and, no - i'm not going to retract....concerns....about the legitimacy of the last election in ontario.

i don't want to do the research right now and find the sources - i'm too far behind on what i'm doing - but i will draw your attention to the curious fact that ford's approval rating a few months after he was elected was essentially the same as his approval rating a few months before he was elected.

if you were to collect this data and graph it, you'd get this weird normal curve, or parabola, depending on your analogy.

so, we're left with two ways to analyze the situation.

1) ford managed to dramatically increase his popularity exactly where and when he needed to, and then lost all the support he somehow gained immediately after he gained it.
2) bullllllshiiiiiiit.

given that he brought in the same people that were accused of doing this in the 2011 federal election, and it happened in the same places, i'm leaning towards 2).

and, i wonder.

what are these guys up to just right now, anyways?

i'm an openly trans person walking around in a city with a sizeable muslim minority.

i understand these numbers. they mirror my own experiences.

and, the left needs to stop ignoring them and start coming up with tactics to address them.

"but, it's his house."

yeah.

and he signed a fucking lease.

like, i just want to...

he smokes with the windows closed, and the shades drawn. he stays inside for days at a time. i see a stray butt here and there outside, but i can't prove anything. i'd have to do something stupid to get in and take a picture or something, and i'm obviously not going to.

it's just an absolutely absurd situation.

but, at least the gas is clearing out. before he lit up, all i could smell down here was the orange air fresheners. it was a pleasant change.

i want to stand with the people that are trying to get out of islam. my solidarity is with the apostates. fully. unwaveringly. that leads me to a position where i shouldn't oppose immigration itself, so much as i should actively work to convert muslims to atheism when they get here. and, in practice, that's how i actually act.

but, i know enough to be mindful of the possibilities of muslim voting blocs, and the threats they may pose to freedom in a secular democracy. and, at the end of the day, the people will speak, and when they do they must be listened to.

it's a careful line to walk.

and, it would be very helpful if the more responsible parties would take more responsible positions.

and, it's not a question of tolerating queers, either.

there's nothing wrong with being queer. what are you tolerating, exactly? consensual sex? that's not tolerance, it's the absence of oppression.

i mean, it's like saying that letting women vote is being tolerant. it's an abuse of language.

with islam, the language is properly defined, and you're talking about tolerating this huge list of things that are actually illegal in virtually every liberal democracy. you're talking about turning a blind eye to basic human rights for entire classes of people. i know that the newspeak is increasingly being indoctrinated, but it's incredibly challenging from an intellectual standpoint; we want the laws to be universal, to apply to everybody, to be void of these exceptions that harm people. and, it's a struggle to come face to face with it, and turn away from it, often on a daily basis.

and, no: i don't have an obligation to tolerate smokers, either.

i was actually going to point out that it seems like the air is finally clearing out, but then somebody lit a smoke.

i'm going to eventually catch him. and, it's going to be an exceedingly messy scenario, when i do.

one of the non-crazy parties in germany (in france, in the uk) needs to run on a platform of decreasing immigration from countries with right-wing value systems.

this game of chicken that they're playing is running it's course. and, somebody's going to get killed.

the people are speaking. and, the rulers need to listen.

the fact is that people don't like them because they're actually terrible.

i want a post-cultural society.

"multiculturalism" is just an algorithm for violence.

we need to stop pretending we can just air drop millions of these people into these secular societies and think it'll work it out.

well, what would the saudis do if five million german techno deutsche bags showed up out of nowhere and decided to party outside the mosque in mecca?

"c'mon, barbie, let's go party..."

the end result would probably look a lot like a concentration camp.

the germans have an opportunity to demonstrate that they've evolved a little, but i'm not interested in jumping around the fundamental point. i think they have a right to self-determination, and in a non-colonial society like germany, that could very well mean putting up walls and telling people they just really aren't welcome there.

because they really might not be.

and, they don't have an obligation to get colonized.

now, i know - it's a fraction of the population. it's not a horde of muslims, banging on the gates of vienna - or at least not yet.

but, the mainstream narrative needs to adjust itself to the reality of the situation, which is that there's an integration problem, and this keeps happening over and over again for a reason: islam is a very difficult culture to be tolerant of because it crosses lines that arguably shouldn't be tolerated.

google threw this at me. i didn't look for it. i guess i recently posted about journalism, and about the hell's (in the rebuild), and it constructed it for me via the magic of algorithms. great.

but, it's an interesting thing to watch re: the question of google stealing profits from journalists.

i guess what's underlying this, really, is a question of a division of labour. and, i suppose a fast way to summarize my position is to simply state that the accounting process is so reductionist, so difficult to calculate, that doing so is virtually impossible. and, again: that's a standard position on the left.

i think i'd expect warren to push through a policy based on a reductionist concept of the division of labour. sanders, less so.

i mean, there's a reason i can have all of these debates.

i went to school for a very long time, and i studied a lot of things.

- math
- math-physics
- math-economics
- computer science (and math-comp courses)
- law

also: courses in english, biology (and some math-bio, but mostly in game theory), music, history, philosophy, psychology...

philosophy is another course with big overlaps with math, but i'm mostly self-taught / dabbling on that front. it's an experiential thing, though. like, math and physics and comp. sci profs will tell you stories about liebniz or newton or descartes or whatever. you don't get credits for it, or get quizzed on it, but it's a part of the process.

if i had stuck around a little longer (or shown up a little later), i'd have probably ended up with enough credits in "mathematical biology", which is the mathematical study of dna sequencing, to get a minor in biology, as well.

having a math degree means you take a lot of interdisciplinary courses that also count as credits in other fields, like physics and economics. and, as such, i would also qualify for a number of minors, almost by accident. i'd have to look into it to be comprehensive, but i know i have enough for physics and economics, to be sure.

it was really not clear to me which one was going to be worse.

and, trump is not as bad as i feared.

but, i mean, voting for a republican is not an option for me, and can't be. it's more like that i'd end up voting green, with the understanding that it would help the republicans win, and either be apathetic about it, or actively hoping for it.

there are obvious reasons why i can't support them, directly.

specifically regarding white voters in midwest states, i would suspect that bill clinton's support for nafta was probably a big factor in voting against hillary.

so, these studies and polls that are trying to...

the premise is that people are voting for things they believe in, that they actively support. and, i think that is wrong.

it is probably the case that most trump voters did some kind of calculation that led them to conclude that he wasn't as bad as clinton, rather than found some kind of policy that they actively supported. and, it is likewise the case that most clinton supporters were mostly acting out of fear at what trump would do if he were to actually win.

in hindsight, the biggest measurable differences are twofold.

1) trump has been terrible on the climate. clinton may not have been very good, but trump is clearly worse. i think that much is not controversial.
2) trump has been better on foreign policy, clearly. it wasn't clear how he'd govern - he said a lot of things that didn't make sense. but, he's largely withdrawn from syria, which is good. and, he's mostly avoided starting new wars anywhere. clinton was crystal clear that she would have been far more aggressive in using force.

obviously, you want an option that is better than either - you want a better climate policy than trump's, and a better foreign policy than clinton's. but, that didn't exist, or at least not in the form of a major candidate.

and, if we're debating which is worse for the planet in the long run, it's not an easy answer; they're both bad, granted, but somebody has to govern.

obviously, i don't like the options on the table very much: i neither like clinton nor trump. i didn't want either to win. but, one of them was going to...

and, in weighing lesser evils, i do not think that trump comes off nearly as poorly as others would suggest - or, in hindsight, that clinton would have offered much of an actual improvement.

if you actually look at the evidence, clinton's positions are largely aligned with trump's on the vast majority of topics that he's criticized for the most loudly. so, if you're angry about immigration, it's not clear that clinton would have been more to your liking. if you're angry about abortion, it's not clear that clinton would have been more to your liking. etc.

on the other hand, it is likely that clinton would have been a belligerent commander-in-chief, and a war-time president, by her own making.

as mentioned: i don't exactly think that trump has had a good presidency.

but, i don't think he's had a horrible one, either. i would rather rank him in the middle of the pack over the last fifty years - he's been about average.

he's not as bad as either bush, he's not as bad as nixon and he's not as bad as reagan. and, he's about a coin toss with the clinton that actually governed.

i understand that, if you want to run against him, you want to exaggerate how bad he is. and, he'll do the same thing in reverse, too. but, the fact is that the economy is not so bad right now, and he hasn't started any wars - low bars, granted, but relevant in a reality where his immediate predecessors were pretty shitty.

also, i did endorse clinton.

weakly.

but, i'm not sure it was the right choice.

i probably would have voted for jill stein, if i could. but, if i had voted for clinton, i might have been in the group of people that did so, and regretted it.

and, no, i don't think there's anything wrong with religious animus.

rather, i think that religion is a virus of the mind that needs to be eradicated as we move towards an entirely godless, fully secular future.

further, i've been as clear as i can that i don't have any animus towards race, but have a strong degree of animus towards religion.

so, to be clear.

