Saturday, May 30, 2020

so, i've been sleepy since wednesday morning and have largely blown the last few days. i mean, i've been working at it, but i've only gotten a few hours done.

the temperature crashed by ten degrees celsius yesterday afternoon, which messed with me, and we're getting a cold and gross weekend. i'm not going to ask for the heat to come on, but it's cold in here, and it really sucks.

i've already used the stove a few times, and i'm going to have to take...i'm probably going to have to shower a few times to warm up. it's just the facts of it.

i've got one last section to cross-reference, and it could really, honestly be done by the morning, or by the afternoon.

Friday, May 29, 2020

greg palast has often argued the opposite position, and does so here.

but, the united states has a very long history of electoral fraud, and stuffing ballots is how they do it. jfk, for example, stole the election in 1960 - as bush did in 2000.

trump may only be accidentally half-right, as is so often the case. but, it's the kind of thing that people should actually be taking very seriously, if they're concerned about electoral integrity.

if you want your vote to count you should walk it in.

and, if you don't want the political class rigging elections, you shouldn't hand them the opportunity to - an opportunity they will take, if you give it to them, because they always have.

https://www.gregpalast.com/rush-to-vote-by-mail-could-cost-dems-the-election/
i'm not concerned about lying, cheating voters.

what i'm concerned about is lying, cheating politicians.
the court ruling is essentially that hypochondria is not a medical condition.

....which is technically actually wrong...:

...even if i kind of like the tone used by the judge.

what i'd like to see around mail-in voting is a better paper trail. i'm not really concerned about voter fraud in the sense of voters voting twice or ineligible voters casting ballots; what i'm concerned about is ballot-stuffing by elected (or not yet-elected) officials, and those concerns are well-grounded, if more so in california than in texas.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/texas-court-mail-voting-1.5588160
to repurpose an old term, what twitter is is an ivory tower.

and, they don't want to come down and mingle with the commoners.
twitter is sending a very clear message - it doesn't want to be a public square, and it doesn't care about speech rights.

it wants to be a private club for middle class liberals, and is happy enough to check you at the door if you speak out.

on some level that's fine. but we need a public square, too - even if the elite prefer to avoid it.
i personally have very little interest in what trump does or does not tweet, and care little about slapping warnings on his posts. i'm a very idealistic free speech advocate, but i ultimately just don't fucking care.

my actual interest is in ensuring that i maintain ownership over my own content - that these companies don't steal my labour from me.

and, independent artists need to be cognizant of what's unfolding and the threat it poses to them, as they give in to their ritualistic two minutes of hate, in a deeply pyrrhic shot to their own face.
you may think it makes you feel good to tell the president to shut up, which says a lot about you and your repressive instincts.

but, you're going to wake up to an internet where five media companies own 95% of the content.

...which is a return to the world we used the internet to break free from.
see, this is why i don't use twitter.

it's not a helpful response.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/may/29/twitter-hides-donald-trump-tweet-glorifying-violence
we're not going to do the next part in sharpie font. i can't edit html headers on a per-post basis, and the process of converting and cutting is rather time consuming.

so, the order is over here:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-preventing-online-censorship/

i'm going directly to the source because i don't trust the capitalist press to report on the capitalist president carrying out what looks like a capitalist power grab. i know they like to make it look like they're in conflict, but the world runs on class divisions, not political partisanism. the republicrats and silicon valley are on the same side, here. so, what are they doing, then?

the news reports were confusing, to say the least. but, reading the order directly isn't helping much. this appears to be a true exercise in trumpian logic, and it's probably going to take a logician to understand the multivalued logic system - and i've had to sit down and write it out to get it, and just concluded that it's incoherent.

so, what does the law say, first?

what it seems to say - and i'm a canadian that has never looked into this before, but does have legal training - is (1) that only the direct author of any content uploaded through any service should be considered to be it's owner and publisher and (2) that no "provider" of an "interactive computer service" should be held liable for any good faith attempt at restricting access to legitimately lewd material. that's clear enough, and i think we take it for granted as obvious.

