there's some more context here.

chapter 3 starts on p. 41.

https://books.google.ca/books?id=Sct5eW57-hIC&pg=PA43&lpg=PA43&dq=%E2%80%9Ca+monstrous+swindle,+under+which+the+Canadian+government+has+ceded+to+the+United+States+of+America+a+large+slice+of+the+country%E2%80%99s+sovereignty+over+its+economy+and+natural+resources.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=REUy2Hlpav&sig=ACfU3U0cpDn6lFgRdxFwMmX9_f6ohz7IKQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjQ0suAtvDoAhWFVs0KHTPfB8oQ6AEwAHoECAsQKQ#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9Ca%20monstrous%20swindle%2C%20under%20which%20the%20Canadian%20government%20has%20ceded%20to%20the%20United%20States%20of%20America%20a%20large%20slice%20of%20the%20country%E2%80%99s%20sovereignty%20over%20its%20economy%20and%20natural%20resources.%E2%80%9D&f=false

“a monstrous swindle, under which the Canadian government has ceded to the United States of America a large slice of the country’s sovereignty over its economy and natural resources.” - pierre trudeau, describing the fta (the precursor to nafta)

more prescient words would be hard to find, on this date.

i'm not going to modify my language to better align with backwards american colloquialisms.

sorry.

historically, conservatives supported mercantilism, while liberals supported free trade. this is actually the etymological origin of the terms conservative and liberal in our political system - it refers to the nature of the trade policies supported by each party.

in canada, the conservative party officially opposed free trade until roughly 1985, when it all of a sudden embraced the results of the mcdonald commission, designed to seek renewed reciprocity with the americans, something that nafta is definitely not.

so, if you look at the situation at face value, it seems as though the conservatives switched sides. but, they haven't, actually. rather, the language has reversed. it really is right out of orwell.

it's actually the liberals that switched sides, by embracing a nafta that uses the language of free trade but is, in truth a fundamentally mercantilist agreement. chretien ran against it, but found himself stuck when he got into office, unable to actually undo it. mulroney had sold us out....

despite launching the committee that led to it, the most vocally prominent opponent of nafta in canada until the day he died was in truth almost certainly pierre elliot trudeau.

so, when i attack doug ford as a mercantilist conservative, it's being done in the context of a british-canadian political tradition. that might be confusing to you if you live in the united states, but all i can tell you is that we're a different country and that you'll need to learn the history if you want to follow the discussion.

if they do this right, it could be a very smart study.

but, now i'm wondering what studies they're citing, and what they actually say.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/sewage-study-windsor-university-of-windsor-1.5535575

but, sitting there and blaming the americans for hoarding supplies is like saying your dog ate your homework.

i'm sick of bullshit excuses from doug ford.

we don't have the capacity. we don't have the manufacturing. we passed the legislation that resulted in this. this is our fault.

and only we can fix it, by undoing the mistakes of neo-liberalism that brought us here.

no.

listen...

if our metrics suggest a steep decline, and it doesn't happen, then we have a contradiction. we have some biases. we have some skewed data.

and that's what statisticians do - they sit down and figure that out.

the hospitalization numbers are probably the best indicators, so the bias is probably on the other side. but, we don't actually know that.

we hollowed out our manufacturing capacities in this province - and we see the consequences, which we were warned of. repeatedly.

we're lucky this is a weak virus.

and, we need to adjust and undo this before a real crisis does hit us.

new york's numbers could still crash tomorrow.

or we might see a continual gradual decline.

the other metrics still suggest a steep decline is imminent. but, we're still running out of time for it to actually happen.

what about new york?

it's frustrating, but a wobble is a wobble and it doesn't mean anything either way.

so, you think i'm vicious with the fake left?

lol.

the guy's probably so fucked up on prozac that we'd be better off with his dead crackhead brother.

we should have the capacity to produce medical supplies in canada, and in ontario specifically. that we do not is a consequence of our failed trade policies going back decades; like so much of what is wrong with this country, the buck stops here at brian mulroney, and his sycophantic relationship with ronald reagan (who is, likewise, the root cause of virtually everything wrong with america).

of course they restricted exports in a crisis. any country would.

don't blame it on them.

it's our policies that failed. it's our fault. and, it's specifically the fault of the conservative movement in this country, which is responsible for embracing these mercantilist trade agreements that were labeled "free trade" as a kind of newspeak.

so, i don't want to hear these nationalist deflections. i don't want to see anybody wrap themselves in the fucking flag. i want a proper analysis on the failure of the trade policies that led to this catastrophe, and i want legislation introduced at the proper level of government to remedy it.

if you think trump is an idiot, look up some of these news conferences with doug ford, who talks to the camera like he's strung out on ssris.

"why don't you attack trump like that?"

because he's not half the fucking retard that doug ford is.

...and because trump doesn't have a capable opposition to replace him.

trump is probably less terrible than clinton would have been, and might actually legitimately be less terrible than biden; we don't have that issue in the legislature in ontario.

i repeat: this is what happens when we collectively ignore science in favour of "common sense".

and, i never, ever, ever, ever want to see any government anywhere make that mistake ever again.

that was wrong.

and i don't want to hear another fucking word of it.

...instead, we insisted on relying on common sense.

the major problem here is that our public servants didn't read the documents that already existed. these readings were no doubt assigned, but they didn't do their homework - and then they flunked the test.

all we had to do was follow the guidelines that already existed, but we didn't.

i don't want to co-exist with the faithful.

and i don't want to hear any more appeals to "common sense". ever.

i don't want to live here anymore.

where in the world can i move to where religion just doesn't exist, and everybody just knows how to behave, where evidence and reason reigns supreme?

where?

tell me.

i'll go.

immediately.

please.....

we have completely thrown the science out of the window here in ontario.

and i am ashamed and embarrassed to live here.

it's exceedingly frustrating to have to deal with these fucking idiots. constantly. every fucking day.

we have years worth of detailed science to draw on, and these idiots like doug ford and evan solomon don't even bother reading it, they just insist on relying on this set of backwards fallacies that conservatives call "common sense".

and, the media just feeds right into it.

despite popular perceptions to the contrary, the science is absolutely clear that almost the worst thing you can do in a pandemic is introduce travel restrictions.

would closing the border have stopped the spread?

no.

the science on the issue is clear: travel restrictions make the problem worse.

and, his backwards, anti-science rants need to fucking stop already.

doug ford does not represent the people of ontario.

at all.

he's a complete embarrassment to the province, to the country and to the universe.

and i am saddened and ashamed that i have to look at his ugly, worthless face every day.

rather than sit there on his fat, lazy piece of shit ass and blame the issue on the united states, why doesn't he do his fucking job and get testing rates up?

i don't want doug ford in ontario. i don't even want him to exist at all.

don't listen to this idiot. the people of ontario always have and always will welcome cross-border interactions with people from the united states.

now, if we could find a way to erase the entire ford family from existence, on the other hand...

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/i-don-t-want-them-in-ontario-premier-ford-fires-back-after-trump-suggests-loosening-border-1.4899199

so, i got a surface clean done, including the rest of the dishes and an overdue shower. i'm actually going to do some very serious cleaning when i finally get done with 01/14 and pivot back to period 3, so this is just for now.

i'll be slowly going through a basket of laundry over the next few days, as well.

but, for now, it's time to nap.

how did that sublingual tablet go yesterday afternoon? i can't claim i've noticed a large difference, really. we're going to do that on thursdays for a while and see what the outcome is...

so, i found myself in an odd situation last night.

i finally made a large plate of pasta and sat down to eat it around 9:00. i would normally eat a half a plate, and put the rest in the fridge. but, my fridge is so full of fruit and soy milk that i had nowhere to place the leftovers. what do you do?

i decided to force myself to eat all of it, and it took quite a while - time i spent by watching get smart rereuns on dailymotion. i can't remember the last time i watched this much tv, and i actually really don't like it. like so many other people, this computer is my only way to understand what's happening right now, but i don't want to develop a habit of using the device for passive entertainment - it's unhealthy, both physically and mentally.

but, after eating twice as much as normal, i found myself horribly bloated and had to sit down for even longer, meaning i watched some more old reruns.

so, i lost another day.

i need to get up and finish that cleaning, now - including doing laundry, as well as cleaning myself. is it time to wash my jacket and put it away for the year, yet? or should i wait a few more weeks?

the spring has been variable, so far. we've had some warm days and some cold ones; i'd guess it averages out to something relatively "normal", even if it feels more like a series of swings. so, it's hard to tell if i should do it now or wait, but if i'm able to stay inside into mid may like i want then the answer may be more obvious next week.