- i do not want to be a mathematician.
- i do not want to be a computer scientist.
- i do not want to be a lawyer.
- i do not want to be a politician.
- i do not want to be a school teacher.

- i do want to be a (studio) musician.
- i do want to be a blogger.
- i do want to be a polemicist.
- i do want to be a social activist.

- i don't care if i have money or wealth or status or family.
- i do care if i have a safe, healthy environment to create in.

i was at some point planning on becoming a school teacher, i suppose a high school teacher, but i've since developed a strong aversion towards spending time with young people.

it's been a slow process of rejecting a lot of opportunity...

so, yes - i spent a lot of time around wealthy people when i was in school.

and, rather than integrate, i developed a pretty strong hate-on for them.

i graduated with a four year honours degree in mathematics in 2006. it's neither a b. sc nor a b.a. but a b. mathematics.

i went back to school from 2008-2010 to complete a similar 4-year degree in computer science, which would have been a b. sc., and because i had a lot of overlap from the previous degree, i walked away with 19.5/20 credits towards that goal. i decided, in the end, that i did not want to work in the industry.

during my second stint, i also brought my number of math credits at the graduate level up to more than enough than is required to earn a masters degree in mathematics. however, i neither registered for this program, nor applied for the degree. i had decided long ago that i did not want to work as a mathematician, in any context.

rather, i went back for three further semesters over 2012-2013 and in the process completed the requirements for a three-year b.a. in the sociology of law. this is not law school, and i was not training to be a lawyer. rather, they were undergraduate courses in case law (civil and criminal), as well as in constitutional law. i decided a third time that i did not want to work in this field.

i am a white person with a university degree, and then some.

i do not believe that i have ever made more than 20,000/yr, although there was one year where it may have been close or a bit above it. but, i haven't tried very hard, either.

i identify as a struggling artist, and a member of the lumpenproletariat.

can we primary gillibrand, now?

what happens on twitter should stay on twitter.

it is an absolutely miniscule slice of the voting public.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/29/the-case-of-al-franken

i didn't take this still shot, steve.

this is from a paper in your own state.

i know, i know, steve.

it's your opponents' ideas that are half-baked, not yours. that's your message. i get it.

and, maybe i'm exposing a bias towards people from the geographical area you're from. maybe it's just your accent. maybe it's not your fault.

but, it would really help if you didn't come off the way you do, which is as somebody that has a done a lot of drugs.

speaking of which, i would like to draw attention to kristen gillibrand pathetically removing herself from the race, today, in complete and utter miserable failure.

the answer to bernie's age problem was always al.

and, he would have beaten trump into the mud.

alas...

dude, i got the perfect running mate for you.

he can use al franken's staffers.

"woah, man, like.

what happens if you push this button, anyways?

they said it was fireworks. woah. fireworks. i'd like some fireworks right now.

you dare me?

you think i'm man enough?

fireworks. yeah. rad."

no, really.

i was just trying to figure out if he's a cokehead, or if he did too many hallucinogens growing up.

and, mr. bullock.

steve-o.

dudiolly.

what are you running for president for, anyways?

don't you know you can take a trip without leaving the farm?

*wink*

actually, i want to hope that the germans can figure out how to restrict immigration, subject to what is a growing popular consensus, without resorting to gassing people.

there's a lot of space to operate, between concentration camps and complete amnesty.

but, the mainstream parties need to pull their heads out of their asses.

https://news.yahoo.com/far-vies-lead-german-regional-130010332.html

and, we need to stop sending our kids to school in america.

they leave as liberals, and come back as democrats. that needs to stop. it's destroying the country.

i just wish i had something better to work with, in terms of pointing to alternatives.

so, sure.

if they want to run as american democrats on a harper-redux foreign policy, we can make sure everybody understands what they're saying.

and what the implications are.

in hindsight, we see that that is what really happened in the ignatieff soft coup that stabbed dion in the back - the party got taken over by democrats.

the left is not going to win power this election, but it could position itself to take a serious shot at in the next election - whether that is in four years or, more likely, in two.

but, it needs to get rid of may as much as it needs to get rid of singh.

the country is currently being run by a bunch of upper class snobs that went to elite american universities, and are only here to take a job.

they're a bunch of centrist democrats.

and, they keep proving it.

the liberals used to be the smart party, too.

they really did.

ok.

so, we can start talking about how trudeau's foreign policy is harper-redux if you really want.

because it clearly is.

the trudeau campaign seems to literally be intent on repeating every single mistake that hillary clinton made, in an environment where those kinds of errors are likely to be more costly (because we have a multi-party system) rather than less costly.

it underlies the basic point about this government: the people running the country right now are just flat out stupid people. and, i mean the lot of them, all of the staffers and people in the pmo. regardless of what you think about politics, the main focus in the election should really be in finding some way to get rid of, or at least put a check on, the stupid.

so, i have a better way to steal clinton's campaign slogan:

what is the best way to ensure that independent media can survive, uncorrupted, in the digital age?

let's not pretend we have the answer before we have the debate.

let's work this out.

i mean, this is a novel topic, there should be a town hall on this, not a ready-made policy from head office.

debate is healthy.

we shouldn't agree from the get go.

let's work this out.

"so, how would the media survive?"

through donations.

"but, it's unfair that the congolomerates are making ad money from this."

then ban it.

if you don't think your politicians should take money from corporations, then it stands to follow that you shouldn't think your media outlets should, either.

an independent media will be far more robust, far more independent, far more valuable, if you completely remove their dependence on ad revenue than it will be if you try and game the system so they get a bigger cut of it.

it's a weird thing to hear from bernie sanders. it's like he's undoing himself, swallowing himself whole. would he apply the same model to himself? no - he doesn't take money from corporate sources, he operates on crowd funding.

i'm going to have to pay close attention to this, because if this policy was written by who i think it was written by then it's aim is not to promote independent media, but rather to enrich the author. and, that's what i've been saying from day one.

if you really want to eliminate clickbait, then you take the profit motive out of it.

because that's their business model, and they can't and won't exist if you destroy it.

advertising is a horrific source of revenue. it promotes horrible things, at the expense of user enjoyment. it destroys us, as individuals. it eats away at our brains. it's an awful business model.

i'd much rather hear a candidate tell me that they want to completely ban advertising altogether, even if it's not entirely possible. pander to me that way - don't tell me you're going to share this dirty money around more.

because, i don't want it.

and this is what i do.

just cut me a check and let me do what i want. don't make it dependent on clicks or views. and, don't allow a collectivist system like a market to tell me whether it has value or not.

http://libcom.org/blog/meaningful-work-appeal-young-08102013

regarding this wang v sanders thing, though.

it's a false debate.

wang claims that his thousand dollars a month will create jobs, which is just silly. the only jobs it's likely to create are federal jobs in sending out the checks. sanders wants a job guarantee, instead, and claims people want to work - as though a thousand dollars a month is offering them any kind of serious way out of employment. it's less than i get on disability, actually, which is currently roughly $1260/month.

and, the ideas are not in contradiction with each other, either. socialism in it's purest state would see these ideas as working together, rather than against each other.

so, post-work anarchists will flip the question on it's head - we'll argue that it is precisely because we want to do meaningful work that we want the escape from market forces that prevent us from doing so. so, i'm not exactly opposed to a federal jobs guarantee - sure, i think that anybody that wants a job should be able to have one - but i am opposed to a system that tells you that you don't have an actual choice in the matter, and that opposition to what the left calls wage slavery is pretty foundational, as well. so, jobs if necessary, but not necessarily jobs (sorry.).

