exist around defined terms; he is conceding the definition of "communist" as "unelected dictatorship", then pointing out that the sandanistas were actually a democratically elected government.

now, here's the thing: if you're like 80 years old, maybe you remember the talking points from the reagan administration and the propaganda from whatever the government news network was in the 80s. i think it was actually abc at the time. something like this might reactivate memories of ancient propaganda, and set you off like a manchurian candidate. it's possible.

but, to 90% of the voting population, the war in nicaragua is something you read about in a history book. and, guess what the history books say? the truth of the matter: that the sandanistas were democratically elected, and in fact very popular amongst the voting populace. it was their popularity that necessitated us intervention, because this is what america has been doing overseas for years: overthrowing popularly elected governments and replacing them with repressive dictatorships, like the contras.

now, you're going to try and counter my statements with some government lies, but, listen, that doesn't work anymore, because we're talking about history, and the books have already been written. the whole world knows this lie.

i'd encourage republicans to push this point; it will only help him, because the fact is that bernie was right.

but, what i'm more curious about is what anybody has to say about biden's role in iran-contra. that is a serious political liability.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/bernie-sanders-pro-sandinista-past-problem.html

and, just for the record: i have never at any point in my life ever listened to anything labelled 'ebm'.

i liked the punk rock component of industrial music, but was interested largely in the politics, not in the sexuality of it. industrial music was initially an outgrowth of the radical leftism in the punk movement. what you call 'ebm' was largely the undoing of this. all of a sudden, industrial music was about leather and black makeup, instead of radical leftist organizing - and if you're more interested in black lipstick than noam chomsky, or you don't even know what the fuck i'm even talking about, then we're simply not coming at this from the same perspective. i have absolutely no interest in that subculture at all.

it is true that genesis p'orridge was an important person in the early rave scene, but he was an old situationist, and he was just looking for a bunch of kids to radicalize. but, nonetheless, i would consider the outgrowth of actual techno to be more "industrial" than ebm is. i'll repeat that: techno music is a better evolution of the ideals underlying industrial music than ebm is.

but, in the 90s, when people used the term ebm, it was contrasted against something else: idm. you had what was called "electronic body music" that existed for the purposes of exploring hedonism and bohemianism through sex, drugs and empty commercialism. this was a very american means of expression, but i hated it to it's core. on the other hand, you had what was called "intelligent dance music" that existed for the purposes of exploring electronic sound design as an art form. this was a more european form, and actually primarily british during this stage, rather than german. my tastes in electronic music were defined by what was called "idm", and included an interest in artists like autechre, aphex twin and squarepusher.

so, if you thought i'd show up at an ebm show, you don't know me very well; if you knew me at all, you'd have known i would have stated a pretty vehement disinterest in the form.

the kind of industrial music i like is essentially a combination of techno and punk rock, in the sense that it combines the anarchist social values of punk rock with the music of techno. it has not really existed since skinny puppy's first break up in 1994.

again: i understand that it's warm in much of the rest of the...well, the world....right now, but the fact is that it is cold in eastern canada right now, and that includes detroit and chicago. further, we can argue about why the jet stream is the way it is right now, but it's clear enough that the reason we're experiencing what we're experiencing is that the jet stream is running unusually far to the south for this time of year, which is allowing colder arctic air to stream down to the lower latitudes. this arctic air is usually bottled up by this time of year, a process that has yet to happen this year. so, we can debate why this is happening [i claim that we're at the bottom of a solar cycle, and this is both predictable and quite 'normal'; you might argue for something else], but we know the mechanics of what's happening well enough - the jet stream is running lower than normal, this year.

the longest day of the year is june 21st. if this yearly process of bottling up doesn't happen soon, it might not happen at all - and this winter is going to be brutal as a result.

so, i will state this as clearly as i can: if you live north or east of detroit or chicago, do not be surprised if it doesn't really warm up at all this year, even while the city 50 miles south of you has another record warm year. there's a hard boundary asserting itself up the st lawerence right now, and the weather this year could be starkly, even frighteningly, different depending on what side of it you're on.