ok. up i go...

i do not want to live in a religious society, and i will fight as hard as i can to keep the authorities from enforcing their religious rules on me.

read the handmaid's tale, yet?

this feels ominous. really. i'm trying to be proportional, and the fact is that i spend weeks inside, regardless. but, the direction this is moving in is increasingly worrying.

we're banning alcohol, ripping up the constitution and forcing people to wear face masks in public, none of which has any basis in science whatsoever.

i feel like i woke up in a backwards, muslim theocracy like iran.

and, like many other people, my patience with this is finite.

i can acknowledge the point that some people may develop a physical addiction to alcohol, but i reject the premise of keeping the store open to support alcoholics - alcoholism is not a real thing, it's just a made up disorder to try to christianize people. my mother thinks she's an alcoholic, so i grew up around this stuff, and it really is very scary in how it brainwashes people - i've seen it, first hand. she thinks she has a genetic disease that prevents her from being able to control herself, which is incoherent in so many ways that i don't even know where to start. she's just a drunk...

but, that's not the point. alcoholism or not, this is food.

we fought many long and hard battles against prohibition, and i'm not about to let that battle go without a hard fight.

everything else aside, if you ban the sale of alcohol in canada, you're going to see a rise in petty crimes like theft and vandalism.

this is a personal choice that needs to be made by individuals, not something that should be pushed down by authoritarian bodies.

personally, i almost never consume alcohol in my own house; i haven't touched that bottle of vodka since i left on the night of march 12th, and probably won't until i go to another concert, whenever that is. but, i'll be damned if i'm going to let a fucking government make that choice for me.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/stay-sober-who-s-advice-as-canadians-drink-their-way-through-the-pandemic-1.4898528

the science happens to be on their side, and my allegiance is to science, not to political ideologies.

but, i don't think that going to the state capitol with guns is very useful.

rather, they should just open their businesses and carry on. if the cops try to shut them down, they should resist with non-violent tactics, and then fight the issue in court after the fact.

i would like to see a critical mass develop, but this one doesn't appear to have much revolutionary potential.

i do wish that the media would stop calling these people conservatives, though.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/04/trump-supporters-protest-coronavirus-orders

the last virus that we dealt with in this region was not the spanish influenza, or polio.

the last virus that we dealt with in this region was nafta. and, from the carnage that was created, emerged a slogan, often stated by the bourgeois elite when challenged about holding to such a destructive policy: there are winners and there are losers.

but, what that means in context is that there are those who are wealthy and own property, and those who are poor and do not - a brutal truth in an economic system that routinely discards life for a few pennies on the dollar.

now, we have a virus that is deadly for the elderly and weak, and largely harmless for everybody else (with statistically valid exceptions for what amount to the unlucky, which is a constant through existence).

do we still have winners and losers, now that this is no longer about class, and the family members of the elite are just as vulnerable as those of the poor?

it's funny how they change their tune, isn't it?

what do we do then?

what i told you in the first place - you lock the old folks up and throw away the key until christmas, and you let everybody else go about their daily lives.

it will kill some young and healthy people, but the universe isn't a safe space; viruses kill people. that's life.

in the end, we ended up locking up the old folks like we should have done from the start. it took thousands of dead geriatrics; we're slow learners, but we got the point, and we adjusted.

at this point, we're clearly going to need to do antibody testing before we're able to realize that what we did had almost no effect, and i'm not expecting a reversal of policy until it happens.

toronto and montreal are each going to have thousands of dead, as will detroit. whether vancouver goes down the same path or not will depend on how long they maintain their protective barrier around their seniors for...

what that means is that we should not expect that our earlier adoption of social distancing should lead to substantively different outcomes.

some areas like bc seem to be doing some different things right, and those different things seem to have been high impact. unlike quebec and ontario, bc acted swiftly to protect it's seniors facilities, partly because they were the first to experience an outbreak. there are other factors - bc has a lot of mountains and bodies of water that split the province into isolated regions and act as barriers to spread - but a combination of efficient policy with useful geography and what is no doubt just good luck seems to have worked to at least keep the thing away from the vulnerable. so, they reported 14 cases yesterday, which probably just means that they're keeping it away from the weak and the other 1000 new cases in bc just aren't sick enough to seek care. they need to be careful to keep their measures in place, but this should really be a model, at least in terms of how they're treating the elderly. but, isn't that what i said from the start?

if we had focused on the people that needed the attention like the planning documents suggested, and that only bonnie henry seems to have actually read, we'd be in the same situation bc is in - where there is no doubt still substantial spread, but very low mortality as a result of it.

to recap, what's my analysis here, so far, for north america?

1) new york overestimated the death toll because it overestimated the effects that a slow adoption of social distancing would have, in combination with an overestimate of the mortality rate.
2) canada underestimated the death toll because it overestimated the effects that a rapid adoption of social distancing would have.

in both cases, the error is that the efficacy of social distancing was overestimated.

is that a proof? well, it wouldn't count as a proof in math, but it's pretty close to one in science - i've essentially falsified the theory as pseudo-science. it's crude, but you can tell me if you're convinced or not.

there's still nobody better in the opposition to replace him with.

so, the models in new york drastically overestimated the problem. the politicians are claiming they overestimated the transmission rate, and social distancing slowed the spread; i am skeptical of this claim, and would suggest instead that they overestimated the mortality rate.

in the end, the death toll is going to be equal to the infection rate multiplied by the mortality rate. so, if your death toll is lower than expected, you have three options to correct for:

1) you can hold your mortality rate steady and decrease your infection rate, which is what the government is pushing.
2) you can hold your infection rate steady and decrease your mortality rate, which i suggest is closer to the truth.
3) you can decrease both factors by differing amounts, which is going to inevitably be reality, but isn't an idea that is being advocated by anybody right now. so, it could be that social distancing is working a little bit and the virus is a little bit less deadly than expected. some separation will eventually be required; right now, the debate is which factor is dominant.

we've seen the opposite in canada, but i should caution that the data is national while the reality is local. why then did the models in canada underestimate the number of deaths?

we could just adjust our reasoning, and this would create some problems for people pushing this widely embraced and rapidly developing pseudo-science of social distancing, to the extent that it doesn't turn into a process of collectivist masochism (if that isn't a redundancy).

then, it would follow that one way to explain why canada underestimated the death toll is because it underestimated the transmission rate, and social distancing did not reduce the spread - or wasn't followed. you'd have to conclude, then, that new york actually managed to do more social distancing, and more effectively than canada....despite the fact that it's actually the baseline used to calculate the worst case scenario. that's not quite a contradiction, but it's certainly inconsistent, and the results are definitely incoherent. if you base your models on the assumption that new york is what happens when no social distancing happens at all, and then new york beats your prediction due to overperforming you on metrics of social distancing, all you've managed to produce is nonsense. which is what i said from the start. so, if we're going to conclude that the numbers are wrong because we underestimated the transmission rate, we should really be deducing that social distancing was less effective in reducing the spread than the modelers initially guessed it might be - not that we're not doing it right. and, this is consistent with my analysis of new york.

the second option would be to argue that they underestimated the mortality rate, which would not be consistent with data we have elsewhere in the world. this is so unlikely that i'm going to discard it offhand.

so, then we're left to conclude that the case study comparison of state data in new york (where they were late to act, and overestimated the death count) and federal data in canada (where they reacted very early and then underestimated the death count) actually produces a consistency - in both cases, the modeling seems to have overestimated the effects (or lack thereof) of social distancing. it's actually pretty much perfectly consistent.

oddly, the provincial governments also seem to have largely overestimated rather than underestimated the toll, so it's starting to look like my analysis of ontario is going to be very similar to my analysis of new york. and, this difference is reflected in the public policy, as well.

trudeau has a knack for knowing the right things to say to persuade secularists to vote for him, but he also has a long history of falling head over heels into complete pseudo-science. this was a big issue under stephen harper, who muzzled scientists and tried to reorganize (perhaps succeeded in reorganizing) the research potential of the state as a propaganda tool of the oil industry. they ran heavily on this point; they were supposed to bring back science to the canadian government, to reintroduce the centrality of evidence-based decision making.

this is what we actually got, instead:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/trudeaus-deliverology-on-the-verge-of-becoming-a-punchline/article37023338/

...as it became increasingly clear that this guy is his mother's child, and he is more into yoga and vague concepts of "spirituality" than he is into science, reason and math.

so, it shouldn't surprise anybody that this is the government that bit the hardest, or that there might be people inside of this government that are legitimately shattered by the failure of the policy.