and, this is why it's important to point out that yang actually isn't doing this right. if he was presenting his policy in terms of an actual guaranteed minimum income - rather than a universal handout of what amounts to a pittance - then it wouldn't seem like there was a debate. sanders could present his jobs guarantee for those who want it, and still support minimum living standards for artists and other people that want to get out of the wage system.

i'm a musician, but i do a lot of writing, right? and, i don't want to charge you for this. i don't want to get paid per word. i don't want to sell this to a bourgeois layer. and, i don't want to bother you with stupid advertisements for useless garbage, either. i just want a nice little monthly check that lets me write what i want, when i want and how i want - and then lets me publish it where i want, too.

i understand that i'm not everybody. lots of people want to get up to go to work and get a pay check for it. that's fine. but, lots of people don't...

yeah, it's going to be a few more days before i do any sealing, but i've convinced myself that the smell from the baseboards is real and at least a major secondary source of the problem.

i'm actually convinced that the primary cause of the smell remains lingering effects of the sewer gas. it was pretty intense at the end, but it had lingered for a long time. so, there's a lot of residue in this space, and there's no real solution besides cleaning everything.

i'm clearly having some difficulty focusing but i'm plugging away, too. i should be done; as it is, i'm about a third of the way there. i just need to focus.

also: i would rather watch two nights with five people each than one night with ten people.

they probably weren't expecting ten candidates to qualify.

maybe they might want to ask around on that.

i'm not predicting this.

but, i'd like to see a final four of sanders, biden, warren and booker. those are the candidates that i would consider serious, at this point.

so, where does the support for all these failed candidates go?

hey, they're all posting low numbers, but when you add them up, you could get 10-15% in some polls. if they're all gone soon, some of the other candidates might get a bit of a boost.

i should add the caveat: i really hope that steyer doesn't get another poll in, but he probably bought the first three, so it's probably just a question of what's for sale. that's not good for anybody.

gabbard's supporters will probably go to sanders, even though that doesn't make any actual sense. getting rid of her should give bernie a mild bump.

of what's left, williamson, gillibrand and de blasio supporters are probably leaning more towards the leftier side, and perhaps the femalier side for the first two at least, of the remaining field. and, the other five will probably give biden a bump.

so, this is probably the debate stage:

i don't see anything surprising in the results, except maybe klobuchar qualifying. she's come off absolutely terribly in the first two debates. like, dumb, terrible. and, while what yang is calling a universal income actually isn't a universal income at all, it's not hard to understand where's he getting support from; i would nonetheless call on him to stay home. i'm not going to call for castro to stay home, but i do hope it's his last debate. the longer he sticks around on that stage, the more likely he seems to be to force the candidates into awkward positions that they'll have to walk back. he doesn't really have a serious shot at either president or vp at this point.

i would actually like to drag o'rourke around a little while longer. it's curiosity, mostly. and, i think booker belongs in the top tier more than buttigieg does - and would ultimately like to see him overtake harris, who is just digging herself a deeper hole on a daily basis, it seems.

so, it's just the bottom three that i'm questioning the relevancy of, at this point.

https://globalnews.ca/news/5471379/planting-trees-climate-change-theory/

i'm essentially proposing a carbon offset, and, as is the general case, the government here is just kind of doing a bit of it, just enough to get the headline it wants.

but, canada is really mostly a giant, uninhabited forest.

yes: we need to keep the tar sands in the ground. and, our per capita use is as bad as anywhere else. but, that's about not making the problem worse.

the biggest thing we can do to actually reverse the problem is to plant as many trees as we possibly can.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-federal-government-pledges-to-spend-15-million-to-restore-ontarios/

given that ford cancelled the cap and trade system, aren't there even already good ideas where to plant?

we should be able to push the treeline north, right?

regarding the burning rainforest, and political ambitions by the liberal party of canada, here's an idea:

what exactly are we doing to plant trees in the expanding boreal/tundra zone?

so, putting people in jail for vaping probably isn't the best reaction to this.

but, we don't seem to learn, do we?

i've hit a few thc vapes at parties, not to mention a little bit of shatter, and they definitely hit your lungs in a way that is a bit heavier, a bit different. i hope that they do a proper autopsy and actually figure this out.

https://globalnews.ca/news/5806783/respiratory-illness-vaping-death-health/?utm_source=Homegnca-national&utm_medium=MostPopular&utm_campaign=2014

stated succinctly, as always:

Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you're really in favor of free speech, then you're in favor of freedom of speech for precisely for views you despise. Otherwise, you're not in favor of free speech.

and, yes - my views on speech have historically been considered left-wing. i cite chomsky because he's kind of an extremist on the topic. but, he's at the head of a long tradition of leftist thinkers that understood the primacy of speech rights.

it has historically been the right that has sought to limit speech rights, which is why the language that these "antifa" groups use is so frustrating. it's gotten so post-modern as to be post-truth. usually, they're doing it right - they're largely peacefully disrupting meetings taking place in public, which is their right, as a consequence of constitutions in both countries on this continent - but they're talking about and explaining it wrong. so, i could get into abstract debates about the value of speech with them, but it would ultimately be with the intent of having them see that what they're doing is only permitted because of free speech laws, rather than to convince them to do something else. and, i would largely not seek to interrupt their tactics.

obviously, things get a little bit different when we're talking about actual violence. violence does have a place, in context. but, you have to make sure you're actually attacking actual nazis, which aren't exactly a highly populated group at this moment. there are random idiots that are abusing the doctrine of self-defense, but they don't speak for their associated groups, and in many cases are probably undercover cops.

so, hate speech is free speech, subject to specific caveats regarding threats and libel. there has to be at least some pretense to honesty, and attempts to materially harm or intimidate need to be kept in check.

but free speech doesn't imply the right to be heard, and it doesn't imply the right to run your mouth off without consequences for it.

so, the way this is supposed to work is that when people take the mic (in public spaces. this doesn't hold for private property.) and say things that the community doesn't want said, then they get shouted down and run out of town.

what our laws and traditions state is that the government has no role to play in regulating speech, unless somebody is under actual threat of legitimate harm.

it is generally the case with the discourse around speech nowadays that neither side of the discussion understands what they're talking about.

so, when forced to take a side between these antifa-type groups and these libertarian-right type groups, i will very rarely do so. it is usually the case that they're both hopelessly wrong, because neither of them understand the basic legal issues at hand.

abstractly speaking, i'm more with chomsky on issues of the sort: the most important speech to protect is the least popular speech. the way to defeat fascism is not to censor it but to deconstruct it, which is what a group like antifa is actually doing  (whether they realize it or not). and, in fact, the government rarely intervenes in these cases, so there's rarely an actual speech issue to defend, despite what the libertarian-right groups might claim.

it is usually the case that if an issue to criticize arises then it is when the police are unconstitutionally called in to stop the protestors, who then have their speech rights violated, and who don't seem to understand the irony of it.

well, in theory, this might have been a speech issue, but only if the government had stepped in and shut it down. had that been the case, and the company argued against it, i would be standing up for the company.

as it is, the board is owned by a private company that took it down on it's own prerogative. as such, it's a property rights issue, not a speech issue - and perhaps a contract law issue, if the purchasing party feels an agreement was breached.

i would hope that bernier and his party were properly refunded. that is the only meaningful legal issue at hand.

but, people arguing that it's not a speech issue because of the content of the ad are wrong on their face, as well.

