so, it just decided not to bother warming up today - the temperature has been roughly steady since 2:00 this morning. i'm feeling like the better choice is to stay in for the night.

i took a gamble on the rain last night, deducing that the jet stream's retreat to just north of here would keep the humidity high and the storm path just far enough away to not bother me. i got that part right, but convection storms from the heat were stronger than i thought they would be and lingered into the early morning. it did clear up, but not before it rained pretty hard, and not until the bars were closed, and i didn't get my park party out of it. i had fun anyways, and have a few stories.

i left around 18:30 to try and catch a break in the rain - i knew it was going to rain again, but expected it to clear out around midnight. so, i expected the ride to hamtramck to need to be done in stints, kind of thing. it had been spitting off and on all day downtown (there were more serious storms elsewhere), but the convection finally broke moments after i got to the bus shelter. i checked today to see how much rain actually fell (it was a lot) and was reminded of the locality of it - i guess it wasn't raining at the airport, because the official record says it wasn't raining at all. but, a news report suggested there was 40 mm of rain in some parts of the city yesterday, which is a daily rainfall record.

those numbers can't be for downtown, where it was mostly dry before the skies opened, and the downpour only lasted twenty minutes. but, for those twenty minutes, it rained about as hard as it can rain. i wasn't in it; i actually found myself enjoying the after-rain air. detroit continues to have some serious air quality issues due to industrialization, so a good rainstorm is that much more refreshing when it hits. it's actually one of the better times to enjoy playing outside.

the ride to hamtramck was through thick humidity and sweaty as fuck, but the rain restrained itself until i got there - when it promptly started back up again. it mostly cleared out before the show was over, but the ride to the second bar was a little drizzly.

the first band, not ok, was actually pretty much ok. ok? ok. they did a style of generic emo-core. i'm going to leave it at that.

the savage seven seemed to downplay their silliness a little in the live setting, partly because the singer was a little less confident than i expected him to be. there's a swagger on the recording that is central to the presentation and was perhaps missing in the show. i'd encourage him to try and capture that better when he's performing. they're a kind of novelty act style rock band with a bit of a very early detroit rock feel, and they pulled it off at points in the set.

wizard rifle, a two piece guitar & drum duo, were on point, even if i was hoping for a longer set in a bar that cleared out before midnight. the mix was dominated by their powerful drummer, who, name-dropped influences aside, actually sounded most like dave grohl going to town. the guitar work is mostly riff-based, but it has an angularity to it that gives it a dose of manic energy, and he makes liberal use of an effects chain to scuzz up the sound. they wear their influences prominently, often jumping into sections that sound like they were taken directly from king crimson or lightning bolt tracks, but that's alright, because they mix it up and rip it apart. they appear to be from portland, and have relocated to detroit; this was the first night of a us tour, so they had some sound issues with the mix. basically, they need to turn the guitars and vocals up in order to compete with the muscular drumming.

as mentioned, the ride to the next bar was a little bit drizzly, but not too bad. i missed the actual event, some kind of industry mixer, while lost in a bit of my own drama: somewhere, somehow i lost a $20, which was also my last $20 for the night.

i strictly carry cash when i'm in detroit, because the banking system is a messy situation. i took money out of a machine in detroit for the first time a few weeks ago, but my debit card won't work. nor do i carry a credit card. so, if i run out of cash, i'll at least need to find a machine, and that machine will need to be on the right network. i'm also looking at around $10 in service charges because it's an international transaction. so, i'm generally fairly paranoid about this, because i know that if i run out of cash in detroit that i'm more or less shit out of luck until i get home.

it was around 1:00 or so when i went to the washroom and checked my pockets to see how much i had left; i had a vague idea that it was around $20, but i don't usually do my accounting until later. so, what's in my pocket?

- keys? check.
- lighter? check.
- three cards: nexus card (border), debit card, health card (ohip.)? check.
- ziploc bags (to protect things in the rain)? check.
- bus fare in cdn dollars? check.
- american money? nope.

wait.

- american money? nope.

that can't be right. let's try this again...

- american money? nope.

fuck.

now, i admit i was a little bit drunk - i was fully conscious and coherent and capable of walking in straight lines and stuff, but even a simple amount of accounting would have benefited from some kind of ledger, and wasn't likely to happen strictly mentally at that point, or at least not correctly. i was also a little flustered. if i had sat down and centered myself and worked out each transaction that had occurred over the night, it would have been immediately clear that i dropped it somewhere. all that i was able to process entirely right there was that i knew i came to detroit with three 20s, and i knew i'd only broken two of them. so, i knew i was missing a $20.

well, it didn't evaporate. it didn't develop locomotion and run away. i guess it might have been pick-pocketed, but what are the chances, really? so, when you lose something you retrace your steps, right?

i had made two transactions at the bar, to that point. i thought i had given the door a $5 bill for cover, and i thought i had given the bartender three one dollar bills for a beer. i'm usually a pretty good bean counter; if i'm going to screw up, it's because i'm going to drop something out of my pocket when i'm rummaging through, but everybody fucks up sometimes. so, maybe i gave one of them a twenty by accident. i can ask, right?

the bartender was pretty certain - he'd have remembered it, because he'd have been surprised by it. and, i had to make the point - i'm not being confrontational, i'm not making accusations, i've just lost some cash and am trying to figure out if i can find it.

the door person was a little less certain - she claimed she couldn't remember, but insisted that if she did then she'd have given me change. her honesty opened a window for me, because if she'd just had said "no. you gave me a $5.", i would have shrugged and walked off. the fact that she was like "i dunno. maybe you did give me a $20.", left me prodding her to remember, to be certain, to be sure; but, as that was happening, i remembered that i gave her a $5, so i had to apologize and walk off.

well, what's next? i might have dropped it near my bike...

nope.

by that point, i'd gotten over the initial shock and sobered up a little due to necessity (it's funny how that happens), so i was able to think it through a little better. i had $61. i spent $9 at the 7/11, $12 + $12 = $24 at the rock show, $5 on cover and $3 dollars on one beer at marble. so i should have.....$20. i should have had a $20, a $5 and three $1s on my way into the bar. if i had accidentally given the door person a $20, i'd still have the $5. if i had accidentally given the bartender a $20, i'd still have the $1. so, i lost the $20; this is my fault.

i made sure that the relevant people were aware of this fact, that i was taking responsibility for losing the cash and not blaming or accusing anybody, when i got back into the bar, went out for a smoke and started cruising for pot, instead.

but, then, something kind of cool happened: somebody tapped me on the shoulder and gave me the $20. it was found by bar staff on the ground.

(and, no, gay people are not recruited. but, i think you'd be being daft in taking that skit too seriously)

by that time, the bar was nearly closed, and the music had shut down, so i only got one more in before it was time to go - no dancing, not much talking, even.

nobody at the park...

i stopped at the gas station at trumbull & warren to get smokes, and lit one up before i got back on my bike. a car full of dudes screeches to a halt an inch from me, and a couple of them get out.

"how much?"

what?

"i said, how much?"

*pause*

no.

"but you're standing right there."

in front of my bike?

"i'm a go into the store, you stay right there."

i was gone before he came back out, and finished my smoke up at the benches on cass, just south of warren.

i had had 10 drinks and been gifted some pot at that point, so i was inebriated, but i was in control and the night was crystal clear until i got to the diner; i just got a coffee, but i seem to have dozed off, and it gets a little blurry for a bit around 4:00. i vaguely recall getting yelled at by a homeless person, but i don't recall the context.

i dozed off a second time at the bus stop, and had to be honked at by the driver to wake me up. but, i'm ok, clearly.

i got me some pasta.

i took me a shower.

and i slept most of the day.

if i'm going to a show, i'm going to a show. where the show is doesn't matter - i'm going to the show.

but, if i'm going for drinks, i want to avoid spaces where....what i'm concerned about is being mistaken for cis.

it depends, really. i feel safer in a mixed setting, usually, and i'm not too keen about getting hit on by gay guys, either. so, if i'm going to go dancing, i'd rather go dancing in a place that is mostly straight, so long as it isn't oppressively so - i'd rather be the weirdo, sort of thing. unfortunately, the bars on the strip in windsor are horrible places that are going to exert exaggerated concepts of hetero-normativity, and that i'm not going to want to go into, for that reason. i've never been into most of these places, but i've walked by there frequently, and it's enough to scare me off. i know i'm going to get stuck with some straight guy all over me when all i actually want to do is dance...

so, i'd feel safer in a queer bar.

but, there doesn't appear to actually be the option. it's a show at phog, or bust.

i did a quick google search and it doesn't appear that there are any gay bars in windsor, although a few have recently closed. and, i found some articles documenting something similar happening in hamilton.

i'm not going to research this, so this is a deduction and, like all deductions, should be contradicted via evidence, should any arise.

but, it's easy enough to figure this out: gay men, especially, are largely looking for sex, and they're going to get what they're looking for quicker and faster in an online personal site than in a bar. so, you'd expect a decline in explicitly queer hangout spaces to follow as a corollary to the rise of internet personals, given that everybody knows that the actual purpose of them was always explicitly sexual.

i can always check out phog mid-week.

but, the cursive show is looking more likely.

and, i don't even know where the gay bars even are in windsor.

the early forecast is that it's going to be beautiful next week, but with the uncertainty of the track...

