listen.

i'm not getting my information from anywhere at all besides a sense of deductive reasoning. if i have a source to share, i'm not shy to do so.

but, i don't read social media and i don't follow really any "alternative media" at all, for the reason that i find so much of it to be so controlled. those quotes are there for good reason; i'd be more likely to rip apart much of what you see in the "alternative press" as statist bullshit than to follow it with any kind of seriousness.

i'm not a bot, i'm just an independent thinker. that's all. and, what you're afraid of is the example of somebody carrying through with actual critical reasoning, not some imaginary russian propaganda that doesn't actually exist.

what's changed with me over the years is that i've stopped reading the news. so, this page doesn't have the kind of media deconstruction that it may have had in previous years, because i've decided that i have better things to do and don't want to waste my time with it...

i try to get my information from the most basic sources possible, to try to minimize bias, and then draw my own conclusions based on my own knowledge base, and my own reasoning skills.

that is what scares you.

and, your fear is what scares the fuck out of me.

- i don't want comments threads here
- i don't want ads here
- while i would like an rss option, i don't want a friends list, and i don't want a feed to read, and won't read one if i have one

i migrated here to get away from social media, because i don't want to be involved with it.

so, i don't want this site to be more like facebook - the whole point was to get away from it.

and, i should have the option to avoid it, if that's what i want.

there's unfortunately a new interface on the backend of this site that looks like it's going to make it a lot harder to use. i tried it for a few seconds and switched back, because i don't have the interest in relearning how to use something that i already know how to use.

why do they do this? what's the purpose of it? it doesn't make them any money. it doesn't make anybody's lives better. it's just a pointless annoyance.

i suppose i'll have to figure this out eventually, but the first thing i noticed is that they eliminated the separation on the side between published posts, drafts and all posts. how do i find drafts, then? i don't really want to figure it out right now, but i guess i'll have to, eventually.

they're also eliminating the search function, apparently - frustrating for a large site like this, that has over 20,000 posts. hopefully, i can bring it back. but, it's there because i want it there. why take it away, only to force me to re-implement it? do you think i have nothing better to do, or what?

lastly - and this is going to be an incredible annoyance if they don't fix it - they appear to be listing the posts by their post title strictly, meaning a post like this would show up as "untitled post". are they trying to force me to title every single fucking post? why? i don't want to title this post - it doesn't deserve a title, it's just a thought. so, are they going to make me come up with some stupid title as a place holder every time i post a thought? again, why?

this site isn't broken, google. don't fix it. it's not wanted...

this government had a choice of models to pick from, including it's own research, and it picked the most authoritarian, most draconian, most heavy-handed, most right-wing, most conservative models that it could find.

countries like singapore, china, south korea and taiwan - fascist states.

and, we're seeing the obvious result of it - we are now afraid of our own government.

congratulations; that's an accomplishment. no more than ten years ago, we had one of the strongest levels of trust in our government on the planet, justified or not.

we were once like sweden.

now we're like singapore.

welcome to the dark ages, canada. they could last a while...

i actually don't think the pandemic in ontario has even started yet, but the low testing numbers are sending the government the message that we don't want to co-operate with the lockdown.

what i think is happening is that people are deciding that the facts are that the disease is not likely to be harmful to them, which is true. maybe they're making an attempt to avoid the weak, like they should. maybe they're not. but, they're making a decision that this isn't serious enough to seek medical attention.

and they don't want to be told to self-isolate at the butt of a shotgun.

we saw this happen in singapore, and it blew up in the end. that is the likely end outcome.

who do you blame for that, when it happens? well, i told you that was going to happen in the first place, and i'm telling you it's going to happen again. the authoritarian response in ontario has made people afraid to seek treatment. the entity that you blame is the government, and all three levels are responsible for this. this is a complete failure in government policy...

don't listen to me, listen to the scientists - they'll tell you this is still spreading, and that it's increasingly spreading undetected.

you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. and, while i didn't expect much better from the dumbass at queen's park, or the conservative mayor of toronto, the authoritarian response from the feds has been very saddening.

what do you do now?

it's probably too late to unscare people. you'll just have to sit and wait.

but, you should also recognize that people are voting with their feet.

we do not consent to this and we want the government to stop.

i'm not likely to see myself going out and protesting outside city hall that things should be allowed to go back to normal.

rather, at some point i'm going to start looking for speakeasies and basement shows - and i'd expect that they're not too much further in the future from developing, either. at some point, we're going to collectively shrug it off and just move on.

my guess is that this is complete nonsense.

they think i'm a bot, and i'm not.

more likely is that it's a tactic to try to marginalize dissent by pretending that these people don't actually exist, and it says a lot about the direction that the state is moving with this.

there's no apparent end in site. so, at what point do we lose our patience and just get on with it?

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/nearly-half-of-coronavirus-related-tweets-are-sent-by-bots-spreading-misinformation-research-finds-1.4953501

i will not consent to receiving this vaccine.

ever.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/vaccine-clinical-trials-1.5580436

i'm moving more slowly than i'd like, but it's coming.

that took longer than i wanted to because the 90s laptop is soooo sloooow, but i downloaded all four of the blogs to usb, and will be able to cross-reference them properly tonight.

it is, counter-intuitively, exceedingly cold in here. what i've done is open the windows, but it's only half-effective because so much of the problem appears to be in the piping. it's some kind of italian cooling system, or something - it's based on the weeping tiles. i'm sure of that...

so, it's 40 degrees outside and i'm wearing a sweater :(.

i don't have screens on the windows, but if i'm stuck inside all summer then i'm going to need to find a way to get some. i can probably just get a roll of something at home hardware next time i'm out.

for now, what i've done is tape over the windows and then poke holes in them. my first attempt wasn't enough, so i poked a whole bunch more in them. it's a balancing act - i want enough holes to let the hot air in, while still keeping the bugs out. i'm hoping the tape helps.

that should be stable for the next week or so. i won't be out again until the weather cools down a little.

for now, i'm overdue on a shower, but i'm starving, so i'm going to eat first.

there is a distinct possibility that there may be some uploads before sunrise. we'll see.

listen, i'm not a park person.

but, you can expect me to come out and march in solidarity if we need to present a show of force to any government trying to restrict our freedom of assembly.

why is the air conditioning on if there hasn't been anybody home upstairs for weeks?

i don't want it on.

i guess the pig wants it on...

well, if you didn't close down the whole city and tell people to sit inside for months at a time, people wouldn't flock to the park as the only thing open when it finally warms up.

you fucking idiots.

i'm not a park person or a beach person; i'd rather sit inside and read. there aren't any bands playing....

but, my solidarity is with the maximization of freedom, not with the enforcement of draconian laws.

we've approached this completely backwards - we should have focused on protecting the weak, not on repressing the strong. and, the state only has itself to blame for it's failure to enact reasonable policies.

https://globalnews.ca/news/6979921/coronavirus-video-toronto-park/

so, the rebuild is done, and i need a nap.

i spent a lot of time with that origins project, and those files on a handful of german tribes are just a tease. there's not thousands of files, there's tens of thousands of files. i'm going to run out of time, and i'm ok with it.

i'll need to cross-reference everything, but it looks like the politics archive is coming in around 230 pages, while the music document is coming in around 175. deathtokoalas is coming in around 90 pages. and, the travel blog is very short, as will be the norm.

let's hope i can get this published in the next 24 hours.

i am in the process of publishing some genealogical/archaeological/pre-historical/paleoanthropological notes on german migrations that happened in the late empire.

this came out of a genealogical project that i started doing in the early 00s that was attempting to build a constructive proof of the existence of a north american aristocracy, something i felt was necessary at the time (and nowadays more or less think is so obvious that it isn't worth proving). these ethnic groups will fall down in the tree to historical people, whose descendants can be traced to living people. over time, the family tree became the structure in a more detailed historical site that i've largely put on hold, and in truth may never really get back to. my music is the primary priority...