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-august-27-2019-1.5260356/removing-anti-immigration-billboards-is-censorship-says-columnist-1.5260365

on some level, he's actually right. but, if we outlaw abortion for these reasons, we'd might as well legalize cannibalism and human sacrifice while we're at it. and, then society will fall apart in no time.

the correct analysis is to realize that this is an example of cultural evolution.

but, he probably rejects evolution too, right?

https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/457707-iowa-gop-official-calls-kings-rape-and-incest-comments-outrageous

she'd do things like put my glasses on and mock me,

"blah blah blah blah"

i actually needed it, though.

and, i still think she should go back to school. it's never too late.

no, really. that happened all the time.

i'd be blabbing about some book i read or something, and it would just be "shut up. i don't care. take your clothes off.".

the excuse she made to come over to see my new place when i moved to bronson was that she had to do feng shui. so, she made sure that i understood how important it was, and how important it may be to move some furniture around, if the energy insists on it.

i let her do it. but, let's all be clear on this point: when your ex-girlfriend shows up two years later and starts talking about moving furniture around, it's not about the psychic energy.

and, no, i wasn't a "do gooder". i don't believe in morality, and i never did, which is just the point - there's nothing moral or immoral about sex. that's a conservative, religious perspective; i'm a godless socialist. if anything, i was actually the biggest badass. she didn't undress anybody else on a draw bridge on vancouver island, or pull anybody else into the santa claus exhibit in the wee hours of the morning. i'm sure other people have stories, but they're not like mine.

i keep pointing out that she didn't want to break up with me. i walked out on her. well, i didn't feel like i had a choice - the situation was driving me nuts. she'd literally take off for days, leaving me to the expectation of a break-up when she got back, and then, instead, fuck me when she did get back; my emotions were just off the chart from it, i was completely fucked up and confused by it. and, she came crawling back after. more than once. the reality is that the premise that she wasn't attracted to me is completely backwards; more accurate is that she had difficulties talking with me (she was very "spiritual", for example.) and that all she wanted to do was fuck.

in fact, that was her catch-phrase: i don't care what you're talking about, j, just shut up and fuck me.

she just had really weird issues with attachment, and, as mentioned, was coming from a pretty damaged capitalist culture where she kind of romanticized sluttiness as an ideal. pushing back against that isn't a question of morality. it's more a question of mental health. i was concerned about her self-worth. and, more than anything else, what i wanted was for her to go to fucking school.

one of the places we had sex after i moved out was in the sauna in the apartment complex i moved into. i just wouldn't let her move in. but, she did ask. i know: i moved out on february 1st because she wouldn't commit, and she was trying to move back into my new place by the start of march. and, yeah, that fucked me up; of course it did.

so, it actually seemed, at first, that nothing had really changed, except that i'd been kind of emancipated from being fucked up about the situation. i would have probably been relatively comfortable with a long-term fwb situation - going out on friend-dates a few times a month. it may have even been more healthy than the previous situation, and i remember pointing that out.

but, as mentioned, she then managed to get impregnated by an old man that she barely knew. and, that kind of messed everything up.

she was a vegan, at the time. so, i took her out for fajitas. and, she came over a few times to talk, when she was pregnant. it might have been the only time we ever spent together when there wasn't a lot of sexual tension. although...yes. once. she insisted. because she was pregnant.

one of the first things she did after giving birth was bike to my house to surprise me, but i wasn't home.

etc.

so, criticize me if you want. i can deal with that. but, get your facts straight. she actually, honestly wanted an open relationship, and i actually really, legitimately couldn't deal with it.

but, when you look at these different civilizations, like...

they don't all want the same thing. liberal naivete is a bad idea, here. you have to listen to what they're actually saying. if you treat the chinese the same way as the europeans, you shouldn't be surprised when you get spit on.

i do think there's a real dividing line between the east v the west, but it can be stated as defining the west as greek civilization and the east as chinese civilization. you have to essentially write off africa, australia and the americas as "indigenous barbarians" under this analysis, but the facts at least uphold an unequal level of development. another way to look at this is that the west is judaic in character, whereas the east is vedic. you would draw the line, then, somewhere through historical persia. a maximum extent of western civilization would probably be alexander's conquests; even the most minimal concept would fully absorb both islam and russia. on the other hand, both zoroastrianism and the historical celtic civilizations would be on the eastern side of the divide, which had it's maximum western extent during the hunnic and mongol invasions.

so, i consider the muslims to be a part of the western world, not a part of the eastern world. and, they're pretty clear on what they want: they want to eclipse. they want to be the hegemon, but not via conquest, so much as via transformation. their maximum extent may encircle the far west of the old world, up through spain to southern france on one side and pushing into vienna on the other, but europeans inevitably misunderstand the context: they were just completing their conquest of rome. they are barbarian usurpers, historically, as were the gemans, but islam is a successor culture of the roman empire. america's interaction with islam should be seen in terms of a conflict within western civilization, rather than in terms of a clash of self-contained civilizations. the fuckers were at least right about one thing: it is a battle for hearts and minds. and, you know what side i'm on. i suppose that if you are standing in america and are a muslim, you may have a different perspective on this issue than i do. but, i see this simply as a struggle between religion and secularism. the cultural and ethnic layers of it are mostly illusory - the muslims are just as greek, just as roman, just as judaic, just as european, and even just as white, broadly, as any other western subculture.

russia is also a part of the western world, and is the actual cultural successor of the eastern empire. they are the closest direct descendant of late greek civilization. and, despite america's best efforts to cast them as an adversary (something that is so old that thomas paine made note of it, even going so far as to erect russia as the new french, a concept that is particularly daunting in the context of the thousand year war between britiain and france over feudal land ownership), the russians do not hate us. the russians see us as lost cousins, which is what we truly are. they wanted to join nato, for fuck's sake. treating the russians as an enemy or a threat is largely ignoring the evidence.

the fact about india is that it is developing too slowly to have these discussions, yet. and, climate change will be particularly damaging to them, even as they keeping spewing the carbon out. from the vedas, through to alexander, to the mughals and the british, india has actually always remained in what is today called the global south. they have an ancient culture, but they are not an ancient empire. a united india is probably not going to make it through this century. the thing the west should be concerned about regarding india is the question of it's instability, and what that means in terms of things like migration.

but, the chinese are a different animal. they are a vedic civilization, like india, but they are also an empire. they have almost no shared historical norms with the west. they are not judaic, not greek, not roman, not carthaginian - and only persian in deep abstraction. so, they see the world through an entirely different concept of history. but, the thing i'm trying to get across is that they're actually pretty much our mirror reflection. like us, they are expansionist. they have a history of colonialism. they see the world outside of their borders as existing for their own benefit. they are an actual, legit alien civilization that is never going to see us as cousins or siblings. and, we will need to find a way to compete or co-operate, at least until we can effectively integrate.

their discography is truly quite spotty.

but, this is really a legit opus.

i don't know what this is really about. it's almost more like he's using vietnam war era imagery to align with the psychedelic rock sounds, but it could just as easily be generalized to an attempt to neutralize an east v west mentality.

the chinese have one major thing going for them that makes them a preferable partner, moving forward: they don't believe in god. when you look around at the world for potential partners, that fact is very appealing to me.

the truth is neither yellow menace nor maoist utopianism.

it's somewhere in between.

you know what i say about false dichotomies...

i want people to be clear on this point: if china could they would conquer, invade and colonize us. and, they might even choose to slaughter most of us.

but, we'd do the same thing to them if we could, too.

in fact, the difference in this relationship is that we once tried to conquer and enslave them, and failed. they haven't had the chance yet.

but, that just demonstrates how important it is to try to bridge differences and work together. when the inevitable outcome of history unfolding is eventual conflict, you have to work as best you can to minimize it.

further, to blame "china", whatever that even means, for the economic reality in front of us is disingenuous. these rules were mostly written by white executives in western corporations. and, while things are better there now than they were, it is our own habits that fuel the worst abuses that exist in that country. vilifying the chinese on a racial or cultural level is not going to be productive in reforming global trade regulations.

but, don't be naive about it. if they could...

so, i don't think the amp is the cause of the smell.

but, it does reek.

so, i've taken it away from my typing area for a bit, meaning my structure is a little wobbly. it won't be for more than a few more days. i'll need to fully disassemble everything to properly clean in here, after i've sealed the baseboards, anyways...

i just want to be sure that i'm fixing the right problem, and the thing is just too rank. i guess i'll need to really scrub it down hard.

i should be tired, but i'm not, so i'm going to get back to work.

actually, i'm very strongly in favour of retraining programs for unionized (and non-unionized) fossil fuel workers.

but, i can't stand with them in their current job functions.

it's not a false dichotomy. the environment is more important than the economy.

it's a valid question.

what if they aren't actually agents provocateur?

what if they're really employees of the window cartel?

https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2013/10/windowdoc.html

in fact, i'm going to throw this out there: somebody (i don't know if this is still something chomsky could do, and herman died a few years ago) should add a bernie sanders chapter to manufacturing consent.

i think that 30% is a low estimate.