...and there's nothing happening, as far as i can see.

i'm not just going to go out for beers, if there's no bands. that's boring. so, this whole exercise might collapse in on itself, in the end.

i haven't really started on the legal stuff, yet. i've been sleepy. that's ok, i have time.

it's looking to me like the storm is going to track about 100 km north of here, but, as it's been all year, it's almost impossible to be certain about it.

i'm itchy. i want to get out of here tonight if i can. so, i'm going to get ready for it, and if i have to reverse that choice around 18:00 or so, so be it..

trump wasn't exactly an anti-war candidate.

but, if obama was the alter-war candidate, and clinton was the ultra-war candidate, trump was the less-war candidate.

i know that certain media outlets wanted to push a narrative of trump being unhinged, and even being in cahoots with russia. this was all very silly, and is all very easily deconstructed, but the concern was always that he'd kind of lose interest in foreign policy and let the party take control. that's how bolton got there in the first place.

what trump actually ran on, what was a central part of his populist rhetoric, was an invocation of the "glorious isolation" pushed by conservatives in the early part of the last century.

i think there's a role to play for international institutions; i'm not opposed to global governance. but, i'll take isolationism over the perverted trostkyism of the neo-conservative clique, which is just a demented front for the war lobby.

john bolton was probably the single most dangerous person in washington. i'm not naive enough to expect his removal to be enough to spin trump back towards his campaign promises on a quasi-isolationist foreign policy, but it's just about the most positive thing you could possibly hope for from this administration. this is good news.

the press is predictably lionizing bolton for preventing trump from making "mistakes" in north korea, syria and iran....

i've been clear on this point: i think he had an electoral mandate to withdraw, and he's broken it. bolton has essentially operated as a representative for the deep state, trying to keep the president in line. while it's not clear that his replacement will be better, i can't imagine it being much worse.

john bolton is not an american hero, and doesn't deserve your respect or admiration. john bolton is a war criminal, and he deserves to spend the rest of his life in a jail cell.

who's next, though?

koo koo ka fucking chew.

and, good riddance.

he was never as openly irreligious as my mother often was.

but, neither of them had any meaningful beliefs, and neither of them made any attempt to steer me towards anything, either way. they were hands off, in that respect.

in fact, for the last years of his life, about 2007-2011, not including his battle with cancer, my father spent sunday mornings with me on a breakfast date. i would often end up cancelling due to hangovers, or something else. but, the general ritual was that he'd pick me up at 9:00 or 10:00, and we'd go get eggs at one of a handful of diners up on wellington. and, we'd catch up on what happened that week...

it was quite important to him.

what i didn't realize until a while into it was that he dropped my stepmother off at church on the way to picking me up, and picked her up on the way home. so, it was partly a "get out of church" card.

as always, they asked bernie a lot of stupid questions, and he just had to spend the time doing damage control.

he was fully bilingual, but he didn't read much, in either language.

even late into life, this was probably his favourite piece of literature:

in fact, the effects of maurice richard on quebecois identity are quite substantial.

he was a quasi-religious figure that was seen by many as a messiah that would save them from anglo hegemony.

much has been written on this topic.

so, that wasn't merely a glib comment; there was some truth to the idea that the rocket was bigger than jesus.

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

i did not participate in the seconds or third sacraments at my catholic elementary school.

and, again: my mother's parents were anglican, but she never went to church out of her own will. she may have identified vaguely as a deist, but i would actually categorize her as more of a laveyan satanist.

my father appears to have had a complex ethnic background that included jewish, italian, french canadian, native american and potentially african-american ancestry, but he was baptized as an infant and raised a roman catholic. his father looked pretty jewish, but had a pure laine quebecois mother, and identified as a francophone roman catholic, as well. i never saw him go to church of his own free will, either; he was vaguely deist, but i think the truth is that he just didn't think about it much. what did religion have to do with the habs winning the cup, anyways? he believed more in maurice richard than he did in jesus; his real religion was hockey.

i was not baptized as an infant. i actually remember my baptism, at the age of four. at the time, the public school system started at grade one, and the catholic school system had two years of kindergarten. so, i was baptized into the catholic church by my satanist mother as a cynical ploy to get me to go to school. and, don't be too kind about her motives: she was a brutal alcoholic and was trying to find something to do with me.

by the time i was about nine or ten, i'd decided that religion was ridiculous, and i never wavered on the point.

so, i'm not religiously or culturally jewish - my dad would have identified as italian or french. and, i'm not roman catholic in any meaningful sense, either.

send the right-libertarians and anarcho-capitalists back to the nihilist right; i won't organize with them.

a holistic, coherent, environmentalist politics needs to understand the dangers posed by second-hand smoke exposure, and stand up for the people trying to minimize their exposure to it, by fighting for bans on residential smoking.

stop.

you stand with the natives when they fight for clean water, but you won't stand with your own people when they fight for smoke-free housing?

you're a hypocrite.

and, to be clear: under canadian law, she did not have an absolute right to smoke in the house.

she just didn't.

that's how it is...

maybe i should explain the law, here.

when a tenant makes a smoke complaint, the landlord has the obligation to make a good faith effort to resolve it. the landlord can't just tell the tenant "if you don't like it, leave". that would be against the landlord tenant act, and open up the landlord to serious litigation by the tenant. in very, very rare cases, it could even lead to charges of criminal negligence.

second-hand smoke kills people. it's not trivial. it's a serious complaint, and it's a big deal when a tenant makes it.

but, that's exactly what the landlord did. she verbatim told me "if you don't like the smoke, leave.". so, i sued her for a few thousand dollars - mostly to get the funds i needed to move, because i live on disability, and can't just up and move on a whim. and, i think it's pretty fucking obvious that if she wasn't going to make any attempt to address the second-hand smoke, then she had a moral and legal obligation to pay for my way out of the unit.

in order for me to win that case, i had to find a way to prove in court that she was actually smoking in the house. it should be obvious that i don't care if she smokes away from the house. she can even swallow a fucking tailpipe for all i care - my interest in her as a living entity was purely, absolutely nihil. and, i'm not a christian, so i don't care about being nice to my neighbours, especially when they won't respect my basic rights. to hell with her. she didn't give a fuck about my rights, so i showed her the same absolute level of disrespect that she showed me, and she deserved any fallout that she got from it for being a self-centered piece of shit. am i sounding more and more like a cop, here?

so, how could i prove that she was smoking inside? i could film her, which would be pretty invasive. i could get an air quality test, which would be expensive. i could subpoena her, which might not even work. the easiest, most fail-proof way to demonstrate my claim in court was to get a police report. so, that's what i did. and, fuck her.

you can accuse me of being anti-social if you want, and i won't disagree with you so much as i'll justify my actions as being proportionate and reasonable, in context. but, suggesting i acted like a cop is just specious.

and, i'll say it again: it's the cops that call other people cops. real people don't act like that.

and, i'll say this: if you're concerned about me retaliating, you're right to be. i'm easy-going, but i'm not a pacifist. i don't look for trouble - that's easy to see. but, if you fuck with me, i'll fuck with you, and i won't apologize for it.

so, don't fuck with me and we'll get along....

and, i need to be very clear and explicit about this point: claims that i'm a police officer are ridiculous, and easily debunked by anybody who's spent more than a few minutes with me.

but, that's not the point i'm making, here. the point i'm making is that you should in general be very suspicious about people that go around calling other people cops.

because those are the actual cops.

trust me: i've been around. i've been in activist circles. i've been in party scenes. the cops are the ones that call other people cops.

and, don't get meta, because i'm not pointing specific fingers, i'm laying down a general rule.

the call that i made was with the sole intent of generating documents for then upcoming litigation. i needed documents for the case i filed against the landlord, as i needed a way to prove in court that the neighbour was, in fact, smoking drugs in the house. in canada, you can't actually get arrested for smoking drugs, anwyays - and i never intended for them to drag her away, or something. the call was a domestic disturbance complaint around an individual that was refusing to respect my rights, as a tenant, to live in smoke-free housing. and, i won the case that i generated the documents around - i don't regret it, and i'd do it again. to attempt to draw some kind of connection between making a domestic disturbance complaint against a neighbour that was being legitimately disrespectful in the face of ridiculous negligence by the landlord and being some kind of a narc is entirely specious. well, unless you think that i don't have any rights, in which case you'd be legally and morally completely fucking wrong, as demonstrated by the fact that i won the case.

again: you might not think it from seeing me out and about, but i can peg a cop, because i've been around. and, i'll tell you flat out: if there's somebody on my case about this, that person is a cop, and you should get away from them. this is how they operate, through divide and conquer.

i'm a threat. they want to alienate me.

if you're reading this, you realize that.