but, things can happen to shift the jet stream that are not related to the sun. remember: this isn't about measuring how much light the earth is being bathed within, so much as it's about magnets operating on the outside of the earth, which is tilted slightly away from the sun. so, the sun is only one input variable, and the actual shape of the jet stream will be determined by a complicated interaction of many, many variables, not only by one.

an active hurricane system could set the jet stream off, and at least give us some reprieve, although the solar condition right now would likely mean that this cold air would shift rather than retreat. so, if you get hurricanes in the right position in the ocean, you'll end up with the cold moving from toronto to calgary, and that would be better for everybody that matters.

that is probably the best we can do, this year.

but, i'm not predicting a deep minimum, i'm just pointing out the reality of a local one. the sun will be back soon.

if i were mark zuckerberg, i would be proud to be found in contempt of a parliament that shows nothing but contempt for the citizens it pretends to represent.

mark zuckerberg is not a canadian citizen, and owes our parliament absolutely nothing. he should raise the issue with his ambassador, who should strongly rebuke us for bullying a foreign citizen to raise cheap political points.

the parliament, and the ruling liberals, should be ashamed of itself.

and, with each stupid, hare-brained attempt to save itself from it's own abysmal failure at ruling, this dying government digs itself further into the notoriety of quite plausibly being the worst government the country has ever seen.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/facebook-contempt-parliament-1.5145347

the fact is that i'm pretty exhausted, even now. i'll be fine in a few hours, but i probably made the right choice. i may have started getting messy if i tried to push it much longer.

to be clear: the choice i had on sunday afternoon at 13:30, after staub, was to wait around until the next raft of parties started, which was really not until 22:00, although i would have snuck the shoegaze show in in the evening as i was waiting. if i had biked down to the diner for 14:00, and finished eating at 15:00 or 16:00, i would have almost certainly passed out as i was waiting for the shoegaze show to start, at 18:00. i would have had to have kept myself occupied in order to avoid passing out.

this is why i was hoping staub would run until at least 16:00. that way, i could dance away the afternoon, eat and hit the rock concert. alas...

on the way home, i was toying with the idea of eating at home and going back but i didn't even get that far; i crashed within seconds of getting in the house. i was legitimately exhausted. and, while i could have maybe slept from 14:00-20:00 and made it back out for 00:00, i didn't really seriously contemplate it.

so, i would have needed a short, free party to crash for the afternoon, to patch in, from around 15:00-18:00. but i'm double checking the after-parties schedule and sunday afternoon looks like it was actually a dead point. there were early morning shows that ended at noon, over-priced brunches, and some over-priced day parties. but, the only thing really happening was the festival, itself.

so, i can see what would have happened - i would have ended up trying to hang out at mocad or something and falling asleep at the table. then, i would have struggled through the shoegaze show and gone home, anyways.

but, i'm still relatively new to this, and they do the same shows every year, more or less. i can revisit this next time.

if i had skipped staub and left early, i could have been back for the freaklimate show, meaning i would have been looking at starting late on sunday night, then looking for an early morning party on monday, before going to day parties on monday, the monday night party and then probably not the early morning tuesday party. while the prospect of wasting five hours early on monday morning is probably easier than the prospect of wasting three hours later on sunday afternoon, it's still the same problem - and i'd no doubt be exhausted by the monday night show.

no. i like the idea of having the rock show on sunday night, but i'm also not exactly a big fan of either of those bands. i rather want to hope that somebody books something solid up against movement on the sunday, next year, and i'm able to find the logic for the extra push. i think i planned the right path, it just didn't work out.

it's also cold in detroit right now, and i knew that was going to be the case, and i think it had an effect on my thought process. if it was sunny and hot, rather than cold and rainy, i might have decided i can weather it out with a coffee in the park. but, you get that chill in your bones and start craving a blanket.

i know i can't win this mental battle; i might feel a little regret for coming home "early", but i suspect i'd have regretted going, too, as i'm not able to get up to the monday night show. i would have probably needed to sleep all day today, and not likely to get out again until tuesday. the question is whether i ought to be at the sunday show or the monday show, i guess. so, it really is a choice between one or the other, isn't it?