these notes are in varying states of usefulness. some of it is original "research" - in fact not research at all, but careful deductive reasoning of other people's research. i tend to rather frequently argue against the deductions made in published research, which is what my actual academic purpose would be, even if i'd rather just throw this up online and let people sort through it than try and actually get it published. some of it is in a state of purgatory, where i've been waiting to more carefully source it for years. some of it is things that i would take a step back from at this point, or otherwise seek to clarify before i defended.

you will note that i have not uploaded any of this to the appspot site, and it is for the reason that i have minimal confidence in it. yet, the purpose of what i'm doing right now is to be comprehensive in documentation, and this blog is intended to be rough, as an intrinsic property. so, take this for what it is.

when i am more confident in these notes, i will publish them to the appspot site. for now, if you're particularly intrigued or upset by something, feel free to drop me an email. the contact address is on the side.

https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014_01_28_archive.html
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014_01_29_archive.html
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014_01_30_archive.html
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2014_01_31_archive.html

there is apparently some suggestion in the classical literature that the persian achaemenids (cyrus, darius, xerxes, etc) took particular exception to the existence of child sacrifice in semitic religion and ordered it ended by force.

so, while modern historians need to take anything classical very carefully (any statements by classical historians need to be treated as hypotheses to be proven using archaeology, rather than accepted at face value), there is at least some consistency in deriving this story - which does not appear to be more ancient than the hebrews - from the babylonian captivity, which is where judaism as we understand it was actually invented, under heavy influence from zoroastrianism.

i'm sure i've posted about this before, but i can't find it...

what's my hyper-rationalist, atheistic take on the whole god-telling-abraham-to-kill-isaac story?

unlike much of the old testament, i don't think that this story has a known alpha source. so, for example, the flood story is thought to derive from a much older babylonian myth, and the exodus story might have something to do with the sea peoples. but, this particular story seems to be inherently and originally jewish (or canaanite) in origin - at least, as far as we know.

i've also seen some suggestions that the story may hold a memory of child sacrifice in ancient hebrew culture, and that it was changed due to changing social attitudes. i think this is close, but it perhaps reverses the causality.

my general perception of what the bible is is an elaborate ploy for the existence of the jewish state. there are still bedouins in the region, to this day; these are what the ancestral hebrew populations in the region would have been like. the bible is essentially a fairy tale to try and assert statist control over these nomadic sheep herders. this story is best understood in this context, along with the rest of the bible.

in the modern era, we reject the idea that jews are baby eaters as racist and hateful and trace the history of this exclusionism back through the christian persecution of judaism that supposedly started in the middle ages. but, if you look at the history in more depth, you realize that the roman persecution of judaism is actually largely rooted in the punic wars - and that the romans were calling the carthaginians baby killers hundreds of years before the common era. in fact, carthaginian religion does appear to have had a place for child sacrifice in it, going back to the early part of the first millennium. the carthaginians lived in modern tunisia, but they were semitic migrants from phoenicia that would have been extremely similar to the ancient jews. roman hegemony was built on the destruction of carthage in the punic wars.

carthago delenda est

...and that feeling was still going on, apparently, for quite a while after it actually was.

what i might suggest, then, is that the people that wrote this particular story were living amongst people that were sacrificing their kids to (the) god(s), for whatever reason - to ward off diseases, to maximize the harvest, so that it would rain once in a while in the fucking desert, etc - and that there was an intent underlying writing it to teach the people to stop fucking do it. it might not even have been particularly moral.

there is evidence of child sacrifice in italy fairly late into antiquity, as a consequence of the calamity that resulted from the onset of the european dark ages. these people were sacrificing their children to their pagan gods in order to stop the collapse of their society - something that was of course foolish, and ultimately would have merely led to lower population growth. it would have been hard for the romans to compete with the invading germans, let alone with the accursed christians, if they were murdering their own children to curry advantage with their imaginary gods. as terrible as the twin threats of christianity and german barbarism no doubt were on the late empire, milesian thought had clearly left these people, as well.

years later, the byzantines would open the gates to the turks because they thought jesus would come back after they did. the turks just laughed at them; that was the end of the byzantines. it's really amazing how religion can weaken and destroy a culture and lead it to cannibalize itself...

but, whether due to moral teaching, or just due to the elite trying to maximize population growth, perhaps even for war, my guess is that the intent of the story is to teach these bedouins to stop sacrificing their own kids - that if they must sacrifice something, they should kill a fucking goat instead.

it's very sad that we're finally getting some nice weather and there's really nothing to do outside because the government cancelled everything :(.

i have lots of work to do. i'll be fine.

but, it would be nice to go out and have a beer somewhere, and i can't.

i would support shutting down the tar sands entirely and permanently, immediately.

but, kenney is right - biden is a lying piece of shit. he won't do it, and these are the reasons why.

https://globalnews.ca/news/6975521/kenney-biden-keystone-xl-alberta-oil/

1:11:15

just another conspiracy theory coming from the faculty at stanford.

apparently, sine and his sidekick co-sine are in cahoots to eliminate the term. is that what you think, susskind?

somebody take away this guy's tenure, he's pushing schizophrenic conspiracies to impressionable students.

In the developing world, the coronavirus is killing far more young people. Fifteen percent of the dead in Brazil were younger than 50 — more than 10 times the percentage in Italy or Spain.

in fact, the correct way to read this statistic is not that it's killing more young people, but that it's killing less old people.

life expectancy in brazil is almost ten years less than it is in italy.

that statistical fail came from the washington post.

is there a connection between the rise of neo-liberalism (and the marketization and productification of everything) and a reality where undercover police officers legally smoke drugs in the house that they're supposed to be on a stakeout in, thereby pissing off the largely straight-edge yet supposedly dangerous radical that they're supposed to be spying on - and that knows they're being spied on because they can fucking smell the dirty, fucking pig smoking up?

i'm sorry if you don't see it, actually.

i did feel better this morning for having screamed, but i still had to sleep it off.

i'm going to finish that meal i started, take a hot shower and finish this up once and for all tonight.

let's hope the air stays clear for the night.

i'm not joking - that yelling really took a lot out of me.

but, the air seems to have cleared out.

i really, really don't want to have to deal with this again, so let's hope this post doesn't jinx it. but, i'm feeling 1000x better than i have in ages, and i want to get back to this now.

i yelled so loud, i strained my boob :\

i've had an absolutely terrible night, full of yelling and screaming at the disgusting pig upstairs. i just kind of snapped. i guess the pot tripped my cortisol levels and pushed me into an anxiety attack.....

i simply don't want to be dealing with migraines all of the time, and i know that the second-hand smoke is what's causing them. on top of that, i was trying to do laundry. what could be more frustrating and disgusting than dealing with unwanted second-hand smoke in your own home, when you're doing laundry? the point of laundry is to get rid of the stink, after all.

she seems to have stopped, but who knows for how long.

so, i'm going to stop to eat, and get back to finishing up the journal afterwards, after that detour through the playlist, which is something i'd been wanting to do for a while but kept putting off.

so, i took a slight detour over the last few days, in building a meta youtube list for the deathtokoalas blog:

that list will get updated whenever i add a new journal entry.

call me an eco-fascist.

whatever.

it's the lockdown that's hurting people, not the virus.

and, if you want a sense of shared loss or shared sacrifice, it's going to come in digging ourselves out of this very substantive economic mess that was neither necessary nor asked for, and will take years and years.

i care little for these dying boomers that destroyed the planet and ate themselves to death in the process.

my concern is for the young, the living - the future. not the past...

and, we are under attack - not by the virus, but by one last dying gasp of baby boomer neo-liberalism, that is carrying out a scorched earth policy on it's way out.

if america is under attack by anybody or anything right now, it's under attack by it's own government.

in 2011 and 1941, the country got attacked.

in 2020, it shut itself down to stop the common cold from killing geriatrics and extremely unhealthy people - and largely failed to even do so.

the responses are incomparable because the situations are incomparable.