they put everything on this - the prime minister, the government, the party and maybe even the entire society. in the short run, they're more likely to blame it on us for being stupid than they are to admit they were wrong, despite that position having absolutely no empirical support. whatever they do, you can be sure that it will be full of copious attempts to uphold their point and plead that we stay the course. but, in canada, they can't do what cuomo is doing - because the numbers are worse than predicted.

i don't know what it's going to take for them to admit they were wrong, and this isn't working.

i just hope that, in the end, we all realize that there have been people like me pointing to actual science since day one. the worst thing that can come out of this is a retreat from science, or a return to religious backwardsness.

who should biden pick as vp?

he says he wants to pick a black woman to "reward their loyalty", which to me is conceptually weird. if he picks a kamala harris or a stacey abrams,  would random black women across the country feel as though they were being rewarded? why, exactly? neither candidate is particularly in tune with the issues that most affect black voters, with the exception of the issue of just being black.

regardless, running for president isn't like working in a coffee shop, and this isn't the time for black voters to decide they're going to get their 6th cup for free (especially given that the 2008 election already happened). in order to win, he needs to focus on winning mostly white states in the midwest...

elizabeth warren has demonstrated rather clearly that she's not going to pull very much of the vote. in a move in a very different direction than warren would take, biden has been doing townhalls with mark zuckerberg recently; you'll recall that the central plank in warren's platform was to destroy the internet, and zuckerberg was public enemy number one, for her. she was campaigning directly against him. so, biden doesn't appear to have her on his short list, and i would agree with people that are arguing that she would not be likely to help him win in any substantive way - she might even end up repelling voters that would otherwise lean in his direction, due to whatever hangover from hillary clinton.

likewise, i would strenuously avoid kamala harris, who demonstrated through the course of the process that she's neither a serious thinker nor a competent manager. she's like a black sarah palin. but, this is the outcome i'm more worried about. she could quite foreseeably cost him the election.

stacey abrams is also on the list, and i'm not entirely sure why, given that she's unlikely to even carry her own state. generally, you have to win a few elections before you get promoted to vp - you might want to even be a two-term governor. she may hinder biden less than kamala harris or elizabeth warren, but she won't help him where he needs to win.

so, if you're looking through black female candidates in the upper midwest, who stands out? the mayor in chicago?

he really shouldn't have boxed himself in like that. but, he may have conceded the process the moment he did it - don't be surprised if he does pick a black southerner, and then basically spends the next six months repeating the mistakes of bernie sanders, which were also the mistakes of hillary clinton, in ceding all of the actually competitive states, while trying to win states he has no chance in.

i don't have a suggestion.

but, avoid kamala harris. she's toxic.

my hearing in june has apparently not technically been cancelled yet.

i won't have an opportunity to reschedule it unless they cancel it.

and, it seems like they're still not dealing with motions until they go back to the office, although i'm going to try to make some calls tomorrow.

i haven't completely given up on teaching, i just deprioritized it. there were so many other things that were so much more important to me.

and, i actually kind of think that teachers should be older people, not young people. i can understand the argument for young teachers in elementary school, because it's not that different from babysitting, and too wide of a generational gap can be a big problem with young kids. but, certainly once you get to high school and older, i'd rather see a systemic focus on telling young teachers to wait in line, perhaps by increasing the educational requirements. there's something kind of backwards about letting people in their 30s and 40s teach at high schools.

if i ever do this, i'm going to actually find myself preferring to teach adults. i don't have a lot of patience with kids, actually; i'd rather deal with grown-ups. and, i suspect there's probably a demand for that.

but, i'm more interested in my art.

right now, i need to eat.

"you can't construct a peak from a plateau, that's just making thing up."

no.

it's what statisticians do - they look at messy raw data and they analyze it for errors and biases to try to reconstruct a reflection of reality from it.

the best way to explain this to a non-technical but educated audience is actually to bring in the allegory of the cave - the data is really shadows on the wall, and what we're tasked with is a way to figure out what's going on by analyzing those shadows.

if you insist otherwise - that the data is reality, and analysis is just making things up - then you are essentially the prisoner shackled to the wall, that can't see things for what they really are.

so, maybe it's eastasia, now, for the next few months.

i need to eat.

this is a useful little find for chromebook purposes and how i made those images on a computer without a hard drive.

https://jspaint.app/

so, our data might end up looking like this:

what we need to know is if reality is really actually more like this:

.....or if it isn't.

and, that's too hard to eyeball - you need to do actual math to figure that out.

if the numbers in new york crash over the next week (and, again - easter is a complicating factor. but, we're starting to get enough data in to understand the fluctuations as more than random.), what we're going to have in front of us is a steep incline, followed by a bumpy and short plateau, and then a steep decrease.

from a data analytical perspective, this is the most confusing outcome possible, because we're left with the problem of trying to reconstruct a peak that might or might not be there.

factors to consider include:

- delayed reporting (so, somebody dying on a monday but not being reported until the wednesday, for example)
- the effects of ventilator systems on essentially postponing death by a few days
- just flat out unreported deaths

and, i would need actual, real data in order to do actual, meaningful work in order to get a real handle on that - that's too subtle to eyeball from some bar graphs.

it will be interesting to see how the msm pivots all of their "covid-19 lab theory debunked !!!1!!!11!" articles, once rachel maddow starts broadcasting anti-chinese propaganda on a nightly basis.

do i think they created this in a lab? well, there wasn't any evidence of this, until the president started pointing fingers, thereby incriminating himself. but, the insistence on trying to write this off without investigating it, despite it being an entirely plausible hypothesis, did raise some eyebrows with me from the start. why were they so insistent on shutting that down?

if this is a bioweapon then:

1) it isn't a very useful one
2) releasing it seems to have backfired and the united states is currently experiencing incredible blowback from it.

but, when was the last time the united states did something that didn't backfire? it was back when joe friday and maxwell smart were on tv. really. before that, even. so, maybe it's blowback, but that's not really a convincing argument against it.

again: i don't currently have any reason to think this was an engineered virus.

...except the people trying very hard to stop me from wondering about it, and the apparent increasing attempt to blame it on china, instead.

Friday, February 28, 2020

i don't understand what's going on with the coronavirus at this point in time, and i haven't presented a hypothesis.

i have pointed out that the reaction seems to be unjustified, given the weakness of the virus. this is really just a variant of the flu.

or so they tell us, anyways. i can hypothesize about actors and motives, but i can't make up data. the data says this is not that scary. but, then, why are they doing this?

so, what i've drawn attention to is that contradiction - they tell us this thing has a 0.5% mortality rate, and then they treat it like it's ebola. they, here, is not the media, it's not "liberal" politicians, but it's rather the global authorities that you expect to operate outside of the alarmism, and actually adhere to the science.

so, when these agencies tell you that this disease is not very dangerous, and then act like it's a serious threat to global health, it makes you wonder what's actually happening.

are they hiding a deeper death toll in order to prevent mass panic? that would explain why they tell us one thing, and act as though another is true.

or, is there some kind of power grab going on behind the scenes?

i don't know....

i know there's a contradiction.

we'll have to see how this plays out, but it really has to be one or the other - either the death toll is far greater than is claimed, or this is going to be used as an excuse to take away people's rights.

again: i could shrug it off if it was a politician overreacting. but, these are the global health authorities, and something is not adding up.

15:02 

the data they've given us says that chances are that you'll catch this thing and have it pass without even knowing you have it...

but, again - why is the who freaking out, then?

they don't have elections to worry about. they're not pandering to their base. they're supposed to be beyond all that shit.

we'll see what happens...

at 15:12 

like, apparently the country with the second highest death toll is iran.

that's just kind of a curious fact.

at 15:34 

so, did they create this thing in a lab?

they could have. if they did, they'd probably let it loose in iran first.

but, you'd think they'd be a little more efficient.

so, i'm going to classify that claim as highly doubtful. but, anybody trying to browbeat you with the idea that that's "debunked" or "wrong" should be treated as a propagandist - it's entirely plausible, in principle.

at 15:36

 let's kind of think this through, though.

if a new virus shows up in china and starts killing chinese people, is it more likely that it was created by the chinese or by their enemies?

if the chinese were going to create viruses and let them loose, you'd expect them to let them loose here, right?

so, who is the most likely suspect, if we take the premise seriously? it would be the americans, of course.

which is making the infection rate in iran seem curious.

but, i still think this idea is dubious, because the virus is just too weak for that. it might save the chinese some money on public health care. it's hardly weapons-grade material...

at 15:40 

so, i got the groceries put away this morning, at least, which is a process of putting fruit into tupperware containers. i got halfway through the dishes, even made some pasta. i fell asleep around 9:30-ish.

so, that was a longer day, and i was able to rebound with only a few hours of sleep.

i'm going to make a bowl of fruit and eat the pasta i made yesterday, now. or, at least, about a third of it.

and, i can get to cleaning after that.

and, then, get to doing some work to close down the month.

well, how did maxwell smart see himself?

that's not speculative, we have plenty of evidence to cite - and the answer is that he saw himself as joe friday.

again - if we end up dragging this out for the next five years, it's just an admission of guilt on behalf of the deep state, and their crony donald trump.