so, this year, i think i did what made the most sense. but, i'm hoping to pull this off that little bit better next year, to get at least one absurdly long day in....

i hope the weather co-operates, too. people are no doubt frustrated by the cold, right now.

and, of course, i was staunchly opposed to the invasion of iraq, as were most canadians, on the basis that it was illegal under international law, and threatened to erode the international global order, which it has done.

further, i have no memory of engaging with any media that suggested that saddam hussein had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks. my memory was that the media and government assigned the attacks to al qaeda, and the reason the united states invaded iraq was to dismantle the "weapons of mass destruction", which the international inspection teams were adamant did not exist, and for which no evidence was ever found to demonstrate their existence.

if there was ever a debate about invading iraq as retaliation for 9/11, i completely missed that. sorry.

for the record.

my initial hypothesis of the world trade centre attack was that it was an inside job. what i mean when i say that is that my initial feeling when living through the attacks was not "the united states is under attack", but instead "the united states military is launching a coup". so, that was my starting point, my initial condition, my base assumption.

however, i have never been involved with, organized with or even really communicated with any kind of "truther" movement. further, the minimal amount of information i've sorted through from these groups has largely struck me as a series of red herrings. broadly speaking, even if they could make their arguments convincingly, it wouldn't actually prove anything.

what are the actual facts, here?

1) the united states government has never released any kind of evidence that bin laden or al qaeda were involved in the attacks. strictly factually and legally speaking, the official position of the united states government - the hypothesis, stated without any proof, that a shady terrorist group called al qaeda blew up several buildings in downtown new york - is actually the most fully developed conspiracy theory in the history of conspiracy theories. no conspiracy theory has produced more media, or generated more speculation. but, there is absolutely no proof at all, whatsoever, for this claim.

2) while there are some inconsistencies in the government's story, it's hardly enough to prove they're lying.

3) the "truther movement" appears to be more interested in distracting from meaningful questions than generating meaningful answers. to state that they have failed to present a compelling alternate hypothesis would be an understatement.

4) the failure of the "truther movement" to articulate their argument compellingly does not mean they're wrong.

i am not going to kneejerk against "conspiracy theorists", or tarnish the concept of alternative research. i do not have a religious epistemology but a scientific one, meaning that i am not looking for absolute truth anywhere in existence, but rather for a series of constantly changing, constantly shifting approximations to reality. as we study and learn more about things, our understanding of them changes. historians, too, are constantly reevaluating evidence to uphold or deny the historical record, to try and figure out what is propaganda and what is actually true. the historical constant is not in any concept of absolute truth, but in the fact that governments are constantly lying to advance their own interests, meaning that the role of the historian is to question what a government says, not to accept it on face value. there is consequently a proper role for conspiracy theory in academic discourse, so long as it is approached using the scientific method. and, i'm actually going to label you a mindless idiot and slam the door in your face if you disagree with me about that. einstein, darwin, gallileo, marx - these were all conspiracy theorists in their day. understand that before you sharpen your knives; we need to collectively be more proactive in our critical thinking skills, to learn how to weigh evidence on our own, and not to rely on the dictates of official media and government narratives. our existence as a free thinking, scientifically-inquiring culture relies upon it.

so, in my mind, you don't win the argument by yelling "conspiracy theory". you need to be more rigorous than that - you need to cite evidence, you need to cite proof.

but, my analysis of the situation right now is that neither side of the debate has done that. the government's official conspiracy theory is no more convincing to me than the one presented by the truthers. neither argument passes basic scientific scrutiny, and neither argument would hold up in a court of law. it follows that the correct position to take on the topic is agnosticism; an honest observer would have to state that it is not at all clear who was responsible for the attack, and either hypothesis is equally valid until such a time comes as more evidence is revealed by the government to properly scrutinize.