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-05-22/little-sense-of-shared-grief-as-virus-deaths-near-100-000

america did this to itself.

and, it seems to want to just move the fuck on.

i'm not feeling so good...

is it possible that somebody put something in my coffee when i was out?

if they find me dead, don't let them tell you i killed myself. i am not suicidal, at all.

see, you think that we're here:

and you're worried about this coming up, in the future:

...but we're actually only here.

....meaning we have to get to vitalogy before this starts to slow down, still.

sorry.

actually, strangely, mexico is now the most obese country in the world. i should have checked that before posting; i thought it was obvious. but, no - they've recently even passed the united states as most obese country, flat out.

so, it could actually be relatively bad there, then, and you might see a mortality curve that it's actually skewed a little younger.

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

i think we should get through the first wave before we start talking about a second wave. this is virology, not punk rock.

most of north america hasn't peaked yet. it's starting to pick up in mexico now, but remember that they have that low life expectancy card to play, and much lower levels of obesity as well. in the end, you should probably expect the mortality rate in mexico to actually be quite a bit lower for that reason. they're seeing it ramp up there now, though...

but, is a second wave inevitable?

it depends on if it substantively mutates.

that's what these historical waves are - different mutations.

so, it's not inevitable, no, and it really has little to do with government, except in the sense of the importance of actually tracking the thing. the only thing the government can really do to stop a second wave is to overtest as much as possible, and be ready to do extremely aggressive contact tracing if it finds a more vicious mutation.

but, if the thing stays relatively stable, or if we've already seen the most substantive mutations, then a second wave isn't likely at all.

the thing you really need to be worried about is how flu-like it really is, and the little bit of evidence i've seen suggests that it is recombining, and that this might make vaccines fleeting - they may need to be updated quite frequently. in that case, you're going to be looking at waves pretty much every year, and they're no longer waves but seasons. that's probably the most likely outcome, in the long run.

the reality is that these people were mostly so old and sick that they were going to die of the first thing they got hit with - not just the flu but, in some cases, the common cold. this is what got them, but the reality is that they were mostly really honestly sitting around waiting to die.

but, the things that could have been done are not esoteric truths that require deep study to uncover. the white paper i posted earlier predicted all of this, and a little basic reasoning uncovers the following:

1) they should have prevented all visitation into these homes immediately. they didn't. in fact, the state run media actually encouraged older people to "hug their grandchildren", in a truly retarded display of conservative anti-science anti-intellectualism that would make jonathan swift proud.

2) they can't have workers moving around between homes like that, or even going out and about. it's insanity. when a pandemic hits, you really need to lock these people in place and you have to realize what's at stake. 

they need to build firewalls around these institutions that they can lock in place when they need to - and if their bleeding hearts won't allow them to, they'll have to realize the consequences of their squeamishness.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-long-term-care-commission-1.5575035

we're all forced to sleep, sometimes. i had a nice, long day yesterday, at least, but it came to a really screeching halt with a hard pass out around 5:00, midway through eating.

i got all of my shopping done. all the fruit is put away. laundry is half done. and, i really just need to do lingering laundry before i finish up what i was doing.

soon.

i don't want to see a dime cut from anything. nobody voted for this.

the government pushed this down on us unilaterally without so much as a referendum, so let's raise corporate and property taxes to offset the deficit, instead.

https://globalnews.ca/news/6965183/coronavirus-rec-centres-ice-rinks-could-be-first-victims-of-budget-cuts-as-cities-forced-to-balance-books/

if anybody tries to force me to wear a mask, i will refuse to do so, and sue them for a charter breach.

this is getting ridiculous.

but, is that how it starts?

listen, it's increasingly becoming clear that the reason that the swedes are being targeted is that they didn't do what they were told. they're being treated as a rogue state, and punished for their insolence. but, who is orchestrating this? and why?

do you realize who owns twitter? it's a part of the reason it weirds me out so much. that's a major channel of communication, and is controlled by just about the worst actor possible.

if i were to measure my concern on a scale from 1 to 10, it remains on the low side, but all of this strangeness persists, and i'm wondering if it's getting closer to the midpoint. frankly, though, i'm less concerned about realizing what's happening, and more concerned about reacting to it.

we're on a very disturbing trajectory, and it doesn't seem random, it seems incremental.

sweden peaked something like a month after everywhere else, so of course they had the highest per capita rate...last week.

this is like something from a fox news article, it's just blatantly absurd, it has no remote intent to be honest, which gets me asking the same question yet again - what is going on here?

why are they going to such ridiculous lengths to flat out smear the swedes on this?

the signals are that undoing all of this bullshit might be a lot harder than anybody assumes.

https://www.businessinsider.in/international/news/sweden-recorded-the-most-coronavirus-deaths-in-europe-per-capita-over-the-last-week-according-to-data/articleshow/75841917.cms

shocked, huh?

if we were to actually run an electric current through doug ford, would it polarize a field in the direction perpendicular to his gut and simulate a reaction of vomiting bullshit out of his mouth?

https://www.kitchenertoday.com/coronavirus-covid-19-local-news/ford-shocked-by-covid-19-testing-numbers-vows-they-will-increase-2365234

We’re creating the Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance Program. This benefit will provide forgivable loans to landlords so that they can reduce by 75 per cent the rent for small business tenants that have lost the majority of their revenue because of COVID-19. 

what is this, some kind of twisted joke?

it's 2020 and canada is bringing in trickle down economics.

they're stuck in a fucking time warp, or something.

modern relationships are what they are. that's fine.

they're not for me.

i'd rather keep to myself.

maybe i'm very emotionally and sexually immature, but i simply could not deal with being cheated on. it tore me up inside, over and over again; i simply wasn't able to deal with it.

i never tried to tell her what to do. remotely. i made no attempt to interfere with her decision making, and fully respected her bodily autonomy.

but, i had to get up and walk out because it was just ripping me apart, and the fact that my decision was final was very much centered in the fact that i never wanted to feel like that ever again.

listen...

i dumped sarah in late 2004 and moved out unilaterally in very early 2005. she was cheating on me and refused to stop; she wanted an open relationship, and i said 'no' and i walked out on her.

she couldn't pay the rent, and ended up homeless. so, she ended up at my apartment, and i told her 'no'.

but, we maintained a friendship of varying distance from 2004 to about 2010 or so that involved going for coffee from time to time, and meeting up for walks. and, yes - we were still having sex for quite a while after.

around 2010 or so, she decided she didn't want to talk to me anymore. i never really got a straight answer, and i've gone through various hypotheses, but as far as i can tell, she rejected me because she decided i was gay. and, after almost ten years of a friendship that was very important to me (she's the only person i've ever had sex with), i reacted very badly to that. i valued her friendship very strongly, and hoped to maintain it forever.

but, i've never had any interest in rekindling any sort of romantic relationship with her, at all, and any suggestions otherwise are just flat out wrong - something that i think she actually understands. if anything, she seems to be mad at me because i don't want to get back together with her. but, the decision i made in late 2004 was permanent, and i've held to it as closely as i can. she's had two children, since then - something that i've tried to be emotionally supportive of, but that i ultimately can't and won't accept in any official capacity. she asked me to be her first child's godparent, and i turned it down.

at this point, it's been so long that trying to rebuild some kind of a friendship seems pointless. that's something that makes me sad, certainly - that was perhaps the only friendship that i've ever had that i very much wanted to maintain.

but, the fact is that i dumped her a long time ago, and i've made no attempt at all to win her back since.

i hope that point is as clear as it can be - and it can't be very clear from a distance, i get that.

so, we're done up until the 25th, and it's time to stop to eat.

after i finish eating, i will have one more segment to complete before i can start posting this and moving on to the next thing, which is filing a complaint against the divisional court judge in federal court, and just generally checking up on the court stuff.

after that, i will need to work through the various liner notes for all of those records that i released or re-released over january, 2014. and, then, i can finally pivot to period three.

i bet you do, don't you.

you're not the centre of the universe; this is about me - it's not about you.