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/global-ad-blocking-behavior-2019-infographic/551716/

further, if you're talking specifically about news, the conglomerate you want to go after is twitter, not facebook or google.

i actually run a program called adblock that removes all of the ads from the internet.

it's quite emancipating.

and it's fairly common.

so, this is a better idea than censoring facebook and bailing out postmedia (which is what the liberals are.....can i say threatening to do, rather than promising to do?).

i have one thing to interject.

i doubt that bernie spends much time reading news on social media. it's a generational thing. and, that's ok. but, while he's right to point out that the advertising model on social media is lopsided, a lack of experience might be obscuring him to what is actually a natural monopoly. and, if you're a smaller independent news source, you don't want to focus on bought advertising - you want word of mouth. you want sharing. and, you want it organic.

small news organizations absolutely require robust social media presences to survive today, which doesn't even mean that they have great pages or that they pay into the system much. what it means is that they have people like me that are doing what i'm doing right now, which is posting one of their articles in a place where people will see it. it's not the paid-for advertising that's important, it's the free advertising that is - the sharing.

and, as such, breaking up these social media sites would just make it harder for small organizations to exist.

i just posted a link to manufacturing consent. i completely understand where he's coming from, and he's absolutely right in focus. but, it is in many ways an old media critique of new media, and it needs a bit of a cross-reference to be more robust.

https://www.cjr.org/opinion/bernie-sanders-media-silicon-valley.php

Institutional critiques such as we present in this book are commonly dismissed by establishment commentators as "conspiracy theories," but this is merely an evasion. We do not use any kind of "conspiracy" hypothesis to explain mass-media performance. In fact, our treatment is much closer to a "free market" analysis, with the results largely an outcome of the workings of market forces. Most biased choices in the media arise from the preselection of right-thinking people, internalized preconceptions, and the adaptation of personnel to the constraints of ownership, organization, market, and political power. Censorship is largely self-censorship, by reporters and commentators who adjust to the realities of source and media organizational requirements, and by people at higher levels within media organizations who are chosen to implement, and have usually internalized, the constraints imposed by proprietary and other market and governmental centers of power.

it's not controversial.

as the man would often say.

you really should at least browse through this if you haven't before.

https://archive.org/stream/pdfy-NekqfnoWIEuYgdZl/Manufacturing+Consent+%5BThe+Political+Economy+Of+The+Mass+Media%5D_djvu.txt

what the corporate media is labeling "trumpian" and "right-wing" is in fact a standard marxist critique that has been co-opted by the right.

but, it's not ironic. it's just demonstrating the point.

noobs.

there's even a wiki page.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_hegemony

fuck, read some chomsky.

it's the famous one.

and, my attacks on the media are neither "fair" nor "trumpian".

read some fucking gramsci, you bloody tossers.

but, i wasn't the only person that predicted that the headgear would go over like a lead balloon.

are some people racist? of course they are.

but, the guy thinks he has a magic beard, amongst other things. there are legit competence questions that are not reducible to racial animus, and quebeckers - more so than other canadians - are not going to gloss over that as meaningless.

he's running for prime minister. it defines his mindset. it's not a triviality.

the point is that those frustrated "anti-everybody voters" are probably mostly not conservatives.

first off, if they were, they'd tell pollsters that. they're not doing that. second, when you compare to recent elections - the fact is that the conservatives have struggled to get over 25% in quebec since the meech lake accords - they're clearly recent ndp and bloc voters, as both parties have taken huge hits.

at this point, if they were going to vote liberal, they'd probably just admit it. but, the fact is that they've avoided voting liberal for this long because they actually don't want to do that. canada is not a two-party system - there are many, many people that are fundamentally to the left of the liberals, base their entire identity on that fact and will never, ever vote for them. in quebec, 23% is probably an underestimate of this type of voter.

so, it's hard to believe they're going to vote for the conservatives all of a sudden. and, it's not much easier to believe that they'll vote for the liberals. likewise, maxime bernier is not likely to do well amongst this group of people - not for his views on immigration, but for his economic views. these people are leftists.

more believable is that they'll stay home.

one of the most famous observations about quebec is that they smoke in church.

when they still go.

if that helps you get your head around it.

and, just...

i'll destroy my ballot -7%

really? is that believable?

in quebec, it is.

they're a perpetually frustrated people that are always voting against everything.

sorry, maybe i should translate.

liberals - 30%
bloc - 16%
conservatives - 16%
ndp - 6%

but...

i'm not voting - 5%
i'll destroy my ballot -7%
undecided - 9%
no answer - 2%

so, 23% of voters are telling pollsters that they really don't like the options. and, given recent trends in quebec, most of them were probably bloc voters twenty years ago and ndp voters ten years ago.

if they all go back to the bloc, you get this:

bloc - 39%
liberals -30%
conservatives - 16%
ndp - 6%

which would be roughly the results of a random election in the 1993-2011 period.

if they all give up and stay home? that's what the conservatives are dreaming about.

but, if they all get really fed up and vote green....that's a shift, alright.

see, i think this is probably a better snapshot of quebec, and it's the same phenomenon i've been pointing to in canada for years - when the number of non-committal voters goes up, the conservative numbers get badly inflated.

there's a kind of naive narrative that quebeckers are going to vote for the conservatives because they don't like jagmeet singh's head gear. but, this is ignoring the fact that the ban on religious symbols was initially brought in by the quebecois left, before being rammed through by the right as a consensus policy. four years ago, the ndp would have been juggling potatoes on this, because they knew a lot of their voters supported it. if the issue is solely to do with the head gear, you'd think these voters would fall back to the bloc, which is where they came from.

instead, they're coming in as non-committal, which is inflating conservative numbers.

when these voters decide what they're doing - which is, in most cases, probably a choice between the liberals and bloc - the numbers will shift downwards for the conservatives.

but, i'd have to argue that these voters are probably much, much more likely to lean towards the bloc.

but, this idea that the liberals were going to win by overperforming in quebec again was always daft.

quebec will always vote against the status quo.

if they won't vote ndp.

and they won't vote conservative.

and, they don't really want to vote bloc, again. that's, like, so 90s.

and, they don't like maxime bernier (and they don't.).

well, what other protest party is left?

are the rhinos running?

there's only one other option, actually.

quebec doesn't want those pipelines running through it.

at all.

consider the following outcome:

liberals: 145
conservatives: 141
bloc: 30
ndp: 15
greens: 7

145 + 15 + 7 = 167.

you need 170 votes to pass a budget.

and, the last time the bloc agreed to vote for a liberal budget, they got creamed in the next election.

you could also imagine something like this, if the greens kill the liberals in swing ridings and the ndp hang on just enough:

liberals: 130
conservatives: 141
bloc: 30
ndp: 30
greens: 7

130 + 30  + 7 = 167, still. but, the governor-general may let the conservatives form a government, because the bloc are unstable. and, it would be the liberals that the conservatives would be looking to help prop them up.

it is pretty clear that the ndp are not going to rebound in quebec, and i remain exceedingly skeptical of the idea that the conservatives are going to make a breakthrough there. the liberals surprised everybody by over-performing in quebec in 2015, which is how we get here (most people, including myself, predicted a strong liberal minority rather than a weak liberal majority; it was a difference of 15 seats). it's really the liberals v the bloc, there.

unless - and i'll point out again that this is not impossible - the greens show up out of nowhere and sweep, which ironically could save the government. it's remote, but quebec does crazy things like this fairly frequently: they vote tout ensemble, and they do so in protest.

i want to be clear: the issue is less that the conservatives are looking like they're going to win a lot of seats. they're not.

the issue is more that the ndp may end up with 10 seats or something - not enough to help the liberals pass a budget.

that's what happened to dion, right?

a dion/layton coalition would have been stable, and the governor-general would have had to accept it.

but, he needed the bloc. and, that just didn't add up.

i'll remind you that the polling at this stage of the democratic primary is essentially being manipulated to generate headlines.

the media wants warren to win because they think they'll get the best ratings that way. they essentially want a rematch in terms of demographics. and, they think the pocahontas thing will boost ratings. it's the sad reality of it. so, they've been fucking with demographics to get the results they want, in an attempt to control the electorate, because they know that a substantial amount of people want to vote for the most popular candidate so they can tell their friends they voted for the winner, or they can feel like they won, or something stupid like that.

they clearly think biden is bad for ratings, and they're probably right. but, it's too early to expect the media framing to push him out. and, beware - because it's warren they're tying to ease in, not sanders. and, i don't know how that actually happens, in terms of actual, real voters on the ground.

and, they want to bury sanders altogether and be done with him.