and, what is trump trying to do?

well, he's arguing that if you edit the post then you should be liable for it. but, what that really means is that he's trying to scratch out the first part, without which no liability could be legally erected. there's no law against aiding and abetting offensive speech; if google or facebook (i don't use twitter...) is to become liable for the content of it's users, that necessarily implies it owns their content, otherwise there would be no basis for liability. that's what the analogy to a publishing house implies, in the end - that these companies will take ownership of the content via copyright. and, i'll get to that in the end.

but, of course, it's ridiculous and incoherent for the president to try and push something like that down. rather, he seems to be trying to threaten twitter into laying off on the censorship. this is where the trumpian logic comes in - he seems to legitimately think that making an absurd threat will create the outcome he wants, and the weakling tech companies will cower in fear of his greater manliness, or some stupidity such as that (or that's at least the surface delusion).

but, what's going to actually happen, of course, is that the lawyers for twitter and facebook and ... are going to look at this and scratch their heads and say "ok. what? this makes no sense.". and, they're not going to cower in fear and comply until they can at least make sense of it. and, at some point, they're going to ask the question "what if we don't comply?".

trumpian logic, which is not rooted in game theory, doesn't seem to allow for dissent or free will, which is why it doesn't ever work out in reality. it's just bully logic - you do what he says, because he says so, because he said so. there's no good reason for it besides dominance and alpha male superiority. which is laughable...

so, what happens if they just shrug it off and don't comply? which is what keeps happening over and over...

well, they may lose liability, but they'll gain ownership. well, in theory anyways. i couldn't imagine them arguing against that particularly loudly, to be entirely honest with you. i might wonder how long they've actually been lobbying for it...

see, trumpian logic is also cartmanian logic in the sense that it tends to skip a lot of steps. there is an endpoint here that seems to make some sense, at least. i've been arguing that we should have public ownership in order to constitutionally protect users (and, in context, the president should be treated like a garden variety user, not like a government entity with special powers), but the other way to bring in constitutional protection would be to have the corporations take copyright over the content. you'd have to break these entities up, so you'd have competing services, but this is the publishing house analogy taken to it's logical conclusion - the services would be liable for defamation, but they'd also have free speech.

so, if twitter ignores the threat, and trump follows through with it, what happens next?

what trump is thinking is something along the lines of "we gave you immunity from defamation, and you're still fucking with my posts. so, i'm going to take away your immunity, and expose you to lawsuits. fuckers.".

twitter is supposed to become fearful and remove the censorship.

but, what they will no doubt actually do is just delete trump's account, because it exposes them to liability.

and, this is why trump always loses - he thinks that he can bully people into submission with these threats, and they usually just laugh at him when he tries.

is any of this going to happen?

well, it's up to congress, really, isn't it?

but, i think he's at least laying down a binary choice and we are going to have to make it at some point. the status quo is not sustainable - we can't have private tyrannies policing speech like this. this has to change. but, will we adopt the model that trump is hinting at, where online companies are treated like publishing houses? or will we take public ownership of the commons?


uch-o



and, i'm actually in full agreement with the president up to this point.



this is where he loses me.

if big brother edits my post, does that mean he now owns it? all of a sudden, this seems less like it's about free speech and more like it's actually a power grab by the tech companies.

i must interject - google did not create this content. this is my content. dammit.



ok, i agree with this, entirely.

but, how do we get from this valid concern to the conclusion that google and facebook (and bandcamp?) now own my content?

i'm going to continue this in a new post - but you see what my concern is.

the internet is not like a factory. i'm not an employee of the sites i post to, and i'm not contributing to a product that is being produced by these sites, in the end. i know that americans have a hard time understanding what "socialism" means, but social media doesn't have much to do with socialization in production.

this needs a marxist deconstruction, because it's looking a lot like a 21st century analogue to the appropriation of labour that happened in the industrial revolution, without any of the logic underlying it.

this is still my product. i still made this. and, if google is going to be given property rights (and responsibilities.) over it, that's just an example of how property is theft.

but, this is still capitalism. we had to expect this, right?

section 2 forthcoming.