to be clear: what's happening is that all of that nice humidity is coming up (partly from the hurricane, and partly just because it's at it's maximum extent; i get that), but...

at some point, at any time of the year, no matter what, the humidity is going to smash into the jet stream. both of these things are there all of the time. in the hottest days of the summer, you hope that happens somewhere up near hudson bay, because the jet stream has retreated. by november, that starts happening considerably south of here, over the ohio river, or further south.

i mean, i'm complaining about the possibility of rain. but, at least i'm almost getting the heat. if i was in sudbury or thunder bay, i'd be experiencing autumn.

for this week, detroit is right where the cold from the jet stream and the warmth from the oceans are smashing into each other, and that's actually pretty normal for....a little later, but around this time of year. it's often the event that transitions from summer to fall.

so, the forecast appears to have been a little eager about the warmth, and rather than get that last bit of humidity, we might wake up after the system passes in a few days in full blown autumn.

i'm not a clairvoyant, it's not about whether i predicted the weather weeks in advance, it's just a question of understanding what's going on. forecasting the weather always comes with a lot of uncertainty. but, what's happening isn't surprising, anyways - this aggressive jet stream has been dominating the weather here for months.

so, i've got this worked out pretty authoritatively, but it seems like the weather is going to keep me locked up. it's going to at least try to be warm, but i keep telling you that i'm right on that nasty jet stream, which is acting up, and the worst case scenario is that it rains non-stop for the next week, as what's left of the summer gets plowed over by the polar vortex.

so, i will probably only make it to one or two of these, unfortunately. 

11th: wizard rifle @ sanctuary--->marble--->park
12th: hot snakes @ small's ---->marble---> park

13th:
19:00-22:00 - strange beautiful music @ dia.
22:30-???? - hide @ small's
secret late night party #1

i will not be doing a full weekend, this week. in fact, saturday is shaping up to be a little cold, and i'll probably want to just stay in.

14th:
17:00 23:00 - strange beautiful music @ dso
secret late night party #2

15th:
no show

16th: cursive @ blind pig----> long bike ride home.

17th, 18th, 19th:
no show.

20th-22nd - potential three day party that would include human eye, severed heads, man man, luke vibert and tunic and that i'll work the details out for closer to the date.

realistically, i'm hoping to get out for the 11th and 12th and, if i do, i could very well stay in for the weekend. but, if i get rained out both days, and it seems nice, i could feel like i need to get out of the house, sort of thing. about the only way i go to the cursive show is if i get completely rained out.

i have not left the house since the 2nd, after all. i might get itchy, if i get stuck.

and, now, i need to get to work on the legal stuff. after a nap...

the cause of the housing collapse was that wages have not kept up with inflation.

it's inequality....

while i'm not going to support the privatization of "freddie mac" and "fannie mae", i think that this is a sector where the government has a valid role in, i don't really think that what happened in 2008 had much to do with them, or that predictions of collapse from spinning them off are particularly grounded.

which isn't to say that i don't think the economy is teetering on the brink. i actually do.

but, just to say that when it tips over, you should probably avoid blaming it on this policy.

yeah. there's nothing today.

and, i'm hoping i don't get rained out tomorrow, now, too.

*shrug*.

the other thing to point out is that it's foolish to compare the 2018 midterms to the 2020 presidential election because the electoral system is entirely incomparable.

if you follow the 2018 playbook, you should probably expect the 2016 results.

the most recent example of it actually working was the 2015 federal election in canada.

and, while it turned out that justin trudeau was a filthy, rotten liar, that's not the question at hand.

i want to interject a more important point: this is not a historical norm. turnout has been at historical lows for around 20 years or so. so, if you're looking deep into the past for examples of a recent phenomenon, you shouldn't be surprised not to find much.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/10/democrats-turnout-2020-election-228040

i'm starting to think i'm going to end up defending biden more often than i'd like to, because, in group discussion scenarios, he tends to be detail-oriented. this isn't idealism v pragmatism. it's not left v right; i don't really agree with him. but, he's wonkish where others aren't, and i appreciate that.

he came off better than all of the candidates that came before him. he's taking the issue seriously, at least.

but, he's visibly aging. he looks older every time i see him. and, at some point...

but, there's no evidence, yet. and, if he's not much older than the average primary voter, it might not at all.

oh - and inri000 should finally get a first draft of liner notes added to it, too.

so, i'm tentatively done with 10/2013, except the travel blog which i'll do last.

politics: 417 pages
music journal: 98 pages
deathtokoalas: 79 pages

as mentioned, the politics page had mirrors of old essays and web documents. that's done, but i did a lot of writing for the next few months, so the documents will remain heavy.

i will not be finalizing or publishing these documents until i get the legal documents done. so, this is to be put aside for a little while.

i'm going to stop to eat, convince myself that i'm staying in tonight and will then get to the legal writing by mid-afternoon.

i'm not jello biafra.

and, i'm sure we could get into a couple of nice arguments about a lot of things.

but, when a person's main artistic message is "think for yourself", he should expect the people he influences to form disagreements with him.

isn't this refreshing, though?

i've got a few more days left for the 10/13 rebuild, but i'm done with the html archiving...

it's a part of the site. i'll just have to get through it.

and, it's just a few more months before the music becomes the dominant focus in early 2014.

this is what i was looking for.

https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/06/j-reacts-to-political-spectrum-and.html

the secular left is badly disenfranchised, right now. the closest thing to a candidate that we have is sanders, but he's a weak representative, himself.

the politician of the future that is going to break through to us is going to sound like a kucinich or a nader, and we're not going to care what s/he looks like.

i can't find the post where i ran myself against the most recent democrats over the political compass. we weren't even in the same quadrant.

the fact is that i would agree with barely half of what clinton said and proposed.

the correct perspective is actually that atheists - a growing, powerful demographic - are completely disenfranchised.

we used to have the liberal party up in canada, but they're in the process of imploding and it's not clear if we can salvage it after we turf trudeau. in the united states, if we're going to organize, we'll probably need to do it in a third party.

if you want more atheists to vote for you, stop talking about god all the fucking time.

the tone of this article is horrific, and the author deserves a talking to about it.

but, the simple reality is that the spectrum sucks. i've pointed this out before. when there are acceptable candidates, we'll vote for them.

but don't run hillary clinton or al gore (or barack obama...or elizabeth warren....or michael ignatieff) for president and then get bitchy at atheists for refusing to vote for them. they're simply not representative of where we stand in the spectrum, and we're simply not going to vote for something that we don't believe in.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/09/08/prodding-irreligious-left-vote

i'll do an installment of ironic campaign songs a little later, once the field has narrowed, but this has to be for warren:

just an update: this rebuild has been brutal.

i thought it would be quick because i'd just be pasting html files in and cross-referencing, but this has demonstrated itself to be time consuming.

the politics document will be between 400 and 450 pages, and i hope to finish the build in the next few hours. but, i'm not going to do all of the clean-up or upload it, yet, because i want to get the legal stuff done first.

november might not be much different, as i will still have a lot of mirroring to do.

just a reminder.

====

oct 26, 2013

i was looking for something like this a few months ago. nice to see it appear.

they did a good job pulling together sources and making it readable, but it's a little naive in how it talks about the elite using the illuminati to "explain revolt", as though they were confused by the masses of starving people trying to kill them and didn't understand why. maybe, though, they're trying to avoid replacing a conspiracy with another.

the illuminati conspiracy was created by the catholic church as a means of scaring the peasants away from enlightenment revolutionary activity. masons were cast as the legions of satan. the illuminati was likewise a satanic plot. did the peasants want to go to hell? if not, they'd better stay away from those nogoodnik enlightenment revolutionaries...

over time, the tactics were adopted by "protestant" preachers in the united states for the same reasons and to protect the same interests, except the satanists became communists. hence, the new world order conspiracy.

so, it's not just a naive attempt to understand the world by primitive european aristocrats; it's a very carefully worked out means of mind control.

ironically.

https://overthrowingilluminati.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/how-to-overthrow-the-illuminati_read.pdf

i'm not advertising for the atkins diet. i eat very little meat, myself; i recommend a balanced diet.

there are many scientists working in the field to try and promote more sustainable practices across the field of agriculture - both for livestock and for crops.

my intent is to convince you that blaming meat consumption is a red herring.

the problem is oil, not cows.

https://news.berkeley.edu/2012/04/02/fertilizer-use-responsible-for-increase-in-nitrous-oxide-in-atmosphere/

i don't know anything about the sunrise movement. i'm too old for student movements, at this point.

and, i don't know if the stooge they got on cnn actually had anything to do with it, or was just an actor on tv.

but, i will tell you very authoritatively that the question posed to klobuchar was an oil industry talking point designed to distract attention away from fossil fuel companies and towards farmers in the midwest, who are an easy target, but are not a substantive part of the problem.

 if you need it stated to you this way, so be it.

 https://skepticalscience.com/animal-agriculture-meat-global-warming.htm

those are the facts.

i'm sorry.