there are certain demographic trends that you want to pay attention to. one of them is that sanders is not doing well with white voters right now; he has to get a handle on that, if he wants to win. but, the actual stories should be completely discarded as absolute nonsense, at this point.

in canada, you want to pay close attention to the undecideds, which i think i demonstrated pretty clearly the other day. in the last election, a large number of people were heavily engaged, and you could expect that the undecideds would make a choice. in this election, turnout is almost certainly going to fall. so, those conservative numbers are not as inflated as they were before.

frankly, at this stage in the process, the conservatives should be exceedingly worried about polling in the low 30s. for them to have a serious chance, they should be polling at at least 35%.

but, likewise, the liberals cannot be expecting to hold their majority with the numbers they have.

a deeper question is how inflated the ndp numbers are. they're only running at around 13-14%, before you adjust for turnout. those numbers will probably fall, but how far? is the better model to 1997 or to 1993? will they maintain party status?

and, are the bloc serious? because, if they are, we could end up with a nightmare scenario where the liberals win a plurality and, yet, the liberal + ndp + green totals are not enough to govern. the debate right now is whether the greens or the ndp end up with the balance.

it might end up being the bloc....

so, the reason that i don't like you is not that you're a female.

the reason i don't like you is that you're a self-absorbed bitch.

i don't like people that are shallow, that are self-absorbed, that are materialistic, that are narcissistic, that are selfish, that are self-centered, that are self-important or that are class-supremacist.

and, that holds equally well across both genders, and anybody in between.

in a post-gendered world, the only truly women's issues would have to do strictly with biology.

and, they wouldn't be afforded greater or lesser importance than issues of male biology.

and, i think that when we discuss something like childcare, we should be framing it in terms of the needs of the child, rather than the needs of one of the parents.

depending on the scenario, that could mean leave for either of the parents, or even for both of them.

i don't think that should be seen as a women's issue. and, that it is, is reflective of a sexist bias....

i guess it's a kind of a leftist tradition that you construct your own spin on the distributive justice rule that defines your personal concept of communism, much as guitarists are absolutely required to do a cover of little wing at some point in their careers.

i've indicated an affinity for technological determinism, and where i am in this materialist march towards the end of history is at the cusp of the rise of large-scale automation, a post-industrial revolution, meaning i'm in the ideological space of post-work anarchism.

so, the abilities part is a little passe.

how about this, instead then:
from each according to their interests, to each according to their needs.

that way, somebody like me can be an artist (or a blogger) if they want, if they choose. we just can't sit around smoking drugs, watching oprah, and expect new cars to show up in our laneway when we need them.

as usual, marx had the right idea: from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.

and, that is equality of outcome.

but, not determined by gender bias, or with a slant one way or the other.

and, don't talk to me about "equity".

that's just newspeak for misogyny.

pull yourselves up by your own pantyhose...

and, what i say to these scores of women that refuse to accept being treated as an equal is: too fucking bad.

a lot of women today absolutely hate it when you treat them equally.

they insist on being treated like princesses.

when you actually don't believe that women are weaker then men, really truly don't, it has a very big effect on how you act.

and, the way women are conditioned today is to react exceedingly negatively to that.

maybe you don't want what i want; maybe you want to continue living in a hierarchical society, maybe you want to maintain chivalry, maybe you want to hold to religion. maybe you want fixed gender roles.

so, we can disagree on that point, and have a debate, and vote and what not.

but, get the language right: you're the misogynist. you're the one insisting on maintaining these unequal gender roles, you're the one that thinks women are the weaker sex, you're the one that believes in chivalry and courting and dominance and submission. in a word, you're the sexist.

and, you're mad at me because i'm a feminist, not despite of it.

it's a problem with this orwellian distortion of what we call "feminism" today.

i'm a feminist in the wollstonecraft sense: i'm a radical egalitarian. that means i believe that you have to teach women to learn to take care of themselves, because nobody is going to do it for them. to me, that's what feminism means - the abolition of patriarchy, and an order of complete and total equality.

and, that means that women need to learn to think about other people when they make choices.

today, we teach our girls to be radically self-absorbed, that the universe revolves around them, and that they have no responsibilities to think about the people around them at all. in a statement, we are teaching our girls to be the worst kind of men, which is not the abolition of patriarchy, but the inclusion of some women within the structure of patriarchal dominance.

and, then they call you names when you insist on actually being a feminist.

it needs to stop.

i have no patience for this kind of radical egoism, whether it's coming from women or men

if i'm upsetting people, if the status quo hates me, if i'm unpopular with the in crowd, then that means that i'm doing something right.

if i was easy to digest, easy to swallow, easy to read, i wouldn't be much of a social critic, now would i?

i'm here to make you uncomfortable.

i'm here to make you cry.

so cry, if you want to. but then change. drop the entitlement, and learn to realize that you're not the centre of the universe, that there are other people on the planet besides yourself.

you're right: i don't like you much.

but, it's not your gender i don't like. it's your attitude. it's you that's toxic.

i'm not going to be brow-beaten by a bunch of faux-feminist, functionally misogynistic, selfish, neo-liberal third-waver nihilists.

because i'm not afraid of you.

and i don't want to fuck you. so, you have no control over me.

i will call you out as you need to be called out. and you need to be called out.

listen, when you bring somebody that you live with, that you share a bed with, to a party with your friends, then her behaviour had better have something to do with you.

because, if it doesn't then she doesn't care much about you.

and, it's time for her to find another bed to sleep in.

i should have walked away much earlier. because the misogynist, the douche bag, the person with no respect for women, was her. i was naive; i thought i was helping her find a way out of something that was harmful to her, and that i just needed to be patient and wait for her to grow up, when all she wanted to do was keep harming herself.

and, in the end, she ended up impregnated by somebody that was 30 years older than her. if i had stuck around a year longer, i would have been stuck with that. forever.

it's my body that's important here, not hers - my autonomy, my rights, my agency, my dreams, my desires. and, i have every right to tell the people around me that if their behaviour is not consistent with what i want, then i'm going to get up and walk away from them.

but, there's no reason to be hateful about that. an adult should be able to look at the situation and say "just because i don't want to live with and date a shameless slut that refuses to have any respect for herself doesn't mean i can't still be friends with her.".

and, i'm still not willing to give up on her, on that level.

and, yes: i do still think that somebody is smoking, although it seems to at this point mostly be a weekend thing. it's not one or the other, it's all of the above.

but, if i can get the cracks filled, and stop the smell from seeping up from under the floor, then i can hopefully start with a more thorough cleaning routine and ultimately get the fan off within a few days.

there's a home hardware around the corner - five minutes, by foot. i can try tomorrow, if i can get enough work done tonight.

if i can fix this once and for all for $10-20, that's fucking great.

so, what i'll need to do is move everything away from all of the walls, clean everything around them and do it all at once.

like i say: i don't care if it makes the problem worse, structurally. i just want the smell to go away. if he wants to actually maintain his property one day, he can do that at his own prerogative; as it is, he doesn't seem to want to do anything except get high and watch tv, so i'll have to do it for him.

if it's more than $50, i'll send him the bill. otherwise, it's not worth it.

https://www.homehardware.ca/en/568g-polyurethane-low-expanding-foam-sealant/p/2030867

we probably shouldn't even be there.

we're barely g10 at this point.

g20 still. firmly.

an actual g7 at this point would include china, india and brazil and leave canada, italy and france behind.

brazil's economy is now actually officially larger than canada's.

if you were wondering.

i care about the smell.

i don't care about his property.

and, it's his own fault for being a lazy, worthless, piece of shit.

belgian neutrality was always bullshit anyways, right?

trudeau and macron need a third stooge. but, i don't want to interfere with belgian neutrality. alas. the franco-phony is a lot smaller than it used to be.

they're both complete idiots and the world will be better off when they're gone.

exhibit a - trudeau is offering to send helicopters to brazil to put out the fires, as though brazil doesn't have the resources, and as though they're not doing it on purpose. it's like offering a lion a glass of milk. thirsty kitty, right? dipshit. worse, i think he thinks it'll win him votes, as though meaningless symbolic gestures overpower actual substantive policy decisions.

because it's the thought that counts.

derrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp......