(executive order here:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-preventing-online-censorship/)

Thursday, May 28, 2020

would you hold in your urine? your shit?

no?

then why would you hold in your sweat?
i need to be able to sweat in the summer.

it's so weird and unnatural - and unhealthy - to stop yourself from sweating. i don't understand why anybody would do such a weird thing to their environment and their body...

i guess it's a male thing, in the end, isn't it? men are taught to bottle everything up inside - their emotions, their feelings, and, i guess, their sweat, too.

but, they need to let it out.

they need to relearn to cry and stink at the same time, it would seem.

but, i don't want to turn off my glands - i want to sweat. and i will.
i was feeling better earlier in the week when the humidity first came in and warmed the place up, but i've been tired and having difficulty focusing over the last few days, as the machines upstairs have adjusted. i'm going to keep the windows open as the humidity falls, in order to short them out. if i'm stuck with cooler air one way or the other, i'd rather have fresh air from outside than dry air from the refrigerants.

it's different this year. last year, i was able to get outside quite a bit, so that when i did come in, i didn't notice the air as much. this year, i'm going to be inside for 98 out of 100 days and i'm going to need to find ways to acclimatize the surroundings. otherwise, i'm just going to sleep all summer as i hide from the air under hot blankets, and i don't want to do that.

for right now, i'm going to try to warm the place up by using the stove and then taking a hot shower. hopefully, i'll be more alert and focused when i get out of it.
what cuomo just signed is legally equivalent to a "separate but equal" order.

the courts need to rip it apart. with force.
it doesn't matter if "they work" or not, it's a discriminatory policy, regardless. you don't have the right to tell me what to wear because "it works" in stopping the spread of a disease - that's a red herring.

i would be more likely to vote with my feet and boycott the business than launch legal action.

but, i hope somebody drags him through court over this and stops this process of legalized discrimination in it's tracks. it sets a terrible precedent that can't be allowed to stand in a free society.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/499942-cuomo-to-sign-executive-order-allowing-businesses-to-deny-entry-to
i'm so distracted.

i haven't touched this since yesterday.

focus, jess.
i have to warn you, though.

you need to expect massive levels of ignorance from the press on this issue, from all sides. we've been through this over and over - almost nobody seems to understand speech on this continent. the response from the aclu (who seems to lose every case they file, nowadays) is going to be just as bad as the response from fox news. it's just going to be complete nonsense from every direction...

if this ends up in court, the ruling will not be about political bias, and it won't be about first amendment rights - although you might stop to pause for a moment and realize that the precedent twitter would be citing would be citizen's united if it came down to it.

the question before the court will be about property rights, and the legal ruling in the end will be that there are no first amendment rights on private property.

that's what the issue here is.

don't let them confuse you.
ok.

i'm going to guess that this executive order is going to be political theatre. again - he gets my hopes up, but he's not going to follow through with anything substantive.

the claim from the whitehouse is that twitter is engaging in "political bias". but, so what? they own the servers - it's their private property. they have no legal obligation to maintain neutrality. and, that's the actual legal fact, here.

i think it's a lamentable reality, but it's the current legal order.

so, what is he doing, then? he's just riling up his base.

as mentioned repeatedly, i'd like to see a total reversal of the way this is approached legally, but it would require overturning the courts, so it would need to go through congress, and i don't see any hope of that going anywhere. 

just about all he can do is post a tweet condemning the censorship on twitter, and that's about all you're going to see actually happen.