those local epa numbers are, again:

transportation: 26-30%
all agriculture, including livestock: 9-12%
livestock: 3-5%

in the united states, meat is less carbon intensive than grains.

the reason is the pesticides.

i know it seems like it sometimes, but the president of the united states isn't actually the emperor of the world.

nor are consumption patterns in india or china relevant, in context.

it's the local epa numbers that are relevant.

well, do you import beef from the other side of the world?

chances are pretty high that it's from the state or province you live in, unless you're eating at some bourgeois restaurant.

so, global production from agriculture isn't relevant to your consumption patterns. what's relevant is your local transportation footprint.

again: this isn't accidental. this is propaganda. those "audience questions" sounded like lobbyist talking points. they were the same points i've heard in online debates by bots and trolls. the whole thing was clearly set up.

the numbers i previously cited were from the epa reported cited in this article.

https://theconversation.com/yes-eating-meat-affects-the-environment-but-cows-are-not-killing-the-climate-94968

well, which endorsements matter?

the reason i want to give sanders the edge here - even over biden - is that he seems to be doing better with things like unions. does anybody care who their congress person endorses, really? i think people care more about endorsements from community newspapers, unions, church leaders, etc.

and, i actually expect that sanders will run the table on all of this stuff, which is why he's the more serious candidate, over warren.

warren, on the other hand, will do better with the actual party people, but it's not clear if those types of endorsements will help or hinder her. i've pointed out before that i think her polling numbers are being exaggerated by "friendly" sampling decisions, but that's a hunch.

but, i live in detroit, too. and, i'm going to tell you a secret: bernie is still the most popular candidate downtown, which is pretty black. the watch parties at the downtown bars are all sanders watch parties. but, i'm seeing watch parties in ferndale and grosse pointe pop up, wealthier white suburbs, and they are increasingly warren watch parties.

nobody seems to care much about biden.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/is-it-really-a-three-candidate-race/

https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2015/08/vote-trudeau-for-more-pipelines.html

and, those numbers are misleading, anyways.

they're comparing global numbers, which takes into account the fact that much of the world uses bad farming practices and doesn't drive cars.

i've fact checked this before and this article is more accurate - in the united states, transportation is in the 25-30% range and livestock emissions are in the 3-5% range. the difference is a little smaller in canada, iirc, but the same basic distortion is present.

so, if you're reading this, and you're talking about your own lifestyle choices, you don't want to think these are comparable issues, or that going vegan is much of a real answer. they aren't, and it isn't.

https://www.futurity.org/dont-blame-cows-for-climate-change/

overall?

klobuchar is providing the kind of answers that sounded good fifteen years ago.

now, we need to move faster than that.

and, i'm just being honest.

so, i'm giving cnn twelve pinocchios on this.

it's a distraction.

Environmentally, AMP systems came out in the green, while feedlot emissions were in the red primarily because of feed-based nitrogen emissions from fertilizer.

again: when cattle farming is a problem, it's due to the petrochemical inputs, and not the cattle itself.

it all goes back to the oil in the end, and the need to find ways to leave it in the ground.

and, can we feed cows without oil? well, we did it for 9900 years...

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180319120133.htm

you know how cow farmers used to get their own fertilizer back in the day, right?

it's tricky - there's good ways and bad ways, best practices, etc. i'm not going to argue against efficiency.

but, don't let the oil companies pull the wool over your eyes on this - the problem is their product. solely. strictly.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/cows-beef-farming-reverse-climate-change-global-warming-a8202121.html

suppose you have a lake that is fed by a river, and exits into a series of underwater caves, before falling off into a natural reservoir. it's an ancient lake in a stable geological area, so the flow of water is in perfect harmony with itself.

now, let's suppose some asshole humans show up and reroute this other river into the lake, that is the same lake we just talked about, in order to reclaim the land under the other river to build a casino. they just figured that the river would flow into the lake and that would be that.

but, in fact, the second river was much larger, which increased the amount of water flowing into the lake by a great amount, leading to annual flooding once the reservoirs filled up. so, they take the money from the casino and hire a geoengineer to study it.

the geongineer takes a good look at the situation and decides that the lake can take about 90% of the flow rate without flooding. so he needs to find a way to reduce the amount of water flowing into the river by about 10%. he then looks at the two sources and measures their rates, concluding that the original source of the lake is responsible for about 15% of the flow rate and the river that was routed into it by the assholes is responsible for 85%.

he then takes his findings back to the casino owners, who quickly devise a strategy.

"well, why don't we reroute the initial river, then? that way, we can save our casino and prevent the flooding. and, it's a smaller river, so what can they do?"

so, they route the smaller river in a different direction one night, when the inhabitants in the region are sleeping. and, indeed, the flooding stops for a while.

meanwhile, however, the reservoir is slowly filling up. and, when somebody else further upstream decides to reroute the river for their own self-interest, the flooding comes back again.

this is a parable to help you understand what happens when you blame livestock farming for global warming. while it may be true that livestock is responsible for ~15% of emissions, these emissions can be placed into equilibrium. it's this new river that is causing the floods. and, in the long run, it's the new river that needs to be addressed to stop the flooding - even if rerouting the small stream might help for a while.

stop for a second.

agriculture started about 10,000 years ago. the warming started about two hundred years ago. think it through. we had 9800 years of agriculture without devastating climate change, right?

now, let me blow your mind a third time: it is actually thought, now, that we did experience a little bit of warming at the start of the neolithic, but that it's hard to separate from the natural warming that occurred at the end of the last interglacial, and that it ultimately balanced out. farming produces emissions, but it also acts as a sink, right?

if you're still confused, the thing you need to ask yourself is where does the carbon come from. so, long as the carbon is coming from the sky or the soil or living things, it gets recycled. it's when we start pulling it out of the underground reservoirs at industrial rates that it fucks up the balance.

if you're concerned, you're way better off getting an electric car than going vegan.

there are convincing reasons why you should cut down on the amount of meat you eat. i'd like to see the meat economy shift to insects, myself. but, reducing your carbon footprint really isn't one of them.

what the newspapers will tell you is that agriculture produces around 15% of the carbon that goes into the atmosphere, which is true. but, what they forget to tell you is that this is naturally occurring carbon, not new carbon.

what?

carbon, of course, is a naturally occurring substance in the environment. it's at the centre of every living organism around you.

and, there's something called a carbon cycle that describes how carbon recycles through the ecosystem. i suppose we get hit by meteorites once in a while, but the net amount of carbon in this system is roughly constant.

climate change is about the amount of carbon that we're introducing into the carbon cycle, and the only source of this introduced carbon is from fossil fuels, where it's been trapped in the ground, for millions or billions of years.

now, as mentioned, there are net inputs when it comes to meat production. the pesticides used to grow the grain are very carbon intensive, and opening up new grazing lands means cutting down trees. there's also transport issues, as well as a number of other things i'm sure i'm forgetting. but, in the abstract ideal of cattle roaming free on naturally occurring grassland, on the edge of an existing forest, there's no net increase of carbon at play.

so, why are they pushing this so hard?

because they think that if they can convert us all into vegans, they can salvage their business model. that is, the idea is to shift the blame, and then shift the source. they essentially think they can continue to emit new carbon, so long as they remove carbon from the existing cycle. get it?

but, it's a false solution, anyways, because even if we did manage to eliminate carbon being recycled by agriculture, your cars are going to eventually replace it all.

stated simply: it's oil industry propaganda. and, it's wide spread. and, people you like will repeat it. but, it's wrong.

i want to make a general comment, though, because we're seeing a trend show up in blaming the issue on cattle farming. i ignored it at first, but it's starting to become a theme, and that's disturbing, because it's not based on any actual science.

it is true that farming is a substantive contributor to global warming, but the idea that it's the dominant factor (and specifically that cows are the dominant factor) is simply wrong and, i believe, ultimately sourced from a dubious hollywood film that took copious amounts of money from the fossil fuel industry. when you hear people talk like this, red flags should go off in your mind. this is pseudo-science, but it's worse than that - it's meant to shift the blame from transnational industry to small farmers that can't really defend themselves.

the host at one point even suggested that the problem would be solved if the whole world went vegan, which is so horrifically wrong as to demand a retraction.

raising cattle is, in theory, actually carbon neutral. why is that? because the carbon that the cattle release into the environment came from the environment in the first place. cows don't create carbon, they use carbon and recycle it. the reason that farming is a substantive contributor is not due to cattle, but due to the use of oil-based pesticides for vegetables, as well as the habit of land-clearing to make room for them.

so, no, you don't have to give up burgers and cheese to solve the problem. nor is giving up burgers and cheese from a state like wisconsin going to make any substantive difference. factory farming is not a significant net contributor. but, soy and corn are.

if you're solely concerned about carbon emissions, your soy burger is worse.

i'm sorry if i burst your bubble of ignorance, but you need to stop watching movies. read books, instead.

i suppose it's not surprising to see this on cnn. i mean, the party itself refused it. so, why wouldn't exxon step in, right?