i don't care about you.

at all.

sorry.

there will inevitably be some people that will be unable to define any meaningful reason to exist when given the freedom to do so, and will choose perpetual drunkenness in the face of objective meaninglessness as a rational conclusion of their own futility.

and, that's really ok.

we should stop pretending that it isn't, or that there's any better way around it - that's a choice, and it should be respected for what it is.

i think there's little question that drinking can form a bad habit, or that psychiatric intervention may be useful in helping people break that bad habit, as it may be in any other habitual or compulsive behaviour.

and, i don't really doubt that physical addiction to alcohol is theoretically possible in the most extreme scenarios, even if i think it's over-diagnosed as a bad excuse for smelly drunks.

what i think is flatly absurd is the idea that it's genetic, or an inherited condition, and that "alcoholics" are essentially powerless because their dna renders them helpless. that's just fucking ridiculous, and any organization pushing that idea is a dangerous cult that should be driven into the sea with pitchforks.

what "alcoholics" need is some kind of drive, some kind of purpose. they need something they'd rather do than get fucked up. and, i do think it's that simple - they really just need some focus in life where they're able to say "i'd rather do this than get drunk".

you might ask "are the kids not enough?" or "is their partner not enough?" or "is (insert whatever) not enough?", and you might even get defensive about it or question a person's morals if they give you the "wrong" answer. but the answer is rather clearly that, no, it isn't enough, and that's why the person is resorting to the bottle. an empirical analysis is that the kids and the partner and the (insert whatever) are actually the source of the problem for this person, who rather obviously doesn't want kids or isn't happy with their partner or wants out of (insert whatever). and, they need to be helped to realize that - that kids aren't for everybody, and sometimes relationships cause more problems than they solve, and that society doesn't provide one-size-fits-all solutions.

i'm just approaching this from a basic existentialist position: it's really just a question of defining some reason to exist and following through with it. objective purpose may be a delusion, and realizing it may make drunkeness rational, to a certain extent. but, transcending that means making up your own purpose, defining your own reasons, setting your own goals and then following through with them.

for a lot of people, the hard part is going to be in telling society to fuck off - and the help they really need is in building the self-confidence to actually do it.

don't let your loved ones get eaten by these cults. help them to see that they're alone in this universe, and need to define their own purpose all by themselves.

https://www.alcoholproblemsandsolutions.org/is-alcoholism-a-disease-heres-the-evidence-and-logic/

i'm just updating some posts, and i want to resummarize something that i've posted about a few times, because i think it's one of the more substantive ideas i've posted in this space over the years.

natural selection should always be treated as a hypothesis to be demonstrated, and should never be treated as an assumption to be uncovered.

i'm not actually arguing with the modern evolutionary synthesis, although i might be reproportioning it - all biologists agree that randomness and selection don't just work at cross-purposes, but are necessary for each other. what i'm actually trying to do is formalize this, because so much of what happens in evolutionary biology really isn't actually science, for the reason that they're so hardwired into their assumptions.

so, let's say you have a species of spider that eats it's mate before it breeds, and this behaviour is observed to decrease reproductive rates. oops. i've read papers where serious biologists try to argue that this is natural selection at work, which is retarded, but why are they doing that? because the synthesis has it drilled into them - everything is selection.

but, everything is not selection, and a spider that eats it's mate before it fucks it is obviously malfunctioning at a pretty brutal level. pointing out that this is obvious, while obvious, is not actually science either, though. so, what is science?

well, you need to throw a statement down and try and disprove it! that's how you do science, and the exact opposite of what evolutionary biologists do on a day-to-day basis.

science, in context, means doing this - you assume drift, and try to prove it wrong. it's only once you've ruled out drift that you can deduce selection.

in fact, this is obvious, and no biologist would disagree with me, when presented in such flamboyant terms as this. so, why don't biologists just fucking do it right, then? why do they need a logician, of all things, to yell at them to use the scientific method?

it's cultural. no, really, that's the right answer; biology is less removed from religion than the other sciences are. that's the actual correct answer, here. but, this excuse is fading, and even reversing.

nowadays, biologists are far more data driven than, say, physicists are. it's the physicists that are stuck with unfalsifiable theories nowadays, and the biologists that are basically doing applied chemistry.

so, this is a call to the field of evolutionary biology to clean itself up and start being more rigorous. you can't just assume any old trait is selection - you have to actually prove it.

so, i'm about 50% through the double check on the rebuild, in terms of calendar dates. let's hope i can get through the rest of this pretty quick.

i want to finish this before i go out to get my pills.

i think i was able to avoid the migraine by running the shower.

but, the smoke seems to have triggered my asthma, which could set me off for weeks right when it's about to get nice out.

it's a lesser problem. but, this is so fucking frustrating :(.

you fucking pig.

you revolt me.

hey pig....

do you think i give a fuck about your flooring?

'cause i don't.

she's smoking drugs up there again, and here comes the migraine, on cue.

ugh.

why don't i just drink more water?

because i'd have to drink less coffee.

i don't want to live in an artificial desert and drink gallons of water to offset it. there's no reason for it; it's stupid. and, i'm going to end up gaining weight.

just let the humidity come up to normal levels...

i was almost feeling normal yesterday for a bit, before the heater turned back on.

i'm not depressed. i'm just dehydrated. the chemical i'm not getting enough of is water. and, i've done enough of an experiment to convince myself of it.

we could still get some downpours, but the scary system coming in seems to have broken up just south of the border and looked something more like this when it get here:

i succeeded in getting the humidity in here up on saturday to a point where i felt healthy, but what i had to do in order to do it was pretty insane - i had to run the shower nonstop for hours, while continually washing my face. i'd have to essentially sit in a sauna for six hours a day. i can't do that on a daily basis.

the forecast was a tease last week, but it looks like we should finally get some more humid weather soon, and i can only hope it clicks into place for a nice, long humid summer so i don't have to constantly run the shower to offset the desiccation...

but, i mean, if i'm inside all summer, and the air kicks in, that's the reality of what's going to happen. i'm not going to sit in here and shiver in dry, cold air, with shit all over my face. the shower is going to be running nonstop so i can clean myself...

for now, i'm going to finish a few things up this morning before i get back to running the hot water for a few hours to try and undo the heaters, and hope it works.

hey, listen - i don't think i'd like to live under chinese hegemony, and, thankfully, i don't think it's likely to happen any time soon. i can, have before and will again intellectually react to the idea, and i don't have a lot of patience for the useful idiots, but i don't fear it; it's not imminent.

do not fool yourselves - they would invade, conquer and colonize us if they could, just like we tried to do to them not so long ago. see, that's the thing about the chinese - they're our mirror reflection. they're exactly the same as us, in all the worst ways. and, they're an alien culture in a very real sense, in a way that the russians and even the arabs really aren't. china doesn't come from greece, or rome or egypt - it's a different planet, altogether.

but, at least they'd stamp out this festering, lingering problem that canada is developing around religion.

hey, there's an upside to everything, right?

i wonder what they're actually thinking.

like, do they really think i'm some kind of "bot"?

what does that even mean?

lol.

seems like the pigs didn't like something i just posted and have stopped the forwarding again.

whatever.

i'm making some progress in getting through this.

but, you can't rely on broadcasting right now - the pigs are trying to shut me down, again.

pynchon's ellipsis use is legendary.

https://pynchonnotes.openlibhums.org/article/id/2850/

wherever she got it from, that's were i got it from, not my mother.

i want to say a little about my mother's writing style, because i'm noticing how strangely it is actually like mine, and it may lead random readers to a false conclusion. in fact, as far as i can tell, the influence flows in the other direction, and it's actually a little bit creepy.

the primary overlap is in the use of the ellipsis (...), which is something that goes very far back in my writing style, and that i mostly picked up from pynchon. i will admit that there was a period in the late 90s where i was very purposefully attempting to emulate his writing style, and i ended up overusing it, even falling into it as a bit of a crutch. it's come in and out of prominence since then, but it's never really gone away; i'd say it's largely become something i use when i'm being lazy nowadays, but i do still use it fairly frequently.