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/the-u-s-is-trying-to-find-out-if-the-coronavirus-came-from-a-wuhan-lab

the reason i'm focusing on new york is that it is the most direct way to understand what's actually happening with the virus and consequently make projections about what is going to happen in canada, soon - that is, whether people like cuomo come out of this looking more like joe friday.......or maxwell smart.

the big drop today is finally aligning the shape of the number of deaths per day with the other stats. this is a tentative step towards the ultimate shape being peakish rather than plateauish, which is suggestive (but, not definitive proof.) of this burning out due to widespread immunity rather than a decrease in infection rates. the other numbers have also declined enough to conclude that any spikes that occur over the next two-three weeks are the result of re-exposure over easter - if that is even possible, anymore, due to such widespread immunity (which does not mean it's safe to visit your nana, yet).

but, this is day-to-day.

if the deaths in the city end up peaking at around 10,000, that is going to suggest immunity levels between 60-70%, and an ultimate mortality rate of between 0.0005% and 0.0020% in my model - which is in line with a seasonal flu, even if the curve doesn't include the very young (and, so, is shifted towards the very old).

we'll see how this continues to work out over the next few days.

the numbers next week are going to be very interesting.

geez, i got to ranting there, didn't i?

i need to get that cleaning done.

this water v salt delivery mechanism is something that is still being studied.

i used the term "water soluble" and that might be a little misleading. you do want the chemical to eventually pass through the membrane into the cell. but, the basic difference between the hemihydrate (the generic) and the brand name is that the hemihydrate attaches the estrogen to a water molecule in the pill, and essentially releases the estrogen in the presence of water, whereas the brand name attaches the estrogen to a salt molecule, which only releases the estrogen when it gets to the liver, and sort of protects it from the gastric acid. 

so, when you take a hemihydrate, it just dissolves in your stomach, because it doesn't have that ester to protect it from the acid - it just dissolves on contact with water. instead, you need to take it under your tongue, where it's released directly into your bloodstream. this produces a peak in blood concentration, followed by a fast decline.

when you take the brand name, the estrogen-ester compound actually absorbs into your blood, to be broken down by your liver - and will then actually even return to your liver for future storage and release. this leads to lower but more stable levels of blood concentration.

the ideal, of course, would be for high and stable levels of blood concentration, but that is hard with this chemical. you could conceivably take massive injections every couple of days, but again - that feels like a drug addiction. i don't want to do that...and i don't want needle marks on my arms. yuck.

i've clearly prioritized having stable amounts that are a little lower over having these spikes. and, let's understand what estrogen is and what these spikes can do - we're talking about crying fits, irrational outbursts, etc. it's pms, basically. every six hours. i have a sneaking suspicion that this is a part of the reason suicide rates are so high - the way this seems to be often prescribed is actually quite reckless. 

cis-women can get around this by taking the pill, which is basically what i'm doing. but, let me ask all the cis-women out there - how long do you think you'd survive if your estrogen peaked and fell 2, 3, 4 times a day? that would be hell, right? that is actually what so many of these transgirls are doing to themselves, and it doesn't increase the efficacy, either.

so, the difference is that the generic should be taken under your tongue and produces a steep spike followed by a sharp decline, while the brand name should be taken orally and produces a more stable level over longer periods. 

my estrogen blood tests have been sufficient. what my doctor told me, verbatim, was to not change what i'm doing, because the concentrations were quite high. i've boosted dosage twice in the last five years. how many more times? well, i've been more concerned about offloading the effects of the cyproterone acetate on my liver, which i'd like to do by removing my testicles. but, if this was hard before, it's even harder now - that's an elective surgery, and there's going to be a backlog when the virus is over.

but, i just spent some time taking a closer look at numbers coming from studies done over the last two years or so (that is, updated data), and while the general difference appears to continue to be upheld, clarification on the difference in reuptake is making me wonder if i shouldn't be optimizing this by mixing it up.

i currently take one 2 mg pill of estrace four times a day, that is every six hours (obviously, i'm rarely exactly on time). i should get about 50 pg/ml from each one after six hours, and it should stay above 35 pg/ml for almost two days. that means that at midnight every day, i should have about 200 pg/ml from the four pills i took over the previous day, and another 100+ from the pills i took the day before that, for average levels in the high 200s or low 300s, which is what i've been tested at - and is statistically higher than almost all cis-women, even if it cuts out the peaks in the cycle, which are much higher.

if i were to take it under my tongue, i'd jump up to 5-600 pg/ml as quickly as within five minutes, but it would crash within an hour. so, i'd end up with a kind of 45 minute estrogen high, followed by a long crash that is going to level me off by the time it's time to take another one. i'd have to do that every six hours which would actually probably be very difficult, emotionally.

so, i want to be clear that i want to avoid that.

but, a lot of my perception around the downside of the sublingual method was the steepness of the curve. the data i'd seen up to this point suggested you'd be at almost nothing after 6 hours, so you'd be constantly ramping up and down. while the ramp up is reflected in the more recent data, it also suggests a bigger base level, so that you're not falling all the way to zero. i even found some studies that suggest that sublingual application may decay at the same rate as metabolic use.

i still don't want my estrogen spiking every six hours. so, i still need the brand name drugs. and, the data does seem to continue to uphold the previous conclusion that average levels are higher with oral administration, which is what i actually want.

but, i'm considering experimenting with sporadic sublingual applications, just to see what happens. maybe, before i go to a concert, for example.

it's thursday, april 16th. let's see if i can remind myself to try it sublingually on thursdays at noon for the next month and see what happens.

it also seems to be that they've recently added prometrium to the formulary, which is good news. i started off on prometrium, but moved to medroxy because it was covered. i ultimately wasn't happy with the outcome of this, but i had to weight the cost-benefit analysis, and the reality is that the drug was expensive. if i can get the prometrium covered, i'll jump to it in a second...

the appointment is in may.

does chris selley really think the concern is inflation, rather than profit?

i'm going to spin the question around: how do we eliminate our reliance on foreign labour in food production? that's not sustainable, but in some sense it's continuity. has anybody written the report that starts with handing out free (often already occupied.) land to immigrants in the 1800s and ends with tfws, as a narrative on the country's continual reliance on foreign labour for food production?

or the slow collapse of the family farm into these massive corporate conglomerations that have the nerve to import slaves and then send them back?

i've been arguing for a very long time that this system is fundamentally incompatible with a free society - it's just a more humane type of slavery, by another name. i know - capitalism is, in general. maybe i'm the one that even told you that. but, this is ethnic. if capitalism in general is barely tolerable, it's these tfws that are across the line of acceptability, of decency and of dignity. this should simply not exist at all.

so, how do you just shut this terrible system down altogether?

i don't actually want to bring back the family farm. maybe we could have avoided losing it, but maybe it's technological determinism - maybe it was inevitable. maybe. but, right now, trying to move back to family farming would be on par with some kind of communist experiment. a communist experiment, you say? what could go wrong?

i'm in strong support of increasing automation in farming, actually. i'd like to see more indoor growing, and less carbon produced by transportation. my carbon footprint is so low you can't even trip over it, but i do have one guilty habit - it's not air travel, exactly (i'd actually rather take the bus.), but the reliance on fruit in my diet, much of which is imported from the southern united states, or mexico. i want to be able to buy strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, bananas, tomatoes, kiwis, pineapple and whatever other fruit you can think of, as well as green peppers, which are the only technical vegetable that i buy regularly, at all times of year, in this country, with a minimal travel footprint. you could probably grow all of these things in leamington.

but, i don't see any particular reason why you actually need humans to do any of this. you may claim that fruit must be picked, but i'll tell you, actually - i'm perfectly happy buying a literal bushel of strawberries out of a bin if it took three hours to transit, instead of sitting three weeks in a plastic container designed to maximize it's shelf-life. you don't have to lay the strawberries down nicely on top of each other in that plastic container. i don't even need the packaging at all; we'd all be better off without it, really. so, this is kind of a weak concern. there's ways around it, even if it means changing how we package and distribute our food, which we need to be looking at ways to do, anyways.

it's never really been cost effective to do this, previously.

is it cost effective now? if not now, when?