but understand it for what it is. and, now that the tone is set, i'll do my best to deconstruct the situation further as it happens.

we need to go after industry, not farmers.

he should sue her for copyright infringement.

so, amy klobuchar wants us to dispel with the notion that climate change isn't happening right now.

i guess she's going for those few holdout marco rubio democrats.

i pretty much tuned out, right there.

to be clear: the intent behind this kind of an attack would not be to try and convince people that warren is a racist, although that would be a bonus. rather, the intent would be to force her to adjust. and, then, once you get lots of media images of warren shaking hands with black and brown people with weird clothes and stuff - and the sanders campaign may have to help disseminate those - you can snap this white voting bloc out of the haze it's in.

so, if you can convince black voters that warren is a racist, that's a bonus.

but, what bernie's campaign really needs to do is convince white voters that she's not a racist.

then, they can get back to looking at policy - and she'll lose when you put the issues on the table, straight up.

is warren's campaign not kind of....white?

so, how can bernie go after warren?

well, the disproportionate and skewed media coverage is a potentially insurmountable problem.

but, let's start with this: where's the diversity in warren's campaign?

and, i'll say this again: i don't think the law is unconstitutional.

i just think they need to use the right arguments.

it was always a left-wing policy. leftists are supposed to believe in state secularism; conservatives are supposed to believe in religious freedom. liberals take a middle approach.

we just live in an era where nobody knows their right from left anymore.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/secularism-law-opinion-jean-francis-lisee-1.5274015

"she's splitting the vote"
"no, he's splitting the vote."
"no.."

listen.

she's splitting the vote.

so, should sanders drop out and give it to warren, then?

not if you want universal healthcare, he shouldn't.

in order to win, sanders has to have an outright majority going in. he can't give the party any opportunity to overturn the results, because they will, if they can.

and, in order to do that, he had to block warren at the start. he had to stop her from gaining any traction at all.

but, he's run an aimless campaign that allowed the media to prop her up, while he campaigned in areas he can't actually win in, and chased demographics that are either out of his reach or too marginal to really matter. and, she's managed to undercut him through his own incompetence.

she still can't win so long as biden is there. but, she can - and will - run interference long enough to give it to biden.

right now - and it's early. things will change. - it seems clear enough that biden will sweep the south, while warren and sanders split the north and west. warren still doesn't have a path, but splitting the delegates is enough to keep bernie out of it, because once you get to the convention, they won't support him.

so, you may even end up in a scenario where sanders has more delegates than warren going into the convention. but, they'll pick warren, anyways.

and, warren will lose to trump.

again: the relevance of the situation is becoming questionable.

it could very well be too late.

if he thinks that standing up for muslims will win him votes, then he's wrong.

in fact, if he lets the media frame it the wrong way, which they will if he lets them, it could cost him the nomination.

....and sikhs aren't even that unpopular, here.

it's certainly not comparable to how america interprets islam, anyways.

i mean, i can publish some more data about how the ndp is doing under jagmeet singh, if you want me to?

no, what i'm drawing attention to is a racist media.

listen: you get what i'm saying or you don't, i'm not going to push the point, and i largely think it's too late. i don't think this requires a lot of explanation, or takes a lot of thought to work out, even if you need somebody to point it out.

but, let's be careful about muslim voter participation. it's easy to look at data and say "70% of muslims voted democrat", and think that's a rising group. but, two points. first, 70% of "muslims" is not the same thing as 70% of muslims. and, second, it's misleading if you take into account that only 5% of muslims voted.

(it should be obvious that i'm just making numbers up, but i'm aware of the trend)

in fact, it doesn't take a lot of thought to realize that those 5% are outliers, comparable to the children of evangelicals that swing left in revolt of their parents. and, to be clear: i'm in solidarity with those voters. but, they're "muslims". they're not muslims. and, there's never going to be a whole lot of them.

some outreach towards muslims is of course a good idea, as is outreach towards any other group. you want as many votes as you can get, obviously. but, when you're dealing with an unpopular group and a hostile media that's keen on framing you negatively, you need to be careful about cost benefit analyses. and, while he might not like to hear it, bernie needs to be careful with this.

as it is, i don't think that linda sarsour's endorsement has much to do with her being a muslim. she doesn't seem to be a spokesperson for the muslim community, but rather an activist in a youth movement that i'm too old to be aware of. ok. but, that's not how the media is covering it, and not how most people are going to interact with it.

i'm just saying that he needs to be mindful of the realities of what the media is actually doing, and that he needs to be realistic about the potential benefits of outreach to this specific group.

but, i don't know who she is.

i have no comment on the endorsement.

one of the frames that the media is pushing right now is to associate sanders with islam.

that's obvious.

and, if he walks right into it like a self-righteous liberal idiot, it will hurt him.

and, no, muslims are not a key swing group.

they mostly don't vote at all, and if they were going to, they would align with evangelicals.

i don't know who linda sarsour is, but the sanders campaign needs to be mindful of the media's apparent insistence on projecting sanders as a pro-muslim candidate.

that's not going to help him win votes in any important demographic - not suburban women, not southern blacks, not midwestern whites. muslims are deeply unpopular amongst pretty much every key swing group.

which is, of course, why they're doing it.

again: i've never heard of her before. i have no analysis or comment, other than to be cautious about the optics, because they're not positive.

and, i'm sorry if you're a muslim and find that offensive, but, like, get an analysis.

the increasing concentrations of carbon in our atmosphere and oceans are a real thing, and they will have measurable consequences in the future. but, this is only one aspect in a complicated system, and for much of the planet, it's not even the dominant aspect. in the higher temperate latitudes of the northern hemisphere, it's actually a minor concern in understanding the weather for most of the year.

and, it won't keep us warm if the sun shuts itself off - not any more than a lighter will keep you warm in the dead of winter.

for better or worse, it seems as though we're currently emerging from a weak solar period, and, within the next couple of years, should expect the higher temperate latitudes to stop bucking the global trend.

for right now, expect a cold winter.

i know you want to see the solar system as something that's fixed and "natural". inalterable. many of the early greeks liked this concept of the universe that they understood. and, it's hobbesian, in some way. but, it's just another type of naturalistic fallacy.

the "natural state" of the universe is one where chaos and randomness is dominant, and small variations in only vaguely understood distant forces could very well wipe us right the fuck out.

we are a small planet suspended in an unimaginably large ocean of unimaginably powerful energy, and we get thrown around by the universe at will, even as we remain anchored in place by our sun - which is itself experiencing massive turbulence.

if you want to understand what is happening in front of you, you need to begin by understanding how small you are.

milankovitch theory is an example of a messy theory, which is the case for most modern theories. what that means is that you can't find nice equations that govern the behaviour of the earth over any period, and you even need to calculate for error and compensate for uncertainty.

so, it's true that the milankovitch theory has proven lacking in key contexts, but the correct takeaway is that the system is proving more complex than we thought it was, and we've yet to uncover all of the complexity. it would be naive to suggest that there's any other way to uncover this besides slowly waiting for the data to come in via increased observation of the relevant celestial mechanics. and, it could take quite a while to work it out.

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

you need to take a course in the topic and get back to me on it.

but, listen: if you're arguing against the well understood correlation between solar cycles and weather in the northern hemisphere, something we've understood for centuries, then you're an ignorant moron and not worth bothering with.

High-pressure areas are normally caused by a phenomenon called subsidence, meaning that as the air in the high cools it becomes denser and moves toward the ground. Pressure increases here because more air fills the space left from the low. Subsidence also evaporates most of the atmosphere's water vapor, so high-pressure systems are usually associated with clear skies and calm weather.

in the northern hemisphere, we experience rapid atmospheric cooling starting around the beginning of september as a consequence of the earth's tilt as it orbits the sun in a wobbly and imprecise manner, which is why we get two things near the end of the year:

1) a lot of high-pressure systems.
2) winter.

further, when you see high-pressure systems assert themselves earlier in the year, or linger later into the spring, the reason this is happening is that the sun isn't warming the atmosphere up enough, or even because the amount of solar energy hitting the earth on the tilt is decreasing in counter-intuitive ways. this is complicated, because it is non-linear. physicists call this an n-body problem, because you calculate it using the sum of the gravity exerted on the earth by the n bodies around it. there is no general solution to the n-body problem, and we are better off trying to measure this directly than solving it using numerical methods. the dynamic nature of the sun further contributes to the complexity in this system. climate scientists would refer to the fluctuations caused by the n-body problem, together with the fluctuations in the solar field, as the mechanics comprising the milankovitch theory.

just in case people don't understand: high pressure atmospheric systems in the northern hemisphere are caused by decreases in energy in the upper levels of the atmosphere, which are driven by variations in sunlight.

so, when you hear a weather forecaster talk about a "high pressure system moving in", you should understand that the primary driver of that weather phenomenon is, in fact, solar insolation.

and, that is basic science.

i'd better shut up, or somebody's gonna slip some hemlock in my beer.

"can you explain the nuances of your position in the israeli-palestinian conflict?"