i was online about 1997 or so and it's been at the centre of my life ever since. however, my mother did not get a computer until the early 00s, and while there were some random emails sent, i don't recall reading much of anything she'd written in any detail until she added me on facebook around 2010.

i do, however, believe that she spent a very large amount of time reading my old web site at https://chat.carleton.ca/~jparent2. in the few emails that she sent me between 2003 and 2008, she was using the tagline - those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it - as her email signature. i think it meant something different to her than me, though; i was using it to suggest that we were spiralling back into fascism, whereas she seems to have been using it as reference to her alcoholism.

regardless, i get the impression that she spent hours and hours sorting through that page. maybe she felt it was the only way to really understand who i was as a person, given that i'd been so distant from her for so long. i think i may have spent something on the order of ten hours with her between 1996 and 2003; i was living with my father, and she was struggling with a severe heroin addiction.

i guess i first sent her the link around 2002 or so. the emulation, since then, is noticeable enough to conclude it isn't a coincidence. but, does she just write that way when she's typing to me? is it more of a reflection of the fact that it coincided with her first serious computer use? she's nearing but not yet at retirement age, but she's never had a meaningful job in her life, and she wouldn't have done much typing in the 70s, when she was in high school. i don't know the answers to these questions...

but, i know i've noticed the similarity, meaning you might have noticed it as well, and i do think the influence flows from me to her, that she was heavily influenced by my writing.

i honestly don't think i'd seen a phrase she'd typed for upwards of ten years after i started writing...

this is the most right-wing government that this country has seen since...the last one.

we're just carrying forward with the same trajectory we've been on since 1985 - each government swings further to the right, regardless of what party forms it.

giving money to church groups to privatize core state functions is the definition of thatcherism.

and, you're all too stupid to understand what's happening.

what a failure...

it's something you'd expect from the daughter of margaret thatcher, not the son of pierre trudeau.

what an embarrassment.

the idea of the government giving money to charity - any charity - is a complete collapse of the system, a total failure at the most fundamental level.

that should never happen.

that money should be directed towards state-funded resources.

we're going to wake up in america if this keeps up. this has to stop.

that should never, ever, ever happen under any circumstance.

rather than continue to fund an organization that has murdered thousands of canadians in an attempt to carry through with some thatcherian goal, we should finish the job in nationalizing any services that they still carry out, and then throw them out of the country for good.

we shut this organization down because it killed thousands of people due to gross incompetence.

does he know the history?

does he care?

it is so shameful, so shocking, that i would call for his resignation.

the red cross is an organization that should be permanently banned from existing in this country, not one that should be funded by the government.

they killed thousands of people.

the prime minister should be deeply ashamed of himself for giving an organization like this a red cent of public money.

why is the current government of canada donating money to the red cross?

this is a discredited and defunded organization, in this country.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/have-we-forgotten-the-lessons-of-the-tainted-blood-scandal/article37097051/

pow! pow!

nanananananana

zam! bang! boom!

what a fucking idiot.

https://www.cp24.com/world/priest-uses-squirt-gun-to-shoot-holy-water-in-fight-against-coronavirus-1.4943416

so, as was obvious, biden thinks he can win georgia and is going to campaign on flipping the south, which is exactly the same error that sanders made in the primaries, and exactly the same error that clinton made in 2016.

biden cannot win georgia. in fact, he's less popular amongst blacks than clinton was.

he can't win arizona, either - he's not popular amongst hispanics, at all.

this is why i went through this deconstruction in the primaries - i saw this coming, and wanted to argue against it.

if biden carries through with this strategy, he is going to lose very badly - worse than clinton did. why am i so sure of this? because it's the same strategy that clinton carried out, and he's a less popular candidate than clinton was with the demographics that he needs to carry over that strategy.

while he is less popular amongst blacks than clinton was, biden does seems to be more popular amongst older white voters than clinton was, so he may have a strategy to win states like ohio and pennsylvania, if he does this right. but, while he's more popular with white voters than clinton, and this is the actually reason he beat sanders in actual swing states, it's not clear if it's enough to beat trump in these states.

it's still the better strategy. and, if he sinks his resources into trying to win in the south, he's just going to have the same outcome as the last time somebody tried that, and the time before that, and...

if the democrats want to get 99% of black voters again, if they think that's their best approach, then they're going to have to run an actual black candidate.

and, i don't understand why they're having such a hard time with this, when it's so fucking obvious.

but, it might just be the weather, still.

let me give it some more time. but, i'm sick of this. i want some kind of answer, so i can wake up.

your body is just a computer; there's no magic, no mystery, no woo, nothing out there to try to grasp on to.

if it's malfunctioning, it's missing some chemical, and can be fixed by taking some drug. fine.

but, you need to prove to me what's wrong, first. i'm not interested in just randomly guessing. i don't want to experiment around my consciousness.

i want to be pragmatic about this: do the test, tell me the answer and give me the fix.

i mean, i don't know what happened.

why did my body chemistry change, all of a sudden?

but, i'm more interested in fixing it and moving on than i am in sitting around complaining about it.

just test me for whatever i'm in deficit of and prescribe me the answer.

i don't want to talk about it or wallow in it. i don't have time for that....

i'm slowly making some progress, but i'm struggling to stay awake today...

i'm still hoping it's mostly the weather, but let me be clear about this: if it turns out i'm depressed, i really have no sympathy for myself. i don't have any patience for this.

and, just to clarify the point regarding what it is that i'm ingesting, and how it might affect my alertness.

- i don't drink at home, and never have. as promised, i haven't touched that 26er of vodka since i left on mar 12th, and don't expect to touch it again until i get to another show. i have no interest, whatsoever, in drinking by myself.
- it was april 13th when i finished the quarter of marijuana i bought about a week earlier. i will generally smoke at home at most twice a year, meaning i might buy some more in july. i have no interest, whatsoever, in being stoned right now.
- my coffee intake has increased, but it appears to be diminishing returns.
- i bummed a few smokes when i was last out on may 5th. it was like two or three, all day. before that, i bummed a few smokes when i was last out on april 15th. i may bum a few more when i go out to get my pills next week. i have no intention of buying a pack of smokes any time soon.
- i'm taking 8 mg of estrogen, 5 mg of medroxyprogesterone and 100 mg of cyproterone acetate, daily. i would not expect these drugs to make me tired, and they never have in the past.

maybe i'm misunderstanding the concept of depression...

i always thought that depression was a mental outlook, essentially a decision to adopt a negative mindframe. now, understand that i reject the negative v positive dichotomy; i label myself a realist, and don't have a lot of patience for positivity. a proper dialectic erects realism as a synthesis, and that's how i've always thought, even if i haven't always been able to articulate it that way. i want to measure the amount of water in the glass, and present an objectively true statement about it - i don't care about your opinion of how much water is in the glass, and will tell you to fuck off for trying to push it down on me.

but, i've always understood depression as the physical consequence of making a decision to be negative. i've generally rejected that as inconsequential, by rejecting the idea that the subjectivity of existence is important.

but, what if depression instead arises from hormonal conditions that you can't control, and the condition is a consequence of being tired all of the time?

what i'm trying to get across is that i am, uncharacteristically, actually feeling pretty bummed out right now, but the causality is reversed - i'm depressed because i'm tired and unproductive, not the other way around.

i don't want to be depressed and unproductive, i want to be alert and focused. the root cause is that i'm so fucking tired. so, how do i eliminate the physical tiredness? that will make me more alert & more productive, and therefore less depressed about being tired.

i've wondered repeatedly if i'm being drugged, somehow. did they put me on anti-depressants against my will? i wonder if i'm reacting to something they prescribed me, without telling me. all i can do is point out that i feel like i'm being drugged, and that, if i am, it's the cause of the problem.

i've never felt like this in years past, i've always been an unflappable person. i've usually been an insomniac, not somebody that's unable to stay awake. so, something has clearly changed in my body chemistry, and i wish i understood what it was so that i could reverse it and go back to being alert, awake and productive, rather than tired and sluggish and depressed all of the time.

if i'm the victim of some kind of experiment, please stop. it's making things infinitely worse...

i just want coffee and free time. that's all i need to be happy. really.

how much does cocaine even cost, anyways? i don't actually even know.

i'm only half joking...

i keep arguing that i'm not depressed, and i don't feel that i'm depressed on an intellectual level. i'm not sad, i don't hate my life, i don't want drugs to numb the pain, etc. but, if the argument is that depression is something physical, maybe i'm deluding myself.

is it possible to be a relatively happy person with a positive outlook on life, but be crippled by the physicality of depression?

i want to drink a gallon of coffee, but it's not working. it's just giving me acid reflux.

i dunno.

maybe i should start smoking again. it seems like my productivity has completely collapsed, since i quit.