there's a lot of ways that the state can approach something like this if it doesn't want to nationalize the servers, which is what i'd actually argue for. the thing is that trump isn't going to be interested in anything like that because it would undo his own relevance. i'm approaching this from a very idealistic perspective about the sanctity of speech; he's just looking to maximize marketing reach. 

it does open a lot of questions, though, about how speech advocates move forward in restricting corporate censorship, in the future. but, don't think trump is an ally, here. he's just in it for himself.
so, i've decided.

the last time i went through this, i was trying to find a way to work blueberries into my diet, decided on the juice and then couldn't find any actual blueberry juice for a decent price; everything at the store was blueberry-cocktail or blueberry-concentrate. so, i just started buying blueberries. but, blueberries make sense in my diet in a way that carrots don't. if i can't find a decent source of carrot juice at a decent price, i'm not going to start buying carrots. maybe, one day, if i ever get a juicer....

the more i look into it, the less sense that green peppers are making to me. as mentioned, i just always got the greens because i liked how they tasted better. i knew they were high in c, and that was of importance to me, but it didn't really cross my mind to look into the different vitamin profiles of the different colours of peppers. now that i have, i realize i should be getting the reds. can i find reds that are bitter, though? or can i adjust to the sweeter taste?

i'm going to give it a try, next time i'm out, and see how i react. the reds have more c, so if my goal with the greens was the c, i'm not losing anything by moving to the reds. however, they have 10x as much beta carotene, which you can't overdose on. this simple switch would be enough to get me up past the daily recommended value for vitamin a at what is probably a moderate price difference.

if i don't like the sweet peppers in my pasta, i'll switch back. and, then what?

what i'll do is go shopping for carrot juice and see what i can find. the point of this is to get a lot of vitamin a, so i'll need to make sure i can actually get what i want. if all i can find is, like, v8 mixer and shit, then i'll need to find something else.

what if i find pure carrot juice and it's expensive? well, maybe i can add it in, without replacing the apple juice explicitly. the pure carrot juice will give you 300% of the rdi in a small glass. so, something i could do is mix the carrot juice with the apple juice. that could stretch it out and make it more affordable.

yes - i get 1000x more c than i need, but i kind of want to keep it that way.

let's hope i can handle the switch to the reds to start with. then, the carrot juice is just an added benefit on top of it.
there's a third reason, and it's ethical.

"it's ok to eat bugs, 'cause they don't have any feelings."

they literally have no brains....

https://www.popsci.com/story/diy/insect-bug-eating-guide/
on second thought, i seem to be overestimating the amount of vitamin a that is in a serving of milk. it's only 6-10%. the soy i buy is actually 10%, which would be better than fortified cow's milk.

again - i just prefer the taste of soy milk more than anything else. it's a habit that stuck from a vegetarian phase i went through years ago and had to reverse because i just wasn't absorbing enough plant iron, and might not have been getting enough b12. that's not a universal condition - some people can be vegan, and, frankly, i actually wish i could be, too. but, it just left me anemic.

so, i buy small amounts of processed meat, and just eat enough of it to keep my b12 levels up. i might buy a burger at a fast food restaurant once in a while, and i'll buy bacon once every couple of years, but i'm actually almost 40 years old and have never purchased actual meat, ever, in my whole life. no steak. no ground beef. no chicken. no ham. nothing - ever.

what i actually want to do in the long run is move to insect protein, so i've been waiting for years for something to come up and it just hasn't materialized. if i could replace the salami in my pasta with caterpillars, i'd feel a lot better about myself....

the eggs & milk don't bother me in principle and at the end of the day i'd rather the animals get eaten than wasted. i'm more about minimizing suffering; the reality as it exists is largely unnecessary, and we're only harming ourselves by doing it. i mean, look at what's happening just right now - people are dying by the thousands of diabetes-related complications as a consequence of a virus that is essentially a mutated common cold. it's as much about their lifestyle choices as it is anything else. at the end of the day, the unavoidable consequence of strict veganism adopted en masse is that you're going to have to kill billions of animals and dump them into mass graves. so, if you really want to do this right, you want to move towards co-existence, which means toning it down more than cutting it out.