*pause*

fuck christgau.

i'm on this side, dammit.

hey, i didn't say i wanted to slaughter or scatter the people.

i just said i wanted to kill their idols.

and, you'd have to destroy it good, too.

- burn it.
- bulldoze it.
- burn it again.
- ship the remains off to the ends of the earth in unmarked containers to be buried in unmarked, unknown locations.
- burn it a third time.
- pave it. 

i've got some italian in me, i guess.

but, if you want me to take a side, that's the side i'm on.

put another way: i am equally opposed to both sides in the conflict.

you'll notice that i don't tend to take sides in these sorts of things, and it's really not because i'm some kind of milquetoast fence sitter - it's because i actually don't support either side.

the faction i would support here would be a secular left that wants to tear down the temple/mosque complex and turn it into a fucking parking lot.

crazy arab: god gave me this land.
crazy jew: no. god gave me this land.

sane analysis: there is no such thing as god.

so, regarding harris' performance...

she's not such a great actor.

that is all.

what they don't have is the right to hold the people around them in inhumane living conditions to advance their own self-interest. that's not a right, it's a violation of the rights of others.

"but, then you reject israel's right to exist."

rights are things that states define; they're rules that exist within themselves. who defines the rules as to which states exist? nobody. so, states can't have rights, it's a contradiction in terms.

i would support israel's opportunity to exist, but if it gets outbred, then it loses, and that's their problem.

i pulled that out of the rebuild from oct, 2013.

maybe it's a good time to remind people that i actually reject a two-state solution in the region, because i reject the premise of ethnic nationalism. i don't think you should have separate states based on religious or ethnic identities, based on justifications from an iron age work of fiction. i think that everything about that idea is thoroughly, completely insane.

rather, i would support a single state solution where jews and arabs have equal voting rights, equal rights to buy property, etc. and, if that takes a long time to actually happen in reality, then we'll just have to wait it out.

i always say they should give it back to the neanderthals.

what i'll point out is this though: so far, this year, the jet stream has won these struggles rather handily.

in fact, it's been that way for the better part of the last five years.

if the ocean starts winning these fights, that's a signal regarding the strength of the next solar cycle.

you can really see what i mean about the jet stream, here:

it's like an evil force field.

the article attached to that picture points out that ocean temperatures in the atlantic are warmest at this time of the year, but it forgets that the sun is also bottoming out. nobody has the right data required to run this properly at a distance of more than a day or two.

but, if the spike in the ocean wins out over the dip in the solar magnets, i'm more likely to get a break down here in windsor than they are up in ottawa, which means we may get a week or two more after all.

if the jet stream overpowers, it's going to be a very early fall.

i kid.

but, no: being drunk in public doesn't disqualify her from holding office.

and, you can take your "right thinking" right out the fucking door, alright?

listen, it doesn't matter.

this has to be a protest election.

yeah, yeah, yeah.

but, i'm not running for prime minister, am i?

for better or for worse, i'm not.

really.

we're tipping over towards a green sweep faster than elizabeth may at a wedding.

this tipping point...

it's almost as tipsy as elizabeth may, herself.

canada could revolt hard this election.

https://thenarwhal.ca/canadians-in-every-riding-support-climate-action-new-research/

there's lots of great educational documentaries on youtube, so why would i want to pay to rot my brain with shit like that?

but, i mean, in context?

you'd probably have to pay me to use it, actually.

i couldn't imagine sitting around streaming sitcoms.

i'm willing to pay for one broadband connection service.

so, i don't pay for a phone, i don't pay for cable and i'm not going to pay to stream movies or music, either.

if it's not on youtube, i don't care about it.

listen: i'm not sure i even know what netflix is.

does it have a youtube channel?

'cause i'm not paying for it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_Crisis_of_1944

so, do i think that orthodox jews should be given conscientious objector status? man, that's a minefield.

i think it should be obvious that i oppose conscription in the first place. but, if conscription is necessary, then i guess i'd have to necessarily lean support towards the side that is arguing against conscription, necessarily. but, i'd want to expand the terms. that is, there should be a way out, but not just for orthodox jews. a secular pacifist should also be able to claim conscientious objector status. if you're going to do this at all...

but, hey, if we can finally get rid of netanyahu, right?

i'm not going to pretend i have a grasp on this. it's messy, and complicated. i'm just optimistic that a new era in israel is days away...

classic sequence.

https://www.tildedave.com/byron.html

also:
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/10/07/planned-obsolescence/

it would be nice to see a red tory tradition (re)-assert itself in the united states, partly because it would make it that much easier for the democrats to actually focus.

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

he reminds me a bit of hugh segal:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Segal

stated differently: in canada, yang would be a conservative. clearly.

yang seemed to have a better grasp of the situation, but he seemed to think it was a secondary issue, and was constantly trying to either change the topic or relate it to something else. this is frustrating. at the end of the day, he might support some incentivizing measures, but i wouldn't expect him to support much of anything that would be in any way inconvenient to the investor class - and he's not going to be at all interested in the kind of major state-led initiatives and investments that are required to actually solve the problem, at this stage. so, despite having a better grasp of the severity of the issue, he had a far worse grasp on the steps necessary to address it, and seemed to perceive it as less important than talking to people about their wallets.

put together, he sounds like what they used to call a "moderate" republican. and, i would plead with him: everybody would be better off if these ideas were floated in that party, instead.

he's the kind of potential legislator i'd like to see a democratic minority compromise with, not the kind of potential legislator i'd want to actively vote for.

it's pretty clear that your god doesn't exist, whatever your god is. but, it's just as clear that if you're going to live in the arctic, then you need to adapt intelligently to the climate and food sources around you.

there is a tremendous difference between teaching children to discard debunked or obsolete knowledge, which is progress, and literally separating people from a sustainable, evolved way of life, which is regress.

we really don't have a history of slavery in canada.

and, i'm not going to argue that the genocide that america carried out against it's indigenous population is in some way comparable to what happened up here. it isn't.

but, our great collective sin is our ongoing colonization of the native population - something most of us don't really know the real extent of, or just how bad it really is. when you ask us directly, we claim we don't care. but, our apathy is a reflection of our ignorance.

so, yeah, i don't like receiving death threats. but, i understood i was dealing with a legacy of control and abuse - and that i was talking with somebody that is so brainwashed that they were barely capable of understanding what they were saying.

talk to an inuit person some time about their ancestral, traditional food sources. you'd think they have some kind of attachment to that, right? it's their culture, right? and, in fact, it's their sustainable food source, too - they can't and shouldn't be shipping in french fries and coke.

but, do you know what they actually call their own food? do you know how they speak of the caribou, the seal, the narwhal, etc?

they call it "country food", because they're taught that it's dirty, and inferior. they speak of it in hushed tones, guiltily. it's a disgrace - a disgrace to us.

and, it's not the past.

i just want to expand on this a little, because the history is different up here.

the indigenous people of canada are taught that the british monarch is their great protector. they are trained to speak of the monarch as the father, and of themselves as children. and, this is still happening - to our great national shame.

when you try and talk to indigenous people about these things, they repeat the lies they've been told, and grow angry and agitated about it, as they've been taught to.

it's like arguing with somebody that was raised in a cult and taught to attack the outside world as liars and corruptors - because, in truth, that's very much the actual reality of it.

every indigenous person in canada knows that the great lord, the queen, would never harm her beloved indigenous children. begone with these marxist lies!

the courts have more or less refused to address the issue, even going so far as to erect a fiduciary duty by the crown.

of course, when you get people off the reserve, it's a slow process of nursing them back to health, but you can do it. it's the ones that are born and raised there and never leave, or leave infrequently, that are like talking to members of an isolated cult - because that's actually what they are.

https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2013/10/taking-note-of-death-threat.html

i do hope that nova scotia gets off ok. and, i feel for the people of the bahamas.

but, i think i want to plan for one weekend, mid-week, instead of two.

that would be wizard rifle on wednesday and hot snakes on thursday, both in far away hamtramck.

at least the buses are relatively early on weekdays.

the ndp is a national political party, it's not a motorcycle gang. it's not a cult.

it can't go around smashing up people's cars for defecting from them.

i mean, what's next: executing apostates?

obviously, when they catch the person responsible for this, they should be held properly responsible.

but, i also think that the jagmeet singh needs to take responsibility for the vacuity of his rhetoric and apologize for the consequences of it. this is what happens when you talk shit like this.