anyways, i'm figuring out that the smell is indeed seeping up from under the floor, which seems to have some cracks in the foundation. i don't think that the problem is air humidity at all. at this point, i no longer care remotely about the piece of shit upstairs, so i'm just going to get some expansion foam at the hardware store and seal up around the baseboards. it's his problem if it ruins the foundation - he's not maintaining the place anyways, and refuses to do basic maintenance. that should keep the smell out. i'm just going to wait a few more days for this rain storm to pass, first. and, to finish october, which won't be much longer.

go clutch your pearls in front of somebody else.

i don't give a fuck.

again: i'm not a conservative, and i don't care about your moral outrage.

did i offend you?

did i upset you?

did i hurt your feelings?

was i rude?

good.

and: fuck you. for good measure.

how much of the dtk blog, which is going to be ramping up in late 2013, am i going to archive here?

anything posted to the appspot site - at all - will be archived here. i consider that to be a formal writing project. so, the cd and concert reviews are relevant to this space for that reason. this will be somewhat of an expansion in scope, moving forward.

random youtube comments that are purely about music can stay on the dtk blog, solely.

tentative reviews are a more complex scenario and are going to need to be dependent. i keep coming back to the idea that a timely record review is news. but, i'm more interested in the idea that it could reflect how i'm feeling.

for example, that touche amore record released at the end of 2013 was kind of exactly what i needed at that point in time, and it's more for that reason that it makes sense to post here.

i'm going to over think this. and, i'm sure i'll break or modify my own rules.

i just want to point out the obvious: i might endorse the band, but that doesn't mean the band endorses me, and in a body of writing this large, i'm sure i've said something that is upsetting to virtually everybody. this is a part of the reason i have the music blog separate: i know that being interested in my music reviews doesn't mean you're interested in my far leftist politics. but, the reverse also applies: just because you don't like my politics doesn't mean i can't listen to certain types of music. i think you should probably know by now that i don't tend to care much for property rights.

so, i'm hesitant, but i'm going to go forward with it, because there's going to be enough overlap anyways that i'm spitting on a fish. and, i'll remind you - if you don't care what i think about politics, just hit the dtk blog, straight up. the link's on the side.

free will is probably a false dichotomy.

we probably need a dialectic...

and, i don't think that's such a crazy suggestion either.

we don't have much say over how our heart beats, or even if  it beats. and, we call this an autonomous nervous system.

but, we can sit and do math homework in our underwear if we want.

it's just a simple way to understand that not all decisions are the same: sometimes we have a choice, and sometimes we really don't.

rejecting descartian dualism means that most real-world decisions would exist in a mixed state, between something like digestion and something like math homework. we can't completely undo our physical realities. but, we can direct it in some way or another. and, how much of that is real and how much of it isn't depends on how purely intellectual the decision actually is.

you can see that with something as simple as going grocery shopping. you know you shop differently when you're hungry, right? and, that kind of mixed up way to look at it is getting to the right idea: it's very complex to separate, to the point of probably being impossible in most scenarios.

i think the conceptual error is that we want to think of decision making as a generalized concept. so, if you can understand how you can make one decision and it is free (or not free) then you can generalize that understanding to all of the other decisions.

i would rather insist that you interpret every single decision making process as an independent experiment, and reject the process of generalization.

"i changed my mind. that's what it's there for."

regarding camus and free will....

i don't actually think that determinism has much to say about free will. when i speak of coercion, i'm erecting my framework in more of a gramscian context than a descartian or newtonian one.

and, i think that's a consequence of quantum physics.

but, that's not to abolish the contradiction, either - because even if this universe isn't deterministic, that doesn't mean we're actually making autonomous decisions, and i'll bring you back to gramsci for that.

where i think camus is more relevant here is in rejecting formal thinking around the topic. this is something where science breaks down, because you don't have a concept of repeatability. you have no controls. but, i think i'm stretching the point.

in practice, i think you want to strive to be free as much as you can, while always continuing to question yourself. why did i do that?

the feds simply can't be expected to negotiate in good faith. they never have.

the court, itself, has a fiduciary responsibility to oversee the process.

by "waste of time and money", what she means is "dangerous because it may provide more rights than the claim is actually asking for".

she's essentially trying to make a deal.

the article is using an activist concept of indigenous title rather than a legal one, and it would not hold up in court. but, they should go through the courts, anyways. from the sounds of it, they will certainly not get everything they want, the court will restrict them to what is defined in the constitution, which is essentially land use, but at the least it will ensure that they're not getting swindled by the government. again.

she's not trying to circumvent the courts out of the goodness of her heart.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/aboriginal-title-rights-elsipogtog-first-nation-mou-1.5132320

ok.

maybe i needed to rant a little.

i do that sometimes, if you hadn't noticed.

can i get to work tonight? let's hope so.

i never talked her into doing any drumming for me. i was apparently too demanding, as a musician.

but, she at least gave me access to a kit over that summer, and i made good use of it, while she was out fucking around.

what she really wanted was to have an open relationship and stay living together and keep being best friends.

what i really wanted was to have a closed relationship and stay living together and keep being best friends.

but, she wouldn't budge on the open, and i wouldn't budge on the closed, so we had to resign ourselves to no longer living together, and consequently drifting apart as friends.

to be clear.

after i got pissy about her sleeping with other people for the 800th time, she came to me in mid-2004 and just laid it down on the table: she wanted to drop the bullshit and officially declare that we were in an open relationship. she was tired of these arguments.

but, she didn't want a break-up. she was very, very clear on that point. what she wanted was for me to accept that she was going to do what she was going to do, and kind of learn to live with it sort of thing. which, i suspect, is what she'd been angling for the whole time. i don't, however, expect that she would have accepted any kind of infidelity on my behalf (something that i was never even interested in - i'm a romantic, i'm monogamous).

from my perspective, i had been hoping, to that point, that she'd grow out of it, basically. so, to have her sit me down and say "this is who i am. i'm not going to change." was a wake-up call, and i did what i always did: i pulled out.

there are underlying factors. i felt insecure about the potential longevity of an open relationship, although in hindsight i could have answered my own question - we'd been in one at that point for two years. why couldn't it last other than me not wanting it to? i was nonetheless fearful that she'd end up pregnant or something, that an open relationship was not sustainable in the long run. and, that itself masked the most dominant underlying issue: at that point it was clear that she really, really wanted kids and i really, really didn't.

but, i didn't hate her for it. i accepted it. and, we stayed friends - in fact, with benefits - for many years after the fact.

we called it a mutual break-up, but i think it was almost the opposite: neither one of us really wanted to break-up, but we both realized there wasn't really a way forwards.

we were living in a one room apartment at the time. she wanted to maintain the arrangement, which in hindsight suggests she wasn't really serious about breaking up. i mean, how do you process somebody that tells you they want to break-up, but wants to keep sleeping in your bed? she expected me to accept the open relationship, and was baffled when i didn't. and, i ended up moving out unilaterally.

listen: i know what side i'm on, even if i know that you don't know what side you're on.

and, i don't go anywhere near these neo-liberal groups masquerading as feminists or leftists. i never have.

the error that liberals and conservatives are going to make in trying to understand a socialist concept of sex is that they're going to create a false dichotomy between religion and "sexual freedom".

what the socialist position is going to argue is that "sexual liberation" and religion are actually both means of statist control. that's what i was getting at in pointing to divide and conquer.

what hedonism does is turn you into a consumer. you're told this is freedom, and if you come from a religious/conservative upbringing you might see it as such (if you don't analyze it) as a consequence of overbearing or oppressive rules pushed down by the religion, but there's no freedom in consumption, no freedom in commerce. it's not any different than arguing that you're more free if you have more choices on the market, you're just conditioned to see it differently.

true freedom is an emancipation from sexuality, from carnal desire, from hedonism and pleasure. emancipation is transcendence.

casual sex is a weird idea to socialists, because it's almost impossible to understand it happening in the absence of coercion. marx famously argued that all sex under capitalism is prostitution. a more contemporary analysis may suggest that the ubiquity and normality of casual sex is just a reflection of the impulsiveness of capitalist society, a way to fill a void left by the emptiness of consumerism, and would largely whither away in the absence of the capitalist relation.

i wouldn't have articulated myself like this at the time, but i don't think my feelings abut the topic have changed much.

so, we're not going to actively prohibit it, the way conservatives will. you can have your meaningless fucks if you really want to. but, we're not going to promote it or live it the way liberals do, either. what liberals call "sexual freedom" is not some kind of emancipation or something, it's just kind of matter-of-fact.