the truthers have made a rather dramatic error, though, in trying to gather positive evidence that the government was responsible. short of finding direct electronic communication documenting the attacks - and if it was done from inside the government then these documents would exist in the proper agency - there was never going to be any convincing way to prove the government did this. these documents would need to be declassified before you could even have a meaningful conversation about the topic, and they will be one day, and we will no doubt learn that the truthers had a few decent insights, even if the smoking gun remains redacted. there are periods of byzantine history where the best way we can describe the existing historical record is to state that we know that records were destroyed and rewritten for that period; we can know that the history is wrong, without knowing what the actual history was, and therefore know that we can't know what actually happened. this may end up being the correct academic perspective in the long run - we may have to accept we'll never actually know.

i would recommend waiting for the government to actually release an unredacted version of their dossier before commenting further.

until then, both unproven hypotheses are equally valid - if you believe in science and evidence, and uphold critical thinking, and won't be intimidated by the senseless bully pulpit that is the corporate media.

these marijuana condensates floating around nowadays can be quite potent. how you react to a "dab" is ultimately a question of tolerance, but there is a possibility that you might overwhelm yourself and need some time to recuperate. 

if you're in a scenario like that, you don't need water, because you're not dehydrated. don't get me wrong: i like water as much as the next person. if you want some water, have some water. but, it doesn't take the edge off of the high; it's not a meaningful solution to anything.

a better idea would actually be coffee. but, there's ultimately not another option besides waiting it out.

so, if you find yourself knocked over after a dab, the reality is that you simply ingested too much thc too fast and now you're just simply too stoned to move and flatly need to wait for your body to process it.

the good news is that you can be quite confident it will pass relatively quickly. you're not likely to lose consciousness, to black out, to lose your memory or to otherwise lose your individuality as a conscious person, to become somebody else. it's more of a frustration than a serious danger, even if your body is clearly putting the brakes on in telling you that it can't process that much thc that fast.

the delivery mechanism is engineered for habitual users that don't get much out of smoking pot anymore. it's meant to be intense, and if you don't have the tolerance, you're going to get knocked down.

so, if you were worried about my well being or otherwise curious about why i seemed in a daze at around 6:00 this just past sunday morning, that's your answer. i wasn't overdosing on anything, i wasn't suffering from exhaustion or dehydration, i didn't need water (although i appreciate the offer) and i wasn't even drunk. rather, i found myself way too stoned after hitting some intense condensate and had to let it pass. that was all.

i recovered fairly well, actually, and was able to keep dancing until they closed marble at 13:00. i was still feeling that dab five hours after it happened though, which is an unusually long period for a marijuana high. so, i got distance from it after the initial intense reaction.

i'm not trying to scare anybody; in fact, i'd do exactly what i did a second time. i'm just reminding everybody that that shit is powerful, and the reaction i experienced is not unexpected. it really was just pot.

i had a good night, actually. actress was phenomenal, and while i wish the night was staggered a bit better i did manage to at least get a bit of everything i wanted to dance to.

saturday/sunday
23:00-02:00: actress [el club]
02:30-05:00: texture [marble]  [rubinstein, parasole]
05:15-?07:00?: art park  [intense dab @ ~ 6:00]
?07:15?-13:00: staub [marble]

if staub had gone on a little longer, i would have ended the night at one of these two spots:
18:00-00:00: basement & nothing [majestic]
00:00-07:00: freaklimate [salon]

but, the five hour wait was too daunting for me and i opted to get home, instead.

i'll be back out tomorrow afternoonish.

bernie's stance on iran is a ballot question, not a gaffe.

if you're that angry about it, you'll need to vote against it - because i can assure you that there are plenty of people that will very explicitly and very consciously vote against another war in the middle east.

friday:
20:00-21:00: detroit techno militia pre-party [bookie's]
21:30-22:00: prelude [northern lights]
22:30-06:30: modern cathedrals [tangent]

i should have showed up earlier and stayed at bookie's until 22:00, but the afternoon got thrown off waiting for a party i didn't go to to release the address, which ended up being too far from tangent to bounce between, and i was hoping to catch a different vibe at northern lights, which was more of a patio party than a dance club. i wanted to dance last night, but it might may have been nice to stop and listen to some modular synth noise in between aerobics sessions; i was hoping they'd end up in midtown or newtown, but they ended up in southwest, and it wasn't feasible.