*sigh*.

how do i wake up?

it seems persistent - every time i sit down to try to get some work done, i end up so tired that i can't even move, and unable to do anything besides sleep.

there's a large rain storm moving through here. i am well aware of the reality that i'm hypersensitive to the weather.

this is the third weekend in a row that i wanted to be productive, but that it seems like is going to be wasted. but, i don't think i'll be able to do anything but sleep it off, and hope things get better mid-week.

i still need to file a formal complaint against this judge in federal court. hopefully, the situation will clarify itself over the next few days. but, that's the first thing i'll need to do, once i get this rebuild finished with.

for now, it looks like i'm going to sleep. and sleep. and sleep....

and i hate it :(.

i never want to sleep ever again.

gimbutas argued (i think convincingly.) that patriarchy came not from agriculture but from nomadism, and i think it's easy to see the conclusions of it in modern society, with the differences in morality that assert themselves depending on how we order our food sources. but, i don't think she presented an opinion on what came before agriculture.

it's an interesting topic, beyond the question of what is driving the evolution of our decrease in body hair.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6236/796

the hourly forecast looks less scary than the news reports, but i don't expect to leave the house until after the storm lifts, so we'll have to see how bad it gets from inside. they're calling for 50-100 mm in the region, but it looks like i'm going to be on the lower end of that, and it looks like it's going to take a long time to pass through. so, let's hope it's not that bad.

yesterday was unfocused. but, i think i'm ready to be super productive tonight. i want this done by monday...

the parasite theory actually also goes a long way to explaining why women are so instinctively revolted by men with facial hair.

the parasite theory does make some sense in explaining the sexual dimorphism that currently exists, however much of a blip it ends up being in the long run.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/latest-theory-human-body-hair/

A researcher studying the plantar region of rabbits noticed that an inhibitor protein, called Dickkopf 2 or Dkk2, was not present in high levels, giving the team the fist clue that Dkk2 may be fundamental to hair growth. 

so, the hormone responsible for hairy palms in mammals is called "dickkopf".

don't look at me, i just read the articles.

here's some more accepted science about humans, not sheepskin.

go tell those idiots to go back to using their sheepskin for condoms.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-did-humans-evolve-lose-fur-180970980/

well, fuck your stupid religion in the first place....

here's an interesting question.

is it possible that women were the hunters in early human society?

is that why they lost their hair more quickly?

so, stop asking "why did we evolve to grow hair?". that is the wrong question, in every possible context.

the right question is always "why do we have less hair than our recent ancestors?".

and, in the context of sexual dimorphism, what we need to understand is why men are losing their hair at a slower rate than women are.

humans are a species with remarkably low levels of sexual dimorphism. this difference in body hair is not shared in other primates, either, who have much more similar levels of body hair across the sexes.

it could take a while for men to catch up to women in their loss of body hair, but we can be reasonably confident that men will eventually lose their beards, over time.

ask any woman whether they think hair gives men an evolutionary advantage.

it's disgusting - women hate facial hair.

this is absolutely retarded, and i take it that it's intended to be.

body hair is actually largely a vestigial trait, meaning we're evolving to have less hair and not more hair. look at a chimp and look at a human and take notes on the direction that facial hair is evolving. so, we don't need to ask why men evolved hair, we need to ask why they haven't gotten rid of it yet, or, more specifically, why men have been slower to lose their facial hair than women have been.

that means that a better question to ask is whether the fact that men still grow facial hair makes them less evolved than women, who have largely evolved past it. and, that is a question that likely has to do with sexual selection, rather than any sort of competition. the answer is basically "yes".

but, any question that starts with "why did men evolve beards?" is completely backwards. men did not evolve to have facial hair, they are in the process of losing it - and are clearly behind the curve in doing so.

https://www.newsweek.com/beards-may-have-evolved-protect-men-punches-face-1504294

i need to get back to work.

(i know where iran is. but, that area is historically iranian.)

i know that a lot of people are very confused.

but, christianity is a religion that originated in the middle east - in israel, in egypt - and was spread by greeks and romans, generally by force.

it is not a religion that comes from the north of europe, which fought back against it with everything it had, for centuries.

stop.

the baltic regions were firmly in the varangian sphere of influence, before the northern crusades. they were then conquered, converted and colonized by force, before succeeding in overthrowing the crusaders. but, they never truly found their way back into the slavic confederacy.

so, are they greco-rus, or are they holdover vikings? i dunno.

i know they're not romans.

you could create a greater scandinavia that looks something like this - plus the british isles - as the third division of europe.

i'd tend to just let the balts be proto-slavs. but, they're not well understood, historically, as roman catholics...

which western european countries got skipped?

my "western empire" statistical area included:

portugal -  10
spain - 47
france - 67
italy - 60
germany - 83
switzerland- 9
belgium- 11
netherlands- 17
luxembourg- 1
austria- 9
czechia- 11
slovenia - 2

i did not consider the british isles or scandinavia to be a part of western europe, but rather split them off together into a separate statistical region due to historical discontinuities with roman culture. there would then be an eastern europe, centered on moscow (but historically on constaninople) that would include the slavic and baltic speaking countries, as well as historical greece, which is where the culture of eastern europe ultimately originates from. that means that i'm splitting europe into three regions - the western empire (rome/paris), the eastern empire (constantinople/moscow) and the untamed viking wilderness (british isles & scandinavia).

(edit: i might let you consider the baltic and finnic countries, together, along with the north of poland, to be a part of scandinavia, but i would not let you consider them to be a part of the western empire. concerns about muscovite hegemony aside, the teutonic knights were hardly much better. the fact is that these regions were christianized by force in a series of crusades that happened well into the modern era, so citing russian chauvinism is hardly much of an argument against catholic barbarity. the balts and slavs are culturally almost indistinguishable, but if you don't like that then the right answer is to split them off as untamed pagans on the periphery of vikingdom, not fold them into the west.)

to complete the thought, portugal is an interesting test case as they did much better than spain without a harsh lockdown, putting them in the same category as sweden. the countries directly in the german sphere of control (including denmark) seem to have done a little better, which is perhaps not surprising. the low countries did not do so well, and may belong in the same tier as the uk. lastly, ireland performed more like france than a part of the united kingdom - as it generally does.

you can work those numbers out if you want to compare your favourite european country to the big seven, but i don't think it really clarifies anything to do so. you can get all of the important idea out just by looking at the countries that kevin drum cherry-picked.

what can you say about the european countries, though?

well, italy and spain and france have a lot of old people - something that's actually not true in the uk, who cannot use that excuse. the swedes are more like the former, and have drastically outperformed them. the swiss are also a very old country that, no doubt aided by the geography, have done even better.

you would actually expect lower death rates in the united states because the life expectancy is lower, and that's actually working out. it's just that there's 330 million people in the united states, which is the size of all of western europe combined. i went over this once before....

the germans have done exceedingly well on first glance, but they are not as old as the other countries in europe, either. they're well ahead of china or the united states, but a little behind the uk, actually.

and, in canada, we're going to hand our homework in after the due date.