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/chris-selley-ottawas-plan-for-quarantining-temporary-foreign-workers-is-more-bizarre-than-comforting

the fact is that there's no science behind the border closure at all. this is just politics - and it's bad politics, the politics of nationalism, of division and of fear.

the messaging from trudeau is that he wants to take an insular, right-wing approach to this and put up more and more borders to keep us more and more walled off (or in.), apparently under pressure from the evan solomons of the world, which he seems to think produce compelling arguments.

but, the science was always clear - this hinders, it does not help.

it doesn't look like much is going to be open in michigan for a while, so a re-opened border actually probably doesn't help me much, especially not now since i've spent the month's money on food, and pot. but, i'd support reopening the border asap, regardless - even it it's only one-way.

https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/canada-news-pmn/restrictions-at-canada-u-s-border-could-soon-be-eased-trump-suggests

you are in charge of your own health - not the doctors, not the pharmacists, not your boss and not the fucking government.

never forget that.

the generics seem to mostly come in from india.

so, up here in canada, where many of the drug stores are run by recent indian emigrants, it makes sense to think that somebody is getting a deal, if they know somebody that knows somebody, in getting supply in at a very low rate - which can then be marked starkly up.

and, they don't care - it's just business.

i'm not even actually arguing that this pharmacist is wrong.

what i'm arguing is that this pharmacist doesn't seem to have much interest in anything besides maximizing profit. she seems to be pushing the generics because she'll make more money that way, not due to any kind of scientific argument, one way or the other.

i doubt she even knows the difference, let alone cares about the efficacy of the treatment.

and, you have to always remember this when you're dealing with healthcare professionals - we live in a capitalist society, which means the number one priority is always profit.

don't forget to ignore pelosi while you're at it.

https://www.newsweek.com/pelosi-urges-americans-ignore-trump-listen-scientists-says-president-caused-unnecessary-deaths-1497922

"i put a lot of effort into those slides."

touche.

</sarcasm>.

i expected that the first peer-reviewed paper on global warming would be an easily googleable thing, but it doesn't seem like anybody's prioritized making that declaration. some things hit us paradigmatically, others are slow to take root; our understanding of global warming has been slow and incremental, rather than sudden and immediate.

in the end, people aren't going to be looking back at actual bad science in relation to covid-19. i haven't seen a lot of specious articles or reports from actual scientists; my criticism has been towards governments, and towards media. i've often reacted to bad information produced by governments and media (and, to an extent, they're the same thing) by directing readers to pre-print papers. so, let's not confuse the comparison even more.

with that in mind, it is perhaps worth noting how badly the media got it in the 70s.

https://www.newsweek.com/climate-change-prediction-perils-111927

governments, on the other hand, seem to have mostly written it off as pie-in-the-sky nonsense.

so, if you were standing in 1970 and you were waving your copy of newsweek and believing the reports from the white house (do you kids know who was president in 1970? he's a lot like the guy we have now, actually.) at face value, you'd have been pretty much exactly wrong.

and, what would the white knights have said?

you need to wait.

but, if you want a comparison, there it is.

we'll know when we get antibody testing. it doesn't have to be widespread, for this application; we'll know when we get a few representative samples.

you should remain skeptical, until then. i will continue to point out reasons why.

and, for fuck's sake, discard your faith in government bureaucrats stumbling through bad science with worse powerpoint slides. it's disgusting...

this situation will change in the upcoming months, and you'll be able to give these zealous democrats that are eager to jump into battle something more sciencey to make bad arguments from authority around, as they struggle for alpha idiot with the anti-science conservatives, who are unlikely to modify their messaging much, regardless.

right now, what these democrats are really doing is putting their faith in bad science, and that should always be strenuously avoided - because faith has no place in science.

to use a bad word, we're not "progressing" away from religion if we just elevate science to the priesthood, in the end. that's not secular humanism, that's some kind of dystopian nazism.

elevating science past religion means replacing faith with skepticism. that's the point, that's the goal, that's the end - it's how you know you're doing this right. and how you know when you aren't...

but people, today, are what they are.

you white knights need to shut up for a while and let science do it's job, first.

even at this stage in the pandemic, i wouldn't put higher odds than a coin toss on either side getting the concept right. is social distancing actually working, or is it just widespread immunity? we don't know; flip a coin.

i'll make my arguments as forcefully and convincingly as i can.

but, in the kind of data desert that we have with this, it's a coin toss. really.

governments have a prerogative to lean staunchly towards conservative policies, and that is what the response is reflective of, not any deep reverence to science. you have to remember that the government is ultimately driven by actuaries; they're taking the path that has the least amount of risk, and will do the least amount of harm - and has what they believe is the lowest projected cost. i think they're wrong on the second and third points, but it's the first point that is really the policy driver. our governments are deeply risk adverse, that is they're deeply conservative, when stripped to their core functions.

are the covid-19 models going to be pretty much completely wrong?

yes.

should you have expected them to have been able to produce something better with the data that they had?

no.

so, is the failure of covid-19 modelling reason to think that climate modelling is inaccurate, too?

i guess we should have seen that coming, and it's typical in it's characteristic of being so naively stupid that it's actually kind of complicated to coherently correct. it really pulls the rug out from underneath the entire concept of the scientific method, to try and compare modelling for a problem we've been working on with great interest for 40 years to something we've barely understood for 40 days. it's just simply an absurd thing to even try and make a comparison, regarding.

so, i don't want to take the bait and fall into a partisan argument around this, because i can tell you in advance where this is going, too - you'll have these white knight science defenders coming out swinging for the democratic party (most of whom have something like a grade 10 science education), arguing forcefully that the models are incapable of error, because they're science, and science is, like, the truth, and stuff. right. in fact, these idiots on the fake left will be making exactly the same mistake as their mirror-reflected idiots on the fake right, in trying to compare something we've been studying intensely for 40 years to something we've barely understood for 40 days. i'm not wading into this battle to be crowned alpha stupid fucking idiot. you guys can have that debate without me.

unlike climate change, we don't have enough data on covid-19 to create anything more useful than exceedingly speculative models.

we can do this comparison, if you want to do it, though, and the way to do it is to launch up the wayback machine and search for climate change articles written in the late 70s and early 80s. i'll see if i can find the first peer-reviewed paper on climate change, i'm sure somebody has figured this out. how accurate was it? i'd guess it was pretty brutal.

after all, these same geniuses are no doubt well aware of the global cooling scare in the 70s.

i'll leave it to somebody else to work out the details, but it's scary because of the anti-intellectualism underlying it, in the way that it really does completely sidestep the scientific method. you shouldn't need advanced degrees to realize that the comparison is absurd - that should be intuitive, should be completely obvious. so, why don't these people (on both sides of the debate) have basic levels of intuition towards things that any idiot can see are obviously true?

"it's just a different 'delivery system'. who cares, right?"

i'm not sure if you failed bio or chem.

or if you bothered to take either.

yes, it does matter. dramatically.

unfortunately, there are no doubt many people that didn't do this research, and are going to end up swallowing water-soluble estrogen, which will do absolutely nothing for them.

i'd guess these are going to be women taking estrogen for menopause, mostly.

and, then you'll hear them complain...

"the estrogen therapy doesn't work!"

well, you've been taking a placebo, you daft bitch.

again - why don't i want the generic?

because it's water soluble. that means i'd have to take it sublingually, which is going to absorb it directly into the blood, which is going to create spikes in blood levels and ultimately lead me to experience the hormone like i'm taking a drug - i'll get "high" on estrogen for an hour or something, and then i'll just piss it out through my kidneys. if i swallow it like an actual pill, it will just get destroyed by my stomach acids, and that would be completely useless.

it's not a different drug, it's a different delivery system, and it matters, in context. i was smart enough to actually look into this and figure it out. i'm not going to make the mistake of swallowing water-soluble estrogen.

if you can find me generic estrace that is actually metabolized, i'll take it.

but, i don't want to get high on estrogen (and then crash from it) over and over again, what i want is stable & constant levels, with minimal peaks and valleys.

so, i got through a few more calls today...

the pharmacy tried to push the generic estrogen on me, yet again, and actually got a little bit pushy with me about it.