besides that tweak - i should have went to bookie's earlier and stayed there later - i had a good, clear night and actually felt pretty refreshed when i got home, although i had no option but to sleep.

round two is either going to be extreme or absurd, depending on how it flows.

this was the best one.

i don't mean to pick on the catholics. really.

that wasn't even ridiculous or offensive at all.

this is ridiculous and offensive. and sacreligious, too.

i'm hoping to have a fun, painless weekend. y'all know i'm there to dance. but, the world is full of assholes, so i'm going to lay down a pre-emptive strike.

let's hope it doesn't come to this, let's hope nobody decides i'm an easy target to strike and goes after me.

but, we'll let this guy do the talking, if you decide you want to pick on me.

again: i felt great this evening after getting some exercise in some warm weather, but this is being ruined by the second-hand smoke from upstairs. i can't understand how anybody could think it's a good idea to prescribe this for depression; all that smoking drugs all the time is ever going to do is make you feel like shit.

an actual doctor would tell you to get some exercise and some fresh air, not to do drugs and vegetate like a mushroom. the quackery is baffling. and, what's more baffling is how many stupid people out there are actually falling for it.

depressed? you don't need drugs. you need exercise. you don't need tar and smoke and carcinogens, you need clean, fresh air.

he went to work for a few days last week, then stopped going again. and, despite what he says, the source of the smoke is clearly his space, even if i can't prove it's actually him.

i'm going to wait a few more hours to turn the fan back on, but it's going to need to be on all day to clear the space out. i'm willing to utilize the fan as a kind of punishment for the time being: if he's going to stay up all night and smoke drugs in the house, i'll turn the fan on all day. if he stops or tones it down, i'll turn it off. and, i'll have to escalate as the situation worsens.

i have no sympathy for somebody that claims they have to do drugs because they're depressed - that is bullshit on every possible level.

the conservatives remain stagnant, but the liberal bleed in every direction - including, i will state again, to the people's party, as that is where those voters are moving from, not the conservatives - is getting to a crisis point.

the only thing that is preventing the liberals from completely collapsing at this point is the reality that the ndp is even less popular.

we're on the path to yet another accidental conservative minority, right now - or worse.

http://www.nanos.co/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Political-Package-2019-05-17-FR.pdf

so, this is apparently what happened to create a change in policy.

meanwhile, i had to purchase a bicycle in farmington hills and bike it back to town, then leave it locked at the blue cross building beside the renaissance centre, where it rusted up over two winters.

sanity prevailed in the end.

https://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/steely-nerved-steely-dan-fan-bikes-the-tunnel-makes-concert

but, there's a walmart at the next exit, and no large retailer can compete with that.

the mall should consider splitting it up into smaller stores.

https://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/lots-and-lots-of-interest-in-former-sears-store-at-devonshire-mall

it felt good to get some exercise in some warm weather today; it's been far too long. and, i am now hungry...

i looked at three bicycles today, and bought the third one. this is copied from the kijiji ad, and is the exact bike:

it's actually quite similar to the one i left in detroit, but it's maybe an upgrade all around: thicker tires, better gears, better brakes. i just need to get the seat up a tad, and it's going to ride like a dream.

$40. cad.

and, that's my new detroit bike.

i'll say this again: if there's something i've posted somewhere that you're confused by, please feel free to bring it up, and i'll try to make sure you understand why you're confused about it. i can only do so much to help you understand, but i can at least clarify any misconceptions you might have, if you're specific enough about the point that you've misunderstood.

test

i don't seem to receive text messages any more, either.

the mailto:deathtokoalas feature appears to have stopped working.

or been intercepted.

frustrating....

test

to state it tersely: what trudeau has done is brought back the house of lords. and, he's supposed to be a whig, too; it's quite shameful, really.

and, now we're going to have to abolish it.

this may seem like a strange debate outside of canada.