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/a-former-ndp-executive-car-is-vandalized-called-racist-1.4580827

i forgot to mention that i started watching the climate town hall.

yes, i'm going to watch the entire thing. it's just going to take a while. one per day, or every other day, depending on when i eat.

the first candidate up was julian castro, and i'll acknowledge that he sounded well spoken enough. i don't really disagree with much of what he said, but i'll just throw out there that the impression that i get from him is that he's a pragmatist, and, at this stage, the global superpower cannot be thinking in pragmatic terms when it comes to climate change. it's too late for that.

somebody asked him about his plans to fund infrastructure replacement, and he suggested it wouldn't be necessary, because he'd reverse the warming. that's not a science-based analysis anymore, that's wishful thinking. but, i think it's wise for me to expect a little bit of that from everybody both because (1) these people have poor science credentials across the board and (2) it is difficult to understand that it really, actually is too late to stop a certain level of damage. the candidate that stands up and says "i know that this isn't just about emissions reductions anymore. i've read the ipcc reports. i understand the necessity to mitigate the irreversible upcoming effects, which means i have budgeted to alter the existing infrastructure" is the one i'm going to take the most seriously, but i'm not sure that's going to happen.

i know that the usual political reflex is to rally people around a cause and be optimistic. but, telling people you can reverse climate change is about as honest as telling them you can bring their factory jobs back. it's magical thinking.

but, the thing i found most instructive was watching him react to the question about what he did wrong in the past, because he stopped to process it. don't get me wrong: it's generally a good idea to think before you speak. but, he seemed to process that he was being walked into a trap, and i'm not sure i believe the answer he gave.

the sum reaction was proceed with caution with this guy.

it's really just about being more like finland.

https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/10/21/taking-sports-out-of-school-2/school-should-be-about-learning-not-sports

i would even go so far as to back a congressional inquiry into athletes being given fake grades to let them continue. that's something that needs to be rooted out and stopped forever.

yeah, right now i'm planning for wednesday.

that jet stream looks like it's going to freeze us out pretty persistently, but the hurricane is going to spike the temperatures for us, here. as noted repeatedly: when the dominant pattern is a low dipping jet stream, the only thing that can really overpower it and let the warm air flow up is a major storm in the atlantic. that's set to hit here tuesday/wednesday before the jetstream reasserts itself.

i'm going to sort through the dally acts a little more carefully, but i expect to be in for the day.

if i was to go anywhere tonight, it would be to a math show in hamtramck.

no.

listen.

they're all terrible.

if athletes want to go to school, i'd encourage it, but they should be admitted based on their marks, and properly evaluated on their merits.

now, that doesn't mean that athletes shouldn't go to school.

what it means is that there should be a separation between the scholastic and the athletic - that athletics don't belong at school, and that people certainly shouldn't get scholarships to play sports.

is paying post-secondary athletes a good idea?

not remotely. what a waste of resources that demonstrates a skewed level of priority.

i'm going to make a different proposal: sports should be banned from universities altogether. i never wanted to have to deal with jocks at school, and would have been happier if they weren't there at all.

let the leagues fund their own systems.

and, let's spend that money on things that are important, like scientific research.

have another plate, meghan.

also, i'll listen to what meghan mccain says about population control and climate change after she cuts down on the cheeseburgers.

and, i'm not crazy.

you're crazy.

you're all crazy.

so, you know what is a waste of time?

going to work is a waste of time.
going to church is a waste of time.
going to school is a waste of time.
going to political rallies is a waste of time.
going to family get-togethers is a waste of time.

what a real left, an anarchist left, wants is to get rid of all of these wastes of our time, so that people can live their lives in actual freedom.

they told me i was a leader.

maybe they were right, after all.

they just didn't expect me to lead an army against them....

i mean, i can be a leader if you insist. that's what they always told me i was good at. i was never so sure they were right, but whatever.

i'm just perhaps not going to lead with the ideals and values and goals that you'd want me to.

but, don't misunderstand the point: the feeling is mutual. i think that capitalism is pretty pointless...

it's your society that is a waste of everybody's time - labour, school, religion, markets.

i'm trying to transcend that.

and, it seems like people need leaders, so follow me, if that's what you need.

actually, i would argue that being an artist - be it a writer or a musician - is a more effective means of actualizing real change than being a politician.

the future has to exist beyond a point of representative government.

that's part of what it means to be an anarchist - rejecting the idea of bourgeois government as a giant waste of time.

so, if you thought i had aspirations in politics, you weren't understanding what i was saying.

i would rather be somebody more like ralph nader, who accomplished more in a few years than the entire left has, combined, since.

i missed this, but it's a good tweak.

i support this.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/patent-drug-board-changes-1.5241413

i've said this before: if orwell was actually right, you wouldn't actually know it.

and, the more right he is, the less you'll be able to figure it out.

it was generally understood that a few of the people hanging around were cops. nobody pointed fingers at each other. and, the truth is that we weren't doing anything particularly sketchy, either.

but, i actually think the truth is quite a bit more startling than that.

i actually think i was at parties where 15 out of the 20 people in the room were cops. i think that it was cops that dominated the organizing committee. and, i ultimately think that the point of the whole thing was a sting.

so, it's not a question of finding the cop. most of the activists were/are cops.

why did i think erin was a cop?

because she was an agent provocateur. i caught her trying to incite violence several times, and she once tried to talk me into smashing up somebody's car (i didn't). it was classic, textbook undercover cop shit.

she was also way too old to be a first-year student.

there were other tip-offs. but, the incitement/entrapment is the classic giveaway, and she was about as obvious as could possibly be about it.

ok, so i've got up until the end of the 18th synced and have posted my last correspondence with esa/erin/shelly. i want to clarify a few things before i stop to eat.

although she did make a few dodged passes at me, erin and i did not have a romantic or sexual relationship at all. whereas sarah was polyamorous, or at least saw it as an ideal to attain to, erin was just a lost soul. it's true that i was a little older then, but it's also true that erin was older than sarah was in the relevant time frame. by the time sarah was erin's age in the time i knew erin, she had already had two kids.

erin's language was colourful, and seemed to suggest a deep level of promiscuity, but i'm actually not going to call her a slut, because i don't think most of what she said to me was actually true.

my initial interest in erin was purely musical. she had perfect pitch, was a competent guitarist and songwriter and was also a concert-level pianist. and, she had confidence in herself, too. she was a real musical talent and i regret not being able to do some work with her.

but, she was completely disinterested in me as an artist. in the end, i don't even know if she liked my writing, because i couldn't even get her to listen to anything. whereas i saw erin as a potential collaborator, she seemed unwilling to look past the fact that i wasn't technically a music student. i was studying law when i knew her, and that's what she saw me in the role of. the fact that i may have actually had more music credits than her at the time (it would have been close.) didn't matter; she seemed unwilling to accept that kind of cross-pollination. she seemed to firmly insist on a strict division of labour....

...or at least that's how it seemed, naively, from a distance.

i told you there was a twist, and here it is: it was several months previous, some time in the spring of 2013, that i first became convinced that esa was actually an undercover cop. so was illuminous. and, i suspect the wobblies were, too.

my awareness of this was quite acute, and it strongly affected how i behaved, but i took the opportunities provided to me as they arose.

and, if you go back and look at the situation from this prism - one where she knows she's a cop, and i know she's a cop, but she doesn't know that i know she's a cop - some things may begin to align themselves more rationally.

i've made some progress, but it seems like i'm in for the night, and maybe the weekend. we'll see how i feel tomorrow.

i mentioned that this was going to come off as a periodical, because i launched the appspot site and am mirroring it here. so, the politics document is going to probably be close to 400 pages because it has a dozen essays and as many more short writing assignments in it, whereas the music journal is only going to be around 100 pages, if that.

as an aside, what about these old book reviews? am i ever going to back to these? eventually, it's just that i've been trying to prioritize finishing the music. i know - that sounds like a joke. but it's actually true, and, ranting aside, i insist i've done a lot of work on this, and that it will start to come together soon enough.

i'll concede that i'm doing too many things, but i'm not giving up on any of it, and i know where my priorities are in getting the discography finished first.

the flip side of that is obvious enough: when or if this does get done, expect me to dive into piles of books pretty quickly.

and, yes - i think this is worthwhile. i wouldn't be doing it, otherwise.

listen.

i can be steadfast in my refusal to vote for somebody without hating them. and, i can wish them the best, even as i insist that i don't want them making decisions. i can feel empathy for them, even as i'm just hoping they quit as soon as possible...

actually, i think this is kind of sad.

i don't want to be contrite. i don't want to say it's too little, too late. it's more like the girl that's falling all over herself to appeal to the guy at the party that doesn't know her name.

i've been massively critical, but at, this point, this isn't the right approach; at this point, it's just self-debasing.

in the end, i hope he has the self-respect to step down.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-jagmeet-singh-addresses-turban-head-on-in-new-quebec-ndp-advertisement/

i'm still calling for autopsies on the dead humans, but understanding the mechanism of what's happening is key.

it seems to be more or less equivalent to the tar build-up you get from regular smoking.

and, if you're surprised by this then you're stupid.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/e-cigarette-vaping-lung-damage-1.5270986

the ndp may very well lose every rural seat that they have in this election.

and, i'll say it again: the greens need to have people on the ground ready to pick up those voters.