"the brand name is on back-order. what we have is the generic, and that is what you will get!"

yeah. right. just call her the estrogen nazi, i guess. no estrace for me.

obviously, that's not acceptable customer service, and i was hardly going to tolerate anybody talking to me like that. so, i called around, found a store with the brand name and moved my prescription there, instead.

it is a bit of a walk, which is frustrating. but, we'll see how it works out from here. there are literally drug stores everywhere. i'm sure i can figure something out.

i was told it would be ready in the morning (early on the 16th), so i found myself in a bit of a quandary. i wanted to get up and clean, but i wanted to finish my shopping for the next couple of weeks, first. if i couldn't get the pills until the morning, should i wait? i decided i'd be better off doing the shopping today, and getting the pills last thing in the morning.

so, i left a little after 5:00 and, after two heavy trips, was back around 20:00 with basically everything i'd need to hermit until mid-may. i got immediately to putting some of this stuff away, and made some progress on it, before i sat down for a minute to check what time the store opens at.

and, the answer is that the store doesn't close.

"wait. so, that means i could pick up the pills at midnight, then. but, what if they're already bottled, then? if i can get them now..."

so, i gave them a call and they were indeed bottled, leading me to a third trip out around 21:30.

it's a 45 minute walk in both directions, so it's not sustainable, but i got what i wanted, along with a few other scattered things and was home by 11:30 - for the next roughly three weeks, solid. i don't plan to even open the door...

i did not buy any marijuana, this time, so i should be alert and focused and productive for the next three weeks, so long as the computers in the apartment continue to work.

ok.

the coffee is working.

it's time to get up.

there are serious ramifications of this as well, if it turns out in the end that we've collectively made the wrong decision.

for, if we all made the same decision together to take in one last ham, we may lose the social knowledge of ham-making, as our nanas all die off simultaneously; this last-ham prerogative would in turn end up rather pyrrhic, as we face a sordid and difficult no-ham future.

we may, in the end, see the development of ritual vomiting, as we plead with the gods to take the ham back, as a sacrifice, in return for a renaissance of ham-making knowledge.

but, it is too late to undo.

so, let's hope the nanas of the world don't fare too poorly this week, so that we may protect the precious wisdom behind this ancient ham production.

we're going to be able to empirically measure how people worked this through fairly soon.

really.

next week...

what?

it's a real dilemma. literally. we're going to see the data around this, soon.

so, there's a pandemic going around, and you're supposed to avoid your grandmother. this is understood by all. but, she's making a ham! so, what is the right choice, here? do you avoid your grandmother, and thereby miss out on the ham, or do you reason that she's going to die soon anyways, so you'd might as well get one more ham in before it's too late.

i'm a logician, i'm not an ethicist. don't look at me.

and, regarding these questions i've been drawing attention to?

1) the death toll in new york city is beginning to tip over into my middle range of mortality rates, which i believe was around 18,000. so, i'm willing to acknowledge that the 0.1% number is maybe too low a bound; the middle bound of 0.3% may turn out to be more correct, at least in new york city. but, it's not like this is going to be precisely constant through diverse populations and shifting demographics, either. everybody knows that new york city is an exceedingly densely populated place...

so, if the mortality rate in new york city ends up around 0.2% rather than 0.1%, i'll need to accept the adjustment. but, i'll still be, conceptually, much closer to the truth - if the antibody tests back up the point.

2) the data is messy, and the numbers are being revised, but, regardless, it's not going to be very much longer before i have to concede that it's a plateau, and not a peak. but, the other data seems to point more towards a peak than a plateau.

do i think there was perfect social distancing over easter? no. so, this is another thing we can test. if we accept that the likelihood of transmission over the previous weekend was much higher than it was over the preceding weekends, we should see the effects of this kick in about this time next week. if we see a small blip, we'll know that most of the population is probably already immune, as this increase in exposure will have led to minimal increases in hospitalization rates. but, if we see a substantive spike, we'll know that social distancing was working, until we decided that access to nana's delicious easter ham took priority over maintaining her actual life.

the most important thing i got from cuomo today is that it seems like he's going to make an attempt to correct the numbers coming out, to try and clarify how the curve is developing. it is probably not a coincidence that the dip under 700 was on a sunday; that would suggest some lagging into monday or tuesday.

in mathematics, we can actually talk about facts, if we are very careful in doing so. that's unusual in the existing epistemological framework, where our understanding of reality is necessarily limited by our inability to perfectly measure it. so, what exactly are the facts, here? that's what people like me are sitting here and trying to figure out, by analyzing the data in front of us.

and, these are two different things, facts and data. data is messy, full of error and full of bias. you can sometimes pull facts out of the data, but you have to do it carefully. you should never conflate the two ideas.

i am not one, but i could be if i wanted to be, and, to a very large extent, what a statistician does is analyze bias. they don't just look at the data, because they know immediately that the data, on it's face, is always wrong. so, they figure out tools to analyze the data, tools that are not objective, but are rather reliant on the assumptions put into them. if you want to get into the philosophy of this, look up david hilbert, who wrote most of it. but, the basic point is that anything a statistician is going to give you is really just their informed opinion, because what they're doing is trying to identify biases in the data and correct for them.

statisticians will consequently give you a variety of analyses, and they're all just somebody's opinion as to what test needs to be used where, what bounds are appropriate, etc.

so, when is something a fact? it's when you decide that it is, and you'll know it is when you've convinced yourself of it. that sounds hokey, but it isn't. first, you have to do more than just measure it once - if something is a fact, it should be repeatably demonstrable as such. worse, if you can't repeat the experiment, as is often the case in economics, and as is the case in the current scenario, then you need to be very cautious about using words like "fact". repeatability is fundamental to the idea of factuality. you should also be able to derive the same facts using multiple methods; that is, facts should be consistent. and, yes, you have to do the tests to figure this out; otherwise you shouldn't be using terms like "fact", as the definition of what a fact is is tied up in these tests.

we don't know how many people have died from this, and we don't know how many people have contracted it. we know how many people have come into hospitals, at least, but that's a very restricted subsample with large amounts of inherent bias that needs to be corrected for before anything can be extrapolated from it.

so, do we know the facts? no. we don't. that's what people like myself are trying to figure out. what are the facts here?

so, when i tell you that we need to wait to know if this is a curve or a peak, i'm pointing to the inaccuracies in the data - i'm pointing out that we shouldn't be drawing conclusions until we're sure that we have the facts clear, and i'm actually getting a little bit of back-up on that point from cuomo, who is expending what are currently sparse resources in trying to actually figure that out.

and, when i say we need to wait for antibody testing to understand whether this is crashing due to immunity or distancing, i'm also making an appeal to the facts - rather than relying on the correctness of models (which are an opinion), or interpolations of incomplete data sets.

what they've done is run a set of very, very loose models, declare the outcome of that modelling to be reality, and then measure the effectiveness of their behaviour based on the sanctity of the models. while we have no choice but to do the best we can in terms of building models to guide the public service, even if it's not good enough, there is really little excuse for the way they've presented these models. we really have to wait for the data to know the facts.

politicians are actually good people for scientists or logicians to argue with, because they're sneaky. they're good with words; they're good at debate, at spinning concepts over in confusing ways designed to obfuscate, even when they don't really fully understand what is actually exiting their lips. for a logician to sit down and really deconstruct these political briefings is actually great real-world debating practice, as it should help both in working through the problems in the presentation and also in helping clarify the concepts in the mind of the logician.

i would encourage it as good downtime practice, if you find yourself off for the rest of the semester, and unable to find a job in the existing economy.

canada has actually experienced some rather serious unrest during periods of serious war.

that's our actual history around this - strikes, riots, etc.

and, what percentage of the population has immigrated to canada at some point after 1950? 70%? 80%?

so, if they think that this attempt to rally around world war imagery is going to make us more compliant or lead to a round of flag-waving, they're probably in for a very rude awakening.

personally?

i think that bringing in war imagery during a pandemic is actually fairly inappropriate. i think that's actually fairly tone-deaf and kind of insensitive.

the ruling class seems to think it's war propaganda actually works, for some reason. but, nobody except the elite looks back at these world wars as a period of increased nationalist fervour, or whatever warped perception that the rulers seem to have about this. most people just interpret these wars as a lot of senseless slaughter. and, as wwII exits our living memory, what is left to replace it - korea. vietnam. aghanistan. iraq. - is even less likely to generate the kind of response in us that our rulers seem to think it's going to.

i'd stop doing that, if it were up to me.

nobody wants to rally around war imagery in 2020.

it's kind of barbaric.

if i'm so tired, am i actually sick?

i have no symptoms.

i think it was just the drugs.