our bicameral legislature isn't modeled after the body in the united states, but is rather a direct evolution of the british system. so, we have a house of commons - a parliament - and something we call a "senate", which is really a house of lords. for decades, the house of lords came into disuse, reduced to patronage appointments for political expediency. and, it is true that it was a waste of money, but this was a minor concern in the larger scheme of things - reducing it to patronage appointments at least prevented it from being used to overturn the will of the house, which is the actual expression of democracy in the country.

the conservatives used to argue for an elected senate, but they haven't done that in a while. it is very quintessentially canadian of me to oppose this proposal, which is generally denigrated across the spectrum as an americanizing policy. our entire system of government was designed to try and prevent the gridlock that exists in the american system. i know that americans love their checks and balances in order to prevent tyranny, but, standing in canada, i'm willing to finger your broken system of government as the root cause of most of your social problems. i don't want to create a system where one house is fighting against the other all of the time. so, i am opposed to an elected senate for the reason that i don't want the gridlock and inefficiency inherent in the american system.

further, abolishing the senate would eliminate the only check that we have. we don't want the senate to actually do anything, except when it has to do something. again: this is very canadian of me.

but, a tanker ban is hardly the kind of pressing concern that needs to trigger an undemocratic seizure of the state, and an oil industry lobbyist is hardly the correct vehicle to overturn the democratic will of the country. the danger of maintaining the senate, always abstract and distant when it was kept in disuse, has now been made apparent and obvious, and freethinking peoples that uphold the primacy of the popular will must mobilize to prevent the country from falling further into tyranny.

the senate wasn't broken before, but it is now.

it must be abolished.

i used to argue that the senate wasn't broken, and there wasn't a need to fix it.

i have been starkly critical of trudeau's reforms, arguing that they were going to bring about a constitutional crisis, and lead to a need to make more dramatic changes. we've been slowing moving to this point....

as of this day forward, i am now officially aligning with the ndp on the senate: i am in favour of complete abolition.

this is not the kind of thing that happens in a democracy, it is the kind of thing that happens in a country like iran.

i am deeply embarrassed by what just happened.

what this is is a constitutional crisis.

nobody voted for this woman, and her undemocratic exercise of power flies in the face of everything that this country's democratic traditions stand for.

i would call on paula simmons to resign immediately, and for the trudeau government to immediately reverse all of the undemocratic reforms that have led to this disastrous outcome for canadian democracy.

she has not just broken the senate, she has broken her own dignity, and the country's own self-worth. congratulations canada: you're a backwards, despotic country with an unelected ruling class.

bravo.

https://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/no-i-havent-broken-the-senate/

if the rules are changing from global governance back to empire again, canada is going to need to shift from the role of arbiter to the role of agitator and provocateur - or lose it's sovereignty to a more dominant power, of which there is only one serious competitor.

i want to be clear: we can't accept this new new world order, whether it's being pushed down from the south or from the east. canada was a prime author of the rules-based system that came out of world war two, and as a part of the coalition that won the war, we helped write the rules in our favour. our sovereignty is a corollary of this; we will lose it if we return to an age of empires.

but, we have to understand it before we can react to it.

it does not appear as though the government has clued in yet, and it had better catch up pretty quick.

china does not interpret canada as a sovereign country, but rather as a client state of the american empire. they would expect us to conduct our relations through washington - just as they would expect washington to conduct relations with the chinese clients through beijing.

a regional governor does not meet with a foreign emperor; that would be inappropriate.

in fact, the chinese no doubt view the mere act of sending a delegation as insolent and worthy of punishment. if tibet or hong kong were to send a delegation directly to washington (that boat has already sailed in taiwan), the chinese would no doubt punish them for it.

china is an empire with imperial ambitions, and sees the world as empires with imperial ambitions do.

so, what does canada do? this is the old, hard problem in canadian politics: how do we balance our sovereignty with our geography? in the case of countries with different ruling philosophies, careful balancing acts are required and necessary. i think it should be clear to everybody that this isn't possible in the chinese case, as they are making a point to interpret us as a province.

canada tends to prefer discourse to conflict, but if the chinese get their way then we become a state. it's hard to see how there's any room for compromise.