so, i'd be happy with myself if i could get my daily protein from insects and just rely on eggs and milk for the rest of it.

for the a, specifically, moving to carrot juice is probably the best approach. i get enough c from my daily fruit bowl - i don't need the apple juice.
they fortify cereal with vitamin a, but i'm an adult, i don't eat cereal.

they should fortify the pasta with it.
so, i never really refocused after eating yesterday morning, then i slept a while, and got up and finished eating. i want to get back to it.

but i'm wondering this morning if i'm getting enough vitamin a.

i don't drink milk, and i don't eat much of any kind of processed food at all so i'm not getting it fortified anywhere. i eat a lot of cheese, but it's actually not stated how much vitamin a is in it. also, the amount of vitamin a in the soy milk i buy is actually disappointingly low.

i eat four eggs/week, in one sitting, and i eat a lot of tomatoes. your body can at least store vitamin a, so eating a bunch of eggs all at once should be a good start, at least. but, i'm crunching the numbers, and it seems a little low, regardless - four eggs in one sitting is more like a daily amount than a weekly amount.

the reason i'm wondering is that my eyesight has been declining. i've been nearsighted since i was a kid, so it's nothing new, but it doesn't seem to have recovered fully from the last round of migraines. i eat a lot of fruit, but hardly any vegetables. i don't drink milk. i hardly eat any meat, and the little bit i do is mostly for the fat content. i'm not sure where i'd work more vegetables in, except maybe the pasta.

my pasta plate has one tomato and one green pepper, and i eat half the plate, six days a week. so, six out of seven days a week, i'll have roughly half a tomato and roughly half a green pepper. i've mostly been worried about c rather than a, but the actual truth is that i prefer the more bitter taste of the green peppers over the sweeter taste of the red peppers and that's really the reason i buy the greens - i just like the taste better. but, an easy way to boost my vitamin a would be to buy red peppers instead of green peppers.

i could also consider replacing the apple juice (which, again, is for vitamin c) with carrot juice. i'm sure i can find some carrot juice with some vitamin c in it.

i just didn't really realize how low my vitamin a intake actually is. i'm kind of surprised by it, actually. i should adjust to that....

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

i hope they checked the office for pretzels, though.


cocaine pretzels, specifically.
i remember one time i was having sex, and my girlfriend at the time was sitting right on top of me and leaned down to bite my nipple, causing me to reflex in such a way that my back arched, which threw her off of me rather violently. she hit her head on the nightstand, creating a nasty bruise.

she was ok. thankfully. and, i don't blame myself - i reflexed, it was involuntary.

but, if she had landed a few cms one way or the other? yeah - it could have killed her. certainly.
the husband may not be the best person to analyze the data, frankly.

you'd obviously need an autopsy to know for sure, and i understand that foul play was not suspected, but when you tell me that a woman has been found dead of head injuries in her boss' office, apparently consistent with head trauma, a seizure is not the first thing that comes to mind.

i'm not saying joe killed her. at least not on purpose.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-tweet-scarborough-1.5576546
and, what about the claim about mail-in ballots?

well, i've seen some results in primaries that don't seem quite right, to say the least. i have some strong reservations about their use and would like to see stronger paper trails attached to them.

i would not consider trump's claim to be objectively false - his concern has some merit.
and, what about the people that actually want the government to crack down on free expression?

well, those are the actual conservatives.

but, our legal system doesn't actually take these people seriously, on either side of the border. they have no mechanism on which to actually act - they would need private companies to do the deed for them. well, unless we rip up our respective constitutions...
but my basic position is clear enough - social media is central enough to public discourse at this point that it should be removed from private oversight and nationalized, so that speech over social media is constitutionally protected.