so, putting those countries into tiers,

1) the countries that have done very, very well relative to their demographics would be the swiss & germans.
2) the swedes have outperformed other countries with very old populations, but have not done quite as well as the swiss. the french also did noticeably better than the spaniards or italians.
3) italy & spain were hit hard, but are very old.
4) the uk is not as old as these countries, but performed as bad or worse. the americans are doing a little better, but are even younger, and are also a little behind in the pandemic curve. we'll have to see if the americans can beat the british or not in the end, but they may not, and this poor performance may in the end be a legacy of thatcher-reaganism.

and we need to wait for canada to finish, but it looks like we'll be more comparable to the swedes or french, and not as good as the germans or swiss.

canada does not have the best health care system in the world. not anymore, anyways - not after decades of neo-liberalism.

but, we might have the most blatantly dishonest government in the oecd, right now.

we appear to be reopening slowly in ontario, but i don't think we're even closing to peaking here yet.

so, i will expect the numbers to climb rather dramatically, even if they end up distorted by bad reporting. it's not clear how it's going to get reported, and i think i've decided to largely just ignore the government rather than pretend i can analyze fraudulent data.

but, it's not going to climb because of reopening, even if the government tries to argue the point. we just haven't come close to peaking yet.

what that means is that if you were to decompose the canadian curve into different provinces, you'd see something more like the peaks and decays in the european countries.

and, likewise, if you were to decompose the american curve into different states, you'd see something more like the peaks and decays in the european countries, too.

if you want to test this question of the efficacy of social distancing, you need to look more locally. so, what's happening in georgia, specifically? but, be careful - did georgia peak before it reopened?

i got that picture from here:

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/05/coronavirus-growth-in-western-countries-may-14-update/

kevin drum is arguing there that he expects that the united states should see a peak and a rise due to the loosening of social distancing, and that if we don't see such a thing then the epidemiologists will have hell to answer to.

i've been arguing that social distancing is pseudo-science from the start. but, i actually don't expect the curve in the united states to fall off quickly - and don't expect the curve in canada to, either. the reason is that canada and the united states are both very big countries with several epidemics, whereas a country like sweden is really just one big city. you'd be better off being as specific as possible, but you could fudge a comparison of all of italy to new york city; comparing individual countries in europe to the entire united states is pointless.

rather, you'd want to compare canada or the united states to the european union, and it's easy to see intuitively that if you superimpose these graphs on top of each other then they will intersect to form a plateau.

so, i expect that the united states will, indeed, plateau, but it was has less to do with social distancing restrictions being lifted and more to do with the fact that you're dealing with 50 different curves pasted on top of each other, rather than just one.

for that reason, the flattening curve in canada is also probably predictive. it's not going to fall like it did in italy, it's going to take a while...

this graph kind of enforces what i've been saying about canada just being last to get hit....and i don't do this very often because i kind of don't need to. graphs are just tools, remember - they help you understand, but they're only as useful as they are necessary.

"do i need to draw you a picture?"

most of the time, i don't need to draw myself pictures, so i don't bother - i can get the point by looking at the information in the chart, and i'll just tell you about it. you can draw your own fucking picture, if you have to.

but, somebody drew this graph for me, and what does it say?

it says canada is peaking last - which has been obvious for a while.

and, why is it peaking last?

because it's furthest away.

that is all.

really.

it seems like the true mortality rate is around 0.2-0.3% - a little higher than my lowball of 0.1%.

is montreal peaking?

well, they're at a little below 2200 deaths, and there is some suggestion that it's a little undercounted.

this was my projection:

3) montreal: (2800, 8399, 13999) [projection: low end]

the first number is a low estimate, the second is a middle estimate and the third is a high estimate. these are dependent not on the efficacy of social distancing but on different estimates of the mortality rate.

if they're actually at 2500 or so, they should cross the minimum barrier within a few days, meaning the numbers should start to slow down quite a bit.

remember: i don't think that total excess mortality much of anywhere is going to have much to do with what the government has or hasn't ordered people to do. so, i don't think that the end results are very dependent on government policy.

my low numbers have been a little too low in most places, but almost nowhere has actually reached the middle number yet. the only exception is new york city, where the population density is so dramatic, and i appear to have underestimated the effects of diabetes.

so, a reasonable expectation in montreal in the end is somewhere around 4000, regardless of what the government does.

so, i got a first pass finished this morning, but it's so dry in here that i'm literally bleeding. i'm hoping the temperature outside has stabilized from that freak cold snap, so that i can begin the process of bringing the humidity levels inside up to something more normal. and, i think i'm feeling better already, but let's hope it's not fleeting.

so, i guess i blew the whole week, but let's hope that things renormalize themselves a bit better from here on in.

i'm going to stop to do some cleaning and just generally run the hot water for the next several hours.

i still need to rebuild the appspot portion of the site into the blogger front-end, because all of the files that i built up at the beginning of the month seem to have strangely disappeared. there's also going to be a cross-referencing phase.

but, the bulk of it is done, and i would expect to be able to publish it by monday.

i think there's a cop upstairs, but the property owner is technically not home and hasn't been for months. so, let's hope we can avoid the air conditioner for most of the year...

i'm definitely not entirely done yet, but i'm over a hump in rebuilding it in the blog, anyways.

another day or two. i made progress tonight, at least....

dark green snot, huh?

is that good or bad, in context?

i'm just tired, really. and, i'm honestly not particularly concerned about this; i shouldn't have much of a problem with it. i just want to be sure i'm not taking it too lightly.

i do want to beat this thing on my own; i won't accept a vaccine for a weak virus. so, if i finally picked it up last week, that's a good thing. i just want to be sure i'm being fully evidence-based.

i was only coughing for a few hours last week, and i'm sure i was reacting to pollution. i have had no vascular issues since.

i don't have any other symptoms; i'm just extraordinarily tired, and my head feels like it's going to explode, and has since the start of the month.

it feels more like an environmentally-induced migraine than a virus. but, if i start coughing again, i'll call somebody. promise.

i'm really hoping this lifts with the cold front.

and, i just slept all morning, again.

i don't feel better. my head still hurts. but, i'm going to try to wake up.

i'm really, really hoping that these short days and blurry realities are over after today.

i smelled something burning last night that...it smelled like chinese food, actually. egg rolls. is there a drug that smells like egg rolls? or did somebody just get chinese?

whatever it was, it gave me a headache, and i just can't stay awake. this sucks....

i'm very slowly moving through that introduction to quantum physics lecture series (which is really a course in applied linear algebra, as i learned it in first year), and it keeps reminding me of this old demo i did with sean - which was the one & only rabit is wolf track that i did not remaster, remix or otherwise play with. it's the one and only track i was actually happy with...

i've tended to resist commenting on sean's vocals, because i think i'm sort of out of line doing so. there really was a total division of labour; he may have asked for an extra bar or two to work out a lyrical idea here and there, but he really had absolutely no musical training whatsoever, and i really had no interest in interfering with his expression. but, i keep thinking about this...

the way this track worked was that sean came in with a vocal idea for a song he wanted to call "released with your sigh", and i built the song up after he left, sending him a demo over...i can't remember if it was icq or msn. but, he came back about a week later and did the vocals for it in one take, and that was really the extent of it.

after listening to it, though, i insisted on naming the track "psi" - as the howl at the end was essentially a wavefunction collapse. in fact, i initially stylized it with the greek letter itself, ψ, but that didn't survive in a pre-mathml browser reality; what i just did to get that psi was very simple, but would have actually been very frustrating back in 2002. so, i just started calling it psi and it stuck....

he asked a few times, and i just told him it was a greek letter. i'd known him since we were kids, and was aware that his scientific literacy was very low. i think he tended to think i was naming it after something jungian, perhaps from a tool influence. but, it was more of a bowie-esque play on words.

so, this tune keeps coming up in my head, when i'm eating.