the actual reality is that canada is probably better off cutting it's losses and trying to cause problems on china's periphery by creating stronger alliances with the koreans, the vietnamese, the japanese, etc. so long as the chinese insist that we are an american client that must communicate with them through washington, we should do what we can to increase the independence of the countries on the chinese periphery, and insist that we do not need to go through beijing to get to them.

but, the canadian government is delusional if it thinks there is any future of normalized relations between canada and china. they don't see us as an independent actor, and we're not in their sphere of interest or their sphere of influence - and this is the language being used by the chinese and americans right now, as they carve up the world without us.

we're not invited.

the truth is that i was hit on by both genders at mocad last week, and while it is unlikely that i'm going to go for a dude (and i think facial hair is revolting, remember - if you want to hit on me, please shave first.), there is absolutely no possibility at all, whatsoever, that i'm going to go for a female.

so, that girl had absolutely no chance. at all. zero. zilch.

and, that dude would have needed to shave, first - at least.

do you know how i actually react to the gpdr requirements, the pop-ups, the scripts that slow everything down, waste resources, kill bandwidth and just annoy the fuck out of everybody?

i have a javascript blocker in my taskbar. whenever i get the nag from the eu parliament (thanks. assholes.), i just prevent the page from running scripts and hit refresh.

i don't want to answer that question over and over again, and that's my primary issue here, as a voter - make the nagging stop. please.

i'd be more likely to vote for somebody promising to exempt canada from the eu rules than somebody promising to enforce them here.

if you don't want to share your personal information, don't upload it.

and, it should be up to the individual to manage what they're allowing through software, not up to the government to regulate it.

this is a job for firefox, not a job for the legislature.

but, i will reiterate: it is not the government's role or responsibility to protect a segment of a free citizenry from the free expression or speech of another section of it, and any suggestions that it is have no place in the discourse of a free and democratic society.

this is a non-starter.

if you want a guardian council, move to iran.

there's not a lot of details released so far, and, as i said before, it seems more like political rhetoric than actual policy - and again reflective of the alternate reality that this government exists within. i mean, who the fuck wants the government policing the internet? twitter?

it sounds to be me like they're trying to ruin the internet, and this is going to be horribly unpopular with everybody outside of the twittersphere, and probably cost them votes and maybe even seats.

but, as an aside, the extensive negotiation process enforced by the eugpdr every time you want to visit a website sure is absolutely fucking annoying and inconvenient, isn't it? can i not opt out of the eugpdr? i don't even live there.

you can't have "online privacy", it's a contradiction in terms. the internet is a public forum, and you need to treat it like one.

i guess i don't really care if people are paranoid about this, but i don't want it to inconvenience me in any way, and i'd like to have the option to just opt-in to data sharing, manage what i'm exposing myself to on my own and not be asked about it every thirty seconds.

https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2019/05/21/new-digital-charter-to-emphasize-canadians-control-over-personal-data.html

the difference is just that i understand that.

so, you think you have friends.

but, you don't.

none of us do.

what i learned a long time ago is that friendship is one of the many contradictions that are irresolvable within capitalism, and this is really just a question of maturity and life experience in getting your head around. i could even go so far as to define an adult as the following...

adult: a person that has experienced betrayal.

it's not a question of doing things differently, of changing yourself or of surrounding yourself with more pure people. it's a socio-cultural reality of the economic system we live in: friendship under capitalism is a joke, and you're a buffoon to suggest otherwise.

now, i don't want to be cynical about this, though. pointing out that we can't have friendship and capitalism at the same time isn't to doom friendship as a concept, so much as it is to present a pre-condition for it's realization. i mean, it's easy enough to see the truth of it: i'm too gentle for this, too lost in a set of discredited ideals. so, i'd be happy to be your friend, if i wasn't convinced you were trying to kill me.

as it is, i keep to myself because i know i'm too fragile, too vulnerable to exist.

i'm friendly. everybody knows that. but, i'll never trust you, and i'd ask that you respect that in not expecting me to.

what?