and i think i'm up, now.

trudeau is talking about the "greatest generation" in his talk today.

if you are 90-100 years old today, you were born between 1920-1930. ish. that means, you were between 15-25 years old at the end of the second world war, and, unless you were a child soldier at the tail end of the german occupation, you did not actually fight in the second world war. essentially any existing veterans would be over the age of 95, at this point.

if you are 80-90 years old today, you were born between 1930-1940 and likely have few memories of the great depression, even if you remember the war.

if you are 70-80 years old today, you were born between 1940-1950 and likely do not remember the war at all. you've probably even spent your whole life identifying as a boomer.

and if you are 60-70 years old today, you were born after 1950 and are clearly a boomer.

so, the virus is mostly killing boomers. actually. the wwII veterans are already all dead and buried.

the trudeau government has a history of these kinds of messy anachronisms, especially in relation to his father. 2013-1985 = 28. they seemed to underestimate how much time that really was, or how old you'd have to be to actively remember politics in the 70s. that distance has only increased...

i would support opening up the benefit to people that make less than $1000/month. but, i actually make $1169/month. so, i still don't think i qualify for anything, but i haven't actually lost any income, either...

i've said this before - as a disability recipient, i probably have the most reliable, stable income in the country. it's designed that way, because we're the most vulnerable; this is maybe the one social system that is just intended to keep running, more or less no matter what. it's not very much money, but it's reliable. at least. i still have to deal with markets, and that's often frustrating, but the social contract with the disabled is that we get these monthly checks, more or less no matter what.

the trade-off is that you accept poverty in exchange for certainty, and i'm happy to do that due to how i've ordered my life around my art. others may, of course, have less of a choice. i should probably be on some kind of artist subsidy rather than strict disability, but that doesn't currently exist.

the point i'm getting at is that i'm not really complaining - my income is intended to be stable, if low, and i've prioritized freedom over wealth, in that sense. so, this is the consequence of that decision, even if it's kind of frustrating, as i watch all this money float around.

i'm eating well. i'm ok.

and i think i'm awake now, even. it's been two days, it's time to get up...

so, am i awake yet?

it's getting better.

soon.

remember that kid at school that always showed up late to class, listened to a walkman while the teacher was talking, never did any homework and then didn't care when she got a d+, even though everybody knew she was an a student?

that wasn't me. i was a bit of a punk, but i broadly did well in high school. in the end, i graduated with an a average....it could have been higher if i had applied myself, but it was an a, nonetheless. so, i was the punk kid that was maybe a little underwhelming to some, but still got (almost) straight as, anyways.

they say that the kind of student i described at the start is often the kind of student that ends up in management. if you're an a student, your boss will probably be a c student, because you want the smart people actually doing the work. the best way around this stupid reality is to get rid of the fucking bosses.

but, i wonder how prevalent the opposite situation is, the a student that shows up at work and, when placed in an under-stimulating environment, just...stops...caring. as the d+ student may screw around in class but excels at work, how many a students are there that just find themselves lighting blunts on break and throwing paper airplanes at the boss when they turn around, because they're so fucking bored and ultimately so terribly out of place in the office setting?

i don't know. i know that's what i was, and i know that's what i'd be if they sent me back to work. and, i'd have some d+ student boss yelling at me to stop screwing around at work.

but, i've never been a pothead, and i don't want to be one now.

i'm not actually a pothead.

i never was a pothead.

i don't want to ever be one, either. i'm confident i won't become one....

it's a disgusting habit. really. i notice it every time i go through this, and come out of it.

i'm still groggy, but i'm going to wake up soon enough. i might not get my moment of clarity from this pot, that was sitting in a warehouse for who knows how long, but i'm sure i'll know it when it's finally out of my system for a while.

i was a gifted kid; i was supposed to be a surgeon but gave up on it when i realized that i didn't really have the hand-eye coordination, the basic motor skills, to do it. you have to be good with your hands, and i'm really, really not, not at all. they use to yell at me for my bad handwriting, until they realized that i just didn't have the coordination to write on the lines. so, it just kind of clicked with me one day - the fact that i couldn't hit a baseball if my life depended on it (after eye surgery as a child) meant i'd probably have difficulties being an actual doctor, no matter how well i understood the concepts. so, i went through this other list of things.

but, i certainly never saw myself as a pothead.

as much as i might push this starving artist meme to the point of cliche, i've largely chosen this life. i decided that freedom was more important than income, that exploring the individualistic concerns of art were more important than contributing to the collective, etc. i've turned down good jobs. i've avoided academic opportunities. i've thrown away my family to embrace living on disability. i wish i had better options, granted. but, i've opted out as best as i can and i have quite a bit to show for it - and hopefully will have even more relatively soon.

but, i never grew up wanting to be a pothead, and i'll be damned if i'm going to turn into one now.

i just don't want to actually be that person.

i've more seriously considered growing tomatoes inside.

this particular apartment has air quality issues, and the last one had roaches. but, if i ever figure out how to get a tomato garden running, that's something i'd be more able to deal with the excess product of.

i don't want to be in a situation where "i have to use this bud up". i want to buy small amounts in the store when i need it, for specific and purposeful applications, with weeks or months of sober time in between.

why don't i just grow it?

i just don't smoke enough of it. even with one plant, i'd be giving 80% of it away. it's really twice a year tops, here, outside of concerts.

i could smoke more, you say.

that's the actual reason i do not want to grow it. it would be inevitable, and i just don't want to live like a dirty pothead.

so, if trump were to declare marijuana illegal by executive order, for example, would that work?

yeah.

if it's presented using the right argument, it would.

does the president have total authority?

i know that cuomo wants to cite the constitution. the judiciary might not think this is necessary.

it sort of depends on what kind of law that trump is actually citing. the division of powers (to use a canadian term to refer to the concept of states rights, which i've learned that you need to articulate carefully) is really about the legislature, not the executive; it's about deciding which laws passed in which house take precedent when they contradict each other, as they some times do.

the reality is that presidential executive orders are largely going to legally trounce all of that, especially when it has anything to do with security. the president is not a king, but he is a kind of napoleonic military dictatorship. the primary role is commander in chief. domestic priorities are kind of a secondary end-around, and not really how the system was designed. so, a lot of what the president actually does day-to-day should really be being done by congress, it is true, but the question of security is really distinctly presidential, and these executive orders are really not that different than proclamations, when you examine their legal weight.

yes, there are all kinds of arguments to use against an executive order. it has to be rational. it has to be proportional. etc. but, all the president really has to do to wield essentially unchecked authoritarian power is tie the order to security, and make a halfways coherent argument about thinking the policy is going to work.

so, can the president open new york city by executive order?

he can if he can convince a judge that the issue is in the domain of security, and that he really, honestly thinks that the action is safe, or perhaps that keeping the city shut is contributing to security issues in some other way, which may be less absurd in a few weeks, once it really warms up, and the number of homeless people starts to increase due to illegal evictions and as a consequence of mass joblessness.

can he do that? it's a harder argument than the one he made with the travel ban, granted. but, in a real sense, all he has to do is actually make it, because the court is unlikely to second guess him, once it gets appealed.

i guess it's an open question as to whether any of this is desirable or not.

but, i'd expect trump to prevail in court, if it comes down to it.

am i awake yet?

i dunno.

what else did i need to do today?

i called the human rights tribunal, and they told me the file hasn't been touched in weeks, and i'm best to send an email to the registrar. the deadline was the 24th of march and nothing was received, but that's probably not very relevant. i just want to understand what the next steps are.

i need to refill my estrogen prescription and probably call them tomorrow.

i think that's everything.

so, maybe i can get something to eat and focus on catching up with the vlogging. i need to clean in here tonight, too...

i'm very bitchy right now, clearly. that head cave didn't work very well. i'm just tired and grouchy and glitchy, right now. it won't last forever...

once i get my pills, i'm going to try to plan around being inside until the next time i need them again, which is going to be in mid may.

one thing at a time means stopping to eat, first.

utterly hopeless stupidity.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/trump-calls-for-halt-to-us-funding-for-world-health-organization-amid-coronavirus-outbreak/

but, can he provide three reasons why biden is better than trump that are more convincing than something you'd hear on saturday night live and don't collapse into empty partisan statements?