we shouldn't have private companies determining what you can or can't say, it should be up to the courts.

and, that's a left wing position, not a conservative one.
given the current legal paradigm of private property and free markets, trump has the choice to abide by the rules put in place by the owners of the social media or not; if he doesn't like the speaking rules put in place by the owner of the property, he has the right to leave the premises and speak elsewhere.

but, if he wants to try to change that, i'd actually support him.

well. let's see what he has in mind, first, before i commit to that.
this is yet another situation where i'm sort of agreeing with trump, from the far left. i've been over this before, but i'm going to summarize what i've already posted.

the issue of speech on social media is confusing for a lot of people, and conservatives are often the most confused. legally speaking, social media is considered to be private property. what that means is that the government really has no more of a right to get involved in this than it does in a private speaking event, and the social media companies have as much right to basically do what they want as the owner of a private venue does.

so, trump's claims are actually rather dubious, especially in the united states, where property is so constitutionally protected. any attempt made by this administration to regulate social media in this manner would be ripped apart by the courts.

but, as a leftist, i don't like that - i think this is an example where property rights are a bad thing, and should be abolished. as an anarchist, my opposition to private property is more or less my most fundamental axiom, and forms the starting point of almost all of my politics. what that means from where i'm standing is that i want to treat social media not as private property but as a public forum, something that the courts have already thoroughly rejected, and that liberals seems to think is reasonable.

so, we're in a situation where liberals want to support social media as private property and let the companies regulate it (and may or may not want stricter enforcement), and self-identified conservatives seem to actually agree with the socialists, who want to treat it as a public forum, which would bring in constitutional protections for freedom of speech.

do i think that twitter should place a parental discretion warning on trump's tweets? i don't, no. and, if twitter was a public forum rather than private property, they would be prohibited from doing so by the first amendment. it's the fact that it's private property that lets them do that.

and, the way out of this is to nationalize social media, which is something i've been calling for for a long time.

i hope i've clarified the actual legalities here and where i stand on them.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-social-media-twitter-fact-check-1.5586285
in fact, i'm going to call for a permanent boycott on any company that is refusing service to people based on whether they wear a mask or not.
doug ford has no legal background and is completely fucking wrong in every way. as usual.

if this were to show up in a court, it would be a clear issue of discrimination, and the business would be forced to pay a fine. and, that is the correct ruling under any concept of human rights law.

that said, if i show up at a grocery store and they tell me i can't come in unless i wear a mask, i'd be just as happy to take my business elsewhere. permanently.

so, i told you months ago that i couldn't support bernie anymore because he was a sellout. basically.

are you admitting i was right, yet?
i'm halfway done the final cross-reference, if measured chronologically. however, it's closer to being two thirds of the way done, if measured in terms of amount of content - more than that, really, because a lot of the posts left are very lengthy, and the remaining process is about running the 'compare' program in notepad++.

i might get this finished by noon.

right now, i'm stopping to eat.

Tuesday, May 26, 2020

i am not a religious person, but there is a popular saying that religious people often trot out:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

unfortunately, a lot of people in government seem to have more courage than wisdom right now.

and, maybe they should go watch the wizard of oz.

https://nationalpost.com/news/fatalism-effect-study-says-people-who-overestimate-covid-19-spread-are-less-likely-to-follow-rules

to be clear - recognizing the futility of fighting this virus is not "fatalism", it's just sound reasoning and rational thinking.
and, why is it so cold in here?

fuck.

i've got the window open, and i'm still shivering.
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.

Monday, May 25, 2020

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.

Sunday, May 24, 2020

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.

Saturday, May 23, 2020

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.

Friday, May 22, 2020

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.

Thursday, May 21, 2020

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.

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.

Wednesday, May 20, 2020

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.

Tuesday, May 19, 2020

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.

Monday, May 18, 2020

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.

Sunday, May 17, 2020

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