i'm working through this slowly because......the concepts are not new to me, but i have never taken a formal course in quantum physics like this before, and some of these concepts are things i've barely looked at in 20 years. the math is...it's weird. it really is. i think the weirdness has more to do with the geometry being wrong, but i will have more to say in due course. for now, i'm making sure i'm going over it well enough to really properly grasp it.

i would expect that future lecture series will be a little faster.

this actually sounds like they're getting this right.

the reality is that you need to figure out jurisdiction before you can go signing contracts.

https://www.princegeorgecitizen.com/chiefs-governments-to-sign-rights-understanding-after-b-c-pipeline-protests-1.24134823

do i think that these republican byelection wins are reflective of growing outrage over the lockdowns in the united states?

i think that democrats should think very carefully about whether they want to hand this to the republicans as an issue, or not.

and, i think that the only thing separating us right now is the weather.

we've adopted a trumpian border policy.

are you dumb enough to be manipulated like this?

when trump needed to distract from his failures, he blamed it on mexicans.

when trudeau needs to distract from his failures, he blames it on americans.

it's fundamentally exactly the same thing.

they're essentially trying to manufacture the illusion of a division in political culture that doesn't exist, but the irony is that their claimed division is a reflection - it's just rebranded trumpism.

what the government is doing here, in fanning the flames of xenophobia and anti-americanism, is actually extremely dangerous; when trudeau blames the issue on americans, that's exactly the same thing as when trump blames it on mexicans - he's distracting from his own failure, his own mismanagement, and his own anti-science policies.

it's just a mirror reflection - the same backwardsness, the same racism, the same ignorance.

"but, the science says..."

no. stop. the science says that closing borders does nothing. at all.

this is just another racist policy, from the same guy that brought you aladdin-in-blackface and absolutely disgusting ironic facial hair.

you can't open the border a little bit - it is either open or it is closed, and right now it is actually open. despite attempts by the media to suggest otherwise, there is absolutely no science underlying these closures at all. and, this idea that canada is a more conservative country than the united states is both ridiculous and absolutely wrong; an article like this may not be reflective of reality, but it really reflects very strongly on the government, and it's existing delusions about popular opinion.

if the border remains closed, it will be due to a political calculation by the government, and not due to any actual science. but, this is a miscalculation.

once the weather turns away from this record cold, which is happening in the next few days, people here will begin to ignore the government, as well.

i hope that, in the end, the government falls over this.

https://globalnews.ca/news/6937528/coronavirus-canada-us-reopening-plans/

i was just about to get started and had to nap again...

i can't handle these shifts in pressure. i know that. and, this one was intense, and bizarre. the dry air in here isn't helping, but i'm going to blame everything on the polar vortex as the root cause - which means i have to go through it lifting, now. hopefully, it's not as bad as it was coming in...

if i can get through the next 12 hours or so, hopefully things start to normalize themselves tomorrow.

let's try to get most of this done overnight.

if we repeat, we're going to skip the farce and go right to tragedy.

but, this article is based on a fundamental misunderstanding; we know now that what actually happened in 1918 was not a "second wave" but a mutated virus. in fact, there was a third wave, with a third mutation, as well.

it is true that there are valuable lessons to learn, but this article is unfortunately somewhat farcical in it's refusal to do so; no amount of prudence or careful planning will help us with a mutated virus, which will be like starting all over again. and, if the virus does not mutate, extending the lockdown will be pointless.

i'll remind you that i don't think the lockdown is working, anyways.

the technology we have today is incomparable to what they had then. we can collect samples in real time and track how the virus is spreading; if there is a lesson, it is in the technological determinism of being able to react to a mutation before it explodes, and that lies in the importance of testing, not in conservative planning.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/1918-pandemic-flu-coronavirus-1.5566524

Strong Leadership was the last guy.

are we going to get an economic action plan next, or what? and will you finally answer this question for me - is it a four year plan or a five year plan?

the consensus at the end of the day is that he was usually the dumbest guy in the room. we don't need more of that....

this government was elected because we wanted a party that would do better than that. following the science was a key part of the mandate, after too many years of on time trains and Strong Men.

what they did was moronic and almost certainly made things worse.

what does the science actually say, here? the answer is threefold:

1) you need to be very careful that you're not too authoritarian, because authoritarianism always backfires. that's the key, central point that the science has always said, and that we completely ignored, because of evan "dumbass" solomon.

2) screening people is a good idea, but only to the extent that you don't scare them too much.

3) the focus at the border should be on monitoring the spread of the disease, not on preventing it from spreading. so, what you really want is to treat the border as a checkpoint.

there's still a lot of evan solomons out there, and they don't understand or care about science. they just want the trains to run on time. but, we need to move on...

https://globalnews.ca/news/6935268/coronavirus-us-canada-border-screening/

while i did get a little bit done yesterday, i actually got sort of distracted by the location entry, and the need to go back and ensure everything was properly lined up. it was also a fairly short day, in the end - barely 15 hours. and, i got a fair amount of sleep this morning. i guess i was tired....

let's hope i can get through a good chunk of this this afternoon. i'm feeling good about it.

"but, isn't democracy that idea that the majority rules? then, aren't markets literally democracy?"

no.

there are very limited scenarios where democracy reduces to majority rule, but this is the exception, and people trying to reduce democracy to plurality are really perverting the concept.

a better way to understand the term democracy is as freedom of association and freedom of expression, and when you approach it from that direction, markets are often the literal negation of democracy, as they upend freedom of association.

anarchists tend to envision a future of small, decentralized groups defined by common interests. we consider peaceful coexistence to be a necessary corollary of decentralization, but we don't generally see much value in romanticizing some kind of concept of multiculturalism or tolerance - these are bourgeois, liberal concepts that are historically actually rather alien to the left.

so, for example, i would choose to completely disassociate myself from anybody practicing any kind of abrahamic religion, if i could - and that would be seen as an ideal, in an anarchist framework.

sometimes, we'll need to deal with issues of collective security, and we'll need to take straight-up votes and enforce a concept of collective will. anarchists would hope this would be very rare...

i don't want rules that make it easier to climb up the ladder to the area above.

rather, i want to topple the structure and burn the ladder.

how should smoking be regulated in residential areas?

well, ideally, it would reduce to democracy, and you'd essentially see self-segregation. people that don't want to live amongst smokers would come together and ban smoking in their buildings, thereby evicting people that don't want to quit. and, people that don't want to be told they can't smoke in their homes would come together, to live in buildings that non-smokers would not want to go in.

this would also work at the community or neighbourhood level, with certain areas banning residential smoking and certain areas allowing it.

that is the ideal; it is how things would work in a utopia. in reality, two things rear themselves to interfere with utopian democracy: market theory and class relations, which both act to make it harder for a lot of people to get into the environment they want to get into. unfortunately, a non-smoking environment is currently a privilege for the upper middle class and the elite, not something people have a democratic right to choose to create; the less educated and the poor seem to see restrictions on their "right to smoke" as draconian, and the majority rules in working class neighbourhoods.

ideally, what we'd do is get rid of class and let democracy work, but the society is built around property and that would require a deep revolution. so, unfortunately, a more practical solution is that we need some kind of government to come in and distort the market, in order to undo the class relation and let democracy approximate itself.

frustratingly, the legal system seems intent on undoing this, as it interprets smoking & non-smoking residential buildings to be discriminatory, based on the division by class. the legal system is essentially trained to see the world from the top down. so, it is concerned about abolishing rules that keep rich smokers out of the wealthy apartments, rather than abolishing rules that lock poor people into environments where they are exposed to second-hand smoke. the non-smoking poor ends up locked in place, collaterally, due to rules designed to prevent discrimination in class mobility. this entire paradigm needs to be revisited, and to an extent already has, but the system is strongly lagging behind the shift.

so, we should just be able to leave it up to democracy and let the people decide, but we can't because of the prevalence of class - instead, we need some kind of special government program to help the poor avoid the smoke, if they want to.

i hope that's clear.

(sorry for the multiple attempts, i'm pre-coffee this morning)