socialists will mostly largely argue for a society where sex is kind of an irrelevance - a necessity to carry the next generation forwards, and a valid expression of emotion when appropriate, but not this pre-occupation that exists as a distraction from more interesting things, the way it is in contemporary capitalism. we'll deconstruct the status quo as more or less a control strategy, and even break apart a lot of the existing narrative as divide and conquer. and, we'll argue that once you're actually free, once you can actually pursue things that are meaningful and substantive, that you'll get bored with casual sex pretty quickly - that you'd rather find somebody to love.

or, to put it another way, yet again.

she was a liberal.

and, i'm a socialist.

i'm a romantic.

and, i hate market theory.

i want true love or bust.

the way i understand is that, in the culture she comes from, the guy with the sluttiest girl has the most prestige. so, sending your girl out to fuck your friends means you're actually alpha.

it's a status thing.

i still don't really get it.

put another way: she expected me to be a sexist douchebag that saw her as property, and then got confused when i wasn't one and treated her like a person.

like, you hear about these orgies happening at the olympic village that sound like something out of saturnalia. if you take that and splice it with standard hip-hop misogyny, that's the culture she was coming from, as built up from a small town on the outskirts of ottawa.

so, i don't just think that she didn't think sleeping with my friends would bother me. i think she thought i wanted her to sleep with my friends, because that's what every other guy she'd ever dated had been like - guys that pass girls around like they're drugs, or otherwise just treat them as property.

i was a total loner in the middle of a halted transition that listened to punk rock, jazz and instrumental classical music. and, i was a feminist, and outspoken about it. she was attracted to that about me, precisely because it was so different than what she was accustomed to, it was weird to her that i treated her like a person, but that learned behaviour transferred over to social situations in ways that just left me absolutely baffled.

and, she always expected me to take her back.

and, for a while i did.

i don't regret walking out; it just didn't make sense. i have to take the good with the bad. and, while a lot of it hurt in ways that she didn't understand, i'm still left with some experiences and memories that most people only experience as fantasies.

i do wonder what things would have been like if i was able to more effectively hold that mirror up, though.

i wasn't allowed to even talk to anybody else, though.

looking back, she existed in this contemporary culture - and she was young, at the time - where she thought being this kind of communal slut was a normal thing to do. i think she thought that it was normal for guys to share girls, or even that she was doing me a favour - that i was showing her off, or that she had to perform, as a kind of trophy, a sort of catch. that i was bringing her home to share. at that age, i had essentially no exposure to this culture, which is built around sports and bad music and to a certain extent also around blackness (although she was white). i reacted terribly to it. but, i don't think she actually realized that i had never lived in that world, that this was so very strange to me. it was almost more like a culture shock.

and, these guys didn't live in that world either, although, unlike me, they may have liked to pretend they did.

we did stay friends for years after. she didn't turn on me until i went back on hormones. and, i tried to avoid judging her, and think i succeeded in doing it in the end. but, i couldn't live in that world, it was not for me, i just had to walk out of it.

if i can't have mutually consensual and intentional monogamy, i don't see the point of it at all.

evidence of the public lavatories in washing-town:

we got to victoria, did mushrooms in a hostel, and hitched out to tofino, where somebody let us stay at a resort for free, before we camped out on a beach, and eventually made it to poole's, before heading back to the mainland.

these stories will be told in their time.

it's funny how a single reference to one thing can set you off, though.

we were hitching up highway 1 from nainamo to victoria, when somebody let us off in the middle of the road, because they were taking a turn in the other direction. so, we walked up the road a little bit, and she suddenly ran off and disappeared into the forest. she was weird like that in strange ways: she seemed to always know where she was going, even when it was completely impossible. she would liken herself to a nymph, or a fairie, irish creatures, and seemed to often behave like one, in purposeful and conscious emulation.

so, i followed her in as best i could, under foliage, through a ditch and out into a clearing overlooking a river. in the distance, we could see and hear natives dancing - naked - around a drum circle, with plumes of black smoke coming out of a triangular hearth. this was my first time in the rainforest.

she wanted to get down there, to join the tribe - i told her that was not the best idea, and tried to talk her down from it.

i had to hop the fence after her, against my better judgement, and follow her on to an old, decaying train bridge, on the other side of which was the reserve. halfway across, she stopped and turned and fucked me right there; she could have killed me, could have killed herself.

and, i then convinced her to come back to the side we came from - that those fences were there for a reason, and they didn't want us there.

we stopped for a smoke before moving on, and an aboriginal cop very tersely asked us to leave and never come back. i suspect he saw the whole thing.

this was a girl that had a basketball scholarship, although she refused to use it. she held every record at her high school. she was captain of her team. she was dominant, aggressive, strong-willed - and she knew how to take control of me, and place me in a submissive position.

i don't meet a lot of women that are like that. but, if there's a way to 'get' me, that is it - you have to take control.

and, people always wondered why we couldn't just casually hang out in public. the fact is that it wouldn't have taken much to lead to a random fuck in a random place, and we both knew it.

even years later, in like 2012, i remember randomly bumping into her on bank street, and she ran into a children's clothing store in a way that made it clear she wanted me to chase her in. and, so i snuck up behind her.

"i think that would match her socks."

she would often communicate merely by stating "j", and it was up to me to determine what she meant by any specific "j" by measuring the length and tone of it. a short, guttural "j" would be of an entirely different meaning then a lengthy, breathy "j", for example. and this was a, "this is beyond surreal, and i'm too overwhelmed to think" j.

but, i behaved myself. perhaps against my better judgement. like i say: it wouldn't have taken much for her to grab me and pull me behind something...even after that long.

....and, probably even today.

there's, like, ten women's washrooms in ottawa....

i don't know if they still let you do it.

but, back in the day, you could walk through the rideau centre from rideau street up to the mackenzie-king bridge in the middle of the night. she lived in the elgin area, so we'd often come out of a bar in the market after last call and walk back to her place through the rideau centre.

and, one night, around christmas, we made a detour into the santa claus area, around 3:00 or so...

like i say: this was all her. i'd never think to do something lie that.

in hindsight, i should have clued in. it was her, not me. she had a thing for weird sex.

some of the places...

...like, the santa claus exhibit at the rideau centre...

...or the bridge, with railroad tracks, overlooking the native reserve in nainamo....

google says it would have been a bad idea.

1) You will have to give your doctor a semen sample to send to a lab. The lab will count the number of ... Do not use any lubricant or saliva.
2) The semen specimen should be obtained by masturbation. Alternate methods may be discussed but are not recommended. Do not use any lubricant, including saliva, when collecting semen.

i went in to leave my sperm there back in 2002. sarah was absolutely insistent on coming with me, but it didn't really click until after. and i, somewhat cluelessly, left her sitting in the waiting room.

i'm not sure i would have let her, even if it clicked. i mean, what's the point, if i'm going to contaminate it with saliva?

i actually never let her do that, although she tended to offer fairly frequently. i had and still have a bit of a complex with it, it just feels wrong to allow it, as a trans person. even when i went off hormones, it was still a non-starter. and, i wonder if she's still dragging around a hate-on for cosmopolitan magazine - because she'd get livid at even the site of it for years, afterwards. for somebody that cheated on me repeatedly (she drank a lot.), she could sure get pointlessly jealous about virtually nothing.

it cost me something like $50 for a set period.

i got a call a few years later, telling me i'd need to pay up, or they'd throw it out. i let them throw it away. did they?

i can't know...

this is actually also the doctor that essentially every trans person in ottawa went to for hormone prescriptions. i knew a dozen people that were seeing him, at one point.

and, i had sperm in the bank, as well.

i can't know....

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/health/sperm-donors-fraud-doctors.html?module=inline

there will be a day in the next six-eight months when i smoke my last cigarette, ever.

the reason i smoke when i'm out is that it's a necessary prop to find pot.

if i don't need to find pot, i don't need to smoke.

i'm sure i'll be over at least once before the end of the year, but i'm getting very close to the end.

it's not cold, exactly. but it's disappointing - and dipping on the weekend, again. so, there's a good chance i'm in for the year, or at least restricting my outings to bands i'm legit into.

that means i could go the better part of the next eight months cold turkey, again, by which time i may have legal marijuana options in michigan, and may never need to buy another pack again.

so, i don't want to deal with people smoking.