(don't tell them that may is a minister)

the fact of the matter is that the ndp are resorting to calling people racists because they're embarassed at what happened. it's a face-saving mechanism. but, they're just digging themselves deeper into a hole.

i don't doubt that there's probably a lot of unease about singh's religious beliefs and personal appearance, but to act surprised or shocked by this is just stupid. it was the most predictable thing that's happened in canadian politics in decades. i predicted it immediately upon seeing the headline.

and, i'll expand on the point: in addition to these kinds of issues occurring in eastern canada, the ndp should expect to see declining numbers as a general phenomenon in rural ridings, including in northern ontario as well as in bc. and, i've seen recent polls where they're even running behind the liberals in fucking saskatchewan.

this is a catastrophe for the ndp, and it is absolutely about the leader. but that's not racism, per se.

i probably wouldn't have much of a problem with jagmeet singh if he presented himself more like ujjal dosanjh, or niki haley. it's not the skin colour that bothers me, it's not where he's from and it's not what language he speaks. what bothers me is that he openly displays his religious beliefs in ways that make it clear that they will be a factor in how he governs, and while you might be able to make sense of that in the context of the social gospel, this is something that is broadly inconsistent with where the ndp has stood in the political spectrum since the retirement of tommy douglas. it's not surprising that ndp voters across the country would react poorly to the thought of electing somebody that is going to put his religious values ahead of pretty much everything else. and, frankly, i agree with them.

i pointed out years ago, now, that this would be a disaster for the party if he refused to cut his beard. i was right.

and, the party needs to stop calling people racists for this and get their head around the actual point: left-leaning canadians don't want to vote for religious people.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ndp-racism-new-brunswick-green-party-elizabeth-may-jonathan-richardson-1.5269606

and, i think opposing this for ethical reasons is a red herring.

being a mouse is going to suck, regardless: minimal cognitive abilities (despite advanced emotional abilities), low lifespans and probable eventual death via predation. i mean, if your most likely endpoint is being eaten alive by an owl at 30% of your maximum lifespan, then why is being grown for pancreas cells so terrible?

i mean, you realize that the mouse can probably feel it's own brain being ripped out by the claws, right?

i'm not even arguing that their lives are meaningless, either - this isn't an exercise in absolute nihilism, and i'm not suggesting that we should discard their experiences. what i'm pointing out is that there's nothing really preventing a donor mouse from being happy and well taken care of. in fact, as it would be for a pregnant mother, you'd want to ensure that a mouse that is bred for this reason is well-fed and kept away from environmental harms.

i have a harder time justifying purely experimental research, and largely argue against it. i don't think we should torture them. that's cruel.

but, we're the advanced species, here, and i don't see why we can't do this humanely.

https://theconversation.com/human-animal-hybrids-are-coming-and-could-be-used-to-grow-organs-for-transplant-a-philosopher-weighs-in-121228

so, let's all understand this.

https://theconversation.com/forget-about-designer-babies-gene-editing-wont-work-on-complex-traits-like-intelligence-51557

well.

are they going to put patents on it?

if it came down to it, i wouldn't feel particularly constrained by any laws restricting my use of chinese gene-editing technology, here in canada - i would consider those laws to be unnecessarily restrictive, and ultimately unjust. sorry.

in the past, i would have expected canada to get this right under a liberal government. but, we're heading towards a dark age, here.

https://theconversation.com/genetic-engineering-and-human-animal-hybrids-how-china-is-leading-a-global-split-in-controversial-research-121473

if we could abort the reprobates, should we?

well, my lumpenproletariat wouldn't be much of a revolutionary force, would it?

i think the better question is: if we could abort the reprobates, would we? and, i'm not sure we'd be able to stop the experiment, which would ironically make us a bunch of reprobates, wouldn't it?

it would be a struggle.

as it is, we actually can't, and we'll never be able to, and that's what the science actually says.

and, i'll reiterate the basic point: the inheritance of personality was, at best, ever a speculative hypothesis. it was never upheld by any actual science.

if you care to look at the actual record, rather than be manipulated by dishonest religious and conservative groups, what you will find is that, throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the actual scientific consensus was caution. the period between mendel and watson/crick was one where biology was reaching towards but ultimately grappling with something that it didn't fully understand. mayr's modern evolutionary synthesis came quite a bit later, and still has some unresolved problems around the species concept and the role of selection v the role of drift, so we're still not entirely there yet. and, the recent change in attitudes around the heritability of homosexuality is instructive in getting to the point - a popular consensus, even amongst working scientists, is not science itself. you have to actually do the research.

the politicians were saying one thing, it is true - often with the support of the church and often broadcast over mainstream media. there was a developing popular consensus around the inheritance of personality, precisely because it upheld the existing protestant religious doctrines. further, a specific interpretation of social darwinism was used to justify a specific concept of competition within capitalism. let us not forget that classical liberal economics predates natural selection, and that the influence flowed from the field of economics into the field of biology, and not the other way around.

but, what the scientists were saying the whole time was "hold your horses. let's back this up. these hypotheses are interesting, and may be right, in the end. but, we need to do the actual research, first. we can't jump to these conclusions like this. and, we don't have the data to draw the inferences you're drawing."

it turns out, in the end, that what we've learned by actually studying dna at a molecular level is that genetics code for proteins, which in turn code for your body chemistry. so, your dna defines the chemistry in your body, including how it produces and reacts to hormones, which have some effect on your behaviour. but, dna does not do things like create ancestral memories or control for behaviours, and we are not genetically predetermined in the way that the calvinists and other protestant groups believed we were. these things are determined primarily by the environment, and at least provide for the illusion of free will.

what that means is that these hypotheses were mostly wrong, and you can't abort the reprobates, after all.

but, it isn't contrary to christian teachings, or at least not contrary to the calvinist ones.

the fact is that it was often used by protestants to try and kill off catholics and control the descendants of the slaves and indigenous groups. and, let us remember that slavery itself comes to us via religion, as well, even if many prohibitionists were, in the end, driven by religious conviction.

https://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j20_3/j20_3_54-60.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4001825/

this is the ultimate origin of eugenics, right here:

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

https://www.google.com/search?q=Total+Hereditary+Depravity

the fundamental reason that we had nazism and "progressive" eugenics was what weber called the "protestant work ethic".

there's just a lot of lingering ignorance in religious communities about this, and a lot of denial about the fundamental and defining role that religion played in the historical "progressive" movements that mostly existed on the west of the continent.

the real root of the problem lies in calvinism, and it's idea that you can be born without the ability for redemption. i'm actually open to arguments that calvinism isn't even really properly categorized as christianity, because it doesn't believe in forgiveness. but, it's at the root of the problem, here, in it's arguments that you can be born lazy, and can't be reformed.

"racist scientist" is a contradiction in terms.

if you're a racist, you don't believe in science, and if you're a scientist, you don't believe in race.

like, as soon as you mention race, you're doing pseudo-science.

there is a very clear, broad consensus about race in the scientific community: race is not a scientific concept.

"Let's just state for the record: talking about needing 'population control' through ABORTION for the sake of CLIMATE is talking about EUGENICS," - some conservative idiot

no, it isn't. and, the use of caps lock doesn't help the argument.

eugenics is the idea that you can improve the genome through artificial selection, and shouldn't be seen as a blanket negative or a bad word. so, something we've been able to target and almost get rid of, for example, is tay-sachs disease, a debilitating condition with no potential upside. that is eugenics, and we should all support doing it. i understand why conservatives are afraid of this, as it challenges their religious perspectives, but we're walking into a future where gene editing via crispr will provide us with incredible opportunities to revolutionize the genome, and we should enthusiastically embrace this as a way to make us better. i support this, wholeheartedly.

in the past, what we've had is politicians driven by poor understandings of the science of genetics that have speciously done things like tie negative personality traits to base racial characteristics. there was never any science that upheld any of this, and the idea of tying their actions to science was always rooted in ignorance. these politicians were in truth usually religious and usually driven by the speciousness of calvinism and evangelical christianity in general; when they justified their actions using science-y language, it was always shoddy and always just a gloss to push forward their backwards religious convictions, more comparable to a contemporary anti-vaccine activist or anti-gmo activist than any contemporary concept of genetics. hitler himself was a roman catholic, not an atheist.

likewise, the idea that you can eliminate gay people or autistic people has always been pseudo-science. with the latter, it's not something to celebrate: if we could eliminate autism, we should do it, but you can't, and the science has never suggested you could. autism is currently understood as a series of mutations in real-time, not something you can flip in a test-tube. the danger has never existed with the actual science, but always existed with corrupt politicians that want to use pseudo-scientific theories to advance their pre-existing agendas. and, that's the irony here: these religious groups might think they're fighting against science, but they're really just fighting against their own ignorance.

providing women with real reproductive choices is not about artificial selection, although it could be argued that there's a basis of natural selection in undoing the existing systems of patriarchy and dominance. one of the reasons that religion needs to be destroyed is that the patriarchal systems it perpetuates are undoing the necessary role of women as gatekeepers of the genome, which is distorting the effects of natural selection. again: i understand that conservatives think "god" is making choices here, but they're wrong, and should be ignored.

so, this isn't about eugenics, and suggesting that it is is just alarmist demagoguery.