*crickets*.

i don't care who wins this election.

at all.

call me irresponsible. whatever.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/elections-2020/ap-interview-sanders-says-opposing-biden-is-irresponsible/

what about new york? is that a peak or a plateau?

it's still not clear.

but, it had better decide pretty soon.

it's probably going to crash hard within a day or two.

of course, the corollary of that is that if we do antibody testing and find out that only 10% of the population has been infected then the mortality rate of the disease becomes rather distressing.

at 10% infected and .1% mortality, you're looking at around 33,000 deaths in the united states, total, and they're almost there. if the numbers keep going up, you'll need to increase the number of people infected, or increase the mortality rate, or both, to understand what's happening.

i think that the totality of the data suggests that the disease is extremely contagious and not very fatal, meaning you should be increasing the infected rate, rather than the mortality rate, in order to make sense of the numbers.

at 66% infected and .1% mortality, you're looking at 220,000 deaths - 8-9x as many as have already occurred. that is going to take a few months to happen, and much of the damage will be done in the midwest, but if i'm right then you need to shut down everything to prevent it - food distribution, pharmacies, hospitals, everything. my critique is not that it's impossible in theory to sit inside for six weeks, it's that we're not actually implementing enough of a policy to allow this to work and that, furthermore, in reality, we can't actually do it. so long as people are out in the city engaging in commerce, they are spreading the disease, and it's just a matter of time....

but, i don't want to shut down everything, i want stricter controls in place to protect those that specifically need it, and greater freedom of movement for people that don't require that level of protection, that can fight it off on their own.

we'll know when they test, and not before then.

and, if they don't test, we'll never know - although we should draw conclusions about why they aren't testing.

when will we know if these lockdowns were a stupid waste of time or not?

don't fall for their models that claim that we saved thousands of lives by staying inside. it's all a lot of complete bullshit.

the fact is that we won't know until we do mass testing for antibodies. if we find out immediately that 65-70% of the people tested have antibodies, we'll have to realize that this was a stupid waste of time. if we find out that the number is more like 20-60%, we'll have to conclude that we might have slowed it down a little, but the effects of the shutdown were ultimately minimal, except perhaps to make it easier to spread in high risk populations.

if immunity ends up closer to 10%, we'll know what we did actually stopped it.

and, it's not lower than 10%; if we get numbers much lower than that, we'll want to question them, and wonder what we're doing wrong.

conservatives and progressives are really subtle reflections of each other.

and, i hate all of them with every ounce of my being.

it's been a constant from day one that the trudeau government has had this kind of laser focus on these conservative, middle class type of family value systems and, in the process, has displayed an almost randian level of contempt for the poor. they truly don't seem to care much about people that don't want to breed, especially, even more so than those that can't or don't want to work.

it's going to hurt them in the long run if they don't reverse course on that.

all of the media surrounding the gst rebate increase states that your rebate will be doubled. it's just a constant statement, without much elaboration.

what i received was about $100 less than that, so it seemed like some idiot at the call center (and, i've worked in call centers - these people are fucking morons) pressed the wrong button. it happens. fine.

after multiple calls, i finally got through to somebody by refusing to enter my sin number.

the agent on the phone had a very difficult time explaining something that was very simple - she kept trying to tell me it had to do with extra amounts added as a consequence of children, which made absolutely no sense because i didn't have any children when it was counted up the first time, so the fact that i don't have any children now shouldn't affect a doubling of it.

so, i forced her to direct me to the actual web page, where it became clear that what she was trying to tell me was completely wrong. the right answer is that it's not the rebate that's doubled, it's the base amount - which, in my case, was the $290 that i received.

if i was dumb enough to have bred at some point before now, i would have had a higher base amount due to the number of state-supported children i'd be dragging around with me, most of whom would probably at least have fas, because about the only way i'd have managed to breed after aggressively pushing for an abortion is if the mother was such a fucking drunk that she barely noticed she was pregnant in the first place.

but, that wasn't the conceptual problem - it really had nothing to do with that.

it's really just some intentionally misleading advertising from the government. they double the base amount and keep the income constant, which works out to getting a check for the base amount, which is determined by the number of children you have, rather than your income.

i've been clear that i thoroughly reject any concept of "progressivism" as being fully synonymous with the conservative right. but, this government just continues to demonstrate how intellectually and conceptually bankrupt it really is - it's happy to throw the term around, but it seems eager to throw away literal progressive income support in favour of conservative rhetoric about family values at every opportunity that it gets; focusing on family size instead of income is in truth a deeply regressive approach.

so, i tried to call the divisional court, and it looks like i need to communicate via email, instead.

an email was sent. we'll see what's next.

i'm still sleepy...

in order to successfully overthrow and permanently get rid of capitalism, a majority of people are going to need to be able to open up the paper, or log on to the internet, and be able to effortlessly identify how the corporate/government press is lying to you.

this is a pre-requisite.

we're stuck until we can get over that.

am i awake?

i dunno.

i wanted to get the vlogging done first, but let me see if i can pivot into some of these calls today, instead.

this is a general truth - when you open up the newspapers and see headlines blaming things on russia or china, the way to read those newspaper headlines is always to interpret them as a statist tactic to deflect the blame.

so, for example, when the cia rigged the election in favour of trump (the other option was killing clinton. it simply wasn't going to happen.), they then floated fake news through their controlled media outlets - from the new york times to cnn - that would blame it all on russia. this worked spectacularly. rather than serious internal investigations into the relevant intelligence agencies leading to a restructuring and staunch restriction of power, which is long overdue, these agencies need to be seriously overhauled, you had a farcical series of reports trying to blame it on the president, himself. but, the truth doesn't matter to these people. it's all about building a narrative.

and, the fact that it was beyond obvious that the establishment was propping up trump from the start was beyond obvious to any halfways intelligent person is irrelevant. when faced with convincing arguments, they just yell and lie and deflect even louder. cue rachel maddow.

it's not some kind of partisan bickering gone wrong, it's an intentional psy-op to stop you from asking the right questions. was the election rigged? yes. did the russians rig it? no. who rigged it then? the cia. why? because they were afraid that clinton would start a world war. were they going to get caught if people looked into it? yes. so how do you deal with that? you launch a major media operation to blame it on the russians. if nobody asks the right questions, nobody gets the right answers.

has anybody else besides me even suggested to you that it was trump himself that rigged the election? no? exactly.

we'll never get anywhere in overthrowing capitalism, until we understand this basic truth: the media is worse than worthless, in this society. it's a tool of control. you have to be able to deconstruct the lies, and you have to be able to do it on the fly, in real time; media literacy is key. if you don't have it, they'll just keep lying to you, and you'll keep falling for it and we're perpetually fucked. this is so key...

and, that is what this article actually says - it's a (perhaps preemptive.) deflection away from accusations of data falsification in the united states. it says "maybe america is falsifying data, and maybe this is easy to uncover, but we're going to blame it on the chinese to distract from it, so nobody bothers to ask the right questions".

while the numbers from china may not be complete, this is projection and the way to read it is as an admission that the united states is publishing falsified data around the epidemic.

you'll need to wait for better data, granted. but, we've seen this repeatedly, now - whenever they do this, it's an admission of guilt.

i don't know how long it will take for the data to get out.

https://globalnews.ca/news/6814940/china-coronavirus-open-letter/

i warned about this a few times when it started up: these strains are mostly medicinal, in origin. so, they're designed to either treat physical pain (like arthritis) or to treat "anxiety" (as a bullshit diagnosis. anybody suffering from real anxiety would react very negatively to habitual marijuana use.) and depression, by essentially putting you to sleep. i mean, that's one way to do it. but, you'd might as well just prescribe them methadone if you're trying to treat depression by knocking them out; i'd argue this is a type of malpractice, actually. it was maybe the most scientifically illiterate court ruling in a long history of scientifically illiterate court rulings....

but, the result is that the product you're buying here in canada was not biologically engineered for recreational use, or the specific purposes of the drug that recreational users have for it, which are dramatically different than the uses that medicinal users have for it. recreational users want to use it to get high and laugh, to dance, to stimulate conversations - so they want an uplifting high, and a chatty buzz. medicinal users bizarrely actually want a numbing stone that just turns you into a vegetable.

so, i was worried that this would essentially end up as a different drug, and it's starting to feel like it has.

i would consequently be pretty apprehensive about using these strains recreationally. they seem to be producing a dulling effect akin to essentially turning your brain off, which appears to be the point of them. again, that's just not how marijuana is used recreationally. and, i might wonder what the long term effects of taking a drug like this, that is designed to slow you down, actually are.

i've often pointed to labeling as a reason to support legalization, for health reasons. you don't know what you're buying on the street. you don't! but, if they don't eventually get some more energetic, recreational type strains in then the inevitable conclusion is going to be that you do know what you're buying at the store, and it's the kind of pot you probably want to largely avoid.